Patchwork People XXIV Cactus Country
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Patchwork People XIV: Gimme Shelter. free porn video
XIV. Gimme shelter.
"You live in a garage?"
They were standing on the little concrete square outside the front door,
staring up together at a tidy two story structure that, modifications
notwithstanding, still, in fact, looked very much like a garage.
"Well, it's not exactly a garage. Actually, It's a converted carriage
house. I'm just renting. The woman I work for owns it. She lives in the
main house across the garden."
"A carriage house? What's that?"
"It's where they used to put the horse-drawn carriages back in the day
before cars."
"No kidding. So it's a horse garage then."
"Yes," Marcia conceded, inserting the key into the front door. "I guess
so."
Phoebe shifted the overstuff backpack off her shoulder. She looked to
have already lost interest.
"Cool," she said, non-committal.
Marcia bent to retrieve her mail from the rug on the other side of the
door. She flipped through it quickly, like a card player with a neutral
hand, considering it just long enough to determine that there was
nothing requiring her immediate attention. She tossed the collection of
bills and flyers on an end table where the phone sat, its red message
light blinking. A quick thumb-scroll through the missed calls menu
showed her no familiar numbers. She'd go through the tedious process of
deleting telemarketer pitches for low-interest credit cards and free
vacations later. Her first order of business was to get Phoebe settled
in and comfortable.
"Let me give you the quick tour and show you where you can put your
things."
Marcia led Phoebe through the downstairs, introducing the kitchen, the
living and dining rooms, all self-evident upon entering. She showed her
the first-floor bathroom and the back room where she and Walt had
hurriedly set up for a bedroom for Phoebe's use. The room consisted of
an old daybed that Walt had dragged out of storage and a couple of
hastily constructed but sturdy cardboard wardrobes they'd picked up from
Target. A television stood on a stool in one corner. There was a jerry-
rigged cable hook up in the room, also courtesy of Walt, hijacked from
Marcia's main account. The television was one of those combination
affairs that also played DVD's. An air conditioner was fit in the bigger
of the two small windows.
"I'm sorry things seems so provisional. We didn't have much time to get
things ready."
Marcia felt a guilt similar to what she imagined a parent feels when a
grown child returns home and finds his or her old room converted to a
den instead of preserved like a museum exhibit. For Marcia there was no
question of doing that. Instead, she might have set up a room like a
prayer in hopeful anticipation of Phoebe one day arriving. The fact was,
not even in her prayers did Marcia anticipate such a day would ever
come. She cleared her throat.
"Anyway, you can use the bottom two drawers of the sideboard in the
dining room, if you need more space. The closet in here is pretty empty.
Anything else you need just let me know. There are some extra blankets
in the closet upstairs. The futon pulls out into a bed. It's not
terribly comfortable, but I hope it'll be okay."
Phoebe shrugged. "I won't be here that long anyway. I'm sure it'll do."
"Yes. Well, if you need help pulling it out or anything..."
"No problem. I've got a friend who's got one of these things. I know how
they work.
"My room is upstairs." Marcia pointed out the doorway towards the
stairs. "In the loft. There's a master bathroom there with a tub if
you'd like a bath."
"The loft. Is that where they used to keep the hay?"
"Could be."
Phoebe nodded, as if this confirmed what she'd been saying all along.
"Umm, so I guess that's it. Can you think of anything else?"
"Nope."
"Needless to say, use whatever you like. The phone. The fridge, the
stove, the...well, anything. Make yourself at home. My horse garage is
your horse garage."
Her attempt at levity was rewarded with a thin smile. She feared that
Phoebe considered the whole set-up, Marcia's whole life, really, rather
shabby. She feared that her daughter might already be regretting having
come at all.
"So are you hungry or anything?"
"We just came from the restaurant," Phoebe reminded her.
"Yes, I guess that's true. Sorry."
The more Marcia stood there trying to be helpful and inviting the more
self-conscious and foolish she felt. Somehow, though, she remained
rooted to the spot, trying to think of something to say that might erase
what she'd already said and replace it with something better. But the
whole conversation was already unmanageable, more words weren't going to
make it any better. Just move, she told herself, just shut up and let
the kid get comfortable, stop being such a fussy hen. You can start over
later.
"Is there anything then?"
"I'd like to get that shower."
"Okay. Sure. Great idea. I'll show you where the towels and stuff are,
how to work the faucets..."
"I think I can manage," Phoebe said.
"Right. Okay, maybe I'll just make some tea then."
Phoebe stared at her blankly for a moment; as if Marcia had announced
beforehand that she was going to scratch her left elbow. Phoebe didn't
say "whatever," but her expression delivered this all-purpose
exclamation of teenaged exasperation in the face of adult obtuseness
more effectively than a thousand mere words ever could.
Marcia was on the couch, browsing the internet on her laptop, when
Phoebe returned from her shower. She was wrapped in the ankle-length
bathrobe of Egyptian cotton that Marcia had left for her on the back of
the bathroom door. Wrapped in a towel-turban, Phoebe's wet hair was
piled atop her head, giving her an exotic, glamorous look.
"Hey," Marcia said, her heart aching at the casual beauty of her
daughter.
Unbidden, the memories of other such moments flooded back, simple
unremarkable moments that most parents took for granted. Marcia should
have experienced these moments a thousand times over, experienced them
so many times they eventually lost the power to break one's heart. If
they ever did. There were other moments, too, and these she could
consider only in the abstract. Moments she had never experienced, and
never would, the particulars of which she could only imagine. These were
moments that had passed during her absence from Phoebe's life. For that
she knew she had no one to blame but herself...and Claire.
"Everything okay?"
"Everything's fine."
"Great. If you'd like to watch television..." Marcia pointed towards the
set which she hadn't turned on.
"There's one in my room, I noticed."
"Sure. Of course. But if you'd rather not be cooped up in there just
yet..." Marcia stopped herself from going further, from saying something
like "in case you wanted to spend time together, after all, we haven't
seen each other in years..." There was no way to express it without
sounding maudlin and needy. Best, Marcia decided, to adopt the same
breezy casual approach that Phoebe seemed comfortable taking. Marcia
pointed out her collection of movies on DVD, mostly classics that she
figured probably wouldn't interest Phoebe. But Phoebe surprised her by
taking a copy of Rear Window.
"We did Hitchcock in film studies," she explained. She also took a copy
of Bell, Book, and Candle. "Mom's favorite."
Her first mention of her mother since she arrived, Marcia noted. She'd
been waiting, not wanting to press, and now she wondered if this were
the time to bring the subject up, but she waited too long and Phoebe was
already heading back to her room with the DVD's in hand.
Marcia was still trying to get over her disappointment that Phoebe would
apparently rather watch old movies--including her mother's favorite no
less--by herself than sit outside on the couch with the parent she
hadn't seen literally in years. She knew it was a petty, self-centered,
mean-spirited thing to be thinking under the circumstances. She was a
rotten person. She should have never have been a parent to begin with.
No wonder Phoebe hadn't wanted to see her all this time, that she
considered Marcia only as a last, desperate resort.
She stopped herself from going any further. Now, on top of it all, she
was feeling sorry for herself. Wallowing in self-pity. Ugh.
Just then Phoebe came padding barefoot out of her bedroom and Marcia's
heart rose. But Phoebe was only going to the kitchen to retrieve a glass
of water. On her way back to the bedroom, Marcia offered to fetch her a
piece of apple pie.
"No thanks. I think I'll just take my water and have a lie down. I'm
bushed. I'll see you in the morning. Okay?"
"Okay. What about breakfast?"
Phoebe shrugged. "Coffee. Cigarettes. Don't sweat it. I can pick at
anything you have around. I don't usually do breakfast anyway."
"Well, in that case, I guess it's good night."
"Good night," Phoebe said with the same bright note of superficial cheer
she'd used with the waitress back at the restaurant that afternoon. It
was the tone one could almost always muster up when you know it's the
last thing you're going to be required to say to someone before taking
your leave of them.
Marcia watched her daughter carry her water into the bedroom and close
the door behind her.
So that was that. There was to be no heart-to-heart talk, no falling-
into-each-other's-arms reunion, not even an update to get Marcia up to
speed on Phoebe's life, to reacquaint her with this daughter who was now
all but a relative stranger. So much for the movie-version of what she
imagined happening when Phoebe arrived.
Well, Marcia reasoned, there was still time, no need to rush to the
climax. She could afford, at least for now, to let it play out in
Phoebe-time. She had no idea how long her daughter would stay, but there
would be a morning, at the very least, and new beginnings were what
mornings were for, after all. She couldn't remember the last time since
that there would be a morning with Phoebe in it.
Well she can call it what she likes, but it still a garage! The room
she's got me stashed away in isn't much bigger than a refrigerator box,
but I guess I can't complain. What did I expect, anyway? Truthfully,
it's really not that bad when you come right down to it, kind of cozy,
actually, in a minimalist, stripped-down, solitary-confinement kind of
way.
She tried to fix it up with some girly touches, you can see that. Those
sprigs of little yellow bell-like flowers, for instance, the Irish lace
runners on the cardboard furniture, but that somehow only makes it all
the more pitiful. That she's even trying, I mean. Sometimes you really
wish that people wouldn't try at all, wouldn't even make the pretense of
caring. That would make things easier, I think. Then you could just go
ahead and be angry and not give a damn and not have any second thoughts
about it or be in any danger of feeling sorry for anyone.
Then there's the fact that she's so nervous, so obviously wanting my
approval or my forgiveness or whatever. If only she hadn't answered my
text at all or told me to go to hell or given me some lame excuse about
why I couldn't stay with her. If only she really had abandoned me. You
know, this is the secret I can't tell anyone, that I can barely tell
myself: that I wish she had abandoned me!
I'm going to cross that out!
Double cross it out!
Christ, this is my dad I'm talking about. Do you realize that? I keep
forgetting it myself!
Of course, he's not really my dad and that's something else I keep
forgetting. He's just my adopted dad. I keep having to remind myself of
that essential fact and when I do it's a great relief to me because it's
that little technicality that really lets me off the hook for having to
care about any of these people, as if I needed an excuse, right? So why
is it when I think about either one of them I just want to cry? Answer
me that, will you?
Both of them are just so unbelievably fucked up. Mom and Dad and poor
little me caught in the middle, between two parents who need an adult to
supervise them! I could be the subject of a children's book: Phoebe and
her Two Moms, or maybe it would titled Phoebe and her Two Would-Be Moms.
Really, don't you think God was trying to tell them something by not
allowing them to have their own kids? But they just wouldn't listen; oh
no, they thought they'd outsmart him and adopt. They had to go and drag
me into it and now I have to suffer. Is that fair at all, do you think?
What did I do to deserve this?
Couldn't I have been adopted by a nice normal Christian couple, boring
and predictable as white bread, where I could have been the weird one,
the wild thing, the black sheep? Isn't that the right every kid has?
What's the point of being a teenager if you're parents are more fucked
up than you?
Christ, I'm so hungry I could eat a horse if they still had one around
this old barn. I could eat hay if they had that. When will she go the
hell upstairs to her loft or her lair or whatever it is so that I can
sneak out to the kitchen and raid the icebox? I need a potato chip a
leaf of lettuce a spoonful of mayonnaise an entire German chocolate cake
and a gallon of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Something! Anything! I
heard her say that she had an apple pie in the fridge.
Okay, I know, it's stupid. I'm still eating even if no one sees me. It's
not like the tree in the forest that makes no sound if no one is there
to hear it. I'm still consuming calories and carbs, I'm still getting
fatter and fatter, even if no one is around to see my fat ass in
underwear. I see it in the mirror, getting doughier day by day, and
that's bad enough. I see the numbers on the scale. So it really doesn't
make any sense to sneak out when no one's looking and cram my face full
of donuts but tell me what in my life makes any sense, cause I'd really
like to know.
I've run away from home and a mom who's not a mom but a mad puppeteer in
disguise and I'm sleeping in a horse-house without a horse with a dad
who's not a dad who is now a woman, but not a mom, though supposedly
still my parent. God only knows what she or he or it really is! Tell me
what about any of this makes any sense at all! Tell me where does that
leave me?
The day was over and a long, eventful day it was. All it all, it went
better than Marcia expected, not exactly the fantasy reunion she might
have wished for, perhaps, but not the nightmare she feared it might be
either. Sometimes, considering the downside, you just had to be thankful
for the compromise.
Marcia listened to Phoebe bumping around in her room. She was making
unmistakable getting-ready-for-bed noises. How Marcia missed those
noises, she realized now, missed them without ever realizing it before.
After a time everything went quiet and Marcia assumed Phoebe had settled
in to sleep. She'd had a long trip and no doubt experienced every bit as
much anticipatory stress at their reunion as Marcia did. Probably more,
when you came to think of it.
She felt a swell of pride and admiration when she thought of the courage
it took for Phoebe to do what she had done. Just running away from home
hadn't taken more guts than Marcia would have had at her age. Not to
mention seeking her out. Marcia couldn't let herself forget what a shock
it must be, after all, for Phoebe to see her as she was now.
Marcia herself all but took it for granted nowadays; in fact, it came as
a shock to her that anyone should be shocked by the fact that she was a
woman. For Marcia, it was now another mere fact of existence, same as
she imagined it must be for any other woman.
It could be hard, especially after so much time had passed, to remember
that Phoebe was, really, in many ways, still little more than a child.
She had always seemed older than her years. She possessed a calm, wise
presence that often humbled Marcia, as it did Claire, too, both of whom,
by contrast, always felt so frantic and out of control. Even back in the
day when they were still changing Phoebe's diapers, Marcia had the sense
that Phoebe was generously enduring it all for their sake, patiently
teaching them the lesson of parenthood.
An old soul, Marcia had heard it referred to. Phoebe had an old soul.
But what you could forget was that it was housed in a young body with a
young mind. What Marcia and Claire should have been doing as parents is
safeguarding Phoebe from the dangers of growing up too fast, nurturing
her until their daughter had time to understand the in-born wisdom of
her soul. That was the sacred trust they had as parents. They had
failed, both of them, each in their own way, to be worthy of that trust.
Marcia turned on her computer. She typed a quick reply to a concerned
email from Walt anxious to hear how things had gone. When this was sent
off, she stretched, yawned, and realized just how exhausted she was. She
closed the laptop and walked around the room, turning off lights. She
left a nightlight that she never used burning in the kitchen just in
case Phoebe might need to find her way in the unfamiliar dark, to use
the bathroom or get a drink. Then she poured herself a glass of water
from the Brita pitcher in the fridge and went upstairs to bed.
Sleep was a long time coming, or maybe it only seemed that way because
every time Marcia turned to look at the bedside clock it seemed that far
more time had passed than what seemed reasonable since the last time
she'd looked. More than likely, she'd been sleeping and waking in short,
fitful cycles. At one point, it seemed that she was actually having a
heated conversation with someone unseen in the room but then she woke up
fully with a start and realized that it must have been a dream. She
tried, but couldn't recall any of the details of the conversation, or
even what the subject, which had seemed so important, might have been.
Lying there, staring up at the ceiling, she heard the sound of someone
moving around downstairs. She rose up on her elbow, heart thudding
painfully in her chest, and experienced a brief moment of confused panic
until her brain delivered to her the memory that it was Phoebe, that her
daughter had arrived that afternoon and was staying in the room
downstairs. There was no cause for alarm, it was only the unaccustomed
sound of a teenager occupying her home.
It's only my daughter, Marcia said to herself, and then she said it
again, because she liked the sound of it. Because she wanted to reassure
herself that it was true, not part of another, more complicated dream.
It was true, as true as anything else in this improbable, occasionally
magical life of ours. She lay her head back down on the pillow and
smiled up into the dark.
* * * * *
Author note: I plan to publish "Patchwork People" in its entirety in
weekly installments here on Fictionmania. In the meantime, the complete
novel is currently available as an Amazon Kindle ebook for $2.99.
For more of my writings, drawings, erotica, and photos please visit my
blog Bad Pussy
sissyforlife(dot)blogspot(dot)com.
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