Notes From the Backseat (13 page)

“Sorry,” I said. “Didn't mean to interrupt.” I headed for the spiral staircase and started up.

“I'll be up in a minute,” Coop said.

“Take your time.” As I glanced over my shoulder, all I could see of Coop was the back of his head, but Dannika was watching me, her eyes tightened in a slight squint, her mouth set in a hard, flat line.

6:50 p.m.

 

D
ear Marla,

I sat upstairs in the guestroom for about twenty minutes before I heard Coop making his way up the spiral staircase. His conversation with Dannika had been in hushed tones and though occasionally I could make out the rise and fall of their voices, I couldn't distinguish any specific words. I'd considered sneaking into the hallway to listen from the top of the stairs, but I was afraid someone would catch me and, besides, my secret agent zeal was on the wane. At first, investigating covertly had seemed like the only way to get at the truth, but now skulking in the shadows of the stairwell sounded acutely humiliating. Was Coop really worth all this? If I couldn't ask him straight up what was going on, how long would we last?

When I heard his footsteps making their way toward our room, I ran to the mirror and wiped away all traces of my supposedly waterproof mascara. Then I dashed for the bed, swiping a book from the nightstand, which I propped up on my knees.

He knocked softly.

“Yeah?” I stared coolly at the page and tried to look engrossed as he let himself in, closed the door behind him and lingered for a moment. I could see him in my peripheral vision leaning against the doorjamb. When I looked up our eyes locked and though his expression wasn't warm, exactly, I still felt myself melting under his gaze, going just as liquid as I did that day when I'd handed him his boxers at the Laundromat.

Still standing near the door, he said, “How you doin'?”

“Okay.” I turned a page in the book, affecting total absorption.

He walked over to the bed and tilted the paperback away from my knees so he could get a look at the title. “
Edible Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest,
huh?” He raised his eyebrows. “Sounds mesmerizing.”

I put the book down. “This trip isn't going very well, is it?”

He sat down on the edge of the bed. We weren't touching, but he was so close that I could feel the warmth of his body against my legs. “Things are complicated.”

I sighed. “I shouldn't have called her Donna. I'm sorry.”

He pinned me with his eyes. “It takes a lot for me to trust someone. You know that, don't you?”

I nodded. “Coop, I completely screwed up, I'm—”

He interrupted me with a searing-hot, tear-off-my-clothes-and-fuck-me-this-minute kiss. The world spun around and before I knew what was happening I was underneath him, intensely aware of his erection as it pressed against the crotch of my borrowed antique riding pants. I arched my back and he planted a trail of blistering kisses along my throat. I started to tug at his shirt, dying to feel his skin against mine when he pulled away abruptly and sat again on the edge of the bed, raking a hand through his hair.

I sat straight up and said, “Coop, God, what is it?”

“I'm so attracted to you,” he whispered, not looking at me.

“And that's a problem?” I was a little dizzy from the whiplash-inducing shifts in mood, here. All the blood had left my brain and was now throbbing between my legs, making it very difficult to think.

“I just don't want to use sex to avoid what's really going on.” I could see the little muscle in his jaw flexing, which excited me, but I forced myself to focus.

“Of course not.” I brushed a strand of hair from my eyes. “So…what
is
going on?”

“Look,” he said, turning slightly toward me. “Dannika's been a real friend to me. We've got a long history together. I've always promised I won't abandon her when I find someone I want to…”

“You want to what?”

“Be with. You know. Long term.”

My internal Greek chorus started in on a rapid-fire debate.
Is he saying he wants to be with me long term? I don't know—it's Dannika he made the
promise
to. It's like they're married or something! Yeah, but didn't he just imply—? So what? Implication means nothing. People imply things all the time, it's a chickenshit way to cover your tracks. If he wants to be with you long term he should come out and
say
that. Yeah, but maybe he's testing the waters, here—he's human, he doesn't want to be rejected. You've got a lot more to worry about than his pussyfoot confessions. See what you can find out about Malibu, for God's sake. Malibu-Shmalibu. Who cares what happened then if he can be mine now? Shut up and listen, you needy cow.

“Gwen?” He rubbed his thumb across my cheek. “Was that a yes or a no?”

Shit, he just asked you something important and you weren't even listening! You suck, Matson.

“Absolutely.” I had a fifty-fifty chance, right? When he looked a little taken aback, I added, “Not. Absolutely not.”

His grin was mischievous. “Is that your final answer?”

I nodded, feeling like a gawky second grader at a spelling bee.

“I see. So your reply to ‘Are you listening?' is ‘Absolutely not.'”

I covered my face with my hands. “I'm sorry, Coop. I got a little distracted.”

He laughed and rubbed his hand over my back. “I know this isn't easy for you.” His smile faded as he looked out the window. “I guess I was sort of naive, thinking we'd all just get along. She doesn't make friends easily, especially female friends. I mean, she
is
beautiful…”

Okay, so she's a supermodel, does he have to say it? Can't we pretend she's a hatchet-faced ho?

“I know she's difficult,” he went on, “but you're so disarming and…”

Disarming. Read: “Not sexy enough to be threatening.”

“…I thought we could just have a nice weekend. I didn't realize it would be this tense.” He studied me. “But she
is
one of my best friends, so eventually—I mean, we'd all have to hang out—if we're going to be together. You and me, I mean.” He looked at the ceiling. “God, I'm really screwing this up, aren't I?”

I put a finger to his lips. “No. I'm the one who screwed up. I betrayed your trust.”

“She pushed you. I know she pushes people. But it's just a defensive thing. She can be a real bitch when she wants to be, but normally she's a lot of fun.”

Yeah, if you're a six-foot-two, deliriously gorgeous stud. Otherwise, she's about as much fun as colon cancer.
“You know what, Coop? I can totally handle this. It's not a problem. Really.”

He cut his eyes at me and they were filled with such hope, such sweet relief, like a kid who'd just been informed he wasn't getting a spanking, of course not, and would he like a cookie?

“I admire your loyalty.” I traced my fingers over his gently. “It's part of who you are.”

“I just worried things were spiraling out of control, here.”

I leaned toward him and touched my lips to his, just barely. “Everything's going to be fine.”

He kissed me with his eyes closed, a gentle, searching kiss. As soon as I felt him relaxing, though, melting into me, dipping us almost imperceptibly toward the mattress, he stopped and sat upright again. “I just—you know—I've had sort of negative experiences with her in the past. That's why I'm gun-shy. I don't want the same thing to happen again.”

I nodded, my face grave.

He gazed at me a moment, and then his eyes moved to my throat. He ducked his head and started a long, slow line of tiny, hot kisses starting just below my earlobe, working his way down to my clavicle. I closed my eyes and felt shivers spreading in slow, swirling whorls across my body.

“I don't want her to come between us,” he said, gently nibbling the side of my neck. “Like she did—”

“With Victoria?”

I'd mumbled it, not thinking, my eyelids still full of swirling, kaleidoscopic shapes, as the shivers continued to travel across my skin. The second it was out of my mouth, though, I felt his body stiffen and pull back.

“What did you say?”

I winced. “Nothing…”

He opened his mouth, closed it again, started over. “Joni told you about that?”

Technically, I'd heard the story from two sources, with distinctly different perspectives, but at the moment it seemed better to keep things simple. I nodded.

He looked at his lap. Our bodies, moments ago entwined, were no longer touching. “You know, I would have told you that story myself. I just didn't want you to have preconceived ideas about Danni.”

The nickname lodged like a softball in my gut.

He went on, still not looking at me. “I was hoping she'd grown up a bit since then. I guess the jury's still out on that.”

I wanted to ask him about Malibu, about how he felt when he looked at her white teeth, about whether he'd ever pictured her when he was inside me. I longed to sit in his lap and listen to him saying I was the only woman he'd ever really wanted—not just in a hot-stab-of-lust way, but wanted with such fervor he longed to curl up beside me night after night and listen to me breathing.

Just then the front door slammed downstairs and Phil's booming voice called out, “Yo, Coop! We got to get going, man. We got some hell to raise.”

Coop just stared at me, and something in his face told me he was retreating, pulling away from me so fast it was like watching the taillights of a speeding car. “Yeah, okay,” he called to Phil over his shoulder. “Hold on a sec.”

It hurt, thinking he was going to leave me like that, right in the middle of things. I felt raw, exposed, sitting there on the bed in a strange house while Coop's eyes grew more and more distant every second. It didn't help that I was several hundred miles from my own apartment, where at least there was a medicinal stash of Stoli and Chunky Monkey in the freezer.

“Where are you going?” It came out part squeak, part whisper.

“Phil's got some crazy idea about a stag night.” He laced his fingers in mine. “I don't want to go, really—I hate these things—but he'll freak if I let him down.”

I nodded. Once again, I could feel my arms and legs prickling with goose bumps, only this time it was from loneliness, not pleasure. “No big deal.” I forced myself to produce an encouraging smile. “Go on. Have a good time.”

He looked doubtful. “It feels weird—I mean, you just met these guys—I don't want you to think I dragged you up here and threw you to the wolves.”

Just hearing him say that made me feel less abandoned. “Joni's great. Seriously. We'll have a good time.”

“You sure?” He squeezed my hand.

“Yes. Go.”

He went to his duffel bag and pulled out a pair of brown wingtips—my favorite. He sat in the old leather chair near the window, unlaced his muddy boots, pulled them off, and exchanged them for the dress shoes. As he was lacing them up he said, “Are you going out with the girls?”

“Don't know,” I said. “Nobody's mentioned it.”

He finished tying the laces, stood up and touched his hair a couple times while looking in the mirror. “Listen, kitten.” He pulled a silver gum wrapper from his pocket, then bent down and scribbled something on the blank side. “If you need anything, this is Phil's cell, okay? Even if you just want to say hi.”

I stood up and went to him. “I'm a big girl,” I said, wrapping my arms around his neck. “I think I can handle a night out with the girls. Or a night in with the girls. Or a night by myself, if the girls ditch me.”

“I doubt that. Joni really digs you.”

I grinned. “See? I'll be just fine.”

“Coop! For God's sake, get down here, man. It's my last free night on earth.” Phil was obviously getting restless.

Coop touched the back of my neck so softly I felt all the lust he'd stirred up earlier kick back into high gear. Right then I wanted nothing more than to tear his clothes off and force myself on him, to meld our bodies into one permanently fused entity.

But he headed for the door. “We'll talk more later.”

“Right.” I nodded, trying to look brave.

He threw a heartbreaking glance over his shoulder and mumbled, “I miss you already,” before closing the door.

8:00 p.m.

 

D
ear Marla,

Now that Coop's left, the silence in the house buzzes like a thousand cicadas. I'm still sitting on the bed in the guestroom, clutching a batik pillow and brooding. Something about the smell in this place, the cold Northern California damp in the air, reminds me too much of being little. I stare out the window as the sky does its slow fade from a cheery blue to a dusky violet to star-sprinkled indigo; against this backdrop, the specters of my childhood slide into view, three-dimensional and way too real.

What happened between my parents—the avalanche of their marriage—took place when I was a kid, so it's hard to see it clearly sometimes. Then again, the memories I do have are so finely etched with details, they seem more real than the room I'm sitting in right now. I was nine when they finally split up. A lot of people assume the divorce itself is the hard part on kids, but for me it was the years leading up to it that sucked. It was like watching your home buckle and give way in a surreal, slow-motion demolition; the worst part was, we were stuck inside, watching the rafters split and the windows shatter—at least my mom and I were. For awhile I wondered where Dad was, why he wasn't helping, but now I know he was the guy outside with the wrecking ball.

The crazy thing about being a kid stuck in your parents' mess is that you're not really lucid enough to call them on their shit, but you're right there in the midst of it, just the same. I think that's why I was so fascinated back then with wounds and burns and skin diseases. Mom thought it indicated a predilection for medicine, but I realize now it was simply a fascination with pain that showed. Inside our family, the injuries and the infections were all hidden within the folds of our silence. It seemed like a relief to wear your suffering out in the open, even if it meant sporting angry red boils or having your flesh sliced down to the bone.

I know I haven't told you any of this. By the time I met you, I was deep into the process of reinventing myself and I had no desire to look back. My obsession with vintage clothing blossomed soon after my parents' divorce. I wanted to blot out the era I was raised in and become someone from an uncontaminated time, when men were men, women were women, and dinner was served at six. I loved the clean, antiseptic feel of the fifties—the mincing innocence of a Peter Pan collar, the haughty aloofness of pure white kid gloves. In the starched and pressed world of vintage fashion, I found the road away from home and I took it without a glance back at the wreck I'd left behind.

But before there was you and before my closet was lined with pillbox hats, there was me and my parents and the failed experiment of their open marriage. At the time, of course, I didn't have anything to call it; nobody bothered explaining it to me. All I knew was that right around the second grade my mother became obsessed with Lindsey Baylor.

Lindsey was a girl I hardly noticed before my mom pointed her out. I guess you never met her; the Baylors moved away just before I started junior high. Lindsey had white-blond hair that was so silky and fine, her little pink plastic barrettes were forever slipping out of place. She was skinny, with scared little-rabbit eyes and a pale, slightly freckled complexion. She wasn't even in my class; she was in Mr. Durden's, and I was in Mrs. Franklin's, but suddenly my mom was quizzing me about her while we ate French fries and salad in front of the news. Dad was never present during these meals; he was often gone, anyway, but during that time he only popped in for brief guest appearances and even then he seemed preoccupied, distant. Mom's peculiar fascination with Lindsey Baylor grew and Dad's absence became more and more conspicuous.

Anyway, as it turns out, my dad was having an affair with Lindsey Baylor's mom. There you have it: mystery unveiled. Evidently Mrs. Baylor used to cut his hair, and I guess it just happened. Dad may have been a womanizer, but he was also compulsively honest and intellectually overdeveloped. He told Mom all about it and suggested that monogamy was a worn-out bourgeois value, that they should consider trying a more modern marriage (or maybe a more old-fashioned one, depending on how you look at it). And because she wanted a family, not a child-support payment that probably wouldn't even be regular, she told him okay, you sleep with whoever you want, just tell me where you are and get your ass home before Gwen gets up in the morning.

Just like that, they transformed themselves. One minute they were Mr. and Mrs. Matson, wrestling coach and homemaker, the next they were swinging bohemians, pioneers in the uncharted territory of sexual freedom.

Except the thing is, my mom didn't swing. It was pretty much a one-sided experiment in non-monogamy. Dad did the messing around. Mom did the mothering.

That's the abridged version—the one I was able to piece together as an adult—but that's not the one I lived. Now I can see it all miniaturized, like peeking into a dollhouse, but when I was eight and my dad was staying out late and my mom was nursing a nervous breakdown, the forces that guided us were murkier, more opaque and sadder. Half of those scenes I can barely remember, but there is one that haunts me and that's the one struggling to take shape now as I sit here on Joni and Phil's bed in the guestroom, holding tight to a batik pillow like it can somehow protect me.

Don't be mad, Marla. I just can't write it down. Putting it on paper is too ugly. I had to live it; why should I have to make it real all over again, resurrect it with ink? Besides, you're in the City of Light. It hardly seems fair to mail you all my shadows.

Signing off from FUBAR Ranch,
Gwen