Leave It to Me - Bharati Mukherjee [70]
“Let her go, please let her go.”
Romeo nuzzled his chin in the mohair tautness between Jess’s breasts. “Not bad for your age.” Then he switched to his Ma Varuna-Lauren Bacali voice. “If roses are red, and violets are blue, our hate is eternal, and our love absolute. Happy Valentine’s Day.”
I’d forgotten it was Valentine’s Day. Pappy would have left a box of Laura Lee by Mama’s penny jar in the kitchen. Frankie would have sent his newest two dozen red roses. Or saucy stuff from Victoria’s Secret. Probably both. To all his women. He’d have Fatboy Frontman take care of the Valentine problem. Nobody sent me flowers this year. Not even a Hallmark card. I’d have settled for one splinter-small ice-cold lead on whatever Romeo’d meant by absolute love. I hated Jess. She wasn’t worthy of obsessive desire and claim-or-die pursuits. He made me wanton, Jess had lied to herself. She wasn’t wanton, had never been and would never be, she was just another Central Valley hippie aging into Marin matron.
You didn’t earn the right to pay Emily homage, Mother; I have.
“Get the hell out! Both of you!” Jess screamed. Then she sobbed.
“Fred didn’t fall, Mom! He was pushed.”
“Shut up!” Jess shouted. “Shut the fuck up! This isn’t happening to me.”
Something was happening to me. A little girl in a shapeless gray smock was being marched up the cracked cement steps of a small-town courthouse. Pariah puppies suckled on the saggy tits of a scarred, bony bitch in the courtyard. Movie lines merged with memories. You shouldn’t have. You was my mother.
I rushed Romeo and Jess; I clawed, punched, jabbed, screamed and wept. Romeo eased his hold on Jess, but didn’t let go.
“Why?” I begged. “They brought me to see you. The Gray Nuns. It was a long, nasty ride. The bus was packed. Why didn’t you want me? I need to know. Why didn’t you keep me? Why didn’t you want to see me again?” It always came back to needs and wants. Frankie Fong had had that one figured.
Jess spat in my face. “I’ve never been pregnant,” she hissed. “I wasn’t that dumb. I may have been naive, but I wasn’t dumb, never.”
A flash, not a memory: Judge, I’m not exactly dumb, you know. I’ve been on the Pill since I was fourteen, okay. That’s not my kid. The dumb nuns got it wrong, but then what did you expect? I must have been in the courtroom. I couldn’t picture the place. I didn’t see faces. Had it been hot or rainy that day?
Romeo pushed me away, and tightened his grasp on Jess’s wrists. “Petunia, my pet, you can still rouse me.”
Jess was flattered into a slight blush. I watched that grateful rosiness spread across her cheeks, and streak into the wrinkles around her lips.
Romeo took advantage of the blushing and softening. He whipped something metallic out of his pocket. Handcuffs. The man and woman who’d given me life were as strange to me as honeymooners from Mars.
Nothing is wrong with that picture of lovers on the deck of a houseboat in a neighborly marina. Of the men I have known, more have than haven’t routinely carried handguns and sex toys, in addition to the usual wallet-stuffers like credit cards and driver’s license.
“Petunia? Is that her real name?” Approver, Petunia: Jess had gone through more melodramatic incarnations than Debby DiMartino.
“My pretty Petunia. Alias Miss Free Love from Fresno alias Jeanne alias Magda alias …”
“What was your mother’s name, Mom?”
“Get the fuck off my property. You’re fucking trespassing. Ham? Why the hell isn’t he back? How long does it take to pick up a pack of pitas, for chrissake?”
“What was her name?”
“Leave her out of this. Mother’s been dead thirty years.”
“Iris?”
“Get off the boat or I’ll call the cops!”
“Not your boat, Mom. You don’t have the right to order me off.”
Romeo chortled. “You make me proud, little Devi. Now my turn to take over.” He pinned Jess’s body against the rail, unlocked the cuffs he’d only just put on her and closed his killer hands around her shoulders. “My pretty Petunia.” He scrunched her shoulder blades together, and squeezed. I winced. She twisted her chin as far back over her shoulder