stone cold sober, chapter 4

4

         “Why is it that you get to be tall and slim and I turn out chubby and stubby? We’re related, aren’t we supposed to look alike, at least a bit?” Kate grabbed her aunt’s hand and held it next to hers. “Even your fingers are skinnier than mine!”
         Arianne intertwined her fingers with her niece’s “Scientists say that rich men prefer voluptuous women,” she said, “and only poor sods go for skinny.”
         “Will you stop it?” Kate backed up, taking her hands with her. “That’s all I get from you all day. Regurgitated trash from people I have never met in my entire life.”
         “They’re pretty smart--“
         “I don’t care!” Kate pouted. “What where my mother’s fingers like?”
         Arianne’s eyes glazed over the way they always did when someone mentioned her dead brother and his wife. Kate was only one when her parents died, she didn’t remember a thing, but Arianne apparently suffered for both of them. “They were as pretty as yours,” she said and then added with a harsher tone, “Now, chill and put the kettle on, I’m so in the mood for an anti-anxiety tea.”
         Kate threw her arms up in abandonment and then slouched towards the kitchen.
         Arianne and Kate. Kate and Arianne. Her aunt was in every memory Kate had since earliest childhood, dressing up, dancing, singing off key, celebrating pagan rituals and witches’ Sabbath while others preferred plain Christmas.
         Kate wished she could tell Arianne the whole story with Quinn but she was afraid that her aunt would hate him for being an irresponsible force in her life. Kate cringed. She couldn’t believe she had told Quinn about the soul mate thing. No, Arianne would have to make do with knowing only bits and pieces, like that Quinn and Sarah had broken up, that Quinn had kissed her, and that while they were driving home, Kate had wanted the night to last forever whereas he probably thought of his ex. Kate instantly regretted having told Arianne so much. It was only a matter of time until her aunt would tease her and pretend to be calling Quinn’s mother to arrange for a bridal shower.
         Kate put on the kettle. Their house was like a little loft, there were no walls between kitchen, dining and living room, and Arianne wouldn’t have it any other way. As Kate waited she watched a bunny appear at the floor to roof kitchen window, it looked up, wriggled its nose and then disappeared around the corner of the house. Kate counted to six and then turned to face the living room in time to watch the bunny hop along the large window front on the living room side.
         A week had passed since her night on the parking lot with Quinn, and the increasing tightness in Kate’s chest had finally won the upper hand. “It was all so perfect,” she mumbled while spooning flower blossoms into two cups.
         Arianne sighed. “Isn't it pretty to think so?”
         “Hemingway?” Kate guessed, waiting for her aunt to nod in approval. “We said goodnight as if nothing happened between us, as if we hadn’t kissed.” She carried their mugs to what Kate referred to as the ‘commune living room’, complete with batik tapestries, incense shrines and beaded room dividers. She was careful not to spill any on the shaggy carpet Arianne used to change her diapers on. At least they now sat on chairs as opposed to squatting on quilted pillows come dinnertime.
         Kate passed Arianne a mug and then stretched out on the futon sofa, plopping her feet in her aunt’s lap. “Why do we have to live in an aquarium?” she said.
         Arianne giggled and slowly began massaging Kate’s feet. Her own legs curled under like a ventriloquist’s.
         "I have an idea,” Arianne suddenly called out. “We could camp out at the cemetery!” She stopped massaging Kate’s feet and did a bad impression of amateur jazz hands. “You could get to know the spiritual side of fear. Learn to fear death less. How’s that?”
         “Christ,” Kate mumbled. Death was the only thing she wasn’t afraid of. “You promised you wouldn’t publicly humiliate me again.” As if automated they looked out the window across the garden to their embarrassingly beat-up car dubbed ‘Old Lucy’. Growing up with a person whose imagination was limitless was weighing hard on Kate. Once, Arianne stopped ‘Old Lucy’ in the middle of the road for a dead cat. She also stopped what little traffic was left in Fildon. ‘I can see its unfinished life,’ she said leaning over the carcass, while tears streamed down her face. Cars drove around her whimpering aunt, and Kate’s class mates found yet another reason to taunt her.
         “Do you remember the time you made us chain ourselves to the only petrol station in the greater area--on a day when everyone had run out of gas?”
         Arianne’s face lit up. “How far out was that demo? And for a good cause too.”
         “They still laugh about it at school,” Kate hissed. They had also laughed when Daniel had torn off the buttons on her blouse a few years ago but she wasn’t going to tell her aunt that. Lucky for Kate her breasts had stopped growing a week after they had first appeared so there was not much to see.
         “You have to stop worrying about what people think of you,” Arianne said with a soothing voice. “Not everyone has to be your friend, Poppy.”
         “I don’t have any!”
         Arianne wore the hint of a smile, as well as a deep frown that almost split her face in half.
         Kate instantly felt guilty for unloading her problems. She could tell Arianne was getting worried and it was the last thing she wanted. Her aunt had enough suffering in the past; there was no need for more. “We can do the cemetery thing, if you want,” Kate added with a sigh.



         For as long as Arianne could remember she had watched Kate obsess about that boy. It wasn’t that Arianne didn’t understand. She did. She was young once, trying to save the world, falling for the wrong man, and all that, but age had put it all into perspective.
         “More tea?”
         “Yes, please,” Kate mumbled. She was half asleep, massaging her feet usually did that to her niece.
         It was fine when Quinn was just a distant dream but now he had physically stepped into Kate’s life. Arianne willed herself to take the boy in through her niece’s eyes but all she saw was some adolescent breaking her little girl’s heart. Tall, dark and handsome she understood, but he was a mere boy, with all that entailed: hormonally challenged, sudden bursts of acne, fluff on his chin that hardly warranted a razor, in perpetual search for the perfect hairdo. She did not have to personally know boys his age to understand that they had no tolerance for others’ opinions. They were teenaged schizo identities caught somewhere between a child and a grown-up, a development so confusing it made every one of them feel like the single most misunderstood soul on the planet--no clue as to what was ahead or that they might be rather ill-equipped for the real world, armed with chest hair and coolness alone.
         Not that she wanted Kate to have an older man instead. No male specimen would do just fine for the next few years, at least until Kate stopped being afraid of everyone and everything.
         Why, oh why, dear Shiva, couldn’t she be afraid of Quinn Bergen? Arianne mumbled while making fresh tea. At least enough to stay away from him, say, forever?
         Her late husband Marten would have put that boy in his place. Arianne sighed. She missed him a little, especially on Sundays when the sun shone. They would paddle out onto the lake and take a nap together while the water rocked them back and forth. It had all happened too quickly, one day she was coping and the next she was burying everyone she loved.
         Arianne filled their teacups, dried her hands and then hung the dishcloth by the sink.
         Kate was still on the couch tiredly staring past the tiny television that hadn’t been turned on in months. She sat up to take the tea cup from Arianne. “Do you think I should call him?”
         Arianne studied her niece’s expression before answering. “I can’t tell you what to do.”
         “Just give me any advice.”
         “Truth will always be painful. One sock will always get lost in the laundry.”
         Kate moaned and hid her face in her hands. “What would you do?” she said through her fingers.
“What would I do if someone broke my heart?”
         Her niece looked away, embarrassed by the words. Though they used to share everything, Arianne knew that the parent-teenager relationship had kicked. Love wasn’t something one discussed with a parent. It had started a year ago when Kate began fetching things from the kitchen because there was a kissing scene on television. Alas, Arianne decided, she wasn’t any different when she was Kate’s age.
         “I always thought,” Arianne said finally, “that a man does not want to be pursued but wants to pursue instead.” She cursed inwardly. How was she going to tell an eighteen year old girl to stay away from the wrong boy, without sounding too much like a grownup?
         If only she sent Kate to a boarding school, preferably beyond the sun. Kate would have fit in better anywhere but Fildon, with its Daniels and Quinns. No, Arianne had wanted her all to herself. She had wanted her to cope in Fildon, to make friends, to overcome her constant melancholy, to stare adversity in the eye. The doctor had made her feel like a naughty child for forcing Kate to do things, and Arianne knew she had made mistakes. The riding classes a few years back? Bad idea. The knitting course, even worse.
         She got up and got some cookies from the top shelf above the sink.
         “What if he wants to call,” Kate called out as if struck by lightning. “He could have lost my number!”
         Arianne glanced past the fridge to where Kate’s feet dangled off the sofa. “If Quinn really wants something, he will come for it, trust me.”
         At least he wasn’t Daniel. Daniel was dead, Arianne cringed with shame at the relief she felt.
         “But what if someone changed his mind?”
         “Then you should probably learn to accept that,” Arianne shot back. She closed her eyes and tried to think of a better way to word it. There was none.
         To this day Arianne didn’t know what had made Kate lock herself up in a restroom with a razor blade. Kate never spoke to her about it, not when she woke up at the hospital nor during the two weeks she spent there. Dr Shiffner spoke to her about it briefly, but he knew as little as she did. The psychiatrist was useless, all though he did come up with the ten-point-plan. A stroke of genius, Arianne decided. This was three years ago and Kate appeared to be so much better now. Wasn’t she? Arianne frowned. It was time to let go, she knew--but not today. She walked back to the living room and passed her niece a plate with cookies.
         “He kissed me,” Kate whined. “So he must like me.”
         “How could he not? You’re beautiful inside and out.” Arianne held up her hand, silencing Kate. “I understand that you’re not going to stop thinking about him. But bear in mind that loving him is not enough for both of you.”
         “You said that you never loved Uncle Marten,” Kate replied and Arianne felt the back of her neck tingle. “It worked for him.”
         Who was she kidding? It wasn’t just the fact that any boy had come into Kate’s life. Quinn had chosen the path of least resistance all his life, what was to prevent him from doing it again? It hurt Arianne to think that Kate was seeking the approval of a boy who would not stand up for her.
         It was time, she decided. “Can I tell you a story?”
         “Another one of your stories about how Uncle Marten invented something?”
         “No. A story about the man I loved more than my life.”
         Kate sat up straight.
         “You already know I grew up in a pacifist, liberal, democratic household. More than that. My brother, your father, Joshua was a civil rights lawyer, my sister almost single-handedly ran Amnesty International, or so she said. And expect nothing less, even my mother did her share. Louise Murphy was a psychiatrist with a private practice dealing mostly with cases of posttraumatic stress. Young soldiers shuffled into my mother’s practice by the dozen. They were brainwashed, and when released from my mother’s smothering care believing even Greenpeace was too radical to join. I knew exactly what was right and what was wrong.”
         “If you’re going to tell me you learned to love yourself, I’m going to throw up.”
         Arianne threw a pillow at her niece, missing her head by an inch on purpose.
         “I was getting ready to achieve greater things with the Peace Corp when I realised I had caught a severe case of pneumonia while on an errand demonstration my sister Melanie had forced me to join in her place. I can safely say that Mel felt more than guilty, but it didn’t do me any good. Someone else had taken my place in Southeast Asia while I was bored to death in hospital drinking chicken soup. My destiny was on hold, or so I thought.
“While in the hospital, I meet Gabriel Sinclair. He was visiting a friend and suddenly stumbled into my room. I was in love the second I laid eyes on him. Gabriel was insanely good-looking. In his mid-thirties with streaky blond hair, dark brown eyes, smart, funny, self-confident. Shall I go on?” Arianne acknowledged Kate’s eager nod before continuing her story. “I had just turned nineteen and judging by his mature age, I was sure he wasn’t going to take me for full. I was barely out of my school uniform. So, I told him I was twenty-four.”
         “Shame on you.” Kate’s eyes sparkled with shared mischief.
         “I don’t know why Gabriel, a mature charming man, fell for my ditsy ways, but he looked at me as if there was no other woman on this planet. I can’t really remember ever having wanted anyone as much as I wanted Gabriel, and that includes Montgomery Clift. That Monty was gay and dead never really bothered me.”
         “Did you sleep with him?” Kate blushed.
         “Did you sleep with Quinn?” Arianne asked back, almost choking on her question. She was suddenly overcome by the sneaking suspicion that Kate wasn’t telling her everything.
         “No,” Kate replied, looking away. “What happened then?”
         “Well, I couldn’t keep Gabriel from my family any longer. He promised to pick me up at my mother’s home, meet my family, go out for a movie and bring me back in time to have a nightcap with my brother.
“So, the door bell rings and in walks Gabriel--in an army uniform. The most stunning appearance I have ever seen, to this day, but nevertheless, it was a uniform. He knew I was a devoted pacifist, which is why he never told me what he did for a living. A public servant, he thought it was more of a white lie.”
         Kate shook her head. “What did your family say?”
         “They fluttered like distraught hen in a coop. Added to which, my sister screeched something about my age. I think the term ‘cradle snatcher’ was used.
         Kate squinted. “What did Gabriel do?”
         “He said he couldn’t go on, needed to think. I’ll spare you the details of my suffering. I barely slept, I barely ate, I barely breathed. After a year I decided to get up before noon and change my life, or in the words of dear Edwin Booth, I had the ‘sudden resolve to abandon the heavy, aching gloom of my little red room, where I have sat so long chewing my heart in solitude’.”
         Kate moaned. “Just once can you not quote yourself through a story?” She shifted uncomfortably and Arianne was afraid to bore her to death.
“I found a job close by, started to rewrite applications, and I was seeing a very nice boy with an odd Arabic name. That was, until Gabriel walked back into my life. I was at my mother’s house when the doorbell rang. I wasn’t fast enough, so it rang again and there he was standing before my befuddled mother who instantly recognised him, and his uniform.
What followed was a polite ‘How do you do, Mrs Murphy’ to my mother and then he walked up to me. ‘I saw you at the movies yesterday,’ he said. ‘Are you in love with him?’



         Kate could feel the tingles spread in her torso. Her own pleasurable pain mixed in with Arianne’s. She wanted to get up to fetch a glass of water, but not as much as she wanted to hear the end of Arianne’s story.
         “He kissed me then, in front of my mother, who, though a liberal mind in her time, yelped in protest--
         “Where was he all this time?” Kate interrupted.
         “There were things he wouldn’t tell me, but I trusted him implicitly. What I do know is that he sometimes saw things that weren’t really there and that he used to have the most horrific nightmares. Gabriel would wake up sweating and shouting, and there was nothing I could do about it. Needless to say, I immediately broke up with my new old boyfriend and on my twentieth birthday Gabriel proposed to me.”
         Kate’s eyes widened. How could she not have heard this before? A picture of Quinn suddenly appeared before her. Quinn smiling at her. Quinn bending down to kiss her. Quinn’s hair all ruffled. Kate’s face softened. “What did your family say?”
         “My sister Melanie threatened to never speak to me again, if I decided to marry him.” Arianne rubbed her eyes with the tips of her fingers. “I loved my sister, but I realised then and there that I would rather spend the rest of my life with a warmonger, than with a woman who can’t change. Three weeks after I accepted Gabriel’s proposal was the last time I spoke to her.”
         Kate wrapped her arms around her middle and pulled her legs closer. “Why did you lie to me? You said we were the only ones left.”
         “We are.” Arianne closed her eyes. “I tried contacting Mel over the years but she never replied. Some things are just not meant to heal, I suppose.”
         Some things are just not meant to heal. “What happened then?”
Arianne sighed. “Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.”
         “Robert Frost?” Kate stated, pretending to be bored.
         “Very good. I bought a wedding dress and one day he left for work and never came back.”
         The room suddenly turned too quiet to bear. Kate realised her mouth was ajar and quickly closed it.
         “Your father, was the one who looked into the matter. He told me that Gabriel was killed in an accident but also, that his body was brought back in--in pieces, by a military transporter. I never cared why Gabriel died, or how. I still don’t. It was a long time ago.”
         “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” Kate moved from her side of the couch to sit closer to her aunt. She tried to hug her, but they both weren’t any good at it. “What about Marten?”
         “I loved your uncle like a dear friend.”
Suddenly the thought of not doing anything, of sitting around, of waiting for Quinn to call, of not seeing him, was making Kate want to scream. What if now was her only chance?
         Kate tried to hide her resolute smile from her aunt who during the course of her story had started looking increasingly pale.

Next Chapter "stone cold sober, chapter 5"  or start at the beginning "stone cold sober, Prologue"