Tell Me. M. Colette Jane

Because…because I don’t. Mine. Only mine to know and bear and carry.

      So. I don’t show, I don’t share. Instead:

      ‘I never judge you,’ I say. ‘He won’t think you’re a skank. OK, well, he might. But he wants you to be a skank. Right? That’s what this whole thing is about.’

      It’s almost the right thing to say. Marie smiles.

      ‘’K,’ she says. ‘’K. It will be OK. I’ll be fine. I look good, right?’ I nod. ‘See you in three or so hours.’

      ‘Be safe.’ I send her on her way. To her lunch. Or a parking-lot fuck.

      I hope she’s packed a condom.

      I spend a joyous but exhausting day with the kids. I don’t text. I don’t think about Matt. Really. I think about work – the bizarre financial case study I promised to review for a client for tomorrow morning, which clearly I’m not doing as I sled with the kids. Oh, fuck. What time will Alex be home? As Marie comes back – hair and makeup intact and overall mood light and neither angst-ridden nor post-coitally joyous, making me infer she only lunched and transgressed not much (we can’t talk with the kids around) – he texts to say he won’t be back until 8, maybe later – ‘fucking clients,’ he writes, the excuse for everything, always – and that won’t get him home in time to do bedtime…and, since I’ve been up since 5 a.m., I’ll be useless post-bedtime.

      Marie’s kids and mine are starting to fight, tired of each other, so despite her half-hearted offer, I decline to send my brood home with her. Maybe I can sell them to my mom in the evening so I can work? I only need an hour, maybe two…

      And that is why, a few hours later, I’m sitting in my parents’ kitchen eating liver and onions (ugh, how can they not know I hate liver and onions after all these years?), listening to four children vie for their grandparents’ attention…while the grandparents fight.

      I have an odd sense of dissonance: I’m there but not there, and I hear my parents in freaky stereo. ‘They would have been better,’ my mother says of the mashed potatoes, ‘but your father insisted on using the new potato masher.’ ‘Insisted?’ my father asks. Voice low. But tired, tense. ‘I took what was in the drawer. I didn’t realise we had a right potato masher and a wrong potato masher.’ Stupid, stupid exchange. And not the first one I’ve heard like this – they are like this all the time now. Sometimes it’s funny. Often it’s sad. And always, after we leave, Alex and I promise ourselves that if we ever get like this, I’ll shoot him and then turn the gun on myself.

      ‘Put the pie in the oven to warm it up, Jerry,’ my mother says. Commands. ‘Gran bought you guys pie!’ she squeals at the kids, and they squeal back. ‘Where’s the pie?’ my father asks. ‘Where it always is!’ my mother screams and rolls her eyes. No, really. She screams. I stare at her in shock. Appalled. My father doesn’t even blink an eye. ‘Which is?’ he says with an excessive show of patience. My stomach turns and I suddenly very badly need to leave the room.

      ‘I’m going to go work,’ I say. ‘I don’t want any pie anyway. Be good for Gran and Gramps,’ I tell the progeny, handing out kisses. I look at Gran and Gramps. ‘Be good in front of the kids,’ I say. It could be taken as a joke. Or a warning. But it’s taken as neither; it’s not heard. The pie’s coming.

      I exit stage right, camp out in one of the spare bedrooms, pull out the laptop.

      Start typing. I turn on Facebook as I work. Cause that’s how the professionals do it, right? Having your Twitter feed and Facebook and LinkedIn on in the background increases your work efficiency. Well-proven fact. Not.

      Confession: I use social media almost exclusively as a procrastination tool.

      Still.

      I have no ulterior motive.

      I am not hoping to see a message from Matt.

      No, really. And so I am not the least bit disappointed that there isn’t one.

      I work. God, who crunched these numbers? Either an idiot or a liar. I identify all the red flags. I get into it. There is a sick kind of satisfaction to it; bringing order to chaos. I work. I am…tranquil.

      Ping.

       Answer the question.

      —Working.

      Waiting. I want you to dress for the occasion. The occasion being our reunion, after what, 10 years?

      Almost eleven. But who’s counting? And how many years since we met? I think…twenty. Oh, my fucking God, twenty. When did that happen? The first time we met, I was…I think I was eighteen. Jesus-fucking-Christ. Grunge ruled. I wore distinctly unsexy jean overalls. I type.

      —Overalls have a certain nostalgic value.

       Oh, yes. Nostalgic.

       And harder.

      —Demure.

       Sceptical.

       Get nostalgic with me, lover. I remember the lingerie store changing room in Bankers Hall.

      —Do you?

       And you reading me erotica over the phone when I was up North. With John’s permission.

       Two memories from hundreds.

      —I remember stairwells. Too many stairwells.

      —The recording booth at the studio.

      —The roof of your apartment building…

       The dark room.

       Halloween party. The lawn. Do you remember?

      —Oh yes. That might be my favourite…

       Scandalised populace.

      —We had no shame.

       What’s your adjective right now?

      —Disturbed.

       Guess mine.

      —You’ve been using one consistently.

       The correct answer is lustful. Also acceptable: dirty (the good kind).

      I pause. Shudder. I feel…yes, I feel. And I type:

      —Lusciously pleased.

      —god i miss you

      —I really didn’t think I did.

       And I you. Tell me what you want. Be blunt.

      —your tongue in my ear, on my neck

      —other places

       Curse these tight jeans.

       I miss your mind. And your mouth.

       And the serious tone of voice you take when you talk dirty.

      —oh god

      —terrified

       Eager.

       Demanding.

      —Are you.

       Dominant.

      —Oh really?

       Determined.

      —On top.

       Challenged.

      —tumbling

       Pleased.

       Hungrier and harder than ever.

      —ecstatic

       Sublimely motivated.