chapter eight
By 2011, the Darling had grown so large that when Mal eventually started working there, it was in another building. Laurie never saw her. They went to work together on the BART, setting up a daily routine that involved picking up coffee and waffles at the Bluebottle in the Ferry Building by the Embarcadero. For twenty minutes each morning they watched the boats cross the bay, listened to seagulls wail, and talked about anything, everything.
“Nick wants me to pick the restaurant next time,” Laurie said. “He thinks my notions of gender roles are archaic. Is it so wrong that given my job, I want a break from making decisions?”
Mal nodded contemplatively. “You can try telling him we’ve come full-circle, so now the man making all the moves is a rare and subversive kink. He’s actually a true feminist, letting you let him dominate.”
Laurie swatted at her, told her the name of the place she’d been considering, an Italian one up in North Beach, and asked her opinion.
“Last time I was there, I had the Zucchini fiori, but I went home with the waiter. Not as good as the zucchini.”
“Nick isn’t the most skilled in bed, but I’m sure he can outperform a vegetable.”
Mal sighed. “We have high standards for soup, but not for sex.”
Laurie didn’t bother contradicting her. The issues with Nick weren’t his fault. She hadn’t been able to climax since her surgery. Hadn’t even touched herself between her legs except when she needed to treat a yeast infection. She understood why so many women didn’t want their husbands in the room during childbirth; it was hard to hold onto desire in the face of biological reality.
They separated to enter their office buildings. Laurie served as admin to a new Director bent on restructuring his team and cultivating the next generation of leaders. He was completely unaware that his team spent their nights on absinthe and karaoke, that they didn’t have the money for rent so they lived in cars or in RVs parked outside Daly City, or that they had no idea what he was talking about but just parroted the words he said— push the envelope, shift the paradigm, pave the cow path —whichever would let them believe themselves safe from the next round of layoffs.
The pundits gave their generation a name— millennials —and wrote articles about how they’d survived the Great Recession, but those writers never quite understood what it meant to not feel even the pain of a lost future. Even sadness seemed out of reach when pensions were a notion as quaint as chamberpots, when 401Ks were worthless, when all they had left was the gig economy, dystopian novels and Twitter, snatches of life that never built up to anything. They’d refused it all, nostalgia and anxiety, history and hope, in favor of an effervescent, breathless present.
Nick asked Laurie to move in with him. “It just doesn’t make sense to pay two rents in this market.”
This was what she’d always wanted, wasn’t it? A practical proposal. Except it wasn’t a proposal.
“I guess I always figured I’d be engaged first,” she said.
“Marriage doesn’t make sense if we’re not going to have kids, does it?”
She stared at him. Their various possible futures suddenly started playing out in her head. They moved in together, lived happily for five years, and then he left her for a woman with a uterus when he decided he really did want kids. They moved in together, got in each other’s way, and tired of it within the year. At no point did she consider the possibility that they might live together into old age. Hope like that was impractical at best, foolish at worst.
“California divorce laws aren’t fair,” Nick said. “All marital assets are divided fifty-fifty, regardless of who paid what share. That makes sense if there are kids involved, but otherwise…”
Otherwise it meant that he, as the higher earner, would relinquish half his assets—cash savings, stocks in the Darling, a house they might buy—to her.
A stone lodged in her stomach. This was what it meant to be a millennial, to plan for the eventuality of the destruction of all her dreams. To believe they had to continually earn their place in each other’s lives, like corporations beholden to a board of shareholders.
“But if we move in together and it doesn’t work out,” she began, slowly, “my apartment’s rent-controlled. Once I move out, my landlord will raise the rent, because it’s my name on the lease.”
He nodded, taking no offense. If she moved in with him and it didn’t work out, she’d be homeless.
“Well, I suppose there’s no harm in carrying on as we have been,” he said. “I’m happy, if you are.”
· · ·
“He’s a shifty little grifter,” Ariel said when Laurie met up with her. They were in a converted yoga studio in the mission where hipsters with hair all colors of the rainbow met to discuss the ills of capitalism and the necessity of a labor movement. “Men like him honestly believe that women who stay at home to take care of kids are freeloaders.”
Laurie shifted on her feet. At work, her manager had told her she was clearly in line for a promotion, especially since she wouldn’t be disappearing at a critical time on maternity leave.
“I’m all about equal pay for equal work,” he’d said, “but you can’t have your cake and eat it too.”
For a moment, she’d actually believed him. Then Ariel tore into her for days, and demanded she join her underground labor collective.
So during the week Laurie spent her days helping introverted engineers discover their leadership skills by attempting to herd sheep—actual sheep! that she rented for their workshop!—and her nights listening to the building fury of the disenfranchised proletariat.
On the weekends, she hung out with Nick, learned to watch his favorite shows—Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, Stargate Atlantis—and tried not to wonder if he’d know how to navigate the health insurance market if she got sick, or if he could only access real life emotions when they were filtered through the lens of space opera.
Still, she should have been happy. She had a stable job, a loyal boyfriend, and more than one thousand dollars in the bank.
Just no orgasm.
And California was a cure for all ills, a cult sampler, a veritable buffet of leadership skills and bedroom techniques.
“You win or lose in your mind before you even enter the field,” said the leadership coach her Director had brought in this month to tease out entrepreneurship from a gaggle of gun-shy geeks, just as, “Arousal is about mental focus, not physical skill,” said the pleasure coach at the seminar on Relationship Anti-patterns.
So it was her mind that was the problem, and mindfulness was the answer. Stanford had used MRIs to image the brains of Tibetan monks; now tech companies wanted to leverage artificial intelligence to build emotional intelligence. Fifty years after Ken Kesey attempted to take everyone further by expanding people’s consciousness with LSD, leadership coaches and orgasmic meditation coaches and therapists attempted to do the same—this time with CBT or CBD.
Nick was surprisingly enthusiastic when she brought it up. Maybe a pleasure coach carried less baggage than the idea of couples therapy, or it spoke to his scientific curiosity and need to decode the female orgasm. Laurie offered to pay for it; all he had to do was show up.
The pleasure coach sat cross-legged by a nest of pillows and blankets, and asked her to undress from the waist down, as if she were setting up for a pelvic exam. Laurie followed the instructions and butterflied her legs, shivering at the cool air against her exposed skin. Nick sat to her right with a dollop of gel on his poised forefinger, an attentive student in the art of female pleasure.
For fifteen minutes—they had a timer, and an app—they had only to focus on one thing. Her.
Laurie’s mind raced. She wanted to laugh. She and Nick had left work early today to come here. She really was using her flextime on this, when Ariel was scrounging for her bottom surgery, when the homeless encampments near their office had started to add urine to the smell of sewage.
No, she had to focus, get her money’s worth. No need to drown in that peculiar guilt that haunted those of them who had survived the recession. They’d been forced to pick between happiness and survival; the only revenge was living well.
Her eyes fell on Nick. They’d been dating nearly two years, but somehow in that moment, in that aggressively pink light meant to stimulate the reluctant feminine, he seemed a complete stranger.
Panicked, she tried reminding herself of how well he knew her, how he’d always picked the right jewelry and restaurants, how he remembered her birthday and the names of her siblings, how neatly their routines had dovetailed, how they’d never had a single fight.
“Her heart rate’s increasing,” said the coach approvingly. “Did you notice? That’s a good signal to continue what you’re doing.”
Right, because his finger was… oh god. The intense pin-prick burn grew unbearable, her toes curled, her muscles clenched—
“She’s close. Learn to recognize the signs. Stay the course.”
—but there was no release. Instead, she started convulsing against the pillows, her upper body thrashing in distress. Too much! She pushed Nick’s hand away, moaned in pain.
“All right. Take a break. She’s overstimulated.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?” Nick asked, his body turned toward the coach.
“It’s… progress. Laurie, you say this has been going on for two years?”
“Since her surgery,” Nick said confidently, although they hadn’t even started sleeping together until after Hawaii.
Later, he put his arm around her and patted her shoulder. “It’s not the end of the world. We made progress today. We’ll keep trying.”
He seemed glad of a problem to solve, as if she was a kitchen to be renovated. He packaged her into an Uber and sent her home.
There was a young girl sitting on her doorstep. As she got closer, the girl’s head lifted. Laurie recognized the dark skin, high cheekbones and curly hair immediately.
“I’m Tara,” said the girl, putting out her hand. “When does my aunt usually get home?”
“Laurie,” she said.
The girl nodded impatiently. “Yeah, I know you from Facebook. Can you let me in? It’s freezing out here.”
Laurie opened the door, wondering where she’d come from and what she was doing here in San Francisco without a jacket.
“It was warm and sunny in the South Bay,” Tara said. “I came here on the Caltrain, then took the BART from Millbrae.”
“Yeah, microclimates. San Francisco’s always cold. Does Mal know you’re coming?”
“I texted her.”
“Mal doesn’t check her phone while she’s at work, but she should be here soon.” She looked Tara over uneasily. She was so tiny! “Do your parents know you’re here?”
Tara scowled. “No. I’d hardly be running away if I told them where I was going, would I?”
Laurie hesitated, unsure what to do next. “Would you like to talk about it?”
“I’m saving it for the therapist.”
What a punk!
“Well, do you want something to eat?”
“What do you have? I’m vegan.”
Of course she was. Laurie brought out some hummus and crackers, and turned to get a plate, but when she turned back Tara had already started eating it out of the box.
“So, are you like her roommate, or—” Tara made air-quotes—“her roommate ?”
“I have a boyfriend.”
Tara shrugged. “Auntie Mal’s loaded, and she hates people, so why would she live with you instead of getting her own place?”
Laurie’s mouth opened and closed. She wanted to say, She’s probably saving up , except that didn’t sound like Mal at all. The woman combined a lack of impulse control with a seemingly bottomless bank account, and there were three-hundred dollar shoes strewn all over the landing because the closets were too full.
“Well, Mal’s straight,” she said.
Tara snorted. “She’s many things; straight isn’t one of them.”
“How would you know?” she said, unable to keep the ice out of her voice.
“When she was in college, she told my mom that she wasn’t sure she wanted to get married because she was attracted to women.”
“What did your mom say?”
“Something about how women’s bodies are just more attractive, and nobody was actually attracted to men.” Tara paused to wipe up the last of the hummus with her finger. “Mom lied, though. After the call ended, she called my grandma and had a total meltdown.”
“And she—they talked about all this in front of you?”
Tara rolled her eyes. “They thought I wouldn’t understand. But I was eight, not stupid.”
A key turned in the lock downstairs. Laurie’s heart started pounding. She wanted to run to her room to hide. How could Mal not have told her? (It didn’t occur to her then that she’d never told Mal about Sophia, either).
Mal came upstairs and sighed theatrically upon seeing Tara, but the smile at the edge of her lips gave her away. “I guess I should be glad you came north to me instead of trying to go south to Mexico.”
“I only had twenty bucks. Mom won’t let me have a bank account.”
Mal turned to Laurie. “Thanks for keeping her company.”
She told Mal it was no trouble and took her words as dismissal because she needed to escape. She went into her room and shut the door, threw herself onto the bed.
What a day! The earlier convulsions from the pleasure coaching session were nothing to the way her heart was palpitating now.
How dare that little brat make her feel the prick of hope?
· · ·
“I’ve said I’m fine,” Tara said into her phone, sounding more tired the next morning than she had last night.
Mal put her fingers over her lips. It was Saturday, and they moved silently in their usualweekend routines. A sizzle from the stove said Mal was making breakfast, so Laurie started to set the dining table.
“Mom… Mom , if you aren’t going to listen, I’m going to hang up.”
Mal motioned to her, and the two women went into Laurie’s room. “I’m thinking of taking her for a drive today. Clear her head a bit, maybe get her to open up about what’s actually going on. Can you come with?”
“I’m not family.”
“People open up around you.”
Yes, but the qualities that made Laurie a receptacle for every awkward engineer’s feelings weren’t likely to work the same on a teenage Gen Z mutineer.
“I know it’s asking a lot, and you usually spend weekends with Nick.” Mal turned to go.
“Wait. We could make a weekend of it. Find a place to stay along the coast? Then if she wants to be alone with you, I could disappear.”
Mal pulled her into a quick, hard hug, whispering thank you . She pulled out her phone and extended the Zipcar booking. “It’ll be like old times. I’ve been going stir-crazy.”
She needs me. We’re just friends.
Laurie sent an apology to Nick and started packing an overnight bag. She couldn’t lie to herself anymore. Electricity ran through her fingers while she packed her pajamas. She couldn’t stop grinning, like one of those people on the subway whose minds had been shot through with drugs.
Stir-crazy? Was that what she ought to call the arousal in her gut at the thought of a drive down the coast? She could already feel the sunshine on her arm, lodged on the open window.
She’d have to pull rank on Tara. No way the brat was taking shotgun.
They headed north, towards Mendocino, trying and failing to be good role models for the kid in the back seat. It didn’t help that Tara had no filter.
“How did you both lose your virginity?”
Mal started laughing.
“You can’t just ask people that,” Laurie said.
“Your generation is so squeamish.”
“You hear that?” Mal drawled. “ This is what comes of letting the Russians take LiveJournal. Now their generation thinks they invented sex, like we weren’t fantasizing about vampires when they were conceived.”
“Fine then.” Laurie folded her arms. “In a car, under an overpass, near a soy farm.”
“That’s a terrible start to a story,” Tara said. “You’re supposed to focus on who it was with.”
“I’m getting to that. We ancients are used to starting our stories with a description of the times and a paragraph of world-building context. Not everything fits in a tweet.”
Tara huffed.
Laurie closed her eyes. She could still see signs along the thin highway for George Bush 2000 interspersed with NO FRACKING and FUCK MONSANTO . There were farms of soy on the hills, small and squat creatures that had sucked the soil dry and now rested with their fat beans hanging in clumps like hard, green testicles.
“Soy is a ruthless survivor,” Diana had said, holding her close. “Just like us. You can’t help but admire it, even when you hate it.”
“Us?” she asked.
Diana turned to her, her lovely face a study in anguish. “You know we can never do this again, right?”
“She was a musician,” Laurie said, and Mal’s head jerked up. She returned to her usual steadiness so quickly Laurie wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t been looking for it. “We’d been playing together a while, so we were… attuned.”
Diana was other things too. Married, with kids. And a Teacher’s Assistant in the class she was auditing at Cornell, one who hid the fact that Laurie wasn’t really a student. At the time she thought she did it out of love. Now, she wondered if Diana only hid her secrets because she hid hers, if it had all been transactional. “But our timing was never really as good in real life as it was in our music.”
Tara paused for a moment, longer than usual, but went on so nonchalantly it felt as if maybe there hadn’t been any silence, after all. “Auntie? What about you?”
“I was late to the party. I’d always lived at home, I didn’t get out much in college, and then I came to live with you.”
“And if Mom so much as sees fancy lingerie she thinks you’re selling yourself on street corners,” Tara said sulkily.
Laurie exchanged a glance with Mal, glad of the clue.
“I decided to be rid of it once and for all,” Mal went on. “Too much hype about making your first time special, when all the data suggests you’re not going to make your first relationship a success. I found a guy at work I thought was cute, one who was going to quit so I wouldn’t have to work with him after. I kissed him and asked him to take me home, just for the night. He was a good teacher, and he made me breakfast burritos the next morning, so that was a bonus.”
“ Will ? You gave your virginity to Will?” Then the full implications hit her. “That was the night we met.”
Beyond that was an even wilder outrage. It wasn’t fair that such an undeserving cad had managed to get not just Cam’s virginity but Mal’s too.
“I wanted to see what the fuss was about,” Mal said.
“And did you?”She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice.
“Yes and no.” Mal drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “I’d heard so many horror stories, about how sex changes your body chemistry, how you can’t help but feel an emotional attachment afterwards. He was a little worried about that too—that I’d turn clingy and want a relationship. But it wasn’t like that. It felt good, but also…”
“Also?” Tara asked.
“It felt like a warm-up,” Mal said. “I don’t think sex is ever great the first time, so it felt like practice for when I meet someone who might want to get better at it with me over time.”
Tara looked contemplative, and Laurie could guess at what might have happened to send the girl spinning. Mal wouldn’t have revealed so much if she hadn’t guessed first.
Sure enough, later that night, when they settled into adjoining rooms at a coastal inn, Mal came over after Tara was asleep to tell her, “Aditi found condom wrappers in the trash and freaked out.”
“It’s understandable. My mom had Micah when she was Tara’s age. She never finished high school, and her parents disowned her.”
“My grandparents never disowned my mother, but they never forgave her for my father either. It still eats at her.”
Laurie waited for her to explain.
“He was a lot like you, actually.” Mal laughed nervously. “Followed his heart. Graduated Harvard, chose to teach high-school kids because he felt he was making a difference. Everyone else thought he was a failure and told him so. When he died… well, wisdom doesn’t pay the bills.”
Their eyes caught again. Laurie couldn’t forget what Tara had told her. So, your niece says you might be into women. Any women in particular?
No, why would Mal—who cowed rooms of men into submission with a look, and took home waiters and baristas with a word—be suddenly indirect and hesitant about this?
“I should go,” Mal said, but didn’t move.
Laurie’s phone beeped. Both sets of eyes turned to the message from Nick, checking in dutifully on Tara’s well-being.
Mal got up and left the room.
· · ·
The next morning, the crisp ocean breeze left Laurie dizzy, too blazed by the shimmer of sapphire blue to think of anything else. They passed through the tiny one-street towns of Point Arena and Gualala, and marveled, hushed, at the dark rocks in Bodega Bay that seemed to be crumbled Oreos at the bottom of treacherous cliffs. As the sun started to set, Tara fell asleep, and Laurie fixed her eyes on Mal.
She’d never been more aroused than on that drive, with the hum of the car engine on an empty road in the rapacious darkness, and that reckless, ruinous smile Mal gave her sometimes, matched only by the sunset, and the open sea.