10. Jenna
JENNA
A ll I want to do is fall into the arms of my loving fiancé.
But Nathan doesn’t look up from where he’s playing a hockey video game in the living room in his boxers and Crocs.
“Did you bring dinner?” he asks the TV.
I’m immediately anxious.
“I’m starving.”
My mom, according to Great-Grandma Mavis, doesn’t know how to take care of a man, and that’s why she keeps driving them off. My mom would toss a handful of toasted chickpeas on a plate and call it dinner.
You have to feed a man, Granny Mavis says. That and regular sex are necessary to keep that man chained to the house and handing you his paycheck every two weeks .
I am determined that my future children won’t be raised like I was. Therefore, the man needs to come first.
I set my bags down and walk over to Nathan to rub his bare shoulders.
Nothing like McCarthy’s.
There was his traitorous voice in my head.
Thanks goodness Nathan is nothing like McCarthy.
I plant a kiss on his neck.
“Not now. I’m starving.” He jerks away. “Are you cooking?”
Well, I was striking out on the sex.
I’ll show Nathan my love via food, I decide, taking out all the ingredients for fried chicken cutlets with a spicy sauce, oven-roasted veggies, and homemade pasta.
“Dinner’s ready!” I call a while later.
“Just put it down in here. I’m in the middle of this. No, fuck! Shoot, asshole! Can you cut it up for me, Jelly Bean?”
I look to my own plate growing cold then begin determinedly to cut up his food so I can feed it to him and watch him play the video game.
This is the foundation of a happy, successful, fulfilling relationship.
“You drove past the flower shop,” McCarthy says as I white-knuckle the steering wheel. “Cupcake… you passed another one. You’re not acting like someone who has one last chance to prove herself.”
“I’m not taking you to an uncontrolled environment. I’ve revised the plan.”
Traffic is light, and we’re at the ferry dock in no time .
“Is this the part where you take a baseball bat to the back of my head and dump me in the bay?” he asks as the ferry operator waves us onto the waiting boat.
“We’re going to my mom’s house.”
“Meeting the parents. Already? So soon in our relationship? I’m starting to realize that the problem isn’t the men you surround yourself with. The problem is you.”
I’m ignoring him. He’s baiting me, and I’m ignoring him.
When the ferry docks, I maneuver the car carefully onto the island’s wooden pier then onto the gravel road that winds its way through the island.
This is a bad idea.
But what can I do? Salinger, fortunately, didn’t tell Bethany about my fuckup. But one more and I know I’ll be toast. I need something to show progress with McCarthy’s reputation.
But bringing him home?
It’s a final act of desperation.
It will pay off.
I have the footage ready, the copy written for the post, and content being cross-posted to all of RDC’s social media accounts. It was a stroke of genius that came to me last night when I was eating my reheated dinner after Nathan rebuffed my blow-job offer.
Makeshift wind chimes clang loudly as I drive us over the bridge and up to the rambling log cabin.
“It all makes sense now.” McCarthy manages to sound so smug that I can’t help but snap “What?” then kick myself for falling for the bait.
“Why you’re floundering in life. I mean”—he rolls down his window—“look where you grew up. It’s a failing farming commune.
You were literally born and raised in failure.
No wonder you can’t handle a real job. I bet you were homeschooled, too, weren’t you?
” He leans over the center console. “No wonder you’re so bad at PR.
You were never properly socialized as a child. ”
I slap at his leg, and he laughs.
Seething, I park the car next to Cher. I step out of the car and breathe in the fresh, slightly salty pine-scented air. Then I say a prayer to the goddess, the spirits, and Satan himself that my crazy idea works, because this is my last shot.
I let Truman loose in the yard, and he disappears into the wild berry bushes.
I have been given a Hail Mary. I was snatched out of the jaws of defeat. I should be packing my things in a box, but Salinger Svensson was uncharacteristically merciful. Or, more likely, he was just trying to piss off McCarthy.
I’m not blowing my second chance. I will not let McCarthy screw this up. We’re getting our photos and getting out.
Behind me, leaves crunch under imported Italian leather shoes.
McCarthy is taking it all in—the dirty barrels repurposed as rainwater collectors, the lines of clothes drying in the breeze, the vegetable patches that are strewn haphazardly around the front yard in the small patches of dappled sunlight through the tall pine trees.
The whole chaotic mess of my childhood is backdropped against the wildly overgrown garden of native plants struggling to survive among the wreckage of abandoned sculpture projects and disintegrating Burning Man floats that lie gasping for breath where my mother left them.
“So much sense.” McCarthy is standing too close to me.
I try to step away from him, but he drags me around to face him. “This is why you are the embodiment of disaster and why we will fundamentally never understand each other.”
He is not your boyfriend , I remind myself as I take deep, cleansing breaths. It doesn’t matter what he thinks of the house. We’re here to get a few photos with the seniors.
“Just stay here,” I order McCarthy. “Don’t wander off. Just let me make sure everything’s ready for you.”
“She has no plan,” he says to the trees.
The door leading from the porch slams.
“Jenna-bug!” My mom, Willow, who likes to describe herself as a buxom witch, hurries out of the cabin, sweeps me into her arms, and kisses my face.
“Ooh, there’s my baby! I had a premonition that you’d come by, and then you called—voilà!
The cards were right.” My mom’s eyes light up when they shift to McCarthy.
“The cards didn’t say anything about a handsome stranger!
” She throws herself at McCarthy and wraps him in a hug of spices and sage.
“Mom, I told you I was bringing my client.”
“But you didn’t say he was hot,” she purrs, tucking a fresh flower into McCarthy’s breast pocket, her hand then lingering on his broad chest.
I’m going to be real with you all… My mom has strong MILF energy.
One of the reasons I dated Brock was because he never tried to sleep with my mom, unlike a lot of the other guys I’d crushed on in my alternative, forest high school, who I figured out way too late were interested in me only because my mom liked to walk around topless at home.
McCarthy’s eyes drift to my mom’s low-cut peasant bodice and down to her narrow waist, which is framed in a pink-and-yellow corset.
He’s just like all the rest of them .
“Ma’am, I think you have a…” He points.
“Oooh! This is just Bernard. He’s my familiar.” My mom holds up the little lizard McCarthy had pointed out and gives him a kiss. “I thought I’d lost you!”
Then McCarthy’s eyes rest on me. I try not to pull at my boxy professional clothes.
“I wish Jenna would have fun and live a little.” My mom pouts up at McCarthy. “But ever since she left the nonprofit world and went into corporate life and met Nathan, Jenna-bug has gotten so boring.” My mom makes an exaggerated face, twirling a curl around her finger.
“Mom…”
“I’m sorry, but you are, squash blossom. You don’t know how to live . You’re losing your soul there in the city. You and Nathan should move out here to the commune. We can fix up the trailer for you.”
“Sounds like it’s exactly your style.”
I elbow McCarthy and scowl as my mom waves a hand at the dilapidated ’50s camper that was ancient in the ’90s and now probably plays host to families of raccoons.
“She and Nathan are having problems,” McCarthy says. “I don’t think they’re moving anywhere anytime soon.”
I kick him. “Nathan and I are fine.”
McCarthy mocks me. “ Fine. ”
“We’re wonderful!” I screech. “We were just talking yesterday about what school district we should buy a house in.”
“You can’t send your child to a school in the city!” Mom cries. “Children have to be with nature! My grandbabies need to turn out just as wonderful and creative as you.” Mom grabs the front of my shirt then shoves a handful of cold rocks in my bra. “Fertility charms.”
Beside me, McCarthy makes a derisive noise .
“Mom…”
“You said you were trying, and you’re a little old to be having your first. You need the goddess’s protection.” Willow clasps her hands together.
“Don’t defile your womb with that man’s sperm!” Great-Granny Mavis comes barreling out of the cottage, her cane clomping on the porch, several chickens wearing cloth diapers trailing her.
McCarthy rushes to help her before she trips over an abandoned art project.
She whacks him with her cane. “I can walk.”
She can’t. She really needs a walker or, better yet, a wheelchair.
Truman, who has raced up to his favorite perch on the Japanese maple, barks at the lumbering, overfed birds.
“I don’t know why every single man you bring home is worse than the last,” Granny Mavis complains.
My mom kisses my cheek. “Jenna is on her own path. And even if she is blessed with a little one, Nathan doesn’t have to be the one to raise the babe. After all, I asked the universe for father figures for Jenna after her sperm-giver took another path, and the universe provided.”
My fingers clench on my tote bag.
Have I tried to have conversations with my mom to make her understand how my chaotic childhood with the revolving door of boyfriends had impacted me negatively?
Yep.
But you can’t have a deep conversation with my mom. It leads only to tears and frustration.
I am accepting people as they are. Inhale. Exhale.