10. Jenna #2
“What’s the point of having a baby if they’re just going to look like Nathan?” Granny Mavis argues, draping an arm around my shoulders. “You go to all that work—your feet bloat, your teeth fall out, and for what? You push a baby out of your snatch and it has Nathan’s nose?”
McCarthy looks like a model standing there in the forest.
Me? I feel sweat dripping down my back even though it’s cool out.
“Are you seriously considering letting that moron get you pregnant? You know he will dump you for a better model and you’re going to end up right back here raising a child in this.” McCarthy gestures grandly. “Repeating the mistakes of your childhood.”
That’s the problem with McCarthy. He digs into your soul, tears out your worst fears, then bludgeons you with them.
“Amen.” Granny Mavis raises a gospel hand.
My nails dig into my palms.
“I cannot for the life of me understand why my brother is trusting my reputation and that of my company to you.”
Just finish the contract, then you’ll never have to see him again.
Great-Granny Mavis fist-bumps McCarthy. “A fellow Nathan-hater, I see. This man is attractive and has good taste. You should have him get you pregnant,” she tells me matter-of-factly.
“Then you can move home, and we’ll help raise the babe!” Mom twirls around, her multitude of scarves flowing around her, then flies into McCarthy’s arms. “Oh, say you’ll father my grandchild!”
“Mom!” I say loudly, “I am not moving home. Ever. We discussed this. Please don’t touch him. ”
“I don’t know. You might have to move when you get fired and Nathan can’t cheat on you anymore because you’re home all day.” McCarthy gives me a knowing look.
“Shut up,” I hiss at him. “Granny Mavis, can you go put your teeth in, please? We’re losing the light.”
She salutes.
“You can’t come here and immediately start working, Jenna-bug. Have tea and nourishment. It’s your favorite—hibiscus and pine bark.”
“I’m just here for work, Mom. I’m not staying to eat.”
“But I baked your favorite herb-and-cheese loaf. I just took it out of the oven. There’s fresh goat cheese, and Edwina even laid an egg,” Willow coos to the chicken glaring at McCarthy.
“The light…”
“The sun will come up tomorrow,” my mom says dreamily. “You can spend the night. Can’t she spend the night, Honeysuckle?” my mother exclaims as a very tall, very naked late middle-aged red-headed man appears on the front porch, his hands on his hips.
“Cover your eyes, McCarthy!” I wave my hands in front of his face. I have heartburn. Severe heartburn.
“Trust me, I am not looking.”
“Oh dear.” Zephyr, my latest stepfather, frowns. “I’m sorry, Jenna.” He grabs a threadbare towel hanging on the banister, wraps it around his waist, and knots it.
“Your mom said this was supposed to be an authentic photo shoot,” Zephyr apologizes. “That you wanted to showcase the community we’ve built.”
“So that's your dad.” McCarthy’s eyes are still closed, and his chin almost rests on my shoulder. “Explains a lot. ”
“Oh, um, no, he is not my dad. Billy, aka Zephyr, is actually the latest in a line of randos my mom has hooked up with. My dad's a finance advisor who wanted to live on the wild side one night after high school graduation, tried acid, then ended up with a kid he didn't want nine months later.”
“Ah, then that really explains a lot about you—the glomming onto the shitty boyfriends, the lack of self-respect. It’s the daddy issues—the simplest answer is statistically correct the most often.”
“I don’t—”
Granny Mavis pokes her head out. “I dug up all the corpses and propped them up on the back patio for ya!” The old woman salutes from the porch as my stepfather waves us inside.
McCarthy’s gray eyes widen in alarm.
“They’re not really dead,” I say to him. “They’re just very elderly.”
“I got the dogs groomed, too, for you,” my stepfather says, loping barefoot into the house.
“I don’t think we’ll have the dogs in the photos.” The wood steps creak ominously under my heels. I just need a few shots and clips of McCarthy and Great-Granny Mavis.
“No, Jenna-bug, you need to show the world how we can have a new model to take care of the elderly. Can you believe it?” my mother cries to McCarthy, grabbing his arm and stroking him.
“People abandon their elderly relatives to waste away in nursing homes. We thought we had to put my grandmother Mavis in a home. The doctors were saying that it was for the best. But what do they know? The first place we looked at was terrible. It hurt my soul.” She grabbed his hand and pressed it to her ample chest. “I just couldn’t bear to leave my grandmother there, so we took her home, along with any other resident that wanted to come.
We’ve invited anyone who needs a warm, loving home to spend it with us here in paradise! ” She spins around.
“Sure you don’t want to post the dogs? Everyone likes senior dogs,” Zephyr says to me while my mother channels her inner manic pixie dream MILF.
“They move at the same pace as the elderly folks,” he explains to a mildly shocked McCarthy.
“Symbiosis!” Willow throws her arms in the air.
I realize belatedly as the sun hits the sheer fabric just right that my mom is not wearing a bra.
“I thought I asked you all,” I say as nonjudgmentally as possible, “to please put on clothes…”
“We have dogs that need a loving home,” Zephyr tells McCarthy kindly. “If you have room in your life…”
I interject quickly. “No pets! We aren’t doing pets. Can we please stay on track?”
“You need animals and plants in your life. Have a quartz crystal.”
McCarthy grunts when my mom shoves the rock in his pocket.
“Don’t you want to move here with us, McCarthy? It would be so nice to have a man around.” She strokes his arm.
“It’d be nice to have someone young and sane around,” Granny Mavis mumbles as we follow her inside.
The cabin where I grew up was expanded haphazardly after I moved out.
It still smells the same—pungent from the herbs my mother has hanging to dry from the rafters.
My old bedroom off the kitchen has been converted into an art studio with a day bed.
But the same worn, low-slung couch with the handmade quilt occupies the place in front of the soot-blackened fireplace.
“Homemade goat cheese, McCarthy?” Mom offers him a tray with a flourish. “Honeycomb from our own hives, gooseberry chutney.”
“No! No food. I don’t want anything in his teeth.” I drag McCarthy away.
Out in the back yard are several cabins arranged as if plopped down in the way that a child would play with toys then forget them. Amongst the overgrowth wander several dozen very elderly, very wrinkly, very naked women and twice as many equally slow, equally elderly dogs.
“Why can’t anyone wear clothes around here?” I shriek.
“They’re just bodies, Jenna. Everyone has one,” my mom sings.
“And this man has a fine one.” Granny Mavis, sucking on a Virginia Slim with lips sporting freshly applied lipstick, looks McCarthy up and down appreciatively then smiles.
“She’s got her teeth in, at least.” Zephyr rocks on his heels.
As the elderly nude women slowly shamble over, McCarthy stands next to me, silent, his hand over his mouth, judging me, cataloging my failures.
I toss a towel over his head.
“Avert your eyes.”
“This smells funny.” He pulls it off his head.
“Just zip it. Rainbow, you’re not going to be in the photo. Please go put some clothes on.”
“I can’t find my dentures.”
“You get the hell away from him! He was special ordered for me.” Granny Mavis whacks at Rainbow with her cane then trips over her service dog, an elderly terrier who is deaf and blind and senile.
“Move!” Granny Mavis hollers at the dog. “Magnum acts like he’s old, but he’s just a puppy.”
“That dog looks like it smokes six packs a day,” McCarthy whispers to me.
Mom drapes Granny Mavis in a deep-eggplant satin wrap. Granny Mavis lights a fresh cigarette from the one in her mouth as another elderly woman, Crocus, reaches out gnarled hands to pat McCarthy.
“Excuse her. She’s blind as a goddamn bat,” Granny Mavis drawls.
“So this is Nathan, eh, girlfriend?”
McCarthy smirks at me as Rainbow squishes his jaw. “She wishes.”
“Damn right she does.”
“You can’t let your mom steal this one from ya too,” Granny Mavis tells me in what I can only assume she believes is a conspiratorial tone, but really, she’s shouting to the whole yard.
“I don’t have to have eyes to smell how aroused she is.” Gardenia, another of the naked and elderly, nods to my mom.
“So your mom smells like sex, and you smell like failure.” McCarthy whispers in my ear.
I jerk away.
“Granny Mavis, please go take your seat over there.”
The old woman ignores me. She’s patting a hand down McCarthy’s broad chest. The billionaire grunts when Granny Mavis squeezes his crotch .
“It’s funny,” she drawls at him through the cigarette smoke. “When you’re one hundred and three, they let you do that.”
“Is this the part where I get locked in a shipping container for the next five years?” McCarthy murmurs toward my neck.
“Sorry, I know it seems like a cult…”
He huffs. “Not enough hungry children for that.”
“I’d like to say they mean well, but…”
“You get the hell up out of my seat, there, Gardenia!” Granny Mavis hollers, her cane flying.
Zephyr eases the elderly interloper off the tall wood bench he’d handcrafted.
“We’ll keep this short,” I tell McCarthy. “Granny Mavis used to be a test pilot for Aurora Pacifica Aerofreight, which your company bought. The post is going to be a fun throwback to history.”
“Show him my photo, Zephyr! Show him my glory days.”
McCarthy whistles appreciatively at the black-and-white photo of my great-grandmother posing like a pinup model with her plane and a giant bomb with a lipstick kiss on it.
Granny Mavis preens as I attach wireless microphones to her and McCarthy.
“I was smoking hot. I slept my way through half the airborne division. I can add you to the list, too, sonny.” She waggles her drawn-on eyebrows.