23. Helen
Have you ever noticed how beautiful the city is first thing in the morning? In the dim, early morning light, the window still half-frosted over, it feels like I’m looking into a snow globe. I sit and sip my coffee, waiting for Thad to arrive. As I catch a glimpse of my own reflection in the window, I grin at myself stupidly, the two of us caught in a guilty, complicit secret.
Last night was…amazing. I don’t know why I waited so long to try this allegedly sinful thing. Whatever that was, that was not sinful. It was…incredible. Life-changing. Transcendent. I feel loose and happy this morning, relaxed in my body in a way that I haven’t felt since…maybe ever. Forget yoga or meditation. This is the self-care practice that everyone should be raving about.
A knock at the door startles me out of my reverie. I jump, my calm of seconds ago shattered by swirling nerves in the pit of my stomach. Did Thad get here early? “Hello?” I call out tentatively, rising to my feet.
“It’s me! Open up.”
Matilda. Sagging with relief, I let in my friend, who is bundled up and holding a Jewel-Osco bag. “I can’t stay,” she says in her usual brisk tone, with no greeting or preamble. “Just dropping this off.”
I take the bag from her, peer inside, and immediately feel myself blush. “Matilda!”
A box of condoms, two different kinds of lube, massage oil, personal grooming scissors, and Tic Tacs.
“Tic Tacs?” I ask in surprise, since even for a perma-virgin like me, the rest seems pretty self-explanatory.
“In case things get hot and heavy before you get a chance to brush your teeth. Whatever you do, don’t let him chew cinnamon gum if he’s going to…” She motions down to my pelvic region, then shudders. “Trust me.”
This bag of unwanted gifts is both invasive and weirdly thoughtful—a pretty accurate summation of my friend. Even though I have no plan to use these things since Thad and I will not be having sex, I smile and pull her into a hug. “Thanks, Matilda.”
She’s always a bit of a stiff hugger, but today she’s even more ramrod than usual. I realize why after she pulls away, frowning as she examines my face. “You look…radiant.”
It sounds more suspicious than complimentary, the way she says it. “Thank you?”
Her eyes widen. “Did you orgasm?” Her eyebrows shoot even higher. “Was it the first time?”
I force a laugh, shooing her toward the door. “Okay, you better get to work, and I have to finish packing, so…”
To my surprise, Matilda is the one who lurches in for a hug this time, holding me in a vise grip with her strong, slender arms. “I’m proud of you.”
Oh, Lordie. I pat her back. “Thanks.” Because really, what else can you say to that?
She’s grinning as she pulls away, really looking like a proud parent. “I try to orgasm at least once a day. It makes me much more relaxed.”
Thisis the more relaxed version of Matilda? “Great,” I say, still trying to not-so-subtly sweep her out the door. I do not want to be having this conversation when Thad shows up.
She stops abruptly, her face settling into its more typical frown. Good. Honestly, the smile was starting to freak me out a little bit. “You weren’t thinking of him, were you?”
I hem and haw, not able to make eye contact. “I’m not sure that’s any of your business.”
Actually, I am sure it’s none of her business, but that’s never stopped Matilda. “You were the one who said nothing was going to happen between you,” she points out pragmatically as I continue to all but shove her out the door. “Which is obviously bullshit, but if you don’t want anything to happen, you probably shouldn’t picture him while you’re climaxing.”
“Okay, thanks for the advice and the sex stuff. Bye!” And with that, I finally manage to slam the door behind her.
I’ve silenced Matilda. But unfortunately, I can’t silence the thoughts she put into my mind as easily. Have I…made a terrible mistake?
By the time Thad arrives to pick me up, it’s no longer a question in my mind.
Last night was monumental. And monumentally stupid.
Did I have my first-ever orgasm? Yes, yes I did. And was it amazing? Yes, yes it was.
But did I fully think through how strange it would be to get into a car and travel for days with the man who inspired said orgasm and has no idea of the role he’s played in my fantasies?
No. No, I did not.
Maybe that’s why things were so stilted between Thad and me this morning when he came to pick me up. We barely spoke a full sentence to each other, beyond him asking me if I had any more bags.
Now, an hour or so into the trip and making our way steadily through Indiana, conversation hasn’t really picked up much. These are the consequences of being a creep, I remind myself in a voice that sounds eerily close to my mother’s. This is really the kind of scenario they should warn you about in Sunday school. Thou shalt not fantasize about a man thou wilt be driving with for fourteen hours across several states.
I’m so preoccupied with feeling self-conscious about how weird I’m acting that it takes me a while to register how weird Thad is acting, too. It’s not like we’ve ever been the best of friends, but yesterday, I felt like we’d come to some kind of understanding.
Today, he’s barely looked at me. His only conversation has had to do with the mechanics of the trip. It’s like he suddenly has this fortress that he’s built up around himself and he’s determined to keep me out of it. I understand why I’m being weird and quiet around him, but why is he being weird and quiet around me?
A sudden, sinking realization hits me: Thad knows I’m attracted to him. He can’t know about what I got up to last night, but maybe he senses that I’m behaving strangely and he’s guessed, in an abstract, roundabout way, the reason why. And he wants to make clear in no uncertain terms that he does not see me that way and nothing is ever going to happen.
I should have seen this coming. I climbed in the man’s lap, for goodness’ sake! He probably thinks I’m some lovesick fantasist. And, okay, sure, I thought about him last night, but not because I think anything is actually going to happen. He’s attractive and he’s convenient, in that we’ve interacted recently and there was a spark between us. I think? Or maybe that’s all in my head, too. I don’t know what I’m doing with all of this. I feel hopelessly, helplessly emotionally stunted in this area of life, especially knowing how easy it seems to be for everyone else.
“You gonna tell me where we’re going, or am I gonna have to guess?”
Thad’s sudden terse words pull me out of my spiral. I blink at him in surprise, motioning to the phone in my hand. “I have the map pulled up. Don’t worry, I know the way.”
He shakes his head, looking irritated. “Will you at least tell me how long we’re gonna be driving? Which direction?”
I’m genuinely perplexed why he’s so annoyed with me. This was the way we’d agreed to do things—and frankly, he has no right to give me attitude. I’m helping him, not the other way around. “I know where we’re going. I’ll get us there. And I’ll make sure you don’t have any reason to leave me in a roadside gas station in the middle of Kentucky.”
He can’t even argue that one—we both know it’s something he might do. “Kentucky,” he says after a moment. “So we’re headed south?”
I feel a brief surge of panic that he might actually piece it all together and leave me behind. “Maybe. Maybe not…” Hoping to distract him, I fish around in my purse and pull out a Tupperware. “Brownie? They’re homemade.”
Yesterday was Sunday, after all, which is baking day. I think briefly about Tom at the library and how disappointed he’ll be not to see me, but that’s probably wishful thinking. If I’m not there to feed him, he’ll just hit up a vending machine.
I’d hoped the offering of chocolate would diffuse some of the tension, but if anything, Thad looks even more horrified. “You can’t eat in Kitty.”
I stare at him blankly. “I’m sorry, I can’t eat in what?”
“Kitty. My car.” Thad says all of this through gritted teeth, like he knows it’s a little ridiculous but he’s mad and not willing to admit it.
“Is Kitty allergic to chocolate?” I ask in a hushed tone, patting the dashboard affectionately. “Does Kitty prefer poppyseed muffins, because I have those too.”
My forced cheerfulness, and my baked goods, make no progress with his awful, terrible, no-good mood. “No crumbs in my car,” he growls, scowling at the road.
We don’t talk again until after we’ve stopped for gas about an hour later. I keep my phone in my pocket, just so he isn’t tempted to take a peek at the directions while I’m in the bathroom, but I decide to try to play nice after that. If we’re going to be stuck in the car together for another twelve hours, we can at least be civil to each other.
“I got snacks!” I announce as I approach the car, holding up my haul. “And I can take over driving for a bit, if you need a break.”
Thad, who is finishing up pumping the gas, just glares at me. “No one drives Kitty but me. And I thought we already established that I don’t want crumbs in my car.”
Wow, he’s being a delight today. I do my best to keep smiling. “No crumbs. See, I got licorice, beef jerky, and trail mix. All crumb-free.”
He looks at me dubiously. “Trail mix leaves a mess.”
“Not if you eat it carefully.” I hold up the bag to him, giving it a little shake to make it look enticing. “Salted nuts. Raisins. Chocolate chips.”
“I don’t like raisins.”
I laugh, like he’s making a joke, even though I know he’s being a grouchy complainer-pants. It’s a skill I’ve developed as a public librarian—refusing to take offense when offense is clearly intended. Sometimes just pretending that you don’t understand someone is being rude can diffuse a lot of situations, because you have to be a real monster to double down on someone who is being relentlessly pleasant to you. (It still happens, but I’ve gotten out of more than one sticky situation this way.)
“No one likes the raisins,” I reassure him. “Just eat around them.”
He grunts, but at least doesn’t complain anymore or tell me I can’t bring my snacks into the car, so I’ll take that as a win.
I understand what he’s doing. He wants it to be clear that he is not interested in me romantically. Fortunately, with the way he’s acting, that is not as much of a blow as it might have otherwise been. I only feel a little ridiculous, for having even briefly thought there might be something between us.
After we’re on the road again, both of us staring silently out at the countryside as it passes by, Thad clears his throat. “So. I did some more digging on you last night. Only seems fair play, since you were looking into my past.”
I look over at him in surprise. “Oh?” Is that the reason he’s being such a grouch today? I mentally run through what he might have found out that could make him so irritated with me. But there’s nothing. Not even a speeding ticket. I’m?—
“Squeaky clean,” Thad says, shaking his head. “Almost too squeaky clean. You must have gotten into trouble at some point in your life?”
He says this almost spitefully. I try not to flinch. “It’s hard to get into trouble when you’ve been on the fast track to becoming a nun since you were a toddler.”
For some reason, this seems to annoy him. He shakes his head, like he’s trying to figure something out, but the pieces just aren’t fitting together. “Teenagers get up to things, though, don’t they? You never snuck out? Shoplifted? Had a boyfriend you weren’t supposed to have?”
I shrug again, finding it harder now to smile. “I guess I was just a rule follower. My mom…she had a hard time conceiving my brother. A really hard time.” My mother’s story is so much a part of my story, or at least what I was told my story was supposed to be, that it’s easy and familiar to recite it now. “She asked God to give her Dean, and when He did, she decided that I should give my life to God to make up for it. And I never thought to question it.”
“Until after you were a nun for five years?” Wow, Thad really did do his homework. “What happened—did something change?” His hands tighten a little on the steering wheel. “You got hot and heavy with a priest or something?”
Thinking of the seventy-six-year-old priest I worked with back at St. Elizabeth’s, I laugh out loud. “Um, no. Nothing like that. It wasn’t really anything crazy, I just…I woke up one day and realized I was living a life that I hadn’t chosen for myself. And I didn’t want to do it anymore.” His face is no longer guarded, but genuinely curious, and I feel compelled to add, “It was like, my whole life I was propelled by this story about what I was supposed to be, and then one day I asked myself—is this even what you want? And I realized no one else had ever asked me that before.”
For a moment, our gazes hold. An understanding passes between us.
Then Thad blinks, looking back at the road, and it’s like the wall has come back up again. I feel it between us, something Thad is hiding behind. But why?
“I guess I just find it hard to believe that you’ve always been this perfect angel.”
I flinch, frowning at the description. “No one ever said I was perfect?—”
Thad scoffs. “Come on. Look at you. You’re fucking perfect.” He raises an eyebrow at me, almost challenging. “Can I swear in front of a former nun, or am I gonna go to hell?”
I’m the one to look away now, out at the road. He’s not the first person I’ve encountered who’s gotten hostile about my so-called saintliness. Some people seem to take my choice to become a sister as a personal indictment of them, somehow, like I must be judging them for not taking the same life path as me. If only they knew how little judgment there was. I always envied people who didn’t make the same choices as me, who got to explore, make mistakes, live their own lives on their own terms. I never thought I was perfect, but the lifestyle I was living, that in some ways I’m still living, wasn’t some carefree, happy existence. It was, and is, a lonely life, full of regret. “You can say whatever you want.”
“But you won’t say it.”
I hear the challenge in his tone and find myself rising to it. I’m usually pretty easygoing, and I’ve been able to shrug off these kinds of confrontations before, but something about him and his presumptions gets under my skin. “I can say it. If I want to say it. But I don’t. I think there are better ways to express yourself.”
“Hmm,” Thad says.
I clear my throat. “And anyway, I’m not freaking perfect.” At the mean little laugh he does under his breath, I feel my temper rise. “I’m just a person. I might not have made some of the mistakes other people do, but I’m plenty messed up in my own way.”
“Oh, yeah? Like what?” Now he sounds genuinely curious—but I don’t know if this is just a ruse to goad me into saying something else he might make fun of.
I raise an eyebrow at him, warring between protecting myself, or proving him that he’s wrong about me. “Well. I don’t always recycle. Sometimes I’m too lazy to wash out a gross container and I just throw it away.”
Thad doesn’t just look unimpressed—he looks almost sorry for me. “That’s the worst thing you’ve ever done in your whole life, Sister Helen?”
I glare at the unexpected nickname. “I broke my mom’s angel figurine once and blamed it on Dean.”
“Whoa. Easy, rebel.” This said pityingly, like one might placate a small child who’s tried their best but just can’t quite play with the big kids.
“I’m still a virgin.” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them, but I need to prove Thad wrong about me. I’ve always had a bit of a competitive streak—hard to avoid, really, when you’ve been pitted against your brother your entire life. “I’ve been a layperson for four years and I still haven’t done more than kiss a man.”
That shuts him up. If Thad is doing the mental calculations, he’s probably figuring out that when he kissed me that first night we met, that’s the farthest I’ve ever gone with a man, sexually. What he hopefully isn’t piecing together is that he’s the only man I’ve ever kissed. That brief, embarrassing encounter with Thad was the total sum of my sexual experience.
He clears his throat. “That doesn’t make you bad, though. If anything, that puts you even more in perfect, saint-like territory.”
“I never said I was bad, I said I was messed up,” I remind him. “And I am plenty messed up. I have spent my whole life trying to get my mother’s approval, dedicating five years of my life to fulfill a bargain she made with God. And now I’m out, but it’s like I’m stuck. I write about romance and sex but I don’t have any idea what I’m talking about. It’s all fantasy, only I’ve fantasized about it so long that now I’m terrified the reality can never live up to my expectations. Like, imagine you’ve never tried chocolate, and your whole life everyone is telling you how incredible chocolate is, and you want to have some but at the same time you know you’ve built it up to be this thing in your mind that it can never be. Right? Nothing will ever be as good as what you’ve dreamed chocolate could be.”
A long pause. “I dunno,” Thad says at last. “Chocolate is pretty damn amazing.”
He says it so deadpan that I can’t help but laugh—a sharp, gasping laugh that takes me by surprise and sets me off on the giggles. Thad laughs along with me, maybe more so because he’s relieved that we’ve moved on than that he actually finds it funny. Either way, soon we’re both laughing so hard that we’re in tears.
“Noted,” I say, wiping at my eyes. “I’ll have to give chocolate a try. Someday.”
I keep my eyes on the road in front of us, though I feel Thad studying me. “You should.” He sighs. “Or maybe you shouldn’t. Sometimes I feel like it can’t be worth all the hassle. You know about Vera, but she was hardly the first.”
He must register my surprised look, because he hastens to add, “The first woman to betray me—not ‘hardly the first’ woman to sleep with me.”
I’d rather not dwell on who he has or hasn’t slept with, frankly. “Who else betrayed you?” I ask quietly, looking over at him.
Still gripping the steering wheel with one hand, he extends his fingers on the other, folding each one in again as he lists a new person. “High school girlfriend dumped me right before she started college, even though she’d asked me to sign a lease on an apartment near the school to be closer to her. Another girlfriend, when I was in my early twenties, borrowed three thousand bucks from me to ‘fix her car’ but instead spent it on a trip to Malaysia with her friends, then ghosted me. Vera, of course. And honestly, even my own mom. She was in a pretty bad way when I was a kid, with drugs and whatnot. She basically gave my dad custody for an allowance so she could blow it all away. She’s clean now and we’ve patched things up, but that was…a rough couple of years.”
Silence, as I take this all in. I feel like it explains a lot of my interactions with Thad, why he’s always so prickly and ready for a fight. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” I say stupidly, for lack of anything better to say. I can’t commiserate and share my own love-gone-wrong stories, and he knows it.
He waves it off, and I can see the tough-guy walls coming back up, sliding into place. “Hardly the worst thing people’ve been through.”
Afraid he might retreat back into his grouchy shell, I try to keep the conversation going. “Well, bless your heart.”
He grins at me, a real grin, and it’s like his whole face splits wide open, and those walls come crashing back down. “Bless your heart? Ouch.”
I frown at him. “What? That’s a nice thing to say, isn’t it?”
“It’s basically the Southern way of saying screw you.” He shakes his head, laughing. “Where’d you hear that, anyway? I’m guessing that’s not a Boston thing.”
Blushing, I look back to the road. “I’ve, um, been watching some of the old episodes of Bama Bounty.” What a loser. I’m totally bluffing. I watched all four seasons in about a week. They’re short episodes and the seasons aren’t that long, but…still. “Just to do a little background check, make sure I know who I’m working with.”
His smile is a little more guarded now, but not faded completely. “And? What’d you think?”
“Well, you’re the breakout star of the show, of course.” I say it playfully, like I’m being a little facetious, but it’s true. Orpheus and Amadeus are more comic relief, beefy and brawny and always fighting with each other. Darius is the slightly ridiculous, but somehow still compelling, seasoned veteran. Vera is…well, the bombshell. And Thad is clearly the broody, inscrutable heartthrob of the show, red mohawk and all. He has a quiet intensity to him that captures your attention whenever he’s onscreen. It totally makes sense to me why there are so many fan pages devoted to him, plus homemade T-shirts, and even a tattoo I saw on one of the chat boards.
He squints at me, wary. “You’re making fun of me.”
“No, I’m not—I swear. I love the way you talk everyone through going back into prison and how you do those prayer circles together,” I tell him. “It’s…oddly moving.” I should probably stop there, but for some reason I’m compelled to continue, “And for the record, Vera was never good enough for you. I guess I’ve had the ending spoiled for me, but…what a diva! That episode where she made everyone wait half an hour while she got her manicure fixed? Not the time, Vera!”
Actually, she reminds me a little of Erica, now that I say it aloud. Huh. I never put that together until just this moment.
I check his face. His expression has turned a little rueful now, but the smile is still in place. “Some of that was scripted,” he admits, “but not entirely divorced from reality, I’ll give you that.”
A moment passes where he seems lost in some memory, and not a pleasant one. He clears his throat, and his smile fades again. “And somehow you still want all that, huh? Don’t you think you were better off in the convent?”
I can’t help but feel it as a rejection, even though I know this was never about me. I shrug, looking out the passenger-side window. “I want to be in love. At least once in my life.”
“Even if it goes horribly wrong?”
“Even if,” I agree.
He snorts. “You think that, until it does.” He’s silent for a while, and I imagine he’s thinking about Vera again, until he asks abruptly, “Is that why you were out with Shane?”
The way he says Shane’s name is so disdainful that I turn to look at his profile, gauging his expression. There’s clearly more to their history than I realized. “Well, kind of. I wasn’t looking for love, per se. More like experience.”
More like, I’d just kissed the guy I really liked and found out he was only interested in me because he wanted to find my brother, and I thought Shane would be an easy ego boost. But I don’t say that part out loud.
Another snort from Thad as he tightens his grip on the steering wheel. “That’d be an experience you’d have to get tested for afterward.”
If I didn’t know better, I’d almost say he sounds…jealous? But I don’t let myself get carried away with that thought, because it’s ridiculous. Thad could not have made it any clearer just how little he’s interested in me. There are about a million other reasons why he might be testy around the subject of Shane.
So I let it drop, and we fall into silence again, both of us staring out at the scenery as it blurs by.