and what she had said about her…
“I’m not going to have time to visit with Dena this morning,” Leah grumbled, interrupting my thoughts. “I have to get Jack.”
“You’re sure Mama will take him tomorrow?” I asked. As much as I wanted Leah to introduce me to Chrissie, I really didn’t want to bring my nephew to the home of a potential psychotic. I was pretty sure that was something most of the parenting books would frown on.
“Actually she already offered to watch him but I’ve been leaving him with the nanny a lot while I work and I was worried we were having too much apart time.” She glanced at her watch. “It’ll be fine. I’ll pick you up tomorrow at three-thirty at your house. Be ready.”
“I’m always ready.”
Leah gave me her give-me-a-break look. “Tell Dena I’ll try to be back tomorrow, and, for God’s sake, go to the gift shop and buy her a magazine or something. The woman can’t be expected to spend the entire day watching game shows and soap operas.”
I smiled to myself as Leah turned on her heel and headed toward the parking lot. The thing about my sister was that she was totally self-absorbed and totally considerate at the same time. I realize that isn’t possible, but it was an impossibility that Leah seemed to manage well.
I went back in the hospital. I had a lot to do but today I would spend at the hospital. I just wanted to be by Dena’s side and remind myself that she was alive.
The day crept by at a snail’s pace. Marcus stopped by for a while but seemed somewhat unnerved by the hospital setting. Mary Ann and Jason were a constant presence and Monty brought Dena’s parents to see her. Her parents didn’t say much. Her father stood a few paces behind her mother as she asked Dena a few clipped questions about how she was doing. It would have been nice if she had shown a little warmth, but Dena’s mother didn’t do warmth, and her father didn’t do anything but stand in her mother’s shadow. In an odd way her parents modeled the master and servant relationship that Dena occasionally played with in the bedroom. That was a rather disturbing thought and I quickly decided not to dwell on it.
When they left Mary Ann walked out with them, promising to be back in less than half an hour. That just left Jason and me sitting in Dena’s room as she stared moodily at the ceiling. Jason’s eyes were on the brown swinging door that Isa, Dena’s mother, had just gone through.
“What the fuck’s up her ass?” he asked.
“She’s pissed,” Dena said with a shrug.
“Why?” I asked incredulously. “She mad at you for getting shot?”
“Not really.” Dena picked up the remote control to the television and turned it over in her hands. “For my mother being pissed isn’t so much a mood as it is a permanent state of being.”
“Oh, got it.” Jason let out a long sigh of relief. “I thought maybe she didn’t like me or something.”
“You’re not the one she doesn’t like,” Dena said shortly.
I smiled and settled myself into the chair by Dena’s bedside. I knew Isa didn’t like me. For one thing she thought I was going to hell because I was a Jew. It’s always hard to have a positive relationship with someone who thinks you’re going to hell. I also suspected that she was clinging to not just a few racist sentiments…not that she ever came out and said so. It was just the way she always seemed surprised that I spoke grammatically correct English and didn’t have any friends in prison that tipped me off.
Dena gave me a sharp look. “I wasn’t talking about you either,” she said. “The only person in this room that she has any real antipathy for is me.”
I swallowed. How did I respond to that? Of course the best answer was probably not to respond at all. “Does she still go to church three times a week?” I asked.
“Yeah, but in her last letter she told me she switched congregations again. It’s hard for her to find a religious community that’s intolerant enough for her.” Dena turned on the television and started flipping through the channels so quickly it was impossible to tell what was on what station.
“All religions are institutions of intolerance,” Jason sneered as he walked over to the window. “They’ll never embrace the beauty of the alternative lifestyle. They’re always spouting shit about heaven and hell. They fail to grasp that it’s about the now, man. It’s about the fucking now.”
“The fucking now,” Dena repeated, finally settling on CNN. “Maybe that’s my mom’s problem, she doesn’t like fucking anything. She doesn’t even like fucking in the literal sense.”
“Dena,” I said with a laugh, “we don’t have to get that graphic about your mom.”
“No, I’m serious. I think the reason she is so into her religion is that it gives her a good reason to be against casual sex or any sex that isn’t for the explicit purpose of procreation. But the truth is my mom doesn’t like sex because it’s hard to be completely in control of yourself during the throes of ecstasy, and Mom doesn’t like to ever be out of control.”
“Are you serious?” Jason turned away from the window, so that his figure was framed by the blue-gray backdrop of the San Franciscan sky. “She doesn’t dig ecstasy?”
“Nope.” She looked up at the face of Wolf Blitzer, wrinkled her nose in distaste and changed the station to Headline News. “All my life she’s been telling me that I must always be in complete control of myself. She can’t understand why I ditched that lesson in favor of the ‘wild life.’”
“But you didn’t—” I started but then quickly stopped myself. The truth was that no one maintained control during sex as well as Dena did. Sex was always on her terms. She chose the positions, she decided if there would be role-playing or if her partner was going to be tied to the bed or not. She may not have realized it, but Dena had totally internalized her mother’s life lessons. But I sensed that pointing that out to her now wasn’t going to go over all that well.
But Dena wasn’t paying attention to me anyway. She was staring down at her legs. “A wild life,” she repeated. “I wonder how wild it’ll be now.”
Jason laughed. “Trust me, baby, it’ll be wild. You don’t have it in you to be tame.”
But Dena didn’t even break a smile. She was still staring at her legs and the look in her eyes… God, I had never before seen her look so sad. It made me want to hold her and then throw things and then wave my fists in the air and rail at God for the unfairness of it all.
Dena looked up at me, and behind the sadness I saw the flash of anger. “The guy who did this…he has to be found. I don’t think I’ll be able to live if the person who did this to me gets away with it.”
“The shooter won’t get away with it,” I said softly. “On that you have my word.”
She looked at me for a long moment before nodding. And then she turned her eyes back up to the news.
By the time I pulled my car into my own driveway the sky was darkening and the air was damp and cool. I liked the feel of it. It gave me a sense of place.
I found Anatoly in the kitchen unloading a bag of groceries as Mr. Katz sat on the floor watching him
