Heart to Heart Read online

  “Then let’s do it,” Amy said. “Don’t even look inside. Just toss every box in the Dumpster.”

  Parker walked back into the room. Amy and Millie watched her walk over to an electrical outlet and plug something into it.

  “What is that?” Amy asked.

  “It’s a mouse remover. It emits a low-frequency beep. We can’t hear it, but the mice can. They’ll get out and stay out as long as that’s plugged in.”

  Amy walked up next to Parker and whispered, “Listen… I’m sorry if I embarrassed you. I didn’t mean to be such a girly-girl.”

  Parker studied the toes of her boots. Without looking up, she said, “That’s okay. I like girly-girls.” She quickly turned and left the room.

  Amy looked over at Millie and raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “She likes you,” Millie said.

  “But she wouldn’t even look at me.”

  “That’s how I know she likes you.”

  Chapter Seven

  Steph came out of the bathroom, fresh from a shower, toweling her hair dry. Rosa was in her fluffy white bathrobe, reclining on the bed, reading a magazine.

  “How’d it go today?” Rosa asked.

  “We had a little excitement. Amy found a mouse and scared the poor little thing half to death,” Steph said. She slipped a T-shirt over her head and climbed up next to Rosa on the bed. She told her the full story, including the dramatic finish.

  “Parker actually caught her? That’s so romantic!” Rosa exclaimed.

  “I think Parker might have been flirting with Amy. Though, it’s hard to tell with her.”

  “Parker, the great lesbian enigma,” Rosa said. She walked her fingertips up Steph’s thigh. “You know what I’m thinking?”

  “I think so,” Steph said.

  Rosa pulled back and looked directly at Steph’s face. “Then why are you grimacing?”

  “I’m not grimacing. That’s my sexy face.”

  “It’s not sexy,” Rosa said, reaching over to stroke the inside of Steph’s thighs, “but you are.”

  “Are you seducing me?”

  “Why do you think I’m sitting on the bed in my bathrobe waiting for you to get out of the shower?”

  “Oh,” Steph said, as Rosa ran her hands up Steph’s well-toned tummy and stopped at her breasts. She traced her fingertip around Steph’s nipple.

  “Maybe I should take this off,” Rosa said, indicating her bathrobe.

  “I definitely think you should,” Steph said, pulling the robe off Rosa’s shoulders. She clicked off the bedside lamp, hopped off the bed, and pulled the shades shut. She sprayed the air with “Midnight at the Oasis” air freshener.

  “Whoa, aren’t you suddenly the romantic?” Rosa said.

  “Gives the room ambience, don’t you think?” Steph said, pulling her T-shirt over her head.

  “Oh, I think so,” Rosa said, tugging Steph onto the bed. She kissed her softly at first and then with more intensity.

  Steph moaned. She kissed Rosa’s ear, nibbling at the lobe. Rosa let out a gasp. Steph had read in one of the magazines the boys had lying around the station, that women loved ear foreplay. For the benefit of men who wanted to please their wives, the magazine had laid out all the erogenous zones. The ears were a big hot spot with the ladies.

  “Where’d you learn to do that? Have you got a girlfriend I don’t know about?” Rosa teased.

  “Only you, my love. I got it from a magazine. I now know about all the erogenous zones on every part of your body.”

  “You’ll have to show me more,” Rosa said. She slipped her hand between Steph’s thighs and lightly caressed that one special erogenous zone. “Is this one of them?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Steph moved on top of Rosa, resting on her elbows. Rosa wrapped her legs around Steph’s waist.

  “We won’t be able to do this when we’re eighty,” Steph said.

  “Let’s worry about that later.”

  “I like to plan ahead,” Steph said. She put her hand between Rosa legs, felt that she was ready, and slowly eased her fingers inside.

  Rosa gasped at the sudden fullness she felt. “My god… I love you inside me,” she whispered.

  Steph answered by lowering her head and taking one of Rosa’s nipples into her mouth. She alternated sucking on Rosa’s nipple and thrusting with her fingers.

  Rosa felt the pressure inside her building. Her body moved of its own accord. She couldn’t seem to get enough of her lover, she felt herself opening wider, accepting more. She thrust her pelvis against Steph’s hand.

  Rosa groaned in pleasure as gentle shock waves moved throughout her body with each thrust of Steph’s fingers.

  Suddenly, Rosa pushed Steph off her.

  “What’s wrong?” Steph asked, alarmed.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Rosa answered. She straddled Steph’s middle. “I want to be on top.”

  This was Steph’s favorite position of lovemaking. She loved to watch Rosa move on top of her. Feel her fingers buried deep inside Rosa. Watch Rosa’s breasts move in rhythm with her thrusts.

  Rosa grabbed the headboard with both hands and rocked against Steph’s fingers. Steph could feel her own orgasm mounting as Rosa’s throbbing center moved deliciously against her own.

  “Come with me,” Rosa growled.

  “Now?”

  “Now,” Rosa commanded.

  They let go at the same time and came together. Wave after wave of pleasure rocked their joined bodies.

  Dinner was going to be very late.

  ***

  Rosa had seconds on the spinach enchiladas. She swallowed the last bite and said, “I seem to have worked up an appetite.”

  Steph leaned over the table and kissed Rosa. “We might have to work this off, you know.”

  Rosa stood and put her plate in the sink. “You know what I was thinking?”

  “I hope it’s the same thing I’m thinking.”

  Rosa laughed and flicked the dishtowel at her. “You’re insatiable.”

  “Okay, what were you thinking?” Steph asked, putting her own plate in the sink.

  As Rosa loaded the dishwasher, she said, “I think we should have a dinner party.”

  “Because?” Steph asked.

  “Because we need to play matchmaker.”

  “For who?”

  “Susan and Tess.”

  “And Parker and Amy,” Steph added.

  “Oh, good. We can kill four birds with one stone,” Rosa said. She bent over and put another plate in the dishwasher.

  Steph moved behind Rosa and pressed her hips into Rosa’s.

  “Didn’t you get enough?” Rosa taunted.

  “Never,” Steph said. “I never get enough of you.”

  Rosa straightened, turned around, and pulled Steph close. “Me neither.”

  Steph took Rosa by the hand and pulled her to the bedroom for round two.

  Chapter Eight

  Amy and Millie were both exhausted after their first day in Hoarderville. Millie had gone straight to bed after a shower and dinner, but Amy, despite being exhausted, was too wired to fall asleep. She knew it’d be some time before sleep found her.

  Against their initial judgment of not looking in the boxes and pitching them into the Dumpster sight unseen, curiosity proved too strong and they’d decided a quick perusal of each box would be for the best. That ended up being a very good thing. They’d found her mother’s photo album. It wasn’t the family album that Amy remembered looking at as a child. This was one she had never seen before.

  This photo album was solely of her mother’s life from the time she was a child until Amy’s father had died. The photos ended with his passing. It seemed after that, her mother had no more interest in cataloguing her own life. Maybe that’s why Amy had run away from her life in Fenton as soon as she was old enough to leave. Her mother’s sadness was like a contagious disease and Amy hadn’t wanted to catch it. So she did what she did best—she ran.

  Amy’
s girlfriends had pointed out this trait. Amy ran when things got too close. One of her ex-girlfriends had nailed it by saying, “You want a girlfriend that doesn’t cross the line. You only let me in so far. You won’t give up your hideous hidey-hole of an apartment and move in with me in case we don’t make it and then you’d be homeless. Not everyone, especially people that love you, are going to desert you. Part of love is sticking around when things get tough.”

  But she was wrong, Amy thought. She had loved her father. He was her shield when things got tough and even he had deserted her. Then, when she needed her mother most—after he died— her mother enveloped herself in grief and deserted Amy, too. This photo album of Mary Warner’s life was a testament to that desertion—stopping at her father’s passing.

  Millie had given her a queer look when she found it. “I remember that album,” she had said.

  “You’ve seen it?”

  Millie nodded cautiously. “From time to time. We’d have tea and she’d look through it.”

  “She let you in her house?” Amy asked incredulously.

  “No, but several times she brought the album over to my house. It was like she wanted to tell her story while she still could. I was her audience.”

  “I should take this one to her for sure,” Amy said.

  “Take a look at it first before you decide.”

  “But this will jog her memory,” Amy said.

  “I think the family album, when we find it, might be better.”

  Amy was puzzled, but she agreed.

  Now, sitting in the kitchen, Amy opened the photo album. The pages fell open to a few Polaroids of her mom and her friends, holding cigarettes and bottles of Lucky beer. They were young, happy, and free. She’d never seen her mother like that.

  But wasn’t it typical of children not to recognize that their parents actually existed before they came along? Children were self-absorbed, hardly realizing that their parents were people, too. Parents had complex lives their children never knew existed. The women in the Polaroids looked to be in their early twenties. Her mother hadn’t married until she was twenty-six. Back in those days, she would’ve been considered an old maid if she weren’t married by the time she was thirty. She’d barely made the cut-off.

  Amy stopped perusing the album long enough to plug in the electric kettle and find the box of chamomile tea. The tea was growing on her. She took her mug back to the kitchen table and opened the album to the first page. It was her mother when she was five. In a spidery cursive someone had written “baby Mary, five years old, Hershey, Pa.”

  Her mother’s childhood looked happy. There were birthday party pictures with chubby children. Mary looked like all the other children. There was one photo of her as a teenager that seemed to capture the essence of a different Mary. She was standing in the half light of a barn door. She was looking out and away. Pain and longing were etched across her young face. Her teen self must have foreseen an unknown sadness on the horizon.

  Amy sipped her tea and studied the photographs of her mother as she grew into a lovely young woman who had poise, and even a dash of panache. Cocky hats, a lit cigarette hanging between her lips, a flute of champagne at a New Year’s Eve party. This was a woman Amy did not know. She tried to find that pain and longing that Mary’s younger self had known that day in the barn. This young woman showed no signs of it. She seemed happy and deliriously so.

  Amy turned a page and a yellowed news clipping fell to the floor. She picked it up and smoothed its wrinkles on the edge of the table. She read the clipping aloud, softly, to herself.

  “I was going to warn you about that,” Millie said. She wore a pink fluffy robe and matching slippers.

  Amy hadn’t heard her come in. She looked up with a jerk. “Millie! I hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “Not at all. My bladder gets me up about twenty times a night. I saw the light and came to sit with you. If that’s all right.”

  Amy nodded. She pointed to the clipping she’d been reading. “This says a baby died. And there were mysterious circumstances. What does that mean? Do you know?”

  Millie frowned. She got a mug out of the cabinet and fixed herself tea. It must be serious, Amy thought, if Millie’s drinking tea. As Millie settled at the table she said, “I better start at the beginning. Did you know you were originally from Hershey, Pennsylvania?”

  “I thought I was born and raised here in Fenton,” Amy said.

  “You weren’t. Your parents moved here when you were two. They couldn’t stay in Hershey. Not after what happened with the baby.”

  “What baby?”

  Millie sighed before delivering the news. “You had a little brother. He died in infancy from SIDS.”

  Amy knew that SIDS was Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. It was when an apparently healthy baby died in its sleep. “Why does this say there was an investigation?”

  “With SIDS, there’s always an investigation. The authorities need to make sure the child wasn’t abused. That the death wasn’t caused by intentional suffocation or some such,” Millie said.

  “What?” Amy was unable to comprehend what she was discovering. “They thought my mother suffocated her own child?”

  Millie nodded. “We didn’t know much about SIDS back then. And, you know, people can be vicious. They elect themselves judge and jury. Even though the investigation didn’t find any conclusive wrongdoing, there was no way to prove she didn’t do it. Everywhere Mary went, she heard people whispering behind their hands. Calling her a baby killer.”

  Amy felt her heart seize up like she couldn’t breathe.

  Millie watched her. “I’m not explaining it well. I’m sorry, honey.”

  “That must have been awful. I can’t comprehend that kind of cruelty.” It was all starting to make sense. Why her mother had seemed so disconnected from her. And then after Amy’s father died, her mother’s only touchstone was gone.

  “There’s more to the story,” Millie said.

  “More? How could there be more?”

  “Your mother suffered a deep depression after your baby brother died. Your father came home and found her on the bathroom floor. She had tried to kill herself with pills. When he got there, you were screaming and crying outside the bathroom door. Mary had locked it behind her. He had to break it down. Then the ambulance came with all the lights and noise and scared you even more, I’m sure. I pray you don’t remember any of it.”

  Amy thought about it. “No, I don’t. I don’t remember anything before living here in Fenton.”

  “That’s a good thing.”

  “So, they moved here because they couldn’t stay in Hershey after that?” Amy asked. The whole situation crashed down on her, the enormity of what her parents had been through.

  Millie nodded.

  “I had a baby brother,” Amy said. “What was his name?”

  “James. He was named after his grandfather.”

  “Do I still have grandparents?” It seemed there was so much more to her mother’s life than she had ever imagined. “My mother said they were long dead by the time I came along.” But there were so many secrets. Maybe grandparents had been one of them.

  “They’re gone now. Let’s see, I’m trying to remember how old you were…” Millie said, obviously rifling through her memories like a file cabinet. “You were seven at the time, I believe. Your mother and father went to their funeral. You stayed with us. That’s when we took you on vacation with us to Branson.”

  “I remember that. We went to Silver Dollar City.” Amy was flooded with the warmness of that memory. “We had so much fun that I didn’t want to come home.”

  Millie chuckled. “Neither did Harry. I had to drag the both of you out of there.”

  “When you said ‘their’ funeral, did you mean my grandparents died at the same time?”

  Millie nodded sadly. “Their car drove off the Combs Bridge into the river. They couldn’t get out. I’m so sorry, Amy. You’re already having so much to deal with you don’t nee
d to have more tragedy piled on top.”

  “I need to know all this. I can’t ask my mother about it.”

  “True,” Millie said. She rose from the table and poured more hot water into their mugs.

  “So those were my mother’s or father’s parents?”

  “They were your mother’s.”

  “What about Dad’s?”

  Millie looked away. “Are you sure you want to go on with this?”

  “Is it bad, too?”

  “Yes. No use me trying to sugarcoat it now.” Millie sat back down and put Amy’s mug in front of her.

  “No wonder my mother was depressed.” Amy wrapped her hands around the mug, savoring the warmth.

  “Do you still want to know?”

  Amy nodded. She might as well get it over with.

  “Your father’s parents disowned them. They were convinced that your mother killed baby James. She’d had what we now know is postpartum depression. But back then people didn’t know about such things. They just thought there were bad mothers. Your father stood by your mother through it all. He tried his best to shield you from her depression.”

  “I had no idea about any of this.”

  “Your grandparents tried to take you away from them, petitioning that they were unfit parents. That’s another reason your parents moved here. The whole thing was such a mess.” Millie shook her head. “No family should have so much sadness.” She put her hand over the album. “Maybe you should let this rest and get some sleep. I think you’ve had enough for one night.”

  “All right. I don’t think my mind can wrap itself around much more.” Amy closed the album.

  “Oh, honey, I wish you hadn’t found that album. Some things are better left to rest.” She pulled Amy into a hug.

  Amy tried not to cry. She didn’t want to cause Millie anymore distress than she already had. “I’m sorry I put you through that tonight. You did so much today and I know you’re tired.”

  “It’s all right. I want you to know I’m here for you. Remember that. Whatever the problem. Promise me, you’ll let me help. You shouldn’t have to go through all of this alone.”