If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out.
Just as a lie, told countless times in one’s own mind eventually becomes memory rather than fantasy, blurring the line between that which was imagined and that which actually took place, could the same be true of real experiences? If one pretended a literal occurrence never happened with enough passion and over a sufficient amount of time, did it eventually cease to exist in the conscious mind? Did it too blur the lines between the imaginary and the actual? Even as I reached for the decaying chaise lounge, I knew the answer to those questions was yes.
On particularly warm and sunny days the chaise lounge was always moved to the center of the backyard, where Bernard’s mother could lay out and sunbathe, the house blocking any view from the road and the trees in back forming a barrier between her and the houses beyond. How many times had I seen her stretched out under summer sun, skin browned and glistening with tanning lotion, head back, eyes closed, chin tilted toward the sky, soft blonde hair contrasting with the gaudy flowery pattern on the padded pillow of the chaise lounge, Jackie-O sunglasses and a fluffy white beach towel resting next to a portable radio on the grass, playing disco tunes always a bit louder than necessary? How many times had I watched her breasts, barely contained in a bright bikini top, rise and fall, her legs outstretched, toes pointed like a prone ballerina while the sun caught the gold bracelet adorning her ankle? How many times had I touched myself and thought of her—my friend’s mother, for Christ’s sake—how many times?
In those years before she’d become sick she was beautiful, but not like everyone else’s mom. Linda was different. She was still a parent, but younger, sexier, more like us than other adults. She’d possessed an impish quality, with expressive light blue eyes, a tiny nose and thin though shapely lips, dyed blonde hair that she kept relatively short in length but that was thick and always a bit wild, as if she’d not quite had the time to style it properly, and a deep, bawdy laugh that sounded implausibly obscene coming from such an otherwise delicate woman. So delicate, in fact, that she often seemed practiced, studied in the ways of carrying oneself in an unquestionably female, unmistakably sexual, undeniably alluring manner. In a boring town like Potter’s Cove, she was the most glamorous being any of us had ever laid eyes on. A misplaced movie starlet banished with her bastard son to the ends of the Earth, sentenced to a life of boredom and loneliness in a place where but for those who ridiculed her, the only attention a woman like Linda Moore was paid was at local bars after dark. I’d once heard my mother talking on the telephone with a friend about her, about how she had gone from her native New Bedford to New York City, where she had become involved with some shady characters. Underworld types who liked to have a woman like Linda on their arms and in their beds. But there had been a murder, so the story went, a mob hit where she had been caught in the middle of a bad situation and fled. She had returned home pregnant, with a drinking problem and a bad reputation, and ended up in Potter’s Cove. Most felt her stay would be temporary, that a party girl without a party would quickly tire of life outside the fast lane and eventually return to it. And in a sense, she did, albeit a small town version. Under more typical circumstances, she was the kind of girl who left the area and went on to bigger things in more sensational locales. But instead she’d become a scandalous woman the older townies spoke about softly, sometimes in outright whispers, hands raised to cover their mouths and eyes cast askance; a woman most grown men and teenage boys alike fantasized about, and a woman Bernard worshipped.
I stood up and stepped back, away from the house, and again watched the upstairs windows for a time. The sense that someone was watching me surfaced a second time, though I had the impression whoever or whatever it was had now moved to some point behind me—perhaps the trees just beyond the fence. I ignored the feeling and without looking back walked slowly around to the side of the house from which I’d come. As I closed the gate I glanced at the backyard, gradually lifting my eyes to the still gently swaying trees.
Satisfied that no one was there, I crossed to the front of the house. The front door, a door we had always been told to knock on once and then feel free to enter through, drew my attention. It was an odd thing, to simply knock once then walk into someone else’s home, not to mention a practice foreign to me and in direct opposition to the more formal rules of etiquette my mother had taught and insisted I adhere to. But it was Linda’s rule. And that was another thing. Calling an adult, particularly a friend’s mother, by their first name was not done and considered disrespectful. But again, it was Linda’s rule. So, when visiting, I’d knock once on the front door then enter, and whenever in her company I’d address her simply as Linda, just like everyone else.
The countless times I had walked in and caught Bernard’s mother in some state of undress trickled through my mind, images of flirting ghosts and sneering demons blurring one into the next to form a single spectral whirlwind. So often when I stopped by she just happened to be scantily or sexily clad, or was changing or had just stepped out of the shower, a skimpy towel somehow managing to cover all the right spots, though just barely, except for those occasions when it slipped or fell completely away to reveal a quick flash of nipple, buttock or pubic hair as she nonchalantly climbed the stairs or pranced into her bedroom. In those days, I’d often wondered if she did the same thing when Bernard’s other friends came to the house.
Bernard’s in his room, sugar. Go on up and see him.
All these years later, I had no doubt that she had.
I stared at the house, called on all the recollections and mysteries it held within its slowly dying walls, summoned them from its bowels to the light of day, to the sidewalk where I now stood. And like the slow rise of blood from an exceptionally deep wound, they came. Slow and seeping at first, and then, as I held the wound open wider still, it gushed, this blood of memories and secrets, leaking from the windows, dripping across the walls, bubbling from cracks in the foundation, frothing and swelling free like waves crashing shoreline, determined to knock me over and drag me under.
And down I went.
The house opened before me like a parting curtain, a yawning mouth vomiting forth the past like the repellent thing that it was.
Knock once and enter.
Just beyond the front door, the staircase at the head of the small entranceway came into focus, the living room to the left, a small closet to the right, the smell of cigarettes, booze, and Linda’s perfume in the air as always. Barely audible sounds of the television in the other room turned down low lingered in my ear even when the stairs began to creak as I climbed them, shifting with each hesitant step.
The door opening—no—already open on the bedroom just to the right of the stairs. Linda’s room, where the bed sat against the back wall, mismatched nightstands on either side of the headboard cluttered with overflowing ashtrays and empty liquor bottles, garments stuffed into plastic clothesbaskets and strewn about the room as if thrown or dropped there, an ironing board against one wall, a dressing table with mirror and closet against another. Lipsticks and makeup, small bottles of polish and colognes and body sprays, tins of soap and powder rattling, clicking one against the other until it all faded to black.