We Are the Light(24)

As I listen to Mom these days from seven to seven thirty on Sunday nights, I try to remain curious, like you taught me. I try to hear Mother’s trauma, her pain, and realize that it’s not my pain, not my trauma. I mostly am able to keep us separate and resist getting enmeshed. But it makes me kind of wish I could skate away on a frozen river, just like in the Joni Mitchell song, even though I realize that river would be called “denial” or “dissociation” or some other psychological term.

Eli has been talking about his own mother. Whenever he mentions her, his face turns red and some awful demon takes control of his brain. You can see it in his eyes. His pupils contract and then the Eli I know—the good boy who wants very much to become a healthy man—vanishes. He’ll pace. Punch his palms and shake his head. You’d think maybe his mother had locked him in a cage for years, like poor Iron John. As I wrote before, it sounds as if Mrs. Hansen did some pretty deranged things to Jacob and Eli when they were little. And when they were teenagers, she infected their minds with words—words like witchcraft designed to bottle up their masculine spirits and make them sick, turning their souls toxic.

“She used to tell Jacob that he was too ugly and lazy to make anything of himself,” Eli ranted one afternoon. “She said he’d die a virgin. A million times Mom said that. She started saying that when he was ten years old!”

I asked about their father and learned that both Eli and Jacob were initially told they never had a dad, even though Jacob sometimes claimed to have vague memories of a “hairy man” living with them when Eli was first born. So when they learned about reproduction in school and the need for sperm to produce a baby, they asked again, which enraged Mrs. Hansen, who apparently said, “Why are you so interested in your mother’s sex life?”

This, of course, reminded me of what my mother said to me when she caught me kissing Jenna Winterbottom behind the garage when we were in the seventh grade and also how Mom used to call me Sundial whenever we went to the beach because my penis—even when it was limp—stuck out when my swim trunks were wet. The nickname upset me so much, I stopped swimming for a few years, refusing to go to pools or lakes or the beach. And I didn’t date anyone again until I started writing letters to Darcy when we were both in college.

And then one July day—between our freshman and sophomore collegiate years—Darce and I went to the beach. I tried to keep a towel wrapped around my waist the whole time, but Darcy kept playfully pulling it off. When she saw me trying to cover my bulge with my hands something flickered in her eyes and I knew that she understood my shame. Instead of saying anything, she led me by the hand into the ocean, where she wrapped her legs around my waist and kissed me until I was hard as a rock. I was so embarrassed but I was also sort of thrilled and on autopilot—instinct completely took over. I was additionally amazed that this beautiful young woman really seemed to be enjoying my body in a way that made me feel proud and desirable and whole.

I remember getting nervous in the middle of the make-out session and blurting out an apology for being hard. I averted my eyes and untangled myself from her. But Darcy swam toward me again and—with so much kindness in her voice—said, “My God. What did your mother do to you?” which scared the hell out of me, because I didn’t realize anyone else could see what had happened so clearly. I was shaking and so Darce put her arms around me and whispered, “It’s okay,” into my ear. She just held me like that for a long time and my erection faded.

I thought I had blown my shot with Darcy but on the way home she asked me to drive into the woods that used to be at the edge of town—where the Caddell Condos now are—and then she directed me to a car-sized rectangle of dirt in a knee-high field of grass. I remember thinking it looked like a freshly covered grave for a recently deceased giant. When I turned off the car, Darce immediately started taking off my clothes and hers. She said, “This is a good thing, Lucas. You’re supposed to enjoy your body. Let me make you feel better. You don’t have to be ashamed.” And she was so gentle that I went along with it and told myself that it was okay and fought like hell against my mother’s voice, which was protesting inside my head, calling me perverted and disgusting. And when it was over, Darce put her head on my chest and listened to my heart beating for a long time while I stroked her black hair and wondered what losing my virginity meant. Except for the kissing I had done with Jenna Winterbottom back in seventh grade, I had never before even touched a woman. It was like going directly from a tricycle to a space shuttle without any training, and now I was in zero gravity and wondering how I was even breathing. But, somehow, I knew that I had done all right with the mission and was okay. And that Darcy was satisfied and maybe even in love with me, which might just have been the greatest miracle of my life.

“I love you,” I said to Darcy—right there in the front seat of my car—and then regretted it immediately.

It felt uncool.

Premature.

Ridiculous.

And the silence that followed almost turned my heart to stone.

But then Darcy lifted her head and gave me a smile. I looked into her sea-green eyes and saw a different kind of witchcraft—this kind healed and completed and left me feeling more hopeful than I had ever been in my entire life.

“I love you too, Lucas Goodgame,” she said, and then gave me a great big kiss on the lips.

But back to my mother.