Eliza Starts a Rumor(6)
Jackie had always worried about the day Jana would get her period. The first time he held her, alone in the nursery after the reality began to set in that he would be raising her on his own, the thought ran through his head. Through the unbearable shock and his streams of tears he actually thought, What will I do when she gets her period? And he was right to worry. It was as if she went to sleep one night a rough-and-tumble toddler and woke up a young woman. A young woman who suddenly looked very much like her mother. That part of it Jackie loved. To see Ann’s face again, and sometimes her smile, that was a gift he would never tire of.
But yesterday morning when his assistant interrupted his presentation on the current risk appetite for currency trading with a call from his housekeeper, his fears felt warranted.
“Jana’s friend has arrived,” the housekeeper announced.
“Well, tell her that Jana’s in school,” he answered, annoyed by the silly interruption.
“No, no, Mr. Campbell. I found a few pairs of Miss Jana’s dirty underwear in the garbage. Her lady friend has arrived, and I think you need to buy her supplies.”
“Oh. Oh,” he repeated aimlessly. And then again, “Oh.”
“If I could give you some advice, Mr. Campbell?”
“Please do.”
“Don’t get tampons, sir. Just pads. Tampons lead to sex.”
Jackie felt the room spin around him as he thanked her and hung up. He repeated her warning again in his head, replacing his housekeeper’s voice with the voice of God: Tampons lead to sex.
When his meeting was over, he went down to the drugstore, where he purchased every kind of pad on the open market: maxis with wings, ultra-thin scented minis, super-absorbent overnights, and various-sized liners with names like Always and Ultra and Stayfree and Poise. If his mother were still alive he would have delegated this entire situation to her. Today he missed her even more than usual.
He arrived home that night with his triple-bagged purchases and stood at his daughter’s door. He paused before knocking, reminding himself that he was a grown man: accomplished, formidable, and possibly even brave. Though he didn’t feel very brave at that moment. He knocked gingerly.
“Come in, Daddy,” she said.
So far, so good.
“Hi, baby girl.” He sat down on the bed. “I’m very sorry your mom or Grammy is not here to talk to you about this, but we always get along pretty well, don’t we?”
She shook her head yes.
“So, I bought you some things that I think you may find helpful.”
He nervously opened the treasure trove of sanitary napkins. As he did, he wished he hadn’t gone so overboard. Lucky for him, she laughed.
“I don’t need all that, Daddy. I went with Ivy after school and bought a box of tampons. I’m good now.”
“You can’t use tampons!” he shouted with an urgency one usually reserves for reporting a fire in a theater or, more likely for Jackie, a catastrophic drop in the Dow Jones. Her face immediately morphed into her “you don’t know anything, and I hate you” look. Jackie tried to backpedal, but he knew from experience that once her ship of adolescent contentiousness sailed, it didn’t return for days. He took a breath.
“I’m sorry I yelled. I hoped you could start with these.”
He opened the bag.
“Any of these.” He pulled out the ones with wings. There had been nearly a year somewhere between three and four where she had insisted on wearing her sparkly fairy wings every day, even over her pajamas. He pictured her sleeping on her belly with her little tush in the air and those wings sprouting from her back like a butterfly.
“These have wings,” he said, hopefully.
It was clear that she got the reference but didn’t find it funny.
“Ugh, Dad, you’re being so extra! I’m not a child. I know what I’m doing.”
But you are a child, he thought, and what the hell does being “extra” mean?
She retreated into her phone as if the conversation was over, a tactic that always infuriated Jackie. He retreated into his overwhelming need to control everything that he could, ever since the uncontrollable had happened to them.
The box of tampons sat right out on her desk. He knew he had two choices: to leave and let her have her way, or to take them and insist on his. The voice of God came back: Tampons lead to sex.
He grabbed the box of tampons and placed the bag of pads on her bed.
“You can use these until you’re older,” he said without once pausing for breath. And got out of her room as quickly as his feet allowed.
CHAPTER 5
Eliza
It took nearly an hour before Eliza peeled herself off the kitchen floor and dragged herself upstairs. If it wasn’t for the thought of Luke and the kids finding her there, she might not have had the will to get up. She took her now-sacred bottle of Valium that they had bought for kicks on a trip to Mexico years before from the medicine cabinet, and emptied its contents into her hand. There were only four left. Over the past months those pills had felt like little life rafts to Eliza. She bit off half of one and washed it down with water from the faucet. When I get down to one, she swore, I will reach out for professional help.
In the shower, she pictured the water washing off the ugly remnants of the outside world. She stayed in there until the Valium kicked in. The hot shower and the drugs left her feeling duly calm and collected. As she dried off, she made a bargain with herself in the bathroom mirror: “You don’t have to leave the house again all weekend. Put on your happy face. Your kids are coming home.”