The Wrong Family(47)
Juno was shivering. She needed to get up, move to where it was warmer. Hems Corner, she thought. No, the blue room; she could sleep in the blue room right off Nigel’s den. When was the last time she’d slept in a bed? She groaned as fresh pain erupted in her stomach. She’d stay here for a little while longer, until she was strong enough, even if the memories were bad.
Chad Allan wasn’t the reason her marriage and her motherhood ended, no. He was just at the ugly end. The whole thing had felt like a roller-coaster ride to Juno, one that she realized she didn’t want to be on until it was too late. The adrenaline of secrecy paired with an angry woman. And Juno was angry—at Kregger. Mostly. Hadn’t she put her life and career on hold to raise his sons? She’d done everything right, everything to benefit him—and yet by the time she met Chad, it seemed that Kregger barely looked at her. He looked at everything but her, in fact: the television, the paper, his laptop.
Chad’s son had seen them together, walking out of a Motel Six hand in hand as he drove to his part-time job at the art store. Chad’s wife, Julianna, filed a civil suit against Juno for sleeping with Chad, her client; and, compounded with the criminal charges brought against her, she didn’t stand a chance and neither did her marriage. Good ol’ Chad had played victim to save his marriage, the poor, wounded target of a predatory therapist who took her own issues out on her clients. While Chad reconciled with his wife on a trip to Tahiti, Kregger moved into an apartment with the boys. With the house in foreclosure, Juno slept on a friend’s couch and waited for her sentencing. Kregger would never forgive her; she knew that. She forgot herself, as people often do. She forgot herself for three months of mediocre sex with a man whose favorite catchphrase was “No soup for you!”
She reached for her water, her throat starting to tickle and her mouth filling with the dust of the crawl space; Juno felt like it was choking her. She was tired enough to sleep again, but her thoughts were keeping her wired. Chad Allan had come for a visit.
All these years later and Juno could still feel his lips on her neck, the little circles his tongue would trace across her pulse and down the steep incline that dipped into her collarbone. He was funny; that’s what she liked most about him. He made her laugh and he made her come: win-win. They hadn’t loved each other, and they hadn’t needed to because it was all for fun. She was in a fever then, crossing the line, wanting more, more, more.
And she was in a fever now, too—literally this time. Throwing off her nest of blankets, she let the air hit her damp skin. She was really sick, she realized. With whatever they’d had up above. The air was sharp, dragging its nails across her skin. Juno had been sick like this twice before: once, in prison, where the women passed around their illnesses like they did their cigarettes in the yard. That had landed her in the med wing for a week with pneumonia. And then once on the street, shortly after she’d moved to Washington, and that had made her stint in the prison hospital look like a spa retreat. She’d picked it up at the shelter, no doubt, and a day later, Juno was shivering so hard she could barely catch her breath. She hadn’t known where to go, only that she needed to lie in place until whatever it was passed through her body. She’d been thirsty, too, but there was no way her legs would hold her up long enough to find water. She’d walked toward a bench near the water; there was a little park on the hill.
She was dreaming now. Chad was standing in a hotel room in his ridiculous Simpsons boxers, a warm bottle of beer in his hand. He was standing in front of the television, doing a little dance that made Juno laugh. Bart Simpson waved his middle finger at Juno from the left ass cheek of Chad’s boxers. Behind him, on the blue-lit screen of the TV, Juno saw another of her former clients, Pattie Stoves. Pattie had been seeing Juno about the guilt she had over having an affair with the minister of her church, Pastor Paul.
“No, no, no—” Juno said as Pattie, on the TV screen, rode the minister, her lips opening in pleasure. Chad, who thought Juno was talking to him, looked momentarily over his shoulder, winking at her. He was a stocky guy, muscular, and for a moment she watched him twerk as Pattie moaned from behind his torso. Juno was about to tell Chad to put on some music when she realized a song was already playing: “Summer of ’69” by Bryan Adams. Now Juno felt sick, even in her dream. Her stomach rolled dangerously as Chad shimmied toward her, his Simpsons underpants tented with his erection.
“Wheeeeeeeee...” Chad cried, bending his knees and throwing his fists into the air. Juno’s eyes switched to the TV where Pattie Stoves was sitting on her minister’s hairy knee obediently. She was naked and seemed wholly unbothered by it as he reclined behind her.
“Get out of here...get the fuck out of here, you’re scaring the kids.”
Juno looked in confusion at the naked woman in the television. She could see the minister’s chest behind Pattie, smooth and muscular, dotted with sweat. He was massaging Pattie’s breast even as she screamed at Juno.
Pattie was really mad now; she stood up, her breasts bouncing sharply in her anger. And then she leaned through the TV, her torso emerging from the screen like it had been nothing but a box the whole time. She reached for Juno and grabbed her by the lapels of her coat.
“You’re a waste of life,” Pattie snarled into her face. Juno looked around for help. Where was Chad...? When Juno looked up again, she was suddenly in Greenlake Park, lying on a bench opposite the playground, Pattie’s scream echoing: “You’re scaring them!” But Pattie herself was gone; so were Chad and Pastor Paul, and a man was glaring down at her, his hands fisted on the shoulders of her jacket. He was young, and behind him was a little girl in a yellow coat, looking scared.