Jacob Of My Mind

1

Jacob of My Wishes

Isat motionless at the head of the table, staring at my birthday cake. I could feel the heat of thirty-five mismatched, blazing candles of varying sizes roasting my face. How my best friend, Kiplyn Zeringue, was able to fit all of them on my Great American Cookie, and keep them all ablaze during the obligatory singing that followed, was a complete mystery to me. A single tear rolled from my left eye. I couldn’t be sure if it was because of the painful radiation coming from the candles, the fact that I was a single, childless thirty-five-year-old or purely because the only people that came to my party were my best friend, my drunk stepdad, my perpetually disappointed mother, and my self-righteous half-sister. And not one of them, apart from Kiplyn, wanted to be here, and I wasn’t even sure that she wanted to be here. Hell, I didn’t want to be here.

Make a wish! Kiplyn pressed with unexplained urgency. And blow out your candles!

My stepdad, Jacques, remained in the living room, softly snoring in the recliner, oblivious to the festivities only feet away. My mother, Regina, was silent, smoking her skinny little cigarette despite me asking her not to smoke in my apartment, looking absolutely miserable, or constipated, or miserably constipated. And my younger, half-sister, Daveney Louviere had the face of pissed off agony, as if someone may have actually lacerated her labia during the Brazilian wax she had prior to coming to my party.

Why do you always have cookie cake? my half-sister asked rudely from across the kitchen. You know I hate cookie cakes. They are just so disgusting, with all that high fructose corn syrup and lard-flavored icing. Yet here we are, just like every other year, in this cramped little apartment, violating every health code imaginable, waiting for you to blow out the candles on yet another cookie cake. It’s just so juvenile. Couldn’t you have a Gentilly cake, maybe a Doberge cake? Branch out, Rebecca. Why don’t you grow up instead of just get old?

I like cookie cake, I softly said as I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, then another to extinguish all the flames. I wished…that I could be anywhere but here, with no need to invite people who did not want to be here in order to have anyone here. Then I opened my eyes.

I’m not eating that! Daveney exclaimed with disgust. I saw spit coming out of your mouth while you were blowing.

My mother exhaled a huge cloud of smoke that only continued to billow from her mouth and nose as she spoke. Honestly Rebecca, you really could have been a little more careful about that, don’t you think?

Kiplyn grimaced and held her tongue. I could sense from her body language she had formulated many cutting remarks that she did not utter out of respect for me.

My mother grabbed one of the festive Happy Birthday plates that Kiplyn had brought for the cake and used it to snuff out her cigarette.

Can we go now, Regina?

Yes, Daveney, we can go, Regina replied as she stood. I always found it odd that Daveney referred to our mother as Regina, like she was not our mom. She was more like a meaningless and inconsequential card character in the book of her life.

My mom reached into the front pocket of her jeans and retrieved a crumpled bill, fifty-six cents in change, and a Wal-Mart receipt. She stuffed the change and receipt back into her pocket, visibly struggling because her jeans were at least two sizes too small. She then threw the bill onto the counter next to the plate with the snuffed cigarette. Here, I didn’t have time to buy you a card. Go get yourself something nice for your birthday. She then walked over to the recliner and flicked Jacques on his head. Get up. We are leaving.

He startled, then glared at her, annoyed.

I wiped my face with a napkin as I acknowledged the five-dollar bill slowly unraveling on the counter. I stood up at the same time as Jacques and walked to the door to send my guests on their way. Daveney pushed past me with not so much as a Kiss my ass, trailed by my mother, who begrudgingly patted my left shoulder, followed up with Jacques who was barely conscious, trailing as the caboose.

I closed the door and walked back into the apartment, making my way to the kitchen where Kiplyn had already started cutting and plating the cake. Thank God. I thought they would never leave, she said, handing me my plate. ’Get yourself something nice,’ she mocked. Like what…an emery board, a taco, and two #2 pencils? Sheesh! She gets worse and worse every year. You really do have a toxic family, Becca, Kiplyn mused as she scraped all of the balloon shaped icing from her cake and reached over to smear it on mine. But, don’t worry, I love you. So I’ll eat your damned ol’ spit flavored cookie cake. I loved that every time Kiplyn and I ate cookie cake together I got all of her frosting. We were truly a match made in heaven, me loving icing and her doing whatever she could to avoid it.

Thanks, Kip. I tried to smile, but I wasn’t very good at faking it. She spoke the truth. I really did have a toxic family. Truth be told, I had a pretty toxic life. And today, of all days, I was feeling it.

Today was an awful day to be Rebecca Thomas.

Are you ever going to stand up to those hornets? she asked.

How can I? They are the only family I have, I answered as I walked to the living room and slumped onto my sofa.

I’d rather be an orphan, Becca, she countered as she thought. One day you are going to get just sick enough of this abuse that you are going to do something about it, and I am going to be so excited, I am going to pop popcorn, sit back, and watch the show.

Even though it was a funny thought, I continued to hang my head in defeat and play with the icing on my cake, pushing it around rather than eating it. She was right. I was such a doormat, just letting them walk all over me. I wanted out. This is the worst birthday ever. I could feel the familiar tightening of my throat and burn of my eyes. This can’t really be my life. I’m supposed to be married and have 2.5 kids, a white picket fence around a house in the suburbs, and a boxer named Dolph Lundgren. I am supposed to be a PTA mom making brownies for bake sales. I could no longer contain the welling tears, so I just let them fall, adding a pinch of saltiness to my spit cake. I am supposed to be driving a minivan and busying myself with T-ball practices and dance reviews and baking bland meatloaf for my family. I am supposed to be celebrating fifteen years of marriage with some insanely hot husband who is loyal to a fault, balances my checkbook, and rubs my feet when I come home from a busy day at work…but…but doesn’t constantly bother me for sex.

What if you want him to constantly bother you for sex? she asked as she shrugged her shoulders and sat down in the recliner that Jacques had unwittingly kept warm for her. She picked up her cake with her fingers and took such a large bite that it was almost halfway finished. She continued while chewing, You ‘bout done?

I swallowed hard and looked up.

She met my gaze. Aww, Becca. Don’t be this way. I’m not coming to your cake-n-candles day anymore if it always ends like this. The only difference from last year’s rant is that it was a Labrador retriever and his name was Edward Cullen. My friend was not having it. "Every year your party starts with your stupid, poisonous, uninterested family, continues with your, my life is supposed to be monologue and ends with you drinking too much and me holding your hair back as you puke in the bushes. I was thinking that maybe we could try something different this year, just for shits ‘n’ giggles."

Kiplyn was the best friend I’d ever had in my life. She was originally from New Orleans but moved to Lafayette when she was in high school. I didn’t meet her until we were both registered nurses, and she was assigned to be my preceptor at the hospital we both worked at. She was a strikingly beautiful black woman who had a sharp mind and an even sharper tongue. I knew that she loved me even though it was never a huggy-kissy kind of love. It was more of a prickly-cactus-hit-you-in-the-face-as-hard-as-you-can kind of love. Her honesty and allegiance was sometimes painful, but always genuine. However, today I just needed her to tell me that everything was going to be all right.

Different…like how? I asked.

Different, like maybe it’s your turn to hold my hair. She winked as she shoved the remainder of her cookie in her mouth.

2

Jacob of My Longing

Icried myself to sleep the night of my birthday disaster as I reviewed the events that unfolded. Sure, there was family drama and spit, but that was not the part that caused me to toss and turn on a wet pillowcase. I was lonely. I longed for a companion. I needed for someone to find me valuable. I wanted to fall in love.

I willed myself to have a better day today and to do that I would start with a run. I had sent a text to Kiplyn before going to bed and informed her that she was going to go with me whether she liked it or not. She’d reluctantly agreed.

Even though I knew that I had set my alarm, I was still startled out of my uneasy slumber by the sooner than anticipated classic harp ringtone. It was as if Saint Peter took time away from his serenade at the gates of heaven to assist me into the conscious world.

It was four a.m.

This was not a new thing for us. It was normal for us to get together three or four days a week to run. Even though neither one of us was currently signed up for a race, we continued to follow a semblance of a training plan, haphazardly designed, devised completely with the goal of maintaining our current weight and fitness levels. We had each accomplished marathon distance races, but that didn’t mean we were healthy. We had tried and failed almost every diet plan available, so to support our junk food addiction, we ran. We preferred the four to six a.m. time slot as the streets in Lafayette, Louisiana were nearly exclusive to dedicated runners. Well…cops, criminals, and dedicated runners. But if we played our cards right, we would not encounter any of the former. Also to be considered, if we started pounding the pavement much later than six, we were forced to play chicken with cars driven by the now awake and rushing workforce. I pressed the snooze button twice before finally giving into the incessant plucking. I slowly shed the toasty warm cocoon of my bed to enter the crisp, mid-winter, ambient air of the room at 4:18 a.m. I put on a pot of coffee, and as it percolated, the rich dark-roasted chicory aroma filled my little one-bedroom apartment. I quickly brushed my teeth and put in my contacts.

While still in my fleece blue snowflake pajamas, I prepared and started to drink my first cup of coffee for the day. I quietly sat at my kitchen table thinking about this morning’s route. I multitasked as I checked Facebook on my phone and allowed the caffeine in my beverage to reanimate and warm me from the inside out. It was only a few moments before the expected, but still surprising, knock of my running partner. She rapped loudly on my front door. I walked over and viewed her through the peephole. I saw the unruly fro and bold smile of my best friend. I slid the chain along its track, clicked the deadbolt, then unlocked and opened the door.

Wakey, wakey, she began, then stopped as she saw how unprepared I was. Jeez, Becca! she fussed as she shivered and hugged herself tightly with both her arms. Why aren’t you ready yet?

The gust of January pre-dawn, ice cold air that had accompanied her into my apartment made me briefly rethink this morning’s plans. Even though this was my idea, I momentarily contemplated scrapping the whole thing, opting instead for staying in my fleece pjs, and a lengthy return to my cocoon. But this morning, especially, I needed to run for a variety of reasons. Even if it meant running in the cold.

Good Morning to you, too, I said, already dismissing the weather and Kiplyn’s question, turning to walk back to the bedroom to get dressed. Have a cup of coffee, boo. Maybe it will chase away the chill and adjust your attitude a bit. I looked back at her and gave her a cheesy grin.

Don’t count on it, she scoffed playfully. I think I’ll help you eat this deadly high fructose corn syrup cake instead, she said as she relaxed a bit and cut a small, frosting-less piece of my birthday cookie from the leftovers in the box on my counter. It’s COLD out, and you know how much I HATE to run in the cold.

Yes. I do. Just about as much as I don’t like sprint drills and weight training, but unfortunately, you don’t let me skip out on those on the grounds of hatred.

Whatevs. She waved her hand to dismiss me. She put the small piece of cookie cake in her mouth.

My best friend made herself at home in my apartment and retrieved her own cup. She poured herself some coffee then buried herself in my refrigerator. She noisily shifted and moved items, apparently searching for something. I left her to her self-directed hunt and resumed my quest to prepare for this morning’s cold run.

I closed the door behind me. I was a ridiculously private and modest girl even in the company of my very best friend.

Becca? Kiplyn questioned.

I reopened the door but only just a crack. Yeah.

Do you have any more of that Almond Joy flavored liquid creamer that I like?

Should be in the door, next to the mustard.

I could hear the further shifting and moving of what now sounded like pickle jars and squirty cheese canisters.

’Kay. Found it. Thanks.

Now that Kiplyn was attended to, I closed the door again and took off my pajamas in private. I got dressed in my favorite sports bra, ankle-length running tights, black and neon yellow dry-fit long sleeve running shirt, and orange, traffic-cone colored socks, that had been a gift from Kiplyn for the New York City marathon. Then for the fun part, to pick which shoes I would wear, since I owned at least three pair of useable street running shoes at any given time. I looked over my choices and finally decided on the mint green On Clouds. I was almost ready, all that was left was Body Glide, my Road ID rubber bracelet, and my Garmin GPS wristwatch. I was more tuned in to the specific preparatory needs required for a run than I ever could have been preparing to go to a bar.

In my absence, Kiplyn had curled up on my sofa and wrapped herself tightly in my tattered and worn bright sunshine yellow and lime green laughing monkey quilt. It was my most prized possession. I had made it all by myself in 4H when I was a sophomore in high school. I took it everywhere. Oh, the stories that blanket could tell.

She sipped her coffee slowly, holding the cup in her left hand as she thumbed through my latest Cosmopolitan with her right. Can we just sit here and pretend like we ran today? she asked, not looking up from her article.

You can, I responded. But with, or without you, today I really need to run.

She looked up, and I expressed my need with non-verbals.

"Oh…yeah…yeah, I almost forgot. Today is the first Monday of the month…The Regina and her daughters’ adventure in psychology lunch. I guess you do need to run today. Get rid of some of your angst and aggression; send you off with a little endorphin high before you meet up with the crazies. Although, she pondered, maybe if you were all tight and bottled up you could muster the courage to tell them both to get bent."

We laughed in unison.

I choose running, I concluded.

Now that I was dressed, I poured myself a second cup and sat in the recliner. I paused my efforts, not making any further advances toward the street and the beginning of today’s workout, and used this time to prepare mentally for the day ahead. While Kiplyn read her magazine, I began to daydream.

The Regina and her daughters’ adventure in psychology lunch was mine and Kiplyn’s way of referring to my mother’s lame-ass idea to keep her adult children close and connected. She had decided about a year ago that she was going to fix all of us and our loathing and disdain toward each other by forcing us once a month to sit together for quite possibly the worst twelve meals of the year. It was every month…rain or shine. No call-ins. No cancellations. It was the most convoluted way of bonding people ever created. It was more like a monthly Becca-bashing party for both of them and this way I was a captive audience.

Last November, when I was sick with the flu, it was my mother and sister with Campbell’s chicken-and-stars soup and Lysol knocking at my door at eleven a.m., the first Monday of the month. It was awful as the whole time we were cooped up in my apartment; all they did was bitch about how they would retaliate if they got sick. Fortunately, neither of them got sick; unfortunately, they still retaliated.

A few months later, it happened with my mother when she had to renew her driver’s license. There we were—Regina and the disjointed sisters—at the overcrowded, all-day-event that was the Lafayette DMV, with cold cut sandwiches and Cokes as she waited for her turn at the photo booth. Daveney and Regina spent most of the afternoon discussing whether or not my sister should fire her contractor for using linen-white grout instead of antique-white grout for her bathroom tile renovation. I chimed in and expressed how I didn’t believe that it was that big of a deal. Neither one of them appreciated my input. So…I lost that argument, and my intelligence and simple nature were insulted just for good measure.

I felt quite confident that I was the only participating member that viewed this tradition as the second menstrual cycle of the month. Frankly, if given a choice between lunch with Regina and Daveney, or a box of Tampax Supers and a bottle of Midol, I’d rather cramp and hemorrhage.

I was very fortunate in that regard, though. Since puberty, my own periods had been all over the board, so to speak. I had not only been diagnosed with polycystic ovarian disease, but also with a horrible case of endometriosis. One month I would bleed to the point of anemia for fourteen days, then I wouldn’t have a cycle for three months. I tried regulating myself once with hormones, and that experiment in torture launched me into a debilitating six-week migraine. The doctors had explained to me that I would more than likely never be regular or be able to get pregnant with all of these issues so I finally just decided to let my body do what it would do, and always carry tampons in my purse just in case. The only predictable monthly cycle in my life was these meals, and they hurt me more than the ones within my screwed up body.

My mother, Regina, was quite a legendary piece of work. She was, for the most part, very cold and unfeeling toward me in private. Out in society though, she really laid it on thick, pretending to be Mother of the Year. She was inconsolable and dramatic as she fabricated feelings of love and sensitivity toward me for onlookers. She had perfected the art of being convincingly upset when I would curse or argue even though if you watched her closely, she actually seemed to enjoy my pain. I knew that saying anything would only make matters worse and she would then break out the big guns. She’d more than likely wind up with her eyes all crocodile tearing, then say something about how she doesn’t ask that much from me; acting out quite a convincing performance to the lay public. But I had seen this dog and pony show before and was literally so immune to her and her tantrums that I could continue my life, and not even attempt to comfort her, without missing a beat. It only seemed to make her hate me more. Sure, I would end up apologizing eventually, just to try and keep the peace, but I always felt icky for saying sorry for something I wasn’t really sorry for. Daveney was exempt from these displays and usually just let things play out while appearing entertained at my expense.

Twenty-eight days between this uncontrolled emotional bleeding was not nearly long enough.

I had considered a psychological hysterectomy.

I was the oldest child in our little blended family. My father, Clayton Thomas, was Regina’s first husband. He was her high school sweetheart, and they may have been in love, but neither one of them was really ready nor willing to have a baby when I was conceived during their senior year. Despite knowing this, Regina’s parents, my grandparents, could not bear the shame of them giving me up for adoption, so I was kept. Kept…despised…and blamed for everything from my mom never going to college, to my parent’s divorce, to the shrinking polar ice caps. I had forgiven my dad for divorcing my mom a long time ago, not because I condoned such behavior, more like, if I had the guts I would divorce her too.

I didn’t get to see Clayton very often. He still lived back in Iowa and worked at the first job he ever had, Tommy Gate in Woodbine, making hydraulic tailgates for industrial business trucks. He was happy in the Midwest with his small-town lifestyle. He never remarried after divorcing my mother even though he was only twenty-nine years old at the time. We weren’t close by any stretch of the imagination, but I did enjoy spending a few weeks each summer as an adolescent on his farm near where I was born and had attended my first few years of elementary school. It was an old bachelor pad of a cottage whose charm was how little charm it had. My dad seemed to like having me cook for him during my visits, and I didn’t mind, it was the only time he really interacted with me. He wasn’t much of a conversationalist, but even though he didn’t speak, he seemed to like me a little more than Regina, Jacques, and Daveney, which wasn’t hard. They didn’t like me at all and took every opportunity to make me aware. Now that I was an adult, I saw him even less, which was sad but still ok. He was more comfortable loving me from a distance anyway, and I didn’t mind being loved from afar, it was easier than being hated up close.

Then there was Daveney, my younger half-sister, the only child of my mother and Jacques Stelly, Regina’s second and current husband. Regina met this husband while rebounding from my dad. He was up visiting an old college buddy of his in Woodbine, and he fell in love with my mom while drinking Budweiser and playing pool at the most popular bar in the rural community, the Corn Crib. It was a whirlwind romance that was so fast that neither of them had the opportunity to grasp the extent of what they were getting themselves into. He was marrying a raving bitch with a ten-year-old daughter, and she was marrying an antisocial personality with a drinking problem. So to make sure that this ill-advised decision came full circle, they got pregnant right away, to drag another helpless soul into this dysfunctional equation.

My half-sister, Daveney was the light of my mother’s life. The wanted child. She was also her daddy’s little princess. Unfortunately, she just carried that same wantedness and princess entitlement mentality into her adult relationships, including her marriage to Scott Louviere. She was a selfish, self-centered, self-righteous, self-absorbed person, who thought that she was better than all of the rest of us lacking humans and never ceased to rub our faces in it. If our conversations were not a positive reflection of her beauty, her money, her intelligence, her fertility crisis, or her excellent taste in men, cars, homes, and handbags, she would either not participate, or she would try everything in her power to redirect the spotlight back to her. She was always between thirty to forty-five minutes late for everything with barely palatable excuses. She really believed that her time was more important than anyone else’s. She puzzled me with that train of thought because the woman didn’t even have a job. Her only occupations were belonging to the Mardi Gras Krewe of Rio, spending her husband’s money, and being a full-time plastic surgery patient. Lucky for her, her husband made a good living as an attorney. He may have had an aggressive job, but he was completely spineless when it came to standing up to his wife. It had been a running joke, between Kiplyn and me, that Daveney castrated Scott sometime during their month-long honeymoon in Barbados, and she kept his preserved testicles in a mason jar on her bedside table, next to her bible. We also speculated that she must slosh them around at him like pickled quail eggs to threaten him every time he tried to stand up to her, to make sure he knew who really had the balls in the family.

Daveney was always dressed impeccably in gorgeous tailored clothing that flattered her implanted and augmented figure flawlessly. Her platinum blonde tresses always perfectly positioned, very tall and lacquered in place. Her makeup looked as though a team of graphic designers took a week to create her, and her Chic-let white veneered smile was as fake as the rest of her. I guess the reason I never got along with her was that I didn’t understand her need for control and perfection or her unexplained intolerance of me.

Well, guess we should get this party started…don’t ya think? Kiplyn asked, pulling my face out of the reflecting pool of introspection. She stood and left her empty mug and the Cosmo on my coffee table and my quilt in a ball on the sofa.

Huh? I looked up and faced her. I had only heard pieces and parts of what she said, like a cell phone with bad reception. What did you say?

I said…come on dreamer…let’s hurry up and get your endorphins flowing. She smiled because she knew that I heard her that time. And I smiled back because I knew that wasn’t what she had originally said.

I stood and walked to my foyer closet to retrieve my favorite neon yellow stocking cap with the Runner Girl figure on the front of it and the ponytail hole in the back. We were finally ready to go at five a.m. Not bad.

It ended up being a very pleasant run, challenging but not overly aggressive. We put in six glorious miles before completing our journey in the front lot of my complex. I offered my friend a glass of water, which she declined, stating that she just wanted to get back to her house and relax in her tub. I wished her well and promised to call her later to fill her in on all of the gory details surrounding my lunch date. I waved to her from my door just as the heat generated from my run began to wane, and I started to chill from a mixture of the temperature outside and the moisture of my sweaty clothes. I, too, ached for the comfort and warmth of my tub.

Once inside my locked and chained front door, I disrobed exhibitionist-style, removing article after article of clothing every few feet, leaving a trail, until I arrived naked in my bathroom. I drew myself a piping hot bath, adding basil and lemongrass scented bath salts. I entered and reclined…giving in to the relaxation of my muscles and my mind.

I woke with a start, unaware that I had fallen asleep in my tub. The noise that woke me was the phone ringing in my living room. I rocketed myself out of the comfort of the now lukewarm water and answered it nude, cold, and dripping wet. It was Tricia, the house supervisor at Our Lady of Perpetual Hope, the hospital that I worked at, calling to see if I would be available tonight—7 p.m. to 7 a.m.—to assist with a dire staffing crisis. Despite the fact that I really didn’t want to work, the extra