Jessie, just nineteen, has a child in her mind, an immaturity that makes her irresistible to older men. Julia wants to have a baby girl. Diane just needs to be loved. All three of them love sex. Jessie shares her unusual triangular-shaped face with her sisters. Their decorous faces are human works of art created by painting them with layer-on-layer of foundation, lipstick, mascara: they look visibly strange, different to other girls. They are sisters, end.
It feels late. She is still in bed. Jess pushes her head and shoulders into the pillows, arching her body upwards to stretch her damaged spinal cord, easing the permanent backache she endures, since falling off the wrong side of the tall oak tree she climbed as an eight-year old foolish tomboy while Jules and Di looked on. She manages to hold her arch for a full thirty-five seconds, collapsing relieved on the bed, stretching her arms and legs outwards, turning her body into a human star shape as if she is some yoga celebrity giving lessons on pay tv. The duvet bunches itself around her, clinging intimately to her overheated torso like a wet sheath during the night. It leaves her feeling restless, edgy. She rolls on her side to check her fairytale digital alarm clock. The Barbie doll lookalike tells her the time has gone 10:00, well past time for her to get up. She thinks of her mummy, her sisters, living.
By now, Joan will be finishing off her early morning workout at the fitness studio. Di will be at school, killing time til she is old enough to leave. Jules will be lounging on a padded couch in the studio being filmed, wearing a skimpy swimsuit, bikini or daring lingerie for some glossy magazine. He’ll be in bed, with her. Unless Jessie’s luck changed overnight, that is. Changed, in her favour. She crosses her fingers, arms and legs, hoping that it has.
The soft linen sheet ruffles into uncomfortable folds whenever she stretches her back. She climbs out of bed, straightens the sheet, fluffs her rosy pink pillows, and pulls her cherries in blossom duvet across the bed. A harsh shaft of daylight penetrates the pervading gloom of the bedroom, lightening her drab mood. Jessie pads over the threadbare tartan carpet, draws back the flimsy doll’s house curtains, opens the mouldy wood framed window. She stares outside for signs of life. A pigeon is foraging for worms on their moist back lawn.
It is raining. The light drizzle mists her bare face. It always rains after he calls her: in the middle of the night. It is raining harder, resembling the tears that stream down her face in her saddest moments. Sad, like the dead fly lying legs up on the windowsill. Sad, like her. She stops at arm’s length from the stiff creature, blowing it off the ledge onto the carpet, for mummy to vacuum up later. The cool rain revives her senses, refreshing her defunct mind: the subliminal mental decline to a child she suffers, since leaving school at sixteen. To mope around the house, aimlessly surfing adults only chat sites, mind corrupting social media, sordid blind dating apps, with no real purpose in her vacuous boring life other than to find somebody to love. In case he gives her up, in much the same way that children tire of toys.
Stretching her arms wider, she yawns, standing in front of the faded full length mirror to examine herself. Plain, if sexually attractive, to men, Jessie doesn’t have much to admire. Best described as chubby with silky-soft shoulder-length oak brown hair and smooth skin, the idled flat-chested girl has puppy’s ears for breasts, a fat tummy, and a spotted bottom. She is forced to play piggy in the middle to her glamorous sisters: a depressing fact of life she struggles to cope with at times. Jessie pulls on her plain white cotton nightie, lies on the bed and plans for her future as a married woman, with a loving daddy, for her children.
When I marry, she tells herself, my marriage will be entirely arranged – Jules and Di will say orchestrated, by me. It will be a marriage of convenience. A marriage I intend to last for the shortest time possible. At least, til he comes along. If he does. I doubt he ever will.
Her mind drifts. She closes her grey eyes and imagines her imperfect obese man coupling with his ginger minx, a cheap tart from the local hostel for the homeless. Jessie lying next to her on her bed. The girl: spent, climbing off him, leaving him to love her. Startled when her mobile rings – prematurely ending her favourite fantasy, she gropes around for it on the flat pack bedside table, holds it to her ear. She listens intently. Her heart skips a beat at the smooth, mature, bass sound of his voice, his cringing, condescending, chat up lines.
‘It’s me, baby, are you alone?’
He calls her baby all the time. She behaves extremely immaturely for a nineteen-year old.
He’s taking a big risk ringing her this morning. Joan could be back from the gym anytime.
‘I am alone,’ she stresses, ‘mummy’s due home any minute. What is it you want of me?’
‘Want you to come wild swimming with me tonight at the lake. Would you like to, baby?’
‘I’d love to, but it’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring, he went to bed, bumped his head, and couldn’t get up in the morning,’ she is singing for him, acting like his child.
‘Love it when you sing for me, baby.’
‘Love to sing for you, mister.’
‘Why so?’
‘Why do you think? I love you.’
There is a silence as he digests her words. Jessie overwhelms him when she misbehaves like his spoilt child, she breaks his heart even more when she acts all grown-up and loving.
‘Love me, too?’ she asks, more out of need than curiosity.
‘Love you, baby? I adore you.’
‘Enough to marry me one day?’
‘When you’re a little older, maybe.’
Her heart plummets into her belly, ‘Only maybe?’
‘Soon as I get rid of Cheri,’ he changes subject, ‘Weathergirl says it’ll be dry tonight, hot, sunny, humid from the rain, perfect for a swim in the lake, some red hot loving afterward, if you like.’
‘I do like. Can I wear my teeny weeny pink bikini for you, mister?’ she coos it, like a kid.
‘If you let me peel it off you afterward, so’s I can feel those purdy little breasts of yours.’
‘Might do,’ she giggles naughtily with excitement, she acts all coy, ‘If you’re kind to me.’
‘Oh, I’ll be kind to you, baby, really kind.’
‘What time’ll you pick me up, honey?’ she cuts in, disbelieving his vain promises of love.
‘Shall we say around nine?’
‘I’ll wait for you by the pillar box. If I can’t make it after all, I’ll text you. Love you lots.’
‘Love you too, baby.’
Jessie cuts the call, climbs off the bed, head in a spin, tripping downstairs, living her closet secrets in a lucid daydream, grasping the polished hardwood handrail at the last second to steady herself, to steady her nerves, for him, if they meet, that is, at around nine, tonight.
For her? Any second now.
