Kith and Kin

by Kris Ripper

  “God, really?”

  “It was like being in a play and not having a script.” Now he’ll leave me. Now that he sees how horrible I am at this, that I reduced fatherhood to acting.

  Jake’s hand lightly smacked his cheek. “Don’t ever do that alone again, dummy. What’s the fucking point of this if you’re feeling like you have no script and I’m feeling like you hate me?”

  “But it might not be enough, otherwise. I mean—”

  “What?”

  This was the worst part, the deepest fear. The thing that kept him from talking to Jake when Jake was the only person who mattered. “You like that I’m capable. I mean, I think that was part of the attraction, when we got together. You weren’t sure how to be out, and I looked like I had it all together, and that was … You liked that, about me. What if we can’t get beyond that? What if I stop pretending and you realize maybe I’m not the person you thought you were with?”

  “You mean, my boyfriend, who passive aggressively doesn’t clean the toilet if he thinks I’m not doing my part to keep the bathroom clean? Or how all the booze in the house mysteriously disappears if you think Frankie and I have been overindulging? Were you pretending with all that, ’cause hey, you could totally let up now.”

  “I’m being serious.”

  “I don’t think you should worry about the evolution of our relationship, Singer. I feel better, right now, than I’ve felt in weeks. Don’t you?”

  “Yes.” And this time it wasn’t a lie. “Yes, but it can’t be that easy.”

  “No, you got some shit to work out. Not me, I’m totally together. So I guess we’re switching places.”

  “Jake.”

  “Singer.”

  They stared at each other.

  “We need to do things differently,” Jake said. “You and I need to reconnect, you know? In our own space. And we are absolutely letting my parents take Miles whenever they want. I need to be able to have a glass of wine once in a while.”

  “When you were gone Frankie got me drunk and high,” Singer confessed.

  “Oh, you fucking asshole. I would have killed to get high.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Listen, when you don’t ever want to be alone with me, I start to seriously worry about us, and I can’t take that right now, with Miles and parenthood and everything else. Right now I need us to be solid.”

  “I just knew I couldn’t keep up appearances, if you were looking at me. I knew I’d embarrass myself and you’d be disgusted and—”

  “Disgusted by what? You not being perfect? Singer, I don’t know how blind you think I am, but I actually already knew you weren’t perfect.”

  “Maybe I didn’t. I don’t know. It felt like you’d be so sick of me, if you saw how hard it really was. You’re such a good dad, and I struggle so much to even look like a mediocre one.”

  “Hey.” Jake leaned in closer. “I’m not your parents. And maybe you haven’t noticed, but my family doesn’t understand perfect the way yours does. It has, I guarantee you, never occurred to anyone except Carey that other people thinking you were okay meant you were actually okay.”

  “And probably not around Alice.” Not with the way Alice accepted Carey wherever he was, if he wanted to stand close but not touch, or sit across the room and exchange glances.

  “Yeah, no, I really can’t see Alice going in for his act. Singer, I can’t do perfect. I can’t even do halfway normal. And if that’s what you need—”

  “No. No, no, please, I can’t go back to that. I mean, that’s what Mother wanted, you know. She wanted to be here, with Lisa and I, and she wanted us to do what we used to do. She wanted us to be who she wanted to see. And Lisa just can’t, right now. And I don’t want to. Ever.”

  “Okay, then,” Jake said, like that was a decision. Like they’d come to some kind of conclusion.

  “Okay then—what?”

  “So we work it out.”

  “Just work it out? Does that mean we’re done fighting?”

  Then Jake pulled on his hand, and in the beginning it had all been Singer, because Jake was nervous and uncertain. But now he was pulling Singer in, leaning his forehead close, murmuring words against his lips. “I love you, stupid, and you absolutely can’t pull this shit again. Next time we fight first, so I can stop fighting with you in my head.”

  “Deal,” Singer whispered back.

  “By my calculations we have at least another hour before Lisa gets back, and that’s if she doesn’t spend the night with Emery. My parents made me promise they could keep Miles overnight. So…”

  “We can make up in the bedroom, right?”

  “I think that would be ideal, yeah.”

  Singer wanted to give in to the levity, but he couldn’t. Not yet. “Jake … I’m sorry. I thought I’d be better co-parent material.”

  “You didn’t sell me a lemon, Singer. We’ll learn. I can’t cook a casserole. You gonna leave me?”

  “No, but you never acted as though you could.”

  “Another deal, then. I’ll take the first ten years. You don’t have to be good for ten years. But once puberty hits, it’s all you. You get the dating questions and the body changing questions”—Jake shuddered—“and all the rest of that. Deal?”

  “Deal. The bedroom?”

  They were both exhausted, emotionally drained, and momentarily awkward. It wasn’t the most mind-blowing sex they’d ever had. But settling into each other, after, to sleep? Very possibly the most loved he’d ever felt.

  They’d pick up Miles in the morning and head over to Carey and Alice’s for some serious house hunting. Time for a fresh start.

  Singer groaned.

  “What is it?”

  “When we move, we’re in for another home visit.”

  “Ugh.” Jake waved a hand. “Fuck it. Last time she let us go with my cousin living in our backyard and Lisa’s long-term ‘visit.’ It’ll be fine.”

  “Yes. It will.” And maybe it was just hormones or chemicals or relief talking, but for the first time in a while, Singer believed it.

  56

  Lisa

  36 days since finding grace

  Lisa was sitting on Emery’s couch reading a book about scrapbooking. Or at least looking at the pictures. She doubted she could make something even half as amazing as the pictures in the book, and they weren’t exactly her goal. She didn’t want to make a scrapbook of some idealized version of Miles’s life, which seemed to be what most scrapbooks were. But maybe she could balance it so when he looked back he’d know how hard he’d worked to get where he was.

  She wasn’t at all sure she could do that with a scrapbook, but she could definitely try.

  One of the sample pages toward the back of the book had a photo of a young girl with light brown hair, holding what looked like an Easter basket. But her eyes, her eyes stared right into the lens of the camera, and she wasn’t quite smiling.

  God, she looked like Abigail. That expression, like she was hiding so much of how she felt that you could only scratch the surface.

  Emery had been picking through shots from the most recent wedding on his computer. He was trying to assemble a collection to print and a larger digital collection to give the couple on a flash drive. She didn’t realize she’d been sitting there staring at the picture of the little girl for so long until he touched her arm.

  “You okay? You haven’t moved in like half an hour.”

  “Oh. I’m okay. Just thinking, I guess.”

  He closed his computer and shoved it under the futon. “Yeah? About Miles’s scrapbook?”

  “A little. And this picture. This is exactly how I would have pictured Abigail as a kid.”

  “Really? I like her eyes.”

  “Abigail’s were more green, but they were similar in other ways. Like you never saw benea
th the surface.” Lisa reached for whatever it was she wanted to say, and Emery didn’t fill the space. “I don’t know. I miss her. I wish I could introduce her to you. But I know she’s dead, and it’s still hard to— Sometimes it’s hard to let go of the idea that I could tell her about Miles, or you, or the Derries.”

  “I’m sorry she’s lost to you,” Emery said. “Now would be a good time to get religion.”

  “I wish I could. I wish I could believe she was a spirit, that she wasn’t just my memory of her voice, you know? But that doesn’t feel right either.” She looked up. “I thought about trying to find her parents, to thank them, or to tell them that she didn’t die unloved. That I loved her.”

  “You decided not to do that?”

  She shook her head. “There were reasons she left home, same as there were reasons you did, or Alice, or me, for that matter. If it was reversed, if she showed up to tell Mother she’d loved me, that wouldn’t make Mother feel better.”

  “If you randomly told my parents you loved me, they’d laugh and slam the door.” His voice was low. “I know what you mean. Even if you found them, even if they weren’t awful, it wouldn’t necessarily make you feel like anyone understood her loss.”

  “Yeah. So maybe no one but me ever will. And that’s sad, you know? Because she was good, and I miss her. And maybe because she’s the first person who ever looked at me and wanted to actually see me, not just whoever they needed me to be.”

  “I think I get that. Being seen can be a gift.”

  “It was, I think. Though it pretty much makes it impossible to go back to who I thought I was.” She closed her book and turned so her knees rested against his thigh. “Can I ask you something?”

  “You can ask me anything.” His nose wrinkled. “Okay, forget I just sounded like the lead in a romantic comedy.”

  “Uh, yeah, I think there’s not a lot of danger of this turning into a romantic comedy, Emery. Can I look at your portfolio?”

  He blinked. “Totally not anywhere I thought you were going. Of course. I never really get tired of showing off my genius, I don’t know if you’ve noticed.”

  They unfolded from the futon, and she waited for him to set the portfolio out on the rug before she started looking through it. If the picture wasn’t here, that would make this harder, but Emery usually kept copies of everything he gave to Alice. He said he liked to know what she was working from, and she must have had something to make that sketch in her studio.

  And here it was, strikingly familiar even though Lisa had only seen the drawing.

  She pulled out the photograph of Emery with his hand out as if offering a blessing to the boy in ropes kneeling before him.

  “Oh, that’s a good one.” He took it and tilted it to the light. “It’s a little insulting that you picked out a picture I didn’t take, but I’ll forgive you, since you have a good eye.”

  “I like looking at you,” she said, watching his face. “How careful you look here. Like you’re standing between him and the world. As if you tied him like that to protect him.”

  Emery’s eyebrows rose. “I don’t need ropes for that, Lisa.”

  “Maybe not. But I might. Could we—if I asked you to—could we try something like that? I want to feel safe. I want to trust myself to know what that is, even if it’s a man.”

  He stared at her for a moment longer, then nodded. “Tonight? Or in the future?”

  “Tonight.” While I’m still thinking of Abigail, while I can still hear her egging me on in my head. “I mean, if that’s okay. And I don’t— I don’t know how this changes other things. Sex. I don’t know if this means sex to you, but you said it doesn’t, so—”

  “Definitely not tonight. And it doesn’t. They can play together, but they don’t have to. Do you want ropes? I have other things that can bind people.”

  “Ropes. Ropes is how I, uh, pictured it.”

  The serious lines in his forehead smoothed out. “You’ve pictured me tying you up in ropes?”

  “And you haven’t?”

  “Oh god, don’t make me answer that, please. I plead the Fifth.”

  Good. Good, it wasn’t just her, it wasn’t some dumb thing she made up like it would be the answer to her everything.

  “Also, you can keep your clothes on.” He stood up, put away his portfolio and dragged out his tub of stuff she didn’t understand.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Don’t want to what?”

  She swallowed. “I don’t want to keep my clothes on.”

  He swiveled on his heels to look at her. “Listen, I don’t want you to think, for a second, that I object to seeing you naked. But ropes is a whole lot of contact, and it might make you feel incredibly vulnerable, which is what it sounds like you’re going for. Do you really want to add nudity to that?”

  “I think so. I think that’s kind of the point.”

  “Huh. Then how about you keep your underwear on? For me, not you.”

  “But why?”

  “Fact of the matter is, if I do this right it’s going to massively turn me on, and I don’t want you to notice that and think there’s any chance I’ll try something while you’re tied up. I think a barrier would be good.”

  “Oh.” Oh. Oh god. She blushed. “Sorry, I didn’t think— I mean, I guess it’s not really fair to ask you—”

  “To be turned on and not have sex? Yeah, actually, that’s totally fair. You might be turned on, too, you never know. Can I trust you to control yourself?”

  “I kind of doubt it will come to that, but yeah. I promise I won’t try to take advantage of you, Emery.”

  “Thanks.”

  And oh boy, those were definitely ropes. One long piece? Multiple lengths? She was a little distracted by their similarity to snakes, though she’d never seen a neon purple snake.

  “Lisa?”

  She looked up.

  “You can stop me anytime.”

  “I know.”

  “Okay. Good.”

  “So, uh, how does this work? Am I supposed to take off my clothes now?”

  “I’m not quite ready yet.” He put the ropes down on the coffee table and drew her to her feet, holding her hands. “How modest are you?”

  “Modest? I didn’t used to be.”

  “I’m thinking about a harness. It wouldn’t incapacitate you; you could sit down, stand up, move around, even put your clothes on and cut it off later. But you’d be stunning in one, and I assume if you’re looking at that picture, you aren’t trying to start small.”

  “I want everything,” she whispered. The boy in the picture had been clothed in lines of rope like a shield, like a force field.

  “Let’s start with this.” He brought her hands to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “It stops when we say it stops. If you don’t like it, tell me.”

  She pulled their joined hands to her own lips, a clumsy return kiss. “I’ll tell you. I’m a little worried they’ll turn into snakes.”

  “I have scissors, Lisa. No matter how far into it we are, I can have them off you and away from your skin inside thirty seconds.”

  “And they’re neon, so that … helps.”

  He smiled. “Good.”

  “So how does this start?”

  “With your shirt. But wait.” Emery dropped her hands and pulled off his own shirt, tossing it on the futon.

  And oh god, the fox inked on his gorgeous chest. It was staring at her, but this time it made her feel as if she were under its protection, not outside of it. Lisa pulled off her own shirt and stepped forward, kissing the side of his smile.

  “That wasn’t in the script,” he murmured.

  “Sorry. I’ll get myself under control in a minute. Or three.” But god, the feel of his hands sliding up into her hair made her want to stay suspended in now forever.

 
; “Three.” He kissed her, soul patch tickling her skin. “Two…”

  “One. Okay.” She leaned her forehead against him. “Tie me up, Emery.”

  “Oh god. I mentioned I’m pretty turned on, right?”

  She looked. She couldn’t not-look. And yeah, he was packing something in those jeans.

  “Stop. You’ll make me blush.”

  Lisa giggled. “Sorry.”

  “You still want to do this?”

  “Oh yeah. Definitely. More than ever.”

  At first it was awkward. Partly because she had to hold two ropes at her shoulders (“Trust me, it will all be worth it when you feel it at the end,” he said), but mostly because she was far too aware of everything. Horns honked down the street; someone walked up the stairs with jingling keys to their apartment on an upper floor; kids on the corner shouted insults; radios blared out of car windows; a scuffle outside the door included a yap and a sharp “SHHH!”

  She could hear the motor in the fridge, and the way the toilet ran intermittently. She could feel every air current against her skin, only underwear and bra still on.

  She wanted to think she felt safe with Emery because he was safe to be with, but the real truth was she’d felt safe enough with all of them, with every one of the men she’d been with. She wondered briefly if Frankie had felt safe with Caldecott, then banished the thought.

  The harness, so far, was disappointing. Far from the woven work of art she’d seen in Alice’s drawing, this was just a series of knots down the front of her body. And Emery touched her carefully, but she didn’t think any more or less carefully than he’d touched the boy in the picture. He could probably tie up anyone and touch them just like this.

  The last knot landed above her pubic bone, and this time he looked up from where he knelt.

  God. No shirt, on his knees, at her feet.

  “I have to get kinda touchy for a minute,” he said. “Is that all right?”

  “Touchy?”

  He held up what was left of the incredibly long rope he was using (even doubled over, it seemed to go on forever). “I’m running this between your legs. Don’t worry, it won’t chafe.”