After The Flesh

by Colin Gallant

  “Hi, Mrs. Hicks,” Freddy greeted her. He rushed forward to relieve her of her payload and caught a case of Coke just as the carton began to tear.

  “Hey, Freddy,” Carrie’s mother replied. Her expression was not one of suspicion or accusation but it knew something. A small smile pursed her lips and her eyes twinkled.

  As he helped unburden her, Freddy stood well within kissing distance. He could read her expression easily but he could not quite tell if she knew or only thought she knew. He kept his own expression pleasantly neutral and met her gaze without blinking.

  “Where’s Carrie?”

  “Upstairs,” he replied. He felt blood heating his cheeks and a knot of anger crept into his gut. He never blushed.

  Nancy glanced passed him into the front entry. “I see she put you to work. Thanks.”

  Freddy spun his head around. “Oh, the suitcases. Yeah. S’nothing.” He turned away and deposited the groceries on the kitchen counter.

  Nancy stayed close to him. Their elbows were nearly touching. The knowing look in her eyes did not fade as she questioned him about his summer, his family and his plans for the upcoming school year.

  Freddy carried his side of the conversation. He was always able to talk to Nancy and listen. She was the only one he could listen to. Her closeness did not bother him either. If it was meant to intimidate him, to force him to blurt a confession it failed. Instead her closeness was something closer to intoxicating. His nostrils filled with her scent, the subtle perfume she always wore, the same one Carrie was wearing. It was no less effective than usual.

  He spoke to her, staying close as much to be close as to hide the erection he could not stop from tenting out the front of his jeans. Freddy imagined being with her there in the kitchen. He lifted her onto the counter between the coffee-maker and the torn case of Coca-cola. The smell of her was the smell of white lace, the musk of feminine arousal. He could not ignore it. He tore her clothing like rice paper.

  Carrie entered then, sidling up next to him and the fantasy shattered. Mother and daughter spoke around him and through him. He could recall nothing of what they said. Later to me he readily admitted he had no control over the situation. He was completely overwhelmed. I think he barely escaped.

  -

  Freddy was growing upset. Because Nancy was the source of his frustration he could only get upset. If it were anyone else, he would have been furious. Nancy would not leave them alone. It was almost as though she could sense her daughter’s wantonness. She could feel the sexual tension between Freddy and Carrie and she was purposefully thwarting any opportunity they might have had.

  Nancy worked from home. When Freddy was over, she found any and every excuse to leave her little office – now down in the basement. Almost randomly she would pop her head into the living room, the back yard or where ever they happened to be. Freddy never made it back upstairs with Carrie – not while Nancy was around. He could not really get anywhere with Carrie while her mother was mere footsteps away.

  The Slough was becoming too shallow. The water was now a silt-laden bog stinking of rot and growing stagnant. The air stunk and Carrie could not stand the smell. Instead they walked in the Green, rode their bikes back in the forest and hung out. They tried making out whenever it was possible. But they never could manage to have sex. Carrie wanted to have sex, but she was not willing to lose her virginity behind some bush within earshot of mothers calling their children back to the picnic table for a snack.

  Carrie had developed a notion of romance. She wanted it to be just right – at least the first time. Mind you that notion of hers did not stop her from going down on Freddy or letting him on her – often behind that same bush. I think she was as addicted to his touch as he was to hers. The ability to go no further was frustrating.

  Freddy found himself missing Çin. Carrie’s touch was growing more skilled but she was able and willing to provide that touch only so often. Also, the fear of getting caught caused her on more than one occasion to begin and stop, leaving him achingly unsatisfied. With Çin, Freddy only had to make the suggestion – if Çin wasn’t suggesting it herself.

  To make matters worse the summer was winding down. The color of autumn foliage was progressing from early stage cancer to full-blown and terminal. Before it could have been ignored, overlooked or dismissed as some trick of the light through the trees. No longer. Even more painful to bear, school started in less than a week.

  Freddy was still pressing for his goal. To him Çin didn’t count. He couldn’t tell anyone but me and I was hardly impressed. He wanted to have sex – with Carrie – before the school year began. She was ready, she was willing but she was also unable to settle for less than a fairytale deflowering. I can understand Freddy’s frustration. I know that Carrie was frustrated as well. That frustration has been felt by nearly everyone at one time or another. The urge, the desire, the unbreakable tension – all coupled with the impossible barriers erected by our parents and peers. When relief finally came, the act itself was all but forgotten and the orgasm equally banished from memory. Only the sense of relief, the patch of shade after endless miles in the sun, remained. This is what we remember.

  Odd, when we grow up and become adults ourselves and the last of our frustrations are overcome by freedom and independence, we welcome it back as parents. Passion and romance. Lifting cars. Maybe that’s the core of it. Maybe that’s what makes it good and special – prolonged frustration.

  -

  Clausson’s was on its lay-off. A dozen projects around the house, put off and then put off some more were dusted off, prioritized and then put off again. Like some kind of mid-life summer vacation, John saw nothing but endless days of freedom stretching to the horizon and beyond. He began it all by getting roaring drunk and closing down Dyson’s. He came home by cab and promptly passed out before he could even find time to beat his wife. He passed out half in, half out of bed with one boot still on and his pants half way to his ankles.

  Freddy stood outside his parents’ bedroom, peering in through a crack in the door as Maggie struggled with his bulk. She managed to strip him to his boxers and, panting for breath, roll him into bed. She tucked pillows along his back to keep him from choking in his sleep. John muttered unintelligibly and reached up, painfully squeezing her left breast before losing consciousness again.

  Maggie dropped to her knees at the bedside, her tears flowing freely. Her agony was plain – even to Freddy – but she made no sound as she cried. No sound to show anyone her grief or despair. She could have killed him right there very easily. He was as defenseless as an infant. All she had to do was forget the pillows, let him roll to his back. His own vomit would do the rest. Freddy was stunned that she did not kill him. All she needed to do was temper the years of oppression into a single moment of purest rage or simplest intent and it would be over.

  But Freddy knew she would do nothing, just as she had done nothing on the countless nights when John had passed out drunk, leaving her battered and bruised to cry her silent tears in her bathroom sanctuary. Freddy knew his mother would cry away her pain and dry her eyes. She would then find the strength to rise to her feet and climb into bed beside this man she had married. She would have the strength for that much.

  I listened to Freddy talk for most of that night as we sat in the little park down the street, smoking cigarettes and sharing a mickey of Blue Tassel Whiskey more for the flavor of it than to get drunk. Freddy didn’t get drunk. He never would.

  He was going to kill John. I knew he was going to do it even if he didn’t say it in so many words. I knew he would do it and I knew I would do nothing to prevent it.

  He planned to kill John for himself. He cared nothing for what John did to his mother. Maggie’s weakness was not her son’s. At some point I guess I came to accept that. I believe I consciously chose to allow Freddy to do it. If he would do it for himself, I would let him do it for Maggie.

  -

  A sense of despair sets in when the last weekend
of summer vacation arrives. In our childhood we suddenly recall all the things we meant to do and neglected. Summer vacation is, in our minds back then, a timeless period in our lives. But I think at some level we all look forward to a return to school and the orderly existence we so readily cast aside those now-brief months ago. Even at an early age I believe we all knew only a return to the classroom would prevent a complete atrophy of our young minds.

  My own frantic state of mind was different that year. I had come to accept Freddy’s plans to kill his father, but I was not entirely positive he was capable of doing it. There was a certain justice to his plans that had been desperately lacking in his tale of killing Çin – a tale that, despite my best efforts, was still only a tale in my mind.

  The house on Crocker Heights was sold in four days. The moving vans and cleaning crews had come and gone. There was a brief story on the news about her two weeks after she went missing. Her mother claimed they had an argument the day she disappeared. The threat of running away had always been shrugged off but now they weren’t laughing. Private investigators had been hired and they were looking for her on her way to the east coast. Çin had money they said, more than enough to get to New York and more than enough to establish herself there. But they were confident she would be found in short order.

  Çin had always wanted to run away to New York and pursue her fashion dreams. She had done it. It seemed far more plausible than her lying in the woods south of town. I had no choice but to conclude Freddy had imagined the whole thing. Further, I can’t honestly be sure how much truth there was to their affair. Not long after the afternoon when Freddy had told off Giles in the alley behind his shop Çin became notably absent from our outings to the Slough. I rarely saw her around. Sometimes I have the suspicion that Freddy made the whole thing up or blew it out of proportion. I convinced myself Freddy spent a month and a half that summer imagining he was having an affair with – and then killed – one of his friends who had moved away or run away. I know something happened there at the beginning. I don’t know how much more was real. I didn’t think I ever would know for sure. Most of what I did know came from Freddy himself. Everything else was just speculation.

  The most frightening thing about it I realize only now. Freddy’s fantasy world could be more real to him than the real world around him every day. He lived in that fantasy world. He had an address there. He took his calls there. At night that was where he laid his head. If he managed to convince himself that he had slept with Çin, he likely believed he had murdered her as well. Freddy did not need to question whether he could kill or not. In his mind he was already had.

  -

  Those last days of summer fled with all the haste of an old rag-time film reel. Freddy and Carrie went to a party at Josh’s house, a sort of farewell to summer shindig – or so Josh called it. For most it was just another excuse to get drunk. And, before the night was half over, the cops were called. The party was broken up before it ever really had a chance to get going.

  Freddy tried to convince Carrie to go for a walk with him in the Green. The hour was not that late but the night was full dark. In the Green they could be alone. Carrie had grown and matured vastly in the months since school let out but her emotional state was hovering somewhere between childhood and adulthood, wavering from one extreme to the other and back again. Because of this they were able to have their first adult fight.

  In the end Freddy walked her home in silence. His anger was a remote thing, something he could feel but not quite grasp. Like an itch it gnawed at him. A suspicion had begun to grow in him, a knot tightening low in his chest. It was not a pleasant feeling for him, this jealousy. It was something he was unfamiliar with. It was unsatisfying. Because it was unsatisfying it was a bad emotion. That is how he put it: It was bad because it did not satisfy him. I had to tell him it was jealousy. I suppose I should also mention it was unfounded.

  At the party Carrie had spent the better part of an hour away from him. He was outside with Jeff and Dave smoking pot and talking about the impending school year. When Freddy finally managed to get away from them, he found Carrie in the kitchen with Josh. They were standing quite close and when he entered Josh backed away. Freddy may not have known the feeling of guilt but he knew the outward signs. He could recognize it in Josh’s fidgeting stance and his down-turned gaze. Carrie seemed unaffected. If anything, she was a little upset at him for abandoning her for so long. Freddy was unsure but he knew a lot could be accomplished in the span of an hour.

  I could have told him Carrie was innocent. Josh was guilty only of his thoughts and that was all they would be. Carrie didn’t even have those. They were only standing so close so they could hear each other over the music. But Carrie was beautiful and Josh was not alone among our friends for desiring her. We were teenage boys. For the better part of the day, most of our blood pooled below our beltlines. They may have wanted her – hell, I wanted her – but they were Freddy’s friends and Carrie’s friends. They would have their feelings and their dirty thoughts, reliving them in the solace of private moments. Even if Carrie offered herself to them, I doubt any of them would do anything about it.

  Alas, I could not tell Freddy this – any of this. He would never understand the difference between his own fantasy realm and the vastly reduced kingdoms of others. His fantasies were his life. In them he had taken to bed half the women in town. At some level he knew they were fantasies but, on all others, there was no difference. I think the level on which he knew this was the only level I ever saw. There were others, many others where the overhead fluorescents had gone dark. The lights on those levels offered only random, convulsive sputters of light, like lightning flickering on the horizon. I would grope blindly there, ignorant of the monster around the next corner. Freddy didn’t need the light on those levels. Down there he had the eyes of a cat.

  Carrie came over to the house on Sunday. This was about the first time she had been inside since John walked in on them in the basement. For her setting foot in the Cartwright house was like being afraid of heights and going skydiving anyway. John scared her. I knew he scared her. He scared me a little too but not for the same reasons.

  She was lucky. John was in the garage and she managed to avoid him. Frantically, she drew Freddy out of the house before anyone else knew she was there. Maggie was out again. Her sewing room was beginning to pay for itself. I guess it had been for some time. CCR was rattling the window panes in the garage. John was none the wiser she had come by. Nearly in tears, Carrie led Freddy down the street.

  “I’m sorry, Freddy,” she told him, clenching his hand almost painfully. “You don’t know how sorry I am about last night.”

  Freddy listened. He was about half-convinced she was going to confess. He thought she was going to tell him all about Josh. He did not look at her while she spoke. Instead he stared straight ahead. His eyes narrowed and a stubborn set rippled his jaw-line. He chose to wait for her to damn herself.

  “I don’t know why you keep insisting on us doing it in the Green,” she said. “When you brought it up again last night I got scared. I thought all you wanted me for was sex.”

  As it was this was the truth. Of course, Freddy would not admit it to her. He was loath to admit it to me at times. “You say you want to,” he tried, “but every time we have a chance you say no. I hate to say it but sometimes I get the feeling you’re getting it from somewhere else.”

  Carrie gasped. “No. Fuck no, Freddy!” Her cursing brought him up short. She rarely swore – rarely enough that when she did people noticed. “I don’t know where you get that from but it’s totally not true! I love you, Freddy. I would never hurt you like that.”

  She sounded sincere. Freddy met her gaze. He waited for the shift in her eyes, in her stance. He watched her breathing and he watched for the subtle tightening around her lips which would indicate she was lying. One who lies as well as Freddy can read the lies of others as easily as one reads the menu in a restaurant. He watched her but the tel
l-tale shift never came.

  “I guess my idea of what ‘the right time’ is, is different,” Freddy conceded. A last indicator, a softening around the eyes as she felt relief never came. Freddy knew her. He knew she was a horrible liar. He was forced to conclude she was telling the truth. He found himself not wanting to believe it but she offered him no evidence to the contrary.

  Carrie stepped forward into his arms. “God, Freddy,” she sighed, “I know how you feel but it’s different for me. I’m a girl. I just -”

  “I’ll be patient,” Freddy told her. “I will. I promise.”

  Carrie grinned, “Don’t be too patient. I think my mom is gonna be away next weekend.”

  “Oh?”

  Laughter bubbled out of her. “I thought you might be interested in that. She has to go back down south to help out with some of my aunt’s stuff.” Carrie made a sour face. “She wants me to go with her but I’ve pretty much convinced her I’m old enough to stay home alone – she hasn’t bought me a plane ticket yet at any rate.”

  It would not be before school started. His goal would be lost. But if he could have sex within the first week of school he would be, if not happy, very content. After they had sex the first time, he was certain they would have it again and again. Once the initial hurdle was overcome Carrie might be more inclined to relax her standards. A quiet place in the woods or in the back of a car could be perfectly okay with her.

  Carrie continued to talk while they walked. He did not really listen to her, mostly nodding and grunting as it was required. He pondered the possibilities – how would it feel, how often would they do it and so on. Most importantly he wondered how long it would be before he was ready for Nancy. Carrie’s mother was his ultimate goal. She was the prize.

  Calling her the prize might be wrong. Nancy was not that to Freddy. She was the proverbial pot of gold, the sword in the stone, a purity only touched and tarnished by myth and imagination. These things were not a prize as seen in the eyes of ordinary men. These things were kept on the edge of imaginable reality, like finding buried treasure or one day purchasing a Ferrari. Nancy was like that. The possibility of being with Nancy was as remote as a ménage à trois with the Olson twins. But even that was within the realm of imagination – all it took was a good hand and a solid door. But Freddy could not fantasize about being with Nancy. He tried but he could never quite get past her triangle of white lace. He could only fantasize that he would be with her. She was not a celebrity or an exotic car. She was something more than that, something like the smell of spring on the air. She was nearly ethereal.