Behrouz Gets Lucky

by Avery Cassell

  Before meeting Lucky, I had slept in my younger grandchild Alex’s bedroom during visits, lying on her single bed wrapped in unfamiliar-smelling sleeping bags and quilts. I liked drifting off to sleep in my grandchild’s bedroom with their ginger cat, Bacon Bits curled up next to my head, one paw patting the nape of my neck. And that was how I slept before, with a cat petting me to sleep with his delicate tufted paw pads, Alex’s stuffed tiger and elephant perched on the windowsill, and the window open a crack to let in the fresh, icy night air.

  Alex’s thin, narrow child’s bed was too small for two creaky old queers though, so we were shacking up on that futon on the living room floor. Theo, Alex, and Sam had already put up the Christmas tree. The clear lights reflected off the terra-cotta walls and the red wool stockings I’d sewn for them hung on the mantelpiece. The futon was lumpy, but we could slide the wooden pocket doors shut and have privacy. It felt a little like college, sweetly innocent and very vanilla. Sleeping on the futon mattress on the floor made me want to hump Lucky frantically, rubbing our cunts against each other’s hip bones, the way I did with my next-door neighbor girlfriend when I was sixteen. We had to be quiet and keep an eye on the sliding doors for interruptions. The first night we made out with our pajamas on, Lucky with her red union suit, and I in my green tartan flannel pajamas. We pulled the unzipped sleeping bags over our heads, and lay on top of each other kissing, giggling, trying to be quiet, our hands holding each other’s breasts under our pajamas, rubbing damp spots through our pajama pants with our come, and the air under the covers steaming up with our breath.

  Lucky and I woke up to my grandchildren Alex and Sam and three cats eyeballing us expectantly, surrounding the futon like knights around a castle moat. Children are time intensive and demanding, something I forgot between visits, and Lucky had never been around children. Lucky was already looking a little frantic, so I sent her to shower while I scouted for tea. In the steamy kitchen, Theo was up frying bacon, while the cats wound about her ankles angling for a second breakfast. Theo had planned a full day of household shopping and bookstore browsing, culminating with a visit to the Christmas lights display at the zoo. Her childhood best friend, China, was having a baby shower on Wednesday and we needed to stop off at Target for a gift. After showering, Lucky shambled into the kitchen in a cloud of Cedarwood Tea, wearing a white cotton undershirt, a scarlet Scotch plaid flannel shirt, blue denim 501s, black Wesco harness boots, and carrying a small shopping bag stuffed full of fancy-pants Blue Bottle coffee beans for Theo. Just like her mom, a sure fire way to Theo’s heart was through her stomach. Theo ground some Bella Donovan beans, started a pot of coffee, shooed the cats, Bacon Bits and Chuck Norris, from the kitchen, and started cooking banana pancakes. By the time I’d gone into the playroom to fetch Alex and Sam for breakfast, Lucky and Theo were animatedly drinking coffee and trading pancake recipes.

  Our first foray into the twenty-three-degree cold was to Target for gloves for Alex and Sam, kitchen odds and ends, and the baby shower gift. The kids stayed with their next-door neighbor, while Theo, Lucky, and I piled into Theo’s car, travel mugs of coffee and tea by our sides. We slid to the mall on barely salted streets, along with a battalion of other last-minute holiday shoppers. Once at the overflowing mall, we parked as close to the store as possible, girded our loins with chocolate and dried fruit, and marched into battle. The store was overheated, and full of squalling children, crazed adults, and exhausted salesclerks. Perky Christmas carols competed with the general crankiness, but we were high on pancakes, coffee, and the pleasure of one another’s company.

  Theo headed with ferocious determination toward the infant section, announcing, “I want to buy China a pack and play for the party.”

  We followed. Lucky poked me in the side, confused. I poked her back, just as wary.

  “A pack and play?” Lucky whispered to me. “Does Target in Ohio carry dildos now? Do pregnant women pack these days? What am I missing out on? Do women pack at baby showers? How do you wrap a pack and play?”

  I giggled, imagining a contingent of pregnant Midwestern women, all packing silicone cocks. “I have no idea what she is talking about. Just keep quiet and eventually we’ll find out.”

  This was one of the disadvantages and one of the delights of mixing cultures. I usually waited it out, knowing that the secret would eventually be revealed. I was reasonably certain that neither China nor her amiable husband needed a silicone cock, and that pack and play meant something entirely else in Ohio baby-land.

  Lucky kept poking me in my side, eyebrows raised and wiggling. I sighed at her impatience. It was obvious that we needed to solve the mystery of the pack and play, so I asked Theo casually, “What exactly is a pack and play?”

  “It’s a playpen for traveling,” Theo replied, oblivious to our giggles.

  “Playpen? Like puppy play?” Lucky whispered. “Do the pregnant women get in the pen and feed one another biscuits through the bars? Is there barking?”

  “Shut up!” I giggled.

  We walked past pyramids of disposable diapers, stacks of cloyingly gendered pastel onesies, aisles of nipple brushes, bottles, and sterilizers until we came to an aisle of portable plastic baby cages, the anticipated pack and play. After much consideration, we decided upon the decidedly urban and fashionable battery-run, chirping, sage-green and chocolate-brown pack and play with an overhead play station. Lucky looked stunned at the culture clash and bewilderedly chewed a handful of bourbon truffles in quick succession. I snickered at her. I was used to it, but she had some catching up to do.

  Next up was another cookie sheet, and a passel of winter gloves for Alex, who had a propensity for losing the left glove of any set. Theo made a beeline for the children’s gloves, while we found a section of leather gloves. Leather gloves were on sale, and Lucky stopped in front of a display. She looked studiously through the selection, while biting her bottom lip in concentration, until she found a pair of black leather gloves with decorative stitching in a size small.

  She pulled me over. “Did you see these gloves?” She drew the glove on slowly, flexing her fingers and causing the thin leather to grip her hands tightly. I felt myself getting turned on looking at Lucky’s hands encased in black leather.

  “You know how I like my gloves soft and tight. Touch them and tell me what you think.” She looked me in the eye. “Are they tight enough for you? Are they soft enough? Touch them.”

  I stroked her gloved knuckle as she clenched her hand into a fist and then relaxed it, stretching her fingers out. “Can you imagine my hand inside of you?” She clenched her hand again.

  She whispered, “Go on, touch the leather again. Is it soft enough? Do you like the fit? Will these last long enough?” She drew out each word seductively, each sentence loaded with meaning.

  Then she lifted her hand to my face, her forefinger curled under my nostrils, and smiled slyly, her olive dimples deepening. I smelled the spicy scent of new leather, and sighed as she took her hand away. She flexed it into a fist again, turning her wrist and admiring the gleaming black leather. I started blushing. I couldn’t stop thinking about her leather-clad hand on my cunt, stroking and parting my cunt lips, then gliding inside so hard and soft, her wrist twisting as she leaned into me. My cunt was getting wet and I could feel my nipples get hard inside my binder.

  I tried to think of something to say. “They fit you well,” I stammered. “I like how they hug your knuckles.” I stroked her leather-clad palm with my forefinger and blushed.

  She said decisively, “I think these will do nicely,” and leaned over to adjust my scarf, casually pinching my nipple in the process. I succeeded in not moaning, but staggered backward in surprise for a second. Lucky smiled and leaned in for a hug.

  Just then, Theo rounded the corner with her shopping cart overflowing with baby furniture, children’s winter gloves, ice scrapers, and cookie tins.

  I tried to look dignified despite my dripping cunt and pink cheeks, as Lucky crowed about findi
ng such spiffy black leather gloves on sale. Theo lit up and tried on a pair of gloves in brilliant orange, then glanced at the price tag and sniffed piously, saying, “They are beautiful, but new leather gloves are a want, not a need!”

  As Theo herded us toward the cashier, I tossed the orange gloves and Lucky tossed a pair of emerald-green gloves into our cart. I rolled my eyes at Theo’s back. I understood the necessary frugal nature of single motherhood, but found Theo’s parsimonious huffiness hard to bear, and I liked to fight it by indulging her with frivolities. It was a parental duty. Usually I sent her la-di-da Blue Bottle coffee beans, cotton sheets, and European shoes, so I was happy now to be able to fuel an immediate desire. Besides, if you asked me, leather often fell under a need rather than a want.

  By that evening, the snow sprinkles had deepened to thick flurries. We’d picked up the kids from a neighbor’s house, grabbed some dirty rice and red beans at the creole joint DaLevee in the Short North, and made it to the zoo light display at 7:00 p.m. On the way back home, Alex and Sam fell asleep in the backseat, sticky candy canes in hand, with me between them, Candye Kane crooning the blues, and Theo and Lucky up front fondly discussing my bossiness. The moon was a horned sliver in the blue night, the snow magical, and I felt exhausted yet satisfied.

  Once home, we put the kids to bed, then changed into our jammies. We met at the table in Theo’s orange kitchen, and I looked up Marion Cunningham’s overnight yeasted waffle recipe on Lucky’s laptop as Theo put on a kettle of water for ginger tea. We could see the snow falling slowly outside the kitchen window, framed by the spidery bare branches of the pear and cherry trees in the small backyard. Lucky mixed the powdery yeast and warm water, added sugar and salt, then the flour, and covered the turquoise pottery bowl of batter with plastic wrap to rise on the counter overnight.

  The next day was Christmas Eve. We planned to spend the day prepping food for Christmas dinner and trying to keep the kids occupied. Between the excitement of Grandpa visiting, meeting Lucky, the impending unwrapping of gifts, and school being out for winter break, they were wound up to hell and back. I’d been tense with worry about whether Theo and Lucky would get along, and how Lucky would handle the onslaught of rambunctious kids, but everyone seemed to be doing fine. I’d even caught Sam and Lucky whispering in the zoo gift shop, then later looking nonchalantly at each other with much eyebrow wiggling and smirking at the checkout counter as they bought something.

  We finally settled into our sleeping bags on the futon at 11:00 p.m. I was exhausted, but I was used to fucking every night and Lucky’s teasing in the leather glove department had me hot for a quickie. I reached for Lucky, but she shoved me over, lying on top of me with her full weight.

  “Please fuck me,” I begged.

  She laughed at me quietly. “Do you really think it is proper to fuck in your grandchildren’s living room? I don’t think so! One, the mess. You know how you are. Two, the noise. Again, you know how you are. Three, propriety! Didn’t you learn anything in that fancy South Carolina finishing school your daddy sent you to?”

  “Please. I’ll be quiet. I’ll stuff your underwear in my mouth. Please, I need your hand inside of me,” I whined. I pleaded. I pouted.

  All Lucky did was laugh at my discomfort, twist my nipples until I almost came, then tell me to lie still with my hands behind my back, and unbuttoned the fly of her union suit, wiggled her hand through the fly, and proceeded to quickly jack off while watching me squirm. She came with a short grunt, kissed me sweetly, shoved her come-covered fingers into my mouth to be licked clean, turned over, and prepared to fall asleep.

  “You’re mean!” I exclaimed, my cock still throbbing with unfulfilled need.

  “That’s my job, sweet cheeks,” Lucky retorted. I spooned Lucky, my cunt throbbing and my nipples burning, and then fell asleep too.

  Christmas Eve morning started at 7:00 a.m., with waffles at eight. I staggered into the kitchen to find Theo on her second pot of coffee while putting away clean dishes, a foot of snow covering the backyard, and cardinals at the bird feeder. The rich smell of Blue Bottle coffee filled the steamy kitchen.

  “So, what do you think of Lucky?”

  “Well, she seems okay,” Theo admitted as she stirred sugar into her coffee. “Better than the last one at least! No. More. Players. That’s the rule!”

  “Oh Theo, knock it off. I can take care of myself and I’m your mother, not your teenaged daughter. Or son. I’m glad you approve though. Are you dating anyone right now?” I added half-and-half to my black tea and looked at Theo’s coffee longingly.

  “I’m not interested in having a boyfriend. They’re too much work. I’m busy with my job and my kids, but maybe that will change once the kids are in high school.” Theo peered at the bowl of fermenting waffle batter on the counter, removed the plastic wrap and poked at the batter with a wooden spoon. “Is it supposed to look all bubbly and gross like this? I am seeing someone once a month, but it’s just for sex.”

  Theo usually had a trick or two on the side, and they almost always started wanting more from her within a few months. “Is he starting to squirm yet?”

  Theo grimaced. “I know. It sucks. I told him I wanted to keep it casual, but now he wants to meet the kids and go out to the movies. I’m going to have to break up with him soon.”

  I commiserated with Theo, but I also felt sorry for the guys she was dating. Theo had the habit of swooping in, fucking them witless for three months, then dumping them swiftly. If anyone was a player around here, it was my feckless daughter.

  I could hear the sounds of Lucky singing “I Enjoy Being a Girl” as she showered upstairs, then her boots on the wooden steps coming downstairs. Lucky swaggered into the kitchen, exuding good cheer and sandalwood.

  “Good morning. Let me get the waffles made.” Lucky kissed me, added the eggs and baking soda to the bubbling waffle batter, then poured herself a cup of coffee, drinking it black. “Whoa! There is snow out there!”

  I boiled water for another cup of morning tea. At the last minute, I decided to live dangerously, popped an antacid pill, and instead drank my first cup of coffee since my birthday, stirring in copious amounts of sugar and half-and-half until it was like drinking a hot, liquid, coffee-flavored candy bar. Fuck consequences! I fried the in-house smoked bacon we’d bought from the Clintonville Community Market, while Lucky made waffles at the table. Alex, Sam, and Theo shoved it in as fast as we cooked. I felt like I was running a diner. Maybe a hipster Oakland diner, but a diner nonetheless. Finally, Lucky and I ate. And ate. The waffles were tender, the outsides crisp from the butter that Lucky had been basting the waffle iron with and the insides light from the yeast. The kitchen was steamy and smelled of coffee, bacon, and maple syrup. Outside it was white and dreamlike, while inside I was coddled by my lover and my family.

  We spent most of the day indoors, except for a morning sledding excursion to Schiller Park followed by a lunch of buttery grilled-cheese sandwiches and canned tomato soup. After lunch, Lucky and Sam played a fierce game of Battleship beneath the Christmas tree, the tiny Christmas lights twinkling as Lucky and Sam annihilated each other gleefully. Theo took two of the cats upstairs for an afternoon nap.

  Alex curled under my arm on the sofa as I read her Millions of Cats by Wanda Gág. The little old man had found the scraggly kitten in the high grass, taken it home to his wife, she’d bathed it, and they’d plumped the kitten up with bowls of cream. I’d reached the end.

  “‘It’s the most beautiful cat in the whole world,’ said the very old man, ‘I ought to know, for I’ve seen—hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, millions and billions and trillions of cats—and not one was as pretty as this one.’” I closed the book.

  Alex looked at me dreamily and whispered, “I want a blue button-down shirt just like Daddy’s! I don’t like dresses and I want a supershort haircut for my birthday,” then closed her eyes and fell asleep.

  I covered her with the quilt, and wondered. She’d always been a ro
ugh-and-tumble girl, dragging fire trucks bigger than her around at age three, and now crazy about softball. I believed that queerness was at least part genetics and our very small family was packed with bisexuals, lesbian separatists, closeted elderly single gentlemen, woman-loving sherry-tippling single gentlewomen in Boston marriages, and queers of all ilks. Maybe Alex would grow up to be a butch lesbian. I smiled, remembering Sam’s stage of wearing pink glittering gowns and tiaras when he was three. Now he wore skater clothing, and was into Doctor Who, chess, baking, and sharks. Things change. I made a note on my phone to buy Alex a blue button-down shirt when I got back to San Francisco, and went into the kitchen for a glass of water. My tummy wasn’t happy with the coffee I’d had at breakfast so I popped another antacid before dinner.

  I was sipping a cup of ginger tea and browsing through cookbooks when Theo came into the kitchen, laptop in hand. “Feel better now? Did you manage to get some sleep?”

  “Yep. I’ll heat up some beef stew for dinner, then I want to start making pies for tomorrow. Are you okay with leftovers?” She retrieved a plastic container of stew from the freezer, removed the lid, popped it in the microwave, and opened her laptop.

  Lucky wandered into the kitchen yawning. “Sam and I fell asleep under the tree for a little bit.”

  The microwave dinged. Theo got out the stew and ladled it into shallow red-yellow-and-white-striped bowls.

  Theo called the kids and we sat down to a Christmas Eve dinner of beef stew and buttered rolls. The kids were cranky and sullen with pre-Christmas excitement.

  “I made grandmother’s recipe for the stew,” Theo said as she started in on her second bowlful of stew.

  “I still have her typed and grease-stained recipe card for the stew. The recipe is from McCall’s magazine in the nineteen sixties. I wish I had her recipe for beef stroganoff. It was her special company dinner and had a tin of beef consommé in it. So sixties!”

  Sam and Alex were kicking each other under the table and squabbling about who got the last dinner roll. Finally I cut it in half, gave each a half, and told them to chill. We finished our stew to Theo fretting over recipes and the kids fretting over tomorrow.