Backseat Saints

by Joshilyn Jackson

  I tried to look anything but relieved. Thom let go of me to pace up to the top of the room. He took long loping strides like a riled zoo tiger.

  “I want to go see Gretel,” I said to his back.

  He wheeled on me and said, “She’s going to be fucking fine, Ro.”

  It got very quiet.

  “No call for that,” Joe said. No one used the f-word in front of Charlotte. Not when Joe was in the room, anyway. Joe pulled it off as good ol’ boy gentlemanly behavior, but I understood him better than that. It was one of the thousand ways he let the world—and his sons—know that his wife was not his equal. Joe shifted in the chair, prepping to rise, and I think we all could feel how electric the air had become, even thick old Larry.

  I was trying to think of what to say, of what Thom’s Ro would do. It wasn’t coming natural. I didn’t feel like Thom’s Ro. I felt cornered, and I felt Rose Mae rising; excepting fire and locusts, she was the last thing needed in this overcharged room.

  I made myself walk across the room toward my husband, trying to block his view of Joe with my small body. He was so on the edge, I knew if Rose Mae pushed him, even a little, the room would be all over blood in seconds. Mine, no doubt, though if God was merciful and just, it would be Joe’s.

  I took another step to Thom. I was small and he was so very angry. I didn’t understand why Rose felt so excited, almost hopeful. Why she was putting her hand on his broad chest and why his flesh shuddered at her touch.

  “Baby,” I said, “I’m so glad you’re all right. That’s the only thing that matters. That you’re all right.”

  It was the right thing. He wheeled back into his lopy pacing. After a moment, Charlotte wrinkled up her nose-peck at me and said, “It’s nice you’re helping your friend, next door, but you might want to have that shower before you go check on the dog. Or before you go, well, anywhere.”

  Thom’s eyebrows beetled back down as he walked the room. My bullets and his daddy had put him as on edge as I had ever seen him. His ears pricked and his brow furrowed at every little rumble.

  “A shower sounds like a good idea,” I said, treading careful, trying to see what Charlotte had said to rile him. Then I had it. Me helping my friend. Thom and I didn’t have friends, neither of us. He came to me for food, for sex, for talk, for play, for violence, and he had no other needs. We were closed together like two halves of a clam’s shell. If I had a friend, she would notice long sleeves and scarves in summer, and unlike Mrs. Fancy, women in my generation had not been trained to look the other way.

  It wasn’t as if Thom and I were hermits. We were friendly enough with couples at church, and I was in the Ladies' League and helped with food and clothing drives. Sometimes I went to lunch with Margie, but her job and her young boys kept her too busy for it to happen often. Thom hunted with his brothers and his father, and he played on the Grand Guns softball team. Every other Sunday, we choked down his mother’s dry-meat roast at an all-family dinner. But Thom didn’t like me to have phone calls or girls’ night at the movies. That sort of thing brought us back to Who is he every time.

  I said to Charlotte, ultracasual, “I’m going to have to talk to Mrs. Fancy’s son or whoever that is who mows her lawn. She might need to go to assisted living. She seems like a nice enough old lady, but that house… well, look at me, and you’ll get a clue how bad it was.”

  I could feel Thom’s hackles lowering as I spoke, but his fingers still fisted and uncoiled in angry rhythms as he paced. It wasn’t good, having me in the room, untouchable in every way that mattered.

  I said, “I think I will grab that shower.”

  I took silence as permission and got out, fast-walking all the way down the hallway to our master bedroom. Gretel was alive. I wouldn’t think about her leg now. I couldn’t. She was alive, and I was not alone. Those were the main things. The vet had said she would be mostly fine. Mostly.

  I didn’t realize Thom had followed me until I was inside our bathroom. When I turned and saw him, I almost screamed.

  “I told them I’d be right back,” he said.

  He came at me and I backed away, but he was so fast. He bullied me backwards to the wall, and I was half-terrified and half-excited, not knowing which thing he wanted. My hands were flat against his chest, and I looked up, trying to read his face. He kissed me then, hard, first on my mouth and then on my throat with his mouth open like he was trying to eat me up. Big Bad Wolf kisses. His hands on my body gripped me hard enough to hurt.

  “You smell like lemons,” he said.

  “I’m filthy,” I said.

  “I don’t care.”

  “Your parents are just down the—”

  He interrupted me. “I don’t damn care.”

  “Your daddy—”

  He came back to my mouth again, eating my words, and all at once I was as ready as he was. Kissing him felt slick and secret and dirty. This was like high school sex, male hands seeking desperate paths through my clothing with a room full of parents right down the hall.

  “Hurry,” I said, and he shoved my jeans down around my ankles. I kicked one foot loose. He jerked his pants down, too, not bothering with the buttons. He lifted me and flattened my back against the cold tile. His mouth was on me, and he was grinding into me, hard and good with only the thin cotton shield of my panties between us, and this was like high school, too. I closed my eyes against the sunshine, and there was Rose Mae Lolley, rampant in my head with her Jim Beverly.

  I kept my eyes closed, and the world tilted and was darker, and Rose Mae was in Jim’s car after a game, parked up by Lipsmack Hill, her shirt pushed up and her bra unhooked. I peeked through my lashes, gasping, and there was Thom in the sunshine with his face twisting and his eyes open. I closed my eyes, and Jim had one hand between Rose Mae’s legs, rubbing her through her jeans, and Thom said, “I thought I was going to die, Ro.”

  I said, “They missed. They missed.”

  All the while in my head I heard Jim Beverly whispering to Rose Mae, and Rose’s hands remembered what it was like to touch Jim, too, her clever fingers counting the buttons on the fly of his Levi’s, endless crazy-making touching through layers of denim and white cotton. She would cup and grip the outline of him, learning by feel this thing she hadn’t seen since they were nine. It was a rigid line of heat that felt nothing like the little-boy pansy blossom she’d seen.

  Thom snaked one hand between us and ripped my panties away. Then he was in me, breathing hard, his face buried in my 409-filled hair. He said, “God, it’s like screwing Mr. Clean,” but he was grinning. I could feel his teeth against my scalp.

  I closed my eyes and heard the ten-year-old echo of Jim Beverly’s voice in my head, saying, “I’m going to kill him. I’m going to kill your worthless daddy, if he lays one hand on you again.” Jim’s hand gripped the undercurve of Rose Mae’s ass, pulling her against him to grind as he said, “I’ll slip in at night and hold a pillow over his face while he’s passed out.” Jim’s fingers followed the inseam of her jeans. “Who would know? Some drunk smothers while passed out? That must happen all the time.”

  Thom was in me, each thrust pushing me up the wall, his face in my hair, just as I liked, and inside I was tipping over. Ten years away, Jim Beverly’s words blew through Rose like a wind, lifted her and sent her into someplace new and dazzling. We met there, met and melded for one moment, so real that I heard that old remembered whisper in my own ear. “I’ll kill him for you,” Jim Beverly said. I opened my eyes and saw my husband’s face.

  Far away, in a car parked up by Lipsmack Hill, Jim’s hand still worked between Rose Mae Lolley’s legs. He hadn’t known that Rose Mae had finished. He was still living blindly in the space where her hand cupped him. But I was wholly in the present. Here in my bathroom, I laughed and arched into Thom in the wake he’d caused. I felt so good. We both felt so damn good.

  That laughy sound from me, so happy, and the way I flexed my back up pushed Thom over, too. We breathed in four or five times to
gether, big cleansing whoops of air, and then his arms lost strength and he let me slide down the wall to thump onto my bare bottom. He relaxed into a lean against the countertop. I pulled off my shirt. My bra was torn, the cups hung down over my ribs, and my jeans were in a bunch around one ankle.

  I grinned up at him and he whispered, “This is nuts.”

  He shook his head and began packing himself away and pulling his shirt down. Half his vinegar was gone, and yet he still smelled dangerous. I was spent, but Rose Mae was a wild thing in me, rioting and pleased.

  As soon as he got his shirt tucked back in, Thom said, “I have to go out there. Take your shower,” and he was gone.

  I took my time, letting hot water pound down on my shoulders while my conditioner set for ten minutes. Even after I got out, I stayed in the bathroom, slowly moisturizing every inch of my skin and then blowing out my long, thick hair.

  I think I already knew what Rose Mae wanted to do next. It wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t let myself even think it. I didn’t let myself think at all. I didn’t want to wreck the good peace I felt in my whole body in the aftermath of sex. I didn’t want to start again.

  I aimed the dryer at my roots to get some volume, staring into the mirror. Rose Mae Lolly stared back at me, not thinking either. She didn’t have to think. Her day would come, a day when Thom would hurt me bad enough to loose her. I closed my eyes against her patience. I dried my hair by feel, but she was still there, chock-full of something close to smug. All she had to do was wait.

  CHAPTER

  5

  GRETEL CAME HOME. Her empty shoulder was a white cone of bandages. The missing leg seemed to puzzle her more than it distressed her. She’d try to lay her head down on her front legs, then pop back up and make thinking eyebrows at the place where it used to be. Five seconds of brain work was enough to make her too tired to keep on; she’d cock her head at an angle that looked to me like the dog version of a shrug and lie back down to sleep.

  She fast mastered a three-beat lazy canter, and she got around the house and yard just fine when she chose to heave herself up off her favorite snooze rug. I tried to drown my guilt in gratitude to God for the small mercies that had been afforded me. She had lived in spite of me, and though one leg down, she was exactly her same dim and lovely self.

  For the rest of that week, in celebration, I made what I called manfood, the meaty dinners that Thom liked best. Pork roast with potatoes and baked apples. Turkey pot pie. Stuffed flank steak. The meals were too heavy for me, but if ever a man needed some comfort food, it was Thom. He stomped around with two creases between his eyebrows that pointed straight up like horns.

  While I’d holed up in our bathroom drying my long hair and trying not to think, Thom’s daddy must have kept on force-feeding him all kinds of crap. One piece in particular had gotten way down wedged in Thom’s belly. He was grinding and churning at it, but it wasn’t breaking down. I could see how it chafed him from the inside out, this thing his daddy had stuffed down him. I’d seen this all before.

  I’m not sure if Thom understood his daddy’s last visit was the reason he was so set on picking a fight with me, but I sure as hell did. I owed Joe Grandee thank-you notes for more than one prior bone crack; Thom may have delivered them, but they were presents Joe had bought and paid for. So I cooked soothing foods that made Thom logy and sleepy, and I tried to live quiet in the corners of our rooms until he’d worked it out.

  On Wednesday, Thom looked down at the meat loaf on his plate with one lip curling, as if I’d served up possum sushi. It was a beautiful meat loaf, too, made with half ground pork and lots of sage like his mother’s, only I didn’t overcook mine until it tasted like a chunk of mummy. He didn’t so much as lift his fork.

  “I was hoping for that sour cream chicken you do.”

  He had his wrists resting on the edge of the table, and I watched his hands flex and unflex. He looked to me like a bad storm coming. Like a bad storm almost here.

  “I’ve bought everything to make it at the grocery,” I said. “I’ll make that chicken tomorrow.”

  “I wanted it tonight,” he said, mulish.

  I thought, And that’s the battle cry of every spoiled toddler.

  I didn’t say it. I knew this game. Hell, I had helped invent it. But I wouldn’t play. I couldn’t afford to anymore. Rose Mae was biding her time; she knew that I had glimpsed the path she’d set. It would not take much to get me walking down it.

  So I showed him some teeth and kept my brow smooth and my tone mild. “Why don’t you go watch the news? I can throw that chicken together in maybe thirty minutes. I’ll use the meat loaf for sandwiches. That’ll be so much nicer for you this week than deli ham and cheese.”

  His brows moved inward, puzzling up together, and he looked at me like he wasn’t sure whose table he’d sat down at. I wasn’t sure, either.

  “That’s ridiculous,” he said.

  “I know,” I said. “But if you really need that chicken for your day to go right, then I want you to have it.”

  Now he looked almost forlorn, as if I’d abandoned him.

  “Thom,” I said to him, “I’m trying.” It sounded to me like a plea. I didn’t want the gypsy’s cards to be for us. They fit her life just as well as they fit mine, and I was doing my damnedest to prove it had been her draw. I couldn’t do that alone. “I’m trying so hard.”

  His gaze dropped to his plate, and he took a big sniff of air into his lungs. I watched his chest expand. I’d always loved the workings of his thick, sleek body. I loved to put my ear to his chest and feel the boom-thump of his heart, then slide lower to hear the gurgle and sigh of his belly hard at work on something I had made.

  When he finally spoke, his voice came out so quiet that it was like he had a secret he was whispering to the mashed potatoes. “I see that,” he said. He started eating, so I did, too. A few minutes later, chewing, he said, “This is delicious.” He sounded surprised.

  I said, “Good,” in a truly pleased way. I didn’t say, “No shit, Sherlock. My meat loaf tastes great and water is wet and your name is Thom.” I blocked those words in with a bite of salad and swallowed them with a gulp of sweet tea. He watched me struggle to get it all down. I managed it, barely. We found ourselves grinning at each other across the table like children, while under it, Gretel thumped her tail against the floor; usually when I said the word good, with such sincerity, I meant her.

  He said, “I’ll try, too.” I watched him, wary-eyed, and he added, “I mean it, Ro.”

  I nodded, and then we picked up our glasses and drank, watching each other over the rims, like we were solemnly sealing a deal with sweet tea and cool water.

  The next day, when he came home from work, he paused and stood silent in our cubicle of a foyer. I was sitting on the sofa, waiting for a timer in the kitchen, and I heard him stamping and breathing in that tiny space, but he didn’t say anything. When at last he stepped through the archway, it was as if he’d left his father and his job and the bills and his temper in the cube behind him.

  On this side of the archway, we holed up, honeymoon style, eating a quiet dinner and then watching a rented movie with a lot of kissing in it. I sat wedged between Thom and Gretel on the sofa, snug and pleased. By morning, everything seemed fresh-made between us.

  It occurred to me I should have hidden in the bushes and taken a couple of potshots at his fool head years ago. It was turning out to be downright good for both of us. I think he was pleased to be alive, and me, I was scared of the secret thing Rose was planning next if he couldn’t join me in playing nice.

  I kept the house so clean, even Thom’s mother couldn’t have found a dusty corner with white gloves and a microscope. Thom and I ran together most mornings, going way too fast to bring Gretel, and at night we sat on the sofa, breathing in the orange oil smell of our clean house. We watched a lot of college ball, and I rooted for his teams, even when Bama was playing. If no one we liked had a game, we rented old movies or played gi
n rummy after dinner.

  Four days a week, I cashiered at the gun store, and I didn’t let myself bitch to Thom about still making minimum wage, although Joe Grandee was making that harder and harder.

  A week into our truce, a salesman didn’t show, and Joe asked me to help customers as best I could until he could get in a replacement. I’d been raised up with guns, and I sure as hell knew more about our stock than the missing fella. My best times with my daddy had been when he took me out shooting. I’d ask a thousand questions about zeroing or muzzle velocity, then lure him into musing about who made a better .45, Colt or Smith & Wesson, stretching our good hours into half a day. If Joe Grandee had ever looked past my boobs up to where I kept my brains, he’d have had me on the sales floor years ago.

  I’d been working the floor maybe half an hour when an obvious fat fish came in—midlife crisis fellow with a salt-and-pepper comb-over and three-hundred-dollar pointy-toed cowboy boots. He was looking, he said, for a little home protection.

  “Nothing flashy,” he said, meaning nothing expensive.

  “Of course not,” I said. “Guy like you, you want something sleek and plain, with enough power for the job at hand. Not some silly cowboy gun that’s all show.”

  Ten minutes later, I had his fingers curling around a gorgeous black snub-nosed revolver that cost over a thousand bucks.

  “I like how that looks in your hand,” I said, and I let myself sound breathless. I leaned over the counter to get a better view, biting my bottom lip.

  I sent him out the door with the revolver and ammo and a gun safe and a cleaning kit and a couple of packs of the overpriced cinnamon gum we kept by the register. He swaggered out hips first like he was toting ten pounds of extra penis, swearing to come back and take a look at our rifles before hunting season.

  I didn’t realize Joe had come out from the office. He was standing in the doorway to the back, watching me run the endgame. The next day, when I came in to relieve Janine, she stayed perched up on the stool, shaking her head at me. I thought I’d misread my schedule, but Joe said, “Derek had an emergency, darlin’. Cover the floor for him until I can get a replacement?”