“Like what?” I asked.
He shrugged. I watched his eyes and they watched me right back. They looked to be worried, waiting, and maybe the tiniest bit afraid. It was this last possibility that thrilled me through and through.
“They’re gorgeous,” I said, to make this strange expression on his face go away.
“I’m going to kiss you now,” he said in an odd, flat voice. The flickering candlelight made his eyes look sunken in, but not in a gruesome way, more like intense. He put his hands on my shoulders and we kissed. This time we opened our mouths and touched our tongues together. He didn’t slobber or try to ram his tongue down my throat, like Billy had the night in the barn. He touched my cheek and my hair. I put my hands on his hips. Almost from the moment he touched me, the shaking started again. I don’t know where it came from, but it took over my entire body and wouldn’t stop. My teeth chattered.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, tilting his head back.
“No, no,” I said, “it’s just … I’m not …”
“Don’t worry,” he said, and he kissed me again.
Embarrassment gave me a fever. My face probably glowed in the dark. I closed my eyes and let my hands rest on his hips and tried to forget my name.
I don’t know how long we’d been doing this when my mom came home. It didn’t seem all that long, but I’d lost track of time. I jerked up when I heard the front door slam and banged my head against a two-by-four on the ceiling.
“What is it?” he said. He must not of heard the door. I’d been listening with half an ear the entire time.
“It’s my mom. I’ve got to go back and get into bed or she’ll think something weird’s going on.”
I crawled into my bedroom. My hands still shook so bad it looked like I’d swallowed some convenience store speed. A long bit of cobweb stuck to my arm.
Filthy
“What have you been doing? It’s four thirty in the morning,” my mom said, giving me an up-and-down look and shaking her head. “God, Lynn, what’s that smell? It’s like, like—”
I cut her off by pretending to fan my armpits at her face. Until this conversation started, I thought I’d sobered up some. Now I felt dead drunk and none too sure on my feet. She wrinkled her nose at me.
“Like what?” I said, keeping it short. I didn’t trust my voice to do or smell as it should.
“You’re all covered in grime and your hair looks like you haven’t brushed it in weeks. What are you doing up anyway?”
“I got worried, so I couldn’t sleep. I was waiting up for you.”
“Where?” she said. “In a trash can?”
“A book fell back behind my bed.” I spoke slowly and carefully. I must of sounded half-retarded. “It got stuck and I had to crawl under there and pull it out.”
“Jesus,” she said. “It looks like you’ve been rolling around in Mr. Cannon’s charcoal grill. You should take a shower before you go to bed tonight.” She reached over and plucked something off of my head. “You’ve got a leaf in your hair. When’s the last time you cleaned under your bed? You growing trees back there now?”
“Where have you been?” I said, and then added, for the guilt it might stir up in my favor, “I really was worried.”
She narrowed her eyes and went quiet a moment.
“I went to see Hayes.” It was her turn to speak slowly and carefully.
“How’s he doing?” I hoped to God she didn’t hear the Boone’s Farm wrestling with my tongue because I sure as hell did. Shut up, I told myself. Stop while you’re still not grounded.
She didn’t say anything to this. Instead, she went into the kitchen and got a beer out of the refrigerator. She sat down at the table and took her quilted cigarette bag out of her purse.
Paranoia kept me talking. Her silence spooked me. “Is he feeling better?” I asked, sitting down across from her. Suddenly, I had a wine headache and my eyeballs felt like fried grapes. Just like that, the fun part of the drunk was gone.
“You’re sweating like a pig.” She ran a finger across my forehead, examined it in the overhead light, and then wiped it on my shirt.
“It’s hot in here. We need to get the window unit fixed.”
“Not as hot as all that. Why don’t you go take a cool shower?”
“Are you working in the morning?”
“No, thank God, Velma’s taking my shift. I’m exhausted.” So was the smile Mom gave me. “I might just sleep till noon.”
“What did Hayes say?”
“He’s still going through a rough patch.” She gave the wall above my head an empty look. Her eyes went dull.
“You ain’t going to help him again, are you? You promised you wouldn’t.”
“I didn’t promise shit.” Her eyes met mine. “This ain’t none of your concern, Lynn.”
“That means you are helping him.”
She said nothing, but her eyes went from dull to full-on glare.
“I knew it.” I tried to keep the sob out of my voice because I could feel it creeping in and clamping down on the muscles in my throat. “Mom, I wish you’d let loose of him. He’s going to get you arrested or worse.”
She squeezed the tip of her nose between her thumb and forefinger.
“Mom?”
“I told him he should run away.” She lowered her head and picked at the label on her beer. I sat very still and watched her pick. Outside, crickets argued and shouted and told each other scratchy-scratchy lies. Inside, my mom’s nails went click, click, click as she tore away the silver paper. “He said no. The dumb bunny is too scared to leave and too stupid to be scared to stay. He thinks he can handle it. I tried to tell him that if he stays …” Her voice trailed off and she looked too tired to explain what she tried to tell him. This wasn’t the answer I’d hoped to hear, but at least Hayes wasn’t here at the house anymore. And if he wasn’t here, maybe the creeps wouldn’t come here looking for him anymore.
“But you’re not going to help him again, right?” I said, trying to catch her eye. “Right?”
Mom let out a sigh, blowing her bangs out of her eyes, and pushed herself away from the table. “If you’re not going to take a shower, I will.”
When I didn’t say anything, she got up and went back to her room. I drank the rest of her beer. After a couple of minutes, the shower started running. I sat at the kitchen table and stared at the ashtray, wondering what I’d do if all this went wrong, how I’d find my dad if it came to that.
Sex Slave
“And?” Dani whispered. It was Sunday morning around eleven. Water ran in the background and something metal clanked. I couldn’t help myself. I’d told her everything. Or near about. We had a new half-ring system. Half-ring and she’d call me back. Logan Loy was still snoring softly in the storage room when I’d last checked on him.
“And what?” I asked.
“Have you done it?”
“Not yet,” I said. “My mom’s here. She doesn’t have to work.”
Dani’s flip-flops went smick-smack, smick-smack, smick-smack. A door slammed and something rattled. “So he’s stuck in there for another night?”
“At least,” I said.
“Now you have your own personal sex slave in your closet. That’s what I need while I’m grounded.”
“Yeah, right.”
“When he kisses you—wait, you have kissed him, haven’t you?”
“Yeah,” I said, embarrassed suddenly. “I told you already.”
“Oh, right, you said it was like eating chocolate velvet pie.” She snickered. I’d said no such thing. “So when he kisses you, does he move his tongue up and down or in a circular motion? And if in a circular motion, is it clockwise or counter?”
“Is this something out of Vogue?”
“Cosmopolitan.”
I thought for a second, moving my tongue in my mouth to remember. “In circles, why?”
“Direction?” Paper rustled.
I guessed. Who remembers stuff like that? “C
lockwise.”
More pages turned. “Ahh, that’s very interesting.”
“What? Come on.”
“That means he’s passionate, but prone to outbursts of anger, and has an artistic nature.”
“You already knew about the art stuff,” I said. “Has the eyeball bothered you again?”
“No, my dad stayed out all night on the sleeping porch with the shotgun.”
“He see anybody?”
“Nah, my mom said he was asleep when she went out in the morning.”
A cabinet door banged. Then I heard a toilet paper tube clatter, roll, and rip. A toilet flushed. I made a face.
“Are you going to the bathroom?” I said.
“Don’t you just love cell phones?” She laughed. “I found out where my mom hid the phone and the charger. On top of the fridge. Can you believe it? Like I was three and couldn’t see up there. I have to make sure I put it back is all. So how long is he going to stay, your Mr. Logan Loy? Or is it Private Logan Loy? Be careful. He could go to jail, you know, if your mom told the police.”
“Forever,” I said.
“No, they’d let him out after a while.”
“I mean in my closet. I’m keeping him forever.”
“Or at least until Mr. Jenkins’s brother Captain Crook gets him.”
“Clap your hands if you believe.”
Dani clapped and laughed, but I stopped thinking it was all that funny almost as soon as it came out of my mouth. I could believe all too easy.
The Dangers of Girl Warming
After I hung up with Dani, I told Logan good morning and we kissed again, but only for a little while. This time the shaking wasn’t so bad. I told him he’d have to stay all day today, since my mom wasn’t working and he couldn’t leave anyway. He smiled at me then, and it felt like a hot water bottle popped inside my belly. If Greenpeace had seen it, they’d have killed him to save the ice caps.
“Sure,” he said. “I think I’d like that.”
We messed around for hours and hours until my lips were actually sore. He never tried to get under my clothes, but he didn’t hold off from various sorts of rubbings. By the end, I could of exploded into a million pieces if he’d touched me in the right place. And by then I wanted him to, but I didn’t know how to ask.
Afterwards, I lay on my bed and went back over every word we said to each other that day and the one before and my heart beat so hard I could feel it in the tips of my fingers. My mom stayed up looking at the TV that night until three in the morning. The thought of him back there sleeping behind my closet, with my princess picture watching over him, kept me awake for most of the night. Was he thinking about me too? I liked knowing he couldn’t come out of the closet unless I told him it was alright. I wasn’t used to being able to tell someone what to do, especially someone older, and it felt nice. But it scared me a little as well, because I didn’t know where all this would end. And scared because anymore I didn’t want it to.
A New Boat
“Where did you get that bracelet?” my mom asked me Monday morning. I’d been wearing it since I got it, but this was the first she’d noticed. Since she didn’t have to go in to work until noon, she’d started working on a new boat. Mom spread the pieces out all over the kitchen table. The room had a sharp chemical smell from the glue. The boat was called the Cutty Sark and she was building it in an old vodka bottle. She wanted to build it in a bottle of Cutty Sark scotch, but she figured the label would hide the boat, so what would be the point. I wasn’t allowed to come into the kitchen when she worked on her stupid ships. She was afraid I’d walk too hard and vibrate the table and ruin it. I’d done this once when I was six, so ever since then she made me stand in the doorway to talk to her when she was working on one.
“Dani let me borrow it,” I said. “For the first day of school.” I waited for my chance to sneak some breakfast out for Logan. Mom had gotten out of bed early and was already working on the boat when I woke up. I made sure and brushed my teeth before I went back and saw him. I gave him my copy of Harriet the Spy and kissed him good morning. His stomach growled twice. Mom turned my attempt to get Logan breakfast into an obstacle course.
“Are you going over to see her today? To pick out your first-day-of-school outfits?” my mom asked.
“Who? Dani?” I said, as if we could be talking about anyone else. My mind was still back behind the closet. “No, she’s grounded.”
“What for?” she asked in her fake casual way, picking up a strip of balsa wood with a long, thin pair of tweezers. She dabbed the tiniest bit of glue on it and slipped it in through the neck of the bottle. She wore special magnifying glasses she’d bought at Wal-Mart, so she could see the details better. They made her look like a properly medicated mad scientist. But I noticed her hands weren’t all too steady. She kept reaching in to place the little stick of wood and then stopping and pulling it out again.
“She got in an argument with her mother about something.”
“That girl does have a mouth on her.”
The house phone rang and we both stopped talking and stared at it like it might jump off the hook and bite us. I looked over and raised my eyebrows at her, but she shook her head and mouthed the word, Wait, as if the person calling could hear us even without the phone being picked up. The answering machine clicked on and my mom’s voice informed whoever it was that we weren’t home. It was Dr. Drose. Mom asked me to pick it up and went back to work on the Cutty Sark. She must of made a mistake with the piece she was placing because she cursed softly and pounded her thigh with a fist. I’d never seen her do that before. Then she took her tweezers and poked herself on the palm three times.
“Hi, sweetie,” Dr. Drose said when I answered. “Is your mother home?”
Mom came out of the kitchen after she tried gluing the piece of balsa wood for a third or fourth time and still couldn’t get it right. She snatched the phone out of my hand like I’d stolen it from her. “Of course,” she said and nodded with a lot of energy. “I don’t mind at all.” And then after a moment or so, “Believe me, I could use it. Alright then, I’ll see you.” She smiled after she hung up. “That’s a nice surprise.”
“What?” I said. I smiled too. The secret of my closet boy hummed sweetly in my chest.
“Someone made a scheduling mistake and they don’t need me for the next couple of days. I get a little vacation.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Why do you look so glum? Am I interfering with some plan of yours?”
“No,” I said.
“Yeah, right,” she said, examining my face like it was a restaurant check from a careless waitress. “What new scheme are you up to today, Lynn Marie?”
The phone rang again and my mother picked it up without thinking. She must of been distracted. Her voice changed completely when the person on the other end of the line said hello. “When? Are you sure it’s not a clerical mistake?” she said, after listening for a little while. It was a man’s voice. That much I could hear. I knew without her saying it wasn’t a call from Dr. Drose. “Have you ever noticed it’s always Carla who makes these little discoveries?”
I went into the living room and sat down, so my mother wouldn’t think I was trying to listen in. The only thing separating the kitchen from the living room was a Formica-topped breakfast bar and three padded barstools. My mom turned and faced the window over the sink, but I could still hear what she said.
“How do you know this?” She shook a cigarette out of her pack and lit it. “That’s ridiculous. He’s a complete idiot anyway. That’s why his own kid checks the med inventory after he does it.” After three or four drags, she stubbed it out. “Goddamnit,” she said, still grinding the cigarette into her coffee saucer even though it was completely out. I hated when she put out cigarettes on dishes. It seemed trashy and I was the one who always had to clean it up. “Just call me when you know for sure, okay? Right. And tell her not to butt into other people’s wards. In fact, tell her not to touch any
thing until I get there. Good-bye.” She put the phone back in its cradle and lit another cigarette. Smoke curled out of her nose. She glared at the ship for a long moment and then walked back and sat down at the table.
“Was that Dr. Drose again?” I knew it wasn’t. She’d never say Goddamnit to Dr. Drose.
“No,” she said.
“Who was it?”
“It sure as hell wasn’t Ed McMahon.” This was an old joke of hers and it always irritated me when she said it. It was so stupid it was aggravating. This time she didn’t even try to use her jokey voice. It came out flat and mean.
I slipped in and grabbed a Coke and a half-eaten bag of Wise potato chips before she could start working on her boat again, making sure to walk across the linoleum very softly. This was not a good time for a big blowup.
“I’m going to go read,” I said.
“Fine.” Mom picked up one of her tools and bent it against her chin a second before letting it pop back into shape. Then she shut her eyes and did it again. She was still doing this when I went back to my room. But before I even opened the closet, the kitchen door creaked and slammed.
The First Real Lie
“Do you think I can slip out and go to the bathroom? I’m about to pop.” Logan leaned up against the wall with a pillow behind his head and Harriet the Spy folded on his chest. It was late afternoon and my mom had been missing now for several hours on some work errand. Logan had jammed the flashlight into the rafters above him, so it shone down on his head like a spotlight. All he had on were boxer shorts, but sweat dripped from his chin and darkened his side burns. The flap in the front of his boxers was open and I could almost but not quite see in. A dark, fluffy shadow of hair. I tried not to stare, but my eyes kept landing there like flies on something stinky.
“There’s no way,” I said. “My mom’s in the kitchen. She’ll see you for sure.”
“When’s she leaving? I mean, I’ve seriously got to pee. I thought you said she’d be at work by now.”
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