It's All Relative

by J. M. Snyder

  “Aunt Evie bought me this dress,” she says. Her gaze drops to her lap, where her hands twist in the fabric, darkening it. “This past summer, when she let me get my tongue done?” In case I could’ve forgotten, she sticks out her tongue, exposing the silver rod through the center of it. “She said this was my color. I told her I liked the black one better but she insisted on this. It was her money, what could I do?”

  Definitely not say no—that was a foreign concept to Evie, a word that held little meaning for her. When she had her wallet out ready to spend, you best just step aside and let her go. All you had to do was cooperate, tell her your sizes, try on the clothes, let her do the rest. Every year without fail, just before we left Sugar Creek for the summer, we were piled into a car or two or three, however many it took to hold us all, and driven to Union City or Franklin or Pittsburgh, wherever Evie felt like shopping. She paraded us through the malls and department stores, snatching up sweaters and underwear and jeans, anything she thought we’d need for school. There was no use telling her we didn’t need new clothes—we got them anyway. So I can easily imagine the resolute look in my aunt’s eyes when she saw the dress Caitlin wears now and knew she had to get it for her niece. “Did you tell Mom that?” I ask, my voice soft.

  She shakes her head. “She didn’t give me a chance,” she whispers. “I walk in and she’s all like you’re not wearing that, and what am I supposed to say?” One corner of her mouth twitches in an attempt to smile. “Gee, Mom, what was I thinking? Let me go change.”

  “Tell her Evie bought it for you,” I suggest. She’ll see why Caitlin wants to wear it, then, and any protest will dissolve in guilt.

  But Caitlin wipes her face, smudging eyeliner into two lines that give her cat’s eyes, and declares, “I ain’t telling her shit! This is my fucking dress, I’ll wear it if I want to.”

  Somehow I don’t think I will be able to convince her otherwise. Lowering her voice, she mumbles, “Evie said she liked this color on me.”

  “It’s very pretty,” I agree. I can’t think of anything else to say.

  Chapter 50: Getting Ready to Go

  After our little talk, Caitlin curls up at the foot of my bed, her shoes kicked to the floor and her dress fanned out around her legs, which are pulled in close to her body so the skirt covers them. “Wake me up when it's time to leave,” she mumbles, burying her face in the crook of her arm pillowed beneath her head.

  I stretch out on the opposite end of the bed, careful not to wrinkle my clothes. For long moments we lie quietly, the only sound in the room our shallow breathing. Caitlin's eyes are closed and mine keep drooping shut—the patterns on the ceiling, cast from the trees outside the window, aren't interesting enough to hold my attention, and the tension eating away at the edges of the day is already gnawing at me, as well. Suddenly I'm well aware of the fact that I got up before dawn and didn't get back to sleep. What would a few minutes now hurt? The thought of giving into the luxury of a quick snooze is almost too much to resist.

  The opening of the door jars me awake. I raise my head off the mattress—when did it grow so heavy?—only to find my lover above me, fully dressed and smiling faintly. Relieved, I sink back to the bed and murmur, “Dan.” A few feet away, Caitlin sighs in her sleep. “Lay down with me a minute.”

  Laughing, he stretches out beside me. He smells wonderful, clean and slightly damp like he just stepped out of the shower, and when he nuzzles into my neck, his freshly buzzed hair scratches my cheek. “You're going back to bed already?” he asks softly so he won't disturb my sister.

  “Just resting my eyes,” I tell him. I turn towards his warmth and find myself in his embrace, one strong arm wrapped around my waist, the other easing beneath my shoulders. I kiss his chin, the only part of him I can reach without stretching, and I want to know, “What time is it?”

  “You’ve got about a half hour left to go,” he replies. With his lips against my ear, his breath hot on my neck, he whispers, “I know better ways to pass the time.”

  Desire snaps me awake, his closeness like a shotgun beside me. Whatever drowsiness clings to me is gone in the instant I raise my head to see the lust in his eyes staring back. “A half hour?” I sit up, interested, and trail a hand down the buttons of his gray shirt. “We’ve managed that before.”

  He laughs again and catches my hand just as it begins to trace the outside of his dick through his jeans. “Your sister,” he cautions.

  “What about her?” I twist free from his grasp and reach for him again, this time getting a good handful of his hardening cock before he stops me. Laying down to cuddle up to him, I unbutton his collar, the next button down, the next, then kiss the hollow of his throat, my tongue licking his smooth skin. My second kiss is more ardent, insistent, and the next button on his shirt gives way to me, exposing the low-cut neck of his undershirt and the faint smattering of freckles across his upper chest. I’m working my way down to his nipple, hard beneath my palm and straining at his shirt—I’ll push the material aside and bite at the tender bud through his thin undershirt, I can almost feel it between my teeth. My sister is the last thing on my mind. Another button comes undone, I’m that much closer to taking him into my mouth. “She’s asleep,” I assure him.

  A foot connects with my lower back. “I am not,” Caitlin grumbles behind me.

  Without raising my lips from my lover’s neck, I slap her leg away. “If you’re up, you can leave,” I tell her, though I don’t know if she hears me or not—my words are muffled against Dan’s skin. He holds me at bay but just barely, his hands in my sweater as if he’s not sure whether to pull me to him or push me away. When she kicks me again, I pinch her ankle, squeezing until she yelps. “Why don’t you just go?”

  “No.” Now both feet strike my buttocks, first one, then the other, rapidly, as if she’s peddling a bicycle. “You’re disgusting, Mike. We’re about to go to a funeral and all you can think about is getting off.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” I ask.

  Rebuttoning his shirt, Dan admits, “I see nothing wrong with it.”

  I stop him before he can get to his collar and hide everything from me again. “What do you think you’re doing?” I laugh. “Caitlin, aren’t you leaving?” No reply, just her feet in my ass, she’s starting to piss me off. “Stop it already, will you?”

  “Take it somewhere else,” she says, as if this isn’t my room. “I don’t want to watch you two making out.”

  “Then don’t look.” I swat her legs but she manages to avoid my hand, and her next kick lands the heel of her foot into my kidney. Pain erupts across my abdomen and I howl, turning on her like a loosened animal, suddenly all anger and swinging fists. “Get the fuck out of here!” I shout, getting in one good hit before she pulls her legs back beneath her skirt, out of sight. Dan holds onto my arms, his grip unforgiving, and I struggle to break free. “Get out, Caitlin. Don’t make me say it again. Get out or I’ll—”

  “Shh, Michael,” Dan murmurs. He hugs me to him but I’m more than a little mad, I’m fucking livid now, my side is on fire where she kicked me and she’s going to pay for that, I’m going to see to it. But when I struggle against him, he rises from the bed, pulls me to my feet, guides me to the door. “Come on, hon. Calm down.”

  “That hurt,” I growl, glaring over his shoulder at my sister. She’s curled into a tight ball at the end of the bed and watches me with frightened eyes, an unspoken apology written all over her face. “Caitlin!”

  “I didn’t mean it,” she mumbles.

  Dan has the door open and blocks my way to the bed, so I can’t just duck around him and go after her. “She didn’t mean it,” he repeats, his voice low. “Come on, Michael, let it go.”

  “It hurt,” I pout. At his concerned look I rub my side, where her foot dug into my kidney. Before he can ask, I tell him, “Right here.”

  His hands cover mine, his fingers slipping beneath my sweater, lifting it up out of the way. Leaning down, he kisses my bare skin, hi
s lips warm on my flesh. I hold my breath and meet his gaze when he looks up, smiling. “That better?” he asks.

  “A little,” I concede. Actually, his mouth leaves a wet imprint that I feel long after he’s smoothed my sweater back down and rubbed his hands over the spot. I look around—the kitchen has cleared out and we’re alone, except for Caitlin in the other room. Trying hard to hold onto my anger, I fumble with the front of my pants and say, “She kicked my butt, too. If you could just—”

  From behind Dan, my sister lets out a surprised laugh, and my lover grins as he slaps my backside. “I’m not kissing your ass,” he tells me.

  “But it hurts, too.”

  “It’s going to hurt a lot worse,” he starts, but he glances around the empty kitchen and sighs. I can hear voices from the living room, children chattering from the open door beside us that leads to the basement, footsteps upstairs rushing around to get ready. Partially because we’re alone—and partially because he wants to show off for my sister, I know him all too well—he sinks to his knees and gives my left buttock a quick peck through my pants. Not quite what I had in mind, but the sight of him squatting beside me, the feel of his hands on my hips, makes the blood pound through my groin and suddenly I can feel each heartbeat pulse in the tip of my dick. “How’s that?” he asks.

  My voice is husky and thick. “Better,” I manage. A hell of a lot better if we could get that half hour alone, I think, and I’m wondering if I could actually physically drag Caitlin from the room when Dan sinks his teeth into me. I can feel the bite through the pants I wear, a huge, healthy chomp that almost makes me come. “Hey!”

  With a laugh, he stands and kisses my neck, one hand rubbing away the mark his mouth made on my butt. “Just playing,” he murmurs, his eyes dancing with mirth. “Maybe later…”

  Fuck that. “Maybe now,” I declare. Stepping around him, I give my sister what I hope looks like a sincere smile and practically beg, “Caitlin, come on, give us five minutes, that’s all I’m asking for here, okay? Please?”

  She’s about to protest—I can tell from that smirk on her face—when my mom comes into the kitchen, her heels clicking importantly on the tiled floor. “Mike, where’s your sister?” she asks, distracted, as she fiddles with the cuffs of her shirt. Seeing Dan, she gives him a tight smile that’s as warm as snow before her gaze slips almost gratefully past us into the back room. The halfhearted smile dies. “You didn’t talk her out of that damn dress,” she says. She speaks of Caitlin in the third person as if my sister can’t hear her, a tactic she uses when she’s close to furious. At least her tears have dried up and she’s regained some semblance of control over her grief—my mother crying is not a sight I want to see again any time soon. “I thought you said you would.”

  “I said I’d talk to her,” I amend, taking a step closer to Dan. His hands still rest on my hips, a comforting touch. Mom sees it and looks away. “I never swore she’d actually listen to me.”

  Her fingers pick at the cuff of her sleeves, first one, then the other, tweaking the fabric nervously until the satin is smooth around her wrists. I wait—when she doesn’t reply immediately, I dare to glance in at Caitlin, who’s watching her closely. She sees me turn and sticks her tongue out at me, exposing that metal rod rammed down the center. Suddenly I can hear my own voice in my mind, years younger, a memory bubbling to the surface of my soul—Ray and I in the back seat of the car on the way here years ago, the two of us sharing a bag of potato chips, and whenever he shoved a handful into his mouth, he’d open wide to show me the chewed up mess. “Mom,” I whined, every single time. “Ray’s sticking his tongue out at me.”

  I had to be seven or eight then, Ray three years older, and we were only halfway through the bag of chips before Mom snatched it from us. Balling it up into her lap, she cried, “Raymond! Michael! Stop it right this instant. If I hear one more sound out of either one of you before we get to Aunt Evie’s, I’m going to have your father turn this car around and go back home.”

  “I wasn’t—” I started.

  “Michael, I’m not playing,” she warned. She turned around in the front seat so we could see she meant business, but I sat behind her and all I saw was half of her face, one angry eye, one corner of her mouth drawn down in a wicked frown, and I threw myself against the side of the car to be as far away from her as I could without getting out. “I don’t want to hear anything else, got that?” I nodded quickly. Ray, not realizing she was talking to him, too, had to be prompted. “Both of you. Or we’re going home.”

  A common threat, but one serious enough not to be taken lightly. We waited all year for the morning when my father shook us both awake before the first light of dawn. We would dress quickly, wolf down bowls of cereal with a nervous energy that buzzed and crackled between us like the excitement of Christmas Eve, then take our pillows and blankets into the back seat of the car, kicking and hitting as we settled in for the long ride. By the time we reached DC, our differences would be forgotten, our anxiety worn down like batteries until we both fell asleep propped together like dolls tucked away on a shelf.

  Even now I can feel that same euphoria and it’s hard to keep an adult’s mind in this house that held so much for me as a child.

  “Fine,” my mother sighs. Satisfied with her cuffs, she smoothes them down, then smoothes down her vest, tugging at the points by her waist to make sure the fabric is as taut as it’s going to get. Without looking at Caitlin, she says, “It’s time to go.”

  “Already?” I ask. I hate the trepidation I hear in my own voice, but what happened to the half hour we had? I frown at Dan’s watch and see it’s already five after ten. “I thought you said we had a few minutes.”

  His smile is apologetic. “I guess we used them up.”

  No…“Already?” I ask again, doubtful. Now that the time has come to leave, I don’t want to—the lethargic morning has disappeared, time rushes by, I feel it slipping away from me like water tumbling over rocks in the creek, and no matter how tight I clench my fists, I can’t seem to hold onto it. “Morrison’s is just in town,” I protest, haggling for more time. “When do we need to be there? It doesn’t start until eleven—”

  “We need to be there now,” my mom declares. “Caitlin, get a move on.”

  “We’ve got a whole hour,” I try.

  “Mike.” There’s a warning in my mom’s voice that silences me. “Don’t push me, mister, not today. The service is at eleven but we have to be there early and you know it. Caitlin.” From the other room I hear the creak of bed springs as my sister sits up. “So are you kids coming, or what?”

  Kids, like I’m not out of my teens. I wonder if she’s conscious of doing that, pegging Dan and me as children, de-sexing us in her mind as if that somehow negates our relationship. It’s okay if he has his arms around my waist or if his chin rests on my shoulder, as long as it’s nothing overt, nothing that hints at more between us. “We’re coming,” I mutter.

  Dan slips his hand into mine and I lead him across the kitchen, my mind in the past. Morrison’s is just a few blocks beyond Grosso’s, back off the main street that leads out of Sugar Creek. I haven’t actually been in there before, not really—this is my first funeral, no one I’ve known has ever died, though once Stephen and Ray talked me into sneaking up to the basement window one summer day before my freshman year of high school. It was sweltering outside, as I recall. The three of us were half-naked in the unself-conscious way that young boys have in the heat, dressed in only swimming trunks and nothing else. Sweat dripped down our bare, suntanned backs and though we rode our bikes, we dropped them at the curb to get a closer look at the quiet funeral parlor. The parking lot’s black tarmac simmered beneath our feet. “You go look,” I told Ray, who shook his head and stopped in the grass, afraid to move any closer. Morrison’s is an old converted house, much like Aunt Evie’s, with a wraparound porch and a bay window on one side that gives it a lopsided, old fashioned appearance. When Ray chickened out, I turned to Stephen. �
�It’s not like they keep dead people in there, right?”

  Stephen shook his head and pushed his glasses up on his nose with one finger. “You go then,” he told me. He followed me a few more feet, just until my brother was out of hearing distance, and lowered his voice to a hot whisper. “Do it,” he hissed. “All you have to do is look in and tell us what you see.” I glanced at him dubiously, but he smiled like the sun above us, bolstering my courage. “Come on, Mikey. Do it and I’ll make it worth your while later.”

  Later meant after we had ditched Ray and it was just the two of us. At that time, anything Stephen did with his tongue and mouth and hands on my body was worth my while, worth anything to be honest, and my dick stiffened at the promise in his words. Before I could lose my nerve, I hurried to the house, running hunched over like I’d seen soldiers do in war movies, as if anyone inside who looked out couldn’t possibly see me weaving through the trim grass. At the porch I threw myself to the ground, landing hard on my knees. As I crawled forward, my dick poked beneath me like a stick jammed down the front of my shorts, each movement sending shivers of pleasure and fear mingling through me, until I almost came from sheer anticipation alone. Just a quick look, I probably wouldn’t see anything anyway, and then Stephen could take me into the woods and work his hands into my pants and get me off. I’d even think of this, I told myself, as his fingers squeezed and pinched, his tongue licked, his lips sucked, this dread moment, excitement and apprehension and the hard, hard ground pushing my balls into my dick. I just wanted to lie there and hump the earth, get myself off in the cool shade of the funeral parlor, smear myself with my own juices and shiver in decadence and sin.

  By the time I got to the first window, I had one hand fisting in the front of my shorts, but whether it was to rub at my erection or hold in my orgasm, I wasn’t sure. When I sat up and squatted to see inside, my genitals seemed to hang between my legs like a savage’s, bloated, pulsating, begging for release. The front of my shorts tented obscenely, my dick rock solid and throbbing, I swore I could see it through the material, veins standing out thick with blood. Holding my breath, I moved tall weeds aside and peered into the window.