The Almost Archer Sisters

by Lisa Gabriele

  “You’re not my father. What have you done with my father?” I said, holding Beau’s ankles. Even though we often found him trailing Lou like a lanky shadow, I was genuinely happy to see Beau that day. A kind face after bad news.

  “Peachy! Heyyy. Christ, we haven’t seen you in a long time.”

  “What do you mean ‘we.’ You live here now?”

  I embarrassed him. It was obvious to everyone that Beau stuck around because his stepdad was a merciless bully. Lou collected the indigent and upset like other people collected stamps. Some who came to the Sunday men’s meeting stuck around to help repair a fence or patch a roof. Others, like Beau, pulled up to chat while Lou cut hair in the carport if it was a nice day and they were only looking for a trim.

  “Nah. Just working on the timer. It’s a beautiful machine, nice lines. Lou’s thinking of painting it dark blue. Hey, Lou’s gonna set me up with some work over at the co-op, fixing tractors and helping out at the oil field near Harrow. Can you believe it? Oil in Essex County. I told Lou we should stick a pipe by the willow and see what’s under that stump. You never know.”

  “You never know. Where’s Lou?”

  Beau told me he took one of the bachelor brothers’ trucks to Windsor to buy plastic piping for the new salon sink. Then he went on for a half an hour—while wiping his hands and putting away Lou’s tools in drawers and jars I had never noticed before— talking about the price of gas, the fact that our high school music teacher had a daughter who was gay, some bla-de-blah about his stupid sister Lucy’s stupid wedding and how it had cost twice as much as she said it would cost and how pissed his stepdad was and why should he pay for it if she wasn’t his blood kid and why hadn’t I been there (wasn’t invited), and in the middle of all that he asked about Beth. I said she was great, seeing some stockbroker, flying to Europe, meeting the rich and famous. Beau’s expression didn’t drop or change when he said, “That’s cool for Beth, I always figured her for a gold digger.”

  “You look really great, Beau,” I blurted out.

  “Oh. Thanks!” His grin did a slow spill across his face.

  “I mean it,” I said, plucking the middle of his shirt like a harp. Rejection had made me cocky. Driving home that afternoon, I had come to the conclusion that I was going to quit social work and maybe go into teaching. By the time I had passed through Tecumseh, I had quit teaching and I was thinking about farming. By Puce, I had quit farming and upon approaching Belle River, I was learning how to cut hair, rewriting the sign to say CHEZ PEACHY, PLUS LOU. But when I saw Beau’s wide-open face, I can’t help but imagine that I had subconsciously landed on motherhood, because I now know I had been violently ovulating.

  I dropped my knapsack on the garage floor.

  Beau looked momentarily frightened.

  “Do you want a beer?” he asked. “Lou doesn’t mind if I keep cold ones for me in the little fridge out here. Plus, he likes to have drinks around for you and Beth.”

  “I’m aware of that, Beau. I live here. Often, I buy the beer myself.”

  “I know. I know. But we never see you anymore. I’m just saying,” he said, still grinning from my compliment.

  I followed him into the house. We sat across from each other on the vinyl chairs and drank our beers kind of quickly, both of us nodding at each other and grinning into uneasy silences. I mentioned the new countertop. Beau said it was a bitch to put in. Three guys to lift it. No idea how heavy granite was. I let out a burp. He laughed and cracked open two more beers, placing mine gently in front of me as if he dared me one more. Out of the corner of my eye something tiny and dark broke our game and bolted across the kitchen floor.

  “What was that?” I screamed.

  “That’s that mouse, and by a mouse, I mean a mouse. There is one in this house. Lou’s been trying to get rid of that fucker all day. Hand me that, Peach,” he said, pointing to an empty juice bottle on the table.

  “This?”

  “Yup. Mouth’s wide enough. Stand back.” He got on his hands and knees, his top half disappearing under the sink. The stillness of his hips belied the bumpy activity going on behind the rusty pipes.

  “I got it!” he hollered, his butt collapsing onto his heels, hands quickly capping the mouse inside. “Oh my God, I got it! Whooo!”

  I peered over Beau’s shoulder. The tiny mouse was trying to scurry up the glass but kept losing its grip in the leftover dreck.

  I screamed again.

  “Oh God, Beau. That was impressive. Let’s take it down to the riv—”

  “Are you kidding me? Lou tried that. No way. It’ll just come back. I gotta kill it.”

  With that dismissal, Beau covered the top of the bottle with his wide palm. He began to shake it, slow at first, but then his arm became a blur, like a graffiti artist readying a spray can. He kept saying, “I’m sorry,” over and over again, to whom or what, I didn’t know, but it was a horrible minute and a half. I covered my eyes while the mouse made tiny thumping sounds. After Beau deemed it dead, he emptied the contents into the garbage under the sink and rinsed out the bottle.

  “Whoo. Sorry, Peach, there was just no turning back. I put myself in a really difficult position there. Either it suffocated in the bottle, or I killed it quick. But that was fucking sick, you think?” He shuddered, shaking his wild deed out of his arm. I thought of the implications of having sex with a man who would do what he had just done, the brutality of which was hard to process, but was terrifically, disgustingly sexy.

  “Sorry, Peachy, that was weird.”

  “Yup.”

  “Whew. All right, where were we?”

  He grinned the grin of a guy who was completely comfortable in his own skin. He was different than the scholars and complainers I’d been surrounded by in university, with their brainy ideas about love. Beau walked over to where I sat, my head tilted up at him, my legs slightly splayed on a kitchen chair. This time I didn’t, couldn’t, stop him from doing what I knew he wanted to do. He got down on his knees in front of me. He clinically separated my thighs and wiggled his skinny torso between my legs, putting his face a few inches from mine. I smiled at him. He smiled at me and laughed. Then he tunneled his hands up the front of my T-shirt and placed them heavily upon both breasts. I put my hands on the top of his hair, which felt dry and wiry.

  “I am totally freaked out right now, Peachy. Totally freaked out.”

  “Me too. That mouse killing was weird.”

  “No. I’m freaked out because I thought about doing this. A lot. And I was thinking exactly this when I saw you today.”

  “Thinking exactly what?” I teased, fiddling with his ears because I only had his head to play with.

  “Thinking I’d like to fuck your brains out on Lou’s new countertop.”

  “You think?” I laughed.

  “Oh shit, though. I just remembered something. Fuck. I just started seeing someone, Peachy,” he said, collapsing back down on his heels. He looked to the floor and then up at me like he was praying into my face.

  “Who?” Not picked again, I thought. This after he’d placed his callused hands on my tiny tits.

  “Janey Waterman.”

  “The dog washer from the vet’s?”

  “Yeah, but she’s training to be a vet.”

  “Sounds exciting.”

  “She’s gonna take it really hard,” he said, thoughtfully rubbing a nonexistent beard.

  “Take what hard?”

  “That it’s over.”

  “It is?”

  “It is.”

  “I guess so.”

  “What do you mean, ‘I guess so.’” He inched back up between my legs and began messing with the back of my bra under my T-shirt.

  “Well, I mean, Beau, I wouldn’t want you to break up with someone if you didn’t want to.” Pick me. Pick me, I thought. I helpfully pulled my loosened bra through the arms of my T-shirt and threw it over his head.

  “But I want to break up with her.”

  “And then w
hat.”

  “And then you can be my girlfriend.”

  The safety pin holding up the zipper of my jeans was giving him some trouble. Had I known this would happen, I would have worn my new black cords, with my tight, blue-and-white-striped boatneck top.

  “Your girlfriend. Says who?”

  “Says me, man.”

  “What about Beth?” I stood up so he could tug my jeans down, putting my hand on his shoulder to stay steady.

  “Beth who? That was high school, Peachy, Jesus. I don’t think about her. I don’t even like her. She dates dickheads.”

  “Would you still fuck her?” I lost my balance and fell back onto the chair. I noticed that my bra had landed near the dog bowl.

  “What a stupid question. No. I don’t want to fuck her. Clearly, it’s you I’m wanting to fuck.”

  “And then what.” Me. Pick me.

  “Well, then we’ll … do some more fucking. And then maybe a bit more. Man, this is great. You have no idea.”

  He stood up and put his hands under my armpits and shuffled me carefully backward over to the counter, my ankles still shackled by my jeans.

  “On the count of three,” he said. “One—two—” and we hoisted my ass up onto the kitchen counter.

  “Nice job this,” I said, patting the granite with my fingertips. It felt so permanent. “Too bad about Janey though.”

  I pulled his shirt over his head too hard and it snagged on the earring he’d soon be parting with. I hated earrings on men. Even Lou finally acquiesced to my bitching about his gold hoop and tossed it. Both Beau’s hands grabbed the bottom cuffs of my jeans and he unveiled my calves and feet like a sculpture he’d made. He tossed them over his shoulder onto the kitchen table. I put my fists on his belt buckle, one of those complicated metal affairs he had to help me with.

  “Sure, I’m sad. For Janey. She’s in love with me, I think.”

  “Maybe you should call her.” I leaned back and fished for the wall phone, knocking the receiver off the cradle and handing it to Beau. Finish the job. Me. Pick me.

  “Hmm. She’d be at work. I don’t know the number by heart.” He hooked his fingers into the sides of my underwear. “On the count of one.” I lifted my butt off the counter like a gymnast and they landed at his work boots. I reached down and opened the drawer by the phone.

  “Look at you,” he said into my lap. “Peachy, Peachy, Peachy.”

  “Want me to look up the number?”

  “I can do it.”

  While he slapped open the book across my naked thighs and dragged a finger down to the vet’s number in Belle River, I reached under the book and split open the top of his jeans, snapping off the button, which hit the floor.

  He dialed and covered the receiver. “Do you mind. I’m on the phone.” His chest and arms were speckled with those dark freckles. He had a raised mole on his shoulder the size of a raisin and a hairy line down the front of his stomach. I could hear Janey Waterman answer the phone. She was always so nice to Scoots. She was the one who had told me that tomato juice was the best way to battle skunk stink.

  “Yeah—hey, Janey. How are you?” he said, winking at me.

  I could hear her say, “Hey, good, you. Where are you?” Her voice was so small I pictured her being pulled backward, slowly disappearing into the new horizon we were drawing for her.

  “I’m good. I’m at Lou’s. Yeah, uh, listen,” Beau was looking into my smiling eyes. I had dunked my hands into the front of his pants, not too far, scratching gently at the hair poking up out of the top of his underwear. It had the same kinky texture as the hair on his head. I felt wicked and perfect, and Beau was so hard he had to wince and pull a little away from me.

  “Yeah. The thing is … Okay. Janey, I can’t see you anymore. And I feel cruddy calling you up to tell you this at work and everything, but I’m sorry. But something’s come up, and I really gotta go. I’ll drop off your stuff. I’m sorrygottago.”

  He was laughing so hard by the time he hung up he couldn’t breathe. I took the receiver from him and slapped it back on its cradle.

  “That was mean,” I said.

  But he was still rocking from his joke.

  “‘Something’s come up.’ Classic.”

  “Are you sad? Wanna talk about it?” I said, feigning a pout. The Beth part of me, the venal and selfish part that I’d always denied myself, was coming to the surface and I welcomed it. He grabbed the phone book off my lap, held it at arm’s length to the right, and let it drop on the dog bowl, spilling the water on my black bra and on the floor, and I suddenly realized I had been wearing white underwear, but that this was just Beau, so what they didn’t match?

  “Yeah. Very sad. I’ll probably need to cry all over your ass, Peachy.”

  He spider-crawled his fingers between my thighs and I let a couple of them inside with an unbearable sigh that tipped me forward into his smooth chest. With my heels I kicked down his underwear, and he pulled my legs forward until we were nicely lined up. I leaned back into the cupboards. His penis looked quite cute, kind of like a brave soldier peeking over an expensive granite trench.

  “Is that for me?” I said.

  He nodded.

  “What should I do with it?”

  “Whatever you want.”

  I started to shift my ass forward when the phone rang.

  “Uh-oh,” I said. “I think you’ve pissed off your girlfriend.”

  “Ex,” he said, leaning toward the receiver. “Hell—o.” Silence. “It’s me. It’s Beau. Oh, hey, Beth. How are you?” Silence. “Good, fine. Yeah, yeah.” Silence. “No, he’s out. I was working on the Jeep. But, ah, Peachy’s here if you want to talk to her.”

  Beau yelled my name out as though I was otherwise occupied in another room. I yanked the receiver and counted to three while Beau worked his fingers back inside me. I had to use his shoulder for support and for something to bite down on.

  “Hey, Beth.”

  “Hey, Peach. What are you doing?”

  “Nothing. Beau’s working on the Jeep. Dad’s out shopping,” I said, suppressing a giggle. Beau was kissing a trail down the side of my torso, his other hand passed gently over my ass, which suddenly felt large and flattened. I was losing feeling in the lower part of my legs, so I lifted my heels into Beau’s hip bones to relieve the pressure. He hooked his forearms under my knees and pulled me forward.

  “Listen, I’m going out to Long Island next weekend after all, Peach,” Beth said. “Joe’s folks are there and he wants me to meet them. I’m sure they’ll hate my guts, so should be good times.”

  “Who’s Joe,” I asked. By then Beau had pushed himself all the way inside me, his big hands firmly grabbing both ass cheeks, pulling the rest of me against him. We stayed very still for a few seconds.

  “My new boyfriend and future rich fiancé. Oh, and Peachy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m glad you’re finally fucking Beau. It’s something he’s very good at. But for godsakes, use a condom.”

  “Okay.”

  “See you in a few weeks, you cheap, filthy whore.”

  “Okay.”

  “And bye, Beau!” she screamed.

  I dropped the phone. We started making Sam on the new granite counter, and finished him off on the floor. Admittedly, it felt like incest, if incest was not only legal, but hot, and completely encouraged.

  Sam had to have happened that afternoon because we didn’t have sex again for a couple of weeks. Though for days afterward the air between us was dense with the deed. Beau would amuse himself by circling around me in the carport, or the kitchen, finding good excuses to come by the farm when Lou was there, and embarrassingly bad ones when he wasn’t. I once watched from the upstairs window as he pulled out of the driveway, only to turn back around and inch toward the house. He idled his car in front for several painful minutes. That’s when I knew.

  Lead legs took me downstairs.

  I opened the front door and yelled through the screen o
ver the loud engine. “Did you forget something?”

  “Yeah,” he yelled back, scratching his head. “Can you check for my car keys? I think I left them on the kitchen counter.”

  “Sure,” I said, turning around. I was patting around the newspapers littering the kitchen island when the screen door slammed behind me.

  I knew then that he had picked me. But the decision to stay picked seemed to suddenly be mine and it was overwhelming. I was terrified of the responsibility the decision suddenly entailed. If I became a part of him, formed a pair, the rest of my life would happen to me. I began to look even harder for his keys.

  “Peachy, just say yes,” he said wearily, taking a step forward.

  “Say yes to what?” I asked, standing still with my back to him.

  “Pretty much everything?” he said.

  “What if I don’t want pretty much everything?” I said, struck with the idea that his keys could have fallen between the bread box and the coffee maker.

  “Then say yes to something. Say yes to a little bit.”

  “What if I say no to it all,” I yelled over my shoulder, looking and looking for the keys.

  “Wow. For someone so pretty, you sure are stupid,” he laughed.

  “Fuck you, Beau,” I screamed, launching what was handy, the loaf of bread, at him. “You do not have the right to tell me I’m stupid because I might not want what you want. Right fucking now!” My voice cracking with the authentic fear buried just below the phony anger. “I’m still in school.”