“Well, what do you think?” he asked, veering off the new grass into a budding maple copse. He tilted her face up towards his and kissed her so hard on the mouth that she gasped. “I probably shouldn’t kiss a cousin like that, but …”
“I think you’re a loyal person,” she responded, her eyes sliding back to the brick house where Uncle Norm was retrieving burgers from the grill on his patio. Her hands remained planted on Dace’s chest. “Too loyal, some might say. Is Rick Lowery out too?”
They were hidden by the trees now. “No,” he said, his face dark until he kissed her eyelids then moved his lips to her neck. “My God. You smell so sweet. Are you wearing that stuff you put on your letters? Or is it your own special scent?”
“It’s just me, I think. I showered and dressed so fast that I forgot. I was in the shower, three minutes tops. Dace, how do men in prison wait so long?” she whispered into his neck, unable to meet his eyes.
“For this, you mean?” he asked, almost crushing her against his chest. “Sweetheart, I’m surprised you waited so long to ask.”
“It seemed a little prurient.”
“Prurient? What’s that? How do they wait? I don’t know. I lived on dreams, I suppose. Most of us did. We thought about the future, you know. What we would do when we got out.”
“And got into fights?”
Dace thrust her a little way from him then, seizing both her wrists and pushing her hard against the nearest tree. Her eyes widened, but she didn’t protest. “Are you suggesting I substituted? My dear, I’m surprised at you. Next thing you’ll be asking if I got it on with some guy.”
“No … no, I wouldn’t,” she stuttered, but searched his face, almost sure he was joking.
“Why not?”
“Uh, because you just lifted my skirt.”
“That’s not all I’d like to do.”
“Oh, Dace, I know you haven’t in forever, but do you really think we should?” Nothing was ever simple. He needed her, needed her so much, and that was a powerful aphrodisiac for her.
“I know. We’re cousins, for God’s sake,” he mimicked his father. “Please don’t start that again. And while we’re on the subject, I don’t care about your past, the same way you don’t care about mine. I’m home now. Everything is going to be all right,” he promised. He took her arm and tugged her deeper into the bush where even Uncle Norm’s collie would have trouble finding them.
“Where are we going?”
“Tut, tut. I’ve lost my way,” he said, his arm resting on her shoulders, his eyes scanning the nearly naked trees.
He talked continuously, as if he couldn’t stop once he’d started. Maybe he didn’t know his way around the farm, but he could still remember Christie Pits. He wanted to go back there soon. Everybody said Toronto was jumping. Yorkville was alive with action, and come summer there would be music at the Riverboat and in the streets. Sure, he’d heard about Yorkville when he was in the Joint. You didn’t have to be a hippy, you know, although a long-haired little girl like her might pass. The Gas Works and Abbey Road would probably have lots of music, too. She didn’t know where those clubs were? Well, they’d find them together. What a goddamn sin Janis Joplin died just last year. But Bruce Cockburn and Joni Mitchell would be playing and maybe even that sap Gordon Lightfoot she liked so much, although he was usually at Massey Hall. Pussy willows, cat-tails, soft winds and roses… Also, he was willing to bet, there would be lots of other good stuff because wherever musicians went …
“Grass, you mean?” she asked, emboldened because she had smoked the stuff with Mel once or twice in his car.
“Maybe.” He smiled down at the top of her head, his eyes shifting to the side.
“What about your parole officer?” she asked. Her hands slid underneath his shirt.
“I haven’t met her yet,” he said. His breath was coming quicker now and her heart pounded. His skin was soft on her fingertips, hard against her hands. “But I’ll bet she’s a busy lady, too busy for the likes of me.”
“Really? But if you …”
“Liza, little Liza, you worry too much. My Dad needs me, so I’ll probably just stay with him until you’re sprung. Don’t you want to finish your degree?”
“Sure, but I’ve got two more years if I do a general B.A. It feels like a sentence after today.”
A shadow crossed his face. “Baby, you have no idea what a sentence feels like. You’ll never know, a girl like you. Now look here. Everything’s going to be all right,” he promised again. His hands pushed her white sweater down to her elbows and lifted her breasts from the halter of her dress. He kissed each one in turn, making her gasp. “Let me. I’ll show you. I’ll get a job when you go back to school this fall. And that will have the added bonus of keeping Miss Parole Officer off my back.”
“D’Arcy! Liza!” Uncle Norm called.
“A bit of a pest, isn’t he?” Liza said, no longer the least bit nervous. She was loathe to leave his hands.
Chapter 22
I Want You
Near Maitland, May 1972:
Later she remembered the early Maitland summer, awash in green and gold. If she didn’t remember the exact date they’d first made love, at least she never forgot the occasion. It was soon after he’d been released. He couldn’t wait, she couldn’t wait, and oh my God, she was so relieved to have him home, home for good. She remembered the golden showers of maple florets as they fell and stuck in their hair, so maybe it had still been May. His Harley lay on its side against a fallen elm trunk. It’s all right, it’s all right, she kept thinking, feeling his pull in spite of her own misgivings. By now her only real concern was that his lovemaking might fail to meet her wildest expectations, the ones she had never even admitted to herself.
In short, she was afraid he’d been in prison so long he might have forgotten how to make love. What happened to a man who spent so much time in jail? What if he got impotent or something? Like Popeye in Faulkner’s Sanctuary, a criminal whose behaviour was never really explained. Or like Clyde Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde? Although that was just a movie. Maybe in real life he had been able to perform. But what if she had to …? She wasn’t sure what to do.
Beyond that, she was afraid he might be reluctant to commit to her for the simple, bourgeois reason that he was her cousin. What he said and what he felt deep down inside might be two different things. Sometimes she was like that too, but right now she was past caring. She was almost twenty and ready this time. She had never wanted anybody so much.
Naturally she didn’t mention any doubts about his prowess or his commitment. He’d come too far. In the bush at the farm, she’d decided he could have whatever he wanted, and how lucky, how wonderful if he wanted her. She had to say something though, so she blathered about their blood ties instead.
“Imagine the complications if we were brother and sister,” Dace said, plucking a maple floret from her hair. “But we aren’t.” Winding her long hair around his hand, he pulled her head back and tripped her, his arms breaking her fall. She fell beneath him onto the sun-warmed ground, her eyes picking out bits of blue sky overhead. The trees were leafy, and as far as she could see, there wasn’t a cloud in the lattice of their branches.
She closed her eyes, nervous, no matter how much she wanted him. It had been a long time for her, too. Almost three years. God help her, she was practically a virgin again. He was, too.
“I’m afraid,” she confessed. What if it’s not as good as I dreamed?
“You think too much,” he whispered into the base of her throat. “Open up and let yourself go.” She loved his urgency. She stopped trying to second guess herself, although having got this far, now she was afraid it might hurt. He was growing against her, so focused, so huge.
“Dace …” she tried to say.
“Shut up,” he said, covering her mouth with his hand. He was up her long jean skirt and inside her in less than sixty seconds. “Take all of me,” he whispered, as if he had to tell her. Heat spread like la
va, racing from her head to her toes. She wrapped her long legs around his waist, doing everything she could to help. Take all of me, she thought, arching her back.
Belatedly he started undressing her, then himself, absolving her of all responsibility. She liked it that way, so she lay back with her arms flung over her head and did what she was told. He moved slowly at first, now that he was in, but after a couple of minutes he plunged deeper, picking up speed.
“I can’t,” she thought she heard him say, his mouth full of one of her elongated nipples. There was a noise from the bush, the crack of a branch. She opened her eyes. A small animal, maybe. And water ran nearby in a thicket of flowering dogwood. Nobody was there, though. Really.
“Liza,” he groaned, coming almost immediately, his mouth where she liked it, on her throat.
“Stay,” she demanded, wrapping her arms around him. Now that her clothes had been removed, it was as if more than her body had been freed. She would do whatever he wanted, whatever he said. They had always been part of each other and now they were both part of the air, the sky. She ran her hands up and down his muscular torso, her fingers searching his smooth, tight skin for all his scars, those signs he’d been invincible and was invincible still, that he would always be here.
Her own unmarred body, usually unisex in a T-shirt and jeans, was large-breasted, small-waisted, and nearly perfect. It must have been, because when he rolled off her, he kissed every inch until his mouth settled on a small spot to which nobody had ever paid much attention before. Not Tony, anyway.
Not even her. Somehow it hadn’t seemed right, and she had never been sure exactly what to do. Her eyes flew open at his touch and she tried to push him away, but he seized both her hands in one of his and held them firmly. He lifted his head from time to time to observe her reaction, wearing a cocky smile on his face.
She closed her eyes, letting him take her to a place she had never imagined before. What was happening? A flutter rose in her groin, sending a rush of warmth to her chest. Butterfly, she almost said, then the feeling spread down, igniting the walls of the place where he’d been so that they opened and closed, over and over, fast and hard. She clamped her mouth shut, still unsure about what was going on. All she knew was when she peeked, Dace was looking rather pleased with himself. Then … Petals, she thought as her body arched towards the sky and her toes curled into the ground. It’s me! I’m blooming.
“My God,” she said, when every petal in her had unfurled and the last spasm had subsided. “Can we do that again?”
“Probably,” he said, then chuckled and stroked her trembling limbs.
Looking down, she saw he definitely could. His cock was standing straight up, ready to go. “Should we have … should we …?” she asked shyly, a blush still warming her cheeks. Determined to be prepared, she had gone to Student Services and was now on the Pill, but it had only been a week.
“I did, and I am,” Dace said. “So shut up,” he begged, crawling up from her lower body, sliding along her until he damn near got lost in her hair. He curled behind her, entering from the side, his large hands almost covering her breasts. “I wish you wouldn’t talk,” he said. “This one’s for you too, beautiful,” he promised, stroking slowly and shallowly with his penis, nudging up against her pubic bone until that feeling—that liquid, painless fire—spread from her clitoris to her throat again and she almost cried.
“I’m not the first,” he said, sounding a little sad, after they’d come together at last.
“You’re the first to make me feel …”
“Hmm, yes, but that’s not exactly what I meant.”
“I know,” she said, ashamed. He was still holding her, though. She took a deep breath, languishing under the warm grip he still held on her breasts. “There was somebody in Ireland, when I was sixteen. The worst part is I didn’t even love him, I don’t think. Um, I don’t know exactly how it happened. Well, I mean, I know how it happened, but he wouldn’t … he didn’t touch me there.”
“On your clit, you mean?” Dace said bluntly, rolling her around to look at him.
She lowered her eyes, embarrassed to be blushing. “Well, okay, my clitoris. I guess it’s a little hard to find.”
“Trust me. It’s not that hard. What did this Irish boy need, a road map?”
“Englishman.”
“Whatever. Sounds like a goof to me. A man, eh? Somehow I doubt you knew a real man. What were you hanging out with him for anyway, a little girl like that?”
“Dace, you wrote me one letter. Then you didn’t write for two years.”
“Because I felt like shit. I was shit. So why didn’t you mention him before, you bad girl?”
“But Dace, you always say the past is the past.”
He sighed. “That’s okay. Don’t tell me more. You’re not my first, either,” he answered, ostensibly slapping several black flies dive bombing her posterior. “You have a great bum,” he added, regarding the imprint of his hand.
“Well, you’re older than me. Besides, there’s the old double standard,” she said, not even trying to escape. “Nobody expects you to be a virgin. How old were you the first time? Fifteen? Sixteen?”
“The first time I was with a girl? Baby, I was sixteen, just like you,” he answered. One of his fingers traced the outline of her heart-shaped face.
“Really?”
He didn’t answer, just gazed blankly at her face.
“Dace?” she said, unaccountably afraid.
Suddenly he was on his feet, slamming his fist against the nearest tree, a hapless poplar that swayed under his assault. He didn’t look at Liza. “I was nine when somebody tried, but he didn’t get too far.”
Feeling almost sick to her stomach, she waited, watching him bend back down, rummage in his discarded jeans and light up a cigarette while he studied the late afternoon sky. Clouds were moving in.
“In that fucking school, there was a priest. Father Danby. Nothing happened. He wanted me to touch him and I didn’t. I hit him instead. Accidentally. And his German Shepherds chased me up a tree. I went to court then and as luck would have it, the Priest’s uncle was on the Bench. Silverton. I remember because he had silver hair. I …”
By now, Liza was on her feet, her arms wrapped around him, her face pressed into his strong back. His sex, she noticed, was nowhere in sight. “Dace, don’t tell me if hurts,” she said. “I don’t have to know.”
“It’s too late, baby. I can’t stop now. That’s what happens when I start talking. That’s why I almost never do. It was really Rosie that Father Danby was after. She was such a little tomboy. You know what she was like. Still is. I went with him so he wouldn’t, you know, touch her. Whatever those fucking creeps do.” He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. “Other than that the school wasn’t all bad. I finally learned how to read.”
“You should sue!”
He spun around to face her. “Do you think anybody would listen to me? Besides,” he said, a little more quietly, “Rosie doesn’t want to.”
“Has she said?”
“She doesn’t even remember the dirty old bugger who wanted to get into a four-year-old’s pants.”
“Is he still alive? Is he still here in Maitland?”
“I don’t know. And it’s really better if I don’t.”
“Dace, we’ve got to get out of here. I’ll transfer, work part-time and we’ll find something for you to do, too.”
“Ah, Liza, little Liza! You can’t do that. You’ve worked too hard to get here. Besides, I can’t leave my father right now. All his business is here. And then there’s the Wolfhounds. They’re after me to join them. I’d like to ride with them for a while, have some fun.”
“Ride with them?” She felt dizzy. So much had happened in the past few minutes, maybe she wasn’t thinking straight. “A motorcycle gang? But Dace—”
“Ah, c’mon. They’re all right. It’s just bikes and stuff. And they throw some helluva good parties. Hey, where do you think you’re going, Mis
s?”
“I don’t know. I just want to walk,” she said, pulling away. He caught her by one hand.
“Are you sure you want to go somewhere?” he asked, his other hand moving down her body to the place he had mapped between her legs. “Because you’re not wearing any clothes.”
“I don’t know what I want.”
“Yes, you do. You want me. Open up and let me in.”
For as long as she lived, she treasured the interlude that followed.
Chapter 23
Hold On Tight
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
*[ Eliot, T.S., The Waste Land, “Burial for the Dead.’]
Maitland, Ontario, Summer.
Back in February she’d applied for a summer job as a counsellor at a day camp in Maitland. She accepted their offer the day after Dace came home. She didn’t make much money, but thought maybe she could earn some extra cash typing term papers in the fall. To her great joy, she had also qualified for an English scholarship, so Granny Magill was off the hook.
For now she was staying in residence, where she paid summer rates and had almost the entire place to herself. Her mother had wanted her to come home, but she didn’t have the space in her flat. Mel was traveling in Europe, through Denmark and Scandinavia. Janice was working on a tobacco farm not far from town. And Dace was staying with his Dad for now. He wouldn’t be alone.
So things weren’t perfect, but they were working out. She got to see Dace whenever she wanted, no questions asked, and all she really wanted was spend time with him.
“I’ll get a job too,” Dace promised when he saw her after work a couple of weeks later. They were eating onion rings at the local A&W. Onion rings hadn’t been on the menu when he’d first gone to prison. The A&W hadn’t even existed in Maitland.
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