by Marsha Moyer
Ash gripped my hips with his hands, his fingers digging into my skin as I leaned toward him, my breasts crushing against his chest, my hair falling in a curtain over our faces, making a tent for our shared breathing. He said my name, raw and hot against my face, under the tent of my hair, and the sound of his voice went right through me, like a switch had been flipped, and I started to come, gradually at first and then stronger, waves of heat moving through my womb and outward, like my skin was lit from inside with liquid mercury. Ash flipped me onto my back and lifted my knees with his hands, pressing them apart as he drove into me, his cry of release buried in my hair as his body convulsed, the muscles in his back and his thighs rippling, and he let out a long, shuddering breath and collapsed beside me.
We lay side by side on the mattress, watching the changing patterns of cloud and moon as they drifted across the ceiling. After a few minutes Ash got up and crossed in the dark to the bathroom; I heard water running, the toilet flush, and then he was back, smelling of Listerine. He stretched out alongside me, his shoulder just touching mine, laying his palm lightly on my belly. I had a vague urge to pee, but I didn't want to move, didn't want whatever had to happen next to happen. I just wanted to lie there and breathe in our combined smells, to listen to our breathing slow and then match each other's. An old Eddy Arnold song popped into my head—"Make the world go away"—as clear as if somebody in the next room had switched on a radio. Tears dammed up in the base of my throat, but I held them in. I held on to all of it, as long as I could, and by the time I finally turned to look at Ash, I saw that he was asleep.
I rolled onto my side and studied him in the half-light. In sleep, all the lines in his face had smoothed out, making him look the way I guessed he must have looked at twelve, or twenty, before the cares of life caught up with him, before his disappointments had begun to etch themselves at the corners of his eyes and between his brows. I watched his chest rise and fall in a slow, even cadence and thought about what he'd said about wanting to go home. The gap between us had been bridged, if only momentarily, bodily, but was that bridge enough to stretch all the way from Nashville to Texas? Maybe, I thought, we could meet in the middle and start over, in a place that wasn't loaded with history. But still, we'd carry all our old baggage with us; it still wouldn't be home.
I got up, stiff and sore in places I hadn't been sore in ages, and made my way to the bathroom, shutting the door quietly behind me before switching on the light. I peed and flushed, then splashed my face with cold water, drying it on a brand-new towel, the Wal-Mart price tag still affixed, that sat in a stack on the edge of the sink. My mouth felt dry and sour, and I opened the mirrored cabinet over the sink to look for the Listerine. I found it, along with a toothbrush and toothpaste, a bottle of aspirin, and a pint of Jack Daniel's, drunk about a third of the way down.
I closed the cabinet and turned out the light, walking quietly back into the bedroom. Ash had turned on his side, away from the window, one arm stretched over his head. I knelt beside the mattress and touched his hip, but he didn't stir. The sadness in me felt huge and immovable, like a rockslide over the road, with
Ash caught on one side and me on the other. I'd been fooling myself. There was no bridge. Making love hadn't changed anything, had only torn open long-held hurts and heaped a whole new set on top of the old ones. I couldn't bring Ash back home, save him from himself. I couldn't even save myself.
Ash didn't wake as I stepped into my panties, hooked my bra, pulled my dress over my head in the dark. The moon was gone and there was a cool spring tang in the air, carrying on it a faint tinge of wood smoke, as I stepped out the door of the trailer and walked barefoot across the yard, hugging my arms across my chest. Letting myself into the house, I took care to shut the screen door quietly behind me. Someone had left on the hood light over the kitchen stove, and there was an empty glass in the sink that hadn't been there earlier.
I stood there as the icebox hummed and the hands on the clock inched past one o'clock, a hollow place like a peach pit lodged between my ribs, thinking about Ash sleeping out there alone on a bare mattress, and Denny and Will drowsing together in my double bed, tangled up together all sated and happy, the way husbands and wives were supposed to. Then I slunk into Jude's room and crawled between the covers, wrinkled dress, dirty feet and all, and lay grasping in vain at the edges of sleep, till morning.
chapter ten
I stood in the kitchen doorway in my rumpled dress and snarled hair, squinting at the clock in disbelief and trying to figure out whether I had a chance of getting to work on time if I pushed it, or whether I ought to just go ahead and put on the coffee, call Peggy and say I'd be late, and generally take things slow and lick my wounds.
I poured water into the Mr. Coffee and shook a scoopful of grounds into the filter, then pulled out a chair and sat down at the table, a table Ash had built himself before I ever knew him, spreading my hands flat on the blond wood surface. I felt flayed, inside and out, even the parts of me Ash hadn't had any direct access to. My head and my bladder ached, and my hipbones felt wrenched sideways in their sockets. I'd already peeked under my dress, seen the bite marks and bruises, the beard burn across the tops of my breasts and thighs. Meanwhile, the house was as quiet as a church; the sun peeked over the window sash with cheerful impertinence, as if to say that the whole rest of the world was grateful and happy, so what was the matter with me?
What was the matter with me? I'd had sex with my husband, which wasn't immoral or illegal, either one. The only thing I was guilty of was unrealistic expectations. But then there were probably hundreds of women just like me, some of them no doubt right here in Cade County, sitting at their kitchen tables waiting for the coffee to perk and feeling more or less the same sort of thing—an inner letdown, the wretched realization that, sex or no sex, some things were just too broke to fix.
I missed Jude, missed his goofy Spider-Man pajamas, missed listening to him sing as he poured milk all over the table along with his Cocoa Puffs. On the other hand, at least he wasn't here to see me dawdling around the kitchen in my dirty feet and slept-in clothes, wallowing in remorse as nine o'clock drew closer and closer.
The kitchen filled with the fortifying aroma of coffee, and I was trying to muster the wherewithal to get up from the table and pour myself a cup when Will Culpepper appeared, yawning and stretching, his flannel shirt half buttoned and his jeans drooping low on his hips, his black hair hanging in his face. My heart skipped a beat. I'd once seen a photo taken on the day Ash married Denny's mama, and this was just how he'd looked that day, young and slinky and dark-haired, rightful heir to all the bounty life had to offer.
Will swept a forelock off his face. "Hey. I thought I smelled coffee."
"It's just done," I said. "Help yourself. Cups are in the cabinet by the sink. No, the other side."
He took down two earthenware mugs, filled them and placed one in front of me, then pulled out the chair opposite mine and eased into it, setting his own coffee on the tabletop. A Southern boy, coming from money, he d no doubt had good manners drilled into him from an early age.
I pushed the sugar bowl toward him. "There's milk in the icebox if you want it," I said, but he shook his head and took an exploratory sip of the strong, black brew. My brother Bailey always claimed my coffee had the taste and consistency of 30-weight Pennzoil, but Will Culpepper just sighed, his long bass player's hands curled around his cup, and looked at me with a vague but pleasant expression. He really was criminally good-looking. What spoiled it was the fact that he knew it, knew it and made no secret of it, was obviously used to working it for all it was worth. I said a little silent prayer for Denny, whose hide was thick, but possibly not thick enough for this.
"Did you have a good night?" I asked, then immediately felt myself flush at the unfortunate choice of words. Will's eyebrow quirked up again, along with one corner of his mouth. "I meant, well—how was the bed?" Damn. I picked up my coffee and gulped, scalding the inside of my mouth. At leas
t that shut me up for a second.
"The bed was fine." His eyes took me in slowly and fully, from my ratted hair to last night's dress and what was left of my makeup. He sat back in his chair, the barest trace of a smile at the corners of his mouth. "How 'bout you? Did you have a good night?"
I didn't have a chance to form any kind of answer, plausible or otherwise, before the back screen door squealed open. Footsteps came rapidly up the rear hall, and then Ash was there, circling the table, parking himself with his back against the counter, his eyes bloodshot, his hair disheveled. I couldn't help noting that his half-buttoned shirt was nearly identical to his new son-in-law's, that his jeans hung on his hips with a similar degree of insouciance.
"Would you like some coffee?" I asked. "It's just made."
"Is something the matter with you?" he said. "Tell me, because I'd really like to know."
"You could at least say 'good morning,'" I said, cutting my eyes toward Will.
"What's good about it? I wake up, sun coming in the window like the first day of creation, and I roll over and the first thing I see—"
"Ash!" I broke in. "This isn't really—"
"The hell it isn't! This is my kitchen, my goddamned house. You're my wife! What was that last night, Lucy? A mercy fuck?"
I set my mug on the table with a crash. "How dare you!" I pushed back my chair. "How dare you accuse me of, of—"
"Of what? Of using me and then just walking out in the middle of the night, like some kind of sleazy one-night stand?"
"Are you talking about me, or you? Because you haven't got a lot of room to—"
"Lord have mercy!"
Denny stood in the doorway, wrapped in my old seersucker robe, shaking a tumble of hair over her shoulders. "What in the world is going on in here? They can probably hear y'all all the way to town." She bent over and planted a kiss on the side of Will's neck. "Mm," she murmured, breathing him in slow and deep.
"Morning, babe," Will said, circling her waist with his arm and pulling her close. "We're having us a nice little breakfast. Just family."
Ash jabbed his finger in Will's direction. "You keep out of this," he said. "You're walking a thin line already around here, Son, and trust me, I am not in the mood."
"Daddy!" Denny said. "What's the matter with you? Why are y'all squalling at each other like a bunch of cats?"
She took note or my appearance, looked at Ash, then me again. "Oh my God!" She laughed, then clapped a hand over her mouth. "Did you guys spend the night together?"
"No, as a matter of fact, we didn't," Ash said. "Because, see, Lucy here got up and snuck out in the middle of the night, without so much as a by-your—"
"Ash, shut up. Denny, hon, this is really just between your daddy and me."
"No, it's not," Denny replied. "I mean, seeing's how y'all are having it out right here in the middle of the house and all." She turned to take a mug out of the cabinet. "I knew this would happen!" she said as she poured herself a cup of coffee. "You should have seen them right after they first got together, back when I first lived with them, when I was fourteen," she told Will. "They couldn't keep their hands off each other. I remember one night I saw them doing it outside in the front yard! Right up against the side of the pickup, under a big old full moon."
"You watched us?" I asked, amazed, at the same time Ash said, "When was that? I don't remember that."
"Y'all used to try and sneak around, but you never were very good at it. I always found out somehow. Remember that time you checked into the Piney View?"
I stood up. "Excuse me, but I am really not comfortable talking about all this in front of—of everybody."
Denny sat down on Will's knee. "I don't get what the big deal is," she went on, sipping her coffee with one hand, the other on the back of Will's neck. "Jeez, you guys are married! And anyway, anybody with two eyes knows y'all are made for each other. Right?" she asked Will, who nodded his chin just enough to seem polite.
"Let me tell you something," I said. "You two are young. You think you invented sex. But wait till you've been married awhile. You'll see. Things get complicated."
They gazed at me out of their languid, sleepy faces.
"Look," I said, "it's not like I'm trying to spoil your visit, or that I'm not happy you're here. But your daddy and I could really use a few minutes in private."
"Whatever." Denny set her mug on the table. "We'll go take a shower. Okay, sweetie?" To seal the deal, she and Will embarked upon a long, full-mouthed kiss, not just mouths but tongues, teeth, the whole nine yards. I wanted to leap across the table and strangle them both with my bare hands.
After they'd disentangled themselves, Ash and I stood staring at each other across the empty table. The bathroom door slammed shut, and moments later came the sound of water rushing through the pipes.
"Great," I said. "Not only have they spent the whole night doing it in my bed, now they're doing it in my shower."
"I've got news for you." Ash took down a cup from the cabinet and filled it with the last few inches of coffee. "Those two may have just discovered sex with each other, but Will Culpep-per's been practicing on other people for a long time."
He downed the coffee in one long gulp and set the mug on the countertop. A cardinal alighted on a branch outside the window—red as blood, a male, the ones with all the plumage. "Why did you take off?" Ash said.
"Are you talking about last summer, or last night?"
"Both. Either." I couldn't hold his eye, and looked back toward the window. The bird was gone. "Jesus, Lucy—have I got to nail you to the floorboards? Don't try to tell me last night didn't mean anything, because I know it did, and you know it, too. Why are you forever running away?"
"Because I knew—I know—this isn't going to work."
"How can it work if you won't stay in one spot for two goddamned minutes?"
"I looked in your bathroom cabinet," I said. "Over the sink."
"What were you doing in there?"
"Looking for Listerine." In all the wrong places. Oh, why was my head full of this foolishness?
Ash sighed and gripped the edge of the counter. I saw the network of veins in the backs of his hands, a blueprint I'd once memorized and could have described blindfolded, the same way I could've found my way from home to town and back again. Why couldn't I be in the same room with Ash and keep my wits? You'd think after seven years I'd have built up some immunity, but the backs of his hands, the lines around his eyes, the frayed buttonholes on his shirtfront still undid me.
"Look, just because— What you saw doesn't change what happened last night," he said.
"Ever since you got here, you've been telling me your drinking is under control."
"Can we just for once have an honest-to-God conversation between us without it being about my drinking?"
"It is about your drinking! I don't understand why you won't admit that! Why can't you just stop?"
"Oh, Luce. Jesus Christ." He let go of the counter edge and scraped his hair back from his face with both palms, closing his eyes, stretching the skin of his face taut.
"I know you think you've got this image to uphold, that you've got to tough it out," I said. "But it's not working, can't you see that? It won't go away on its own."
"Have you heard a thing I've said? This isn't just about me. I mean, yeah, I've got a problem, but you can't keep laying it all on me."
He glanced over his shoulder at the coffeemaker, like a fresh pot might have appeared there by magic, then turned back with a sigh. "Listen to me a minute. Just listen, and don't say anything until I'm through," he said. "I met this priest. Father Laughlin. He runs the AA meetings at the Catholic church down in Jefferson."
"You went to an AA meeting?"
"I think you should go see him. Just drive down there some afternoon and meet him, hear what he has to say."
"About what? I'm not a drunk, and I'm not Catholic."
"And nothing's ever your fault, is it? Lucy Hatch is queen of her own little worl
d, and anything bad that happens, it's off with somebody else's head."
I sucked in my breath, but before I could answer, something stopped me, seemed to rise up like a hand and place itself, gently but firmly, over my mouth. Something—not Ash's voice, not exactly a voice at all, but something small but insistent inside me—told me, for once, to be still.
"I know I need help," Ash said. "I know that. But you've got to own up to your side of it, too, or we haven't got a chance."
I could hear the dogs snuffling around on the back porch, pressing their noses against the screen. Ash pushed away from the counter, opened the pantry door, filled the metal scoop from the big bag of Purina, just like he'd done the very first morning after I'd slept over, just like he'd been doing it every day in the meantime.
"Father Laughlin," he said as he skirted the table and headed for the hall. "St. Jude's, in Jefferson." The screen door shut behind him.
I called peggy and asked her to open the shop, told her I'd be in by ten, ten-thirty at the latest, that I'd explain when I got there. After what seemed like an eternity, the shower stopped running, and I waited as long as I decently could before sneaking down the hall and making sure the coast was clear. The bedroom door was closed, and I could hear murmuring and muffled laughter behind it. I guessed, after what Denny had said earlier, it was only fair, given what she'd had to put up with between her daddy and me from the other side of that door a few years back.