by Mara White
As kids we swam there, even as the township enlarged the lake and pushed hard to attract campers and speed boaters, jet skiers and anglers, anything other than us local kids learning to do underwater handstands and doggy paddle. I was an okay swimmer, I guess, at least before I developed breasts, but Storm and Farren were champions, the very best. They were the strongest swimmers in the school district, and nobody could keep up with them.
After the age of ten, I only entered the water in shorts and a T-shirt, no matter how hot the summer sun, no matter how few people were swimming or roaming the shore. I used to think I stopped wearing a bathing suit because I’d gotten my period or because my breasts were bigger than any other ten-year-old west of the Mississippi. Sometimes I speculated it was because of the murder, that stripping down in front of strangers, letting them really see me, had become nothing short of unbearable. I hated to be vulnerable.
After they found the Dodge Dart, I realized that maybe it was just my subconscious calling to me. Avoid the lake, it’s a watery grave, a family crypt that is too saturated with history.
It was the summer after I graduated high school that they found the Dart. Eight years were enough for the scandal to settle, even in a town like Sulphur; they’d put it to rest, especially after the murder/suicide on the campground out by the highway. Just some other drunk and homicidal idiots, but at least not from my family. The gossip had gotten quieter and quieter until it was barely more than a whisper from the grocery cart behind me in line at the store or the big-eared teenager handing out rental shoes at the bowling alley. I could see it in their eyes, but at least strangers had stopped asking. They’d stopped talking behind my back and, most importantly, stopped staring. Until that one hot July when they’d dredged both lakes, Veteran’s and Arbuckle, using up city money to elevate the dams and make improvements for tourism.
I was in the trailer swatting flies and leafing through a Sears catalogue when Stacey Dobson rapped on the screen door, yelling, “Aimeee!” and got me tripping over chairs on my way to the door, convinced that a tornado must be tearing through.
“They found your dad’s car! At the bottom of the lake!”
Her cheeks were flushed pink from running in the stagnant heat, and circles of darker purple stained the armpits of her jumper.
“What?” I asked. I remembered standing in the doorframe. I thought about his body on the floor, how his skin felt like wet plastic wrap over raw liver after all signs of life had left him. The look of death in his eyes was really the most sober I could remember ever seeing him.
“The car was at the bottom of the lake! They drained it to widen the lakebed and there it was, sitting out in the middle.”
“Was it empty?” I asked her, my eyes narrowing to take her in. She was nearsighted, the Dobson girl, and in all remedial classes at the high school. She was a few years older than me. As children we’d been amicable in a freeze tag, king of the mountain, Barbie-sharing sort of way, but after my dad died, I looked at everyone suspiciously, wondering what they could want from me. I would have no friends in this place.
Stacey looked desperate and disheveled, sweat along her hairline, pinpoints of red starting to appear on her face.
“Don’t know, they just brought in a tow truck to pull it out. You can only see the top of it.”
“How do you know it’s my dad’s car?” The words felt sharp as they exited my mouth, like they had tines and were looking to plunge into any soft surface. Stacey’s chubby cheeks, the soft round of her gut. It had been a long time since I’d said my dad, words I typically avoided at all costs.
“Divers,” Stacey said. Her eyes lit up like streetlights through a dismal fog. The lack of news in this town turned everyone into vultures for tragedy.
“Let’s go,” I said. I jammed my keys in my pocket and threw my yellow and green windbreaker over my shoulder. Grabbing a pack of cigarettes and a lighter my mom had left on the counter, I switched off the light and promised myself that I wouldn’t stick around this damned town only to witness my own downfall. Damned if I’d let them all stand around defaming and slandering my family with not a one of us to hold them accountable for their local poison—a bitter mouthful of gossip. Show them that an Olsen, at least this Olsen, didn’t have mercy for anyone dumb enough to cross her.
Danny has his own key so he lets himself in. He drops his phone and keys on the table and I roll over in bed. I try to smooth my hair back a little and sort of wish I could dash into the bathroom to brush my teeth. There is now some pressure to please him; in a twisted way, I’m competing with his wife.
Danny walks into my bedroom, which actually has a lot more light than the unit across the hall. He unbuttons his work shirt slowly and I can see his hard cock outlined through his tailored slacks. He came over to fuck before work.
He doesn’t say anything as he strips off his pants along with his boxers. Danny is fit for his age, not that I’ve ever really seen anyone else naked. My girlfriends used to joke about whether or not he takes Viagra. But Danny’s cock is always hard for me; there’s never been an issue in the bedroom.
“Good morning, Sunshine,” he says in his easy, laid-back way. I swear there’s a Zen element about this man. He may have an ugly temper when something makes him snap, but other than typical New Yorker’s impatience, he is always relaxed.
One hand slides under the back of my neck while the other finds my hip and tears down my pajama pants. I pull back the covers and he slides underneath. He kneads my ass hard while he sucks on my tits, then slides down between my legs and spreads apart my thighs.
“Goddamn, I’ve missed you, Sunshine. You feel so warm.”
I close my eyes and melt into his mouth. An orgasm appears within minutes of him gently tonguing my clit and fucking me with two fingers. I arch my back and moan. There are benefits to always having the same lover. Danny knows my body and he knows what it likes. He pins my hips to the bed as he pulls his body up mine, his dick smearing precum on my thigh as he drags it up my leg. He teases the head in over and over as I turn my head to the side and thrust my hips up, trying to get full penetration. I’ll come again just from the maddening teasing.
He dives down and captures my erect nipple between his teeth. I yelp in protest but then he greedily starts sucking. He keeps up the teasing, alternating between slamming full hilt into me and then dragging his thick cock through my swollen lips to stimulate my clit. His hot exhale is in my ear. He whispers, threatens, talks a little bit dirty.
I want to come again so badly I start to whimper and plead with him, “Oh, God, Danny, please just give it to me!”
“Promise me you won’t leave me again, Sunshine,” he says through gritted teeth. He’s trying to hold back too. I can’t help but wonder if he still fucks his wife. Does he do this to her too? He slams his full length into me right as that image pops my magic bubble. I’m not the only one Danny makes love to. He isn’t only mine alone, which is exactly what the dumb nineteen-year-old version of myself believed. He knows her body, too—in fact, he’s married to it.
A low moan erupts from me as pleasure rips through my body. Despite the physical satisfaction, I’m drowning in melancholy. I come in equal parts ecstasy and disappointment. A sad orgasm because it means both fulfillment and settling. I don’t know how to give this up—I don’t know how to stop wanting it.
Danny pulls out and is up on his knees. His cock is gigantic and throbbing and he’s aiming it right at my face. Still reeling from pleasure and confusion, I pull myself up to sitting, Danny grabs my hair and shoves his cock against my closed mouth. He’s rougher than usual and I instinctively back up. He yanks my head hard and fucks my mouth right into the back of my throat. I gag every time he pulls out, but he doesn’t slow down and he doesn’t let up.
“Don’t leave me again,” he pants as he yanks my hair hard.
I shake my head and try to gently push him off.
“Do not leave me again,” he says, no tenderness in his speech. He fucks
my face hard—too hard. I’ve never had him be this rough before and I start to feel scared. Then he unloads on my tongue and my mouth fills with his hot semen. It would seem like he, too, has been celibate for six months, if the amount of cum in my mouth is any indication.
It gathers with thick saliva at the back of my throat as I rise to my knees and signal to him with one finger, “I’ll be right back, after I spit this in the sink.”
“Swallow,” Danny says.
My eyes bug out in surprise. He knows I don’t like to—that I’m a spitter. I swallow it down in one gulp and hold back from gagging and puking it up on the duvet cover. If my instinct is right, Danny feels like punishing me this morning for breaking up with him.
I push past him and stomp into the hall.
“Be a doll, Sunshine, and make some coffee, would you?”
“I don’t have a fucking coffee maker yet,” I growl, wanting to address what just happened while he’s plainly ignoring it.
“You do, babe. It’s under the sink. A brand-spanking-new, super-deluxe one.”
I jerk it out from under the sink and tear open a box of filters. The shower hits the tub, followed by the glass shower door sliding closed. Thanks for the gourmet coffee and raping my mouth for a homecoming.
But what do I do instead? I cry. And sit cross-legged on the floor and pet my cats while they purr and inhale their breakfast. I pick at the linoleum, a standard black and white checker pattern. Danny takes a ten-minute shower and emerges already speaking on the phone. He comes into the kitchen buttoning his work shirt.
I’m seated at the small table, sipping my coffee, with Elvis in my lap and Priscilla lying on my feet.
He kisses me on the forehead as he speaks into the phone. “Well, they better fucking have it there by noon if they know what’s good for them.”
Danny, AKA Daniel Montclair, né Danilo Bartolini. Nope, he’s not French—it’s what he named his business, and then he named himself after it. He says his father got the name off of a bakery he used to walk by on the way to Danny’s school. Danny is a wealthy WOP from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, who struck it rich in the shipping industry. And by rich, I mean big money, the ones you never have to worry about. Summer house in Sicily and condos in Aspen and St. Barts. Two marriages, four kids and four cars. I knew there had been a wife number one, but Danny left out that he’d then remarried and never divorced the second one. Full-time driver, a bevy of social engagements, the best suits money can buy. And one forlorn lover. Aimee Olsen. Born and raised in Sulphur, Oklahoma. Twenty-six. Danny’s sunshine. The reliable one.
Danny and I are basically from different planets but somehow cut from the same cloth. We both hide our pasts and pretend to be something we’re not.
I wasn’t popular, I wasn’t all that smart. I had a body that wasn’t in style in high school, but I knew from walking down the street that it was a body that older men liked. Full hips, wide thighs, big breasts and a soft tummy. Curly blonde hair and big blue eyes. I knew that I looked like a doll and even if I didn’t, people felt obliged to tell me so all the time.
He’s still talking on the phone as he gulps the coffee and puts the mug in the sink. He touches my shoulder absentmindedly and his hand wanders to my nipple. I don’t like being a fuck toy. I think I hate being a mistress. But anyone would have fallen like I did, the moment they met him. You can’t say no to Danny. No one ever does. No one did.
Mr. Bowden was nice, but he was always on edge. He never seemed to have enough time and he was impatient with me, just like Mama always was when we were getting ready for church and I took too long in the bathroom. When he smiled, his lips shook just a little. It was enough to make me feel like his smiles weren’t real and he was somehow always pretending. I pretended too. We were all pretending.
He got me orange juice in my very own carton, and even pulled open the part where you sip from for me and stuck a straw in it. I smiled big at him and he gave me back his shaky smile that did something to my stomach.
“Aimee, just answer the question,” Mama said. She was wearing her flowered dress and had her two curls perfectly in place.
Mr. Bowden wasn’t allowed to talk to me unless Mama was present. He always told us, “I’m on your side. I work for you, but you’ve got to help me by corroborating the truth.”
I didn’t think Mama knew what he meant, but we nodded our heads yes and he turned on his tape recorder. The juice was more acidic than the orange drink we had at home. It gave me canker sores on my tongue, but I didn’t tell him that because I didn’t want him to feel bad for giving me something.
He was a nice man and Mama said he was helping us out. I knew a lot about him after only three or four sessions. Like, he hated it when I answered, “I don’t know,” or “I don’t remember,” to any of his questions. His brow knitted and sometimes he would even pinch the bridge of his nose. I said, “I don’t remember” three times the first time we met. He would stop breathing every time I said it, so I realized pretty quick that it wasn’t a good answer—not the answer he wanted.
If I told him something exciting and acted like I was sure about it, his face lit right up and he started writing fast even though he had the tape recorder.
Mr. Bowden said that if we could all get on the same page, I wouldn’t have to testify against Storm and Farren in front of the judge. He told me a bunch of times, “Believe me, you don’t want to have to do that.”
So I told him things that were not really what happened. They were stories Storm and Farren made up and my job was to believe them and say them too. Tell every one of them that it was what I saw. And Mama had to say it was like that too, even though she didn’t remember because she was knocked out on the floor.
It was funny because we never talked about that night at home. We went back to the trailer and the steps groaned when we walked up them. I couldn’t look at the kitchen without seeing him lying on the floor, his blood like a red candy apple that turned black as it dried. The pilot light went out on the stove and we didn’t know how to fix it so we used the microwave instead and everything tasted chewy and soggy, but we still ate it. Mama didn’t say much of anything. She passed me slices of buttered bread to make a sandwich with my meatloaf.
I really wanted to say out loud what happened—it was like an itch you can’t reach and you can’t think about anything but scratching it—but instead I had to say the answers that Mr. Bowden wanted. It was like a game of twenty questions and I was getting good at it. Mama stayed up really late watching TV. She didn’t turn the lights on and we sat in the dark while I sang along with the commercials.
“Get in bed, Aimee,” she told me.
She didn’t even tuck me in when I went to sleep. But I always woke up at some point in the night, either from strange sounds outside the trailer or from the muffled sobs of Mama crying into her pillow. The fear from that night was still thick and it would try to creep into my head while I slept. And sometimes, when I tiptoed into her room, I’d think about Daddy. I’d think about him so much that I was almost sure I’d see him. Either hiding around the corner in the hallway or standing in the darkest corner of her room, just beyond reach and where my eyes couldn’t see him. I always wished I had saved the fire extinguisher, but it was me who got rid of it after Daddy died—dragged it out past the dirt pile and all the way over to the creek, then threw it and watched the water carry it downstream until it got stuck on a fallen branch.
Sometimes I heard his voice in the wind or in my sleep. Always with the same little whistle-lisp that would sneak out around his missing tooth.
“Come here, Aim-girl. Why can’t you tell the fuckin’ truth?”
I’d slip into bed with Mama when she was crying and she didn’t even notice I was there. She didn’t kiss me or cuddle me. The only comfort I had was to keep telling myself that she loved me. I was afraid I did this to all of us—that this mess was my fault. I thought it was me who had ruined our family.
“Aimee,” Mama cried. “You’re all I g
ot left.”
After our reunion in bed, he kisses me goodbye at the front door.
“I love you, baby. Dinner at seven,” Danny coos as he massages my shoulders. I thought I couldn’t live without him while we were apart, but now I think he’ll destroy me first rather than ever let me go again. It feels like it was a trick to bring me back so that he could punish me for leaving. He throws down a wad of cash and two platinum credit cards in my name. Then a cell phone, a keycard to his office and one to his car. I sweep everything toward me and take another swig of coffee. Not much better than a prostitute. I am now officially a kept woman.
Danny got me back but he still hasn’t left her. His wife, Mrs. Bartolini, Mrs. Montclair to the business world, still lords over his estate, his dick and probably his whole consciousness. I picture her looking like stereotypical mafia. I don’t know what she looks like; I’ve never met her. But she probably has a hit out on me now, probably a fucking sniper with his crosshairs trained right at my kitchen window.
Danny kisses me goodbye with way too much tongue, and I cry as soon as he leaves. I roll out of the chair onto the floor and whimper like a child. The carpet is white and soft, so new and pristine; I stroke it with my hand and think about how eventually, everything gets dirty. Elvis laps up my tears and purrs while he does it.
How do I have so little self-esteem that I got myself here? Why can’t I just leave him? I don’t know how to be Aimee. I only know how to be Sunshine, Danny’s pushover girlfriend.
Only one week later and I’m back at the old job. I’m running late for work thanks to the goddamn traffic—it’s so bad I could probably walk across town faster than the bus is moving. It’s hot and humid with no sign of a breeze, and tensions run high in this city and people get crazy when they can barely breathe or keep their clothes dry in the heat.