He hears water running in the bathroom; he knocks.
Kevin? she calls.
Yeah, he says into the door. He imagines her in the shower, behind the plastic curtain beaded with black mold, scrubbing her scars. He has never seen her naked, never touched her anywhere except that one place.
Just get yourself a drink or whatever, she tells him. I’ll be right out.
He wanders into the kitchen, fills a cup with water from the sink, sits. Darkness presses up against the windows, nibbles the edges of the weak kitchen light. A lingerie catalogue sits on the table beneath a plate of dried eggs and he looks at the cover model’s legs. A moment later he hears them, her sons, coming into the house, and he freezes.
In the kitchen they grab cans of beer—not Nicole’s beer, she sticks to wine, but their beer, beer they have convinced their mother to buy or that she has supplied without being asked; one of her little gifts to them, along with the cigarettes, the convenience foods, the absence of a curfew. They take a pizza from a box in the fridge, twist the dial on the oven. As they suck the foam from the top of the cans, their eyes roam through the room and finally land on him.
Shit, man, Titty’s here.
Again? Dude, do you ever go home?
Nah, he’s fucking Nic, like nonstop.
Ugh.
Fucking freak show, right? Gimp Nic and the Tit!
One of them imitates her shuffling step, leg turned in, arms flapping, eyes rolled up, while the other sticks his neck out and humps his brother’s backside. They cry out in shattering falsettos; they grunt and slap and moan, they take turns playing Nicole, playing Kevin. It seems to go on and on, louder and louder, the big boys in their black clothes splashing through the room. Kevin shrinks against the wall. They crash into the kitchen chairs, knock their hips on the chrome edge of the table.
Stop, he says, stop it!
Their heads whip toward each other. It speaks! they crow.
You’re disgusting, he whispers.
They laugh like they’ve been punched in the stomach.
What’d you say, Titty?
She’s your mother.
So?
Where is your father? Kevin asks, glancing at them by accident. The boys stop laughing.
Our dad could kick your ass, they say.
But where is he? he repeats. The boys grunt, shout, shuffle, but they don’t actually say anything. He stares at the brown door of the oven, where the pizza is dripping its cheese onto the red coils below the rack.
I think that’s done, he says.
Asshole, they mutter, turning to pull the pizza from the oven with their bare hands, cursing as they attempt to shift the pizza to a plate before it buckles in half. As they slice the pie into pieces their mother walks in, bare-legged, scrubbing at her wet head with a towel.
Hey guys, she says. What’re you making?
What’s it look like, Nic.
She pinches Duncan’s shoulder; the boy shrugs away.
I thought we could watch a movie later, she says.
They shake their heads, turning, plates of pizza pressed to their chests. We’re going out.
But you just got back.
Things to do, Nic, they say, with big fake smiles. As they file past they look at Kevin, and their smiles harden.
Later, Titty.
The boys leave. Nicole finishes her hair, then goes to the oven, snapping the bake knob to Off.
Every time, she murmurs, and he can smell the cheese burning, can hear the boys laughing in the hall. She dips her head to wrap it into the towel, vertebrae spiking beneath the skin on her steam-flushed neck.
They’re just kids, he says.
She turns, eyes wide. God, Kevin, I know.
She drags her foot to the fridge, gets a bottle of diet cola, pours it over ice into a plastic cup, then adds wine. Sitting opposite him she sips, running her little finger in circles over the tabletop. There is nothing for him to do here except watch her. The front door slams. She lights a cigarette.
What were you guys talking about?
He shrugs.
Did they give you shit or what?
He shrugs again.
Don’t just sit there, say something!
What do you want me to say? he says, and she slaps him. Before he can even feel the sting her hand leaves on his cheek she is on her feet.
I’m sorry, fuck, Kevin, I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m like this, I really don’t! she yelps, stubbing her cigarette out, her hand shaking as she begins clearing away the bags and empty cans that litter the tabletop. This place is a pit, she says, pulling the bin from beneath the sink. Can I make you a sandwich? Or we could order something. Chinese or whatever. I haven’t eaten. I was waiting for the boys—
She’s speaking to the garbage, trying to cram all the junk in. Duncan! Kenneth! she yells over her shoulder. Take this trash out now! I told you before!
They’ve gone out, Kevin reminds her.
She looks at him, mouth open, then turns back to the trash.
I’ll take it, he says.
No, you—you don’t have do anything, they should do it, I’ve told them to put this junk outside, I keep—she shoves again at the trash—telling them—
He gets up, lifts the can, takes it outside, dumps it into the bin. Bottles and cans crash atop more bottles and cans and the sound bounces away through the cul-de-sac, then rams back against him as he stands at the curb, his hands at the back of his hips, staring into the dark street; even though the streetlamp is out he can see all the little stones on the road. Rocks everywhere. He rolls one beneath the toe of his boot. He could get in his car and go home. He could turn off his phone, he could eat lunch somewhere else, he could stop coming to the driveway, to this house: that’s what her men do, he guesses, they peel themselves away from her, they can’t help it.
He stoops, picks up a rock. Puts it in his pocket.
* * *
In the morning he is still at her house, propped in a kitchen chair beside her bed, his head against the wall, mouth oozing saliva. She is sleeping, arm tossed high on the pillows. There is so much light coming in between the blinds on the windows he guesses it must be almost noon. He stands up carefully, his back sore, his stomach aching; they never did get any food last night, he’d just watched her drink and drink in the kitchen, and then he helped her to her room and she’d asked him to stay until she fell asleep. At the door he listens for the boys; their voices are barely audible, coming from somewhere outside. He goes to the hall bathroom; lifting the toilet seat he is met with a familiar film of piss on the porcelain. Afterward he looks for a toothbrush in the cabinet, but all he finds is an empty box of Band-Aids and several bottles of prescription pills. He reads the labels: her name, high dosages, pain. He closes the cabinet door, rinses his mouth with water from the tap.
When he returns to her room she is awake, sitting up and smiling, girlish, her cheek scarred by the crumpled sheet.
Hi, she says. Sorry. Were you in the chair all night?
He shrugs, drifting in the doorway. She wipes her fingers beneath her eyes, collecting bits of mascara. The bad foot seems especially naked against the bedspread and he imagines putting his hand over it, just to feel it, to be nice to it.
Do you want to lie down for a minute?
He clears his throat. I thought I might go, actually.
Just for a minute, she says, slapping a pillow into shape. It won’t kill you.
He goes to the bed. Leaning to rummage in the nightstand drawer she withdraws a handful of stones and once he has them in his hand he feels better; this is their territory. She lies back and pushes her underwear down and he leans in, the rocks in his fist, his knuckles brushing against her thighs, stirring the flesh between her legs. He bows his head. He does it as slow as he can, pushing the rocks up and up, one after another, a slow liquid press; there are eight, nine stones, and he uses them all. She closes her eyes. He rests his chin against her raised knee, her wetness drooling over his fingers.
When the last one is in, his hand feels light, too light; she ends up with everything, he thinks, but that is the way it is, this is her one consolation.
Swallowing, she opens her eyes, reaching for him.
Come on, she breathes, her hair brushing his face, her sour breath hot on the crown of his head. Don’t you want it?
She unzips him, draws him through the slit in his boxers. He sees that he is half-hard, but his penis is like a plant stapled to his crotch; he hardly recognizes it.
Keep touching me, she insists, wedging herself beneath him. He fumbles between her legs, all grace between them gone. Here, she’s saying, Here, here, but he doesn’t know what here means; his erection wanders, knocking against her bony pelvis, the crepey skin of her stomach. Her hand is down there as well, fishing out the pieces of quartz; they make an obscene sound as they land on the disintegrating carpet. He remembers the boys in the kitchen, chanting Gimp Nic and the Tit; he squeezes his eyes shut and groans.
It’s okay, she says, pulling his hip to hers. There’s room. See?
She thrusts upward; the tip of his penis sinks inside her and he feels immediately how wrong it is. There is nowhere for him to go.
What are you doing? she demands as, withdrawing, he watches himself wilt against her thigh.
I’m sorry, he says.
She drops her head back to the pillow. Shit, she breathes. He’s frozen over her, his arms aching, his legs, bound at the knees by his jeans, like a tail between her thighs.
Lie down, she says, and pushes on his back, right on the hump, until he collapses. In his mind he is cutting off every part of himself that is touching her. She plucks the sheet up to their waists, her bad foot jutting sideways beneath the cover. The light stripes the bed, bends over their bodies. His despair floats somewhere above his head; he could reach up and touch it.
Look, she says, gazing through the window at her boys swinging baseball bats against the trunk of the leafless oak tree. The sound is ceaseless, cruel: whack-shatter, whack-shatter, pieces of bark shooting all the way to the window.
They’re gorgeous, she whispers.
Yes, he says. She turns her back to him. The boys laugh. Bark bullets the glass.
THE CHEAT
We met near the Dumpster. I was on hall duty, which meant emptying all the trash from the dorms and common rooms into black sacks and dragging them out to the bins behind the kitchen. I kept hearing this crunching sound and I thought one of the other kids had nabbed a bag of Fritos, but when I looked around the Dumpster there wasn’t any kid and there weren’t any Fritos.
Instead, he was there, crouched against the wall, half a rat in his mouth. Crunch went the rat bones. Crack-crunch. I stared. He ate everything, even the tail, jerking the body into his mouth with little tosses of his head. There wasn’t a lot of blood and I never saw any guts or anything fall out of his mouth; in a way it was a lot more civilized than some of the kids tucking into a turkey burger on Cookout Night.
When he finished he looked at me, his skinny pink tongue flickering out to clean his whiskers. He was red, with those long black marks on his front legs that made him look like he was wearing evening gloves, and his eyes were a kind of yellow that almost glowed. I had never seen a fox up close.
Hi, I said.
His ears twitched.
Was it good?
He cocked his head. I squatted, plucking my shirt away from my stomach. We watched each other. He sat, tail curled against his side. I held out my hand, palm up. Neither of us moved. The woods behind us crackled and snapped, like cereal in milk, the sounds of nature doing its thing. At night you could hear something running out there—not the way we ran, with our feet dragging and our fat shaking all over the place, but something going fast. Trying to get away.
It’s all right, I said. I won’t hurt you.
He shivered.
Amber! one of the counselors yelled through the doorway. I turned and the fox darted off, leaves spitting beneath his paws.
Shit, what! I yelled back. Wilson’s head popped over the Dumpster.
What are you doing? she asked.
Taking a piss, I said.
Cool it with the language, jokester, Wilson said. We need you in the Circle.
* * *
Prayer Circle was time for us to sit on the floor in the rec room and hold hands and ask Jesus to make us skinny. We were supposed to say things like “I pray for the strength to run a mile Wednesday without stopping” or “I pray for forgiveness for eating outside my Calorie Plan.” I thought about the fox, the way he ate that rat like it was nothing, so neat and easy. Looking at me afterward without any shame at all. It was my second week at camp and I weighed 192 pounds.
* * *
I didn’t have to tell him to come, didn’t have to tell him which room was mine; two days after I’d seen him by the Dumpster I was lying in bed when I saw his head slip beneath the window we had cracked open, the screen torn just enough for him to squeeze through.
It’s you, I whispered. He stepped onto my shoulder, fur brushing my cheek. I sat up and made room for him on the pillow but he sat in my lap instead, a snack pie in his mouth.
For me? I whispered, and he dipped his head, laying the pie on my chest, eyes deep into mine, and I thought about how a person would never look at another person like that, for such a long time, hardly blinking. I tore the wrapper and slid the pie into my hand, breaking off a piece and offering it to him.
Do you like this? I asked, and he took the piece from me and we ate there in the near-dark, comfortable, like we’d done it a hundred times before. Our faces were so close I could almost count the hairs in his velveteen ears. The pie was cherry and the filling was thick, like glue, sticking to my teeth even after I swallowed.
When we were done he licked my lips. I jerked my head back; he paused, waiting, then did it again. His tongue was warm, smooth, clean; I opened my mouth and he got inside it like it was a jar of honey, like it was the best thing he ever tasted, his paws on my chest as if to hold me down as we licked each other clean.
* * *
This happened almost every night, night after night. He brought snack cakes, potato chips, red licorice, jerky. There was a convenience store a half mile down the road; in the woods there were garbage cans, summer cabins with kitchens, campers with coolers and picnic baskets. But I could only guess where he got what he brought, and every night it was something different.
What do I look like to you? I asked after our snack, feeling how I spread over the tiny bed like a bowl of spilled pudding.
Enormous, I said. Right? A blimp. I puffed out my cheeks.
He twitched that place above his mouth where the whiskers entered, two soft white lozenges I longed to touch but never did. Don’t, his eyes said. He didn’t like it when I said anything bad about myself.
It’s just that I think you’re so beautiful, I explained, but it was more than that; I had this weird ache when I looked at him, like his prettiness hurt me. He tucked his head beneath my hand, pressing it against my palm. I pet him. He kept butting his head against me, insistent, all four paws sinking into my stomach.
What? What do you want? I asked. Hm?
He rubbed his head back and forth in my hand.
More? Like this? I dug my fingers deep into his fur; he pushed hard against me. I was stroking him all over. He was so clean, so soft, almost meatless; I’d had cats heavier than him. He crouched between my breasts, back arching and slinking as I touched him, his tail tapping my thighs. I didn’t think about what was happening. I just let it happen. I lifted my hips. He stretched his jaw to my chin, resting it there, his whiskers trembling as he breathed his warm breath over my mouth. Lauren snored above us. I swallowed a sigh and closed my eyes.
* * *
I’d lost thirty pounds since the start of camp and I was learning how to run without puking, how to lift weights without feeling like I was going to pass out. I didn’t have to lie down to button my shorts. At mealtimes I told everyone I wanted to
be a vegetarian but in secret I was still eating meat, hamburger patties and hot dogs he got from someone’s grill, studded with little holes from where his teeth had split through the skin. I was eating everything I had eaten before and more.
One night Wilson sat next to me at dinner all cozy and said You know, God gave us animals to sustain us. It isn’t wrong to eat meat as long as we eat it in moderation. She pointed her chin at the pile of chicken breasts on the cafeteria counter. I said Yeah, I know, and chewed a slice of cucumber dipped in nonfat ranch. Wilson squeezed my wrist and told me that what she really wanted to say was that she was proud of me, that I was an example to the other campers, that she could see Christ working in my life and that she hoped I could see it, too. I swallowed the cucumber and smiled.
* * *
No matter how long I’d waited to see him, no matter how much I wanted to do all the other things we did, the food came first, and it always had to be slow. I loved that about him, how he took his time; nothing was rushed. He wanted to be with me. And though it was always him who decided everything, always him who made the rules, everything that happened felt right. We would eat, and then we talked a little, and then we’d go quiet, and then, when I thought it might not happen, that it would never happen again, his tail would start to swish across my thighs. He used his nose to catch the end of my T-shirt, pushing it up. His ears quivered beneath my palms. His chin rubbed against my breasts, his fur sliding all over me. I helped him get my underwear off my hips. His little teeth were like needles, sometimes nibbling at my skin, just so I would know they were there, that he could hurt me if he wanted to, could take a piece of me in his mouth and swallow it whole.
* * *
It was midnight when the dorm door was flung open and the light snapped on. He froze between my legs.
What the heck, Lauren murmured, creaking awake in the bed above me.
Heartbreaker Page 11