by Joe Hill
Lee had instructions to call the doctor if his mother took a turn for the worse, but he thought in her case dying actually represented a turn for the better. With that in mind, the first person he called was Merrin. He was naked at the time, and it was a good feeling, standing there in the dim kitchen with nothing on, Merrin’s solicitous voice in his ear. She said she just needed to get dressed and she’d be right over, and immediately Lee imagined her almost undressed herself, in her bedroom at her parents’ house. Little silk drawers, maybe. Girlish panties with pink flowers on them. She asked if he needed anything. Lee said he just needed a friend.
After he hung up, he had another drink, rum and Coke. He imagined her picking out a skirt, turning this way and that to admire herself in the mirror on the back of her closet door. Then he had to stop thinking about it, was getting himself a little too turned on. He thought maybe he ought to get dressed himself. He debated with himself about putting on a shirt and finally decided it wouldn’t do to be bare-chested this morning. Yesterday’s stained white button-down and jeans were in the laundry cubby. He considered going upstairs to get something fresh, then asked himself WWID and decided to put on the old things. Wrinkled, unwashed clothes sort of completed the picture of painful loss. Lee had managed his own behavior for almost a decade by asking WWID, and it had won him his life and kept him out of trouble, had kept him safe, safe from himself.
He thought she’d be along in another few minutes. Time to make some more calls. He called the doctor and said his mother was at rest. He called his father in Florida. He called the congressman’s office and spoke with the congressman himself for a minute. The congressman asked if Lee wanted to pray with him, to have a silent prayer together, right there on the phone. Lee said he did. Lee said he wanted to thank God for giving him these last three months with his mother. They really had been precious. The two of them were quiet for a while, both of them on the phone but saying nothing. Finally the congressman cleared his throat, a little emotionally, and said Lee would be in his thoughts. Lee thanked him and said good-bye.
Last of all he called Ig. He thought maybe Ig would cry when he heard the news, but Ig pulled one of his not-infrequent surprises and was calm, quietly affectionate. Lee had spent the past five years in and out of college, had taken courses in psychology, sociology, theology, political science, and media theory, but his real major was Ig Studies, and yet in spite of years of diligent coursework he was not always able to anticipate Ig’s reactions.
“I don’t know how she found the strength to hang on so long,” Lee said to Ig.
And Ig said, “From you, Lee. She found it in you.”
There wasn’t much Lee Tourneau found funny, but at this he barked with laughter, then turned it into a harsh, shuddering sob. Lee had discovered, years before, that he could cry whenever he needed to and that a crying person could steer a conversation in any direction he wanted to take it.
“Thank you,” he said, something else he’d learned from Ig over the years. Nothing made people feel better about themselves than being thanked, repetitively and needlessly. Then, in a hoarse, choked voice, he said, “I have to go.” It was just the right line, perfect for that particular moment, but it was also true, since he could see Merrin pulling into the drive, behind the wheel of her daddy’s station wagon. Ig said he’d be over soon.
Lee watched her through the kitchen window while she walked up the path, plucking at her blouse, dressed smart in a blue linen skirt and a white blouse, unbuttoned to show her gold cross. Bare legs, navy slingbacks. She had thought about what to put on before she came here, had thought about how she wanted to be seen. He finished the rest of his rum and Coke on his way to the door, opened it as she was raising her hand to knock. His eyes were still burning and watery from his conversation with Ig, and he wondered if he ought to blink some tears down his cheeks, then decided not to. It was better to look like he was fighting it than to actually do it.
“Hey, Lee,” she said. Merrin looked as if she were fighting tears herself. She cupped his face with one hand, and then drew herself to him.
It was a brief hug, but for a moment his nose was in her hair and her small hands were against his chest. Her hair had a keen, almost sharp smell of lemons and mint. Lee thought that was the most fascinating aroma he’d ever smelled, better even than the smell of wet pussy. He had laid plenty of girls, knew all their smells, all their flavors, but Merrin was different. Sometimes he thought if she just didn’t smell that way, he could stop worrying about her.
“Who’s here?” she asked, as she came into the house, her arm still around his waist.
“You’re the first one…” Lee said. He almost finished it—the first one I called—then knew it would be the wrong thing, would be too…what? Unusual. Wrong for the moment. Instead he finished, “…to get here. I called Ig, and then I called you. I wasn’t thinking. I should’ve called my father first.”
“Have you talked to him?”
“Just a few minutes ago.”
“Well. That’s all right, Lee. Do you want to sit down? Do you want me to call people for you?”
He was leading her to the guest bedroom where his mother was. He didn’t ask if she wanted to go, just started walking, and she went along with her arm around his waist. He wanted her to see his mother, wanted to see her face.
They stopped in the open doorway. Lee had propped the fan in the window and turned it on full blast as soon as he knew she was dead, but the room still contained a dry, fevery heat. His mother’s withered arms were curled against her chest, her skinny hands hooked into claws, as if she were trying to push something away. She had been, had made a last fitful effort to try to shove off the comforters at around nine-thirty, but she was too weak. The extra comforters were now folded and put away. A single crisp blue sheet lay across her. In death she had become birdlike, looked like a dead chick dropped from a nest. Her head was tipped back, and her mouth was open, yawning wide to show her fillings.
“Oh, Lee,” Merrin said, and squeezed his fingers in hers. She had started to cry. Lee thought maybe it was time for him to cry, too.
“I tried putting a sheet over her face,” Lee said. “But it didn’t look right. She fought for so long, Merrin.”
“I know.”
“I don’t like how she’s staring. Will you close her eyes?”
“All right. You go sit down, Lee.”
“Will you have a drink with me?”
“Sure. I’ll be right along.”
He went to the kitchen and mixed her a strong drink and then stood at the cabinet looking at his reflection and willing himself to start crying. It was harder than usual; he was, in truth, a little excited. As Merrin entered the kitchen behind him, tears were just beginning to spill down his face, and he bent forward and exhaled savagely, a noise much like a sob. Forcing those tears out was hard, painful work, like squeezing out a splinter. She came toward him. She was crying, too. He could tell by the soft struggling sound of her breath, although he couldn’t see her face. She put a hand on his shoulder. She was the one who turned him to her, as his breath began to catch and then come out of him in hoarse, angry sobs.
Merrin put her hands behind his head and pulled him close and whispered to him.
“She loved you so much,” she said. “You were there every day for her, Lee, and it meant everything to her.” And so on and so forth, a lot of stuff like that. Lee wasn’t listening.
He was taller than her by almost a foot, and to be close she had to pull his head down. He pressed his face to her chest, to the cleft between her breasts, and shut his eyes, breathing in the almost astringent mint smell of her. He took the hem of her blouse with one hand and tugged it down, pulling it tight against her body, but also deforming the opening, to show the lightly freckled tops of her breasts, the cups of her bra. His other hand was on her waist, and he moved it up and down over her hip, and she didn’t tell him to stop. He wept against her breasts, and she whispered to him and rocked with him. He kiss
ed the top of her left breast. He wondered if she noticed—his face was so wet that maybe she couldn’t tell—and started to lift his face, to see her expression, to see if she liked it. But she pushed his face back down, holding him to her bosom.
“Go ahead,” she whispered, her voice soft, an excited whisper. “Just go ahead. It’s all right now. There’s no one here but us. There’s no one to see.” Holding his mouth to her breast.
He felt himself stiffening in his pants and became aware then of the way she was standing, his left leg planted between her thighs. He wondered if it had turned her on, the dead body. There was a strain of psychology that felt the presence of a corpse was an aphrodisiac. A corpse was a get-out-of-jail-free card, permission to do a crazy thing. After he had screwed her, she could assuage any guilt she felt, or thought she was supposed to feel—Lee didn’t exactly believe in guilt, he believed in fixing things to satisfy social norms—by telling herself they were both carried away by their grief, by their desperate needs. He kissed her breast again and a third time, and she didn’t try to get away.
“I love you, Merrin,” he whispered, the right thing to say, he knew it. It would make everything easier: for him and for her. As he said it, he had his hand on her hip and was swaying, forcing her to totter back on her heels so her rump was pushed up against the kitchen island. He had a fistful of skirt, pulling it up to midthigh, and his leg was well between her thighs, and he could feel the heat of her crotch against it.
“I love you, too,” she said, but her tone was off. “We both do, Lee. Ig and I.” A strange thing to say, considering what they were doing, strange to bring Ig into it. She let go of the back of his head and dropped her hands to his waist, put them lightly on his hips. He wondered if she was feeling for his belt. He reached up to take her blouse, meaning to pull it open—if he busted a couple buttons, then so be it—but his hand caught the little gold cross around her throat, and at the same time a completely unplanned convulsive sob passed through him. His hand jerked at the cross, and there was a soft metallic chiming sound, and it came loose and slipped down the front of her blouse.
“Lee,” she said, pushing him back. “My necklace.”
It fell softly against the floor. They stood looking down at it, and then Lee bent and got it and held it out to her. It shone in the sun and lit her face in gold.
“I can fix it,” Lee said.
“You did last time, didn’t you?” she said, and smiled, her face flushed, her eyes weepy. She fidgeted with her blouse. A button had come undone, and he had left the top of her breast wet. She reached forward and put her hands over his, closed his fingers around the cross. “Fix it and give it back to me when you’re ready. You don’t even have to use Ig as the middleman this time.”
Lee twitched in spite of himself, wondered for a moment if she could mean what he thought she meant by that. But of course she did, of course she knew exactly how he’d take it. A lot of what Merrin said had double meanings, one for public consumption and the other just for him. She’d been sending him messages for years.
She cast a discerning eye over him and said, “How long have you been in those clothes?”
“I don’t know. Two days.”
“All right. I want you to get out of those things and in the shower.”
He felt his heart tighten; his cock was hot against his thigh. He looked at the front door. There wasn’t time for him to wash up before they had sex.
“People are coming,” he said.
“Well. No one is here yet. There’s time. Go on. I’ll bring you your drink.”
He walked ahead of her down the back hallway, as hard as he’d ever been in his life, grateful his underwear was holding it down against his leg. He thought she might follow him into the bathroom and reach around and unbutton his pants for him, but when he stepped in, she closed the door gently behind him.
Lee undressed and got into the shower and waited for her, the hot water hammering against him. Steam billowed. His pulse was quick and forceful, and his absurd erection wavered in the spray. When her hand reached around the curtain with his drink, another rum and Coke, he thought she would step in after it, clothes off, but as soon as he took the drink, she pulled her hand back.
“Ig’s here,” she said. Her voice soft and full of regret.
“Made it in record time,” Ig said from somewhere behind her. “How are you, man?”
“Hello, Ig,” Lee said, the sound of Ig’s voice as unwelcome as if the hot water had cut out all at once. “Doing okay. Given the circumstances. Thank you for coming.” The “thank you” didn’t come out quite right this time, but he decided Ig would hear the edge in his voice and write it off as emotional strain.
“I’ll bring you something to wear,” Merrin said, and then they were gone; he heard the door shut with a click.
He stood in the hot water, half in a rage at the idea that Ig should be here already, wondering if he knew something—no—had an idea that—no, no. Ig had come at high speed because a friend needed him. That was Ig to the core.
Lee wasn’t sure how long he’d been there before he realized that his right hand was hurting. He looked at it and found he was holding the cross, the gold chain wrapped around his hand, cutting into the skin. She had looked him in the eye, with her blouse half unbuttoned, and offered him her cross. She could not have offered herself to him any more plainly, his leg between her thighs while she surrendered it to him. There were things she did not dare say outright, but he understood the message she was sending him, understood her perfectly. He looped the chain of the cross around the showerhead, watched it swing, flashing in the late-morning light, flashing the all clear. Soon Ig would be in England and there would be no more reason for caution, nothing to stop them from doing what they both wanted.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
AFTER HIS MOTHER DIED, Merrin called and e-mailed more frequently, under the pretense of checking to see how he was doing. Or perhaps that really was what she thought she was doing—Lee could not underrate the average person’s ability to deceive himself about what he wanted. Merrin had internalized a lot of Iggy’s morality, and Lee thought she could only go so far, could only hint so much, and then he would have to take the lead. Also, even with Ig away in England, they wouldn’t necessarily have a clear path at first. Merrin had settled on a set of rules about how people of high status acted. She would have to be persuaded that if she were going to fuck someone else, it was actually in Ig’s best interests. Lee understood. Lee could help her with that.
Merrin left messages for him at home, at the congressman’s office. She wanted to know how he was doing, what he was doing, if he was seeing anyone. She told him he needed a woman, he needed to get laid. She said she was thinking of him. It wasn’t hard to see what she was working up to. He thought often she called after having a couple drinks, could hear it in her voice, a kind of sexy slowness.
Then Ig went to New York City for his orientation with Amnesty International, and a few days later Merrin began pestering Lee to come see her. Her roommate was moving out, and Merrin was going to take her bedroom and would have twice as much space. There was a dresser she had left at home, in Gideon, that she wanted, and she e-mailed Lee, asked if he would bring it down the next time he got to Boston. She told him her Victoria’s Secret things were in the bottom drawer, to save him the trouble of searching for them. She told him he could try on her fancy underwear, but only if he took pictures of himself and sent them to her. She texted him, said if he brought her the dresser, she would fix him up with a girl, a blonde, just like him, an ice queen. She wrote that the sex would be great, just like beating off in front of a mirror, only better, because his reflection would have tits. She reminded him that with her roommate gone there was an extra bedroom at her apartment in case he got lucky. Letting him know she would be alone.
By then Lee had learned to read her coded messages almost perfectly. When she talked about this other girl, she was talking about herself, what they had to look forwa
rd to. Still, he had not decided to bring the dresser, was not sure he wanted to meet her while Ig was in America, even if he was a few hundred miles away. They might not be able to keep their impulses in check. Things would be easier with Ig gone.
Lee had always assumed it would be Ig who discarded Merrin. It hadn’t crossed his mind that she might want out, might be bored and ready finally to be done, and that Ig’s going away for six months was her chance to make a clean break. Ig came from money, had a last name with some cachet, had a connected family, and it made sense for him to play the field. Lee had always assumed that Ig would dump her around the time they graduated from high school, and that would fix that; Lee could have his turn with her then. She was going to Harvard, and Ig was going to Dartmouth. Out of sight, out of mind, that was what Lee figured, but Ig figured different, was down in Boston fucking her every weekend, like a dog marking his territory.
All Lee could think was that on some level Ig held on to her out of a perverse desire to hold her over Lee. Ig was glad to have Lee as his sidekick—the reformation of Lee Tourneau had been Ig’s high-school hobby—but he would want Lee to know there were limits to their friendship. He would not want Lee to forget who had won her. As if Lee did not remember every time he closed his right eye and the world became a dim shadowland, a place where ghosts crept through the darkness and the sun was a cold and distant moon.
A part of Lee respected how Ig had taken her away from him, back when they both had an equal shot at her. Ig had simply wanted that red pussy more than Lee, and under pressure he had become someone different, someone wily and smooth. With his asthma and bad hair and head full of Bible trivia, no one would ever think of Ig as ruthless or cunning. Lee had stayed close to Ig for most of ten years, following his lead. He thought of them as lessons in disguise, lessons in how to appear harmless, safe. Faced with any ethical quandary, Lee had learned it was best to ask, What Would Ig Do? The answer, usually, was apologize, abase himself, and then fling himself into some entirely unnecessary act of make-nice. Lee had learned from Ig to admit he was wrong even when he wasn’t, to ask for forgiveness he didn’t need, and to pretend he didn’t want the things he had coming to him.