Swimming Sweet Arrow: A Novel

by Gibbon, Maureen

  He was drinking shots of Southern Comfort there at the keg. When I came near, I heard one of his friends, a guy named Kutz, say, “Here comes your woman, Pardee. Drink up.”

  When I got up to the keg, Kutz said to me, “What, don’t you drink?”

  “I drink.”

  “You look stone-cold sober to me.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You ought to loosen up. Good-looking woman like you ought to have a good time.”

  “I’m having a good time. I have to work tomorrow.”

  “Hell, you’ll be working your whole life! You don’t see that stopping us, do you?”

  I saw Del stick one finger in the air at Kutz, and as soon as I saw that, I knew Del was drunk. He speechified a lot when he was drunk, and a lot of times it started with a finger pointed in the air.

  “Kutz,” he said. “My woman’s the hardest-working bitch you’ll ever meet.”

  I let that one wash over me for a few seconds, and then I turned to Del and said, “Come get me when you’re ready.” And I went back to where some of the women were, and I sat down on the edge of a conversation and I made myself listen and smile.

  In a little while Del came over and handed me his keys, and I took the both of us home.

  I knew Del had to be a different kind of person at work, too. I knew he had to act tough, and I also think he had to act crazy because he was the young one. But I couldn’t believe he would use a word like that to talk about me.

  I never told him I was hurt. I probably should have, but I didn’t want him to know. If he could hurt me with words, it meant the smallest things could injure me, and I didn’t want to be that vulnerable, not even with him.

  I pretended everything was normal between Del and me, and in a little while, it was. Three weekends later, though, when there was going to be a party at Laban Wolfe’s house, I told Del I wasn’t going. He thought I was bullshitting, though, because around nine he said, “Come on, I want to be leaving soon.”

  “I told you I didn’t want to go.”

  “You’ll go,” he said, smiling. “Smoke a joint and you’ll be fine.”

  “No, I deal with rude people all day. I don’t need to deal with them at night.”

  Del looked at me for a long second after I said that, but he didn’t say anything. He stood there in the living room, watching me, and at first I did not want to meet his eyes, but then I thought, why shouldn’t I meet his eyes? I thought about the way he headed for the keg as soon as he got to a party, and the way I got ditched off to spend time with the “girls”—and of course that line of thinking led me right back to bitch night. I just didn’t want to have anything to do with it.

  “Go have fun by yourself,” I said, looking straight at him. “Leave your dog at home.”

  I gave him credit. He waited awhile, trying to figure out my words, and when he couldn’t, he gave up.

  “Suit yourself,” he said, and he walked out the back door.

  THAT NIGHT when Del came home, he laid into me. I don’t mean he hit me—I mean he laid me open. We fucked in about four positions, and he slammed into me in each one. He didn’t talk at all, just pulled at my hips when he wanted me to move. In the end I was on top so he could have my breasts in his mouth and hands, and I was working hard to make him come so it all could stop. Then—and the two things happened almost together—he slapped me hard on my ass, and squeezed and bit my right breast so hard I thought he’d gone through skin.

  The slap surprised me more than it hurt, but my breast felt like a knife had gone through it. I cried out. And I don’t know if he thought it was a sound of pleasure or what, but a little bit after that he came.

  When I climbed off him, I said, “Jesus Christ, Del, that hurt.”

  “Sorry,” he said, but I heard the way he said it and knew from his voice he was still drunk. I didn’t say anything else.

  After he rolled onto his side, I waited until I heard his breathing change, and then I slipped out of the bed and went to the bathroom. When I checked my breast, I could see a bunch of the little specks of blood just under the skin from the last bite. The skin looked bubbly, like it was blistered, and blood was gathering in the blistered places. Even though no skin was broken, my breast felt like it was on fire.

  I went downstairs to the kitchen, filled a plastic bag with ice from the freezer, and brought it back up to the bedroom. I lay with the ice on me, and even though I still did not sleep easily or well beside Del, I made myself sleep that night because I could not stand to be awake.

  IN THE morning when the alarm rang, Del said, “What the hell?”

  I opened my eyes and saw him touching a place on the bed with his hand.

  “What is this from?” Del said as he touched the wet spot on the bed.

  “I slept with an ice pack. I guess it melted.”

  “What, are you sick?”

  “Maybe you could lighten up,” I said, and I turned in the bed so he could see my breasts. The last place where he bit was even a darker purple-black than before. The black blood that filled the blistery places looked thick under the skin.

  “I don’t care if you slap me on the ass, but this is too much,” I said. I watched him, but I didn’t know what I saw in his face when he looked at my body. “You were so drunk you probably don’t even remember doing it.”

  “I remember it, Vangie,” he said, but by then I had turned away from him in the bed.

  I did not get up to make him breakfast or pack his lunch. I didn’t do anything for him. Before he left for work, he came back upstairs and stood in the doorway of our room.

  “I’m sorry,” he said from the doorway.

  I did not open my eyes.

  “Vangie, it’ll never happen again.”

  I heard him move into the room then, and I figured he was going to try to kiss me or some shit, but then I heard him move away and go back down the stairs. When I did open my eyes, I saw why he’d come back into the room: he’d made me another bag of ice, wrapped it in a towel, and left it on the edge of the bed.

  11

  I wanted to talk to June, but when I called out to the house, the telephone rang and rang. I figured she was with Luke, so I didn’t try to go out there. While part of me wanted to talk to her about Del and about what was going on, I also didn’t want her to know. I wouldn’t know how to launch into all the things I had on my mind—I couldn’t even picture myself really saying the words. So I stayed away.

  That week Del and I did not talk about what had happened, but he was on his best behavior. He bought me new wiper blades for my truck and changed the oil, he put a hook on the screen door that I’d been wanting ever since we moved in, and he brushed out my hair every night when I came home from Dreisbach’s stinking from grease and sweat. He was so well behaved that it was hard to even act natural with him, and I felt self-conscious and quiet. After a while, things mostly went back to the way they were before, but there was still a little place in me that was walled off from Del. I knew it would be that way for a while. Even though I could not stand having hurt feelings or being so self-conscious, I couldn’t change everything I felt.

  I worked the next Friday night, and a little after eleven, I saw Del waiting for me there in the hallway of Dreisbach’s, next to the bread rack.

  “I came to see if you’d go out with me,” he said, and just the way he said the words, I knew he’d already had a drink or two.

  “I don’t think so. I’m supposed to work until midnight.”

  “It’s not what you think,” he said. “I won’t drink anymore if you don’t want me to.”

  I stood looking at him a long time. He never showed up at my work like that, and I guess it touched me. Something must have showed in my face, because he took my hands and pulled them up to his chest. When he kissed me, it was exactly the kind of kiss I liked best: a little hard, a little biting, but also soft.

  “Go see if you can get off early,” he said.

  For whatever reason, Earl decided to
be nice to me, or maybe he took one look at Del—who came to stand just outside the kitchen doorway—and thought it had to be something pressing if he was showing up for me like that.

  “You serve this burger, you can go,” he said.

  When I left, the last customer was eating in near darkness, because Earl had turned out nearly all the lights in the dining room. Out in the parking lot, Del made me leave my truck there and ride with him.

  “Where to?” I said.

  “The Ruby. Want to?”

  “I’m ready.”

  As soon as we got in his car, Del slipped his hand between my legs and I let him. We hadn’t had sex all week, and I knew Del was wondering if later I’d let him slip in that way, too. Part of me was still thinking about the bruises, and another part of me couldn’t wait to push it all away from me. I could feel myself getting the shivery feeling with just his hand outside my pantyhose and underwear.

  We still weren’t legal, but the Ruby would serve anyone who could reach the bar. There were a good number of people in the place when we got there, but it was not as exciting as it seemed the times I’d been there before to buy packages to take out. No one was playing the jukebox, no one was playing mini-bowling or darts. People were just drinking and talking. Del and I sat down at one of the tables, and even though no one was looking at us, I felt self-conscious about being there in my waitress uniform. At least it was a black one, and not all white like I sometimes wore.

  “I wish you would have told me at home we were coming here,” I said. “I would have brought clothes.”

  “Would you have come if I asked?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Maybe,” Del said. “You hardly talked to me all week.”

  “Do you blame me?”

  He squirreled around in his pocket until he came up with four quarters.

  “Go pick some songs.” He waited a second before he handed them over to me. “I don’t blame you,” he said.

  “You want to help me pick?”

  “Naw, you go ahead.” He moved his head in the direction of the bar. “What should I get you?”

  “A screwdriver.”

  It took me a while to find ten songs I liked on that juke-box. By the time I got back to the table and the drink Del had waiting for me, one of his cronies from Traut’s was parked at one of our extra chairs. I sat down, and though Del slipped his hand over my nyloned knee as soon as I pulled in my chair, he did not stop his talking or introduce me to the guy sitting with us.

  The guy was talking to Del about hunting. Buck season was about to open, and all of Traut’s had the day off from work for the opener. Like most places in Mahanaqua, including the schools, Traut’s closed down for the first day of buck season because it wouldn’t have paid to run the factory with so many guys taking vacation or calling in sick. The guy Del was talking to had his stand all built, his area staked out, and he could not believe Del’s plans to kill a deer were not as elaborate as his own.

  “I’ll probably just go on out with my dad and brother,” Del said.

  What the guy couldn’t know, what Del didn’t say, was that Del didn’t hunt anymore. Not at all. He’d started hunting when he was ten, he got his first buck when he was twelve, and he puked when he had to skin that dead buck. After, his father beat him for getting sick over it. I was the only one who knew that story—along with his brother Frank and his old man, who liked to use his fists so much to decorate his boys’ faces.

  But I did not say anything as I sat and listened. After a long time, the guy finally seemed to understand that while Del might go strolling out in the woods with a gun over his shoulder, he had no real plans on how to kill a deer, or how to get the buck with the biggest rack, or anything like that.

  “So you don’t want to try to get yourself a ten-point buck?” the guy said.

  “I got one already,” Del said. “She’s my ten-point buck.”

  For the first time in the conversation the guy had to look over at me. Del took his hand from my thigh and slipped it around my back, touching my shoulder blades through my uniform. The guy didn’t stay too long after that.

  After he walked away, I said to Del, “He doesn’t know what to make of you.”

  “What?”

  “You just told him you like pussy better than hunting.”

  Del did not say anything, but he narrowed his eyes, studying me.

  “What if I do?” he said after a while.

  “I guess it would be a first in this town.”

  When we got home, the night was all about me. I knew it was still part of the be-nice-to-Vangie campaign, but I didn’t care. Del was careful in how he touched me—cupping my breasts only and not kneading them, kissing them but not sucking. He did not try to get inside me, just used his fingers and his tongue until he made me come. He was going to do it a second time, but I stopped his hand.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I told him. “I’m just resting.”

  We lay there, his hand brushing back and forth over my hip. It was peaceful in the darkness.

  “What are you thinking about?” I said.

  “I’m thinking how smooth your skin is.”

  When he said it, I wondered how he had learned to do that, to say exactly the right thing. I wondered if it was a thing all pretty boys just knew how to do.

  I climbed on top of him then, but when he went to touch me, I took his hands in mine and moved them above his head, pinning them against the mattress. He struggled against my weight for a second, and then he understood what I was doing, and he let me hold him down. I kissed him and I moved my body over his body, but I did not let him touch me with his hands.

  I had just gotten him up inside me, and had my nipple—on my good breast, not the one where he’d almost bitten through the skin—in his mouth when I started talking to him.

  “Am I your ten-point buck?”

  “What?”

  “Am I your ten-point buck,” I said.

  “You know you are.”

  “Not a doe?”

  “Not a doe.”

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll be a buck. But don’t you forget.”

  “What, honey?”

  “I let you catch me.”

  “So you did,” he said. “So you did.”

  We fucked then, me rocking on him and stopping, rocking and stopping. We did it a long time, and I kept feeling like I was dripping down around him. I’d never felt that wet before just from screwing, and I couldn’t get enough of the feeling. It was not like coming, but something in me just kept opening and opening.

  After a time, Del couldn’t take it anymore. I let him move his hands, and he wrapped his arms around my back so he could fuck hard up into me. There were no more words then, no more talk, but I’d already heard everything I wanted to hear.

  My ten-point buck—to anyone else, it probably would have sounded stupid, calling a woman a deer. But I’d seen Del’s face there in the Ruby when he said it the first time, and I had his cock up inside me when I made him say it again. I never forgot the bruises, but I never forgot those words, either.

  12

  THE following weekend, June called. She asked how I was, but by that time things had settled down between Del and me. My bruises were two weeks old and almost gone, and it seemed pointless to go into the whole thing. I figured she had enough on her plate. “I’ve been better, but I’ve been worse,” I told her. “How’s the love nest?”

  “Be serious, Vangie. I need to talk to you.”

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  She told me they’d gone out shining deer, she and Luke and Ray. She didn’t like the way they used the lights against the deer, but she was glad she went anyway.

  “I wanted to sit between the two of them,” she said. “I wanted to know what it felt like.”

  And of course it wasn’t the leg of the one who already was her lover that she concentrated on when it pressed against hers, and it wasn’t his warmth
she missed when he got out of the truck to check a stand.

  When they got back to the house, she stayed out on the porch to smoke, because she didn’t want to go in the house, not yet, not for another night. Luke came out to find her, and they stood smoking in the dark air while Ray was inside.

  June said they didn’t talk at all. She said she heard Luke move before she felt his touch. Then his hand was there, reaching under her hair to the nape of her neck.

  “His fingers were so cool and smooth, Vangie,” she said.

  She told me she was sure then that Luke had to know her in a way no one else knew her, because that was her favorite place to be touched—her neck and her face and her hair—and Ray never touched her there.

  “Do you know what I’m saying?”

  “I know,” I said, and it was a lie and it was the truth. I knew what it meant to be touched in a way you liked, but I didn’t know what it meant to June to be touched by Luke. There was no way for me to know.

  She told me she and Luke had sex for the first time the next morning, after Ray left for work. She went to Luke’s room, and they fucked in Luke’s bed. She said it wasn’t like anything she ever did.

  That was all she told me. It wasn’t like when we were in high school and we recounted every detail.

  “Say something,” she said at the end.

  “I’m glad you found someone. I’m glad you love him.”

  “But?”

  “But nothing. Just be careful.”

  She laughed at that. “You mean if I can’t be good, be careful?”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “I’ll call when I can,” she said. “When I have something new to tell.”

  But I didn’t hear from her again for a long time.

  13

  DEL and I crossed some kind of line the night he called me a buck. Maybe it had to do with me trusting him again, or maybe it had to do with me pinning him to the mattress. I didn’t know. What I was sure of was that our sex changed.