Dirty Love (39 page)

“Here, Dev.”

She turned and Luke put her iEverything in her hand. His eyes were on her lips, her chin, her throat, and he looked weak the way he used to. She felt strong and dirty. He put his arm around her. She leaned her head against his shoulder. She wanted to tell him that her father was cheating on her mother. She could almost feel the words rising up to her tongue, but she’d never talked to Luke about anything serious before and she wasn’t going to start now. Still, it felt good to have his arm around her. It felt good to rest her cheek on his shoulder. She could feel his muscles under his sweatshirt, and it smelled clean.

“’Member that?” He raised two fingers in the direction of the boathouse. She nodded. She was so young then. Just a kid in the dark in the back of a boat.

“Nobody does it like you, Dev.”

“That’s nice.” She meant for that to come out hard, but it came out soft, and she drank from her bottle and he drank from his. She thought of Sick. They’d waited for spring before they did it. He’d told her spring was his favorite season because dead things stopped being dead and so maybe we should do it then, D. It’ll be even better that way.

Luke was kissing the top of her head. He turned and lifted her chin and kissed her lips. It was slow and sweet and she could taste his beer and hard lemonade, his stubble against her chin. It was like tripping and falling onto a pile of leaves, surprised at how they can hold you. She pulled away. “I need to go home, Luke.”

“Not yet.”

“Can you just drive me right now, please?”

“One last time, okay?”

“No.” She put her hand on his chest to push him, but she didn’t push him.

“Please, Dev. We’re graduating soon and then we’re all going to college and it won’t be the same, ever.” That need for her. It was in his voice again and, for the first time, in his words too. Fighting him would take a long time. It would take more care than she had to give it. His tongue in his mouth or that other part of him, both connected to a boy she could care less about really. With Sick she was D., and D. was smart and beautiful and kind, but this was Dev now and soon she would never see this boy again, and it was always over so fast and then she’d be walking away free.

“You gonna fucking drive me home?”

“I will, Dev. I promise, I will.” Luke’s voice so weak for her as he led her around the boathouse, his palm damp in her hand, his fingers cool. There were birch trees there she hadn’t seen before, and he leaned against one and unsnapped and unzipped his jeans and now she didn’t want to. She’d have to kneel on the ground that was dirt and pebbles. But Luke’s thing was out, hard and straight and looking wrong in the air like that, and he grabbed her sweater and pulled her close, his eyes so hungry and so excited he looked a little scared, and even then she liked this part. She always had. That moment when she was everything and he was nothing.

Just once more and she was gone.

She squatted and drank down her hard lemonade and dropped the empty bottle onto a patch of snow, though she wished she hadn’t done that because she would want something to drink soon.

It was taking a while. Her thighs were burning and her jaw ached, and she didn’t like how he pulled on her head with two hands because it reminded her of Meghan Monroe in the bathroom.
No one does it like you, Dev.
So she worked harder with her hand to make it end faster and he was pushing into her mouth as if she didn’t need to breathe and she was about to pull back when she heard behind her the sound of pebbles under a boot.

“Man, look at her.” Price’s voice, a wide smile in it, and she jerked back and opened her eyes to see his iEverything pointed at her, the tiny glass eye of his camera. “Davey!”

He was laughing, and Bobby was too, and Luke was quiet, but his fingers were in her hair and he pulled her face back to what she’d just let go of. “
C’mon
, I’m almost
done
.”

“No.”
She tried to stand but he had her by the hair and with his other hand he was jerking back and forth on himself, and she couldn’t breathe and then he let out a groan as warm spurts fell wetly across her cheek and nose and eye, and Davey was laughing as if he’d just scored points in a game, and Luke let go of her hair and she fell back on her hands. “Fucking
ass
holes!”

She turned and scooped a handful of dirty snow and wiped it across her face. She couldn’t quite open her left eye, and with the other she saw Bobby up against the boathouse unzipping his jeans and pulling out his hard-on. He stepped toward her with it, and Davey was holding his iEverything close and Devon slapped at it and missed, and then she was up and pushing past Bobby and running across Luke’s yard around his house and down the long driveway. One of them was calling her, calling her name, and it was hard to see out of her eye and she wasn’t running straight. The pine trees on both sides of her were so tall and so old, and she ran faster.

F
RANCIS LIES IN THE DARK
listening to the rain. It’s eased up quite bit, just a smattering of it now and then against his window. When Devon came in an hour or so ago, he nearly climbed out of bed and pulled on his robe to greet her, but he couldn’t. He kept seeing her concave cheek, and he just could not.

Ditch of the Bodos
. It’s where he’ll store this image of Devy, too. Close a door on it and lock it. Never open it again. Except Francis knows this does not work, that she’ll arrive in his dream world that way, a dirty movie of his precious niece for which he only has his nephew to thank. But does he?
See for yourself, Uncle
. Yes, Francis had left her room as quickly as he could have, bad knee and all, but why didn’t he close his eyes? Certainly he knew without knowing what Charlie was up to. Surely, he could have looked away and seen only wall, door, hallway. Why did he look? Why this perpetual pull toward darkness? Why?

After Charlie was gone, Francis had walked down the hall and pulled Devon’s door closed. Once again he’d been a passive participant in something ugly, and he heard Beth’s voice as clearly as if she were standing behind him.
Quit stooping, Francis. You’re tall, don’t be ashamed of it.
But he was ashamed. Some part of him always had been. And he will not judge this child. He will not.

From the other side of his small house he can hear the muffled strains of her voice through her door and his. She’s talking to that boy again. She must be.
He was in a war, too.
So perhaps he is not a boy after all. Perhaps he is a veteran of the recent wars, for every generation seems to get one, doesn’t it? The old sending the young to far-off countries to kill other young people.

He will not judge Devy. How
can
he? This man who would drive away from the high school on a lovely October afternoon, the sun high, the dying tree leaves at the height of their beauty, and soon he’d be sipping vodka from a Styrofoam coffee cup while steering north up the highway for home and all the good work he’d done earlier in the day would be tossed into the fire he was building in his own blood and brain: Burn it, burn it all; burn being a good teacher, burn being a good man, burn being a good citizen and following the rules, and burn them especially—burn the rules, these invisible cages around us, for if he’s learned nothing in all his years he’s learned that, that from our first gasps for air till our last, we simply want to be left alone to do what we want to do when we want to do it, and because this is rarely the case we crave oblivion in any way it presents its dark, sweet self to us. Devy and her closed eyes and concave cheek, how is this any different from Francis pouring one nip then two then three more into his Styrofoam coffee cup, all of which he will stuff into the trash barrel outside the 7-Eleven before floating in for breath mints and bottled water and his smiling return to hearth and home?

“That’s all I ever wanted, Uncle. A home for her, you know? A
home
.”

“Drink some tea, Charlie.”

Charlie did. He raised the cup and sipped loudly, his eyes on his reflection in the French doors. His shoulders were slumped, and he seemed to be staring at a man he used to want to talk to but no longer.

“I think she needs to hear that, Charlie.”

“She fuckin’ hates me.”

“I don’t think so.”

Charlie held his cup in the air. He sipped again. He lowered it slowly, set it carefully onto its saucer.

“Well maybe
I
fucking hate me.”

“Maybe you hate your behavior, nephew.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Behavior can be changed.”

Charlie looked at him, his eyes pink and heavy-lidded. He held his head back accusatorily. “I don’t think so.”

This wasn’t the time for argument. Not now.

“Charlie, I want you to rest on the couch for a while before you drive, okay?”

“Nope. I’m good.” Charlie stood and drained his tea as if it was a beer. There was no reasoning with a drunk, and Francis knew he would have to stop him physically, but he’d gotten lucky once and doing it again was out of the question.

“Charlie, if you get behind that wheel, I will call the police.”

“Do what you fucking want, Uncle. I’m going home.”

Perhaps if Charlie had backed carefully out of the driveway, Francis would have done nothing. But his nephew’s car had jerked backwards into the road, its headlights flashing across Francis’s neighbor’s windows, and then, as if he’d made his point, Charlie drove slowly away. For a long while, it seemed, Francis held the kitchen telephone in his hand. He saw the cracked foundation and splintered corner of that house on the boulevard. He saw his own crushed lower leg hanging in a sling. He saw the stainless steel bedpan in Beth’s hands, and there was really no need to see anymore. He put on his glasses and dialed, trying to remember the make of his nephew’s sedan, its color, its plates.

It’s quiet now. No rain or gusts of wind. In the darkness, Francis can no longer hear Devy’s muffled voice either, and he’s relieved. His eyes are going, but his ears still seem to work and for this he’s grateful. The strains of her voice, they were in the urgently confiding tones close friends use with one another. Or lovers. How is this possible?

But it’s time for sleep. Early tomorrow he’ll have to call Marie. Find out first if the police did locate and stop Charlie, which they may not have. But for Charlie’s sake, Francis can only hope they did. Maybe it was even Jimmy Swansea, and then Francis will offer to do what he can. Charlie will need rides to and from work and—who knows?—perhaps meetings like the ones that saved his father. Like the ones that probably saved his marriage, too. And maybe tomorrow won’t be the best day to take Charlie’s mother to lunch. But then again, why not? Why not tell Evelyn it was him who did this? Her brother-in-law, Francis William Brandt, who’d taken action and hopefully prevented something catastrophic?

Francis’s knee still hurts. He hopes he hasn’t injured it, but he also feels more substantial than he has in a long while, his ship righting itself a bit. He sees himself standing before a sea of children not unlike Devon. On their own too soon, their faces a mask he’d like to talk his way into. Perhaps he should put his name in as a substitute. He can do that. One or two days a week, he should. Why not?

He turns on his side and rests his hand on the surface of the cool, empty sheet beside him. That Thursday night in January. He’d gone out for milk for her tea the next morning, that’s all, just that, so who was this man who unlocked the door and closed it to the cold and hung up his coat and hat? Who was this man who took off his gloves and pushed them into his coat pockets and carried the milk into the warmth of their living room to find his wife fast asleep? Her reading glasses hung just beneath her nose, and her chin had dropped and what was this on her blue sweater? Oatmeal? No, for he could smell it as he lowered himself to her, and so this man was expecting a high fever, a stomach flu, a wife who would need Pepto-Bismol and help to bed. Not this stillness. Not this absolute quiet. Her hands he grasped falling away like useless objects left behind.

Francis feels sleep begin to cover him like a warm blanket. There is Devy’s concave cheek and her closed eyes, Triz smiling up at him in the Tiki light, Beth’s damp head leaning against his shoulder as he kisses her hair and lifts a dueling pistol and aims its long barrel at his own nephew who is running, running toward a ditch under an unrelenting sun.

D
EVON OPENS HER LAPTOP
and Skypes Hollis. It’s past two, but he doesn’t sleep. He says that’s when they come for him, when he’s lying on his bed in the quiet dark. He sees them, fathers and uncles, mothers and little kids, all huddled in their night clothes in the dirt.

The screen becomes his face. The lamp with the burned shade is on behind him, and he looks like he’s been sleeping. He’s clean-shaven and he’s wearing a white T-shirt with a rip in it on his left shoulder. She can see his skin.

“Did I wake you?”

“No, honey. You know I don’t sleep.”

“Can I come see you? Like, really soon?” Her voice sounds young to her, and this makes her feel shy but Hollis is nodding his head, his eyes on her, and it’s like what she’s just said is a song in the air only he can hear. “In two days I’ll be in my Airstream. Can you be here in two days?”

“I think so. I mean, I know so.”

“You sure?”

“I have to.”

“Good.”

“Yeah, good.” Devon feels a little scared, and Hollis lights up a cigarette. He’s nodding again, smiling at her, blowing smoke through his nose as if it’s love and he has so much of it, so much of it to give.

D
EVON WALKS SOFTLY
down the hallway. She flicks on the light over the kitchen table. On the counter beside the fridge is Francis’s blood pressure medication and her GED notebook, and she grabs it, then pulls a pen from the jar of them under the phone. Aunt Beth’s car keys hang beside Francis’s. Her reading glasses still hang from a magnet on the fridge too, and Devon thinks how he’s always been so quiet about missing her.
He’s lucky to have you there, kid.
Her face warms. She glances at his bedroom door. It’s open a few inches, and she tiptoes quickly across the kitchen and shuts off the light and hurries to her room.