Family and Other Accidents (3 page)

“Do you think what you have is contagious?” he asks.

         

Jenny's pills are probably working, but instead of having sex, Connor is picking globs of melted cheese from waffle fries and celery out of a tuna melt in a booth at Yours Truly. Across from him, Jenny is playing with bread crusts she cut off her BLT.

“I had a really big lunch,” he apologizes to the defeated sandwich.

Actually he had half a bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats and a couple cups of coffee, but his stomachache has progressed to the point of distraction. Gesturing toward the dishes between them, he asks if Jenny is finished.

“Yeah.” She smiles, dimples popping into creamy cheeks. “We don't want to get too full and prevent other activities.”

He takes the check to the register and surveys the display of gum, mints, and antacid tablets. Growing up, Connor rarely saw his father, but one of his few distinct memories he has is of his dad eating Tums the way other people chain-smoked—a heftier, grumpier version of Jack popping them off the roll and into his mouth with a smooth, practiced motion. Connor buys a package and chews the first three. Putting the change in his wallet, he looks at his long fingers—cuticles shredded, knuckles scabbed and red from rock climbing at Headlands before it got too cold—and wonders what his mother would have thought of Jenny. The Tums have an odd peppermint flavor; he's pretty sure he doesn't love her.

“Ready?” Jenny comes up behind him and takes his hand, leads him to the station wagon in the lot.

Lake-effect snow is still falling—each dandruff flake turning to water as it hits the pavement. She gives him the keys, assuming he'll drive her mother's car, which he does without question, even though it's snowing and dark and he has been trying not to drive in bad weather since the accident. But he makes it home safely and kills the engine in the driveway. As the car loses heat, he stares at the big brick colonial where he has lived his entire life—the giant elm in the front lawn almost completely bare.

“Come on, Conn.” Jenny squeezes his fingers. “You still want to do this, right?”

From his bedroom window, where he left the lights on, Kennedy says it shouldn't be a question.

“The torch has been passed to a new generation,” Connor says, and Jenny laughs, tells him he's weird.

When the garage door rolls open, the BMW is gone, and the Sentra is in the same place it has been for a week.

“Why is it like three hundred degrees in here?” Jenny asks as they kick slushy snow off hiking boots, shimmy out of down coats, scarves, and gloves.

Explaining about Jack being sick, Connor spins the thermostat down twenty degrees, and the heat chugs to a stop. Jenny leads him upstairs to his room, which has been vacuumed and straightened—blue sheets tucked into crisp corners, pillows fluffed. Even though Jack isn't home and would never come in without knocking, Connor locks the door behind them. They sit on the edge of his bed, and he looks at their feet, then at Kennedy on the wall, puts his hand on Jenny's thigh.

“I made a mix.” She grabs her backpack, unzips the front pocket, and puts the tape in the bookshelf stereo.

Other tapes she gave him have themed names—“Fourth of July Mix,” “Three Month Anniversary Mix,” “Road Trip Mix”—all written in her curly, girlie handwriting, and he wonders if she called this one “Sex Mix.” The first song is Dylan's “Tangled Up in Blue,” which is reassuring. Relaxing, he brushes her long hair behind her shoulder, kisses her, tasting bacon and tomato.

“You taste like Tums.” She licks her lips; he stops kissing her.

“I'm sorry.” He wants Jenny to say she's nervous, too, that her guts are knotted and clenched, legs and arms distant and tingly.

“My mom takes them for calcium,” she says.

Kennedy probably never had sex that started this way. Kissing again, his hands on her waist, hers on his shoulders. He notices a faint blond mustache above her lip, realizes he doesn't know her father's first name or if she believes in God.

“We should take off our clothes,” she says.

Sweaters and turtlenecks are wrestled overhead and jeans are wiggled from slim hips. Bra and boxers are removed with quick, deliberate motions. Finally they take off their socks, because they look dumb wearing nothing but socks. He met Jenny in a red bathing suit and flip-flops, but being naked with her embarrasses him, especially with the light from the overhead fixture, especially with Kennedy watching.

“You'd make a good junkie.” She points to the thick blue-green vein running from the underside of his wrist to his elbow. Another one of those things she says that he isn't sure there's a good response to.

But it doesn't seem to matter, because she's easing herself down on his bed (Jack's old bed), pulling him close. Two fingers in her panties, he kneads the folds of flesh, waits for her to moisten. Below them the garage door opens and closes; footsteps and muted voices—Jack and a girl, probably Brenda Starr. By the closet, the vent sputters to life, spewing additional hot air into the sauna of his bedroom, where the window is already fogged.

“That's good,” Jenny says. “Are
you
ready?”

And he is ready, physically, he's ready.

Touching his lips to the bones in her knee, he's flushed and sweaty because he wants to be inside her, and because he feels guilty wanting that when he doesn't love her, and because it's too hot in the house and he might be coming down with the Jack flu. Two sets of feet sound on the stairs along with the laughter that makes Brenda Starr beautiful. Jack's door closes across the hall.

“Maybe now?” Jenny says.

Finding the condoms in his drawer, Connor slides one on, climbs on top of her. Trying to line his cock up with her pussy, he thinks of it in terms of a puzzle piece or a finger in a glove. Only it's not working like that—more like forcing a plastic spoon into a block of cheddar cheese. Beneath him her face screws up—certainly more like pain than happiness. She gasps and jerks her body away from his. Pulling out, he looms over her on hands and knees, casting shadows on her smooth belly.

“Why'd you stop?” she asks.

“I thought I was hurting you.”

“It's supposed to hurt the first time.”

“I don't want to do it if it hurts you,” he says, and means it. He wonders about Jack next door who does this all the time with all kinds of girls, girls he hasn't known half as long as Connor has known Jenny. “Maybe we should wait?”

On the wall, Kennedy rubs his eyebrows with his thumb and forefinger and shakes his head—just like Jack does—but Connor might just be delusional from the heat.

“No, I want to,” Jenny says. “Maybe you should go down on me a little? Make things wetter?”

So he's back under her raised knees, where things never tasted all that great to begin with. But now she's bleeding, the metal mixed with a strange rubbery taste from the condom. George Michael's “I Want Your Sex” comes from the mix tape on the stereo, which is just stupid. Connor's digestive tract digests itself; he might get sick, is rapidly losing his erection.

Across the hall, Jack is coughing again over Brenda Starr's soft voice, her words indecipherable. And even though he doesn't want to, even though it's not fair, Connor closes his eyes and imagines the reporter—her hair, the freckles across the bridge of her nose, her cold hands. Things stir again. He thinks about Brenda Starr staring at the smooth plaster of the ceiling in Jack's room, about her pale skin on Jack's gray sheets. About Jack reaching into his nightstand drawer for the box of condoms.

“I think I'm ready now,” Jenny says, but she's not Jenny anymore, she's Brenda Starr, and maybe he's not Connor, but Jack.

Silky and sure, he swings his leg over her, pressing himself inside. Things tear, and he feels her become stiff and rigid underneath him.

“Stop,” she says, pushing on his chest with open palms. But he can't stop because he's finally inside, and it's not really something he can control anymore—he truly has become the Incredible Hulk. “Connor, you're hurting me. Stop, please!”

“I can't yet,” he mumbles, kisses her tear-streaked cheek. “All I need is a minute, Brenda.”

Trying to soothe her, he smoothes her hair from her face. He expects red curls, and is surprised when his hands connect with fine long strands. Still it's enough; everything in his lower body tightens to loosen.

“I'm not Brenda,” she says. “Stop, please.”

Then it's done. Panting and drained, he tumbles off of her, feeling relief not unlike the feeling that comes immediately after puking.

Jenny looks as if she has no idea who or what he is—the mild-mannered professor turned green and massive. She inches against the wall, as far away from him as she can get. Underneath her there's a circular stain that looks almost brown on the blue flannel, and Connor winces, realizing it's her blood.

“I asked you to stop, and you didn't stop,” she says. “And you called me Brenda.”

“I did?” He tries to wrap arms around her shoulders, but she squirms away. “I'm sorry, Jen. I was just thinking about the comic strip.”

She's out of bed, looking for her clothes on the floor—stabbing legs into the holes of her panties; working her arms through a lacy bra.

“You didn't stop.”

“Please, Jenny.” Sitting up, he takes off the oozy condom, but can't find anywhere to put it so he just holds it. “I'm sorry.”

She shakes her head, pulls on her sweater, backs into the hall. Condom still in hand, he puts on boxers and goes after her.

“Jen, wait,” he calls from the upstairs landing. At the front door she turns around, dark hair fanning behind her. “You know I'm not like that.”

“I don't know
what
I know.”

“I'm so sorry, Jenny,” he says. “Come back. You can stay for a half hour and still get back in time.”

“Call me tomorrow. Maybe things will be different.” And then she's gone.

On his way back to his own room, Connor pauses outside Jack's door, listens to the muffled sounds—Jack hacking, saying something about South Euclid; the reporter's soft laughter; rustling that might be sheets or clothes or skin. Connor squats, resting his head against the wood to listen. Things become almost rhythmic—the reporter's small moans; Jack's voice gentle, asking if everything is okay, if there's anything he can do. Closing his eyes, Connor strains to hear the difference between what's going on inside and what happened in his room.

Then everything is quite, then shuffling, then the door opens and Brenda Starr stumbles over him, her bare feet cold against his calf. Yelping, she scurries down the hall. Too stunned to move, Connor just sits there.

“What's wrong?” Jack races out of the bedroom in undershorts and a crumpled blue button-down. Caterpillar eyebrows raised with panic, he kneels next to his brother. “Are you sick?”

“No.”

Breathing wet and heavy, Jack sighs, sits back on his ankles. “Then why are you outside my door in your underwear?”

Brenda Starr makes brief eye contact—her eyes aren't darty and unfocused anymore. Gone is the light laugh that made her beautiful; she's one more girl in one more of Jack's T-shirts. Turning away, she looks at the white wall.

In unison Connor and Jack notice the used condom crusting in Connor's left hand, and Jack's face twists in a way Connor is pretty sure he'll remember the rest of his life—the way people remember where they were when Kennedy was shot.

“Jesus, what is with you?” Jack asks as Connor closes his hand and pulls knees to his chest. “I feel like shit. I'm having the worst week at work”—he rolls his eyes to the reporter—“do you have to have this meltdown right now?”

Jack looks sick and sallow, his skin looser than that of a normal twenty-seven-year-old. Pebbled guilt in Connor's rib cage expands to a grapefruit, because Jack probably didn't want to live in Ohio and do monumentally boring things in their father's law firm where he has worked two years and senior partners still call him “Reed's kid.” Because Connor hasn't done anything he promised himself he would do at the repair shop after the accident. Because Brenda Starr's dislike radiates like gamma rays. Because Jenny says “soda” instead of “pop” and deserved better.

“I had sex with Jenny,” he finally says, because that might give some sense of purpose to Jack's sacrifices. But Jack looks at him, blank as oatmeal, things going on behind his black eyes that Connor can't read.

Sighing again, Jack reaches out and lays his palm on top of Connor's fist. “You still need to throw that away,” he says.

The two of them don't have the kind of relationship where they touch often, and in this brief exchange of flesh on flesh, Connor thinks he understands, a little, about the girls who come in and out of Jack's life like cheap pens. About how those girls mean something to Jack at the time. About how they feel when they're with him or sleeping smashed against his side afterward.

“Go to bed, kid,” Jack says, and then he's up, taking Brenda Starr's hand, shaking his head, and inventing an explanation that makes more sense than the truth as he shows her to whatever it was she needed in the bathroom. Connor goes back to his bedroom and folds the condom in a piece of notebook paper on his desk. Kennedy stares at him with disapproval.

“What?” Connor asks.

The poster says nothing.

Picking up the phone, Connor dials Jenny's number, but hangs up when her mother answers—groggy and mad. He showers, gets dressed, and takes the keys to the Sentra from the hook in the laundry room. Maybe he's going to drive twenty minutes to Jenny's and apologize, or maybe he's going to the twenty-four-hour market for bagels and soup so there's food in the house. Maybe he'll only make it to the end of the cul-de-sac. It all depends how much gas is in the tank, if they've plowed the roads, and how badly things go when he gets behind the wheel.