Farthest House (15 page)

He flashed a sideways grin. “Friar? What happened to Spot? But then who names a kid, Elvis?”

“He was my grandmother’s dog. She was going for
brother.
”

She watched Derrick, sensing there was something he wanted to say, but he struggled to get it out. He cleared his throat and more than once adjusted the rear view mirror. “Mary doesn’t need to know about this,” he said. “She’s got a temper you wouldn’t believe.”

Willow wanted to tell him she knew all about Mary’s temper, and then just as quickly, she didn’t want to think about Mary or for him to think about Mary. “Don’t you love this song?”

“Yeah,” relief in his voice. “And you and I are talking.”

“We are.” That fact bewildered her, too.

“If you want to punch me or something,” he said, “go ahead. I deserve it.”

She laughed with surprise and turned at an angle to face him more squarely, her right scapula safely pressed against the door. “Don’t push your luck.” This was what it meant to be a teenager, out after dark, talking with a boy in a car, a radio playing. She’d grab up the night with both hands.

An hour later, he pulled back to the curb in front of her house, keeping the engine idling. Convinced he’d never be back, because she hadn’t been good enough at whatever it was he wanted her to be good at, she didn’t want to get out. She could do better. “Where are you going for college?” The question sounded stupid to her, left field stupid, and she wanted it back.

He didn’t laugh. “As far from Omaha as I can get.” He raised a finger, touched the air here and there, going clockwise around the extreme edges of an imaginary U.S. map. “Bangor Maine, Miami, Brownville, San Francisco, Seattle. Europe, if I could.”

“Why?” She understood wanting to get away, but Derrick? He had everything going for him.

He made a point of looking at his watch. “Curfew. I won’t be going anywhere if I don’t get through high school.” He leaned over the gearshift, fresh waves of his aftershave reaching Willow like a balm of promises. “Can I kiss you?”

She held her breath, even as she told herself to breathe. He kissed her, only a peck, and pulled back to study her expression. “I’m not very good at that,” she said.

He laughed. “You’ll learn.” He kissed her again, this time with one hand around the back of her neck, gently holding her, pulling her closer to him. They separated, and he grinned, “You’re cute. I could fall in love with you.”

She didn’t answer.

“Curfew.”

Julian hadn’t moved, dishes still sat in the sink, and clutter lay everywhere. She thought of Cinderella returned to her scullery. Would she ever dance with the Prince again? Had he meant what he said, that he thought her cute and could fall in love with her?

Lying awake in her bed, with Friar’s absence a gaping hole in the room, she replayed the evening: the car ride, Derrick’s kiss, and his voice. She heard him repeat endless times how he thought she was cute and how he could fall in love with her.

The next night, they parked in a field a half-mile from the end of the airport runway. The roar of jet engines, the flashing lights, and what seemed like huge silver whales rising and lifting over them, felt magical. The great-bellied beings thundered with power and mysterious comings and goings to places she only saw in books or on television and while sitting slumped on a bleak and ratty sofa. This was being alive. She failed Friar, and she continued to fail Papa by not finding a way to bring him back from his shadowed wanderings. But sitting next to Derrick, power surging over and through her, all that was a world away.

“Let’s get in the back seat,” he said.

Crawling between the seats to the back, she landed first and then he, all legs and arms between them. Derrick kissing, unsnapping his jeans first, then hers, tugging hers down over her hips.

His speed shocked her. Was getting in the back seat a code word for
yes
? “I don’t think we should,” she said, but she didn’t pull his hands from her clothes and didn’t push him back. “Wait, just wait a sec.”

“You want to be my girlfriend, don’t you?”

Of course she did, just as she wanted him to desire her, but she needed a minute.

“You got a rubber?” he asked.

A rubber?
So, they were really going to do it? She wasn’t saying, “No,” but she also wasn’t saying, “Yes.” Her jeans were off, then her panties, and her heart banged with so much noise she feared he would hear and laugh at her. “Derrick—”

“You don’t have a rubber? You’re good then?” He mumbled the question into her neck, kissing and breathing, hugging and rocking against her. His bare thighs on hers.

A plane roared so low overhead the car’s windows rattled.

Yes, she was good in the sense that she wanted him to love her. She didn’t really want to have sex, but she
did
want to feel desired. And despite the planes, the world outside the car seemed far away, along with her worries about tomorrow and Papa. There was only Derrick pressing his lips on hers, the weight of his body on hers. Her mind flitted over the idea that she might get pregnant, but she let it go. Tomorrow was a million miles away. It would never come, and not having a rubber wasn’t slowing Derrick down. If he wasn’t concerned, she wouldn’t be the one to ruin everything. Besides, everyone knew you couldn’t get pregnant the first time.

As I left them alone, I considered how I never conceived, never gave Thomas children of our own. After a year of marriage, I gathered the courage to see a doctor. He examined me, and then we sat opposite each other, his wide desk between us.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “You’ll never have a child.” His face was tight with questions. Or knowing. Had he seen other cases? “You’re full of scars. Pelvic adhesions and bands of scar tissue.” My eyes were filling with tears, and he slowed down. “Bad infections in children, before the cervix is fully mature….”

His office filled with the scents of lavender, Damask, and Mme. Francoise’s baths. I knew then why I was barren. I rose and left the office before he finished explaining. On the list of things
Le B
ête
took from me, I could add my children.

In the dark that night, I whispered to Thomas, “There won’t be any children.” I turned to the wall. The bed moved as he rolled after me and pulled me into his big arms. “Then I get to keep you all to myself.”

We never spoke of children again. A few months later, I received word of Luessy.

18

Immediately after that encounter, certainly I can’t call it lovemaking, they left the thundering overhead planes bounding to places unknown. Within minutes Derrick had her home again, his car idling in front of her house. “Wish I didn’t have to go,” he said, “but I’ve got curfew.”

Her jeans felt tight, and the seams twisted and uncomfortable, wrong on her body. Her underwear was soiled. The Beatles sang on the radio, but she heard only the idling engine and Derrick’s readiness to leave.

“You okay?” he asked, and before she could answer, he looked purposefully again at his watch.

She shifted in the seat, pulled her long hair over one shoulder and twisted it around and around. They just had sex. She wanted to talk about it, to find her place in its meaning. He’d fumbled and hurried through as though a classroom bell might ring at any moment signaling their time was up. Now, she wanted the rest, the non-rushing part where he made her feel loved, not gutted.

When he opened his door to step out and come around, she opened her own door and stepped out before he reached her. She’d act on her own, not have him standing there with her door open, all but saying, “go.”

He planted a kiss on her lips and grinned. “I’ll see you tomorrow night.” He started back around the car, “I’m sure I can get away.”

She wanted to stop him and say that it had been her first time, but she was afraid he’d shrug, “You’re kidding, right?”

His car moved down the street and turned at the corner and vanished. Only then did she look at the listing porch and the house without Friar. Derrick’s car had been stuffy hot, and lying under him, her head wedged against the door while his was in the cleaner air, she smelled the seat and a saturation of odors rising from impossible crevices: dust, sweat, splashes of beer, stale French fries. Derrick hadn’t taken his jeans all the way off, had only slid them down over his hips. If a policeman, or night watchman, had come to the window and tapped on the glass, Derrick could have covered himself in an instant. Their different states of undress seemed a metaphor for the evening, a feeling that she’d been the only one who’d really taken risks.

The lights in the front room and kitchen and even the television were still on. Snoring rumbled and caught and rumbled again from Papa’s room. She locked the front door, turned off the lights and television, and in the dark walked through the kitchen to stare out into the backyard. The mound beneath the tree chilled her. She and Friar were both buried.

She wiped at her tears, left the window, and walked to the doorway of Papa’s room. The same streetlight, giving his room dim illumination each night, outlined his form on the bed. She once ended nightmares and did away with monsters by running down the hall into his room. On those nights, he lifted the blanket, she snuggled into the warmth and security, he kissed her cheek, and he snored again—the best lullaby in the world.

She tiptoed into his room. “Papa, are you awake?”

He hadn’t removed his shoes, and the sole of each one had a quarter-sized hole. The two openings stared at her like a pair of animal eyes. She imagined how he’d staggered,
Yes, Sister Dominic Agnes, he staggered down the hall and fell onto his bed.
“Papa?”

He didn’t move.

A little louder. “Papa?”

He still didn’t move, and she took the last step to the side of his bed. He smelled of stale wine, cigarettes, and old clothes. His whiskers were a salt and pepper stubble. She didn’t want to confess what she’d done with Derrick, she’d never tell him that, but she wanted to hear his voice, to have proof she wasn’t alone. “Papa? You want to talk?” She put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry for what I said. I don’t blame you for Friar.”

He groaned, but his eyes remained closed.

She stood a long moment, sucking and biting her bottom lip. “I need you to wake up.” She shook him, and his shoulder felt thin and lifeless. Still he didn’t move. Her anger rose. She whispered, “You’re leaving me. Just like Jeannie and Mémé did. Just like Friar.” She slapped his shoulder. “Papa! Wake up! You stupid drunk!”

Over the next few days, especially in the mornings before leaving for school and before Julian started drinking, she stayed close to him. As he made coffee, she stood at his shoulder, and as he smoked his first morning cigarette, she kept her chair close to his. She thought if she stayed near enough he’d notice she was different, and he’d know how to fix it. For certain, he’d see the fear in her eyes, and he’d know what she knew: If she didn’t keep having sex with Derrick, he’d dump her. She couldn’t go back to her life with mired ducks, and she couldn’t let Mary win and have Derrick back.

Julian did notice her, but he believed she only missed Friar, and the way he’d disappointed her by not taking the dog to a vet, weighed on him. Though he thought his non-action was justified, she respected him less, and knowing that, hurt. He was proud of her. She’d become a beautiful woman: tall and sleek. Many days, wandering through the empty house, he looked in at her canvases or sketch book, and what he saw could make him weep with pride and shame. His emotions closed his throat against saying he loved her and made him pour more wine into his glass.

When Willow and Derrick next crawled into the back seat, she knew she should ask him to wear a condom, but she couldn’t find the courage.
Rubber
was such a gross word and subject. She just didn’t know him that well, and their relationship felt too fragile for such clinical talk. She could talk about math, science, art, but not say the word
rubber.
She was also tired of worrying about the future. Derrick was all she had, the only thing that mattered, and they’d already done it once, all of which was a kind of box fitted over her. When he started unbuckling his belt, she wiggled her pants over her hips. This time, too, Derrick fumbled with her breasts only through her bra, not reaching behind to open hooks and eyes, and she wondered if he avoided getting his hands near her shoulder. Embarrassed, she quit wearing a bra. They’d come from the Goodwill two years earlier, were old, gray, and still fit only because the elastic was stretched out. She didn’t want him seeing them anyway. Without a bra, button by button, as nonchalantly as possible, she could open her own blouse, and Derrick would fondle her breasts, and she’d fight back tears of shame over her beggarly act. Who was
that
needy? How was it different from offering Mary her back?

After the first few times, with the fall days growing colder and shorter, her hopelessness grew. She’d lost so much already, why protest now? Lying beneath him in the backseat of his car, the radio low, she never resisted him, and she never joined him. While he pumped and grunted, she let her mind ride around and around the circle of whatever song played in the background. The lyrics taking her all the distance of a carousel horse.