The Scamp (27 page)

The market is a little clapboard house with gas pumps out front and an apartment above the store. There's an attendant who pumps for you; he'll wash your windshield and check your oil. Inside, they sell milk and snacks, bundles of firewood and charcoal. The only imported beer they have is Heineken, which Couper says is skunky, but they do have Sam Adams, and big cheap bottles of chardonnay.

I buy a pint of hand-packed mint ice cream, open it at the store, and pick at it with a plastic spoon. It's my fourth time this week. The week drags on like it did when I was a kid, waiting for supper, waiting for Chuck to come home, kicking around the yard after Khaki had gone. When she was there, we spent every day together. Even when we did nothing, we did nothing side by side.

Earlier this week I bought barbecue potato chips, cheddar popcorn, canned peaches, which I ate whole with a fork and then drank the juice. They made me long for peach cobbler, something my grandmother made when we were small, and no one else did after she died. She always baked it in a red bowl. The whole house smelling like nutmeg.

Patty, the woman behind the counter, looks a little like a dark-haired version of my mother, not so much in the face as in her clothes and the tired wrinkle of her skin, her
hair pulled up in a banana clip. She's a woman I know. I can't see them, but I'd guess that on her feet she wears canvas flats from Walmart. The kind you buy two pairs for five dollars. She scrapes her thumbnail along the glass cover that shows the variety of lottery tickets they have.

I used to crave, she says, watching me eat. I lean against the opposite counter. There's no AC in here, just the door open and a big fan, blowing my hair. Behind me, hot dogs roll on metal scaffolding, up and down in a sheet of grease. I used to crave hot peppers, Patty says, and laughs. Hell on you later if you get heartburn.

I put the ice cream down on the counter with the spoon stuck straight up in the middle. I fish a ten out of my pocket and ask her for a pack of Winston Lights.

That baby's twenty-seven now, she says.

Your baby? I say, taking her bait. She talks to me a little more every time. I've seen other people come in who stand and talk to her for a half hour, forty minutes. I try to listen, but I never hear anything important. Dogs and farming. Who's having a baby.

She nods and taps the pack on the counter, makes my change. You need matches, honey? she asks.

Yes ma'am, I say. Then, You don't look old enough to have a twenty-seven-year-old baby, I say, and laugh. That's older than me.

In the parking lot, a big old sedan pulls in, but doesn't stay, leaves in a red-clay cloud, spinning up tiny dirt devils above the potholed pavement. I watch out the door, long after the car is gone. Across the street, there's a
house on the corner that looks vacant, the siding a hard weathered gray, the porch slanted and empty.

Patty says, What else you craving?

Oh, I'm not craving, I say. I'm just bored. It'll make me fat, I say.

She chuckles at me like an old aunt, not your mother, who might reasonably ask you what in the hell you're doing out in the middle of nowhere eating mint ice cream and living in a campground. An aunt sees through your bullshit and doesn't judge you. Teddy always took my face in her hands when I went to their house. She'd hold me still and say, Let me get a good look at you. I was afraid of the hole in her throat, and too shy to meet her eye. I'd stare at her forehead where her full dark hair met in a widow's peak. She looked like a movie star to me, but maybe one who had fallen down the stairs too many times.

Patty hands me a plain white book of matches, no writing, no advertising. See you tomorrow, she says.

Khaki told me I was too stupid not to get pregnant. She knew her way around her own body the way some guys know their cars, like she could take it apart and put it back together.

It stung. Partially because I didn't think I was stupid. I kind of knew I wanted a baby someday, but she made it sound like it was some little girl princess fantasy. Then she said, You're so stupid you'll probably get married too.

My mother asked me if I loved Eli. Because we seemed headed toward some kind of life together, with
Summer on the way. He'd already secured the house for us, Summer's room with blue-flowered wallpaper, a white crib and a rocker.

He's okay, I said.

And you're all right with that, my mother said.

Right now, I said.

You could still take care of it, she said.

Mom, I said. I thought about the baby, which I already knew was a girl, which I could feel moving inside my belly.

Out of state, she said. Or Teddy's doctor.

Mom, I warned.

You don't know half the shit my sister went through, she said. She got up from the table then, when nothing much got her to move, and she went outside, smoking. It was one of the last warm days, the leaves on fire, the sun bright, and we had been sitting inside, smoking, her drinking gin and me drinking tea. I watched her scuff her feet along the driveway, looking down.

The mint ice cream turns to soup in the car, but I slurp at it with a spoon anyway. I dig a straw out of one of the Scamp's drawers and drink some of it. I offer it to Couper, who's sitting in the shade with his glasses on.

It's like a shake, I say. You have to suck real hard to get the chocolate chips though.

He takes the Styrofoam container from me. It's melted ice cream, he says.

Try it. I watch him suck. I can see a black chip moving up the straw.

He shakes his head.

I got dinner, I say.

We take a blanket down to the water. It gets cool and cloudy, a welcome relief from the hot sun of the day, and we eat a rotisserie chicken with our fingers.

I think you're afraid of noncommitment, I tell him. You're the opposite of what women complain about. You'll commit to anybody. You don't know how not to commit, I say.

He pulls a long greasy piece off the side of the chicken, from underneath the wing, down toward the top of the thigh.

Where'd you get that from? he says.

Just thinking. All I have is time to think, I say.

So you're thinking about me, he says.

What else?

Your cousin, he says.

I'm not going to conjure her thinking about her, I say.

White pieces of pollen, the seeds of old dandelions, float down all around us like it's snowing. They stick to the chicken, in Couper's hair, in my hair. They make a coating along the riverbank.

You're overlapping, I say. You're overlapping your love interests.

I am not.

You're not divorced, I say.

I don't love Amanda anymore, he says.

Did you?

I did, he says. Or maybe an idea of her.

And now? I say.

Now I love you, he says.

No you don't, I say.

But he outright laughs at me, his eyes crinkled, a sheen of grease on his lips. Tell me you love me, he says.

No, I say.

It's okay, he says. I know you do.

When it gets dark we press together inside the Scamp. I curve against his back, sitting behind him, and lay my arm along the length of his arm, my hand ready to cradle his hand while he signs the divorce papers. And then he puts the pen in his left hand.

Over here, he says. I'm left-handed.

No you're not, I say. I shake my head, my hair loose and tickling his shoulders. I've seen you write, Couper. With your right hand. Why do you insist on fucking with me?

But he signs with his left hand.

I'm both, he says.

I put my lips on his ear. Why do you have to be so difficult, I whisper.

Because I'm old.

We flip through and find all the arrows and he signs away all the Couper A. Gales from all the Amanda L. Kesslers. He lets the papers fall to the floor after, and puts his hand behind my head, his lips in the hollow of collarbone, beneath my ear, his leg rough up the inside of my leg, the window behind my head, the screen, covered
in pollen. He holds my wrist, my waist, my hipbone, my ass. We kiss, and I remember to watch his face, listen to the sound of his teeth, to the low howl that comes from inside his chest, swirling like wind against the corner of a barn. I put my hands at his temples, feel his pulse. Closed, his eyelids are purple and shot with fine vessels. Closed, I can't remember which eye is blue. On the floor at our feet, the papers refuse to scatter, held tightly by the clip that binds them.

twenty-two

KHAKI

I learned everything from my father. He was sharper than the rest of them. Faster, trickier. Smart as a whip and strong. I owe him everything.

I know. The easy answer is to point backward and place blame. To gather me up in pieces like a broken little doll, explain away the pain in my heart, in my thighs. Tell me it's not my fault.

Go ahead. Tell me it's not my fault.

The way I live now relies on the weakness of others. Their proclivities. Their darkness. I try to keep my own hands clean.

It's a role that Tennessee was born for. With her round face and her baby-soft limbs, her brown skin and
pink lips. I don't have to guide her much. I let her practice on me. To a point. When I stop her, she pouts.

She straddles me where I lie on a leather chaise. Her waist cinched in, her tits pushed up high.

You won't let me whip you? she asks, chin down, eyes raised.

She's a natural.

Not a chance, I say.

I do, however, let her loose on Schweitzer.

You think a man is selling furniture, is working as the town clerk, or the postmaster, but behind a closed black door, he puts his face to the ground and begs you to piss on his back. He asks you to bind his hands in red satin rope until his fingers turn purple, to choke him till he comes seeing stars.

Ordinarily when he comes to me, Schweitzer goes right for the humiliation, his head bowed to the floor, my spiked heel in his back. I can spend a whole hour tickling him with one feather, and then five minutes blistering his ass.

He pays me in cash. They all do.

I tell him I have a new flavor.

I dress her in white. From far away, she looks sweet, a girl bride on her wedding night. Up close, the corset is stiff with metal boning. Around her wrist, a bracelet in the shape of a snake, its head pointed toward her thumb.

She does everything without touching, like I taught her. That first day, I stay, and watch. She leans in, her breath vanilla and spearmint from the garden. Her lips
glossed hard and shiny. I lined her eyes to an elongated point, like a doe's or a cat's. Dusted her cheeks with copper.

Schweitzer kneels on the floor in his underpants, his hands bound behind his back, his head lowered. Tennessee pops a piece of gum into her mouth, a big square piece of bubble gum that she works with her mouth open and juicy. Her breasts are barely contained in their cups. Her legs, crisscrossed in ivory fishnet. She paces around him in five-inch heels.

I sure do wish I had a place to stay for the night, she twangs, exaggerating what is already slow and tinny about her accent. I watch her blow a bubble and then lift his head up with her toe under his chin. She puts her thumbs on her own nipples.

I know you got a place, she says.

Yes ma'am, he says. I do.

Who are you calling ma'am? she starts. How dare you answer me directly.

He tries to apologize, but she shushes him.

She might be a masterpiece. A dominant baby whore. It's hard to tell when a woman like that is playing you, all the time, some of the time. When she is ever telling the truth. If she is sweet to everyone, just to get what she needs from them. When she slips her hand inside your shirt or your pants, if that's for you alone, or if you're just next on her list.

I couldn't have made her better if I'd sewn her together from parts.

When it drives me crazy, the perfection of her, the silly sweetness of her voice, the constant performance, I step outside, where it's still light, the blue-green field behind our house shadowed by the building.

And I find Virginia. Crouched outside our place with her back against the brick wall. I've seen her in town. I know who she is. Worse, I know who her daddy is.

Please, she says to me.

Her skin looks like vanilla ice cream, her hair shiny like a crow feather.

Please what? I say to her.

Will you have me? she says.

I ask her what she's heard.

She describes a woman I never thought I'd hear of. Someone who will take you in. Who can suck the baby right from your belly, will polish you down to your feet and give you a good-paying job where you don't have to fuck anyone or suck any dicks.

My gosh, I say, and light a cigarette. That woman sounds like a dream come true.

She reaches for my hand. It's you, she says. Isn't it.

I should send her away, should tell her I have no idea what she's talking about. But the truth is, she's tongued my ego hard with that description. She plays me better than I might have played myself. And with her flawless skin and her dark hair, her small waist, she's too tempting to turn away.

Virginia is a disaster, a mistake. Virginia is my fault.

twenty-three

RAYELLE

It's predawn and Couper shuffles in the Scamp. We haven't even been sleeping that long. And it was one of those mornings when I could have slept clean through till noon, especially under the pines, the wind through them like the sound of your mother shushing you, telling you to go back to sleep.

Well, maybe not my mother.

When I hear him shut the screen door, holding it so it doesn't slam, I get up.

Couper, I say.

He doesn't answer me. He works the hitch over the ball, humming.

Can we sleep just a little while longer? Did something happen?

You sleep less when you're older, he says. He has a lantern on the trunk of the car, its light up on his face, on the back of the Scamp, but not so much where he needs it to shine on the connection. He feels his way over the joints with his hands. He can do it in the dark.