by Piper Denna
“Nothing,” I choked miserably. “Everything.”
She pulled my head up on her lap, off the rug.
“My whole life has gone to shit in only two months.”
“That’s pretty fast work, A. Look how many years I’ve been working on messing mine up. You’re very efficient.”
“Shut up,” I laughed against her leg. “Some friend.” But she was. She was a good friend, right there, comforting me in my time of need. As I’d done for her countless times.
“Sounds like man-fight crying to me. Was it Willy or Wonderboy?”
“I’m sure you’d be equally pleased with either answer.” I pinched her leg, hard, because I knew a good part of what Cam had on me was because of what she’d said to me on the front porch that day.
“Hey, bitch! What was that for?” she half-laughed, rubbing the red spot.
“Cam thinks I’m damaged goods, and it’s all thanks to you. Oh, and he thinks you’re a closet lesbian in love with me.”
“Fuck,” she laughed. “He’s no psychic, huh? We’re, like, sisters. And I like dick way too much to be a closet dyke.”
“Yeah. But why’d you do it that night, Shurre?”
She pushed my head off her leg and stood up.
I thought she was defensive, ‘til she faced me.
“We were wasted and horny, Ali. It was an experiment. And it worked, right?”
My stomach contracted when she looked at me with half-closed eyes, like when she’d masturbated for me. And from that night.
“It was good, wasn’t it?” Her voice was lower, almost a purr.
My breathing got uneven. I felt mesmerized by her voice. It was good. I hated it.
“Not so good for me, for a long time. I felt sick for months, every time I came.” I hoped my revelation hurt her, a lot. She was doing it again, trying to make me think I wanted it.
“Sorry your boyfriend can’t take it, Sugar. I’ve gotta go for awhile. Have to go see Uncle Ronnie.”
What? She couldn’t just take off to visit her uncle in the middle of our conversation!
“Sounds pretty stupid to me. You’re gonna have to explain that shiner to him, you know.”
She looked at me like I was stupid then. At first I thought she’d forgotten about the black eye.
“Duh,” she sneered, then bit her lower lip and closed her eyes.
Duh? What the hell did that mean?
Then, desperate and fast, “I mean, of course I’ll explain.”
But that wasn’t what she’d meant at all. I was certain that “duh” meant Ronnie knew. Shurre hadn’t been anywhere since that night. Her house of cards came crashing down in my mind.
“Oh my God. He did the black eye. Oh my God. Shurre!”
She turned and stalked away.
“Come back here!” I followed her to the living room, where she pulled clothes from her bag. “He did the bruises too. Why do you let him beat you up?”
“Shut up, Ali.” She stripped off her sweatshirt, started putting on a bra. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think I do. It was Ronnie that beat you up. And you were drunk with him. Did he beat you for drinking? But those bruises were, oh God. You had sex with your uncle?”
She tugged on a tight, cleavage-baring v-neck. “No. What is this crazy shit? You’re insane, you know. Sex with my uncle.”
I had to hand it to her—if I didn’t have all the proof in front of me, she’d have sounded believable.
“How long, Shurre? How long has it been going on? Is that why he bought you the SUV? For the sex, or for the bruises?”
She shot me the dirtiest of looks while tugging up tight jeans. “You’re wrong. You don’t know dick. Just mind your own business and I’ll mind mine.”
“I’m going with you.”
“The fuck you are.”
“I am! You can’t keep me from going. If you don’t let me ride with you, I’ll drive my own car and follow you.” Then another idea hit me. “Let me come, or I’m calling Robert right now.”
Her eyes rounded. “Stay the fuck away from me, Ali. Stay out of my business.” Her words were full of hate, but her voice betrayed fear.
“Sure. Push me away. That’s why you’ve been coming to me for help all this time, right? Because you don’t need me? I’m coming. He won’t get his hands on you tonight, Shurre. Why don’t you just refuse to go?”
A look of pain crossed her face, and I couldn’t understand it, but I didn’t want to hurt her more. “I’ll be there for you, okay Hon? I’ll be there.” It was all I could do.
All Fore Revenge
Chapter 15
Ronnie Shumaker was every bit as disgusting as I remembered. Outwardly, he was a clean old man with a military haircut, always dressed in slacks and a button down shirt. He could smile like anybody’s grandpa. But one look in those leering eyes, and he morphed into a sicko with a greasy comb-over, stained jeans, and a yellowed undershirt with cigarettes rolled in the sleeve. Fortunately for Shurre, he had been a smoker for around fifty years, and he had lung cancer. He’d be lucky to last another year, she’d told me on the way to his house.
I honestly don’t know how I could have missed seeing him for what he truly was, all those years. As an adult, as a mother who always looks out for her kids’ well-being, I couldn’t understand how any amount of brotherly love had kept Shurre’s mother from knowing what he was doing to her daughter.
What he wasn’t, was pleased to see me. It was far too obvious that he’d wanted Shurre to himself. No amount of protesting on her part during the drive to his house had swayed me. The pieces were falling together in a sickeningly clear picture.
I sat in polite silence while they talked about her new vehicle and his upcoming medical treatment. He asked about her kids and she flinched. He wanted them to visit and she lied about where they were.
He had a hard-on bulging in his slacks and, when he absently fondled it, I felt the need to retch.
I excused myself to use the bathroom. Then, hearing them discussing some private matter in low, unfriendly voices, I tiptoed into the master bathroom. Stifling that urge to vomit, I held my breath and opened his medicine cabinet. There were tons of bottles. Vitamins and minerals, pain meds, and, voila! Viagra. What would a seventy-year-old cancer-ridden widower need with Viagra? Especially a prescription he’d filled just the week before? Only one thing.
Of course, it required planning, didn’t it? It had to be taken a couple of hours in advance. Well, no wonder Shurre had to show up at a certain time. But why? Why would she keep going? Just tell the guy to fuck off. She’s an adult. He can’t bully her anymore.
My return to the living room interrupted an even more heated conversation.
Shurre jumped away from him like he was a snake. He was.
I couldn’t keep silent any longer. This monster needed to know that I knew what he’d been doing to her, for, how long had it been?
“It’s kinda strange, Ron, how you didn’t even ask your favorite niece how she got a black eye.” I narrowed my eyes on him, unable to keep the disgust from my glare.
“Well, we all know how Shurre gets clumsy. Or maybe she’s taken up with that fellow who used to beat her.” He looked at Shurre like she was the lowest piece of white trash in the world.
“Your concern is absolutely touching,” I sneered.
“Ali?” Shurre warned.
“Young lady,” Ronnie patronized, “you’re very disrespectful.”
“I give respect where it’s due, sir. You let your niece drive away drunk out of her mind the other night, with bruises all over her breasts. Perhaps if you’d control yourself…”
“That’s enough, Ali!” Shurre yanked me by the arm out the front door.
*
“Goddammit,” she muttered. An unlit cigarette dangled from the corner of her mouth as she peeled out of Ronnie’s driveway.
“I thought you quit that.”
“Some things you can’t ever rea
lly quit. Fuck, how could you talk to him like that?”
“He’s a monster, Shurre. A MONSTER!” I yelled. “You of all people know that.”
“Ali. You don’t know. You have it wrong. He’s not a monster. I am. I’m sick, okay?”
“No,” I shook my head, “you’re not. He wants you to think that. You know you’re not. Let’s call the cops. Let’s end this.”
“You’re wrong, Ali. Don’t waste our friendship by insisting you’re right. Just because you got some crazy idea. Jesus. Because you feel guilty about a same-sex encounter that happened years ago.”
“Don’t turn this around, Shurre. You’re trying to make me feel guilty like you do. If you are sick, it’s only because of him.”
She’d parked in my driveway, but left her car running while she strode up the sidewalk.
“Don’t you dare go back to him tonight. Shurre?” I grabbed her arm while she was stuffing clothes in her bag. “Don’t hate me for this, but I’m calling Robert. I’ll tell him where to find you if you don’t go home.”
“What the hell am I gonna tell him about my eye?”
“Try the truth. I don’t know why the sick old fuck has to hit you when he has you doing just what he wants anyway.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she insisted.
“Then tell me.”
“Go to hell, Ali.” With that kind invitation, she left.
*
Out of simple respect for Shurre and the horrible secret she’d been carrying for so long, I waited forty-five minutes before I called her house. Robert answered.
“Hey Robert. I just wanted to make sure Shurre made it okay. She was kinda upset when she left here.”
“She made it.” He sounded annoyed that I was intruding.
“Good. Look, she’s really upset with her uncle right now. Maybe, um, she shouldn’t go over there tonight.
“Yeah. Whatever. Thanks for your concern.” He hung up on me, and I couldn’t help hating him for blaming me when I was doing so much to help her. One day. One day he’d appreciate what I’d done.
Though it was still early, I went to bed. There was no energy left in me to fight the maze of battles in my mind. Every direction, conversation, encounter, brought me to a new struggle. Screw emotion. All I wanted was numb sleep.
*
I dreamed of Shurre, when we were sixteen, the last day of school. We were on the school bus home, and she was telling me she was going to stay with her aunt and uncle for a month during summer break. I was devastated at the prospect of her being gone so long. But she was elated, in a way she’d never been before. When we were small, she’d liked to visit them, always coming home with some small toy or piece of jewelry, but around the time we became teenagers she started hating to go there. She told me it was boring. No kids to hang with.
After spring break that year, she came home with a pile of new clothes and tapes. And this time, she was positively thrilled. Something had changed, and I was jealous she wanted to be away for so long. She was so pleased to be leaving our podunk town for the summer. Before she got off the bus, she hugged me and promised to bring me home something great for my birthday. It was the last I saw her until July 4th, when Ronnie and Pam brought her home and attended the annual family picnic.
Shurre returned triumphant, as if she’d accomplished something by scoring so many new outfits. For my birthday, she presented me with a brand new pair of LA Gear high-tops. This was a huge deal, since she could rarely afford anything for my birthday at all. I was just happy to have her back. We spent her family picnic off by the creek, talking about boys and sex, her most knowledgeable topics. She’d started smoking in that month, and whispered in my ear that Ronnie had bought her two cartons and helped her hide them in her suitcase. It seemed like an awful gift to me.
I woke with a sick vision of Ronnie rolling off a nude Shurre, then patting her on the head in a benevolent-uncle fashion and offering her a post-coital smoke.
*
“Ali,” Bill said softly. “Hey. You okay?”
“Hmm?” It was dark in my room, and he sat on the edge of my bed, holding my hand.
“You were dreaming. It didn’t sound good.”
“Oh. God. You’re in Colorado?”
“I’m on my way to the San Diego tournament.”
I laughed softly in the dark. “I hate to tell you, but you’ve taken a wrong turn, baby. San Diego was the other direction from Phoenix.”
“God, it’s good to hear you call me Baby.” His hand squeezed mine. “I’m sorry for what I said when I was here Tuesday.”
“You flew this far out of your way to tell me that?”
“Al. I love you, and I want to make things right with us again. I would have walked this far, if I thought it would fix things.”
“Wow,” I teased, “you won’t even walk nine holes.”
He started singing, “And I would walk five hundred miles, and I would walk five hundred more…”
“God. You haven’t sung to me in years.”
“I know. I let a lot of things go to shit. I’m sorry. But I’m gonna fix it.” He lay down facing me, and put his arms around my neck. “Is it alright if I stay here tonight?”
“You bought the house, Bill.”
“Don’t do that. I want to know you want me here. What were you dreaming about?”
Relieved because I didn’t have to address whether I wanted him, I said, “Shurre. Her uncle’s been molesting her since God knows when.”
“She’s a grown woman now. How can he molest her? How’d you find out?”
“I know. And I saw it tonight, when I went to his house with her. He has Viagra. He was hard for her. God, it was horrible.” I shivered in Bill’s arms.
“That’s all pretty sick. She must be mental if she keeps going there. No wonder… well, you know, her crazy lifestyle must be because of that.” His lips pressed past my hair to my ear. “You’re pretty shook up over it.”
“Yeah.”
“You knew it, too. You were so set on finding out what was wrong. I love you, Alison. The way you take care of us all. That busy little mind of yours, always working on something. And that hot little ass.” His hand stole down to grip it, and it felt great.
“Please, go on,” I giggled.
“You’ve got great tits, you know. And a good backswing. Not a bad putt, for a girl.”
I cleared my throat.
He chuckled. “I like my tongue in your mouth, like this.”
He kissed me then, and his tongue felt so natural there with mine, like it belonged. The way you don’t notice that your house has a feel, a smell all its own, until you’ve been away for a long time, and first walk in it, and think, Hey, this is my home!
He whispered, “I love the way you feel inside.”
“Show me.” The hands I knew so well pushed down my panties and knew right where to go when they were off.
“Ali,” he moaned when his fingers touched me.
“Bill. Oh, God. More, do it more.” It was right. We were together, as we’d been my entire adult life. We were meant to be.
Before I kissed him again, I told him, “I love you.”
He cried, and I kissed him more, and then he made long, soul-trading, incredible love to me in the way that only two people who know one another can. It was better and deeper and warmer than anything with someone new can ever be.
We dozed afterward, and when I woke up against him, I wondered if I’d made a mistake. There was still the trust issue. Could I overcome it? If he knew all I’d done since we’d been apart, could he? Could I keep that to myself for the rest of our lives?
“Tell me what’s going on in the busy little mind?” he said softly.
I looked up at his moonlit face, and believed I could trust him. Shurre would tell me I was stupid for it. Well, look at all the stupid shit Shurre had done. Maybe someone who made so many mistakes and hurt so many people wasn’t the best person to get advice from.
&n
bsp; “I’ve, um, figured some stuff out this month. Remembered some stuff.”
“Like?”
Maybe I shouldn’t tell him. What would it help? Yet, I’d feel like he never really knew me if I didn’t. “Um. Remember that time in Cancun, when you found that girl for a threesome?”
He chuckled. “The one we had to send away, because you couldn’t touch her?”
“Yeah.” I felt embarrassed still, though it made no sense. “It wasn’t my first time with a girl.”
“I know.”
“You know?” I was shocked.
“Honey, it wasn’t just homophobia. You were freaked out.”
“You never asked me about it.”
“I figured you’d tell me if you wanted to. Do you want to now?”
“Maybe not yet. Almost.”
“I always thought something happened that summer we were dating. You were pretty hot to trot, and then all of a sudden you seemed scared. I thought I’d bag you on the fourth date, but then it didn’t happen until we were engaged.”
“Yeah,” I yawned. “Bill? Thanks for reminding me. How much I loved you.”
He was holding me tight when I fell asleep again.
*
Bill stayed the next day and took me golfing, just like our first dates. He kissed me under the tree where he had the first time. He stood behind me and held my club with me, not because I needed instruction, but because we could get away with the physical contact in public.
I played well, better than I had in years. So well that with my handicap, I beat Bill.
He owed me sexual favors we’d bet at the third hole.
I collected all afternoon at the farmhouse.
“Is the separation over then?” he asked, kissing my fingers next to my rings. “We’re together, and it’s just you and me, right Al?”
“Just you and me, Bill. I love you.”
When he left in his rental car to catch his flight to San Diego, I’d promised to join him in Charleston the next weekend for his tournament. I was in love again, and it felt great. None of the guilt I got from loving Cam. I belonged with Bill, I’d promised to be with him, and I was keeping up my end of the deal.
