“But I did not feel anything,” I said. “I did not even know he was in there. I felt like there was this wall in me, and nothing was going to break through it. It went on like this for months and months. I was so scared. I did not say anything about it. He did not ask how I felt, if I was having a good time or anything. He did not know yet that he was supposed to do that. And I did not know he was supposed to do that either. We were so young. I was so numb. And then one day he asked me if I liked it. Maybe he figured out to ask from a TV show, maybe one of his buddies, I do not know. He could tell I was lying. It all came out then. It was a mess. But it only brought us closer together. Together we were going to figure it out. Because that is what married couples did. It was either that or divorce.”
“You were sixteen,” said Valka.
“We were married. Or something like it,” I said. “We were like one.”
A FEW YEARS BACK Thomas had decided we needed a joint solution, and that could only be found in a sex shop. We drove down I-80 for a few hours, just over the Iowa border, where he had heard there was a magazine shop off the interstate that sold all kinds of helpful paraphernalia. Like little extra bits he could strap onto himself, just to give him an extra inch or two. And there were oils and creams and pills for me, to make me more “sensitive” down there. I had protested, but Thomas sweet-talked me into going with him. When we got to the store, I refused to go inside with him though. There were signs up all over the outside of the store that said “Triple XXX” and “Adult Magazines” and “Open 24 Hours,” and the windows were covered with curtains and I have never trusted a place that you can’t see inside. Plus there were a dozen big rigs sitting outside in the parking lot. It was the middle of summer and I was wearing a short skirt and a tank top and I suddenly felt naked. Thomas cut the engine off and the car immediately flooded with heat, the sun ticking off sweat points on my body.
“I do not care to mix with truckers in a dirty magazine store today, Thomas Madison,” I said. I was quiet. I never raised my voice to him. The few times I had he had always cried, and then I ended up doing what he wanted in the first place just to make him feel better. I had learned to keep my voice low and my thoughts clear when I disagreed with him.
“I’m sure that part’s separate,” he said. “Come on, baby, it’s better if we do it together.”
“I will not go in there today,” I said. “Or ever.”
“Fine, I guess I’ll have to make the extra effort to make our marriage work by myself,” he said. His guilt trip was not going to work. I stayed put, crossing my arms across my chest to make sure he knew I was serious. The tiniest gestures would work on him.
He opened the car door.
“I’m going,” he said.
“Go,” I said. “And leave me the keys.”
“Why do you want me to leave you the keys?”
“Because I want to listen to the radio. Because it is hot and I want to keep the AC going. And because I cannot believe I let you drag me all the way out here, that is how come I want the keys.” As soon as I said all that, I felt better. I was hoping I would soon find all of this funny, though I had not yet.
Thomas slid the keys into the ignition and turned on the car, and looked straight ahead out the window, paused, and then said, “You’re not going to leave me here, are you?”
“Like I would leave anyone I love in a place like this,” I said.
“I’m just going to take a peek,” he said.
“Go on, then,” I said.
I watched him after he got out of the car and headed to the dirty magazine store, kicking dust and gravel behind him as he walked. I slid over to the edge of my seat and fiddled with the radio until I hit an all-news channel. A famous zoologist had died. He was filming a TV show, something about deep-sea diving, and had bumped into a stingray in the middle of the ocean. The stingray stung him in the chest. Pierced directly into his heart. He died almost instantly. He left behind a wife and child. I remembered I shivered as I listened to this. It was hard not to imagine how that hurt, even if I did not have a child. I did not ever want to be left alone. I turned down the AC and wrapped my arms around myself.
There was a knock at the window, one of the truckers, a red-faced man with small nervous welts around his neck. His eyes were blue in the center, but yellow and red where the white should be. He asked me to roll down the window. I rolled it down just a tiny bit. His scent was so strong it made it through even just the inch of air between us. I pulled back away from him and started breathing through my mouth.
“Are you working?” he said.
“Working?” I said. “On what?”
“Don’t worry,” he said. He winked. “I’m not a cop.”
I was willing to take crap from my husband, but not strangers who smell like whiskey before noon.
“I do not know what you are implying, but my husband went inside to use the restroom, and he is ginormous and will kick your ass if you do not step away from this car right now, and I will scream, I will . . .” I just kept rattling things off until he mumbled, “My mistake,” and drifted off slowly at first toward the hub of rigs, and then he turned and looked at me, at my fierce and determined face, and then he began to hustle toward his truck. He rolled out of the parking lot in less than a minute. Filthy man.
But could I blame him? What was I doing sitting in the parking lot of an adult bookstore on a Tuesday morning? I was going to kill my husband. I rolled up the window and blasted the radio. I pulled a shiny tin package of gum out of my purse, popped a piece in my mouth, and started chewing. I pulled on my jaw like it was the lever of a machine. My knee started twitching up and down. I crossed my arms. A few minutes later another trucker knocked on the window. I stared straight ahead. He knocked again, so I slammed the back of my hand up against the window, middle finger up in the air. He cursed me, then walked away.
That is it, I thought. I am a married, respectable woman. I will not be cursed by truckers. I put my hand on the horn, and I started pressing it, alternating between long spurts, and short little beats. I did this until the front door of the bookstore opened. A lean man in a white and black striped dress shirt walked out toward our car, loping with his long legs and black cowboy boots. He walked with a purpose, that purpose being to stop me from beeping and destroying his business. He tapped on the window. I rolled it down, again just a short distance. He did not look angry.
“Hon, is there a problem? Are you okay?” He smiled. His teeth were gigantic. There were three wavy lines indented into his forehead. They were so distinct, it seemed like they had been drawn there, like a caveman’s drawing on a wall. The symbol for fire, or a river, or the slaughter of an animal.
“Can you send my husband out?” I said. I was chewing my gum really fast. “I really want to go home.”
“Who’s your husband?”
“Thomas Ma—” I stopped myself. Maybe I should use a fake name, I thought. Last thing I need is our good name getting out. “Just Thomas. Just say, ‘Thomas, your wife wants to go home. Right now.’”
“Are you sure you don’t want to come in and find him yourself?” he said. He leaned in closer to the window and hooked his fingers over the top of it. “You might find something you like inside.” He was looking at my little denim skirt, my legs, my strappy tank top, and then my face. He did not see it right, though, I could tell. He did not see it as the skirt I bought at my daddy’s Walmart with his employee discount to keep cool in the summer days, but as a short trashy little skirt for a short trashy little girl who hangs out in the parking lot of dirty magazine stores. Even though he did not know anything except that my husband was inside—my husband could be a complete psycho—he still acted as bold as anything. There are certain men who do that, act like it is okay because they are flattering you. It is all in their tone. They think they control the world. They probably do half the time. I am not saying it is right, I am just saying they know how to work things to their advantage.
“Just tell him
that his wife is sitting out here waiting for him,” I said. I rolled up the window and he snapped his hands back. He put his fingers to his head and gave me a little salute, and then turned on one foot and marched back to the shop. It made me laugh, even though I knew he was a scumbag.
A minute later, Thomas came hurrying out to the car. He was empty-handed, and looked terrified. He got in the car, put it in drive, and pulled out of that trucker hellhole parking lot and onto the freeway.
He was dead quiet until he hit seventy on the interstate.
“Way to embarrass me, Moonie,” he said.
“What, in front of all your new friends?” I snapped. “What about me? Did you know there were truckers coming up to me thinking I was a hooker? They wanted to pay me. To have sex with them.”
Thomas looked at me, his jaw dropped, his mouth open wide, and I took my hand and pushed his chin up until his lips met. And then came the waterworks.
“How could I have done that to you, Moonie?” One tear, and then it seemed like there were twenty tears all at once, streaming down his face. He sniffled for a few minutes; I let him get it all out.
“Oh, it is all right,” I told him. “There are better ways to spend a Tuesday, but it is not like anything really bad happened.”
“That place wasn’t right anyway,” said Thomas. “I went to hit the can and there was a glory hole in there, swear to God.”
“What’s a glory hole?” It sounded sort of pretty. I pictured a black hole in the night sky with stars twinkling all around it.
“It’s where . . . people put their dicks in them. For sex.”
That sounded like just about the most awful thing someone could do. Sex through a hole, where you could not see the other person? Or touch them or kiss them? I did not get it. I puckered my mouth. “And what happens after?” I said.
“I think it’s maybe gay. I don’t know. Your friend Timber’d probably like it.”
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“Everyone knows he’s gay,” said Thomas.
“He is?” Suddenly I liked Timber a lot more. I did not know why. I guess being gay just made him more i nteresting.
“That’s why he had to leave school. For being gay.”
“They can’t kick you out of college for being gay,” I said. “That’s illegal.”
“They can kick you out if they catch you sucking your professor’s dick.”
“Shut up, Thomas,” I said. “That is just not true. They would just fire the professor. And, anyway, how would you even hear something like that?”
“I don’t know all the exact details, little miss smarty-pants,” said Thomas. “I just know I heard it around.”
I looked out the window. A sign said we were sixty-five miles from Omaha. We still had a long way to go before we got home.
Thomas tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “It’s sort of funny, huh? All of that with the truckers.”
“Not yet it isn’t,” I said. But eventually it would be something we could laugh about. It was all temporary, a piece of plastic he would have added to himself, so I could temporarily feel him, during a temporary moment, which is all sex was. That was why I did not care that I could not feel him. It was just one part of a lifetime of moments I planned on having with him. And the non-feeling part made me feel more, made me love him more. It was sort of like how a blind person could hear better than someone who could see, or a deaf person might have a really strong sense of smell. It seemed like all of my other senses were more intense to make up for the place I felt nothing. I could never make him see that what was missing was just as important as what was there. That it was one part of our makeup, the way we fitted together.
At least I wanted to believe this was all true. So it was.
And then two years later he wanted to do something permanent, change the way we fit together for the rest of our lives, and it scared me. I could not talk him out of it. He could not spend his father’s money fast enough; he was in a race with himself. I could see he was sticking his head out, his chest, his neck, reaching for that finish line. I had never seen him running so fast in his life.
13.
We had taken some Advil. We had guzzled some water. We had decided we were never going to drink again. We lay there and let the water run through us. Hydrating, said Valka. It was soothing, and I began to calm down.
“What are you going to do with all that money anyway?” she said.
“I do not even care about it at all,” I said.
“You must care a little,” she said.
“Live, I guess.” I had not thought much about how I would spend it. “Maybe I should send some of it back,” I said. “Like half. That seems fair.”
“You will do no such thing,” said Valka.
A chime rang in the other room, and then there was a knock at the door. Valka got out of bed and started toward the front room.
“Wait—” I said.
“What?” she said.
“It could be someone looking for me,” I said.
“Well, if they found you, they found you,” she said. “You can’t stay in this room forever.”
She disappeared from sight. I heard the door open, and then I heard her laugh. “Hold on,” she said. She came back into view, grabbed her purse and ran back to the door. “This is for you,” she said.
She came back into the bedroom carrying a bouquet of red roses. “He is so in love with me,” she said. She sniffed the roses. “These are the real deal, too. I wonder where these came from, this time of year. The hybridized ones barely smell anymore. Although they are very cheap. And bright.”
She lay down in bed and put the flowers between us. I fingered the baby’s breath. “I knew it. I knew we had made a connection,” she said.
Another person in love. I was happy for my friend but still my face turned dark.
“Oh, honey,” she said. She reached out a hand toward my face. “It’s just some flowers. I don’t even like roses. I prefer more exotic blooms.”
“It’s nothing,” I said. “It’s good that he likes you.”
“But didn’t you have fun, too? With that little Prince impersonator? He definitely liked you.”
I did not say that he was a she, or something in between anyway. Halfway there in some ways, all the way there in others. I knew Valka would not judge me. I was not worried about that. I just did not want her to have all my secrets. I could see that she was hungering for them. She wanted real sisterhood. It was not bad that she wanted it to be that way. But I already had a sister. Valka was my friend. My best friend. And I would tell her a lot. Not everything, though. I did not want anyone to know everything about me. That seemed scary to me.
“We just talked,” I said. That was mostly the truth.
“What did you talk about?” said Valka. “Did you tell him this story?”
“Not really,” I said. “He talked more than me.” Also mostly true.
“Did you make out?” she said. “Did you let him get to first base?” She started laughing and I laughed, too. I smelled her roses, the tender petals brushing against my face. They did smell real.
IT WAS ONLY A FEW WEEKS AFTER Thomas and I watched the show that we were sitting in front of the brand-new Helping Hands Center in Omaha. Another parking lot, me wanting to stay in the car, and Thomas begging me to come inside with him. Thomas had an appointment with a doctor, just an initial meeting to see how much it would cost and how long it would take to fix his penis. “It’s just to see what it’s all about,” said Thomas.
The center was a smooth, long building with windows that reflected out at the street like a pair of sunglasses my mother ordered from some commercial when I was little, the kind where you could see in front and behind you at the same time. They were sneaky. I was feeling distrustful. I set my jaw against the world. I do not know why Thomas was always trying to make me go places I did not want to go. If I had never left bed in the morning with Thomas, it would have been just fine. Let us
stay just how we are, I thought, frozen in love. I had never dreamed of bigger things like some people. There was a girl we went to high school with who ended up going all the way to Rhode Island for college. She was an artist, and she had a pointy tongue that she used to stick out at people when they teased her. She was quiet her whole life and then senior year she got accepted to art school and it was like everything changed at once for her. She started wearing bright red lipstick and dying her blond hair red and if anyone messed with her she would say, “I am counting the hours until I never have to deal with you again.” Sometimes she said it in a British accent. I thought she was funny.
But I was not her, thinking of something that existed beyond our flat horizon. I dreamed of the small things. Little noises, like the high-pitched squeal of the crickets calling for love, or the pregnant sizzle of bacon and eggs cooking together in a cast-iron frying pan. Or the different colors in our town, on our land, the purple and gold of prairie flowers, and the way those colors repeat themselves again and again, the plain, healthy green of the elm trees that shade the south side of the farmhouse, so it was the coolest part of our home. The swollen purple belly of our tiny town river after a storm, waves of anxious minnows following the flow of water. That was all, just the little details of the world around me. There was no plotline to my dreams, as much as I would have liked there to be sometimes, something to shoot for in the future. But I had no need for bigger things, no need for alteration to my self. That was how I felt then. Couldn’t I already be whole?
VALKA MADE a little coughing noise, only there was nothing stuck in her throat.
“What?” I said.
“I don’t mean to say Thomas was right about anything. And I am your friend and I will always take your side. But.”
She looked a little green, and she was biting her lower lip. She was straight up and honest almost all the time but sometimes telling a friend the truth was hard. I could see she was about to tell me I was wrong.
The Melting Season Page 10
