by KT Morrison
Maceo was calm, expressionless, standing still and regarding her. The weak ambient light of her sewing room caressed all the edges of his body, picked him out as a paler shape against the black of her son’s dark room behind him. It was like he allowed her to appreciate his body, and now her eyes roamed while her arms and legs had gone rigid and immobile.
He was so tall, her eyes level with his chest, his hard and young and masculine torso flexing before her eyes as he breathed calmly. But her eyes fell low, down between his legs, moving up and down over the big penis that dangled there below a thicket of his pubic hair.
It hung down more than double the length of his testicles, a sagging, heavy thing with a bell end on it that looked as big as a chicken egg; it was pendulously mesmerizing, swaying from side to side. A squelch of Mar’s leftover guacamole dip she’d served with dinner burned her an inch below her sternum; the thing between his legs should have been revolting to her but her eyes wouldn’t leave it; her knees trembled and at first she thought it was fear that he would condemn her for looking at it, but as heartbeat after heartbeat her quivering eyes never left him, she realized a foreign, roaring, uncomfortable feeling roused deep within her, and the whispering word lust echoed in her mind. This was lust; primal sexual impulse.
The moment was long and awkward and agonizing. His eyes stayed steady on her. Instead of stepping back, maybe bringing both his hands down in a quick gesture to cover his nakedness, she watched the slightest smile pull up on one side of his cheek. At last, he motioned with his hand out into the sewing room saying, “I was going to turn out the light.”
Mouth opening and closing, but no sound coming except for a tense creak in the hinge of her jaw only she could hear, she struggled for something to say. “I, uh, s-sorry, I-I’ll turn it out...” And then her mouth stayed open because there was more to say but she had nothing again, her heart beating faster and faster and this awful whooshing sound in her ears. He continued to regard her, almost amused, and her eyes went down over his perfect form and between his legs again, then back up. She said, “I was going to make... some tea—you want, uh, do you want some tea?”
Still standing there as if he wasn’t completely naked he said, “It’s late for tea, Janie.”
“Yeah,” she said, struggling to swallow. “I suppose.”
He shifted, one hip going out, his cock swaying; the door opened wider and so did her eyes. An invitation—she swore it was an invitation, a gesture to allow her access to the room, to come in and join him; the smallest of movements but loaded with perceived meaning.
“Oh, no, oh, okay, I, uh, good, um, good night, Maceo,” she stammered, hands shaking, stepping back into the safer perimeter of her sewing room, watching the young handsome man still regarding her from the open doorway. “Good night, Janie, I see you tomorrow,” he said and smiled.
“Yeah, see you tom—see you in the, uh, the morning...”
With that, Maceo closed the door, and she was alone in the safe space, heart whooshing in her ears, deafening, her knees gone weak, her ass muscles gone into tremors and her stomach feeling light and airy and pushing gently up against her organs. She continued her path backward, coming to her chair, her calves pressing against its front face. She plopped down heavily onto it, eyes still on the closed door, watching it again in the mirror she’d angled for the purpose of dressing her tailor’s dummy.
Sure, that was why it was angled that way. Sure.
Elbows on her knees, she buried her face in her sweaty palms and could feel the horror taking over, consuming her now, flooding up from her core and hacking through her like with a scythe swung in crescents. She was ashamed, embarrassed, loathsome. A peeping tom. An old woman spying on a young man; she’d sat here half-heartedly knitting, waiting to catch a glimpse of him naked again. And she did. All that good built up during the day, almost a friendship, just whacked on the footing and the whole beautiful day came down like a Jenga tower.
“Oh, no, oh, why, Janie? Why did you do that?” she cried.
* * *
Janie changed her mind and came to bed. He’d fallen asleep but woke with the feel of her sliding in between the sheets next to him. Half asleep, he rolled over to meet her.
“I was hoping you were going to come to bed,” he murmured.
“You’re still up?” she whispered.
“I was waiting for you.”
“I thought you were sleeping.” Her voice sounded tight, constricted.
“Come here,” he said, hooked his forearm around her waist, and pulled her closer. But instead of turning to face him, putting her face up by his, she squirmed to face the opposite way, giving him her back. It felt good to have her body pressed to his, to feel her lithe frame rubbing against him. He brought the center of his hand up to her chest, put his mouth on her neck and kissed.
She whispered, “What are you doing?”
“I turned you down last night.”
“You did.”
There was that tension in her voice again, a tightness that raised her whisper to a high sound. Her body was rigid under his touch. “Are you shaking?”
“Am I?”
It felt like her body was trembling, he could feel it along her sides, and against the inside of his arm. “You don’t feel cold,” he said.
“I think I have a chill.”
“Coming down with something?”
It took her a moment to answer, and he thought maybe she’d not heard him or drifted off. “Maybe,” she whispered at last.
He brought his hand down the center of her body, going up over her hip and down her thigh. He could feel her grace under the cotton flannel of her pajama bottoms. His hand swooped back up the front of her thigh, resting now across her stomach below her navel.
He kissed her ear again, but she said, “Is it okay if we just don’t?”
“You don’t want to?”
“Is it all right if you just hold me?”
“I’ll hold you,” he said. He didn’t like letting her down the night before, but if she wasn’t in the mood, she wasn’t in the mood. And he did have to get up early—they had a lot to do to prepare for the storm.
The hand on her stomach came up, higher than her breasts, up to her collar and he wormed his fingers to fit in the space between her neck and the pillow. He wriggled closer, shifting his hips, and Janie did the same, pushing her rump back against him. “I love you,” he said.
“I love you, too, John.”
In five minutes he was asleep.
Discovery
Nothing was said the next morning about the naked encounter and for that she was glad. She made Maceo his breakfast; he went and did the chores on his own while she cooked. They ate together but were quiet, friendly enough, though, and then he went upstairs to shower. She asked him what he wanted for lunch and he wouldn’t hear of it saying, “No, I get something at school.” That night he came home at six, and John was home at seven. They didn’t have time to paint, and she was disappointed. During the day she’d stared at her canvas, but now nothing was coming to her. She had other things to do, anyway, so she did those instead. It was the same thing on Wednesday, the same thing on Thursday. Wednesday he came home after John and said that he went out after classes with some friends he made at the art program. It wasn’t late, she was happy for him. On Thursday, John was later, so she and Maceo ate together at the dining room table. That was last night. He’d said, “Tomorrow I’ll be home I think around two. Will you paint with me?...” She’d nodded silently, but couldn’t help smiling.
Now it was Friday, and it was half-past one, she was sitting at the dining room table waiting for him to appear around the corner, waiting for that tall good-looking guy to come up her snowy walk and join her in the studio. She’d showered, washed her hair, dried it, done everything she could to bring it back to the way she’d walked out of the salon on Monday (though it resisted her), finally found a way for it to look flattering again. Lip gloss was applied; she’d tried a bit of old mak
eup, and even went into Mar’s room to grab a few of her leftover things, but ended up wiping it all off. It looked out of place. Besides, she never wore makeup. That wasn’t her. And all she wanted was for him to come home so she could paint with him. That’s all it was.
So her fingers wove together, and once it passed two o’clock those fingers began to wring together and hurt. She twisted them around, brow furrowing, imagining Maceo heading home and a group of girls from the college intercepting him enjoining him to come out with them for a little bite to eat, hang out for a while and talk about art. Bare feet bouncing on the floor she watched the window, sadness creeping up her back. All alone again in the homestead, sitting at the table in her best old jeans and her painting flannel, afraid if he didn’t walk around the corner soon she would never be able to paint again...
And then there he was. Tall, handsome, happy. Her heart lifted, and she smiled and waved. He met her eyes the whole way, coming up between banks of shoveled snow that lay over her summer gardens.
* * *
Light came in the studio windows, flooding the space with a dull coolness that made almost no shadows. The landscape outside the windows glowed in a strange otherworldly gloom; the snow shone bright with reflected sun from an unseen bright sky somewhere to the east side of the addition, the house side where there were no windows, but the valley and the hills beyond looked black and jagged against the cushion of settled snow and the sky that spread out above in a huge, daunting swath was pregnant with a roiling storm, dark and churning, and already wet flakes of snow as big as flower petals dropped in fast vertical paths to the bare farm fields where her children had once nurtured livestock.
Maceo painted, and she did as well, both of them quiet with rapture, the sounds of their brushes beating on the canvas like drums riding in syncopation overtop of the steady roar of the wood stove’s fire. It was hot in the room, and her partner had donned his light garb again to work; a clean white T-shirt that clung to his frame, and paint-spattered cotton shorts. They’d painted for hours and now was the time she would have to stop and clean up, prepare for dinner. But that expectant sky told her John would be late, likely very late, because soon the sky would fill with snow, blotting out the fading dusk light and clogging the roads.
Hunger wormed at her but the call of the work was stronger. Still, they painted with fervor. As dusk came the world out the windows went white with a torrent of sideways snow moving across the farm fields like a freight train. Then the world went black with night but the slashing sleet out the window shone in the porch light. Her back curled forward in hunched tension, and her eyes narrowed—she’d lost herself in the work but something was cracking and a way out was showing itself to her. The closer she came, the more she feared escape, even if it came with epiphany, because without the thrill of chase she feared this thrill would leave her forever, and the ghostly hand reaching out to grasp what it sought, closed to a weak claw, faded, fell…
* * *
Brush set down, she stared, felt herself panting as if with exhaustion. Her working hand ached and the two middle knuckles pinged with the high throbbing note of what she swore was arthritis. Hand pulled protectively between her breasts, the other hand working and kneading a thumb to soothe its partners, she examined what she’d created from nothing.
After completing perhaps two dozen landscapes over the last three years, working from photos, here was work with inspiration, something built from experience and communicated without reference. It sung with energy. The sky crackled with meaning, a ridge line took shape below, a farmhouse was obscured by snow. She was done.
What sung inside her had told its lyrics and here was something she was proud of, done and exhausted in a total of hours. But instead of lost excitement, it was renewed; she wanted to go again, like riding a roller coaster through its course, arriving at its covered depot and the waiting lines, her soul ran its finger around in a whirlybird signal to the operator: Let’s do it all again, captain!
She stepped back and whispered, “Whoah.”
Maceo noticed the change in her energy and set his brush down, too. He watched her first, then regarded her painting.
Self-consciousness worked at her again and now she heard her echo whispering a prideful whoah and how a talented young artist might perceive that in comparison with the work on the canvas. It made her shrug in submissive surrender, and now she scowled at her own landscape as if in scrutiny. With a timid tone she said to him, “I don’t know—what do you think?”
Instead of telling her, he took her shoulders and turned her to face him; his expression was intense and serious and it startled her. His eyes held hers with unexpected ferocity, and when she looked away toward the painting, he took her chin and turned her gaze back to him. He said, “Don’t look at it, look at me. What do I think?—you want to know? Look at me, tell me how you feel…”
She faltered, said, “I don’t know,” and heard the weakness of a whine in her voice. She could tell by Maceo’s eyes he was bothered by the sound. The grip his large hands had on her shoulders tightened.
“You do,” he said, brow lowering, “tell me.”
Nothing came to her except for one word. “Amazing,” she whispered.
“Are you embarrassed?” he said, and the slightest of smiles touched his lips. Instant relief flooded her.
“I guess…”
“Tell me…”
“I feel amazing,” she said with a growing confidence.
“You should,” he said with firmness. Now he turned her again, and they both faced the canvas. “Look what you did. Look at this beauty…”
They both regarded it for a full and foreboding moment.
He said, “That’s you, that’s real. You did that here,” he said and touched two fingers to her temple, “but also here,” and his hand dropped to touch those two fingers between her breasts, over her heart. She was acutely aware of the pressure, kept her eyes on the painting but could instead picture that big hand with its tanned color, the long fingers and big knuckles, and the lines of the thick veins drawn on the backs. Her scalp tightened, her hair rose; her nipples rolled over painfully inside the tightness of her bra—but she didn’t move from his touch nor guide his hand away for fear of embarrassing him or herself. You’re wearing a shirt and a bra, stop thinking so highly of yourself, he’s just being nice. And she was happy for his help, his instruction.
She said, “It’s like I’ve been swimming with water wings... Do you know what those are?”
He made no sound, and she didn’t look to him, kept her eyes on the painting she’d done. “I’m swimming on my own,” she said.
The fingers left her chest, but his hand remained on her back, just below the nape of her neck. “It’s beautiful, Janie,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said earnestly and hoped he understood she meant not just for the compliment but for his influence.
Tears swelled her eyes, and she moved her hands to her face and stepped away from her painting before she made a fool of herself. Her mouth worked around, opening so she could breathe—if she tried through her nose, she knew she would make a wet sniffle. “How about you?” she said and could hear a thickness in her voice she hoped he would miss.
“I paint some friends I miss,” he said.
The canvas on his easel was unfinished; two faces, two people, close together, a young man and a young woman with similar features. “Are they brother and sister?” she asked, letting loose with a single quiet sniffle and then clearing her throat.
“Yes, they are my cousins. My father’s brother, they live in the country.”
“You ever visit them?”
“When we were younger, yes. But not in a while. They come to see me in Rome.”
“They’re beautiful.”
“Thank you... Yes, they are.”
She examined his work now, hoping she could give him the same kind of support she felt from him. The two faces were close together in the center of the canvas, just above
the middle line, close together; sparkling eyes, cheeks mushed together and she couldn’t believe how well he’d captured that, just a thin white line to show shine on the raised parts where their flesh pressed. It was unbelievable talent he had; he’d done it all from inside his head. The two faces were almost complete, the hair roughed in, beginning to show form and detail. Their hands were together, the young man with one on his hip, the other in his lap, the girl with both her hands in her lap. But it was just rough, almost blurry. Then around their faces, more emptiness. There was texture there, brush strokes that showed something would happen, but she didn’t know yet what it was. She sighed, said, “Your work is so beautiful. I wish I could paint like you.”
“You see things, you can paint them.”
“I see things…”
“Then you can paint them.”
“I just wish I could draw figures as well as you do.”
“You can, Janie. You can…”
She laughed. “No, I can’t. I showed you already, I showed you I can’t draw people…”
“You can, you just push it away.”
“Push what away?”
“I don’t know what it is. But it’s like... a block,” he said, and drew a sort of brick shape in the air.
“You think I’m walling myself off?”
“That’s it, yes... You putting up barrier.”
“I just can’t draw figures, Maceo.”
“You can—show me.”
“I already did,” she said. That first day they painted, she showed him her sketchbook. Landscapes were one thing, but her figure work was amateurish.
“Janie, come on. Don’t you believe me?”
“No,” she laughed and folded her arms.
Now he smiled. “You see, there is your barrier,” and those big hands came and touched her folded arms. Her sleeves were rolled up, and the warmth of his palm was felt across both her forearms. He opened her arms away, breaking her barriers as it were, but in effect he’d taken her shield away from her breasts. She felt a tightness there again and hoped she wasn’t showing evidence through her shirt.
