by CD Reiss
Love. Always the great convincer.
He pushed all the way down to his base, stretching me as I’d never been stretched before. Slowly sliding his body into mine. Then out. Slowly. He closed his eyes and grunted deep in his chest.
I ran my fingers through his hair, pulling him down to me. He kissed my cheek and slid inside again, watching my expression. He hurt me less than last time. Maybe he could tell, because the next thrust was harder. Really hard. It pushed the air out of my lungs.
Did people talk during sex? I didn’t know how.
I managed to get out a single word. “More.”
As if I’d opened a gate and let a bull charge through, he pulled out and slammed into me again. And again. Harder and faster. Then slow and deep. Pleasure welled up inside me. Hard. Fast. Slow. I never knew what was coming next and it made me throb all over. His lips on my cheek, one of his hands leveraging the desktop as the other grabbed my ass, he grunted hard and pulled out.
“Wha—?” I didn’t finish.
With his fist moving fast along his shaft and my naked legs spread wide in front of him, he closed his eyes and spurted on my belly.
I was appreciating the warmth and the look on his face. I was thinking about how this dishonorable thing of having my legs spread where he could see everything was actually pleasurable and freeing.
But as he was coming on me, a dog yipped outside. Lance, for sure. Then someone rapped on the window above. A man’s voice came through the glass.
“Catherine Barrington!”
I saw Chris first, looking out the window with his hand around himself, his face lit in stripes by the iron bars. Then I bent my head back.
The man at the window was Sheriff Brady, and the horrified woman next to him was my mother.
* * *
We hadn’t thought about the blood. It wasn’t much, but it seemed as if it was everywhere. We scrambled to get dressed as Sheriff Brady used his universal key to get in. Lance came in first and sniffed our ankles. My skirt had twisted, leaving a streak of blood on the fabric over my left thigh. Chris barely had his pants up when Brady threw him against the wall so hard his head bounced against it. Lance bit the cop’s pant cuffs, growling like the puppy he was.
“Stop!” I shouted.
But my father, who I hadn’t seen through the window, took me by the arm in a skin-twisting grip. My eyes adjusted to the light as he pushed me outside. I yanked away, but he held me tight as a bird in the hand.
“That boy’s going to be sorry,” my mother said from behind me. “He forced you, obviously.”
“He didn’t.” I was sure she didn’t hear me, so I looked back and said it again. “He didn’t force me.”
“Of course he did.”
Dad loosened his grip. He wouldn’t look at me.
“This is humiliating,” Mom continued.
The grassy square was visible in the slit between buildings. My shirt stuck to me where Chris had unloaded, and I tried to cover the blood with my hand. My thighs slid against each other from dripping fluids. I wondered if Sheriff Brady was going to return the underwear I’d left behind or if the office manager of the hardware store would find them.
The sheriff’s black-and-white car was parked up the street, its windows wide open.
“Don’t hurt Chris,” I said. “I’ll be good. I’ll never see him again.”
“I know,” grumbled my father, lighting a cigarette.
“We’ll discuss him later,” Mom interjected.
“Daddy?”
“Don’t worry about it, Peanut.”
“I’m not letting you go soft, Earl.” We broke into the town square and my mother brightened, giving me a sidelong glance. “Smile, darling.”
Dad shook hands with some of the guys and talked the way men talk when a bunch of them get together. I could still see the police car. No Brady. No Chris.
Mom waved at my sister. “My God, look at her. Harper, dear! Come along! It’s time to go.”
“Maaaaa, noooooo.” Harper’s shoulders dropped and her knees bent as if leaving was a grievous hardship.
One split-second look of sternness got her to wave good-bye to the puppies.
“What happened?” Harper poked the blood-soaked spot on my skirt.
Mom slapped her hand away. “Stop asking questions.” She put her hand on my father’s shoulder. “Time to go, honey.”
“Just a flesh wound,” I whispered to my sister. Was she looking at the way my shirt stuck to the now-cold slime on my belly?
Harper scrambled into the limo. Behind me, Dad dropped his cigarette and smothered it with his shoe. I stole another glance at the police car.
It was gone.
I was sure Chris was in it. I was sure he didn’t have the money to get out of trouble. Whatever that trouble was, it was going to be decided by my parents. His mother could barely get out of bed to go to court. How would she defend him? He had no one. It wasn’t fair. I loved him and it wasn’t fair.
“Get in,” Mom snapped over my shoulder.
I put my hand on the doorframe and straightened my arm, locking it at the elbow. “No.”
“Catherine,” Dad said softly. “Let’s just get home and discuss this.” He arched an eyebrow and indicated the back seat with a quick tilt of his chin.
“Promise Chris will be all right and I’ll get in.”
“That boy is not going to be all right,” my mother said.
“Then I’m going to go find him.”
“Get in this car!” Mom’s face was red.
“We’re going to run away together and you’ll never see me again!”
“Catherine Daisy Barrington.” My mother’s arm was stone-stiff, extending toward the door.
“Peanut,” my father said gently, expectantly, threateningly all at once.
“I’m old enough to marry him.” I took a backward step toward the town square. “I’ll do it. If anything happens to him, I swear I will.”
They looked at each other, then at me, then each other again, speaking in the silent way married people do. I had an opening.
“Promise you’ll call Sheriff Brady as soon as we get home.”
“I will not—”
I took two steps closer to the square. “Promise!”
I was losing my nerve by the second. I didn’t have the strength to do what I threatened to do. I had to keep Chris first in my mind. The consequences for him were worse than a bad reputation. They’d get him fired. Send him to jail. Kick him out of school. Drain whatever money he and his mother had.
“Don’t hurt him.” I shifted my gaze to my father.
“Can you just grab her, Earl?”
“For what?” He seemed baffled. “If she’s not going to ruin her life today, she’ll do it tomorrow.”
Wait.
Was that a promise?
Could I get in the car before someone passed close enough to see my sticky, bloody clothes? I looked from Mom to Dad as they killed each other with their stare.
“I need satisfaction,” Mom growled.
“Get it somewhere else,” he said before he looked at me. “Princess, we have a deal. I won’t hurt him.”
“You won’t get him fired from the club?”
“Oh, for the love of…” Mom threw her hands up. “Now I can’t go to the club?”
“I won’t go anymore,” I said. “I don’t like tennis anyway. I just won’t see him. Ever. Never again. Just… no charges. No lawyers. Promise.”
Dad answered before Mom could object. “That’s a fair deal.”
Mom covered her face with her hands. While she was blinded by her humiliation and frustration, I caught my father’s eye.
“Thank you,” I mouthed silently.
He pointed at the car.
I got in.
Chapter 16
CATHERINE - present
It was down to me. My decision. Stay? Go?
Chris’s letter had woken me from a deep sleep, and my letter back had stunned me into
a fugue. My decisions were my own from now on.
Stay or go?
Not for him. Not to wait, or to pretend to myself I wasn’t waiting.
Just what did I need? What did the people I loved need?
Which master did I serve?
A half dozen little elves came to the house, armed with brooms and buckets. I knew them as Juanita, Mrs. Boden, Pat, Sally and Trudy Crenshaw, and Dina Marcus. I was shooed out of my kitchen and left to go around the outside of the house so I wouldn’t step on wet floors. I wasn’t allowed down the hall where the suite was because another half dozen elves were fixing it. Harper was holed up in her room on the third floor. Taylor dragged his dirty, dusty self up there with plates of sandwiches and came right down after dropping them off.
“Is she eating?” I asked.
“Shoo,” he said, then kissed my cheek before trotting down the hall to the dusty suite.
The house was packed with people who loved me, but none of them knew what I was going through.
I still didn’t know if I was staying or going.
Counting the days, I waited until I could be reasonably sure Chris had gotten the letter. Then I did nothing. He’d gotten it by Wednesday, for sure. Done is done. I had nothing else to say to him. That part of my life was over now. It ended not with a bang or a light, but with an exhale.
Wednesday, the evening before my birthday, I was in my old room, the one that faced the front of the house. Everything was quiet and dark. This was about the time I’d let the sadness creep in and I’d cry myself to sleep. I hadn’t cried in a week, but I’d slept well.
I didn’t know how to feel about anything.
On Thursday, voices from across the house and clopping footsteps along the hall told me people had arrived to work on the suite. I knew how I felt about that at least. Whether I stayed or went, I was glad to see the room taken care of.
I crossed my bedroom naked after my shower. My closet was open because I’d been looking for things to wear to my party later. A full-length mirror hung inside the door and I caught a glimpse of myself.
Most of my friends from school were in town. At nearly thirty, their bodies had been through childbirth at an early age, recovered, and done it again. My body had barely been touched.
My hands slid along my curves. My breasts, belly, hips, round and tight with disuse. All this skin was meant to be touched. It was designed to feel, to receive, to sense and interpret. My breasts were meant for children and the touch of a lover. They remained high and tight from neglect. Hardening under my fingertips, they were ready, and I was too.
I sat on the bed in front of the mirror.
This was me.
I spread my legs.
Still me. The little pink split had a function. I slid my finger there and felt the wetness that reminded me that it was ready. It worked. It could do what it was built for.
Moving my fingers along the liquid folds of skin, I quietly brought myself to orgasm without thinking of Chris until it was over.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered into the sheets.
I didn’t apologize to the Chris of today or even five years before, but to the sixteen-year-old boy who’d loved me. I’d let him go. I hadn’t chased him. Hadn’t fought for him. Hadn’t looked for him or asked his mother what happened to him. And now I was releasing him with regret. But I was releasing him.
I washed my hands and dressed.
When I opened the door, I gasped. Reggie was in the hall with his fist up as if he was about to knock.
“Oh, sorry!” he said. “I was just—”
“It’s fine.”
“I wanted to tell you something.” The paint splatter on his overalls was multicolored from years of spills and hard work.
“Okay.”
Behind Reggie, Taylor carried a can of paint in each hand.
“Don’t look,” Taylor said to me before tapping Reggie in the behind with a can. “Come on, lazy ass. Let’s get this done.”
“I’m coming, Cali-boy.” Reggie turned back to me. “Private.”
I didn’t have a place for him to sit in my room, so we went to the front porch. I sat on the swing, and he leaned on the railing. The hardware store delivery truck was just pulling away.
“What’s all that?” I pointed at a stack of four moldy boxes in the corner of the porch.
“Found ‘em in the crawlspace over the ceiling. You should check inside. See if there’s anything you want.”
I couldn’t imagine anything of real or personal value in those collapsed, water-damaged, mold-covered boxes. They probably had mushrooms growing in them. I wrinkled my nose and sat back on the porch swing.
Reggie looked at the floorboards, rocking a little as if he was telling himself to get on with it. I folded my hands in my lap and waited.
“You know, I been looking at that ceiling for two days now. I musta been outta my mind.”
“Why?”
“Painting roses on a tin ceiling? God, Catherine, nobody does that. You can paint it a flat color… but flowers? I bet that’s the only tin ceiling mural in the United States.”
“You should be famous.”
“Hell, yeah. I’ve been telling myself that a long time now.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “You know I… ah… well I remember when your father asked for it. You were sixteen and I was engaged to Carla the cheating bitch. But you, girl? You broke my heart. Like…” He squeezed his fingertips to his chest and exploded them like a starfish.
“It was a rough time.”
After Chris left, my parents started the process of splitting up while living in the same house. Everyone knew it. There weren’t many secrets in Barrington.
“You sure could peel the paint off with your crying.” Reggie shook his head slowly with a smile. “Shit, I thought them flowers wouldn’t survive with all your wailing.”
I laughed to myself.
Seeing I wasn’t hurt, he continued. “I thought to ask you to a job site, you know, save us some work with the scrapers.” He laughed with me. “Thought we could even go international with it.”
“Oh, Reggie, do you remember when I asked you to hide flying monkeys in it?”
“I thought you’d gone crazy. But your dad said to just do it.”
“I loved them. I put the bed right under them so I could see them when I went to sleep.”
“I’m glad. I’m really glad you got comfort from it. And I’m sorry you had to wait so long to get that room fixed up.”
“I’m sorry I never asked.”
“Thing is…” He looked away, then at me. “It was always something. You were real young. Then I got married.” He ran through the list more quickly. “Then the factory closed and I was out of work. Then I got divorced. Then your father died. Then your mother left and you spent the next seven years taking care of everyone in this place like it’s your job. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I never got to tell you how I felt about you, and now Chris fucking Carmichael is coming back and I got a sliver of a window to tell you.”
“You don’t have to,” I said. Chris wasn’t coming, which put the burden on me to refuse Reggie. He was a good man, but I couldn’t lead him on. I didn’t feel for him what I’d felt for Chris, and I wanted nothing less.
“I want to. I have to.”
“Reggie, don’t.”
“I love you. I’ve always loved you and I don’t care if you know it. I don’t care if Chris comes back on a white horse and sweeps you off your feet or whatever. I’ll be okay with that. But if he doesn’t, I want you to know that you and me? We can talk if you want.” He took a deep breath as if he’d needed to get that off his chest.
He and I didn’t have anything to talk about. At least, not what he wanted to talk about. If he wanted to talk about how to get over waiting for someone who was never coming, maybe we’d have something to say to each other.
“Okay,” I said, not ready to tell him there would be no Chris. No knight riding in on a white stallion
. No fairy tale ending. That was my problem. Not his.
“Okay.” He snapped his fingers as punctuation. “Now that we got that out of the way, I better go make sure they don’t try to paint over my ceiling.”
“Thank you. For everything.”
“I ain’t even done yet.” He tapped the doorjamb twice and went inside.
Chapter 17
catherine - sixteenTH SUMMER
I showered and then stayed in my room. I crouched on the floor with my knees to my chin and cried as they fought downstairs. Their voices came up the walls and into my room. I couldn’t hear most of it. Phrases and words. The sun set and the room went dark. My throat was dry and my eyes throbbed.
Harper knocked and peeked around the door, letting in a shaft of light. “Hi.” She stepped all the way in. “I came to say good night.”
“Good night.”
“What are they fighting about?”
“Me.”
She sat on the bed, folding her nightgown between her knees. “Did you do something?”
“Yeah.”
“What?”
“I can’t say.”
“Okay.” She extended the last bit of the word as a launching pad into a run-on sentence. “Because I know you know everything, but it really sounds like they’re mad at each other when she’s calling him things I can’t repeat and he’s like—‘well, after what you did, you have no business blah blah’ and she’s like ‘your forgiveness is worse than revenge,’ so there’s that.”
I put my head against the wall. “I don’t know what they’re mad about anymore.”
“Yeah. Well. Do you want me to stay in here with you? Keep you company?”
I did. I wanted my sister’s warm body kicking me all night. It would be worth it to prove I wasn’t too filthy to love. But Mom didn’t like when we curled up together, and it wasn’t a good night to displease her.
“I think you’d better not. I’ll be okay.”
She kissed my cheek. “I love you.”
“I love you too. Close the door on the way out, okay?”
She left me in the dark. Exactly where I wanted to be. On the floor, in the dark. When I got tired, I laid my cheek on my knees. I could have gotten into bed, but I didn’t feel worthy of a comfortable pillow and clean sheets.
