by CD Reiss
LII
Keeping my hands off her in the house of God was no easy task. Everyone turned when we came in, and by the time we slid in next to Catherine in the third row, people had stopped singing to stare. Harper held her head high. I nodded to Kyle, who nodded back as if he approved. Butthead wore a black shirt that pulled at the buttons. Orrin nodded but didn’t seem to appreciate my wave. Johnny wasn’t around, but Pat didn’t even look up from her book.
“I didn’t know there were this many people in town,” I whispered.
“Shut up.” Harper handed me a booklet.
“I feel like I’m on display.”
“You are.”
“Do I look all right?”
She looked at me. Really checked me out, up and down. “Very fuckable.”
She said it loudly enough for the older lady in front of us to shoot a glance over her shoulder. Catherine subtly whacked her sister with her hymnal.
The song ended, and everyone sat.
“What are you doing?” I whispered while pretending to follow along with the readings.
“Praying.” She elbowed me, eyes on the reading.
I tried to focus on my booklet but couldn’t find the words. Harper sighed and flipped the page, pointing at the right place.
“Thanks,” I muttered. I’d missed half of it already.
We didn’t get two more lines into it before her hand was on the inside of my thigh. Turning toward her, I let her know she was out of her fucking mind by moving her hand and twisting my face into a scowl.
She was unfazed.
“Praise be to God,” she said with the rest of the congregation.
Another reading started. More words. More songs. Harper kept trying to rub against me, and I kept trying to stay churchy. I had a boner that barely fit in my slacks, and at some point, we were going to have to stand and sing. There were about a hundred fifty people in the room with their heads bowed over Corinthians. If I got up now, all those heads were going to unbow themselves. I was going to have a tent in my pants for the Virgin Princess of Barrington, the girl the entire county had protected because they loved her dead father.
“Praise be to God.” The congregation’s voices rose in the dead, flat tones of churchly responses.
Shit rustled and banged as people stood. Harper put her hand on my ass. I moved it. She did it again even while singing the first verse of the song.
It was arousing, sure. I wasn’t made of stone. But it wasn’t normal or smart. And yeah, Harper wasn’t normal, but she was fucking smart. She was using me as a fidget toy for a reason.
“Can you show me the bathroom?” I kept my voice low but audible so we had a public excuse to be out of the room together.
Of course, Harper got flirty as she pulled me out of the row, practically skipping down the center aisle. We exited into a courtyard with a fountain and gardens of dying flowers.
Once the door shut behind us, I took the lead, guiding her around the back of the rectory to a narrow space between the building and a fence. The ground was scraggly and weedy. A kid’s yellow sand bucket lay on its side three feet from a broken orange shovel.
She went right for my belt.
I pinned her wrists against the wall. “What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Everyone sees you grabbing at me.”
“So?”
“So you and your dirty little mind belong to me now, but the people in this town think you belong to them.” I let her wrists go. “You have to let them get used to you not being sweet Miss Mary Jane.”
“Fuck them.”
She took me by the collar. She was aggressive, passionate, as intense as any woman I’d ever met, so I let her wrestle with my damn shirt. I put my arms around her and drew her close.
“I feel free,” she said in a low roar that went right from my ears to my spine. “I feel like I can do whatever I want. Really be myself. God, Taylor, I know I trapped you, but you turned around and saved me. I’m free, free, free. I feel so… God, I feel so good. I can do anything.”
She could, but not because of me. Because she was Harper and brilliant and crazy enough to try the hardest things because she saw the big picture. I kissed her, pushing my tongue past hers to touch the core, throbbing Harperness.
Pulling her shirt and bra up in one motion, she revealed tits that made me ache. “Fuck me. Right here. At church. Before they finish with communion.”
She laid her hands on my crotch like a kid in a candy store. Not just any kid. A kid who had never tried candy her whole life then gone bananas at her first taste.
“Harper. Goose.”
My tone got her hands off my pants, but she unsnapped her own fly. “Beeze?”
“You’re a little crazy.”
She slid her hand past her panties, wrist deep. “I’m so wet.”
“I bet you are. And you’re reckless.”
She groaned. “I can’t even think. I want your dick all the time. I can’t sleep I want to fuck so bad. Is this normal?”
I leaned into her until I felt her arm move out of her pants. I grabbed her elbow and pushed it back down. “Nothing about you is normal. Go ahead. Make yourself come.”
“I should?”
“Show me how you look when I’m fucking you. Move faster. Three strokes on your clit, then back to your pussy, then… yes. That’s my goose. I love it when your mouth opens like that. I want to bite that lip.”
I took her lower lip in my teeth and sucked on it. She exhaled, hot on my skin. Her nipples were hard, and when I pinched one, she nearly came off the floor.
“Hush,” I warned her.
She came quietly, frozen in a muted cry, leaning on me to keep from falling.
I took her hand and sucked on her wet fingers.
Music came over the courtyard then voices.
“Shit.” She stood straight, whipping her hand from my mouth, and buttoned her pants.
I laughed and helped her pull her shirt down. “You didn’t care in the damn pews.”
“Pressure’s off, I guess. Do I look presentable?”
I took her hand. “You look like a nice girl from the heart of America.”
“Let’s go around the garden side. Then we can fade into the crowd.”
Holding her hand, I let her lead me through the slit of space and onto the brick path leading to the garden.
LIII
Dirt tasted the same in Barrington as it did in Camden. I’d eaten more than my share of the ground in elementary school. I’d been thrown down, stepped on, had my face pushed into asphalt, grass, dry soil, snowpack, and puddles. By far, the puddles were the worst.
“Uncle!” I shouted before I spit the dirt. There had to be five guys on me, and if any of them weighed less than two hundred pounds, I’d have eaten the football under my stomach.
“Give me the ball,” Kyle grunted.
“Fuck off!”
“No cursing on Sunday!” a female voice came from the sidelines.
Hands tried to flip me and strip the ball, but what I lacked in body weight I had in tenacity.
“Ref!”
The whistle blew, and the reverend’s feet came into view. He was youngish and wore combat boots with his collar. “All right, guys. Get off him. That’s a touchdown!”
Once the weight was off, I rolled off the ball.
Butthead helped me up. “That was some run, brother.”
“Thanks.” I brushed myself off.
The rest of the team high-fived me and clapped me on the back. Orrin’s two high-school-aged sons and his father. Damon’s brother. Pat’s half brother.
“Butthead would have blocked for you, but he’s too fat to keep up with you,” Orrin said after he gave me a clap.
“You’re pretty quick for an old man,” I replied.
A can of beer had materialized in my hand. It was ice cold, and it still tasted like chemicals and bad breath. By unspoken agreement, the game was over. Or there had been an agreement befor
ehand, years ago, when these boys learned to play park football from their older brothers and fathers.
“What do you mean you never played football?” Damon said from across the food table. “You wear dresses too?”
Trudy shot him a look. I couldn’t tell if they had something together, but he seemed less aggressive around her.
“I’d shut it if I were you,” Orrin said to Damon. “Darcy’ll flay you before you have a chance to say another stupid thing.”
“Who’s Darcy?” I asked. “Do we need to disarm her?”
“Him,” Damon grumbled.
Trudy poked him. “She’s my sister if she says so, and if you want me to be nice later, you’ll follow along.”
“Whatever you say.” He didn’t look convinced.
“Try the mushroom salad.” Orrin pointed his fork at a bowl of canned mushrooms with unidentified beige squares. “My wife made it. Everyone loves it. Go on. It’s going to be gone in ten minutes.”
“My Orrin’s too nice.” A woman in her forties with poufy brown hair and glasses I hadn’t noticed before patted his arm, and he kissed her on the lips.
“He is,” I said as she put a scoop of mushrooms on my plate. “Thank you.”
“Uh oh,” Harper’s voice came from my left. She had a plate with a burger and potato salad. “He’s going to want to bring a five-gallon drum home to California now.”
I got out of the table line to stand next to Harper. “Is it good?” I whispered.
“Try it.”
I forked a couple of mushrooms and stuck them in my mouth. I didn’t chew. I didn’t think I could. My tongue rejected the super-sweetened, ultra-salty, rank buttbuds completely. I stepped out of earshot and Harper followed.
“No good?” Harper asked around a mouthful of burger.
I swallowed without chewing and gulped the beer. Shook my head hard.
“Is she getting them from your bathroom wall?” I kept my voice low.
She covered her mouth so she wouldn’t spit her burger.
I poked at the slippery beige cubes. “What are these little things? Chopped asshole?”
She couldn’t laugh. She couldn’t swallow her burger. Her face was red.
“It’s really not that funny.”
A tear fell down her cheek.
I wasn’t the funny guy. I’d never gotten a girl because I could make her laugh. They all said they wanted a sense of humor, but I’d gotten by all right without one.
Watching Harper get ahold of herself while I tried to find another mushroom joke in me, I wondered how I’d gotten the girls I had. Around her, I was different.
“You gonna eat that, mister?” A voice came from below, where a little girl of about five stood in a dirt-rolled dress, wielding a white plastic fork.
“This?” I pointed at the potato salad.
“This one.” She pointed her fork at the mushrooms.
I hadn’t known that many kids, but rumor had it they generally didn’t like mushrooms.
“Here.” I gave her my plate. “You can have it.”
Her eyes went wide, and her mouth opened in joy.
Catherine rushed over. “Lori!”
“She’s all right,” I said. “Really.”
“If you turn your back on your plate, she’ll take it.”
“She asked politely.” I jerked my head at the girl, telling her to get out of Dodge before the narcks got her.
A mistress of subtlety, Lori ran to the table with the other kids. Catherine watched with longing in her eyes. She touched her nose as if it had suddenly filled up.
“Hey,” Harper said to Catherine. “Snap out of it.”
“Sorry.” She smiled, and I remembered I hadn’t heard her crying behind the walls in the past three nights. “Wally!” She ran to the children’s table, where a kid had barbecue sauce all over his shirt.
“She’s like Momma Barrington,” Harper said.
“I haven’t heard her in a few nights. Or have I just been distracted?”
Harper wiped the last of her burger across a palette of condiments. “She got a letter from her long-lost love.”
“The guy? The one who left?”
Romantic? Sweet? Fucking crazy?
“She told you about him?”
“Not much. But that’s…wow. Good for her.”
“I know.” She neatly placed the rest of the burger in her mouth then chewed with one cheek so she could talk. Her every move was graceful and efficient. Mostly, every gesture was honest and part and parcel of who she was. “Been years and boom. He’s coming.”
“When?”
“Friday. Had to squeeze it out of her. She really doesn’t tell me shit, if you want to know the truth. I had to threaten to kick Daddy’s grave over before she told me.”
Catherine kneeled in front of Wally’s shirt as he wept, and a woman in a sleeveless denim shirt who looked just like the barbecue-stained kid ran to them with a roll of paper towels. When his mother reached him, Catherine stood up, getting out of the way.
She backed up, looking wistful, longing. She looked just like Harper, but a little taller, older, with unruly hair. I never wanted Harper to have that look on her face. As if she accepted a world of things that would never be.
“We have to fix her room,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“Her long-lost love is coming, and her room is moldy.”
“It’s not. It’s… wait. You mean the master suite?”
“She can’t bring what’s-his-name into some shitty bedroom. Come on. While you’re mastering qubits, I’ll do the walls.”
“You?”
“I’m from a line of contractors. And the guys’ll help. Where’s your romantic spirit?”
“It’s my sister. I don’t want to think of you creating some romp room for her.”
“I’ve been banging you right under her nose, and she hasn’t said shit.”
“To you, she hasn’t.”
I got between her and the eyes of the town. “What did she say to you?”
She shrugged and wiped her mouth. “My sister’s not exactly a chatterbox, if you haven’t noticed. She has a way of asking how I slept that’s pretty much asking how big your dick is.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I said, ‘He’s hung like a watermelon, and he fucks like an animal.’”
“You said that?”
“No, dork. I said ‘fine,’ but I said it as if I was talking about your dick, and I know she heard what I was thinking because she blushed.”
I pinched her chin between my thumb and the bend of my index finger. “Let’s get back and make some noise while we can.”
She took my arm, and we went back home.
LIV
Once, when we were on a demolition project, my dad had told me that mushrooms are never just mushrooms. In the case of the Barrington master suite, he was right, as usual. The mushroom in the bathroom had eaten the wood behind it, and the more plaster I removed, the more mushroom appeared. There was an entire ecosystem back there.
The day after church, I woke up early, went to the shed to get the sledgehammer with half a handle, and called the lumberyard with an order. My phone was jangling and beeping with messages. Media. Employees. Friends. I reassured my mother, who was worried after the call with Gram, and texted a couple of friends. I didn’t want to talk to anyone else. I wanted to fix the damn bedroom.
Harper picked up a shift at the distro center. I kissed her before she left as if I actually lived there with her.
The moment the sledgehammer touched the plaster and I started breathing lead dust, I let the physical activity take over. I was sweaty, stripped down to my undershirt, filthy everywhere. I’d dug sneakers and jeans out of my bag, moved and covered the bed with a tarp I’d found in the shed, and made a really loud, big fucking mess.
“Oh my Lord!” Catherine was at the door in a robe and bare feet.
“Good morning.”
“What… what are you d
oing?”
“Don’t come in!”
“But—”
“There are nails.”
She bent at the waist, peering into the room. Half the walls were down to the studs, and mold, mildew, and fungus had left much of the busted plaster black on the back side.
“You won’t have the mushroom again. The mold isn’t safe to breathe.”
She looked at the ceiling.
“And that? I looked behind it. It’s clean.”
“I want to say something.” Her voice was as grave as I’d ever heard it. Not black in its tone but a serious shade of grey.
“Yes?”
“I own a gun.”
“Okay?”
“I know how to use it.”
“Cath—”
“Don’t let anything happen to the painting.”
I nodded slowly. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And thank you,” she said more lightly. “It’ll be nice to sleep in here again.”
She walked away without saying more.
* * *
By the time I got the last bit of plaster down, a flatbed from the hardware store arrived with a dumpster in tow.
Butthead got out of the truck with Florencio from the factory and Jorge, who came to the door while the other two slid drywall off the bed.
“Where you want it?” Jorge asked.
“Dumpster in the back. The rest of it can go upstairs.”
He called back to the two guys in Spanish. They pulled the flatbed around back. I followed it.
“The dumpster should be right under that balcony, right there.” I pointed up at the master suite.
The three other men looked up.
“That the room with Reggie’s painting?” Butthead asked.
“Yeah.”
“What are you thinking of doing?”
“Fixing it.”
“Who? You?”
“Me.” I slapped his chest and went to help Jorge unhook the dumpster from the flatbed.
He called out to Butthead. “You gonna help us, or are you gonna chitchat like an international man of leisure?” Jorge’s thick accent made his command of the language funny, and he seemed to know it.
Generally, pallets of drywall sheets were raised into an open window by crane, but the windows weren’t big enough, and the balcony doors couldn’t be used without risking the railings. I didn’t want to warn Catherine that her house could be destroyed before the first nail was driven in, so the supplies had to be brought in via the stairs.
