“I did.” She leaned her head back until it was resting against my arm, her eyes staring into the middle distance. “I didn’t know much about guns then. I didn’t know my father stored them unloaded. I pulled the trigger and the stupid thing just clicked. I kept pulling and it just kept clicking until Taylor pissed himself and passed out.”
“Today, in the barn, was that the same gun?”
Meri nodded, her hair rubbing against my arm. “It was the only one I kept.”
“Was it loaded?”
Meri nodded again. “Both barrels.”
“But you didn’t pull the trigger this time.”
“No, I didn’t.” She rolled her head over to look at me. “Do I get points for that?”
“This is not something you should joke about, Meri. You very nearly killed someone today.”
“Not quite so near as you’re thinking.”
“What do you mean?”
“The safety was on. If I had pulled the trigger, nothing would’ve happened. It wouldn’t have even clicked.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying, Meri.”
Meri’s eyes searched mine for a long time. “Right after my parents died, my only thought was to hunt Taylor down and kill him. First him and then me. Today, I’m not so ready to die.” She sighed lightly. “I guess that makes me less ready to deal out death to others.”
The kitchen light was harsh to her upturned face. Lines that had no business being there creased the sides of her mouth, furrowed across her brow. I pulled her closer to me.
“I might be willing to give you a few points for that.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I thought we weren’t going to joke about this.”
“I’m not joking.”
Meri sat up in her chair, leaned forward and reached for the beer. She drank deeply and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “The hell of it all is that Taylor reminds me of my dad. He looks a lot like him and talks like him, but he’s not really anything like him at all. It’s like he’s only a shadow of him, a bad counterfeit.” She finished the beer with a few quick swallows and set the empty bottle on the table next to the other one.
“I’m sorry I scared you, Bea. I’m sorry if I’m not the person you thought I was,” she said with a hollowness that wasn’t at all empty, but filled with shades of love and loss. “I know you said you still love me, but I’ll understand if you don’t want to stay here anymore.”
I reached out to rub slow circles across the small of her back. “Remember when you first found me in the barn? You said I looked pretty scary wearing all that blood and leather.”
She smiled a little. “Yeah, you did look a fright.”
“But I didn’t turn out to be what you thought I was.”
“Bea,” she said dryly, “I thought you were an escaped convict.”
“But you still helped me when I asked you to.”
“You were hurt.”
“You’re hurt now.”
She shifted in her chair. “Yeah, I guess so.”
She got up, went over to the refrigerator and opened the door. I followed her. I took her hand off the handle and shut the door before she could reach in for another beer. She frowned as I touched her cheek.
“There are less destructive ways to deal with what hurts you.”
“Such as?”
I let my fingers fall, trailing down her throat, dipped them inside the open collar of her shirt and traced over the line of her collarbone. She closed her eyes and lifted her chin. I leaned over and kissed the spot where her jaw met her neck and started unbuttoning her shirt, letting my knuckles rub against her skin with each button undone. She made a little mewing sound when I pulled the shirt open and unbuttoned her jeans. She slipped her hands around my waist, pulling me to her. I kissed her mouth, drinking deeply of the sour beer taste that coated her tongue. Her breath came warm and fast against my cheek, her hands kneading my hips. She pulled away suddenly. Her hands slipped around to my front and fumbled with the buttons on my shirt, but they all pulled and stuck. She snarled and yanked. Two of the buttons popped off and hit the floor with tiny clicking bounces. She gave up on the buttons and lifted the shirt over my head. She tore her own shirt off and then struggled out of her bra. When I slipped my bra off too she stood still for a second looking at me with a ferocious hunger that all by itself was just this side of scary. She crushed me against her, her face buried against my neck, teeth nipping, hands rubbing hot over my skin.
“Upstairs?” I asked. My voice sounded low and rough.
“No,” she whispered. “Right here, right now.”
We sank to the floor. The tile was cold against my skin. Meri slipped her legs between mine and spread my knees with hers. She knelt over me, her hands kneading, pressing, pinching, caressing, her mouth kissing, tongue licking, teeth biting until I was twisting and squirming underneath her, moaning with low ragged groans. I caught her off balance and pulled her down on top of me, crushing her breasts against mine. I wrapped my legs around hers and pinned her tight. We became all fervent lips and probing tongues, grasping hands and deep-throated moans. She held on to my hips and ground herself into me, blue jeans rubbing hard and fast, almost to the point of pain, our breath coming in short quick gasps.
“Oh god, oh fuck, oh god,” Meri whispered.
A short, sharp spasm shuddered through me and I reached to cup her butt, pressing her harder into me. My hips arched off the floor.
The kitchen door opened. My body sank and stilled.
Meri didn’t hear it.
“Stop, Meri,” I whispered harshly as I pushed her shoulders away from me. “Meri, stop.”
She pulled herself up and looked down at me, her face a mix of confusion and concern. “What?” she asked still breathing hard and ragged. “What’s wrong? Was I hurting you?”
I shook my head and jerked my chin over her shoulder. She raised her head and froze. I twisted to see who it was. There was a little old lady standing in the doorway. She was a round roly-poly woman in a pink cardigan sweater with bright blue hair, shock and disgust dancing all over her face.
“Hi, Auntie Bea,” Meri said in a small, thin voice.
The little old lady spun on her heels and slammed the door shut behind her.
“Oh, shit,” Meri said and collapsed on top of me.
Meri drank quite a bit after Aunt Beatrice left, and I didn’t try to stop her again. After the beer ran out, I put her to bed, made sure she was sleeping on her side, and lay down next to her. I had my arms tucked behind my head as I listened to her snore and to the creaking of the house as the night dragged on and on. In the morning, she took a long time in the shower. I stayed in bed listening to the rush of water and the groans of the old water pipes. Usually, she sang or hummed as she washed. Today she was silent. I reached under the sheets, slipped a hand under my shorts and touched myself gently. My pubic bone was sore, but inside I felt haunted and hungry. There was an aching emptiness that still wanted Meri to fill it, so I lay there waiting for her to finish in the bathroom, waiting for her to come back to me.
Meri dropped something in the shower that bounced around with dull thuds. She cursed and the water turned off. I waited for another ten minutes, staring at the bathroom door, slowly combing my fingers through my hair. The hair dryer turned on and I got tired of waiting. I got out of bed, slipped on yesterday’s clothes and went out to the barn.
I measured out Sergeant’s breakfast and watched him eat, gave him a quick brush, checked his hooves and turned him out for the day. He didn’t go far. He leaned his head in through the pasture window to watch me rake the old wet straw out of his stall. I dumped it and came back to spread new straw around. Sergeant was still peeking in the window, and I stopped to pat his neck. He nudged me with his nose.
“What is it, Sarge?” I asked him. “You want me to leave?”
“No,” Meri answered for him, “he’s telling you that there’s someone behind you.”
I turned around. Meri was
n’t wearing blue jeans. She was in a frilly blouse and a pleated skirt. She had makeup on, inexpertly done. The blush made her face look pale, and the heavy mascara made the dark circles under her eyes look darker. I could have helped her with the makeup if she had asked, but maybe she didn’t want any more of my help. I leaned the rake against the wall. “All that for Aunt Beatrice?”
“She’s my closest living relative,” Meri said as she smoothed her skirt flat against her thighs, “my father’s older sister. She’s all that I have left of my immediate family.”
“You look nice,” I said dully.
Meri flushed. “It’s not very fashionable or anything.” It wasn’t and she seemed uncomfortable in it. She was stiff and wooden as if she was lost and out of place standing there in the hay in her skirt and heels.
I smiled and shrugged. “The classic stuff never goes out of style.”
She smiled nervously.
I pointed at her feet. “It’s probably not a good idea to be walking through the barn in those shoes.” I held my hand out to her. “Come on, I’ll walk you to the truck.”
She looked at my hand. Her face was drawn and pale, her eyes colorless.
“All right,” I said, dropping my hand, “it’s okay. I understand.”
“Do you?”
“Sure.” I shrugged with what I hoped was nonchalance. “This is a small town and your aunt likes to talk. You want us to cool off for a while, and I should act more like a real guest if people come over.”
Meri’s face fell. That wasn’t the right answer. “It’s too late for that, I think.” Her hands hung at her sides like she didn’t know what to do with them with no pockets in her skirt to stuff them into.
Sergeant snorted from the window. I felt like snorting too. “What do you want, then?”
“I can’t lose any more of my family.” Her voice sounded small and soft. “If my aunt disowns me then all of my cousins will too.
I can’t let that happen. I need them.”
A spark of anger flickered inside me. “Oh, right,” I said, folding my arms across my chest, “and we’ve been seeing so much of them lately.”
Hurt filled her eyes. “Sarcasm isn’t going to help things, Bea.”
“What will?” My tone sounded cold even to me.
Her hands clenched and unclenched. She opened them flat and rubbed her palms against her skirt. I clenched my teeth together hard and promised myself that I was not going to cry.
“Do you want me to leave?” I lifted my chin with maybe just a small touch of challenge.
Meri hugged her arms across her stomach. “Maybe that would be best, but only for a little while, just until this blows over.”
That was not the answer I was expecting. It hit me square in the chest. “This isn’t going to blow over.” My words came out much harsher than I meant them to, but my throat had tightened almost to closing.
“You don’t know that.” Meri’s own anger sparked in her eyes. “Maybe it will blow over if I can think of something good enough to tell Aunt Beatrice.”
“What’s there to tell her? She saw you fucking a woman on your kitchen floor. How are you going to explain that?”
Meri’s eyes widened and she blinked a few times. “I wouldn’t exactly call it fucking. We still had our pants on.”
“That’s just great, Meri,” I said, putting my hands on my hips. “That’ll explain everything. You can tell her that we weren’t doing what it looked like we were doing because we still had our pants on. I’m sure she’ll be convinced.”
“I’m not going to say that, Bea.” Meri’s hands twitched against her legs. “I’m not even sure what we were doing. Everything happened so fast.”
So much for my promises. I was going to cry. “Weren’t we making love?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know anything.”
“What are you going to call it when you talk to her?” I swiped at my cheek with an angry hand. “A lapse in judgment? A momentary indiscretion? CPR administered in a unique and unusual way?”
“Bea, please don’t do this,” Meri said, raising her hands to rub at her temples.
“Oh, I’ve got it. Why don’t you tell her that I was a bad influence on you? Tell her I came breezing in here with my big city ideas and seduced you, but you have seen the error of your ways and have decided to marry Taylor after all and will raise a whole litter of children just to prove that you’ve repented.”
“That’s cruel, Bea.” Meri’s hands dropped again to her side.
“No, Meri, it isn’t. It’s reality. That will be the price of her forgiveness. I’ve been there before.”
“What do you mean?”
I gave her a smile that made her frown. “My father. That was the price he demanded of me. I was to marry and give him his grandchildren. That’s what it cost to be his daughter. That’s what it’s going to cost you to be Aunt Bea’s niece. If you go over there begging forgiveness, she’ll insist that you ‘do the right thing.’”
Meri’s shoulders stiffened. “I won’t marry Taylor.”
“It won’t matter who you marry, just so long as you get married.”
Meri threw her hands in the air. “What am I supposed to do then, Bea? I don’t have a motorcycle. I can’t run away from here. Everything I am is tied to this land, to this town, to these people.”
That made me stop and think. It was true. She didn’t have the same options I did. She didn’t really have any options at all, but I wasn’t sure she could see that. “You have to decide,” I said.
“Decide what?”
“Whether to live the truth and risk being lonely or live a lie surrounded by your kin.”
“I’m not you, Bea.” Meri shook her head slowly. “I need my family. I need to know that they’re close by.” “I’m close by,” I said softly.
“For how long?” Meri stared at me, seeing I don’t know what in my face, but her expression softened. “Do you see?” she asked. “No matter what I do, you’ll leave anyway, and then I’ll be more alone than I ever was before.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. She was right.
“You want me to leave right now?” It was almost a whisper.
“No, not at all.” She started to stretch her hand out but then dropped it again. “I don’t want you to leave right now, not right this second.”
“But soon.”
She didn’t answer, and I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. I rubbed at the pucker of scar tissue that ran across my forehead.
“The bike’s almost fixed,” I said. “I can finish in a few days and be out of here before the weekend.”
“I didn’t mean that soon, either.” There was a catch in her voice. Her face was ashen.
I looked around the stall. Sergeant had disappeared from the window. “Why wait?” I asked the question more to myself than to Meri. I drew myself up straighter. My father would say that I was looking down my nose and wouldn’t have disapproved in the slightest. “Why wait?”
She opened her mouth and closed it again. I saw her swallow. “When will you come back?”
“I won’t, Meri.” I raised my chin higher. “You won’t even want me too after a while.”
“That’s not true,” she said softly.
I watched a parade of emotions march across her face: hurt, want, loss, fear. It was the fear that stayed, and I thought then that it was true. She wouldn’t want me back. I could just picture her getting married, having children, getting religion, locking the memory of me away in an old dark closet in some dusty corner of her heart. She would only think of me on lonely spring nights when the wind turned warm and blew in from the south and she would drink to forget me again. She would shed a tear for the almosts and no one would understand why she did such things. Her life would look so normal, surrounded by kith and kin, but its heart would be a sad one.
It wasn’t the direction that I chose, but this choice was hers to make, not mine. “You’d better go see if you can patch thin
gs up with your aunt. Soonest started . . .”
“. . . is soonest sung,” she finished for me.
“I’ll get to work on the bike.” I brushed past her and went into the next stall. I could still see her through the doorway standing very still, looking at the spot where I had just been. I couldn’t tell, now, what she was thinking. From the side, her face seemed closed and hard. She tugged at her skirt and drew herself up. She gave a sharp nod of her head, spun around and walked out of the barn. I heard the truck door creak and slam. The engine turned over with a cough and a splutter. I stood still, my feet rooted in the hay as I listened to the tires crunch over the gravel drive.
The bike stood in front of me, gleaming black, shining chrome and silver duct tape. I lied to Meri. It wouldn’t take me a few days to fix it. It only took about an hour and forty-five minutes. I had the right tools, and Taylor had already done all the hard parts. The old clutch assembly came unstuck with a screwdriver and vicious kick. The new assembly came together and slipped right in like it was too scared of me to cause any problems. I connected the pedal and tightened all the bolts. I disconnected the battery charger, coiled the wires and put it back on the shelf in the tack room. I knelt in the hay and replaced the engine guards, fumbling with the screws.
My hands started to shake, but I told myself to stop being an idiot. It would be easier on us both this way. It would be too hard to sleep next to each other in the same bed, both of us knowing that I was going to leave soon. It would be awkward. It would be awful. I dropped the last screw into the hay and couldn’t find it again. I didn’t really believe myself. Nothing would make leaving any easier. It would only be faster, but sometimes fast is good, like when you’re ripping off Band-Aids or breaking your lover’s heart. I dug around in the hay looking for the screw for a few minutes, gave up on finding it and went back to the house to take a very long shower. It would be the last one I would enjoy for a while. It was warm enough now to skip the motels. If I could stick to camping grounds, I would be harder to trace. I wondered if Meri would try, and then I wondered how far it was to the Arctic Circle.
My hair was still damp when I pulled the saddlebags out of the cedar chest. For the most part, they were already packed. I never unpacked them except to wash the dirty clothes, which I repacked once they were clean. Everything I wore belonged to Meri: her jeans, her shirts, her sweaters, her socks. Only the underwear was mine and that was only because I couldn’t stand her cotton granny drawers. I went to our bedroom and dug my silk underthings out of the drawer she had given to me, the top left hand one of the dresser in her room. She cleared it out for me so I wouldn’t have to run through the hallway in a towel, even though I thought she rather liked seeing me in a towel. I folded the jeans and the shirt I’d been wearing and laid them on the end of her bed. Our bed. Her bed again.
As Far As Far Enough Page 9
