Steel My Love

by Vivian Lux

  The wind rattled at my windows and I heard the screech of tires stuck in snow. It woke me from my uneasy dreams and I stared into the fuzzy darkness.

  Once I saw Casey, it was like he had always been there. I wondered how I could have missed him in the fist place. Other than that my parents' exhortations had trained me to look away from the“bad”house.

  I never saw anyone but him outside. I knew he couldn't possibly live alone, but it certainly seemed that way. He wandered the neighborhood at all hours, always moving slowly, always dragging his feet like he wanted to waste time.

  Then one day two little boys appeared from out of nowhere. My mother was home on that day, giving me a break from my duties as little mommy and I was allowed to be a kid again. I was up a tree that bordered our backyard and the park. I loved to read up there, it felt cooler than the heat of the baked summer ground. I could see over all the rooftops of our neighborhood, but no one could see me through the branches.

  The van looked completely out of place in our neighborhood of station wagons. It looked like one of those vans our church rented to take kids to camp. The first person out was a stern looking black woman. She was dressed severely, her hair scraped back from her face. I could see the oil glistening from all the way up in my perch. Even from far away I could see she looked pissed.

  She waited in the front yard of the bad house, her arms crossed. Her foot tapped impatiently. I realized she was waiting for someone to come outside to meet her.

  Fascinated, I crept forward on the branch. The limb swayed dangerously and I scrambled back to the safety of my strong bough. I bobbed my head, looking for a better vantage point. Swinging down I put my fingers directly in oozing sap. Now I had to be careful not to put my hands in my wild red hair, or else my mother would know I was up the tree again.

  She opened the sliding van door and two tow-headed boys came tumbling out, all knobby knees and sharp elbows. I sat up in realization that their hair was the exact same shade of blond as Casey's.

  Just then I heard a bang and Casey's blond head joined the cluster on the lawn. The three boys rolled and jumped and pummeled each other in such joyous celebration that I couldn't help but smile. I was reminded of when my friend Valerie's dog had puppies and how they would play. I had never seen Casey move with such enthusiasm. His normal dragging gait was gone as he whirled around them. His face was stretched into such a wide, joyous grin that I had to smile too.

  I saw the severe woman put her hands on her hips. She must have asked him something important, because his face snapped to seriousness immediately. He nodded and bolted to the front door, moving faster than I ever thought possible. The severe woman grabbed both of the smaller boys hands and held them back from following.

  The front door banged again and I saw Casey emerge, dragging a disheveled looking woman behind him. She wiped her hands on her too short shorts and then ran them through her wild blonde hair. It was broken and frizzled like straw. She was rocking unsteadily on her feet as the severe woman gesticulated. When the disheveled woman nodded, the severe woman let go of the two boys' hands and dropped down to her knees. She spoke to them, her expression soft and regretful. Even from up here I could tell that she loved those little boys. They both nodded, looking shrunken and reluctant. She hugged them and pushed them gently forward. The disheveled woman opened her arms and they both looked down. Casey stepped forward and guided them into the arms of what I now knew was their mother

  I had never seen her before today. She wavered, insubstantial, like a mirage. Her painful thinness along with her fried, bleached hair made me think of a dandelion puff. She looked like she might blow away in a strong breeze.

  She patted the small boys absently, then all three of them looked at Case, as if wondering what to do next. I saw Case shoot them an encouraging grin, then nod like he was giving permission. At that, the four of them headed into the house.

  The severe woman stood for several minutes on the lawn, watching carefully, her hands opening and closing like she wished she could snatch them back.

  That was the first and last time I saw Case's mother. Once in a while I would hear a car door slam late at night, and I somehow knew it was her, and the knowledge made me shudder even though I didn't yet understand. My childish mind made her into a ghost, or a vampire. And she was draining the life from her sons.

  Chapter 11

  Case

  Crash fumbled with his keys, dropping them on the floor of the hallway. "Fuck, " he muttered, and the mocha-skinned chick on his arm giggled wildly.

  Case ran his hand up the back of the girl standing nervously at his side. She had been a hard one to convince, but her eyes were a soft, velvety brown and the freckles on her shoulders stirred something inside of him. So he had been persistent, finally breaking past her hesitation with a few soft words and promises. And the skill of his hands and lips.

  Crash finally burst through the door of his apartment. He grabbed the still giggling girl by the wrist and hauled her through the living room. The door to his bedroom slammed so hard the walls reverberated. Case was relegated to the beat up, sagging sofa. The girl looked crestfallen. Janie was her name. He thought.

  "You live here?" she squeaked.

  "Just crashing for the night." Those freckles were driving him mad. He wanted to bite them.

  She looked all around, but Case wasn't in the mood to take things slowly. He yanked her close to him, cupping his hands around her ass cheeks. They were a bit too bony for his liking, but he would get over it. "You feel that, baby?" he rasped into her throat. Her hair wasn't the right shade, more strawberry blonde, than red, but she would do nicely. "You feel what you do to me?" He pressed himself roughly against her, letting her feel the prodding thrust of his desire.

  She stifled a moan as he bent her head back, exposing the curve of her throat. She pressed herself against him and that was all the consent he needed. Pushing her roughly back onto the sofa, he yanked her skinny jeans down and smiled when he saw her lacy red thong. Janie had wanted action tonight. That was clear. And he was gonna give it to her.

  He heard the delicate fabric rip slightly as he exposed her, but he couldn't be bothered with that. When he buried his face in between her legs, she gave a startled squeak that only served to inflame him further. He fucked her with his tongue, dragging her quickly and heedlessly to her peak. When he felt her muscles bunch and grow taut, he yanked his own jeans down and quickly unrolled a condom. As she arched herself up in her crescendo, he plunged himself roughly inside of her.

  It was too much. She looked too much like her. In the back of his head, Case knew it wasn't Janie's fault. She didn't ask to look like the first girl he had ever loved. The girl he had trusted with the most guarded secret he had. Janie didn't know anything about how he had been betrayed, or how his family had been torn apart one last time. How his moment of weakness in trusting someone else had ripped away everything he had held dear.

  It wasn't Janie's fault. But her eyes were that same shade of copper brown. And so he fucked her. Hard. Mercilessly. He pushed himself higher and higher inside of her, his anger taking him too far to care about her pleasure anymore. Her cries of pleasure degraded into yelps of pain and her velvet brown eyes flew open to stare at him, uncomprehendingly.

  He couldn't stand to see the fear. With a grunt he pulled out and flipped her over onto her knees before plunging back into her. He gripped her tightly, driving himself into her over and over. He could feel her tensing again, poised on the precipice of an unwilling orgasm. She liked it. She didn't want to like it. He pressed his thumb down on her nub from behind and began to rub her frantically. She cried out in furious pleasure as he spent himself inside of her with a roar.

  The wave of regret hit him the minute he went soft. She scrambled away from him, yanking her jeans back with hurt in her eyes. He looked at her directly. He felt about himself the same way she was feeling about him. When clarity finally took hold, he could see that her eyes were darker, more cocoa th
an warm cinnamon. This infuriated him more that ever. "You can go now," he heard himself say..

  "You're a fucking asshole." Her voice was trembling.

  "Baby," he touched the freckles on the shoulder that had so enticed him only moments ago. Those were wrong too. "You're absolutely right."

  ***

  Crash fucked his girl three more times, by Case's count. Janie had rushed out the door and he had done nothing to stop her. He laid on the couch, willing sleep to overtake him, but the reproach in those brown eyes kept him staring into the darkness. The snow was really piling up outside.

  Maybe tomorrow he would finally have the nerve to call the agency. If it wasn't closed. He would tell them he wanted to wish Hunter a happy birthday. That was all. He wasn't going to interfere or make trouble. He just wanted to wish his little brother a happy birthday, what would be the harm in that? Maybe they would finally tell him where he had ended up. Maybe they would give him the number of the foster home and he could finally hear his brothers' voices. It had been five years, he reminded himself. Their voices would have changed. They would sound like men, not little boys.

  He rolled over onto his side, trying to drown out his thoughts with a throw pillow. Crash and his girl had finally shut the fuck up, leaving him alone with the noise of his thoughts. What was he even thinking? Even if he did get the number, what would he say? What could he tell his brothers, all these years later? How could he explain that he didn't mean to break their promise? How could he tell them that he knew he had failed?

  How could he say he was sorry?

  Chapter 12

  Lexi

  I woke up to the bright sunlight reflecting off of the two feet of glittering snow that blanketed the world. One look at our unplowed street confirmed it; I wasn't going anywhere today.

  After logging on to the CCP website to confirm that classes were indeed cancelled, I wandered reluctantly from my room. I could already hear the blare of the television. It would be on all day, tuned to the frantic news reports at ear-splitting volume, interjected periodically with my father's even louder cries of indignation over the idiocy he was seeing. He liked to call us in right at the tail end of a story and demand to know if we could believe what was being said. Since I had learned a long time ago to tune out the television set, I rarely knew what he was talking about and only succeeded in agitating him further.

  I walked downstairs in time to catch the press conference with the mayor. He was only reading a prepared statement, all unnecessary traffic should stay out of the roads so the plows could do their job, all city offices were closed until further notice. The usual solemn warnings to go to shelters if it got too cold. All normal and inoffensive.

  "Do you believe this idiot?"

  I blinked at my father as he gesticulated wildly at the TV. He was still in his pajama pants, his bathrobe loosely tied so that it fell open at his chest, revealing the once rock hard muscles that had now gone soft and flabby with disuse. He blamed his weight gain on my mother's cooking, and frequently went on rigid diet and exercise sprees, only to be caught, late at night spooning some of my mother's meatballs directly into a bowl and eating them in front of CNN. Without the rigidity of the police force's fitness demands, my father was left to depend on his own willpower, something he lacked just like a child.

  "I can't believe the nerve of this guy." My father had turned back to the TV, pushing the volume even higher. "If he was at all a competent leader, he would have anticipated this and not have to shut everything down. I think his lazy ass just doesn't want to work. This isn't that bad, I've seen worse, Christ, back in '94 we had a storm close to...."

  When I realized he wasn't actually talking to me anymore, I slipped quietly into the kitchen. He talked a good talk, but I knew he would be following the Mayor's guidelines strictly. The instinct to obey authority was too deeply ingrained in him.

  I yawned as I headed to the coffee maker. Both Sarah and Mary were still asleep, so the pot hadn't been completely drained yet. Sarah was notorious for taking the last cup and not refilling. My whole family was demon coffee drinkers; my mother was seldom seen without a mug in her hand. I wondered if a group of people as anxious and agitated as we were really needed the caffeine. Then I told myself to shut up and poured a blessed cup of that heavenly nectar.

  It felt strange to have a day off. It made me nervous, like I was missing something. I couldn't help but wonder if I had read the announcement wrong, that classes really weren't cancelled and I was skipping the last class before finals. That would be devastating. My grades were good, but they hung by a thread. I couldn't miss a review.

  I stood by the back window of the kitchen and stared into the snow. Our house backed into the park, a real perk when I was a kid, but the once magical fairyland I had constructed back there was now choked and overgrown with vines and bramble. The snow weighed it down, making it look like the driftes were seven feet tall. It looked like a wall ready to tumble down and bury me beneath it. I felt the clawing of claustrophobia at my throat and turned quickly away.

  The creak of a floorboard overhead told me my mother was awake, and my panic rose further. Without my sisters around to deflect her, all of her focus would zero in on me with laser-like precision. Unless I found something to do quickly, she would corner me and start grilling me, offering unwanted advice and insight, tearing back my defenses until she had me second guessing every decision I had made. Right down to the amount of coffee I poured into my mug.

  It was how she showed her love.

  When I heard her footfall on the carpeted stairs, I looked around quickly. Grabbing one of my textbooks from where it lay facedown in a heap by the computer desk in the corner of the dining room, I slid quickly into a dining room chair and opened it randomly. It was the text for my American History class, barely used, barely needed but still wildly expensive. My professor taught almost exclusively from the packet he had also made us buy, and the textbook had gathered dust since the third week of the semester.

  Looking at it now, I could see why. The text was barely comprehensible. But it gave me something to focus on as my mother entered the kitchen and spied me through the opening between the two rooms. It paid to always look busy in front of my mom. Her nervous energy never let her see the value in just sitting alone with your thoughts.

  "Only boring people are bored," she would say, stuffing a rag into our hands and sending us off to do chores if we ever so much as looked like we might not be being productive.

  Sarah, Mary and I had all quickly learned that the only way to avoid being drowned in a river of menial tasks was to always have something that we could plead away and do. So I bent my head to the textbook, poking my tongue out of the corner of my mouth in faux contemplation. I could feel her smile at me fondly. She ambled over to ruffle my wild hair and I relaxed slightly when her fingernails scratched lightly over my scalp and up the back of my neck. I'm a sucker for headrubs.

  "Hey Mom," I whispered distractedly.

  "Right back at it without any breaks, huh?"

  I quickly remembered that I had run away from dinner with excuses about having to study. "Ugh, yes," I sighed dramatically. "Finals," I elaborated.

  "That's my girl." She headed over to the back window and cupped her coffee mug in her hands. Her normal whirl of nervous energy always dissipated when she looked back there. I wondered where she went when she stood there dreaming.

  I spent the morning reading a textbook I didn't need to, just to keep up the charade. My sisters finally roused themselves close to noon and suddenly everything was as it always was in this house. People in every room. My mother in the kitchen, sitting in a chair, reading through the mail pile that always teetered on the edge of drowning us all. Sarah in her room, blasting music, punishing us for some unknown crime. My father in his place in the living room, the couch cushions molded into a perfect outline of his body.

  And Mary. I clenched and released my hand, and as always she spied it. "Stressed?" she asked in that same s
ingsongy voice she's used since we were kids. "I don't know what you're worried about. It's just community college."

  "Shut up," I warned, unwilling to be dragged into our usual argument. Mary was too close to me in age and too like me in temperament. She was everything about me, magnified tenfold. My competent intelligence in her was a whip-smart intellect that she used to mercilessly beat down friend and foe alike. My stubbornness in her was a bulldog intensity and a complete unwillingness to back down. My comfort as a leader was in her a desire for world domination.

  "You shut up," she shot back.

  "Well said," I snarked. I was getting drawn into it. I couldn't help it. Mary pushes every one of my buttons. It's a wonder I didn't strangle her long ago.

  "Perfect score on the verbal SAT," she intoned. "I just didn't want to waste it on you."

  "Why are you such an almighty bitch?" I breathed.

  "Girls!" My mom looked up sharply. "Alexandra, watch your language."

  "Just goes to prove my point," Mary muttered.

  I tried so hard not to rise to the bait, but I failed. "What point is that?"

  She smiled smugly. "That I don't have to resort to cheap jargon and profanity to tell you what I think of you." She tapped her temple. "Perfect score."

  "Mary, will you go away?"

  "Why? This is my dining room too. You have a room if you need to go study."

  "Mary!

  "Girls!" My father roared over the din of the television. "Keep it down, I can barely hear the TV!"

  "Stop this awful bickering," my mother added, piling on. "You are sisters and should love each other." When she was sure she had our attention, she shifted in her chair and took on the martyred tone that we both knew and dreaded. "When I am dead and gone, I want to look down from heaven to see you two supporting each other."

  Mary looked at me and rolled her eyes. I cast mine downward before I started to laugh. "What about Sarah, Mom?" Mary asked, voice heavy with sarcasm. "Why doesn't she have to support us too?"