Читать книгу The Mourning Hours - Paula DeBoard Treick - Страница 15

nine

That fall, tension in our house lurked around every corner. Stacy still came over sometimes, but she didn’t always come inside. Instead, Johnny went out to meet her, and Emilie and I would spy on them as he leaned her back against the Camaro for one of their long, passionate kisses.

Mom would watch from the kitchen window, flicking the porch light on and off, like some kind of Morse code: I’m watching you. I see what you’re doing.

Each night was its own battle, but the afternoons were generally quiet and peaceful, with Mom still at work and Johnny and Emilie at one sort of practice or another. When the bus dropped me off from school, I’d run down the driveway to check in with Dad in the barn, give Kennel a hundred kisses, fix myself a peanut butter sandwich and curl up in my own secret fort—the back of the hallway linen closet.

This was one of the few benefits of being short, I’d discovered—I could squeeze my body into unexpected places. When Johnny and Emilie used to play hide-and-seek with me, I was always the winner. I could slide into the narrowest of cracks behind an open door, climb into dresser drawers and stand upright in a vacuum cleaner box with inches to spare. Then a few years ago, I’d discovered the hollow at the back of an upstairs closet. It was just a narrow space behind the closet shelves, about four feet high and two and a half feet deep—too small to bother sealing, too awkward for storage, and perfect for me. It was a great place for reading; all I had to do was move our guest towels out of the way and I was in.

With a couple of Grandma’s old quilts and the flickering light of a Coleman lantern, my hiding place was as neat and comfortable as any hobbit hole—and no one could bother me. I could spend uninterrupted hours with books of true crime, or my new favorite obsession, the Guinness Book of World Records. I marveled at the world’s tallest person, who had reached eight feet, eleven inches and only lived to be twenty-two. Eight feet—I couldn’t imagine. He wouldn’t have survived long in our house, where his head would have brushed the ceiling and smacked against every doorway.

One afternoon, when Dad was up in Green Bay and I was up in my hideout studying a photo of Kara Gordon, the world’s shortest person at twenty-three inches tall, I heard the back door bang open. I heard the unmistakable sound of Johnny hammering his boots against the door sill, a habit Mom had drilled into each of us, and then faintly, Stacy’s laugh. This surprised me—since Stacy was only welcome in our house if Mom or Dad were there. And even then, she wasn’t truly welcome.

Straining, I could hear the winter undressing sounds associated with snow—hats and scarves and gloves peeling off with a whack, coats unzipping, feet working their way out of boots. Then two sets of footsteps on the stairs. I held my breath.

“Shh...shh!” Stacy’s hissed whisper.

“We don’t have to ‘shh.’ No one’s here,” Johnny said, whispering anyway. “Mom’s at work, and Dad’s out of town for the day.”

“What about your sisters?”

“Emilie’s at band practice and Kirsten’s probably in the hayloft or something.”

“Are you sure?”

Johnny laughed. “Are you kidding me? If Kirsten were here, she’d be hanging all over you by now.”

That was mean, I thought, my cheeks hot. But not as mean as Stacy’s laugh of agreement. I would have expected her to protest, to say that I wasn’t a pest, that she loved talking to me.

Instead, she hollered, “Hello! Helllllloooo! Emilie and Kirsten! Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

They laughed as if this was the most hysterical thing ever.

Quietly, I folded my legs and brought my knees to my chin. I heard Johnny’s bedroom door squeak open, then thunk as it caught on something, a pair of shoes, maybe, or a football.

“God, your room is such a sty,” Stacy said. “No wonder you’ve never let me in here before.” She laughed again, and I remembered Stacy’s bedroom from her party: the white bedspread, the neat line of books on her shelf.

“Jeez, Lemke. Let it go.”

There was the sound of metal coiling, and I realized they were on Johnny’s bed. My little hideout was situated between the linen closet and Johnny’s bedroom; I might as well have been perched in his closet. Listening to Stacy’s giggles, my hearing suddenly felt very sharp. I plugged my ears and counted to twenty, then unstopped them and listened to their quiet sucking sounds. This was kissing—real kissing, late-night TV kissing, not the short pecks my parents planted on each other’s cheeks on their way out the door or the dry forehead smacks Mom gave us when we professed to have fevers, kisses that were more thermometer than affection. Once, Emilie had shown me how to practice kissing, and we had sucked on the insides of our arms until they were covered with purplish hickeys. It had taken a full week for mine to disappear, and Mom had frowned, noticing my arm as I got ready for bed. “You must be playing too hard in the barn,” she said. “You’re all bruised up.”

Now I imagined Johnny and Stacy burying each other’s bodies in hickeys, a more private version of what Mom termed their “make-out sessions” when Johnny walked Stacy to her car. I wondered if her pink lip gloss, which she reapplied constantly from a little tube that bulged in her back pocket like a strange tumor, had transferred onto Johnny’s mouth, his neck, leaving sweet raspberries on his skin.

I’ve got to say something now, I thought, make some noise, get myself out of here. I had a basic idea of what was happening—anything from necking to going all the way, which I’d learned about from Katie and Kari Schultz, twins in my grade whose college-aged babysitter had filled them in on everything from periods to where babies came from.

Then I heard something else—a zipper?

“What are you doing?” Johnny groaned, loud and low.

Stacy laughed again. “I thought you might like that,” she whispered, a throaty sound that didn’t sound like Stacy at all, but more like an actress in a love scene the moment before Mom changed the channel.

What would happen if someone came in now, like Grandpa with one of his shirts to be mended, or Mom, released from her shift early?

“You are such a tease,” Johnny moaned, and Stacy laughed again.

“Good?” she asked.

“Mmm...”

I started to count in my head again, just wanting this to be over. One, two, three... Something soft like a sweater smacked against the wall, and then there were more sounds, like someone tugging off a pair of jeans. Were these, I wondered, the pale blue jeans with heart-shaped appliqués on the back pockets?

All of a sudden, the sounds stopped, and Johnny said, clear as anything: “I don’t know about this.”

Fifteen...sixteen...seventeen...

“I told you, I’m ready,” Stacy whispered.

“But I just—I don’t want you to think you have to—”

“I don’t think I have to. I know I want to.”

“You’re sure about this? I mean, really sure?” Johnny’s voice was husky, too. All of a sudden I realized it was a man’s voice, not a boy’s.

Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine.

“I told you, yeah. I’m sure. What can I do to get you to believe me?” She laughed then, and Johnny groaned.

“But what about...?”

“Don’t worry about it. We’ll be careful.” She gave him a light smack, her voice teasing.

“Everyone always thinks they’re being careful.”

“I never thought I’d be the one who had to convince you,” she said, sounding almost annoyed for a second. Then she switched back to her throaty, teasing voice. “I mean, most guys wouldn’t mind...”

Johnny’s voice then was husky. “All right, you’ve convinced me.”

There were more kissing sounds, the bedsprings creaking. Even if I wasn’t hiding in the linen closet, I would have heard this. I started again. Forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty... My cheeks burned. The bed frame rattled against the wall.

Katie and Kari had illustrated the process for me in a notebook, behind pages of multiplication tables. It didn’t make much sense until I equated her drawing with bulls and heifers. “So the man puts this—” a crude mushroom-shaped object “—into this—” a petal-shaped fissure I only vaguely equated with my own body “—and the woman gets pregnant,” Katie had told me.

“And then her breasts get really big because they’ve filled up with milk,” Kari added. I suspected they were missing a few steps in between, but still, I was unnerved to realize that this scene from the animal world in our barn translated so closely to human life. It shocked me to think that this happened all around me, to my parents, to my married cousins, even to people from church.

Johnny and Stacy were panting now, and it was as if they were breathing directly into my ear. I got stuck for a second: Seventy-one, seventy-one, seventy-one...

“Ouch!” Johnny’s voice. “Did you just bite me?”

Stacy laughed. “Go ahead, bite me back.”

Eighty-six... There was a rhythm to the bed creaking, the groans. I could hear—or was I imagining it?—two pairs of lungs, breath heavy, in sync. I hit one hundred and started working my way down. Ninety-six, ninety-five...

“Oh, Stace, Stace, Stace,” Johnny said, his voice high-pitched and rapid.

What if I stood up, announcing my presence right then? I wondered if I could sneak out of the closet, down the stairs, out the screen door and then in again with a slam, the world’s smallest superhero, here to save the day. I’d come charging up the steps and bang on Johnny’s door, yelling, “Stop—or you’ll have a baby!”

Seventy-five, seventy-four...

It was suddenly quiet, their bodies still. I felt as if I was going to suffocate in my hideout, I was so warm. If I moved, they would hear me. I had no choice but to stay still, breathing in the stale closet air until there was no more oxygen and I passed out. They would find my body there days later, and Johnny and Stacy would feel horribly guilty for what they’d done. I counted all the way down to zero and sat, listening to their silence. I imagined them together on Johnny’s bed, skin against skin, and felt a warm flush on my neck.

“Shit,” Johnny said suddenly, his voice startlingly close. “Look at the clock—it’s after five. We’ve gotta get moving.”

Stacy giggled. “Nah, I think I’ll stay here.”

Johnny was getting up—the bedsprings protesting, his voice moving farther away. “I don’t think so.”

“Why? Because your mom wouldn’t approve?” Stacy laughed her lilting laugh. “Come on, Johnny. I’ll be really quiet. I could camp here for a few days, and no one would even notice.”

“Very funny.”

I could hear Johnny moving around the room, dressing.

Stacy continued, her voice wistful, “If you want, I’ll explain it all to them. I’ll say, ‘Mr. and Mrs. Hammarstrom, I know you don’t really like me, but I’m moving in with your son.’ I’ll tell them that we love each other and that I’m already physically your wife.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Johnny said, annoyance creeping into his voice. “Put your clothes on. Let’s go.”

Stacy’s voice was smug. “Nope—I told you. I’m not leaving. I’m going to have a little talk with your parents when they come home, mister.”

She seemed pretty pleased with herself for coming up with this bizarre plan. I tried, and failed, to imagine a world where my parents would let Stacy Lemke live in my brother’s bedroom.

“Stacy, come on.” There was an edge to his voice now, something I’d heard often enough as his sister. I remembered how angry he’d been when Stacy interrupted the wrestling night, that breathless moment when I couldn’t tell if he was serious or joking, when it could have gone either way. Stacy had won that match, but I knew she wasn’t going to win this one.

Again she laughed. “Sorry! No can do. I guess you’re just stuck with me, Johnny Hammarstrom.”

“I’m serious.” Johnny’s voice was level, but there was an edge to his calm. If Stacy got up right then, everything would be fine. If she didn’t...well... “Any second now my sisters are going to be here, and we need to be gone.”

“I’m perfectly serious, too,” Stacy purred. “I’m just going to lie here on your bed, all stretched out, deliciously naked....”

“Stacy—now!”

They were both alike, I realized. Johnny never knew when to stop being the aggressor, and Stacy didn’t know when to stop egging him on.

Stacy ignored him. “I’d be like your own little princess in the tower, catering to your every whim. And I’d be good to you. I’d be so, sooo, soooo good to you. Come over here, we have time for more—”

There was a slapping sound, as if Johnny was batting Stacy’s hands away. “What are you, crazy? Get dressed! You’re going to get me in trouble!”

I’d been holding my breath for so long that I felt dizzy.

“Well, we wouldn’t want that.” Stacy sounded hurt, but as far as I could tell, she hadn’t moved yet.

Johnny sighed, trying to be patient. “Are you going to get up?”

“I don’t know,” Stacy said simply.

“What the fuck, Stacy!” Johnny exploded suddenly. There was a thunk, like he’d kicked something—an open dresser drawer or his bed frame. He swung his bedroom door open, banging it against the wall, and took the stairs two at a time. At the bottom of the stairs, he called back over his shoulder, “I’m going to be in the truck, and if you’re coming, you’d better get moving.”

Slowly, too slowly, Stacy stood up. She seemed to be muttering under her breath while she gathered her clothes. I pressed my ear to the wall, trying to pick out her words. But, no, she wasn’t muttering. She was humming—as if she had all the time in the world.

Johnny’s voice carried up the stairs, dangerously. “Stacy...”

“All right, I’m coming,” she called finally, starting down. “What’s the hurry, Hammarstrom? Got another girl to visit before dinner?”

When I heard the back door slam behind them, I unfolded myself from my hiding spot, taking in fresh gulps of air like a deep-sea diver coming to the surface. I rushed to my bedroom window, careful not to disturb the curtain as I peeked out. Johnny had already started his truck. Hands on the steering wheel, he stared straight ahead. Stacy only had one leg inside when he gunned the engine. As they made the half turn in the driveway, I saw her reach unsteadily out with one hand and, straining, pull the door shut.