Swimming Sweet Arrow Part 7

14.

ONE night around quarter to ten the phone rang. Before I even answered, I knew it was June. When I picked up the receiver, though, I heard a lot of noise and crackling, and I thought, no, it's Del calling from a bar, wanting me to come pick him up.

"Hey, it's me," June said.

"Where are you?"

"Eighty-one. At the rest stop."

"What are you doing there?"

June said, "Oh, it's a long story. I'll tell you sometime. I just called to ask a favor."

One of the rigs picked that moment to pull on through. When the roaring was done, I said, "What's the favor?"

"If Ray calls, tell him I just left. Tell him I just left your place. I told him I was running out to see you."

"What for?" I said.

"Please, Vangie. I don't think he'll call, but help me out just this once."

"No, I mean, what did you tell him you were coming out here for? What's the story?"

"I said you needed help hemming a couple uniforms. I couldn't think of anything else."

I said, "If I hem them much shorter, I might as well not wear a skirt at all." Another rig pulled out then, and after the sound pa.s.sed I said, "What are you doing up there anyway?"

"Getting cleaned up. I couldn't go home like I was."

"Where were you before now?"

"In the woods."

And it took me that long into the conversation to understand what the situation was and what June was asking. She and Luke weren't just s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g in the house when Ray was at work-she'd left Ray at home, waiting, so she could go f.u.c.k Luke in the woods, and she wanted to use me as a cover.

"Jesus Christ, June," I said. "Don't you think that's dangerous?"

"No one saw us. I'll tell you more later."

"Okay, okay," I said. "Are you going home now?"

"Straight home from here."

"Where's Luke?"

"I don't know. He'll wait a couple hours before he goes back. He's probably in a bar."

"So you're there by yourself?"

"I have to go, Vangie. I'll tell you more later."

"All right. I got it," I said, and she hung up.

After I hung up, I sat there in my kitchen in Mennonite Town, picturing June washing up at the rest stop on the interstate. I knew the place. There was a line of sinks-one of them with a tall, curved faucet where you could wash your hair if you needed to. I pictured June standing in a stall, washing with wet fingers and paper towels.

It was crazy what June was doing, and I was crazy myself for being part of it. I wasn't doing a G.o.dd.a.m.n thing wrong, and yet here I was, caught up in a lie and worrying a liar's worry over it. It was bad enough each time I didn't tell Del the truth about what was happening to Ray, but I didn't also want to be June's alibi. To withhold information was one thing-I withheld information from Del every single day of my life when I didn't tell him about Frank-but I did not want to have to tell a lie. I did not want to put my mouth around the words.

As it turned out, all my worrying was for nothing. Ray didn't call that night or any other night, and that was the only time I ever got a phone call like that from June. Either she and Luke planned their outings better, or June took it on faith that I'd invent a story if I had to. That's how much she trusted me, but that's also how well she knew me. Because while I could resolve not to lie when I was sitting by myself in my house, when the time came I'd probably do what came most naturally. I knew myself well enough to say that. And June knew me that well, too.

THAT FRIDAY I came home early from dinner shift one night because I was feeling so bad. I stayed long enough to help Lorraine serve the "mad rush" of the dinner crowd and barely made it through, and I was sure I had some kind of fever, because nothing else would make me feel so stupid and weak. The whole drive home, I kept to forty. When I pulled up to the house, I was surprised to see Del's car. When he worked the seven-to-three shift, he usually went out partying with his buddies. I was glad, though, because I figured all I had to do was make it into the house and he'd be able to take care of me if I did have the flu. When I walked in the house, though, I found Del sitting at the kitchen table, high from sniffing a can of PAM.

I couldn't even believe it. He'd sprayed PAM into a bag and inhaled the fumes-there among the breakfast dishes and crumbs, there beside the refrigerator and stove. He still had the bag in his hand when I walked in the door. When he turned to look at me, his eyes were so far gone I knew he was high, high, high.

"Vangie, get me a washcloth, just a washcloth," was the only thing he said. I guessed he wanted to wash the grease off his face from where he had been holding the bag to his nose and mouth. He looked at me a little while, and then put his head down on the table.

I took the bag from his hand, threw it in the trash, and then just stood and watched him. I'd never seen anyone huff before. It was something I'd only ever heard of, read about. It must have been a gentle kind of high, because Del's hand had no tension in it when I took the greasy plastic from him.

In a couple seconds, he looked up at me again and said, "Vangie, a washcloth."

I ran the water until it got hot. I soaked a washcloth and smeared soap on part of it. I ended up washing his face for him, still there in the kitchen, him sitting on a chair, me standing between his legs.

When I was done, I said, "I'm going to bed. I'm sick."

"Okay," he said. "Okay. I'll be up later."

"I threw out the can and the bag," I said.

"That's all right," he said.

When he came to bed later, I felt sick-as much from what Del looked like sitting in that kitchen chair as from whatever bug was in my body. I didn't really want to touch him, but when he started moving up against me, I knew he wouldn't sleep without s.e.x. So I let him f.u.c.k me. Or I let someone f.u.c.k me-I didn't know who. He didn't talk to me at all, and he didn't touch me-except to stick his p.e.n.i.s into me. After, he slid away and fell asleep. I thought of going downstairs to sleep on the sofa, but I felt weak and hot and didn't want to move. I didn't know what difference it would have made at that point, anyway If I let him f.u.c.k me, it didn't seem like I should care about sleeping beside his body.

DEL TOLD me he huffed the PAM because he didn't want to drink and we didn't have any weed.

"I didn't know you'd be home so soon, Vangie. I heard about it, and I wanted to try it."

"Yeah, well I heard about it, too," I said. "But I hear a lot of things I'd never do."

"It was a onetime thing. I didn't want to drink. I didn't want to hurt you."

"Don't you think it's a pretty funny way not to hurt me? Sniffing PAM?"

"I guess. I don't know."

That was how he worked it out in his mind: he bruised and bit me when he was drunk, so if he didn't get drunk again, he knew he couldn't do the same thing. Smoking dope didn't fall into the same category, and neither did huffing.

I had to hand it to him. That was the idea he stuck to: he was not going to hurt me again as a result of alcohol. But because he could not or would not stop getting drunk, by the next weekend he had to add a new element to his plan: if he did decide to drink, he had to stay away from me completely. So he didn't come home Friday after work, and I didn't get a call from him. Nothing. He just disappeared. All that night I kept waiting to hear him come up the stairs and say, "Vangie," but he didn't. Part of me was scared he would never come back, and part of me was mad that he would.

On Sat.u.r.day when I heard him come in, I was lying in our bed, listening to a cardinal call, over and over. I was lying on my side in the bed, facing the doorway, and I didn't move when Del came to the doorway of the room. I let him look at me a long time, and I let myself look at him a long time.

He said, "You look surprised to see me."

I didn't say anything.

"Don't ever think I'm not coming back, Vangie."

"No?"

"No. Don't ever think that."

"I can't promise what I'll think," I said.

"Well, don't think I'm not coming back."

"All I think is I don't know you anymore," I said. "That's all." I turned away from him then.

He could still see my back, though, and he could read that just like he could read any other part of me, so in a little while he said, "You know me, Vangie. No one knows me better than you."

I did not say anything but went on listening to the cardinal's call.

"Can I come lay with you?"

When I didn't answer, he said, "Vangie, please. Can I come lay down with you?"

"I don't care," I told him. "It's your bed, too."

When he got into bed with me, I did not turn to kiss him and I did not move my hand over his hand when he put his arm over my belly. I lay there, and I let him lie at my back. That was all. In the end, though, it was the same as taking him back into my heart. A short trip through muscle and bone.

15.

WHEN Del started staying away one or two nights a week, I had lots of time alone. Because I did not want to think about Del, I made myself think about other things and other people. Sometimes I thought of my mom, who had sent me a picture of her and her ex-Mormon. Even though my mom was smiling in the picture and wearing a turquoise ring on almost every finger, the picture worried me. I thought the ex-Mormon looked skinny and mean, and it made me sad to think of my mom being with him. It didn't make me feel much better to think of June, but those nights when Del was gone, I mostly ended up thinking of her out there in that house with Luke and Ray.

I thought I understood some of June's motivation. She wanted to be loved, and she wanted to be the center of attention. But I wondered what it meant to her to sleep with two brothers. What did it serve in her? Maybe she wanted c.o.c.k from one brother who was full and thick in her arms and one who was thin enough to have the face of a hawk. Or maybe she really could talk to Luke. Maybe a hundred things. I knew enough about June to understand that the key for her was brothers, but there had to be something she needed from each and something she got from each. As for Luke-well, I knew from Del how two brothers could grow up together and keep hate in a trundle bed between them, pulling it out when it was needed, when there was no one else to hate.

It all made me think of the stories I heard about Kevin Keel. Everyone knew the who-what-where-when of Kevin Keel, but they never knew the why. Why did he become what he was? n.o.body could tell me that story, just like they couldn't tell me why he stayed in a place where everyone knew him as a h.e.l.l-raiser, a user, and a killer. Maybe he did not know how to be anything else, and it served his fear to stay, or maybe he figured that whatever his story was, it was his, and he might as well stay no matter what people thought of him.

All I knew for certain was that none of us did anything for long unless we wanted to. June and Luke wanted the lies and danger and hurtfulness, at least in part. They might not have known they wanted those things, but something pulled them to that water and they did not draw back.

I pictured the two of them in my mind like they were in a movie, and I ran the movie over and over in my head those nights I was alone. I pictured June waiting until Ray's car pulled away in the morning, and then crossing the hall soundlessly to stand beside Luke's bed. He was the first one to speak.

Why so quiet? He's long gone.

Aren't you afraid, ever?

Of him? No, I'm not afraid of him.

Are you afraid of me? That I'll get tired of it?

Never. You're here because you want to be.

They'd kiss, and sometimes she'd steal just that much and hurry on in to work. Other times she'd have to move the sheets back from Luke's body so she could see. His narrow hips and c.o.c.k would be so pretty they'd make something ache inside her, and she'd have to bend to kiss his hipbones and the small paths of veins running down to his c.o.c.k. Those mornings she would not go to work at all, but it didn't matter-they were always looking for women to pay minimum wage to, and what was a job anyway, except a way to keep food on the table. What she did with Luke was the only living.

Did he give it to you last night?

You know he did. You heard it.

Then what do you want from me?

This. And this. Everything.

I knew they were my words and my f.u.c.king-because I couldn't know what it was like between them. But I wanted to picture them so I could understand, so I could feel close. So I could have something to think about other than my own life in that house with Del. If what pa.s.sed between June and Luke all happened a different way, different from the one I imagined, then it did, and my picturing did no good. Did no good.

16.

ONE Friday at the end of June, Del disappeared again, but he did not come home at the end of the weekend, he did not come home on Monday, and he did not come home on Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday. On the seventh day running, I couldn't stand it anymore, so about ten o'clock at night, I took one of my tip dimes and called Del's job from the pay phone at Dreisbach's. When I talked to the supervisor, I found out that he'd made it in to Traut's to work all of his shifts that week. That meant that the only place he wasn't making it was home to me.

When I found that out, something inside me just broke.

I usually liked the late part of my shift because I had a little time to myself. I could pee, play a song or two on the jukebox, think my own thoughts. Some nights I'd bring a cup of coffee to a back booth so I could sit down and fold napkins. After working on my feet all day, it was sweet just to sit down for a while. But that night I did none of those things. I did not want to sit at a back booth folding napkins, and I did not want to think my own thoughts.

When I saw Kevin Keel at one of my tables, I knew he would help me pa.s.s the time. I thought that if I could just hear a friendly voice in that dining room, I'd be all right. So I took his order for a rib eye steak and I got him a Yuengling from the bar and I talked about anything and nothing, just to fill up the air. I told him how unG.o.dly hot it was getting in the back room where we had to do our dishes, now that the weather was turning. I told him how I spilled water that night when I was serving my old high school princ.i.p.al and his wife. I told him how you could always tell it was Friday night, because the farmers came in wearing black dress shoes with their overalls and white socks. Kevin was kind and listened to me fill up the air with all of that.

He was finishing his dessert when I went up to his table with his green guest check. I believe he thought I was going to sit down and tell him some more about my vision of the world and the dinner crowd, but I didn't.

"I'm going to play you a song on the jukebox," I said instead. "Is that all right with you?"

"Sure it's all right. Are you going to sit with me and listen?"