Me and Mom Fall for Spencer (17 page)

I squeal and roll away from him and he’s
trying to lift my shirt, and Ned is quickly on the bed again, and Dusty bowls
right on top of me. My arm is stinging from
Dusty’s
toenails. Spencer rebukes them soundly and they slink onto the blanket on the
floor, their tails nervously pumping against the wood. Spencer returns to me,
takes my arm to view the damage. He kisses the red scratch. “Damn dogs. I’m
taking them to a kill shelter,” he says kill shelter in their direction, “in
the morning.”

They are both over here now, their noses
poking at me. “It’s alright,” I say patting their clunky heads. I point out
Dusty’s
little knob on top of his skull. It’s sharper than
Ned’s. Once this has all been thoroughly explored and talked about we all
settle in again. Spencer has his arm in place, and I am lying on his shoulder. We
smell a little like dogs now, but we agree we’re too lazy to wash because
they’ll probably be back a few more times.

In a minute I am tracing his profile. I
say, “Too doggy?”
 

He laughs and says, “My face?”

His eyes are closed so I can do what I
want. I touch his lashes. They are as thick as they look. I rub my finger over
his brow. Then I trace again. His jaws are rough with shadow.

“I like your face,” I whisper thinking
of God the potter, us the clay and how Spencer typifies that better than anyone
I’ve seen before or likely ever will.

He smiles but he doesn’t open his eyes. “I
like you here,” he says.

I put my arm around him and move as
close to him as I can. I allow my eyes to close, and my breathing eases. I can
feel sleep weighing my eyelids, even my lashes. I feel so safe, here in this
home I am starting to call his.

“Spencer?”

“Yes?”

“Will you hug me hard…hard as you can?”

He moves then, more onto his side. I am
wearing him. He has a leg around me even, and he tightens his hold, tightens
more. I close my eyes and direct all of my attention to this feeling…of being
protected. My mind quiets, and I am here, here, wrapped in him.

He doesn’t speak, we don’t speak. I have
my ear against his chest and I hear his body thump and gurgle, and I feel his
strength enfolded here, a vice of flesh and bone and muscle, but a heart, a
mind that believes…in this hug…in us.

After a couple of minutes he says, “Sullivan?”

“Yes?”

“I’m easing a little, okay?”

I don’t answer, but he eases and I
breathe more. I think of how I had to bolt when I awoke in his arms. But when
he lets me be the asker, it can’t be tight enough…his hold.

“Did you like it, being held that way?”

“Yes,” I say small.

“It didn’t hurt?”

“In a good way.”

“I don’t want to hurt you baby.”

I look at him, that deep in his eyes. “It
was good.”

He is touching me, my face and hair. “Think
about us…what we’ve done together?” he says.

“At
Cyro’s
?”

He laughs. “No. Or yes. While we were
being all nice and industrious and I tried not to let him…or you for that
matter…catch me staring at your ass.”

I raise and slap at him. He’s laughing
and I am too. “I did catch you,” I say, “that one time.”

“You did not,” he says.

We settle down and get quiet, the dogs
making these little gasps while they chew, and the soft whirr of the fan making
a kind of music.

“What have you been thinking about it?”
he asks.

“Read it,” I say, because I could never
tell him.

He puts his thumb in the middle of my
forehead and says, “Thought-so.”

But here’s what I’m thinking--Spencer…I
love you. If you left people…they’re wondering…they loved you. You’re so kind. They
miss you…someone…somewhere is missing you.

He says, “Sarah…I’m a five minute show. Anyone
can be great for five minutes. But you, five years, twenty, they just love you
all the more. You’re the real deal.”

I move my head so I can look in his
eyes.

“I know how special you are. It’s not
casual. They say casual sex—I don’t feel that way…casual,” he says.

I don’t know what to say to that. I
can’t speak right away. I try to imagine myself as this special thing. A dozen
mundane pictures of me doing my mundane things flip through my mind. It’s a
stretch.

He breathes in, his arm tightening for a
minute.

“Is anyone looking for you?”

He hesitates. “No.”

“How do you know?”

“They’re not. I haven’t been home in a
long time.”

“Did something bad happen? Could you go
home if you wanted to? Would you?”

“I am home. Not back there.
Here.
You.”

“Chicago?”

“What?”

“Chicago. Is that home?”

“Why would you say that?”
His demeanor changes.
“How…has
Cyro
been…
it’s
Cyro
.”

“No,” I say, alarmed at how serious he’s
become so quickly. “It was the newspaper…for the fries. It said Chicago,” I
say. We’re sitting up.

He stares at me, and I know he’s a
little ashamed, but it’s really thrown him that I’ve said Chicago.

“Sarah…I told you the Midwest. Why can’t
that be enough?
You and
Cyro
.
I need you to drop it. It has no bearing on what’s happening between us.”

“I just want to know you.”

“You do know me. This is me. What I say
to you, what we do. It’s me.”

I pick at a thread on the blanket.

“Sarah, listen to me. We’re doing the
man-woman thing, right?
 
We both know why
you came
over,
we know why I told you to hurry.
 
But you haven’t thought this through.”
 
We are looking at one another.
 
“I’ve been pushing and…that hasn’t been
fair.
 
I need to back off and let you
come my way…if you want to.
 
When.”

“I did come your
way.
 
You don’t want me.”

“Of course I want
you.
 
That’s never been a problem.”
 
He pulls me closer and says close to my face,
my lips, “I want you Sarah.”

I can’t leave him.
 
Doesn’t he know that?
 
I can’t even stop to think.
 
Breathing over thinking.
 
Living over thinking.
 

He is looking at me,
looking.
 
“You’re never rash, amazingly
consistent, every move calculated, you’re throwing all that aside for someone
you worry you can’t trust.
 
You need to
go home, girl.
 
You need to run the hell
out of here.”

I take his hand, hold
it, I look so far into his eyes I am falling head first in a rush.
 
“I won’t leave you, Spencer.
 
I don’t want to.
 
I want to be here.
 
No-where else.”

He doesn’t say anything
for a while.
 
He’s looking so far into
me.

Finally I lay my head
back down and he slowly pulls me in and he tightens his arms like he did
before, and he adds the leg and I am crushed against him waiting for his body
to give way and become one with mine.

We lay like this and
he’s holding me, and inside I am rearranged, I am soft and
echoey
as I look into rooms long closed, rooms I’d forgotten were behind the walls…in
me.

When his arms tremble
he eases his hold and I lift then, enough to kiss him, to give him myself that
way, and I pull up my shirt so I can feel my skin on his.
 
He groans and we kiss like this and time goes
away and dogs and the room, and I am over him, on him, and I stay there but I
move off, my hand wanting to feel what I’ve felt against my protruding pelvic
bone.
 
I ease off and I feel him then,
through the thin pants and underwear which he pulls down and hooks somewhere
under his balls and I see him then, the way he’s made, and I look at his face
and he’s watching me, letting me take my time.
 
I touch him and I can feel the tightening in him and he wraps his hand
around mine and I know I should hold him that way, this flesh over hardness
having some give, some looseness, and his body lifts with the pleasure I’m
giving him.
 

“That’s enough,” he
says, taking my hand.
 
“You’re going to
kill him.
 
Get undressed.”

We both do, and it’s
quick, and I am bare to him, and he to me, and he is glorious and I watch his
big hand for a minute, moving over me, my breasts, my scar, my stomach, the
hair between my very spread legs, my white thighs.
 
And I see it now, that I’m this woman…sexy…I
have what he wants…I have it.
 
He’s made
me beautiful…right now…perfect.

He touches me down
there, his head on my stomach, he makes me come, go to pieces, yell out and my
hands in his hair, the long hot wave of pleasure, then his hot lips on mine,
and sucking my tongue, my lips, sucking on my breasts and one quick touch of
his fingers and I put my hands over his strong hand and lift my head and I come
again, bliss and sounds and smells, and I grab onto him and I’m pumping him,
and faster and the white, hot spurts, the wet and sticky, the sweaty us, the
laughing us, the kissing wildly us, the whispered words, beauty, beautiful, my
God, the glow, the joy of so much discovery.

“In the morning I’m
going to fry you some patty pan squash,” I say after.

“That white kind?”

“Yeah.
 
With soft eggs.
 
It’s so good.
 
You dip the squash in the yellow.”

“Sarah,” he
whispers.
 
Then he says, “We never had
our steak!”

“After we cut pumpkins
tomorrow,” I say.
 
“I know a place.”

I get a kiss for
that.
 
He gets one too, for kissing
me.
 
We don’t sleep until much later.

Me and Mom Fall for
Spencer

Chapter Twenty-Six

On Friday, after the promised breakfast
of patty pan squash and soft eggs and fresh tomatoes, some footsies while we
eat, some long lingering looks, some hugs, some smooches, Spencer,
Leeanne
, the dogs and I are on our way to the pumpkin patch
on
Leeanne’s
uncles’ farm. We plan to cut the various
sizes and colors and shapes of pumpkins and load them in the truck.

“This dog is drooling on my leg,”
Leeanne
says in her dead pan way. She has Dusty between her
knees and Spencer has Ned between his. I’d wanted Spencer to sit in the middle
so he could be by me, but he said it wasn’t manly to sit in the middle so
Leeanne
had to do it.

At first
Leeanne
is shy around Spencer, blushing and looking at me like, what’s this? Then she
softens up a little and pretty soon she is smirking at everything he says.

She tells him how her
uncles
planted the pumpkins near the pond and they grow
like crazy there, tangled in the sunflowers and cattails. Every fall they let
us cut them for the market as they both have a series of shelter dogs and
believe in the cause. They’ve never taken wives, just dogs and cats and various
critters, a long line of them.

Leeanne
has a box in the back of the truck with two pies and cookies for the old
bachelors. They’ve both served in Vietnam and one of them lived like a homeless
man for many years until the other one went to Detroit and brought him back to
the farm. So the two of them live in the same ramshackle they’ve grown up in. They
still use the same appliances and the regular antenna on their old TV.

“You’ve got to understand, my people are
about the land,” she says.

“What happens if I fail to understand
that?” Spencer teases.

“You’ll see them as a couple of losers
too lazy to fix up their house,” she says.

Spencer loves that and says, “Dully
noted. No judgment from me Miss
Leeanne
.”

Pulling onto the property Spencer
whistles through his teeth. “I had this place I wouldn’t care what I lived in,”
he says.

It is typical picturesque Michigan
farmland. The old house and adjacent faded red barn are tucked in some trees
and a swell of ground leads to a large pond. The ground is dry enough I am able
to pull my truck right up to the water. I drive slowly so we aren’t jostled too
awful much but
Leeanne
still complains.

Ned and Dusty seem to know we’ve arrived
and are both getting all breathy and antsy. As soon as Spencer opens his door
the dogs are out, and Spencer has both leashes. We’ve decided to keep them
tethered until they meet the uncles’ dogs. We also don’t want them to run off
and get lost.

So here come the dogs right off, a
Collie sort, a yellow mixed lab, and a beagle. They have plenty to say about
Ned and Dusty and those being the new guys and young to-
boot,
they stand at ease and let themselves be sniffed. The shelter has socialized
them, and in a few minutes everyone’s tail is waving and Spencer unsnaps their
leads.

The uncles come next. One, Tom, is on a
four-wheeler. The other, Mr. Homeless from Detroit, is driving a tractor.

Leeanne
introduces Spencer and he moves to each of their vehicles to shake hands. He’s
asked about the pond and the fish, tells them they have a great place. I pull
my gloves from behind the seat and find another pair for Spencer. He doesn’t
know how prickly the stems can be. I get the two knives for cutting the fruit. I
nod to the uncles and give Spencer the implements that will make him an
official migrant worker.
Leeanne
is in the bed
retrieving her box of baked goods. Spencer puts his knife in his back-pocket
and rushes to help her, taking the box from her while she jumps to the ground.

She’ll walk the baked goods up to the
house and end up cleaning the kitchen so she can complain all the way home
about how disgusting her
uncles
are.

They follow after
Leeanne
on their vehicles and I am free to walk to the first green pumpkin looking
stealth in the tall grass. I show Spencer where to cut and I’ve bent over to do
that, and he moves close to me and I feel his hand on my waist. When I stand he
pulls me in and kisses me softly on the lips. “Kissing with knives is the
best,” he says and then he smiles and kisses me again.

It’s funny and sexy and I don’t want to
stop. He smirks at me and picks up the green monster saying, “Come to daddy,” and
I slap him lightly on the behind before he can straighten.

He stands up quickly. “I can’t believe
you did that. I was honorable and only touched your waist.”

“Move it, Gundry. We don’t have all
day,” I say like queen of the patch.

“Yes Ma’am,” he says with a southern
drawl and a wink and he takes the bounty to the truck.

He is in love with the different gourd
shapes. They are so cool and it’s fascinating to see what’s next. These are
heirloom vegetables and they bring the most interest at market and the best
prices.

“Hey, you want to see my gourd,” he
whispers once, as he passes me carrying a nice fat orange veggie.

I am laughing. It’s pretty outrageous
behavior for a southern gentleman.

By noon we’ve got a good load on the
truck and the dogs are lying all worn out in the grass. They’ve gone swimming
countless times and they’ve wrestled and run all over the place. We’re about
starved and Spencer and I put the damp dogs in the bed and drive to the house
and honk for
Leeanne
. She tells us to go
on,
she’s spending the night because the house is such a
mess.
 
That means Spencer and I
are
doing the market in the morning. I know where everything
is and she’s baked, but the old reluctance to face that crowd is in me, even
though Spencer will charm them and do most of the talking for us.

We move the dogs to the cab and I try to
breathe toward my open window because they smell like dog-frogs. Spencer lets
Ned sit in his usual place on the floor, and he’s worked to keep Dusty off the
seat, but I finally tell him to let Dusty get up there. It’s not worth the
fight.

So on the way home we look at one
another around
Dusty’s
big mossy head and that
doesn’t dim either one of our smiles at all.

At home Spencer says let’s meet up for
that steak around supper time. He says, “How long do you need?”

I have so much work to do, and he says
he’ll pick the garden and put everything in the crates so I can keep working
and maybe I’d like to see a movie too?

I am so thrown by all this I can’t
answer.

“Sullivan?”

“I don’t know,” I say. Can I really stay
focused on my work knowing he’s in the garden doing my job? I really don’t
know.

“And I’ll take the kids,” he says, like
it’s settled, and I guess it is because he has both of them on their leashes. “How
long Sullivan?”

“Um…six.”

“Okay,” he says. “See you then…pumpkin.”

I am cringing and he likes that. He’s
laughing. “Is that a fruit or a vegetable?”

“Both,” I say. “It has characteristics
of both.”

“Oh yeah…that’s you then.”

I don’t know what he means by that. But
he’s cute, walking away with those two dogs behaving for once.

I sigh really big and go in the house. Mom
isn’t home yet, so I make a couple of sandwiches and take them over to
Cyro
. I knock on the door and put my forehead on the
screen. “Hey,” I say.

He waves me in. I take the sandwiches to
him. “Doe with you?” he asks.

“No. Why?”

“Just wondering if he’s
going to start on the kitchen.”

“He will.”

“He
don’t
have
a job?”

“Just you.”

“A real job?
He would have liquidated any assets when he went in the program so that could
keep him going for a while,”
Cyro
says.

“Let it go,” I say. “He doesn’t like you
saying that.”

“Course not. He thinks I’m blowing his
cover.”

“Well if you believe he’s in WITSEC, you
are blowing his cover. Promise you won’t say it again.”

“What are you doing, Sarah? You got the
gooey eyes for him.”

“Eat your sandwiches,” I say. “You make
that store list?”

“Right here,” he hands it to me with his
debit card. “Sarah?
You serious about Doe?”

“Spencer,
Cyro
.
You know that.”

“He’s hiding something. If somebody’s
looking for him, it could put you in danger.”

“Spencer is the nicest person you’ll
ever meet. If you can’t see that by now…some cop.”

“Lots of nice people in
WITSEC.
Some great guys in jail.
Oh
look, there went a unicorn past my window,” he says.

It’s time for me to go. I get home and
turn on my laptop and make myself dig into one of the files awaiting my
attention. By five I give up. I am finally accomplishing something, but it’s
time to think about what I look like. I get undressed and stand before the
mirror. I’m honestly not much. I am not ugly, I know that, but I’m no beauty
either.
Beige.
Oh God, I’m beige. What does Spencer
see in me? What if he’s secretly making fun of me and I can’t see it? I am
crazy in love. He’s…here. I don’t know why. Am I just convenient…like the soda
you drink because someone puts it in your hand and you’re too lazy to walk to
the fridge and get another? Is it like that?

I am disillusioned while I dig in my
closet to find…something. I think of Mom’s closet. But no, we’re not on those
kinds of terms. We don’t even see one another, don’t want to. I don’t trust her
clothes anyway. They’ve been around.

I settle on jeans and a pretty blouse. It’s
a dark red and I’d gotten it from Merle and Pearlie for my birthday. That means
Leeanne
picked it out. Believe it or not she has
decent taste for someone besides herself. It has these flat subtle studs on the
shoulders. This has kept me from wearing it before now, this and not having an
occasion.

I put my hair in a braid so the studs
will show. And because Spencer can pull on it to his heart’s content. My heart
is fluttering at the thought of his hands on me.

Mom is home when I go down, my flat
shoes quiet on the stairs. She’s in the kitchen. “Sarah Marie
get
in here,” she says.

 
I
go as far as the door. When I see her, I don’t feel the rush of care I expect to.
I am numb towards her and immediately guilty for that…for the numbness.

She is sitting at the table smoking and
drinking a glass of wine. She is also dressed to go out. I have no wish to
smell like cigarettes so I keep my distance, and I want to get out quickly if
she tries to start something.

She is looking up and down me nodding
her head, her mouth open a little, her tongue tucked behind her bottom teeth. I
keep still.

“Going out? What are you doing…moving in
with this guy?”

I’m not, so I don’t answer.

“I know how powerful it is the first
time. You think he’s the only one, that you can’t feel that way about anyone
else. You’d die for him.” She flicks her ashes in the tray, “and you imagine
he’d die for you.”

We don’t touch that scenario. Mom’s
happiest when I pretend to fit her generic, all-knowing profiles.

“Yeah, it was like that with Fred.
Believe it or not.
Those first couple of years…it was just
like that.
But right next door…how convenient for him.
And exciting for you.
Neither one of you even have to
leave home…leave the block. And we know you like that…not leaving the block. It’s
like he got sent by UPS.
Right to the door.
Thanks to
me. I invited him in. I get it. He was waiting to see which one of us came
toward him first. You were so easily infatuated. And men can’t resist young
stuff.”

“Mom,” I say. “Young stuff? I’m your
daughter. I’m going out.” I start to leave.

“Sarah? You believe it was that way for
me and Fred once?”

I have no idea. “It,” I clear my throat,
“…doesn’t matter now.”

“You think it doesn’t?
Obtuse, Sarah.
Very obtuse.
Let me
tell you something about getting older. You think back. If someone loved you it
matters.”

“Alright,” I say. Anything because I
realize she’s had more than one glass of wine.

“I know you don’t think he loved me, but
he did.”