Authors: Cora Brent
“You know where we’re going,” Marco teased in response to my question.
The streets of Cross Pine Village were deserted. Now and again we saw darting shadows of cats
and every once in a while the rustle of some lonely resident searching the night.
As we drew closer to the center of town I could hear the pulse of the Maple Street bars. Madonna was advising all within earshot to
‘Express Yourself’
.
The buildings along Main Street were all dark. Though it was becoming more fashionable for places of business to remain open on Sundays, Cross Point Village was a bit behind the curve. Every establishment, including Durant’s Drug Store, had been closed to customers since Saturday evening.
I heard the pop of a few early fireworks, likely coming from the high school parking lot. For Cross Point Village, tomorrow would be a usual business day, but ripe with anticipation for Tuesday’s holiday.
The Fourth of July was a kid’s summer Christmas.
They would wake up early and start scouring the side streets for Chinese firework duds which they would squirrel away, unrolling the paper and peering at the foreign writing within, slowly accumulating a pile of the black powder. Always there was some awful story about this kid in the next town or a neighboring county whose fingers had been blown off, whose eyes had been singed out. But privately the kids agreed that these tales of horror were concocted by adults for the sole purpose of keeping them contained. They knew there was no real danger, no actual risk. Such heavy concepts existed only for grown ups.
Marco stopped short, staring at the hulking monument secured into a concrete pedestal in front of the tow
n hall. The pedestal rose eight feet off the ground, sloping on all sides with shallow steps which made climbing to the cannon easy. And once you were there you could straddle its wide length and howl with glee over the ultimate sacrilege being committed. Afterwards you could take a can of spray pain purloined from a buddy’s garage and write ‘Suck Me’ or ‘Fuck Me’ or some other deep witticism which was meant to be the decisive Screw You to the universe, to your parents, to CPV.
Or so I’d always heard.
“Memories?” I asked him.
He chuckled. “A few.”
Marco found my hand and pulled me along as we circled the cannon, which seemed to peer down at us with withering expectancy. I stared up at the thing doubtfully as Marco’s arm circled my shoulders.
As a sigh rolled through him I realized there was more on his mind than screwing on the town landmark. I put my head on his shoulder and he wrapped his arms around me tightly. I inhaled the clean scent of his aftershave, enjoying the feel of his body pressed against mine. For all the times we’d already coupled, there was something far more intimate about this quiet embrace under a clear night sky.
I leaned back and our lips touched tentatively, then more insistently as our tongues found one another. Marco groaned softly and tangled his right hand in my hair, his fingers massaging the hollow behind my neck. His passion began to assert itself and I reached low, touching him, outlining the growing want.
“Come here,” I said suddenly, pulling him along towards the shadowed side of the town hall.
Marco offered no objection as I pushed him against the crumbling brick, kissing him fervently. I felt his sharp gasp when I dropped to my knees and pulled out his swollen dick.
I brought
him along quickly, having learned much in our times together. I teased his tip and ran my tongue along his length, finally taking him full in my mouth and moving rhythmically as he whispered my name over and over and then released the salty outcome, which I swallowed.
“Damn, girl,” he said softly, sinking to the ground.
I sat next to him, listening as his heavy breathing gradually slowed. Marco took my hand.
“You’re something, Angela.”
I laughed hoarsely. “How many girls you say that to, Marco?”
I hadn’t meant for it to be a jab but realized as the words hung in the air they seemed to have a bit
e to them. And I admitted to myself that I’d been jealous. Jealous of whatever memories Marco guarded, jealous of all the girls I’d seen him with since junior high, jealous of all the unknown women he’d had since then.
“I like you, Angela.”
“Ha! Do you like me or do you
like me
like me?”
“Which answer will score me another blow job?”
I slugged him in the shoulder. “My father’s right. You are an asshole.”
“Did he call me an asshole before or after dinner?”
“What difference does it make?”
Marco waited.
“Before, all right?”
Marco nodde
d and then leaned over, rubbing my neck. “I like you,” he said quietly. Then he sighed. “It’s just…I’m not good at this shit, Angela.”
“It’s all right,” I said, standing and brushing the asphalt crumbs from my rear end. I looked up into the night sky, which was far brighter and more i
lluminated than a typical Boston night. “You don’t have to be.”
Marco stood at my back and hugged me from behind, his strong arms crossing in front of me and gripping my shoulders. I kissed his arm.
“I like you too, Marco.”
We stood like that for many moments, quietly breathing, saying nothing, just enjoying a rare occasion of peaceful contentment.
Finally Marco gave me a small squeeze and withdrew his arms. “Well, Alan and Grace are likely waiting up.”
“
And you reminded me that I’m not exactly sixteen.”
Marco seemed thoughtful. “Yeah, I know and believe me I would love to repeat last night, but you
r folks were nice enough to let me into their house. Seems disrespectful to follow it up by debauching their darling daughter all night long.”
“Debauching?” I broke into giggles.
Marco yanked me along playfully. “Believe it or not I know a cool word here and there.”
“I believe it. You were never stupid.”
Marco glanced back at where the cannon stood silent vigil. “I was stupid,” he said quietly.
“Nah, you were just seventeen,” I said, remembering the tattoo which stretched across his shoulder blades.
“Same thing,” he laughed.
We left the eerie silence of the town square and began to meander through the side streets towards Polaris Lane.
Marco draped his arm across my shoulders. “So how many more days you mean to stick around?”
“I’ll probably head out early Wednesday afternoon.”
“Back to Boston?”
“Back to Boston.”
Marco was quiet for a moment. “And your plans for tomorrow?”
“Why? Are you asking me out, Marco
Bendetti?”
“I’m asking if you want to spend the day with me
, Angela Durant.”
My face was instantly hot with pleasure but I tried to keep my voice light. “And what would we do?”
“Whatever you want.”
“Is your bike running?”
I could hear the smile in his voice. “It is.”
“Take me for a ri
de then.”
“All right. I’ll ride you.”
“Debaucher.”
“Abs
olutely.”
When we reached my house Marco walked me right up to the door like a gentleman. I saw a light remained on in the living room, meaning he had been right. One or both of my parents were actually waiting up for their
nearly twenty five year old daughter.
Marco cup
ped my chin and kissed me gently. “Good night, Angela.”
“Good night, Marco. Thank you for a pleasant evening.”
Even in the dark I saw something soften in his eyes. But when I blinked it was gone and he wore his patent cocky stare as he backed away. “Eleven am tomorrow,” he said. “Be ready for a ride.”
“I’m ready now,” I said mildly.
Marco laughed to himself and turned towards his own dark house as I opened the door to number 16 Polaris Lane and went inside.
My mother pretended to read
Good Housekeeping
magazine on the sofa. She looked up when I entered, as if she was completely surprised to see me.
I crossed my arms.
“Daddy not keeping you company?”
She waved a hand. “He went to bed an hour ago.”
She seemed troubled as she played with a strand of her short hair. “It’s been quite a few years since I had any reason to wait up.”
“But that was always
for Tony. I hardly left the house.”
Her face clouded, as it always did, at the mention of Tony’s name.
“I called him today.”
“Oh? How’s he doing?”
“Says he’s still working. Of course he also sounded drunk as all heck so who knows. An
d then some profane woman started shrieking at him to hang up the phone.”
“Does he have a girlfriend?”
She shrugged, her eyes bleak. “It’s To
ny. Who knows?”
My mother heaved a sigh and got up heavily, tossing
Good Housekeeping
onto the end table. She offered me a weak smile and a peck on the cheek. “Good night, Angela. It’s lovely having you home.”
As she began to shuffle towards the stairs I called her back. “Mom?”
She paused and looked back.
“I miss him too.”
I dressed hurriedly in my same old t-shirt and crawled into bed. Though it wasn’t terribly late I was exhausted. I blinked at the pale ceiling, remembering what it had been like, growing up as the kid sister of Tony Durant.
Tony was born impatient, explosive even. There was a telling photo which remained in fading 8x10 framed glory in the stairwell. Tony was two years old and at a mere four months it was my first Christmas. My mother had driven us into Springfield to get our holiday portraits taken.
The photographer sat Tony in a small wooden rocking chair next to a gaudy miniature Christmas tree. Then, tenderly, my mother placed me in Tony’s small lap as the photographer began making ab
surd buzzing sounds, trying to prompt us to smile.
My chubby little face broke into a
n easy grin but Tony fixed a stony glare on the camera lens and was immortalized. If you paused in front of the picture and looked deep into that toddler’s eyes, the restless anger was nearly palpable. Which must have been why, mere seconds later, Tony roughly rolled me off his lap and onto the floor where I fell with a crack, dislocating my tiny shoulder.
“Tony!”
My mother scolded as she tried to comfort me in my wailing agony. “Look at how you’ve hurt your sister! Why did you do that?”
Tony only glared at her and shrugged. “Because I did.”
My mother told me that story nearly twenty years later and tried to laugh her way through it. A disastrous holiday memory. What family doesn’t have them? What family can’t chuckle over them after several decades have passed?
But the laugh
ter didn’t reach her eyes and I saw in the shadows on her face that the memory of it still troubled her.
I didn’t miss Tony. By now I realized that the camaraderie of adult siblings would never be ours.
But although I’ve never had that, the fabled affectionate bond, it is something I do miss.
A brother who remembers the world of our shared childhood and appreciates that though we may not have been close then, we were bound in a unique way which was more than genetic soup.
I hadn’t seen my brother in three and a half years. Christmas Eve, 1985, he rolled into CPV in a dilapidated pickup truck and in the space of an hour managed to find and consume an entire bottle of wine, pick a screaming match with my father, and then peel out of Polaris Lane as neighbors paused from their own holidays long enough to gawk out their windows.
My mother drew
up the courage to call him once or twice a month. I sent him cards for birthdays and holidays, though he never acknowledged any of them. My friend Lanie had a twin brother who called her every Sunday and who she spoke of with the mix of irritation and affection which was the usual sibling due.
When people ask me about Tony, I always feel at somewhat of a loss.
Yes, I have a brother.
No, we aren’t close.
There never seems to be anything else left to say.
The room seemed to close in on me as I tried to seek sleep. How many summer nights had I spent musing in this very spot in the dark? So many. I remember being age five and nervously anticipating the first day of kindergarten. And then, ten years later, sitting on my bed in the dark and listening to my brother and his friends as they talked about things I wasn’t meant to hear. My face still burned over that memory…
***
It was well past midnight and the boys were still bullshitting in the side yard. My window was open in search of the rare summer breeze and every few moments I could hear the crack of another beer can opening. I didn’t dare let on that I could hear them full well. Their talk was fascinating. All sex and tough guy expressions, it stirred a strange longing in me as I lay silently in my bed a week after my fifteenth birthday.
Except for the brief and confusing passages I’d found in forbidden books, it was all
baffling. I’d never been kissed, never been touched, and although my body was fully, almost embarrassingly, developed, I wondered if I ever would be.
Though hearing the boys crudely jest about blow jobs and bras tickled something inside of me, I also held them in them contempt. So limited, so puerile. They were the majority, the sort who had no motivation to ever leave Cross Point Village. They would marry a local girl and pop out a bunch of brats in their own likeness and rarely think about anything more
rousing than where their next beer was hiding.
As I stared at the ceiling and listened to the ribald talk of Tony and his
half drunk pals I grew restless, finally hopping off the bed and padding down the hall to the kitchen. My mother and I had baked chocolate chip cookies earlier in the evening and I figured a nice sugar rush might settle me down.
Runnin
g into him was like colliding with a rock wall.
“Whoa,” he breathed
, exhaling a cloud of alcohol and steadying himself on my shoulders.
I backed away. “What the hell are you doing in here?”
Marco Bendetti peered down at me in the darkness of my parents’ living room. He’d grown at least four inches the past year and I felt more than a bit unnerved being so close to him.
“Got to take a piss,” he explained, motioning down the hall.
“Don’t you have a bathroom in that house across the street?”
Marco was not shy about
staring at my chest with a nasty grin. I blushed and pushed my plastic frame eyeglasses up my nose, then crossed my arms. “Well?”
“So I can’t use your bathroom, Angela?”
I tossed my head, wishing I wasn’t wearing an old 4-H t-shirt with my hair in a childish ponytail. “Go ahead then. But be quiet. My dad won’t like it.”
After grabbing a handful of cookies I ran back to my room before Marco finished in the bathroom. I sat cross-legged on the edge of my bed, chewing
on great mouthfuls of chocolate chips as the curtains rustled in the warm air. I didn’t even hear the gentle whine of the screen door closing, yet Marco had found his way silently out of the house and rejoined his friends.
“Man,” he wh
istled. “The tits on that girl almost made me cream my pants.”
“What girl
?” piped up an interested voice.
“Angie.”
My jaw dropped, spilling wet cookie crumbs into my lap.
Another of the boys snorted. “Shit, don’t let Tony hear you say that if you want to live.”
“Where the hell is he anyway?”
“Off getting a blow from Cortez.”
“Jeez, he’ll settle for anything.”
Another snort. “You’re one to talk.”
“Not at all. I have the option of selectivity.”
“Well you b
etter not select Tony’s sister unless you want to end up eating your own balls.”
And then suddenly there was
Tony’s low, slurred voice. “What are you shitheads talking about?”
“Tits,” said Marco in a mild voice.
“Hey Tony, she spit or swallow?”
“Whose tits?” asked Tony,
belching.
“Marco has
a hard on for your sister.”
“Hey thanks, asshole.”
Tony seemed to sober up in a heartbeat, his voice murderous. “Bendetti, you touch my fucking sister and I’ll fucking kill you.”
“Piss up a flagpole, Durant. I just said she had nice tits.”
A string of swearing and the sound of a scuffle ensued.
“Fuck
is your problem, Tony? You don’t so much as blink when that cousin of yours gets fingered in plain sight on the cannon.”
Tony laughed
meanly. “Krista? Do whatever you like with that little skank but I’m warning you, Angie is off limits. That goes for all you lousy little pricks and you know damn well I don’t like to say the same thing twice.”
The other boys murmured some form of agreement and the subject seemed to die in favor of other talk, like which CPV
High teacher had the best ass. Once a consensus was reached that the prize belonged to Mrs. Carrington, the art teacher, someone reached the grand conclusion that beer was running low.
As the boys wandered
away from the side yard in a haze of cussing and obscene jokes, I had forgotten the chocolate chip cookies in my lap.
I had, it seemed, forgotten how to breathe.
Marco’s comments, coarse though they were, left me feeling strange and excited. Timidly I pulled back the collar of my shirt and stared into the fleshy twin masses which seemed to grow daily. I tried to imagine Marco’s large hands on them. It wasn’t hard.
But then I remembered Tony’s
dire words and I exhaled with irritation. I was pretty sure my brother didn’t give a damn about me. In school I was a nonentity to him and the only time he acknowledged me at home was to bellow something along the lines of, “Get your fat ass out of the bathroom!” or “Did you eat the rest of my fucking cereal?”
But everyone was scared shitless of Tony so as my peers groped each other on Saturday night in the school yard or
Cannon Banged in the moonlight, no one dared come near me.
Tony wasn’t
the overprotective type. I knew such brothers existed but I also knew mine didn’t have a tender spot in his entire soul. So I cursed my brother for being a mean, joyless prick and flopped on top of the covers, letting Marco’s words run through my mind again and again.
I did not fall asleep for a long
long time.