Father's Keeper (10 page)

I listened to the back door and then
the very distant but distinct rattle and slam of the back gate. The dog three
doors down, who usually slept through as he was old (had been when I was a
teenager and was still around), set to barking. I wondered in my blissed out,
mostly asleep state if Carl was walking or if Tammy the trollop had driven him
home and was waiting for him. Her old Ford smoking in the cool night air.
Classic rock whispering in the maroon interior.

I turned so that I was tucked into
Gil’s arms, my head under his chin. My mouth breathing warm breath on his neck.
I felt the salt and pepper stubble on his cheeks rasp against my forehead. I
felt his heartbeat thumping in his tone body. His fingers swept back and forth,
back and forth, a mesmerizing caress along my back. I thought of him buried in
me, moving in me, taking me. I bit my lip and shivered and he whispered, “Are
you cold?”

“No,” I said and shook my head.

“Go to sleep,” he said and tucked me
against him just a bit more. A little closer, a little warmer. The air
conditioner kicked on and I heard the whistle and whir of the forced air in the
vents.

“Okay.” And I shocked myself by
falling asleep.

I heard the phone ring once. Heard him
mutter and murmur. Heard him hang up. It was like coming up from a deep dive. I
swam to the surface of consciousness, pushing away the murk of sleep. But when
he stopped talking the nonsense words I could not make out, I let the tide of
sleep drag me back under a bit.  I opened my eyes to his broad, naked back. To
him running his hand through his dark hair. I watched him stress, my eyelids
weighing heavy. The sun wasn’t up yet, the sky was not yet light. The air was a
heavy periwinkle I always associated with pre-dawn. Air colored so that I felt
safe and warm and tucked away. The way I imagine a child swaddled just so would
feel. I let myself drop back under the purple blanket of sleep but as I drifted
I heard Gil whisper “I can’t do this.”

A flower of fear blossomed in the pit
of my belly but my tired body wouldn’t have any of it and I fell back into a
dream where Gil and I ran on a beach that seemed to have no end under a sun the
color of lemons and the warmest breeze I’d ever felt. Too warm and perfect to
be real.

Chapter
12

The phone rang again. A blaring,
bleating, shameful sound that made me want to find a baseball bat and beat the
shit out of the fragile bit of plastic. Another ring and I groaned, the
sunlight blaring like loud music through the window.

One more ring and I heard the machine
cut on. The shower was rushing and racing on the other side of the wall so I
knew Gil was in there getting clean. I wanted to tiptoe in there and slip into
the hot steam and water that would turn me bright red, I knew. I sat up to do
just that when my mother’s voice rushed over me, felling me like a downed tree.

“Gil? It’s Marian?” she said it like
it was a question. Like she wasn’t sure if it was her or not. “Gil? Pick up.”

I picked up. Fire and anger and rage
growing in me like an uncontrollable force. “Mother?”

“Jennifer! Oh, hello, honey. I was
calling for Gil.”

“I know that mother.” The indignation
in my voice swelled like a red wave.

“He called--”

“I’m in his bed, mother.” My voice was
a slide of brittle words. All my hurt and all my ire, all directed at her. For
leaving Gil, for leaving me. For walking off as if we were so insignificant. No
more important than cheap flip-flops purchase for the beach and then forgotten
there. “Or should I say your bed? We’ve been together.”

“Jennifer!”

“And when I say together, I mean in
the biblical sense,” I said and laughed. It was a short brutal ugly laugh. If
it had a color it would have been muddy yellow. “He fucked me. More than once.”

I heard her silence like a loud drum
being beaten. It was crushing and overwhelming in its completeness. On the
other side of the wall the shower cut off. “Jennifer,” she said again, as if I
were squeezing all the air out of her. “Gil called and--”

That made me see red, quite literally.
Anger so consuming the light in the room was swallowed. I heard the sink, the
door, the movement of a handsome man I was swiftly letting myself fall for
after all these years. Why had he called her? Why? Wasn’t she gone yet? If she
was leaving us shouldn’t she just fucking leave and be done with it. Not
calling Gil from some unknown place with some unknown person doing some unknown
shit that did not involve her husband and her daughter.

“I don’t care if he called you. I’m telling
you don’t call here anymore. You don’t live here anymore,” I said. “You chose
for things to be that way Marian, so you can go fu--”

The phone was removed forcibly from my
hand and Gil pressed it to his ear, murmured, “I’ll call you back.” He set the
phone in the base and turned to me, his face angry and stark.

“Gil, I--”

“What the hell was that?”

“I can’t stand that she called you,” I
stammered.

“She’s my wife,” he said and I could
tell that they way he said it was to hurt me. He was annoyed with my behavior
and my actions. I had seen it many, many times in my youth, I knew the look of
Gil’s discontent when I saw it.

My cheeks flamed hotly and I
stiffened, my shame turning swiftly to anger. “Well, by all means, have her
back. Fuck
her
again and again. Do you make her call you daddy in bed,
too?” I said before I could stop myself.

His hand was a blur and his open palm
connected with my cheek where a blossom of heat and pain sprang up. “Shut up,
Jennifer. Stop now while you can.”

I stared at him, rubbing my cheek. The
anger at my mother, the hurt, the pain and now the physical sting of his
retribution all came crashing down around me and though I tried to stave it
off, I burst into tears and started to shake.

“Jennifer.”

I bolted past him, hurled myself into
the shower. The steam in the bathroom was still cottony around my face.
Gripping at me with fingers of thick, muggy hair. I turned the spray on hot and
full force and cried my way through a Silkwood worthy scrub down. My skin
sizzled, hot and raw from my scrubbing and when I opened the bathroom door, he
stood there. Gil slouched against the wall in nothing but his old favorite
jeans and a grim look.

I tried to walk past him and he almost
let me. At the last minute, his strong arm lashed out, quick like a snake and
he caught me up. Hauled me back. Held me to him. He said right up against my
ear so I broke out in goose bumps. “You shouldn’t have done that, little girl.”

“I hate her!” I said. I felt young and
petulant and petty to boot. I wanted to be mature and older and wiser and all
of the things I had thought I was upon returning home to Pleasant Parks.
Instead I sounded like a pissy little girl who hadn’t gotten her way.

“I know it, girl. And I don’t blame
you.” His hand was on my towel, right at the top of my thigh and despite my
anger it set my body on edge with arousal. A slow steady thump of blood and
desire started in my pussy and I struggled to focus on his words.

“And I hate you for wanting her back.”

“What? I don’t want her back.”

“Liar!”

His face drew down in anger then and
he shook his head, his chin banging the side of my face. It was a gesture I
could more feel than see, one familiar to me. Something Gil did when he was
quietly angry. “Don’t call me a liar, Jen.”

“I heard you,” I practically spat.
“This morning. When you said you couldn’t do this. And then you got up and then
she said you called and--”

“Jennifer,” he said, his voice warning
me to tread softly.

I never listen.

“And now you are lying to me,” I said,
my voice hard. I would rather focus on my anger than my pain.

“That’s enough,” Gil said.

“Said the liar,” I hissed.

He grunted then. A short burst of
noise as if to say
time to get the job done, then
and he levered me
forward at the waist with one smooth shift of his arm. My towel fell forward
and then open. His hand came up the back of my legs, burrowing under my towel
and then pushing it out of the way. The first blow sounded like a dry stick
breaking and then I yelled. Anger and shock and outrage flowing over me like a
brush fire in a dry forest.

“What the fuck!”

“Hush up, girl. I’ve had just about
enough of you mouth.” The second blow landed and fire ate up my flesh, then. Or
so it felt. A quicksilver of pain that skittered over the skin of my ass and
down the backs of my legs. “I think the only way to get any sense into you
right now is through your hide,” he said. His voice was all cigarettes and
campfires and good whiskey on a cold night.

My face burned with shame and rage but
my ass burned with sparkling pain and my cunt flexed up, wet and despicably
aroused. “Gil,” I gasped.

“Shut up.” Another four blows,
alternating with a maddening patience. Not hard enough to truly harm me but way
harder than anyone’s version of a playful swat.

When we reached ten, I hung from his
arm, my belly crushed over his forearm. The air tore in and out of my throat
and my stomach sizzled with a sensual mixture of pleasure and pain. Before I
could grumble or bitch, he pushed his fingers into my pussy, flexing them
against the swollen eager parts of me. “Oh,” I said.

“Yes, oh. Someone enjoyed that way too
much.”

“Was it you?” I asked, not ready to
let go of my bratty self just yet.

He gave me another hard blow but kept
his fingers deep in my pussy. He blessed me with a hybrid of punishment and
reward. “Hush.”

“Yessir,” I said. As I’d been raised.
As I had addressed him from time to time when I was much younger.

“There’s her manners,” he said and
slowly started to fuck me with his fingers. When I squirmed and danced in the
hallway, the towel flapping around me like sea green wings, he pushed me down
on the cold wooden floor and spread my legs. “She does have manners after all,”
he muttered, sucking my nipple into his mouth and biting it hard enough for me
to curve up under him. My body curling toward him though my instinct was to
move away.

His fingers still buried deep, he
moved to the other nipple, biting little pink circles over my nipple, over my
clavicle. Between my breast and down my side until I was panting like I had
been running. His fingers flexed and moved and thrust until that first sweet
burst of orgasm rose up in me and I came, clutching at him, moving my flesh to
his mouth. “Now she’s a good girl,” he said softly and kissed me.

I held onto him like he was a mirage.
I gripped him tight for fear of losing him. I had just gotten him. Wasn’t even
sure I
had
him. She could not have him back. “Don’t go. Don’t go back to
her,” I begged.

He laughed softly,  unbuttoning in his
jeans, running the ruddy and heated tip of his cock to my pussy. Spreading my
own moisture along my outer lips, ringing me with heat. “See, Jen, you’d be a
dangerous creature if you listened when you should.”

“What?”

“Shush,” he said, putting his fingers
to my lips.

“Tell me, tell me,” I said desperately
even as I moved up to meet his body. Letting him slip into me slowly but
surely.

“She called and I told her I didn’t
want to talk. Then I called her back when you were gone. I left a message that
it was done. She wanted to come back.” He moved into me languidly. Slipping
deep and then pulling back, over and over so that I felt like I would weep or
laugh. I wasn’t sure which.

“She wanted to come back,” I echoed,
my body betraying my damaged emotions by contracting with euphoria and
pleasure. I clenched my pussy tight even as I clenched my teeth at his words.

“But I said no. When I said I couldn’t
do this, I meant lie. When I left it was to put it to an end.”

Gil thrust deep, rocked his hips from
side to side, pinned me with is bulk and kissed me with his soft lips. I came
like a firecracker bursting on a hot summer night. My body clamping tight
around his seeking cock, my mouth pressed hard and determined to his mouth.

“Say no, say no,” I said, though he
had already explained that was what he’d done. All I kept hearing in my head was
that she wanted to come back. My mother wanted to come back. Marian wanted to
come back. His
wife
wanted to come back.

He pushed his fingers into the strands
of hair that stuck to my forehead. He cupped my head and kissed me gently,
moving against me in lazy seesaw motions, his face intent. “See, you’re not
listening again. I did.”

I nodded, gripping his trim hips with
my fingers, digging them in so that I held him tight and true. “Good. Good.”

“I want this. I want to see where this
goes. I want you, Jenny. I want
you
,” he gasped, thrusting faster, his
rhythm more intense now. I wrapped my legs around his waist and sucked his
finger into my mouth. I licked the tip with my tongue and sucked it hard enough
to make him grunt and then he was coming. His free hand shoved under my ass,
lifting me. He came and I relished ever cry of pleasure from his lips. Because
I had done that.