Into the Great Wide Open (11 page)

She spoke with the true voice of depression, Kenny thought: the commonplace becoming too heavy to lift, the senselessness overtaking. The cow’s life, the pig’s life worth more than her own. Still, the soft light; the way that small things mattered, the two of them bound in the light of the flames, the cold world outside.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what else there is.”

“That’s why I brought you here,” she said. “To tell me.”

She smiled at him gravely, apologies again: for the weather, the state of the world. “This has got to stop,” he said.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Come here.”

She looked at him, grave, skeptical. Kenny found himself not breathing again. Come on, he thought, come on, sending the thought toward her with all his power; which as near as he could tell was none. Come over here to me.

And then she did, sliding around on the coarse burlap cloth of the seat. She took her glasses off first, left them on the table. Her mouth was slick with butter but still she tasted of nothing, rainwater. Rain ticking at the glass, the ice already down. He could feel the cold at the back of his neck, the miles of cold black night pressing down at the windows; and the empty streets of the city, the canceled life.

“Come on,” she said; taking the lamps, scooting out of his reach.

Kenny didn’t argue. He followed her up the stairs and into her bedroom, the dim flames of the oil lamps sending crazy shadows all around her. They loomed and separated, shivered in place. Her mother was downstairs, probably asleep by now—she had a daybed in her sewing room, separate from the room she officially shared with
her official husband, where she slept most nights. She had a television down there, a little dorm refrigerator. Kenny and Junie were alone as they could ever want to be.

“Wait here,” she said, leaving him at the door of her bedroom, leaving the lamps with him. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Again that feeling of marriage: this house belonged to them, an ordinary Wednesday night, November. Householders, housekeepers. He went in, set the lamps on the table, and sat on the edge of the bed, waiting, not wanting to jinx anything by thinking about it.

When Junie came back in, her clothes hung loose around her, unbuttoned. Quickly she stepped out of them, as easily as if she had done this a hundred times in front of him. She fussed with her bra, straightened out her blouse so it wouldn’t wrinkle, just like he wasn’t there; then lay down on the bed behind him, facing the wall.

“Your turn,” she said.

He felt the gravity right away, knew this was something, it would have weight. He stepped out of her jeans, let them fall loose to the floor, threw the flannel shirt aside. He was hard as anything, just from seeing her. Not quite real, her body in the lamplight.

“Go easy,” she said as she turned to him; and he didn’t know what she meant, at first. He kissed her lips, her neck, and as he kissed her breasts he felt the trembling start inside her. He wondered. But she stayed with him, bravely, her arms just resting anywhere and then coming slowly, awkwardly to embrace him. Her hand on the back of his head, pressing his lips to her breast. Kenny thought that he might go off soon, any moment, he could feel her with his whole body.

She pushed him away, just far enough to see his face, her familiar nearsighted gaze focusing, trying to see. “I’m not using anything,” she said. Up on one elbow, whispering.

“What?”

“I’m not using anything,” she said again, searching his face.
Kenny flushed, not guilty of any particular offense but not exactly innocent either.

He said, “I’ve got a thing, downstairs. I mean it’s out in the car but I can get it.”

“No,” Junie said. “I don’t want anything. I want it to be real, all right? Consequences, take your chances.”

His heart leapt toward her, this was beautiful, crazy; he was already in deeper than he knew. He closed his eyes. The way she lay there, up on one elbow, her fine long neck and her breasts offered to him. He was sure of her, even past the temptation. Too late to stop anyway but he was sure of her.

“All right,” he whispered. “Consequences.”

“Go easy,” she said; and still he didn’t know what she meant. She let herself down onto her back again and lay in front of him, open to him.
Ceremonial
, he thought; not quite a victim. Kenny would have been content to look at her for a while, enjoy the touch of her body, the places that were new to him. But there was an urgency. He didn’t want to wreck it. He pressed his body against hers again, kissed her breasts one then the other and felt her hand lacing through the short hair at the base of his neck, urging him on. She opened her legs for him, he knelt between them, but before he could come inside she stopped him. She brought a small tube of K-Y jelly from under the bed, opened the top, and out came a glistening clear drop. First did herself and then him and Kenny was lucky not to go off then, the feel of it … And then the other thought, of Junie making preparations, of where she might have learned about K-Y jelly, but this wasn’t the time. She laid the tube out of sight under the bed and pulled him down inside of her and he was partway inside her when he felt the stop.

“Come on,” she said fiercely. “Don’t stop.”

Then he knew what she meant:
a virgin
. Kenny was frightened, excited. Her hand was resting in the small of his back and now it
moved down, pulled him closer, urged him on. Eyes closed, he had a sense of falling, farther than he knew. More than you bargained for, more than you bargained for: it was his father’s voice going around in his head, fear and anger mixed in with this other thing, not quite pleasure, or a pleasure that was painful too … He broke through, came all the way inside her and went off at the same time.

Rested on top of her with his eyes closed, quiet. Something had happened. They were each away inside, miles apart but touching. The slick, sweaty warmth of her skin. It was only, what? Eight-thirty or nine o’clock. The rain unimpeded in the trees outside. Kenny closed his eyes and rested in the warmth between them, bellies slick with come and blood, he didn’t want to look. More than you bargained for, his father’s voice said. Why didn’t she tell you?

He drew away from her, inside himself again. She wanted things from Kenny. She had delivered herself into his care; her problems were going to be his own from now on. Entrapment: a simple fuck turned into a wedding. Really it was nothing so clear. Really it was this: Kenny had thought they were walking along on solid ground when really they were thousands of feet up in the air, walking a thin line. Now he saw how far there was to fall. It scared him. He was going to have to take care, take care of himself, of her.

She stirred beneath him and he opened his eyes, found her face, tears standing in her eyes. Shit, he thought; felt again the urge to run away. She was so much heavier than he had thought.
Consequences, take your chances
. And then the second voice inside him saying all right, I can do it, I can take the weight.

“What?” he said, and touched her cheek with his hand.

She closed her eyes, shook her head, tears streaming down the sides of her face. “Shit,” she said. “I said I wasn’t going to …”

“What’s the matter?”

“It hurts,” she said.

“Is that …?”

“No,” she said; then started to laugh, tears and laughter, come and blood all mixed up into some nameless everything. Kenny felt the same. She said, “I mean, it’s almost enough. It
hurts
.”

“I’m sorry,” Kenny said, and meant it, and she started to laugh harder.

“Shit,” she said. “This is where we started, isn’t it? Apologies.” Smiled and wiped the tears out of her eyes and then lay there for a moment composing her face, eyes closed, like he was about to take her picture; and Kenny thought
I love you
and almost said it.

Jesus, he thought. At the same time feeling like he had made a discovery, he had found the right name for himself and his certainty of her. He wanted to dare it, to say the word out loud, like the first words of a new language: I love you. I am your lover.

“I love you,” Kenny said.

“Oh, shit,” she said, and turned her face from him, trying to get away. “Don’t say that.”

“I’m sorry,” Kenny said; but it was broken already; the exact wrong words, and he had said them. She shrugged him off and they both sat up and looked at the mess they had made, the red bloodstain—smaller than he thought—spreading into the white sheets. His own dick smeared with blood, and her thighs. She took a pillowcase, suddenly all business, and held it between her legs and went out to the bathroom again, leaving Kenny alone, cold, wondering.

Came back into the room carrying a washcloth; kissed him, then washed the blood off him, like she was erasing him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s what people say, you know, when they want to remind you that they own you.” She pitched her own voice to imitate her mother’s: “I love you, Junie. That’s why you’ve
got
to see the counselor. That’s why you’ve
got
to get new clothes.”

“I’m sorry,” Kenny said, and that got them both started laughing.

“I’m sorry,” she said, without meaning to, and that got them laughing harder.
Giggles
, Kenny thought; remembering a time when
he had cut an artery in his foot at a remote mountain lake and driven an hour to the nearest clinic, pressing paper towels to the spurting blood—they used up nearly all the roll on the drive, got lost twice—and laughing all the way. They giggled at half jokes, roadside signs, street names. That kind of laughter, edgy.

She sat down on the edge of the bed, stroked the side of his face with her hand. He closed his eyes. Touch.

“You can say whatever you want,” she said. “It just freaks me out.”

“What does?”

“I don’t know.”

“Me, too.” He drew her down to him, feeling her breasts, slightly cool now, barely brushing against his chest.

“I want to get this straightened up,” she said, wriggling away.

“Come back here.”

“In a minute,” she said. “Get up for a second.”

He stood, and lost the last of his warmth; suddenly naked, chilly. She swept the sheet off the bed in one careless motion and Kenny saw that there were towels under it, under the middle of the bed, so the mattress would not be stained. This was premeditated, then. She knew what was going to happen. This bothered him like crazy, made him feel afraid again, entrapped. The things from his pockets were lying on the table, spilled there when he changed clothes to put his in the dryer: his two-dollar pocket watch ticking like a bomb, keys change wallet pocketknife tobacco. “Can I smoke in here?” he asked.

“I guess,” she said. “I never thought about that.”

“What?”

“You have sex, then you have a cigarette,” she said. “It’s just like the cartoons.”

“Do you want one?”

Junie laughed. “Not me,” she said. “I’d like to miss one cliché, if I could. Just one.”

Kenny settled onto the desk chair, feeling the coarse virtuous fabric of the seat on his naked butt; burlap and teak, what was so unethical about paint? He tried to arrange himself but his dick kept staring out at her, one-eyed, inquisitive. Her breasts, her legs. She was naked in the lamplight, gathering the dirty sheets into a bundle and then the towels and then for some reason the pillowcases. Maybe she knew he was watching but it didn’t feel that way; he thought he was seeing the natural movements of her body. She left. He rolled a cigarette, taking pleasure in the small exact movements of his own hands. Sitting there exposed, naked. I love you, he told her; and she said nothing in return. Deal with it. He felt an excitement anyway, past the fear. Lit the cigarette and waited for her, watching the smoke curl out of the lamplight. I can spin straw into gold, the little man said. Out of the ordinary materials of his life, he had accidentally made this.

K
enny drove home around two the next day, a bright cold afternoon and a holiday feeling in the streets: nobody had gone to work that morning, nobody had gone to school with the streets glazed and treacherous with ice. Now the sun was out, though, and the ice was melting: first off the black streets, the telephone wires and power poles; more slowly off the trees and bushes, so that even now there were some that still sparkled with most of their diamonds intact. He had looked at these close-up in Junie’s yard, on his way out to the car: the living twig encased in a clear sheath of ice, two or three times its own thickness. He imagined that he could feel the spring stored up in the buds, the life waiting inside the ice, but he knew he was only imagining. It wasn’t even Christmas yet. The deep part of winter hadn’t even started yet.

Shattered branches lay by the side of the roads, evidence of the storm. Split trees with their green hearts showing, the bark torn away with the falling branch. Something naked about the sight, something dirty, a secret he wasn’t meant to see. An injury. He thought of Junie then: the taste of her mouth, the taste of cigarettes in his own. He hadn’t meant to take it any farther, but his dick got hard when he was lying next to her. She didn’t want to; but finally she was the one who guided him inside, little noises of pain or pleasure, or both … This went on for a while, half the night. They both knew they should stop. The last time she gasped, real pain, surprising, he saw it in her eyes—the mute animal fear—but she didn’t stop; and the memory of this moment makes his dick stir in his pants again, driving down Nebraska Avenue. Why? The pain: she didn’t stop. Kenny was raw himself, still wearing her jeans without underwear. He could have worn his own but he chose not to.

Which was it, exactly: dressing himself in girl clothes. What if Junie really was? What if Kenny was himself? Though he didn’t think so, not about his own preferences, there were beautiful boys in high school that he could almost imagine but then there was the actual nakedness and kissing part, the lumpy hairy boneful body of another man that did not appeal to Kenny at all. Still, even if he was innocent, there was something else, some residue of feeling, some reason why he felt more at home in Junie’s clothes than he did in his own.