She tried to articulate this to Lisa, who wouldn’t have it.
“You need to get that stuff out of your head, dude. It’s making you nuts. Take a break from feeling guilty over things you probably don’t even believe in.”
Stacey shot her a furious look. “I do believe.”
Patrick had just been ordained as a part-time youth minister. During the party in the basement, he had thanked her: My little sister, Stacey. One of the reasons I’m so excited about this. Your dedication and love for this church and for Jesus Christ has been a source of inspiration for me. It’s been one of the great blessings of my life to watch you grow up and see what an amazing woman you’re about to become.
Lisa now met her gaze, and Stacey said something she hoped would hurt her. “I’m not you. I just don’t think I’m like that way.”
She hadn’t even been able to say it. I’m not like that way. What a repressed dyke way to phrase your denial, to stay as far away from the actual word as possible.
Lisa threw up her hands, grin spreading. “So then stop going down on me, Miracle.”
Even though she was driving, bombing along Stillwater Road in the pure, driven dark, Stacey wanted to reach over and smack her. It was the first time she’d ever felt that way about someone (though it would not be the last; Patrick and his wife would elicit that regularly). There was so much dismissiveness veined through Lisa’s blithe attitude, but it sounded false, a whistle through the graveyard. Lisa couldn’t stop fingering her locket, this dumb, cheap piece of jewelry in which she kept photos of various teen idols as a joke (the current half-ironic recipient was a singer from the group B2K, who’d replaced Aaron Carter). Her thumb and index finger worried it even as she tried to make a gag of this. Of them. She wanted to feel like she had control of this situation, and ridiculing Stacey’s fear gave her that.
“Would you feel that way if your family found out?” Stacey asked. “Should I tell your mom?”
“Don’t threaten me, bitch.”
“Don’t act like you’re so above this then,” Stacey snapped. At this, Lisa dropped the locket to her chest. Her eyes actually popped open a little, her whole posture subtly recoiling. “Don’t treat me like I’m a joke to you.”
Neither of them said anything for a while after that. Finally, Lisa slipped her hand over Stacey’s, fingers skimming over the skin of her thin wrists. She said, “Only one verse I care about. What Paul said about the other Romans, baby. I loved you at your darkest.”
They were both quiet for a while. Stillwater was the best road in the whole county—long stretches with no streetlights or homes or light pollution of any kind. The moon reflected off the thin sheet of snow covering the cornfields. Eventually, Stacey circled back into town. Stacey wondered if this conversation had been a bad idea, if she had spoiled what they had by letting Lisa see how afraid she was. Then, less than a mile from her house, as they passed the public library, Lisa pointed to it and said, “The first time I blew Ashcraft was on the roof there.”
That surprised Stacey into laughter. “Gross.”
“Really I’d have a hard time thinking of somewhere in this town I didn’t blow him.”
“Shut up, Han.”
“It’s true. My mom was always trying to get us to stay at our house so she could keep an eye on us, so last year during the Oscars, we watched it with her and Bob, and they’re both so old they fell asleep before they even announced Best Actor. Bill and I went around the corner from the living room to the kitchen, and I sucked him off on the kitchen island.”
“Oh that’s disgusting! C’mon, Lisa.”
Lisa had her window cracked, her fingertips holding the outside of the door. The night came in on the wind and black threads of hair blew across her eyes. “What, you never gave Harrington head? Poor guy.”
“Of course I did.”
“So? You didn’t like it?”
“I didn’t not like it. I don’t know. I could take it or leave it. It was just a thing I’d do as long as we had a fair trade-off.”
“Oh, well I love it. Turns me on.” She shuddered dramatically, eyes fluttering. “I think I have a clitoris in the back of my throat.”
Stacey brayed laughter. “Oh my God, where do you even come from?”
“What? That’s Linda Lovelace. Deep Throat.”
“Huh?”
“The porn star. It’s actually really sad. She wrote this memoir about how her husband beat her and like had her gang-raped and forced her into prostitution and pornography. Really terrible.”
Returning her eyes to the road, Stacey said, “You’re a really strange chick, chick.” They were quiet again for a moment. “So wait, if you love giving head so much, do you miss it? Am I just totally not satisfying a need of yours? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Yeah. Well.” She smiled, a cute little tick of her lips. “Luckily I have a clitoris on my clitoris too.”
When Matt was a sophomore, Stacey still in eighth grade, there’d been a kid whom everyone suspected of being gay. Stacey couldn’t remember his name, but she did remember hearing that someone beat the windshield of his car into spiderwebs of fractured glass. None of this was ever far from her mind that year, but the shame could never win out over the taste of Lisa. Her orgasm was never in the small, tight noises she made as Stacey teased her with her tongue—it was always in the silence, this moment when Lisa’s breath caught and her nails dug into Stacey’s skull, and reality felt impossibly taut, a wire stretched to the breaking point. Humming from the finger that plucked it.
She left Jonah with his head on the table. Passing the waitress—of the ample rear end, not the elderly poet—she told her to maybe call Jonah’s dad. “He might have a concussion.”
She wondered if she’d wandered into Vicky’s not to meet Bethany Kline and marvel at how difficult it was to hold on to hate. Maybe Vicky’s, from which she’d yet to escape that night, was a kind of supra-reality, an illusory space where so many of the spokes of her life crossed, her own Tel’aran’rhiod imbued with nostalgia, time, and interconnection.
She touched the envelope sticking out of her purse, but she had a new destination, and she would put off this final, horrible errand just a bit longer. If anyone knew Lisa as well as she did—that is, if anyone knew her at all—it was Bill Ashcraft. The thought of Lisa coming home and contacting him but not her was enough to send an old splinter of jealousy cruising through her vein like a sliver of bone on its way to the heart. Which was exactly why she needed to see him. Or maybe “confront” was the word. She checked her phone, but she no longer had Ashcraft’s number. Other than the errant Facebook Like, they hadn’t spoken in years. The Lincoln bar wasn’t far from Vicky’s, and she left her car in the square to walk.