“Wait,” he said, the pressure against my chest increasing. He was actually pushing me away. “I—,” he stammered, and I smiled, “I don’t—this is—this is too fast,” he said. In his voice, there was surprise and also something else, something I couldn’t recognize.
I put my hand on his arm, “I want you,” I said.
“But you said—I mean—you left.”
“I shouldn’t have,” I said, running my fingers along his arm.
“I—,” he started again, “Mikey, this is—maybe I didn’t explain to you what—I mean what I do—,”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, trying to move closer. At that moment, I wanted his mouth on mine more than anything else I could ever think of. Something in my chest was pressing toward him; I needed his mouth on mine.
“I’m—Mikey, I’m a—,” he started, again.
“Shut up,” I said, amazed at myself, “and kiss me.”
His eyes changed, and the pressure against my chest lessened. I moved closer to him, and he tilted his face toward me. Our lips met and, in my head, there was a dull thump, as if something in a box exploded. The sounds of the room were more vivid, and my body grew so hot, I was certain it was glowing. I’d heard Susan talk about things like this in her romance novels, which I’d always turned my nose up at, but I felt this. I knew this, now.
When I came back to something resembling my senses, the light in the room was dim. I burrowed my head further down into the pillow, and heard someone sigh next to me. I moved a bit so I could see, and Kevin was burrowed down into his own cocoon. In my body, a desire to wrap myself around him rose up. I wanted to put him in me, to protect him from something. I reached out, and put my arm over him, the flat of my palm against the flat of his chest. I pulled him back toward me, and he moved. His lower back was against my stomach. I smiled, and closed my eyes again. In my head, there was a quiet; not the breath-held quiet of a jungle, but the settled quiet of a house—of a home.
TWENTY-FOUR
In the dream, I was inside an airplane, and looking out the windows at a blazing sunset over the Grand Canyon. I thought I should go forward, to the cockpit, to see out the front windows. The plane was traveling directly at the sun. Everything seemed so warm, and glowed the way things do at that time of day.
From behind me, though, someone kept whispering my name. I tried to turn around, but could only do it inches at a time. Each time I turned, the seat became less comfortable, and things glowed less. Every turn, that whisper got louder. By the time I turned all the way around, I saw that Kevin was making love to my sister in the seat behind me, his eyes on me the entire time. He wasn’t moaning my name, though; he was yelling it.
I woke up to him standing over me, shaking my shoulders. “Wha—?” I started to ask, when he put his hand over my mouth. His eyes were the same huge, intense things as they had been in the dream.
“He’s here,” Kevin whispered. When my squirming didn’t calm, he said “the Sheriff is here.” I froze. He nodded and slowly let his hand off my mouth.
“Why?” I whispered back.
“He’s early,” he whispered, and his eyes went to the bedroom door. Someone knocked on the front door loudly three times, and we both jumped. “Under the bed, or in the closet,” he said, and turned. I jumped out of bed and went into the open closet, shutting it quickly behind me. The dark of the tiny space grew heavy fast. I tried to slow down my breathing.
The creak of a door, somewhere, and voices. The click of a door shutting, and the voices growing closer. The creaking floor got louder until I could tell they were in the bedroom. There was a giggle that stopped short, and the heavy thud of a mattress. The rustling sounds of skin and cloth, and the muffled moans of mouths closed on one another. That was when it struck me what Kevin must have meant by saying “he’s early”. A pressure started in my chest, and it built with terrifying speed. I couldn’t breathe, it seemed, and, even in the dark, my eyes were growing blurry.
Then there came a slap. I talk about things that I remember to this day, but that sound is one which comes of its own volition. I remember it, even when I don’t want to. There was a stifled gasp, and then another slap. Someone moaned, and then there was the unmistakable sound of knuckles against bone.
A tiny little sliver of light came in from a crack between the door and the carpet. The sound of another punch and then a slap came, along with someone whimpering “not the face, please,” before I got down on my knees, and put my face to that small opening. I saw a set of boots near the bed. No sooner did I start to wonder where the other set of feet were, when the sheriff said “Stand up, boy.” The mattress groaned, and two bare feet appeared on the carpet, facing the boots. Another slap, and another punch. The bare feet disappeared, and the mattress groaned again. The boots disappeared, and the mattress groaned louder.
What happened next, I don’t want to go into too much detail on. Even in my own memory, I like to leave it fuzzy. At the time, I remember doing my best to keep still, and thinking about things my sister had said to me. I tried to think about how to spell the huge words she was always throwing around. It was hard, though, to remember whether or not the ending of ‘Liminal’ was ‘a’ then ‘l’ or ‘l’ then ‘e’ with the mattress groaning in a sick rhythm, and the sound of pain coming from one voice, while another whispered a string of curses and hatred. It went on for what seemed like hours. Sometime during it, I managed to find a relatively comfortable spot to sit, and leaned back against the wall without too much noise.
When the sounds died down to rustling cloth and muffled sobs, I came back to what could loosely be termed “reality.” Things still felt thick, and there was very little light, but my eyes were glued on that tiny sliver between the door and the carpet.
The sound of someone getting up off the mattress, and boots thunking across the floor made me lean forward. “Now, don’t go spendin’ that all at once, y’hear?” someone said, jokingly. The sobs wound down to silence. “And, if that Kendall boy comes ‘round, you send him away, y’hear? I don’t want you talkin’ to him.” The boots thunked away until a door opened somewhere, then closed. I reached for the door handle, and someone hissed “stay in there!” as loudly as a whisper can go. After a few minutes which stretched out into what I was sure over half-an-hour, the door opened. I looked up at what was left of Kevin.
TWENTY-FIVE
I finished putting the ice into the bag, and tried to put it against Kevin’s face. He stopped me, and took the bag himself. He put it against his cheek. I came from the sink and sat down at the small round kitchen table across from him. His face was drawn up in a grimace of pain, and his eyes were closed.
“Why did—?” I started to ask.
“Because sometimes he comes back in. Sometimes, he wants more,” Kevin said, without looking at me.
“That wasn’t what I was going to ask,” I whispered. His eyes opened, and locked on mine. “Why do you—? I mean—umm—uh—why do you let him hit you?” I asked. That wasn’t what I was going to ask, either, but I let him think it was.
“I—,” he started, “I let them do whatever they pay for,” he said, his eyes falling to the table with each word. I felt as if I was sinking, and my mind started to flash pictures, but I stopped it. I forced myself to focus on him.