Julia Pierpont - Among the Ten Thousand Things

She walked to the porch and sat on its lowermost step. The house was like a pirate ship alive behind her, beached up from the ocean bottom. The planks, the little rugs and the railing, everything she touched left a trace of itself on her fingers.

—

Simon and Kay had each taken great care stealing past their mother’s door, a black-ops precaution that was actually unnecessary, because Deb wasn’t in there. She was on the edge of the bed in Gary’s room, wearing her sleep shirt and listening to Debussy on a turntable.

“You know, I bet I still know the steps.” She stood and hobbled on one leg, arms akimbo. At her birthday dinner she’d had a few glasses, and Gary a few more.

“You should see yourself right now.”

“No, wait, I—” She switched legs, laughing. “Wait, here it is.”

—

Simon’s hand found Teagan’s on the bedspread. He kissed her mouth, the skin around her mouth, her cheeks, her neck. He breathed into her ear by accident, and she made such a happy sound that he returned there again and again.

—

In the unmoving dark of the porch, Kay ran a thumb over the buttons of her mother’s phone. She looked at her own serious face in the camera, brightening and dimming the screen. She watched the time change and listened to her breathing. She wasn’t sure if it was earlier or later in Texas, if there was much or any difference.

“Jack Cell” in her mother’s phone. It went straight to voice mail, but she left no message. There was a slug on the step beside her. There were no fireflies that she could see.

—

In Gary’s room, Deb was dancing. They’d stopped laughing. She kept her gestures small to fit the space, concentrating hard on the floor to follow the music. Throwing her hair forward over her face. The girl in Afternoon of a Faun, a part she’d always coveted.

“Hey,” he said and grabbed her arm to stop her moving. “Happy fucking birthday.”

“Thank you.” A nod affirmed it. “I’m officially old.”

He stood and slipped his fingers through hers, their hands left to hover in some kind of pact.

—

Teagan’s hand: warm on his thigh, reaching the zipper of his jeans.

Simon’s hand: brave enough to slip inside her collar and cup the skin just below.

—

Kay had walked home from Teagan’s house before, but her father was right: It got much darker here, not like New York. She closed her eyes, thinking how long it would be before Simon came out, if he’d stay all night. Wondering what he was doing in there.

The night air slid over her cheeks. A sound behind her — she hadn’t realized the front door was open. Open wide, beads tapping together in the breeze.

—

“Feel much different?” Gary asked.

“Being old?”

“Being wanted.”

“That, oh.” She laughed and turned toward the mirror, still playing with her hair.

—

Over his fly Teagan was making circles and figure eights and not really any sense, but it felt good, without knowing where her hand would go next. Simon’s own fingers found her nipple, and she pushed into him with a long heavy stroke that he liked better than anything. His hand under her shirt forgot what it was doing, but her hand didn’t. He could not believe this was happening in front of another person. He saw that she was waiting for him to kiss her, and he did, deep and hard and fast. It was enough for everything, for the whole night. If he could love, he loved her.

—

Kay slipped past the hanging beads. Up on her toes, surprisingly quick. Forgetting to breathe. Simon was here somewhere, doing things that required the dark and minimum sound.

In the living room, television light. Blankets and pillows charaded as people. Then she was on the stairs without knowing exactly how.

—

“Turn around.”

“Make me.”

He put his hands on her, thumbs pressing hard into her top shoulder bones. “Deb, you are the kindest, most beautiful, most — kindest—”

“Oh, you’re drunk.” She raised her arms as if to fly away from him.

—

Teagan was hooking two fingers into the loops of his jeans and leaning back, pulling so he’d follow. He climbed over her, clumsy over her, trying to keep his elbows locked. She slid one thigh between his two, braiding herself around him with legs stronger than they looked.

He would have liked to see everything better but was afraid now to pull away, didn’t want to do anything that would turn out to be the wrong thing. He was pushing up her nightgown and she was pulling down her underwear and the more time that passed the longer he would have to think about what he was doing, the danger of getting into his head and outside his body. He was so sick of thinking things. Faster than the speed of thought, that was how he moved into her.

She cried so loud he nearly stopped, but as she cried she nodded. She reached a hand around and pushed him toward her from behind. As he moved her jaw fell open, and he could just make out the place in her tongue where the stud had been. He concentrated on the shadow piercing in her mouth, the hole within a hole, and tried to think only exactly about how it felt. He was glad she closed her eyes.

—

Kay stood very quiet at the top of the stairs.

Down the hall, the hard of something rapped against a wall, once, twice, but didn’t sound like anyone wanting to be let in.

Suddenly she felt herself wanting to cry, and what was wrong with everyone, and what was wrong with her, and why was she alone here?

What was wrong, she didn’t recognize. Didn’t know enough to know what she didn’t understand, which was that she’d been feeling — for some time, but more now than ever — she’d been feeling—

There was one sharp, quick sob, definitely a person.

She spun around and tripped over her own ankle, landed on her knees partway down the stairs. Tears in her eyes from the shock of the fall. Unable even to perceive in real time what she was doing, which was flinging herself to her feet, running down and back out through the wave of beads, racing herself home.

—

Afterward the thing he most wanted to do was to collapse on top of her. But her head was turned off to the side and she was quiet, and so he stood, unsticking his skin from her skin, which seemed to want to stay touching, the soft sound it made, like peeling a Post-it.

He picked his puddled jeans up off the floor. “Did you hear something, before? I thought I heard someone walking around.”

“It’s just the house,” she said, rolling her nightgown down from around her waist. He held her underwear out to her and was surprised when she pulled it back on, slick where he’d touched it.

Teagan didn’t look at him again until they were down in the kitchen. There she handed him a peach from a wire basket and waited for him to bite into it. The juice ran down his wrist and he hoped she didn’t hate him already. No muscles in his thighs at all. Together they tiptoed to the front door, which had been open the whole time, and she let him kiss her carefully good night.

On the walk back toward his house he knew he was happy, because his legs, only noodles before, wanted so much to run.

—

The record had stopped.

Deb was looking at Gary, and then she was looking beyond him, over his shoulder, to the partly open door, where she saw the shine of eyes, then a face. It was a girl who gave the impression of a second daughter, because Deb believed hers to be in bed already, lights out. In the dark of the hall, she appeared to have no body.

“Baby?” The face retreated into dark. “Honey, come in. Why aren’t you asleep?”

The door eased open and Kay looked to be crying, indeed was all kinds of wet. Moons of sweat had pooled under her arms, and she’d scraped a knee.