Lily King - Father of the Rain

There was a general store on our route, the only store in a tiny town that we often passed through. One day in early December, he said he was thirsty and pulled into a parking spot. We’d never gotten out of the car during our drives before, not even for animal sightings. An old couple sat on stools behind the counter, and there were several men in the aisles, one lifting out a six-pack from the cooler, another at the magazine stand. Everybody seemed to be talking at once until they saw us and stopped. It reminded me of walking into the kitchen when my father and Catherine weren’t expecting me. The same suspicious glares. Before I knew what I was doing I’d taken Jonathan’s hand. It was the first time we’d touched, though I’d longed for weeks to put my hand on his thigh as he drove, longed to kiss the side of his long neck, had already imagined, I admit it, straddling him, my back against the steering wheel. It was such a relief to touch him, to feel him squeeze my hand with his. We picked out cookies and sodas and I let go reluctantly when we had to pay.

“You did not have to do that,” he said when we walked to the car. “I didn’t need your protection in there.” He slammed the door.

I was stunned by his anger. I thought we’d get back in the car and laugh. I thought he might kiss me. My whole body was still straining toward his. I felt like he’d already touched me everywhere, the way his hand had felt in mine.

He started the car, put it in reverse without a word. I did not explain how to turn going backwards, and didn’t need to. Before we went into the general store we’d been singing “O-o-h, child, things are gonna get easier,” but now we drove back toward Ann Arbor in silence. I wanted your protection, I thought to myself. The man with the six-pack had scared me. But I didn’t speak. I didn’t know what was the truth. For the first time in my life I’d made the first move. My hand had gone out to his and he had taken it and now he was angry at me. I felt like a child. I wanted him to get out of my car so I could cry and cry. I watched the road signs. ANN ARBOR 12 MILES; ANN ARBOR 9 MILES. And then he turned down a road we’d never taken before. I hadn’t seen a sign, didn’t know how he knew it. It bumped along for over a mile, a dirt road with huge ruts and a rise of grass in the middle that scraped the bottom of my car. I thought maybe he was going to drop me off down here as a punishment, make me find my way back. His profile looked particularly harsh then, the jaw working, shifting. The road ended at a lake. The sun had gone behind the tall trees and the still water reflected the purple dusk plushly, like fabric. We stayed in the car and did not look at each other.

“You probably won’t believe this,” he said finally, staring straight ahead, “but I’ve never crossed the color line before. It just never seemed worth it somehow. I wasn’t raised to believe that we’re all the same deep down. My grandmother used to say to me and my brothers, Stay away from white girls. Stay away from them. She was from Vidalia, Georgia, and had a million stories from her childhood. They all ended the same. The black man ended up either dead or in jail. Where I grew up in Philadelphia, there weren’t white people. Not in my neighborhood. Not on the streets, not at school, not in the shops. I knew they existed — I saw them on TV or if we got in my uncle’s car and went somewhere — but I didn’t think there were very many of them. I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about white people. And then one day my uncle came by and took me and my cousin to a movie. I think we were six. He had some discount for a theater across town. We got there and there was a thick line of white people down the entire block and around the corner and down another block. All white. I didn’t understand where they could have come from. I still remember the feeling in my chest, terrified, utterly terrified, but also something else, a little thrill or something, because the world was different from what I had thought.” He was still looking straight at the lake, fingers looped around the steering wheel. I wanted to touch him again. “In there, holding your hand, I got that same feeling.”

We reached for each other at the same time. Hands, then mouths, then our bodies pressing against each other. I could not stop tears from leaking out, so great was the relief of his touch and the end of his anger. I hoped he wouldn’t notice but he did; he found them and licked them and apologized for yelling. I wasn’t used to apologies. It brought on a few more tears.

I’d always paced things carefully with men, offered up my body piecemeal, resisted exploration of theirs until I felt certain the emotional connection was keeping pace with the physical. My mother had told me not to make love without love, but I had become a freakish air-traffic controller, determined to land the two, love and sex, at precisely the same time. It rarely worked. The orchestrating itself derailed things. With Jonathan I lost interest in control, lost the ability to control. And that first sex in the car by the lake was always with us, every time we made love afterward, and never once did I regret it.

I can’t offer anyone a real goodbye at the end of the night. When people hug me, I insist I’ll see them soon, I’ll see them around. Julie squeezes me hard. This is the end of our life together. I took all my things out of our apartment this morning and crammed them into my car. There is only a little hole for me to squeeze into tomorrow and drive to California.

“I hate this,” she says. “I hate that I’m not going to find all your dirty dishes in the sink tomorrow night.”

“Please don’t make me cry. If I start, I won’t stop.” But I feel numb, nowhere close to tears.

She kisses me on both cheeks and leaves them wet. She promises to visit in the fall. It doesn’t feel real, my future, all that I have worked so hard to make happen. But the future always sits uneasily with me. I’ve never been able to really trust it. I’ve trained myself not to look forward to things very often. And I’m tired. I’m bone tired. Part of me just wants to curl up on a couch and sleep for a few years.

Dan is the last to leave. From his car he asks, “Can I use that bit about your father not going to the funeral?” He means in a story. “Please? I’ve already wrung my own childhood dry.”

“Go ahead,” I say, and then he is gone, just a hand out the car window, and then that is gone, too. He was my very first friend here.

Jonathan and I stack the dishes in the kitchen and lie on his bed in our clothes. It’s how we’ve always done it, like teenagers, as if each night we spend together is our first. My old boyfriend David used to have to brush his teeth and change into a clean T-shirt and fresh underwear before he got near the bed, and liked me to do the same. I couldn’t stand the sterile marriedness of it. I make sure I don’t always sleep on the same side of Jonathan’s bed when I stay over. I don’t want ritual or routine in a relationship. Ever.

Jonathan traces a finger along my temple and around my ear. When he takes off his glasses you can see that he has little stripes of tawny gold in his dark brown eyes. “You were so funny when people were toasting you. You looked like they were giving you an enema.”

“I hate watching people have to come up with nice things to say.” I kiss his finger, the tender pink pad of it. “Thank you for the party.”

“You’re so welcome, my Daley bread.”

We kiss hard, our hands reaching for bare skin. He lifts a breast out of my bra and into his mouth and my groin starts to ache. I wonder how long our desire will last. We’ve signed a year’s lease in California. Will we still touch each other so hungrily after a year of living together?