A. Homes - The End of Alice

“Show me the clip.”

“Clip?”

“You know, your clip. It’s supposed to do something.”

She reaches down, exposing the gemstone, the dancing dot of perfect pleasure. “Clitoris,” she says. “Clit, not clip.” A short course in pronunciation.

“What’s it do?”

He with his great erector set, his bursting birthday toy, the wondrous wand that rises and falls, launching rockets, firing jets of joy, the juiciest jizz of the jungle, he with that magnificent mechanical manhood is not impressed: hers is the wind-up model.

“It feels good when you rub it.”

He doesn’t answer, only stares for a moment, then picks up a Matchbox car — an ambulance — from beside the sofa and runs it over her, driving the small black wheels backward and forward over the spot. When nothing happens, he stops. “Show me,” he says. And she does, illustrating the procedure with her own hand, encouraging him to gently take her titties under tongue while she does the rest, and in seconds there is the shiver, the shudder, and she stops.

“That’s it?” he asks.

“Yep.”

“I don’t get it.”

She shrugs.

Completely clothed, he lies down on her, rubbing her. There is a barking in the backyard. They go to the window; dog boy is outside howling, pawing at his bowl.

“Find out what he wants for dinner,” she says. And the boy — the front of his pants stained with a weird wet mark, a secret sloppy kiss that could be either his or hers — goes into the yard and asks the pup, “Do you want your dinner?” The puppy nods. “Gaines Burgers or Alpo?”

The pup curls his nose, sits up on his back legs, and speaks. “People food.”

“You’re a spoiled puppy, a bratty boy,” the big brother says. Dog boy whimpers. “Do you want milk or juice with it?”

“Apple juice,” dog boy says.

“Be right back.”

In the kitchen, the girl opens a can of Beefaroni and spoons the contents into a plastic bowl, adding a serious sip of allergy syrup before slipping the bowl into the microwave. When it is ready, she lays a spoon and a napkin on a tray, pours the kid a cup of apple juice, and lets her boy deliver dinner out into the yard.

While Matt’s gone, she feeds Wallace, the real dog, and puts her clothing back on.

I asked Matt what he wanted for dinner. “ Everything,” he said, and so we had it, all of it: egg rolls, cheese puffs, french fries, fried chicken, spinach souffle, macaroni and cheese, everything out of the freezer. Made pigs of ourselves. Oink, oink. Fun.

Do you get to pick what you eat? Is it like a hospital where you circle your choices? Is the food Oedipal? — a little joke, ha, ha.

Is it Oedipal? I could kill her. I struggle to remember what it is to choose, to decide what you want and then have it. Asparagus. I haven’t had asparagus in twenty-three years. I respond with a little history lesson. The FDA allows a higher percentage of hair, mouse shit, whatever evil and vermin you can imagine, into food intended for industrial use as compared to the single-serving cans you open at home — why is there a second standard?

And to drink with that? Wine?

Matt digs deep into the cabinet. “Only red. Is red okay?”

Yeah.

He pulls out a can of Hawaiian Punch.

She had something else in mind, but punch drunk is punch drunk. Fine.

Because they cannot admit it, cannot even name what it is they desire, their fearful craving encourages them to consume the contents of the cabinets, to sit at the table gorging themselves until they are in pain. And the pain comes as a relief; they push away from the table feeling sated, safely satisfied.

Dinner done, dishes disposed of, she glances out the kitchen window. Baby brother is at the far end of his tether, his pants are down, he’s squatting, smiling, pleased with himself, shitting on the grass. He finishes, pulls his pants up, and on all fours comes back across the yard, turns in several circles like a real dog, and lies down in the grass. It is probably good that she gave him the allergy medicine; without it, he would be wheezing.

Brightness evaporates inside the house. It is nearly night. Shadows abound, taking him and her, she and he, the kooky kidlets, down into the dark as if etherizing them, putting them in an odd and uncomfortable twilight sleep. Floorboards creak. In the living room the television talks to itself. Without warning they are two children, alone at home, afraid of the dark. Hear no evil, see no evil, do no evil. They don’t speak or move. The presence of something larger than either of them fills the room. (I’d call it guilt.)

Light. The light, turn on the light, one wants to call to them, but they are deaf — the dulling of the senses is part of the darkness.

Outside the yard is bright. Timers sensitive to dusk have automatically turned on the floodlights. Sprinklers kick to a start with a whispering whoosh. The two children hear the water go on, look at each other, and suddenly spared from twilight’s sleep run out of the house, pushing down the steps, into the night. The oscillator’s sweep sprays water upward against gravity. The water then drops gently down, fooling the grass, the petunias and geraniums. Phlox won’t be fooled, my grandmother used to say. Boy and girl fly through the sprinkler’s swath; water soaks their clothes. The boy takes off his shirt and throws it onto a bush. The girl slides out of her pants; her shirt is long and covers her ass. Through the water, over the water, under the water, they dash and dance. The spray turns his khaki shorts dark, and the outline of his erection is clear. He takes off his shorts, leaving them on the grass. The thick cotton weave of his BVDs binds his protuberance against his body. She slides off her shirt, stripping down to an intimate bikini, bra and panties. The insects of summer click and clack. Moths circle the floodlights. They chase each other. He plucks the back of her bra, making a melody like she’s strung with the strings of a lute. Her breasts bounce keeping time, as do her thighs and buttocks, a wiggle and jiggle that he might find attractive but which slightly rolls my stomach. His member, his aspiring manhood, stretching, growing longer, thicker each time it rises, is now frozen, stiff like something stuffed, aimed up, fixed on God.

He runs after her. He pulls her panties down, pushing her until she falls onto the grass and is down on her hands and knees. He throws himself on her, holding her until his prize is aligned, then pokes her from the back, laying in, bending the bone, riding her as though she’s unbroken, his wild mare. He steadies himself by pulling on her bra strap, holding her elastic reins. One arm thrown high into the sky, he rides, hips humping. He slaps the side of her thigh, leaving the muddy mark of his hand — his brand. He rides his fuck until she’s bucking violently under him and it is all he can do to keep himself in.

Her brassiere gives way, comes undone, firing him backward, sliding him out and off and into the dirt. For a second his pillar, his pole, lights up the night, red, hot, glowing like molten steel, like the rumored reindeer’s nose. But as quickly as it’s flashed, she’s upon it, bouncing up and down. Shimmy, shimmy, shake. How quickly it is done. She leaves him laid out in the grass and moves over to the sprinkler, spreading herself over it, working the water whip back and forth beneath her. With the tiny teeth, the tickle of a tongue, she water-picks her pussy, sighing under its spray. Both breasts in hand, she tilts her hips back and forth, rocking, coming not just once but in a set, a small series of cataclysmic constrictions. It is something to see, to watch, the work of an artisan. Beneath her, as her hips continue to sway, the water automatically turns itself off.