Alissa Nutting - Tampa

I expected him to feel this was a betrayal and argue, but it hardly seemed to register; he was staring at the toilet paper dispenser with a gaze of forlorn defeat, as if he’d just taken a hefty dump but was helpless to wipe himself. Still, I wanted to offer further explanation. “You’re going to have too many people watching you in the next few days, Jack. You’re likely going to be in great emotional pain. It might get very tempting for you to call me, but for our sake we can’t make contact again until things settle down.” Suddenly Jack’s frozen stare broke; he squeezed his eyes shut, then began a low scream; seconds later he was violently smacking his own forehead.

“Shhh,” I said soothingly. I knew I had to distract him, give him something to fixate on. “Jack, listen. Do you know the number of my secret phone by heart?”

He nodded, grasping his hair and drawing his knees up onto the toilet against his body. This had the effect of making his testicles, which hung off the ridge of the toilet seat in solitude, seem like a normally internal appendage that had accidentally fallen out. “Good. In a few days, if you’re able to walk to a pay phone without anyone following you, call me around five o’clock. Understand?”

He nodded. I sat down on the edge of the tub across from him and waited for several minutes before Jack finally stood, dressed, then began an automaton-like walk into his bedroom, where he grabbed the comforter off his bed. I followed him out to the hallway and watched Jack place it over his father’s body. There was something charming about the fact that Buck’s funeral shroud was a blanket covered with several months’ worth of commingled seminal and vaginal fluids from his son and me. When I cleared my throat Jack finally spoke.

“I’ll go move the car.” We didn’t turn on any lights in the house; I watched only the outline of Jack’s body ambling toward the front door as I turned and went my separate way toward the garage.

When I pulled out of the driveway and passed by Jack idling inside his father’s car in the street, I noted lights on in Mrs. Pachenko’s house but didn’t see anyone nosily peeking out through the window blinds. Although I didn’t turn to look at him as we drove in opposite directions, I could somehow feel that Jack was not watching me leave.

Unfortunately it turned out that Buck wasn’t the only surprise of the evening. When I pulled into the driveway Ford’s police car was already home. Although I was wary about what change might’ve brought him back early, I was relieved that he wasn’t out on patrol. I didn’t want Ford to be the officer to respond to Jack’s call.

“Hey, I’m in here,” Ford called out from the back room. I entered the den to find all the furniture covered with plastic drop cloths; Ford himself was on a ladder, painting the ceiling a forgettable beige. “Where you been?” he asked distractedly. From his tone I knew I didn’t actually need to answer him; he was about to launch into why he was home and what he was doing and would go right ahead whether I responded or stayed silent, but I felt compliant after the day’s long events. “Went out for a bite to eat with some of the girls from work,” I answered.

“Ladies’ night,” he said, a touch of grandeur in his voice. “Speaking of nights, I got switched again. New shift starting tomorrow. Ten P.M. to six A.M.” There was something sickening about the slick sound of the wet brush’s bristles moving back and forth across the wall, like a large predator’s tongue washing its kill. “Kinda brutal but I’m trying to play the game, right? That’s where they need me for now. At least we’ll get to have dinner together. When you’re not eating with the gals,” he joked.

This news, combined with knowledge of the changes that were sure to come for Jack following Buck’s death, made me feel the sliding nausea of a perfect era untying itself; it would be hard to do much of anything after school with Ford at home waiting, if Jack even continued the year out at Jefferson. The thought suddenly occurred to me that Jack would now have to go live with his mother—did that leave me with enough time to work up to a level of full engagement with another student before the summer break started? “Anyhow, they gave me tonight off to do errands and such before I begin on the vampire crew. I thought I’d finally get started on shaping this den up.” He motioned to a swath of paint samples taped to the wall. “You like taupe for the shutters?”

I swallowed, worried that I might abruptly throw up on my shoes. “Yes, Ford,” I did finally manage to say. “I just love it.”

Jack was broken for good, though the weepy, vacant state he occupied for the first few weeks after the death did thankfully fade. He missed ten days of school; it was just after the last period let out on the second week of his absence that my cell phone sounded its alerting buzz inside my bag.

“I’m at the house,” Jack said. “My dad’s house. I’m here alone. Please come over.”

At first the invitation sounded so perfect as to seem like a trap, but my libido overruled any suspicion; I’d been going stir-crazy in the classroom, trying to make educated guesses as to what type of underwear different boys wore by inspecting their groins when they stood up at their desks to read aloud.

I found Jack in his room lying on his bed, his fingers laced behind his head as he looked up at the ceiling. It was an anticlimactic reunion—on some level I expected him to be feeling as sexually deprived as I did, to grasp me and begin passionately kissing; if he had to cry with relief at being able to touch me again, I wouldn’t have minded coital tears. Instead he barely blinked when my face came into view above his. I lay down next to him and ran my hand up his shirt, stroking his chest.

His mental perspective wasn’t ideal for intercourse. “My life is over,” he said, his voice cracking with dramatic inflection. “My mom said I could stay in town with our friends the Ryans and finish out the year at Jefferson, but then I have to go live with her and do high school in Crystal Springs. I’ll never see you. I won’t even be going to high school with any of my friends.” He let a beat of silence pass, then placed his hands over his face, as though this fact horrified him most of all. “I wish I were dead.”

I realized that if I was going to glean any satisfaction at all from this visit, I needed to put forward an agenda of transmuting suffering through sexual healing.

Kneeling beside him, I lifted his shirt and began to kiss upward from his stomach to his chest in slow, warm licks. “Your body doesn’t wish you were dead, Jack,” I told him. “Just your mind. You’ve got to separate the two. Live in your skin instead of your brain.” With that I began furiously kissing his neck, occasionally lowering my pelvis just enough that it put light pressure onto his crotch. He was responding; I could feel an erection building though his body seemed tensed against it. “Distance won’t be a problem,” I lied, peeling off my shirt and unhooking my bra. I stroked his forehead and offered him a nipple in an act of mothering. When he took it he closed his eyes to suck intensely, as though some intoxicating drug might eventually come out and take his pain away. “And you’ll make new friends in no time. Everything’s okay.”

He kept sucking my nipples, one and then the other, in a near-hypnotic trance. His brow was creased with indecision; he licked his lips and stared off in thought, like a sommelier trying to discern a vintage at a blind taste test. Suddenly a switch seemed to flip inside him and he sat up, pulling down his pants, then lifted my ass up toward him and entered me. Thank god , I thought—I had a flash of optimism that the worst was over. The sex was very good, his pelvis steadily driven. When he came it seemed like a natural catharsis to the entire situation, and I pulled him back down to the bed and wrapped my body around his. “That was great,” I whispered, feeling a light, exuberant air pour into the room. He was breathing very quickly, his chest rising and falling with emphasis. I expected it to slow down after a moment but it didn’t; although we were completely still, his body was acting like he was sprinting in place.