Me and Mom Fall for Spencer (19 page)

I can hear his breathing.
 
“We’ll just…,” he says like he’s doing a
great service and he’s excited.
 
He is
lowering my sleep pants and I kick them off when they get down there with my
shoes.
 
Then it’s just my underwear.

He stands up and rubs his hands together
like he’s stoking up for the big one and I have to laugh a little, and he’s
mister glee face, and he lowers my underwear.
 
He makes a sound as he looks it all over and I kick out of my underwear
and he helps me and I’m kind of mortified, horrified, and proud of myself all
in one.

He still has my underwear dangling from
his hand and I grab those and throw them in a corner and they look like a
dust-rag over there.

He takes my hand and kisses it.
 
“You’re a goddess,” he says.

I do a little laugh.
 
Yeah I’m speechless.
 
He leads me to the tub and I lift my leg rather
gracelessly, probably shooting the
beav
right there
and I have a flashing thought of
Leeanne
and what
she’d say about this.
 
One leg is in
though, bubbles are thick, and I bring the next leg in and swiftly sink down
like I’ve found a bush…so I can hide my bush.

“Sit back,” he says, and he’s got a
wash-rag already, and I am in here, and oh my God it’s the
most
lovely
thing.

“You have to come with me,” I say.

He looks at the rag,
then
seems to realize he can still wash me after he’s in.
 
He puts the rag down and peels off his pants,
then lowers his boxers and ‘
boing
.’
 
Oh my god.
 
I know I’ve seen it already, but we are not yet familiar and the shock
value is still strong.
 
That thing has
presence.

I swallow thickly as he gets in, and I
see the balls then, not so bad and close to his body and plump.
 
He is smirking because yeah, I gawk like a
Michigan hick.
 
But
dang who wouldn’t.
 
So he lowers
Loch-
ness
in to the water.

“What were you thinking just now?” he
says, big smile as the borderline hot as shit water covers his jewels.

“Read it,” I say.
 
He makes the hand cradle and fits it right
over the factory.
 

“It’s fuzzy.
 
You’re…dazzled.”

“Think Scotland.”

“
Lochness
,” he
says with eerie rapidity.
 
“You saw the
monster.”

My jaw drops.
 
“How in the hell…?”

He’s laughing so loud it bounces off the
walls and he keeps going.
 
He grabs my
foot and pulls me right up to the monster.
 
If it was pointing at me instead of seeking air we’d be making that baby
Mom is worried about.

It’s
lots of wet, naked kissing then.
 
The feel of him, hot bubbles and seal-skin.
 
He’s going back and we are under the water
kissing for a minute, then breaking above gasping and laughing.

“Hey,” he says, stilling me all of a
sudden.
 
He puts his hand on my chin,
pushes back my streaming hair, his face right there, our noses almost touching,
my arms around his neck, his hands on my back and my ass.
 
“You know you make me so happy, right?”

I pretend to look down at the creature
hard and long against my stomach, then I look back at him.
 
“Yeah.”

“I
ah
…I hope
this doesn’t freak you out too much but…I’m in love with you.”

It’s a strange reaction, but my face
crumples, and the force of what I’m
feeling,
it’s that
quiet cry, that insanely quiet moment when everything builds.
 
It’s that feeling and I have little control,
but I gasp first, and then the sound.
 
It’s a thin wail because I’m working on holding it in.

“Oh baby, no, no,” he says cradling my
head on his soapy slick shoulder.
 
He’s
sincere but he’s laughing too.
 
“It’s
okay.
 
Too much?
 
Too soon?”

I kiss him then.

“I thought you didn’t kiss people,” he
says soft-voiced.

“I...I’ve changed,” I say and I kiss him
again.

Me
and Mom Fall for Spencer

Chapter Twenty-Eight

He’s at the market—A.
R..
He nods his head at me as he passes our booth carrying a bottle of water only. He
barely glances at Spencer. That one is standing in the middle of the flow of
shoppers.

“Don’t be a bumpkin. Buy a pumpkin!” Spencer
sings while he strums his guitar. It’s kind of fascinating the way females of
all ages gather around him here at the market.
And some men,
fathers of young children because they don’t have a choice.
Their
children are eager to stop and listen to the guitar man. Some of them already
know his name and they say, “Hi Spencer.” And besides A. R. and the fathers of
small children there are others, carefully coiffed men holding tote bags of
peppers and green onions who also possibly find Spencer as interesting, as
beautiful as I do.

I scan the crowd for A. R.’s head. He’s
gone past. Now my good mood is a little choked.

But people continue to put their money
in the carved out pumpkin Spencer has placed by his feet. And every once in a
while he looks at me and breaks into the endless song he writes while he sings,
“She’s a girl, she’s a girl, she’s a
Nessie
wrestling
girl.” Or some-such, then he adds in this narrative voice, “But I just call her
bubbles.” He winks at me.

I stare. I can’t even worry when he’s around.
I know I’m blushing like a deep red. The bath, he’s taken me there in front of
everyone and we have this secret language now. I cross my ankles and smile.

Ned and Dusty aren’t even responding to
being petted anymore. They are like two black body pillows, lying under the
table on their sides while many hands, all sizes and colors pat them. They are
the best kind of advertising for the shelter, but I fear hugely that someone
will head to the doggie jail and get Lucky before I can so I text Barb. “Don’t
let anyone adopt that Lucky dog.”

She
texts back, “Luck will not run out.” It’s almost funny.

We make a killing. On the way home Spencer
counts the money and says, “We squashed it, baby.”

“Puns are the humor of fathers,” I quote
with no room to talk.

“I probably fathered a few in my time,”
he sasses.

I swerve the truck a little.

He reaches around Dusty and puts his
hand on the wheel.
“Sarah…you alright?
Puns.
I fathered puns.”

I pull off the road and the one pumpkin
we couldn’t sell because Spencer insisted we were taking it home to carve a
jack-o-lantern and roast the
seeds is
rolling around
in the bed of the truck.

A. R. may have disappeared in the crowd,
but I can’t get him out of my head. “Who are you? What are you?
Cyro
says WITSEC. You say no. What’s your story? Tell me!”

“Where the hell did this come
from…again?”

“You don’t answer me. You
..say
you love me and…we’re sleeping in the same bed!’

We sit there a minute, both glaring out
the windows. Well I’m glaring.

“You know what I was doing this time
last year? I’d just finished walking the Pacific Crest Trail. I finished in
Canada.
Over two thousand miles.
It took me almost
five months. That’s where my guitar got beat up. I took it on the trail.”

“Your stuff….”

“…I accumulated in Oregon where I
wintered. I found this house on the internet. I knew I wanted to stay north. I
liked it. This town is small, the house was cheap. It was random. I’m into
random.”

“Why Spencer?”

“Because everything was
planned before that.
Every step.
And it was a path that led to a box that was really a coffin.”

“You were dying?”

“No.
Symbolism!”

“Who are the ones you left behind?”

He’s
staring
ahead
and shaking his head. “I was finished there. I was betrayed.”

“How?”

He is silent a long time. Ned and Dusty
have long realized they are not getting out. They’ve fallen asleep.

“I left it all on the trail, Sarah.” He
looks at me. “It’s not that I won’t tell you, or you can’t know. It doesn’t matter.
I left it there and I swore I wouldn’t pick it up again. I wouldn’t speak about
it or give it another minute. I’m telling you this because I love you. But I
left it in a canyon on the trail.”

“You didn’t…push someone into the canyon
or something?”

He laughs just a little, but his eyes
are so sad. “No. It was real, but…I’m dramatic. No murder in my past.
Nothing so exciting.
Very little joy actually. Nothing like
I feel with you.” He looks away, his profile sad and beautiful.

“Your family, Spencer.
I just want to understand,” I say.

“It’s not complicated,” he smiles
weakly. “I changed my course. You can, you know.
Most of the
time I don’t think we believe it.
It takes guts
cause
even misery gets so familiar it’s comfortable.”

“You left your life.”

“I found my life.” He does hold my gaze
now. “Understand something Sarah. I’m not in some kind of denial. I know
exactly what I let go of.”

“You let go…but what about yourself…how
did you hang onto yourself?”

“I found myself on the trail. Then I had
the luck to recognize you.”

“You feel that way about me?” Gosh I
think of myself that first day, those first days.
Such a
weirdo.
Surely he deserves more than me.

I am chewing my lip, an annoying habit
that drives Marie crazy.

“All that time I was walking toward you.
If I wouldn’t have had the guts to leave, I never would have found you.”

I drive to the shelter pretty fogged
over from our conversation.

Spencer has the money gathered, the
change in a doubled plastic bag. We’ve made over six hundred. It’s like the
gates of heaven have opened and the manna is gold.

So we take that in, and leave the guys in
the truck. As soon as they figure out we are leaving they start to howl.

Once in the shelter I walk straight to
Lucky’s
kennel.

“Sullivan,” Spencer is saying. “Sarah? Don’t
do it.
Don’t…do it.”

But I’m already back there and I’m
unlatching the gate and Lucky bolts right out, runs all over the place, then
turns and comes back to me, jumps and puts his paws on my shoulders and licks
my face a few times. He’s got it in the eyes, Lucky does, that soulful thing
like his brothers…even more. He’s good people. It was always him I was working
my way to. Like Spencer with me.

“Sarah,” Spencer says softly as he
approaches, and I hear him through the din.

I am stroking along
Lucky’s
ribs. I’m going to
wreak
. “He needs us,” I say. He’s
so like Spencer. That’s what I think. The brother cut off from his brother…s.

“Babe…another one?”

“Yeah,” I say and we look at each other
and he knows…Spencer knows.

So that’s it. The ride home is crowded. We’ve
let them bleed off some of their hysteria from the reunion in the pen. Ned and
Dusty seemed to get a second wind around Lucky. They aren’t entirely accepting
of him, and they’re both a little jealous of letting him in, but they’re better
now. They all seem a little tired.

“You’re giving him to
Cyro
?” Spencer says.

“I don’t know,” I say. Mom is going to
kill me,
that’s
for sure.
If she
doesn’t kill herself first.
But I’m not giving Lucky to anyone.

At home it’s a rodeo. I put Lucky in my
yard and Spencer puts Ned and Dusty in his, then those two spend all their time
barking at Lucky so Spencer does a crazy thing and attacks the fence and I say,
“What are you doing?”

And he says, “Remodeling.” And before I
know it there’s an opening in the fence and the three dogs are together again. We
are watching them. I’m pretty starved and I’m thinking of so many things.