All That's Left to Tell(58)

Genevieve said, “For a while?”

“I’m getting to that. And it went on that way. He was taken with my body as much as I was taken with his. He would linger over my belly. He’d breathe in the scent of it, deep breath after deep breath. He’d lift his fingers to his mouth and get some saliva on the tips, and then he’d rub it into the crease behind my knees. And then he’d kiss those places. And all of this lasted for what seemed like a long time, probably into February. But, you know, even when you’re that young, that level of fascination has to turn into something else. You can’t live in that narrow space, even though I wanted to.

“At that age, I considered myself political. You know, angry at the hypocrisy of the world. There was the war in Afghanistan, and I’d go to protests, but there’d be maybe twenty people at those protests. Mostly older people carrying signs and waving at those who honked their horns in support.”

She thought for a moment about the man at the rest stop eating his sandwich with his wife, and how he’d chided her for losing touch with her father.

“And I was outraged. Not so much at the world, you know, but instead that I had to live in it. But in that time with Seth, those first weeks, I would hear the radio. In the little market where I worked, we kept it on. I’d hear the reports at the top of the hour of civilian deaths, or drone strikes. And I’d shake my head, but I’d be shaking my head into a grin. Thinking of him. The way the winter light struck his chest that morning. Like that boyfriend you described with the shadow of the snow falling on him, remember?”

“Sure.”

“Everything else seemed like a cartoon. Except then, you know, it shifted. Like it always does. We’d still do our little evening ritual. Sitting at that table and talking, sipping, and then swallowing those full shots of whiskey. And taking each other’s hand. But when he was inside me, and we were making love, he started talking to me. I mean, I know that’s what people do. I even knew it then. But it was the first time for me. And the things he would whisper to me were gentle at first—about how much he loved me, about how it felt so good, about the smell of my skin when I was excited—but then, after a while, the things he said became, well, there’s no way to describe it but to say they got more violent.”

Saying this made her pause for a moment. She listened to the moths battering the streetlamp. Not a single car had passed along the road that led past the school lot in the time she was speaking. She could distantly hear the cars along the highway a mile or so away, and their rushing past sounded like a faraway wind, but the air wasn’t moving at all. She had to remind herself they were just over the Nebraska border. She was on her way back to Michigan.

“It’s so ungodly quiet here,” she said. “I mean, it’s June. We’re out in the middle of nowhere with trees and grass and this empty school. No crickets, no katydids. I’d love to hear an owl, or something.”

“Maybe they think it’s going to start to rain.”

“I don’t think everything goes quiet because of the rain.”

“I guess not. But sometimes it seems that way once you start to hear it fall.”

She turned her head and looked at Genevieve.

“You’re right about that. It does seem that way.” She couldn’t see Genevieve’s eyes in the shadow cast by her head, and felt herself wanting to. “Why don’t the moths disappear if it’s going to rain?”

“They’re distracted by the streetlight.”

“Ah. You have a kind of answer for everything, don’t you, Gen?”

“Not really. What did you mean by violent?” Claire remembered Genevieve’s questions the night the fat man had come to their truck when she’d told the story about her family’s dog that killed the chickens.

“He would talk to me. He’d tell me the kind of things he would do to me. It wasn’t particularly dramatic at first. About how he was going to tie me down so I couldn’t move, and then how he’d gag me so I could barely breathe. Or how someday when I came home from the shop he was going to meet me at the door and knock me to the floor and tear off my clothes and take me from behind. Those kinds of things.”

Genevieve, who had been listening the whole time with her hands folded under her chin, now turned away and ran her fingers along the edge of the truck bed, but didn’t speak.

“But even then, I didn’t think much of it. We were drunk, and it was exciting. They were fantasies, and I knew about fantasies. To speak them out loud—well, I loved words enough back then. They seemed new to me, too, at least when Seth was saying them. It was a kind of thrill—the words close to what we were doing in the bed. I don’t mean close to describing what we were doing in bed. I mean close as in proximity. As if when he gave them a voice they were wrapped around us almost as tightly as our arms and legs.

“But then—I don’t know. I don’t know why. It got darker. We were drinking more. We’d finish half a bottle of whiskey between us. I think both of us were pushing to see what would come next.

“I’ll tell you one story that I remember, Genevieve. I try not to think about it, not because it’s horrifying, or anything, but because in some ways I’ve wondered how it affected what happened next. I don’t know. I’m not superstitious, or anything. But when you are making love—when a man is inside your body, and you’re wanting him to come inside you harder and harder—and then there are these words in the air that are so close to you, like I said, well, the words become more real, like a physical presence in the room. It was like they wanted a life of their own. And that’s why I think I was hurt, that’s why I think I was attacked. Does this make any sense?”