The Weight of Him(50)

He straightened his spine, raised his left hand, and curved his right arm around the memory of Tricia’s thin, delicate back. To a waltz from the radio, he danced Tricia around the kitchen floor, one, two, three, one, two, three. He danced faster, leading Tricia, twirling her, dipping her, their faces feverish. He stopped, breathless, dizzy, his arms aching from all the emptiness he was holding.

*

Inside the tiny cottage, in their bedroom of golden walls, red silk curtains, and a bed linen patterned with black and white stripes, tiny Tricia undresses tiny Billy. Then he undresses her, peeling the last layers of satin from her skin with tender teeth. She presses the palms of her hands to his hard chest, her prints unlocking him like some secured doorway. He touches her face, his fingertips tracing her sharp cheek. She takes his hungry fingers into her wet, hot mouth. He kisses her, kisses his own fingers inside her—soft brushes with his lips, then tender kisses with tongue, then firmer, openmouthed gymnastics. He tugs with his teeth on her lower lip, his fingers slipping between her legs now. Their tongues flick and curl together, wet and slippery. He presses her down onto her back on the bed, falling on top of her, feeling the spill of her juice on his hand.

He kisses her neck, collarbone, and on down to her breasts. He sucks on her hard brown nipples. She rubs her hand over the top of his head, fingers his ears, twists his lobes. He enters her slick, tight insides and she wraps her thighs around his waist, demanding all of him. He glides his hard, lean body back and forth above her, the throb of his cock matching the thump of his fiery heart.

Billy hardened. He looked behind him to double-check that the garage door was locked. He stood up and leaned over his workbench, the flat of his hand pressed to the wood, to support him. With his free hand, he opened his zipper and satisfied himself fast and hard, his head turning every so often to check on the closed garage door.

*

At eleven o’clock, Tricia still hadn’t returned home. Billy ordered Anna and Ivor to bed, and struggled up from his armchair to follow them. John remained on the couch, watching TV.

“Don’t stay up too much longer,” Billy said, looking at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was late for Tricia to still be out. “Do you hear me?”

“Yeah,” John mumbled.

“Night, son.”

Billy waited, but John didn’t respond. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” John said.

“Did you want to talk?”

John looked up at him, his expression dark, confused. “About what?”

“What you said earlier.…”

John looked back at the TV. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It sure sounded like it mattered.”

John’s attention remained on the screen. “I’m trying to watch the telly.”

Billy waited in the open doorway, hoping John would say more.

John’s head turned like something about to bite. “Would you get out?”

Billy pushed back his anger. He was trying, damn it. “If you change your mind, you know where I am, okay?”

John bounced his leg, his hand a fist on his knee. Billy stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him. He climbed up the stairs, his mood as heavy as his tread.

After he’d tucked Anna and Ivor into bed, Billy stood on the landing, holding on to the railing. The TV sent up sounds of explosions and what appeared to be the collision of giant metal contraptions. John was all about warring these days, and especially with Billy. As Billy was about to enter his room, he caught some sound beyond the TV battle noises. He listened hard. There, behind the heavy gunfire, came the strum of Michael’s guitar. He pictured John sitting downstairs, resurrecting Michael’s music, alone and in secret. He moved to his bedroom. John would hate him to eavesdrop.

Billy took one look at his and Tricia’s large, empty bed, and changed his mind. He entered the boys’ room, finding Ivor already asleep on the bottom bunk. He could be looking at himself at age nine. He leaned down and kissed the side of Ivor’s head. Ivor stirred, but didn’t waken. Aside from those times in the days after Michael’s death, it had been years since he’d kissed the boy. “I’m too big for kisses,” Ivor had declared.

Billy checked his phone again. No text or missed call from Tricia. His thumb moved back and forth over the phone’s screen. He pushed his pride aside and started typing. Everything ok? He waited.

Still waiting, he crossed the room, undressed, and climbed into Michael’s single bed. He lay facing Ivor, trying to remember back to a time when his father had kissed him, even hugged him. He couldn’t. Not once. His phone beeped. All ok, home soon. Relieved, he burrowed into Michael’s mattress and pillow, trying to sink into the exact hollows made by his firstborn. The slim bed seemed fragile, something he could fall right through. He worried he would break it.

When Michael was small, and Billy wasn’t so humongous, he had sat next to the boy on this bed many times, telling stories. Michael hadn’t wanted tales from books or his father’s imagination so much as real stories from Billy’s childhood. Billy quickly ran out of any pleasant or interesting memories, though, and had to pass off made-up events as real.

Michael never tired of the stories and wanted to hear them over and over. “Tell me again about how you helped deliver the twin calves. Tell me about being Oisín in the school play. Tell me about the time Santa came to your house twice, on Christmas Eve and on Christmas morning.”