Marston

Notes: alternating point of view, some light non-consent.

______________________

I didn't tell my ex that my dad had died. I didn't tell him anything, really, just asked if he was up. And I can't say I blame him for not knowing something was wrong, 2am text messages tending to only mean one thing. I guess I was looking for that too. Mostly I think I just wanted to pick a fight? Or to pick a fight with myself, do something stupid and destructive.

I actually don't even remember deciding to text him or typing the message. My mom had called to tell me. I think we'd gotten a few sentences back and forth but then my ears were ringing and she sounded so far away. "Mickey? You're coming home, right?" Her voice had an edge of frustration to it, and I realized it was at least the second time she'd said it. I blinked and coughed out my confirmation. And then I was sitting there holding the phone, looking at a text reply I hadn't realized I'd solicited. Sure, see you soon.

Call me naive, but I actually managed to be a little shocked when I opened the door and saw just how hungry and still hurt and worse... how hopeful he was. I felt sick just about instantly. But I was the one who'd texted him.

He took hold of my hips, pushed me back against the entryway wall and started kissing my neck like he was mad at it. I figured, whatever, I'd roll with this. Let my body go into autopilot for a while. But if I kissed back he turned his head; if I showed signs of pleasure, he bit. Clearly he thought this was make up sex - punishment and forgiveness to be wrapped up in one orgasm. It wasn't worth clarifying.

He turned me around harder than he needed to, pulled down my jeans and panties and pushed my chest against the wall. Then he grabbed my ponytail, twisted it around his fist. My cheekbone was scraping the drywall, my chin forced up. The idea that I deserved punishment from him was irritating, but the punishment itself actually fit my mood pretty well. When he started slapping my ass, I wanted more. The sting of each hit was a sharp point to focus on, driving out the sadness, the shame. It was so much cleaner than those ugly feelings. I struggled, knowing it would make him slap me harder. I pushed my pelvic bone against the wall, erased the ex boyfriend from my mind and imagined I was fucking something hard and inanimate and painful.

Of course he ruined it by talking, barking something at me like he wanted to remind me he was in control. I knocked the key bowl off the console in my irritation, although I'm sure it read more like dizzy lust. He turned me towards him again, pulled my shirt and bra off. Then pushed me over to and up against the window, and I thought, fuck it, I'm never going to see these people again anyway. I let him take me with my ass cheeks plastered against the glass. Maybe it was meant to humiliate me? My skin actually made little squeaky sounds when he really got going; it was kind of ridiculous in a hard-to-ignore way. I found myself imagining the scene like I was witnessing it from outside my body. Instead of an orgasm, a wave of disgust hit me. I wondered if I would throw up, and then I actually almost laughed out loud, imagining puking on him and what his face would do. He didn't notice. He pulled out at the end, gave his dick a few last tugs and came on my chest and stomach while I slumped on the window sill.

His anger was gone and he was looking at me differently now. Taking stock. He ran a hand under my breasts, cradled them, and then smeared the cum over my nipple with his thumb. And that stupid son of bitch had this look on his face, to this day I don't know whether it was like, awe at the beauty of my breast, or just dumb pride with himself for having marked it as his territory. Frankly I didn't care for either. I looked at the door and told him I was tired.

I wasn't. I cried for the better part of an hour after he left, and then went into a manic frenzy of packing. I didn't have boxes, so I ended up just shoving things into garbage bags, or grocery bags, or when I ran out of all those, making piles on sheets, tying the corners together with hair ties. I obviously wasn't going to fit everything, and I found myself prioritizing in a weird way. Like, I couldn't imagine actually wanting anything I packed in my truck; I wasn't saving what would be useful to have in the future. I was just hiding away anything remotely personal. Even leaving things in the building dumpster felt too public. I had to get all of myself out of there.

By 6am my truck was loaded and the apartment was clean enough that I could ask Sophie to deal with the rest. She'd be hurt I'd left without saying goodbye, and pissed that I'd called that asshole instead of her. But she would understand. Honestly, Sophie had adapted to life in Pittsburg better than I ever would. She had a decent boyfriend, a good job, and a new circle of professional friends that I would never quite click with. She would still be happy here. She would forgive me.

It was a shitty three hour drive back to Marston, and I was such a wreck, I shouldn't have been behind the wheel. But I made it into my mother's driveway in one piece. And then I was stepping across those creaky porch boards, and trying to shut the front door behind me against the cold, and cussing at it, and then my mom was there and it was her good smell and hard hugs and I was shaking, and then Matt was there too, hugging us both and crying, and we were all a mess, but we were together.

___

Matt's dad had been sick for three years. Longer I guess, but it had gone more or less unspoken before that, handled privately. It got pretty crappy at the end. He wasn't his stoic self, just alternately scared, embarrassed, or disassociated. I would come sit with him, but I'd just end up looking out the window, not knowing what to say to this different version of my best friend's dad, not even knowing how much he understood. I wished it could be over for him. But when it finally happened it wasn't a relief at all, it was just horrible. And now Matt spent whole days sitting outside in the yard either poking at the bonfire or splitting wood for the next one, and I didn't know what to do. I showed up after my shift every afternoon and sat there with him, but I didn't have any words.

They'd been close. Matt had worked with his dad at their auto shop since we were 16, and the hours of quiet coworking had resulted in a sort of silent language between the two of them. An understanding. He was taking what I guess I'd call an indeterminate leave of absence now, but I knew everyone, including him, was wondering if he'd take over the shop officially, or try to sell it. Neither option sounded ideal- working with an ever-present ghost, or walking away from a sort of legacy. And he was good at it, or he had been, before everything went south and he kind of checked out. I wondered how long he could stay in limbo like this, but it wasn't my business, so I didn't ask.

We poked the fire and nursed our beers and killed time. Most nights Jake would eventually show up too, and sometimes Kyle and Chris. It helped to have a crowd. We'd drink a few more and tell stupid stories and even if Matt wasn't saying much, it felt like we were helping.

Matt's little sister, Mickey, was back in town and occasionally she'd come out and have one, too. Matt seemed to thaw a little when she sat with us. She'd pull up a lawn chair right next to his and lean her head on his shoulder. No one had ever seen Mickey be sweet and soft like that, but we certainly weren't going to make any jokes about it now. She'd stay pretty quiet and it made everyone stumble on their stories, having her there observing us without ever really joining in.

Mickey's one of those girls that are hard to act normal around even in the best of circumstances. She just feels dangerous, like you're waiting for some sort of bomb to go off but you want to stay near her anyway. Not just because she's beautiful, although she is. And doesn't know it, or only seems to when she's wielding it like a weapon. But also because she's smart and tough and funny. Capable. Unpredictable. She's just so sharp. If you say something stupid, she won't admonish you, she'll smile and urge you on and you'll not only have your foot in your mouth but halfway down your throat by the time you realize she's spotlighting what an asshole you are. It's a skill Matt's always taken as high entertainment. And anyway, even if she weren't so cutting, we'd keep our distance. One time in high school, Kyle made the mistake of singing 'oh Mickey you're so fine' when she walked through the living room in a swimsuit, and Matt broke his nose. Actually broke it. It just about ended the friendship. So yeah, we got the memo. I guess Mickey did too, because she pretty much only ever dated out of town guys, that one foreign exchange student being the exception. She probably would have said something crass about not shitting where she eats. She was like that, too.

But so Mickey was back, and now when she came outside with us I mostly just stared at the fire, and I got about as quiet as Matt. Because somehow she'd gotten even more beautiful living in the city those last six years, and now I was afraid I'd start blushing or something if she caught my eye. Worse, I knew Matt would know, and that was just about unthinkable.

___

The funeral was okay. I guess there was some sense of closure, but mostly it felt like something to survive. Matt and Mom and I were pretty much the only family we had left, given that Mom was an only child, and my grandparents had all passed by the time I was in middle school. My uncle Ron came, and I'm probably an asshole for admitting this, but I was hugely relieved that he stayed in a motel in town. I assume we all were. My godparents were there, and Sophie came. About a million people from town I didn't care to reunite with. A couple grease monkeys from Evansburg I guess my dad knew through work and had played cards with. Some kids I used to babysit for, weirdly grown up now.

I thought it would at least be helpful to have all the things to do, a prescribed list of actions we were expected to take. Planning and such. But it turned out, of course, Dad had taken care of all that. He did always like to leave things tidy. Mom wrote a check and wheels started turning and then it was mostly a matter of being shuffled from one place to another.

I guess the photos were the one nice thing. The funeral home asked for pictures they could project in a side room during the visitation. I was sort of surprised Dad hadn't picked all those out too, but I was glad he hadn't, because spreading out those shoeboxes of photos on the kitchen table, rifling through them with Matt and my mom, remembering... it was the one really healing thing I can point to from that first week after.

My mom was hollow-eyed and old looking for the first time ever. But also totally stoic. She had no patience for the old church acquaintances, hamming up their grief like she should be patting their arms, but she also wasn't going to put on a show. In our family, tears are private.

Matt had me worried. He and Dad were close, and I'm sure there was plenty of baggage wrapped up in that. He never flew the coop like I did, always lived in Dad's shadow, and I suspect there was some mourning for the fact that Dad never got a chance to see him as his own person, in his own separate life. Maybe I'm projecting; that certainly would have been my feeling if I'd stayed and worked at the auto shop. But Matt and I are very different people. In any case, there was also the fact that Matt did so much caretaking for my dad at the end of his life. I mean the brutally physical stuff, cleaning, bathrooming, things like that. Obviously my mom helped, but she wasn't strong enough to help him get up or move around. We all watched my dad shrink from being this stubborn, wise, hard-shelled man, to a body in a hospital bed in our living room, but I think Matt was the most shocked by it. Matt had admired him so much, and was confronted by the harshest realities of his heart failure in the end.

He became so robotic there for a while. It made me a little frantic. I would see him standing in the kitchen or the living room, just staring out the window not doing anything for longer than you could consider a reverie or whatever. I would find myself nudging my way under his arm, hugging him, waiting for him to call me a name or give me a noogie or something. But he would just let me in, and that was the most unnerving part of it. I was longing for a hard shove and a playful insult; instead, he just wasn't there.

___

I didn't acknowledge it at the time, but when I look back at those first few weeks right after Matt's dad died, the fog of my own grief was pretty thick. It wasn't the same for me as it was for Matt; I don't mean to say that. It's just, my own dad was a drunk. My mom kicked him out when I was in fourth grade, and I'm grateful to her for that I guess, but her own depression and addiction issues, 'functional' as she may have been, meant that it basically left me parentless. My dad beat the shit out of me when he was drinking, but he was the only one paying any attention to me the rest of the time. My mom preferred opioids and it more or less made her a zombie, sick all the time and zoned out or sleeping.

When I met Matt in sixth grade, it wasn't just making a new friend, it was making a new family. It was a no-questions-asked seat at the dinner table, a phone number I could call when my mom didn't show up to drive me home after hockey practice, a house with light and people I could hang out in when she was passed out in front of our TV for the night. His parents never overtly acknowledged the situation, but I think we all understood the role they played for me. And I wasn't close to his dad the same way Matt was, but I was close to him.

And now, it wasn't just this surrogate dad I had lost. It was Matt, too. I mean, he was gone, as disassociated as my mom ever was. And I was bumbling around, me, of all people, the one suddenly responsible for carrying the conversation. That went about as well as you would think.

People tease me that I wear my heart on my sleeve, although I've never really understood it since I'm not a talker. It's true that I don't have a great poker face and I'm a terrible liar. But I keep an awful lot to myself, and it's sort of a point of pride. I'm not out to throw my mom or anyone else under the bus. I'm only saying all this to say, that February was a fucking month.

It was a fucking month and maybe my guard was down. Maybe I started to let my glance linger when I normally would have kept my eyes down. Maybe I was being a little reckless, maybe I felt like I had nothing left to lose. But whatever simmering thought's I'd had about Mickey over the years, kept on the back burner, seemed to boil over now. My longing for her quickly overtook my longing for the normalcy I'd known before. Suddenly all I could imagine was her waist, and what it would feel like to pull it against me. I wondered what her hair felt like, and how it would look on her naked shoulders. I wondered what she tasted like. I've never been more ashamed of myself. I've never cared less about my shame.

___

I didn't have anything to do here; that was the problem. I still had some remote work as a copywriter, and as much academic editing as I had the patience for (the internet is a freelancing girl's best friend). But for the most part I could crush all that out over a few cups of coffee, and then the day loomed long. I wasn't ready to get another job - I was a mess and my mom was a mess and Matt was a mess. I didn't particularly love high school and I didn't love seeing all those ogling, bashful faces at my dad's funeral, either. I certainly didn't want to start seeing them around town every day. And anyways, what jobs did Marston have to offer an English major? There was no community college; there wasn't even a local paper anymore. Actually, I knew the answer to that question and it was totally demoralizing: waiting tables like I had back in high school. No way did I have the stomach for that anymore - to smile and call everyone 'hun' while I filled their coffee mugs, like I didn't know they were looking down their noses at me. Don't get me wrong; there's no shame in working the food industry. It was my go-to side hustle in Pittsburgh. Just not here. It was different here.

But I also can't sit still for long. I love my mom but the house was straight up suffocating, and my pacing the halls was beginning to annoy her about as much as her creaky hallway floors were annoying me. I knew Matt would take it the wrong way, and he did, but before long I had a mental 'honey-do' list for myself about a mile long.

I was chipping away at that list, bent over our front door (now lying horizontal on sawhorses in the woodshop) trying to get the rusted hinge screws out, when Matt poked his head in to say he was driving down to the auto shop to drop off the schedule. He hadn't been working much either and I was honestly feeling a little anxious about how things were going there, not that I'd butt my head in, the auto shop was never my jam. But it was a relief to realize he'd been doing at least a little management of the place. When he left I turned up my music and took a minute to enjoy the smells around me, sawdust and something like burnt wood, which I suppose meant the table saw could use a fresh blade, but I tried to shake the to-do list out of my head.

This was where my dad had taught me to make things. My first project was a small display shelf, with a railing around the front made of tiny turned dowels, like chess pieces. This was where I'd cut my thumb so badly on the bandsaw, he'd thrown me in the car with a clean rag and instructions to keep it raised to the roof, drove to the hospital at 90mph, white knuckles, didn't even stop into the house to tell my mom first. Bought me a four-pack of the good root beer in glass bottles on our way home. This was where I first saw him get pale and light headed, not doing much of anything. He'd had to sit down and I remember noticing his hands were shaking, and that was the first time I'd ever been scared for him.

A wave of sadness was threatening to take me again. I nipped it in the bud, grabbed my phone and hit pause mid-song, like it was the music's fault, and switched to something a little edgier. Took a long drink of my beer and then picked up my drill again, ready for that power-tool high to lift me back up.

There is a magic to fixing things. I'm honestly a little bitter about it, because it's a magic men tend to hoard. Not Matt or my dad, but in general. You go to the hardware store and they give you this smug smile, like 'this ought to be cute.' They act like you need big muscles to use a tool, but the truth is, the tool is the muscle. All you have to do is push a button and have the confidence to use the damn thing once it starts. And I do.

So I'm finally fixing the door, this door that has greeted me with resistance for most of my life. And I'm really satisfied watching these screws come out, and I'm about to be a lot more satisfied once I've cut it down and rehung it and can easily shut the thing, and I'm bent over to get some leverage, and I'm feeling fine as hell. Fuck you, hinge screw. Here is my driver coming for you. Here is some WD40 for back up. Here is my bicep pushing this bit into your stubborn center, here is my back arched so my full body weight is pressing into you, here is my ass in the air, crown of these legs, rooted into the floor. I own you.

And then I realized I was being watched. I don't even know how I knew. Maybe he blocked the light when he stood at the door, maybe I could just feel his eyes. I was embarrassed at first, assuming it was Matt back too quickly, or my mom. But it wasn't. It was Billy.