He’d been in a nursing home for years, ever since my grandma died and he had a stroke. Before the stroke he was just like my dad—a tough, matter-of-fact guy. Dad had a sense of humor, though, while Grandpa always seemed tense, like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop, but if it ever did he wouldn’t say a word about it. After the stroke, it was like he’d been turned inside out. He cried all the time. He cried when we came to visit him, when the nurse put him to bed at night, even about stuff that should have made him happy like when the Twins were winning. It was as if eighty years of buried emotion started leaking out his eyeballs.
The nursing home was a sad-looking concrete building outside Des Moines where all the old ladies sat on the cracked patio and tried to wave us over to their wheelchairs. We ignored them and kept our eyes on the backs of Mom’s shoes as she walked inside. Grandpa always had stale Bit-O-Honeys that just about broke your jaw and we had to sit there chewing them while Mom chatted to the walls as she fussed around his room and he stared at us, silent tears running down his grizzled, old face.
When he died I wondered if my dad was more upset about missing the harvest. Nobody talked about their feelings around here. They just absorbed the hurts and the losses and barely nodded if anyone said anything about it. It was okay to be funny or crack a joke like Dad, but any other emotion just got the American Gothic treatment. It was all hidden and sometimes I wondered if it was even there. I guess Dad really did love his father, though, because he left in the middle of the harvest and hired a migrant contractor to take over his fields while he was gone.
I stayed behind to finish school that week and was supposed to come down for the funeral on Saturday. One afternoon I was reading on the log swing by the house, tracing the outside of one breast absently while I flipped pages, when I glanced over and saw Marco standing twenty feet away, staring at me. He was tall and thick, the kind of fat someone got when they did manual labor and probably ate a bunch of fast food, layers of muscle over fat over muscle. Dad had said he was Guatemalan, with dark skin and hair, but his eyes were bright and fixed on the hand on my breast.
I jumped up and muttered an apology, then ran back to the house. I even locked the front door, which I don’t think had ever been locked before, and watched his comings and goings through the curtains of my bedroom for the rest of the afternoon. Maybe it was the book, or the way his eyes seemed to be on fire, but that night was the first time I had an orgasm. I’d tried masturbating before, but apparently it was all about motivation.
Since I’d fallen in love with Peter, motivation was never a problem.
Still, nothing I’d imagined in my bed at night had prepared me for what happened in the Erickson barn. His anger scared me and I’d almost lost hope, until suddenly he grabbed me and dragged us to our knees. I remembered everything, how he ran his hands over every part of me he could reach, how I burned every place he kissed me. He was sweaty and hard and demanding and then it was over as quickly as it started.
“We can’t do this,” he’d said, pushing me away.
I dove back into him, kissing his neck, running my hands through his hair. He smelled so good. I wondered when boys stopped smelling like boys and started smelling like his tangle of musk and soap and heat. Or maybe Peter had always smelled that way. What would I have done if he’d walked by me in a mall when he was sixteen? Would my eight-year-old nose have smelled its match and followed him through the food court? I smiled into his collarbone and murmured, “I have condoms.”
He groaned and nuzzled my temple, then framed my face in his hands. “You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you?”
“No, Peter.” I shook my head as much as his hold would allow. “I’m trying to help you live.”
“Drop the act, Hattie. Tell me what you really want.”
“I want you. I just want you.” I said it over and over again, closing my eyes and rubbing my cheek against his hand. His thumb ran over my mouth and I let it fall open, hoping he’d keep kissing me, but he didn’t.
He stood up and dragged himself away.
“You’re not eighteen.”
My heart flip-flopped. “What’s a few weeks?”
“Legally, it’s the difference between getting fired and getting fired, arrested, and thrown in jail.”
I noticed he didn’t say anything about getting divorced, but I didn’t want to bring it up and spoil my chances. “So what are you going to give me for my birthday? A party? A present?”
“A spanking,” he said, almost to himself, and then shook his head and started laughing. It wasn’t a happy-sounding laugh.
“Hey, I’m going to be eighteen.” I stood up and crossed my arms. “You can’t talk to me like I’m a kid after that.”
He just covered his face with his hand. I walked over and pulled it down so he had to look at me.
“If anyone’s getting spanked, it’s you. You’re the naughty one here, having lusty feelings for your underage student.”
I tsk-tsked him in my best sexy-teacher voice, but he wasn’t in the mood to play. His eyes raked over my face like he was desperate for something and not finding it. I didn’t know how to assure him when he didn’t believe anything I said. Finally he groaned again, a self-defeating groan, and wound me into a hug, resting his forehead on mine. It was the sweetest gesture he’d made toward me yet, and my heart slammed in my chest. The hope almost choked me.