Part 15 (1/2)
So he got back up inside me and he screwed me, and I almost didn't feel a thing.
THE NEXT morning, I lay in bed when Del got up and got himself ready for work. Before he went downstairs, he came and stood beside the bed.
”You all right, Vangie?”
He waited there in the half-light for me to answer, but I didn't say anything. When he leaned down to kiss me, I didn't move.
”I gotta go,” he said.
After I heard his car pull away, I still stayed in bed. I heard the cardinal call, and I lay listening to that. My v.a.g.i.n.a felt swollen from all the f.u.c.king, and there was a little raw place just inside my lips, right by the opening. After we made it upstairs to the bedroom, Del shoved the d.i.l.d.o and his c.o.c.k into my v.a.g.i.n.a at the same time, and I figured that's what made the raw place. He'd f.u.c.ked me in the c.u.n.t and a.s.s and mouth and back again, and I had the smell of everything on me and in me. I brushed my teeth in the middle of the night, but I let everything else sit until morning.
So I made myself get up, and I made myself take a bath. I washed inside myself with watery fingers. After I got out of the tub, I put hydrogen peroxide on my b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Pieces of me burned, but that was better. At least I felt clean.
BY THE time Del came home from work, I had myself packed and my bags loaded in the truck. I didn't leave when he was working. I wasn't a coward.
When he saw me standing beside my truck with all my s.h.i.+t piled in it, he looked as surprised as anyone who didn't know a thing was wrong. He said, ”What the h.e.l.l, Vangie, what the h.e.l.l?”
”I can't do it anymore.”
”What are you talking about? What can't you do?”
”This,” I said, and motioned to the house. ”Us.”
”You can pour the vodka down the drain. I'll get back on track.”
”That's not it.”
”What is it? Is it the pills?”
”It's not just the pills.”
”Then what the h.e.l.l?”
I didn't feel like saying the word d.i.l.d.o in the daylight, and I didn't feel like saying, I don't like the taste of my own s.h.i.+t. He'd put his c.o.c.k in my mouth after f.u.c.king me in the a.s.s last night, but he probably didn't even remember doing it. So I told Del the one thing I knew to say, that I remembered from the day my mom left my dad.
I said, ”It is never just one thing.”
I unb.u.t.toned my s.h.i.+rt and pulled my bra over to show him the new black places on my b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the ones he bit into me when we were on the sofa. He'd broken the skin twice, and those places were the sorest. I had little bandages on them over the breaks in the skin, but there was still plenty of black blood showing through my skin.
”I don't need such beautiful bruises,” I said.
”It wasn't my intention to hurt you.”
”I know,” I said. ”Intentionally you love me.”
It went on a while longer, but there's no point in repeating the words. Just as I was getting into the truck, though, Del said one thing that, while it did not change what was happening at that moment, changed everything that had happened before -all of our time together.
”I knew you f.u.c.ked him, Vangie,” he said. ”But it doesn't matter. It never did.”
For a second I thought he was talking about Kevin Keel, and then I realized it was not the latest lie he was talking about but the old one.
”Frank told me that night,” Del said. ”He couldn't wait to tell me.”
I let his words sink in. They wrapped themselves in my hair and fell tingling and burning on my skin.
”Why didn't you ever say anything to me?”
”What was there to say? It was done.”
”Didn't it bother you?”
”Sure it bothered me. Then I didn't care.”
”You didn't care at all?”
”I didn't know why you did it,” Del said. ”But I knew I didn't want it to matter. It didn't change anything between you and me.”
By the way he said it, I could tell he believed it. And maybe it hadn't mattered. Maybe he loved me exactly the way he would have loved me even if I hadn't f.u.c.ked Frank. Maybe Frank wasn't the reason Del bit black bruises into my skin. Maybe Del really didn't care that I was the biggest liar that walked the earth. And maybe Del was just trying to give me what he thought I wanted when he shoved his c.o.c.k and d.i.l.d.o up inside me at the same time: two c.o.c.ks. I didn't know.
”It happened one time, Vangie. It wasn't like June and Ray.”
”No, it wasn't like June and Ray,” I said, but all I had to do was look at Del's face to see the truth. That was my piece of the devastation.
”If I could, I would take it all back, Del. I would never hurt you like that.”
”Right,” he said, and looked away. Then he shook his head and looked back at me.
”I thought,” he said, ”that we were really working on something here.”
”I thought, too. I just don't know what.”
I was crying by then, and so was he.
”And you don't think a kid would change that,” he said.
”I don't think a baby would change that.”
I didn't know anymore why I was leaving, but I couldn't make myself want to stay. There was a huge difference between those two things, though, and I knew it. I had to know. My life depended on it.
29.