“I ate a horse’s face once,” the littlest boy said one night.
“Oh? Did the horse cry, or was it already dead?”
“That’s not what you’re supposed to say. You’re supposed to say gross. Ew.”
“Well, in some cultures, the horse’s face is like candy. It’s a rare treat.”
“What’s a culture?”
“It’s a group of people who are stuck with each other.”
“Like a family?”
“Yes, but bigger. Without a house. Spread all over the place.”
“Is there a dad and mom?”
I snuffed out the conversation with some tickling. The two of them were ridiculously easy prey. I could gesture at them, a snatching motion with my hand, not even touching them, and they would weep with laughter, protecting their soft spots, which was pretty much every part of them. The tickling was foreshadowed, and I almost didn’t even need to be in the room. I could hold up a single finger and they trembled. They were mine. I owned them. As I was doing it, triggering the most helpless giggles from these two little guys, I couldn’t help thinking how much I’d love to be able to end an adult conversation this way. Just when things got fraught or tense or dull I’d slide my hand along an inner thigh or into an armpit, and poke into the sweetness to see what sort of explosive verbal helplessness came back. Except of course adults aren’t ticklish. Profoundly not. Parts of their bodies have died, the whole interior—a kind of early death of the nerves. Immune to sensation to a large degree. Dead person walking, and etc. Being tickled, once you’re older, is simply like being excavated, as if your flesh were soft and would give way, as if it could be spooned out of you with a long finger.
We got into a little bit of a routine after the kids went to sleep. Drew drank too much at night, then pretended, I think, to need my help getting to bed. He would act sort of out of it, almost asleep. Bereaved, tired, and drunk. He would murmur in some private dialogue with himself. The widower’s soliloquy, I guess. I heard Sarah’s name, but I tried not to listen too carefully—it was like eavesdropping on his thoughts, which I wanted no part of. I pretended that he was speaking a language I didn’t know, and it sort of worked. I’d take his arm and escort him upstairs. Thank god he didn’t really need to lean on me, because he was huge and leaden and I am only as big as I need to be—that’s always been my size. We’d get upstairs and I’d help him strip down to his boxers and T-shirt. Beyond that I had no interest, or even tolerance, I don’t think. There was not a human being on earth whose sleepwear concerned me, least of all Drew’s. Nor were there any nude bodies beyond those freely available on the Internet that I felt I needed to see. Anywhere. And I must say that the human body, in this sort of man at this age, perhaps especially after the loss of a spouse, can cause some feelings. If I looked at him too closely I felt like I was at the morgue or the butcher or that the world had ended. Somehow I had started to associate Sarah’s death with him. Because she had died I started to think that so had Drew, by association. Or literally. That he was effectively dead and whatever he’d been doing these last few days only amounted to final spasms and twitches. Throes, I guess they are called. Soon he’d stop seizing. Soon he’d go cold. I’d have to make a call and get him removed. I knew this wasn’t true, of course, but I also worried that it was. I was torn between worry and knowledge, and worry was always more persuasive. Worry had the upper hand. It was best to just get Drew under the covers so that I didn’t have to see. I could deal with his head, poking above the blankets. That was manageable.
“Sometimes I pay for hand jobs,” he mumbled one night, as I was pulling down his shades.
I was hardly listening, and I didn’t think he was even fully awake, but I was curious. “How much?” I asked.
He didn’t answer, but he tossed and turned a little bit and issued a high-pitched cough.
“How much do hand jobs cost?” I asked again.
Drew rolled over and spoke into his pillow. “You have to pay for a massage, and then it’s extra for that.” Maybe he was being shy or maybe he was just barely awake. “Sarah knew. It wasn’t like that. I mean, I never told her, but I know she knew. She was okay with it. We never discussed it. She didn’t mind. I wanted to tell her.”
“So you can’t go in and say, no massage, just a hand job. I’m in a hurry?”
“No, you can’t even say hand job. They will kick you out.”
It sounded like he was talking from experience. I pictured him getting kicked out of a massage parlor, emerging into the afternoon light of a strip mall, shielding his eyes, deciding if he should maybe just get some ice cream. “So how much then?” I asked.
“Two hundred dollars.”
“Interesting.”
The next morning I got the boys to their bus stop early and they begged me to wait with them. Of course I would never have left them alone, but it was nice to be wanted, and I let them try to talk me into staying. Usually they’d just pull on my arms until I fell in the grass with them, and that was it, they’d made their case. I told them that they should both be lawyers, they were very persuasive young men. And I would say just this once as they sat on me and played with my hair, telling me that I was their favorite couch, the best couch ever.
The rule in the mornings was that the boys could wear their helmets to the bus stop, but when the bus came they had to take them off, and then I carried the helmets home, two stinking shells that clacked together and that I dreamed of hurling far into the woods, where I am sure they would serve as a cautionary tale to the animals, a dual beheading of some mythical beast. Except there weren’t any woods. The land was too valuable in this neighborhood. Just lawn after lawn after lawn. For some reason, Drew had warned me not to use anyone else’s trash can. Like, ever, or else I would have already ditched the helmets in one of them by now and then played dumb later. He was very solemn in his warning. If you put even the littlest piece of trash in someone else’s can, they’d see you and they’d go nuts, apparently. It was worse than shitting on someone’s floor, I guess. Every house had a massive trash can out front, nearly the size of my bedroom in college. You could easily put a body in one. You could stuff blankets and pillows down into the bottom and have, I bet, an incredibly cozy and private nap. No one would think to look for you in there. It was sort of the ultimate panic room. Hidden in plain sight. With mountains in the distance, too, if you drilled yourself a little peephole.
The boys held my hands and together we leaned over the curb and looked down the street to see if the bus was coming. No feet allowed in the street, I always said. At times like this the boys were fond of interviewing me. Did I know how to swim? Did I like cheese? Who was my favorite superhero? How old was I? Why wasn’t I at my own house right now? Did I ride a school bus when I was a little girl? When was I leaving? Would I be gone when they got home from school today? How did I get to be an aunt? Is there a school for that? When did I meet their mom? Were we friends or enemies? Could I beat their dad in a fight?