Goodbye Kiss (595 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.1 on 31 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Jack McCallum (View user info) at 2008-04-28 18:31:25 EDT
Rowena was sitting on her back porch when she heard the knock on the front door. She set down her beer and shouted, "Around back!"
Lorena came down the shaded path along the south side of the house and sat on the stairs.
It was late afternoon. The creek at the edge of the garden was hidden by spring growth, but they could hear it. Beyond the creek was the woods. They had grown up in this house. Rowena lived there now.
Rowena lived there alone, now.
Lorena leaned back, resting against her sister's knee. "Got a cold one for me?"
Rowena took a beer from the plastic bucket. The water sloshed and shards of ice jingled.
Lorena twisted off the cap and took a sip. "I heard something today, Wen."
Rowena didn't say a thing.
Lorena looked at the worn boards of the porch under her sister's bare feet. The boards were littered with damp tissues squeezed into small blue balls.
"Do you need any help with... the arrangements?"
Rowena sniffed, flicking tears away from her eyes with her fingertips. "No."
Lorena sipped her beer. Her big sister would be burying a husband tomorrow. She had no idea how someone did something like that, how they got through it. Lorena had already offered to stay with Rowena, to help out. Rowena had said she was fine.
Lorena had a small antique store in Mendocino, a few miles north of Little River. Little River was where the girls had grown up, and after their parents died Rowena had taken over the house. Rowena was a Realtor. She knew almost everyone in the small town.
They drank their beer and watched one hummingbird chasing another.
"Listen, Wen, about what I heard—"
"You heard the story of disgusting filthy Rowena? That didn't take long."
"I'm not sure what I heard," Lorena said. "I'm not sure if what I heard was exaggerated or twisted or just bullshit someone made up."
"Did they tell you about Rowena the pervert?"
"Wen—"
"Ren, what did you hear?"
Lorena looked up at her sister, expecting to see anger, seeing only the grief that had held Rowena for the past two days.
For a moment Lorena wasn't sure what to say. Then she laughed. She was with her big sister. She could say anything.
"They say you kissed his cock. Everyone is saying it. A lot of people know you. A lot of people are repeating that story. One of them told it to me."
"Hmm..." Rowena said. Amused. Musing.
"Look, Wen, you just lost your husband in a terrible accident and the last thing you need is people spreading bullshit lies about you so just say the word and I'll start kicking asses from here to—"
Rowena laid a hand on Lorena's shoulder. "Little sister big," she said.
Lorena hadn't heard that in years, since school. There was a time when she would take on any girl or boy on the playground, and later, on the street, if they said anything bad about her family.
"It's okay, sweetie. "I'm okay."
"It was probably that fucking Paul Mercer at the funeral home," Lorena said. Little River was a small town, just a few hundred residents. More often than not when dealing with the dead in small towns the county medical examiner would order a body delivered to a local funeral home for identification and examination if there was no foul play suspected. "He thinks he's a big shot with all his gross stories. I can't understand how a shitheel like that could ever get a mortician's license. The creepy fucker."
Rowena laughed. "Yes, he is. But they aren't lying. I did what they said."
Lorena stood, went up the stairs, and dragged an empty chair close to the edge of the porch. She sat beside her sister.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean exactly what I said, Ren. Exactly what they said."
Lorena didn't know what to say. She was no prude, she had enjoyed a lot of sex with a lot of different guys over the years and didn't see any reason to stop anytime soon as long as she played it safe, but the thought of kissing a dead man's cock was just too out there.
"I kissed Jesse's penis, Ren. That's why they are saying what they are saying about me. That's why they looked at me the way they did when I went to the market for beer. That's why they will continue to look at me like that for a long time to come."
"Why," Lorena said. "Why did you do... that?"
"That's what they don't understand, and never will," Rowena said. "I loved him, Ren. We were married nine years and I never stopped loving him. You know what happened, how he died."
Lorena nodded.
Jesse had been driving north on highway 1. A pickup truck and another car were driving south. The bed of the pickup had been packed tight with tools and scrap metal. The tailgate had come unhitched. Debris spilled onto the road. A fuel can full of gasoline had bounced along the highway among hacksaw blades and sheet metal screws and odds and ends of brass and aluminum and steel. The driver of the car behind the truck began pumping his brakes. Jesse had swerved to the shoulder in his lane and was slowing down as the truck and the other car passed him. He would have survived if not for the gas can. The car behind the pickup passed over the can. It ruptured and spat a stream of gasoline into the open window of Jesse's old Mustang. There must have been a spark.
"They asked me to identify Jesse," Rowena said. She was looking into the woods beyond the creek. "He was burned. From the chest up. His face, his whole head. His hands, where they'd been on the steering wheel. When I went to the mortuary he was on a gurney. The medical examiner had stripped him. There was part of a sheet over his head and shoulders. Towels around his hands. A towel over his hips. I could smuh—"
Rowena's voice hitched. She drew a deep breath.
"I could smell him. He was so burned, Ren. I wasn't even sure how I could identify him. I was fighting hysteria. But then a saw a few familiar landmarks on his body. The scar he got on his knee from kneeling to change a flat in San Francisco. He kneeled right on a piece of broken glass. His funny big toe. He broke it twice when he was a little boy, playing hockey back east. And I looked at his penis. I looked around to make sure I was alone. I guess I wasn't. I've been married to him nine years, Ren. I know that part of him as well as any other. He has three little freckles on his penis. Really close together, in a triangle almost. When I saw those, I knew it was him."
Rowena cried a little. Lorena leaned close and hugged her. Their chairs creaked.
"I couldn't kiss him goodbye," Rowena said. "We'd been trying to get pregnant for years now, and nothing happened, and here he was dead and soon I'd have to bury him and he'd be gone forever and I couldn't even look at his face one more time or kiss him goodbye."
Lorena looked down as Rowena took her hand.
"He was so funny, Ren. He could always make me laugh no matter what was on my mind. We also had a lot... a lot of good sex over the years. Some was clumsy. Some was great. Some was incredible. It all averaged out to good. Nine years of good sex and laughter and companionship and comfort. If I couldn't kiss goodbye the mouth that teased me and soothed me and loved me then I decided I'd kiss the other part of him that brought me so much joy. So, yes, the people spreading the story about me are right. I kissed his cock goodbye. And I don't regret it, Ren. I don't regret it at all."
They sat quietly together. After a while Lorena pulled two more beers from the bucket. Before she sat down she faced the house, and the town on the other side of the house, and the people of that town going about their business.
"Fuck you all," she said, giving the unseen population of Little River the finger.
She sat beside her big sister.
They drank beer and watched the hummingbirds as the sun went down. There was nothing more to say for now.
User Reviews
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2008-04-30 21:17:51 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Hasn't everyone?
Submitted by Crystle (user info) at 2008-04-30 18:19:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
personal experiance?
you're saying you kissed dead genitals?
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2008-04-30 18:02:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Crystle (user info) at 2008-04-30 16:32:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
how do you take a repulsive thought and turn it into something endearing?
--
Personal experience.
If Uber has taught you anything it should have taught you that I am repulsive, yet endearing.
Submitted by Crystle (user info) at 2008-04-30 16:32:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
how do you take a repulsive thought and turn it into something endearing?
blargh..
Submitted by ubetidid (user info) at 2008-04-30 12:38:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Adamdidit2u (user info) at 2008-04-29 21:36:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
WTF IM NOT READING ALL THAT!
Submitted by Lib (user info) at 2008-04-29 15:08:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
: )
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2008-04-29 13:04:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
.
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2008-04-29 13:04:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2008-04-29 11:23:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by woolfe (user info) at 2008-04-29 10:38:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by MudWhistle (user info) at 2008-04-29 10:09:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
also the names and abbreviated versions mucked this whole thing up
RowEEna as I imagine it would be pronounced....would that be wEEn (as you wrote 'Wen) for short
LoRAINa as I imagine it would be pronounced....would that be rAIn (as you wrote 'Ren) for short
Submitted by MudWhistle (user info) at 2008-04-29 10:07:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
why would she set down her beer just to say 'around back' ?
Submitted by F.J.Bell (user info) at 2008-04-29 09:59:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
I didn't care for it
Submitted by CaptainThorns (user info) at 2008-04-29 09:47:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2008-04-29 09:45:19 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by HurtByTheSun (user info) at 2008-04-29 03:32:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Enjoyable, but not the best thing you've ever written.
Submitted by Fartman (user info) at 2008-04-29 02:21:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
"There is something very seriously wrong with you, Jack," she said, as she sipped her beer.
"Very seriously wrong."
Submitted by Caulaincourt (user info) at 2008-04-28 23:09:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
save the cats.
stop writing.
Submitted by PepsiCoke (user info) at 2008-04-28 22:42:18 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
No Comment
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2008-04-28 22:17:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
No Comment
Submitted by jasumthin (user info) at 2008-04-28 22:08:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
No Comment
Submitted by sparkle_pink (user info) at 2008-04-28 22:07:46 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Strange.
I thought you captured the setting nicely.
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2008-04-28 20:19:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Ballare (user info) at 2008-04-28 19:12:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
what
Submitted by HotWillie (user info) at 2008-04-28 19:10:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
jack you magnificent cunt you've ruined the submit box nothing else forevermore shall equal this unqualified masterpiece and the crowning achievement of your long and productive uber-life
PLUS FUCKING ONE!
Submitted by Yozz (user info) at 2008-04-28 19:05:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by joedaddy (user info) at 2008-04-28 19:04:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
sounds like something Pam "The Pro" Anderson would do to Tommy "Man-O-War" Lee
Submitted by Poots (user info) at 2008-04-28 19:00:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I liked this an incredible amount of alotness.
Submitted by DonovanMD (user info) at 2008-04-28 18:53:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Not your best piece ever, but better than the majority.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2008-04-28 18:31:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I know I didn't catch all the typos. No way.