Free Off Keck Road by Mona Simpson Page B

had to change.
    And now that her own gramma was dead, it seemed odd that this grandmother was still here, in her house, the same.
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    At first, George never let himself go all the way in, even though she wanted him to.
    â€œYou gotta be in one piece for your wedding,” he said.
    In all her life, he was the only one who said the words “wedding” and “you” in the same sentence.
    Not even her grandma had supposed she would get married. Her family never spoke about any of that in reference to her.
    â€œâ€™Specially you,” he said. “It never bothers me, but some kid doesn’t even know you? That’s the way it is at that age. They don’t know nothing, but they think they do.”
    â€œYou’re strange,” she said, socking him in the warm gut.
    â€œI’ve always been strange,” he said. “I’ve just gotten used to it.”
    She tried to think, while it was happening, how he saw her leg. Sometimes she imagined it was the part of her he wanted. She pictured her bones the way they might look to somebody else—the dull foot, the slant leg—like a clump of hair growing out where it’s not supposed to be, on an elbow, a shin.
    When she asked, he told her, “You’re different at first, but then you’re not. Then you’re just young.”
    It was a small motion like a sawing. She could feel herself hanging on underneath wanting nothing to change, nothing to stop, like that dog, needing the hit hit hit.
    Nothing had happened until after her grandma died.
    Shelley knew her grandma wouldn’t like it. “Other people’s lives aren’t yours and they aren’t going to be,” her grandma had said. “You have to think what’s interesting for yourself in your own day.”
    But maybe, Shelley thought, still under him, his shoulder pressing into her collarbone, maybe they are the same. She didn’t love him—not la-de-da love, nothing like that. But it was easier after to laugh.
    The first time it happened, they were behind the currant bushes, by the cement mixer, bags of the dusty formula stacked around them like a fort. Nance had taken Petey off to get new Keds and then they were stopping at Dairy Queen for Dilly bars.
    After that they watched for when she and Petey were gone. They never talked about it. They just noticed and waited. Her grandmother’s house was across the way, sitting empty. She still slept there most nights. But they never went inside that first summer. Uncle Bob sometimes walked back and forth in the yard with a stick. It would have required talking about it and planning. They just waited until they were both alone, an acre of hot quiet land ringing around them, and then the air got thicker, making their skin itch and swell.
    Only one time, they saw another person: Wesley popping wheelies on his bike in the back of their lawn.
    It was never romantic.
    They knew each other too much already. Shelley thought it was the opposite of romance, or what she’d seen of that so far. If romance was your heart beating too fast in your chest and your breath shallow and catching, this was more like boredom. Where it was easy to say whatever just walked through your mind.
    The only time her body was really like that, when something felt the way it was supposed to look from the outside, wasn’t sex; it was the day they filled the swimming pool. That was already July the second year. They couldn’t finish the first summer. They covered up the hole with tarps and bricks when the frost came, and then there was snow damage they’d had to repair. But finally it was done, all the cement poured, the bottom painted—that was what made the color. When they turned the hoses on, the thing just filled, the clear water turning blue when it gained volume.
    He let her be the first one. She stood on the diving board for a good long minute, springing on it, feeling