Bent Road - Lori Roy [82]
Chapter 24
Celia props the last dish in the drying rack, hangs her dish towel on the hook over the sink, and taking one last look around the kitchen to make sure everything is in its place, she flips off the light. Daniel and Evie’s rooms are quiet, have been since dinner. Daniel didn’t eat a bite. Celia will make pancakes for breakfast—his favorite. A light still shines in Elaine’s room where she and Ruth are quietly talking, probably planning the bodice for Elaine’s wedding dress or picking the flowers for her bouquet. Elaine thinks lilies but Ruth likes carnations. Checking that someone locked the back door and giving the deadbolt an extra tug, even though Arthur has twice done the same thing, Celia walks toward her bedroom and meets Arthur as he comes out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist, the steam from a hot shower following him.
His skin is thicker since they moved to Kansas, like a hide. His face and neck are dark, his hands rough, his back and chest broad. Celia touches his collarbone as she slips past him into their bedroom. He smells of soap. He takes her hand, stops her, makes her look up at him. She knows what he wants. He wants Celia to believe in him, to trust him. Laying her hand flat on his chest, she closes her eyes, breathes in the warm air about his body and prepares to tell him the truth. While he was in the shower, she called Floyd, even after Arthur said it would do no good, that it would only stir up Ray, stir up more trouble. She called Floyd and told him that Ray tried to take her little girl. She lied to Arthur and she was hateful to him, if only in her thoughts. Not once, not ever, in all their years together, has she been so hateful. Not even when Arthur brought home the new truck and lashed her Detroit life to it, did she have a hateful thought. She made herself trust him then and she wants the same now. More than anything, she wants to trust him.
Pulling their door closed, Arthur backs Celia toward the bed. As she lowers herself, Arthur standing before her, she lifts her hands and lays them on his stomach, bending her fingers, gently denting his dark skin with her nails. If he is more of a man now, then she is more of a woman. When they lived in Detroit, Arthur wore a starched shirt to church, shined his shoes once a week and sat for a haircut every fourth Tuesday. Celia wore pearls on Sundays and set her table with pressed linens. But here in Kansas, Arthur’s shirts are fraying at the collars and cuffs and Celia’s pearls are packed away in a box in her top dresser drawer. They are different, both of them.
Letting her hands slide down Arthur’s flat stomach, Celia pulls apart the towel at his waist. She needs him to make her feel clean again because the showers and shampoo and soap did not. She needs Arthur to make her forget the way Ray looked at her or the feel of him grinding himself into her thigh, to make her forget the thought of Ray with her little girl, his dirty hands touching Evie’s yellow hair. Clawing Arthur’s back, she draws him down on top of her and buries her face in his shoulder where the muscle dips into his neck. He pulls her skirt up, presses aside the crotch of her cotton panties, and forces himself inside of her with one quick motion. The pain lasts only an instant. His movements are quick, fierce, almost angry. Pressing his face into the mattress, he muffles a groan. And then his breathing quiets. He shudders and is still. Celia needs something more, wants something more. But it’s over.