It was delicious: the man’s head in Kit’s hands, his gray-brown hair curling between her fingers, the searchlight of his tongue sweeping her mouth. They made out with the propulsion of teenage astronauts. Afterwards, Obsession for Men lingered in the lines of her neck.
It started with them sneaking off after work in the man’s convertible to listen to Springsteen and Mellencamp with the top down. His Mustang was vintage burgundy, he said, pulling onto the dirt road. As if she cared. The paint crackled at the dents, like the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes.
In the back seat, Kit splayed her arms beneath the weedy Ohio sunshine. It was too humid for shoes on her swollen feet. She tumbled off her scuffed Mary Janes; he tossed his tassled loafers atop them. That’s when she knew.
She followed flitting swallowtails across the pollen-orange sky, pretending not to notice his gaze. She sang a little ditty about Jack and Diane, pounding drumbeats on her thighs.
On the second verse, the man joined in.
They met up after their shifts on Tuesdays because nothing remarkable ever happened on a Tuesday. At forty-seven, her weeks were a mix of wage work, PTA meetings, free classes at the library, and her writing group: five mothers writing memoirs. None were finished yet.
It took months of parking along fallow fields south of town, the man’s hungry mouth on hers, for Kit to realize her family liked her being gone. On Tuesday evenings, her husband and sons reveled in a mom-free house: they ate greasy Delfino’s pizza from the box while watching reruns of Married with Children. They drank Coke rather than milk and left a mess, calling her Peg and snickering for her to clean it up when she came home. They couldn’t be bothered to use a fucking coaster though a stack of them sat right there. Their pop cans sweated white rings onto her mother’s coffee table.
One Tuesday, Kit slid a duffel bag in the back seat of the vintage burgundy convertible; she kicked off her shoes in front. The man’s shit-eating grin shone as he rumbled the engine to life. Kit stretched her arms to the twilight, tickling the stars as they pulled away, a cloud of dust streaming behind.
The man chased the sunset west. They’d make Sturgis by Thursday, Spokane by Friday, the man said—as if she cared.
Good mothers don’t leave, a voice hissed. Even dead, her mother blurted the punchline before Kit could finish the joke.
The cool wind nipped at her cheeks as the purple night descended. They’d have to close the top soon—but not yet. Kit liked air and space. That’s why the man had anchored it open: for her. She watched him drive, his hands at ten and two, his eyes scanning the meadow edges for deer. Already, he was turning responsible. Kit didn’t want to think about that.
Instead, she sat back and hummed along to Small Town. She pictured her family enjoying their evening freedom in the form of reruns, soda pop, pizza. It was magic, wasn’t it, what Kit had done? She had the power to make every day Tuesday as long as the trip lasted.
She liked to think her family was happy about that.
Gabriela Denise Frank is a Pacific Northwest writer, editor, and creative writing instructor. Her essays and short fiction have been published in True Story, Hunger Mountain, Bayou, Baltimore Review, Crab Creek Review, The Normal School, Lunch Ticket, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She is working on her first novel. You can find Gabriela at @CivitaVeritas and www.gabrieladenisefrank.com.
Photo by Jordan Nix on Unsplash.
