The Blood: A Denouement

“I wasn’t your first,”I say to her one day when we’re in bed together.

I’m not sure what brought that on, but she doesn’t deny it.

“Was it Grange? Did you fuck him first?”

Delia is never ashamed. She has the expression of a cat as she sits up in bed, pulls one knee to her chest and begins filing her nails.

“No.”

“Dillard?”

“No.”

I’m waiting for her to either deny fucking some of my cousins, or to tell me it’s none of my business, but she just looks amused.

She says nothing, and after a long time, she speaks.

“Pamela taught me all sorts of things. All herblore. She’s a real witch, you know? In the best way. Things got lonely for me, especially in that time when your bitch of a mother drove my father away. He was too beautiful to love women. Never really thought much of any of them except for Pamela. And me.

“I used to watch him dressing, and showering. He was so glorious. Muscled, like he still is, the color of marble, or ivory. All that tumble of golden hair.

“One night, while he was sleeping, for I had made him sleep, I came to his room, and pulled the blankets away. He was so lovely, Nathan. I had never properly seen a man, and he was so lovely. I was afraid at first, but I did not want to waste the moment. I knew no one was with with us, but I looked around anyway. I closed the door. I disrobed. I touched him, Nate. I touched him and watched him rise and be hard the way men are.”

I should have been sick when she said this. I should have thrown her out of bed, but maybe the same kind of spell she’d used on Steiger she was using on me. I just lay listening, and while she told what she did, she illustrated it with me, her hand working on me.

“I pleased him, watching him rise and rise, watching him smile in his sleep, watching those strong arms reach out for me. And then when he whimpered, even though I was a virgin, even though I was afraid, I mounted him. Like this. Like I am mounting you right now. And it hurt, Nate. It hurt so bad, his cock in my virgin pussy, the way you’re in me now, but I sat down harder, and rode him and rode him until… Yes… Just like this.”

Because I had turned her over and was fucking her, was pumping all of my fury and disgust into her harder and harder, quicker and knowing, as the bed creaked rapidly, that she was delighted by my lust, my disgust, my animal nature, that I was doing the same thing to her Grange and Dillard and Byron and even her drugged father had done and when I came so hard I screamed, and we began to pull away, Delia began to speak again.

“I wiped the blood from him, and I climbed out of the bed and went back to my room. He had no idea.”

“You’re a monster.”

“Maybe,” Delia shrugged.

“I hurt all day. I planned to never do it again, but the hurt reminded me how much I loved having him in me, how much I loved men. So… I waited a week. Eventually it became a few times a week. There were drugs and… I suppose you would call them spells… so powerful I could spend the night in bed with him, and who he thought I was I will not say. I thought I might end up pregnant by him. I almost hoped I would. But one morning, while I was riding him he came to. He blinked up at me, and I knew he knew. He threw me off of him.”

“That’s why he left.”

“That’s why he left,” Delia said.

“I was distraught,” she continued. “For two days I cried, and then I got up and went over to the house on Williams Street.”

“And found Granger.”

“No,” Delia shook her head. “Well, I did, but I wasn’t looking for him. Or Marianne, that bitch.”

“You watch your mouth. She’s a nun.”

“Of course she is. Only Christ would fuck her. I didn’t care about her then, and I definitely don’t care about her now.

“I didn’t care about Granger either, not at the time,” Delia said. “I came for his father.”

“Uncle Will?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a liar.”

“That’s the one thing I’ve never been.

“You have to understand, I needed a man.”

“He turned you down.”

“He did not. He felt bad about it, but he didn’t turn me down. He had me in that basement of his, on the floor. All six feet and two hundred pounds of him. He crushed me, and I loved it. I felt like between the weight of his body, and the size of his cock I was being pressed out of myself. He was forty-five and that stupid Maris was upstairs the whole time and Marianne praying her Rosary. I was thirteen.”

“I hate you,” I told her, because I did. She had made not just me, but all of the men in my family something I could respect. Will had been gone for years, and I couldn’t bear to think of him that way, and yet, the more this slut told me these stories, the more aroused I became.

I fuck her all the time now and write about it in here. No one’s going to see it but me and the truth is, for the first time I enjoy being me, enjoy being this bad man, and Delia’s a bad woman. She always was. She lives in the carriage house with Byron, and Byron is asleep by eight. When I fuck her in their bed, I half strangle her and make her promise she isn’t fucking anyone else. When it’s, done sometimes there are bruises and bites on her, but I slap her, the way she likes if she tries to bruise or bite me After all, Becca can’t know, but I don’t want to talk about her, because with her I’m someone different. I’m the man I should be. I go to work, protect my family. With Delia I’m a monster, and we both like it.

One night Delia says, “I’m not even fucking my own husband. I can’t remember the last time I had Byron, and I certainly can’t remember the last time he satisfied me….”

Becca tells me I’m going to be a Dad all over again. I take her and Marabeth for ice cream and feel like a good husband, like someone who isn’t cheating on his beautiful wife with the girl who’s supposed to be her best friend. It feels good to feel like a good man, and Mara looks at me with so much love in her eyes. They all do, my whole family. I’m finally the man I was supposed to be. I think I go to Delia to break it off. I tell her Becca’s pregnant with my son so it’s over.

Delia laughs and slaps me real hard back to reality.

“We’ll never be over, Nate. She’s not the only one pregnant with your son.”

I stare at her.

“Yeah,” she laughs. “That’s right.”

Cigarette in hand, Marabeth realizes she isn't nearly as surprised as she should be.She knows where the journal is headed, but is compelled to read on, to let her father tell her the truth she should have known.

Ten pounds, ten fingers ten toes, the happiest baby I’ve ever seen, and out of the womb with a head of dark hair! We’ll have to do something about that mess. My son, Kristian Strauss. Rebecca said he should be named after my sister. I’ll put that out of my head. He’s going to be a different type of kid. In her way, Mara is fascinated by him.

The baby went missing for a moment. Becca was out of her mind. Found Mara and Amy and Maris playing with Chris in the stroller. He was gnawing on Becca’s bra. When she exploded and asked Mara what she was doing, she just said, “Breastfeeding him.”

Seven pounds all limbs and digits accounted for, my second son! James for my Dad, his granddad. James Friederich Strauss. The others were pale and dark haired, he’s golden and blond, and his eyes are going to stay blue. I can tell that already. Jim, you’re such a happy baby. You’re nothing like me and your mom or the man you think is your dad or your grandparents, except maybe Steiger. Pamela won’t stop hovering over you. She’ll hardly let me hold you she wants to hold you so much. Here comes Byron.

It all makes since, and she’s been waiting for this since Delia first came into the story.Since the strange letter about Jim being her Golden Brother, really. On some level, knowing how… challenged... her Uncle Byron was, she’d always suspected he couldn’t be Jim’s father. Maybe, on some level, it was the reason for the strife between Kris and Jim.

“I have to tell him about this,” Marabeth said. He has to know, Marabeth is thinking as she pulls on the housecoat. He has to know before anybody else.