My father opened the door and there was a boy I know in the porch light, said he was going to take me for a ride and that we’d get some donuts and coffee for us and my father if he wanted any, maybe some for my mother, who was in the den painting her nails and humming church tunes with my brother Larry, did he want any donuts?

My father said okay and that he wanted a cruller with a large decaf, Mom wanted glaze, Larry, jelly, and they let me go in the car with him, into the passenger seat where the seat belt hung limp above my shoulder. That’s broken, he said.

I’d never been in his car before. No one I knew had cars.  He didn’t play the radio and he didn’t talk so it was the sound of the slick roads and the tires skidding along fast turns. The window was cracked open, mists of water coming in cold onto my arms.

I liked him.

He took out a black cigarette and draped his wrist over the window’s edge. When he lit it, it smelled like gingerbread. Where do you know him from? my mother once asked. School, I said, which wasn’t a lie. He doesn’t look seventeen, she said. I said he’s not, he’s eighteen, which was a lie. He cleans the floors. Like a janitor? she asked. Exactly.

She didn’t like this.

But Dad works at a factory, I said.

She said, it’s a cleaner job than cleaning.

How can a job not cleaning be cleaner than a job cleaning?

She didn’t get it.

—

We pulled into the parking lot and he slid the cigarette between his lips and started to talk with it like that. Don’t move, he said. I’m coming around and opening your door. How sweet, I thought. When I climbed out, he stood still, looking at the latch.

That’s broken too, he said.

The donuts came in a box, all different kinds, and the coffee in Styrofoam cups and cardboard holders. He ordered me a hot cocoa, which he knew I liked because he had seen me drinking it in the cafeteria with Lisie, who I knew he messed around with. I asked him once in the broom closet. I’d heard things. Who told you that lie? He looked away at a can of Bon Ami. He asked if it would make a difference to me. I said it would. I thought I might cry but didn’t. The room was musky and smelled like a lawnmower bag. He sat me on the desk where I’d kissed him before, my ankles banging into its cold legs. Outside in the fields, girls were playing lacrosse, grunting. Just tell me, I said. He leaned in. There’s nothing to tell you. When he started to trace little circles up and inside my skirt, my chin dropped to my chest. We stopped talking.

He held the box in his lap and ate a jelly roll in the driver’s seat, turning the wheel with his knees. I asked him why he offered my family donuts. Because, he said. They’ll like me. We stopped at a red light. I wasn’t eating anything even though I was hungry. I didn’t like sweets but they smelled puffy and warm. It made my stomach feel empty and ache. He pulled the car into a parking lot with turned-over shopping carts and placed his hands between the seat fabric and my back, feeling for exposed skin. There were sugar grains still on his fingers. When we stopped by a rusted freight container, he leaned and pressed and tightened and kissed me. It was coffee-tasting and dank. Distant houses with dots of window light seemed still and leaves on nearby trees were blowing, the windshield wet. There were empty cups on the floor, my father’s full and upright, still hot.

We moved on one another like I had seen in movies on cable with my brother, the blue flashing of the television and peach-colored bodies. I did not want all of it then, not in a parking lot, not in a car, but he was heavy on me and sure of himself. On the television there were bedrooms and sheets and great care and good lighting. Under him, things were shifted, they were swollen. When I said I wanted to wait, he told me we were there now, it was dark, we were alone. Things were already happening. I had become aware of him, of myself, the clothes that had come undone. The keys left in the ignition rattled against the wheel from new movement. The radio was on. When I asked him to stop, he said nothing. There were tears in my eyes from what it felt like. No one had warned me about that part. I asked him again, this time lower. He put a finger in my mouth and I bit it. He must not have heard me, I thought.

—

Thank you for the coffee, said Dad. Thank you, said Mom, not looking at him. Coffee’s nice and hot still, they said, bending back their lids. On television was a program about whales, migrating, beached. Sit down, son, said Dad. Tell me about you.

I left them with their hands in the box, Larry anxious and on his knees. In the bathroom I wrapped toilet paper around my hand and wrist and soaked it under warm water to press where it hurt. I looked in the mirror like everyone always said they had done after. I didn’t look like anyone else, even though I wanted to.  There will be a mark on your soul, my mother always warned. She crossed herself. She often went to Mass and knelt. In the reflection I saw my grade-school graduation photo. I saw the blue silk screen, my hair in a bun. I still had a gap between molars, a scar below my neck. I flushed the toilet and watched the water whirl and then vanish. I didn’t get sick but wanted to.

In the living room, he wasn’t there anymore. He had to go, said Dad. So predictable, said Mom. He left you some sweets, they told me. He wanted to say good night, they said. The lid of the box was open against the table. Sticky wax paper on the carpet by my brother’s bare feet.

I went to the window without eating, looking for tail lights, the glint from a bumper, a door handle. The TV was still on, my family transfixed. There was a whale on the sand and people around it covering their mouths, watching.

Good donuts, said Mom. Nice young man, said Dad.

Story by Alissa Riccardelli
Photography by Agnes Samour