Rant

monks and embroidery is to Irene Casey—eating pussy was to Rant. He used to wedge his face between my legs and slip his tongue into me. He’d come up on his elbows, smacking his lips, his chin dripping, and Rant would say, “You ate something with cinnamon for breakfast…” He’d lick his lips and roll his eyes, saying, “Not French toast…something else.” Rant would snort and gobble, then come up with his eyes shining, saying, “For breakfast, you drank a cup of Constant Comment tea. That’s the cinnamon.”
    From just the smell and taste of me, he’d nail my whole day: tea, whole-wheat toast without butter, plain yogurt, blueberries, a tempeh sandwich, one avocado, a glass of orange juice, and a beet salad.
    “And you had an order of fast-food onion rings,” he’d say, and smack his lips. “A large order.” I called him “the Pussy Psychic.”
    Bodie Carlyle ( Childhood Friend): In the time it took most folks to sit around a table, say a blessing, pass their food, and eat it, eat a second helping, help themselves to pie and coffee, then drink another cup of coffee and start to clear the dishes, in that same stretch of time, the Casey family might take only one bite. One bite of meatloaf or tuna casserole, and still be chewing it. Not just eating slow, but not talking, not reading books or watching television. Their whole attention was inside their mouth, chewing, tasting, feeling.
    Echo Lawrence: Get real. Most guys are keeping score with every lap of their tongue. Every time they come up for air, they’re clocking your pleasure. And, lick for lick, you know this had better balance out with the pleasure you give them back. So, lick after lick, you never can relax and get off, not when you know that meter is always running. Every lick an investment in getting licked back.
    Even guys who hate bookkeeping and doing their taxes, guys who could only shrug if you asked their savings-account or credit-card balance, they’ll compute the exact number of laps their tongue’s done around your snatch. And the payback they have coming. The sexual equivalent of clock watchers or bean counters.
    That’s every guy—except Rant Casey. He’d stick his tongue into you and years could pass. Mountains erode.
    Edna Perry ( Childhood Neighbor): Christmas dinner in England, when you find a clove in your food, it means you’re a villain. Automatic. If you find a little stick of a twig, you’re the idiot. No arguing. And if you bite into something and find a rag of cloth fabric, folks will know you’re a slut. Imagine that, being branded a slut, right there at Christmas dinner, but Irene Casey swears she read this in a book.
    Echo Lawrence: One time, face planted between my legs, Rant surfaced for air, picked a pubic hair off his tongue, and said, “What happened today? Something bad happened…”
    I told him to forget it.
    He licked me and rolled his eyes, licked again, and said, “A parking ticket? No, something worse…” I told him to forget it. I said nothing had happened.
    Rant licked me again, only slower, dragging his tongue through me from back to front, his breath hot, and he looked up, staring, until I looked down at him. Met his green eyes. He said, “I’m sorry.” Rant said, “You lost your job today, didn’t you?”
    My stupid fucking job I had, selling mobile fucking phones.
    Like, he could find out anything with his nose, and from the taste of you. That was Rant Casey. Always right. And between orgasms, I started to cry.
    From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms ( Historian): Every family has its scriptures, but most can’t articulate them. These are stories people repeat to reinforce their identity: Who they are. Where they came from. Why they behave as they do.
    Rant used to say, “Every family is a regular little cult.”
    Basin Carlyle ( Childhood Neighbor): Don’t laugh, but in France, Irene says, they bake a metal kind of lucky charm into their dessert cake. Their rule is, the one who bites the charm has to cook the next supper, but folks in France are so cheap they’re more likely to swallow the charm. So they won’t have to host.
    From her reading, Irene says Mexicans bake a Jesus baby doll into their food. Folks in Spain always throw in some loose change. Irene showed me a little brochure for baking fancy cakes, told all about it. The entire history of cakes from around the world.
    Irene Casey ( Rant’s Mother): Near as I recollect, Chet and Buddy didn’t start out slow