Two's Company Shrunken First Semester chapter 14 by maximally

The rest of the week went by in shifts.

Tuesday was briefs. Wednesday was briefs and the shower caddy, which Victoria stuck to the tile at chest height so Max could sit in the little soap dish and watch while she shaved her legs. Thursday she sat on him for the whole of a two-hour Zoom with her book club and never once muted herself when she laughed. Friday was briefs again, all day, all night, and by Saturday morning he'd stopped counting the hours spent in black cotton the way you'd stop counting the days on a long flight. Izzy came and went. Mostly went. Twice more Max heard the third stair at midnight, and twice more Victoria slept right through it.

Then, at eleven-thirty on Saturday, the deadbolt turned downstairs.

"Victoria Maria!"

Max, wedged in his stepmother's cleavage at the kitchen island, felt her whole body jolt.

"Mamá's early," Victoria whispered, and then, louder and brighter: "In the kitchen, Mamá!"

Lupe came through the front hall like a weather front with grocery bags. She had on a yellow embroidered blouse and black leggings, and her braid was pinned up in a crown for the drive. Her lips were already red. She was hauling three bags in each hand without any sign of strain, and the first thing she did, before she'd even set them down, was stop dead in the kitchen doorway and look straight at her daughter's tits.

"Where is he?"

Victoria pointed down. "Right here, Mamá."

Lupe dropped the bags. A can of hominy rolled across the tile.

"Mijo!" She crossed the kitchen in three strides and plucked him out of the V of Victoria's tank top before Victoria could even say hello. Then he was up in the air, and then he was mashed into Abuela's face for a long, loud kiss that left him red from his scalp to his belly button. She smelled exactly like she had the weekend before: rosewater and coffee and six hours of freeway, and underneath that, the honest warm sweat of a big woman who'd been sitting in a hot car. "Look at you! Look at him, Victoria, he's so pale. Are you feeding him? He's pale."

"He's three inches tall, Mamá. He's always going to look pale."

"Hmph." Lupe held him up to the window and inspected him from all sides like a melon. Then she sniffed. She sniffed again, closer. Her eyebrows went up.

"Why," she said slowly, "does this boy smell like your culo?"

*

Lunch was pozole, because Lupe had brought the hominy and the pork shoulder and opinions about Victoria's pantry, and because, Lupe said, there was nothing in this world that pozole couldn't fix.

Max ate a single kernel of hominy off a saucer. It was the size of his head and very chewy.

Victoria told her everything.

She did it brightly, the way she'd tell a funny story at a party, so Max knew she was nervous. She started with the briefs. She told Lupe about the new ones, how Izzy had sized up, and the first hour that became two, and Sunday, and Max going in at four-fifteen and staying in all night.

"All night?" said Lupe.

"He loved it, Mamá. He told me himself."

Lupe looked at Max on his saucer. Max looked at his hominy.

Victoria kept going. The shower. Her feet. The new caddy. And then, with a little flourish, Target. How she'd carried him down El Camino right in her blouse. How they'd bumped into Nikki Allais, and Nikki had hugged her, and how Max had been right there the whole time, invisible, while she told Nikki he was building a school in Mexico with his abuelo.

"With Juan?" Lupe set her spoon down. "You told that girl he's in Mexico with Juan?"

"It was the first thing I thought of!"

"Juan is on a tanker, Victoria. Halfway to God knows where. He can't build a birdhouse. He can't even come home for dinner."

"Nikki doesn't know that."

Lupe was quiet for a long moment. She folded her hands on the table. Max recognized the posture from a hundred dinners at her house; it was the one that came before the lecture.

"So," she said. "Let me understand. Last Sunday, Abuela drives six hours home. And the minute she's gone, you put him in your calzones. You put him in the shower. You take him to Target." Her voice climbed with each one. "And nobody calls Abuela. Nobody sends Abuela a picture. Nothing."

"Mamá—"

"I had to find out from Izzy, Victoria. On Instagram. A story with a black square that just said 'you should come up this weekend lol.'"

Max closed his eyes.

"Izzy!" Victoria shouted at the ceiling.

Upstairs, nothing. Then, faintly, the sound of a door closing very quietly.

*

It took Lupe four minutes to find the legal pad. She found it by the fruit bowl. She put on her reading glasses, which she kept on a beaded chain around her neck, and went down the list with one red fingernail the way she must have graded a thousand spelling tests in Queens.

"One, two, three, done. Six, done. Twelve, done. Eleven, done?"

"That one was an accident, Mamá."

"Hmph." Her finger went back up to the top of the page and stopped. Her mouth pursed. Then it curled up into a slow, satisfied smile.

"Two," she read out loud. "'Her butt.'" She tapped the word. "It says her. It doesn't say how many."

She took off her glasses.

"Well," said Abuela. "Last time I checked, Abuela is also a her."

*

They did it on the cream sectional, because it was the only piece of furniture in the house both of them agreed was wide enough.

Victoria set him on the middle cushion, face up. Lupe pushed him two inches to the left with her pinky, toward the crease between the middle and the left-hand cushion, so the dip would cradle him. Then Victoria pushed him back. Then they both stood over him with their hands on their hips and argued about it for a minute and a half while Max lay on the leather looking up at two faces, two pairs of tits, and two very red mouths, all upside down and blocking out the ceiling.

"Mamá, he likes the middle."

"He likes where the cushions meet. Look at his little face. He's comfortable there."

"He's terrified there."

"That's the same face, mija."

They compromised on a spot right in the dent, exactly in the center. Then they turned around.

Max had been under each of them before. He had never been under both. He had never even seen them like this, side by side and shoulder to shoulder, two huge asses squaring off above him like a pair of moons. Victoria's was on the right, in the stretched-out black yoga pants she wore around the house on weekends: tall, round, high, every curve showing through the fabric. Lupe's was on the left, in her black leggings: wider and lower and heavier, a real shelf that stuck straight out from the small of her back, the leggings gone shiny at the widest part. The two of them nearly touched in the middle, and where they did, the seam of Victoria's left cheek and the seam of Lupe's right made one deep valley of shadow running right down the center.

That valley was where he was.

"On three," said Lupe. "Uno—"

"Mamá, I'm not counting in Spanish—"

"Dos—"

They came down.

Not together. Lupe was faster. She dropped without any of the inch-by-inch fuss she'd made last weekend in the recliner, a strong, easy, practiced sit, and her right cheek came down over the left half of him like a slammed door. Victoria came half a beat later, careful and wobbling, and her left cheek settled across his right side.

Then they both leaned in.

Max had been crushed before. This was something else. On his left was Lupe, heavy and solid, a big bulk of butt with muscle under it that didn't give so much as push. On his right was Victoria, softer, sinking in and spreading out. Where they met, over his face and chest and belly, the two cheeks pressed together from opposite sides and closed over him in a deep hot seam of flesh with one wall made of leggings and the other made of yoga pants. Five hundred and sixty pounds of mother and daughter sat on the same cushion, and the cushion sank, and he sank with it, and the only part of him with any room left was his toes.

It was dark. It was hotter than he'd ever been. It smelled like two different women at once: rosewater and pozole and freeway sweat on the left, and cocoa butter and Victoria's musky, familiar skin on the right. The smells mixed together somewhere around his nose into something new.

He could feel both heartbeats. They weren't in time.

"Ay, Dios," Lupe said. He felt it rumble through her cheek. "He's so little under there. I can barely feel him."

"You're on the wrong side of him, Mamá. I can feel him fine."

"You're on his feet, Victoria."

"I am not." A shift, and a slow roll of soft butt across his right shoulder. "There. Now Mama's got his face."

"I've got his face."

"You've got his ear."

They shifted at the same time, each trying to claim more of him. The two cheeks ground together over him, back and forth, and for a few seconds he was squashed in a living, sliding seam with no air in it at all.

Then the bickering changed direction.

"Anyway," Victoria said, in a tone Max knew too well. It was the voice she used to settle a dinner check. "Mama was thinking, after this, we could do eight."

There was a silence on the left.

Eight. Ass worship. It had two hearts drawn next to it, one in purple and one in red, because Izzy had gone back over it on a second pass.

"You," said Lupe, "were thinking you'd do eight."

"I'm his mother."

"I'm his abuela."

"Mamá, you don't even live here."

"And whose fault is that?" Lupe shifted her weight. Her cheek bore down, and the pressure went from crushing to something past it, and Max's vision sparkled. "You had a whole week with him. A whole week, Victoria. Calzones. Showers. Target. Abuela gets one weekend, and you want eight, too?"

"Eight's a lot, Mamá. He needs to be ready for eight."

"And you think you know when he's ready? You put him in your panties overnight on day nine."

"Izzy said—"

"Izzy says a lot of things."

They were quiet for a second, both of them breathing hard. In the dark under their asses, Max thought he might be passing out. He wiggled. It was barely anything, a weak flutter of one arm in the seam between their cheeks.

"Ay, he's wiggling," said Lupe.

"He's wiggling at me."

"He's wiggling for air, Victoria."

And then, with a sigh of deep, long-suffering patience, Lupe stood up.

Light came back in a rush from the left. Cold air hit half of him. Victoria was still sitting on the rest, and he lay there half-buried under one cheek and half-exposed, gasping at the ceiling, his whole left side glowing red where Abuela had been.

*

Lupe looked down at him over her shoulder. Then she looked at her daughter.

"Here's what's going to happen," she said.

Victoria lifted her hip off him with a small, guilty wince. He lay in the dent and breathed.

"Abuela is staying tonight," said Lupe. "In the guest room. I already brought my bag. It's in the car."

"You're staying?"

"I drove six hours, mija. I'm not driving back tonight for pozole and bickering." She bent down, picked Max up off the cushion in one easy motion, and held him in her palm. "And he sleeps with me."

"Mamá, he sleeps in my—"

"In your calzones. I know. I heard." Lupe's eyebrows went up. "One night, Victoria. Your mother is asking you for one night."

Victoria opened her mouth. Lupe looked at her the way she'd looked at every seventh-grader in Queens who'd ever tried to talk back. Victoria closed her mouth again.

"Fine," she said. "One night."

"And eight," said Lupe pleasantly, "waits. We'll talk about eight in the morning. Like grown women."

From the stairs came a muffled snort.

They both turned. Izzy was sitting on the third step from the top, in a hoodie, with her knees drawn up and her phone in her lap. She had clearly been there for a while. She widened her eyes.

"Hi, Abuela," she said sweetly. "Did you get my message?"

"Isabella."

"I just thought you'd want to know," Izzy said. "Family's supposed to, like, share stuff."

*

The guest room was small and smelled like the cedar closet and clean sheets.

Lupe changed into her old pink housecoat, the threadbare one with the snaps up the front, which Max had seen a thousand times draped over a kitchen chair at her house in LA. She sat on the edge of the bed and took her braid down, slowly, finger-combing the long gray-black waves over one shoulder. She set her reading glasses on the nightstand. Then she took the little gold cross off its chain, kissed it, and set it next to the glasses.

Then she picked him up.

"You know," Lupe said quietly, "your Mamá loves you very much. Too much, sometimes. She was always like that. Everything she loved, she held too tight."

She undid the top three snaps of the housecoat. Underneath, there was nothing but Abuela. Her tits spilled out heavy and loose and settled on her belly, broad and soft and covered in faint silver stretch marks. Her nipples were wide and dark, and her skin was warm brown and still damp from the shower she'd taken after dinner.

"Abuela holds things just right," she said.

She lowered him into the valley between them and did the snaps back up over him, one, two, three.

It was dark in there. It was heavy, and close, and it smelled of rosewater and Ivory soap and skin. Her heartbeat thudded right under him, big and slow, rocking up through her chest. She lay back on the pillows with a groan of contentment, and the whole world tilted backward, and her tits rolled outward and pinned him gently between them.

Somewhere far away, through the wall, he heard Victoria's door close, harder than it needed to.

Lupe chuckled. It shook all through her, and he shook with it.

"She'll be fine," Abuela murmured. "Goodnight, mijo."

Then she began to pray. It was the rosary, in Spanish, under her breath. Max didn't know most of the words, but he knew the rhythm, from Sunday mornings in her kitchen years ago: the same few lines over and over, low and steady, her chest rising and falling under him with every one. He lay there in the dark, held between her tits, listening.

She was asleep before she reached the end. Max lay awake in the dark and finished it for her, in the only part he knew, under his breath.