Jackie Gleason waddled up to the podium and blew into the microphone. The immense crowd at the Wyoming State Fair rustled and grew quiet as wind over the prairie. Mr. Gleason turned sideways so he could see the three women and speak into the mike at the same time.
“Have the judges reached their decision?”
Hayley Mills, Doris Day, and Maurey Pierce all nodded simultaneously.
“The envelope please.”
Doris Day stood and handed the paper to Mr. Gleason. Her eyes were glazed and her forehead the most relaxed it had been since babyhood.
Mr. Gleason opened the envelope as he swung back to the crowd. “And the winner of the Wyoming State Fair blue ribbon for orgasming women is,” the crowd held its collective breath, “Sam Callahan.”
Yea!
As Sam made his modest way to the stage, a band broke into “Semper Fidelis” by John Philip Sousa and the Cheyenne JayCees’ fireworks display lit the air. The crowd went wild with enthusiasm.
Sam shook Mr. Gleason’s hand and accepted the award. Then he turned to the judges and smiled. At the sight of Sam’s tongue, Doris Day passed orgasm again.
Having never made out or even kissed before Maurey came along, I only knew one way to do it and that caused me some grief at Chuckette’s teen party. Grief isn’t exactly the word. I didn’t care enough for that. More like unpleasantness in an ugly way.
It ended up in the closet just like Dot said it would. Dot comes off as a pleasant ding, but whenever she says something will happen it generally does.
I was about ready to throw up, watching Dothan and Maurey flirt. He came dressed in black corduroys that I wouldn’t be caught dead in. He had on this jeans jacket with his shirt not tucked in so the tails flapped around like tabs on the front and back. I hate that. Maurey couldn’t say a sentence without touching him and he couldn’t say a sentence without her flying off into laughter.
She looked good too. Her eyes were brighter and her breasts seemed to be growing by the day. It was Saturday and every Saturday Annabel drove over to Idaho Falls for the AAUW bridge club, so we’d got in the routine of practicing on Saturday mornings while Lydia was off doing something wholesome on a snowmobile with Hank.
I spent that morning in bed with her but Dothan got the date. What a gyp. Maurey and I about had the practicing thing down. We’d discovered there’s more to it than boy-on-top. As long as this stuck to that, you could wander all over the room—the thrill of the odd position. Maurey even got off again, a lot quicker this time. My jaw didn’t feel like I’d chewed eight pieces of Topps baseball card gum.
We French kissed a long time afterward and I liked that just fine, better than the actual humping.
“You disappeared,” Maurey said.
“I’m right here with you.”
“Every now and then your eyes go away and your mind leaves the room. I feel as if I’m somebody else to you.”
I rolled off her but stayed where I could see her face. “I make up stories sometimes.”
“Like Mark Twain?”
“I guess. If I can’t be a baseball player, I’d like to be a writer someday.” I’d never told anyone, not even Lydia, that one. I couldn’t believe the stuff I exposed to Maurey. I mean, I didn’t know her that well outside of the sack.
“When you’re with me, you should pay attention.”
“Are you really going to this dumb party with Dothan?”
She sat up. “It’s impolite to give me a hard time while I’m still glowing from an orgasm.”
“Glowing from an orgasm? Where’d you hear that?”
“Redbook. It was a test. And, yes, I’m going with Dothan and you’re going with Charlotte. It’ll be good for you to watch me with him, keep you from getting attached to me.”
“But I’m already attached to you.”
“We can’t practice anymore if you get attached.”
“Okay, I’m not attached. I don’t give a hoot for you.”
She didn’t care either way. “Orgasms make me nauseous. Isn’t that weird?”
“Did you ask Lydia about that?”
Maurey leaned back on her shoulders to pull on her panties. “Just don’t be squirrelly around Chuckette. This is your big chance to get a girlfriend.” Maurey had a beautiful back.
Five hours later we played this idiot game where each girl writes down a name from the first four books of the New Testament and the boys say which one we’d like to be and when there’s a match, the guy and girl go in the closet for five minutes of timed fun. Biblical necking.
The damn game was rigged. Every girl there got the boy she’d picked out ahead of time. There were four couples: Kim Schmidt and LaNell Smith, this guy and girl from Jackson named Byron and Sharon, and us. Sharon had long blonde hair and, coming from Jackson, had everyone swamped in the sophistication deal. Chuckette sucked up to her like the Sharon stamp of approval was the last thing in parties. LaNell looked slightly lost without LaDell there to giggle with. She and Kim didn’t pass two words with each other outside the closet. I bet nothing happened inside either.
Maurey went first and I said “Luke” because I knew she liked Little Luke on The Real McCoys, but Dothan said “John” and got her. They either set it up or she knew he could only remember one book of the Bible. As they were stepping into the closet, Dothan grinned at me and winked—I could have shot his leg off—and as they came out, Maurey smiled at me. God knows why.
In between Chuckette went on about the fondue and 7-Up.
“Try dipping a piece of cauliflower, Sharon. I don’t eat hard vegetables on account of my retainer, but I know they’re good. We bought the fondue pot in Yellowstone Park.” Sharon looked at the cauliflower distastefully without touching it. The fondue pot had a spouting geyser on one side and some little bears following their mother.
Sharon was at least as beautiful as Maurey, who was in the closet. And LaNell wasn’t all that bad when she kept her mouth shut. The truth is I was more attracted to every girl at the party than I was to Chuckette, which is kind of sad because when she wasn’t sucking up to Sharon she was sucking up to me.
“Want some more 7-Up?” she asked.
“Okay.” Out of pity, I dipped some cauliflower in the melted Velveeta. I always feel like crap when I do something out of pity.
“Do you like ‘Dominique’ by the Singing Nun?” Chuckette asked. “It’s number-one on every station.”
I nodded and Sharon sniffed. Byron spent the whole party inspecting his boots. Kim and LaNell sat on the couch with paper plates on their laps. Neither one looked at anybody or said anything, except once when Kim did his barfing-dog imitation.
“I think Dion is gross,” Sharon said.
Chuckette and I agreed immediately.
“Gross,” said Chuckette.
“Gross,” I said.
LaNell coughed politely.
Since the whole valley seemed to have me fated for Chuckette Morris, I’d gotten the lowdown from Maurey. Chuckette didn’t have a tremendous amount to look forward to after the seventh grade. Her father, Don, worked for the phone company. Jackson already had dial phones and the outlying areas would follow by spring.
Don Morris once sent an entire paycheck to Oral Roberts. The family had to live on Wheaties and potato chips for a month. Chuckette had a younger sister named Sugar, who was destined to take everything Chuckette ever got away from her. Even at the party, Sugar hung around on the periphery of the action, going through the stack of 45 rpm records and telling Chuckette which ones mattered. I wanted to see Sugar naked.
Chuckette’s turn at the game came and we both said, “Mark.” The last thing I remember before they closed the door was Maurey looking at me from the back of the group. She held her fingers up in an A-Okay sign. Or maybe it was something dirty, I don’t know. I’d hoped she might be a little bit jealous.
“Have you ever kissed a girl?” Chuckette asked. Girls are all the time asking me that question. What do I look like anyway?
I nodded but it was way black and she couldn’t see my head. A tiny crack of light came under the door, enough so the penny in one of her loafers reflected a brassy color.
“Have you?” I asked.
“Lots. At church camp last summer three boys kissed me in one night. Deacon Saltzer said they would go to hell.”
“You told the deacon?”
“I can’t lie. If I lied he would have sent me to hell.”
“What’s hell like?”
“Are you going to kiss me or not? We’ve only got five minutes.”
“I don’t want to go to hell.”
“I was twelve last summer. I’m thirteen now. It’s okay to kiss when you’re a teenager.”
“Where’s your face?”
In the dark, Chuckette’s face seemed almost regular. She didn’t have pimples or zits or anything weird like that. Those would come later. I took her by the shoulders and kissed. The poor girl had nothing worth squat in her life, and I felt bad because of that, so I gave her a real kiss. Heck, I admit it, I got into the deal some. I’d never kissed anyone except Maurey, and Chuckette’s lips felt different. They were stiffer. The only weird part was when I touched the retainer.
Chuckette put out a little scream and bit my tongue. I yelped and jumped back, banging into the door. Voices came from outside the closet.
“What’s going on in there?” from LaNell, “Go get ’em, Sammy,” from Maurey, and Dothan, “No copping feels.”
Chuckette kind of whimpered. “That’s disgusting.”
“It was a kiss.”
“With your tongue out? It’s all wet.” We were flattened against opposite walls of the closet, as far away from each other as we could possibly be—about ten inches.
“Is that how people kiss back East?” she asked.
“Sure.” I didn’t know but I had to convince her I was normal and she wasn’t.
“Your mouth was open.”
“That’s how you do it, Charlotte.”
“That’s not how Southern Baptists do it.”
When I leaned to the right, a hanger bonked me in the forehead. My tongue felt stung. I didn’t know if I was bleeding or not and I sure couldn’t go back to the party with red dribble on my chin. I felt around until I found a coat or something and blotted my face and tongue.
“What’re you doing?” she asked.
“Waiting for our five minutes to end.”
Chuckette started sniffling, as if she were trying to hold back tears. When I didn’t do anything, she sniffled a good honky one.
“What’s the matter?”
“The party’s ruined.”
“The party’s ruined because I gave you a French kiss?”
“Is it Eastern or French? Make up your mind.” I didn’t say anything so she kept talking between sniffles. “Daddy said it would end like this.”
“Crying in the closet?”
“He said boys would try to get me passionate so they could make me pregnant and ruin my life and make me go to hell.”
“You don’t sound passionate to me.”
She sniffed a few more times and blew her nose on something. “I wasn’t ready that time. Let’s try again.”
When I came home I found the toaster oven in the front yard. Someone had evidently stood on the porch and heaved it. I picked up the screen deal you put the food on, but left the rest.
The first I noticed when I went inside was a pair of toilet paper tubes up Les’s nostrils. Lydia’s voice came from the kitchen. “When was the last time you did something spontaneous? Just cut loose regardless of the consequences?”
Hank’s voice answered. “Every action has consequences.”
“You’re an Indian. Indians are supposed to get drunk and be stupid.”
“If I’m stupid I go to jail.”
I walked in the kitchen to find Lydia sitting at the table, rolling eight or nine eggs under her hands. Evidence of several more were splatted on the floor at Hank’s feet. Alice lapped at the mess. I set the screen from the toaster oven in the sink.
“Hi, Mom, I’m home.”
She sent me the look and rolled an egg slowly off the side of the table. It went into a slow motion effect as it fell, then it made a pop sound and blew up. The yolk didn’t break.
Hank sat in the other chair with his hands on the varnished wood tabletop, his thumbs touching each other. “When you’re stupid, you get shipped off to live with the common people for a few months. The worst thing that could possibly happen to you is you might lose your trust fund.”
Lydia rolled another egg off the edge. Pop. I opened the refrigerator and pulled out a Dr Pepper. “Either you guys want one?” They didn’t look at me.
“I wish just once you’d do something you hadn’t planned to do,” Lydia said.
I opened my pop and sat on the milk crate to listen. It took ten minutes of back and forth to figure the situation, but near as I can tell, they’d gone with Delores and Ft. Worth to a new pizza place outside Jackson and Delores and Lydia got in a vicious fight about how many glasses of beer come in a pitcher.
Hank didn’t back up Lydia with enough enthusiasm, or maybe he took the what-does-it-matter stance. Anyhow, he’d failed her and Lydia didn’t cut slack when men failed her.
“You’re passive as wet toast,” Lydia said.
“Who sat on her couch for three months, refusing to accept where she was.”
“Who lives in a twelve-foot trailer with a kitchen table that makes into a bed.”
“I do.” Hank’s face had gone rock. I was impressed.
“I’m not about to spend my life waiting for free-cheese day at the county extension office,” Lydia said.
“Who asked you to?”
“You are beneath my dignity.”
Hank reached across the table. I thought he was going to hit her and I think Lydia did too—she paled real quick. Instead, Hank swept all the eggs off in one swoop of the arm.
“Take your dignity and stuff it up your ass.”
Lydia’s color came back. “How dare you resort to violence in my house.”
Hank stood up, knocking his chair back. “You want spontaneous violence?”
“Let’s see it, big man.”
The distance between me and Hank’s head was about six feet. I figured if he lit into her, I could knock him cold with the Dr Pepper bottle before his second punch.
But Hank went indecisive. I saw it in his eyes. He knew she wouldn’t respect him if he didn’t take action and would hate him if he did. Typical Lydia positioning. He gave me a helpless look and left—didn’t even slam the front door. We sat listening as he started his truck and moved off down Alpine. Lydia stared at a spot on the wall.
“Got rid of another one,” I said.
She closed her eyes and exhaled. “Go fuck your little girlfriend and leave me alone.”
Right before the 10:30 bottle Lydia caught Alice peeing in her panty box. I heard a crash and a yell, then Alice tore through my room and into my closet.
Lydia threw a full-scale temper tantrum. Glass broke, tables turned over, threats rained. I sat at my desk trying to avoid notice. At first she blamed all her personal problems on Alice, but the bile soon turned on me.
“I’m sick of that cat, I’m sick of this town, I’m sick of you. Every time I turn around there’s your hurt stare. I can’t breathe without you judging me. Well, I’m a whore and a bad mother, okay. You satisfied?”
“No.”
“But you, you know what you are? You’re pathetic. A pathetic little boy.”
What I knew was I had to clean up the glass, and in one hour—half a pint of gin—Lydia would turn on herself; and in two hours—full pint—she would cry and touch me and beg my forgiveness. Say she couldn’t live without me, I’m all she’s got.
Et cetera. So on. Boring.
The forgiveness part of the deal was harder than the being called pathetic part. I know thousands of kids go through this process every day, but it’s still a pain in the butt.
The next day while Lydia slept I washed all sixty pairs of panties, folded them, and put them in her bureau drawer where Alice couldn’t pee. I didn’t see the pictures of my possible fathers. Lydia must have moved them.
Monday morning was cold at a level you’d never grasp in North Carolina. I woke up to a half-inch of ice along the inside bottom frame of my bedroom window. When I turned on the hot water for my shower, the water heater made knocking noises and the faucet emitted a tiny, pathetic sigh. I brushed my teeth with Dr Pepper.
Lydia had her electric blanket cranked to ten and her head buried.
“Water’s frozen up,” I said. “No bathing till the thaw.”
Her voice came from under the pile. “I cannot survive without a bath each and every day.”
“Keep up the pioneer spirit, Lydia.”
“To hell with the pioneer spirit. We’re going to die in this hell hole and no one civilized will remember our names. The no-neck locals will feed off our bodies.”
“I can’t make you coffee.”
“I shall not be moved from this bed until Caspar sends us two tickets to somewhere warm.”
“Coffee would just make you pee anyway and the toilet won’t flush. Sensitive as you are, you’d better not open the lid.”
Lydia let out a low catlike moan.
I put on about eight layers of sweaters, coats, and scarves and headed for school. The day was an unbelievable clear blue. Humidity froze in the air, making for a sparkly Wonderland atmosphere. Each step caused a loud protesting squeal from the snow. Would have been neat if my cheeks hadn’t stung and the mucus in my sinuses hadn’t iced up a half-block from home.
The White Deck windows were so frosted over on the inside that I couldn’t see who was doing the morning coffee deal. I hadn’t run into Hank since the unpleasantness and I wasn’t sure how to come across—friendly buddies together against the opposite sex: “They’re all bitches, Hank. You can’t live with ’em and you can’t live without ’em”; or loyal son: “Don’t mess with my mama, man.”
I try to always plan for every attitude.
The place was packed but, fortunately, Hank wasn’t there. I sat at the counter between Ft. Worth and a sheepherder named Lasco. Lasco had an odor. When Dot poured his coffee, he dumped in three spoons of sugar and stirred it with his thumb.
Talk at the counter centered on a how-cold-it-was routine. Some guy said forty-eight below at his place and others doubted it. Ft. Worth claimed it wasn’t a degree under thirty-five below zero. They all agreed it’d been a lot colder when they were my age.
Dot set a cup in front of me and said, “You’re blue.”
I nodded, too frozen to be cool.
She started rubbing my cheekbones with both her hands. It was kind of odd, being touched on the face right in front of the guys and all. My eyes were six inches or so off her bra strap; my nose even closer.
She was rough, but she created warmth and gave me the thrill of the day. “Got to get blood moving to your head. You’ll have a frostbite.”
I nodded again.
Ft. Worth was blatantly jealous. He said, “Kid’ll get more than frostbite from all the heat you got going.”
“Keep your pants zipped, Jack,” Dot said. She called everyone Jack when they bothered her.
“If I go outside and turn blue-faced will you rub me?”
“You couldn’t handle it if I did.”
This got a snicker rippling up the counter. Dot was the queen at sliding around flirty rednecks without doing severe damage to their king-hell egos. I never saw her lose a tip by saying no.
Ft. Worth pointed at me with his stub finger. “His little girlfriend’s not gonna like you warming his face on your tits.”
Girlfriend? My stomach went queasy. So the town knew about Saturday practice sessions with Maurey. My first thought was that she would stop doing it and I’d never get laid again. I’d lose her. But the second thought was, hell, I deserve some credit here. This would make my junior high reputation, for good or bad, and Maurey would quit sooner or later anyway. Girls liked a guy with know-how. They’d be lined up for orgasms. My third thought was Buddy’s going to kill me.
Fourth, fifth, and on down the line thoughts don’t matter squat though because the whole process was based on a false assumption.
Dot took her hands away and picked up the coffeepot. “Sam’s too good for Charlotte Morris, anyway. He needs a woman like me, someone who’ll do him better than to bite his tongue.”
I said, “Charlotte Morris?” but the good-old-gang was laughing at Dot’s sauciness and no one heard me. Doesn’t take much to entertain guys who wear caps indoors.
Lasco didn’t laugh. Maybe he only spoke Armenian or whatever language it is that sheepherders speak. His mouth made chewing motions even when there wasn’t anything in it, and he tilted his cup so coffee dribbled down the side and ran off the bottom into his saucer. Then he lifted the saucer and, with a disgusting sound, sucked in his coffee.
There’s some scientific principle why when you try to pour a little liquid from a cup it dribbles off the bottom instead of the lip. I learned just enough in school to know these things had a cause, but not enough to know what it was.
What’s strange in a small town is how you can have a rich, creative sex life with one girl for several months and keep it a secret from everyone, then you go in a closet and kiss someone you don’t give a flying hoot about, and suddenly you’re the town talk.
I got to Stebbins’s class late, just as he was having everyone open Island of the Blue Dolphins. Stebbins’s eyebrows jumped toward each other in a stare and several guys grinned into their hands. Teddy the Chewer hummed “Here Comes the Bride.” Maurey winked at me. She’d been doing a lot of that lately. I didn’t look at Chuckette.
Stebbins talked on about animal symbolism—wild dogs, dolphins, cormorants. I didn’t see it. The girl fought animals or ate them. Where’s the symbolism in fighting and eating?
Stebbins walked up and down the aisles as he called on people. At one point he stopped next to my desk and stood as close to me as he could get. Florence was explaining about wild dogs in Alabama—Lord knows what it had to do with me and my life—while Stebbins hulked above, breathing on my head. I finally looked over to Chuckette and she smiled real sweet. So did LaNell Smith.
When the hall bell rang, I made a beeline for the boy’s room and hid out in a stall full of graffiti, waiting for the next class. Wyoming kids were like the apex of innocence back then. Someone had actually taken the time and energy to carve Gol durn in the door.
I came out of the John to find Maurey bent over the knee-high water fountain. When she stood up, her lips shone from the water and a single drop held on to the edge of her mouth. She was beautiful.
“So you slipped it to chunky Chuckette,” she said.
“I kissed her. Wasn’t that the point of the game—to go in the closet and kiss.”
“Not that kind of kiss. She’s saying you got downright passionate.”
“You taught me how to kiss. I only know one way.”
“Sure, Sam. You just better not ever hurt her. She’s a friend of mine.”
“How could I hurt Chuckette?”
Maurey undid the top button on my shirt. “Didn’t your mother tell you only squirrels button it to the top? I better not talk to you in the halls anymore, Chuck wouldn’t like it. If Mom’ll let me put, I’ll come by tonight after Dick Van Dyke.”
How, all of a sudden, could Chuckette control who talked to me in the hall? I was like the African explorer who said “Pardon me” to the chief’s daughter and suddenly found himself choosing between marriage and having his chest ripped out. We’re talking unfair situation.
At lunch—fish sticks and congealed carrots—I sat across from Rodney Cannelioski. He stood up and left, muttering something along the lines of godless hordes. He should have been the one to choose favorite books of the Bible with her. They could have chapter-versed themselves into a fundamentalist orgy.
A tray slid into view and I looked up to see Chuckette Morris’s face. In institutional cafeteria light, she wasn’t nearly as passable as she’d been in the closet. Her face was flat, like here’s her semi-normal head only the front part has been mushed into shape by a dinner plate and all the features kind of stuck in wherever they would fit. She had these tiny bangs about the length of fingernails.
Her voice wasn’t so bad, maybe I could spend our time together with my eyes closed.
“What were you talking to Maurey Pierce about?” she asked.
I arranged my fish sticks into the shape of a baseball diamond. “When was that?”
“Florence Talbot saw you guys talking after Stebbins’s class. You shouldn’t talk to other girls.”
I came so close to telling her that Maurey and I had been talking about fucking our eyes out after Dick Van Dyke tonight. So close. I could have nipped several months of trouble bang in the bud.
“She was saying how much fun she had at your party the other night. She especially liked the fondue.”
Chuckette’s face lit up. It’s just too easy to make some people feel good. “My mom got the recipe from the back page of TV Guide.”
“It was best with the crackers.”
“Sharon liked it that way too. We’re doubling with Maurey and Dothan to a movie in Jackson Saturday after next. Be sure and bring enough money to pay my way and buy a Black Whip. I like Black Whips. You should know that about me since we’re going steady.”
I had to get out of this quick. “Who says we’re going steady?”
She looked at me suspiciously. “Everyone. They all know what you did to me at the party.”
“Do I get some say in this deal?”
“You wouldn’t come into GroVont and put your tongue in just any girl’s mouth, would you? Maybe that’s how they do things back East, but in Teton County we’re moral.”
“I thought I was supposed to kiss you in the closet.”
“That reminds me, you’re supposed to give me your jacket.”
Now I was riled. Thirty degrees below zero and this little moon-face wants my coat because I pity-kissed her. I said the most self-righteous thing I could come up with at the moment.
“What?”
“It’ll be a letter jacket in the ninth grade, but we’ll make do for right now.”
I set down my fork. “Charlotte, there is no way I’m giving you my coat.”
Tears leapt into her eyes. She wasn’t so pitifully helpless after all. “Ever’one’ll think you took advantage of me if you don’t give me something to seal our love. They’ll say I’m cheap.” Her lower lip went atremble.
“Jesus,” I said.
“Don’t you dare take the Lord’s name in vain.”
“How about a scarf? My grandfather gave me this scarf.” Actually I shoplifted it at Sears when I found out we were moving West. “It belonged to my grandmother. Is a scarf good enough?”
She stopped crying like turning off a faucet. “Let me see it.”
I handed her the thing. It was green and about a yard long. I figured I could survive the walk home without it.
Chuckette stuffed the scarf in her purse. “It’ll do, I guess. You’ll have to buy me a gold chain for our anniversary.”
“Our anniversary?”
Across the cafeteria, I saw Maurey carrying her tray over to a table of ninth-graders. She had on Dothan’s jacket.
“And another thing,” Chuckette said. “All touching stays above the neck until we’re engaged.”
When I came home, Hank’s truck was parked in the yard, which I took as a good sign. Lydia’s the kind of person who when she’s not happy she doesn’t want anyone around her happy either. She can be real uncomfortable to live with when she sets her mind on it. A bitch.
Otis hopped across the road and dropped a red ball at my feet, then gazed up at me with those melted chocolate eyes that only a dog can pull off. Thirty below or not, I had to throw the damn thing.
Otis was really fast, when you consider his missing part. The problem—there’s always a problem—was the ball was rubber and he’d slobbered on it and the slobber froze to my mitten, so throwing didn’t work out well. The ball had a tendency to stick for an instant, then wobble off about ten feet the wrong way. Otis would pounce on it with his front feet and drool some more before getting a good grip.
I finally launched a fairly good throw way up and toward the house. Otis took off like a shaky shot, timing his leap so as to be most impressive. Just as he jumped, the rubber ball hit the wall and shattered into a zillion pieces.
Made me feel like cold crap. Otis hopped around looking for his toy, actually stepping on the shards of frozen rubber. You’d think I’d destroyed his best pal. Maybe I did, hell, dogs can’t tell toys from friends.
Inside, the toilet paper rolls were gone from Les’s nose and the door to Lydia’s room was closed, so I figured we were into a make-up scene. They really did like each other. It’s a shame when people who like each other aren’t on speaking terms. Goes against the natural order.
I sang “Surfer Joe” which was big on KOMA that week, so they’d know the kid was home from school and to keep it down. Cute couple or not, I wasn’t in the mood for moans and screams from my own mother. I fed Alice, popped open a Dr Pepper and dug out some peanut butter cookies, and wandered into the living room.
The thing with Chuckette bothered me, but the thing with Maurey bothered me more. This jacket deal was some kind of a localized social ritual indicating romantic commitment. An anthropologist could go to town on these northern rural types. Maybe in the early days when a warm coat was a matter of survival, giving a woman your jacket was the ultimate love gesture. Anyhow, Maurey was wearing Dothan’s tan-and-dirt letter jacket with the gv on the right breast—definitely a sign of bad news.
She’d be coming over later to do things which the letter jacket implied were off-base, but I couldn’t very well ask her about it for fear of causing her to feel bad. Maurey might get in a bad mood and stop practice if I said something she didn’t want to hear.
In the midst of this daydreaming, I wandered down the hall, stopped to listen at Lydia’s door, and, not hearing a sound, I went into the bathroom. Lydia and Hank were in the tub, together, naked.
“Hi, honey bunny,” she said.
“Hi, Lydia.” Why is it that whenever something interesting happens to my mother it so often revolves around the can? Hank was behind her with his back up against the end of the claw-legged tub and his hands on her hips. Lydia had the toes of her left foot propped on the faucet.
“Hank got the water going,” she said. “Give me a sip.”
I handed her the Dr Pepper. “What?”
Hank looked embarrassed no end. I think the family weirdness had just crossed his acceptable-level line.
“Hank crawled under the house with a torch and thawed the pipes. Wasn’t that nice of him?” Lydia’s breasts were a lot bigger than Maurey’s but not as big as the girls in Playboy. They kind of pointed down and the nipples were dark. Her stomach had creases where she was bent forward. Casual as I kept it for the purpose of not coming off squirrelly in front of Hank, I wasn’t in the habit of nude conversation.
Lydia offered Hank a hit off the pop, but he shook his head without looking at either of us. She handed the bottle back to me. “There’s a letter from Caspar on top of the end table.”
“What’s it say?”
“I wouldn’t open mail from him. I may be your mother, but I respect your privacy.”
“Right.” I took my pop and left.
Sigmund Freud sucked deeply on the opium hookah, raised one eyebrow petulantly, then nodded toward his young friend. He spoke without exhaling. “After careful analysis, Sam Callahan, I find you the most balanced, sane person I’ve ever had the pleasure to converse with.”
“You’re drooling, sir. Have a Kleenex.”
“The part I cannot fathom is how someone as emotionally relaxed as yourself could have survived a chaotic background filled with mixed signals and backward relationships, not to mention Miss Neurotic America for a mother-image.”
“Everyone must survive their mother, Sig.”
Sigmund Freud blew an opium smoke ring into the air and turned into the Cheshire cat. “You are a colossus of will over environment, son. Want a hit of this? It will turn the world into ice cream.”
“None for me thanks. Fresh air is plenty enough drug for me.”
Samuel—
The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them. Think carbon paper, Samuel.
Caspar Callahan
As I read the letter a second time, Lydia came from the bathroom barefoot in her white terrycloth robe. She didn’t look any older than I felt.
“What’s dear Daddy got to say?” she asked.
“He’s been reading again.”
“God, I hate it when he does that.”