Maurey showed me how to make a tent out of the blankets so you can read by flashlight and eat graham crackers without your mother finding out.
“But Lydia doesn’t care if we leave the light on and read and eat all night,” I said.
“This is how I’ve always done it. There are certain things you should sneak around to do, even if no one cares.”
“Like reading?”
We sat cross-legged, facing each other, with the books and graham cracker box between us. Maurey’s book was The Black Stallion’s Filly. She’d been on a horse-fiction kick ever since the botched abortion. I was working on Tike and Tiny in the Tetons by Frances Farnsworth, Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre, and the back of the graham cracker box.
Hank loaned me Being and Nothingness. He said it would help me understand life and Lydia.
“Do you understand Lydia?” I asked.
“I’m better with life.”
I spent twenty minutes on the table of contents—“Chapter Three, Knowledge as a Type of Relationship Between the For-Itself and the In-Itself”—and decided I was still a kid after all.
“You’re getting crumbs in the sheets,” Maurey said.
“I thought we were supposed to get crumbs in the sheets. If we didn’t want to crumb the sheets, we’d be in the living room, on the couch.”
“You’re losing your sense of play, Sam.”
“What play?” Maurey was wearing the white nightie and the flashlight light made her new breasts and the undersides of her cheekbones glow while the rest of her stayed shaded.
I wanted to talk more than read. “Is your real name Maureen? Hank said Maurey is short for Maureen.”
“Merle.”
I flipped the light beam up at her face. “Merle?”
“Short for Merle Oberon. She was a movie star in the thirties or forties or sometime when Dad used to see movies all the time. He thought she was the perfect woman.”
“Was she?”
“I’ve seen photographs; she had a face like Charlotte Morris.”
I had trouble with the picture. “You’re named after a beautiful woman who looked like Chuckette?”
“Chuckette’s pretty.”
“If you like a dinner plate with eyes.”
Maurey dug in the box for another cracker. “Our TM Ranch is named for a cowboy star named Tom Mix. Dad’s his second cousin’s son or something like that. He saw Tom Mix once in San Francisco.”
This was considerably more interesting than Being and Nothingness. “What was Buddy doing in San Francisco?”
“Art school at Stanford.” Maurey reached over and with the thumb and forefinger of her left hand, she opened my pajama fly.
I ignored her, but, boy, did I have hopes. “Buddy’s a cowboy. He couldn’t be in art school.”
“Cowboys aren’t stupid, Sam. They just like being alone and outdoors.” Maurey held the graham cracker in her right hand and made a fist, then she let the crumbs sift through her fingers into my pubic area. She said, “Now there’s a sense of play.”
“I’ll show you play.” I dived on her and she shrieked. We rolled around, all tied up in each other and the blankets while I stuffed crackers down her nightgown and she crumbled into my hair. I got her a good one, right up the nose. Amid the giggling and mock screams, we rolled off the bed and crashed to the floor where I came out on top. She looked at me with crumbs in her eyelashes and smiled.
I stared into her blue eyes for a long time, then dipped in for the kiss.
“No,” Maurey said.
“No?”
“We’re having fun, Sam. Don’t spoil it.”
I sat up. “I don’t understand. You kiss Dothan Talbot all the time and he’s a jerk.”
“I kiss him because he’s a jerk. I like you. I can’t kiss you anymore.”
Cracker crumbs trickled down my balls and into my bottom crack. “I’m nice to you, we sleep in the same bed, you’re having our baby, but you can’t kiss me because you like me?”
“Right.”
“And you can kiss Dothan because you don’t like him?”
“I like him, in a different way.”
I reached over and dusted the cracker crumbs out of her eyebrows. “Do you think the fall hurt the baby?”
Maurey sat up next to me. “I hope not.” We sat shoulder to shoulder on the floor, staring at the log wall under my desk. One of the logs had a whorl knot with bark around the outside of the circle. I wondered if Lydia heard the crash. Probably not; it was after midnight.
“Sam,” Maurey said. “I’m sorry you want something that I don’t. I’d like to give you what you want, but you’re important to me now. What with the baby and things all a mess with Dad, I need you too much to risk anything more than friendship.”
She put her hand on my knee. After a while, I covered her hand with mine. We laced fingers and she gave me a little squeeze.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“I don’t either.”
“Shit.”
“I’m crumby. Want to take a shower?”
Wednesday evening as the three of us walked into the White Deck, Maurey stopped and stared off toward Kimball’s Food Market.
She said, “They’re going to Jackson to church.”
“Who?” I didn’t see anything other than a white Chevelle with the engine left running.
“That’s Mama’s car,” Maurey said.
Annabel came out of the grocery store carrying a single brown paper bag, followed by Petey in his dark suit that made him look like a miniature hit man. Annabel was wearing a purple print dress with yellow leaves on it and a hat.
Petey stopped and pointed toward us. I could hear his high-whine voice but not the words. Annabel looked at us a moment, then opened the back door and set in her sack. She said something to Petey as she moved around the Chevelle and got in the driver’s side.
“That’ll be Dad’s beer and this month’s Redbook,” Maurey said. “She always buys that stuff on the way to church.”
The passenger door opened from the inside and I could see Annabel gesturing for Petey to get in the car. He pointed one more time, then he climbed in and they drove off away from us.
Maurey stared after them. “How does she dare show herself in church after what she’s done?”
Lydia sniffed. “How does she dare show herself in church wearing that dress?”
“So Dothan’s going to drive over here in his Ford to pick up his date and her roommate?”
“What’s the matter with that?”
“Won’t he think it squirrelly that you’re living at a guy’s house?”
“I told him the truth—Mom and I had a fight so I’m staying with you and Lydia.”
“And he didn’t think that was squirrelly?”
“I didn’t ask him if he thought that was squirrelly. I don’t care what he thinks it is.”
“Well, it’s not traditional.”
“You think I should wear this yellow sweater Lydia loaned me or the blue shirt with a white dickie?”
“The blue shirt makes your eyes look nice, but I have serious doubts about the dickie.”
The eager boy climbed the highest peak in the Tetons to ask a question of the wise, tall one.
“Sam Callahan, why is it I always want to be with one girl and I’m always with another one?”
Sam Callahan scratched his thick beard. “God planned it so everybody likes somebody but no one likes the person who likes them.”
“Why?”
“The purpose of our existence is to keep God entertained.”
Double-dating is stupid to begin with. It’s hard enough to relax with one person without having to keep track of the insecurities and innuendos of a whole other couple. With me and a girl, there’s one relationship to be paranoid over. That’s plenty. With four people, I count six connections—me and Chuckette, Dothan and Maurey, Maurey and Chuckette, Dothan and me, me and Maurey, and Dothan and Chuckette. Which would be complicated enough even if Dothan’s date and I weren’t about to have a baby.
We drove into Jackson to a Leap Year Day sock hop at the Mormon Church rec hall. The Mormons had February 29 mixed up with Sadie Hawkins Day from the Li’l Abner comic strip. I think that’s because Sadie Hawkins Day is when women can force men to marry them, and Mormons have the same superstition about leap year. Whatever the reason, almost all the kids except us were dressed in Dogpatch clothes. I wasn’t into that straw-in-the-hair stuff. Dogpatch was too close to North Carolina.
Down South, Fundamentalists like the Baptists and Church of Christ don’t believe in mixed dancing, but Mormons must be different. Or maybe Wyoming is different. Anyhow, the decadence of doing the twist eight feet from your partner in a fluorescent tube-lit room with more chaperones than dancers thrilled Chuckette to the bone.
She said, “Daddy’d die if he saw this.”
“So would my mom.”
They stacked Pat Boone and Chubby Checker 45s on a Sylvania record player and we danced under a basketball net. Refreshments were lemonade and cookie squares made out of Rice Crispies and melted marshmallows.
“They’ll stick to my retainer,” Chuckette said.
“I’ll eat yours.”
This room with walls the same color as Lydia’s face was like dancing in a brightly lit Ping-Pong ball. The chaperones made us change partners regularly so no one would feel left out. During a Sam Cooke song about this guy who was an idiot in school—“Don’t know much about history, don’t know much biology”—I found myself dancing face to face with Maurey. Sam Cooke thought if he made all A’s some girl would get hot for his bod and what a wonderful world it would be.
“Having fun, Sam?” Maurey asked.
I was listening as Sam Cooke connected grade-point average to sex appeal. My fantasy life was peanuts next to this guy. “What?”
“Are you having fun?”
“After an hour, the twist is boring.”
“Sharon can do the shimmy. Dance with her.”
Sharon could do the dirty bird, mashed potatoes, and the itch, only the chaperones stepped in when she did the itch.
“That’s disgusting,” Maurey said as Sharon dug into herself like a flea-bit dog.
Dothan did a leer. “I’d like to itch her.”
Chuckette popped her retainer. “After high school, I’m joining the Peace Corps.”
The chaperones kicked a guy out for being from Idaho.
At the end, two Sunday-school teachers held on to opposite ends of a dowel rod and us boys were formed into a limbo line. Girls couldn’t do it because they were wearing dresses. We shuffled around to the music, pretending we were Negroes going under a stick. I bombed early on purpose so people would think I was too tall to see how low I could go.
Chuckette gave me this look that said I’d let us down as a couple. I played Hank, which I’d been doing a lot lately.
Dothan made the final three, but this one skinny little cowboy in boots could really get down there. He didn’t even take off his hat. When they gave him the prize—The Pearl of Great Price in a vest-pocket edition—he said bareback training made him limber.
Except for a fight in the parking lot between the guy from Idaho and a chaperone, the dance was over by ten.
“I should of jumped in the fight,” Dothan said.
Maurey shoved over right next to him in the front seat. “Whose side would you have been on?”
“Doesn’t matter, I should have jumped in.”
“Why fight when you don’t care which side’s right?” I asked.
Dothan threw a gap-toothed look of disgust over his shoulder. “Only an outsider would have to ask that.”
“You’re from Alabama.”
“After high school, I’m gonna join the Peace Corps,” Chuckette said again. She had me backed against the passenger’s-side back door. When she talked her retainer made clack sounds in my ear.
Maurey turned on the radio. “I thought you were planning to get married and have three sons after high school?”
“I might do both. Daddy says we can’t get married till I’m eighteen.”
We? It’s like you go on a date with some girl and she construes it as a life-long deal. One movie and a sterile sock hop and it’s marry her or break her heart, although breaking Chuckette’s heart wouldn’t cause that much stress. I could have Lydia do it.
“I should have kicked that guy’s ass,” Dothan said.
Maurey turned up “Deadman’s Curve” by Jan and Dean. “Which guy?”
A plane flew over GroVont and I pretended I was the pilot, looking down. He’d probably miss the whole town, see nothing but moonlight off the snow and mountains. Every building on Alpine was pitch-black. The Forest Service lights were all off, and the Tastee Freeze. A glow came from Kimball’s, caused by the refrigeration units, but the White Deck to Chuckette’s could have passed for a ghost town.
The kitchen light showed from our cabin, but it was after 10:30, so I figured Lydia was on the couch in the living room. Hank’s truck sat parked in the yard. Otis stood next to it, sniffing a tire.
“Kind of pretty when everyone’s asleep, isn’t it,” Maurey said.
“That dog knocks over our trash one more time, I’m gonna shoot it,” Dothan said.
As we pulled up in front of the Morrises’ house, the porch light came on. “That’ll be Daddy,” Chuckette said. “He says we can’t waste electricity so he stays up until I get home. Mom stays up from worry for fear I’ll be in a wreck. She says if I stay out late, she won’t get enough sleep and she’ll be sick the next day and it’ll be my fault.”
“Sounds pitiful,” I said.
“They’re good parents.”
“Want me to walk you to the door?”
The Morrises’ front porch was the only lit-up spot in GroVont and that’s where we stood to say good night. I didn’t want to kiss her, but her face bent up toward me seemed to expect it. Sexiness and pity just don’t mix. When I leaned in to Chuckette’s thin lips, the porch light flashed.
“I’m in trouble now,” she said. “Daddy’ll make me ask God for forgiveness.”
“We didn’t do anything.”
“I had an impure thought.”
“I didn’t.”
I got back to the Ford to find Dothan and Maurey’s faces in a lock. I hopped in the front seat next to them.
“Fun night,” I said.
Dothan looked over Maurey’s shoulder. “She bite your tongue again?”
Dothan pulled up beside Hank’s truck and turned off the engine. We all three sat in silence, staring at the cabin.
“Good night, Sam,” Dothan said.
I opened the door, but didn’t move. I looked at Maurey. “You coming in?”
“In a minute.”
“I can wait. The lock is kind of tricky and we’d be less likely to wake up Lydia if we go in together.” Which were lies; the door wasn’t locked, and Lydia was either awake and getting laid, or she was already asleep and nothing short of a fire would affect her.
“She’ll be in when she comes in,” Dothan said.
“I can wait if you guys want to say good night.”
“Get out of the car, Sam,” Dothan said.
I looked at Maurey. She reached over and patted my hand. “I’ll be in in a minute.”
“I don’t mind waiting.”
Dothan said, “Sam.”
In the bathroom, I did the introspective mirror deal for a while. I stuck out my tongue to check the white moldy stuff that sometimes grows there. I wondered if Lydia really connected to herself by touching her tongue in the mirror. Seemed kind of stupid, but I guess you do whatever it takes to feel like you and the person in your body are related. I brushed my teeth with Maurey’s blue toothbrush, then I shook it as dry as possible and hung it back next to my red one. Maybe the basic way people connect is through the mouth; that would explain the French kiss.
Because the dryer was broken, Lydia had clothes draped all over Les’s horns. I tried to picture Les as a noble beast surviving the wilderness, then carried the deal onto some religion where awareness stays with the body after it dies and he was up on the wall knowing full well that a neurotic woman had hung bras and hose around his horns and stuck a Gilbey’s label over each eye. What indignities would fall on my body after I died?
I sat at the kitchen table, staring down at one of Lydia’s ever-present half-finished crossword puzzles, drinking a Dr Pepper, and chewing on some of Hank’s jerky, which also came from a noble beast of the wilderness. More indignities.
I figured if sex was poker, the order of the winning hands went like this: mouth to mouth, fingers to tits, mouth to tits, fingers to crotch, mouth to crotch, crotch to crotch; although mouth to tits and fingers to crotch might be reversed or equal. Subheads would include fingers to tits through shirt and bra, through bra only, or directly on nipple. Then there was tongue in ear.
Dothan and Maurey would be about stage two by now— fingers to tits, probably below shirt and above bra. Her right tit was a little bigger than the left one. The tip end stuck out farther.
They wouldn’t fuck in my driveway, would they? Get sweaty and wet, blow come right in the Ford? There was nothing in the world to stop them. I could flash the porch light like Chuckette’s father did, only our porch light was burnt out. That would only piss Maurey off anyway.
Alice jumped on the table and sat on the crossword, mewing. I didn’t care what went across or down anyway. I poured a little Dr Pepper in a saucer and watched as she lapped it up. Would he undress her completely or just pull her skirt up? Dothan was the kind of jerk who would expect a blow job and give nothing in return.
I stood in the dark in the living room and peeked through a crack in the curtain. The half-moon gave the snow a dull nickel look and Soapley’s trailer could have been a spaceship or a bloated pill. Dothan’s car was too steamed to see into, but I imagined movement; I imagined her mouth around his penis and his fingers tangled in her hair.
The Oriental gentleman slid the evil device around Sam Callahan’s finger and over his neck, across the soles of his feet to the twin hooks embedded in his testicles.
“The ancients called it the self-starting torture kit,” he grinned. “If you ignore it, the pain is small, but if you think about it, if you worry it, if it makes you sad, it will gradually rip your nerves to shreds and tear your balls out. Eh, eh.”
Sam Callahan checked the fit. “Sounds like my kind of deal. I’ll take one.”
As an act of rebellion, I put on the paisley pajamas and sat at my typewriter, pretending to read Being and Nothingness. I heard Maurey at the front door and in the bathroom. The water heater knocked when she ran hot water. Nobody would ever sneak around and use hot water in my house.
She came in the bedroom and shrugged out of the blue shirt and pulled the white dickie off. I couldn’t see any marks on her body.
“You used my toothbrush,” she said.
“I deny it.”
She slid the white nightie on over her head, then sat on the bed to pull off her shoes and skirt. No panty shot tonight. “We saw you spying at the window.”
“Maurey, I do not enjoy these double dates.”
Maurey picked up her hairbrush. “You’d rather I go out with him alone while you sit here and wonder?”
“I’d rather you not go out with him.”
“Not an option.” She talked as she brushed. “If it makes you unhappy, I’ll move out. I’m not here to make you unhappy.”
“I don’t want you to move out. Living with you is neat.”
“What do you want then?”
“Within the options?”
“Within the options.”
She held her head down to brush up from the back of her neck. The truth of our baby floating around in this little girl zipped in and out of my grasp. I’d never even looked at a baby up close before. Alice hopped in my lap and I sat, petting her and wishing I could touch Maurey and tell her I loved her, but knowing that would be squirrelly. I wished I had a father.
“I want a Fudgsicle. How about you?”
She looked at me and smiled. “Okay.”
I made pecan pancakes while Hank walked to Kimball’s Food Market and back for the Rocky Mountain News. The women padded around in their nightgowns, looking rumpled and beautiful as they waited for the coffee to kick in and the day to start.
Maurey wore my red slippers. Her hair had that clumped-to-one-side look women get when they sleep.
“Sam slept in paisley jammies again last night,” she said.
Lydia lit a cigarette. “What a chump; your mother and I should exchange children. Annabel would love a child in paisley pajamas.”
“She could iron them every afternoon.”
A tiny row of bubbles appeared around the edge of each pancake. I eased the flipper under a corner and checked for golden brownness. On the one hand it was really nice and homey sitting around the kitchen like this, contentedly feeling the night fuzz drop from my brain. I’d always wanted a family.
But on the other hand two women could be lots more than twice as scornful as one. My life might become nothing but the object of snappy banter. I was glad when Hank showed up with the paper.
“Dibs on the funnies,” Maurey said.
Lydia affixed herself in Hank’s arms and gave him an open-mouthed kiss that lasted like three minutes.
“Ish,” I said.
Maurey rolled her eyes up under her eyelids. “I’ll never act like that in front of my children.”
“Me, either.”
Lydia broke off the kiss and went all smug. “You’ll never have a sexual technician like mine.”
Hank looked more embarrassed than pleased, but I could tell he was somewhat pleased. Not many good lays get public appreciation. I flipped a pancake wrong and batter glomped all over the griddle.
Lydia ate like a hog. Her appetite must be connected by direct wire to her crotch—one orgasm and she turns into Johnny the Lumberjack.
Maurey didn’t eat any.
Hank and Lydia got into a fight that just about snuffed the afterglow. Lydia tore a comic page down the middle. “Red Ryder and Little Beaver are ethnic perverts.”
“Don’t make fun of Little Beaver,” Hank said.
“Look at this yellow headband. He’s an embarrassment to beavers everywhere.”
Hank looked. “I have a headband that color.”
“Ethnic pervert.”
The sports page was all Boston Celtics and Winter Olympics. Skiing just wasn’t my gig.
I was making a second pot of coffee when someone knocked on the door.
Maurey’s face went happy. “That’ll be Dad.”
Hank and I traded a quick guilt glance. Males must be born with a fear of fathers at the door.
I said, “Buddy?”
Maurey set down her mug. “I figured he’d be down from the TM this weekend. Thanks for letting me stay here.”
Lydia said, “You’re welcome.”
Throughout the whole deal, Maurey and Lydia always knew what was going on and they never told me. I didn’t find out Maurey was moving in until she was in, and now the same thing was happening on the move out.
The knock came again. As she walked barefoot into the living room, Lydia said, “I’ve been waiting to meet the fabulous Buddy Pierce.”
I looked at Maurey’s eyes. “Are we splitting up?”
She was still smiling on account of her dad. “Oh, Sam, we were never together. I’ll still be over every couple of days.”
“What about the baby?”
She glanced behind me to see if Buddy was in earshot. “We’ll name him after he comes.”
“Where will she live?”
“We’ll know when it happens, no need to worry about stuff like that until he’s here.” I knew she was lying. I’d bet anything that Maurey and Lydia both knew what sex, what name, where it would live, and what sports it would go out for. In their little brains they’d already planned its life; they just weren’t telling me.
Lydia’s voice came from the living room. “Would you care for some coffee?”
“No, thanks, I’ll pick up my daughter and be gone.”
Then they were in the kitchen and everyone was shuffling around being awkward on the deal.
“Hank,” Buddy said.
“Buddy,” Hank said.
I guess Buddy felt odd about working out a family crisis in front of people he didn’t know. “Get your things,” he said to Maurey.
“I’m already packed.”
Buddy stood next to me, which made me nervous and itchy. I mean, how far had Annabel filled in the details? She couldn’t very well say, “Sam fucked our baby,” without spilling the disgusting details of Howard Stebbins and Rock Springs. Any hint of truth would disorder the dickens out of her order. But then, the very term “make a clean breast” might appeal to Annabel.
I risked a look up, but he was so close all I could see was a plaid shirt, an unzipped red parka, and that black bush of a beard. He stayed put while Maurey went off to our room to gather up her suitcase and bear. When had she packed anyway? Had to be while I was in the shower, but you’d think I would have noticed when I got dressed.
“Get an elk this year, Hank?” Buddy asked.
“Yes. You?”
“Killed a cow up on Goosewing.”
“Goosewing has always been a good location.”
Both men were trying to out-stoic the other. Lydia took the pot from my hand and ran water. “Maurey tells us you went to art school at Stanford.”
Buddy’s beard nodded.
“What kind of art interested you?”
“Bronze.”
“I love bronze, don’t you, Sam?”
“It’s my favorite metal.”
After that no one said anything until Maurey came in and stood next to her father. He put a hand on her shoulder. “Thanks for taking care of my daughter. I hope she wasn’t trouble.”
Lydia smiled at Maurey. “No trouble. You have a fine little girl, Mr. Pierce.”
The beard nodded again.
“See you in school, Sam,” Maurey said.
Then they were gone and, at thirteen years and six months, I discovered the pain in the ass of a woman walking out the door.