Blackbird (14 page)

“You have a nice time, son.” Dad waved a dirty-work-gloved hand at me.

“Thanks, Dad.”

Cherie lives just a few blocks away, and I seemed to get to her house much too fast. I rang the doorbell, half hoping it wouldn’t work, half hoping Cherie’s folks had carted her off to Saugus no matter how sick she claimed to be. But she was at the door so fast she must have been standing right at it, doorknob in hand. She was wearing a white halter top that made her breasts look like a tourist attraction, and a pair of faded bell-bottom jeans. She looked blissfully calm. She whispered, “Hi,” smiling that smile of hers, and took my hand.

I was having trouble walking. I was having trouble breathing. I looked down at my chest and could see my heartbeat.

“Excuse the mess,” Cherie said. This was no hostess cliché, mind you. The house was a mess. It was always a mess. Cherie’s mother possesses housekeeping skills comparable to Cherie’s English skills.

The Bakers have two huge Labradors, and Mrs. Baker chain-smokes Camels unfiltered, so the house perpetually reeks of dogs and cigarettes. “Can I get you anything?” Cherie asked.

“Uh-uh.” In my nervous agitation, I began emptying small overflowing ashtrays into larger ones.

“Please don’t do that,” Cherie said.

“I’m sorry.” I put the ashtrays down and brushed my hands against my jeans. Then stood there, swinging my arms and feeling awkward for what felt like weeks, before Cherie said, “Sure I can’t get you anything? A coke. Iced tea. A beer, maybe.”

“A beer?” I’d never tasted beer in my life. Oh, I’d been offered it, at cast parties and such, but I’ve always feared that if I came home with alcohol in my bloodstream, Mom would somehow know, and go off like a smoke alarm.

“Yeah, a beer. Might calm you down.”

I considered it. Maybe a beer. And then I thought, a hypodermic full of rhinoceros tranquilizer wouldn’t calm me down.

“No. Thanks. Nothing for me.”

“Then maybe we should just go on to bed.”

She took my hand again and led me to her room (by far the cleanest place in the entire house) and plopped down on the Grandma-made-it quilt covering her small unmade bed. As I slowly sat next to her, my only thought was: Oh God, what if I don’t get hard?

Cherie, wisely not waiting for me to make the first move, leaned toward me, placed one little hand on my chest, and kissed my lips.

I’d never really kissed anyone before, so the sensation was brand new.

Cherie’s lips were very soft, maybe even too soft. I wasn’t sure I liked the feeling, but when her little pink tongue wiggled its way between my lips, my dick shot up.

We fell backward and kissed and kissed. Our tongues introduced themselves and did a wet waltz around our teeth. I had often wondered what another person’s mouth might taste like. Cherie’s sort of tasted like nothing, which was fine by me. She stroked me up and down my body with her tiny hands, and taking it as my cue, I began stroking Cherie’s back, her hips, her arms. Her body was like her lips. Soft. Soft-soft, as if she were made of meringue. Still, it wasn’t unpleasant exactly, and all in all I was surprised just how much I liked it, the kissing part, I mean. Cherie seemed to me to be quite good at it. I briefly wondered who’d taught her how. At one point I must have kissed her too hard, because she suddenly pulled away and said, “Hey, not so rough.”

She took off her halter top (something I’m sure I was supposed to do), and I touched her breasts with some curiosity, but not much else, while we kissed some more. I didn’t much like the way they hung. Her nipples were as big around as tollhouse cookies. They just seemed – I don’t know – extreme. After a bit more kissing, which was beginning to lose its novelty, Cherie reached down and began stroking my hard-on through my pants. She looked up at me with a look that I could have sworn was victory. She had probably been none too sure herself if I was going to get hard or not.

“Why don’t we get under the covers?” she said.

Cherie’s naked body was more softnesses, more baby-sweet scents. She lay on her back, and her breasts seemed to want to fall into her armpits. She almost hoisted me on top of her, and she took my penis into her hand. Her little hand couldn’t quite encircle it. She had just begun guiding it into her when I remembered my friend the rubber.

“Um, shouldn’t I, y’know, use something?”

“Unh-uh, I’m on the pill,” she whispered.

And I thought, Wow. The Pill.

And it suddenly occurred to me, for the very first time (if you can believe it), that Cherie had obviously done this before. Probably often. I was just beginning to fret about whether or not I might measure up to however many guys she might have been with before in her life, when all of a sudden Cherie lifted and I sort of fell, and I was inside her.

I caught my breath. A long tremble started at my head and sprinted down my back. The feeling was all but indescribable. Warm and wet and nearly unbearably delicious. It felt so good, I giggled. It felt so good, I bit my lower lip. It felt so good, I was hardly all the way inside her before I came, crying out as if someone had jumped out from behind a door and yelled Boo!

“I’m sorry,” I said through some ragged breaths.

“It’s all right.” Cherie stroked my back. “Just wait a minute or two.”

And in just a minute or two, we were doing it again. I’d never gotten soft, and when Cherie began to move, I moved with her, almost as if she were teaching me to dance, and almost before I knew it I had the basic step down and we were moving together.

It wasn’t a very long time before I could feel another climax slowly sliding the length of me, and I moved faster. Cherie grabbed my behind with her hands and pulled me up and into her with an amazing amount of force. I closed my eyes, and I could just see Marshall MacNeill’s face in the red-and-black behind my eyes as I came again.

I could hear Cherie making a succession of little kitty-cat noises beneath me before my arms gave way and I collapsed, barely retaining enough presence of mind to fall to one side rather than directly onto Cherie. We both gasped audibly at the sensation of my slipping so quickly out of her wet pussy.

I lay on my back, trembling and short of breath, staring at the ugly old light fixture over Cherie’s bed, wondering at the way Marshall MacNeill had popped into my head while I was trying to screw Cherie. I felt a little guilty, as if I had cheated on her or something.

Cherie tucked herself into my armpit and stroked my chest. My entire body was exposed nerve endings, and I nearly jumped to the ceiling at her touch.

“Well?” she said after a while.

“Well what?”

“Was it good?”

“Yes. I liked it. I really did.”

“And …” She seemed to be groping for words to express a difficult thought. “How do you feel?”

“I feel good.”

“You know what I mean.” She poked at my belly, tickling me.

“Do you feel … you know, different?”

Then it hit me. She wanted to know if she’d cured me or something. I’d actually managed to forget that that was the whole point of our going to bed together in the first place.

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh.” She drew away from me quickly, rolling as far to the other side of the bed as possible. Which wasn’t far – it was only a single bed.

“I’m sorry, Cherie.” I touched her shoulder, making a little stroking motion with my hand. “I told you it wouldn’t work.”

“I know,” she said through a sniff, and I knew she was crying.

I reached out to hug her, but she drew away, nearly falling off the bed.

“Would you please go.”

“Cherie – what can I do?”

“Nothing. It’s not your fault, okay? Would you just please go.

Would you just do that for me, please?”

“I’m really sorry, Cherie.” I slid out of bed and broke speed records getting dressed. Cherie didn’t say a word, just sniffed now and then. “Cherie” – I paused at her bedroom door – “You know I love you. As best I can.”

“I know.” I could just barely hear her.

I went home, feeling lower than the gutters, and managed to get all the way to my room without being seen. I started to put Joni on the stereo, but I wasn’t in the mood for any music at all, or even for the French numbers lady. I wrapped myself around a pillow, curled up on my bed, and just lay there, feeling bad. I wasn’t even sure if I was feeling bad for Cherie or feeling bad for me or all of the above.

But I figured I was going to feel pretty much like shit for quite a while.

Chapter Eleven

The next day was, of course, Sunday. And Sunday, of course, meant church. We go every Sunday, Mom and Dad and me, except on the rare occasion when Dad just can’t seem to drag himself out of bed in time, or when I for whatever reason just stay home and have cinnamon toast and hot chocolate for breakfast, and watch “Bullwinkle.”

I’m not what you’d call terribly religious. Not anymore, anyway. I went through a period when I
was
terribly religious, when I was about twelve years old. It started right after I saw
The Song of Bernadette
on TV. I’d read about it, and I knew Jennifer Jones had won the Oscar for it, and that was my main interest in the movie, initially. As you may or may not know,
The Song of Bernadette
is about Saint Bernadette of Lourdes, who was a poor, ignorant, but basically good French peasant girl back in the late 1800s, who sees a heavenly vision of the Virgin Mary in the village garbage dump. I swear. And she performs several miracles and digs a miraculous healing spring that people still flock to by the thousands, and becomes a nun, and later, a saint.

Well, this was all pretty fascinating to little me, especially since by this time I already had something of a nun fixation. I had seen
The Sound of Music
about thirty-seven times. And the Singing Nun (both the real one and Debbie Reynolds in the movie). I knew all the words to “Dominique” by heart, in French. I’m not sure what it was about them, but I did have this thing about nuns. Nothing against the church I was raised in, you understand, but you have to admit the Baptist church is mighty low in the nun department. No nuns or priests or monks; they don’t make an awful lot of the Virgin Mary, except maybe at Christmas (after all, where would Christmas be without her?); and you’re not likely to hear a lot of talk about heavenly visions of anybody, in or out of garbage dumps.

Anyway, by Bernadette’s big death scene, all backlit and with an off-screen chorus singing high, sustained chords all over the soundtrack, I knew I wanted to become a Catholic. Maybe even a priest. Being ineligible for nunhood, it was the best I could hope for.

I went to the public library and crash-coursed the Catholic Church. I learned the Rosary and began reciting it at least once a day while pantomiming the fingering of beads. I spent two weeks’ allowance on a large crucifix of indeterminate alloy, and carried it surreptitiously in my back pocket until one day Mom found it making a racket in the clothes dryer.

Needless to say, Mom and Dad were having none of this Catholic business. Mom made it clear that no son of hers was converting to Catholicism while there was a breath left in her body; that Catholics worshipped Mary and prayed to saints and probably weren’t going to Heaven; and that I watched too much TV. Any time I come up with a notion Mom finds the least bit out of the ordinary, she rolls her eyes toward Heaven (that great Southern Baptist Convention in the sky) and says I watch too much TV.

Dad asked, “Why would you want to be Cath’lic, son?”

I replied, in my best Jennifer Jones, “Because I wish to dedicate my life to God.”

“Well you can just dedicate your life to God in the
true
church, Little Mister,” Mom said, giving me the old finger-wag. And I said, “Yes, Mother,” but secretly resolved to pray to Saint Bernadette on Mom and Dad’s behalf.

This went on for three or four weeks, as I recall. Then a gorgeous blond kid named Mike Mulvaney transferred into my school from Texarkana, Texas, and before long my head was so full of Mike’s robin’s-egg-blue eyes and Texas accent that there was no room for the Catholic Church, Bernadette of Lourdes, or even Jennifer Jones. Which I can only imagine is all for the best. I really don’t see me as much of a priest.

Anyway, since my Catholic period I’ve done quite a bit of reading about different religions, even tried a couple more on for size. I’ve read the Bible (cover to cover, like a novel – it lags in spots, but pretty good reading overall), the Book of Mormon (pretty easy to get around these parts), and a good bit of the Bhagavad-Gita (which is truly strange). I seriously considered becoming a Jehovah’s Witness for about a week or so. Then Mom found a stack of “Watchtowers” in my room and nearly had a coronary.

Lately, though, I’ve pretty much given up on organized religion altogether. As far as I can see, nobody’s got The Truth, The Answer, or The God. No particular church, I mean. They’re all just whistling in the dark, more or less, all of them saying pretty much the same thing over and over with different accents and a name change here and there; not one of them with any more claim to a direct hotline of the Ancient of Days than any of the rest; none of them one baby-step closer to or further away from the Great I Am than, well, I am.

Which is why I’ve sometimes been heard to say that I don’t believe in God. Which is not exactly true, even though I will say it sometimes, for the shock value mostly. What I really don’t believe in is church – anybody’s church, as I’ve said. And I also don’t buy the Christian Church’s God, the frowning old fart in the long white caftan and the long white beard. One hand full of thou-shalt-nots and the other one full of a terrible swift sword. Nope – I don’t buy it. Not anymore.

Or Mom’s God. Dr. Jesus – he’s never lost a case. Except he has lost them. Case after case after case. Or the God a lot of the holy-holyholy types over at the Baptist church have bought into: Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny all rolled into one, with a crown of thorns, yet. Pray for what you want, and – poof! – it’s yours. I actually know people who pray for an empty space in a crowded parking lot, and then if someone happens to vacate a space, they’ll shout “Praise the Lord,” as if they’d just seen water turned into wine, and then tell everybody about it, come the next youth-group meeting.