Skipped Parts: A Heartbreaking, Wild, and Raunchy Comedy (16 page)

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.”

“Well, are you going to kiss me or not?”

Chuckette had asked an interesting question. Whenever you can kiss a girl, you should. I knew that. I’d be a fool to pass, but on the screen a horde of girls in bathing suits were running across the sand and although I knew the movies would never let an entire tit pop all the way out, I could always imagine that might happen, and the flesh they showed was interesting—a lot more breast than I was likely to see anytime soon in real life. So it was a question of taking the tangible kiss from a drab girl who couldn’t stop playing with her retainer, or waiting on a possible visual tit that I knew would never happen.

The picture was
Gidget Goes Hawaiian
and I was king-hell lost because this was the first sequel I’d ever seen where the main character is somebody else. When I saw
Gidget
in Greensboro, she’d been Sandra Dee, now she was Deborah Walley. I had no idea movies could do that. I’d thought movie people becoming someone else was as impossible—or at least as illegal—as real people turning into someone else. Shows what I knew.

The plot was that Gidget and Moondoggie have a fight and she flies to Hawaii with her parents where, even though she’s an outsider, Gidget instantly becomes popular on the local scene.

“Are you?” Chuckette asked again.

“You’ll have to take out your gum.”

“If I can touch your tongue you can touch my gum.” It was Chicklets, three pieces. Her mouth hadn’t stopped snapping and popping since we hit Dothan’s ’59 Ford. I can’t stand girls who chew gum; never could. Makes them look stupid.

“I’m not kissing a wad of gum.”

“I’m sorry I came with you. You don’t give a whit about my feelings.” Which was true.

And to make it a whole lot worse, down the end of our row, against the wall, Maurey and Dothan weren’t watching Gidget at all. He had his greasy pinhead right in her face. I could see her hand on the back of his neck.

All the way from GroVont Maurey sat in the middle of the front seat up against Dothan. He drove with only his left hand on the wheel, which made me think he was touching her. Chuckette and I sat up against opposite doors in the backseat. I refused to speak more than a grunt. With no explanation, Maurey hadn’t come over for practice that afternoon. Left me sitting home like a goofball. I’d been looking forward to it. A boy needs some sex to relax him before a date.

“You win,” Chuckette said, “but it’ll cost you another Black Whip.”

“Win what?”

She made a big deal out of taking out the Chicklet mess and finding a candy wrapper to stick it in. Then she kind of sighed, put both hands in her lap, and turned to me with her flat face tilted up like she was an Episcopalian taking communion against her will.

On the other side of Chuckette, both Maurey’s hands showed on Dothan’s hair. What could she see in that Southern turd? He had no redeeming qualities at all—just a mean oily rural kid whose teeth would be bad before he turned nineteen.

He would hit her someday. I could feel it.

I leaned sideways and kissed Chuckette, but I didn’t touch her with my hands.

“You forget how the French kiss?” she asked.

“I thought you didn’t like it that way.”

“Once you get used to the spit, it’s okay. Besides, it proves you love me.”

I thought about denying I loved her, but what was the use. She wouldn’t believe me. Gidget and the happy, well-adjusted kids were dancing around a bonfire on the beach. We’d done that once on Ocracoke Island down on the Outer Banks. Lydia had been with a captain or something from the Coast Guard. The jerk patted me on the head and gave me pinball money. There’d been a girl with red braids named Ursula that I watched for hours but never got up the gall to talk to. She’d had on a yellow two-piece bathing suit and if you stared at the fire awhile, then looked quickly at her, she seemed naked. Sort of. I decided to pretend Chuckette was really Ursula. Maybe she’d had a disfiguring accident or something and had plastic surgery only down inside she was still Ursula just as Gidget was still Sandra Dee.

The fantasy worked me up enough to do the tongue deal and even to touch Chuckette’s one shoulder. But midway through the kiss I went into a short story and lost track.

Dear Sam Callahan,

You don’t know me but my name is Ursula Dee, daughter of Sandra Dee. I caught sight of you a single time at a cast party on the Outer Banks. I didn’t have the courage to speak to you then and that has been a regret I will always have to live with.

Ever since that night, I’ve imagined what it would be like to have your fingers caressing my bare arms and legs. I want you to touch my feet, Sam Callahan. Mom and I will be in your area soon for the filming of
Gidget Goes to GroVont
, and I would appreciate it if you would touch me at that time. Mom wants you to touch her also. She said

Chuckette slapped me. “That’s my knee.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t ever touch my knee.”

“Is something wrong with it?”

“My body is a temple.”

“Doesn’t look like a temple.”

She sat up stiff. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Your body looks like a body. Sort of. A temple is a building, some kind of a church.”

She thought about this awhile, but couldn’t seem to get around the logic. “Time for you to buy me a Black Whip.”

Trading kisses for Black Whips didn’t seem the way to treat your body like a temple. “But the movie is almost over. We’ll get to see which guy she really likes.”

“I want my Black Whip.”

Gidget was going to really like Moondoggie anyway. He was the tallest.

While I was standing at the candy counter in the lobby, Maurey came out of the theater, her lips swollen from all the necking.

“You didn’t come this afternoon,” I said.

“You be home tomorrow?”

I hadn’t considered tomorrow one way or the other, so I hesitated long enough to keep her off balance, then I said yes.

“I want you and your mom both there.”

“Lydia? We don’t need her anymore.”

“I do. I’ll be there after church.” Maurey headed across the lobby toward the ladies’ room. About halfway across, she turned back to me and said, “He doesn’t kiss near as good as you do.”

***

Sunday, Hank decided to show us the valley. “If you’re going to live here you might as well see the place,” he said.

Lydia blew cigarette smoke in my face. “We live in North Carolina. We’re only here for a lost weekend.”

Hank grinned and drank coffee. He’d been in a fine mood since Lydia let him come back. I guess he thought he’d won a point because she called him instead of him calling her. I knew better.

Outside had warmed up, if that’s the word you use for zero. At least, ear wax no longer froze. Maurey showed up while we were loading the truck with a picnic and enough blankets to avoid death should the Dodge collapse miles from a heat source. She looked at the pile of cardboard boxes in the back of Hank’s truck and said, “You’re not getting me in one of those.”

“What’s she mean by that?” Lydia asked. Her breath put out more fog when she talked than the rest of us. I couldn’t figure out why.

Hank said, “The boxes are for moving goods.”

Maurey reached over the tailgate and scraped a box with her thumbnail. “Why are they waxed, then?”

Hank shrugged and opened the passenger door for us. “Get in.”

Lydia was suspicious. “Since when do you open a door for a lady?”

“Since it won’t shut from the inside anymore.”

Lydia rode next to Hank and Maurey sat on my lap by the door that not only wouldn’t shut from the inside but wouldn’t open that way either. On account of the truck having electrical tape instead of a passenger window, I felt somewhat trapped, though in a pleasant way. I hadn’t been this close to Maurey in several days and I missed it. A person can get used to touching someone.

My head was jammed up against the gun rack, so I kept my nose in the little dent on the back of her neck for most of the ride. Her hair smelled way clean, not a shampoo smell exactly, more like fresh-snow clean. She didn’t have hair spray or any of the other gunk that Chuckette used to make her hair into a helmet. Touching Chuckette’s hair was like reaching into a hole not knowing what lives under the surface.

“There’s no excuse for civilized people living here,” Lydia said. “Not that any do. But look. There’s no trees, there’s no country lanes lined with two-story colonial homes and pickaninny shanties. There’s no pickaninnies. Man should not live without ethnic diversity.”

Hank grunted. “What do you think I am?”

“You’re just a white guy with a nice tan and too long hair.”

Maurey popped me with an elbow. “Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“You’re coming over after dinner tonight. Ed Sullivan said this week would be a really big show.”

“He always says that.”

“Yeah, but someone told Mom at her AAUW bridge club yesterday that this time it would be big. You want to come over, Lydia? Mom would be glad to have company.”

“Every time I speak to Annabel she works the conversation around to laundry detergent. I’d rather talk to my moose.”

“Mom,” I said.

“Look.” Hank pointed as we crossed the Snake River. It was an army-green color and gave off the impression of cold. “No rivers like that down South.”

“Nonsense,” Lydia said. “The South is full of rivers. And concert halls and department stores and porches. Every house has a proper porch. Here they have mud rooms.”

Discussion deteriorated into the stock West-versus-South and rural-versus-urban canned lecture that Lydia used to fill time. I think she hated silence and Hank was comfortable with it and she couldn’t stand seeing him comfortable when she wasn’t. Much as I liked Maurey on my lap, her butt bones were digging into my thighs. I shifted my weight, trying to find a comfortable divot.

She reached behind herself with her right hand and grabbed my penis hard. I yelped.

“What are you whining about now?” Lydia asked.

“Caught the window knob in my rib.”

“Well, keep it to yourself.”

We started up a steep hill with pine trees on either side. “This is the pass,” Hank said. “From the top we can see the four corners of the world.”

Lydia lit a cigarette. “What difference does it make?”

Maurey went into this pulsating squeeze action. It felt good, kind of bizarre, but I couldn’t block out of my mind the picture of her kissing that grease bag.

Hank said, “I want to be idealistic. I want to believe in things.”

“Like what?” I asked, though my voice came out wrong. I could feel Maurey’s smile clear through the back of her head.

“Like beauty and the nobility of man. Look over there.” We passed a big live moose, Les’s cousin maybe. He was up a little gully, belly-deep in snow, chewing on a bush. Maurey squeezed the hell out of me.

Hank went on giving what, for him, was practically a speech.

“You can believe in whatever you want to believe in up here. Look at the snow on that whitebark pine. People in cities can’t believe in the nobility of man because they see no evidence of it.”

“I love it when he talks like Chief Joseph,” Lydia said.

Maurey said in a deep voice, “I will fight no more forever.”

I kept up my end of the conversation under the direst circumstances possible. “Easy to believe in people when there’s none around.”

Hank hit the steering wheel with one hand. ‘‘That’s what I mean.”

Maurey gave a mighty squeeze and I blew in my pants. Coughed like death to cover the sound and clawed at the window handle, which was a waste; you can’t roll down a window that isn’t there.

“Sam, control yourself,” Lydia said.

“I got hot all of a sudden.”

She turned to look at me. “It’s freezing in here.”

Maurey put her hand back in her lap. “Mrs. Callahan, I came to see you on purpose.”

“As opposed to accidentally?”

We were moving up the mountain. I went into a fear fantasy where the truck broke down and all that come froze around my pecker and it broke off.

“We tried to save him, but it came off in my hand,” the doctor said.

Maurey Pierce cried until rivulets ran across her cheeks.

“He’ll never practice again.”

Sam Callahan looked at the emptiness between his legs. “Does this mean I’m a girl now?”

Maurey’s voice cut through the story. “How can you tell if you’re pregnant?”

There’s a conversation stopper for you. We rode a quarter mile up the mountain in silence.

Lydia lit a cigarette. “The game was supposed to stop on your first period.”

“I’ve never had a period. Can you get pregnant if you’ve never had a period?”

Hank rolled the window down a couple of inches. I asked, “What’s a period?”

Nobody pays any attention to me in a crisis.

Lydia blew smoke across Hank at the cracked window, then turned back to Maurey. “What exactly makes you think you might be pregnant?”

“My body is way off, has to be pregnancy or cancer. I get sick sometimes and food smells like poop and my tits hurt.”

“Get sick mostly in the mornings?”

“Right. And after lunch at school. And my dreams have been really weird lately.”

I glanced over at Hank, wondering what he must think of the turn in our Sunday drive. Hank stared out the cracked windshield at the typically majestic terrain. He had on his implacable look that I was starting to take as something of a pain in the ass. I mean, how convenient if in every slightly off-the-norm social situation you could fall back on the Blackfoot stereotype.

“Do you know what cancer feels like?” Maurey asked.

Lydia suddenly scratched her right ear, a very un-Lydia-like thing to do. “I hardly even know what being pregnant feels like. I was only with child once and I was your age, almost. The subject hasn’t come up since.”

I felt Maurey’s stomach through her car coat. Could I have done something to put a little person in there? Lydia’s sex lesson hadn’t included anything about the pregnancy process—other than it might happen so we had to stop when Maurey became a woman. I didn’t know exactly what Maurey and I could have done to cause or not cause a baby.