by Ron Koertge
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
What took you so long?” Sully asked when I finally got to the phone.
“I was busy.”
“Yeah? Doing what?”
“Not that. If you must know, I was just putting away the potato chips and brownies.”
“Bring some when you come over.”
“Who said I was coming over?”
“Look at it this way, Walker: it’s hot, my dad filled the pool, and there are three Playboy bunnies here, all centerfolds.”
“Two for you, naturally.”
“I’m the host. By the way, don’t tell your mom.”
“Mom’s not home. She’s interviewing for a job.”
“Great. How long’s it been now, almost a year? That’s enough time to be sad. A job is just the thing.”
“Thank you, Dr. Sullivan.”
“Go ahead and make fun, but when I get to be a bigtime psychiatrist, that kind of insight will cost you plenty.”
“I thought you wanted to be a surgeon, like your dad.”
“I might. I have lots of career choices.”
“Lucky you. I just got my ASVAB back from counseling. Guess where my aptitudes lie.”
“Is there a category for masturbation?”
“Only as a hobby, not as a profession. Try preacher or forest ranger.”
“You?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, could you be both?”
“Why not? ‘All you bears who are sorry you ate that family from Iowa, come forward and we’ll pray. And you nasty trees, stop rubbing your limbs together.’”
“‘And you squirrels, cover up your nuts.’” Sully laughed at his own joke, then said, “Hurry up. I’ll meet you out there.”
Sully’s folks had a really nice house about ten minutes away from mine. On the way over, I stopped at an AM-PM Mini-Mart, locked my bike just to be on the safe side, bought a package of Twinkies, then sat outside in the sun to eat them. I wondered if I should be a forest ranger. Maybe I could get a job so high in the mountains there wouldn’t be any junk food. I pictured myself lean and hard from living on cold water and rocks, rescuing girls in torn shorts and halter tops. Their gratitude knew no bounds.
God, I thought about sex a lot. Maybe it was the season. Maybe my young man’s fancy was turning.
Sully was stretched out on a chaise when I got there. He tapped his watch and frowned.
“What took you so long?”
“I had to find my trunks.”
“In that room of yours? I’m surprised you didn’t get here tomorrow. You can change anywhere; there’s nobody home.”
I put my towel under a chair. “In a minute.”
The truth was, I was afraid my stomach would hang over my waistband. There were fish on my trunks; it would look like they were swimming under a ledge.
“I had Twinkies on the way over,” I said, lying down on the webbed chaise.
“It’s good for you to confess, my son,” Sully said. “Don’t be ashamed. We’re all human, except me, who is perfect.” Then he propped himself up on one elbow. He was wearing dark sunglasses and I couldn’t see his eyes. “You’ve only been pigging seriously since Debbie left, haven’t you?”
“Four months is quite a stretch if you’re chewing the whole time.”
“You’ve had a hell of a year.” He patted me on the shoulder: bam-bam. Guy-pats. Just like at the funeral. Just before my mother and I fell in the grave. God, what a mess.
“You know,” I said, and I could feel my chest get thick, “for years everything was fine. Maybe I was a little overweight, maybe I jerked off a little more than was good for me, but that was it. Then my father dies, just like that.” I snapped my fingers. “Then I meet Debbie. We start to go together. Maybe she’s not the prettiest girl in the world.”
“Or the tallest.”
“Or the tallest.”
“Or the smartest.”
“Okay, but she was really nice to me, Sully. I mean really. And she never looked at another guy.”
“And you’re still a virgin.”
“So are you.”
“I didn’t go steady with anybody.”
“And then she moved away. It was like she’d died, too. One week she’s here, the next week she’s gone.”
“My father says that adolescence is the most difficult period in a person’s life. He says growing up is just a bitch. And let’s face it, we’re growing up. I go away to Harvard next year, and you’ll be a senior.”
I was only half listening. “What next, I wonder? I mean, my father and Debbie are two. Mom says bad things come in threes.”
“You need a girlfriend.”
“And so do you.”
“Bullshit,” he said mildly, turning over to show the sun another million freckles. “I need to get older is all. High-school girls like cute guys — lots of hair, nice bodies, the whole package. That’s not me.”
“You make it sound like you’re some kind of troll.”
“Not at all. I’m just realistic. Besides, I don’t have time for a girlfriend: three years of high school, three years of college, med school, intern, and residency, and I’m out even faster than my old man was.”
“Marcia Notley likes you.”
“My father says I can’t afford the Marcia Notleys of this world.”
“What does that mean?”
“Marcia Notley wants to get married, and she wants to marry a doctor. My father says all women secretly want to marry doctors. That’s why I’ve got to watch my step from here on out.”
“Yeah, there’s a beauty lurking behind every bush.”
“But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a girlfriend.”
“Old careerless, goalless Walker.”
“Still.” He sat up and put on a green plaid shirt. “It’d be nice to have some girls in my pool right now.”
“We could make them promise they wouldn’t want to marry you before they ever got in the water.”
“Then when they jumped in, all their tops would fall off.”
“I saw somebody’s breast in a pool once.”
“By itself?”
“Well, obviously it wasn’t taking a dip on its own. I guess it’d just slipped out of this girl’s suit. She was standing there down toward the deep end and I guess she didn’t notice.”
“Did it float?”
“Sort of, I guess.”
“My dick floats.”
“Gee, Sully, let me call the newspaper. There’s probably time to make tomorrow’s edition.”
“Doesn’t yours?”
“To my undying credit, I don’t know. But then, you’re a bachelor doctor with keener powers of observation than us forest ranger pastors.”
“Was it pretty?”
“Her breast? Sort of; not very sexy, though. It looked friendly bobbing in the water like that.”
“My father says the parts of the body are interesting, but grotesque.”
“Tell that to Hugh Hefner. Anyway, Sully, your father’s married and settled in. I’ll bet twenty years ago he didn’t take off your mom’s bra and say, ‘Interesting, dear, but grotesque.’”
“Have you ever touched one?”
“Bare?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Almost.”
“With Debbie?” he asked.
“Who else? It was nice.”
“God, I’ll bet.”
“You never touched Peggy’s?”
“Peggy’s a friend. We go to concerts and stuff sometimes. Hell, Walker, Peggy’s your friend, too.”
“Sure, but n
ot like you.”
Suddenly he sat up and pulled his jeans half on. Not to his knees, though; I mean he only put one leg in.
“I think I’ll perform a scientific experiment. I’ll tan this leg until it’s a golden brown.”
“Like Colonel Sanders’s drumsticks?”
“Maybe all the freckles will run together and I’ll be tanned forever. Then I’ll show the leg to a few girls and if they like it I’ll tan the rest of me.”
“I’d like to be there when you tell those select few that you’ve got this leg you want them to evaluate.”
“Quiet. My father says tissue can be affected by thought. I’m going to think this leg dark in just thirty minutes.”
When I opened my eyes, it was cold. Sully was still lying there. He was breathing evenly and his mouth was half open. I guess that’s what happens when you marry somebody, or at least sleep together. You see her drool and stuff like that. I’d never seen a girl drool. I knew they went to the bathroom — everybody does — but neither Sully nor I had ever heard one fart. Belch maybe, but not the other. Sully said it was the same thing. I said that it wasn’t. I said that there were some countries where it was polite to belch after a meal but nowhere was it polite to fart afterward. He said I was exaggerating. We almost got into a fight over it, but that was when we were a lot more immature. Like last year.
“I’m not asleep,” he said.
“Who said you were? Be like my mother and tell me you were just resting your eyes.”
“God, I slobbered on myself.”
“Maybe you were just resting your lips, too.” I stood up and reached for my towel.
“What’s the hurry? Stay and eat dinner if you want. We’re having steak again.”
“We’re having Caviar Helper. Add it to anything and it’s twice as expensive. Thanks anyway.”
I started to pedal home, taking my time, making those smooth skier’s swoops that cover the whole street, the same kind I’d made ever since I was a kid.
Spring had definitely arrived. There were those early bulbs my mother had put in every year but this one — the crocuses and daffodils and one or two more whose names I couldn’t remember. And the grass was coming in fast, looking eager and new.
Somebody in a red Subaru honked and waved. A bike is okay, but there’s nothing like a car. Man, just get in a car and everything changes; it’s like a room on wheels. Nothing can happen on a bike; anything can happen in a car.
Still, you can’t look around as much or ride real slow without having somebody call Neighborhood Watch. Pedaling, though, I could enjoy the trip. It was late and people were going home for dinner. Sometimes I could see through the front windows where the curtains were pulled to one side like an old-fashioned hairdo. There sat the family with the dishes going around from hand to hand. It was eerie the way that scene repeated itself that evening: family after family eating and smiling at each other, not in that gross way with spinach stuck to somebody’s front tooth, but in a nice way, probably just telling stories about what happened at work or school that day.
I have to admit, it made me want to see my mother.
The Saturn was in the drive, and I went in wondering what was for dinner —“like a lamb to the slaughter,” as my father used to say about some poor guy who didn’t see it coming.
Inside, my mom was staring at the stove. The stereo was on real loud and she was dancing a little, swishing her behind and pushing herself off the Amana into little spins like her partner was too fat to move.
“Hey,” she said when she saw me. “I got a job.”
“Great. Doing what?”
“I don’t want to cook. I thought maybe we’d go out and celebrate. Have a pizza or something.”
“Okay, I guess.”
“I’m going to have a glass of wine first. You want to sit with me while I have a glass of wine?”
Man, what a fool I was. Hadn’t I had parents for sixteen years and didn’t I know their tricks? Or maybe I was just thinking about the pizza I would order, the one that took two men to lift and had everything on it but beets.
“I want you to hear this from me,” she said, turning down the stereo.
“Hear what?” The alarms were starting to go off, but faintly.
“That job I got? I’m going to be a dancer.”
“What kind of dancer? Like you were in college?”
“Sort of.”
I sat back and looked at her carefully. She took a sip of wine and her lips were as shiny as her eyes.
“Where are you going to dance?” I was getting very wary.
“At a club just outside Kansas City.” She felt for the top buttons of her blouse.
“There’s something going on,” I said, “isn’t there? Something I’m not going to like.”
“It’s up to you, really. You can like it or not like it. I hope you like it. I hope you’re proud of me.”
“You aren’t going to move out or anything, are you? And leave me here?”
“Oh, honey, no. God.” She put her wine glass down and reached for my hands, but I pulled them back. I felt like a little animal with his paws curled up on his chest.
“Tell me,” I said.
She sighed and sat back. “I’m working at a club called Ye Olde Burlesque. I’m one of the exotic dancers.”
“You?”
“Your old bag of a mother, you mean?”
“Why?”
“I needed a job.”
“A job? Sarah Willoughby’s mother works at Sears. Kevin Kopit’s mother works at OSH. They didn’t get jobs taking off their clothes.”
“That’s their business.”
“Ye Olde Burlesque sounds stupid. It’s such a stupid name. It’s Middle English and nineteenth century all mixed together. There wasn’t any burlesque in the Middle Ages. There was just Ye Olde Black Death and Ye Olde Inquisition.”
“It’s old-fashioned burlesque,” she said patiently. “That’s all. It’s to show that there’s comedy sketches and singers, as well as dancers.”
“Topless dancers?”
“Exotic dancers. It’s not a dirty show.”
“I suppose you put on more clothes and pray.”
“I do what’s called a novelty act.”
“Oh, God. Don’t tell me.” I actually began to wring my hands. I’d heard of that all my life, and there I was, doing it. “You didn’t even ask me.”
“It’s none of your business.”
“Are you crazy? I have to take the fall-out. Everybody’s going to know. All the kids at school. What am I supposed to say?”
“Tell them the truth.”
“That you show your ass to anybody?”
“Watch your mouth with me, Walker. I’m still your mother.”
“Then act like it.” I was starting to shout.
“Look. I took the job. I told them I’d be there. I won’t go back on my word.”
“When do you start? Maybe I can move to another town and grow a beard.”
“Tonight. The snake got sick, and Eve can’t do very much without a snake.”
“I don’t believe I’m hearing this.”
“Sweetheart,” she said, leaning toward me, “I thought about this before I did it, and I know I want this job.” A fingernail tapped each word into the coffee table. “Anyway, who’s going to know? I’m not going to tell, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“They’ll see you. Everybody will see you. Probably somebody we know will be there tonight, and tomorrow it’ll be all over school.”
“Walker, be reasonable. Who’ll drive forty miles one way to see old-fashioned burlesque in a club that doesn’t hold two hundred people?”
“You, that’s who. You’ll drive it every night.”
“Sure, but I have to.”
“Why? Is this some kind of a midlife crisis?”
“Honey, we need the money.”
The stupid rhyme just irritated me. “I wish Dad was alive. He wouldn’t let you do this.”
She stood up decisively and held out one hand. “C’mon, let’s go and get a giant pepperoni.”
“I don’t eat pizza.” The Glacier speaks.
“With exotic dancers?”
“Period.”
“Oh, pooh. Your room smells like Shakey’s about half the time.”
That made me blush. I thought I’d been so clever. “Okay then. I don’t want to eat with you. How’s that?”
“Honest.” She leaned over and shook her hair, which was dark and curly and shiny. “Dumb but honest.”
“I think I’ll go to my room.” I sounded like I was punishing myself.
“Suit yourself, but first give a listen. I have to work six nights a week,” she said evenly, “but never any later than ten-thirty or eleven. I don’t leave until six, so I won’t be gone very long. There’s a list of phone numbers on the pad, and the neighbors know I’ll be away.”
“Oh, Jesus. What’d you say you’d be doing?”
“Well, I thought of telling them the truth and saying that I was making two hundred dollars a night as an actress and a dancer in a revival of old-time burlesque, but I knew they’d sew a scarlet A on my best sweater and dunk me in the river, so I said I was drowning kittens for a dollar an hour and that seemed to satisfy them.”
“Don’t just do it for the money,” I begged. “I’ll go to work. I’ll stop eating so much.”
“You won’t go to work,” she said firmly. “You’ll keep studying, you’ll get terrific grades, and you’ll get a scholarship to college.”
“I can work and still get A’s, honest.”
“Out of the question.”
“You sound like Dad. That’s what he said when you wanted to go to work two years ago.”
“I got a part-time job in a pet store, that’s all, and he acted like…” She leaned toward me. “Walker, it’s not just the money. I think I’m going to like it.”
“Stripping?”
“Dancing.” She corrected me like a teacher.
“Well, I hate it.”
She sighed. “I still need to eat dinner. You can come with me and I’ll drop you back here, or I’ll go alone and just drive straight to Love’s Park from Luigi’s.”
