“Not at all,” the doctor said. “I only ask that if you have a soft spot for blood or needles or anything of the sort that you look away and stay seated. I don’t need another patient.” He smiled and Colleen smiled back.
“Okay,” she said.
“Now, Ted,” the doctor said. “This is going to be a bit like the dentist. Ever had Novocain?”
The boy nodded.
“I’m going to give you a couple injections of something like it. And it’s going to burn like a son of a gun. But after that you shouldn’t feel much of anything. Sound all right?”
The boy shrugged. He felt Colleen take his hand in both of hers. When he saw the doctor reaching in with the needle, he opened his mouth and closed his eyes. A heavy hand fell on his chin and then it felt as if the doctor were pushing a red-hot needle into his tongue. He bore down on Colleen’s hand and arched his back against the bed.
“A few more spots and we’ll be done,” the doctor said. “You’re doing great.”
The boy felt the needle withdraw and plunge again and again. Each time he had to fight the urge to clamp his jaw shut. His hand grew hot and sweaty in Colleen’s.
“Now we’re just going to give the medicine a chance to work,” the doctor said.
The boy nodded. He opened his eyes and looked over at Colleen. She had her forehead down on the back of her hand that held his. He looked back to the doctor. The doctor smiled. The boy noticed that his tongue had begun to disappear.
After a moment the doctor was back in his mouth. The boy felt the pressure of his tongue being held in place. When he saw the doctor draw the needle up to pull the suture tight, he felt the tug, tug, tug of the string on his tongue.
The doctor prescribed an oral antibiotic and an antiseptic mouthwash. He told the boy that the stitches would dissolve on their own and that he didn’t need to return unless something went wrong. He said the swelling should go down in a day or so and he told the boy that Popsicles would help. The doctor smiled when he said Popsicles.
The boy shook his hand and left the room. He waited for Colleen, then headed down the hall toward the waiting room. He saw his mother at the opposite end, but she didn’t see him. She walked quickly, her purse under her arm. She ducked her head as if to go faster. The boy stayed in her path. When she looked up to see the obstruction, she was startled to see it was him.
“Goodness,” she said. She put an open hand on her chest. “Already done?”
The boy smiled, amused with himself for surprising her. He nodded.
“Let me see,” she said. She reached and took him by the chin, pushing his mouth gently open. He stuck his tongue out. “Ouch,” she said. “Hurt?”
He shrugged.
“You fell?” his mother said.
He nodded.
“He tripped at the top of a couple stairs,” Colleen said.
“Thanks for being here with him, Colleen.”
Colleen smiled and nodded.
“My boy must be growing,” the mother said. “He’s getting clumsy.” She smiled at the both of them.
The boy held out the two prescriptions and his mother took them.
“We can pick these up on the way home,” she said.
“The doctor also said Popsicles would help with the swelling,” Colleen said.
“Popsicles it is, then,” the mother said. They headed down the hall.
“Mrs. LeClare?” Colleen said. “Do you mind if I come over?”
“No,” the mother said. “If your parents don’t mind.”
“No one’s home,” Colleen said. “I get creeped out by myself.”
“I’m sure Teddy would like the company.”
The boy looked at Colleen and shook his head. He wanted to ask her who the hell she thought she was, inviting herself over to his house. He wanted to tell her to go on back to George and his little study group. He wanted to explain to her just how upset seeing her with George had made him, but all that was impossible with his tongue as useless as it was. He could only frown and shake his head.
Colleen playfully slapped at his forearm and followed him out of the hospital.
Colleen and the mother ate bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches on toasted white bread while the boy sucked on a milk-shake that his mother made. After dinner she went upstairs to grade student work while he and Colleen sat on the couch and watched television. After some time Colleen pulled his head down to her lap. He put his feet up and rested his head on her thigh. She ran her fingers through his hair and massaged his scalp.
At a commercial break he got up to use the bathroom. When he returned, he saw that Colleen was sprawled across the couch. Rather than sitting back up, she opened her arms for him. He paused for a moment and then lay beside her, letting his head rest against her warm, soft chest. She kissed his forehead and ran her hand up his back, under his shirt. He closed his eyes and felt his breathing go slow and heavy.
Sometime later he heard movement upstairs. He untangled himself from Colleen and sat up.
“Teddy?” his mother called down. “Ted?”
He grunted.
“I think it’s time for Colleen to head home.”
“Okay, Mrs. LeClare,” Colleen said. “Thank you for dinner.”
“Glad to have you,” the mother said. “Have a good week at school.”
“You too, Mrs. LeClare.”
On the front steps outside the house, Colleen ran her hand up and down his chest. She kissed him on the lips. “Good night baby,” she said.
He nodded and smiled.
After she’d backed out and headed down the road, he went inside. He turned off the television and the lights on the first floor, then walked up the stairs to say good night to his mother.
In the bathroom he stuck out his tongue in the mirror. It was swollen and discolored. The black stitches wound like a helix through either side of the cut. He brushed his teeth and rinsed with the antiseptic mouthwash. He winced at the pain. He killed the light in the bathroom and walked across the hall to his room.
Undressed and under the covers, he didn’t think of Bobby or the investigation. He didn’t think of George and the Youth. He thought of the warm feeling that had filled him in Colleen’s arms. He thought of the searing pain that had filled his mouth earlier in the day. Sleep came fast.
The following day in school, he carried around a sheet of paper. It said, I have stitches in my tongue. I can’t talk. Thanks for understanding. After he handed each teacher the note, he opened his mouth as proof. When the teacher asked how it happened, he flipped the paper over. There it said, I fell.
By the end of the week the swelling was gone and the cut had begun to close. Still the boy chose not to talk. He liked the silence. It allowed him to stay back, behind his eyes, where it was quiet and less complicated.
The Youth stayed out of his way for a spell. Whether they were sympathetic to his injury or fearful of his rock-wielding rage, the boy did not know.
12
At the end of the following week, Colleen’s sister and her husband invited Colleen and the boy over for the evening, for drinks. The boy had never been anywhere for drinks. Sure, he’d gone places to drink—the gravel pits and basements about town—but this was different. For drinks sounded sophisticated. He knew he was breaking Youth doctrine, but hell, he was messing around with Colleen and he’d already ruined the Youth plot against Kevin Dennison. Really, the boy thought, what was a couple of drinks?
When they arrived, Colleen’s nephew was hanging in a swinging chair and her sister was spooning food into his mouth. Jenny was a rounder, lighter-haired version of Colleen. She greeted them, placing the jar of baby food on the coffee table to shake the boy’s hand. Jenny told them to make themselves comfortable. She said she’d be done in a minute. When her husband, Doug, came into the room, the boy was surprised at how young he looked. He gave them a weak smile.
“Get drinks,” Jenny told Doug. And Doug went to get drinks. “Daiquiris,” Jenny said. And Doug made daiqui
ris—strawberry, frozen, from a can in the freezer.
“You want some of this?” Doug asked him, holding up the blender pitcher. “I’ve got beers,” Doug added. He nodded and Doug handed two mugs of daiquiris to Colleen and Jenny, went to the fridge, and came back with two cans of Budweiser. He handed one to the boy. “Only the best,” Doug said.
“Cheers,” said Jenny, and the four leaned in and clicked their drinks together.
It wasn’t long until several rounds had gone down and Doug was sent back into the kitchen for another batch of frozen cocktails.
Jenny said, “Piña coladas,” and Doug made piña coladas with another can of frozen mix. “I’m so glad you’re not with that…” Jenny took a sip off the top of her new cocktail. “That Nazi.” She looked at Colleen. The two of them were giddy with drink. “You’re not into that no-drinking, no-drugs, no-sex thing, are you, Ted?” She reached out to her son’s swing and gave it a light push.
The boy shook his head and held up his most recent Budweiser with a smile. He was feeling the alcohol as well.
“That’s good,” Jenny said. “Good for Colleen, anyway.” She pointed at her sister and laughed out loud.
“Shut up,” said Colleen.
“Serious, though.” Jenny stopped laughing. “George and those guys are just weird.”
The boy smiled and raised the beer to his lips. He finished the last quarter of the can.
“All right,” Jenny said. “Part of the deal is that you guys have to watch Jimmy while me and Doug go and check on some friends.” She gently rubbed her son’s head with one hand and her other hand shot up with the empty glass in it. Doug retrieved the glass and filled it with what was left in the pitcher. With her drink full, Jenny took Doug’s hand and pulled him toward the door.
“Adiós,” Doug said.
“We’ll knock,” said Jenny through the closing gap of the door. “Take care of my baby,” she said at the last second. Colleen chuckled and looked at the boy. He shrugged.
“They’re going to smoke pot,” Colleen said. “They have friends two floors up. They’ll be a while.”
He smiled.
“I do it sometimes,” she said. “You?”
“I tried it,” he said. “Didn’t get anything off it, though.”
“We’ll do it,” she said. “Me and you. We’ll get totally stoned.”
He leaned forward to put his beer on the coffee table. When he returned to the couch, he slid over, close to Colleen. He put his arm around her and she leaned into him. When she looked up at him, he kissed her.
“I couldn’t wait for them to leave,” she said.
She kissed him back, thrusting her tongue into his mouth. His own tongue was still a bit tender, but he managed to flop it about as the kissing required. After waiting for what he thought was an appropriate time, he ran a hand over one of her breasts. She rubbed the crotch of his jeans. When she leaned back, he followed her.
“Take off your shoes,” she said.
He hesitated.
“It’s a new sofa,” she told him.
He sat up and slid off his loafers. Colleen smiled and kicked her feet up and down on the couch. He untied her sneakers and pulled them off, tossing them to the floor. She looked back, above her head, and gave the swing her nephew sat in a gentle push.
The boy lay upon her and they kissed. He pushed her shirt up to her armpits and fussed with her bra until she laughed at him, sat up, and undid the contraption herself. He fell greedily upon her breasts.
When he tired of them, he set to her pants. She raised her hips from the couch, allowing him to pull them free. She reached back and pushed the swing again. Her nephew gurgled and swatted at the rattle mounted before him. The boy finally realized that the swing mechanism was broken.
They were both down to underwear and he ground himself into her. It wasn’t a particularly good feeling—something like the early stages of rug burn—but he couldn’t bring himself to stop. When he came poking out the front of his boxers, he didn’t reach to return it—the grinding felt much better against the satin of her underwear than it did against the cotton of his own.
“You want to?” he said.
Colleen shook her head.
He paused. “You sure?”
She nodded.
He had raised himself up off her to speak. Doing so exposed her breasts, and he fell upon them again with his hands and mouth, as if he had forgotten they existed. He kept up the grinding of pelvises and soon he found himself pulling her underwear aside. His aim always seemed skewed. He finally used a hand for direction, but as he slid his hips forward, Colleen stopped him.
“No,” she said. She looked over her shoulder toward her nephew.
He pushed his hips farther forward, stopping only when their hips met. They remained motionless for a moment, staring into each other’s eyes. She weakly shook her head. He nodded.
“At least put something on,” she said.
He sat up and reached down for his pants, scuffling about for his wallet. When he set to putting the rubber on, it proved difficult, impossible, really.
“You’ve got it backward,” she said.
He corrected his mistake and fell back upon her after he finished with the condom. She kept one hand on the swing, rocking it steadily. There was again the question of aim, but with some help from his hand, he corrected it. As he proceeded through the motions, he heard noises from Colleen. He wanted to believe that the sounds were evidence of pleasure, evidence that he was doing something right. As he continued, he realized she was humming. By the time he’d finished, he could tell that the tune was something of a lullaby, and not meant for him at all.
He sat up and stared at the television. There was a movie on. He tried to catch up with what he had missed. Colleen stood up quickly and grabbed her clothes. Before she left the room she glared back at him and said, “Are you happy?” She looked angry. “Now that you can tell your friends?”
He thought it strange. He didn’t have friends. And if he told the friends he once had, they would most certainly kick his ass. And she knew this. When she came back into the room, she was clothed. She took her nephew and left again. The boy put his pants back on. She returned without the child and took a seat in a chair across the room from him.
“That was my first time,” he said.
“What?”
“I’ve never done it,” he said. He thought it was obvious.
She came slowly toward him. She took up a seat on the couch. “Really?”
“Yeah,” he said. He grabbed his T-shirt off the floor. He turned it right side out and reached his hands above his head to pull it on.
“What are those?” Colleen said, touching the inside of his arm.
He flinched and quickly pulled the shirt down and over his head. He looked at the television and tried to let the moment pass.
“Hey,” she said. She tried to lift his elbow, but he held his arm tightly to his side. “What happened?”
“It’s nothing,” he told her.
“It’s not nothing,” Colleen said.
“It’s old,” he said.
Colleen shook her head. “One’s still scabbed.”
He stared at the television.
“Hey,” she said. She tugged at his hand.
He looked at her. He shook his head.
They both looked back to the television.
“When I was in middle school,” Colleen said. “I rubbed a pencil eraser back and forth on my arm. I made a cross. The counselor kept saying it was because of my parents’ divorce, but I was just bored.”
“It’s not like that,” he said.
“Don’t get mad,” she said. She put her head on his shoulder and wrapped her arms around him. She held him quietly for some time. “Have you told anyone about Bobby?” she said.
“My mother.”
“Any of your friends?”
He shook his head.
“Will you tell me now? What happened?”
“He
died,” the boy told her.
“What was it like?”
He thought for a moment. “Not wicked bloody or anything like that,” he said. “He just stopped.”
“Stopped what?” Colleen said.
“Stopped everything.”
A commercial break came on the television and he slipped out of her embrace. He eased her down on the couch and slid his hand up under her shirt. He ran the tip of his index finger around her nipple. He pulled her shirt up and sucked at her breast. His pelvis started to gyrate against the outside of her thigh.
“Already?” she said.
He looked up and smiled.
After it was over, Colleen smiled and said, “You’re not lying? I’m your first?”
He nodded. “You?” he said.
“Once before,” she told him. “Twice now.”
He raised his eyebrows at what he thought was a lie.
“I thought I was in love with him,” she said.
“Punk-rock guy?”
“Yeah,” she said. “How did you know?”
“Youth guys,” he said.
“What else did they tell you?”
He shook his head.
“You shouldn’t believe them,” she said. “They know I don’t believe in any of their shit.”
He nodded. They put on their pants and watched what was left of the movie.
Jenny and Doug came back squinting and yawning. They said thank you and good-bye. Colleen and the boy walked through the drizzle to the car, and after they were back on the highway, he said, “You won’t tell?”
“About the drinking?” she said.
“And us?”
Colleen paused for a moment. “No,” she said.
It made the boy half happy. Half happy because it was one of the two things he had been fretting about. He was also concerned about returning to his house half drunk and late. It was Friday. He knew his father was due home and hoped he would be sleeping. If all went well, he could slip quietly into his room, tell his parents a half-truth the following morning, and everything would turn out half good.
They were about two hundred feet from his driveway when he said, “Stop here.”
American Youth Page 11
