Until I Find You

Wurtz delivering him to Redding. (The very journey itself would be dramatized, of that he had little doubt.)

“What about Mrs. Machado?” Alice asked. Only Emma noticed that this caused Jack to lose his appetite.

“I doubt she can drive,” Leslie Oastler said dismissively. “That woman is so stupid—she can’t put the laundry back in the right drawers.”

“Don’t you like the pizza, honey pie?”

“Jack, please finish your milk—even if you’re full. You have to stop losing weight,” Alice said.

“If you don’t want the rest of that pizza, I’ll eat it,” Emma said.

“What about that little faggot, your drama teacher?” Mrs. Oastler asked Jack. “What’s his name?”

“Mr. Ramsey,” Emma answered. “He’s nice—he’s a good guy! Don’t call him a faggot.”

“He is one, dear,” Emma’s mom told her. “I’m sure he’s entirely safe,” Leslie said to Alice. “If he’d so much as touched a boy at St. Hilda’s, someone would have blown the whistle on him.”

“What about not bothering teachers in the summer?” Jack asked.

“Mr. Ramsey wouldn’t mind,” Mrs. Oastler said. “He obviously worships the ground you walk on, Jack.”

“Well, I don’t know—” Alice began.

“You don’t know what, Alice?” Leslie Oastler asked.

“It’s just that he is a homosexual,” Alice replied.

“It’s not guys who are inclined to mess around with Jack,” Emma observed.

“I like Mr. Ramsey—he would be fine,” Jack said.

“If he can see over the steering wheel, baby cakes.”

“I guess it wouldn’t do any harm to ask him,” Alice said. “Maybe Mr. Ramsey wants a tattoo.”

“He’s a teacher, Alice—he makes no money,” Leslie told her. “Mr. Ramsey doesn’t need a free tattoo; he needs money.”

“Well—” Alice said.

When Alice and Mrs. Oastler went out to a movie, Emma was left to do the dishes and put Jack to bed. Emma ate the remaining pizza off everyone’s plate. Jack understood why she was hungry—she hadn’t touched her salad.

“Put on some music, honey pie.”

Emma liked to sing when she was eating. She did her best Bob Dylan imitation with her mouth full. Jack put on the album called Another Side of Bob Dylan—loud, the way Emma liked it—and went upstairs to get ready for bed. Even with the water running in the bathroom sink, when he was brushing his teeth, he could hear Emma singing along with “Motorpsycho Nightmare.” It must have put him in a mood.

When Jack undressed, he had a look at his penis, which was a little red and sore-looking. He thought of putting some moisturizer on it, but he was afraid the moisturizer would sting. He put on a clean pair of “summer pajamas”—his boxer shorts—and lay in bed waiting for Emma to come kiss him good night.

Jack was thinking that he missed saying prayers with Lottie. The only prayer he sometimes said by himself was the one he used to say with his mom, who had stopped saying prayers with him—another feature of his being too old, apparently. Besides, that familiar Scottish prayer seemed inappropriate—given his new life with Mrs. Machado. “The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended. Thank You for it.” (Most nights, Jack didn’t feel like thanking anyone for the day he’d had.)

As for Lottie, she’d sent the boy a postcard from Prince Edward Island; from the look of the fir trees, the gray rocks, the dark-blue ocean, you wouldn’t know that anything was wrong.

“No, no, no, it ain’t me, babe,” Emma was singing. “It ain’t me you’re lookin’ for, babe.”

Jack was obsessing about Mr. Ramsey taking him to Maine, which also put him in a mood. He was feeling sorry for himself, which is fertile territory for bad dreams. The Bob Dylan album was still playing when he fell asleep. He imagined that his mother and Mrs. Oastler had returned from the movie before Emma had come upstairs to kiss him good night. He was lying there wondering if his mom or Emma would kiss him good night first, but of course it was a dream—he was only dreaming that he was lying in bed, awake.

Bob Dylan was still wailing away, or he was wailing away in Jack’s dream. “Perhaps it’s the color of the sun cut flat/An’ cov’rin’ the crossroads I’m standing at,” Emma sang along with Bob. “Or maybe it’s the weather or something like that,/But mama, you been on my mind.” (There was an understatement!)

Someone came into Jack’s bedroom. He opened his eyes to see if it was Emma or his mother, but it was Leslie Oastler and she was naked. She pulled back the covers and got into bed with him. Given how small she was, there was more room in the bed for her than there ever had been for Mrs. Machado—and Mrs. Oastler smelled better. She made a sound in the back of her throat, a kind of growl—as if she were feral, or as if she might bite. Her long, painted nails scratched Jack’s chest; her nails skittered over his stomach. Her small, fast hand shot inside his boxers. One of her nails nicked his penis; she just happened to scratch him on a spot where the little guy was sore. Jack must have flinched.

“What’s wrong—you don’t like me?” Leslie whispered in his ear. Her small hand closed around his penis. He was paralyzed in Mrs. Oastler’s clinging embrace.

“No, I like you—it’s just that my penis hurts,” Jack tried to say, but the words wouldn’t come. (In dreams, he was always tongue-tied—he could never speak.)

Jack could feel the little guy getting bigger in Leslie’s hand. Mrs. Oastler’s hand is no bigger than my own! he was thinking, while the music played. “It don’t even matter to me where you’re wakin’ up tomorrow,” Emma was singing, “but mama, you’re just on my mind.”

“Where Mister Penis is going, it won’t hurt anymore,” Mrs. Oastler whispered in Jack’s ear.

But how did Leslie know about Mister Penis? the boy wondered—and how did she know his penis hurt, when he couldn’t even talk? “What did you say?” Jack tried to ask her, but he couldn’t hear his own words—only Mrs. Oastler, repeating herself.

Her voice had changed. It was definitely Leslie Oastler’s hard, thin body that was grinding against Jack’s, but her voice was Mrs. Machado’s voice—or a perfect imitation. “Where Meester Penis ees going, eet won’t hurt anymore.” (Jack was surprised she didn’t call him “dahleen.”)

“Please don’t. My penis really hurts. Please stop,” Jack kept trying to say. But if he couldn’t hear himself, how could Mrs. Oastler hear him? (He knew it was pointless to think that his mother might hear him, or that she would come save him if she did.)

If Bob Dylan ever stopped singing, maybe Emma would hear him and come to his rescue, Jack was thinking. He couldn’t hear the music anymore, but this didn’t necessarily mean that Bob had shut up. The way Leslie Oastler was breathing in his ear, Jack couldn’t have heard Bob Dylan if Bob had been singing his brains out in the bedroom.

“You’re forgetting to breathe again, baby cakes,” Jack distinctly heard Emma say. He’d thought it was Mrs. Oastler who was kissing him, but it was Emma! “You can keep kissing me, but you gotta breathe, too.”

“I was dreaming,” he told her.

“You’re telling me! You were pulling your pecker off, honey pie—I’m not surprised it hurts.”

“Oh.”

“Better show me the little guy, Jack,” Emma said. “Let’s see what’s the matter.”

“Nothing’s the matter,” he told her. (He was ashamed to let her see the damage.)

“Jack, it’s me, for Christ’s sake. I’m not going to hurt you.” Both the bathroom light and the lamp on the night table were on. Emma took a good look at Mister Penis. “It’s kind of sore-looking—it’s all chafed!” she said.

“It’s what?”

“Jesus, Jack, you’ve rubbed yourself raw! You gotta leave it alone for a night or