a pint of Gilbey’s.
She flipped on the TV. A fuzzy image came on of two people showing the mechanics of a rifle. Lydia went on. “That Dotty’s had a fascinating life. She has a little son she hasn’t seen in two years and a husband in Asia, or somewhere, in the army.”
“You talk to Dot?”
“We have a lot in common.”
You think you’re on top of the deal, then suddenly you find yourself actually over to the side with the view blocked.
I was more disoriented than ever.
Maurey and I discovered a mutual love of reading books. It was like being in Bolivia or someplace foreign and running into the only other person in a thousand miles who speaks English—instant old-home week.
We raved at each other. “Have you read
“God, it was great. Have you read
Sunday, Maurey and I discussed the sex stuff in
“It’s a metaphor,” Maurey said.
“A metaphor for what?”
They were showing the procession as John Kennedy’s body was moved from the White House to the Capitol. It was real sad and dignified. White horses pulled the casket up the street followed by a black horse with empty boots stuck backward through the stirrups.
“Jeeze, what a horse,” Maurey said. “Wouldn’t you love to ride him?”
“Who wouldn’t?” The horse looked like a man-killer to me.
Petey dragged a bunch of dolls and a beat-to-death bear into his fort and pretended they were customers at a drive-up liquor store. Being from North Carolina, I had no idea what that meant until Maurey explained.
“You sure have led a sheltered life,” she said.
“I went to New York City once. I didn’t see any drive-up liquor stores there.”
The literary sex stuff confused us both. Growing up around Lydia, I’d learned the patter early—the hooker laid the John with a Bo Peep fantasy on a half and half—but I didn’t know what went where when the hooker did all this.
Maurey couldn’t even follow it that far. “Bo Peep is about doing it?”
I faked sophistication. “Of course.”
Maurey had read
I told her about the whores in
She told me a Hemingway story where an African guide has a double cot and somebody’s wife sneaks out for a couple of hours, then the next day she blows her husband’s head off.
I told her about
We finally found common ground with
“But what happened in the gully?” Maurey asked.
I shrugged. “Seems like a lot of book people die afterward.”
Maurey pointed to the TV. “Here’s the killer.”
“Who are all those other people?”
“Holy cow,” Maurey said.
Annabel brought in a huge bowl of popcorn and stood in the middle of the family room, staring blankly at the Dallas police wrestling Jack Ruby to the concrete floor. She turned to us. “Who’s ready for a snack?”
Petey twisted the bear’s head until it tore off its body.
That night I had my first wet dream. It was king-hell peculiar. Lydia and I were in this department store to buy me some new Wranglers. She held a pair of 26-28s up to my waist and said, “Looks right if they don’t shrink much. Maybe you better try them on.”
I went into the changing booth and Annabel Pierce was sitting on this three-legged stool, naked with Kleenex boxes on both feet. She said, “You didn’t eat the popcorn.”
I couldn’t take off my jeans to try on the new ones with her watching, so I just waited there, holding the pants in front of me, embarrassed because Annabel was old and naked.
She stood up and said, “Here’s what the gypsy did to the virgin,” and she pressed herself against me and kissed me on the lips, a real closed-mouth kiss, felt like kissing the seam on a football.
Lydia banged on the door. “Come on, I want to see the waistline.” Then suddenly I was naked from the navel down, except my socks, and something felt really weird and I woke up with this mess on my stomach.
I wiped myself off with a day-old sweat sock and changed pajamas. In the bathroom, I examined my eyes for signs of jaundice. Me Maw died of jaundice caused by cancer and Caspar said it was hereditary. I checked a mole on my right inner thigh, which I’d been told would change color and fall off if I had polio.
No yellow, no rotting moles. I went in, turned off the TV, and woke up Lydia, which I’d never done before.
She still slept on the couch in an askew post-Gilbey’s position, but at least she’d graduated to a white flannel nightgown. No more waking up fully dressed. Out the window, dawn turned the snow from gray to a light pink. That meant she’d had several hours to process the gin and Valium and might be somewhere near coherent.
I stuck the gooey sock up close to her face. “What’s this?”
Lydia blinked twice, stretched her spine, then made a chewing motion. It was my first experience at watching a woman go from asleep to awake.
“Sammy?”
“Lydia, something weird is going on and I demand an explanation.”
Her eyes focused. “You blew your nose on a sock.”
“No way in the world did this stuff blow out my nose.”
Lydia blinked a couple more times. She touched the goo with her index finger and touched the finger to her tongue. Her eyes woke up. “You jerked off. It’s come.”
I’d heard come-brains and come in your pants, and knew it was connected to the penis, but I’d vaguely figured it meant peeing on yourself. Jerk-off was a term used in sports to denote a lazy screwup. “I didn’t jerk off, Mom. I woke up with this stuff all over me.”
Lydia’s eyes left the sock and went to my face. “You had a wet dream, honey bunny. It’s okay. Boys have them all the time.”
“A wet dream?”
“Were you dreaming right before you woke up?”
I nodded.
“Maybe there was a girl in the dream?”
“She was naked.”
Lydia smiled. “Did you recognize her?”
Something told me to skip that one. “She kissed me and I felt funny.”
Lydia sat up and hugged me. I held the sock out away from her back. “Poor Sammy. It’s a natural stage in
