ball—absolutely talentless in every way, not to mention he had the posture of a train-station beggar. Yet he was a king-hell big deal. People sucked up to Ed like he was president of the world or something. No wonder kids grow up weird.
I was watching Maurey breathe, trying to see if there was a baby in there, so I missed the first part, but when she said, “Shut up,” I looked at Ed hunched over by a curtain.
He said, “And now…the Beatles.”
The audience went nuts—you had to be there—as four guys in wimp clothes with their hair combed forward broke into “All My Loving.” I didn’t know it was “All My Loving” at the time. Maurey told me the next day at school after Kim Schmidt told her.
“Sissies,” Buddy said through his bush of a beard.
“I think they’re cute,” Annabel said.
Petey threw a Candy Land marker at the screen.
The weird part was the screaming girls. No way could they hear the music; they were making too much noise. The camera blew off the Beatles to focus on these regular high school-looking girls with tears streaming away and their hands up in helpless supplication. I can’t stand seeing strong emotions. Makes me nervous.
Maurey’s right foot was up in the air going side to side with the song. She held the cocoa with both hands and blew steam toward the television. When the two Beatles on the left leaned into the same microphone, the scream intensity doubled.
“If they’re so hot why don’t they buy a separate microphone for each guy,” I said.
Buddy had an answer. “Cause they like to stand close to each other. England is all boys who like other boys. I was there in the war.”
Annabel did a
My mind said “Pregnant, pregnant, pregnant,” over and over. I hate that when you get a word in there and it won’t go away no matter what you’re doing on the outside.
They sang five songs. “She Loves You” was pretty good and the last one, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” was okay. The others were somewhat drippy for me, though it was hard to tell with all the screaming. For sure they were better than the Singing Nun.
The next act was some dogs who wore fu-fu clothes and rode bicycles. They reminded me of Otis, whose leg I shot off. I’d been in town six months and shot one dog and gotten one girl pregnant.
Maurey got a comb and stood behind me, combing my hair forward like a Beatle. Embarrassed me to no end.
“You’ll look cool at school,” she said.
“Being from the East causes me enough trash. If I look like an English wimp Coach Stebbins will hate me sure.”
“Coach Stebbins hates you?” Annabel asked.
“He thinks I’m an outsider.”
“You are,” Buddy said. “But you’ll get over it.” He held up the rifle barrel and sighted through the tube right at me. Gave me a funny feeling in the spine.
Maurey stood back to admire my hair. “This’ll drive Chuckette Morris crazy. She’ll be all over you in homeroom.”
“I don’t want Chuckette Morris all over me in homeroom.”
“Have to fight ’em off, huh?” Buddy said.
Maurey smiled at me. “With a stick.”
Sometime after midnight, I came wide awake. I lay there with my eyes open, trying to piece together the room, where I was, why, when. What had caused me to come to. A coal glowed bright over by my desk, then dimmed. Lydia’s head was silhouetted by the window. The coal moved down and she flicked a part of it into my trash can.
“I was so sick the day I found out I was pregnant with you. I’ve never been so sick. It was worse than I’d dreamed.” She inhaled on the cigarette. “The doctor told Caspar first and Caspar came into my room and hit me in the face. The only time he ever hit me. So far.”
The coal went bright again. “I fell into my dollhouse and broke the roof.”
She was quiet a long time. I was afraid to move—she seemed so delicate, fragile—as if raising my head could change her. Lydia finally went on. “I was so sick I didn’t care that he hit me. I just wanted you out of me so I wouldn’t feel sick anymore.” Her foot touched the trash can, making a metal sound.
“I would have gone for an abortion if Caspar hadn’t tried to make me have one. Why doesn’t that man ever figure me out?”
This time the silence stretched the length of a cigarette. She threw the live butt in my trash can and stood up. “I got pregnant to spite my father and I refused an abortion to spite him. I wonder how that makes you feel.”
I listened while Lydia made her way across the house and into her bedroom. Then I got up and poured water into the trash can.
“If you are pregnant, we could get married and live in an apartment. I’ll find a job.”
“Oh, Sam, don’t be a squirrel.”
Being a squirrel was the worst thing that could happen to a boy. Kids would do anything, no matter how bizarre or dangerous, to avoid squirrelhood; all except for the really squirrelly ones like Rodney Cannelioski who didn’t know Shinola. I kind of felt sorry for him. He put more salt on his food than anyone I ever saw. We would sit at the cafeteria table and watch him shake salt over his square slab of pizza for five minutes. You could see it caking up on the awful stuff that passed for cheese.
No matter what a chump you think you are, you never have to look far to find someone else in worse shape —only they don’t seem to know it. Lydia says it’s not nice to make empty, worthless people see themselves in a true light. “They just get angry and nothing changes anyway.”
The conversation with Maurey where I suggested marriage took place next to our Oldsmobile on Saturday right before she and Lydia drove over to Dubois to see the doctor. Maurey had been nervous all week and I knew she was scared—pregnancy is a big deal whether you keep the kid or not—but she would never admit it. She seemed somehow mad at me, as if I’d imposed on her.
The closest we came to talking about the baby was Wednesday after geography when I asked her if she felt like coming by for practice that night.
“We practiced enough, Sam. We’re through with practice.”
“Does that mean we’re ready for the real thing?”
“I’m ready to go back to sixth grade. You can go anywhere you want.”
Chuckette walked up and did the dirty-look-at-me thing for talking to another girl and Maurey went off to the ladies’ room where I knew she got sick between second and third period every morning.
Lydia put a box of Sterno and her toothbrush in the backseat for their drive to Dubois. She was always afraid the car would break down fifteen miles from any people and she’d freeze to death behind the wheel and be discovered dead with bad breath. She hid boxes of matches all over town in case the power failed in a blizzard. And I know for a fact she stashed a spare toothbrush in the silver toilet-paper tube in the women’s John at the White Deck.
“Want anything from Dubois?” she asked before they took off.
“Spider-Man comic books.”
“Sammy, you are so infantile.”
Maurey sat on the passenger side, staring out the window, not looking at me. It occurred to me we hadn’t
