The first twenty miles north of Rock Springs no one talked. Maurey rode bent over with her face between her knees. At one point she reached up to crank the heater and fan as high as they would go. I looked at her bare back, at the bumpy ridge of the spinal column with the two dips along each side and her thin shoulderblades. There were two strings, one tied around her neck and another that was supposed to tie around her ribs but had come loose.
Lydia glanced at me and narrowed her eyes.
“Her mom was there,” I said, “getting an abortion too. And Coach Stebbins was with her.”
Lydia let this sink in as the high Wyoming plains swept by. A mail truck passed us going south, and some ravens swooped around a roadkill deer.
Lydia wrinkled her nose. “Annabel Pierce had sex?”
Maurey’s head sunk and I heard her say “Daddy,” then she was crying. Her back trembled, contracted with sobs. She cried really loud. I’d never heard honest grief before.
Lydia pulled off the side and held Maurey’s head, pulling hair out of her face. I put my hand on her shoulder blade, for a second, then took it back. I didn’t know if I was part of the problem or the comfort.
The loudness didn’t last long, then came gasps like her breath had been knocked out. She sat up and leaned her head back on the seat, staring open-eyed at the car roof.
“A man was shaving me,” she said.
“Where?” I asked.
Lydia said, “Shut up.”
“He was touching me, down there, and chewing gum and it felt dirty. I wanted to get rid of my skin. I looked to the right at the Negro girl who had already been shaved. Her eyes were closed like she was asleep and I thought, wow, I see my first Negro and get my first abortion on the same day.”
Lydia held a Kleenex up to Maurey’s nose and said, “Blow.” After Maurey blew, Lydia cracked her window and threw out the Kleenex.
Maurey sniffed twice. “I turned my head to the left and she was looking at me. I said, ‘Mama, what are you doing here?’ then I realized the man was fixing to shave her too. She said, ‘Oh, honey.’
“I jerked and the man snapped at me. I was afraid to jump up for fear he’d cut me there, I had to lie still but I couldn’t. My own mother . . .” Lydia leaned over and started the car, but didn’t put it in gear.
“The nurse gave the Negro girl a shot, and I knew when she gave me one I’d never be able to move. And Mama kept staring at me. That’s when I screamed.”
Lydia shifted into drive and we eased back onto the highway. The wind blew snow across the road about wheel level so we couldn’t see the pavement but everything a foot off the ground was clear. It made for an unreal effect.
I didn’t understand. “This is impossible. How could Annabel be getting an abortion at the same time and place as Maurey?”
Maurey blinked when I said “abortion.”
Lydia punched the lighter and waited a few seconds, then lit a cigarette, a Kool. “Once you get past the odds of them both being pregnant at the same time, it’s not so hard to figure. This is the only clinic doing them for three hundred miles, that I know of, and it only runs on weekends and we had to come today because of Annabel’s bridge club.”
Maurey still looked at the ceiling. “I bet there never was a bridge club. I bet every Saturday she goes off with Howard Stebbins and fucks all day.” Tears flowed again, only this time with no sound. “And while Daddy’s up taking care of the horses and being alone all winter, she’s naked with Howard on top of her sticking his greasy thing in my mother.”
Maurey’s voice rose when she said “my mother.”
“His filthy thing that just came out of his filthy little wife who gave him those three brats. Annabel Pierce, the perfect home-maker and thing-sucker.”
I had trouble with the picture. Annabel would never allow herself to be seen in an unironed blouse. How could she get naked with a coach? And I suddenly realized what part of this whole thing affected me. Was the abortion off or postponed or what? We’d left Lydia’s money—Caspar’s really—and Maurey’s clothes and shoes back in Rock Springs. They owed us an abortion. Were we talking rain check or blow off?
We drove another thirty miles with each of us lost in our thoughts. My fairly boggled thoughts jumped from Buddy to the baby to how this would change homeroom. The sucker would never blackmail me into coming out for football again. No more licks. Maurey took my hand again in one of hers. I was real happy about that. All I ever wanted was to be needed.
Maurey closed her eyes. Lydia chain-smoked Kools. We passed a cluster of three houses, one mobile home, and a post office with a sign out front that said Eden. One of the houses was surrounded by huge cottonwoods. It had recently been painted yellow and looked strange and kept up in the middle of the white on gray on white winter desert.
Lydia’s voice broke the silence. I guess she’d been holding it in all these years, wanting to tell the story, but waiting for the right moment. I couldn’t follow at first. She held both hands on the wheel and talked with a cigarette balanced in her mouth, smoke trailing over her face. Her voice stayed flat, no emotion.
“The first time they took Mother to the hospital, before the operations, Caspar had to sell some carbon paper in Durham right before Christmas. Christmas Eve he said he’d get back early and we’d have supper together and open presents. I decorated the tree by myself and put on my blue jumper. Every time a car came down the hill I ran to the window. You know the deal. Everyone that’s seen a shrink has a story like it. Caspar never showed up.”
Lydia paused to blow smoke out her nose. I think she hoped for some poor-little-girl understanding, but I was her kid—she’d pulled the same crap on me as long as I could remember—and Maurey had just caught her mom aborting a coach’s baby. Neither one of us exactly bubbled with sympathy.
“About eight o’clock Caspar called to say he had to stay in Durham, but he’d bring me a nice present the next day. I found a piece of flagstone and went into his study and smashed his best pipe. Then I decided to have a party.”
The heater was too hot, but to take off my coat, I’d have to let go of Maurey’s hand, and I didn’t want to do that. Her breathing had gone real steady. I couldn’t tell if she was listening or asleep. I was pretty sure she wasn’t asleep, but I just couldn’t see making her move.
“I called up the big brother of a girl I knew in school, Mimi Rotkeillor. He was a football player I kind of liked. I invited him over, said my daddy was out of town and he should round up any friends wanted to have some fun on Christmas Eve. They brought oranges and grapefruit that they’d injected vodka in with a hypodermic syringe. Lord knows where they got the syringe.”
“How many?” I asked.
She blinked smoke out of her eyes. “How many what?”
“How many people came over?”
Lydia bit her lower lip. “Five football players from around town. They had oranges full of vodka.” I remembered the pictures in the panty box and realized where this story was heading. So did Maurey. Her hand tightened on mine and she opened her eyes.
“We ate the oranges and put on a Rosemary Clooney Christmas album and danced. They kept touching me and I thought, Daddy will be sorry now. He didn’t know real boys liked me. Someone found his liquor cabinet and we drank something. I was pretty woozy.”
Lydia punched fire for another Kool. We drove through Pinedale without a word, as if this was something she couldn’t talk about in front of people.
“One guy was kissing me and I felt warm, and then I was on the floor and he was yanking on the blue jumper. I didn’t know what was going on. He hurt me, but I was drunk and didn’t care. I kept hoping Caspar would walk in and feel bad. Another guy climbed on me and he was big and I started bleeding and got scared. One of them held me down with his knees on my shoulders and his dick right in my face while another one did it to
