Skipped Parts

Petey slammed both hands on the table. “Rocky’s not on on Saturday afternoon, stupid.”

***

Lydia telephoned Hank, who brought over a couple of frozen pizzas—sausage with mushroom and Canadian bacon. It was odd, like zap, Maurey was part of the family and always had been. She helped me wash the dishes without being asked. Hank took out the trash. Lydia painted her toenails black.

After supper we all four hung out in the living room, doing whatever we would have done anyway even if Maurey hadn’t bumped into her mom at an abortion clinic. I sat in the elk-gut chair with Alice in my lap, reading The Once and Future King and Tom Swift and His Deep-Sea Hydrodrome. Maurey brought a pillow from our bedroom and sat on it with her back against the couch. Her book was The Capture of the Golden Stallion by Rutherford G. Montgomery. Unlike me, Maurey actually made progress in her reading. I sat staring at the same page—96—in both my books, trying to understand sentences with migratory words.

Lydia perched on her feet on the couch, flipping through a New Yorker, while next to her Hank watched “Gunsmoke.”

“Miss Kitty is frigid,” Lydia said.

“She’s just white, all white women look frigid.”

“She’s frigid.”

Our bedroom—had a creepy ring to it. I’d never shared a room with anyone. At the manor house I had four bedrooms I thought of as mine. What hacked me off and made the words swim was that no one ever discussed anything. When we drove onto the GroVont Highway, Maurey had said, “Swing by my place and I’ll pick up some clothes.”

Then we came home and she asked me which drawers were hers. The stuffed bear lay propped against the headboard, so I figured she was sleeping in the bed, but where was I sleeping? Why hadn’t anyone said, “Mind if I stay at your house tonight?” “What’s Buddy going to do?” “Gee, Maurey, would you like to live in my room?” “I think maybe I’ll have the baby after all.”

Instead we washed the dishes, left them to dry in the drain-board, went in the living room and plopped down for the evening. Maurey said, “I’m getting a pillow from our bedroom. Want anything while I’m up?”

“No.”

At 10:30 I went out to the kitchen for Lydia’s Gilbey’s and she went to the bathroom for Valium.

“Hold out your hands,” Lydia said.

Maurey, Hank, and I held out our hands so Lydia could shake a little yellow pill into each one. She said to Maurey, “We don’t do this every night, understand, but today was special.”

“A day I won’t forget,” Maurey said.

The three of us shared a Dr Pepper to wash down our Valiums while Lydia knocked hers off with a shot of gin.

“Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” she said.

Hank said, “Sleep with your mouth shut or your spirit will fly around the world and might not be back for your awakening.”

***

Maurey went to the bathroom and I put on my pajamas, then sat in the chair in front of my typewriter. By pressing down on all the keys at once I made them stick together up by the ribbon. A few fell back, but if I really slammed down on a key it usually stuck in the bunch. I got every one but three—Q, ;, and 9—jammed.

Getting under the sheets and waiting didn’t feel like the thing to do. She might have me planned for the couch, or maybe she thought we’d sleep with our heads at different ends. It wasn’t a day to take anything for granted.

Maurey came in wearing a white flannel nightgown. She’d brushed her hair and looked thirteen and beautiful. On account of the pregnancy, her breasts were growing by the day.

She folded the clothes she had been wearing and put them on the dresser. “Which side of the bed do you sleep on?”

I looked at the bed. It had a sky blue spread with thin white lines running lengthwise. “I never thought about it. I just sleep.”

“Can I have the outside? Lately, I pee and throw up at strange times of night.”

“Sure.” I turned back the blankets and got in. We’d been together in my bed plenty of times, but I always knew what was going to happen before. “Can I see where the man shaved you?”

Maurey pulled her white nightie up above her hips and looked down at herself. Her crotch was a fold in a flat area at the top of a gentle rise. The distance from her navel to the fold was farther than I’d imagined, like one belly above the belly button and one belly below it. You couldn’t tell she’d ever had hair there.

“Weird, huh?” Maurey said.

“I don’t know, it looks okay.” I reached out to touch it, but she dropped her nightie.

“No touching.”

“I just wanted to feel the stub.”

“You thought you could get me wet and I’d do something I told you I wouldn’t do.”

“Maurey, I’m surprised you think that.”

“Here’s the rules. No kissing and no touching the spot. If you try to kiss me it will ruin everything.”

I’d been afraid those were the rules. Maybe after the Valium kicked in she would change her mind.

Maurey slid under the covers next to me. We lay on our backs with our shoulders almost together, only I couldn’t see her face because the bear was between our heads.

We listened to each other breathe. In the kitchen, the refrigerator kicked on, and with a mew Alice jumped on the bed and settled between us at knee level.

“She finally seems weaned,” Maurey said.

“Are we going to keep the baby?”

Her back flinched. “I’m not thinking about that tonight.”

“What’s your dad going to say about you living here?”

“I’m not thinking about anything tonight, okay, Sam. Don’t ask me any more questions.”

Nobody said anything for a long time. The front of my forehead started to wooze out with the familiar approach-of-Valium feeling.

Maurey giggled.

“What?” I asked.

“I can sleep with you but I don’t know if I can sleep with those pajamas.”

I’m feeling touching togetherness and she’s laughing at my sleep wear. “What’s wrong with my pajamas?”

“They’re paisley.”

“Grandma Callahan bought them for me.”

“Don’t they give you nightmares?”

She was beginning to sound like Lydia. “Do you want me to get up and change them?”

“I’d sleep better if you did.”

I crawled over Maurey and went to the closet and dug out a pair of pajamas the same color as a pack of Doublemint chewing gum. They were meant for summertime and the bottoms were short, which showed my knees. Maurey stared at the ceiling while I undressed and dressed. I know because I took a peek when I was naked to see if she cared and she didn’t.

After I changed I crawled across and settled in on my back again. Alice turned around twice to arrange herself. Maurey moved the bear from between us. She rolled over on her stomach, propped up on her elbows, and stared at me.

“Do you think you can keep from kissing me or touching the spot?”

“I think so.”

“You better be sure.”

“Okay, I’m sure,” I said, even though I wasn’t.

“Will you hold me then.”