Shannon at the High Point furniture mart. She chose it because she liked the ironwork design on the headboard. In my mind, I could see her hands intertwined in the iron design while Eugene’s sweat dribbled into her pores. You try to be both mother and father, you try to set a good example, you want to lock them up so they’ll never be hurt, but the books and magazines all say “Set her free, let her go.” And look what happens. A balding male who can’t even talk right charms his sleazy way into her body. God, I hate men.
What to do? Call the police? Ignore the atrocity? In the olden days a man would have smashed down the door with a shotgun and forced Eugene to marry her, but times have changed. Marriage is the last thing I want for a daughter of mine.
Shannon made a low gasp followed by a series of
Yet Shannon was pretty darn close to someone I’d heard before. My mind raced back through the years and bodies until it suddenly struck me—Maurey. Her mother. At thirteen Maurey had sung the
Sickened yet fascinated, I listened to Shannon build toward climax. I was amazed. The sound of passion is genetic. A woman echoing her mother couldn’t be learned behavior, has to be heredity. Maybe it goes clear back to the moment of conception, in which case impregnation must be accompanied by orgasm or the song is not passed on.
I watched Mom have sex in our living room once and her sounds were completely different from Shannon’s and Maurey’s, which means the gene isn’t passed through the male side. Lydia sounded like a kid having an asthma attack. That night I saw her doing it, the guy came and quit before she got off—an immoral act, if you ask me—so I didn’t hear my mother’s orgasm. Probably for the best.
The emotions you feel watching your mother get laid don’t even compare to how you feel when it’s your daughter. That was my baby in there with a penis crammed inside her. The little girl I raised through kindergarten, birthday parties, mumps, first bike, driving lessons, first zit. I wanted to throw up. What if Eugene was a pervert? A bondage freak with a French tickler.
What if he toyed with her heartstrings and left? Wam, bam, thank you, Sam. Even worse, what if he stayed? They might fall in love and become life mates, and I would have to be gracious. I refuse to be gracious to anyone noodling my daughter.
I doubled up my fist and rapped on the door. The sounds suddenly stopped.
Shannon shouted: “What?”
“Are you practicing proper birth control?”
Short silence, then: “Daddy, go away!”
Back in my own bedroom, Katrina had tossed her nightgown aside. She sat naked on the bed, rubbing Wanda’s vitamin E oil into her thighs under the sheets.
She looked up at me and said, “I chap easy.”
I leaned back against the closed door. “My baby is having sex.”
“Good for her.”
“I shall never have an erection again. The penis is a blind and cruel animal without conscience or mercy.”
“You talk like there’s one big schlong out there that ravages little girls.”
“There is. All schlongs are one schlong and the one schlong is soiling Shannon.”
Katrina stared at my boxers. “You really can’t get a stiffie?”
“I’m limp with outrage.”
She threw back the sheets, revealing her tight little body. “You’ve still got a tongue.”
For a few days life reached a pattern of some sort. Breakfast pancakes with Gilia, oral perversions with Katrina, miles and miles on the Exercycle 6000. At night I telephoned Mike Newberry to fill him in on the day’s activities: dry cleaners, the Magic Cart office, a drive over to Winston-Salem to see if Rainbow News and Novels still stocked
A novelist can’t stand to tell a boring story. I invented a Chinese brothel in Siler City where I wiled away the afternoon. I told him I lost ten thousand dollars betting on cockfights.
Tuesday noon I had a remarkably close call at Katrina’s health club. Turned out to be the same health club where Gilia swam. I ended up hiding in the women’s shower, then escaping down a laundry chute and out a fire exit. After that I insisted Katrina meet me at the Ramada Inn. She took out a room with a weekly rate.
At breakfast Wednesday, Gilia was indignant about the invasion of Grenada.
“Seven thousand crack marines against two hundred Cuban construction workers,” she said, “and Reagan’s behaving like we whipped the Kaiser.”
“Are Grenadians black?”
Gilia’s hair was in a ponytail, which excited me for some reason. She looked clean and wholesome, like untracked snow. I guess no boy can resist putting tracks in untracked snow.
“Spanish, I think,” she said, “but maybe black. Jamaicans are black and Grenada is somewhere near Jamaica.”
“My garbage disposal predicted a war against black people.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Actually, my housekeeper, Gus, predicted the war against black people, but she heard it from the garbage disposal.”
“Seven thousand marines against construction workers could hardly be called a war.”
I went on to explain Gus, which is no easy trick. She’s six feet two inches tall, and twenty-five years ago she played basketball for North Carolina A & T, back when girls’ teams had six on the floor instead of five the way they do now. Gus reads the
“We had a black maid but Mama accused her of wasting toilet paper. Now she won’t hire anyone but Quakers,” Gilia said.
“I saw a black woman at Skip’s. She wouldn’t speak to me even though I asked politely if anyone was home.”
Gilia slid the check to her side of the table. “That’s Phadron. Skip hires illegal aliens who don’t speak English. Ryan says Skip threatens them with deportation if they don’t sleep with him and Katrina can’t do anything to stop it.”
“Sounds like a sad situation.” I made a grab for the check but she snatched it away. A traditional Southern woman would have protested delicately, but still let me win.
She said, “I suspect Katrina does her share to balance Skippy’s sins. She’s been awfully chipper the last few days.”
“Chipper?”
“Mama suspects the tennis pro.”
That afternoon a thin man in an extremely cheap suit showed up on my doorstep. I’ll wear a sports jacket now and then, but I stopped wearing suits after Lydia told me the neck tie is a phallic symbol. I’m not ashamed of
