by John Irving
Emma's mom was a small, compact woman--as her push-up bra would suggest. As Emma's mustache would imply, her mother was surprisingly hairy--at least for a woman, and a small woman at that. Emma's mom would have had a more discernible mustache than her daughter, but (according to Emma) Mrs. Oastler frequently had her upper lip waxed. She would not have been rash to consider waxing her arms as well, but the only other visible preventative measure taken against her hairiness was that she had her sleek black hair cut as short as a boy's in an elfish pixie. Despite her prettiness, which was petite in nature, Jack thought that Mrs. Oastler looked a little like a man.
"Yes, but an attractive one," Alice said to her son. She thought that Emma's mother was "very good-looking," and that it was a pity Emma "took after" her father.
Jack never met Emma's dad. After every winter break from St. Hilda's, Emma returned to school with a tan. Her father had taken her to the West Indies, or Mexico; that was virtually the only time they spent together. Emma also spent a month of every summer at a cottage in Georgian Bay, but most of that time she was in the care of a nanny or a housekeeper--her dad came to the cottage only on weekends. Emma never spoke of him.
That Mrs. Oastler thought Emma was too young to have her mustache waxed was a source of contention between mother and daughter. "It's hardly noticeable," Emma's mom would tell her. "Besides, at your age, what does it matter?" And there were other issues between them, as one might expect of a divorced woman raising a "difficult" only child--a sixteen-year-old daughter who was physically bigger and stronger than her mother, and still growing.
Mrs. Oastler also thought that Emma was too young to have a tattoo--an intolerable hypocrisy, in Emma's opinion, because her mom had recently been tattooed by Daughter Alice. This was news to Jack, but so was almost everything Emma told him. "What's her tattoo? A tattoo where?" he asked.
Well, what a surprise! Emma's mom had been tattooed to conceal a scar. "She had a Cesarean," Emma said. That old business again, Jack thought. "It's a scar from her C-section," Emma told him. And to think he'd once believed this was the ward for difficult births in a hospital in Halifax! "She had a bikini cut," Emma explained.
"A what?"
"A horizontal incision, not the vertical kind."
"I still don't get it," Jack said.
This necessitated a trip to Mrs. Oastler's bedroom. (Emma's mother was out.) There Emma showed Jack a pair of her mom's panties--black bikini briefs, no doubt a fetching match to the push-up bra. Mrs. Oastler's scar was called a bikini cut because the incision was below the panty line of the briefs.
"Oh. And what's the tattoo?"
"A stupid rose."
Jack thought not. He was pretty sure he knew what kind of rose it was, in which case it would have been too big to be completely concealed under the panty line of Mrs. Oastler's bikini briefs. "A Rose of Jericho?" he asked Emma.
It was, for once, her turn to be uninformed. "A Rose of what?"
This was not the easiest thing for a nine-year-old to explain. Jack made a fist. "It's about this big, maybe a little bigger," he began.
"Yes, it is," Emma said. "Go on, Jack."
"It's a flower with the petals of another flower hidden inside it."
"What other flower?"
There were so many words he'd heard and remembered--not that he understood them. Labia was one, vagina another--they were like flowers, weren't they? And the other flower hidden in a Rose of Jericho was like the petals, or the labia, a woman had--a vagina concealed in a rose. Jack couldn't imagine what a mess he made of this explanation to Emma, but of course Emma knew what he was trying to say.
"You must be kidding, Jack."
"You have to know what you're looking for in order to see it," the boy said.
"Don't tell me you know what a vagina looks like, honey pie."
"Not an actual one," Jack admitted. But he had seen a Rose of Jericho--many, in fact. He had examined the petals of that flower. He'd spotted "the lips" within the rose, as Ladies' Man Madsen had called them--the oh-so-peculiar-but-discernible something that made a Rose of Jericho not quite like any other rose. "Maybe you haven't looked closely enough," he said to Emma, who seemed not herself--she was paralyzed with disbelief. "I mean at the tattoo."
Emma took Jack by the hand and led him back to her bedroom. In her other hand, Emma was still holding her mom's bikini briefs; it was as if Jack Burns were destined to bear to his grave the burden of a life-changing relationship with Mrs. Oastler's underwear.
Emma's bedroom was everything you would expect of that passage from childhood through puberty to concupiscence. The neglected teddy bears and other stuffed animals occupied positions of no particular importance on the king-size bed; there was a poster from a Beatles concert, and one from a Robert Redford movie. (It might have been Jeremiah Johnson, because Redford had a beard.) And everywhere, on the floor, on the bed--in one case, as if strangling a teddy bear--Emma's bras and panties were flagrantly displayed. The underwear of a woman-in-progress, which Emma clearly was, indicated (albeit not to Jack) that Emma was in more of a hurry on her journey to womanhood than most girls her age.
In comparison, Jack was in no hurry on his journey to becoming a young man. He just happened to have met Emma Oastler, who knew his father's story; despite the seven years between them, Emma was eager to see him catch up to her. "So you know what a vagina looks like," Emma was saying, as she lay down among her discarded panties and bras and teddy bears.
"I know what one looks like in a Rose of Jericho," Jack replied. She'd not let go of his hand. He had no choice but to lie down on the bed beside her.
"So a vagina is familiar to you--the labia, the whole business," Emma was saying, as she lifted her short pleated skirt and wriggled out of her panties. Her mom's bikini briefs could never have accommodated Emma's hips. Consistent with the general sloppiness of dress (and undress) of the older girls at St. Hilda's, Emma didn't bother to take her panties entirely off; she kicked one leg free but left her panties dangling on one ankle, where their whiteness stood in contrast to her gray kneesocks, which were typically pushed down below midcalf, as if the socks were also indications of Emma's preference for half-dress (or half-undress).
"You have big feet," Jack observed.
"Forget the feet, Jack. You're looking at your first vagina, and you're telling me you're not surprised?" The hair was again a surprise--though not nearly so much as when he'd first felt it, unseen. But the rest of the business--well, he was prepared for it to be complicated. The intricate folds ("the lips," as Ladies' Man Madsen had called them) were of a certain healthiness of pink that no tattoo pigment could imitate; yet this ornate door, for a vagina was clearly an opening, was recognizable from his mom's Rose of Jericho, of which Jack had seen a hundred. Having seen Emma's, he would have no trouble (in the future) finding that other flower in the rose, but for how many nine-year-old boys is it no big deal to see your first actual vagina? "Cat got your tongue, Jack?" Emma said.
"The hair's different--there's no hair on the tattoo," he told her.
"You're saying only the hair is special? You're saying you've seen the rest of it?"
"It's a Rose of Jericho," Jack said. "I would recognize it anywhere."
"It's a vagina, honey pie!"
"But it's also a Rose of Jericho," he insisted. "You just need to take a closer look at your mom's--at her tattoo, I mean."
"Maybe the little guy has more of an interest in the real thing than you do, Jack." Alas, the little guy did not look interested enough to merit Emma's approval. "Jesus, baby cakes, I think there's something wrong." At nine going on ten, Jack simply wasn't old enough. The unpredictability of his penis--aroused one minute, indifferent the next--wasn't half as disappointing to him as it was to Emma. "Kiss me," Emma demanded. "That sometimes works."
Not this time. Jack would have admitted that the kiss was more aggressive than usual on Emma's part, and that--notwithstanding how she'd criticized him for inserting his tongue in her mouth an
d wiggling it like a worm--the probing use she made of her tongue was beginning to get the little guy's attention. But at the very moment his pinkie of a penis demonstrated a growing interest, which Emma might have called "promising," he snagged his lower lip on a loose wire in Emma's newly acquired braces. Before either of them noticed, Jack had bled all over Emma and himself--and her bed, several stuffed animals, and the aforementioned bra. (The one that appeared to be strangling a teddy bear.)
There was blood everywhere; more alarming, Emma and Jack were still attached. While Emma searched her messy bedroom for a hand mirror, they were clumsily--in Jack's case, painfully--linked. His lower lip was hooked to her wired teeth. And the hand mirror, when Emma finally found it, offered a confusingly reversed view. They were caught in the act of failing to disengage his lip from her braces when Emma's mom came home and skillfully, in a matter of seconds, separated them. "Maybe you should get your upper lip waxed, Emma," Mrs. Oastler said.
Did he need stitches? Jack wanted to know. There was every bit as much blood as when Lucinda Fleming had attempted to eat herself. Dangerous kissing was not new to Jack Burns!
"It's just a puncture wound," Emma's mom said, pinching his lower lip between her thumb and index finger. She didn't seem to mind the blood. Jack recognized her perfume from his many nights with her push-up bra. Mrs. Oastler, the instant he remembered her stolen bra, spotted her black bikini briefs on Emma's bloodstained bed. "I wish you'd play these games with your own underwear, Emma," Mrs. Oastler said. By the evidence of Emma's white panties with the lace waistband, which were still wrapped around Emma's left ankle and draped over her left foot, it was clear that Emma and Jack had been playing a game with her underwear as well. But Mrs. Oastler took more of an interest in recovering her black bikini briefs. "You're evidently a precocious boy, Jack," Emma's mom said.
"Jack knows all about tattoos," Emma told her. "He knows all about yours, anyway."
"Really? Is that true, Jack?" Mrs. Oastler asked.
"If it's a Rose of Jericho, I know something about it," he said.
"Go on--show him," Emma told her mom.
"I'm sure Jack doesn't need to see another Rose of Jericho. I'll bet he's already seen his share," Mrs. Oastler said.
"Well, I'd like to take a closer look at it myself," Emma told her mother. "Now that I know what it is."
"Maybe later, Emma," Mrs. Oastler said. "We can't send Jack home all covered with blood."
"You've got a vagina above your vagina, and you won't let me get a butterfly on my ankle!" Emma screamed.
"Ankles hurt," Jack offered. "Tattoos hurt where there's nothing but bone."
"It seems that Jack does know all about tattoos, Emma. You should listen to Jack."
"I just want a butterfly!" Emma screamed.
"Here's what we're going to do, Jack," Mrs. Oastler said, ignoring her daughter. "I'm going to take you to my bathroom, where you can wash up. Emma can wash up in her bathroom." Emma's mom took Jack's hand and led him down the familiar path to her bedroom, which was connected to a large bathroom with wall-to-wall mirrors. In her other hand, Mrs. Oastler carried her black bikini briefs, which she twirled around and around her index finger. In the slight breeze made by her swinging panties, Jack became more aware of her perfume than before.
She removed his bloodstained shirt and tie and filled her bathroom sink with warm water; with a wet washcloth, she wiped his face and neck, being careful to gently pat his punctured lip, which was still bleeding, if only a little. While Jack washed the blood from his hands in the sink, Mrs. Oastler rubbed his shoulders with her cool, silky hands. There wasn't any blood on Jack's shoulders, but Emma's mom seemed almost as comfortable touching him as her daughter was. "You're going to be a strong boy, Jack--not very big, but strong."
"Do you think so?" he asked.
"I know so," Mrs. Oastler said. "I can tell."
"Oh." He realized why her hands felt so cool and silky. She was rubbing his back and shoulders with her black bikini briefs.
"You're obviously very mature for your age," Emma's mom continued, "whereas Emma, although she's a big girl, is somewhat immature in other areas. She's not at all at ease with boys her own age, for example."
"Oh," Jack said again. He was drying his hands with a towel while Mrs. Oastler continued rubbing his back and shoulders with her panties. In the mirror, he could see her intense, serious face, framed by her pixie haircut.
"As for you, Jack, you seem quite comfortable around older girls and women." He felt somewhat less comfortable when Emma's mom ran her silky underwear over the back of his neck and placed her panties on his head, like a hat--like a curiously misshapen beret. His ears protruded from her bikini briefs, where her thighs would normally be. "What on earth will we tell your mom about your lip?" she asked. Before Jack could think of an answer, Mrs. Oastler said: "I get the feeling Alice isn't quite ready for the idea of you kissing a sixteen-year-old."
So his mom was "Alice" to Mrs. Oastler, which was only a mild surprise. He should have known. A Rose of Jericho is a fairly lengthy procedure, several hours under the best circumstances--and in this case, on such an intimate area of the body. Jack could easily imagine his mom and Mrs. Oastler having quite the conversation. Lying face-up on a bed or a table, for hours at a time, having a Rose of Jericho tattooed a few inches above your vagina--well, what subjects wouldn't you feel free to discuss? People became fast friends in less than half the time it took to tattoo a Rose of Jericho. Alice had spent hours staring at Mrs. Oastler's pubes; in such a situation, how could they not get to know each other? But while Alice had apparently gone along with Mrs. Oastler regarding Jack and Emma's behavior, that he had cut his lip in a kissing accident might just nip Alice's friendship with Mrs. Oastler in the bud. In any case, it made perfect sense to Jack not to tell his mother how he'd hurt himself kissing Emma.
"You could say it was a staple, Jack. I was trying to separate two pages of paper that had been stapled together, and you tried to help me. You opened the staple with your teeth."
"Why would I use my teeth?" he asked.
"Because you're a kid," Mrs. Oastler said. She patted her bikini briefs, which Jack still wore as a hat; then she plucked her panties off his head and threw them across the bathroom into an open laundry hamper. It was a good shot. She had a kind of athletic grace, boyish in nature. "I'll find you a T-shirt, something to wear home. Tell your mom I'm sending your shirt and tie to the dry cleaner's."
"Okay," he said.
Emma's mom was in her bedroom, opening a drawer. Jack kept looking at himself, bare-chested, in her bathroom mirror above the sink--as if he expected to start growing in some observable fashion. Mrs. Oastler came back with a T-shirt. It was all black, like her bikini briefs, and with the sleeves for the upper arms cut short and tight, the way women liked them. Emma's mom was so small, her T-shirt was only a little loose on Jack. "It's one of mine, of course. Emma's clothes," she added, disapprovingly, "would be too big."
His lower lip had finally stopped bleeding, but it was swollen and you could see the pinprick where the wire from Emma's braces had stabbed him. Mrs. Oastler gently rubbed some lip gloss over the wound. Emma walked into the bathroom while her mom was doing this. "You look like a girl in that T-shirt, Jack," Emma said.
"Well, Jack's pretty enough to be a girl, isn't he?" Mrs. Oastler asked. There was a noticeable measure of shame in Emma's resentful expression and slouched posture, as if she'd taken her mother's point to heart. (Jack may have been pretty enough to be a girl, but--in her mom's estimation--Emma wasn't.) "We're telling Jack's mother that he cut himself on a staple. He was trying to open a staple with his teeth, silly boy."
"I want to see the fucking Rose of Jericho," Emma said. "I want Jack to see it, too."
Without a word, Mrs. Oastler, who wore a tight-fitting pair of black jeans with a silver belt, untucked her long-sleeved cotton turtleneck, which was also black. She unbuckled the belt and wriggled the jeans over her slim hips. Jack could see only
the top half of the Rose of Jericho above the panty line of her black bikini briefs. She hooked her thumbs under the waistband of her panties, but before she slid them down, she said: "This, Jack, would be in the category of needlessly upsetting your mom--maybe even worse than kissing a sixteen-year-old, if you know what I mean."
"Oh," he said, as she pulled her bikini briefs down.
There it was. (Not the Rose of Jericho. Jack didn't need to waste a second of his time looking at another one. His mom was a pro; he assumed that Daughter Alice's Rose of Jericho was the same every time.) While Emma saw, with a gasp, the unmistakable other flower within the rose, Jack took a long, careful look at the real thing--his second sighting of an actual vagina in one day. Emma's pubic hair was as unruly as she was, but Mrs. Oastler's pubes were neatly trimmed. And if Jack ever doubted Emma's authority--that he had an older-woman thing, as she put it--he didn't doubt it now. If Emma's vagina had left the little guy largely unimpressed, what was Jack to make of the quantum leap the little guy made in response to Emma's mom? "That's disgusting!" Emma said. (She meant the tattoo.)
"It's a Rose of Jericho, like any other," Jack insisted. "My mom does a good one."
While he went on staring at her vagina, Mrs. Oastler rumpled his hair and said: "You bet she does, Jack--you bet she does."
Emma suddenly hit him so hard that he took a short flight across the bathroom tiles and landed in the vicinity of the laundry hamper. Jack instinctively put a finger to his lower lip, to be sure he wasn't bleeding again. "You weren't looking at the tattoo, baby cakes."
"Boys will be boys, Emma," Mrs. Oastler told her daughter. "Be nice to Jack. Please don't make him bleed again."
Emma yanked him to his feet by grabbing hold of her mom's skimpy T-shirt. In one of the bathroom's many mirrors, Jack caught a glimpse of Mrs. Oastler pulling up her bikini briefs and wriggling her hips back into her jeans. "What's the little guy think of my mom's Rose of Jericho?" Emma asked Jack in her vaguely threatening way.
Mrs. Oastler, of course, didn't realize that Emma was referring to Jack's penis. She probably assumed that her daughter was being disparaging about the boy's smaller size. "Don't bully him, Emma," Mrs. Oastler said. "It's unbecoming."