Now Is the Hour

by Tom Spanbauer

  Where are you going?

  To a movie.

  Which movie?

  A Man for All Seasons.

  You better check with the Idaho Catholic Register, she said. Is it condemned?

  It’s not condemned, Mom, I said. It’s about Saint Thomas More.

  Oh.

  Who are you going with?

  A girl.

  Mom stopped beating the bowl and set the bowl down. She didn’t turn around. Some of her pin curls had come undone. She stood up tall, reached up, and touched the back of her wrist to her hair.

  A girl? What girl? What’s her name?

  Billie Cody.

  Is she Catholic?

  She goes to Highland High School.

  What religion is she?

  Mom poured the yellow batter in the bowl into the cake pan, wiping down the sides of the bowl with the rubber spatula.

  What I said next, I said slow because I didn’t know how the words would sound in the kitchen with Mom.

  She isn’t sure, I said. Her mother is a Jew who was raised Catholic, and her father is a Mormon who’s Italian.

  Mom didn’t have her eyebrows on, but if she did, they would’ve been two Joan Crawford swoops high up into her forehead.

  Good Lord, she said. She made the sign of the cross.

  Mom set the bowl down, wiped the spatula end with her finger.

  Where did you meet her?

  At De Sales.

  Oh.

  Can I have ten dollars?

  Mom walked the green bowl across the blue and white tile.

  Is she converting?

  She set the bowl with the spatula in it right in front of me.

  She’s into it, I said. Can I have ten dollars?

  Ten dollars, Mom said. You can go to a movie on five.

  There was a lot of yellow batter in the bowl and on the spatula to lick.

  But I want to buy her a Coke and some French fries at the Snac Out.

  Well, six dollars then, she said.

  Pound cake. It was lemon pound cake.

  Then, can I go? I said.

  Ask your father, she said.

  That Friday night became the first of the every other Friday nights I got the pickup.

  Now it was Billie and I every Wednesday and every other Friday. First thing Billie and I did was beat it to Mount Moriah Cemetery and park.

  That’s all I wanted to do was sit close to Billie in the pickup in the dark with the radio on, and smoke, and kiss and kiss and kiss. It felt like home kissing Billie. Her lips on my lips, French-kissing too. Billie’s kisses on my neck, on my ears, on my face. Billie even kissed my eyes. One time, she kissed my hands, each finger on both hands, the palms of my hands.

  Her body right up against mine on the seat, the French smell of her, how her shoulder fit just right under my arm, I felt so solid, yet at the same time so floaty, like sitting next to Billie and kissing made us into a dream.

  One night I remember, Billie had just turned “The Ballad of the Green Berets” off, and outside the pickup the snow was melted down and it was gray slush. We’d just finished about three hours of kissing, and we’d lit cigarettes. I was going on and on about this guy I’d read about in a psychology book who said that everything we do is sexual. How we eat, and drink, how we relate to others, how we stand, sit down, lie down, how we pray, even how we believe in God, is sexual.

  So I was going on and on about this guy, showing off about how much I knew, the ramifications of this and that, and so on and so forth. At some moment, I realized there was something about Billie’s face. When I stopped and looked into her blue eyes, she couldn’t stand it. She burst out laughing.

  The guy’s name I’d been talking about was Sigmund Freud. But I hadn’t been saying his name right. I thought the eu in Freud sounded like oo. So I had been saying Sigmund Frood.

  Froid, Billie said, as in oi.

  What a dumb ass I can be. Really I just wanted to die or something. So many times I’m like my father and mother or sis, and I don’t get words right. Fuck, even when I think about it now, it just makes me want to cover my head.

  But Billie did something very cool. She put her hands on my face, the palms of her hands on my cheeks. She squished my cheeks together, and she kissed me a big wet smooch, and then she put her face right up to mine so that blue was locked into hazel.

  Rigby John, Billie said. How you are is just fine with me.

  Billie kept holding my face like that, holding it and holding.

  God, she said, if you could just see yourself right now. Did you know your eyes have flecks of gold in them?

  I went to speak, but I couldn’t because my face was squished.

  I love it when your eyes are gold, Billie said.

  I wondered if Dad had ever said that to Mom.

  On Billie’s birthday, February 28, Billie got her ears pierced, and with the allowance I’d saved I went to Molinelli’s Jewelers and bought her a pair of fourteen-karat-gold thick gold loops for her pierced ears. That night, parked in Mount Moriah, when Billie opened the box and saw the gold earrings sitting inside the box on the blue velvet, Billie made the happiest sound. I had to open the pickup door so the dome light would go on so she could put the earrings on in the rearview mirror even though she was supposed to just leave the gold posts in.

  You should have seen Billie that night. The thick gold loops in her ears were gold sparkles of moon. Her blue eyes a couple of stars. She put her arms around me and held on to me so tight.

  Life was sweet. There we were kissing and making out. The moonlight through the elm tree on Billie’s skin, the warm cab of the pickup, only the radio light on. Billie was my girlfriend, and Billie and I were safe and warm.

  We were close like that all that winter. It seemed like Billie and I together made something totally new in the world. We weren’t just two kids from Pocatello, we had something special. We read A Death in the Family, The Dharma Bums, and Native Son at the same time. I can’t tell you all the hours we talked about those books. I mean really talking, like our lives depended on it.

  Talking like that with Billie made me differnt. Pretty soon I was speaking my mind all over the place. Not necessarily at home — Mom and Dad were as weird as ever — but in class. My English teacher, Miss Barnett, couldn’t believe her ears when I spoke up in class one day about the Reverend Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter. First A I ever got in high school. Plus Scardino had flunked out, and I started to breathe in the hallways between classes.

  Then there were the movies. Billie and I loved movies. Not your regular kind of movies like Beach Blanket Bingo or Harum Scarum. I mean real movies. Movies you had to stop and think about. Movies I’d never have gone to without Billie. A Man for All Seasons, Georgy Girl, Alfie, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

  And instead of just parking in Mount Moriah, Billie and I started going to the Shanghai Café. It was real old, with old dark wood and Chinese lanterns. We sat in a red booth in a bright, bright room and drank Chinese tea and ordered pork and seeds — what Dad would call gook food — with hot mustard. Billie and I’d pump a couple of quarters in the jukebox that was on the wall by the table. Billie couldn’t shut up long enough for me to talk, and vice versa.

  The night we walked out of A Man for All Seasons I felt like I’d been in a philosophy class. Billie and I forwent kissing altogether that night.

  Billie was smoking a Winston Long with one hand, and her other hand was around a white Chinese cup without a handle when Billie said authenticity. The light was so bright you needed a pair of shades.

  What do you mean by authenticity? I said.

  Billie’s cigarette, the Queen of England waving to a parade.

  By authentic, Billie said, I mean people like Thomas More or Rosa Parks who stand by their beliefs no matter what, imprisonment or even death.

  I made a mental note of the word authenticity, and when I got home that night, I got out my dictionary and looked it up. Authentic wasn’t hard to find be
cause it’s spelled pretty much like it sounds, and what it means is this: being fully trustworthy, not imaginary, false, or imitation.

  Billie and I spent days and days in the Shanghai talking talking about Alfie and Georgy Girl and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? And men and women, and women and babies, and babies and abortion. Billie thought abortion should be legal. She said if she got pregnant, she’d get an abortion, even if it was illegal.

  Myself, I’d never thought about abortion, really, but what did I do but open up my trap, and of course, what did I say but:

  I think abortion is wrong, I said. Because that’s a child you’re killing.

  That’s because you’re a Catholic, Billie said. And a man.

  That don’t make no differnce, I said.

  Billie’s cigarette was a spurt spurt spurt, then razzle razzle razzle, then back to spurt spurt spurt again.

  The hell if it doesn’t, Billie said.

  Then Billie launched into an argument there was no way in hell I could keep up with. Just the way her chin got and her eyes so blue, you knew Billie Cody knew what she was talking about. So in the end I ended up agreeing with Billie because I figured it was like me and communism. Abortion was something I’d never really thought about in any way that was real. I was saying only what I’d heard other people say. Catholic people, that is.

  That’s what Billie did for me. She showed me I didn’t have to think like everybody else. I could have opinions and I could back them up. And I think I did something for Billie too. She started out knowing she was smart, but somehow in there, maybe I gave her confidence.

  Billie and I were for peace and love and integration. Not a whole hell of a lot of people in Pocatello like that. It wasn’t that everybody was mean and stupid. They just never stopped to think is what I decided. Most of the kids who sat in their cars at the Snatch Out thought getting drafted was cool. The only other things they thought about was getting drunk and getting married. Like Sis and Gene Kelso. Seemed like all they did was drive around town in his red ’56 Mercury, buy beer, smoke cigarettes, and end up in the back seat parked up in the cedars.

  Weird. Usually something shows up in the world, and then you start talking about it. With babies, though, Billie and I were talking about babies long before any babies showed up. At least in our own personal lives. How the fuck were we to know what the universe had conspired to do.

  It was a real long while, maybe three, even four, weeks, after Billie and I had talked about abortion, after another Wednesday night when Billie and I’d sat and kissed and talked about more stuff, and Sis and I were headed home in the pickup. It was nine-thirty and we were supposed to be home at nine-thirty, but we never got home at nine-thirty, we’d only just get started going home at nine-thirty. We were smoking. The windows were up, and the heater was on because it was March. The song on the radio was “Something Stupid.”

  Rigby John, Sis said.

  Rigby John. When Sis said my name like that, it meant only one thing. She wanted to borrow some money.

  I don’t have any money to lend you, I said. I need my money. I’ve got Billie now.

  Sis’s dark eyes, Dad’s Roosky Gypsy eyes, looked across the dark at me.

  Are you having sex? she said.

  Sex?

  Billie and I were Frenching. I’d touched just the top of her boobs. Really just the lower part of her neck.

  Sex?

  My mouth was a bowling alley. A bunch of words stacked at one end, the rest of me throwing a heavy ball at them. Sooner or later something would come out.

  Sis stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray, pulled the ashtray out from the dash, opened her window, then poured the cigarette butts and ashes out the window. Tiny orange sparks in the night.

  Sis was holding the empty pickup ashtray. She looked inside the ashtray and took a deep breath. Ashes blew up and out.

  Rigby John, Sis said.

  This Rigby John was differnt. Rigby John said that way accompanied by a sigh meant only one thing. Sis had a secret.

  Sis shoved the ashtray back into the dash.

  I’m going to tell you something, Sis said, and you got to promise not to tell Mom and Dad.

  I reached down, shut the radio off.

  Promise? she said.

  I promise, I said.

  At the corner of Philbin and Tyhee, nine-forty-five, ten till, after Sis shifted into second, slowed down to twenty-five, turned the steering wheel to the right, and we were in good purchase on Tyhee Road, Sis said:

  I’m pregnant.

  Holy shit. For a moment there, everything stopped. Breath, movement, the whole world went black. Deep in my bones, in my blood, a fear so vast, I don’t know what happened. Perhaps I fainted. All’s I know is, when I came to, the pickup was off on the side of the road, Sis was crying and crying, trying hard to get a cigarette lit. I was in the middle of the seat, and my arm was around Sis’s shoulder.

  Are you going to get an abortion? I said.

  Sis’s mascara was mud all down her cheeks. Her dark Roosky Gypsy eyes. Sis inhaled deep, turned her head quick, looked over to me, and said: What in the hell are you talking about?

  The bowling ball a long, thunderous roll down my tongue. The words in my mouth never seemed to come out right.

  Abortions are cool, I said. Abortions should be legal.

  The way those Roosky eyes looked at me, I should’ve curled up and dropped dead.

  Abortion! Sis screamed. Do you think I’m going to kill my unborn child? What are you, nuts?!

  My arm wasn’t on Sis’s shoulders anymore. I was sitting across the cab, lighting my own cigarette.

  Well, I said. What you going to do, then?

  Well, duh? Sis said, like I was so stupid. What do you think? Gene and I are getting married, Sis said.

  Just then, headlights from a car came around Philbin onto Tyhee. The headlights filled the cab up with light. The headlights on the rearview mirror pushed the rectangle of headlights right onto Sis’s eyes.

  Everything was in Sis’s eyes right then. The day Russell died, the Door of the Dead, how much she hated her brown patch of birthmark on her thigh, how when we were kids I chased her with the dead mouse, the baby inside her, dress-up, the night we won the jitterbug contest.

  Gene wants to marry you? I said.

  The old Ford passed by slow. The horn beeped.

  A bottle out the window, broken green glass.

  Indians.

  Of course he does, Sis said. It’ll just take some time.

  Time for what? I said. You only got nine months.

  Six, Sis said.

  Sis was crying again. Holding her belly, crying. Crying so hard she wasn’t just crying for herself. She was crying for her baby too.

  I haven’t told him yet, she said.

  Who? I said.

  Gene, she said.

  Kelso? I said.

  Gene fucking Kelly, you dumb ass.

  The first time I heard Sis say fuck.

  When you going to tell him? I said.

  Tomorrow, Sis said. Or soon.

  Sis reached down, turned the engine off. She was crying so hard, she had to lie down with her head on my lap. She pulled her legs up into her chest and put her hands up across her eyes.

  On the Tyhee Flats, in the middle of all that dark, there was Sis and I on the side of the road, the headlights still on, poking a hole in the night. The last time I’d seen somebody cry like that was me with Billie, hunched over Russell’s grave.

  I put my hand on Sis’s hair, rubbed her bangs from off her face. Sis looked differnt now that she was pregnant.

  We should have been home an hour ago. Mom and Dad were going to be pissed. I really had to pee.

  But what was an hour late compared to a pregnancy?

  Einstein was so right on with his theory of relativity.

  Still the cigar was only a cigar, and the shit was going to hit the fan.

  It was still a while of Sis crying. Finally, she snuffed up, pulled h
erself together. She sat with her back to me, staring out the driver’s-side window.

  Can I borrow some money? Sis said.

  She wasn’t even looking at me.

  All I need is ten dollars, she said. I promise I’ll pay you back.

  Mom and Dad were waiting up. They were sitting at the kitchen table under the new bright light that pulled down. The clock that looked like a black cat with big back-and-forth eyes and its tail wagging above the refrigerator said twenty to eleven.

  Mom and Dad sitting at the table that night is a photograph in my mind that I don’t think will ever leave. Dad in his baby blue pajamas, Mom in her pink quilted robe, her hair in a hairnet. The way they sat stiff there in the circle of bright light in the quiet house, just Grandma’s clock ticking. Sis and I had just entered the Inner Sanctum. Suddenly we were all an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Everything was normal — a kitchen, a table, a light above the table, the blue and white squares of the kitchen tile, the table with the oilcloth tablecloth, the yellow plastic chairs — but inside everything, such terrible fear.

  You’ve got some explaining to do, Dad said.

  A school night, Mom said. Damn near eleven o’clock.

  Nine-thirty, Dad said. You were supposed to be home at nine-thirty.

  My knees were buckling. I was leaving my body. I looked over at Sis.

  The shower scene. A pregnant Janet Leigh in Psycho.

  I could tell Sis was going to spill the beans.

  If I were a better person and a better brother, I would have stayed there with Sis, walked down the narrow, dark hallway hand in hand with her, but really, I had to pee. Plus, the breathing thing I do. I wasn’t breathing.

  I gave Sis a look, touched her light on the shoulder, said too loud: I really got to use the bathroom.

  Frankenstein words in the Alfred Hitchcock kitchen.

  I ducked my head and made a beeline over the blue and white tiles, past Dad sitting there in his blue PJs at the end of the table. In no time, I was around the corner. My shoulder pushed the bathroom door into the jamb, and the latch clicked. My hands turned the lock. I pulled on the switch of the fluorescent lights on either side of the mirror. The light flipped and spazzed and made the buzz sound. Out of the dark and into the fluorescence, I appeared.