by Janis Owens
Probably not, because all he said was okay, then without any consultation with me or Keri, drove us to this airstrip way out in the country. Or I guess that’s what it was. God knows it was far from prying eyes, in the middle of this cutover cotton field next to what looked like a deserted hangar. I was just sitting there, wondering what was up, when Simon turned off the car and he and Kendra got out and left me and Keri alone with no instructions at all, just walked off into the dark.
I mean, one minute, I was sitting in a restaurant trying to remember my name on my first date with a girl, the next I was out in a parked car, surrounded by miles of empty field and a quiet Georgia night, without a clue in the world to what was going on. I wanted to get out and run catch up with Sim, ask him what I was supposed to do next, but didn’t, of course, just sat there, rambling on, talking about God knows what, till my eyes adjusted to the light and I could make out Keri a little better in the darkness.
At first, I couldn’t tell what she was doing, then I realized she was taking off her earrings and putting them in the back dash, then getting a Kleenex out of her purse and wiping off her lipstick, going about it in this very casual, premeditated kind of way.
I must have looked curious because she said: “You don’t want to get this on your clothes, it’s hard to get out.”
I smiled for lack of a better response, and when she was all finished with the lipstick, she reached behind her back and did something under her T-shirt that made a pop, then said: “All righty.”
By then I was thinking that God, Kenneth wasn’t going to believe this. Not in a million years, because it had finally occurred to me that that pop was the pop of an unsnapped bra. Suddenly I understood exactly what was going on and did my duty as I saw it, though it really wasn’t as good as I had imagined because the whole time I kissed her—and that’s all I did—a voice in my head kept turning things over and over, wondering if premarital breast-feeling was a sin; wondering when Sim was coming back, and worst of all, wondering how it would be if I was doing this with Rachel.
When I’d think of it that way, I could feel this incredible stab of heat right in the middle of my back, a weight of breathlessness that almost made me faint. Then, right on the tail of that, I’d think what a sleaze I was, making out with one girl and pretending it was another, and try to get my mind out of the car and let my emotions run away with me, but it wasn’t the kind of thing you could will into being. I mean, it either happens or it doesn’t.
But anyway—I did my duty from her neck up and arms down and she was returning the favor, with none of the aforementioned boundaries, which I found a little distracting. I mean, if I’d have known her better I would have told her to stop, that she was tickling me. But I didn’t, so I let her and it went on for long enough that my mouth was getting numb and the bottom of my back was starting to ache when suddenly Sim and Kendra came back at the car, jerking open the doors and filling the backseat with this sudden glare of light.
I jumped like I’d been shot, though everyone else seemed pretty cool, Keri straightening up and rearranging her T-shirts, Sim and Kendra slamming themselves in and putting on their seat belts, talking about a plane. From what I could gather, Kendra was taking flight lessons and trying to convince Sim to do the same, showing him one of her father’s planes that he (her father) wanted him to buy, which made me feel like a criminal. I mean, I thought they’d been heading to the hangar for immoral purposes and it’d given me the green light to forge ahead with my own explorations, and here they were, just looking at a Cessna in storage.
“—you could fly up here in half an hour,” Kendra was saying as we headed back to town, Sim asking about gas mileage and maintenance costs while Keri put on her earrings and a fresh coat of lipstick, and I tried to get a clean breath of air, even opened the window so the cool night air would hit me full in the face, hoping it’d bring some feeling back to my lips.
When we got to their house, we ran into their father while we were walking them to the door, apparently just coming home from a business trip. He met us in the drive with his carry-on bag still in hand and talked to us a moment, Sim casually kissing Kendra good-bye right in front of him, though I didn’t have the guts for that, and took Keri to the door to kiss her in privacy. I did a pretty lousy job of it with her father standing there, not ten feet behind me, then joined him and Sim in the drive where they were discussing the plane.
I tried to throw out an intelligent comment or two before Sim shook the old man’s hand and said we had to go, that he’d think about the plane, me following him down the curve of the drive till we were out of earshot, when he glanced at me out of the corner of his eye and in this kind of dry, amazed voice, asked if I knew I was undone. I didn’t know what he was talking about, just looked down, where before God, I was unbuttoned from about the middle button of my shirt on down, my shirt tail flapping in the wind, even my belt undone, poking out about six inches in the air. It was like that old awful nightmare I used to have about sitting at school taking a test in my underwear, except this wasn’t a dream, it was cold, hard life, and I could have fainted I was so embarrassed.
Sim didn’t help matters much, laughing so hard all the way home he kept weaving off to the shoulder of the road, nearly killing us both. I kept begging him to shut up, to pleease shut up, till he finally let up and said good night, leaving me to undress (finish undressing, you might say) for bed, then pull out the couch and lie there awake in the darkness, staring at the ceiling. Every once in a while I’d think about how I was standing there in front of God and everyone, talking about planes with Simon and the old man with my underwear poking out of my pants.
I’d feel a slow wave of heat creep into my face, try to tell myself that he probably didn’t notice. He probably thought I was hot or something and had unbuttoned my shirt. By morning I’d almost convinced myself that everything was cool when Simon came out and stood by the bed while he tucked in his shirttail, not saying good morning or anything, but just diving right into a replay of the evening’s events.
“—and when we got out of the car and saw her daddy, I didn’t look back, saw you walking Keri to the house and thought how it was good, you having the class to kiss her at the door, and then you came out and I turned to introduce you and—” he paused then, laughing so hard he couldn’t get it out “—and you’re standing there with your shirt unbuttoned, your belt sticking out, a foot in the air—”
“Please, Sim—” I begged, covering my face with a pillow, though he didn’t quit.
“—but you just stood there making small talk like everything was okey-dokey, saying: ‘Yeah, my friend Kenneth’s brother just went in the air force, he’s in flight school in Pensacola—’ Why the heck didn’t you button back up?”
I spoke from beneath the pillow: “Because I wasn’t the one who did the unbuttoning. I didn’t know I was hanging out in the wind. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What was I supposed to do?” he asked. “Say: ‘Hey, Clay, you forgot to button back up, your drawers are poking out—’”
I burrowed further under my pillow, thanked God that Grannie was a state away in Florida, murmured: “I will never be able to face those people again.”
Sim just laughed harder. “Well, you better,” he said, “’cause they’ll probably be sitting behind you at church this morning.”
I dropped the pillow on that and sat up. “You’re lying,” I said, but he just grinned.
“Where d’you think I met Kendra?” he asked.
“At church?”
Sim just shrugged. “The old man doesn’t go, but you can bet your butt Keri’ll be there. She’s in love.”
He made a face when he said it, then went to the kitchen to fix up something for breakfast while I bestirred myself and took a shower and got dressed. I kept thinking he’d come to his senses after a while and come to the bathroom and give me some kind of lecture on chastity or something, but he never said a word, just looked kind of proud of me, I don’t know why
. Maybe for being manly or something, and at that point, all of it began to get embarrassing.
I mean, terminally embarrassing, walking into church an hour later and seeing Keri wave at me from an aisle seat she’d saved for me next to her and her mother. I noticed that she was less MTV at church, or at least MTV with a sabbatical touch in dark hose and low heels. I didn’t know quite what to make of it, because she was like Sim about the beer, just completely unrepentant, singing the hymns with a lot of gusto, then inviting me to an R-rated movie with her and Kendra and Sim, all in the same breath.
Maybe I’d been hanging out with the Aunt Candace and the fanatics too long, but it all began to seem mighty fishy to me, mighty fishy, indeed. Of course, that didn’t stop me from going to the movies with them that night, seeing Fatal Attraction, which I didn’t think too much of because I sympathized with the crazy woman, wondered if Mama acted like that when she got pregnant with me. Who knows? Nobody ever talks about it, and when the wife killed her, everybody in the audience cheered, even Sim, and I could have cried. I mean, nobody has any sympathy for crazy people. Nobody.
When it was over, Sim took us back to his apartment and me and Keri were left alone in the living room on the couch that everyone knows is a bed while they went out to swim in the pool that was pitch-black that late at night. Now, I don’t know what they were up to out there in the dark, but as soon as the door shut I was in the spotlight again and asked Keri if she wanted to watch MTV.
I guess I figured from her style of clothing it was her chief form of entertainment, and sure enough, she said yes, so I turned it on and messed with the volume a little, still a little preoccupied, thinking about that stupid movie and how Michael Douglas had gotten the crazy woman pregnant and told her to have an abortion. I was wondering if Gabe had wanted Mama to do that when I realized Keri was getting comfortable again. First it was the earrings, then the lipstick, then, with no permission from me, she just slid her shirt over her head and all of a sudden she was sitting there on the end of the couch with a pretty remarkable imitation of a Madonna-like smirk on her face and no bra at all.
And you know, it had the strangest effect on me.
Suddenly I couldn’t remember what had just been bothering me; couldn’t have told you what was on the television; might not have been able to remember my name. Suddenly my emotions had sure enough gotten the upper hand, just as Daddy had once warned, and all I could think was how plump and white her breasts were, not as big as the ones in magazines, but for all the world as neat and smooth as a slice of cheesecake sitting there so perky and bare.
There was a mighty pounding in my ears as I went over and knelt beside her and kissed her, not bothering with her mouth this time, but concentrating on unexplored territories. She didn’t complain, just stopped to pull my face up and make me kiss her on the mouth every once in a while, and I honestly don’t know where it would have ended up if she hadn’t pulled my face up a final time and instead of a kiss, said: “Clay. It’s Kendra and Sim. They’re coming up the stairs—”
She stood up then and gathered her shirt and went in the bathroom, so when they opened the door a half a second later, I was sitting there on the couch watching MTV without a care in the world, all buttoned up and cool, with a face like the sole survivor of a train wreck.
Sim and Kendra didn’t seem to notice, just went to the bedroom and dressed and Kendra said they had to go, she had to work the next day (she works for her father). When they were gone, I pulled out the bed and got undressed, needing to sleep since I hadn’t slept much the night before, but for some reason, I couldn’t.
There was something on my mind, and it wasn’t Keri’s chest, either. It was something out of place, and when I realized what it was I went to Simon’s room and went in without bothering to knock. I found him standing at the open closet in his boxer shorts, picking out his clothes for work the next day just like Daddy used to do, looking a lot like him, to tell you the truth, only taller, heavier in the chest and arms, more like Uncle Ira, like a combination of the two.
He looked up when I came in, asked: “What’s up?”
But the question I was going to ask him had been pretty much answered the moment I stepped in the door and saw Kendra’s wet bathing suit hanging on the door handle to dry, because that’s what had struck me as strange: how they’d gone to the bedroom together to change out of bathing suits. When I saw the evidence right there, dripping water on the carpet, I said: “Oh.” Then I almost went back to the living room, except that I really needed to know, and asked in this halting little voice: “Sim? You and Kendra—are you, seeing each other?”
Which was a pretty ridiculous way of putting it, now that I think of it. I mean, if they’d changed out of bathing suits in the same bedroom, it was pretty clear they were seeing a lot of each other, in more ways than one.
Sim didn’t look too insulted by my implication, though. He just went back to picking out his clothes, answering over his shoulder in this cool, casual voice, “Yeah. I been seeing her. You went on two dates with us, remember?”
It was a dodge worthy of our mother and that emboldened me to be more specific. “Is she your girlfriend?” I asked. Then, before he could answer, “I thought Sondra Cole was your girlfriend.”
“She was,” he said, choosing a shirt and tossing it to the bed, “in school. Kendra’s my girl now.”
My girl, he said, making it sound sweet and old-fashioned, like he took her to Sunday-school picnics and gave her chocolate on Valentine’s Day. It left me no choice but to baldly strike at the heart of the matter, ask in this incredulous little voice: “Are you sleeping with her?”
At the word, he turned and looked at me for a fraction of a second, then said: “Yes.”
Well, that’s all I wanted to know, I guess—or at least that’s what I’d gotten out of bed to go in there and ask. I nodded and said something like, “Oh,” then went back to the living room and crawled back in bed, if possible, more awake than I was before.
Sim must have heard me tossing and turning in there and decided a little more explanation was necessary, for he came out a few minutes later, still in his boxer shorts, and stood there beside the bed, not offering any particular excuses, but just providing the details of the matter in this calm, reasonable voice. “We been seeing each other about six months now. That’s why I got an apartment, so she could move in, because she and her mother, they weren’t getting along too well. If it’s all right with you, she’ll move back in tomorrow, which’ll be great, Clay, because she’s a good cook. A good girl. And Keri’ll be around more, too.”
I must not have looked properly grateful, because he paused a moment, then added with a little more force: “And you can tell Mama if you want, I don’t care. I’m nineteen years old, it’s none of her business.”
And you know, till then, I was still kind of moving through the tail end of the shock Keri had put me in when she peeled off her shirt. But when he said the part about it not being any of Mama’s business, I came back to earth with this nauseating thud and saw something so terrible that it made me sick, just absolutely puking sick. Because I knew then that Sim hadn’t taken all the Gabe-stuff so well either—not calm and good-natured like everyone bragged. That he’d taken it to the belly like I had, that Gabe had messed him up, corrupted him with his liberal Yankee ways, left him morally pockmarked, just as Mama had feared.
I mean, I knew it so clearly, so suddenly, though I didn’t know what to say and just sat there and faced him off a moment till he turned to go back to his room, when I finally spoke, asked the only thing I could think of asking: “Simon,” I said. When he turned, I asked: “Do you love her?” He just looked at me a moment, then answered with a flat, level honesty: “D’you love Keri?”
Then I realized he thought I was asking if he loved Kendra when I was really asking if he still loved Mama. And then it really didn’t matter, because I had my answer anyway. I just lay back in bed without another word and he went to the bedroom and sh
ut the door. He didn’t slam it, didn’t seem angry at all, which only made me feel sicker when I thought about poor Mama and how Simon had cheered when the crazy woman got blown away in that stupid movie.
And I tell you what, I been up half the night talking into this thing—it’s four o’clock in the morning now and I feel like puking still.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
EASTER EVENING; GRANNIE’S BACK PORCH
I’m back in Florida now. Back on Magnolia Hill, where time is at a standstill, nothing ever changes, or at least nothing changes physically. I myself feel as if I’ve aged a hundred years in a week, though Grannie’s little house is just as I left it, even smells the same, of camphor and butter beans and now that the wisteria has bloomed, of vivid, purple spring. The smell is especially strong here on the back porch, where I’ve decided to tape tonight because it’s pretty private back here, nothing but shadows and birdsong—mostly whippoorwills, though there’s an old barn owl in the sweet gum who hovers close once twilight falls, his mournful hooing so loud I’m sure I’ll pick it up on tape.
I am pleased to report that finally, after half a dozen tapes of disconnected ramblings, I’ve come upon a date that has actual historic significance: today is the first time in the history of the world that I’ve ever missed an Easter service at Welcome Baptist, though from what Kenneth says, I don’t seem to have missed much. They didn’t even have a sunrise service this year, but are just meeting at the church tonight (this very moment, in fact) and carpooling to First Baptist’s huge new Passion Play that has professional sound and lighting and a lead who looks just like Jesus, or so Grannie told me a few minutes ago while I was helping her with her coat.