Shine Shine Shine

by Lydia Netzer

  “Come on, Maxon,” she urged him.

  When she was standing there in only her cotton panties and her white cotton bra, she pushed the door closed with a solid thud, and Maxon was inside the room with her. Inside the room where the kids went to have sex, there were Sunny and Maxon, about to do it.

  “This is what happens,” said Sunny, giggling. “This is what happens, this is what. Happens. What happens, what happens, what happens.” She was drunk. Maxon knew it. She grabbed the waistband of his jeans and ripped them open, dragging the denim down over his legs. He felt his legs automatically kicking his shoes off by putting each toe on the opposite heel, pulling down. It was as if the feeling of his pants around his ankles just made them behave this way. Then she pressed her hands into his chest and pulled off his flannel shirt.

  There they were, him in a T-shirt and boxers, her in her underwear. It could have been any other time. They could have been somewhere in the woods. This was not unfamiliar, this was not yet unsafe. There was a chance she would chicken out of whatever she was planning for them. He could run away. He could take a picture, right now, before it happened. But she was in a hurry, and jittery. She grabbed his hand and led him, zombie-like, to the pile of pillows.

  “Shut up, Maxon, you’re so chatty,” she said, her feet prancing a little as she pulled him over and pushed him down on the pile.

  “Lie down on your back,” she said. “And don’t worry. I know what to do. Renee told me.”

  He knew he should not be here. He knew it could be a bad moment. It could not be good. And yet, as she stood there in the golden light of someone’s old flashlight, humming to herself as she pulled off her bra, as she crawled over to him like an animal, where he lay on the pillow, as she fell into his arms, he could not leave her or stop her. She was on top of him, the little tips of her breasts against his chest, her hands beside his shoulders, pressing down into the pillows, and she put her mouth up to his ear.

  “I love you, baby,” she said into his ear, her breath causing electrical ripples down his body. He felt the familiar triangle light up between his hips and his groin, very fast, like a jolt. She put her mouth on his neck beneath his jaw, on his collarbone, on his sternum and his ribs. This was a kiss followed by another, each one small and chaste, but quick, like kissing hello. There was none of the wetness he dreaded. There was no terrible sweating. His body was cold, chilled, except for the places where she touched him, where her lips engaged with his skin. There were little hot marks left on him, like thermal imaging, his body blue, and mouth shapes in orange and red punctuating it. She moved down, kissed the points of his ribs where they arched over his belly, her elbows dropping to support her, her butt rising in the air as she leaned back and down. She giggled, pressing her face against his belly, tickling.

  She kissed his hipbone, then with her cheek rubbed against the inside of his boxers. She pulled the fabric down with her teeth so his penis came out through his fly. Her hot breath on him made his hands clench into the pillows around him. His eyes shut tight. He could not think about what she seemed about to do, and he could not stop her. Then everything went from fast to slow as she put her tongue on him. He was hers, whatever she wanted to do to him. A very simple thing, he thought. A very simple motion. He really wanted it. Her hands pressed against his thighs.

  Then he felt the hot wetness of her mouth touching it, and gasped. “I can’t,” he choked out. The first thing he had said since the theater. She took her mouth away and looked up at him. He saw her, mouth red, eyes black, framed in his legs, her tawny shoulders raised up like a lion at a kill.

  “Come on, boy,” she said, and as her mouth closed over him again, it felt so good. Moments later, he silently ejaculated, managing to get it out of her mouth first.

  “That was awesome,” she said cheerfully, pulling herself back up next to him. She reached across him, pulled a folded sheet from the pile and tucked it over them. Her cheek against his shoulder, her arm under his neck. He was warm, warmer than ever, and floating. They went to sleep, her from liquor, him from being at peace.

  *

  THEY WOKE UP TO the sound of the door opening. As Sunny’s eyes opened and she remembered, slowly, where she was, she saw the outline of her friend Renee and two guys in the door. Renee was reaching around on the floor for the flashlight. Sunny took in the sight next to her, Maxon asleep in his boxers and T-shirt. She saw her own panties still in place. Her plan had failed. At least I got my bra off, she thought. Maybe we even kissed lying down. He was deeply asleep, his mouth open. She pulled her arm from under his neck and his head lolled off to the side. Strange. She wondered if he’d had vodka, too.

  “Hey, occupado!” she called to Renee.

  “Sunny? Is that you? Where’s the fucking light?”

  “I don’t know,” Sunny said.

  “I got a Maglite,” said one of the boys, and Sunny recognized the voice of Adam Tyler, a football player.

  “Why didn’t you say so, asshole,” Renee said, and snatched a flashlight out of his hand, turned it toward Sunny.

  “Hey,” she said as the light hit her eyes, pulling the sheet up and around her. She stood up and hopped over to her clothes, began to put on her jeans under the sheet. The bra would just have to stay here; no way was she giving the football team a show. That was Renee’s job anyway.

  “Get going, sister, this ain’t a motel,” said Renee affectionately.

  “Wait a minute,” said Adam Tyler. “Isn’t that Maxon Mann?”

  Sunny looked over at Maxon. He was now sitting up perfectly straight.

  “Whatcha doing here, Mann, don’t you know this is the honeymoon suite?”

  Adam punched his buddy’s arm and his buddy punched back. Renee was holding the flashlight so it pointed toward the ceiling.

  “Shut up, Adam,” she said mildly.

  Maxon stood up and spread his hands amicably.

  “Hey, Tyler,” he said, “I didn’t realize you lived here, man. My apologies. And my compliments.”

  “Fuck you, nerd,” Adam shouted, lunging forward, menacing Maxon with his fists. “I don’t live here, I fuck here. And you don’t fuck where I fuck, okay? So take your bald bitch and go down and poke her in the bathroom, where shitheads like you belong.”

  Sunny did not see Maxon coming toward Adam, but she heard the sound of his fist landing on Adam’s head. When the buddy jumped into the fray, planting a firm fist in Maxon’s kidney region, Maxon began to fight for real, and Renee pulled Sunny out the door, leaving Adam’s flashlight on the floor, still lighting up the scene. Behind the door, there were sounds of a raging typhoon.

  “Come on,” said Renee. “We have to get help. They’re going to kill him.”

  “They’re not,” said Sunny, panting a little as they ran down the mall, zipping up her jacket. “Don’t worry about him, worry about them. Seriously, trust me, he is in no danger.”

  There was a time when Maxon had been put to the ground by two brothers, fighting him. Then it took three brothers, and then four. Since the growth spurt, there had been no bruises. Either he was winning all the time or his body no longer responded to punishment. It was as if he didn’t even feel pain.

  She let Renee go. She slowed to a walk, headed for the door. Outside the air was fresh. She got into her car, wishing for a cigarette. She also wished for a drink of water and a couple of Advil. When Maxon emerged from the mall a few minutes later, and sauntered across the parking lot, he was neatly dressed, his face wreathed in a carefree smile. He popped open the door and folded himself into the passenger seat.

  “Did you kill them, Maxon?” she asked him, starting up the car.

  “Nope,” he said. “But we can use that room whenever we want.”

  “Baby, you know,” said Sunny, “I like drinking but I am never going to do it unless I have you around to protect me. And I don’t think we should go back to that room.”

  They never did go back to the honeymoon suite at the Yates Mall. And even during her y
ears away at college, Sunny never drank without Maxon there to protect her. And that was true all through their lives.

  *

  IN THE STUDIO OF WNFO News, Sunny sat in the same white wicker chair as before, folded her feet the same way, laid her hands on the side of her pregnant belly. But now her head was bald, and her eyes were red from crying. Showing up on television as a bald woman was something that she could do for Maxon, whether it mattered or not. Whether or not, for him, there would ever be an opportunity to watch the tape. Seeing her sitting next to Les Weathers, with no Maxon on the other side, it would be clear to everyone in the world that Maxon was gone. The special symmetry was missing. There was an absence in space. The camera closed in on just the two of them, Sunny and Les, and when Les began the interview, the cameraman pulled the shot even tighter, on just their heads. Two heads, talking on television, one blond and one bald.

  Sunny had had a dream, and in the dream, she was wearing her mother’s clothes. The clothes were tight and didn’t fit her pregnant body, but she was wearing them anyway, and carrying her mother’s purse as well. She was wearing her mother’s walking shoes, and dealing with the aftermath of her mother’s death. Seventeen copies of the death certificate, a decent obituary, cremation. And as she was discussing the details of the memorial service with the rector of the church, her mother walked into the room, clearly alive and not even sick. There was a large shining lump on the mother’s head, as if she fell out of a tree and forgot who she was, accidentally went into a coma and died from cancer, and then remembered who she was and fully recovered. And what Sunny felt at that moment, when she saw her mother walking into the room, was anger. Why did you put me through all that? she asked her mother. The sickness, the sores, and pulling the plug? Why did I have to do all that by myself, when you were perfectly well enough to do it with me? But the mother was transformed. Having been fake-dead, she was now somehow above reproach, and wouldn’t even respond.

  “Sunny Mann,” said Les Weathers. “First let me say that I am sorry about what’s happening to you now, and I appreciate your coming in to share your experiences with us once again.”

  “Thank you for having me,” she said.

  “Around the world, and certainly here in the U.S., everyone has been watching the story so carefully. But just to fill in our viewers, your husband’s rocket has been hit by a meteor and all communication with the astronauts has been lost. How are you holding up?”

  And Sunny managed to answer, “I am doing okay. I am taking it slowly, one thing at a time.”

  Sunny told about how she had found out, what she had been thinking. She explained that she really wanted Maxon to be alive, and the whole crew to be safe, and Les Weathers told her that he did, too, they all did, everyone in the whole world. After the interview, someone came to take Sunny’s mic from the back of her shirt and unpin it from her collar. Les Weathers stayed on set with her as the crew peeled away. Soon they were sitting there, still in the wicker chairs with no one else around.

  “How are you doing, really?” Les said.

  “I don’t know. It’s pretty awful,” said Sunny.

  He put his hand over hers, and she watched the two hands fold together, the way human hands naturally do.

  “I hope you realize,” he said, “that we are here for you. We are all here for you. Especially me.”

  “Okay,” she said. She swiped at her eyes with one sleeve.

  “I’m right down the street if you need me.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And if he doesn’t come back, Sunny,” Les went on, leaning in toward her ear. She could feel the warmth from his body, different from the heat of the lights. It was a moving, breathing warmth. “If he doesn’t come back, I know this is not the right thing to say, but I’m saying it anyway: If he doesn’t come back, I want you to know that I don’t mind about the baldness either. I don’t mind.”

  25

  At 2:30 in the morning, the phone next to Sunny’s bed rang. It was NASA. She should come in right away. Communications with the rocket had been established, and there was a video uplink. The men were alive. They were well. She could talk to Maxon, see him, hear him talk. She pulled on some clothes, kissed Bubber awake and dressed him, and bundled them both out the door and into the van. There she sat, blinking, at her reflection in the rearview mirror. She was about to send a love letter with no words in it at all. She set off toward the Langley Research Center, where they would be waiting for her.

  *

  AT THREE O’CLOCK IN the morning, the mother’s heart fluttered. It fluttered and faded. Then it resumed operating, but at an unsteady pace. The kidneys had been gone for hours, the liver dead, the blood full of toxins. Underneath her body, her mind was racing. In the room, under the flat sheet, there was no change. The orange light of the parking-lot fixtures filtered through the shade like morning sun through the shell of an egg. A nurse had come in, hours ago, and felt for a pulse. Now the room was silent.

  To say that the mother did not resume consciousness just before death would be wrong. It would be something that was said to palliate the people who maybe should have been there for the death. She did not resume the symptoms of consciousness: the fluttering eyelid, the squeezing hand, the gentle nod. But she did resume the awareness that she was dying. And she fought with death. All by herself, in the dark, with nothing to help her control the encroaching darkness inside her, she fought against her own failing blood and the terrible things in it that were at work against her. She fought to live.

  In her mind, she was standing at a roadside vegetable stand in Pennsylvania. She was picking over tomatoes, wondering if they could really be local, because they looked so perfect. There was a kid there operating the stand, the same age as Sunny and from the same 4-H club. A car swished down the highway, disturbing the air around the vegetables, a thrush whirred somewhere in the woods back away from the road. She could hear the locusts at their songs in between passing cars. It was late summer, late afternoon, and the warm last rays of the sun slanted across the valley.

  The kid was looking at her. She said, “Mrs. Butcher?” Emma remembered clearly the electrified feeling in her body when the kid said, “Do you know where Sunny is right now?”

  “Where is Sunny?” Emma said, setting one of her tomatoes back into the bin.

  “Um, I’m probably not supposed to tell you.”

  “Well, is she in danger?” Emma’s finger pressed a hole into a tomato, then another hole into the same tomato, giving the tomato a little girdle of holes.

  “Hmm,” said the kid, sucking her braces. “Yeah, probably.”

  Emma in the hospital, static under the blankets, unable to move her arms or make a fist, remembered the desire to throttle this pimply, damp child in her denim short-shorts, to strangle her with her own straggly braid.

  “Maggie,” said Emma. “You need to tell me right now where Sunny is. Otherwise I am going to be very angry, and tell your father.”

  “Well,” said Maggie, drawing out the word. “I guess it is in Sunny’s best interest if I tell you.”

  “Tell me.”

  Emma’s teeth ground together, in the hospital bed, by the roadside stand. Where is my child? What is going to happen to her? Fix it, fix it, fix it.

  “Uh, Mrs. Butcher, you know the Belmar bridge?”

  Emma was gone. She ran to the car, slammed herself into it, and gunned out of the little roadside area, spraying gravel behind her. She knew the Belmar bridge. For three generations, the youth of Yates County had been daring each other to jump off it, and infrequently dying under it. A railroad trestle over the Allegheny River, the Belmar bridge was legendary, its stone pylons driving down thickly into the river, its rusted and inflexible beams rising high above. The kids would climb out to the center pylon, reaching it by means of the rusted rungs of a service ladder, and lie in the sun there, high above the water. The bravest of them would leap off the platform and into the water, almost forty feet below. The Allegheny is a shallow
river, but the construction of the bridge and the current in that spot had left a deep eddy just downstream of that huge middle pylon, so if you held your body just right, and hit the water correctly, you could dive down safely, and not get hurt. Or, like several kids over the years, you could kill yourself trying.

  Okay, she told herself. To be fair. To be truthful. Those kids were drunk. Sunny wouldn’t drink. Those kids were stupid. Sunny is smart. Probably she won’t even climb out there. She would know how mad I’d be if I found out. She would have some sense. She would not do this. She would not jump off this bridge. It was a rite of passage, the neighbors had told them over dinner one night, for the local youths. The neighbors’ children had not done it, though. The sensible, smart neighbors’ children had grown up and gone and had not jumped off that bridge at all. The most impressive railroad trestle in three counties. Emma could just picture it. Her skin burned.

  She sped down the two-lane highway with no regard for traffic, drifting into the opposite lane on curves to the right, drifting onto the shoulder on curves to the left. The beautiful late-afternoon sun on the countryside had become the fires of hell burning her. She knew that Sunny could not die, and she knew that she could stop her. She could say, “Sunny, STOP.” The bald head would whip around, the girl would wave, turn, and she would sheepishly shrug, let some other kid do it, let some other kid jump off that platform for her.

  If only she were with some more sensible boy. Maxon would just let her go, just let her do it, whatever she wanted. He was enslaved to her, and he was hopeless, too damaged, she could not trust him with Sunny’s life. She could not believe that he could keep her safe, not just by thinking about it. Why could she not love some optimistic clod who would tell her the truth, keep her out of trouble, and become a banker? That type of kid would never let her break her neck on a river rock. Never.

  At the bottom of the hill, she opened the door and began to run, leaving the car open behind her. Her long skirt beat against her legs and her feet kicked up gravel behind her. Her mind demanded she stay alive. She took a shuddering gasp and let it out, shifting the blankets just a little. She felt the crushing weight of her own ribs, felt that no more breath would come in. Maybe that was her last breath. Maybe it was over. She was done. But it couldn’t be. She had to run, she had to find out. So she dragged another breath in, her pulse jumping up in her neck, one gulping swallow of air as her throat collapsed, enough to keep her alive until she could see her child safe, until she could see Sunny and tell her “Don’t jump off that fucking bridge.”