Skipped Parts

by Tim Sandlin

  Lydia’s voice broke the silence. I guess she’d been holding it in all these years, wanting to tell the story, but waiting for the right moment. I couldn’t follow at first. She held both hands on the wheel and talked with a cigarette balanced in her mouth, smoke trailing over her face. Her voice stayed flat, no emotion.

  “The first time they took Mother to the hospital, before the operations, Caspar had to sell some carbon paper in Durham right before Christmas. Christmas Eve he said he’d get back early and we’d have supper together and open presents. I decorated the tree by myself and put on my blue jumper. Every time a car came down the hill I ran to the window. You know the deal. Everyone that’s seen a shrink has a story like it. Caspar never showed up.”

  Lydia paused to blow smoke out her nose. I think she hoped for some poor-little-girl understanding, but I was her kid—she’d pulled the same crap on me as long as I could remember—and Maurey had just caught her mom aborting a coach’s baby. Neither one of us exactly bubbled with sympathy.

  “About eight o’clock Caspar called to say he had to stay in Durham, but he’d bring me a nice present the next day. I found a piece of flagstone and went into his study and smashed his best pipe. Then I decided to have a party.”

  The heater was too hot, but to take off my coat, I’d have to let go of Maurey’s hand, and I didn’t want to do that. Her breathing had gone real steady. I couldn’t tell if she was listening or asleep. I was pretty sure she wasn’t asleep, but I just couldn’t see making her move.

  “I called up the big brother of a girl I knew in school, Mimi Rotkeillor. He was a football player I kind of liked. I invited him over, said my daddy was out of town and he should round up any friends wanted to have some fun on Christmas Eve. They brought oranges and grapefruit that they’d injected vodka in with a hypodermic syringe. Lord knows where they got the syringe.”

  “How many?” I asked.

  She blinked smoke out of her eyes. “How many what?”

  “How many people came over?”

  Lydia bit her lower lip. “Five football players from around town. They had oranges full of vodka.” I remembered the pictures in the panty box and realized where this story was heading. So did Maurey. Her hand tightened on mine and she opened her eyes.

  “We ate the oranges and put on a Rosemary Clooney Christmas album and danced. They kept touching me and I thought, Daddy will be sorry now. He didn’t know real boys liked me. Someone found his liquor cabinet and we drank something. I was pretty woozy.”

  Lydia punched fire for another Kool. We drove through Pinedale without a word, as if this was something she couldn’t talk about in front of people.

  “One guy was kissing me and I felt warm, and then I was on the floor and he was yanking on the blue jumper. I didn’t know what was going on. He hurt me, but I was drunk and didn’t care. I kept hoping Caspar would walk in and feel bad. Another guy climbed on me and he was big and I started bleeding and got scared. One of them held me down with his knees on my shoulders and his dick right in my face while another one did it to me.”

  Lydia’s voice came faster. I kept seeing boys in the pictures— numbers 72, 56, 81, 11, and 20.

  “They squirted on my face and in my mouth. My hair was filthy. They kept grunting on me and when I cried, they poured vodka on my crotch and it stung. When I screamed they hit me, so I shut up and pretended I was unconscious, but they screwed me a couple more times anyway.”

  Lydia stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray. Her eyes were hard, and I could see her jawbone tighten in her cheek. She sped the car up some, but her voice stayed even. “After that, they stood in a circle around my body and urinated on me.” She looked over at me for the first time. “That’s your daddy.”

  Maurey brought her head off the seat back; I looked out my passenger window. We came to a small river with ice along the edges and clear across where it slowed down for logs.

  Lydia rolled down her window which brought in a blast of cold air. “I was so stupid about sex, I didn’t even know if you had five fathers or one until a couple years ago.”

  “How many?” I asked.

  “One. Only one sperm from one daddy took hold. The rest was just gooey come and blood.”

  “Which one gave the come that took hold?”

  She rolled her window back up. “How the hell should I know.”

  18

  Lydia decided that since Maurey was barefoot and pregnant in the snow, I should carry her into the Pierces’ yellow frame house.

  “I can walk,” Maurey said.

  “She can walk,” I said.

  Lydia stayed firm. “We’ve done enough, I don’t want pneumonia added to the list.”

  So I stood next to the car and Maurey slid over to where I could reach one arm under her knees and the other on her back. After she put her right hand around my neck, I counted three and jerk-curled her up. It was neat in that her back and legs where I touched them were naked. I hadn’t grabbed flesh in two weeks, so I immediately developed a stiffie and Maurey got the giggles.

  “You can’t carry me.”

  “Me Tarzan, you Jane.”

  “You’re gonna drop me on my ass.”

  I made a Cheetah sound. There’s a limit on how much tension kids can handle before they revert.

  We staggered up the driveway in a lurch to the right a few steps, lurch to the left motion. Maurey tickled my ears.

  “Quit fooling around and take her inside,” Lydia said.

  “Who’s fooling around?”

  At the door, Lydia didn’t volunteer any help, which made our entrance a Three Stooges routine. I cracked the screen with my right hand, twisted into the opening, then Maurey turned the knob and I backed into the door with a crash that caught Petey in the face.

  Petey sat down hard and howled. I dropped Maurey’s feet maybe a tenth of a second before her back so at least we avoided the sprawl-on-the-floor thing. She looked down at my jeans and slapped me lightly on the stiffie.

  “I told you no more of those.”

  “I can’t control it.”

  “You better learn.”

  Petey held his face and screamed. “I’m half-dead, I’m half-dead.”

  Coming through the door, Lydia observed the scene with her usual disdain. Telling us the truth had made her more superior than ever.

  She said, “Shut up, little boy.”

  Petey’s howl stopped like she’d cut it with a knife. He stared in disbelief.

  “Get off the floor. You’re behaving like a child.”

  “I am a child.”

  “Don’t brag.”

  Petey stood up, thought about bratting out on Lydia, but changed his mind and faced Maurey instead. “I’m not supposed to be alone all day.”

  “You lived.” Maurey headed for the back of the house.

  “Mama’s gonna get you when she comes home. Hey, you’re naked in back.”

  Maurey turned. “So?”

  “Mama’s gonna get you.”

  “Fuck Mama.” Maurey smiled at us. “Make yourself at home. I’ll be right back.”

  Lydia beelined for the kitchen with a mesmerized Petey in her wake. She’d wanted to criticize Annabel’s homemaking ever since she heard about the recipe box full of alphabetized index cards. I figured she was in there making a cleanliness inspection, looking for cracks in Annabel’s Lysol defense system, and I didn’t really care to watch Lydia probe for character flaws. She does enough of that with me. But standing alone in the living room felt squirrelly, so I eventually followed on in.

  Lydia was standing on a chair, running her fingertips across the tops of shelves. She looked at her hand and said, “How could a woman like this get knocked up?”

  I’m sure Petey had never seen a grown-up stand on a chair—Annabel had stools. “Mama’s gonna be mad at you,” he said with no convict
ion. “She doesn’t like people touching her stuff.”

  Lydia looked way down on Petey. “In the grand scheme of things, little boy, no one in the whole world cares what your mother likes or doesn’t like.” She stepped down, walked to the refrigerator, and glared inside. “Everything is dated in ink on little strips of masking tape, the leftovers are clearly labeled. I’d die before I’d live like this. Where’s the recipe file?”

  I pointed to a flowered file box on the cabinet between a pair of crocheted oven mitts and a framed sampler that read, No matter where i sit my guests, they always like my kitchen best.

  “Don’t touch that,” Petey yelped, too late.

  Lydia dragged the chair back over from the shelves to the linoleum-topped kitchen table. She sat down and pulled out all the index cards. “Look at this—chipped beef and cheese, chocolate pie, Cindy’s mother’s venison casserole, cornbread, corn pudding—the woman is a maniac.”

  Lydia divided the stack and shuffled cards like we were waiting to play crazy 8s. “This’ll screw her up more than the abortion.”

  Petey’s wide eyes never left Lydia’s hands as she shuffled. “What’s a bortion?”

  “Dirty oven, kid. Like when meatloaf splatters and you have to scrape out the grease.” Lydia thinks she’s so cute sometimes.

  “My mama’s oven is never dirty.”

  “Was today.”

  Maurey appeared at the door wearing jeans and a black sweater with her hair pulled back in a barrette. She carried a leather-looking suitcase in her right hand and a tan overnight bag in her left. A stuffed bear poked out of her right armpit.

  Petey tattled. “The lady touched Mama’s stuff.”

  Maurey looked at Lydia. “Let’s go.”

  “You’re not supposed to leave me alone after dark. I might get in trouble.”

  “Mom will be along in a couple hours. Meantime, burn up the house if you feel like it.”

  I felt sorry for the kid. All his limits had been shot down and he looked ready to cry. Since Lydia and Maurey were being ugly, I opted for nice. “She’s kidding. Don’t really burn the house up.”

  “But I’ll be alone.”

  “Go watch Rocky the Flying Squirrel.”

  Petey slammed both hands on the table. “Rocky’s not on on Saturday afternoon, stupid.”

  ***

  Lydia telephoned Hank, who brought over a couple of frozen pizzas—sausage with mushroom and Canadian bacon. It was odd, like zap, Maurey was part of the family and always had been. She helped me wash the dishes without being asked. Hank took out the trash. Lydia painted her toenails black.

  After supper we all four hung out in the living room, doing whatever we would have done anyway even if Maurey hadn’t bumped into her mom at an abortion clinic. I sat in the elk-gut chair with Alice in my lap, reading The Once and Future King and Tom Swift and His Deep-Sea Hydrodrome. Maurey brought a pillow from our bedroom and sat on it with her back against the couch. Her book was The Capture of the Golden Stallion by Rutherford G. Montgomery. Unlike me, Maurey actually made progress in her reading. I sat staring at the same page—96—in both my books, trying to understand sentences with migratory words.

  Lydia perched on her feet on the couch, flipping through a New Yorker, while next to her Hank watched “Gunsmoke.”

  “Miss Kitty is frigid,” Lydia said.

  “She’s just white, all white women look frigid.”

  “She’s frigid.”

  Our bedroom—had a creepy ring to it. I’d never shared a room with anyone. At the manor house I had four bedrooms I thought of as mine. What hacked me off and made the words swim was that no one ever discussed anything. When we drove onto the GroVont Highway, Maurey had said, “Swing by my place and I’ll pick up some clothes.”

  Then we came home and she asked me which drawers were hers. The stuffed bear lay propped against the headboard, so I figured she was sleeping in the bed, but where was I sleeping? Why hadn’t anyone said, “Mind if I stay at your house tonight?” “What’s Buddy going to do?” “Gee, Maurey, would you like to live in my room?” “I think maybe I’ll have the baby after all.”

  Instead we washed the dishes, left them to dry in the drain-board, went in the living room and plopped down for the evening. Maurey said, “I’m getting a pillow from our bedroom. Want anything while I’m up?”

  “No.”

  At 10:30 I went out to the kitchen for Lydia’s Gilbey’s and she went to the bathroom for Valium.

  “Hold out your hands,” Lydia said.

  Maurey, Hank, and I held out our hands so Lydia could shake a little yellow pill into each one. She said to Maurey, “We don’t do this every night, understand, but today was special.”

  “A day I won’t forget,” Maurey said.

  The three of us shared a Dr Pepper to wash down our Valiums while Lydia knocked hers off with a shot of gin.

  “Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” she said.

  Hank said, “Sleep with your mouth shut or your spirit will fly around the world and might not be back for your awakening.”

  ***

  Maurey went to the bathroom and I put on my pajamas, then sat in the chair in front of my typewriter. By pressing down on all the keys at once I made them stick together up by the ribbon. A few fell back, but if I really slammed down on a key it usually stuck in the bunch. I got every one but three—Q, ;, and 9—jammed.

  Getting under the sheets and waiting didn’t feel like the thing to do. She might have me planned for the couch, or maybe she thought we’d sleep with our heads at different ends. It wasn’t a day to take anything for granted.

  Maurey came in wearing a white flannel nightgown. She’d brushed her hair and looked thirteen and beautiful. On account of the pregnancy, her breasts were growing by the day.

  She folded the clothes she had been wearing and put them on the dresser. “Which side of the bed do you sleep on?”

  I looked at the bed. It had a sky blue spread with thin white lines running lengthwise. “I never thought about it. I just sleep.”

  “Can I have the outside? Lately, I pee and throw up at strange times of night.”

  “Sure.” I turned back the blankets and got in. We’d been together in my bed plenty of times, but I always knew what was going to happen before. “Can I see where the man shaved you?”

  Maurey pulled her white nightie up above her hips and looked down at herself. Her crotch was a fold in a flat area at the top of a gentle rise. The distance from her navel to the fold was farther than I’d imagined, like one belly above the belly button and one belly below it. You couldn’t tell she’d ever had hair there.

  “Weird, huh?” Maurey said.

  “I don’t know, it looks okay.” I reached out to touch it, but she dropped her nightie.

  “No touching.”

  “I just wanted to feel the stub.”

  “You thought you could get me wet and I’d do something I told you I wouldn’t do.”

  “Maurey, I’m surprised you think that.”

  “Here’s the rules. No kissing and no touching the spot. If you try to kiss me it will ruin everything.”

  I’d been afraid those were the rules. Maybe after the Valium kicked in she would change her mind.

  Maurey slid under the covers next to me. We lay on our backs with our shoulders almost together, only I couldn’t see her face because the bear was between our heads.

  We listened to each other breathe. In the kitchen, the refrigerator kicked on, and with a mew Alice jumped on the bed and settled between us at knee level.

  “She finally seems weaned,” Maurey said.

  “Are we going to keep the baby?”

  Her back flinched. “I’m not thinking about that tonight.”

  “What’s your dad going to say about you living here?”

  “I’m not think
ing about anything tonight, okay, Sam. Don’t ask me any more questions.”

  Nobody said anything for a long time. The front of my forehead started to wooze out with the familiar approach-of-Valium feeling.

  Maurey giggled.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I can sleep with you but I don’t know if I can sleep with those pajamas.”

  I’m feeling touching togetherness and she’s laughing at my sleep wear. “What’s wrong with my pajamas?”

  “They’re paisley.”

  “Grandma Callahan bought them for me.”

  “Don’t they give you nightmares?”

  She was beginning to sound like Lydia. “Do you want me to get up and change them?”

  “I’d sleep better if you did.”

  I crawled over Maurey and went to the closet and dug out a pair of pajamas the same color as a pack of Doublemint chewing gum. They were meant for summertime and the bottoms were short, which showed my knees. Maurey stared at the ceiling while I undressed and dressed. I know because I took a peek when I was naked to see if she cared and she didn’t.

  After I changed I crawled across and settled in on my back again. Alice turned around twice to arrange herself. Maurey moved the bear from between us. She rolled over on her stomach, propped up on her elbows, and stared at me.

  “Do you think you can keep from kissing me or touching the spot?”

  “I think so.”

  “You better be sure.”

  “Okay, I’m sure,” I said, even though I wasn’t.

  “Will you hold me then.”

  That surprised me. I hadn’t learned to separate affection from sex yet. I put my right arm under her and my left arm over her and she curled up with both hands balled into fists between our chests. Her hair was up against my nose.

  Maurey mumbled. “I’m so tired. I’ve never been so tired in my life.”

  Something large and heavy crashed in Lydia’s room. Maurey’s head came up an inch off my pillow. “What was that?”