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 conviction. “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.”