“Don’t you knock?” she asked.
“I knocked.”
“Knock louder.” The shower went off and Maurey’s hand reached out for a towel. The problem was that I still peed a mainstream with a 90-degree-angle shooter, which I’d adapted to by holding my left hand off to the side there. The pee ran down my fingers into the toilet, I washed my hands well before leaving the can, and no one was the wiser. Only Maurey was the wiser when she stepped from the shower, toweled armpits to thighs, and caught me peeing into my hand.
“You’re pissing on yourself.”
“No, I’m not. I’m shy and hiding dick from you.”
“You’re pissing into your palm.”
“Don’t be a squirrel, Maurey.”
“The kid who catches his own pee calls me a squirrel?”
Lydia pushed through the door in the same wraparound towel getup as Maurey. She had creases on her face and exhausted-looking hair.
Maurey wanted to tell the world. “Sam pees in his hand.”
“All men piss on themselves and shit on women. Get out, both of you.”
“It’s my turn.”
“Out.”
Didn’t take a lot of brains to connect last night’s crash, Hank’s Band-Aid, and Lydia’s mood. Maurey and I went to our room and shut the door.
She unwrapped the towel and sat on the edge of the bed with her head bent over, drying her hair. “Lydia’s unhappy about something.”
“We better eat breakfast at the White Deck.”
I couldn’t get over how completely nonmodest she was about being naked in front of me. She wasn’t flirty or shy or anything—like we’d been raised since birth getting dressed together. Guys in a locker room are more body-spooked than Maurey was around me.
I sat in the typing chair watching her. Her rib cage was a lot lighter than mine. The smallpox vaccination bump on her arm was smaller. She twisted the towel around her head in a maneuver males can’t do and looked at me. “What are you staring at?”
“You don’t look pregnant.”
Maurey stood up facing the mirror. From my chair, I saw her real front and her front in the mirror. Pushmi and Pullyu seemed to be staring at her behind, like when the eyes in a painting follow you around.
Maurey reached out and touched her womb area in the mirror. “My boobs hurt, my feet are swollen, I’m nauseous and pee all the time, my mom had an abortion yesterday.”
“That’s true.”
So I took a cold shower and we escaped to the White Deck. We left an ugly silence in the kitchen. Hank stared at the floor and sipped coffee. Lydia stared at Hank and smoked cigarettes. Maurey and I could no more have stayed in that house than we could have taken back yesterday.
First thing, right off, the instant Dot walked up to the table, Maurey blabbed, “Sam pees in his hand.”
How would she feel if I said, “Maurey’s got a shaved thing.”
Dot did the usual spontaneous gale of laughter. “Jimmy does too. He’s like a garden hose with a nail hole on one side and a drip off the bottom.”
“I don’t drip off the bottom.”
“Good for you, Sam.”
Maurey wanted embarrassment and wasn’t getting any. “Peeing on yourself is nothing to be proud of.”
There’s not an actress in the world who could fake Dot’s laugh. If someone made a 45 of her laughing I’d buy it and play it every morning.
“All men pee on themselves,” Dot said. “That’s why toilets have the sandwich seat that they lift and never put down. Gives them a bigger target.”
She poured us coffee and we went to work with the sugar and cream. A fly landed on top of the sugar dispenser and Maurey tried catching it and missed. “My dad doesn’t pee on himself.”
“They all do,” I said, even though I hadn’t known up until Dot said so. I never watched anyone urinate. “Even John Wayne pees on his fingers.”
“John Wayne never peed on himself.”
I tried to remember John Wayne movies while the fly made another attack on the sugar. It crawled up under the flap and down into the glass a little. Maurey grabbed the dispenser and shook it hard. We watched the fly buzz around above his sea of sugar, totally disoriented. I went into an empathetic fantasy where I was the fly who only wanted sugar, but when I got it someone trapped me in glass and shook me to smithereens.
“John Wayne doesn’t pee at all,” Dot said. She didn’t seem disturbed by the fly in her sugar shaker.
Maurey thumped it down. “Everyone pees.”
Dot reached over and with her thumb held open the top flap. We watched the fly walk around inside, waiting for him to stumble on the escape door. I couldn’t figure where the fly came from in the first place. It was twenty degrees outside. He—or his ancestors—must have spent the whole winter in the White Deck.
Dot said, “John Wayne’s made I bet fifty movies, and have you ever seen him take a leak once?”
The fly found the hole and escaped. I felt like I’d survived a trauma. “I never saw anyone in a movie take a leak.”
“Don’t you wish life was like the movies,” Maurey said.
She ordered cinnamon toast and I had pancakes. Cinnamon toast and coffee wasn’t the thing for our future child, but we hadn’t reached the stage where I could nag, “Think about the baby, dear.”
When Dot brought out the plates, she raised an eyebrow and looked at Maurey. “Well?”
“No.”
Dot’s face lit like the sun. “You didn’t go through with it?”
“No.”
“I’m so happy.”
Maurey sprinkled extra sugar on her toast. “You never told me you’d be happy if I chickened out.”
Dot slid into the booth next to me and patted my hand. “Honey, ever’one says, ‘Do what you think best, it’s your body,’ but they’re all pulling for you to keep the baby, they’re pleased when you do.”
“Why is that?”
“That’s the way the world is. Life is neater than anything else.”
For all her grins and giggles, Dot was a deep thinker too. Life is neater than anything else. I could hardly wait to find some paper and write that down.
“So, are you going to keep the baby?” Dot asked.
Funny how virtual strangers can ask about things that would be personal coming from loved ones. Maurey wouldn’t give me an answer to that question, but to Dot she shrugged both shoulders and said, “I guess so.”
Made me happy. “Yippee.”
Maurey swung in the booth. “You’re happy I’m going through with it?”
“Sure, I’m ready to be a father.”
“Sam, you’ll turn fourteen after it’s born.”
“I’m ready.”
“And you’ve never lived in a small town. Things are liable to get ugly around here come summer.”
Dot nodded in agreement.
“I don’t care.”
“If my boyfriend doesn’t break your legs, my dad probably will.”
I paused a moment on that one. “You still have a boyfriend?”
“Whose jacket am I wearing?”
“You could give it back?”
“No.”
We zipped into intense eye lock until Dot got nervous and slid from the booth. “I’ll leave you young parents to yourselves.”
“What about me?” I asked.
“We’re friends.”
19
Caspar attended the Culver Military Academy way back in the Dark Ages. He rode in the Black Horse Troop and he learned all about leadership. I don’t have much use for leadership qualities. Caspar talks about Culver with the same gleam as Mr. March the barber on World War II.
“The friendships last a lifetime,” he said.
I never saw any of his Culver pals around the manor house.
“It’ll make a man out of you. If Lydia had gone there she wouldn’t be the mess she is today.”