I stared into her blue eyes for a long time, then dipped in for the kiss.
“No,” Maurey said.
“No?”
“We’re having fun, Sam. Don’t spoil it.”
I sat up. “I don’t understand. You kiss Dothan Talbot all the time and he’s a jerk.”
“I kiss him because he’s a jerk. I like you. I can’t kiss you anymore.”
Cracker crumbs trickled down my balls and into my bottom crack. “I’m nice to you, we sleep in the same bed, you’re having our baby, but you can’t kiss me because you like me?”
“Right.”
“And you can kiss Dothan because you don’t like him?”
“I like him, in a different way.”
I reached over and dusted the cracker crumbs out of her eyebrows. “Do you think the fall hurt the baby?”
Maurey sat up next to me. “I hope not.” We sat shoulder to shoulder on the floor, staring at the log wall under my desk. One of the logs had a whorl knot with bark around the outside of the circle. I wondered if Lydia heard the crash. Probably not; it was after midnight.
“Sam,” Maurey said. “I’m sorry you want something that I don’t. I’d like to give you what you want, but you’re important to me now. What with the baby and things all a mess with Dad, I need you too much to risk anything more than friendship.”
She put her hand on my knee. After a while, I covered her hand with mine. We laced fingers and she gave me a little squeeze.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“I don’t either.”
“Shit.”
“I’m crumby. Want to take a shower?”
Wednesday evening as the three of us walked into the White Deck, Maurey stopped and stared off toward Kimball’s Food Market.
She said, “They’re going to Jackson to church.”
“Who?” I didn’t see anything other than a white Chevelle with the engine left running.
“That’s Mama’s car,” Maurey said.
Annabel came out of the grocery store carrying a single brown paper bag, followed by Petey in his dark suit that made him look like a miniature hit man. Annabel was wearing a purple print dress with yellow leaves on it and a hat.
Petey stopped and pointed toward us. I could hear his high-whine voice but not the words. Annabel looked at us a moment, then opened the back door and set in her sack. She said something to Petey as she moved around the Chevelle and got in the driver’s side.
“That’ll be Dad’s beer and this month’s Redbook,” Maurey said. “She always buys that stuff on the way to church.”
The passenger door opened from the inside and I could see Annabel gesturing for Petey to get in the car. He pointed one more time, then he climbed in and they drove off away from us.
Maurey stared after them. “How does she dare show herself in church after what she’s done?”
Lydia sniffed. “How does she dare show herself in church wearing that dress?”
“So Dothan’s going to drive over here in his Ford to pick up his date and her roommate?”
“What’s the matter with that?”
“Won’t he think it squirrelly that you’re living at a guy’s house?”
“I told him the truth—Mom and I had a fight so I’m staying with you and Lydia.”
“And he didn’t think that was squirrelly?”
“I didn’t ask him if he thought that was squirrelly. I don’t care what he thinks it is.”
“Well, it’s not traditional.”
“You think I should wear this yellow sweater Lydia loaned me or the blue shirt with a white dickie?”
“The blue shirt makes your eyes look nice, but I have serious doubts about the dickie.”
The eager boy climbed the highest peak in the Tetons to ask a question of the wise, tall one.
“Sam Callahan, why is it I always want to be with one girl and I’m always with another one?”
Sam Callahan scratched his thick beard. “God planned it so everybody likes somebody but no one likes the person who likes them.”
“Why?”
“The purpose of our existence is to keep God entertained.”
Double-dating is stupid to begin with. It’s hard enough to relax with one person without having to keep track of the insecurities and innuendos of a whole other couple. With me and a girl, there’s one relationship to be paranoid over. That’s plenty. With four people, I count six connections—me and Chuckette, Dothan and Maurey, Maurey and Chuckette, Dothan and me, me and Maurey, and Dothan and Chuckette. Which would be complicated enough even if Dothan’s date and I weren’t about to have a baby.
We drove into Jackson to a Leap Year Day sock hop at the Mormon Church rec hall. The Mormons had February 29 mixed up with Sadie Hawkins Day from the Li’l Abner comic strip. I think that’s because Sadie Hawkins Day is when women can force men to marry them, and Mormons have the same superstition about leap year. Whatever the reason, almost all the kids except us were dressed in Dogpatch clothes. I wasn’t into that straw-in-the-hair stuff. Dogpatch was too close to North Carolina.
Down South, Fundamentalists like the Baptists and Church of Christ don’t believe in mixed dancing, but Mormons must be different. Or maybe Wyoming is different. Anyhow, the decadence of doing the twist eight feet from your partner in a fluorescent tube-lit room with more chaperones than dancers thrilled Chuckette to the bone.
She said, “Daddy’d die if he saw this.”
“So would my mom.”
They stacked Pat Boone and Chubby Checker 45s on a Sylvania record player and we danced under a basketball net. Refreshments were lemonade and cookie squares made out of Rice Crispies and melted marshmallows.
“They’ll stick to my retainer,” Chuckette said.
“I’ll eat yours.”
This room with walls the same color as Lydia’s face was like dancing in a brightly lit Ping-Pong ball. The chaperones made us change partners regularly so no one would feel left out. During a Sam Cooke song about this guy who was an idiot in school—“Don’t know much about history, don’t know much biology”—I found myself dancing face to face with Maurey. Sam Cooke thought if he made all A’s some girl would get hot for his bod and what a wonderful world it would be.
“Having fun, Sam?” Maurey asked.
I was listening as Sam Cooke connected grade-point average to sex appeal. My fantasy life was peanuts next to this guy. “What?”
“Are you having fun?”
“After an hour, the twist is boring.”
“Sharon can do the shimmy. Dance with her.”
Sharon could do the dirty bird, mashed potatoes, and the itch, only the chaperones stepped in when she did the itch.
“That’s disgusting,” Maurey said as Sharon dug into herself like a flea-bit dog.
Dothan did a leer. “I’d like to itch her.”
Chuckette popped her retainer. “After high school, I’m joining the Peace Corps.”
The chaperones kicked a guy out for being from Idaho.
At the end, two Sunday-school teachers held on to opposite ends of a dowel rod and us boys were formed into a limbo line. Girls couldn’t do it because they were wearing dresses. We shuffled around to the music, pretending we were Negroes going under a stick. I bombed early on purpose so people would think I was too tall to see how low I could go.
Chuckette gave me this look that said I’d let us down as a couple. I played Hank, which I’d been doing a lot lately.