Maurey seemed to talk to herself. “I like him in the right way and I was looking forward to doing it for the right reason, you know, love, but since I did it for the wrong reason it wasn’t any better than doing it with you.”
Not exactly what I wanted to hear.
“At least with you I got off. With Dothan all I got was muddy.”
This was awful. ‘‘Maurey, don’t ever fuck with someone to protect me.”
She touched my arm above the elbow. “I didn’t do it for you. I did it for me. I’m scared and Dad doesn’t love me anymore.”
She had on her white nightie. I loved her more than I ever had before, I guess because she said she was scared.
She poked her index finger into my stomach. “Look—here’s me. Here’s my father, here’s my boyfriend, and here’s my best friend.” She was on the belly button with me on the left rib, Dothan on the right rib, and her father at the top of my pubic hair.
“I’ve lost Dad and I don’t want to lose either of you. If Dothan hates you, I’d have to choose between you guys and I’d be down to only one. I don’t think I could have this baby with only one connection.”
“Which would you choose?”
“Him, I guess. Except then there’d be nowhere to live. Dothan’s parents are grotesque.”
At least she couldn’t say that about Lydia. “You screwed Dothan so you could live with me?”
“I guess. No. I don’t know, Sam. I wish Dad still loved me, then I wouldn’t need either of you and I could live at home.” On my stomach, she traced the connection between her and Buddy.
“I need you.”
Maurey fell back into a lying-down position. “I know, Sam. That just makes everything even weirder.”
I picked up Maurey’s bear and put it on her chest. “I’m sorry.”
She rubbed the bear’s head against her cheek. “Being a grown-up is too complicated.”
25
1971—Abner and Willoughby Rex play in the cool black dirt under Abner’s daddy’s house in Carbon Hill, Alabama.
Willoughby Rex’s voice is somewhat whiny. “Come on, I give you Frank Howard for Mickey Mantle.”
“Grow up,” Abner says.
“How about Willie Mays and my uncle M.L.’s gallstone?”
“I like my Mickey Mantle.”
Willoughby Rex furrows his brow and makes a last offer. “Okay, my Sam Callahan card for your Mickey Mantle and your Roger Maris.”
“Throw in Sam Callahan’s last novel and you got a deal.”
In Jackson Hole, one sort of athletically inclined boy goes rabid for mountain climbing—“The cafeteria wall is a five-point-five with a forty-foot exposure”—and the other sort of athletically inclined boy defines himself by rodeo—bullriding if he’s short and self-destructive. That doesn’t leave much pickings for Little League. The baseball players are mostly kids who would rather waste the summer drinking Kool-Aid and hassling little girls, only their fathers make them do something, and baseball is less stress than climbing mountains or riding bulls.
Skipper O’Brien’s dad volunteered to coach the team. He was on workman’s disability from falling off the dam and messing up his inner ear, so he didn’t have a regular job or anything interesting to do. The first day of practice Mr. O’Brien sent the whole team to the outfield for fungo-catching. He took off his windbreaker, picked up a bat, threw a ball in the air and whiffed. Missed by a foot.
Right then I told Kim Schmidt we were in for a long summer.
Mr. O’Brien was also the kind of coach who prides himself on not giving his own son special attention, which meant that every day we had to stand there and listen to him yell at Skipper.
“You’re a sick excuse for a ballplayer. You can’t run, you can’t catch, you can’t hit. You throw like a girl.”
Typical junior high-coach child psychology. Made me glad I didn’t have a father.
We opened against Jackson East and lost 17-3. Kim and I scored all three runs. Jackson West shut us out 21-zip.
Most nights I listened to the Dodger game on the radio, then crawled into bed next to Maurey and told her the frustrations of my day, just like we were a real couple. “Rodney Cannelioski is disabled, I swear the kid puts his jock strap on backwards. You know what he did at the plate this afternoon?”
“Sam, I don’t give a rat’s ass what happened at baseball practice today.” She would slap her growing belly. “I’m uncomfortable. I miss my horse. For the first summer since I can remember I’m not riding every day. Little League baseball means nothing to me. Do you understand, Sam. Nothing.”
“How can baseball mean nothing?”
Sometimes this launched another round of foul-mouthed tirade—Maurey’s language went downhill after that day she said fuck in class—or other times she’d lie there silently seething. The seething was hard to deal with.
“You’re just jealous cause you’re too fat to barrel race.”
That one got me Alice across the neck.
Every now and then Maurey was king-hell happy. One afternoon I came in from practice to find her, Dot, and Lydia in total hysterics over baby clothes. Maurey was holding a mint green sunsuit over her head and dancing while Dot slid clear off the couch and onto the floor from laughing so hard, and Lydia smoked two cigarettes at once. I didn’t see anything funny about dancing with baby clothes and said so and that set them off all over again. When she tried to get up, Dot hit her head on the coffee table.
Another time I caught Maurey and Lydia comparing my toddler pictures to the five football players. A photographer had set up his camera in J. C. Penney’s and Lydia dressed me in this stupid sailor suit with a flat-topped hat with two ribbons off the back. In every picture, I looked embarrassed about to death.
“He’s definitely a Negro,” Maurey said.
“I think he looks more like Billy-Butch. See that weak chin.”
That was the night Maurey kicked me out of bed for sleeping. Three in the morning, she bit my thumb.
“My God, you bit me.”
“Wake up.”
“Why did you bite me?”
“I can’t sleep and if I can’t sleep I’ll be damned if you will.”
“Look, tooth marks on my thumb.”
“This is your fault. ‘I won’t squirt,’ you said. ‘No mush,’ you said.” Maurey did the line attributed to me in a falsetto. “All you wanted was in my pants. You’d have said anything to screw me.”
“That’s true.”
“And now I’ll never sleep again.” I swear, she started to cry.
“I could get you a Valium.”
“Valium’s bad for the baby. I can’t take Valium.”
“Lydia ate lots of Valium when she was pregnant with me.”
“Yeah, and look at you.” She sniffled a few minutes and wiped her nose on my pajama collar. “You have to sleep on the floor tonight, Sam. I need the whole bed.”
“How about if I take the couch in the living room?”
She clutched my shoulder. “I don’t want you that far away. I may need you and I want you next to me—on the floor.”
“You may need me?”
She pushed me gently off the bed. “God, I wish Dad was here.”
I didn’t see Buddy all summer, and, so far as I know, neither did Maurey. I guess he stayed up on the TM, delousing and moving water, whatever it is you do for horse maintenance. Whether because of shame or hard work, I don’t know, but he didn’t come into GroVont. I can’t picture Buddy avoiding anything because of shame.