“Have your baby.”
“Rory took our half of the rent. The other half is Lynette’s and she’s gone too. And I was on his insurance at the plant, only now he don’t have a job. Who’ll pay the doctor?”
“Don’t worry about the money,” I said. “I’ll take care of that. You just take care of your baby.”
16
Most of my heroes committed suicide. That thought came to me late Monday night when I should have been asleep, but, as usual, wasn’t. I’d ridden the Exercycle 6000 twenty miles at high tension, but stopped because I couldn’t concentrate on Wanda. Gilia’s face kept getting in the way.
I lay in the bed with three pillows next to me for the arm and leg that had to be draped over someone before I felt okay enough to sleep. No help. I didn’t feel okay and I wasn’t asleep. Buttons in the mattress poked into my ribs. Why do mattresses have buttons? I got to thinking about Alan Watts and his views on sleep, which led to a local poet named Randall Jarrell, then Sylvia Plath and Marilyn Monroe, who Maurey says slept naked, and it dawned on me that these four people had two things in common: They were all my role models and they all killed themselves. And my heroes who didn’t kill themselves on purpose—Gram Parsons and Hank Williams—killed themselves accidentally. Were these people I wanted to model my life after?
Baseball heroes don’t commit suicide. Sandy Koufax, Moose Skowron, Vin Scully, I could think of a dozen admirable baseball people who hadn’t killed themselves, but let’s face it, at thirty-three, you can’t sign on as disciple to a baseball player.
The door cracked open and a form slithered into the room. My first thought was, Skip’s hired a hit man.
“Who’s there?”
“Who do you think, darlin’?”
“Oh, shit.”
“You don’t sound happy to see me. I can’t believe it, you must be covering up your true delight at my arrival so I won’t become overconfident.” She was wearing a nightgown, a filmy, flowing number with ruffles. She floated through the dim moonlight like a short ghost.
“Katrina, this isn’t a good time. I have someone with me.”
“No, you don’t.”
I sat up in bed. “How can you tell?”
“Those’re pillows. Anybody can tell the difference between pillows and women, ’cept maybe a horny man.” Katrina slid across the room. “I was lying there next to old Skippy, tingling from head to toe on account of what you did this morning.”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
She sat on the edge of the bed. Her fingertips brushed my arm. “I decided once wasn’t enough.”
“Katrina, that’s not fair. I do you a favor and now you want more. How did you get in, anyway? The door’s locked.”
“The side door isn’t.” She ran her fingernails up and down the inside of my elbow. I swear, she purred like Alice.
“We don’t have a side door.”
“Behind the weeping willow.”
“That’s the servants’ entrance. Nobody’s used that door in twenty years.”
She leaned so close her lips grazed my ear and said, “It still works.”
“Am I wrong or did you pick up a French accent since this morning?”
Her tongue flicked in and out of my ear. In my experience, women who are into tongue flicking all read Danielle Steel.
“My grandmama was French. It comes out whenever I’m crazed with lust.” She lifted the sheet and slipped under. I slipped right out the other side—stood there feeling foolish in plaid boxer shorts.
“Sam.” Katrina blinked seductively. “If you reject me there will be repercussions.”
Veiled threats are a sure sign that a relationship is fixing to wash down the tubes.
“I’m not rejecting you, Katrina. I just can’t have sex in my own home. What if my daughter hears us?”
Katrina giggled. “Does your daughter sleep three doors that way?”
I nodded, not liking the giggle.
“She should be worried about you hearing them, not the other way around.”
“Them?”
Katrina made her face into a pout and talked baby talk. “Uh-ho, Sammy’s wittle baby is making diddle-widdle wight under Sammy’s nose.”
I hate women who talk baby talk. It’s all I can do to sleep with them.
“Don’t go away,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
“Honey, I wouldn’t think of leaving.”
I’m a spy in my own home. I stood outside Shannon’s door, barefoot in boxer shorts, listening to the sounds of passion. The bed rocked a steady rhythm, chunka chunka chunk. I bought that bed for Shannon at the High Point furniture mart. She chose it because she liked the ironwork design on the headboard. In my mind, I could see her hands intertwined in the iron design while Eugene’s sweat dribbled into her pores. You try to be both mother and father, you try to set a good example, you want to lock them up so they’ll never be hurt, but the books and magazines all say “Set her free, let her go.” And look what happens. A balding male who can’t even talk right charms his sleazy way into her body. God, I hate men.
What to do? Call the police? Ignore the atrocity? In the olden days a man would have smashed down the door with a shotgun and forced Eugene to marry her, but times have changed. Marriage is the last thing I want for a daughter of mine.
Shannon made a low gasp followed by a series of peeps. I’d heard those peeps before. In the throes of sex, each woman emits a unique sound. I’ve been with screamers, cursers, huff-and-puffers, and women silent as stone until that sudden shriek. One woman actually shouted “Bingo!” The tones, rhythms, even the words are like snowflakes, similar from afar but up close no two are the same.
Yet Shannon was pretty darn close to someone I’d heard before. My mind raced back through the years and bodies until it suddenly struck me—Maurey. Her mother. At thirteen Maurey had sung the gasp, gasp, then five peeps in a row. The peeps had been like a two-minute warning.
Sickened yet fascinated, I listened to Shannon build toward climax. I was amazed. The sound of passion is genetic. A woman echoing her mother couldn’t be learned behavior, has to be heredity. Maybe it goes clear back to the moment of conception, in which case impregnation must be accompanied by orgasm or the song is not passed on.
I watched Mom have sex in our living room once and her sounds were completely different from Shannon’s and Maurey’s, which means the gene isn’t passed through the male side. Lydia sounded like a kid having an asthma attack. That night I saw her doing it, the guy came and quit before she got off—an immoral act, if you ask me—so I didn’t hear my mother’s orgasm. Probably for the best.
The emotions you feel watching your mother get laid don’t even compare to how you feel when it’s your daughter. That was my baby in there with a penis crammed inside her. The little girl I raised through kindergarten, birthday parties, mumps, first bike, driving lessons, first zit. I wanted to throw up. What if Eugene was a pervert? A bondage freak with a French tickler.
What if he toyed with her heartstrings and left? Wam, bam, thank you, Sam. Even worse, what if he stayed? They might fall in love and become life mates, and I would have to be gracious. I refuse to be gracious to anyone noodling my daughter.
I doubled up my fist and rapped on the door. The sounds suddenly stopped.
Shannon shouted: “What?”
“Are you practicing proper birth control?”
Short silence, then: “Daddy, go away!”
Back in my own bedroom, Katrina had tossed her nightgown aside. She sat naked on the bed, rubbing Wanda’s vitamin E oil into her thighs under the sheets.