Jack didn’t sleep well; he had dreams, of course. Was he worried that the stained-glass saint would slip back into his bed while he slept—or more worried that she had turned her back on him, as he feared he had turned his back on God?
Jack was aware that his mother and Mrs. Oastler had come home, not because he woke up when his mom came into his bedroom and kissed him—at least his mom said she came into his room and kissed him, every night—but because the lights in the hall had changed. No longer was there a light on at the far end of the corridor, but the door to his mother’s room was ajar and the light from her bathroom glowed dimly in the hall. The light in Jack’s bathroom was also on, and it cast a thin, bright line of light under the door.
Jack was aware of his wet dream, too, because the cold, damp area of his bed had dried—but near it was a wetter spot, still warm, where the little guy had shed a few more tears of joy. Maybe he’d been dreaming about Mrs. Machado. He wondered if he would tell Emma about his wet dream, which Emma had anticipated for so long. (Jack Burns wondered if he would ever tell anyone about Mrs. Machado.)
He got out of bed and crossed the hall to his mother’s room, but his mom wasn’t there; her bed wasn’t even turned down. Jack went looking for his mother in the dark mansion. Mrs. Machado must have gone home, because the downstairs lights were off. The boy wandered from the guest wing into the hallway that led past Emma’s empty bedroom. There was a flickering light; it came from under Leslie Oastler’s bedroom door.
Maybe Mrs. Oastler and his mom were watching television, Jack was thinking. He knocked on the door, but they didn’t hear him. Or maybe he forgot to knock and just opened the door. The TV was off—it was a candle on the night table that was flickering.
He thought at first that Mrs. Oastler was dead. Her body was arched as if her spine were broken, and her head was hanging off the side of the bed so that her face was turned toward Jack—but her face was upside down. The boy could tell that she didn’t see him. She was naked and her eyes were wide and staring, as if the dim light from the hall had made Jack invisible—or else he was the one who was dead and Mrs. Oastler was looking right through him. Maybe he’d died during his wet dream, Jack imagined. (It would not have surprised him to learn that the experience with Mrs. Machado had killed him—not just the high-groin kick, but all the rest of it.)
Alice sat up suddenly and covered her breasts with both hands. She was naked, too, but Jack had not seen her in the bed until she moved. She sat bolt-upright with Leslie Oastler’s legs wrapped around her. Mrs. Oastler hadn’t moved, but Jack saw that her eyes had regained their focus; he was greatly relieved that she saw him.
“I didn’t die, but I had a dream,” Jack told them.
“Go back to your room, Jack—I’ll be right there,” his mom told him.
Alice was looking for her nightgown, which she found tangled in the sheets at the foot of the bed. Leslie Oastler just lay there naked, staring at Jack. In the candlelight, the rose-red, rose-pink petals of her Rose of Jericho looked like two shades of black—black and blacker.
Jack was in the hall, going back to his room, when he heard Mrs. Oastler say: “You shouldn’t still be sleeping in the same bed with him, Alice—he’s too old.”
“I only do it when he’s had a bad dream,” Alice told her.
“You do it whenever Jack wants to do it,” Mrs. Oastler said.
“I’m sorry, Leslie,” Jack heard his mother say.
The boy lay in his bed, not knowing quite what he should do or say about the wet spot. Maybe nothing. But when his mother got into bed with him, it didn’t take her long to discover it. “Oh, it was that kind of dream,” she said, as if this hardly counted as a nightmare.
“It’s not blood, it’s not pee,” the boy elaborated.
“Of course it isn’t, Jack—it’s semen.”
Jack was thoroughly confused. (He failed to see how a wet dream could have anything to do with sailors!) “I didn’t mean to do it,” he explained. “I don’t even remember doing it.”
“It’s not your fault, Jackie—a boy’s wet dreams just happen.”
“Oh.”
He wanted her to hold him; he wanted to snuggle against her, the way he used to snuggle against her after bad dreams when he was smaller. But when he tried to get closer to her, he unintentionally touched her breasts and she pushed him away. “I think you’re too old to be in bed with me,” she said.
“I’m not too old!” Jack told her. How could he go from being not old enough to being too old in such a hurry? He felt like crying, but he didn’t. His mom must have sensed it.
“Don’t cry, Jack—you’re almost too old to cry,” she said. “When you go away to school, you can’t cry. If you cry, the boys will tease you.”
“Why am I going away to school?” he asked her.
“It’s better for everyone,” his mother said. “Under the circumstances, it’s just better.”
“What circumstances?”
“It’s just better,” she repeated.
“It’s not better for me!” Jack cried. She put her arms around him and let him snuggle against her. It was the way he used to fall asleep when he was four and they were in Europe.
Jack should have told his mom about Mrs. Machado. (If he’d told his mother about Mrs. Machado, maybe Alice would have realized that he was still not old enough—that there was nothing too old about him.) But Jack didn’t tell her. He fell asleep in her arms, like the old days—or almost like the old days. Something about her smell was different; his mother’s face had a funny odor. Jack realized it was the same strong smell he had noticed in his bath. Maybe the odor had come from Mrs. Machado. As before, it was strange not knowing if he liked the smell. Even in his sleep, the smell persisted.
How long had Leslie Oastler been there in Jack’s bedroom with them, just sitting on Alice’s side of the bed? When Jack woke up and saw her, he didn’t know at first that it was Mrs. Oastler. Jack thought it was the stained-glass saint. She’d come back to claim him! (Maybe that was how a woman saint took possession of you, by taking all her clothes off first.)
Leslie Oastler was naked, and she was rubbing Alice on that spot between her shoulder blades where Boris had a tattoo of the Chinese character for luck and Pavel had a tattoo of a tenaculum.
Jack must have woken up only a split second before his mom did. “You should put some clothes on, Leslie,” Alice was saying.
“I had a dream,” Mrs. Oastler replied. “A bad one.”
“Go back to your room, Leslie—I’ll be right there,” Alice said. Jack watched Mrs. Oastler leave his room; she was awfully proud of her body, the boy thought. His mother kissed him on the forehead. There was that smell again; he shut his eyes, still trying to decide if he liked it. His mom kissed him on his eyelids. It was a hard smell to like; nevertheless, he thought he liked it.
“I’m sorry, Jack,” his mom said. He kept his eyes closed and listened to her bare feet padding down the hall after Leslie Oastler.
He couldn’t wait for Emma to get back from the fat farm in California. Surely Emma would help him understand these new and troubling “circumstances”—to use his mother’s word for her relationship with Mrs. Oastler.
With Mrs. Machado as his regular workout partner, Jack’s wrestling noticeably improved—although not as noticeably as hers. She was a feisty competitor—even Chenko was impressed—and she was twice his weight, an advantage he couldn’t overcome. Jack still managed to hold her down with a cross-body ride, but he had trouble taking her down in the first place; she controlled their tie-ups on the feet, to the degree that he couldn’t ankle-pick her anymore. An arm-drag to an outside single-leg was the only offensive takedown he occasionally got on her, and Mrs. Machado was impossible to pin unless he caught her in a cross-face cradle. She was just too strong for him, especially in the area of hand control. But Jack knew he was getting better.