Skipped Parts: A Heartbreaking, Wild, and Raunchy Comedy (17 page)

It was an odd feeling though. A baby, a live piece of me in Maurey.

Hank pulled into a parking area and turned the truck around. “This is the place.”

I leaned to look over Maurey’s right shoulder. The whole valley stretched off beneath us like a waxed linoleum floor. Lines of brown marked the creeks with a wider band at the Snake River. Chimney smoke drifted over the towns of Jackson and Wilson. GroVont was around a corner, too far north to see. The whole thing gave the illusion of being above life.

“God, I hate being practical,” Lydia said.

Maurey’s hair brushed my face when she nodded. “I know what you mean.”

“No use getting agitated until we know for sure. Who’s your doctor?”

“Dr. Petrov in Jackson, but I can’t go to him. He and daddy played football together in high school.”

“Everyone in this state played football together in high school. How about Erickson over in Dubois? He’s a Valium candy store. Does your daddy know him?”

I couldn’t see Maurey’s face, but she shook her head no.

“Then if you are pregnant we can talk abort or not to abort.”

“I’m just a kid, I can’t have a baby.”

“That’s what I thought.”

We sat a minute, staring at the shimmery view and considering the implications. Buddy would castrate me. I’d heard him talk horse castration before and he enjoyed it. Gave me every disgusting detail. Took an “I’ve got my balls and you don’t” attitude. Annabel would be disappointed. Everyone else would get a kick out of the deal because it would give them something to talk about. Wasn’t that much to talk about in winter.

Abortion—I knew what that meant, more or less. Meant keep or get rid of and it was king-hell, kick-in-your-door illegal stuff.

Maurey started yanking at the door handle. “How the hell do you escape this monster, I’ve gotta slide.”

Hank popped open his door. “Only works from the outside.”

As Hank ran around the back of the truck, Maurey threw her shoulder into the door which didn’t budge. “Give me a box, I’m a kid. Kids have fun, dammit, why won’t this door do something.”

Lydia looked at me. “You following this?”

I held Maurey around her waist. We were going out into the cold and I had a crotch full of goo and a possibly pregnant just-friends friend. Other than that, I was lost as ever.

***

Maurey got me in a cardboard box behind her with her arms up on my knees—almost the same position of Hank and Lydia in the bathtub.

“This smacks of suicidal,” I said.

“Stay loose if we dump.”

By leaning forward I could see way the heck down the mountain. It was like looking down a great, white throat. Hank had every intention of pushing us over the edge and letting us hurtle down the iced-up angle and into the woods. That’s why the box was waxed—so we could go fast and not waterlog out halfway down the mountain.

Lydia lit a cigarette. “Looks like spontaneous fun.”

Hank looked up at her. “We’re next.”

“Over my dead body we are.”

Maurey’s face was a nifty flush-red with white points on the tip-top of her ears. The air wasn’t near as cold up high as it had been in the valley. Hank said it was an inversion. “Same thing that causes smog.”

“Pollution causes smog,” I said.

Maurey’s eyes had a nothing-to-lose glint that worried me. “Whatever happens, don’t bail out,” she said. “You’ll break your neck.”

“I know we have a problem, but death isn’t the answer.”

Her head came back with all that beautiful hair in my face and she laughed and I was charmed to no end. It was the laugh of a child, the laugh of king-hell innocence, not pregnancy and orgasms and jacking-off boys in trucks; not even necking with greasers at the picture show. Maurey’s laugh belonged to a person who had done none of those things.

I’d of said something about it if Hank hadn’t shoved the waxed box and we took off like a cut-loose elevator.

I’m big on control. I like knowing where I am and where I should be next and how to get there and how to escape any situation. Falling is not your control motif. Maurey was hollering into the wind, same note as when she came in my room. My stomach did the up-the-throat thing.

I guess it was no faster than a sled, but the sleds I’d been on were semi-controllable and didn’t fly a half-mile down the ramp. The snow had these hollowed-out dips so there was an up sensation in the midst of the down. Tears froze. Then there was a cliff and we were rolling. I grabbed Maurey as we went through the box. Snow crystals stung while we rolled and rolled and I braced myself for the tree that never hit.

We finally slid to a stop with Maurey in laughter hysterics. I did a four-point and threw up. She shoved snow over the mess as fast as I put it out.

I can’t stand it when someone has a wonderful time doing the same thing that I hate doing. “Holy cow, that was a gas,” she laughed. “You okay?”

I tried to breathe.

“You’d better move fairly quick,” Maurey said.

“Why’s that?”

“Hank and Lydia are fixing to face plant on that same drop off and they’ll land on you.”

I looked back up the hill. Forty yards or so up was a five-foot ledge, not a cliff at all. “No way in hell Hank’s going to get Lydia in a box,” I said.

Famous last words. I heard the scream just before they came flying over the top. It was one of those stop-action memories that freeze in your head and stay there for life, even if you turn senile and can’t remember your own phone number. They floated in the air above the box. Lydia had her arms up, reaching for the sun. Her mouth was an O and I could see the tip of her tongue. One of Hank’s black boots hovered over her legs and his left hand showed on her shoulder. He seemed to be leaning back, as if the box was still behind him.

They hit and separated. Hank slid on his chest with his face pushing a great mound of snow before him. Lydia rolled end over end, then fell into a baseball hook slide. Neither one slowed down all that much as they went past Maurey and me. The really weird part was that Lydia went by laughing.

I’d never heard my mother laugh before.

Lydia mostly liked to comment on things. She didn’t really care to do anything and laughing requires some kind of doing. I didn’t know if I liked this turn of events or not.

When the slide finally petered out, she was lying on her back with both arms out in a crucifixion look. Hank slowly stood up and brushed off his face, but Lydia didn’t move a muscle. I flashed on paralysis and death. The three of us all made it to her at the same time. I knelt next to her head and touched her limp shoulder. “Can you move?”

Lydia smiled. “Isn’t the air pretty.”

“Where does it hurt?”

She sat up with her hands around her knees. “I was just admiring the sky. Do you mind?”

“You never admired the sky before. I thought you were crippled.”

“Why can’t a person admire the sky without their kid calling for an ambulance?”

I looked at Maurey who seemed to know what Lydia was talking about. They made eye contact. What I thought was the word:
pregnant
.

Lydia struggled to her feet. “That had a high entertainment value. Let’s do it again.”

***

I wish I could claim that I caught the historical significance of watching
The Ed Sullivan Show
in the Pierces’ family room that night. Kennedy day I knew we were involved in something bigger than us, but Beatles night I was considerably more wrapped up in me and the baby thing than any history-unfolding deal.

My brain was stuck on the first joke I ever memorized. Lord only knows how old I was, but I must have been young because I thought you could tell a joke five thousand times and it would still be funny. It’s a wonder Lydia and Casper didn’t slap me upside the head.

I would stand real straight and recite, “Mary had a little lamb,” then I’d hesitate a millisecond before screaming, “
and the doctor fainted
.” I got the biggest kick out of that.

Buddy was home, sitting in his Stratolounger, taking apart the trigger doogie on a thirty-ought-six. He spread all the little pieces on a cloth on a TV tray. Petey played Candy Land and he cheated. I saw him. Maurey lay on her stomach on the floor with a pillow under her chest and her chin propped on both hands.

She raised one foot, then lowered it and raised the other one. I watched her instead of Topo Gigio, the Italian mechanical mouse. I pretended I was the baby in her. It would be dark and hot and wet. Really wet. I imagined the baby as a wet mouse. It would be a girl. We could name her Vanessa or Chadron; or maybe Nancy since we’d both read over thirty Nancy Drew books.

Maurey would marry me if we had a daughter. Buddy would make her.

Buddy dropped a tiny screwdriver and said “Shit,” just as Annabel came in the room with a tray of cocoa mugs. Maurey’s mother must have been a cocoa junkie and I think it affected Maurey’s outlook.

“Don’t talk like a cowboy in front of the children,” she said.

“I am a cowboy.”

Petey jumped to his feet, singing, “Shit-shit-shit, shit-shit-shit,” to the tune of “Jingle Bells.” He danced around the room in his pajamas, driving everyone right up the wall. If Maurey’s and my kid acted like that I would put him in Culver Military Academy.

Buddy raised his arm in a mock backhand and Petey ran screaming to hide behind Annabel’s legs. “Don’t let Daddy beat me. Don’t let Daddy beat me.”

“Now look what you’ve done,” Annabel said.

I was always intrigued by the flow of the Pierce family. I think the only way you can act cruddy to a family member is when you deep down inside care for them. Lydia and Caspar were formal and polite because they didn’t like each other. Anything approaching honesty at the manor house would have caused bloodshed.

“Shut up,” Maurey ordered.

Ed Sullivan is like the American role model. The guy couldn’t do anything—couldn’t act, sing, draw, throw a ball—absolutely talentless in every way, not to mention he had the posture of a train-station beggar. Yet he was a king-hell big deal. People sucked up to Ed like he was president of the world or something. No wonder kids grow up weird.

I was watching Maurey breathe, trying to see if there was a baby in there, so I missed the first part, but when she said, “Shut up,” I looked at Ed hunched over by a curtain.

He said, “And now…the Beatles.”

The audience went nuts—you had to be there—as four guys in wimp clothes with their hair combed forward broke into “All My Loving.” I didn’t know it was “All My Loving” at the time. Maurey told me the next day at school after Kim Schmidt told her.

“Sissies,” Buddy said through his bush of a beard.

“I think they’re cute,” Annabel said.

Petey threw a Candy Land marker at the screen.

The weird part was the screaming girls. No way could they hear the music; they were making too much noise. The camera blew off the Beatles to focus on these regular high school-looking girls with tears streaming away and their hands up in helpless supplication. I can’t stand seeing strong emotions. Makes me nervous.

Maurey’s right foot was up in the air going side to side with the song. She held the cocoa with both hands and blew steam toward the television. When the two Beatles on the left leaned into the same microphone, the scream intensity doubled.

“If they’re so hot why don’t they buy a separate microphone for each guy,” I said.

Buddy had an answer. “Cause they like to stand close to each other. England is all boys who like other boys. I was there in the war.”

Annabel did a
tsk
action with her tongue.

My mind said “Pregnant, pregnant, pregnant,” over and over. I hate that when you get a word in there and it won’t go away no matter what you’re doing on the outside.

They sang five songs. “She Loves You” was pretty good and the last one, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” was okay. The others were somewhat drippy for me, though it was hard to tell with all the screaming. For sure they were better than the Singing Nun.

The next act was some dogs who wore fu-fu clothes and rode bicycles. They reminded me of Otis, whose leg I shot off. I’d been in town six months and shot one dog and gotten one girl pregnant.

Maurey got a comb and stood behind me, combing my hair forward like a Beatle. Embarrassed me to no end.

“You’ll look cool at school,” she said.

“Being from the East causes me enough trash. If I look like an English wimp Coach Stebbins will hate me sure.”

“Coach Stebbins hates you?” Annabel asked.

“He thinks I’m an outsider.”

“You are,” Buddy said. “But you’ll get over it.” He held up the rifle barrel and sighted through the tube right at me. Gave me a funny feeling in the spine.

Maurey stood back to admire my hair. “This’ll drive Chuckette Morris crazy. She’ll be all over you in homeroom.”

“I don’t want Chuckette Morris all over me in homeroom.”

“Have to fight ’em off, huh?” Buddy said.

Maurey smiled at me. “With a stick.”

***

Sometime after midnight, I came wide awake. I lay there with my eyes open, trying to piece together the room, where I was, why, when. What had caused me to come to. A coal glowed bright over by my desk, then dimmed. Lydia’s head was silhouetted by the window. The coal moved down and she flicked a part of it into my trash can.

“I was so sick the day I found out I was pregnant with you. I’ve never been so sick. It was worse than I’d dreamed.” She inhaled on the cigarette. “The doctor told Caspar first and Caspar came into my room and hit me in the face. The only time he ever hit me. So far.”

The coal went bright again. “I fell into my dollhouse and broke the roof.”

She was quiet a long time. I was afraid to move—she seemed so delicate, fragile—as if raising my head could change her. Lydia finally went on. “I was so sick I didn’t care that he hit me. I just wanted you out of me so I wouldn’t feel sick anymore.” Her foot touched the trash can, making a metal sound.

“I would have gone for an abortion if Caspar hadn’t tried to make me have one. Why doesn’t that man ever figure me out?”

This time the silence stretched the length of a cigarette. She threw the live butt in my trash can and stood up. “I got pregnant to spite my father and I refused an abortion to spite him. I wonder how that makes you feel.”