Women & Other Animals (15 page)

The three men laughed, and it took Kevin a moment to catch on. His dad crushed out his cigarette, mashing and extinguishing the hot ash. How could an officer of the law talk about Mrs. Mar

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tin's personal parts that way? Didn't they see she was a struggling mother? Kevin felt an urgent need to check on Mrs. Martin, to see if she was okay, to make sure nothing was burning. He sucked down his Coke and excused himself. He walked halfway and then broke into a jog. When he got a cramp, he walked again.

Kevin entered through the back door and, out of habit, sniffed for smoke. He brought in some dirty paper cups from the picnic table and threw them away in the kitchen. A halfempty fifth of vodka sat on the counter. Kevin put the lid on the bottle, then climbed the stairs to Madeline's bedroom. Lace throw pillows and a ruffleedged spread covered the bed. A scarf hung across her mirror, a scarf Madeline apparently could do without at college. The dresser top was arranged neatly with a jewelry box and a picture of herself in her cheerleader outfit. Her powdery smell lingered, but the room was only a shrine now. Kevin knew darn well Madeline wasn't coming back to these cracked plaster walls or to him. He sat on her bed, hands over his eyes, because he couldn't help himself—he'd started to cry.

An arm slipped around his shoulder. It was Mrs. Martin sitting beside him on the bed. Her eyes were red and teary; her hair fell limply around her face. She was the only one who would understand, the only one who loved Madeline as much as he did. She wrapped a second arm around him, pulling him toward her, as though she were an extensive lap upon which he could rest. To escape the stream of smoke from her cigarette, he let his face fall into her neck. She dropped the cigarette, still burning, onto Madeline's end table, and it rolled against a plasticframed picture of Madeline and her father. Then Mrs. Martin's long fingers began to snake around Kevin; they reached inside his shirt, undressing him, pulling him apart. His desire for Mrs. Martin hit him unexpectedly, like an electric shock. She unzipped his jeans, and he kicked them the rest of the way off.

The softness of Mrs. Martin's breasts and skin made him want to swear allegiance to her, to say that he would protect her from fire and crabgrass and every other thing, but he was unable to form words or even to look into those eyes—not green like Madeline's, but orange. As Mrs. Martin opened her robe and laid her naked Page 99

weight on him, Kevin struggled one last time to smell Madeline's perfume through the cigarette smoke and the scorching plastic of the picture frame. Long hair fell around his face and trailed in his mouth. Mrs. Martin's legs wrapped around him, and her body threatened to devour not just his personal part, but all the rest of him too. Invisible flames curled around him like a late summer heat that wilted flowers, singed grasses, and cracked bare earth. As his body combusted, he watched the backyard, through the window glass, and soothed his eyes upon the cool emerald expanse of the perfect lawn.

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The Sudden Physical Development of Debra Dupuis

After their first gym class, while the rest of the seventhgrade girls soaped and rinsed their poor bumps and swells, Debra tipped her head back and let the shower splash over her womanly bounty like a cleansing waterfall among serene and shapely volcanos. She dropped her towel in front of her gym locker and turned sideways to the mirror. An Acup girl putting on mascara rolled her eyes, but Debra didn't care. Unfettered by gravity, Debra's breasts rose and floated above her rib cage, heliumfilled flesh dirigibles, buoyant and blissful honeydew melons. Debra had been heartbroken this summer when her exbest friend Nicole had invited another girl to go with her to Disney World, but it seemed God had taken pity on her, and as a consolation had sent her these sacred globes, these heavenly orbs, these twin suns around which the rest of her body now revolved.

"Debra!" called Miss Spartan as Debra was leaving the locker room. "Tell your mother to buy you a sports bra. Otherwise you're going to hurt yourself." Miss Spartan was tall, skinny and, Debra noticed for the first time, endowed with breasts like worndown speed bumps.

That afternoon Mr. Chiccoine, the science teacher, could have chosen anyone, including her exbest friend Nicole, but he asked Page 101

Debra to deliver a sealed envelope to the office. Debra descended the stairwell as elegantly as the cover model in her mother's current
Woman!
magazine containing the article "Wondering about Wonder Bras?" in which flatchested women sang their laments and pinned hopes to a bit of fiberfill padding. Envelope in one hand, neongreen laminated hall pass in the other, she kept her head straight and her chest thrust forward in a posture befitting a girl with such a blessing as hers. At the bottom, she opened the door into an empty hall.

In the school office, Debra handed the envelope to Mrs. Kraft, the secretary, whom everyone liked. Mrs. Kraft wore her hair in a neat French braid, and her lips were perfectly outlined and colored dark pink. She was married to Mr. Kraft, the math teacher, and her voice was quiet, which made everyone speak quietly around her.

Last year Mrs. Kraft had told some girls that climbing stairs helped relieve menstrual cramps. For a month the stairs were thronged with girls traveling up and down—

teachers even gave girls hall passes, which showed the strength of Mrs. Kraft's influence. That was, until Tamara Jenkins fell on her face, or was pushed, depending on who you asked, and broke her nose and loosened two front teeth.

The only other student in the office was Debra's classmate Southwell Banks, a thickbodied boy who nobody talked to because his skin flaked off. Debra and Nicole used to speculate about the nature of Southwell's disease. They knew he bathed in oil—or had they made that up? They knew his parents looked gray and dusty, old enough to be greatgrandparents. Focused on nothing before him, Southwell's eyes opened, reptilian, into a wet inner core, shielded beneath black brows and chafed eyelids.

"Debra," said Mrs. Kraft, and she touched the pearly button of her own pink crepe shirt just above and between her generous promontories. Debra looked down at her own chest and saw that the indicated button on her flowered shirt hung open. Her mother had inspected her this morning, but first thing at school Debra had undone that second button. Debra refastened it and glimpsed herself doing it in the reflection from the big window between the office and the hallway.

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Josh Hines had left earlier to go to the dentist, and on her way back to class, Debra saw him pulling open the door into the stairwell.

"Hey, Josh!"

Josh turned and his eyes stuck to her chest like flies to flytape. "Hi," he squeaked like a pinned insect. He had grown probably six inches taller over the summer. He loomed over Debra, yet seemed less substantial than before. He cleared his throat and repeated "Hi" in a deeper voice. Last year he and Debra had worked together on a science project collecting fungus from the perimeter of the school grounds. In gym class, Debra had overheard that Josh's parents were divorcing and that his older brother just went to jail. Debra envisioned poor Josh in a cell with a bunk and a tiny metal sink. A postersized picture of herself, Debra Dupuis, would probably hang on the wall. In the picture, Debra would be wearing sheer red silk, like the July
Woman!
cover model, her nipples pressing against the translucent fabric like softcut rubies. The other inmates coveted the poster, of course, but Josh refused to trade it for any amount of money or cigarettes.

Perhaps for the poster, Debra would have let the silk garment slip down her arms. In a selfless gesture she might expose her immaculate form for a guy down on his luck the way Josh was. They entered the stairwell together, but Debra said, "Stay there," before Josh could begin to climb.

"Huh?"

Debra positioned herself several steps above him. Keeping an eye on the top of the stairwell, which was open to the second floor, Debra undid the cleavage button, then the other four. Josh moved his mouth but didn't speak. She peeled the sides of her blouse back, unwrapping herself as though she were a meal for a hungry belly, a Christmas gift for an orphan, medicine for the wounded. One after another, she unhooked the three clasps of her frontclosing bra, and, as though bringing a surprise birthday cake lit with candles into a dark room, she presented Josh with the wonder of her divine endowments.

Josh fell sideways, and the wall caught him. He reached a hand toward Debra but let it drop. Debra bent forward to gather herself into her bra and fastened the clasps and shirt buttons, but Josh's

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mouth continued to move as if making bubbles. "Josh, come on, straighten up." Debra shook his arm. "Josh, come on." He followed, zombielike, up the stairs and to Mr. Chiccoine's class, his late excuse slip clutched in his fingers.

That night in her room, Debra lay propped in bed beside her reading light, staring out through the burglar bars. She couldn't sneak down the side of the house and wander through her dark neighborhood—her dad had caught her the one time she'd done it this summer, and he'd installed the bars the following weekend. He'd acted mad at her ever since. Now the bars imprisoned her in the same way a bra caged her. The stuffed tigers above her dresser frowned in sympathy—they had long ago suffered the loss of their tails at the hands of her idiot brother. Debra adjusted her crushedvelvet robe so that it was open in the front, and she assumed the same pose as the cover model in last year's Christmas Planning Issue of
Woman!
If a guy walked by on her street and looked up at the right angle, he would see her breasts pressed together like hands in prayer.

Debra had been surprised that Mrs. Kraft wanted her to cover herself. Her mother, small and drooping, Debra understood, but Mrs. Kraft was a young woman with her own bounteous attributes. Having shown her breasts to Josh made Debra want to show them to everyone, the way Nicole had displayed her dead grandmother's halfcarat diamond ring last year, holding out her hand for inspection and admiration. Debra should not have to hide in the stairwell; she should pose in front of a chorus line of the rest of her girl classmates, on a stage, dressed in a loose blouse of chiffon through which her feminine outline was visible. After the audience had filled the room with anticipation, Debra would slowly unbutton to reveal her breasts like two full buckets of gold doubloons from a treasure cache. Everyone would be stunned at the wealth of which she was custodian. Debra would turn sideways and lift her arms so people could better admire the shape of her polished golden lamps with their magic spouts. Only after she had closed her shirt would the spell be broken, and the audience would begin to clap and cheer respectfully.

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The other girls would overcome their jealousy and celebrate her, the way that runnersup in the Miss America Pageant all hug the winner. Even Mrs. Kraft would compliment her on her bravery, fully supportive. Debra's mother would realize how wrong she had been to demand Debra strap down and conceal her blessings with a bra and shirt buttons done up to her collarbone. Her father would call her ''Princess" and promise to remove the window bars, saying he trusted her now. Nicole would apologize for not having asked her to Disney World and would want to be best friends again. And in the very back of the cafetorium, Southwell Banks, who never smiled, would be smiling slightly, experiencing, perhaps, a miraculous healing of his skin.

Debra, in her purple stretchy velveteen tee, leaned over Mr. Chiccoine's desk. She was supposed to be labeling the parts of a cell, but she had identified only the mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell. Terry Orphid slipped behind Mr. Chiccoine and mimicked the movements of Mr. Chiccoine's upper body. "I have a headache," said Debra, leaning closer, pressing her arms together to make more cleavage. Mr. Chiccoine's sleeves were rolled up to just below his elbows, revealing tanned and muscled forearms tangled with dark arm hair.

"You're too young to have a headache," he said, looking past her breasts, into her face.

"I think it's my period," said Debra. "I get headaches at my period. I need some Tylenol. The counselor has a note from my mom."

Mr. Chiccoinc squeezed his roller ball pen and tapped the desk blotter. Debra admired a blue vein stretching up the underside of his arm. "All right," he said. "Be back in six minutes or I'll mark you tardy." He pulled the hall pass from his lefthand desk drawer.

Debra was halfway down the stairs when she felt fingers digging into her sides, tickling her. She squirmed against them and turned to see Terry Orphid's face. "Hey!

Stop it!" she whispered. "You snuck out of class."

"I needed a break, man," he said. "I'm having my peereeyid."

"Shut up, Terry." Even though he was a pain, Debra had to admit that he was the funniest guy in class. Some of his wisecracks just Page 105

cut you up. Mrs. Schultz sent him to the office without laughing, though, when he asked the other day if the first lady gave "head of state." Terry grabbed at Debra's sides again, and she pushed his hands down.