Boy Minus Girl (9 page)

PART TWO

Seduction Tip Number 8:

Her Ears

“Carrying on with another man’s wife. It’s a sin!” says Mom at breakfast the next morning. “What will people think of our family?”

Dad, unshaven, with purple bags under his eyes, just hangs his head as he stares at his coffee cup. In addition to taking care of Uncle Ray, he was up most of the night delivering twins.

“Bev, just try to keep this in perspective,” Dad says. “He could’ve been killed.”

Mom, lips pursed, sits back in her chair. “Well, Raymond is not allowed back in this house.”

“Once I release him from the hospital,
my brother
will recuperate
right here,
” Dad says adamantly, pointing at the table. “He’s had a serious concussion. I’m going to have to observe him closely for at least a week.”

Mom shakes her head. “No, not in my house he’s not—”

Dad slams his fist on the table, rattling the dishes; Mom and I both flinch. “Goddamn it, he’s my brother!” Dad seethes through gritted teeth. “He will always be welcome in this house!
My
house!”

Dad leaps up with such force that his chair shoots back a good three feet and slams against the wall. He stomps out.

He cursed at Mom! She looks so stunned and hurt. My first instinct is to quickly leave the kitchen so I won’t have to see her cry. Instead, I go over and awkwardly pat her back while she sniffles into my shirt.

***

During second period Principal Cheavers leads the entire eighth-grade class out of school and to an idling bus. This is to be the official tour of where we are to spend the next four years, Dickerson County Consolidated High School, and we’re each given a name tag (the school secretary typed “Less” on mine), so that our new principal can get to know us. When I step aboard, I see Charity sitting and laughing with Kristy Lynn Hagel, our star girls’ basketball player, on the hump seat. I had no idea she and the big-boned Kristy Lynn were friends. Does Charity
like
like her? Does Kristy Lynn like Charity?

“How’s your uncle?” Charity asks as I file past.

“Pretty busted up,” I say, “but recuperating.”

I plop down in the seat beside Howard, who’s reading
Facts & Fallacies
.

“Fact or fallacy?” he asks. “It takes longer for Newton’s apple to fall to earth now than it did in 1665.”

“Fact—or fallacy?” I say. “Asking annoying and pointless questions is what led to the murder of Howard Bachbaugh.”

“What’s eating you?” he asks, closing the book.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say, and my eyes return to Charity, who’s laughing with Kristy Lynn.

“I gather Instinct cologne doesn’t work so well on female Homo sapiens,” he says.

I whirl to him and whisper, “How’d you know she was gay?”

He shakes his head. “Gay?”

“You said it doesn’t work on female homosexuals. How’d you know she was?”

“I said ‘Homo sapiens.’ Means mankind.” Then he covers his mouth. “Oh my God, she’s gay?!”

“Geez! Shh! You didn’t get that from me, understand?”

“That’s
so
great! I mean, not for you,” he says. “And that explains why she’s all over Kristy Lynn.”

“Is Kristy Lynn . . . ?”

“Fact or fallacy?” Howard asks. “A girl basketball star who never dates boys, goes by the name Kris, and wears steel-toed boots to the spring dance is straight.”

Does he have a point? You always hear about how there’s a high percentage of lesbians in girls’ sports.

I watch as Charity and Kristy Lynn laugh and flirt it up, and I feel my heart drop to the floor. Kristy Lynn is
not
good-looking, or Miss Personality. I mean, I think I’m a lot better-looking and way funnier. And, still, she’s going to land my Charity. That’s totally unfair. Does Charity have no taste?

Ten minutes later the bus lumbers into the high school lot.

“Look at all the cars,” I say to Howard. “They must have a lot more teachers than the junior high.”

“Most of those are the students’, Einstein,” Howard says. “Unless you’re some kind of loser and take the bus, you drive to high school.”

Dickerson County Consolidated High School, a one-story modern structure with massive pod-shaped concrete buildings stuck together like lily pads, resembles a sewage treatment plant, or a 1950s
Mechanix Illustrated
rendition of a moon colony. The windowless gym feels like an airplane hangar. No rope—I checked. The cafeteria looks to seat a thousand, and the library displays more books and magazines than I’ve ever seen in one space. Walking the fluorescent-lit curved hallways with my class, I feel spooked: how will I not get lost in this never-ending labyrinth and make it to class on time? I already miss my sunshine-filled, moldy-smelling, 1910-constructed junior high, with its high ceilings and creaky hardwood floors. I glance at Charity, who is at the back of the line beside Kristy Lynn.

An electronic buzzer blares, and the hallway flash-floods with students, most of whom look more like adults to me. So many of the girls have fantastic chests and wear jewelry and makeup, and even high heels. All the guys seem tall, and I note some of them sporting mustaches. My scrawny classmates, marooned in the current of towering upperclassmen, receive a few snickers.

Mr. Swedeson, the high school principal, a tall, thin, bald man with Woody Allen glasses, corrals us onto the gymnasium bleachers.

“All righty, people,” he says, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “Welcome to the high school. Hope you enjoyed your tour.” For the next half hour, as he speaks of how we select our own classes and make our own schedules in high school, I feel so overwhelmed I want to puke.

Dear Jesus . . . don’t send me here. I’m not ready for this place. After what happened with Charity, I think You owe me. Amen.

“We’ll see you all back here in August!” Principal Swedeson grins a devil’s grin. “Enjoy your summer.”

On the bus ride back to the junior high, no one speaks. Clearly, I’m not the only one dreading next year. And I think: Why does life have to change? Why can’t things stay the same? That’s all I want. For life to stay the same. Not that junior high is great, but it looks a heck of a lot more manageable than that high school.

I glance over at Charity. The way she is smiling at Kristy Lynn . . . why couldn’t that smile be for me? Is my girl falling for a big-boned basketball player who wears a ponytail?

After school I am sprawled out on a picnic table in empty Harker Park, my spent eyes staring listlessly at the cottonwood trees above me as they dispense their fluffy, snowflake-like seeds into the air. As much as I want to tell Uncle Ray about Charity, I keep my promise to her. I am flailing around for something to get Charity off of my mind when I remember what Uncle Ray said about finding an “easy” girl. Should I find myself one of those? Where?

I bike down to Burger In A Box, a small, tacky fry bin by the rail yard, and rest my bike against the Tang-colored stucco siding. When I step up to the outside shelflike counter, the little window slides back and my reason for coming stares out at me: Regina Fallers.

A short girl who wears tons of makeup and has a pronounced underbite, Regina has “gone out with” at least ten guys that I’ve heard about. She isn’t a slut per se, but she doesn’t seem to have a problem taking off her bra and allowing guys to fondle her great big boobs.

“Eckhardt party of one,” I quip. “My secretary made reservations for four o’clock—wait, isn’t this Spago?”

Her brow draws in a confused expression. “Huh?”

“Never mind,” I say. “Just making a joke.”

“What do you want, Eckhardt?”

“A small vanilla cone.”

As she busies herself making my soft-serve, I study her plump fanny, ripe beneath her formfitting purple uniform. Her mom, who manages Burger In A Box, is supposedly quite loose herself. I know I will never love Regina. But I am going to get me some of something.

Regina reaches through the window and hands me the cone. “Seventy-five cents.”

I give her a one dollar bill and say in a husky-sexy voice, “Keep the change, sugar.”

“Okay,” she says unenthusiastically, and deposits the money in the register.

I lick the ice cream. “Mmm-mm. You make a killer cone, Regina.”

She closes the register and stares out the window at nothing, chomping her gum.

“So, tell me,” I say as I lean in the window, “how you been?”

She shrugs, still looking out the window, and pops a pink bubble. I can’t resist glancing at her cleavage and thinking about fondling it.

I clear my throat. “So, Regina, I was thinking, how would you like to go out sometime?”

“Go out where?”

“How about we just go for a walk, see where it takes us.”

“I don’t like to walk,” she says to the window.

“Well, then, we can go for a sit.” I laugh a little, to help her know this was a joke.

She pops another bubble.

“Maybe we could go down to the park this evening when you get off work and hang out.”

“Why?” She is now inspecting the nail on her right index finger.

“Well, I’d, uh, like to get to know you a little better.”

“You’ve known me since kindergarten,” she says between chomps.

“I think we can have a lot of fun together, just you and me.”

“You mean, like a date?” she says, nibbling on a hangnail.

“Yeah, like a date.”

Her cheeks puff up and her Tootsie Roll brown eyes, shrewd beneath blue eyeliner, roam around the tiny kitchen. “You wanna take me out?”

“Uh-huh.”

“But aren’t you one of those gay-wads?”

“I am not!”

“But you’ve never gone steady with any girl and you don’t play football.”

“That doesn’t mean I like guys.”

“Yeah, well, anyway,” she says, “you don’t even have a car.”

“But I know how to treat a lady like you, Regina.” She still isn’t looking at me. “So when do you get off work?”

“At seven.”

“Perfect! I’ll come by then.”

She sighs and closes the takeout window. Mission accomplished.

“Now, Les, your uncle Ray’s going to be very groggy,” Dad says as he wheels into the hospital parking lot. “He’s on a lot of pain medication.”

The Harker City Hospital is a one-story, twelve-bed brick building on the northern edge of town, out near the high school and nursing home. Dad is the only full-time physician in a thirty-mile radius. Dr. Hayes, who is in his late seventies, works only a few days a week (and never when the fishing’s good).

When we walk into his hospital room, I stop at the sight of Uncle Ray lying in bed: head immobilized with a neck brace, bandages covering his ghoulishly bruised face, both eyes blackened and reddened, bottom lip puffed up like a poppin’ fresh dinner roll. I feel my knees liquefy and everything fades to black. . . .

When the light returns, I see Dad kneeling over me with a concerned look and an old-lady nurse standing behind him.

“Les, can you hear me?” Dad asks.

“Yeah.” I feel something on my right wrist and see that Dad is taking my pulse.

“You passed out, son,” Dad says.

He and the nurse lady each take one of my arms and help me into a nearby chair. Uncle Ray stares at me from his bed. God, he looks awful. Will this end his womanizing ways? Is Jesus trying to teach me a lesson about the wages of sinful behavior? The nurse hands me a cup of water and I sip from it.

“Ray, how’re you feeling?” Dad asks as he removes the chart from the end of the bed, flipping it open.

“I can’t turn my head, my back feels like someone took a chain saw to it, I have to piss in a bottle, and I can’t smoke in this goddamn hospital,” Uncle Ray grouses. “That answer your moronic question?”

Dad, taking out his penlight, approaches Uncle Ray. “I need you to follow my index finger with your eyes.”

Dad examines Uncle Ray’s reflexes, then clicks off his penlight. “Seeing you don’t have insurance, I’m going to have to release you from here, but I’ll observe you at home for a while.”

“I’m fine.”

“Now, Ray, we don’t know that yet,” Dad counters. “You need to be watched carefully for at least a week.”

“Where’s my damn Corvette?”

Dad glances at me, as if looking for support or sympathy, then back at Uncle Ray. “The mechanic said the concrete seeped into the engine. Wrecker service is going to deliver it to the house.”

Uncle Ray’s eyes turn desolately out the window and he mutters, “Forgot to renew my damn car insurance last month.”

I want to do something, say anything, to make him feel better, but what?

Dad nudges the food tray, where a wilting green salad and tired-looking fruit cocktail sit untouched. “Ray, be good for you to eat a little something, huh?”

Uncle Ray looks at Dad. “What’d they do with that psycho?”

“Leo’s in lockup,” Dad says. “The county’s going to press charges.”

About twenty minutes later I wheel Uncle Ray out to Dad’s Dodge Charger. He gasps and winces as Dad and I ease him into the backseat. On the ride home I sit up front with Dad.

“Farmers sure need rain,” Dad says rhetorically.

“Sure do,” I reply. No comment on the lust for rain from the backseat.

When we pull into our driveway, there sits Uncle Ray’s Corvette. Barely a foot off the ground, the front seat is filled to the dashboard with solid concrete. Uncle Ray moans as we roll past. “My poor baby.”

Mom doesn’t even look up from kneading her biscuit dough at the kitchen island when we help Uncle Ray into the house. Once in my room, Dad and I slowly lower Uncle Ray onto the bed. “Oh God!” he yells as his head touches the pillow. “Jesus Christ!”

“Can I get you anything?” I ask Uncle Ray.

“A buttload more of them painkillers,” he says, his chest heaving.