Women and Other Animals Part 7

"Hi, son," said his father.

Kevin was too winded to speak right away.

"This your kid, Sam?" asked the postal man.

"Yep, this is Kevin. He's working with me fulltime this summer." Kevin's dad clapped him on the back. After being outdoors in the sun, Kevin was blind in the dark bar, and he had to feel his way down into a captain's chair. The three men drank beer from draft gla.s.ses and expelled streams of smoke, tapping their cigarettes into a central gla.s.s ashtray. "Hey, Shirl, bring my boy a c.o.ke."

"Diet or regular?" she shouted back, across the room.

"h.e.l.l, Shirl, do you think he's on a diet?"

"Last time you brought him in, he ordered Diet."

The men at the table glanced at Kevin, mildly alarmed.

Kevin had finally caught his breath. "Regular, please." He had ordered Diet last time because that's what Madeline drank. "Dad, I came over here because I want you to meet that lady I was telling you about."

"Boy's trying to fix me up," explained his dad, tapping his cigarette again on the ashtray, "with a lady named Martin, his girlfriend's mother."

"My daughter was in cheerleading with a Martin girl," said Officer Harding. "Same one?"

"Yes, sir," said Kevin. "She's going to the University of Michigan."

"Smart girl," said Officer Harding. "The mother's a little out there, though."

"No, sir," said Kevin.

"I picked her up once by the library," said Harding. "She was walking around in a bathrobe, drunk. Robe was hanging all the way open. So I give her a ride home."

He leaned back from the table and raised his eyebrows. "I can tell you boys one thing-that broad's a natural born redhead."

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 Page 98 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 c.o.ke 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s and skin made him want to swear allegiance to her, to say that he would protect her from fire and crabgra.s.s 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 gra.s.ses, and cracked bare earth. As his body combusted, he watched the backyard, through the window gla.s.s, and soothed his eyes upon the cool emerald expanse of the perfect lawn.

Page 100 The Sudden Physical Development of Debra Dupuis After their first gym cla.s.s, while the rest of the seventhgrade girls soaped and rinsed their poor b.u.mps 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 G.o.d 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s like worndown speed b.u.mps.

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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.ses, 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 cla.s.smate Southwell Banks, a thickbodied boy who n.o.body 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 b.u.t.ton 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 b.u.t.ton on her flowered shirt hung open. Her mother had inspected her this morning, but first thing at school Debra had undone that second b.u.t.ton. Debra refastened it and glimpsed herself doing it in the reflection from the big window between the office and the hallway.

Page 102 Josh Hines had left earlier to go to the dentist, and on her way back to cla.s.s, 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 cla.s.s, 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 b.u.t.ton, 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 b.u.t.tons, but Josh's Page 103 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 cla.s.s, 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 a.s.sumed 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 cla.s.smates, 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 antic.i.p.ation, Debra would slowly unb.u.t.ton to reveal her b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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.

Page 104 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 b.u.t.tons 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s, 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 pa.s.s 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 cla.s.s."

"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 cla.s.s. 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.

He said, "You have great mammaries."

She digested the word "mammaries." Like mammals, like whales, like cows with hairy, sagging milk sacs. She tried to think of soup for the hungry, of cures for diseases, but mostly she felt the nag of protest against sloppy udders and nipples like rubber glove fingers. Terry had no idea of the roundness of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and the gravity they defied. He could not fathom her areolas like the salmoncolored centers of solar systems.

"You want to see them?"

"Sure." Terry's short bangs stuck straight out over a forehead newly afflicted by acne.

"Stand there." She pointed five stairs down. Debra stayed above him on the landing so she could see if anyone was coming. She hiked the velveteen fabric over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, imagining herself on the cafetorium stage in breezy fabric, the audience holding its breath, waiting for her to uncover her middle school holy grail. She held her shirt under her chin as she unworked the bra hooks. The two sides snapped away from each other, but instead of being stunned into devotion, Terry lunged forward and grabbed a breast in each hand. He squeezed as though her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were not made of a person's flesh but were leather wrapped around hard rubber centers, oversize baseb.a.l.l.s meant to be pitched and s.h.a.gged and clobbered with bats.

In trying to pull away from him, Debra let herself be driven into the brick wall. She continued backing into the corner, snagging her shirt on the rough surface, slapping Terry, screaming "Stop it! Stop it!" When she was all the way in the corner, she looked into Terry's grimace. He was not laughing or grinning or enjoying himself-he seemed to be seriously engaged in pulling her treasures right off her chest. Adrenaline surged through Debra. "They're mine, d.a.m.n it!" she screamed and kicked toward Terry's crotch. "Let go of me!'' She knocked one of his arms loose and he backed away from her kicks but continued to hold with the other hand, stuck on her like a sea lamprey. Debra looked up past Terry and saw her cla.s.smates now Page 106 standing at the railing, twenty faces staring down like pigeons from a bridge.

"Terry!" boomed Mr. Chiccoine. Terry's hands dropped automatically to his sides. Students gawked at Debra's redstreaked chest, but their shock and silence deteriorated quickly into giggles. Debra turned to face the brick corner as she worked to reconnect her bra, whose strap had twisted under both armpits. Though her anger started out solid, it liquefied in the fluorescent lights, and tears spilled onto her face. Vomit rose halfway up her throat and settled as she struggled with the clasps. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s had been stretched and transformed into pulpy, veined appendages, sagging like fungus from trees. As she got them covered and adjusted her shirt, Mr. Chiccoine grabbed her neck with one hairy arm and Terry's neck with the other.

In the office, Debra couldn't look into Mrs. Kraft's face. The viceprinc.i.p.al positioned Debra and Terry on opposite sides of the office while he called Debra's mom and Terry's dad Debra couldn't see Terry around the filing cabinet, but his reflection showed in the window. He was leaning back in his chair, a foot crossed over his knee, twitching. When the parents showed, the story came out sounding different, as though Debra had caused the problem. She defended herself: "Hey, I offered to show them to you, not have you tear them off." During the whole meeting, Debra's mother wore a face like a frozen chicken pie. The viceprinc.i.p.al sent both Debra and Terry home early.

The next time she saw Terry, Monday in homeroom, he acted all proud, huddling with a bunch of snickering boys. When he brushed her shoulder on the way to the pencil sharpener, Terry said, "I've seen better b.o.o.bs than yours on my uncle's milk cows." Nicole's new best friend Becky flashed a fake smile, and Debra had to wonder how much Nicole had told her-everybody in school probably knew that Debra had started her period on the TiltoWhirl and that she didn't notice until a lady carnival worker pointed it out to her. Nicole and Becky wore matching Minnie Mouse Tshirts and light pink lipstick. The color dulled Becky's brunette lips.

Debra's throat stung. Crying over a girlfriend would be stupid. Girls in Woman! magazine didn't cry over other girls-they cried because of leaking silicone Page 107 breast implants and turning forty. The outline of Nicole's trainer bra showed through her Tshirt, but otherwise her chest stretched as flat as a new canvas. Becky had b.r.e.a.s.t.s like anthills built at sidewalk cracks, the kind Debra would step on without hesitation.

Throughout the day, groups of guys radiated heat toward Debra, in the locker banks, in the cafetorium at lunch, their stares digging into her like the ends of fingers.

Girls eyed her as though she were covered with flaking skin. A bathroomsmoking girl with a scar in her chin like a chip in a cocoa mug distinctly said "s.l.u.t" at lunchtime even though Miss Spartan could have overheard. When Debra reached up into the top part of her locker, a short boy grabbed at her from behind, but missed her breast and squeezed her arm muscle instead. When Debra looked back, she saw only the blurred figures of four boys in hightop shoes running away.

Later, somebody shot paper clips at her, and when one went down the front of her shirt she just left it there. She exited the school with her head high, keeping to the side of the cement path, but groups of people jostled her or whispered as she pa.s.sed. On another sidewalk, heading in a different direction, Southwell Banks shuffled away from the school, his collar b.u.t.toned high onto his neck.

At dinner that night with her mother, father, and idiot fourthgrade brother, Debra ate her baked French fries, then picked at her drumstick. Her mother avoided looking at her, and every couple of minutes her dad shook his head for no reason.

"Why do you hate me?" asked Debra.

"We don't hate you," said her mother.

"You hate my b.r.e.a.s.t.s."

"How could we hate your b.r.e.a.s.t.s?" asked her mother. "They're just b.r.e.a.s.t.s, for Christ's sake. Why are you making such a big deal out of them? Believe me, Debra, women have grown b.r.e.a.s.t.s for millions of years."

Her father shook his head again.

Her idiot brother asked, "Are you a wh.o.r.e?"

Debra kicked him under the table and said, "No, but you're an idiot."

When Debra unhooked her bra in the upstairs bathroom, the paper clip from fifth hour fell out and chimed on the ceramic tile- Page 108 it had imprinted its shape into her skin. She showered for about the tenth time in four days and retired to her room. She didn't even care that she was grounded. Good thing for her parents there were bars on her window, because otherwise she might jump and end it all on the concrete patio. She tried to imagine her body lying there all perfect, her hair spread out around her head, shining like satin in the light from above the garage. But Debra knew she wouldn't tumble gracefully. She'd tangle herself into the patio furniture and land in a sickening twist of limbs and dangling b.o.o.bs. Nicole and Becky would be there in matching outfits. "Gross," Nicole would say. Terry Orphid would say, "Sick, man," and if Mrs. Kraft didn't show up to stop him, Terry would poke at her chest. Mrs. Kraft would come, though, and in her quiet voice she'd send everyone away, and she'd rearrange the robe to cover Debra.

Debra opened her robe and looked in the mirror as she had not done since Friday. As much as she had imagined her b.r.e.a.s.t.s sagging and sinking, they did not.

Despite all that had happened, her great pyramids jutted forward, temples still fully worthy of worship. She turned sideways and admired her cherry blossom peaks angled slightly upwards, as reverent as lips in prayer. In the bedroom light, her skin glowed all the way up her neck to her face, where a few pimples didn't really matter. As her hair dried, it began to shine with a halo like the base of a crown. Her mother was wrong about her b.r.e.a.s.t.s being like other b.r.e.a.s.t.s on millions of women. Debra had seen those other poor, regular tomatoes, small or plain or flattened. Jesus couldn't have b.r.e.a.s.t.s, but if he had them, they'd be like hers. And just as Jesus showed all men their holiness by his example, Debra's divine bestowal uplifted all the less than perfect bosoms around her. Held aloft by the hand of G.o.d, her oblate shrines offered salvation to all humanity, even if the humanity around here was not worthy of them. Terry Orphid said he'd seen better ones on milk cows. Well, he could go back to his uncle's farm because he was a heathen t.u.r.d who didn't deserve to stand in the glow of their magnificence. Debra pulled her curtains closed, and the golden light of her incandescent lamp reflected against them, back to her. She curled on the bed, tucked the crushedvelvet robe around her, and hugged herself.

Page 109 Sleeping Sickness A crocodile. That's what I felt like. Hot, slow, and mean. But crocodiles live in Egypt, halfsubmerged in cool rivers, and I was frying like an egg outside of Alexander, Michigan, near the Indiana line. The humid air pressed on me from all sides, so I tried not to move, swatting at flies only when they buzzed in my ears or touched my face. I didn't bother to keep flies off the vegetables in front of me-people should know enough to wash them when they got home. For breakfast I'd had the last few pieces of my twelfth birthday cake, which I'd made and eaten almost entirely myself, and now the sticky yellow plate was covered with ants. When I put it on the gra.s.s, my orange tiger cat Ripley slid from the table to lick it clean. As I watched some crows picking at a roadhit possum, I was thinking that a person could forget to breathe on a day like this and then just pa.s.s out and die.

My vegetable table stood atop the hill, halfway between the house and the road, under two s.h.a.gbark hickory trees, and ever since school had gotten out last week I was minding the stand fulltime. I was sitting behind my perfectly arranged cuc.u.mbers, peppers, and jars of milk labeled "milk for cats" when John Blain first showed up. He drove by in a station wagon, knocking up dust which drifted and settled on me. He turned around and went by again Page 110 slowly, then pulled into our dirt driveway and parked in front of my sign: "Cukes, Toms, Peps 6/$1." Ripley ran away toward the barn. John Blain got out of the driver's seat and left the door hanging open on its hinges. He was a white man about forty years old, wearing a Caterpillar cap. Dirty steam seemed to rise off him.

"What do you want?" I asked.

The garden was behind me on my right, farther up the driveway, past the barn. The house was on the left, surrounded by the unruly bushes Mom called bridal wreath, whose whiteflowered branches stretched out like octopus arms. The man took off his hat, wiped his forehead with it, ran a hand through forelocks as blond and rough as corn ta.s.sels, then put the hat back on. He had a pack of cigarettes in his Tshirt pocket. "Don't look like you got too much business, kiddo." He picked up a bell pepper, tossed it, and caught it, but he was looking beyond me, at the porch where Mom had just stepped.

"That your mom?"

"Maybe. What's it to you? She's got no money, so don't bother trying to sell her anything." I was telling the truth. In fact, she was needing all my vegetable money just to pay the power bill.

"I might want to buy something from her."

"She's got nothing to sell to you." I'd met enough men to know there wasn't any profit in being nice to ones like him. I was hoping for a breeze to blow in my shirtsleeves. For my birthday Mom had given me a bra, but all it did was soak up sweat, and I needed to readjust it. "You're blocking my sign," I said, but the man wasn't listening, so I went around the stand and moved my piece of plywood to where it could be seen from the road. Not many cars were coming by, but I was making a point of not letting this guy interrupt my life. Mom was walking up the driveway toward us, wearing a flowered dress. Though it was about twelvethirty, and I had been up for six and a half hours, she'd just gotten out of bed. I rearranged my cuc.u.mbers in order of their size, biggest to smallest.

"How you doing, Sunshine?" Mom talked sweet whenever she got around men. Sweat dripped from her temples, and she had to squint against the sun. She was talking to me, but looking at the man, smiling and blinking, her long, shiny hair dangling around Page 111 her shoulders. Her skin was pale except for a few freckles because she hardly ever went outside.

"This guy is blocking my stand." I slumped in my chair.

"Don't be rude, Reg." Mom gave the man an apologetic smile.

"Merle at the service station in Alexander told me you got a Plymouth station wagon, same year as mine," said the man.

Mom said, "It was my father's. The engine's no good. It's been sitting out behind the house more than a year."

"If the body's good, I might be interested," he said. "And what's your name, ma'am?"

"Margie." Mom pushed her hair over her ear in a shy way.

"I'm John Blain. Pleased to meet you." He held out his hand, and she wiped hers on her dress before she shook it. "We sure got us a hot one today," he said, adjusting his hat. "We ought to be up in the U.P. where I just come from. Nice and cool up there."

"I've never been to the Upper Peninsula," said Mom, as though it was some dreamy place she'd been meaning to go. The next thing you know, she'd invited John Blain to have lunch with us, and he said sure, he'd love a cup of coffee. I left him and Mom talking and went into the barnyard for some privacy in adjusting my bra, I picked gra.s.s from along my garden fence and dropped the bits into the chicken yard it fell like confetti around our four hens, who dashed to peck it up. I cooled my arms, legs and face with the hose by the side of the house, but by the time I went inside, I was hot again.

"This isn't a restaurant," I said, too quietly for Mom to hear. John Blain looked me in the eyes and growled. I made a sandwich and poured a gla.s.s of last night's milk from Jessie, our brownandwhite cow, wondering all the while what kind of man would growl at a person. For sure both he and Mom were out of their gourds. It was hot enough for blood to boil in your veins, and they were sipping coffee, and John Blain took long, hot draws from his cigarette. Mom laughed idiotically at everything he said.

After lunch I carried some crushed ice to my vegetables to revive them and to keep the milkforcats cold. I tied Jessie to a cement block nearby to graze. She had to get away from her calf for a few hours in order to have any milk by evening. There wasn't any Page 112 reason people couldn't drink her milk-we did, after all-but, according to Mr. VanderVeen who sold us straw and cheap hay that had been rained on in the field, it was against the law to sell the milk for people. Jessie dragged her block behind her, tearing a line through the gra.s.s, and she swatted flies disinterestedly with her tail. I looked through my newspaper again, though I had already read it front to back. Then I used it to fan myself.

It was hard to concentrate in the new summer heat, hard to remember things, hard to make plans. I walked around to investigate John Blain's car, which was rusty and faded olive green. The back was folded down, and there was a mattress but no room for anyone to sleep with all that junk back there-cables and loose rusty tools, a chain saw, and even a bicycle with the wheels taken off. The front seat was full of food wrappers and Styrofoam cups, and across the pa.s.senger seat lay a green army sleeping bag. A freezer bag held a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a plastic razor. The least he could do, I thought, was move this rusted hulk away from my stand so I could earn a living.

I'd been cupping my hands at the pa.s.sengerside window to get a better view, and when I stepped back, the figure of a man towered behind me in the reflection. I screamed.

"Find anything interesting?" asked John Blain.

"You're a slob."

"And you're a nosey girl." John Blain walked around to the driver's side of the car and brushed his teeth in some water from a bottle, spitting foam onto the driveway.

Then he grinned into his sideview mirror, showing all his teeth. "You take care of your teeth, kiddo, and they'll take care of you." I let him see me roll my eyes. He pulled a tool box out of the back of the car and carried it toward the house.

I yelled after him, "The price of the car is 250 bucks!"

Since my dad had left us, there'd been a river of nogood men running through our lives. I was glad when they didn't stay around, and they usually didn't. I knew Mom wasn't happy without a man, but she didn't have to go for whatever guy showed up in our driveway. That's what I told her that night at supper.

Page 113 "How come every guy who comes around you're falling all over him?"

"I wasn't falling over him. He seemed like a nice man, didn't he? He stayed with his aunt in Alexander when he was a boy. That's why he came here. But his aunt's dead."

"Well, I hate him."

"Why don't you want me to be happy?" She asked the question with a heaving of her chest, as though exhausted and beleaguered by a long history of cruel treatment at my hands.