Davinia shook her head. She had heard about it already, and who could believe such a thing? But the psychologist’s daughter—that was interesting, didn’t Emma think so? (Emma nodded. She thought so.) Amazing, Davinia said, when you thought about it, how times had changed—she found it all disgusting.
Emma Clark, tired of nodding, got ready to leave.
Oh, then—Davinia wondered if on her way out she could please find a nurse. She gave Emma a triumphant nod. “I’m finished with this bedpan now,” she said.
Driving home, Emma Clark could not prevent certain unpleasant images from coming into her mind regarding the now obvious fact that Davinia Dayble had been using a bedpan full force throughout their entire conversation. Emma frowned into the clear June light; it riled her how Avery expected her to do these churchy things. She was going to drive home and tell him in no uncertain terms that she was damned sick and tired of the Sunshine Club.
BUT THE WEATHER was perfect. “Perfect weather,” people said to each other, shaking their heads. The sky was vast and blue, lawns vibrant with their tender shoots of grass. Barbecue grills got rolled out of garages, and people ate supper on their front porches; there were the summer sounds of screen doors banging and ice cubes clinking, while children called out as they rode their bicycles in zigzags on the street.
Isabelle, living in her little house beneath the pines, heard the peepers in the marsh nearby and loved how long the evenings were. Poking through her window boxes, or crouching pensively as she tended the marigolds that lined the front walk, she often found herself thinking of Avery Clark’s long and slightly crooked mouth, and what it would feel like, with great tenderness, to press her mouth against it. She was certain that Emma Clark had not kissed her husband tenderly in years. (Older people tended not to, she thought, just as Amy yelled out the window, “Mom, have you seen my yellow blouse? The one with the buttons in the back?”) Perhaps, Isabelle considered uncharitably, Emma wore dentures that produced an awful smell. In addition to the fact, of course, that she was simply a cold fish. (“In the ironing basket,” Isabelle answered. “And for heaven’s sake, don’t shout.”) She stood, brushing a few loose strands of hair from her face, listening to the peepers and smelling the fragrance of the crushed marigolds still on her fingers. Gifts from God, she thought, picturing again the tender mouth of Avery—all these gifts from God.
But that night she had a bad dream. She dreamed that Amy took off her clothes in a field filled with hippies and walked into a muddy pond, where a man with filthy long hair embraced her, laughing. In the dream Isabelle ran through the field and frantically called her daughter’s name.
Waking, she continued calling out, and found Amy standing in her nightgown by her bed. “Oh, honey,” Isabelle said, confused, embarrassed, still distressed.
“You’re dreaming,” Amy told her, and from the light in the hallway Isabelle could see the face of her daughter, her long body in its pale nightgown leaning over the bed. “You scared me, Mom.”
Isabelle sat up. “I had a terrible dream.”
Amy was nice; she went into the bathroom and got her mother a glass of water.
Isabelle tightened the sheet around herself, thinking it was good to know she had a nice girl like Amy and not the dirty hippie in the dream. And to know that a mile down the road Avery Clark lay sleeping. Still, it took her a while to get back to sleep. There was a queer, unpleasant feeling that wouldn’t go away, as though something lay undigested right below her ribs.
It took Amy a while to get back to sleep, too, but for her it was okay, because in the dark she smiled slightly, thinking of Mr. Robertson. They went into the woods each day now, leaving his car parked beneath the trees on the old lumber road. After the part where they walked down the path, sometimes holding hands, and after the part where Mr. Robertson talked, they would sit with their backs against the big gray rock and he would kiss her face, or sometimes after studying her lips he would kiss her hard and strong right away in the mouth, and then, rather soon, because there was never the taking-off of any clothes, they would be lying down, him moving on top of her, clothing rumpled and pressed together, while she, filled with some inner singing, damp between her legs and at the roots of her long hair, would look at the blue sky laced above the pine boughs; or if her head was turned to the side, the yellow, dancing spots of buttercups.
All this was happiness—to run her open mouth across his face, to have his dark curly hair mingled with her own, to sometimes slip her skinny fingers into his mouth and press her fingertips against his gums; oh, it was joyful heaven, to have this man so near.
A FEW NIGHTS later the weather turned muggy, and by morning it was very hot. The next day was hotter and even more muggy. The following day was worse. In a few more days the river smelled. The sky was pale white, indifferent. Yellow jackets hung over garbage bins in the hazy air as though too stunned to land. This was the start to what was to be one of the hottest summers in the history of Shirley Falls, but nobody knew it then. Nobody gave it much thought, except to pluck at their shirts and say, “It’s the humidity that gets you, I think.” It was still early in the season; people had their minds on other things.
Dottie Brown, for example, lying in her hospital bed (one flight up from Miss Dayble), staring blankly at the television set hanging from the ceiling, had survived her hysterectomy and was grateful—privately she had feared she would die. But she felt odd. On a tray beside her sat her dinner: a warm can of 7-Up, a melting scoop of lemon ice, and a Styrofoam bowl of beef broth that looked like day-old dishwater and whose smell made poor Dottie almost gag. She wondered where her husband was. The doctor said she could go home in a few days—as soon as she had a BM.
And Barbara Rawley, the deacon’s wife who had annoyed Isabelle at church, and later in the A&P, was now annoyed herself. Her best friend, another deacon’s wife, named Peg Dunlap, was having a disgusting affair with the psychologist Gerald Burrows, and Barbara was forced to hear about it more and more. On the phone this afternoon the woman had gone so far as to imply that their adulterous lovemaking was even better in this heat. “When his daughter got pregnant I was afraid he might call it quits with me. But, no”—a happy sigh. “Quite the opposite, if you get what I mean.”
Barbara said she had chicken to defrost and hung up the telephone. It offended her profoundly. She knew marriage wasn’t perfect; life wasn’t perfect. But she wanted it to be.
THE LAST DAY of school was a Thursday, the twenty-fifth of June. Because dismissal was early and because the weather was terribly hot, the students had been told they could wear shorts if they wanted to, and now the school was filled with an anxious, festive feeling, teenagers moving about the hallways in long T-shirts and cutoff dungarees, many wearing baseball caps, or floppy denim things covering an eye. The effect was odd, as though it were a Saturday and the school building had been opened only to accommodate an overflow of the town’s exuberant youth. Some students left the building and draped themselves along the front steps, or sat on the lawn, leaning back on their elbows with their faces tipped toward the sun, which baked down through a white sky.
Amy was not wearing shorts, because Isabelle that morning had not allowed her to leave the house in cutoff jeans. Only a navy-blue pair of shorts from Sears would meet with her approval, and Amy had refused them. She wore a plain white blouse and a lavender skirt and felt miserably foolish, while her classmates appeared more confident than ever, even insolent. When old Mrs. Wheelwright wished the class a very pleasant summer, few people bothered to answer. Instead students snapped gum with abandon and called out loudly to each other. To Amy it seemed that everyone had a party to go to as soon as they were released, and so it was a good thing when Mr. Robertson confirmed, murmuring to her on the way out of their final class, “I’ll see you after school?”
At lunchtime she went with Stacy to their spot in the woods. Stacy, squinting into her pocketbook for the cigarette pack, said, “Shit, am I glad this year is over. What a stupid,
fucking school.”
Amy held a cigarette in her lips and twisted her hair off the back of her hot neck. “It’s probably better than working with those farty old ladies all day in the mill,” she said. “I start on Monday, you know.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Stacy. “What a drag.” But Stacy didn’t seem particularly concerned with Amy’s prospects for the summer. Instead she tilted her head back, blowing up a great stream of smoke, and said, “My father’s being a prick again. He was nice for a while, but now he’s a prick again.”
“How come?” The air was motionless, hot as an oven.
Stacy shrugged. “Made that way, I think. Who knows.” She tried fanning her neck with the cigarette pack. “When you’re pregnant, your body temperature rises ten degrees.” With her other hand she wiped at her face. “He’s always writing papers for these stupid journals and stuff.”
Amy nodded, although she did not know what journals or papers Stacy meant.
“He should write one called Why I Am a Prick: A Psychological Study by Gerald Burrows, Pukehead, Ph.D.” Stacy held her hair off her neck. “It is so fucking hot. You’re lucky your hair looks pretty in this heat. Mine looks like something tacked onto the rump of a circus horse.”
Amy wished she could invite Stacy to come to her house some Saturday during the summer, but what would they do at Amy’s stupid, small house? Look at her mother’s marigolds?
Stacy opened her carton of milk and leaned her head back. She swallowed a number of times and then said, “I met Maryanne Barmble in the store the other day with her mother. Ever seen her mother?”
Amy shook her head.
“Just like Maryanne. Spacey, nice. Waved her hand around in front of her face just like Maryanne does.”
“Weird.”
“Was weird. This milk is warm.” Stacy made a face.
Amy smoked, watching Stacy pour the milk onto the ground, a white puddle separating into tiny rivers creeping over the dirt and leaves, darkening as it seeped into the soil. She missed Stacy already. Already Stacy seemed gone.
“I wonder if I’m like my real mother.” Stacy smoked pensively. “Because if everyone just turns out like their mother, then what’s the rat’s-ass point?”
ONCE AMY WAS in the car with Mr. Robertson, things seemed a little more normal, although it was earlier than usual, since the school day had been shortened. The sun was high and very hot in the white sky. “Am I going to see you this summer?” she blurted out, not long after they left the school parking lot.
Mr. Robertson glanced at her as though mildly surprised. “I certainly hope so,” he said.
“Because on Monday, you know, I start my stupid job at the mill.”
He nodded, pulling up to a stop sign. “We’ll work it out,” he said, touching her arm lightly.
She turned her face away, letting the air from the open window move across her neck; she held her hair in a loose fist, the tips of it tapping lightly against the window frame. For the first time she felt on the verge of a quarrel with him. Such a thing had not seemed possible before.
Nor was it possible now, for she could not find the words, could only feel a dismal petulance as she gazed out the window of the moving car and thought how he, after all these weeks of kissing in the woods, had not told her anything more about his wife, or about himself, for that matter (except for stories about his past, she thought crossly), nothing of how he felt about things, his plans or hopes for the future.
Finally she said, “Are you all right?” as he turned off Route 22 and parked the car under some trees partway up the old lumber road.
“I’m fine,” he said, touching her hand as he pulled the key from the ignition.
But in fact he seemed distracted and silent, and things didn’t go the way they usually did. When he kissed her, she felt only flatly and lucidly conscious of the pine needles beneath her bare legs and of the short, deep breathing of this man rhythmically pushing against her. She was very warm and so was he; clutching his back she could feel the moistness of his wrinkled shirt.
Finally he rolled off her and said, staring at the sky, “I guess we both knew this probably wasn’t the day.”
She said nothing. In a while he reached for her hand and helped her up. They walked back to the car. “You should go to college in Boston,” he suddenly said. She didn’t answer but instead brushed the pine needles off her leg and got into the car.
He examined a scratch on his door and then got into the car too, leaning his back against the open window, one elbow propped against the steering wheel. With his other hand he touched the inside of her arm and smiled when he saw goosebumps springing up. “You’re shivering,” he said, “and it’s so warm.”
She almost didn’t like him. She dropped her eyes, shrugging slightly. The dashboard was dusty in the milky light. Her skin felt oily, not clean.
“Amy,” he said. “You know you’ll always be loved, don’t you?”
She looked at him. For a long time she didn’t say anything, but then because of the expression in his kind, sad eyes, she said, “Oh, God, that sounds like a good-bye.”
He pulled her head toward him, murmuring, “No, no, no,” as he stroked her hair by the side of her face. “We’ll work something out, little Amy Goodrow.”
She straightened up, ready to kiss him, but he seemed content to simply gaze at her, and so she sat shyly looking down at her hands in her lap.
“Amy,” he said quietly, “take off your blouse.”
She glanced up, surprised. He was watching her impassively through half-opened eyes.
Slowly she undid the buttons, flat, shiny buttons; one glinted in the muted sun. “All the way,” he said, because she was hesitating once the buttons were undone.
She leaned forward, tilting first one shoulder, then the other one, removing the wrinkled blouse, two pine needles stuck to it. He took it from her and picked off the pine needles, and then very elaborately folded the blouse before he turned and placed it on the back seat.
She sat there in her bra from Sears, a plain white bra with a tiny appliqué of a daisy between the pointed cups. She was perspiring, and when he looked at her she wiped her hand across her mouth and looked away.
“Take that off, too.” He said it very quietly, in his low, rumbly voice.
She flushed in the heat of the car. It was like her eyelids were sweating; her eyes felt almost swollen. She hesitated, and then leaned forward and unhooked her bra; her fingertips were cold. He held out his hand and she gave him the bra. With his eyes still on her face, he dropped it onto the back-seat floor.
She looked away, at the gearshift that was there between them with its dark lump of a leathery top. He would have to be looking at her now. She blinked at the gearshift and started to raise a hand to press a finger to her mouth, but she stopped, and pressed her lips together instead. So that her hair would hide her face, she tilted her head down, and saw between the roundness of her breasts, the pale pink tips as excruciatingly exposed as something newborn, a trickle of sweat run down her stomach into the waistband of her lavender skirt.
“You’re so pretty,” Mr. Robertson said conversationally, but softly. “Honestly, Amy, you really are beautiful,” and after that she was all right. A tiny flicker of a smile shot across her face and she looked at him, but he was looking at her there.
“Would you mind doing certain things?” he asked quietly.
She said nothing, not knowing what he meant.
For example, would she mind putting her hand under her breast and holding it toward him? She blushed and gave a small laugh, rolling her eyes quickly, embarrassed, but she did what he asked, and he looked so pleased that she didn’t mind after all. She didn’t mind doing more; like holding both of her breasts together, and then having her hair fall down over them with her nipples peeking through. He asked if she would mind spitting on her fingers and then touching the nipples, and she was surprised, but she did that too.
He asked her to turn one way, then another. He as
ked her to raise her arm and hold her hair up and tilt her head. The longer he looked at her, the more she liked it. She wished he had asked her to do these things before. With her arm raised she could smell the sweat of herself, the lilac smell of the deodorant mixed with herself. Her nose itched, and rubbing her arm across it she could smell that too, the smell of her arm.
“Touch them again,” he directed, and she did.
He had her put the seat back after that, so that, really, she was lying down. Her breasts flattened out, spreading over toward her arms. It was very hot in the car.
“Close your eyes,” he said.
She felt a tiny, unexpected breeze come through the window, and her eyes flickered open.
“Are you worried?” he asked gently. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
She shook her head.
“I don’t want you to be frightened.”
“I’m not frightened. My eyes won’t stay closed, though.”
“That’s okay. Lift up your skirt, honey. Around your waist.”
She was embarrassed again, and smiled slightly, blushing, and then obediently she tugged at the lavender skirt until it was bunched at her waist, showing her white cotton Carter underpants and the slight rising from her pubic hair.
“I don’t want you taking your panties off,” he said. “Do you understand?”
She nodded, looking at him, her mouth parting with some deep emotion at having heard his husky, soft voice speak the word “panties.” His face seemed slackened; he was staring at her down there.
“Let’s just stay like this awhile,” he said. “Let’s just enjoy the warm summer day.” A bead of sweat ran down the side of his face, disappearing into his beard; another followed. “Lie back,” he said. “Try closing your eyes again. Enjoy the summer day.”
He smiled at her, leaning his head back against the window frame, closing his own eyes. She closed her eyes too.
“A very beautiful girl,” she heard him say quietly, and she smiled a little, her eyes still closed.
And then he had his mouth to her breast and was sucking on it, her eyes opening in amazement to see his furry mouth working, sucking slowly at first but then with greater urgency, so that in a few moments he was not just moving the hardening nipple through his mouth, but was biting it with little bites, pulling on it with his teeth. She let out a small cry, and then it really was like she was crying because the sound she made became continuous, as a series of sobs would be, but it was not a sobbing, it was an odd cry of begging, and the more she cried the more fervently he sucked on the hard nipple, and the funnel-shaped thing in her middle swirled, tugged her down there, every squeeze of his mouth made her ache down there so that her hips began to move, her middle arching up and the sound of begging filling the air.