The Ice Storm

  —Huh?

  —You know, Charles. Pussy.

  The word fell from his mouth like the name for a particularly dull frozen vegetable. Twat, pussy, cunt, muff, slit, pudenda. There were no good words for the anatomy of girls. Why were the words for beautiful things—orchids, gables, auroras—so beautiful? Would her pussy, if it were named after one of these, still sound so homely?

  —You want to get into my pants, Mikey?

  And this turned out to be the right way to approach the issue. At the invitation, he got all panicky. She could see him freezing up. She had been wearing shorts with little floral suspenders that day. Suspenders were in since Godspell. Some frilly, lacy shirt. A trainer bra. Mike had never bargained on cooperation. Boys thought of girls the way they thought of particularly good careers, things to work toward. Or as fine objects: they wanted to haggle and get a good price. Wendy thought she was the first fourteen-year-old in America to fully understand this point.

  —What’s my payment, Mikey? If you want what you want, you gotta put your cards out on the table.

  The opportunity to fool with the boxes of gum afforded him the time he needed to think. The Williamses never understood people, really. That’s what Wendy thought. They fooled around with enterprises. Her mother had told Wendy this. It was one of her mother’s very firm points of view.

  Mike brought two gross boxes from one of the packing crates and placed them at her feet, like he was one of the wise men in the school Christmas pageant.

  —Not enough, she said.

  —No way, Wendy. My dad’ll see. You know? He’s keeping an eye out—

  —So he chews it too?

  —It’s not that, it’s—

  —Mikey, you’re making me mad. Forget it. You’re insulting me. I want the whole thing. I want a whole crate full.

  He couldn’t. He just couldn’t. In Wendy’s social studies class they were doing skits about ethical dilemmas in November, and this would have made a fine one. Wendy did hers on President Nixon’s agonizing decision about whether or not to burn the tapes rather than turn them over to the special prosecutor. What Mike didn’t realize was that Wendy would have done it for nothing.

  Now, in November, it was wet and cold and he was late. He should have had time to stow his soccer clothes and make it to Silver Meadow. He should have had time to put everything else out of his mind except her, except the things about her—her hair in the wind, the way she hugged harder than anyone else, her devotion. In summer it was easy, and just a look at her body was enough to get him to put aside boyish things. The moment came, that first moment, gratis, at the country club.

  They were behind the snack bar, about to go their separate ways, to their separate bathhouses. Such a small parting. But she felt as though she were losing an heirloom at that moment, as if the memory of her lost grandparents had vanished somehow, or a friend who died in childhood of leukemia had just been laid to earth, so she held him by his shoulder and with one hand tugged down the bottom of her American stars-and-stripes two-piece bathing suit and revealed the blond, almost hairless pubic bone underneath.

  Because the town was as barren as a rock face. Because her family was chilly and sad. It had come over her that fast. That’s why she did it. Or if love existed, it was buried so far down in work and politeness that its meager nectar could never be pumped to the surface. She had never seen her parents embrace. Her mother had actually once denied loving her father—she’d said she liked him all right. Her dad said these were subjects for encounter groups, for religious cults, and for the inmates over at Silver Meadow, but not for families. Wendy yearned for vulgarity, for all this sloppy stuff. She yearned for some impolite rustling or a torn piece of fabric; for some late-night moaning, for some Swedish Super-8 movies: Biology Class or Madame Ovary. For anything that didn’t have the feelings bleached out of it. She would have made out with their retriever to learn a little bit about love. Please God, Wendy thought on the stately paths of Silver Meadow, not another winter night of New Canaan conversation …

  So, back at the country club. Mike gazed at her vagina—its concealments and complexities—and froze. The sounds of the country club swept over them like an orchestral tuning. She could hear caddies suggesting a particular iron, kids arguing about who got to go off the high dive first, mothers hurrying children up to the snack bar. He smelled like coconut. She smelled like sweat and chlorine and generations of good breeding. The day smelled like hot pavement.

  Then Mike Williams untied the knot in his maroon swimming trunks and revealed his own inheritance. He was no more like Sandy than she was. It was a big, sprawling thing, a garter snake coiled in his swimming trunks, or one of those Fourth of July snakes, the kind that unfurled themselves—from a little black chip—in a thick, stinky, sulfuric haze. A small down of auburn hairs adorned its base where the little fellow was now swelling forth as though she had used its secret name.

  —This is it, Wendy, Mike said.

  They embraced. And parted. Wendy laughed and laughed and laughed.

  For a couple of weeks after that Mike was pretty shy. Well, she gave him the benefit of the doubt. Watergate was heating up. Saturday Night Massacre. Wendy had started watching Watergate more closely than even Dark Shadows or The 4:30 Movie. She liked to see Nixon sweating under the cameras; she liked the relentless glare of network news. But Mike came back eventually, like he was coming up Valley Road, now, on his Fuji bicycle.

  Finally, she had led him from his chewing-gum counting house and down to the little graveyard on Silvermine Road, where lost souls from the nineteenth century slept fitfully—Sereno Ogden, Capt. Ebenezer Benedict, and S. Y. St. John—where none came to mourn, where kids practiced their French inhaling. When the dizziness from their own pack of Larks was too much, Wendy lay across his chest. And he held her there.

  She could see his erection in the tan corduroys, straining like the kid in math who always had the answer. And they undressed there in the graveyard, their clothes piled neatly on some family mausoleum, and then they stopped just short, each with the other’s smell on his or her hands, each like an overwound watch. They just stopped. Who knew why? So the graveyard, for Wendy and Mike, inaugurated the tradition of dry humping.

  —Where have you been? she called across the gloomy landscaped expanses of Silver Meadow.

  —Something with my mom, Mike said, hauling his bike alongside him. She was getting out of the house in a hurry and I was in the driveway trying to get the chain back on the bike, and then, because of the rain, I went back in the garage—

  Mike pointed at a spot on her chest, right in the center of her poncho, and she looked down. He chucked her under the chin with his index finger. HA! HA! HA! HA! He always did that.

  —Freezing my ass off out here, she said.

  —Don’t bum out. Charles.

  The light was failing. The precipitation had turned to snow. Or something close to it, fierce nuggets of precipitation. Precipitation like an insult. But the anticipation of licentiousness thrilled Wendy, worked that tantric magic on her. Winter didn’t trouble her. She could have waded miles in the slush and ice, like a superhero.

  The basement of the Williams house was unused and lonely. She had seen, in the frugal architecture of local churches—Congregational and Episcopalian and Presbyterian; her mom could never make up her mind about denomination—those small altars where just prior to communion the minister arrayed himself in his professional garment, and where the sacred vessels moldered. Sacristy? This was how she thought of the Williamses’ basement, as she straddled the seat of Mikey’s bike (he pedaled standing up), and held fast onto his waist.

  It was an uphill ride and they left her own house behind—on the far edge of Silver Meadow—that ramshackle place of dark brown, full of drafts and ancient hinges, the former home of Mark Staples, Republican assemblyman and Episcopal minister of New Canaan from 1871 to 1879.

  And then up the hill, up the hill. Mike downshifted angrily, as though the incline
were a challenge to his burgeoning manhood.

  The Williamses’ place was white and squarish with columns in front. An American flag usually hung limply there, but not this afternoon. Mourning doves wailed in the backyard. The steep backyard that tumbled headlong down into the creek there. (Down where Wendy lived the creek ran right under the living room patio.) There was always wildlife strutting around Mikey’s backyard—raccoons, muskrats, and rabbits. The wildlife of the suburbs. It was practically like Mutual of Goddam Omaha back there. The Silvermine River teemed with inflatable canoes.

  Mike dumped his bike on the grass by the garage door, never mind the rain. They snuck in through the porch, downstairs.

  In the ritual of their congress, Wendy insisted on silence. No getting-to-know-you chatter. Some conversation was inevitable, the table-setting, the hors d’oeuvres, but a silence was more dignified. Around them, the dusty packing crates full of gum were like the faceless sentries that protected some imperial decay, like the Easter Island statues in this book the boys at school had lately been passing around, Chariots of the Gods. The Bermuda Triangle. The basement was a neglected precinct of the Williamses’ place. The Ping-Pong table sagged in the middle of the room, like a rotting sea vessel. The power tools hanging on the wall were instruments of torture. The dart board had a woman’s face, torn from a magazine, stuck upon it.

  The other book everybody read at school was Go Ask Alice.

  Were Wendy to peel off the layers, the painter’s pants, the turtleneck, the toe socks, she would also have to shed the church-going, cheerleading Ivory Soap girl. She would have to reveal to Mike the depths of her complicated feelings. But this was not her gig. This was New Canaan, after all. Her idea, instead, was about putting on more roles, more deceits. On the platform at the end of the room, on the beanbag chair that faced the television set, they positioned themselves.

  And Wendy began reluctantly to confide in him her instructions. They played the roles, that afternoon, of corporate managerial type and assistant. Mike was coming to her house one afternoon, one weekend afternoon, to deal with a crisis—yeah, that was it—a crisis concerning some stocks, and he needed her help. He needed her.

  —And I’m just lying here, Wendy said. I’m just lying here and something’s really wrong. I’m crying, sobbing maybe, because I’m alone, because my man has gone or something, and you come in and try to comfort me.

  —But—

  —I’m in the middle of some really awful heartbreak. On his knees, with the clumsiness of a boy who would never appear on stage in his entire life, he mimed the adjustment of his necktie. He set down his attaché case by the magazine rack. Wendy put a finger to her lips and the performance began in earnest. In the half-light.

  A long afternoon was over at the office, Wendy thought. The daily political struggle was over. He brushed back her hair. Who was he and why did he understand so well how to console a woman? The loss of her husband, the estrangement of her children—she had been judged unfit—her inability to work. She had only the properties and income that the divorce settlement deeded her. Not enough to live in the style she was accustomed to.

  —Baby, Mike said. Our waiting is over.

  From the beanbag chair, Wendy slid to the floor. She rolled across Sandy’s battered pocket calculator. Her turtleneck rode up and the pale spotless area under her breasts was visible. She arranged it that way, just like Willie Mays arranged for his cap to fly off in pursuit of the long fly ball. Mike pinioned her—one arm under the beanbag, the other under a green leather footstool. A TV Guide with Sanford and Son on the cover was only inches from her face.

  —Maybe we should turn on the television, Mike whispered, in case someone comes along.

  —Don’t be silly, Wendy said.

  She dragged his hand along her stomach, and he climbed up on top of her. It was a sort of desperate embrace. Stuff was going to get into her hair, bugs and crumbs, and old pieces of gum that had been stamped into the rug.

  —Tell me your long-range plans, Wendy said. Tell me that you aren’t going to leave. Tell me that you aren’t like all the others. Read the awful parts of the Old Testament to me. Would you harm people for me? Would you give me your most expensive possession? Would you be on call twenty-four hours a day? Would you leave the church of your birth for me? Would you give up weekend sports activities, including touch football? Would you do my laundry, including the very personal items? Would you take responsibility for filling my prescription of birth control pills? Would you grow your hair or go to a group encounter session or visit Nepal? Would you swing?

  Their hips locked together uneasily, like mismatched pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. They ground themselves against one another slowly. She grazed the part of his jeans where the monstrous thing had swollen again. It looked as though it was bent uncomfortably toward his right pocket.

  —Have you forgotten everything? Mike said.

  —What do you mean, my darling? Wendy said.

  —I gave you work for the weekend.

  —I’m afraid I don’t understand the assignment. I’m going to need an extra help session.

  The quiet was funereal. Wendy slowed to a stop. Mike had transformed himself entirely into the unforgiving executive of her dreams. The guy who would look after drug and alcohol procurement. She could smell it on his breath, and his tongue had a taste it never had, a medicinal taste. Her needs were going to be met. She grabbed the back of his ass. It was loose and boyish. Just bones and jeans. Nothing more. He wrestled with her as though she were a sailor’s knot he had never learned.

  —C’mon, he said.

  —You mean the tapes, Wendy said. You mean the tapes you wanted me to look after. You want me to fast-forward—

  Mike grunted.

  —C’mon—

  —I’m afraid there’s been a problem. There’s a problem in processing—

  —Wendy, Mike said, you gotta take off your pants.

  —No way, not until I’m fifteen.

  —It’s not … you can’t do it like this. You have to take off your pants.

  —No way.

  He caught her by the wrists again. He let go and got up on his knees. He began to fumble with his belt buckle. And then with the zipper.

  —Okay, she said. Okay. I’ll touch it, but that’s as far as it goes.

  Mike shoved his jeans down around his knees and lay down on her again. Goosebumps. His briefs were tangled in his pants. They reminded her of nothing so much as a diaper. Her turtleneck was still bunched up around her breasts, and he set his penis on the unnavigated terrain there, on her belly. It felt like a salamander to her. It felt like a salamander scampering across her.

  Then the door at the top of the stairs opened.

  The light when the door opened! That splendid bad news! Wendy never knew that a door, so imperceptibly ajar, could promise so much. It was like the climax of a fabulous chorale. The thrashing of Mike’s salamander recaged, the unknotting and refastening of shirts and pants. Instantaneous. No soldiers anywhere were ever quicker to arms. The two of them were like some undercranked silent movie, like Keystone Cops at a laundry line.

  She knew, somehow, that it was her dad who descended those stairs. Before she even heard his tiresome, methodical steps she knew it was him—the incongruity of him didn’t strike her until a long time after. By the time she could see his face she and Mike had been through all the unspoken strategies and cover-ups—they could presume he didn’t know what was going on, they could lie about it, they could tell the truth and hope for the best. Mike found a fourth option: he seized another TV Guide—Gene Rayburn on the cover—and studied it furiously.

  —When Worlds Collide, he muttered.

  —Huh?

  —4:30 movie.

  Her dad had reached the bottom of the stairs with the sort of exaggerated drama that marked all his paternal moments. It was fake. There was something fake about him. He stood with folded arms among the Topps packing crates.

  —What the hell are you
kids doing down here?

  His face was scarlet. Not the color of drinking, which she knew pretty well, but the scarlet of shame and rage, the color of a baby’s face when, smeared in its own poop, it is left in a parking lot with a note pinned to its breast. Wendy had seen her dad like this only a few times and she didn’t like the memories.

  —What do you think we’re doing, Dad? she said.

  —What do I think? I think you’re probably touching each other. I think you’re touching that reckless little jerkoff, for God’s sake, and I think he’s trying to get into your slacks. I think, at fourteen goddam years of age, that you’re getting ready to give up your girlhood. And I can’t believe my eyes—

  —Hey, hang on there, Mister Hood—

  His shirt wasn’t buttoned properly. Wendy’s ordinarily immaculate father, her father, the Mike’s Sports mannequin, the L. L. Bean dad, had misbuttoned his shirt so that an extra inch of fabric on one side was mashed around his scarlet jowels. He was chewing the air, like he needed its nourishment in order to get fully into his elaborate condescensions. His shirt was luffing.

  —Don’t you direct a single word at me, Mike. I don’t want to hear it. I will be speaking with your mother and father about this situation very soon. Bet your ass on that, son. I can’t believe you two have any idea what you’re doing here! I’m shocked to think you’re so misguided, that this seems to you like the best way to spend the Thanks giving holidays. This is just shameful, you kids, shameful.

  Mike wasn’t going to take this last speech too well, Wendy could see this. She knew him well enough. He was considering some harsh rejoinder. It was fight or flight time. If it developed into a fight, she figured that she would root for Mike. Because her dad outweighed him by probably 140 pounds. It was only fair to back the underdog.

  But Mike hung his head with barely concealed rage. He didn’t say anything.

  —Young lady? Her father looked her over.

  —Talking to me, Dad?

  —Who else would I be talking to?

  —Well, then forget all this stern dad stuff.