Tom’s mother, who was always dressed up at night, looked naked to Slade now. He was fascinated by each thing she wore: a bra that made her breasts into two white cones on a harness, loose shorts — her navel showing in her pale flat stomach — and wedge-heeled shoes with fake cherries attached to the straps, painted toenails, her thick braid sliding across her spine as, looking tall, she concentrated hard on her pressed-down fingers, making music.
Had she not been playing the instrument she would have seen Slade at once. Carelessly dressed, her braid swinging, she seemed playful, younger, like a very big girl. Steadman stayed at the window, looking at her bare legs and her white shapely breasts. She was half faced away from him, but she looked so lovely he found himself staring. He was dizzy with meaningless heat and numb fingers. He loved looking, but as minutes passed she became less and less Tom’s mother and more and more like someone whom he knew a little and had never seen like this.
Imagining himself touching her eased his mind. She had sallow skin and green eyes. Mentally he placed his hands over the cups of her breasts and stroked them slowly. The thought so possessed him that he stepped away, ducked beneath the cabin window, and went back to the lake to wait for Tom and Nita to return from the fishing trip. Still, even sitting on the grassy bank with his feet propped on the exposed roots of a tree, hidden by bushes, he felt guilty and excited.
“You missed it!” Tom called out from the skiff when he saw Slade on the embankment. Tom held up a dripping foot-long fish.
That night, Tom’s mother wore a pink pleated dress with short sleeves and white sandals. Her long hair was unbraided, combed out, hiding her neck. Each night she dressed differently. He loved her clothes, their color and variety, and he saw in her joy in dressing up how attractive she was. But it pleased him to know that he had seen her that afternoon in her bra and shorts. She was kind to Slade. She watched him eat and complimented him on his manners.
“And what a good appetite.” She said to Tom, “I wish you’d eat like Slade.”
“You’re a good cook,” Slade said, and saw the effect of his praise — the way she smiled, the way she leaned over and asked him if he wanted more. He averted his eyes from her neckline, but he got a glimpse of the bra.
Nita whispered to her and then clapped her hand over her mouth.
“And you’ve got a secret admirer,” Tom’s mother said.
In the bunk beds that night, almost pained by the thought of the woman and needing to talk about her, Slade whispered in the darkness from the top bunk, “Tom. You awake?”
“Yeah.”
“Your mother’s nice.”
“Bull.”
“No. She really is.”
Slade wanted to have a conversation about Tom’s mother, find out more about her, or at least just talk to console himself.
“She’s horrible. She’s a wicked nag. Always making me babysit Nita.”
Tom wouldn’t say any more. Soon he was asleep, and Slade saw how Tom was selfish and immature, no fun to talk to, a disappointment who was a burden as a friend.
The routine was the same every day. Up at seven, and after breakfast, the lake. Hot dogs and milk at the cabin for lunch, then bike riding or back to the lake in the afternoon. Supper at six, the meal Slade looked forward to, because Tom’s mother would be dressed up. They played in the meadow until the mosquitoes started biting. Then to bed. The house smelled of its pine floors and newly sawn timber, and at night there was always a radio playing, Tom’s mother downstairs alone, leafing through a magazine, Collier’s or the Saturday Evening Post.
The next afternoon, Slade left Tom at the beach.
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
He returned to the cabin, delighted when he heard the familiar music. He crept toward it, his head down, and he took up his place at the window to watch the woman in her white bra and shorts, to listen to her playing. He had been there only a minute or less when Nita stepped from behind the side porch. She had obviously followed him from the lake.
Fearful of revealing his secret interest, feeling discovered, Slade started to walk away.
Nita said in a whisper, “You’re spying on my mom.”
“No I’m not.”
“Don’t believe you.” She squinted at him and smiled and in a wheedling voice said, “Want to see my special house?”
“Sure,” he said, to humor her and avoid any more questions, and as he agreed it occurred to him that Nita looked just like a monkey.
Nita bent over and slipped under the porch, duck-walking into the crawl space. Slade followed her, hearing the mother’s music, like bright light blazing through the cracks in the floorboards. The crawl space was cool and smelled of cat shit and sour dust; the shadows were thick with cobwebs. At its edge was a banner of sunlight, for the cabin was on blocks, no basement, only the crawl space and the splintery wooden underpart. Slade felt disoriented by stepping under the house and hearing the music from the room above, and by the insistent beckoning girl among the shadows and the smells. He was dizzy and distinctly felt that he was doing something wrong.
“This is my kitchen. I could fix you a meal. This is my living room.” She had a hoarse husky voice. “Bedroom’s over there.”
The places she named were just sun-striped portions of dust and cat shit, littered with stones and blown leaves, an overturned bucket serving as a stool.
“And this is my bathroom,” she said.
Slade was half kneeling because he was so much taller than she was and there was so little headroom.
“You can use it if you want,” she said.
“Use it like how?”
“Like what do you think, silly.”
She slid her panties to her knees and squatted, defying him with her mother’s green eyes, seeming to hold her breath while he watched and listened. He stared at her, the little bare-assed monkey with the wicked look squatting in the dust, but all he heard was her mother’s music slashing through the floor from the cabin just over their heads.
Even crouching, Slade could see nothing more of Nita than her bulgy small-girl knees, for she was compact and squatting. But when she stood up and straightened, with the same defiant look, leaving her panties at her ankles, he got a glimpse of sunshine through her legs, but little else, and it seemed a mystery. What was she hiding? When he went closer he saw the subtle, slightly parted mouth of what seemed a secret incomplete face, a simple frowning mask at her crotch. Only then did she tug up her panties, as though as an afterthought.
“Your turn now,” she said, and hiked the panties up tightly.
He found he could not speak at first. He had a reply but couldn’t utter it while transfixed by the way the slit-like frown under her belly showed through the panties. At last he said, “You didn’t do anything.”
“At least I tried.” She was irritable. “Go ahead, fraidy cat, no one’s looking.”
The demanding sharpness in her tone aroused him and worried him at the same time. He wanted to linger, he wanted more of her. To be alone in the shadows of a summer cabin with a willing wicked girl was like a dream. But her body was skinny and incomplete, she was too small, she was reckless. The danger of her recklessness excited him but made him afraid, and in the seconds of trembling there he felt only panic. What if someone saw or heard them? He bent over and tried to rush out of the crawl space, but not bending over far enough, he cracked his head against a low board under the cabin floor, and then was on his hands and knees in the sunshine, his head ringing.