Little Zoe’s big brother Philip missed his sister’s turn, putting on a show of his own at about the same time in the downstairs toilet at the back of the house, very embarrassing. And now he had a story to tell, not about his performance (forget that), but about how it happened he was in there in the first place and what happened afterwards, a weird story but nobody he could trust enough to tell it to, now that Turtle and his family were no longer invited to this house and Turtle anyway nowhere to be found, the dumb kid’s touchy parents just barking at him when Philip dropped by asking for him. Had they locked him in his room? Wouldn’t be the first time, Turtle’s dad could get pretty mean. Zoe said she’d heard he’d run away. Fish couldn’t blame him if he had, he’d thought about it plenty of times himself, but he was surprised and, if it was true, a little hurt that Turtle hadn’t asked him along. Not that he’d have gone. No? So what was keeping such a big fish here in this little puddle? Well, in a word, Clarissa. Philip couldn’t help himself, he lusted after her sweet bod day and night. It was hopeless, she hated him, but then, he had the consoling impression she hated everybody, everybody but herself, he wasn’t the only recipient of Ms. P. T. Big Head’s icy jabs. But someday she’d need him, or need someone, and he’d be there at her elbow, and then she’d love him for the good and faithful soldier that he was. This was the centerpiece of his intensest fantasies: repentant Clarissa melting in his arms. Meanwhile, though: whatever he could get wherever he could find it, young or old, of which in this town no shortage, or such was the story he told. The truth was a bit different, sorry to say, for though he laid claim to at least a dozen girls from school, all of whom had conveniently graduated or moved elsewhere, and had lots of stories about older broads in town whose lawns he’d mowed or sidewalks shoveled, Fish in point of fact had yet to score and wondered if he was the only guy his age in the Western world whose hand was all he knew of that great mystery. Such a mystery was not even on his mind, though, when that ugly old fart with the meaty honker walked in on him in the john a few minutes ago and started upbraiding him for weakening all his manly faculties with self-abuse. That dickhead was running for mayor? What a town. All Fish was trying to do at the time was pee through a hard-on. So how come he had a hard-on? For starters, because he always had one, or anyhow almost always, the main exceptions being in gym class showers, on trips to the dentist, and during his old man’s Sunday sermons. But also in this instance because of, one, Clarissa’s underwear drawer (he’d been pawing around in there while everyone else had headed into the living room to catch the kiddy mime show) and, two, Clarissa’s mom, who had smiled at him when he stepped out of Clarissa’s room with his hands deep in his pockets before she disappeared into the bathroom. That smile: it was weird, she’d never even looked at him before, his occasional brags notwithstanding. But now, wow … He’d waited there in the hall for a while, all alone, holding the hot pole between his legs as though, not to raise it, but to plant it, and when time passed and she did not come out he took a chance, walked over, and tried the door. It opened. As he entered, trying to seem casual while unzipping his pants (oops, sorry, didn’t know anyone was in here), he realized that his mouth was hanging open, something he always tried to stop himself from doing, since he knew it was not his most flattering expression. He closed it and the door, blinked: the room was empty. He glanced into the shower stall, the towel cupboard, did a slow three-sixty: how had he missed her? Well. Not the first time opportunity had slipped away as though it never existed. His pants were open, his rod poking partway out: he decided he might as well go ahead and do what he’d pretended to come in here to do. In case, he found himself thinking, he needed an alibi. Which is when the old fart who was running for mayor blundered in, glowered at what he was holding, and laid into him for betraying his own body, sapping its vital juices and turning red corpuscles white. “You’ll be old and dead before your time, son. Now put that little stick away before you break it, go wash your hands, and get your damned sissified butt outa here!” Fish was only too glad to oblige. Jesus. Didn’t bother to wash his hands either, just ducked his head and shot out of there, headed for the twilit backyard, pausing only long enough in the empty kitchen to glance back at the toilet door in time to see Clarissa’s mom come out of it, she smiling at him when she noticed him gawping there. Which was the strange yet true story he had to tell, but couldn’t, the middle of it being the difficult part to explain. He saw Jennifer and Clarissa back in the shadows of the rose garden gazebo, also giving little Mikey’s dumbshow a miss. He could tell by the way they were hunched over they were doing lines of coke. He approached them hopefully, trying to remember to keep his jaw closed, even though he knew they didn’t want him around and would only insult him. But what could he do? Could he help it if he was madly in love with the little fast-track queen of the mall rats? “Hey,” he said, drifting up. “Hey, it’s the Creep,” said his ladylove. “Get lost, asshole.”
The Creep’s mother, also Jennifer’s and little Zoe’s, once known as Trixie the go-go dancer and now as Beatrice the preacher’s wife, had arrived at that party straight from church choir practice, feeling exhilarated. The singing had been unusually harmonious that afternoon, as though God had got inside them all and made his presence felt, an experience that always had an agreeably erotic effect on Beatrice. After everyone had left, many to get dressed for John’s party, Beatrice, wishing to prolong this sweet musical communion, had stayed on to practice the organ for a while, letting the sacred melodies flow through her and into the organ pipes like the pumping of God’s blood, feeling at one with herself and with the universe. And with the organ, she becoming its adjunct, the instrument’s instrument, the pedals and keys her feet’s and fingers’ very reason for being, their raisin-something, as a teacher, one of her many teachers, once put it, and the same could be said for score and eyes, bench and bottom, music and mind — all of a piece, like some kind of magic! How happy she was! She’d never played better! Or been played better! As the music throbbed through her expanded body, her heart beating, her pipes resonating, in time to the turning of the spheres, tears of gratitude and intense well-being came to her eyes — and were still there, in the corners of her eyes, giving them an appealing twinkle, when she arrived at John’s party just before sundown, still a bit breathless and full of nameless joy. John squeezed her hand with both of his when she came in, gave her a hug; her husband smiled at her from across the room; her smallest child, dressed in a sweater miles too big for her, one of Mikey’s mother’s, came to ask for her help in tying a kerchief in her hair; someone brought her a glass of bubbly wine. It was as though Beatrice had foreseen all of this before she entered the house, perhaps during choir practice or while playing the organ, and it was all very beautiful. Her husband was beautiful, John’s house was beautiful, her friends were beautiful, her daughter was beautiful as she stepped into the luminous center of everyone’s attention. Beatrice loved this town, these people, this moment in her life. Things weren’t perfect, but Beatrice hoped they’d never change, not at least until she got to heaven. But of course they were already changing. That’s how the world was, you couldn’t stop it, harmony was unnatural to it, constancy was. A sudden presentiment of disaster sent a shiver down Beatrices spine and deep into that core of her which till now had been the seat of such holy ecstasy. She set her glass down, her eyes beginning to mist over. Her daughter had faded from sight somehow, even as she was watching her, her husband, too, though she was not. Something violent and irreversible was about to happen. Or had already happened but was about to be made manifest. Beatrice couldn’t see it, blind to everything at that moment except her own panic and despair (where was John’s wife?), but she could feel it. “Yipes!” she yelped when the blocks flew, and shrinking back, reached down with both hands to touch her tummy. Oh no, she thought. It can’t be. I’m pregnant again.