Interstate (19 page)

and trooper watching him as he passed, so good thing he was thinking of the should or shouldn't he while doing sixty for he's sure he would have been nabbed, no other cars near him for half a mile now it seemed. Then Julie awoke, knuckled her eyes and he said “Good, you napped almost an hour,” and she said “I wasn't asleep, I only had my eyes closed and was thinking,” and Margo said “What about?” and she said “None of your business,” and that she was thirsty and had to pee and Margo me-tooed and that she was also hungry, so they stopped at the next rest area for gas and bathrooms and a snack, coffee to go for him, curly French fries between the girls for the car and fruit punch he had them drink in the Roy Rogers because he didn't want them to make a mess and if the car suddenly had to slow or stop, the straws to cut their palates, “but if you're good the rest of the trip, real hamburgers in warm hamburger buns and all the trimmins for dinner and ginger ale in champagne glasses”—took no more than twenty minutes. Wanted to get home fast, get the mail, unpack quickly and put everything away, garbage and two weeks of plastic, bottles and cans on the walk for tomorrow's pickup, get the kids' dinner ready, while things are cooking have a scotch on rocks as he sits in his Morris chair and goes through the newspapers and mail that had collected past two days and dump the catalogs and advertising circulars and inserts that had come before Lee gets ahold of them. Then after dinner make a couple of calls and finish his work work. No calls. Tomorrow the kids can talk to Lee before they go to school, or she might not be up, so that evening, and he'll see his associate soon enough and work he'll do after the kids are asleep. Read them a story when their lights are out and they're in bed, or tell them one from his head, maybe about a car, the trip, New York City, the road. Comical incident in the tunnel or at a rest stop. Or they're being followed in an unmarked car by Goofy—loves him as a character, as he gets to talk in a stupid voice and say funny dumb things—and Nancy Drew, since Margo says she's getting too old for just Goofy and Minnie and the gang. Goofy and Nancy are an item, he'll say, and explain what “item” here is. They think the car he and the kids are in is stolen and while they're tailing them they put in a check on their license plate. They pull them over and Goofy asks all sorts of dumb questions. He's much better at dialog than description or that thing that moves the action along and has all the filler and fill-in, like what the setting is and surroundings look like and why the characters do this and that and so on. “Is this a car you're in?” Goofy can say. “You mean,” Nancy can correct him, “is this their car they're in.” “Um-m-m, I think that's what I said, didn't I? Is this a their car they're in?” “Excuse me, Goofy, but what's a their car?” and Goofy can say “Um-m-m, wha'd'ya think? A their car is their car just as an our car is ours. Gosh, Nancy, you goofy or something? No, you can't be, since you're Nancy, I just said, and I'm Goofy, I think, and the captain would never put two Goofys in one patrol car, would he? ‘cause how could we be able to figure out the more harder police things?” “Oh, I give up on you already, Goofy. Our engagement's off and I don't want to be your police partner anymore either. And now that he's out of the picture,” she can say to the girls, “you two want to be my sidekicks? Even if our engagement's kaput, police work's got to go on.” Not that but something like and Goofy can say “Hey, don't blame me for getting out of your picture, for who wants their sides kicked?” The girls love when he brings them into the stories. But he'll forget this one by the time he decides to tell it tonight and he might even forget he was planning to tell them about Nancy and Goofy. Knows his memory. He'll come up with something though. Always does even if most as stories with satisfying endings that relate to what came before it and tie it all up, fail. Maybe one with his wife and kids in the car. Taking a vacation or the highway suddenly opens up and they drive spirally down an Alice-like hole. Or where the kids and he drive straight home, no Goofy and Nancy stop, open the door and she's there, house warm, fire going, dinner ready, table set, drink waiting for him with the ice just plopped in, while he's sitting reading the paper and having the drink, his wife and kids unload the car and put everything away and the garbage, plastic, bottles and cans on the walk, lots of good mail to go through, correspondence and checks, no ads or bills. “But how'd you get here?” he can say and she can say “Flew.” “Plane, and then you cabbed over?” and she can say “No, this time with my arms,” and demonstrates around the house, up the stairs, down to the basement, then opens the front door while hovering above it like a hummingbird and holding the knob and flies outside. “We too,” the kids can shout, “teach us,” and he can say “Not Daddy, he's afr-fr-fraid of heights when his f-f-feet aren't on something,” but they convince him it'll be a great unforgettable family event and they all, after the kids and he ask her how and she says “Just hold your arms out, no trick to it, and say the magic blessing, ‘gefilte fish,'” fly someplace. Out the window, or door, for windows are too Peter Pannish and he tries with these to be original as he can, so to Inner Mongolia, outer Bessarabia, Central Chile, interior Australia, soar with condors and wine and dine with aborigines who are swinging on vines while the four of them glide. “Whee, whee,” it could all be pretty happy and the right kind of dream-generating stuff for the girls before they go to sleep. So something with Lee, and it'll be nice for them too if he includes her, Mommy with them if only in this way. Actually, he thought, wishes she were in the car with him; talking with her passes the time better and he likes putting his hand on her thigh while he drives and rubbing and squeezing it or under her knee and maybe her backside. If he were doing it now with the thigh, he thought, kids in back, she'd probably smile for him not to go further and maybe even say as she's done a number of times for something like this “Can I take a raincheck on it?” If one of the kids said “For what?” he or she has always said “Conversation.” Alone with her on a big empty road or just a car now and then flitting past, he's stuck his hand on her crotch, even unzipped her fly a couple of times in broad daylight and tight as her jeans still were was able to push her panties down enough to stroke her hair there and once got the tip of his middle finger to the top of her crack but not far enough to touch the bump. Never got that far with any girl in a car, he thought. Once, though, forgets who, though she was very pretty, long dark hair, and slim and always smelling of some intoxicating rose perfume or cologne, Fanny or Franny her name was, they were in high school, rich kid who at the time said she wanted to be a medical missionary while he wanted to be a dentist—called her several times after that and then lost track of her—on the way back on a date where they danced and illegally drank in a Long Island nightclub, and she stuck her hand in his fly, or he steered it in for her. He'd unzipped it, she had to have heard the zip and probably the couple in the front seat too, and he put her hand in under his coat and she jerked it around a little. Tried to get his hand in her underpants under her skirt but she wouldn't let him. Then tried sticking his finger in her vagina through the underpants and she put her lips to his ear and said “No, that hurts. I'll do this for you,” jerking him some more, “but do you have a clean cloth?—that stuff can gush.” “How do you know?” and she whispered “Don't be immature or I'll stop.” He got out a hanky, forgets how far he got or if she had to stop because of the couple in front or something. Once, though, maybe this was the first time, he met a girl at a party who after he danced and necked with for a while, did it to him till he came. Her name he remembers: Honey and that she had lots of wavy honey-colored hair on top and that when they sat on a radiator cover in the dark she took out some pins and let it drop to her butt. Never even phoned her after that though she gave him her number and said she'd really like to see him. When he was going back to the subway with his friends—party was in the Bronx, they lived in Manhattan—he told them they'd never believe what happened with that girl he was with and one said “She gave you a handjob,” and he said “You saw? It was almost pitch black in the room and I had my jacket over me,” and his friend said “No, but she did?—what a triumph. Nat got jerked off by a chickie he just met, Nat got jerked off, the fucking lucky.” They all said for him to call her and she'll bang him the next time or the time after and then every time after that and he said he probably will but she's so homely and they said “So what, her cunt isn't; they're all the same, a big juicy slit.” What complete schmucks they all were. Winced in the car when he thought of himself then, vulgar, ugly, stupid, and the girl: she liked him and was nice to him, how could he have been such a creep? His father once said, when he told him he was going on a date with a girl he liked, “Don't tell me: when you're your age all a girl's good for is for whatever you can get. That's what it was for me and don't tell me it isn't for you. But be smart like I was though; you get her in trouble, deny everything or your goose is cooked for keeps.” He said “Wrong, this girl is sweet and from a good family and a real brain and I like her and would be satisfied with just lots of talk and being with her on more dates and at the end of them and only if she wanted, a goodnight kiss,” and his father said “Who do you think you're fooling? Ah, you're already on the road to being a patsy with that attitude and ruining your whole dumb life.” Honey didn't seem very bright and had been too eager to do him, he didn't understand that since they'd only just met and he never said he liked her, and her dress was too loud and she wore these sparkly dangling ear things and clunky bracelets and had on pancake makeup and her mouth was very wide with a ton of smelly lipstick on it and when she smiled, too much of her gums showed and he wondered if she was doing something to keep a lot more of it hid. She got his number from the girl who gave the party who got it from a friend of his and she said “So, were you serious about wanting to have a date or was that just a line?” and he said she lived too far away for him to subway back and forth to her all the time and she said she could meet him in Manhattan every other date, she loves the city, and he said okay, when he didn't mean it, “but not this weekend, I got all this studying to do plus my deliveryboy job,” and she said “Maybe I should've gone slower with you, but that I didn't says something about how I felt, doesn't it?” and he said “Sure, no complaints, I appreciate it,” and didn't call back. Then Lenore when he was sixteen, girl who did it to lots of guys he'd heard and first to do it to him more than once. That was how he'd heard of her: “She does it to you first date sometimes and to some guys, once she gets to know you, she sticks your prick between her tits and squeezes them into it till you get off. All you do is introduce yourself to her at a dance or on the street, even, if she's walking with some girls and then you call her up and say you're the guy who said hello to her or something and is she doing anything now, can you come over? and if she isn't doing anything, like whacking off another guy, she usually invites you up if she liked your looks and style and she isn't sick.” Her parents or one of them were always there but they left her alone with him in her bedroom. Amazing, he thought, and with the door shut and lights off except for a bedlamp of such low wattage that it couldn't have been there for reading or anything but lying back listening to music or having sex. He'll never permit that with his kids when they reach that age or even twenty and they're still living home, and it's probably more accepted now than then so might even be more accepted ten years from now. Knows it's more accepted: some parents thinking better the kids do it in your home where you can give them a condom than on a beach or in back of a car without one and where they can get mugged or the girl gang-raped. Door will always have to be open, main lights on and music not so loud to drown out every sound. Eight years from now with Margo it might begin, though he hopes not after what they've subtly instilled in her so far and he expects to openly impress on her later on: do young youthful things while you're young, save the older fake reveling and rebelling stuff for when you're over twenty-one and have half a brain what's right in those goings-on, and he's sure Lee will go along with him on that, though who knows? She might say “I had my first all-the-way when I was sixteen with a boy several years older who I loved so why not her when she's a year or two older than I was if she truly wants to and is prepared for it and the boy's nice and they've been seeing each other awhile and are genuinely fond of each other and absolutely safe about the act?” On his first date with Lenore, and he can't really call it that and he never saw her outside her apartment, she answered the door and said “Come in, hello, these are my folks, Martha and Mo” or something, “this is Nat,” as they passed the living room, parents were seated reading the papers and waved, sometimes he went into the living room if they were there to say hello and shake their hands, “Now I want to show you my room,” and they went in and she said “Close the door, it's okay, they hate me and I hate them, they're demented old
assholes but they're cool.” “Jeez, what a way to talk about your parents,” and she said “Why, something wrong with it? I live with them, you don't, but if my talk's not up to your standards, split,” and he said “No, I don't mind.” She had her own little refrigerator in her room with sodas and snacks inside, double electric burner for making hot chocolate and mint tea, she said, though she never once offered him anything but a cigarette every time he was there when she knew he didn't smoke, record player, shortwave radio, TV set when lots of homes didn't even have one, all sorts of things, even a toaster and table cigarette lighter and a carton of cigarettes on her night table and a typewriter on a desk and two walls of tall bookcases filled with books. She said when he was staring at them “Do you like to read?” and he said “Oh, I love it,” and she said “Good, we got something in common—who are your favorite authors?” and he mentioned a few and she said “They stink—maybe I can loan you some of my books; I got too many,” and he said “Sure, I'll give them a closer look after,” and she said “After what?” and wasn't smiling and for a moment he didn't know what to say because he didn't want to ruin it and he said “When I'm going, now let's just talk…where do I sit?” and she said “I guess the bed, there's no good chair for sitting here,” and they sat together on the bed and talked about people they knew and movies they've liked or they want to see and what clothes she thinks boys his age look good in and he said he wouldn't mind owning some of those but it'd take every dime he earns—“My parents have the money, I suppose, but I want to be independent and I think it's good,” and she said “I should be more that way too with money but Martha and Mo won't let me—they give me more things than I need and always leave plenty of money in a kitchen drawer for me for whenever I want it—even enough to buy you a restaurant dinner with me if you'd like to one night,” and he said “Sure, that'd be nice, I've hardly ever gone except with my parents for lunch, but I wouldn't want you to pay and I don't think I could pay for myself unless it was a kind of cheap place,” and she said “Don't be silly, it's an invitation, and I hope you like French food, I do,” and he said “Sure, probably, what do they have?” and she said “Snails, atmosphere, cloth napkins, who cares?” and moved closer and he did and they kissed and did that for a while, kissing, rubbing each other's backs and necks and he thought this is probably a good time and reached for the night table light, wanted to get it over with and go home and maybe call one of his friends and tell him, and she said “Wait, listen at the door,” and he said “For what?” and she said “Do what I say, tell me if you hear anything, or I'm not turning off the light,” and he got up and put his ear to the door and heard nothing and said “Your parents?” and she said “Lock the door, they can be snoopy even if they are cool—I think they'd like to burst in here sometimes and see me naked, not with boys so much but when I'm undressing for bed or drying after showering—I have my own shower, by the way, with these needlelike side sprays from Sweden if you ever feel like taking one when you're here,” and he thought “With you? I shouldn't say,” and said “Thanks, but about your parents barging in here, come on now, they wouldn't do that,” and she said angrily “You don't believe me?” and he said “Hey, if you say it, it's got to be true, but you can still see how someone could find it hard to believe, parents doing that,” and locked the door and got back on the bed and she turned the light off and they kissed and he said “Could you put out your cigarette, please, it's the smoke, it gets in my nose,” and she said “If you insist, sir, though I hope you're not going to next complain about my breath; I try to be mindful of others with what I smoke; they're mentholated,” and he said “No, I don't mind cigarette smell even if it doesn't have that,” and they lay, as they always did, on the bed—this probably happened five or six times before he said “Do you think you could put my thing between your boobs and rub and stuff and do it that way?” and she said “Where'd you ever get that idea? You've got to be sick, sonny, thinking I'd ever do that to a boy. Better you get the heck out of here and pronto,” and got off the bed and buttoned herself up and shooed him out and told him not to call her anymore, he did and she said “I was serious; leave me alone or I'm calling the police”—and she'd grab his penis through the pants after he touched her breasts through her shirt and then he'd unzip his fly or she would and she'd jerk him up and down and he'd stick his finger in her vagina and poke and probe and wiggle it around inside and they'd go on like that and continue kissing till he'd come into a bunch of tissues she'd quickly pop out of a box by her bed and hand him or cover his penis tip with. She never came but maybe she did. He didn't think about those things then for girls and didn't talk about it with her and for all he knew he had probably hurt her with his finger. He just didn't know what to do in there or around it and he's not so sure he does now. Several women before Lee tried at times to improve his fingering technique and even Lee now and then says he's not doing it right or he could be doing it better, though Lenore never complained about it and she was the sort of person who would have or at least said when he hurt. Maybe she didn't even know what she was supposed to get out of it. Or she had somehow come to believe that a boy scratching deep inside her was about the gentlest and most skillful fingering she should expect to get. But she had to have done it to herself lots of times and there must have been a couple of guys before him who had done it well, so who knows what she thought when he did it. Anyway, the poor parents, he thought in the car before. Lenore was a little homely too. Big nose, nothing that would bother him today, he found ugly then. He didn't want to be seen outside with her, and she was also a little heavy. His friends would have said, which they did when he told them what they were doing to each other in the room, “Take a peek at Nat with Miss Beak” or “L'Amour Schnoz” or “the blimp.” Maybe her folks thought this was the only way she was going to get a guy. That's what he thought then. But they didn't look or seem dumb. Father was a doctor, mother an interior designer and both were always reading something when he went into the living room to say hello or waved when he left: news magazines, books, professional journals, big thick newspapers,