We Five (35 page)

Maggie had nearly convinced herself to take a look when there came a knock at the door. She hesitated. She peeled up one corner of the blackout paper that covered the front window. Through the exposed glass she got a sideways view of the front step…and the man standing upon it. It was Jerry Castle, the person in all the kingdom she least desired to see again.

“I've come to apologise,” said Jerry to the door.

“I'm over here at the window,” Maggie shouted through the glass, her lips all but pressed against the spot where she'd turned up the gummy paper. “Apologise to me over here at the window and then pop off.”

Jerry wheeled round to address the windowpane. “I'm sorry I behaved so abominably. I am an abominable person and deserve to be removed from your life forever. I am without any hope of redemption. Accept this apology and I'll be on my way.”

“Apology accepted. Now go.”

“I'm going to enlist.”

“You're making a list? What list?”

“No. To
enlist
. In the army.”

“Oh. Well. Take care of yourself. Cheers.”

“I will. Cheers.”

Jerry started down the flag walk just as the air raid siren began to blare. He halted and looked up into the sky. Overhead, the silver-grey barrage balloons drooped in limp silhouette, the conical searchlights that would soon animate them not yet switched to full power.

Maggie looked at him for a moment through the spot where she'd pulled the paper away and where the light from inside seemed, she thought, to be escaping with such brilliance as to target her house for a made-to-order bomb drop from an approaching Heinkel or Messerschmitt.

Then she went to the door. Reluctantly, she opened it. “Come inside. We'll go round back and you can wait out the raid in my Anderson.”

Jerry nodded and followed Maggie through the empty house and out to the backyard. “Where's your mother?”

Maggie spoke to Jerry over her shoulder. “It's a sad but interesting story. You know part of it already. We'll have plenty of time for me to tell you the rest once we put ourselves beneath the corrugated.”

This particular air raid lasted over an hour. With the bombs falling frightfully close and the two feeling that copping it right then and there was a palpable possibility, Jerry took Maggie in his arms and held her closely and protectively. Maggie didn't resist. She had, like Jerry, become a helpless victim to the peril of their circumstances. She was frightened. She was also exhilarated.

Soon Jerry was kissing Maggie and undressing her with ravenous paws. Maggie forgave him for every hateful, stupid, boorish thing he'd said, and even forgave his participation in “the game,” for which he blamed Tom Katz, who “had a way of forcing people to do things that were against their generally good natures.” And whereas Pat and Molly had been like two adolescents, exploring one another with tender and curious innocence; and whereas Will and Carrie had delighted at the Hammersmith Palais in all the possibilities inherent in “that which could very well be”; and whereas Ruth and Cain had melded minds and joined their two hearts to the extent that their settled penchants permitted them; and whereas Jane had submitted to a seduction that was less seduction and more a brutal conquest of body, mind, and spirit; Maggie and Jerry found in their present situation the opportunity for union of a different species, enhanced by an aphrodisiac of immense potency. They reeled over the possibility that the climax of their spirited animalistic coupling might be death itself in the form of either an advertent or inadvertent gift from Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering.

It did not end thusly but it
did
end with feelings of receding rapture that Maggie would have been hard-pressed to describe in words.

No. Maggie hadn't danced a dervish with the devil, but there was still the distinct smell of cordite and sulphur in the air.

And it made her wonder…

“Where are my panties?”

“Is that them hanging on that rake?”

“That isn't a rake. It's a yard broom.”

Jerry was sitting on an upturned wheelbarrow. He was enjoying the scene of a totally naked Maggie Barton searching the tool shed for all the clothes she had flung off before having impromptu, devil-may-care sex with him. “I'm kind of out of my, um, element,” said Jerry teasingly. “I've never had sex in a tool shed before.”

“Well, neither have I. In fact, I've never had sex
anywhere
before
.
That is, if you don't count the times my sick bastard incestor father put his hands inside my underwear.” Maggie stepped into her panties. “How can you just sit there naked and freezing your ass off?”

“I'm not cold. I think you really got my blood to flowing.”

“Yes. I can see one spot where it's
still
flowing.”

Jerry looked down. “Oh yeah.” Maggie handed Jerry his undershirt. “Thanks. Is that why your mom kicked your dad out?”

“That and the fact that he clipped his toenails in front of the television and ate whole boxes of Cheetos while sitting on the toilet. Would you
please
get dressed so we can go inside and get warmed up? Are these your underpants?”

“Nope. Not mine.”

“
What
?”

“I'm kidding. You seem to have a healthy attitude for somebody whose father did that to her.”

“Oh, you think so?” Maggie pulled her blouse over her head. “I was a virgin until this very afternoon. That's right, Mr. Castle. I lost my virginity in that thunderstorm. And the other half of my dirty little secret is that I'd been thinking about going the rest of my life without sex until you had to go and look so sexy in the rain.”

“You looked pretty sexy yourself. You looked like you were in a wet T-shirt contest.” Jerry jumped up and started to get dressed.

“I
knew
you weren't really an asshole,” teased Maggie.

Jerry smiled. “Oh I'm an asshole, all right. But every now and then I like to take a little vacation.”

“I'm glad you took your little vacation with me. I'm not ashamed of what we did. I've been very tense lately and very depressed. I really needed this.” Maggie, fully dressed now, busied herself by folding up the tarpaulin she'd thrown down on the shed floor. “I know I'm acting like my father didn't mess me up big time. He actually did. I was really afraid of boys all through junior high and high school. And that just carried over into adulthood. The whole idea of sex scared me to death. I went through a long period of time worrying that if I let a guy do it with me, he might accidentally pee inside of me.”

“I'm not sure that's possible.”

“
I
didn't know that. I didn't know anything, except that sometimes fathers come into their little girls' rooms and do things you're not supposed to tell anybody about.” Maggie chuckled to herself. “Of course, I wasn't one of those little girls who did what they're supposed to do. I went straight to my mother and told her everything. Maybe this is why I put up with all her weirdness. She
believed me
—just when I really needed her to. She sent him packing that very night. From what I understand, most mothers in situations like that would become like the ‘Queen of Denial.'”

“I don't know why we put on these wet clothes. We should have just run into the house naked and then thrown everything in the dryer.”

Maggie shook her head. “Not a good idea to go streaking across the backyard in the middle of the day. I have nosy neighbors, and you never know when somebody might be looking over the fence. Didn't you put
your
nosy nose over that fence looking for
me
about an hour ago?”

Jerry nodded. “Let's go inside and get naked again and put all these clothes in the dryer.”

“I like it when you aren't acting like a dick. Can you keep on not acting like a dick for a little while longer?”

“Okay.”

Maggie and Jerry went inside through the back door off the patio. The second they opened the door, they heard voices. Turning the corner from the mud/laundry room into the kitchen, they saw Clara Barton and Lucille Mobry sitting at the kitchen table. The room was filled with the smell of freshly brewed coffee.

“There you are!” Clara cried.

“Don't hug me. I'm all wet.”

“It looks like the two of you got caught in that thunderstorm,” said Lucille. “I nearly did, but luckily your mother had come home and she gave me shelter. Isn't this nice, Maggie? Your mother's come home.”

“Are you okay, Mama?”

“I'm fine, honey.”

“Oh, this is Jerry. He works at the casino. Well, he
worked
at the casino; they fired him today.”

“Yes,” said Clara, going over to the coffeemaker. “Lucille was telling me all about it.”

“Who told
you
?” asked Jerry of Lucille.

“Ruth.” Lucille gave Jerry a strange look.

“You're really dripping, honey,” said Clara, looking her daughter up and down. “Go upstairs and put on some warm, dry clothes. Jerry, follow Maggie up and grab some of my husband's old clothes to wear while we dry yours. I'm sorry you lost your job, but I'm sure you'll find another one you'll like even better.”

Maggie started from the room and then stopped. “Mama, did you find Michael?”

“I found him. I can't tell anybody where he is and that includes you, but I found him. He's thinking about giving himself up, but he wants me to call the assistant district attorney's office first and find out what kind of charges he's looking at.”

“Well, the charge would be murder, wouldn't it, Mama?”

“But the question is if he could plea out for manslaughter.”

“It wasn't an accident, Mama.”

“But he wasn't in his right mind, honey, and I know in my heart that he didn't set out to pitch that poor boy out the window.”

“We don't set out to do a lot of things we end up doing,” said Jerry philosophically. Then he and Maggie left the kitchen.

After they were out of earshot, Clara said to Lucille, “Don't say it. I don't want to hear it.”

“Say what?”

“That those boys are bad eggs. I know they're bad eggs.” Clara put a steaming cup in front of Lucille. “I should make more coffee. You look pale, honey. Are you cold?”

Lucille shook her head. “Ruth said the girls weren't having anything else to do with them, but then Maggie walks in with this one.”

“Maggie has a forgiving nature,” said Clara. “You'd
have
to, to have lived with
me
all these years. Lucille, I don't like that look on your face. Tell me what's going on. We've all been dealt enough shit over the last several days. Please just tell me something else hasn't just happened.”

“Maybe nothing's happened.”

“For God's sake, Lucille, just say it.”

Lucille nodded. She spoke slowly, choosing her words carefully. “Your son—the one you gave away—his name is Jerry. I mean, that's the name his adoptive family gave him.”

Clara's eyes widened. “Are you saying there's a chance the boy upstairs is mine?”

“Ruth said his name is Castle. That isn't Caster. It's very similar, but it isn't the same.”

“You're right. And this is Bellevenue, and where did Herb say the family moved to?”

“Little Rock. It could just be a coincidence.”

Clara sat down slowly. “I did see something in his eyes that reminded me of John.” Clara shook it off. “This is silly. We'll just ask him.
Maggie, you and Jerry come downstairs. We need to ask you something
.”

Clara got up. She went to the coffeemaker again. Neither woman spoke to the other. A sepulchral silence fell over the room. It was broken by the sound of Maggie and Jerry clumping down the wooden stairs in the other part of the house. Maggie entered the kitchen carrying a plastic laundry basket filled with their wet clothes. She was dressed casually in a pink sweatshirt and jeans. Jerry was wearing clothes that had belonged to Maggie's father, which Clara had never bothered to throw out: an old Memphis State Tigers T-shirt and frayed khakis. He had slick-combed his wet hair back the way John Barton used to when he and Clara had first started dating in college. Clara suppressed a gasp. Lucille, who remembered John from the old days, looked as if she'd just seen a ghost.

“Your last name, Jerry,” said Clara steadily. “Has it always been Castle?”

Jerry shook his head. “It used to be Caster. But I hated it. I changed it.”

Clara grabbed the edge of the table. “I have to ask the two of you something,” Clara went on, now anything but emotionally steady. “You have to be very honest with me. Are you having sex?”

Maggie shrieked. “
Mama
!”

“I have to know.”

“You
don't
have to know. And you
certainly
don't have to know right in front of Jerry and Ms. Mobr—”

“She
does
have to know,” interrupted Lucille. “It's very important. Tell us if the two of you are sleeping together.”

As Maggie hedged, Jerry stepped in. “Yes, we had sex. One time. An hour ago. Out in the tool shed.”

Clara and Lucille exchanged bug-eyed looks of almost comic-book horror. Picking up on this, Jerry made his case: “I'm sure you've heard about the game by now, but the game's over. You have my word. Mags and I—we did it because we wanted to.
I
wanted to.
She
wanted to. She's white and over twenty-one as they say, and she can do whatever she wants to with her own body, so maybe we can all just drop it, okay?”

Maggie gave her mother a cold stare. “What is
wrong
with you—I mean, what is wrong with you
today
?”

“Maggie—Oh God. Maggie, Maggie—Oh my dear God.”