Keepers (11 page)

“Actually,” she said, slipping her arms around my neck, “I am.
Very
happy. Because I love you, too.”

Earlier, when I said the first kiss Beth gave me that day was the one against which all others would be compared and come up lacking...I was wrong. The kiss she gave me at that moment, a kiss just as soft and warm and deep and long and moist as the first, but this time with the hint of hunger on the tip of its tongue and a
heat
around it that you experience once and once only in your life if you’re lucky, because it’s a heat that burns into the core of your heart and tells you that this is
it
, kiddo, run for cover, this is the Real Thing, Taking No Prisoners, give it up, you’re doomed, because Love has just kicked your teeth down your throat, ain’t it grand?—
this
kiss was the one whose summer taste and autumn passion would linger on my lips for all the rest of my days.

When she pulled away—not taking her arms from around my neck—we both let out a long, hot, staggered breath. She pressed her forehead against mine and stroked the back of my neck, swallowing once before saying, “Oh,
my
,” ending that second word on a smoothly descending note of embarrassed laughter that snuggled down in the back of her throat and wrapped itself up in something like a purr; I could almost feel her voice with my fingertips.

“Just wait until I’m legal, huh?”

“Oh, I think we passed the ‘waiting’ part about thirty seconds ago.” She lifted her head and looked into my eyes again. “Before I picked you up today, I rented a hotel room downtown. Can I take you there? Can we leave right now?”

“What are your friends going to think?”

“I don’t care. If they’re my friends, they’ll see in you everything I see. They’ll accept you or they won’t stay my friends.” She kissed me again. When had my pants gotten so much smaller? They’d fit just fine when I’d put them on this morning.

“You were right here, all the time,” she whispered in my ear. “I’m sorry it took me so long to figure it out.”

“But...I’m
seventeen
and you’re—”

“I know how old I am, thank you. What’s it matter? I love you. You’re not just my best friend anymore, kiddo. You’re everything that I didn’t know I always wanted. You’re my soul-mate, you dumb dildo. I
love
you.”

“‘Dumb dildo’? Oh, be still my heart. And you owe me another buck.”

“Is that the best you can do?”

“No—I love you, too.” I felt like my bones were going to dissolve from the want of her.

“Are you happy right now? Right here?”

I smiled. “You’re kidding, right? The girl I’ve been in love with all my life just told me that she feels the same way, lays one of the greatest kisses in the history of history itself on me, and finishes up by informing me that she’s taking me to a hotel to divest me of the burden of my virginity—”

“—oh, I
knew
you were still a virgin. You have any idea how
hot
that is?—”

“—and you ask if I’m
happy
? Jack Lemmon was
happy
when he won the Oscar for
Save the Tiger
—fantastic movie, by the way; the troops in Vietnam were
happy
when Nixon finally came to his senses and ordered everyone to get the hell out and come home; and I’m sure that John Travolta is
happy
that people don’t think of him as just another Sweat-Hog anymore after
Saturday Night Fever
, but
this?
The way I feel right now? I’d have to swallow a whole bottle of downers to reach just
happy
.
There isn’t a word yet for how fantastic I’m feeling.”

“So you’re saying yes, you
are
happy?”

“Something along those lines, yes.”

Now it was her turn to smile; a slow, knowing, slightly naughty smile. “Oh, you’re gonna
be happier. A
lot
happier. In about half an hour or so,
right now
is going to seem downright dull to you.”

She nailed that one. Then me. Four times. She’d bought two boxes of condoms (three to a pack, and we still called them “rubbers”)
and bet me a year’s worth of back-rubs that I couldn’t last through one box. I made it all the way through the first one from the
second
box before she and I didn’t so much fall asleep as pass out. I say this not to boast (c’mon, I was seventeen and a virgin; most days I was so horny the crack of dawn wasn’t safe) but to give you some idea of how gloriously
unhinged
the whole experience was. It was romantic and primal, awkward and embarrassing, spectacular and funny, life-affirming and depressing as hell, always surprising (she did things with me I didn’t think two bodies were capable of doing, even with lubricants), and even a little...mystifying. We fell out of bed laughing, we got a little mushy, a lot dirty, very sweaty, and ultimately so sore neither of us walked very fast or very straight for a day or two afterward.

So, yeah; I was happy.

After that day, things between us only got better.

Both of us were stunned by this. In most cases when sex enters into a friendship, the friendship goes straight down the tubes; Beth and I only grew closer. For the next three years we were nearly inseparable; everything she said or did was new to me, because I was seeing them for the first time as the
guy she loved
, not just her best friend. And for some reason I didn’t understand but also wouldn’t question, she never tired of my company, my voice, or my body. She and I became
us
, and remained
us
even when we weren’t together. There was nothing we wouldn’t do for each other.

She
did
lose some friends over being with me, but she honestly didn’t care. “You know what it is? We’re all skidding down the off-ramp toward thirty, and here I am with this hot young stud. They’re stuck with guys their own age who aren’t as energetic as they used to be, and they see the way my cheeks are always flushed and my eyes have this constant, satiated
gleam
.”

“So they’re jealous that you have a boy-toy, is that it?”

“‘
Boy-toy
’? That’s a new one. Where’d you hear it?”

“Some actress on
The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson
.”

“You are
not
a toy, all right? I’m not playing around here. You are
it
for me. You—what? What’s that look for?”

“I’m still trying to fathom the words
hot young stud
. Somehow hearing them used in reference to me seems like a contradiction. Or evidence that you need glasses.”

“Still in love with me, kiddo?” She held out a dollar.

I reached out to take it. “More and more each second of every day.”

“
Good
answer,” she said, snatching it back at the last moment and laying back against the pillows on the couch. “You may now claim the Grand Prize behind Door Number Three.”

Mom was nuts about Beth; Dad actually
spoke
to her when she came by, which from him was the highest seal of approval, sober or not. Mabel was beside herself when Beth and I told her about our being together. “I
knew
it,” she said. “That first night she brought you over for dinner, I knew you’d grow up to be the guy for my Elizabeth. Does that sound weird or maybe a little sick? Saying that I knew a nine-year-old kid was the one she was destined to be with? Ah, screw it if it does. The timing could have been a lot worse than just a seven-year difference. You two could’ve been born forty or fifty years apart and never found each other. You’re so very lucky. Hey—maybe some of that luck’ll rub off on me, huh? That’d be nice....”

One night at dinner Dad remarked that Beth seemed like a decent girl and I should count myself lucky to have found her. Then he looked across the table at Mom and smiled, and my mother actually blushed.

I was stunned. For as long as I could remember, they’d never displayed any tenderness or affection for one another in front of me—as far as I cared to imagine, they’d never displayed any in private, either. They were Just Mom and Dad, the people who raised me and paid for my clothes and put a roof over my head and sent me to school and never missed a chance to remind me that everything I had was because of them. I knew that parents were just like any other couple, that there was love and affection and all of that, but these were
my
folks, for the love of God.
My
folks never talked about anything like this—hell, the only time anything more than the day’s trivialities were ever brought up was when Dad was on a drunk and shouting at the top of his lungs about the bills or the condition of the house or how the goddamn company was going to fuck over the union with the next contract.

But this little flirtatious display over the meatloaf...this was just
weird
. It made me nervous. And a little queasy.

Later—I guess it must have been two or two-thirty in the morning—I woke up with one of those middle-of-the-night cases of dry-mouth that make you think you’re going to die within seconds if you don’t get something to drink
right now
, and went downstairs to get a glass of juice from the fridge. The living room was dark as I passed by but it
felt
like someone was in there. Probably Dad. Again. They’d been screwing with his hours at the plant and, as a result, he hadn’t gotten back on anything close to a normal sleeping schedule yet. Most nights he’d toss and turn for hours until he woke Mom, who’d make him come down here and do his tossing and turning on the sofa. He was usually cranky as hell whenever this happened, so I walked very softly and decided not to turn on the kitchen lights. I drank my juice, quietly rinsed out the glass and set it in the sink, and was starting back toward the stairs when I heard Dad say, in a voice so tired and sad it froze me where I stood: “Did I ever tell you that when I was a kid, I wanted to raise chickens for a living?”

I couldn’t have been more anxious if I’d run into an armed burglar. Talks between Dad and me never ended well—one of us always wound up accusing the other of being too pushy or disrespectful or whatever—and the idea of getting into it with him at this hour, especially considering how upset he sounded, made me cringe.

Then I heard Mom reply: “Only about a hundred times, hon. But if you want to talk about it again, go ahead.”

When had she come down? I would have heard her—the steps squeaked and groaned like something out of a haunted house movie. I was surprised that Dad hadn’t lit into me about making so much noise coming down here.

Then it occurred to me that maybe the two of them had been sitting in there the whole time since I’d gone to bed, that maybe Dad was genuinely upset about something other than the usual list of complaints and Mom, to keep the peace, had decided to sit in there and let him talk it out, however long it took.

Something in their respective tones baffled me; they were talking to one another not as my parents, but as a husband and wife.

I realized then that, until the incident at dinner tonight, I’d never actually thought of them as being that way—husband and wife—only Mom and Dad. It was kind of fascinating, and in my best What-the-Hell-Are-You-Doing skulk, I crept out of the kitchen and hid myself in the shadows on the stairway. They couldn’t see me here, I was pretty sure, but I had a clear view of their silhouettes against the window, whose curtain glowed a dull blue against the diffuse street light trying to sneak in from outside.

Mom was sitting in her chair next to the fireplace and Dad was on the old leather ottoman that should have been put out of its misery years ago. He was leaning forward, elbows on knees, holding his pipe in one hand. If the curtains had been open, he would have been staring out the window, but I knew he’d just been sitting there staring at the curtains as if imagining something really interesting on the other side. I’d seen him do this too many times to count. I always wondered what he thought about as he sat in the dark staring at a set of closed curtains. Why not just open the damn things? At least the view of the street
might
change if a car or dog or neighbor wandered by.

“You gonna tell me what’s bothering you?” asked Mom.

“It’s stupid.”

“Not if it’s got you like this, it isn’t.”

Dad fired up his pipe, then pointed toward where I was hiding with its glowing red bowl. “He must think I’m some kind of asshole.”

“I don’t think he feels that way. He maybe doesn’t understand you, but he doesn’t think ill of you.”

“What about you?”

“You’re my husband and I love you.”

“C’mon. I’m not drunk so I’m not gonna throw a fit—
answer the question
.”

“I think you act like a real bastard when you’ve been drinking—but it doesn’t
make
you a bastard. That’s something you really have to work at.”

Dad chuckled, puffing on his pipe. Even from where I was hiding, I could smell the sweet cherry-flavored tobacco.

“Think he’ll remember much about us after we’re gone?”

Mom pulled in a little gasp of air, then said: “Don’t you go talking like that. We may not be as young as we used to be, but I’m not shopping for burial plots just yet.”

“That’s because you don’t have to, remember? We paid for them damn things—what was it?—ten, fifteen years ago?”

“Oh.”

“
Oh
, she says.” He shook his head. “Think a person’d remember something like that.”

Mom adjusted her position in the chair. “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong or not?”

Dad puffed on his pipe again, then wiped the back of his arm over his face. “I told you, it’s stupid.”

“How about you let me decide that for myself?”

He looked straight at her. “It’s just, I been thinkin’ about when I was a kid, how I’d always get a whole dime once a month to go spend however I wanted. Shit, I had seven different paper routes I worked, and I handed every penny over to Mom so she could buy groceries and pay the bills—”

“—I remember the Depression, hon. We’re the same age, as I recall.”