I was tired, and so was Marti, and we were almost asleep when a big old thunderstorm came booming in, filling the room with flashes of bright light. “I’m a little scared of storms,” she said. “If I take your hand, you won’t break out in hair and go for my throat or anything, will you?”
“When there’s a thunderstorm on,” I said, “I can’t see the moon anyway.”
So we fell asleep holding hands. If married couples got to do this all the time, shit if I could understand how there were ever divorces, or even fights.
PART SIX
(Monday, September 10, 1973)
24
The Long End of the Stick Isn’t So Hot Either
THE DOOR BOOMED.
I opened my eyes to see it was five fifteen just after I jumped out of bed with a yell, because I thought it was one of Mom’s crazy boyfriends coming upstairs to beat me up because Mom was mad at me.
I remembered where I was in about half a second. We had set the alarm for five forty-five, so we could slip out before anyone saw us—the bedroom lamp came on, and I looked back to see Marti sitting up, clutching a sheet around herself. I turned back to the door and shouted, “What!”
“Police. Open up.”
“We have to get some clothes on,” I said, not thinking very clearly.
Behind me, Marti was scrambling to get into hers. I dove for my T-shirt and jeans.
But I hadn’t put the chain on, so Marilyn just used her key to unlock the door, and a whole parade came through—first Marilyn in her dyed-black beehive, dumpy brown dress, and sensible shoes, hand to her mouth, looking perfectly like a cartoon of a middle-aged lady being shocked. Then Officer Williams, Lightsburg’s family court officer, a big man with a heavy black mustache, his level gaze appraising everything in an instant—two kids frantically putting clothes on, one bed with covers flung all over.
Behind them came Mom, and Mrs. Nielsen, both of whom had that hard-set mother-jaw that means: “You have embarrassed me.”
And behind all of that, looking like the most embarrassed guy in the world, which he couldn’t possibly be, since I was right there, was Mom’s Wonderful Bill.
Mrs. Nielsen shrieked first. “Oh my god, oh honey, what did that boy
do
to you?”
Marti blinked. “Mom, we—”
Mrs. Nielsen and Marilyn had rushed to her like she was bleeding to death and they were trying to win the International Special Tourniquet Award. “Did he hurt you? Did he leave marks? Oh honey—”
“Now
just
a minute,” Mom said. “Just a damn
minute.
Karl would
never
—”
“How fast can we get a pregnancy test?” Mrs. Nielsen demanded.
Officer Williams opened his mouth but didn’t seem to have anything to say, maybe trying to decide which craziness to deal with first. Just as he seemed to settle on Mrs. Nielsen, Marilyn asked, “Can the Carrellsen Hotel get into legal trouble about this? I don’t think it’s fair if we can get in trouble for people doing things like this.”
Williams froze again. I don’t know how they let a guy like that be a cop; what would he do in the middle of a bank robbery?
I looked away—really looking for anything besides two raging moms, one beehived old church lady, a bewildered old cop, and a bum-bin hotel room. Bill was standing halfway in the door—the room was a little big for the crowd and he couldn’t quite get in past Williams’s broad, lardy back. Bill was wearing big old tire-tread sandals, chinos that looked like they’d been fished out of the laundry basket, an untucked Mud Hens T-shirt with holes in the belly, and one of those silly patch-on-the-elbows corduroy jackets. He looked so disheveled and out of it that the pathetic stupid fisherman’s cap, perched on the back of his head like a lost pancake, sort of helped by at least hiding some of the mess of his hair.
Out of nowhere he gave me this funny little sideways smile and a wink.
I didn’t know what the fuck he meant, but it did make me feel better, come to admit it.
Meanwhile, everyone else except Marti had gotten into yelling at each other, trying to settle whether I was a rapist psycho, or Marti was an out-of-control little slut who lured me here to give me VD and trap me into a loveless marriage with a baby that probably wasn’t even mine. At least I think that’s what the two mothers were saying, trying to shout over each other, and over Marilyn, and over Williams asking them to calm down.
At first I thought they were drunk. Then I realized Mrs. Nielsen had what Mom called a “slamover,” a sleepless hangover that you get by sobering up while staying up all night. And Mom—I didn’t know. She just looked sick for some reason.
It was kind of hard to keep it all straight with both of them going at the same time, and Marilyn asking if the hotel was in trouble and helpfully suggesting that all of us ought to be tested for drugs. All three of them were pretty much drowning out Officer Williams, who seemed to be trying to get them to just come at him one at a time.
Finally Williams’s patience wore out just as Mom and Mrs. Nielsen paused for breath, which left Marilyn pointing out that all this was probably because of
drugs
, if you just
look
ed at the
peop
le in
volv
ed, and Williams lost it and barked
“Shut up!”
at her, kind of loud.
She got an expression like he’d just given her ten million volts across the nipples, and her face started folding and crumpling like a soggy paper towel in a campfire, and it was like you could see poor old Williams brace himself for half a second before Marilyn let loose with a wail like she just saw her kitten go under a tire. She flumped down on the bed and just sobbed, because it all wasn’t fair, the Carrellsen was going to be
closed
because of this, she
knew
it, and she’d
lose her job
and it was all because some people couldn’t keep their kids away from
drugs
. Her beehive was kind of working its way loose, shaking more and more as she talked and sobbed, and it looked like in no time it would be all down around her face.
Williams sat down next to her, and patted her arm, and told her everything would be fine, the Carrellsen and her job would survive, really, and she should just go on down to the desk, he’d handle everything and it would all work out.
She sniffled once, then fled like her butt was on fire; her cheeks were streaked with makeup and eye shadow avalanches and the beehive was more like a squirrel nest.
Williams looked a little at loss for words.
Bill said, “Look, I’m just the chauffeur here, but I think somebody ought to ask and give them a chance to just tell us. Did you kids have sex?”
“No!” Marti and I both said, pretty loud.
At least that seemed to surprise Mom and Mrs. Nielsen. Williams opened his mouth again, but Bill rolled on. “And did you come here to have sex?”
“No,” I said.
“We were locked out and we needed somewhere to sleep, sir,” Marti said, in that stubborn-sincere way that seemed to drive Gratz apeshit (but I could tell Bill believed her).
“
You
weren’t locked out, Karl,” Mom said. She didn’t sound happy. She was on probation for marijuana possession, and locking your kid out, unless they were violent, was a crime.
“I
thought
I was locked out, Mom, I was
sure
I would be.”
She stared at me, and I realized her confusion was real. “Karl, I’ve been out looking for you for most of the night. And Rose has been looking for Marti. Bill was driving us around. I was
worried
.”
That was so weird—Mom worrying about what was happening when I was out—that she and I just kind of stared at each other for a second while the weirdness washed over us.
“I want to go to the hospital,” Mrs. Nielsen announced.
I swear I was still so freaked-out that for one crazy second I wondered if she was sick.
Unfortunately she wasn’t. I mean, not that it would have been fortunate if she’d been sick or anything like that. I mean, she didn’t want to go to the hospital for herself. “We’ve got to find out what this creepy little boy did to Martinella right now,” she said, arms folded across her chest. “That’s all there is to it. You’re not going to railroad me with any small-town bullshit, Officer, we are going to make sure the truth comes out. Martinella is going straight to the hospital for a pregnancy test and a VD test and whatever kind of whatever else they can do for her.”
“Uh, ma’am,” Officer Williams said, “neither one of those tests would show anything right now, if she just now got pregnant or infected. I guess if we test them both we can find out whether either one could have infected the other—”
“He could not have gotten it from Martinella! He could not! We are just going to test to see whether she got it from this—this—”
“If you are going to be that way about it, Rose,” Mom said, with a voice that would freeze vodka solid, “then I think Karl had
better
be tested for VD. You never know what he might have gotten off a girl like that.”
“Fine!”
Mrs. Nielsen was pretty loud; I felt sorry for anyone trying to sleep. For a second there I thought we might get to see our moms brawling on the floor. But instead they seemed to agree on something while communicating entirely by glare. All of a sudden we had grabbed up our few things, and Mrs. Nielsen took Marti’s car, Bill took Mom in his car, and Williams took me and Marti in the oinkmobile. “Probably it will be better if you two don’t communicate, officially,” he said. “But was what you said true, you didn’t have sex, you were just sleeping, and didn’t want to put dirty clothes back on?”
“We didn’t have sex, we didn’t plan to have sex, we just needed a place to sleep,” I said.
“Martinella?”
“Same thing,” she said. “Christ, my mother is embarrassing.”
Williams sighed. “She’s upset and terrified and you’re gonna have to take care of her. She thinks she’s a complete failure because of this, you know.”
That kind of killed the conversation for the next three miles as we rumbled onto the interstate and out through the cornfields. It was the same time of day I was used to being out with Browning, gray-white sky that would be blue as soon as it got more light, sun crawling up over the distant tree line, but I wasn’t getting paid for this one.
After a while Williams said, “So, Karl, no drugs?”
“No.”
“Drinking?”
“No, really, we just needed to sleep some—”
“Who killed Squid’s rabbit?”
“I did,” I said. “Everybody knows that.” Then I realized what a cheap trick that was, and didn’t care, because obviously I’d passed the test. I’m sure old Williams thought he was the cleverest son of a bitch of a pig old Lightsburg had ever produced, but if he was willing to believe us because of it, I guess he was welcome to think he was Sherlock Fucking Holmes.
He was nodding. “You’re acting like a kid who isn’t lying. Keep that up and we can probably get you through all this bullshit okay. You do the same, Martinella, and this can just be a mildly unpleasant day or two.”
“All right,” she said.
It was grayish dawn with the sun just coming up when we turned into the driveway for the emergency room at Gist County Hospital in Vinville. There was no one waiting this morning.
Marti’s mom was already there, having captured a very embarrassed young doctor. “All right, now I want both of them tested,” she barked, in a tone I wouldn’t use on a bad waiter.
“Ma’am,” he said, “now that everyone is here, let me just repeat, a pregnancy test is useless right now. The tests we do here don’t even
start
to mean anything until about a week after a missed period, and for the new tests we still need to wait at least two weeks and then send a urine sample to the lab in North Carolina. This is just going to be money down the—”
“Money!” Mrs. Nielsen got madder, which I wouldn’t have thought was possible. “This is the care of my daughter we are talking about! I want a pregnancy test and right now. My husband has good insurance, he’s an important scientist and a professor. This is the kind of thing we
have
insurance for. Give her whatever the best test is—give her the expensive one. And I want her tested and treated for VD.
That
is what she was with,” she said, pointing at me.
Bill had had Mom by the elbow and been talking to her quietly, but now she shook him off and said, “You go right ahead and do that, Rose Lee Nielsen.”
I had a feeling old Rose was no longer a super super lady.
Williams stepped between them. We all watched Marti, her mother, and the doctor disappear down the white, fluorescent-lit corridor. When he could see they were all out of earshot, Williams said, “Look, Mrs. Shoemaker, I think we can trust your son and the girl, they really didn’t have sex, and there’s really no reason for him to have that test or—”
“I don’t care,” Mom said. “If that bitch is going to talk about my son like that, and call him a liar and say he raped that ugly little zit-face girl—”
“Mom, Marti is my friend—”
“Karl, don’t argue, I mean it. If that bitch, who just got to this town a month ago, is going to say that kind of crap about my son—I mean, a
Shoemaker
—well, then
we’re
going to act just like he was with a whore.”
“Uh,” Bill said, “I think what Officer Williams is trying to tell you is that the test is pretty uncomfortable and if we—” He stopped because she was glaring at him. “Karl,” he said, “I am sure Officer Williams will say it’s up to you, and I have to tell you—”
“You don’t have to tell him anything. He’s taking the test.” It was so weird to see Mom so angry and not yelling, just hissing everything through a clenched jaw. I hadn’t seen that since Dad died.
“Mom,” I said, “I really wasn’t with anyone, but if it’ll keep the peace, I’ll have the test.”
Williams and Bill both seemed to shrug, like they’d tried, and then Mom and me filled out the forms and they led me back to a little room. They told me this was something Mom wouldn’t want to see.