A varsity team would have stayed to mock and prod the fallen schoolmate, but the JVs, probably still unsure about just what they could get away with, ran off giggling.
Burt Moppett slowly sat up and touched his scalp gingerly, checking for blood or knots. He gathered up his books and records, stood, looked at his naked wrist as though it wore a watch, then picked up his bunch of bananas and examined them for bruises and rents.
“Burt!”
Brenda waved to him and smiled with unconscious venery. He came over.
“You girls know what time it is?”
He towered. Maybe it was his enviable height the mostly shorter ballplayers had been attacking. Burt had one ordinary hand, and one large,
knotty, coral-like fretting hand, with which he picked up the impervious milk carton. He tore it open with his teeth, which were small and white behind the curtain of the forty or so long black whiskers that constituted his moustache.
“Fifth period's almost done,” said Brenda.
“Are you coming to see us next week, my greatest fan?” he said, handing the milk back to Brenda. “We're playing at Wolford's. Your song's ready.”
“Mmm. Maybe.”
From under the rich, clover-honey blond bangs of her pageboy, Brenda watched Burt.
“You're Libby, right?” said Burt, who Livia noticed was deliberately not looking at the pillowy contours of her yellow blouse, an article, chosen for this hoped-for occasion, whose buttons were spaced such that if Livia effected a specific posture, the hems would part, allowing a glimpse of brassiere. Livia effected the posture.
“Hi. Right.”
“Yeah,” said Burt, peeling a banana. “I think I know your momma. From Braunschweiger's S&L, right? I drop by there to trade in dollar bills for small change for work. I work at Centennial Liquors by UT after school. She's really pretty.”
“Oh. Thanks. Yeah.”
Livia, in order to give Burt a chance at a full assessment of herself, turned her attention toward Brenda for a moment. Then she looked up at him, catching him mid-ogle. It was as polite and gentlemanly as an ogle could get.
Burt smiled. A tiny fragment of brown milk-carton cardboard was stuck between his two front teeth. His chin-holes curtsied pleasantly.
“You look a lot like your mom,” he said. He nibbled on his banana lengthwise, like corn on the cob.
To drag Burt's attention back to herself, Brenda sat up and thrust out her own unignorable bosom, which Burt did not ignore. A bell rang.
“Right on. I'll see you next week. My greatest fan. Fan
s
, I should say.”
Brenda poured the rest of the chocolate milk into her mouth and briefly swished it around before noisily swallowing.
“I guess I'll try to make it,” said Livia, yawning like a sinkhole. “I'll tell Mère Durant I can't take her bowling.”
Brenda said nothing. She wadded up the carton, tossed it onto the table, picked up her books, and disappeared down a hallway lined with trophy cases.
After school, Livia went home.
Charlotte and Mère Durant were teamed up against their friends, Nance and Bull Wheeler, at Charlotte's pinochle table.
Pretty much everyone knew the Wheelers in one way or another. Nance was well known for her philanthropic work, and for being a good friend of Ladybird's, and Bull one knew either from a card game, an air show, a polling station, Longhorns baseball, a fistfight, or as dean of UT Law, one of the grandest seats of civic power one can hold without being publicly elected, at least in Austin. Nance and Bull had nine children. Livia suspected that her mother had possibly slept with Bull, mainly because he was the only person Charlotte acted indifferent toward. Livia also suspected that Nance knew this.
“Mère,” said Livia.
“Not now. I'm at labor.”
“Can I skip taking you to bowling on Tuesday?”
The Wheelers looked up at Livia. Then at Charlotte, and finally at Mère Durant.
“Pooh,” said Mère, slapping a jack of spades onto the table.
“You will take your grandmother bowling,” said Charlotte. “She hasn't missed a league night in⦠how long?”
Bull picked up the jack of spades and held it close to his face, as if to authenticate it. “This is a goddam jack of spades, Nance.”
“Put it down, it's not your turn,” said Nance.
“But I have to go to Brenda's,” said Livia. “She's learning cotangent.”
“Go, then, teach your sister, so that she may one day sunder the masculine grip on the sciences,” said Mère, who, given her magnanimity, must have been winning. “Your mother will take me to Saengerrunde.”
“Will I?” said Charlotte.
“You will. You will regard it as a penalty for playing that jack.”
“Thank you, Mère,” said Livia, who turned to head into the kitchen to make a pimiento cheese sandwich. She stopped and turned back around. “Oh, Mother? I forgot to tell youâmy friend at school, Burt? Burt Moppett? He said to say hi.”
Now everyone turned to regard Livia.
“Who?” said Charlotte.
“Ooh, a boyfriend?” said Nance, who was deeply fascinated by relationships, especially the extreme details in the history of Charlotte's and Lou's.
“What man is not a vicious clown, show him to me!” shouted Mère, waggling a queen of diamonds at Livia.
Mère often claimed she'd never met a man she liked, or trusted, except for her husband, Big Red, who had deserted her by falling into a tower silo and drowning in sorghum only four months after Charlotte was born. Charlotte and Mère had lived together alone until Lou came along and got Charlotte pregnant at twelve. Later that year Charlotte had Livia, and the three of themâgrandmother, daughter, granddaughterâmoved to Austin to live in their matriarchal outpost, governed by Mère and as such impermeable to males, especially Lou, whom she pronounced a demon and public enemy number one. Charlotte had told Livia in private, more than once, that Lou was the only man she'd ever loved.
“To encumber and flee is the duty of the male,” said Mère, her upper lip sweating tiny dots of outrage.
“Burt Moppett,” said Livia. “He has a group. He comes into the bank after school?”
“Is he sweet to you always?” said Nance, ignoring pinochle for the moment.
“Nance,” said Bull, throwing up his hands, “leave the young lady alone, pick up your cards, and continue to play pinochle.”
“Hmm,” said Charlotte, scratching her chin lightly with the tip of her little finger. “Not sure⦔
“Chin scars,” said Livia.
“Oh, sure,” said Charlotte. “I know who you mean. Polite. Nice boy. Sugar, bring me a Coors.”
“Durant women will forever bludgeon ourselves with the hardened members of absent men,” said Mère, waving her arms, which exposed her cards. “All but my dear old Big Red.”
“I might be home kind of late,” said Livia, bringing Charlotte an olive can of Coors.
“Will you be tutoring your friend Burt Moffett, too?” said Charlotte, obviously trying to get a look at Mère's cards as she waved them around.
“Ooh!” said Nance. She was ignoring pinochle, and following the conversation with raccoon-like focus.
Mère stood up. “How can we be both sun and shadow to the patriarchy?”
“Moppett,” said Livia, ignoring Mère. “No, just me and Brenda.”
Livia smiled and nudged her mother. They sometimes told each other about crushes and encounters. Charlotte blushed and fanned herself in a Southern-belle kind of way. Mère paced in tight circles, pulling on the chain of her reading glasses so it bit into the skin on the back of her neck.
Mère pointed at Livia, apparently trying to produce lightning with her fingertip.
“There is no tutoring to be done, siren, I know, I see. Go to your Burt-man. Go. He shall be to you as Belial was to her.”
“Thanks Momma, thanks Mère, bye,” said Livia, deciding she'd skip the cheese sandwich and go right to her room to plan an outfit that would make Burt fall in love with her instead of Brenda.
On Tuesday after school, Brenda and Livia raced home to the Lathers' house, locked themselves in Brenda's room, a converted garage separate from the house, cued up a well-worn 13
th
Floor Elevators record, turned it up loud, and began experimenting with Burt-transfixing ensembles. Brenda was meticulous and thorough: it took her three hours to decide on a pair of panties, an unremarkable knicker-fabric garment as loose and pretty as a diaper, which she claimed was an ideal mix of utility, facility, comfort, and did not say,
Rip us off her body she'll screw anything,
a message she was sure would repel an artistic gentleman like Burt Moppett.
“I have lots of
those
kinds of panties,” said Brenda, removing her diaper-panty for final ironing and perfuming. “I'll save the yank-em-offs for next year's freshman football squad.”
Livia had brought her outfit along in a grocery bag, planning to wait till Brenda was fully dolled, powdered, and painted before she put on her own. Livia had been successful the past few days in keeping up the appearance of a friend and collaborator rather than a rival and backstabber, but when her turn came to squeeze into her own outfit, she was sure Brenda would catch on. She wanted Brenda to see, and not to see, how sexy she could be.
“The main thing is the bed, Liv,” Brenda said, explaining what to expect at the show, while wiggling out of a heavily reinforced beige brassiere that was designed to remold the breasts into mortar rounds. “Really, what do you think of when you think of a bed?”
Brenda told Livia that while performing Burt liked to lie fully clothed on a king-size bed that he would share with as many and whichever female groupies cared to be there, a number limited only by space and the groupies' mutual tolerance; usually four.
“Uh, sleep?” said Livia, lying back on Brenda's bed, watching her snap, with one hand and no mirror, a drum-tight bra that looked to be made of snowy billiard-table felt. Brenda, by admission and repute, had had a great deal of sex in this bed, and in lots of others besides. Livia could understand this: Brenda had a nifty figure, looked a good bit like Ann-Margret, and could, without notice, for anyone she chose, unfetter a smile that seemed to welcome, promise, and forbid all at once.
“Sex.”
Brenda popped out of her felt bra and tossed it over her shoulder, found another of the same color but silken, lacy, and roomier, and strapped herself in.
I have the better bosom, thought Livia, who was wearing a featureless underwire from Bealls.
And
the better pubic area. Brenda's seemed a tad balding, its sparse hairs sallying too far into space.
“Sex. Yeah. Hey, shouldn't we get going?”
“Eeeeee!” screeched Brenda, ripping off the latest experiment in bosom support. After a moment she pulled on a black T-shirt. “Who needs a bra in bed? Hey, get dressed, we're late.”
It took Livia all of ten minutes to dress in a yellow miniskirt and sleeveless white blouse (a composition whose assembly required a day's hooky and a secret Saturday drive to Neiman's in Dallas in Charlotte's car), brush her hair some more, lay on some blush and lipstick, curl her eyelashes, and slip on a pair of wedgy orange platforms that caused her calves to subtly tumesce and cleave in a way that unhinged her granny and clabbered her mother's usually sweet camaraderie.
“Say, you look great,” said Brenda, when Livia finally turned to pose.
“Thank you.”
Brenda smiled.
The smile said: I see what kind of friend you are. I've had friends like you. If there was time I'd change into an outfit that would make you look like Pig Pen. Later, after the show, I will squash you.
They didn't get to the Ye Moppe Hedds show until an hour after it started. Brenda had to “talk” privately with Krug, the fry cook, before he'd let them sneak through.
Inside, Wolford's proved so dark and crowded that they got separated almost immediately. Livia soon found herself crushed against a sticky wall near the back of the club, a not-cold can of Pearl beer pinned between her collarbone and the adze-like scapula of a tall, oily man in a leather vest. As uncomfortable as she was, she was happy to be able to watch Burt Moppett without worrying how far along Brenda was in her seduction.
Onstage Burt was lying in a big bed, as described. An adjustable microphone stuck out of the headboard. A large mirror suspended at an angle over the stage gave the audience a bird's-eye view of the goings-on in the bed, and Burt a view of his adoring duchy. Burt was performing “Ye Cube of Happy Sugar,” a ballad Livia recognized from Brenda's rendition. Four groupies, two lying on either side of him, leisurely undulated to the fuzzy rhythm. The crowd rocked from side to side.
Jerry, the organist, Gary, the bass player, and Larry, the drummer, did not have beds but rather stood or sat in the proximate shadows, artfully backing up Burt's charisma without intruding on it. Livia could just make out their nodding, backlit heads.