Everyone but You (30 page)

Father Bastian nodded. He rocked back and forth slightly, as
if he were considering the merits of Aggie’s statement. He ran a gloved hand over his face. “And does Sister Agatha inspire
you
to such adoration, Morty?”

“I guess,” Morty said. “In her own way.”

“Well, I love the snow days, myself,” Father Bastian replied, looking around in an amused, thoughtful way. “As for school tomorrow, I’ll put in a word upstairs. But the nuns hold a lot of sway up there, too, and if Sister Agatha has it in mind to read from
The Canterbury Tales
tomorrow, I doubt even the heavens could stop her.”

W
HEN THEY ARRIVED
at what the students at Our Lady of Perpetual Misery referred to as Camel Toe Hill, with its dimpled impression at the peak, Aggie didn’t want to be bothered with Morty at all. She ran off when she saw her two best friends, the two Marias. They stood by the cemetery wall, talking. Both were blond and stocky, though one Maria now had breasts that Morty fantasized about grabbing whenever she walked by him. “Brand new,” Morty heard Aggie say, and he caught the gist again of state-of-the-art engineering.

The snow pounded down, obliterating the line between the earth and sky. Morty climbed the hill. He headed toward the long line of trees that stretched over the hillcrest, interrupting the monotonous whiteness. He could barely make out the blurred shapes of other students as they ran in the distance. He heard muffled shouts, taunts, laughter. There were at least twenty students from Our Lady who hurtled down the hill, screaming as they whizzed by and veered off in various directions, toward the right, where the hill leveled out in a benign way, or toward the left, where the slope was steeper and the path
longer, the walk back up the hill backbreaking and where, on the way down, you’d have to maneuver over several moguls before stalling out at the cemetery wall that rose between the convent and the rectory.

When he reached the summit, Morty blinked hard. He studied the terrain, trying to figure out how to best execute his run. Eric Brumble and John Warner called to him from the woods. When Morty turned, he saw them marching out of the brush. They were both flushed. Eric wore a peacoat and high boots. He punched at the air in a playful, defiant way. John followed, his face so obscured by a scarf that only his glasses were visible. Both grabbed the sleds they had abandoned under the tree. “I got bets on getting down first,” Eric yelled, and he hopped on his racer. John followed suit, as did Morty. He cut a new path. The cold punched Morty as he picked up speed. The wind tunneled through his coat. He lowered his head to shield his face from the ice. Halfway down the hill he veered left, toward the cemetery wall. He hit one good bump, and two, and three. The sled lifted in the air, came down hard. He veered left again, toward the grassy area where icy yellow stalks pushed through the snow and cushioned his sled’s speed. Victorious, Eric was already waiting at the bottom. John followed behind both boys. “I knew I’d win!” Eric exclaimed. “Beat your asses.”

“Head start,” Morty said. “Rematch!” Breathless, they ran up the hill and then raced down again. After more than an hour passed, Eric, bored and exhausted from the climb, started a snowball fight that sent all three boys scattering into the woods. They pummeled one another’s backs and legs. They hit tree trunks. The wind loosened the snow from the branches and sent it swirling down around them.

Finally, Eric said, “Come on, Morty. There’s more to do than this. I’ve got something for you to see.”

“Show him, Eric,” John said.

“I’ll show him,” Eric said, motioning. He led the way along a trail already thick with footprints. He snapped low twigs and branches. When they reached a dense area of brush, Eric pulled out a
Playboy
that he had stuffed inside his jacket. The pages were damp and wrinkled from the snow. John pushed his glasses higher on his nose and smacked his mittened hands together. Eric paged through the magazine, while Morty and John huddled close, staring at photographs of naked women. “Holy shit!” John mused. “I’d do that one.”

“Hell, yeah,” Eric agreed. He pointed out those women he thought had perfect bodies, and Morty, his heart racing, his cheeks flushed in an embarrassed way, agreed. The boys discussed
melons
and
puckers
and
fun bags
,
bare pussies
and
hairy monsters
. “I can’t wait to do it,” Eric said, though Morty sensed it would be a long time coming. He shivered, balled his fingers together for warmth. He noticed the snow, dirtied from his boots.

“Look at that one!” John exclaimed, stopping Eric’s paging. “Oh yeah, I’d do that.”

“Me, too,” Morty said, though he was beginning to feel ashamed, dirty, even, like he did in gym class when all the boys measured themselves to see whose pecker was the longest. There were some things that were best left to the privacy of one’s bedroom, he thought, and he wondered if, when he returned home, he should say a rosary or pray to the statue of the Holy Family that he had stored in the closet after his mother’s funeral. His mother would be so disappointed in him if she could see him now, gawking over these women. Once, last year, when his
jiggling off had begun in all its complicated rigor, she’d found some nude photographs that Morty had printed off the Web. “Morty,” she’d said disappointedly. His mother was a modest woman, all in all, and she was sensitive about things pertaining to sex. She sat down on the edge of his bed and held the pages he’d printed. To his embarrassment, she leafed through them, and then she looked out the window for a long time and was silent. “I’ll have to talk to your father about this when he gets back from his trip,” she said finally. But before such a discussion could occur, she and Morty were in the accident—the icy roads, the metal guardrail. Thinking about this and studying the
Playboy
, something came over Morty unexpectedly, something confusing and sad.

“How about her, Morty?” Eric asked. He licked his lips suggestively.

“Ah, they aren’t that great,” Morty told him. “I’ve seen better.”

“Sure you have,” Eric said.

“Sure,” John chimed in. “Whatever,
Mort-y.
”

“I’d whack off to this brunette,” Eric added. “Hey, bet I could get off faster than either of you could, to this hot tamale right here.”

“I’d get off faster,” John says. “My pecker is bigger than yours.”

“The hell it is,” Eric replied.

“Well, I’m not freezing my pecker off,” Morty said. He wanted to leave. “My hands are numb. I’m heading home.”

“Suit yourself,” John told him.

“Wuss,” Eric called.

Morty flipped them the bird and walked through the woods. He was thinking about the photographs, of course, and desperately
wishing his erection away. When he reached the clearing and grabbed his sled, Aggie Tuft was there, standing, surveying the hill. The two Marias were gone. Morty called to her and she turned and waved him on.

“I was wondering where you were,” she said. She pushed away hair that whipped in her face and hopped onto her sled. She sat, cross-legged, before catapulting herself forward. “Can’t catch me, Morty!”

Morty ran after her, set his sled down, and leapt onto his racer. The waxed blades caught in the icy snow at first but quickly gained speed. He propelled himself toward Aggie. He thought, fleetingly, that her sled wasn’t so fast, not as fast as his old wooden one. There was something about it all that thrilled him—the snow whipping about, the cold air, the knowledge that somewhere ahead of him Aggie was there, at first a blur against the whiteness but then gradually sharper in his line of vision as he neared, her red beret, her checkered coat.

Morty felt, at this point, not a terrible tension in his arms and legs but only the cold wind, the blades atop the ice. He gained more speed and approached Aggie’s right. She turned. A flash of nervous, excited energy came across her face. He thought, I’ve got you now, and Aggie yelled to her own sled, “Faster, faster, faster.” He reached out and pushed her, hard, as he might push Eric or John when they roughhoused. Her sled wobbled, and, off balance, she hit a mogul hard before she veered left again, not toward the grassy area at all. Her sled seemed to fly in the air and Aggie moved faster and faster, until it was obvious to Morty that she wouldn’t be able to steer away from the cemetery wall, and he imagined the unevenness of the wall and the unyielding quality of it, and how he couldn’t do anything to save Aggie from hitting the wall, hitting it hard,
slamming into it and catapulting forward. Aggie was blurry again by now, lost in the whiteness, her dark hair whipping around her. Her red beret flew from her head as she disappeared over a bumpy crest, and then Morty heard her scream. He raced past the beret, and he swore for a moment it was a puddle of blood, blood and not wool, and that if he touched it, it wouldn’t be soft, but warm and tacky. His muscles tensed. He felt as if his heart might explode in his chest. His eyes welled up, though Morty was a boy who seldom cried.

When he reached the bottom of the hill, he crawled to a stop. He dismounted and ran, breathless, to where Aggie was lying on the ground. Snow dusted her dark hair, making her appear suddenly older. A few feet away, her sled had smashed into the wall and now was upright, pushed against it. The remaining children from Our Lady were off at some distance—he could hear them somewhere in the swirls of whiteness, but when he went to call out for help, his mouth was too dry for him to yell. He fell to his knees. He pushed Aggie’s shoulder. “Get up,” he said, softly, lifting her arm, but it was heavy and fell as soon as he released it. He waited and felt his jaw tighten, and then he yelled again, “Get up!”

For a moment, everything seemed muted by the snow, except for his heart, which thumped wildly. He was aware of his shallow breath. His hand rested on Aggie. Her eyes suddenly flew open. She turned her head and laughed. She moved her legs in an amused way, writhing on the ground. “What a ride!” she yipped. She held her stomach. “Holy! I wiped out. I wiped out hard. I’ve never wiped out!”

Morty got up and spit on the ground. “That wasn’t funny,” he yelled. He clenched his fists.

Still laughing, but less so now, Aggie sat up. “Oh,
Morty
,” she
said. “But it
was
fun! I’ve never gone so fast. I beat you down the hill! I won!”

“You did that on purpose,” he said. “To make me think—”

“Me?
You
almost killed me, pushing me like that!” She paused suddenly when Morty began to cry. She stood up and bit her bottom lip. “Morty?”

Morty was too flabbergasted to respond. He spit on the ground again. He wiped his face with his sleeve. His entire body was shaking.

Aggie brushed snow from her jeans and coat before coming closer to him. She looked around, but there was only whiteness, and children somewhere off in the distance, laughing, unaware of what had happened. She stared at Morty in an earnest way. “No one saw,” she said. Then, before he realized what was about to happen, before he could think to say anything, Aggie stepped so close to him he could smell her strawberry shampoo. She kissed him on the mouth. Her lips were cold and soft and she kept them pressed to his. His heart swelled, and it was as if everything in that moment were perfect, every fear soothed, every hurt alleviated, every burden lifted. He felt light, deliriously happy. He wanted the kiss to last forever.

When Aggie stepped back, she smiled shyly, and Morty put his sleeve to his mouth. He watched as Aggie retrieved her sled and then ran to find her hat. She glanced back. “I’m sorry, Morty,” she said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

M
ORTY WALKED HOME
, mindful of cars that moved slowly along the icy streets. There was so much he wanted to say, so much he wanted to talk about. How foolish he felt now, thinking of accidents and seeing blood. It wasn’t like that day with his
mother, the day Morty had cracked a joke and she’d turned her head at the wrong moment. It wasn’t like that day at all. Nothing bad had happened. Aggie kissed him, and the kiss was wonderful. Was God behind that, too?

At the house, he took off his boots and left them next to his father’s on the porch. Inside, he hung up his coat. In the living room, he found his father sleeping upright on the couch. Generally, after Morty Sr. had said his own personal contrition and after half the bottle of Jack was gone, he fell blissfully asleep each night. Morty pried the bottle from his father’s hand and replaced the cap before returning it to the kitchen cupboard, next to the glasses. “Dad,” he said, going back, nudging his father. He sat down next to him. “Are you okay?”

His father opened his eyes slightly and yawned. “Oh, Morty,” he said. “You’re such a good kid.”

“Hard day?”

“The hardest.”

“Because of the snow? Because of Mom?”

“Not now, Morty,” his father said. He patted Morty’s thigh.

“Dad,” he said finally, “can we talk?”

“Tomorrow,” his father said, drifting more. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

Morty thought his father might say more but there was nothing else, just the dinging sound from the television game show on television.

He found the hoagie his father had made for him in the refrigerator, along with pop and chips, but he felt too sick to eat, and too confused to jiggle off again. He envisioned Aggie lying in the snow and then opening her eyes to look at him. He thought of the kiss again, and his chest tightened. After a while, Morty slipped on his coat and went back outside.

It was dark now, and colder, though the snow had stopped and the sky appeared clear and black, the moon low and full. Morty walked the ten blocks back toward the school, taking the same streets he did before, passing the duplexes and homes with lanterns and lit windows, the silhouettes of people sometimes visible through the curtains. He wondered about each house, what each was like inside. At Aggie Tuft’s house, he stopped and looked for movement inside. One room to the side of the house was lit, and he imagined Aggie and her mother were having a late dinner—possibly her father was there, too, possibly Aggie was talking about the day. Would Aggie mention the kiss? Or was she sitting there, quietly, thinking about Morty, keeping the thrill of the secret close? Was it her first kiss? he wondered. After she pulled her lips from his, after she stepped back, she appeared prettier than Morty ever had imagined, and it was like his mother once said about love—that love can make everything seem perfect