Tietam Brown (10 page)

What kind of gift could she give that I'd love? Anything, actually, as long as it was from her. But what could she possibly want in return? Something I'd had all of my life? That narrowed it down, because I didn't have much. Except for old Nat, and surely . . . Oh no, that must be it, she wanted my Nat King Cole, and as much as I liked her, or loved her, I guess, that album was more than an album to me. It was . . .

The door slowly opened, and Terri appeared, her wet auburn locks framing her face. Gone was the blood along with her makeup. And she shone with a beauty so natural and clean that I surely knew if she asked me for Nat I'd give it up quick, with no questions asked.

And the shirt she wore. Just a white long-sleeved shirt, but man it looked good. Unbuttoned down so I could just barely see a hint of ripe cleavage.

She sat on the bed so her bare legs touched mine, which I wished right away were not covered with jeans.

“Did you read it?” she said, and pointed her finger to the last paragraph, the one with the riddle.

“Yes, yes I did.”

“And what did you think?”

“Um well, I'm not sure I get it.”

She then placed the finger a little bit up and said, “How 'bout this?”

“What?”

“Did you read it?”

“I did.”

“And what did you think?”

My eyes focused in on the words by her finger, and my heart nearly dropped when the words got through to my brain. I opened my mouth to speak, but those eleven words, and the thought required to analyze them and make some small sense, was almost too much for me. I couldn't be asked to think and then speak at the same time. It was sensory overload. So when I opened my mouth, not a whole lot came out. Just “Uuughh, ughhhmuh.”

“Andy.”

“Uughh.”

“Andy.”

Her hand, which had been in the harmless upper-knee area, had just swept to the right, and was now bordering on dangerous inner-thigh territory.

“Yes.”

“Read it to me.”

“Read it?”

“Yes, read it to me . . . please.”

I took a deep breath. Hoped for some strength and read. “I'm just a girl that wants to be kissed. By him.”

“Andy?”

“Yes?”

“I am.”

“You are? . . . What?”

“Just a girl . . . that wants to be—”

And then I was kissing her. A magic moment in time. When my body just acted, paying no heed to my mind. A kiss of such sweetness. I had to do it again. And my lips met hers, and pressed firmly ahead, and I opened my mouth, just ever so slightly, and our tongues gently touched, and performed a small dance, until her tongue won out and entered my mouth. In an instant, I knew, all my practice had paid off. I had kissed Terri and I knew . . . I . . . Was . . . Good.

She withdrew her tongue and pressed her forehead to mine, until our eyelashes touched. Kept it that way, then jokingly said, “See, that wasn't so bad,” and then, “Andy, lay down.”

She took hold of my hand and gently pushed on my chest, easing me down on her tiny soft bed. With a sweep of her arm, she scattered stuffed animals, until just she and I were finally alone.

She straddled my torso and leaned slowly down, so that her small hint of cleavage came springing to life. I caught just a glimpse as she lowered her lips and bathed my wounded eye with her kisses. The swelling was huge but it hurt not a bit, her soft tender kisses were life's best medicine.

Then she pulled back her hair and kissed at my neck, her tongue gently darting as she made her way to the place where an ear had once been. My cringe was involuntary, slight but still there, and she read the thoughts of my body and put them at ease. “It's all right now, Andy,” she whispered into that stub, then she kissed it so gently while I softly whimpered. And then she rose in a wet blur of auburn and a swell of soft cleavage.

“Terri,” I said, in a voice so soft it sounded distant.

“Yes, Andy Brown.”

“This is the best.”

“The best what, Andy Brown?”

“The best . . . day of my life.”

“Andy?”

“Yes.”

“It's about to get better.”

And with that my eyes grew as, one at a time, button by button, the cloth slowly gave way. And then the shirt parted and I just about died. “Oh Jesus Christ.” It just burst forth from my lips, the words out of my mouth before I could think that maybe her room wasn't the appropriate place for that particular expression.

But Terri just smiled, and she looked down at me, then looked at her cross and put her hand on my mouth.

“Shh, shh,” she whispered, then said, “I think it's okay with him if it's okay with you.”

“Are you sure?” I said, and she nodded her head.

“Andy, does this feel wrong to you?”

“No, to tell you the truth, it feels pretty good.”

“It feels good to me, too.” She paused, then said, “I want you to touch me.”

“Touch you, touch you where?”

She took hold of my hand and, guiding the way, made an arc for her breast. And then there was contact.

“Oh Jesus Christ.” In a chemical reaction that seemed inconceivable, in a period of time that can only be described as instantaneous, my whole body shook. My voice made little gasps, and my face made expressions that I wouldn't want to see on video for a million dollars. Like that (snap of the fingers) I was done. All that planning, all that practice, all down the drain.

I then took on that look that all of us get. That look that we get at the exact moment that great pleasure runs smack-dab into even greater humiliation.

I looked up at Terri, who was smiling at me. A real smile, too, not just an “I'd better smile so he doesn't feel even worse” smile.

She reached down and kissed my eye, my nose, my forehead. “It's okay, it's okay,” she said.

“Are you sure?” I asked, my vulnerability at a peak that mankind may never come remotely close to again.

“No, it's not okay,” she said. My heart sank. Then she laughed. “It's better than okay. It means you really like me . . . don't you?” Then, before I could answer, she told me, “Come here,” and with a wave of her finger brought me up from my back so I sat up on the bed. “Come here,” she said again, and she eased my face into her bare breasts, and she rocked me like a child and placed kisses on my head. And those breasts, which only moments earlier had induced such a spasm, suddenly became the safest place in the world.

She drove me home at ten-fifteen. After having treated me to dinner at Friendly's and a showing of
Pee-wee's Big Adventure
at the previously unthinkable Seven Valley Twelve. No one died in this movie, and even if it didn't offer the emotional wallop of Rambo's “love us as much as we love it” closer, it was nice to see a movie without the soft-drink residue of a previous generation sticking to my soles.

No, on that night, the stickiness was right where it belonged, in my underwear, which I would later wad up and put in my small box of keepsakes as a rather odd souvenir of the most horrifying five seconds of my romantic career.

There in the darkness of the Seven Valley Twelve, life seemed to be pretty good: an ice pack on my face, a huge shiner on my eye, a hand inside my own, a warmth in my heart, and a load in my shorts.

“Andy, when am I going to meet your father?” Terri asked as she pulled into my drive. I had to think about how best to approach this subject. Honesty, as usual, was the policy I went with.

“Probably not tonight,” I said.

“How come?”

I looked at my dad's silhouette in the window, moving up and down, up and down.

“How come?” Terri repeated.

“Because he's exercising naked in the living room.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Wow.” She paused. “I thought my father was the only one who did that.” She burst out laughing, and I did too, although the idea of her father's middle-aged balls would come back to haunt me at a later date in a most inappropriate fashion.

“Good night, Terri,” I said, and leaned over to kiss her, taking the initiative for the first time in our relationship.

She leaned back, away from the kiss, and extended her arm instead and said, “Let's just shake on it, Andy.” A pause, and then another burst of laughter, followed by a meeting of lips. “Good night, Andy . . . you keep ice on that eye.”

I walked into the house and tried to keep my right eye out of view, and started climbing the stairs. “Hi, Dad, good night,” I said, wishing just a little that my swollen, closed eye was facing him so I wouldn't have to see his penis brushing the shag carpet with each descent of his push-ups.

“Hold on, Andy,” he said with a voice that, judging by the slight slurring, seemed to have become acquainted with about its twelfth beer of the evening. “Eight, nine, ten.”

“Okay, Dad.” I stopped, but stayed in my surreptitious stance.

My dad stood up from his push-up position and cracked open another Genny. Sweat was pouring off his body, but he wasn't breathing heavily in the least. I looked at his deck, saw that only two or three cards remained, and silently dreaded the encore performance that was sure to make its presence felt through the Sheetrock between us.

“All right Andy, tell me why you're so late . . . and hey, tell me about your report . . . I'll bet it was the only one that told it like it really was, huh?”

“Yeah, I think it was, Dad. My teacher was really, um, moved by it.”

“Great, great,” my dad said, “but hey, why so late?”

“Uh, I went to the movies with Terri.”

“Oh yeah?” he said in just such a way that I instinctively knew he had a follow-up question lined up. And I knew what it was. “You get any?”

I tried to get away without an answer.

“Come on, did you? You can tell your father anything.”

“Maybe just a little.”

“Hey, that's great,” he said, acting, I guessed, as some dads would when their kids get accepted to Harvard.

“Thanks, Dad.”

“How much did you get?” he said, and I felt my face flush at the mere mention of this whole scenario.

Without really thinking, I turned just a bit, and my father took in the dramatic change in my face.

“Holy shit!” Tietam yelled out. “What the hell happened to you?”

“Just a fight at school, Dad, no big deal.”

“A fight? A fight with who?” Tietam asked as he stepped forward to inspect the damage.

“Well, I uh, I uh, read my report in class and the teacher—”

“That son of a bitch!” Tietam yelled. “That son of a bitch! I'm gonna settle this, Andy, goddammit, I'm gonna settle this.”

Settling this, I was pretty sure, did not seem to involve a mature and educated debate on the Emancipation Proclamation, but a physical confrontation that would be a mistake of epic proportions. Mr. Hanrahan had already left his mark on Antietam Brown number five. I didn't think adding number four to his collection was something I wanted to be part of. So I tried to stop it.

“Dad, please, he—”

“Not now, Andy, not now. What's his name, Andy, what's his name?”

“Mr. Hanrahan, Dad.”

“Hanrahan, huh, Hanrahan?” my dad said as he found the telephone book and started tearing through it. “Haggerty, Handlelong, Hanrahan, there it is. Hanrahan, H. 272 Quaker Path. Son of a bitch!”

“But Dad,” I pleaded, “this guy is huge.” Hanrahan had to have had a hundred pounds on my dad, and deck of cards or no deck of cards, my father was going to get his ass handed to him. Apparently, he didn't think so.

“That's all right,” he said, grabbing the car keys off the mantel.

“He played in the NFL.”

Tietam stopped short and looked me in the eye, all semblance of wildness suddenly gone, replaced by the calmest of looks. “Even better,” was all he said.

“But Dad,” I yelled after him as he headed out the door, “you can't go . . . you're naked.”

He stopped and turned around. I hoped that he'd come to his senses, or at least come for his trousers. Instead he opened the door, still nude and still calm, and said, “Give me your pants and tell Mrs. Baskin upstairs that she'd better not wait.”

Mrs. Baskin upstairs? Mrs. Baskin? As in Clem Baskin's mother? My dad was nailing Clem Baskin's mother? I laughed to myself and gave him my pants, momentarily oblivious to the fact that my father was embarking on a suicide mission. After he left I walked up the stairs in my history-making underwear. Put on sweatpants and knocked on the door next to mine. “Excuse me, Mrs. Baskin.”

“Southern boy, is that you?”

Holy crap! She was the blonde with the red dress. The blonde with the red dress was Clem Baskin's mom. The one who had stuck her tongue in my mouth, who had let me listen to her put on a show. The one who had licked my father's ass. Suddenly I understood, if not completely agreed with, my father's philosophy. I now owned Clem Baskin by proxy, because his mother had licked my father's ass. I had the power.

“Yes ma'am, it's me. Um, my dad had to leave, and he said not to wait for him.”

“Is that so?” she said, trying to sound defiant but instead sounding merely jilted.

“Yes ma'am.”

“Southern boy?”

“Yes ma'am.”

“Call me Amanda.”

“Yes ma'am, Amanda.”

“Southern boy?”

“Yes m—Amanda?”

“Would you come in here please.”

My heart pounded fast. Pounded, yes, because Clem Baskin's mother the ass-licker was requesting my presence, but pounded more so because my father's room was off limits.

“Amanda, I don't think that I should.”

“Just for a minute,” she said. “Promise. I won't bite.”