Boy Toy (23 page)

"This project," Dad said, bringing me back to the moment. "This project of hers is taking a hell of a long time, isn't it?"

I opened my mouth to answer, terrified that I was going to throw up instead.

Mom rescued me. "The project's been over for
weeks,
Bill."

"Then why's he over there all the time?"

She rolled her eyes. "He's helping her with school stuff. Making bulletin boards, grading papers..."

"Grading
papers?
" Dad didn't believe it. Neither did I. Of course, I had the added benefit of knowing that it wasn't true.

"She teaches a sixth grade history class, too. He can grade those. They're just true-false. She gives him an answer key." She laughed lightly. "For God's sake, Bill, stop worrying. I talk to the woman every week. Everything's fine."

Mom looked over at me. "Josh? Are you OK?"

I think I'd gone pale the minute Mom said that she talked to Eve every week. My mouth didn't work; my voice wouldn't come.

"Josh?"

I said the first thing that came to mind: "I have to pee."

Dad grunted. Mom gave me her most exasperated look. "Well, for—Go to the bathroom, then! What are you waiting for, an engraved invitation?"

I scrambled up from my chair. "Honestly," I heard Mom say as I left the kitchen, "if I hadn't seen the IQ scores myself, sometimes I would wonder..."

"He seems distracted..." Dad's voice faded as I closed the bathroom door behind me.

I looked in the mirror. My face screamed, "I've been lying to you and I've been kissing Eve and I've been having sex and I've been FUCKING." I don't know how they could have missed it. They must have been complete idiots.

"Of course I've been talking to your mother," Eve said the next day on the way to the apartment. "Did you think she was just clueless and didn't notice how much time you've been spending at my apartment?"

Well, yeah, I had, to tell the truth. Still, I was mad. How could Eve let me get caught off-guard like that? What if my mom ... What if she...

I don't know what, actually. But if Mom was talking to Eve,
something
could have happened.

"I'm still trying to come up with a way for us to have a whole day together, honey. I have to be friends with your mom, don't you see? So that we can keep playing together." She stole glances at me as she talked; I sat there with my arms folded over my chest and stared out the windshield.

"Oh, honey, don't be angry." She put her hand on my leg and I shook it off.

"Talking to my mother ... It's like I'm a baby or something."

"Honey, I know you're not a baby. You
know
I know that. Don't be angry. We only have two hours today—George is coming home at his usual time."

"I don't care."

"I'm going to make this up to you," she promised. "You'll see."

At the apartment, she told me to wait while she went into the bedroom. After a few minutes, she came and strutted down the hallway toward me on heels. She was wearing a kind of bra and stockings I'd never seen before, festooned with straps and bands of color, something complicated and almost not there at all.

"Now," she said, standing before me, towering over me on her heels, "I'll make it up to you." She took my hand and led me into the bedroom.

Later, we lay together on the bed, each trying to catch our breath.

"You know what I like about us, Josh?"

"What?" I gasped.

"Our names. We both have biblical names. Did you notice that?" She turned her head to me and kissed my heaving shoulder. "You're Joshua. Strong. My king. And me...

"I'm Eve. The first woman." She snuggled close to me. "
Your
first woman."

I forgave her.

As baseball season started, Eve became more and more obsessed with figuring out a way for us to have an entire day—and, she said sometimes, an entire night—together. I could have told my mom I was spending the night at Zik's house, but Mom didn't really like Mr. and Mrs. Lorenz (then again, Zik and I didn't like them, either), so she would have asked a lot of questions and probably called over there once or twice just to check up on me.

The first game of the season, I went 2 for 3 and fielded three outs at shortstop. I had an RBI when I went for a double on a long drive into center left. Dad was at the game, but Mom had to work late, so she missed it.

I was surprised when I saw Eve on the third-base line, sitting in a fold-out lawn chair behind a group of parents. When I was hit to third, she winked at me, then pretended she was watching the rest of the game.

After the game, she came up to me—right in front of Dad!—hugged me, and congratulated me on such a great game.

If Dad noticed the look of terror I was sure had pounced on my face, he didn't let on. He offered her his right hand; she shook it with her free one. "Bill Mendel," Dad said.

"Evelyn Sherman. We actually met at parent-teacher con ferences last year," she reminded him. "But that was a while ago, and I'm not very memorable."

Who was she kidding? She was wearing a light yellow tank top that I'd never seen before and a little pleated skirt along with sandals that showed off—yes—electric blue toenails. Her black hair was tied back in a ponytail, sunglasses pushed up on her head. She was smiling broadly, her dimple out in full force.

"Of course," Dad said. "Of course. Josh speaks highly of you."

Huh? I never talked about Eve.

"Well, he's just a delight in class," she said. "And such a great helper, too!"

"I'm glad he's making productive use of his time."

I coughed. Productive use! How could he not tell? My God! Her standing there with her arm around me...! It took every ounce of willpower in my body to resist leaning into her and pressing against her like I usually did. My knees were so locked in place that I thought I might faint. I couldn't figure out how no one could tell what was going on between us. But people just milled around as if nothing had happened, nothing would happen.

"You know, my nephew's on the rec center team," Eve said, "and their schedule mirrors the school's. So if you and Jenna are ever too busy, I can always bring Josh home for you."

"That's nice of you. Thanks."

It was like Eve had multiple personalities or something. She could talk to my dad as if she were really nothing more than my teacher, all the while angling to get me back to her apartment on a regular basis. I was impressed, despite my fear that simply standing next to her would reveal the truth to the world.

I also knew that she didn't have a nephew.

"Well, I've got to get going. It was good seeing you again." She shook Dad's hand again and disengaged from me. "Bye, Josh. See you in school tomorrow."

I couldn't speak. I finally grunted, "Bye."

"Sorry," Dad said. "He's been quiet lately. Is he like that in school?"

Eve looked right at me, her green eyes seeming to take me over, commandeer my soul. "No," she said, smiling cheerfully, innocently, her voice light and airy while her eyes plumbed my skull. "He's very different around me."

My thirteenth birthday was a Friday. Mom and Dad said I was too old for a big party with lots of people, so I invited Zik to spend the night instead. Of course, I went home with Eve first, and we celebrated in our own way. She gave me a card that said "I love you," but didn't sign it. I read it as we lay in bed together.

"I can't sign it if you take it home with you," she said. "If your parents see it, tell them that you found it in your locker and it must be from a secret admirer."

Eve was happy because she'd finally figured out how to get us more time together. In two weeks, my team had an away game on a Saturday afternoon. Eve was going to come to the game and, just before we got on the bus to come back home, tell the coach that she'd gotten a call from my parents on her cell phone—there was an emergency and no one would be able to pick me up at the school when the bus dropped me off. Eve would volunteer to take me home. She knew the coach (he was our phys ed teacher), so she knew she could pull it off. Meanwhile, she had already told my parents that she was going to be working at school on that Saturday, so she would be more than happy to bring me home for them.

In reality, of course, we would be heading straight for a hotel room she'd already booked. We would get back to Brookdale late that night—she planned to call Mom and Dad and tell them that her car broke down on the way back and we were waiting for a tow truck. She was positively giddy about her plan.

So my birthday came. "Lucky thirteen," Dad said. "Oh, Bill," Mom said. That night, while my parents and Zik slept, I crept out of my room and swiped the cordless from the kitchen. I took it out on the back porch, where you could still get a signal, and I called Eve. Her voice mail picked up. I don't know what made me do it, but I said, "Hi, it's Josh. I can't wait for two Saturdays from now." I had her card in my hand, and looking at it filled me with an empty want for her. "I love you," I said, and hung up.

And four days later, I went to Rachel's birthday party.

And she spun a bottle.

And we went into the closet.

And that was the beginning and the end of it all.

Rachel peers at me in the gloomy morning dark. According to my watch, it's 3:14 and SAMMPark is a mass of shadows, a thousand different shades of gray all commingling in the murk, broken up by the light of the moon.

Zik's freshman season batting average was .314. He went 33 for 105, with 10 walks and 34 strikeouts. A woman with measurements 33-105-34 would look mighty strange.

"I didn't know any of that," Rachel says softly. We've been sitting on the grass midway between the diamond and the gate for hours, and my ass is numb. Hers must be too, because she stands and stretches, her legs wide apart. Touches her toes a couple of times. "I mean, once you mentioned it, I remembered that Christmas at the construction site. But I didn't know
any
of that."

"It was in the papers."

"Not the details. Not that stuff. It just said that she abused you and then she confessed, and—"

"And within a week, her whole confession was on a website because someone in the county courthouse thought they were doing the world a favor by leaking it. Don't tell me you never read the confession."

She stops midstretch, her body contorted, her face twisted to match. "Fine, then. I won't tell you."

And then she yawns.

"Sorry to bore you." It comes out snide and mean and shitty, and I wish I could say that it's a mistake, but it's not. In that moment, I want to hurt Rachel and I don't know why. Maybe because I told her things I swore I'd never tell anyone. Maybe because, in the end, it
is
her fault that it all came out, her and that stupid party and that stupid game.

"I don't deserve that," she says quietly, folding herself up into a ball on the ground, knees drawn to her chest, chin resting on knees, watching me sadly.

"I'm tired, is all. I worked all night, then I came here, and I have to be up for work again in five hours."

"I'm sorry."

"Five hours," she goes on, as if I've said nothing, "and I'm not going anywhere."

"I'm sorry." I say it again, this time louder, and more contritely. I've apologized more in the past three hours than in my whole life, it seems.

"I'll tell you my part of it," she says, now looking up at the sky. The moon's gigantic, pregnant. "It was all my mother's fault."

"What?"

"I missed you. I liked you a lot. The way kids like each other and maybe a little bit more. I don't know. I was thirteen. I wasn't experiencing what you were experiencing. All I knew was that you suddenly weren't around anymore. Zik said you were helping Mrs. Sherman with a project, and I couldn't understand how that could occupy every last minute of your time.

"Michelle was getting tired of me moping around. She was on cloud nine with Zik and I think I was bringing her down. So now I'd lost this guy I liked a lot and on top of that my best friend was acting like she had better things to do."

She shrugs. "So. Enter: my mother." She says it like the reveal of a villain in a movie, and I can't help but chuckle. Rachel shakes her head. "Yeah, yeah ... She saw I was depressed. Like an idiot, I told her what was bothering me. God, Josh. You should have
seen
her eyes light up! I mean, it's like she suddenly saw a lever that read 'For Mother of the Year Award, pull here!' I've spent my whole life being called a tomboy and my mother always hated it. She wanted a life-size Barbie doll she could play dress-up with. She said, 'Don't worry, honey. We can fix this up, no problem.'

"It was supposed to be the last year for me to have a big birthday party with lots of friends over. Instead, Mom suggested I just have Michelle and Zik and you. It was so devious; she said that Michelle and Zik would spend all their time together, so you would
have
to talk to me."

"Your
mother
planned all that?"

"Well, she didn't tell me to play spin-the-bottle or get you into the closet. That was Michelle's idea. She came over early and we practiced it until we had it down pat."