The Girl Next Door (20 page)
And it went just like before, except that Meg was there. Except that the reasoning was crazy.
But by then we were used to that.
Woofer pulled her pants down over the casts and nobody even had to hold her this time while Ruth gave her twenty, fast, with no letup, while she screamed and howled as her ass got redder and redder in that close little room that Willie Sr. had built to withstand the Atomic Bomb—and at first Meg struggled when she heard the howling and crying and the sound of the belt coming down but Willie took her arm and twisted it behind her back, pressed her facedown into the air mattress so that she had all she could do to breathe, never mind helping, tears running down not just Susan’s face but hers too and splotching the dirty mattress while Donny and I stood watching and listening in our wrinkled pajamas.
When it was over Ruth stood back and slipped her belt through her belt loops and Susan bent over with difficulty, braces chattering, and pulled up her panties, then smoothed the back of the dress down over her.
Willie let go of Meg and stepped away.
As Susan turned toward us, Meg lifted her head off the mattress and I watched their glances meet. I saw something pass between them. Something that seemed suddenly placid behind the tears, sad and oddly tranquil.
It unnerved me. I wondered if they weren’t stronger than all of us after all.
And I was aware that once again this thing had escalated somehow.
Then Meg’s eyes shifted to Ruth and I saw how.
Her eyes were savage.
Ruth saw it too and took an involuntary step back away from her. Her own eyes narrowed and ranged the room. They fixed on the comer where the pick, ax, crowbar and shovel stood propped together like a little steel family of destruction.
Ruth smiled. “I think Meg’s pissed at us, boys,” she said.
Meg said nothing.
“Well, we all know that won’t get her anywhere at all. But let’s just pick up that stuff over there so she’s not too tempted. She’s maybe just dumb enough to try. So get ’em. And lock the door behind you when you leave.
“By the way, Meggy,” she said. “You just passed on lunch and dinner. Have a real nice day.”
She turned and left the room.
We watched her go. Her walk was a little unsteady, I thought, almost like she’d been drinking though I knew that wasn’t so.
“You want to tie her up again?” Woofer asked Willie.
“Try it,
” said Meg.
” said Meg.
Willie snorted. “That’s real cool, Meg,” he said. “Act tough. We could do it whenever we want to and you know it. And Susan’s here. Remember that.”
Meg glared at him. He shrugged.
“Maybe later, Woof,” said Willie, and he went and got the ax and shovel. Woofer took the pick and the crowbar and followed him.
And then there was a discussion as to where to put it all now that it was outside the protection of the shelter. The basement flooded sometimes so there was a danger of rusting. Woofer wanted to hang them from the ceiling support beams. Donny suggested they nail them to the wall. Willie said fuck it, put ‘em by the boiler.
Let
’em rust. Donny won and they went looking through Willie Sr.’s old World War II footlocker by the dryer, which served as a toolbox now, for hammer and nails.
Let
’em rust. Donny won and they went looking through Willie Sr.’s old World War II footlocker by the dryer, which served as a toolbox now, for hammer and nails.
I looked at Meg. I had to brace myself to do so. I guess I was expecting hate. Half dreading and half hoping it’d be there because then, at least, I’d know where I stood with her and with the rest of them. I could already see that playing the middle was going to be tough. But there wasn’t any hate that I could see. Her eyes were steady. Sort of neutral.
“You could run away,” I said softly. “I could maybe help you.”
She smiled but it wasn’t pretty.
“And what would you want for that, David?” she said. “Got any ideas?”
And for a moment she did sound a little like the tramp Ruth said she was.
“No. Nothing,” I said. But she’d got me. I was blushing.
“Really?”
“Honest. Really. Nothing. I mean, I don’t know where you could go but at least you could get away.”
She nodded and looked at Susan. And then her tone of voice was totally different, very matter-of-fact, incredibly reasonable and very adult again.
“I
could,” she said. “But
she
can’t.”
could,” she said. “But
she
can’t.”
And suddenly Susan was crying again. She stood looking at Meg for a moment and then hobbled over and kissed her on the lips and on the cheek and then on the lips again.
“We’ll do
something,”
she said. “Meg? We’ll do something. All right?”
something,”
she said. “Meg? We’ll do something. All right?”
“Okay,” said Meg. “All right.”
She looked at me.
They hugged and when they were finished Susan came over to me standing by the door and took my hand.
And together we locked her in again.
Chapter Thirty-One
Then, as if to negate my offer of help, I stayed away.
Under the circumstances it was the best I could do.
Images haunted me.
Meg laughing on the Ferris wheel, lying on the Rock by the brook. Working in the garden in her shorts and halter with a big straw hat over her head. Running bases, fast, over at the playground. But most of all Meg naked in the heat of her own exertions, vulnerable and open to me.
On the other side I saw Willie’s and Donny’s tackle dummy.
I saw a mouth crushed into an air mattress for being unable to swallow a piece of toast.
The images were contradictory. They confused me.
So trying to decide what to do, if anything, and with the excuse of a rainy, ugly week to live through, I stayed away.
I saw Donny twice that week. The others I didn’t see at all.
The first time I saw him I was emptying the garbage and he ran out into the gray afternoon drizzle with a sweatshirt pulled over his head.
“Guess what,” he said. “No water tonight.”
It had been raining for three days.
“Huh?”
“Meg, dummy. Ruth’s not letting her have any water tonight. Not until tomorrow morning.”
“How come?”
He smiled. “Long story,” he said. “Tell you about it later.”
Then he ran back into the house.
The second time was a couple of days later. The weather had cleared and I was climbing onto my four-speed on the way to the store for my mother. Donny came riding up the driveway behind me on his old beat-up Schwinn.
“Where you going?”
“Over to the store. My mom needs milk and shit. You?”
“Up to Eddie’s. There’s a game on up at the water tower later. Braves versus Bucks. Want us to wait for you?”
“Nah.” It was Little League and didn’t interest me.
Donny shook his head.
“I gotta get outta here,” he said. “This stuff is driving me crazy. You know what they got me doin’ now?”
“What.”
“Throwin’ her shit pan out in back of the yard! You believe that?”
“I don’t get it. Why?”
“She’s not allowed upstairs at all anymore. No toilet privileges, nothin’. So the stupid little fuck tries to hold it. But even
she’s
got to piss and shit sometime and now I got the goddamn detail! You believe it? What the hell’s the matter with Woofer?” He shrugged. “But Mom says it’s got to be one of us older guys.”
she’s
got to piss and shit sometime and now I got the goddamn detail! You believe it? What the hell’s the matter with Woofer?” He shrugged. “But Mom says it’s got to be one of us older guys.”
“Why?”
“How the hell do I know?”
He pushed off.
“Hey, you sure you don’t want us to wait up for you?”
“Nah. Not today.”
“Okay. See ya then. Stop over, huh?”
“Okay, I will.”
I didn’t, though. Not then.
It seemed so foreign to me. I couldn’t even imagine her going to the bathroom, much less using a pan that somebody would have to dump in back of the yard. What if I went over there and they hadn’t cleaned up yet that day? What if I had to smell her piss and shit down there? The whole thing disgusted me.
She
disgusted me. That wasn’t Meg. That was somebody else.
She
disgusted me. That wasn’t Meg. That was somebody else.
It became yet another strange new image to trouble me. And the problem was there was nobody to talk to, nobody to sort things out with.
If you talked to the kids on the block it was clear that everybody had some notion of what was happening over there—some vague and others pretty specific. But nobody had any opinions about it. It was as though what was happening were a storm or a sunset, some force of nature, something that just happened sometimes. And there was no point discussing summer showers.
I knew enough to be aware that, if you were a boy, you were expected to bring some matters to your father.
So I took a shot at that.
Now that I was older I was supposed to put in some time at the Eagle’s Nest now and then, helping to stock and clean up and whatnot, and I was working on the grill in the kitchen with a whetstone and some soda water, pushing the grease into the side troughs with the whetstone as the grill slowly cooled and the soda water loosened the grease—drudge work of the kind I’d seen Meg do a thousand times—when finally I just started talking.
My father was making shrimp salad, crumbling bits of bread in to make it stretch further.
There was a liquor delivery coming in and through the windowed partition between bar and kitchen we could see Hodie, my dad’s day shift bartender, ticking off the cartons on an order sheet and arguing with the delivery man over a couple cases of vodka. It was the house brand and evidently the guy had shorted him. Hodie was mad. Hodie was a rail-thin Georgia cracker with a temper volatile enough to have kept him in the brig throughout half the war. The delivery man was sweating.
My father watched, amused. Except to Hodie, two cases was no big deal. Just so long as my father wasn’t paying for something he wasn’t getting. But maybe it was Hodie’s anger that got me started.
“Dad,” I said. “Did you ever see a guy hit a girl?”
My father shrugged.
“Sure,” he said. “I guess so. Kids. Drunks. I’ve seen a few. Why?”
“You figure it’s ever . . . okay . . . to do that?”
“Okay? You mean justified?”
“Yeah.”
He laughed. “That’s a tough one,” he said. “A woman can really tick you off sometimes. I’d say in general, no. I mean, you got to have better ways to deal with a woman than that. You have to respect the fact that the woman’s the weaker of the species. It’s like being a bully, you know?”
He wiped his hands on his apron. Then he smiled.
“Only thing is,” he said, “I’ve got to say I’ve seen ’em deserve it now and then. You work in a bar, you see that kind of thing. A woman gets too much to drink, gets abusive, loud, maybe even takes a poke at the guy she’s with. Now what’s he supposed to do? Just sit there? So he whacks her one. Now, you’ve got to break up that kind of thing straightaway.
“See, it’s like the exception that proves the rule. You should never hit a woman, never—and God forbid I ever catch you doing it. Because if I do you’ve had it. But sometimes there’s nothing else you can do. You get pushed that far. You see? It works both ways.”
I was sweating. It was as much the conversation as the work but with the work there I had an excuse.
My father had begun on the tuna salad. There was crumbled bread in that too, and pickle relish. In the next room Hodie had run the guy back to his truck to search for the missing vodka.
I tried to make sense of what he was saying: it was never okay but then sometimes it was.
You get pushed that far.
That got stuck in my mind. Had Meg pushed Ruth too hard at some point? Done something I hadn’t seen?
Was this a
never or a sometimes
situation?
never or a sometimes
situation?
“Why d’you ask?” said my father.
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