growing pains

Growing Pains

Joseph J. Registrato

I. Family

It was early in the morning, still dark and cold, and the boy was under the big white George Washington bedspread that smelled like his mother, when he heard whispering out in the hallway of the big old house on Long Island. He couldn't make out the words, but he recognized the voices of his father, brother and sister, and he could tell that whatever was going on, it was not good. This wasn't a fun kind of whispering; this was more like a keep-Joe-in-the-dark kind of whispering.

Also, they weren't pushing him to get out of bed. Usually at this time of morning in November it was 'get up, get up, you'll be late for school.' But that day they were letting him alone in the dark and they were out there whispering.

After a while, his father came in the room and didn't say a word; he went right to his big closet and started dressing. But he was putting on a white shirt, and a suit and tie, which was very strange, he never dressed up in a suit and tie on a work day. His father drove a truck and wore green work pants, thick black socks and heavy work boots with leather laces. The only time he wore a suit, a black mohair that a tailor made special for him, was when he took the boy's mother dancing at Roseland in New York City and to church on Sunday. He never wore a suit to work. He wasn't his usual chipper self, either, whistling and making jokes. He looked bad.

After he finished dressing he went back out to the hallway and they started whispering again, but this time he heard his brother, who was eight years older than he was, start crying. It wasn't like his brother to cry. In fact he could not remember a time when he heard his brother cry, but there was no doubt he was crying. His sister said, "Stop it. He'll hear you." She was trying to muffle her voice, but she lost the whisper on that line and it came out loud enough for him to hear.

In a few minutes the boy's sister came in and stood over him. She was ten years older than the boy and sometimes she acted like she was the boss. She was always nice about it, never pushy no matter what kind of mess he'd made, but still, sometimes she acted like an adult, although she was only 15.

She reached one hand down and touched the spread where it covered the boy's arm, just barely touching him. Then she sat down next to him and rubbed his back gently.

"You okay, Joe?" She said.

He was pretty sure something bad had happened, the way they were all tiptoeing around and whispering and crying and all, and he figured he'd learn more if he feigned sleep, so he didn't move or say anything. It was still dark, although he knew for sure it was morning because it was getting to be light outside. In a few minutes, she stood up and walked away.

There was a knock at the back door. He made out the sound of the door opening and slamming shut and in a few seconds more crying. He wasn't sure who it was, but it sounded like a woman sobbing, big, deep sobs, pretty much out of control. He suspected the woman was one of his aunts, one of his mother's sisters. She was talking, shouting, yelling, but it was so mixed up with the sobs he could not make much sense of it. He made out a few words. "So young." Then she shouted, "How?" And then "Can't be."

Again his sister whispered, "Stop crying, please, he'll hear you."

After a long time, his father spoke, not a whisper, but loud and clear.

"We have to stop this. It's no use. I have to tell him. There's no other way. He'll have to make up his own mind about it. Of course he's a baby, I hear what you're saying about that. But there's no other way. I've got to tell him."

The boy laid still and heard his father's steps as he came into the bedroom and sat down next to him on the bed. He pulled the bedspread back a little so he could get a look at the boy, and put his hands on the boy's arms. His hands were big and strong but he was always gentle and kind and when he touched the boy that morning, the boy could feel the warmth in his fingers and palms.

"Joe," he said, "I have to talk to you."

The boy opened his eyes.

"Do you want to see your mother for the last time?" He said.

This puzzled the boy. Why would it be the last time? Just the day before she had put one arm around his belly and lifted him up on her hip and walked out to the chicken coop in the back of the house. She plopped the boy down and he went inside the coop and found six eggs inside the boxes the chickens sat in to lay the eggs. They were brown and still warm and his mother cheered him on for finding them.

"Your mother is gone, Joe. She died. You can see her one last time if you really want to, but she's really not even there, not the mother you know, anyway. It might be better if you just remember her the way she was."

His father didn't need to do any more convincing. The boy wasn't sure what happened, but he didn't want to move off that bed. The thing he remembered was that bedspread, it had these little nubs or tufts in it, and it smelled like his mother, just like her. He stayed wrapped up in it for a long time.

II. Cruelty

The neighbor kid was a few years older than the boy and he'd been living in the tiny town of West Islip on eastern Long Island for a long time so when he showed up at the boy's house early one morning with a green and yellow snake in a cardboard box the boy was full of questions.

"Where'd you find him?" The boy said.

"Out in the woods. I'll show you later."

The woods, tall trees and long vines and bushes grown together into a tangle of vegetation so thick it blocked out the sun, surrounded the boy's house on three sides and held great potential for adventure. Who knew what treasures or dangers or creatures might lurk in the woods?

"Is he poisonous?" The boy said.

"I don't know," said the neighbor kid. "I guess maybe."

"How did you catch him?"

"I scooped him up with a shovel and dumped him in this box. He hardly moved at all."

"What does he eat?" The boy asked.

"Hell, I don't know. Mice I guess, or birds."

"Birds? How would he catch a bird?"

"He might climb a tree and get into a nest."

They were silent for a few seconds. The morning sun was slanting in through the trees causing long shadows to form on the ground. It was just the two of them staring down at this quiet, unmoving creature inside the box.

"Let's get some fuel oil from your father's truck and set him on fire. Look, I brought some matches."

The boy's father ran a small fuel oil delivery business. He parked his truck in the backyard of the house. Even when the truck was mostly empty of fuel it was possible to coax out a few ounces of the fuel from the thick black hose rolled up on a big cylinder on the side of the truck. The boy thought, so that's why he came over with the snake: To get at my father's oil. He was sickened to realize he'd been used in this way, and would not forget it. It was a lesson.

The boy knew he could get the oil all right, that was no problem. He'd watched his father do this numerous times to obtain a few ounces of oil to start the barbecue fire. And they lived far out in the country where most people burned their garbage in a pit somewhere near the house so he wasn't worried about starting a fire.

Setting fire to a snake, that seemed wrong. And his father would kill him if he caught him or found out. But his father wasn't around and probably would not be for a while.

"Why don't we just turn him loose over in the woods where you found him," the boy said.

The neighbor kid shook his head.

"I caught him, so I get to decide. You going to get me some oil or not?"

The time would come when his father would warn the boy about choosing his associations carefully because they could lead you to trouble, and about conscious and choosing right from wrong. But out in his sunny backyard that morning all he had was the sense of a 7-year-old and it wasn't enough.

The boy found an empty coffee can in the garbage pit and slapped it on the ground to knock off the caked up dirt that had stuck to the inside of it. He pulled the nozzle of the hose out a few feet and squeezed the lever on the nozzle and a few ounces of oil dripped into the coffee can. He handed the can over to the neighbor kid.

"I'll pour the oil on this bastard then you light a match and toss it in the box," the neighbor kid said to him.

This was even worse. But he'd made his decision and to back out now seemed cowardly. He did not want the neighbor kid to be able to say he'd chickened out.

The boy took the matchbook from the neighbor kid, pulled a match out and held it at the ready.

The neighbor kid opened the flap on top of the box and poured the oil in the box, but most of it missed the snake altogether. Some of the oil must have splashed on the snake, though, and the creature was immediately awakened. The snake leaped or climbed or otherwise wiggled his was out of that box and onto the tall grass in seconds.

"Hurry and light the match," the neighbor kid said. "He's gonna get away."

The boy lit the match and tossed it in the direction of the snake but he missed the target. The boy hoped that at this point, the creature would slither away, but no, it remained there in the same spot.

"Light another one," the neighbor kid said. "Hurry up."

The boy pulled another match from the book, struck it and tossed the flame in the direction of the snake. This time the match landed on a bit of the oil that had splashed on the ground and a flame flared up right next to the snake. The snake was clearly burned by the fire and he moved quickly through the grass and out of the yard and disappeared into thick bushes.

"You got him, but he got away," the neighbor kid said. "I think I heard him sizzle."

The boy tossed the matchbook on the ground and shrugged. He picked up the box that had been stained with the oil and empty coffee, walked back to the garbage pit and tossed them in.

The neighbor kid said, "Did you hear him sizzle? Damn snake."

The boy shook his head. "Yeah."

Even when he was much older, he was sickened by the thought of that sound.

III. Sex

A girl named Judy lived nearby. She was 16, had long blonde hair that hung straight down her back and wore tight jeans and cowboy boots. The boy was not yet old enough to appreciate Judy's feminine aspects, but his brother, Salvatore, was eight years older.

The two would meet in the backyard or in Sal's brand new 1956 Chevrolet. The boy had secret perches from which he could watch the couple but not be seen. He would crouch down low to the ground behind thick hedges or lay still on the far side of the sloping roof of the garage and watch the action. There was plenty of action.

It was from these observations the boy first learned about sex, the mechanics of it, how both parties assisted in removal of clothing and underwear, the incredible urgency exhibited by each, the lack of concern about whether the ground was wet or frozen or muddy and filthy. The thing that impressed him the most was the mutuality involved, how both parties fully participated, writhing and sliding over each other naturally and completely. There was something completely animal about the way they went about it, as though they were driven by an uncivilized, uncontrollable force. It was incredibly spontaneous, hardly any preliminaries or talking were necessary before they were fully engaged in the various acts. At times, it seemed the union was so complete they became one person. The boy later realized he learned more about sex from watching his brother and Judy than any other lesson in or out of school, with the possible exception of his own experiments.

The boy was only 7 and most people paid little or no attention to him even when he was standing right in front of them. Therefore, he watched in silence the relationship that developed between Salvatore and Judy. Also, cell phones would not be invented for about 30 years, so the communication between these two was more or less out in the open.

"I've been missing you," she would sometimes say. "Why don't you call me?"

"I work all the time," was Sal's usual response. It was true, the boy's brother had quit school at age 16, got a job with their uncle as a plumber's helper and worked five days a week. But the boy heard Sal tell their father he didn't even like the girl or her brother or parents, that they were "stuck up," and thought they were too good for Italians. "They make jokes about Italians," Sal said.

"People make jokes about everybody. Who cares what they say?" The boy's father told him.

"I don't like it," Sal said.

It seemed Judy wanted more, but Sal wasn't willing to give more. Although rare, a few times the boy was close enough to intercept a voice communication.

"All we do is this," she said once when they had just started up. "Why don't you take me out to a movie or something? Is this all you care about?"
Sal said, "Okay, sure," which seemed to end the conversation and they went on with the sex.

At some point, Sal started seeing Marie, who was older than Judy and who apparently had something more going for her, or maybe she had just figured out a different way to keep him interested. Sal and Marie would drive up in Sal's Chevrolet and start out with the sex in the front seat of the car. The boy saw Judy watch them for about fifteen minutes before she quietly went on her way.

The boy was surprised and a little disturbed by the way the sex started up with one girl, then stopped quickly then started up again with a different girl, all in the space of just a few days or weeks. How could something so powerful end without warning and then start up again so quickly?

IV. Death

One morning, the boy's father told him, "We've got to go visit Aunt Mary."

Aunt Mary was his father's sister. She was probably about the same age as his father, but she looked much older, was overweight and often looked sad or depressed. She was married to Uncle Morris, a weird guy who spoke with an accent, although the boy was never able to pin down exactly where Morris came from, and nobody else seemed to know for sure.

They arrived in the middle of a glorious Long Island spring day when the sun made everything warm and bright reds and yellows seemed to leap out of every backyard garden. Mary and Morris lived on a quiet rural road in Huntington. The house was set far back from the road and was surrounded on all sides by flowers and trees. The garden had not been tended, the grass had not been cut in weeks, but still, the place had a distinct storybook feel to it; overhanging trees and tall flowers blooming everywhere.

The boy realized something was not right the minute they were inside the house. Mary hugged them both and offered coffee and cake. Morris wasn't around. Mary's eyes were always a little wet, but they seemed more moist than normal.

Finally, Manuel said, "I'm going upstairs to see Morris. You want to come with me? He's sick."

There had been no mention of sickness, so it caught the boy off guard. Still, he saw no reason to be overly concerned. He said, "Sure," and stood up.

They walked up a narrow stairway, at the top of which was a landing and three doors. Manuel knocked on one of the door and Morris opened the door and looked out. He saw the boy standing behind Manuel and waved at him. He whispered something to Manuel and closed the door.

Manuel turned to the boy. "He's a little embarrassed because he can't speak very well." Manuel pointed to his own throat. "It's in here," Manuel said. "You go down and keep Mary company and I'll be down in a little while."

The boy turned and went back down the stairs and sat at the kitchen table with Mary, who smiled at him and kept offering him different things. Cake, milk, coffee, tea, water, soda.

"There's plenty to have, Joey. Do you drink coffee?"

He nodded.

"Well here, I've made some fresh," She said, and poured him a cup of coffee.

"Here's milk and sugar," she said. "Help yourself. Feel at home, Joey. You know your father is my brother! You know that, right?"

The boy nodded. It was ridiculous answering these simple questions, but he thought he had to humor her.

In a little while, his father came down the stairs and Mary met him and they walked into another room. The boy did not get up from the table. In a little while they both came back in the kitchen and Manuel sat and Mary poured him coffee. He sipped it for a little while and then stood up.

"You ready to go home, Joe?" Manuel said.

"Anytime," The boy said.

"Give Aunt Mary a hug and we'll get going," Manuel said.

Back in the car, his father said to him, "Cancer. In his throat. He can't eat. He can't drink. He said the only thing he can enjoy is a cigarette. Can you imagine? It's the thing that's killing him; still, it's the only thing he can enjoy. Can you imagine?"
The boy said, "He is going to get better?"

"No," Manuel said. "You don't get better from this."

They drove a few minutes, then without explanation Manuel hit the green metal dashboard with the palm of his hand, hard, so hard it must have stung. The dull thud startled the boy and he looked at his father strangely. What's wrong with him?

"You see this," Manuel shouted. "When you're dead you're just like this."

They didn't say much after that.

VI. The Wrong Crowd

A friend named Dickie Watters told the boy about a bar called The Duck Inn that hardly ever checked for proof of age. The legal drinking age was 18 at that time in New York, but these two were only 16.

Inside it was dark and smoky. Duck decoys of all sizes and colors had been used to decorate the place, and bottles of liquor were set up on shelves also decorated with duck decoys.

The boys had hoped for a young and pretty bar maid, but this one was an older woman with an English accent. She wasn't unattractive, just too old for any real flirting or fantasizing. Sure enough, she asked for no identification.

"We'll have two Buds," Dickie Waterson said. The bar maid drew two draft beers from a tap and put the frosty glasses on the bar.

"There you go, boys," she said, smiling. "Something to eat?"

Dickie looked at Joe. "You want anything?"

"Not now," Joe said, and the barmaid nodded. "You just say the word and I'll fix you something right off."

The two boys sat in the bar for a long time and had far too many beers. Finally, both of them feeling the effects of the alcohol, they climbed into Joe's father's car and drove toward a nearby boatyard.

"We'll get some beer on the way," Dickie said, but the boy did not think he could drink anymore without being sick.

They passed along a "no trespassing" sign, but ignored it and proceeded into the boatyard, where many small boats were tied to docks that ran along each side.

Dickie said, "Stay here, I'll see what I can find," and started down toward the water.

In a few minutes, two police cars sped up and stopped a few feet from Joe's car.

"What are you doing here," one of the cops said. "Do you have a boat here?"

"No, I'm just sitting around."

"Did you see the no trespassing sign?" The cop said.

"No. I'm not doing anything wrong," Joe said.

"You're doing something wrong just by being here," the cop said.

One of the cops looked around the boatyard for a few minutes then came back. "Nothing," he said.

They put Joe in the cop car and drove him to the police station.

"Are you going to tell me why you're arresting me," Joe said from the back of the car.

"You better keep your mouth shut, boy," one of the cops said.

They brought Joe into the police station and made him empty his pockets and take off his belt.

A uniformed cop behind a desk was writing on a form but hadn't said anything. Joe said to the cop, "My father has a pretty expensive camera in that car. Am I going to get it back?"

The cop looked at him with hard black eyes. He stood up from the desk, walked around it and faced the boy. He did not say a word, he just hit Joe with an open hand across the face, hard, knocking him to the floor. Without a word, the cop walked back behind the desk and went back to the form.

The cops put Joe in a tiny cell. He laid down on a hard wooden bench and fell asleep. When he woke up, the cops let him make a phone call. He was too afraid to call his father, so he called Salvatore, who came to the jail and bailed him out. But Salvatore told their father, of course.

That same morning, Manuel took the boy to a courthouse where they sat on a hard bench while each case was called up. Dickie Watters shuffled into the courtroom in handcuffs and leg irons. He had obviously been caught but not bailed out of jail.

The judge was setting a bond for those who were still in jail and informing the others of the charges against them.

On the way out of the courtroom, Manuel said to the boy, "Was that guy in handcuffs the one you were arrested with?"
"Yes, Dad."

Manuel took in a breath.

"If you would have come in that room chained up like him, I would have gotten up and walked out and you'd be on your own," Manuel said.

Years later, even after Manuel died, those words still echo in Joe's ears.

V. Greed

Some years later, the boy's grandmother died and there were questions. Did the boy's graying aunts and uncles, his grandmother's own children who seemed normal and loving and kind, kill his grandmother out of greed or on doctor's orders? Facts gleaned from both sides of the fractured family pointed to one or the other. And if it was murder, would the culprit pay with his life or at least his soul? It was difficult to believe the question could even be put, and it nagged at him.

The night before he learned of his grandmother's death, something else entirely was on the boy's mind. In the rolled and pleated blue leather front seat of his father's Chrysler New Yorker, the boy had worked his hand up under the skirt of the beautiful, desirable Maxine, his fingers reaching her soft inner thighs.

He had had parked on a narrow side street from which he could see through the rear view mirror the great stone walls of the Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church, where he had taken Maxine to confess their sins, and being early for the ritual the couple used the time to engage in the universal pass time of teenagers.

Once reaching the previously unattainable goal of the girl's creamy smooth leg, the boy inexplicably and uncharacteristically hesitated, perhaps savoring the moment, as a climber might hesitate before reaching the top of a previously unscaled mountain. At which point, Maxine, in a rather unfazed, understated tone said to him, "Well go ahead, Joe."

These words had an unsettling and unexpected effect. Far from feeling encouraged, the boy's first thought was she had shown herself to be something of a fraud. For months, she'd played the role of the almost untouchable sexual object, reluctant to engage in anything more than the most innocent petting. Then all of a sudden she's this firecracker that must instruct the boy on how to proceed! And in the shadow of the Most Holy Redeemer Church at that! What the hell was going on?

The boy was still kicking himself a few hours later for not seeing this obvious act for what it was, and for failing to take greater advantage of her eagerness, and apparently greater experience, when, upon entering his house, his father told him, "Joe, your grandmother has died."

This would be his mother's mother. She was old, probably around 90, so her death was not unexpected. The boy's own mother had died years before in a tragic accident. Thereafter, his father had carefully kept up the ties to her extended family; therefore his attendance at any sort of memorial service would be mandatory. It had only been a few months since his grandfather died at the advanced age of probably 100. Now this.

No sense arguing. Further adventures with the suddenly eager Maxine would have to be put on hold.

Joe and his father donned dark woolen suits and silk ties and stiff white shirts and shined up black shoes. They made the hour-long drive from the sedate green wooded reaches of eastern Long Island to the crowded bustling concrete streets and sidewalks of Brooklyn, and finally to a very commercial looking building in smelly Canarsie. It must have been a funeral home or some sort of religious gathering place, but it looked more like a vacant warehouse. The Brooklyn landscape was different than the Long Island country, where things more closely resembled what they actually were. In Brooklyn, it seemed, buildings and stores, houses and apartments, could easily be disguised as something else.

Uncle Gene, one of his mother's brothers, met them at the glass door. He looked good, smiling and animated. He had short, curly, prematurely gray hair and a salt and pepper bushy mustache in the old southern Italian style.

"Manuel, Manuel," Gene laughed. He always laughed as he talked. "And you brought Joey. When I see him..." Gene stopped himself and the boy knew why. Gene was about to say how the boy reminded him of Catherine, his dead sister, the boy's mother. They weren't supposed to bring that up with the boy, don't remind him of the horrible tragedy that took his mother when he was only five, but they all slipped once in a while, tearing up, sometimes sobbing, holding onto the boy as though trying to contact his dead mother by transference. It was all a bit traumatic, but the boy understood and had grown accustomed.

Gene was a young uncle, maybe 30 or 40, always happy, always smiling. His father smiled and shook Gene's hand.
Gene said, "You know those bastards killed her, right? They killed her, Manuel, and won't own up to it."

The boy's father looked stunned. "Gene, No," He said.

"Yes," Gene said, nodding vigorously. "Come on, let's go for a ride."

They immediately left the funeral place, or whatever it was, climbed back into the New Yorker and were heading along a busy street somewhere in Brooklyn, a place that was always a puzzle to the boy, although his father seemed to know exactly where he was at every turn. His father drove, Gene sat up front and Joe in the back.

"You heard about the man who tied up his father in the woods, right?"
The boy's father nodded, but Joe had not heard this. So Gene went on.

"The man was getting too old and the son couldn't take care of him anymore, so he took him out in the woods and tied him to a tree to let him die. And as he's walking away, the old man says to his son, you know I did this to my father."

Gene and his father slapped the seat. Great story!

"So those bastards, they'll get theirs in the end, right Joe? They have children. Their own children will give it to them, you watch."
The boy nodded, but said nothing.

"Manuel, they put her in Bellevue. They knew it would kill her. Bellevue, Manuel. They said she was talking to the television. What nonsense!"

Manuel said, "So she wasn't batty?"

"She was fine. Nothing wrong with her. She missed Pappa, that was all."
"Ah, I see," Manuel said.

"She would have died soon enough. They had to hurry it along. They wanted Pappa's garden. It's a whole square block. Probably worth a couple hundred thousand."

Manuel said, "Money. Root of all evil. Are they all there? All of them?"
"Oh, sure, they're all there."

Once back at the funeral home, Gene led the way. All the boy's aunts and uncles and cousins and the cousin's boyfriends and girlfriends or wives and husbands were all seated in the darkened room. The casket containing his grandmother's body was up front, draped with pink fabric that hung in big puffy waves around it. The boy pulled away from his father and sat in the back, but Manuel walked right up to the casket. He crossed himself the way Catholics do, and stood there a while, his head down. Then he turned around and came back. On the way, he stopped and hugged all the aunts and uncles, Josie and Tony and the other Tony and Tessie and Connie and Bill and Jimmy and Lulu and Louise and Louise's husband and about a half dozen others. He pointed to Joe and they all turned and waved at the boy in the back, who would not walk up to look in the casket.

Gene sat on one side next to his wife.

Tony, Josie's husband, followed Manuel out, and the boy joined up with them.

"Manuel, I saw you came in with Gene. He's got in his head we wanted her dead, so we had her committed. We didn't have her committed, Manuel, the doctor did. He said she needed the treatment so we said sure. What were we going to do?"
Manuel nodded and threw up his hands.

"What else could you do?" Manuel said.

"Right. It had to be done."

"Okay. But yes, Gene thinks it was unnecessary. He thinks we should have kept her at home. He and Tony and Tessie, at least those three, they're all against us. They think we wanted the property Pappa has his garden in, it's a whole square block, and there was no way to get that property until she died. So they think we did it for the money. How crazy!"
Manuel shook his head.

"It's a hard thing, Tony. So now the family is, what, split down the middle?"
"Right down the middle," Tony said, chopping the air with his flattened hand. "We're living in the same house, but we don't speak. It's horrible."

Just before they left to head back to Long Island, Gene caught them in the lobby.

"You see how they act? Like it was not their fault. Don't believe them, Manuel. They're evil. They'll pay the price, some day."
Manuel nodded.

Gene said, "So, Joey, you're going to college?"

Joe shrugged. Manuel said simply, "He can if he wants."

Gene said, "Listen, if you want some advice, get that sheepskin. You want that sheepskin."

Joe smiled and nodded, but it seemed like college would take too long and what good would it do? Finally they said good bye and left.

On the way home, Joe said to his father, "Did they really kill Grandma?"

His father looked at him.

"You heard. They're split down the middle. Some of them think they just wanted to get that lot the old man had his farm on. It's worth some money. The others think it was doctor's orders. You think she needed to be in Bellevue?"

"What's Bellevue," Joe said.

"It's a mental hospital. Some people say it's a horrible place, where they basically warehouse the mentally ill."
"God, Dad. Is it?"

"I don't know. It's just what people say."

"So you think they should have sent her there?" Joe said.

"I don't know, Joe. We didn't live with her so I don't know what it was like. But I think putting her in there, yeah, it would be enough to kill her."

The boy shook his head. Who was right? He didn't know.

1. 1. 2. Betrayal

The following day the boy had the Chrysler again and picked up Maxine for school. She looked terrific in a black skirt, white shirt and yellow and blue scarf. She was sixteen but dressed and looked like she was 21 or 22.

"Could we pick up Harriet and Bobby? They need a ride," Maxine said.

Harriet was Maxine's best friend and Bobby was Harriet's forever boyfriend. She went nowhere without Bobby.

"Sure, Max. No problem."

She looked disturbed.

"Listen, don't call me Max, okay? My father calls me Max and he doesn't want anybody else to use that name."

The boy blew out a breath. Was this for real? It seemed ridiculous, extreme.

"I heard Harriet call you Max," Joe said.

"She doesn't know about it, and anyway it's different with her. Just please don't call me Max."

"Okay," Joe said, shaking his head. Ridiculous, he thought. Why would it be different with Harriet? Does it have something to do with her being female? Was he in some kind of competition with her father?

"And listen, don't try to kiss me or molest me when we're with other people. It's not polite."

"Molest you? When do I molest you?"

"You're always trying to maul me. Please stop."

This was interesting, and confounding. He was tempted to bring up her eagerness when they were parked in front of the church, but he stopped himself. The girl presented at least two and sometimes three distinct attitudes and personalities. But she was too good, too beautiful, too desirable to call her on it. He let it go.

He pulled up to Harriet's house and stopped at the curb. In a few minutes, Harriet and her perpetual boyfriend Bobby trotted out to the car and Maxine got out and let them climb in the back seat. This business about giving them a ride to school had been going on a while and it was a pain, but if it meant keeping Maxine happy, he'd do it. As he drove to school, Maxine and Harriet talked non-stop about nothing at all.

A few weeks later, Maxine told him she "needed some space," and would not be seeing anybody for a while. A few nights later, he saw her with an older guy at a bowling alley and as they kissed, the guy squeezed her thigh.

-end--