The next afternoon when I got home from school, Charlotte had news for me: “Your mother called this morning,” she said. She was smiling, probably thinking I’d be happy to hear from Mama. Apparently Mama had called to say she still had a few things she knew I’d want to have with me, some items of clothing, toys, a few books. She asked if Larry and Charlotte might want to drive me over one evening to pick the stuff up. “I told her tonight would be good,” Charlotte said, “since we’re going to be out Christmas shopping anyway.” Butch would be staying at Grandma Pat’s house (in fact, he was already there), so he wouldn’t be a nuisance while we shopped. Charlotte seemed eager to go. But the thought of her seeing Mama where she lived embarrassed me. I didn’t want her talking to Mama about me, afraid it would somehow change the way Charlotte thought of me. “The fruit,” one of my teachers had once quoted, “never falls far from the tree.”
My anxiety must have shown. “What’s the matter?” Charlotte said, stroking my head. “Don’t you want to see your Mom?”
“Sure I do,” I lied.
Later that evening, by the time Larry came home from work, Charlotte and I had everything ready for tacos. She let me mash the pinto beans and grate the cheese, while she fried up the tortillas and cut the tomatoes and onions and lettuce and avocados. Charlotte beamed while Larry and I ate our fill of tacos and refried beans, as if eating any less would somehow mean she hadn’t done her job right. My stomach hurt, I’d eaten so much, but I couldn’t help myself, it all tasted so good. And the feeling of fullness helped drive away the memory that I’d ever been hungry.
Later, after I’d helped Charlotte with the dishes and Larry had cleaned up and changed out of his uniform into jeans and a sweatshirt and tennis shoes, it was time to go. Larry opened the front passenger door and told me to get in, that I could sit up front with him and Charlotte. “All right!” I said, enthusiastically, sliding into the middle of the seat. Charlotte laughed and got in after me. Larry shut the door and Charlotte put her arm around me and hugged me, the scent of her perfume reminding me of jasmine, hanging lightly in the air during a summer evening, a smell that made everything seem sweet and dreamy.
Larry got in and started the car. Then he turned and looked at me. “So, Billy? You want to let Charlotte see how good you can drive?” His voice had that same easy tone that made you think he was asking something small and insignificant, like, “Are you comfortable?”
Something grabbed my stomach from the inside and squeezed it, forcing a nervous laugh to pop suddenly from my mouth. Had Larry said what I thought he’d said? After all, he and I weren’t exactly alone, and even if I might have been able to twist my brain around enough to tolerate—or, at least, ignore—Larry’s quirky need to pull on my dick, I couldn’t imagine that Charlotte would be so open-minded. And then I thought, Of course not; he’d never risk it. It would have been like inviting your parents into the bathroom to watch while you played with yourself in the shower. It was something no kid I knew would willingly do. They’d have rather died first. But as Larry’s seemingly nonchalant question bounced around in my head, I sensed there was something else in his voice, a sort of hunger, even if I couldn’t actually hear it. He had said what I thought he said, hadn’t he?
“I—I—don’t know,” I stammered. I glanced over at Charlotte. I wanted her to say something, tell Larry no, I was way too young to be driving a car, what in the world was he thinking? She didn’t say anything, just glanced over at Larry with a sort of surprised smile on her face. “Do you think it’s okay?” I asked her.
She looked shocked that I would even ask such a question. “Of course it’s okay,” she said, winking at me. “I trust Larry James completely. He’d never do anything dangerous.”
Her voice was soothing, reassuring. Of course, I repeated to myself, of course. Larry would never do anything—dangerous.
A moment later I was sitting on Larry’s lap, steering the car slowly out of the driveway. “Look to where you want to go first,” Larry said to me, “then turn the wheel in that direction.” As I had hoped, Larry’s one hand rested inoffensively on his own leg; the other was hooked by his thumb to the bottom of the steering wheel. His pressure on the wheel was light, almost non-existent: I actually felt like I was the one steering the car. “Good, good,” Larry said, as we backed into the street and stopped, and then smoothly began moving forward and down the hill. “Very good. I didn’t have to help you at all!”
“All right!” I said, giggling a little, thrilled. I looked over at Charlotte, who nodded at me approvingly. “Look, Charlotte!” I said. “I’m driving!”
“Yes, I see that!” she said, chuckling at my enthusiasm. “I’m so impressed!”
I stared at her. I wanted this moment to last forever. But Larry’s stern voice jolted me back to reality. “Billy!” he said, and I felt him move the wheel under my hands. “If you’re going to drive, you’ve got to keep your eyes on the road!”
“Oh. Right,” I said, jerking my head forward again.
We drove down University Avenue to 70th Street, then north past El Cajon Boulevard and down the long hill to Highway 80. There were cars everywhere; everyone was out doing their Christmas shopping. Several times, Larry had to take the wheel, saying each time that that was to be expected when you’re first learning.
It wasn’t until we were finally got on the highway headed toward Ocean Beach that I thought I felt something hard begin to press against my tailbone. Larry’s right hand, the one whose thumb was helping me steer the car, pulled me tightly against him. His left hand worked its way quickly up my thigh to my groin. In no time at all, my pants were unbuttoned and the zipper pulled down, and Larry’s warm fingers were buried in my underwear, tugging gruffly at my dick, rubbing, pinching, rolling. His breath grew hot on my neck. I felt myself growing hard, fast. He began pulling on me, up and down, up and down, until that familiar, strange mixture of intense pleasure and nausea began to wash over me.
Amazingly, Charlotte seemed not to have a clue about what was going on scarcely two feet away from her. She hummed along with the radio: Spike Jones singing “All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth”. She told Larry she wanted to go to the Sears store in Hillcrest to look for some pajamas for Butchie, and what did Larry think his dad might want for Christmas? Larry, preoccupied with helping me keep the car on the road while he continued pulling on me, muttered something about a golf club, or maybe a set of barbecue utensils. Charlotte nodded and stared out the windshield or out her own window at the passing cars and store fronts. “Ooooh,” she said, appreciatively, “look at the pretty lights!” She even pointed out something now and again to look at outside the driver-side window, and each time she did, my heart froze and I swore she’d seen what was going on or heard my strained breathing. If she had, she never let on. She turned and gazed again out her window or fiddled with her polished nails or rummaged through her purse for her cigarettes and lighter.
Ten minutes later, when we finally rolled into Ocean Beach, Larry had rubbed me to a sort of chafed numbness. I wished he would quit, but I obviously couldn’t say so, and I couldn’t just hop off his lap while we were driving. We cruised through the residential area of OB, southward down Sunset Cliffs Boulevard, then west on Long Branch Avenue toward the beach, where Mama lived. Thankfully, Larry began to put things back together, tucking in my shirttail, zipping up and buttoning my pants. We found a parking spot open right outside Mama’s apartment; Larry had me turn into it, and then gave me a little extra help parking next to the curb. At last, he turned off the car, and gave me a little shove from his lap onto the seat next to Charlotte.
“Wow!” she said, patting my leg. “You did great, Billy!” She looked at Larry. “Didn’t he do great, Hubbins?”
“You really think so?” I said.
Larry tried to look unimpressed, but I could see in his eyes he was just kidding: “Well, he wasn’t too bad…” he said.
When Mama opened the door, it was as if I hadn’t seen her in years, instead of just a week and a half. Mama, on the other hand, behaved as if I’d never left, as if I’d simply been visiting the next door neighbors for a few minutes. “Oh, hi!” she said, more to Larry and Charlotte than to me. She pushed open the screen door to let us in, and I noticed she looked older than I remembered. And fatter, too. She leaned down when I came in and hugged me lightly with one arm. I hugged her back and tried to feel something like affection, with her arm around me, but all I found was—indifference.
Our visit was brief. Just long enough for me to feel completely mortified. Larry and Charlotte both shook Mama’s hand and told her it was good to see her again. Mama smoothed the puke-brown bedspread on the couch (it hid a multitude of stains, I remembered her saying once) and told them to sit down, which they did, arranging their butts carefully on the edge, as if they were afraid of getting something on themselves or falling into the couch and not being able to get out. Mama had the TV on, but with the sound turned down. It bathed us in a weird silent silvery light. The place smelled of Mama’s spaghetti, mixed with ammonia. I figured it was probably the cat-box needing to be dumped. I pictured the usual scene in the kitchen: the rusty pot of spaghetti still on the stove, her empty plate in the sink, balanced atop the usual pile of dirty dishes, the urine-soaked cardboard box filled with clumped sand and cat turds by the back door. I felt a sick knot in my stomach. Would they care for something to drink, Mama asked? She could put on a pot of coffee, or there was some instant tea she could throw together, it already had the sugar and lemon flavoring in it. No, they said, thanks, but we weren’t going to be there that long. And I was glad to hear that. Charlotte wore a smile on her face that looked somehow painful. She asked in a sweet voice how Mama was, and about my sisters. Mama told her she was fine, and my sisters were playing at a friend’s house. She didn’t offer any more details.
Mama told me my clothes looked really nice. “Are they new?” she asked. I told her they were. She asked how I was, what sort of things was I doing. I was doing really well, I told her. I liked my new school. Miss Sterling was beautiful, though I couldn’t stand my desk mate, and I was singing in the chorus for the Christmas show that Friday. Mama nodded, though I got the impression she really didn’t hear, she was just pretending because Larry and Charlotte were there. Things got quiet, then, and uncomfortable. Mama picked up an old cardboard box she had by the couch. She opened it to show Charlotte: some pants, underwear; my plastic model aircraft carrier I’d got last Christmas; my copies of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, both with their covers ripped off; and the leatherette-bound bible I’d got earlier that year from the Ocean Beach Methodist Church, with my name handwritten on the inside cover by the pastor himself.
Mama put the things back into the box and folded the flaps over. We sat for a few more seconds. Mama kept looking at me, then at Larry and Charlotte, though there was no way of telling what she was thinking. Finally Charlotte looked fidgety and started glancing over at Larry and smiling, until he finally got the hint. “Well, we probably ought to get going,” he said. “We still have some Christmas shopping to do.” He stood up. “It was sure nice seeing you again, Barbara,” he said. Mama looked relieved. Everyone looked relieved. Mama stood up and put my box of stuff into my arms. Then she hugged me in that halfway way and, as usual, told me to “be good.”
We left the apartment and walked out to the car. I couldn’t help thinking both Larry and Charlotte were breathing the clean salt air as if they’d just come from a place where breathing had been difficult. When we finally got back into the car, it was with the sense that we’d just taken care of an unpleasant, but necessary, chore.
Larry didn’t offer to let me drive to Sears, which was fine with me. I sat next to Charlotte, who seemed a little quieter than she had been earlier. Once in awhile she glanced at me and smiled, but with something like sadness in her eyes. I wondered if maybe she’d changed her mind about me, if she thought they’d made a terrible mistake, I really didn’t belong with them, I wasn’t who—or what—they’d thought I was. But then she reached over and touched my hair, as if she’d read my mind and wanted to let me know nothing had changed; they wanted me now more than ever. And I breathed easier.