The day finally came when it was time for me to start back to regular school. I had mixed feelings about this. Part of me welcomed the idea of re-entering “normal” life, which obviously included public school. Up to this point, I’d always liked going to school. I enjoyed learning, and I usually excelled academically. And I liked being with other kids, too, despite having occasionally been picked on or shunned by some of my classmates. But things were different now: I liked being near Charlotte. A lot. The thought of spending time away from her filled me with a strange kind of hurt I’d never felt before. Jealousy, too: Butchie, who was still two years away from having to go to school, could be with Charlotte all day long.
I could never say these things to Charlotte. I didn’t understand them. I could only sigh when she’d asked me, while tucking me into bed the night before, if I was looking forward to school the next day. I’d forced a smile and said I was. In truth, the only thing about school I was looking forward to was that she had promised to walk me there.
Charlotte took Butchie a few houses up the street to stay with her friend Mrs. Castiglione while she took me to school. By the time she got back, I was dressed in a new flannel shirt and corduroy pants and a new pair of gray Hush Puppies, looking and feeling better dressed than I remembered having ever been. Charlotte rubbed Brylcreem in my hair and combed it for me, as best she could—“We really need to get you a decent haircut!” she said—and gave me thirty-five cents for lunch. Then she lit a cigarette and put on a sweater and walked with me the six or so blocks to La Mesa Dale Elementary School, where I was registered and installed in Miss Sterling’s fifth grade class. When it finally came time for one of the school secretaries to escort me to my new classroom, Charlotte hugged me and promised to meet me by the flag pole in front of the school. Then she kissed me goodbye on my forehead. My gut ached the moment she was out of my sight.
My new teacher, Miss Sterling, was a life-sized version of a Barbie doll, with platinum hair, a tight skirt, and high heeled shoes that clicked authoritatively on the tile floor as she paced back and forth in front of the class. All the boys, I would soon discover, were in love with her. She penciled my name in on her seating chart and pointed to a desk at the back of the room. “You can sit over there, Billy,” she said, “next to Trisha Scott.”
I slid myself gingerly into the chair next to Trisha Scott, an ugly, big-boned girl with freckles and copper-colored hair who was a foot taller than me, and began putting away the collection of books and papers and other supplies Miss Sterling had dumped into my arms a minute earlier. Trisha ignored me, until one moment when Miss Sterling turned her back to the class to writing out sentences on the blackboard. She glared at me balefully and sniffed the air, which I took as an accusation that I had just farted or that I simply smelled bad in general. “I can beat you up,” she said.
I stared back at her, and realized she was probably right. Somebody nearby laughed, and I turned my reddening face toward the blackboard again, a knot of shame growing in my stomach.
The rest of the morning was uneventful. I spent much of my time just copying the motions of the other kids, trying to blend in. Trisha didn’t say another word to me, and I was grateful, though I half suspected she’d be waiting for me after school some day just to prove she really could beat me up. For art, the class was making paper-mâché ornaments for Christmas, and Miss Sterling spent some extra time showing me how to make shapes with starch and newspaper and baling wire. She was nice. But all the time I kept wishing I were back at home with Charlotte.
There wasn’t much to do during what was left of the lunch hour after my cafeteria meal of chicken and rice. I wasn’t interested in playing hopscotch or jump rope with the girls, and most of the boys were huddled in tight groups on the dirt playground shooting marbles. Marbles were the big thing at La Mesa Dale. In fact, marbles were the only thing. Most of the boys wore huge leather bags of marbles tied to their belts, like scalps, and spent their free time playing “Bull Ring” or “Standup,” games I’d never heard of before. The others—those who, for whatever reasons, didn’t eat, drink, and shit marbles—were widely regarded as having to ride the “special” bus to school. I’d never played marbles, to speak of. Now, suddenly, I was desperate to get my hands on some. I wandered past a couple of games and watched, feeling like an outsider, until the bell rang and everyone went back to their classrooms.
At three o’clock, Charlotte was waiting for me in front of the flagpole, as she had promised, smoking a cigarette and watching the kids walk by. Her face broke into a big smile when she saw me coming toward her, and when I finally reached her, she knelt down and hugged me the way I remembered her hugging Butchie the day he came home from his grandmother’s. I felt as if I were melting in her arms.
Charlotte made meatloaf and mashed potatoes for dinner, and we had vanilla ice cream with Hershey’s syrup for dessert. I told Larry about my day at school, about witchy Trisha Scott. He laughed when I said I wouldn’t mind it if a house fell on her, like in The Wizard of Oz. Then I told him about watching the other boys on the playground shooting marbles. A surprised grin sprouted on his face when I told him about Standup, how it seemed to be the most popular game. “My God,” he said, “are they still playing that? Jesus, I remember Standup from when I was your age.” He looked at me. “So, did you get to play?”
“Well—no,” I stammered, “I didn’t—”
Larry stared at me blankly for a moment, until he realized what I’d not been able to say. “Oh, right,” he said, grinning awkwardly. “I guess it’s a little hard to shoot marbles if you don’t have any, isn’t it?”
Larry looked over at Charlotte, and something seemed to pass between them. Charlotte smiled and winked.
After we finished dessert, Charlotte cleared the table. Larry stood up, grabbed his car keys and wallet and pistol, and, after turning something over in his mind for a few moments, asked me if I wanted to go with him to run a couple of errands. I glanced into the kitchen. Charlotte was busy rinsing the dirty plates. “I—guess so,” I said, realizing as I spoke that he probably knew I was lying, could easily see I’d much rather have stayed at home with Charlotte, even if it was just to stand in the doorway and watch her clean the kitchen. I felt an embarrassed flush come into my face. “Will we be gone long?” I asked.
“We’ll be back before you know it,” Larry said. I looked at him. If he knew what was going on in my head, he didn’t show it. I went to the hall closet and got my coat.
Then Butchie said, “I go, too?”
“Not tonight, Butch,” Larry said. “Maybe next time.”
“I go, too?” Butch said again, his voice thickening into a sob.
“Butch!” Charlotte called from the kitchen, “your father said no, now drop it. You can go another time.” But Butch wouldn’t drop it, and by the time Larry and I had put on our jackets and kissed Charlotte goodbye and walked out the front door, Butchie was in our bedroom, where Charlotte had sent him, throwing a fit. Even after we’d got into the car and closed the doors, I could hear him, screaming, until Larry started the engine and we drove away.
The night sky was dark, and we drove along streets lit brightly with Christmas lights. I asked Larry where we were going.
“I need to pick up some beer and cigarettes for Char and me,” he said. “And then there’s a little something else I need to get over at TG&Y.”
“Like what?” I said.
Larry’s smile was almost smug. “I can’t tell you,” he said. “It’s a surprise.”
“A surprise?” Now he’d got my attention. “For me? What kind of surprise?” Then I remembered the look that had passed between him and Charlotte during dinner. My heart raced.
“You’ll see,” he said. “Soon enough.”
He drove us to the Seven-Eleven for the beer and cigarettes, and told me to wait in the car while he went in. He wasn’t gone long, but in my excitement it seemed like hours. When he finally came out again and stashed the paper bag with his beer and cigarettes in the trunk, I felt as if I had worms in my chest. He took his time settling into his seat and starting the car, and during the two or three mile drive to TG&Y, he seemed to make doubly sure we hit all the red lights. When we finally pulled into the TG&Y parking lot, he made me wait for him in the car again while he went inside. “Oh, man!” I said, frowning. He laughed, and reached over and squeezed my thigh. “I think you’ll live,” he said. Then he got out of the car and walked into the store, cramming his pistol into his pants front, underneath his jacket.
When he came back five minutes later, he opened the driver-side door and tossed a medium-sized paper bag onto the seat next to me. “Happy early Christmas,” he said merrily. He put his gun under the seat, then got in and closed the door. I stared at the bag, thinking for some reason that I needed his permission to pick it up. “Well?” he said. “Go ahead. Open it.”
I snatched the bag from the seat and peered inside. Even in the dark, I knew what they were—marbles. “All right!” I blurted out. I turned the bag over and dumped the contents onto the seat. For a long moment I stared at the pile of small clear plastic bags, each packed with an assortment of marbles. Lots of marbles. Larry pointed at the bags and rattled off their names: cat’s-eyes; aggies; purees; boulders and steelies; even a couple of boulder-steelies. Next to them lay a big leather bag with a draw string to carry them all. “Wow!” I said, running my fingers through the pile. “Thank you! This is—so neato!”
I couldn’t recall the last time anyone had given me something like this, something I really wanted, something that instantly made me feel equal to other kids. Even my bicycle, which my drunken father had bought for me two years earlier, didn’t count: the tires had gone flat before I could really learn how to ride it, before anyone could see that I owned a bicycle. And being seen was what mattered most. Already I was envisioning myself walking onto the dirt playground with my huge bag of marbles, plunking them down at one of the games, soaking up the admiring looks from the other kids when they saw how many I had. I felt suddenly—important. “Can I take them to school tomorrow?” I asked.
Larry grinned, obviously pleased with my response. “Of course,” he said. “That’s why I got them for you. Every boy should have a big stash of marbles. It’s an unwritten law.”
“Neato!” I said again.
Larry started the car. Then he looked over at me while I dropped the plastic bags back into the larger bag, one at a time, trying to estimate how many marbles I had. “So,” he said nonchalantly, “you want to drive?” The question just sort of tripped from his tongue. He might as easily have been asking me if I knew what time it was.
“You’re kidding,” I said. I felt my eyes bugging out. Way out.
“No, I’m not kidding,” he said. “I let kids do this all the time. It’s easy. Just sit on my lap. You can steer, and I’ll work the gas and the brakes.”
I looked at him, still not believing he meant it. Me? Driving? Maybe he was teasing me. I waited for the punch line, the gotcha! that said what a fool I was to think he was serious. He just sat there, waiting, watching me. Finally I let out a little nervous laugh and shrugged. “Well,” I said, “if you really think it’s okay.”
“Of course, it’s okay,” he said. “Hey, I’m a policeman. You don’t think I’d have you do something that was against the law, do you?” There was something comforting in his voice, the same as when he’d talked with me the night I’d first met him in Ocean Beach. I felt my nervousness melt away, replaced with excitement. He reached over and picked me up by my arms and pulled me onto his lap. Then he slid my hands around to the ten and two o’clock positions on the steering wheel. “Ready?” he said. I jerked my head up and down. He pulled on the gear lever, and the car began moving slowly backwards. “Look over your shoulder,” he said. “See that empty space behind us? Just turn the wheel in the direction you want to go.” I looked and turned the wheel, and we glided easily into an empty spot in the parking lot. “Great!” he said, bringing the car to a stop. “You’re a natural!” He put the shifter into drive, and we moved forward. Moments later, I had steered the car (with just a little help, I noticed, from his thumb which he hooked at the bottom of the wheel) out of the parking lot and onto the street. My heart beat crazily in my chest.
He had me turn the car into a nearby residential area, where it was darker and where there were fewer cars on the street, and we drove, randomly turning here and there, going nowhere in particular. I could hardly believe I was actually doing this. Me! Driving a car!
Larry slid his arms more tightly around my waist and pulled me closer to him. “That’s my boy,” he said, his voice a low, strange growl in my ear. The words echoed in my brain: my boy.
He pulled me closer yet, until something hard pressed against my backside, beginning at my tailbone and running halfway up my spine. At first I thought it was something in Larry’s pocket, like a roll of quarters, only longer. “What’s that—?” I started to ask, but before I could finish the question, I felt Larry’s free hand unbuttoning my pants, and then pulling my zipper all the way down. In one deft motion, he rooted into my underwear and, with a directness that almost made me cry out, clamped his warm fingers firmly onto my dick.
A bolt of lightning seemed to crash through my brain. The smile on my face snapped into a surprised grimace, as if the muscles of my face had been pulled tight from the back of my head, like strings. The air on my scrotum was cool. It chilled me all the way into my abdomen, as if Larry had actually unzipped my belly and was busy riffling through my innards. The thing I’d felt against my back grew even harder and longer, and more insistent. I didn’t have to ask what it was.
All thoughts of anything beyond what Larry was doing with his hand suddenly disappeared—including driving. The car veered to the right, toward a long line of parked cars.
“Whoa, careful there!” Larry said, though it sounded as if he was sitting somewhere in the back seat. I felt the wheel jerk to the left, seemingly of its own free will. “Pay attention to where you’re going!” he said sharply. I thought for a moment he was mad at me, until I realized his other hand was still calmly, methodically squeezing and pulling up and down on my dick, as if nothing dangerous or unusual were happening elsewhere. I felt my dick growing erect, and groaned inwardly. Now Larry’s fingers had that much more to hold onto. I cringed to think he would interpret my erection as a signal that I was enjoying what he was doing. But just as distressing was the realization that a part of me actually was enjoying it. There seemed no way to hold both sides in my head at the same time, and I found myself bouncing mentally back and forth. He called me ‘his boy’! His Boy! But—this is wrong, this is dirty, there’s something—sick—about this! Does this mean he likes me? Loves me? What DOES this mean?
The car seemed suddenly to be going faster, along with Larry’s heavy breathing and the movement of his hand. I had a hard time keeping my mind on where the car was going. Several times, Larry had to steer us back onto the road. And he did so, easily, with the same free hand, while the other did its rhythmic work. At some point I realized my dick had grown completely numb, as if he’d yanked it from my body altogether. All I felt now was the pulsating pressure of his hand on me, beating rapidly against my upper thighs.
I don’t know how long we drove around. A kind of fog had settled over me. Neither of us mentioned what Larry was doing. He was silent except for the occasional suggestion to turn on this or that street. That, and his breathing, which sounded as if he were trudging steadily up a long, steep hill. As for me, it was easier to hold my head up, look at the occasional Christmas lights we passed, think about what was going on in the houses we passed, anything except what Larry was doing. We eventually came to the area of La Mesa I recognized. Larry stopped pulling on me, and, by the time I’d turned the car into our driveway, had zipped up and buttoned my pants. He shut the car off and let me out.
I stood there on the small grass yard, waiting for Larry, clutching my bag of marbles. They suddenly felt lighter in my hands than I remembered, as if they were fakes made from plastic, not the glass or polished stones real marbles were made from. I couldn’t decide if I wanted them anymore. I sucked in the cool night air and tried to breathe out the heaviness in my gut. Larry retrieved his gun from underneath the front seat and the beer and cigarettes from the trunk, then shut and locked the car doors. For some reason I felt obliged to thank him again for the marbles, and he put a hand on my back and massaged me. “You’re welcome,” he said.
Charlotte and Butchie were on the living room couch when we came inside the house, watching Dick Van Dyke on TV. Or, rather, Charlotte was watching it. Butchie was snuggled up with his arms around her, asleep. He didn’t stir, even when we slammed the screen door behind us and Larry made a racket hanging up our jackets in the hall closet. Charlotte extricated herself from the couch and Butchie’s arms and came into the hallway. “Where have you two been?” she said, scowling, half-whispering so as not to wake Butch. “You left over two hours ago to get beer and cigarettes!”
I looked into Charlotte’s angry face. For a split second, I pictured myself throwing my arms around her and telling her about Larry and this thing he’d done. In my mind’s eye I watched as she glowered at him and demanded that he explain himself, and then—. Then the movie in my head stopped, the way a real movie stops when the film breaks. I tried to get it running again, but couldn’t. All I could manage was a blank screen. I glanced at Larry, then back to Charlotte. In that instant, I was aware of everything around me, the warm house, the TV turned down low, Butch snug and asleep on the couch, how everything fit together. And in that same instant, I knew I could never tell her, could never wish for her to be mad at Larry, or for anything else that would mar the dream come true that had become my new life. I wanted Charlotte to love Larry, the way June Cleaver loved Ward, or the way Jane Wyatt loved Robert Young on Father Knows Best. I wanted her to smile at Larry with glittering eyes and call him LJ. Then another picture popped into my brain, something I recalled from just the day before. It was the sunny image of Charlotte standing at the kitchen sink washing the breakfast dishes, unaware that I was watching her as she hummed softly to herself and gazed wistfully out into the back yard, the tips of her brown hair glowing golden in the light. It was a picture I wanted to hold always in my memory. One wrong word and it was sure to crumble away to nothing.
I kept quiet. I stood staring at her, praying that what was churning in my stomach didn’t boil over and start me crying, inviting questions I didn’t know how—didn’t want—to answer.
“We drove over to the dime store, Babes,” Larry said apologetically. “I’m sorry, I thought you knew.” Larry looked down at me, nodding furtively toward the bag I held.
“Oh. Yeah,” I said, holding up the bag. “Larry bought me some marbles.” I tried to sound excited, but something had wrapped itself around my throat. What came out wasn’t a voice as much as a monotone croak. I tried again. “A bunch of marbles,” I said. I pulled my face into something I hoped would pass for a smile.
“And?” Larry said, prompting me. “What else did we do?”
My heart jumped, and I fought to catch it, shove it back into my chest. “Larry—he—let me steer the car,” I stammered. “All by myself!”
Larry sort of coughed. “Well, pretty much all by himself,” he said quietly. “Anyway, that’s why we were gone so long.”
Amazingly, Charlotte didn’t seem at all fazed by this information. Her face took on a reluctant grin. “Well, I just wish you’d let me know what you were planning,” she said. “I was worried.”
“I’m really sorry,” Larry said, soothingly. “It was inconsiderate of me not to call. Forgive me?”
Charlotte thought for a long moment, and then nodded, though I could tell she was still a little mad. But when she looked down at me, her face brightened with a look that kindled again that strange tickling sensation in my heart. She knelt down and ran her fingers through my hair, petting me. “So? Larry’s teaching you to drive!” she said, grinning. She glanced up at Larry. “And how did he do, Hubbins?”
Larry looked down at me and smiled. “Really fine,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “He’s one of my star pupils.”