Afternoons with Stephen King, and Hanky-Panky
Eighty-two days still remained. There was a rhythm to how we spent them, and far from feeling bored that this was so, I loved the consistency of it all, the way those happy summer days played out, steady as Forrest’s crawl stroke as he made his way out into the lake every afternoon, steady as a tennis rally between a couple of players who knew what they were doing, as the children did not.
Breakfast with Forrest—sometimes bagel, sometimes croissant—then tennis at the club (“Little Hitters” class for Jilly, “Racquet Maniacs” for Hayward), followed by a stop at the Caboose, then home.
After lunch, Hayward and Jilly went off to their sailing lessons.
These took place at the yacht club, which was close enough to Wonderland that we could walk over, though sometimes Forrest dropped the children off in the boat.
We could usually count on one of the other mothers to bring them home afterward.
This left my afternoons gloriously free, most days.
I was still waiting for Forrest to take me out on the boat again for my waterskiing lesson, but meanwhile, there was plenty to occupy me.
Down by the water, I might read or go swimming—take a nap, swim some more, work on my tan, toss my tennis ball, imagining I was out on the court myself, like the country club girls, racquet in hand.
In the fantasy version, I played better than any of them.
Now and then Prudence might ask me to fold some laundry or carry out the trash or bring afternoon tea to Regina and clear away her cup afterward, but that was about as demanding as my job ever got.
Prudence always set a cookie on the tray with the teapot, but Regina never touched it.
That cookie was mine to savor with whatever book I’d checked out of the library most recently.
Luckily, Stephen King had written enough books that I didn’t have to worry about running out.
Every time I finished one—as I did every few days now—I’d hop on Buttercup and ride back over to the library.
If it was a rainy day, I’d settle into a cozy chair there to read for a while.
On sunny days, I took the long way home, stopping in the village to look in shop windows or get a Diet Coke.
I could almost imagine this town was my actual home.
It was late in the afternoon, the sun low on the horizon.
Regina was sipping her club soda. Forrest had fixed himself his gin and tonic.
The two of them sat on the patio glider together, Forrest’s hand resting on Regina’s thin white shoulder.
The strap on her sundress had slipped. He rearranged it for her.
It slipped again. Their eyes met. I registered something, though I wasn’t clear what.
“Why don’t you take the children out to the Caboose for fried clams,” Regina said to me.
“Count me out,” Hayward said. “I’m sick of fried clams.”
“You heard your mother,” Forrest said to him. “It’s still light enough the three of you can ride your bikes.”
The children and I headed out the French doors toward the rack where we kept our bicycles. Jilly, holding her Molly doll, ran ahead.
“You know why they said that, right?” Hayward said to me.
I looked at him. I didn’t, actually.
“Hanky-panky,” he whispered, grinning. “Every now and then my mom lets him fool around with her. It doesn’t happen very often,” he told me. “Maybe they watched a sexy video or something last night. Hubba-hubba.”
Though it was early in the summer, I’d already learned the best way to deal with Hayward’s remarks: Ignore them whenever possible. He wasn’t finished, though.
“They sleep in different rooms,” Hayward said. “But on special occasions she visits him. You’ll probably hear them one of these nights.”
He made an odd movement, like a man working a drill—up and down, up and down. He made a series of noises then. Grunting, panting, a small, high scream.
“Don’t look so surprised,” he said to me. “Don’t you know about sex? It makes people go crazy.”
Did I know about sex? I wanted to know. I thought about it every day—with horror and fascination, both at once.
I wrote about it in my journal at night, as well as a person could who’d never actually experienced it.
But as with nearly every other aspect in life, this one left me feeling, once again, like an outsider.
It was as if there were this great party going on to which everyone had been invited—even Regina, evidently. Everyone but me. I stood on the sidelines, wanting to catch a glimpse of what was happening and trying to make sense of things.
More and more over that last year, thoughts about sex kept popping up in my brain like the weirdest kind of public service announcement ever.
We interrupt this program with a special bulletin .
. . I’d catch sight of the pale, bland face of the weather person on TV, and the thought would come to me: When was the last time she had sex?
And when she did, what happened, exactly?
What was it people actually did when they had sex with each other?
I knew the basics, but I longed to understand what it felt like—more so, what it meant, and why people cared about it so much.
I considered the sex question about almost everyone I encountered.
It could be a woman at MacDougall’s when I stopped in to pick up suntan lotion, or the school secretary, or the man who delivered our mail, the bank teller to whom I’d handed my passbook when I’d deposited my most recent stash of babysitting money.
Nancy Reagan. Barbara Walters. My social studies teacher.
A woman who’d shown up at our apartment wanting my dad to fix her toaster.
It started a year or so before this, but since I’d come to Wonderland, I seemed to be on fire.
All of a sudden sex was everywhere. Everywhere I looked, I saw it.
The possibility of sex, anyway. And its effects on people.
Either because it was going on in their lives or, for some of them, because it wasn’t.
Until that night when Forrest and Regina sent us off to the Caboose, I had believed they were in the no-sex category, but Hayward’s remarks had revealed a new layer to the mystery.
Even Regina had sex. Not very often, maybe. But she did.
I figured I must be a freak. Was I the only person who thought about these things? What was happening to me?
Stop it, I told myself.
Only I never could.
And now came a realization that might have been comforting, only it wasn’t. I was not the only person who thought about sex. So did Hayward Emerson, the biggest loser boy, ever, which probably made me the biggest loser girl.