The next day, even though it was the end of January, she wore open-toed sandals in school, her nails a brilliant blue. I didn't hear a word she said in class—my notebook was completely blank. That afternoon, after our usual session (she called it "petting," and she was letting me touch her freely now—a stand-up triple, easy), she snuggled up to me on the sofa and let me copy her notes into my notebook so that I wouldn't fall behind.
Sometimes she would take me places. Never in Brookdale, of course. We'd make out in her apartment and then drive out to Canterstown or down to Finn's Crossing, where she'd treat me to dinner or hot chocolate or a movie. For those excursions, she would always call Mom from her cell phone and pretend that we were staying late at school to change the bulletin boards in the classroom or set up something for a lesson. "He's just a terrific little helper," she would say in complete innocence, usually while we were half-naked together on the sofa or floor.
The more time Eve and I spent together, the guiltier I started to feel, though I knew that the alternative—not seeing her at all—would be even worse. Eve was my friend. She had talked about how our "playing" together made us both feel good, but I knew that I was getting more out of this than she was. I was getting mind-shattering bliss and pleasure every time we were together, sometimes twice. She wasn't getting anything like that.
"Why don't you let me make you feel good, too?"
"Do you want to, Josh?"
"It just doesn't seem fair. You do all of these things for me and I don't—"
"But do you want to, Josh?"
I got frustrated. Why didn't she understand? I wasn't talking about what I wanted to do or didn't want to do. I was talking about what was fair. About me always getting and never giving anything back. Feeling guilty for that.
But sometimes she was like this—she wanted to hear what she wanted to hear and that was that.
"Yes. I want to."
That afternoon and for the rest of the week, she taught me her body. She was a very good teacher, and I suppose I was a good student.
There was only one other lesson to learn, I guess.
A week or so later, she asked me if I wanted to see the Happy Trio again. (She didn't call them the Happy Trio. That's just how I thought of them.)
I was curious, I have to admit, so I told her yes. She went into the bedroom and got the DVD. We watched it from the beginning, when it was just a Happy Duo, not a Happy Trio. It was amazing to see it with the perspective of the last few weeks. I knew that. And that. And that, too.
Except for when they pressed together, as close as Eve and I had pressed, but without clothing. I stared.
"Are you OK?" Eve was lying on the sofa, her head on my lap. I absently stroked her lustrous black hair while watching.
"I'm fine," I said, unable to turn away from the TV. I knew the sounds of lovemaking from listening to my parents through the vents. But I'd never had the visuals to go with it.
"I want to do that," I whispered.
Eve sat upright. "Are you sure?"
I kept staring at the screen. Eve paused the DVD and made me look at her. "Are you sure that's what you want?"
I swallowed. Was she saying that we could ... She was married...
"Yes," I whispered. I realized I was shaking. I had something else to say, something I could barely bring myself to say. I wanted to tell her that I wanted to do it with her, but I knew that was too far, too much. She was married. Married people have sex with each other. I knew that much.
"Yes," I said again. "But I don't know how."
There were tears in her eyes. She held me tight to her and kissed me deep and long. "That's OK." Her tongue flicked at my ear. "I'll teach you."
And she did. From then on, we moved our sessions from the sofa to the bedroom. My Xbox time dropped almost to nil.
I learned every curve, nook, and niche of her body, every inch of smooth skin, every bump and turn.
I learned what to touch, when to touch it, how to touch it, and for how long. I learned; I watched.
I never, ever stopped thrilling to the sight each time I saw her naked. Every time, it was new. Never boring. Never old.
She taught me how to make love and she taught me how to fuck and she taught me the difference. We ended up doing more of the latter than the former.
One time, in the panting aftermath of our afternoon session, she lay on the bed in unconscious imitation of that Playmate from Zik's Playboy an eternity ago.
"What are your numbers?" I asked her.
She looked at me sleepily over her shoulder. "My what?"
"Your numbers." I gestured at her chest, her waist.
"Oh." She laughed. "Why do you care all of a sudden?"
"Numbers are important."
"Come on, Josh."
"Numbers are important."
She relented at the seriousness in my expression. She took my hand and made me touch breast, waist, hip, as she recited "Thirty-four, twenty-six, thirty-five."
"Are those good numbers?"
Her eyebrows shot up. "Well, I like to think so! What do you think?" And she sprawled out on the bed, unashamed, completely open to me.
"I like them," I conceded. "But what do they mean?"
She explained the measurements to me, the way bra and cup sizes worked, the way women's clothes were measured differently then men's. Satisfied at last, I drifted off to sleep in her arms, catching an hour nap before the alarm woke us up in time to change the sheets, make the bed, and get dressed before George got home.
"Are you OK, Josh?" she asked me as we put fresh sheets on the bed. I was being quieter than usual, I guess.
"Yeah."
"Are you all right with what we're doing?"
Her eyes and her voice were filled with concern.
"Yes. I'm fine with it."
"Because if you want to stop—"
"No. I don't want to stop."
I couldn't tell her the truth: that I felt terrible for what I was doing. Guilty for making her do what I wanted. Guilty for making her do it my way. Guilty for making her cheat on her husband. Every time I saw George, every time his eyes lit up at the sight of me and he slapped me on the back and said, "How's it going, champ?" I felt like a part of me had died.
I hated myself for being too weak to stop it.
"You know, Josh, what we're doing is fine when two people love each other. Do you love me, Josh?"
And of course I had no choice. Not in terms of what to say—no choice but to love her. How could I do anything but? It was impossible.
"Yes. I do."
She came to me and hugged me, our bodies still slightly sticky with sweat. She was a few inches taller than I, and my head nestled—perfectly, as if designed that way, she always said—in the hollow of her throat, just above her breasts.
She kissed the top of my head, just like Mom. "And I love you, Josh. I really do. I wish..." Her body hitched, and I realized she was crying. "I wish things were different. I wish people would understand..."
I held her tightly as she cried.
The weather warmed—a little bit—and the days lengthened by some small but noticeable amount. One day over dinner, Mom suddenly said, "Poor Mrs. Sherman."
My heart hammered like I was facing Randy Johnson on the mound. I said absolutely nothing.
"I said," Mom said when no one rose to the bait, "'Poor Mrs. Sherman.'"
"We heard you," Dad said.
"Baseball practice starts in a couple of weeks. She's going to lose her little helper."
Baseball practice! How could I have forgotten about it?
Well, that was a silly question, actually. I knew exactly how I could have forgotten about it. I wasn't hanging out with Zik and Rachel all the time like I used to. We would have started our spring training countdown a few days ago and begun obsessing over the new season. But time was a strange, plastic thing when I was with Eve—it went slowly when it was just the two of us together, whether in the apartment or out somewhere in another town togethe
r. Then, when I came back home, it seemed like weeks had gone by in the interim, and I was late with homework or a project or something else.
Baseball practice. Man! It wasn't every day, but it was three times a week, plus Saturdays. Eve had been talking about trying to figure out a way to steal an entire Saturday together, but she hadn't come up with anything yet. Now there would be no way for that to happen.
"This project," Dad said, bringing me back to the moment. "This project of hers is taking a hell of a long time, isn't it?"
I opened my mouth to answer, terrified that I was going to throw up instead.
Mom rescued me. "The project's been over for weeks, Bill."
"Then why's he over there all the time?"
She rolled her eyes. "He's helping her with school stuff. Making bulletin boards, grading papers..."
"Grading papers?" Dad didn't believe it. Neither did I. Of course, I had the added benefit of knowing that it wasn't true.
"She teaches a sixth grade history class, too. He can grade those. They're just true-false. She gives him an answer key." She laughed lightly. "For God's sake, Bill, stop worrying. I talk to the woman every week. Everything's fine."
Mom looked over at me. "Josh? Are you OK?"
I think I'd gone pale the minute Mom said that she talked to Eve every week. My mouth didn't work; my voice wouldn't come.
"Josh?"
I said the first thing that came to mind: "I have to pee."
Dad grunted. Mom gave me her most exasperated look. "Well, for—Go to the bathroom, then! What are you waiting for, an engraved invitation?"
I scrambled up from my chair. "Honestly," I heard Mom say as I left the kitchen, "if I hadn't seen the IQ scores myself, sometimes I would wonder..."
"He seems distracted..." Dad's voice faded as I closed the bathroom door behind me.
I looked in the mirror. My face screamed, "I've been lying to you and I've been kissing Eve and I've been having sex and I've been FUCKING." I don't know how they could have missed it. They must have been complete idiots.
"Of course I've been talking to your mother," Eve said the next day on the way to the apartment. "Did you think she was just clueless and didn't notice how much time you've been spending at my apartment?"
Well, yeah, I had, to tell the truth. Still, I was mad. How could Eve let me get caught off-guard like that? What if my mom ... What if she...
I don't know what, actually. But if Mom was talking to Eve, something could have happened.
"I'm still trying to come up with a way for us to have a whole day together, honey. I have to be friends with your mom, don't you see? So that we can keep playing together." She stole glances at me as she talked; I sat there with my arms folded over my chest and stared out the windshield.
"Oh, honey, don't be angry." She put her hand on my leg and I shook it off.
"Talking to my mother ... It's like I'm a baby or something."
"Honey, I know you're not a baby. You know I know that. Don't be angry. We only have two hours today—George is coming home at his usual time."
"I don't care."
"I'm going to make this up to you," she promised. "You'll see."
At the apartment, she told me to wait while she went into the bedroom. After a few minutes, she came and strutted down the hallway toward me on heels. She was wearing a kind of bra and stockings I'd never seen before, festooned with straps and bands of color, something complicated and almost not there at all.
"Now," she said, standing before me, towering over me on her heels, "I'll make it up to you." She took my hand and led me into the bedroom.
Later, we lay together on the bed, each trying to catch our breath.
"You know what I like about us, Josh?"
"What?" I gasped.
"Our names. We both have biblical names. Did you notice that?" She turned her head to me and kissed my heaving shoulder. "You're Joshua. Strong. My king. And me...
"I'm Eve. The first woman." She snuggled close to me. "Your first woman."
I forgave her.
As baseball season started, Eve became more and more obsessed with figuring out a way for us to have an entire day—and, she said sometimes, an entire night—together. I could have told my mom I was spending the night at Zik's house, but Mom didn't really like Mr. and Mrs. Lorenz (then again, Zik and I didn't like them, either), so she would have asked a lot of questions and probably called over there once or twice just to check up on me.
The first game of the season, I went 2 for 3 and fielded three outs at shortstop. I had an RBI when I went for a double on a long drive into center left. Dad was at the game, but Mom had to work late, so she missed it.
I was surprised when I saw Eve on the third-base line, sitting in a fold-out lawn chair behind a group of parents. When I was hit to third, she winked at me, then pretended she was watching the rest of the game.
After the game, she came up to me—right in front of Dad!—hugged me, and congratulated me on such a great game.
If Dad noticed the look of terror I was sure had pounced on my face, he didn't let on. He offered her his right hand; she shook it with her free one. "Bill Mendel," Dad said.
"Evelyn Sherman. We actually met at parent-teacher con ferences last year," she reminded him. "But that was a while ago, and I'm not very memorable."
Who was she kidding? She was wearing a light yellow tank top that I'd never seen before and a little pleated skirt along with sandals that showed off—yes—electric blue toenails. Her black hair was tied back in a ponytail, sunglasses pushed up on her head. She was smiling broadly, her dimple out in full force.
"Of course," Dad said. "Of course. Josh speaks highly of you."
Huh? I never talked about Eve.
"Well, he's just a delight in class," she said. "And such a great helper, too!"
"I'm glad he's making productive use of his time."
I coughed. Productive use! How could he not tell? My God! Her standing there with her arm around me...! It took every ounce of willpower in my body to resist leaning into her and pressing against her like I usually did. My knees were so locked in place that I thought I might faint. I couldn't figure out how no one could tell what was going on between us. But people just milled around as if nothing had happened, nothing would happen.
"You know, my nephew's on the rec center team," Eve said, "and their schedule mirrors the school's. So if you and Jenna are ever too busy, I can always bring Josh home for you."
"That's nice of you. Thanks."
It was like Eve had multiple personalities or something. She could talk to my dad as if she were really nothing more than my teacher, all the while angling to get me back to her apartment on a regular basis. I was impressed, despite my fear that simply standing next to her would reveal the truth to the world.
I also knew that she didn't have a nephew.
"Well, I've got to get going. It was good seeing you again." She shook Dad's hand again and disengaged from me. "Bye, Josh. See you in school tomorrow."
I couldn't speak. I finally grunted, "Bye."
"Sorry," Dad said. "He's been quiet lately. Is he like that in school?"
Eve looked right at me, her green eyes seeming to take me over, commandeer my soul. "No," she said, smiling cheerfully, innocently, her voice light and airy while her eyes plumbed my skull. "He's very different around me."
My thirteenth birthday was a Friday. Mom and Dad said I was too old for a big party with lots of people, so I invited Zik to spend the night instead. Of course, I went home with Eve first, and we celebrated in our own way. She gave me a card that said "I love you," but didn't sign it. I read it as we lay in bed together.
"I can't sign it if you take it home with you," she said. "If your parents see it, tell them that you found it in your locker and it must be from a secret admirer."
Eve was happy because she'd finally figured out how to get us more time together. In two weeks, my team had an away game on a Saturday afternoon. Eve was going to come to the ga
me and, just before we got on the bus to come back home, tell the coach that she'd gotten a call from my parents on her cell phone—there was an emergency and no one would be able to pick me up at the school when the bus dropped me off. Eve would volunteer to take me home. She knew the coach (he was our phys ed teacher), so she knew she could pull it off. Meanwhile, she had already told my parents that she was going to be working at school on that Saturday, so she would be more than happy to bring me home for them.
In reality, of course, we would be heading straight for a hotel room she'd already booked. We would get back to Brookdale late that night—she planned to call Mom and Dad and tell them that her car broke down on the way back and we were waiting for a tow truck. She was positively giddy about her plan.
So my birthday came. "Lucky thirteen," Dad said. "Oh, Bill," Mom said. That night, while my parents and Zik slept, I crept out of my room and swiped the cordless from the kitchen. I took it out on the back porch, where you could still get a signal, and I called Eve. Her voice mail picked up. I don't know what made me do it, but I said, "Hi, it's Josh. I can't wait for two Saturdays from now." I had her card in my hand, and looking at it filled me with an empty want for her. "I love you," I said, and hung up.
And four days later, I went to Rachel's birthday party.
And she spun a bottle.
And we went into the closet.
And that was the beginning and the end of it all.
Strike Two
Chapter 11
Back to Life
Rachel peers at me in the gloomy morning dark. According to my watch, it's 3:14 and SAMMPark is a mass of shadows, a thousand different shades of gray all commingling in the murk, broken up by the light of the moon.
Zik's freshman season batting average was .314. He went 33 for 105, with 10 walks and 34 strikeouts. A woman with measurements 33-105-34 would look mighty strange.