CHAPTER 21
LUCY
“So he came into Wash-n-Tan a few weeks back with all his collared shirts,” Bess said. “You know how he’d been going around all wrinkly since his wife left. You’d think somebody like him could figure out something as simple as an iron. I guess he was just too lazy.” She was trying to explain how it was that she came to be fooling around with Vice Principal Sorrel from the junior high, whom I remembered mostly for his sweatiness and fake smile. I was trying to hold my judgment, but it was really, really hard. I kept picturing the yellow stains on the armpits of all his shirts.
“Can we please skip to the part where you discover his redeeming qualities?”
Bess looked embarrassed, and I regretted opening my mouth. “It didn’t happen all at once,” she said. “Like I was saying, he came in with his shirts and offered extra if I could get ’em done while he waited. Said he needed ’em for some job interviews he had coming up. Normally, my cousin makes me leave all the ironing for him to do, ’cause I fuck it up every time. But I wanted the extra cash, so I told Sorrel I’d do it. He just sat there watching me at first while I loaded up the washer. I mean, he had a magazine, but he wasn’t looking at it. He started making small talk, like, he couldn’t believe how much I’d grown up since junior high, how were things going for me in high school, what did I think of the teachers, on and on. I got sick of it after a while, so I said, ‘Why don’t you go ahead and get a tan while you’re waiting? So you can look real sharp for your interviews?’ Boy, did he think that was a grand idea. I got him all set up in the back room, and he asked me if he had to get naked to get in the thing, and I said, ‘Well, you don’t have to, but people do, and I wipe down the bed with antiseptic after, so it’s safe if you want to do it.’ ”
I imagined Vice Principal Sorrel getting naked, squeezing his doughy body between the plates of the tanning bed like some messy grilled sandwich.
“I went back up front to the desk, and after a couple minutes I thought I heard something over the racket of the washing machine. I walked toward the tanning room, and the door was cracked open the tiniest bit, and Sorrel was calling my name. Said he was having trouble getting into the bed, could I help him. I was wishing I hadn’t agreed to do his shirts, because he was turning out to be a pain, and he was keeping me from watching my soaps, besides. But I figured for the money, I could help squish his fat ass into the tanning bed, it’d only take a minute. Well, I walked in and there he was, sitting naked on the bed with his dick all hard pointing right at me, and he had this sly look on his face, like he was gonna act either embarrassed or sexy, depending on my reaction.”
“Bess! What did you do?”
“What do you think I did, jump on for a ride? I said, ‘Looks like you’re doing just fine,’ and I went to close the door. I was thinking how I’d burn his shirts up with the iron, get ’em all brown and crispy and he’d never come back.”
“You didn’t, though, did you.”
She sighed. “No. He started bawling before I even got the door closed, started begging me not to tell anybody what he’d done, that he’d misread me and he did that sometimes and he couldn’t seem to help it. I didn’t believe him all the way, but he was pretty pathetic, so I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for him.” As much as Bess mocked Gabby and her softness for hopeless creatures, she was turning out to be just like her mother in that way, unable to cast aside whatever toothless dog or troubled man crossed her path. “I stood there and listened a minute,” she continued. “And when he saw I wasn’t too freaked out, he calmed down a little, and we kinda started talking.”
“What do you talk about after something like that? Was he sitting there naked the whole time?”
Bess laughed. “He laid his pants across his lap. We talked about his wife a little bit at first. He wasn’t mad at her for leaving, sounded like he was almost kinda relieved, like he didn’t have to keep pretending things were good. He said not to get married without taking a test run first, because he found out too late that her tits were nothing but pushup bras and padding. She was flat as a board and didn’t believe in having sex unless you were trying to make a baby. Then he got all dreamy-eyed and said he didn’t mean any disrespect, but my chest was just perfect, he could tell through my shirt, and he hoped he could find himself a girl like me.”
“I still can’t believe it,” I said. “Sorrel? Didn’t you feel gross with him talking about your boobs like that?”
“I dunno,” she said. “He was kinda growing on me. He’s funny, actually, and there was something about seeing the guy who keeps a big whipping paddle in his office at school all naked and backed in a corner. I liked it, I guess.” She chewed a hangnail. “He asked if I could deliver the shirts to his house when I got off work. He said he’d pay me in cash and maybe we could talk a bit more.”
I was thinking that I would never in a million years go to the vice principal’s house after he showed me his penis, but hadn’t I met Jamie Petree alone on the river and let him touch me to get what I wanted? Whatever Bess had done, she had her reasons.
“I hate to ask what happened at his house,” I said, “because I’m already going to be having nightmares about him naked in the tanning bed. Let me guess, does he have one of those paddles in his bedroom, too?”
Bess’s cheeks flushed.
“No!” I said. “I was kidding. Does he really? Did he try to … Did he want you to …?”
Bess looked down. “He was playing around with it one time. He thought it’d be funny, and I thought he was just gonna give me a little swat, but it kinda hurt, and I wouldn’t let him do it again.”
Her tone had shifted, and I could tell she wasn’t as confident as she’d been acting. It worried me. “How many times have you been over there?”
She shrugged. “Most days, I guess, the last few weeks. He has cable and air-conditioning, and he always had cigarettes and things for me. It wasn’t all sexual.” The word sexual came out all sticky, like it was hard for her to say. “Sometimes we’d watch movies and stuff. Crank the air and wrap up in blankets and eat a pizza.” She was quiet for a moment. “It didn’t seem like he was into real sex.… He had trouble, you know, getting it up for that. It was mostly other stuff, like he wanted to show me how a guy likes a hand job. He asked if I’d ever gotten off with any of the guys I’d been with, and I hadn’t, and he said he wasn’t surprised because most of those younger guys don’t have a clue what they’re doing, they’re sticking fingers in everywhere like they’re looking for crawdads in a mud hole. So he made a sort of game out of trying to make me come, said maybe I’d reward him when he got it right, maybe I’d let him try some other things.”
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”
“I dunno. You were busy with Daniel and the whole Cheri thing. I was just having fun, you know. Sometimes it’s fun to have a secret. And it was fun, Luce. I know it sounds weird, but he made me laugh and he listened to me, and the way he touched me—he knew what he was doing. I couldn’t help it, it felt good. I might’ve been picturing Gage when I shut my eyes, but God help me, Gage Petree flopping around on top of me like he was having a seizure didn’t make me feel anything like this.”
We sat there on the porch steps, me wondering what exactly Sorrel had done to make her feel so good but not sure I should ask. I was used to Bess moving into unknown territory ahead of me, but she usually made me feel like I was right there with her, sharing every detail.
“Forget about all that stuff,” Bess said, flipping her hair out of her face. “That’s not the important part. Something happened after I talked to you last. We’re not … seeing each other anymore. I was over at his place the other night. He was drinking tequila, but I didn’t have any because I got sick on it that time at the river, remember?” I nodded. “So he was getting all drunk, and he wanted to fool around, but he wanted to try something different this time. I wondered what it’d be—I was already closing my eyes and thinking about Gage. Well, he went in the bedroom and came out with this old crank telephone. Said he’d hook it up to a battery and put the wires on me, like on my nipples or something, and turn the crank, and it’d feel real good. There was something not quite right about the way he was acting, and the more I thought about it, it didn’t sound fun, it sounded like he wanted to fucking electrocute me. Nobody knew where I was. Nobody knew I’d been seeing him. And that’s about when I started thinking I needed to get the hell out of there. He was real sweet at first, tried to talk me into staying. Said some girls really liked it, he knew I would, too. When I tried to leave, he got in my way, and his face was all red and twisted to where I couldn’t believe I’d ever thought him anything other than ugly, and he said, ‘Do I have to tie you down like that retarded girl?’ I guess he knew by looking at me that he’d screwed up, because he backed off and sort of laughed and said the whole thing was a joke, he was just kidding. I said, ‘Oh, yeah, you got me, but I really do need to get home, I told my mom I was dropping off your ironing.’ And I pushed out of there and haven’t been back. Obviously.”
“Cheri,” I said, stunned. “The ‘retarded girl.’ You think he meant Cheri.”
“Who else? I mean, he’s obviously into kinky shit, and he likes younger girls. Maybe he’s the one who had her in that trailer.”
My mind whirled through the possibilities. Did his wife find out? Was that why she left? “Thank God you got out of there,” I said. “Who knows what he would’ve done. Are you worried he’ll come after you?”
“I thought he would at first, yeah,” she said. “But I think he was waiting to see if I’d tell anybody. Probably figured nobody’d believe me.”
“We can’t let him go on doing stuff like that,” I said. “He can’t be working at a school, around kids.”
“Then we need to find something to pin him to Cheri, because I can’t prove anything we did together. Nobody saw me over there. Probably nobody would believe me, my word against his.”
I knew she was right. And if he’d been worried that there was anything tying him to Cheri’s death, he wouldn’t have let Bess go.
“Well, I have plenty of free time to work on that. No distractions.”
“Hey,” she said, squeezing my knee. “It won’t take Daniel that long to finish school. He’ll come back. They all do.”
I got so tired of hearing that. Not everyone returned to Henbane. Not Janessa Walker. Not Birdie’s sons. And maybe I wouldn’t, either. Maybe I’d see Iowa and keep right on going.