|
|
|
|  |  |  |
|
BILLIE SUE For Laura,
Mi-Mi, and Morn About a week before the house next
door sold to the young couple, Billie Sue and I broke up. It was painful and my
choice. Some stupid argument we'd had, but I tried to tell myself I had made
the right decision. And in the light of day it seemed I
had. But come night when the darkness set in and the king-size bed was like a
great raft on which I floated, I missed Billie Sue. I missed her being next to
me, holding her. The comfort she had afforded me had been greater than I
imagined, and now that she was gone, I felt empty, as if I had been drained
from head to toe and that my body was a husk and nothing more. But the kids next door changed
that. For a time. I was off for the summer. I teach
math during the high school term, and since Billie Sue and I had broken up, I
had begun to wish that I had signed on to teach summer school. It would have
been some kind of diversion. Something to fill my days with besides thinking of
Billie Sue. About the second day the kids moved
in, the boy was out mowing their yard, and I watched him from the window for a
while, then made up some lemonade and took it out on the patio and went over
and stood by where he was mowing. He stopped and killed the engine
and smiled at me. He was a nice looking kid, if a little bony. He had very
blond hair and was shirtless and was just starting to get hair on his chest. It
looked like down, and the thought of that made me feel ill at ease, because,
bizarrely enough, the down-like hair made me think of Billie Sue, how soft she
was, and that in turn made me think of the empty house and the empty bed and
the nights that went on and on. "Hey," the boy said.
"You're our neighbor?" "That's right. Kevin
Pierce." "Jim Howel.
Glad to meet you." We shook hands. I judged him to be about twenty. Half
my age. "Come on and meet my
wife," he said. "You married?" "No," I said, but I felt
strange saying it. It wasn't that Billie Sue and I were married, but it had
seemed like it. The way I felt about her, a marriage license wasn't necessary.
But now she was gone, and the fact that we had never officially been hitched
meant nothing. I walked with him to the front
door, and about the time we got there, a young woman, his wife, of course,
opened the screen and looked out. She wore a tight green halter-top that
exposed a beautiful brown belly and a belly button that looked as if it had
been made for licking. She had on white shorts and thongs. Her black hair was
tied back, and some of it had slipped out of the tie and was falling over her
forehead and around her ears, and it looked soft and sensual. In fact, she was
quite the looker. It wasn't that her face was all
that perfect, but it was soft and filled with big brown eyes, and she had those kind of lips that look as if they've been bruised and
swollen. But not too much. Just enough to make you want to put your lips on
them, to maybe soothe the pain. "Oh, hi," she said. "Hi," I said. Jim introduced us. Her name was
Sharon. "I've got some lemonade next
door, if you two would like to come over and share it," I said. "Just
made it." "Well, yeah," said Jim.
"I'd like that. I'm hot as a pistol." "I guess so," said the
girl, and I saw Jim throw her a look. A sort of hey-don't-be-rude kind of look.
If she saw the look, she gave no sign of it. As we walked over to my house, I
said, "You folks been married long?" "Not long," James said.
"How long, honey?" "Eighteen months." "Well, congratulations,"
I said. "Newlyweds." We sat out on the patio and drank
the lemonade, and James did most of the talking. He wanted to be a lawyer, and
Sharon was working at some cafe in town putting him through. He tried to talk
like he was really complimenting her, and I think he was, but I could tell
Sharon wasn't feeling complimented. There was something about her silence that
said a lot. It said, Look what I've got myself into. Married this chatterbox
who wants to be a lawyer and can't make a dollar 'cause he's got to study, so
I've got to work, and law school isn't any hop, skip and a jump. We're talking
years of tips and pinches on the ass, and is this guy worth it anyhow? She said all that and more without
so much as opening her mouth. When we finished off the lemonade, James got up
and said he had to finish the lawn. "I'll sit here a while,"
Sharon said. "You go on and mow." Kevin looked at her, then he looked
at me and made a smile. "Sure," he said to her: "We'll eat some
lunch after a while." "I ate already," she
said. "Get you a sandwich, something out of the box." "Sure," he said, and went
back to mow. As he went, I noticed his back was
red from the sun. I said, "You ought to tell him to get some lotion on.
Look at his back." She swiveled in her chair and
looked, turned back to me, said, "He'll find out soon enough he ought to
wear lotion. You got anything stronger than lemonade?" I went in the house, got a couple
of beers and a bottle of Jack Daniels, and some glasses. We drank the beers out
on the veranda, then, as it turned hotter, we came inside and sat on the couch
and drank the whisky. While James' mower droned on, we talked about this and
that, but not really about anything. You know what I mean. Just small talk
that's so small it's hardly talk. After about an hour, I finally
decided what we were really talking about, and I put my hand out and touched
her hand on the couch and she didn't move it. "Maybe you ought to go on
back." "You want me to." "That's the problem, I don't
want you to." "I just met you." "I know. That's another reason
you ought to go back to your husband." "He's a boring sonofabitch.
You know that. I thought he was all right when we met. Good looking and all,
but he's as dull as a cheap china plate, and twice as shallow. I'm nineteen
years old. I don't want to work in any goddamn cafe for years while he gets a
job where he can wear a suit and get people divorces. I want to get my divorce
now." She slid over and we kissed. She
was soft and pliant, and there were things about her that were better than
Billie Sue, and for a moment I didn't think of Billie at all. I kissed her for
a long time and touched her, and finally the mower stopped. "Goddamn it," she said.
"That figures." She touched me again, and in the
right place. She got up and retied her halter-top, which I had just managed to
loosen. "I'm sorry," I said.
"I let this get out of hand." "Hell, I'm the one sorry it
didn't get completely out of hand. But it will. We're neighbors." I tried to avoid Sharon after that,
and managed to do so for a couple days. I even thought about trying to patch
things up with Billie Sue, but just couldn't. My goddamn pride. On the fourth night after they'd
moved in, I woke up to the sound of dishes breaking. I got out of bed and went
into the living room and looked out the window at my neighbor's house, the
source of the noise. It was Sharon yelling and tossing things that had awakened
me. The yelling went on for a time. I got a beer out of the box and sat down
with a chair pulled up at the window and watched. There was a light on in their
living room window, and now and then their shadows would go across the light,
then move away. Finally I heard the front door
slam, and Kevin went out, got in their car and drove away. He hadn't so much as
departed when Sharon came out of the house and started across the yard toward
my place. I moved the chair back to its
position and sat down on the couch and waited. She knocked on the door. Hard. I
let her knock for a while, then I got up and answered the door. I was in my
underwear when I answered, but of course, I didn't care. She was in a short
black nightie, no shoes, and she didn't care either. I let her in. She said, "We
had a fight. I hope the sonofabitch doesn't come back." She took hold of me then, and we
kissed, and then we made our way to the bedroom, and it was sweet, the way she
loved me, and finally, near morning, we fell asleep. When I awoke it was to Kevin's
voice. In our haste, we had left the front door open, and I guess he'd seen the
writing on the wall all along, and now he was in the house, standing over the
bed yelling. Sharon sat up in bed, and the sheet
fell off her naked breast and she yelled back. I sat up amazed, more than
embarrassed. I had to learn to lock my doors, no matter what. This yelling went on for a time,
lots of cussing, then Kevin grabbed her by the wrist and jerked her out of the
bed and onto the floor. I jumped up then and hit him, hit
him hard enough to knock him down. He sat up and opened his mouth and a tooth
fell out. "Oh my God, Kevin,"
Sharon said. She slid across the floor and took his head in her hands and
kissed his cheek. "Oh, baby, are you all right?" "Yeah, I'm all right," he
said. I couldn't believe it. "What
the hell?" I said. "You didn't have to hit
him," Sharon said. "You're older, stronger. You hurt him." I started to argue, but by that
time Kevin was up and Sharon had her arm around him. She said, "I'm sorry,
baby, I'm so sorry. Let's go home." Sharon pulled on her nightie, and
away they went. I picked up the panties she'd left and put them over my head,
trying to look as foolish as I felt. They smelled good though. Dumb
asshole, I said to myself. How
many times have they done this? There are strange people in this world.
Some get their kicks from wearing leather, being tied down and pissed on, you
name it, but this pair has a simpler method of courtship. They fight with each
other, break up, then Sharon flirts and sleeps around until James discovers
her, then they yell at each other and he forgives her, and he's all excited to
think she's been in bed with another man, and she's all excited to have been
there, and they're both turned on and happy. Whatever. I didn't want any part of
it. That night I decided to make up
with Billie Sue. I got my shovel out of the garage and went out and dug her up
from under the rose bushes. I got her out of there and brushed the dirt off and
carried her inside. I washed her yellow body off in the sink. I fondled her
bill and told her I was sorry. I was so sorry I began to cry. I just couldn't
help myself. I told her I'd never bury her in the dirt again. I filled the bathtub with water and
put Billie Sue in there and watched her float. I turned her in the water so
that she could watch me undress. I stripped off my clothes slowly and got in
the tub with her. She floated and bobbed toward me, and I picked her up and
squeezed her and dirt puffed from the noisemaker in her beak and the sound she
made was not quite a squeak or a quack. I laughed. I squeezed her hard, the
way she likes it, the way she's always liked it since the first time my mother
gave her to me when I was a child. I squeezed her many times. I floated her in
the tub with me, moved her around my erection, which stuck up out of the water
like a stick in a pond, and I knew then what I should have always known. Billie
Sue was the love of my life. Perhaps we were not too unlike that
silly couple next door. We fought too. We fought often. We had broken up
before. I had buried her under the rose bushes before, though never for this
long. But now, holding her, squeezing her hard, listening to her quack, I knew
never again. I began to laugh and laugh and laugh at what she was saying. She
could be like that when she wanted. So funny. So forgiving. Oh, Billie Sue. Billie Sue. My
little rubber duckie poo. Be back here Thursday, May 2, with
bells on! "Billie Sue" originally appeared in A Fist Full of Stories [and Articles], a collection published by CD Publications. It was later included in Bumper Crop (Golden Gryphon Press). "Billie Sue" © 1996 By Bizarre Hands, LLC. All Rights Reserved. |
