The Hour I First Believed. Wally Lamb
First time. “You know a lot about writing,” she said. “You should write a book.”
I told her I had—a novel.
“Shut up! Did it get published?”
“It was accepted for publication, but then it never happened.”
“Why not?”
“Long story.”
“What’s it about?”
The disappearance of a little boy, I told her.
“Cool. Can I read it sometime?”
“No.”
“Has Maureen read it?”
“Mrs. Quirk, you mean? No, she hasn’t.”
“Why not?”
Because it made me too vulnerable. “Because it’s asleep in a file cabinet in Connecticut,” I said. “I don’t want to wake it up.”
She smirked at that. “So now you don’t have to work on it no more, right?” I told her I was beginning to feel like I’d created a monster.
“What’s the title?”
“Hey,” I said. “Let’s get back to your writing.” But she persisted. Pestered me until I told her. “The Absent Boy,” I said.
She repeated the title, nodding in agreement. “Cool,” she said.
On our walk back to the in-school suspension room, I brought up the subject of those graveyard blow jobs. “You’re not doing anything like that now, are you?” I asked. She looked away. Shook her head. “Because that’s pretty risky behavior, you know? You deserve better.”
“I made them use a condom,” she said.
“Which was good. But still—”
“Except this one older dude. He wouldn’t use one, so I charged him extra. Plus, he worked at Radio Shack, so he used to boost me some cool stuff. Handheld video games and shit.”
A few days later, velvet handed me a revision of “Hope Cemetery.” The sex act was intact, but she’d sanded down the rough edges and sharpened the connection between the opening and closing images. She’d grasped the concept of resonance, all right. At the bottom of her paper, I wrote, “This essay is as polished as one of your grandfather’s sculptures.” Sitting across from her at lunchtime the next day, I watched her read the comment. When she was done, she looked up, expressionless. She stared at me for a few seconds more than felt comfortable.
That night, I had Maureen read Velvet’s essay. “It’s unbelievable, isn’t it?” I said. “I mean, unless Jerry Falwell’s the judge, how could she not win this thing?…What? Why are you smirking?”
“Sounds like Mr. Neutral’s misplaced his objectivity,” she said.
“Yeah, well…if some kid comes up with a piece that’s better than ‘Hope Cemetery,’ I’d really like to read it.”
VELVET’S SIXTEENTH BIRTHDAY WAS COMING up, so we invited her over to the house for dinner. It was Maureen’s idea. I felt a little iffy about it—mixing school and home—but it wasn’t as if anyone else was going to do anything for the kid. Mo ordered a cake and one of those balloon bouquets. She made a vegetable lasagna. We shopped together for Velvet’s presents: dangly earrings, jazzy socks, a leather-bound journal for her writing.
Velvet wanted to be picked up in front of Wok Express, the takeout place near where the State of Colorado rented her a room. Mo drove over there, waited half an hour, and then called me. “Should I just come home?” she asked. “Oh, wait a minute. Here she comes.”
Back at the house, things got off to a bumpy start. Velvet took one look at Sophie and Chet and headed for higher ground—her butt on the back of our sofa, her big silver boots on the seat cushions. She’d been bitten by a rottweiler once, she said; she didn’t trust any dogs. We kept trying to convince her that ours were friendly, but she wasn’t buying it. I had to put them out in the garage and let them bark.
And then there was Velvet’s party outfit: cargo shorts, fishnet stockings crisscrossing the uncovered swastika tattoo, and a stained T-shirt with a cartoon picture of Santa Claus raising his middle finger. “Fuck You and the Sleigh You Rode In On,” it said. Maureen handled the situation gracefully. She asked Velvet if she wanted a house tour. On their way upstairs, I heard Mo suggest how chilly it was at our house. When they came back down again, the kid was wearing Mo’s blue pullover sweater.
We’d planned to have her open her gifts after dinner and birthday cake, but the minute she saw them, she tore into them. She put on her new earrings, pulled off her boots so that she could wear her new socks. She kept picking up the journal and rubbing its soft leather against her cheek.
“This dinner’s good, Mom,” Velvet told Maureen, even though she performed an autopsy on her square of lasagna, piling all traces of vegetable matter onto the cloth napkin beside her plate. Two or three times, she got out of her chair to whack her balloon bouquet. When we lit the candles and sang “Happy Birthday,” she wouldn’t look at her cake. She blew out her candles with such ferocity, I thought the frosting might fly across the room.
When Velvet went outside for a smoke, Maureen and I cleared the table. “This is going well, don’t you think?” Mo said.
“Uh-huh. She calls you Mom?”
“She just started doing that. I don’t think anyone’s ever had a party for her. Do you?”
“From the way she’s behaving, I’d say no. Do you think we can let the dogs back in? They’re going crazy out there.”
Mo shook her head. “She’s really scared of them.”
We ended things a little after nine. Mo stayed home to clean up and I drove Velvet back, the balloons bobbing and blocking my view from the rearview mirror. En route, I asked her if she’d had a good time.
“Yeah,” she said. “You and Mom are awesome.”
“Why do you call her Mom?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Cuz she’s my mom.”
“Yeah? How so?”
She didn’t answer for several seconds. Then, she said, “I’ll give you a blow job if you want. I’m good at it.” At first, I didn’t say anything. Couldn’t think of anything to say. “You know the Salvation Army store? Just drive around back where the drop-off bins are.”
“Velvet,” I said. “That’s so inappropriate, so disrespectful of…How can you spend the evening with us, call her Mom, for Christ’s sake, and then—”
“Okay, okay,” she snapped. “You don’t have to get all moral about it. It’s not like you’re doing me any favors.”
When I stopped for a red light, she swung the door open and jumped out. “Hey, come back here!” I called.
She did, but only to snatch up her gifts, minus the balloon bouquet. I followed her for about a block, trying to coax her back into the car. It was dark. It was late. We were a mile or more from where she lived. “Get away from me, you perv!” she screamed. Hey, I didn’t need that bullshit. I hung a U-turn and gunned it in the opposite direction.
I didn’t get it. She’d enjoyed the evening. Why did she have to sabotage it? I was sure her come-on was going to piss off Maureen as much as it did me.
Except when I got home, I didn’t tell Mo. “That was quick,” she said.
“Yeah. No traffic. The dogs need to go out?”
“Just came back in. I see she forgot her balloons.”
“That’s a red flag, isn’t it?” I said. “That ‘Mom’ business?”
“Well, I’m