We Are Water. Wally Lamb
he reaches down and takes my hand in his. It makes me think of that song “I Want to Hold Your Hand” that’s on my brother Donald’s Meet the Beatles! album. When Donald got married and moved out of state, he gave me all of his old Beatles albums, which I still play quite a bit, even though the Beatles broke up because of Yoko Ono. Instead of watching Return to the Planet of the Apes or thinking about what Albie’s up to, I start singing that song in my head. And when I touch you I feel happy inside … It makes me think about this girl in my fourth grade public school class named Carol Cosentino who used to wear a pink sailor hat that had all these little metal Beatles buttons pinned all over it. Carol’s favorite Beatle was George, I remember. I wonder whatever happened to her. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice that Albie, while he’s still holding my hand, is using his other hand to fiddle with his pants. Then I hear this snap-snapping sound and I see his belt flying into the back. From the way he just lifted his butt off the seat, he might have just pulled his pants down. I’m not sure, but I’m certainly not going to look over there and find out. But then he moves my hand over to his side and puts it down there—him and his Dutch courage. I can feel that he’s still got his underpants on, which is a relief, but I can also feel that he’s got a lump in there. A “boner,” I’ve heard boys at school call it when they’re talking dirty in the cafeteria. “Please?” he whispers, moving my hand up and down against his lump. I let him do it, not because I want to but because he said please, which makes me feel, kind of, that it’s me who’s in control of the situation, not him, and also because if Albie likes me, then maybe Winona will like me better, too, and assign me to Section A, where those lawyers from the office building next door always sit, and they’re big tippers. Those booths are Althea’s section, usually. Althea is Winona’s pet and she used to be Albie’s girlfriend. One day I overheard her telling one of the other waitresses that she broke up with him because he has no class. But according to Albie, he broke up with her because, unlike me, Althea is “a bitch on wheels who thinks her shit don’t stink.” That’s one thing I have to say for myself: I never, ever leave a bathroom smelly; I’m very careful about that kind of thing. I keep matches in my purse even though I don’t smoke, and whenever I have to use the toilet and, you know, get the bathroom smelly, I always light a match and burn some toilet paper to, what’s it called? Oh yeah, fumigate it. Part of me wants to yank my hand away from Albie’s lump, but another part of me says, what do I care? It doesn’t even feel like it’s my hand that’s doing what he’s making it do, and while he’s over there, mouth-breathing and making my hand go faster, I try thinking of other things. I make up this game where I have to think of all the songs on Abbey Road in the right order: “Come Together,” “Something,” “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.” I get all the way to “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” and then I can’t think of what comes after that. It’s like my mind’s gone blank or something. Thinking about other things is something I learned to do on those nights when Kent would sneak into my room. I’d recite stuff they made us memorize in school: the Ten Commandments; the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries. I can still remember some of the Mysteries—the Annunciation, the Nativity, Finding Jesus in the Temple. And, let me think … the Resurrection, the Crowning of Mary as Queen of Heaven. (One time, this girl who sat next to me, Tammy Tusia, had to go to the office for being sacrilegious because she leaned over and said to me, trying to be funny, “Gee if Mary got queen, who got first runner-up?” and Sister Presentation heard her say it. Luckily, I didn’t laugh so I didn’t get in trouble.) So that’s how many mysteries? While I’m counting how many I’ve said, Albie starts going, “Oh, god! Oh, fuck! Faster!” Oh, and there’s the Scourging at the Pillar, the Descent of the Holy Ghost. Albie starts to groan and now I can feel the wet stuff. I know from Kent that after the wet stuff comes out, they quiet down and stop bothering you. I finally remember the song that comes after “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” It’s “Here Comes the Sun”—the one George sings. I wonder if Carol Cosentino, wherever she is, still likes George the best, even though he has long scraggly hair now and a beard that makes him look like a hillbilly. In my opinion, the Beatles looked better when they had their Beatle haircuts, like on the Meet the Beatles! cover.
It’s after midnight by the time the drive-in gets out, and when Albie pulls up in front of my foster family’s house, he asks if he can kiss me good night and I say no, it’s late and I have to go in, and he accepts it. See? I’m in control. Not him. “Can I call you?” he asks. I make him wait a couple of seconds. Then I say, “Yeah, okay.” Albie’s not handsome or anything, but he’s sort of cute. Priscilla from work thinks he’s borderline fat and has kind of a pig face, and I can see her point, too. Upstairs, while I’m getting ready for bed, I decide Albie’s ugly-cute, like Ringo. Not that he looks anything like Ringo. He looks like Winona, although he acted kind of insulted when I told him that.
On our next date, Albie and I go to the drive-in again. Saturday Night Fever is playing this time, and I’ve been looking forward to seeing it because I’ve had a little bit of a crush on John Travolta from when he was Vinnie Barbarino on TV. But Albie’s wrecking it for me because he keeps telling me he’d bet me any amount of money that John Travolta is a homosexual. (How would he know?) I’m sitting there, trying to enjoy the movie, and Albie keeps saying stuff like, “Look! There’s your evidence. That’s a flitty walk” and “You know who dances like that? Queers, that’s who. I swear on a stack of Bibles: that guy is light in the loafers.”
“Do you mind?” I finally say, and after that he shuts up for a while, thank god. Then, halfway through the movie, there’s lightning and thunder and it starts pouring. The movie stops and it says on the speaker that they’re closing but giving everyone fog passes at the exit. When we get ours, Albie says he sure as hell would hate to sit through that faggy John Travolta movie again and, to be funny, I guess, he puts the fog passes in his mouth, chews on them, and then spits them out his window. I don’t like Althea, but she’s right about him: Albie’s got no class.
It’s early still, so we go to Kelly’s Drive-Thru and get Cokes and clam fritters, and while we’re eating our food, the rain stops. Albie throws out our trash, and then he starts his car and drives us out to Oak Swamp Reservoir, which is a make-out spot for kids our age. Well, my age. It’s easy to forget that Albie’s six years older than me. He parks and turns off his engine but keeps the radio on. They’re playing that song “Baker Street,” which I like, but when I say I do, Albie says it sucks and that he wants to listen to some real music. He reaches under his seat and pulls out a Judas Priest cassette and puts it into his player. “Yuck,” I say. “Where’s my earplugs?” and Albie says I obviously don’t know good music and turns up the volume. We start making out a little, and he guides my hand down there again to that same area as last time, big surprise, and he’s got his lump again. “Please, sweetie. Please,” he says. It makes me think of that thing my father said to me that time when he caught me feeding veal loaf to our cat, Fluffy, under the table. “You start that, Anna Banana, and he’ll pester you nonstop.” One thing about my father: whenever he got finished working on our car, he always came in and washed his hands with that scratchy soap powder, Boraxo, to get the grease off. But Albie always has greasy hands, and, when he gets close to you, he smells like … mufflers.
Five minutes later, Albie still hasn’t finished and my hand’s starting to go numb. Then something unexpected happens. He puts his hand between my legs and starts tongue-kissing my mouth at the same time. I let him because it feels kind of strange but also a little bit good, and the more he does it, the less I want him to stop. “Mmm, you’re wet,” he whispers.
“No, I’m not,” I say. Am I?
“Yeah, you are,” Albie says. “You’re so wet, I almost need a mop. You’re good and ready for it, aren’t you?”
I know what “it” is, and I don’t want it in me, but I don’t not want it, either. I’m confused. So when he pulls me into the backseat and gets on top of me, I let him. He pokes his thing all around down there but his aim is bad. Then he finally figures it out. He starts whispering stuff like “Oh, Jesus” and “Oh, baby” and he’s pumping his hips faster and faster, and that’s when, all of a sudden, I think about birth control. “Hey!” I say. “Stop. I