Jernigan by David Gates Page B

“Ostensibly. But I don’t see that anything beyond the ostensible would necessarily”—smoother and smoother, boy—“be so crazy. I mean, okay: we have our kids in there doing whatever they’re in there doing. Which does not mean—”
    I tried to think how to say what it didn’t mean.
    “But there isn’t any music,” she said.
    I dislodged my arm, assuming this was her trite way of saying she was having second thoughts.
    “Better get back there put some music on,” she said. “You can’t give a party and then neglect it. Any more than you neglect your own child.” She seemed much in earnest about this.
    “Are you in any shape to deal with your party right now?” I said.
    “Dealing with my party,” she said, “will get me in shape to deal with my party.” She took my hand and pulled. “But you have to come help.”
    It was the first husbandly duty laid on me in a year. In exactly a year. To the fucking hour. Give or take. And clearly I was the first husbandly help this Martha Peretsky had had for a while too. I thought about her kneeling by that crate of records. Trying, unadvised, to come up with the song that would get things going.
5
    Martha Peretsky’s bedroom was unrecognizable by morning light. It was full of all this detail, whereas the night before it had been, I don’t know, whatever. A long-legged old dresser, painted glossy black, with an oval mirror. A flower decal on each drawer, centered between the many-faceted glass knobs. On top of the dresser, jars and jewel boxesand hairbrushes. A wicker laundry basket with a pantyhose foot dangling from under the lid, as if someone were being swallowed. On the wall, in a too-ornate silver-painted frame, an old chromo of a hula girl with ukulele. Our clothes here and there on the floor. Outside, birds sang and a faraway lawnmower was going.
    Martha Peretsky was asleep, or pretending to be asleep, face down. Shoulders swelling and subsiding. I got out of bed, found the jockey shorts where they’d ended up—I remembered now her taking them down and my not caring what became of them—and crept to the door. Then I remembered the girl, Clarissa, and went back and put on trousers. Glanced at stomach. Put on shirt.
    In the hallway I met Danny, in just his jockey shorts, coming out of the bathroom. He gave me thumbs-up, and a grin I would never have given my father, no matter how much of an old bohemian he was. But what was the point of trying to be on your dignity when you were getting up from doing the same thing he was getting up from doing? I decided fuck it, and gave him thumbs-up back, the canny old veteran who could still come off the bench and move the runner along with a perfect bunt. Greeting the rookie who’d raise his average fifty points and still hit almost as many home runs if he’d just cut down on his swing. Then he went into what I gathered was Clarissa’s room and closed the door behind him, back to whatever moody pleasures she gave him, and I went into the bathroom. Should I really be countenancing this?
    Back in the bedroom, Martha was lying pretty much as I’d left her: on her stomach, bent arms making a diamond around her head. I undressed again, got under the covers, lay against her, caressed her awake. Sleepily she rolled onto her side, facing away, and my penis slipped between her buttocks. Then she reached around behind and pulled me in tighter. So. If she was ready for refinements this early along, it meant what? Probably that it would run its course even quicker.
    “Mmm,” she said. “Do you like that, is that good?”
    “Listen,” she said, after another little while, “I hope this isn’t too shocking of me, but I think there’s still a little thing of Vaseline in the drawer of that night table.” Right she was. I got the cap off, hands trembling. A few seconds later she said, “Oh my God. I know you’renot supposed to do this anymore, but I just”—she inhaled sharply—“do not care.” Later we both lay