Veronica put her skates on and rolled out onto the floor of the rink. She looked just terrific, skating around the rink as if she were the only one on it, and to my eyes she was. I couldn’t really imagine why she was taking lessons. What could any lessons teach her beyond the things she was doing already? She wore a tiny skater’s dress that hugged her at the top but had a skirt that flew outward whenever she turned, displaying her legs and her panties. I tried to maintain an appearance of detached interest in the sport without betraying the uneasy feeling I got each time Veronica skated backwards past us with her little skirt flipped up over her little bottom. As she skated, I began to understand what Porky had meant when he had said that she was quite a little number, and I began to understand that Veronica was growing up in a way that I wasn’t. At the same time, I became more and more convinced that I would be able to acquit myself quite well when I went out onto the rink. I began to wonder why I had ever worried about being able to skate. Watching Veronica, I could see that it was so much easier than I had imagined, and it was clearly lots of fun, such a delight to zip around like that, to whirl, to spin, to glide along with one leg stretched out in the air behind you. I was going to have a ball.
Then Veronica’s teacher arrived. As soon as I saw him, I knew that he was Jack, the Jack who had been forced to hide in the storage area under the eaves in Veronica’s parents’ bedroom. It took a moment longer for me to recognize that he must be Stretch Mitgang’s older brother. I couldn’t have estimated his age then, but I would guess now that he was twenty-two. He had jet black hair, heavy eyebrows, a clear and piercing gaze, a craggy jaw, a heartwarming smile, and straight teeth. Just watching him glide across the rink made me feel confident; surely Jack must have taught Stretch to skate.
Mrs. McCall put her hand on my knee. “Oh, here’s Jack,” she breathed. “Hi, Jack!” she called out. She waved at him with her other hand, and squeezed my knee so hard that I turned toward her with some alarm, wondering what I had done to upset her.
“Isn’t he cute?” she whispered to me. He didn’t seem at all cute to me. After all, he was a grown man.
“He’s handsome,” I said. “Veronica’s cute.” I paused. Distractedly, I corrected myself. “She’s more than cute, if you know what I mean,” I said. “She’s quite a little number.”
Mrs. McCall looked at me. She seemed to be noticing me for the first time.
“Why, you’re right,” she said. “She is, isn’t she?” She looked out across the rink. For quite a while she said nothing, just watched Jack and Veronica. Jack swooped up behind Veronica and gave her a pat on the rump. Mrs. McCall muttered, “My God.”
For several minutes, we watched Jack and Veronica cavort around the rink. Jack would grasp Veronica between the legs, his large hand forming a seat for her, her tight nates settling into his palm, his fingers reaching up toward the small of her back. I thought that Mrs. McCall might pass out. She breathed in short, shallow draughts, and she had begun languidly to massage my knee, as if she were trying to make up for the pain she had inflicted earlier. At last Jack put Veronica down, and he began directing her through a series of slow, precise exercises. Mrs. McCall sighed and said, “I’m going outside for a cigarette. You want to come?”
“Sure,” I said.
When we reached the parking lot, Mrs. McCall took a package of Kools from her handbag, and asked, “Do you smoke?” Before I could speak she put a hand to her forehead and shook her head. “Of course you don’t smoke,” she said. “What am I thinking of? I must be losing my mind. You’re a little boy.” I looked at the ground. “Oh, I didn’t mean it that way,” she said. “Peter?” I looked up. She let a long stream of smoke out through her puckered lips. She took another long pull at her cigarette and let the smoke out. “You’re very—advanced—for your age,” she said.
“Well, I read a lot,” I said.
She smiled and patted me on the shoulder. “So you think Veronica is quite a little number, do you?”
“Yes,” I said. I felt my ears redden.
“And Jack is handsome,” she added.
“Right,” I said.
“What about me?” she asked. She raised her eyebrows and tilted her head, waiting for an answer.
I knew the answer, if only by imitation. It was a statement that had shocked me when I heard my mother repeat it one Sunday morning at breakfast. She and my father had gone to a party, some couple’s anniversary party, the night before, and my mother was in an effervescent mood that Sunday morning. She actually danced around the kitchen while she made breakfast, humming and singing, and she recounted the entire evening, while my father stared at the paper and drank his coffee and I watched and listened wide-eyed and open-mouthed. I caught my mother’s delight in the memory of the evening before, the dancing, the toast with real champagne, the canapés, the high spirits, the flirting, and though I was shocked I was also proud and pleased when she repeated, giggling, what a man, some other woman’s husband, had said to her.
“You look sexy in that sweater.”
Mrs. McCall choked and burst out laughing. “Oh, thank you, Peter,” she said.
It was the truth. She was, I guess, about thirty-five at the time. She had dark hair and large, bright eyes. She was voluptuous. Her lips were full, and she used a bright red shade of lipstick. She had large breasts, a rounded belly, wide hips, and a lively bottom that could have been the inspiration for the tight skirts that came into fashion a year or two later. The sweater she was wearing, a white cardigan, very snug, with the top buttons open to display her cleavage, did make her look sexy. It was the truth, but I didn’t understand why it was the truth; my notion of sexy went no further than the décolletage of the sweater. I had no appreciation of what the décolletage was designed to inspire, what ultimately it was intended to offer. I wished that I had said nothing. I wished that my mother had said nothing. I wished that I could go home.
Veronica called to me. She was standing in the doorway of the plywood entry. Jack stood behind her with a hand on her shoulder.
“Come on, Peter,” she said. “We can practice together.”
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🎧 176: Veronica put her skates ...