Chapter 2

Over the next two months of that summer, I went over there three more times. She DID have a lot that needed doing too. I guess with no man around, and her being what she called “mechanically challenged”, there was all kinds of stuff that had broken, and needed replacing or adjusting, or oiled or something pretty simple. Being a Boy Scout, I had learned how to do all kinds of things, and most of what she needed done was easy. She never tried to pay me anything after that first time, but she did stand there and watch, and talk to me while I did most of the stuff. She baked me a pie for my sixteenth birthday, and I got to eat the whole thing.

Then school started up again, and I was busy all day, and most evenings. It wasn’t that I decided not to go over there ... it just worked out that way. I saw her a couple of times, and she always waved and said she was saving up good deeds for me to do for her. It was kind of a joke between us. I’d told her about some of my earlier disasters while I did some things for her that first summer. She’d laughed, instead of acting like I was a dufus or something.

So, the next summer, during which I turned seventeen, the next time I saw her, I told her I’d come over.

I did too. In fact, I went back a lot. That summer, I stopped by probably twice a week. She HAD saved up a bunch of good deeds for me.

For the rest of that summer I oiled hinges, and re-glued tiles, and replaced faucet washers and other stuff like that. And I got to know her better.

It turned out she HAD been a cheerleader in High School, which she had only graduated from eight years ago, which made her twenty-six. I didn’t tell her I’d assumed she was thirty-something. I was a little dense, but not THAT dense. She’d gotten married to her High School sweetheart, who went to college on a basketball scholarship, and took her with him. He’d been good, and got drafted into the NBA in his Junior year. There had been all kinds of interest in him his whole college career, including, apparently, from the ladies, who, according to Gloria, swarmed around him like bees around honey.

“I just couldn’t compete,” she said one day, leaning against the bathroom door, while I put a new flapper in her toilet.

By then our first name basis was comfortable for me.

“Come on, Gloria,” I said, trying to get the flapper arm hooked on the outlet flange. “That’s pretty hard to believe. You’re a stone fox.”

I had spoken out of turn. I THOUGHT things like that ... but I didn’t SAY things like that. My attention on the flapper sort of distracted me, I think.

“Why thank you, Bobby,” she said, with syrup in her voice. “You know how to make an old single lady feel pretty good.”

“Uh, sorry,” I said, darting a look at her. She had never berated me for looking her over, after that first time. I tried not to do it too often, or too obviously, but she WAS a stone fox, and I had been a horny sixteen-year-old all summer, and had just become a horny seventeen-year-old a week past.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” she said, her voice telling me she wasn’t mad. “At least you’re a gentleman. I thought they were all gone until I met you.”

“Awww,” I said. “I don’t know about THAT.”

She folded her arms under her breasts. She did that a lot. It always kind of put them on display. I didn’t find out until later that she did it on purpose.

“Well I do,” she said firmly. “After I caught Brett in bed with two college freshmen, in our own bed to boot, I met a lot of men. None of THEM were gentlemen.”

“That sucks,” I said.

“I wouldn’t say that, exactly,” she said.

I looked up, confused. She had “that look” on her face again.

I had named it “that look” because she used it on me every once in a while, but I didn’t know what it meant. It was a look I didn’t understand at all. It looked half like she was about to smile, like she’d made a joke, except that I never understood the joke. And it looked half like she was curious about something, except she never asked me what she was curious about. It made me feel funny, when she used it, because her eyes seemed to stare right into my brain. There were times when I didn’t want her peeking into my brain, cause of the things I thought about.

Like her. I thought about her a lot. I wasn’t allowed to date until I was seventeen, and having been that age for only a week, I hadn’t been on any dates yet. But the girls I knew from school were, for the most part, pretty self absorbed. They liked to talk about themselves, and that kind of thing. Besides, they were always on a cell phone, so you couldn’t even try to talk to them. So, in one sense, Gloria was the only woman, younger than my parents age group, that I ever got to actually talk to on any long-term basis. Long-term, in this situation, means for more than two minutes at a time.

And, because we talked a lot, while I fixed this or that thing around her house, it got kind of ... I don’t know ... comfortable, maybe? I mean I liked her. She talked about anything and everything, but not the kind of stuff you’d remember for the rest of your life, or anything like that. It was just ... conversation. And she asked me what I thought about things ... like it mattered, even though I was just a kid. I got the impression, a couple of times, that she was lonely, though I couldn’t fathom a woman who looked like that being lonely. Of course I was a kid, and she was an adult. There was a lot I couldn’t fathom that summer.

What I DID fathom was that she looked at LEAST as good as some of those Playboy Bunnies, and I imagined her in all their poses. I didn’t have enough imagination to decide what she would actually look like naked, but I was able to put her head on those pictures, especially with my eyes closed, while I beat my meat.

I know what you’re thinking. Scouts aren’t supposed to do things like beating their meat. I think it’s a violation of the “morally straight” part of things, or at least I got that impression. On the other hand, no adult ever said flat out “A good scout does not beat off!”, and I didn’t feel the need to get clarification. A guy needs an outlet of some kind, you know.

Which was why I hoped she couldn’t actually see into my brain, like her eyes suggested she could, when she had “that look” on her face. I eventually decided she couldn’t, because she never threw anything at me.

She never went to work. It didn’t matter what time of the day I might be walking by. I found out, during one of our chats, that, when she’d divorced her husband, he’d been making a ton of money, and she got a lot of it. She was rich, really, which was why she didn’t work. It’s not like I asked her about that. It just came up in conversation, like lots of other things did.

We saw a lot of each other, that summer. I didn’t do a good deed for her every single time I saw her, but usually I did. Sometimes she’d be out in her flower garden, or on the porch, or walking to or from her car and just wave. Sometimes she’d call out to me and ask me if I had time to do a good deed.

I always had time to do a good deed for Gloria.

My mom busted my chops about it at supper one night, just before school started up for my Senior year. Both Mom and Dad insisted that we have a family meal every night, where we all sat down together and stuff like that.

My mother had a pinched look on her face as we sat down that night.

“I saw Ruth Abernathy at the store today,” she said, in preamble. Whenever she said she saw someone somewhere, it meant they’d said something, and she was going to tell us what it was, and what she thought about it. What WE thought about it was less important.

“Oh?” said Dad. He knew the rules, and he knew his part in this little ritual.

“Yes, she said she saw Bobby going into that Mrs. Wilson’s house the other day.”

“Really!” My dad actually sounded interested, for some reason.

Mom looked at me with that level sort of look that said “You got some ‘splaining to do, Lucy!”

I was a deer in the headlights. I had no idea of the storm that might sweep over our household any minute.

“Yeah,” I said simply. “She needed some help moving some furniture around,” I said. It was true. That’s what she’d asked me to do the last time I was there. She was re-arranging the living room.

“Move ... furniture around...” said my mother, staring straight at me.

“Uh huh,” I said, loading up my fork with potatoes. “It was my good deed for the day.”

“What?” That was my dad, and he sounded confused.

“You know ... Scouts? Good deed every day?” I helped him out a little.

“Oh,” he said.

“Your good deed of the day,” said my mother, her voice flat.

I had spoken clearly. Now it was me who was confused. Mom knew about good deeds. She had punished me for enough of them.

“Yeah?” I said, not sure any more whether something was wrong. Mom’s demeanor said it was, but I hadn’t screwed anything up, like before. In fact, I really WAS on a streak at Gloria’s house. Everything I did over there turned out just like it was supposed to.

“What ... exactly ... did this ... good deed entail?” asked my mother.

Suzy had stopped eating, and was looking on interestedly. It sounded like I was in trouble, and she always enjoyed that.

Like a good Boy Scout, I told the truth. “Well, she was rearranging her living room, and she needed help with the couch and two chairs ... we had to pick them up so they wouldn’t scratch the floor when we moved them.”

“And what ELSE did she do?” my mother asked. There was almost a triumphant note in her voice.

I really WAS confused now. She was obviously pissed off at me, but I had no idea why.

“She moved the lamps by herself,” I said. “I guess I helped with some magazines. I’m not sure about that.” I frowned, thinking hard. I smacked my forehead. “Oh yeah ... NOW I remember,” I said.

My mother leaned forward, the fork in her hand somehow looking like a weapon.

“We moved the coffee table too,” I said. I looked at Mom hopefully.

She blinked, and looked at my Dad, who was grinning for some reason.

“This is NOT funny!” my mother snarled at him.

“Clair, you’re being ridiculous,” he said.

“I am not!” she said archly. “Everybody knows what a harlot that woman is!”

“What’s a harlot?” asked Suzy. She was eleven, that summer.

My mother almost choked and, for once, my father took the assertive role at dinner.

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The Good Deed Blues

Lubrican

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