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by Mike E. Swope
Mainstream, 6 pages.
Originally Published in The Rectangle, Vol. 65, No. 2, 1991
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It happened when I was twelve.
We lived at 21 East Angelique in a large, two-story ivory house which my mother kept spotless. She shook the rugs, dusted, cleaned the windows and bathrooms, mopped, and did the laundry twice a week. If someone was coming to visit, she cleaned the house once more before they arrived. She kept the outside as spotless as she did the inside. She made Dad paint the house every two years, whether it needed it or not. Our house always looked freshly starched to me. Our house was the only ivory house on the block.
Janet was the next door neighbor to our left. She was eighteen, a senior in high school. She had dark hair, almost black, which fell curly to her shoulders. She had brown eyes with pupils of slate, which always brought to my mind the image of a timber wolf. She was slender and attractive and graceful, too, like the timber wolf.
Her house was tan. It was very similar to ours, probably taken from the same blueprints, maybe even built by the same contractor. Her house was never dirty, but it wasn’t crisp, either. How can I explain it? It didn’t look the way starched sheets feel when you slip beneath them. Her room was on the second floor and her window faced our house. Mom and Dad’s room looked directly into hers. Occasionally I got a glimpse of her as she applied her make-up and fixed her hair in the mornings before school.
Everyone at school called me “Twinkie” when I was twelve because I loved twinkies. I could almost always be found with one in my hand. I ate them at meals for dessert and for snacks during the day. I think it was the sugar. I was an active child; some people said hyperactive. My seventh grade teacher was the one who finally broke the mold and said I was normal. That was the same year I stopped eating twinkies.
Janet had a boyfriend who was always stopping by after school before her parents got home. His name was Mark. They’d go into the living room when he got there. It was on the ground floor. I watched them sometimes through the window. They watched TV mostly. Standing in the yard I watched TV with them. Sometimes they kissed, slipping their tongues into each others’ mouths. I felt guilty watching them when they began to kiss, so I usually left and went and got Bobby, my best friend, and did something else.
I’d known Janet most of my life and we were good friends. She was an only child. Her family moved in next door to us when I was five and she was eleven. She never called me Twinkie. She always called me by my real name, Jack. She used to play tag, kickball, simon says, or catch with me when she got home from school. When she had money, she’d buy me something from the ice-cream man when he came down the street ringing his bell. I liked Janet a lot. She used to ask me inside to watch TV, until she began to have boyfriends. She still asked me to go inside and watch TV with her even then, but not when they were around. She didn’t want me there when she had company.
There was a beautiful painting of horses in her living room above the couch. It covered most of the wall. The horses ran through a blue and white river, splashing water high into the air around them. Their muscles glistened beneath their skins, especially those of the black horse. There was a white horse, too, and three brown ones. Their manes trailed out behind them, either slightly up or down, depending on their stride. The black mare’s mane went slightly down because she was taking a step, and the white horse’s went up because he was finishing one. I don’t know why I picture the black horse as being female, or why I feel the others are males. The sky in the painting was a clear blue and reminded me of summer because the sun was white in the corner. I imagine if I’d looked close enough sweat foamed on the horses’ shoulders from the running and from the heat. Janet liked the painting. She said the horses symbolized strength and power. She said she could almost smell the scent of their sweat.
Janet knew I watched her and Mark. She caught me watching them one day. They had begun to watch Gilligan’s Island, one of my favorites. They sat on the couch beneath the painting of the five horses. She sat on his left that day. In the middle of the show she leaned over to him. He turned his head toward hers and they slowly kissed. For some reason I didn’t leave and go do something else that day when she began kissing him. Instead I stayed and watched them, but I watched Gilligan’s Island, too. I glanced at Janet once when a commercial came on and found her looking at me. I felt caught, but caught at what I’m not sure. I couldn’t look away, even after she began kissing Mark again. She stopped kissing hi -- [End of Preview.]