Robert Coover - Pricksongs & Descants

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That’s My Desire? I’ll Be Around? He smiles toothily, beckons faintly with his head, rubs his fast balding pate. Bewitched, maybe? Or, What’s the Reason? He pulls on his shorts, gives his hips a slap. The baby goes silent in mid-scream. Isn’t this the one who used their tub last time? Who’s Sorry Now, that’s it.

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Jack is wandering around town, not knowing what to do. His girlfriend is babysitting at the Tuckers’, and later, when she’s got the kids in bed, maybe he’ll drop over there. Sometimes he watches TV with her when she’s babysitting, it’s about the only chance he gets to make out a little since he doesn’t own wheels, but they have to be careful because most people don’t like their sitters to have boyfriends over. Just kissing her makes her nervous. She won’t close her eyes because she has to be watching the door all the time. Married people really have it good, he thinks.

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“Hi,” the babysitter says to the children, and puts her books on top of the refrigerator. “What’s for supper?” The little girl, Bitsy, only stares at her obliquely. She joins them at the end of the kitchen table. I don’t have to go to bed until nine,” the boy announces flatly, and stuffs his mouth full of potato chips. The babysitter catches a glimpse of Mr. Tucker hurrying out of the bathroom in his underwear.

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Her tummy. Under her arms. And her feet. Those are the best places. She’ll spank him, she says sometimes. Let her.

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That sweet odor that girls have. The softness of her blouse. He catches a glimpse of the gentle shadows amid her thighs, as she curls her legs up under her. He stares hard at her. He has a lot of meaning packed into that stare, but she’s not even looking. She’s popping her gum and watching television. She’s sitting right there, inches away, soft, fragrant, and ready: but what’s his next move? He notices his buddy Mark in the drugstore, playing the pinball machine, and joins him. “Hey, this mama’s cold, Jack baby! She needs your touch!”

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Mrs. Tucker appears at the kitchen doorway, holding a rolled-up diaper. “Now, don’t just eat potato chips, Jimmy! See that he eats his hamburger, dear.” She hurries away to the bathroom. The boy glares sullenly at the babysitter, silently daring her to carry out the order. “How about a little of that good hamburger now, Jimmy?” she says perfunctorily. He lets half of it drop to the floor. The baby is silent and a man is singing a love song on the TV. The children crunch chips.

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He loves her. She loves him. They whirl airily, stirring a light breeze, through a magical landscape of rose and emerald and deep blue. Her light brown hair coils and wisps softly in the breeze, and the soft folds of her white gown tug at her body and then float away. He smiles in a pulsing crescendo of sincerity and song.

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“You mean she’s alone?” Mark asks. “Well, there’s two or three kids,” Jack says. He slides the coin in. There’s a rumble of steel balls tumbling, lining up. He pushes a plunger with his thumb, and one ball pops up in place, hard and glittering with promise. His stare? to say he loves her. That he cares for her and would protect her, would shield her, if need be, with his own body. Grinning, he bends over the ball to take careful aim: he and Mark have studied this and have it figured out, but still it’s not that easy to beat.

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On the drive to the party, his mind is partly on the girl, partly on his own high-school days, long past Sitting at the end of the kitchen table there with his children, she had seemed to be self-consciously arching her back, jutting her pert breasts, twitching her thighs: and for whom if not for him? So she’d seen him coming put of there, after all. He smiles. Yet what could he ever do about it? Those good times are gone, old man. He glances over at his wife, who, readjusting a garter, asks: “What do you think of our babysitter?”

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He loves her. She loves him. And then the babies come. And dirty diapers and one goddamn meal after another. Dishes. Noise. Clutter. And fat. Not just tight, her girdle actually hurts. Somewhere recently she’s read about women getting heart attacks or cancer or something from too-tight girdles. Dolly pulls the car door shut with a grunt, strangely irritated, not knowing why. Party mood. Why is her husband humming, “Who’s Sorry Now?” Pulling out of the drive, she glances back at the lighted kitchen window. “What do you think of our babysitter?’’ she asks. While her husband stumbles all over himself trying to answer, she pulls a stocking tight, biting deeper with the garters.

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“Stop it!” she laughs. Bitsy is pulling on her skirt and he is tickling her in the ribs. “Jimmy! Don’t!” But she is laughing too much to stop him. He leaps on her, wrapping his legs around her waist, and they all fall to the carpet in front of the TV, where just now a man in a tuxedo and a little girl in a flouncy white dress are doing a tapdance together. The babysitter’s blouse is pulling out of her skirt, showing a patch of bare tummy: the target. “I’ll spank!”

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Jack pushes the plunger, thrusting up a steel ball, and bends studiously over the machine. “You getting any off her?” Mark asks, and clears his throat, flicks ash from his cigarette. “Well, not exactly, not yet,” Jack says, grinning awkwardly, but trying to suggest more than he admits to, and fires. He heaves his weight gently against the machine as the ball bounds off a rubber bumper. He can feel her warming up under his hands, the flippers suddenly coming alive, delicate rapid-fire patterns emerging in the flashing of the lights, 1000 when lit: now! “Got my hand on it, that’s about all.” Mark glances up from the machine, cigarette dangling from his lip. “Maybe you need some help,” he suggests with a wry one-sided grin. “Like maybe together, man, we could do it.”

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She likes the big tub. She uses the Tuckers’ bath salts, and loves to sink into the hot fragrant suds. She can stretch out, submerged, up to her chin. It gives her a good sleepy tingly feeling.

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“What do you think of our babysitter?” Dolly asks, adjusting a garter. “Oh, I hardly noticed,” he says. “Cute girl. She seems to get along fine with the kids. Why?” “I don’t know.” His wife tugs her skirt down, glances at a lighted window they are passing, adding: “I’m not sure I trust her completely, that’s all. With the baby, I mean. She seems a little careless. And the other time, I’m almost sure she had a boyfriend over.” He grins, claps one hand on his wife’s broad gartered thigh. “What’s wrong with that?” he asks. Still in anklets, too. Bare thighs, no girdles, nothing up there but a flimsy pair of panties and soft adolescent flesh. He’s flooded with vague remembrances of football rallies and movie balconies.

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How tiny and rubbery it is! she thinks, soaping between the boy’s legs, giving him his bath. Just a funny jiggly little thing that looks like it shouldn’t even be there at all. Is that what all the songs are about?

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Jack watches Mark lunge and twist against the machine. Got her running now, racking them up. He’s not too excited about the idea of Mark fooling around with his girlfriend, but Mark’s a cooler operator than he is, and maybe, doing it together this once, he’d get over his own timidity. And if she didn’t like it, there were other girls around. If Mark went too far, he could cut him off, too. He feels his shoulders tense: enough’s enough, man… but sees the flesh, too. “Maybe I’ll call her later,” he says.