Stanley Elkin - George Mills

“Mary, please, ” her mother said, “people are trying to have a conversation.”

“Oh, it’s ‘Bugs Bunny’ in Spanish!” She turned to Father Merchant. “Do you get ‘The Flintstones’ in Spanish?”

“Three o’clock. Channel 2.”

“They get ‘The Flintstones’ in Spanish. Do you get Johnny Carson in Spanish? ‘Laverne and Shirley’?”

“Turn that off. Button your blouse.”

“Mom, it’s so hot. ”

“Would you like to go for a swim?” her uncle asked. “Do you want Mills to drive you back to the hotel?”

“Could I Mom? Could I?”

“Oh, Mary,” Mrs. Glazer said mournfully, “you didn’t bring a bathing suit, did you? Did you bring a bathing suit to Mexico? You did, didn’t you?”

“You never opened my candy,” Mary said.

“Your mother doesn’t feel like any candy, honey,” her uncle said. “But you open it. Pass it around.”

“I’ll take one, Mary,” Mrs. Glazer said.

“Which? A caramel or a nut? Here’s a chocolate-covered cherry. Which do you want?”

“Have the chocolate straw, señora. No no, the dark chocolate.”

The child sat on the side of her mother’s bed and kissed her. She put her arms about Mrs. Glazer and hugged her roughly.

“Mary,” her Uncle Harry said, “let Mother rest for a bit.”

“I want my hair brushed,” Mary said. “I want Mom to brush my hair.”

“Mary!” her uncle said.

“That’s all right, Harry, I want to.”

“I shouldn’t have brought her,” Harry told Father Merchant.

“If you want me to brush your hair I wish you’d button your blouse.”

“Mommy thinks my boobs are too big.”

“You have a lovely figure,” Mrs. Glazer said.

“Milly’s periods have started,” Mary said. “She says they didn’t but they did. I saw her underwear. She says she has an infection. That child.”

“There,” her mother said weakly.

“A hundred strokes,” Mary said. “That wasn’t even fifteen even.”

“Mommy’s so tired, sweetheart,” Mrs. Glazer said.

“It didn’t even feel good,” Mary said.

“Mommy’s weak, sweetheart,” Mrs. Glazer said.

“It wasn’t even fourteen, it wasn’t even nine,” she said, and started to cry.

“Take her swimming,” Father Merchant said.

Mills looked at Mrs. Glazer’s brother.

“I don’t know,” Mrs. Glazer said. “Why don’t you?”

“You think I don’t know what’s going on,” Mary said.

“Of course you do, darling,” Mrs. Glazer said. “Of course you do, sweetheart.”

“I know what’s going on,” Mary said. “I read your chart, I know your temperature.”

The rule at Harry Claunch’s hotel was that guests were not allowed in the pool area unless they were in suitable bathing attire. Mills told them he was not a guest, only Harry Claunch’s servant, only Mary’s babysitter, but they would not waive their rule for him, so he had to buy a suit in one of the hotel shops. At Mary’s insistence he even agreed to let her pick it out for him. A yellow bikini.

“I can’t wear that.”

“Sure you can,” Mary said, “it’s the style.”

“I can’t,” Mills said. “I won’t.”

“Please, Mills,” she said. “ Please. It’s such a pretty color. Please. ”

“I’m over fifty years old,” he said.

“I want to go back to the hospital,” Mary said.

“Mrs. Glazer is tired. She needs to rest.”

“Take me back.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Now. Take me back now.”

“Don’t be like that.”

“I’ll go in a taxi.”

“Come on, Mary. Don’t be like that.”

“You call me Miss.”

“Don’t be like that, Miss.”

“Will you buy the yellow bathing suit?”

“Yeah, sure thing, Miss,” Mills said.

He changed in a stall in the men’s room. He loaded his genitals into the suit’s small pouch, crushed them against his crotch. They seemed more sizable than in street clothes, and he felt like a man in a codpiece, curiously badged, an agreeable power. He had felt this way before, in the locker rooms of plants, naked on his bed. Stripped on examining tables or dressed at close quarters on couches, his erection courting the girls, his shyness suddenly reversed, subsumed in waves, jolts of inexplicable swank.

He carried his underwear rolled in his pants and crossed the lobby. He still wore his shirt. White socks came up his shins and out of his black, unlaced shoes.

Mary treaded water at the deep end of the pool. She ducked her head down and squirted water at him through her braces, wetting his legs. “Ha ha, Miss,” George Mills said.

“I’ll race you,” she said.

“I’m not much of a racer,” Mills said. “I wouldn’t stand a chance against someone who takes lessons from a swim coach or who’s been to summer camp.”

“How do you know I have a coach? How do you know I go to camp?”

“Your mother told me.”

“Does she talk about me a lot?”

“All the time, Miss.”

“As much as my sister Milly?”

“She’s mentioned your sister.”

“Only mentioned her? Let’s race. Come on.”

“I don’t know if I could even swim in a pool. I probably wouldn’t stay in the lane.”

“I’ll spot you. You can have a head start. Come on, get wet.” She splashed him.

“Ooh. Oh.”

“Then get in the water. Get in or I’ll splash you.”

“It’s cold.”

“It’s lovely once you’re in.”

“It’s too cold.”

“Once you get used to it.”

“Well,” Mills said uncertainly.

“I’ll count to ten.”

“I’ll take my shoes and socks off.”

And George Mills, on a patio chair, crossed his legs, the gesture broad, difficult. He tugged at his unlaced shoes. He rolled his socks down his legs. Spreading his thighs, he leaned over and stuffed his socks into the front of his shoes. He felt a flap of testicle against his thigh and looked up. Mary was watching him.

“I’ve seen balls before,” she said.

“Have you?”

“Sure, lots of times. My daddy’s and uncle’s. I’m on the swim team. I’ve seen my coach’s. I think they’re ridiculous. Big old hairy prunes. Anyway, I go steady. Don’t they hurt when you sit on them?”

“That doesn’t happen.”

“No?”

“Mother Nature keeps them out of the way, Miss.”

“Boobs don’t hurt either. Well sometimes they do. Before my period they can get pretty sore.”

“Hmn,” George Mills said.

“Are you coming in or aren’t you? What did you mean you don’t know if you can swim in a pool?”

“The poor don’t know much about swimming pools. The schools didn’t have them when I was a boy.”

“Where did you swim?”

“Off piers. In ponds. In bodies of water where bait shops are found.”

“Didn’t you ever go to the beach?”

“We went there on Sundays, on Fourths of July. We sat on a blanket, we drank beer from a keg. We swam always in waters that were bad for our strokes.”

“Come in,” she said, “we don’t have to race.”

“I’ve a stroke like a nigger. I flounder, I thrash.”

“That’s mean, Mills. That’s wicked to say.”

“Black people are afraid of the water,” George Mills said. “Poor people are.”

“Wait,” she said, “I’ll come out.” She swam to the side of the pool where George Mills was sitting and placed her hands on the coping. Using only her arms, she hoisted herself out of the water easily. “Brr,” she said, “it is chilly. The air’s cooler than the water. Where’s my towel? Oh, there it is. Dry me off, Mills.”