Rick Moody - The Ice Storm

Elena’s eggs, their aroma, filled the kitchen now, and lent it concord and harmony it didn’t exactly have. Mr. Williams was getting nervous as he traveled down the rich, salesmanlike path of his reasoning. Wendy’s poisonous mouth stung. She hung her head.

— So now we can do this if we want. We can bend these bonds a little bit; we can borrow somebody else for a night and not have it… without endangering our families or anything. Borrow out of affection, right? Not callously, but the way you would call on a friend to share something. That’s it, just sharing. And that’s what I want to say to you kids. You can wake up one morning like this, when everything outside is so pretty, and you can wake up to something confusing like finding your mother away from home and someone else — your friend’s mother, say — in her place. The car’s missing, you figure out it’s totaled someplace. But I want you to understand, bub (and Williams was sitting at the table now and leaning out over his designer place mats to look his son right in the eyes), that this doesn’t have any effect on our family. I’m here in this house. I will always be here in this house. And your mother and I may have our patches of white water, but we’re still together. We’re in this house together, electricity or no electricity. And we want to be together, to help you kids and to help each other.

— Now, your mother, Williams went on, your mother… left the party with someone else. I want to be honest about this. I have to be straight with you. Okay? And so we can figure out what kind of situation she’s in. She has taken advantage of this opportunity that same way we have. She might be happy about it, she might not. We don’t know. But she can’t call now, because the phone lines don’t work and probably there are trees down along the roads. The electricity is out, and the roads are dangerous. And that’s why she’s not back yet. But when she gets back and when Mike gets back we will all sit down, Sandy, and probably Wendy you can count on sitting down in your house, too, with your dad, and have a long conversation about what’s happened.

Elena sat at the table next to Wendy. She passed around the plates. To Wendy, the eggs tasted bland and cold. They tasted like blue soap. Sandy was shoving eggs into his mouth without passion or joy.

— There’s one last thing we have to go into here, Jim Williams added, and that’s the matter of you kids staying together last night. Now, I guess I don’t have to give you two a brushing-up on the birds and the bees. (Here Williams laughed a deep and hearty belly laugh that nonetheless sounded phony.) I mean, I guess I don’t have to explain to you about sexual intercourse. I will say, though, that this is a very serious business. I’m not sure in your case, bub, that you’re quite ready to handle it — I mean, when you’ve got a few dark hairs on your upper lip we can get down to some real conversation on the subject. Then I’ll teach you how to take this matter into your own hands, but until then, firstly, you guys aren’t ready and so you should confine yourselves to less, uh, invasive kinds of investigation, and secondly, if something miraculous were going to happen… say you were suddenly able to conceive — you would be in a very difficult place. Right? This is serious. Imagine, Sandy, if Wendy were to get pregnant right now, when you are thirteen and she is — what? Thirteen, too? Imagine what Wendy would have to go through over at the high school in her maternity gowns, trying to cover up the fact. And then how would you two take care of the baby once you had it? Who’s going to take care of it while you are at school? Who’s going to pay for the obstetrical care or the delivery of the child? Do you expect us to carry the expenses you two incur through stupidity? Hell, no! And who’s going to teach this kid the morals it needs to have? Its morality is already a little sloppy based on the job you’re doing now. Get it? You two aren’t even done learning morals yourselves and already you want the responsibility of taking on a kid? And add to this the fact that you don’t know how you feel about each other, because there are other… extenuating relationships going on around here. You don’t even know what you think exactly.… Well, obviously, there’s some kind of contagious quality to behavior like this. You guys didn’t get an idea this far out just by yourselves, that’s what I think. So you must have gotten it somewhere. That’s something to think about, whether you were reading one of our books and you found references to behavior like this, or what. We’d be happy to discuss this with you, rather than leave you to get all your information from books. Just bring the book down here with you, Sandy, bring the book to me, The Godfather, page whatever, that one Mike likes to read. We can go over the hard words. Look, making choices is an important thing for young people. So that’s what I’d like to offer you guys… choices. Until you have all the facts, until you know, when you’re getting into bed, how the other half lives, it’s just not a good idea. That’s what I’m saying to you, and if it’s not a good idea, you should put it off. Put it off, okay? Get it, kids?

Wendy had been staring at her plate, watching the eggs sink into a lukewarm and clotted state, stirring up the arrangement of toast and jam and eggs. It was safe to look up again.

— Elena, do you have anything to add? Elena shook her head drastically.

— No, no. Wendy and I will take this up on the way back to the house.

So that was the end of it. Whatever stray impulse had led Wendy’s mother into the Williamses’ house — and it had been passed along to Wendy in full, just as the volatility of the O’Malleys had been passed along to her — whatever the impulse was that had led her mother from the party onto the water bed, where she had swam in Jim Williams’s arms, whatever revolution had taken place in her mother, it had been succeeded by a harsh return to her old constitution. That was the way of things with adults — they trailed after ecstasy and then denied it, rationalized it, dressed it all up in talk. Her mother regretted being there, in that kitchen, regretted having cooked the breakfast, regretted even having hurt Benjamin, however justified this hurt might have been. Her mother regretted everything now. Wendy could see this regret playing across her face.

— Hey, bub, Jim Williams said, your shortwave radio have any batteries in it? Think we can get news radio or something on there?

Sandy nodded halfheartedly.

And the two of them rose together and in synchronous, almost choreographed movements, they wiped their mouths with the cloth napkins Elena had set on the table, set these napkins across their plates, and left the plates behind.

And then Wendy thought about the complications of the whole night. What if there was a sort of swap with the neighbors and it exceeded everybody’s expectation? Just to start with, Wendy was going to be sealed into a town where everyone knew her mother slept with the man up the street. This knowledge would circulate like her own dalliance with Debby Armitage. Then, take it a little further, go a little further down that road, she might be stepsister with the boy she loved, and stepsister, also, with his rival, whom she had also once loved. She would commit incest with a stepsibling. She would permit each of her stepbrothers to touch her. She would dry hump them together, maybe. Then her stepbrothers would fight to the death for the right to seed in her a two-headed baby who spoke Greek at birth and knew the date of Jesus’ next appearance. Her father and stepfather would not speak to one another. Her mother and stepmother would not speak to one another. She would be enjoined, when in the company of her father and Mrs. Williams, against speaking about her mother and Mr. Williams. Or: she would never see Mikey and Sandy, because they would have opposite weekends of visitation. Or: they would split up visitation, one week with Sandy, one week with Mikey, and she would swap them, as her parents had swapped one another. Or: she would return home with the Hoods and this whole weekend would remain a horrible episode no one ever talked about, which left in its wake the moral carnage of a whole town full of kids.