I kept expecting her to give me the coordinates for a meetup, but no. Linda Larkins was phone-sex only. My entire freshman year. It never crossed my mind that I could just, you know, hang up on her. This older person had singled me out, and it felt like the NFL draft, you go where you’re called. I spent a lot of time trying to think of things I could say to sound more adult. That year I also did the regular things with other girls, homecoming dance etc. But it put a weird spin on normal dates and conversations and the making out, if that happened, to know that this chick that could probably suck the enamel off a phone receiver was waiting to polish off my night.
Angus as usual felt free to weigh in on the immature type of girls I was going out with. But for once, Angus had no inkling. Of this older woman that had me by the cerulean balls.
The Peggots started taking me in their wing again. Asking me over for Sunday dinners, not worried anymore about me trying to worm in and get adopted. I’d forgiven them for all that. It worked out for the best, not just because Miss Betsy was rich and sending Coach checks every month for my upkeep. She was my true kin. Paying me back on what I never got from my dad.
Angus would drive me to the Peggot house, with U-Haul supervising. She was in driver’s ed, needing her forty-five hours behind the wheel. She got curious about the trailer home where I was born and everything, so one time we walked up there but I got pretty sad. Big Wheels trike on the porch, toys left out in the rain. A naked doll half buried in dead leaves with all its hair cut off, just those hair dots all over the scalp. A whole new family in there. Mom and I were nowhere.
Mrs. Peggot always would ask if my friend wanted to stay for dinner, and a time or two Angus did, but it was awkward. That winter she was into this black leather motorcycle cap, like they wore in the old movies prior to helmets. Mrs. Peggot, poor little thing, just stared at that leather hat with no gumption to make her take it off. So over here is badass Angus, over there is Maggot with the eye makeup, black nail polish, and ever-expanding lip ring collection. Big shock, Demon is the nice-looking normal kid at the table.
They’d got so old, Mr. Peg worse than her. He always had the limp, but now it was the event of his day to get up out of his La-Z-Boy to come sit at the kitchen table. Maggot was taking his toll on them. He’d not say two words at dinner, just the black eyes bugged at me from time to time like, Rescue me. Which he was in no need of, Maggot did what he pleased. He laid out of school plenty, and I’d heard about the molly parties, the drugstore raids where he was ganking more than Max Factor. I wasn’t sure anymore how I fit into the Peggot situation.
One evening Mr. Peg got me outside, shoving his walker out the kitchen door, huffing and puffing over to his truck, supposedly for my second opinion on his battery cable. Actually, to discuss Maggot. Same truck, the Ram. Pretty sure Mr. Peg would be buried in that vehicle. He said he and Mrs. Peggot couldn’t handle Maggot anymore. They were getting almost scared of him. I didn’t ask if Mariah was getting out of prison any time soon. I tried to stick to the positive, that Maggot was a tenderhearted person underneath the cosmetics and death metal business.
Mr. Peg asked, “What is he thinking of, to go around looking thataway?”
I said I didn’t know. Not wanting to be a traitor to Maggot. But also, I really didn’t.
Mr. Peg elbowed the truck to keep his balance while he lit a Camel with his shaky hands. He smoked and looked up at the sky. His bottom eyelids drooped so their red insides showed. “Whenever I’s a boy,” he finally said, “we just done like we’s told. Is that so damn hard to do?”
I said we probably were more messed up nowadays due to TV and cable.
He asked why, though. What was so confusing? I don’t think he was wanting me to throw Maggot under the bus, just really and truly wondering what was so hard for us. Now, versus the old days. I said maybe the difference was we could see now what all we were missing. With everybody else in the world being richer than us, doing all kinds of nonsense and getting away with it. It pisses you off. It makes you restless.
Mr. Peg finished his Camel and stamped it out on the ground, shifting the heel of his old leather shoe side to side, grinding in slo-mo. Even for that small thing, he was hard pressed. “Do you reckon we spoilt him?” he asked. “Me and his mammaw? Because I’ll tell you something. She’ll go to her grave a-wishing she done better for Mariah.”
I told him Mrs. Peggot had always treated me with the exact same niceness as Maggot whenever we were small, and I was glad of it. That as far as home life went, I had run the full gamut, and theirs was the best by far. I didn’t think Maggot was mad or spoiled or anything like that. Just trying out being a different type person.