He runs across the field with the dying sun giving fire to his blonde hair. His legs are strong. The freckles on his tanned skin are like his mother's. Some people see him and think he's the mailman's son. Some people think he's God's, and only He knows why. I think
white bikini
His dad yells loudest as we all watch the touchdown. This strange, kind, foolish man who anyone can see had nothing to do with the genetic material in that kid. He watches his boy with an affection that borders on yearning, a potbellied groupie, idiosyncratic among the throng of cheerleaders and young housewives.
Chris' admirers sit together in the bleachers on the other side of the field. It's easy to pick her out. She's the corona. She's the Madonna in the center of them all. She sips a soda and makes pious eyes every time he scores. Today she wears a white sundress, the preacher's daughter in the movie of my life as portrayed by Marilyn Monroe.
It's Saturday morning. School's out. Chris is out back with the lawnmower, as every Saturday. It's some parody of visitation rights. It's the best I can do.
I sit at the table in the yellow kitchen, watching him there. I wonder if those blessed good looks, the charm, the smarts, will last him into his thirties. Or will he begin to erode, and end up just another construction worker with a shelf of dusty trophies, same as the rest of us?
The Church, of course, think he's got better coming to him that any shiny gold cup. He could win himself a Nobel Prize and they'd think he had more to do. They really do believe it. Maybe people just need a distraction.
She doesn't bother to knock, just walks in. She's wearing one of those tank tops teenage girls wear. The kind that looks like lingerie. And shorts, if you could call them that.
Somehow The Church sees past all this, sees in her the thing they want her to be. To me, she looks like the Devil.
"What you got there, Bill?" she asks me, leaning up against my fridge so her top rides up a little on one side, showing me a tan that stretches to places the Virgin Mary never would have been immodest enough to uncover before the sun.
"Coffee."
"Mmmm. I'd join you for a cup, but I already had mine.
"How's he coming out there?"
"Should be done any minute."
"How many minutes?" She runs her hand down her torso, traces the hem of her top, runs her fingers over the button on the fly of her shorts.
white bikini
My coffee drips the wrong direction, and I clench coughing over the table, choking on what I wish I'd said. I would have liked to have told her to shove it.
She just laughs and the hand slides back to sit on her hip. "I need some money, Bill."
"Sure, Debbie." I dig for my wallet and pull out a twenty. She looks at me with disgust. I pull out two more and lay them on the first. She comes to me, bringing her hips close to my face as she takes my money. For a second, I can smell
white bikini
The white blur of her body moves out of my vision and out my back door.
I hear her call her son and hear the car start. But I don't watch them go. I watch my hand on the table, rough and brown and showing the beginning blushes of liver spots. I told her no once, and I've been paying for it.
She came through my door, uninvited as always. It was around midnight, but I was still up, drinking beers at the kitchen table, which is what I did in those lonely days of my fledging independence. It was the last time I saw her wearing black.
She sat on my table, her legs dangling on either side of me. She took the beer from me and held it to her lips. But without drinking, she stopped, set it down, and pushed it back over to me. It was the only time I saw her look serious.
"I'm in some trouble, Mr. Halbrook," she whispered.
She explained the situation to me. And to really understand what was going through my mind, you need to know some things about Debbie. Debbie when she was 16, when she was Debbie Barnes and not Debbie Christenson, the Second Coming's God fearing mama.
Debbie was the daughter of Reverend Matthias Barnes, and in my experience, preacher's daughters come out really good or really bad. She'd tried the former, but found she had the taste (and the body) for the latter. But I feel she was a little bit on the fence. She smoked, but no one was allowed to know. She dressed up trashy and snuck out of the house to meet boys, but they only got to kiss her. Her parents were blind to this. She was their only child after a succession of miscarriages and Jesus' own little perfect angel.
Like some mimeographed Bible pamphlet, she got knocked up the very first time she let a man get into her pants. And the lucky son of a bitch was me.
"Ok. Well, I'll marry you, if that's what you want," I said, not sure what else to say.
"Are you nuts?" Her face got red and her eyes got wet. "I can't have a baby. And I'm not getting married.
"But I can't stay here, Bill. I'm sick of this fucking small town and my parents and the church and school and everything! Let's go to Chicago! I'll get it taken care of there. And we'll be together."
So I saw then that this was just a road bump for her. It wasn't that she was scared. She was inconvenienced, is all. And she only wanted me to get her out of it.
To tell the truth, it was the hardest thing I ever did, saying no. I was crazy for her. I was weak for her. And I tried not to let her know it, but women sometimes have a way of knowing everything.
I wouldn't have been invited to Chris' birthday party except that everyone was. They hold it in the church basement, maybe thinking that this'll be the year he finally comes into his own and turns water into wine or birthday cake into gold brick.
Most people in town are here, because there's not a lot going on. For the believers, it's a duty. For the rest of us, it's a continuing farce. Groups of your more sophisticated variety of small town women are still playing guessing games in the corners, their hushed debates crescendoing every time Chris stands next to another man in the crowd and they can compare features. No one would suspect, but I hang back anyway.
And on the other side you have the crazies who bought Debbie's virgin birth story when it was that or call the preacher's daughter a whore. The novelty must have worn off by now. They must know they've been taken for a bunch of suckers. I guess they're just not ready to admit it.
The Virgin herself walks over to me when the crowd is thick enough to provide safe cover. She leans over to whisper in my ear, pressing everything above her knees up against me until she can feel me pressing back.
What she says is: "And just think. You could have had me in Chicago, all to yourself. And I would've let you. But look what a fool I would've been, to miss all this."
It's June, 1989. She walks through my open door, into my house all piled up with moving boxes. The first thing I see of her is the halo of the summer sun around the edges of her silhouette, catching in her brown hair and turning it red, and sparkling the water droplets on her skin.
She moves inside and my eyes refocus. I didn't notice whether she was beautiful. My mind went blank except for
white bikini
She's been in a pool or sprinkler or something and the white fabric is soaked through. Just transparent enough that I have to question whether my eyes and hormones are playing tricks on me.
She welcomes me, and makes innocent small talk, but it's clear she can tell the effect she and her swimsuit are having. And she enjoys it. She dangles this power around in front of me, wiping water off her bare skin, straddling the arm of my couch. Bouncing when she talks so I can observe the friction under her bikini top. She gets bolder and bolder as I become more eager.
I can't remember how we began kissing, but I know it ended with me on her and her bikini not.
I don't want the boy. Truthfully, I never cared about him with more than a casual curiosity. He belongs to the man she married for his last name. And I'm ok with that.
I want her, sliding under my hands in the heat of summer. But all she wants is the fame of her fable. And to curse me with constant reminders of a thing I lost the moment I touched it. | 
