My neighborhood was a new, working class neighborhood already run down by tired redneck, hillbilly, and cracker families not up to the esthetic challenge of landscaping and decorating let alone lawn and house maintenance. But most of these families were buying their small two and three bedroom homes into which they packed some very large families. They were property owners. So it was strange to me when I realized that one of the kids lived in a rental house.
Bart lived with his mother and sister. That, too, was an oddity, for everyone else lived in complete family units. Bart's father would come around to see him from time to time. He liked to take Bart to the baseball spring training camps and to see the pre-season games. All the major league teams came to Florida back then, and I was impressed at Bart's collection of autographed baseballs. He had Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris and baseballs signed by entire teams.
Bart's father, though, was not like the other fathers. Our dad's all worked with their hands and were thick and strong and had large bellies. They defined manhood for me. Bart's father was a musician and worked in a music store. He would come over in white shirts and slacks like the people we saw in movies, often wearing a jacket and tie. His shoulders were narrow and his fingers delicate, not fat and calloused the way I thought a man's hands should be.
We did not go to Bart's house much, and one day I guessed why. His mother was not like the other mothers. She wore what I took to be expensive clothes, had her hair done at beauty parlors, and wore lipstick and makeup and necklaces all the time, even in the middle of the day. I think men came over and took her on dates, but I didn't really know much about that since I was young and home at the courting hour. One afternoon, we went to his house to get something, his baseball glove, I think, and his mother was there. As we came in, she came out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her. I had never seen a woman wrapped in a towel before, it showing the tops of her breasts, her legs and thighs, her decency almost exposed. But there was something wrong with her that I couldn't make out. I had never seen anyone drunk like that, especially a woman and especially in the middle of the day. She was talking like a my mother's aunt who was a stroke victim, and flailing about like something had gone wrong with her inner ear when her towel slowly slid to the ground. Other than my mother, she was the first woman I had ever seen naked. She was a natural redhead, a little chubby and freckled. It was like being hit with a bolt of lightening on a sunny day. Maybe Bart was used to it, but I thought I might pee my pants. Suddenly, Bart's sister came out of her room and helped her mother to the back of the house, telling Bart and me to leave.
Bart was embarrassed, but he handled it well. We never said anything about what had just happened. Later, Bart went to live with his father.
His mother stayed on in the neighborhood a little while longer. One evening, about dusk, I was cutting through the yards between houses on my way somewhere. There were lots of cut through yards in our neighborhood, and we all used them. We had to be quiet going through some yards so as not to get caught, while others were as open as freeways. I was alone this time, surely on my way home. I was sliding along the narrow place between the Ivey's carport and Bart's mother's bathroom where light fell warmly from the window. I saw her there in the mirror. She was naked, just out of the shower, attending to herself, putting on her makeup. Irresistible. I could not help myself. Terrified, I crept silently closer and watched her as she leaned close to the mirror applying eyeliner and lipstick. She was slow and deliberate and took her time. How long I stood there, I couldn't say. An eternity, perhaps. This was wrong, I knew, but there was no helping it. I throbbed and trembled in ways I had not known before, standing there in the yellow light, things I'd never dreamed of unfolding before my newly opened eyes. Then, somewhere close by there was a noise, the clicking of a door handle. Terrified, I fled into the street waiting for the voice that would cry out an alarm. I waited for a long time. I waited through the evening and I waited in bed and all the next day. Perhaps I still am.
I can see her even now, middle-aged, a little fleshy but more glamorous than our mothers, a woman of experience and high taste. A divorcee. A drunk. How much has she shaped my unconscious, determined the choices I would make in life?
She moved from the neighborhood without notice. I don't remember anyone talking about her after that.
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