The Progress of Love

with her legs around the newel post. They spared old Mrs. Cruze—they had some limits, after all. What about Miss Kernaghan, with her rheumatism, her layers of rusty clothes, her queer painted mouth? They had heard stories, everybody had. Callie was supposed to be the child of a Bible salesman, a boarder. They imagined the Bible salesman doing it in place of themselves, plugging old Miss Kernaghan. Over and over, the Bible salesman rams her, tears her ancient bloomers, smears her hungry mouth, drives her to croaks and groans of the most extreme need and gratification.
    “Callie, too,” said Edgar.
    What about Callie? The joys of the game stopped for Sam when she was mentioned. The fact that she, too, was female came to him as an embarrassment. You would think he had discovered something disgusting and pitiable about himself.
    Edgar didn’t mean that they should just imagine what could be done to Callie.
    “We could get her to. I bet we could.”
    Sam said, “She’s too small.”
    “No, she’s not.”
    That persuading Sam does remember, and it was accomplished by dares, which makes him think the skating-rink adventure must have been managed the same way. A Saturday morning when the winter was nearly over, when the farmers’ sleighs, driven over the packed snow, grated on patches of bare ground as they passed Kernaghan’s house. Callie coming up the attic stairs with the wet mop, scrub pail, dust rags. She kicked the rag rug down the stairs so that she could shake it out the door. She stripped the beds of the flannelette sheets, with their intimate, cozy smell. No fresh air enters the Kernaghan house. Outside the windows are the storm windows. This is the time and place for Callie’s seduction.
    That is not a suitable word for it. Callie cross and impatient at first, keeping at her work, then sullen, then oddly tractable. Taunting her with being scared was surely the effective tactic. They must have known, by then, her real age, but they still treated her as if she were an imp to be cajoled—didn’t think of stroking or flattering her as if she were a girl.
    Even with her cooperation, it was nothing like as easy as they had imagined. Sam became convinced that the story about Chrissie was a lie, even though Edgar was invoking Chrissie’s name at the moment.
    “Come on,” Edgar said. “I’ll show you what I do to my girlfriend. Here’s what I do to Chrissie.”
    “I bet,” said Callie sourly, but she let herself be pulled down on the narrow mattress. The elastic of her winter bloomers had left red rings around her legs and waist. A flannel vest, buttoned over an undershirt, her brown ribbed stockings, held up by long, lumpy suspenders. Nothing but the bloomers was taken off. Edgar said the suspenders were hurting him and went to undo them, but Callie cried out, “Leave those alone!” as if they were what she had to protect.
    Something very important is missing from Sam’s memory of that morning—blood. He has no doubt of Callie’s virginity, rememberingEdgar’s struggles, then his own, such jabbing and prodding and bafflement. Callie lay beneath them each in turn, half-grudging, half-obliging, putting up with them and not complaining that anything hurt. She would never do that. But she would not do anything, specifically, to help.
    “Open your legs,” said Edgar urgently.
    “They’re open already.”
    The reason he doesn’t remember blood is probably that there wasn’t any. They did not get far enough. Callie was so thin her hipbones stood up, yet she seemed quite extensive to Sam, and unwieldy and complicated. Cold and sticky where Edgar had wet her, dry otherwise, with unexpected bumps and flaps and blind alleys—a leathery feel to her. When he thought of this afterward, he still wasn’t sure that he had found out what girls were like. It was as if they had used a doll or a compliant puppy. When he got off her, he saw that she had goose bumps where her skin was bare, all around that tuft of dead-looking hair. Also, that their wet had soaked one stocking. Callie wiped herself with the dust rag—granted, it looked to be a clean one—and said it reminded her of when somebody blew their nose.
    “You’re not mad?” said Sam, meaning partly that, and partly, you won’t tell?“Did we hurt you?”
    Callie said, “It would take a lot more than that stupid business to hurt me.”
    There was no more skating after that. The weather got too mild.
    Miss Kernaghan’s rheumatism was worse.