Bobby's Good Deeds

by Lubrican

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Chapter Two

Over the next two months of that summer, I went over there three more times. She did have a lot that needed doing too. I guess with no man around, and her being what she called "mechanically challenged", there was all kinds of stuff that had broken, and needed replacing or adjusting, or oiled or something pretty simple. Being a Boy Scout, I had learned how to do all kinds of things, and most of what she needed done was easy. She never tried to pay me anything after that first time, but she did stand there and watch, and talk to me while I did most of the stuff. She baked me a pie for my sixteenth birthday, and I got to eat the whole thing.

Then school started up again, and I was busy all day, and most evenings. It wasn't that I decided not to go over there ... it just worked out that way. I saw her a couple of times, and she always waved and said she was saving up good deeds for me to do for her. It was kind of a joke between us. I'd told her about some of my earlier disasters while I did some things for her that first summer. She'd laughed, instead of acting like I was a dufus or something.

So, the next summer, during which I turned seventeen, the next time I saw her, I told her I'd come over.

I did too. In fact, I went back a lot. That summer, I stopped by probably twice a week. She had saved up a bunch of good deeds for me.

For the rest of that summer I oiled hinges, and re-glued tiles, and replaced faucet washers and other stuff like that. And I got to know her better.

It turned out she had been a cheerleader in High School, which she had only graduated from eight years ago, which made her twenty-six. I didn't tell her I'd assumed she was thirty-something. I was a little dense, but not that dense. She'd gotten married to her High School sweetheart, who went to college on a basketball scholarship, and took her with him. He'd been good, and got drafted into the NBA in his Junior year. There had been all kinds of interest in him his whole college career, including, apparently, from the ladies, who, according to Gloria, swarmed around him like bees around honey.

"I just couldn't compete," she said one day, leaning against the bathroom door, while I put a new flapper in her toilet.

By then our first name basis was comfortable for me.

"Come on, Gloria," I said, trying to get the flapper arm hooked on the outlet flange. "That's pretty hard to believe. You're a stone fox."

I had spoken out of turn. I thought things like that ... but I didn't say things like that. My attention on the flapper sort of distracted me, I think.

"Why thank you, Bobby," she said, with syrup in her voice. "You know how to make an old single lady feel pretty good."

"Uh, sorry," I said, darting a look at her. She had never berated me for looking her over, after that first time. I tried not to do it too often, or too obviously, but she was a stone fox, and I had been a horny sixteen-year-old all summer, and had just become a horny seventeen-year-old a week past.

"You don't have to be sorry," she said, her voice telling me she wasn't mad. "At least you're a gentleman. I thought they were all gone until I met you."

"Awww," I said. "I don't know about that."

She folded her arms under her breasts. She did that a lot. It always kind of put them on display. I didn't find out until later that she did it on purpose.

"Well I do," she said firmly. "After I caught Brett in bed with two college freshmen, in our own bed to boot, I met a lot of men. None of them were gentlemen."

"That sucks," I said.

"I wouldn't say that, exactly," she said.

I looked up, confused. She had "that look" on her face again.

I had named it "that look" because she used it on me every once in a while, but I didn't know what it meant. It was a look I didn't understand at all. It looked half like she was about to smile, like she'd made a joke, except that I never understood the joke. And it looked half like she was curious about something, except she never asked me what she was curious about. It made me feel funny, when she used it, because her eyes seemed to stare right into my brain. There were times when I didn't want her peeking into my brain, cause of the things I thought about.

Like her. I thought about her a lot. I wasn't allowed to date until I was seventeen, and having been that age for only a couple of weeks, I hadn't been on any dates yet. But the girls I knew from school were, for the most part, pretty self-absorbed. They liked to talk about themselves, and that kind of thing. Besides, they were always on a cell phone, so you couldn't even try to talk to them. So, in one sense, Gloria was the only woman, younger than my parents age group, that I ever got to actually talk to on any long-term basis. Long-term, in this situation, means for more than two minutes at a time.

And, because we talked a lot, while I fixed this or that thing around her house, it got kind of ... I don't know ... comfortable, maybe? I mean I liked her. She talked about anything and everything, but not the kind of stuff you'd remember for the rest of your life, or anything like that. It was just ... conversation. And she asked me what I thought about things ... like it mattered, even though I was just a kid. I got the impression, a couple of times, that she was lonely, though I couldn't fathom a woman who looked like that being lonely. Of course I was a kid, and she was an adult. There was a lot I couldn't fathom that summer.

What I did fathom was that she looked at least as good as some of those Playboy Bunnies, and I imagined her in all their poses. I didn't have enough imagination to decide what she would actually look like naked, but I was able to put her head on those pictures, especially with my eyes closed, while I beat my meat.

I know what you're thinking. Scouts aren't supposed to do things like beating their meat. I think it's a violation of the "morally straight" part of things, or at least I got that impression. On the other hand, no adult ever said flat out "A good scout does not beat off!", and I didn't feel the need to get clarification. A guy needs an outlet of some kind, you know.

Which was why I hoped she couldn't actually see into my brain, like her eyes suggested she could, when she had "that look" on her face. I eventually decided she couldn't, because she never threw anything at me.

She never went to work. It didn't matter what time of the day I might be walking by. I found out, during one of our chats, that, when she'd divorced her husband, he'd been making a ton of money, and she got a lot of it. She was rich, really, which was why she didn't work. It's not like I asked her about that. It just came up in conversation, like lots of other things did.

We saw a lot of each other, that summer. I didn't do a good deed for her every single time I saw her, but usually I did. Sometimes she'd be out in her flower garden, or on the porch, or walking to or from her car and just wave. Sometimes she'd call out to me and ask me if I had time to do a good deed.

I always had time to do a good deed for Gloria.

My mom busted my chops about it at supper one night, just before school started up for my Senior year. Both Mom and Dad insisted that we have a family meal every night, where we all sat down together and stuff like that.

My mother had a pinched look on her face as we sat down that night.

"I saw Ruth Abernathy at the store today," she said, in preamble. Whenever she said she saw someone somewhere, it meant they'd said something, and she was going to tell us what it was, and what she thought about it. What we thought about it was less important.

"Oh?" said Dad. He knew the rules, and he knew his part in this little ritual.

"Yes, she said she saw Bobby going into that Mrs. Wilson's house the other day."

"Really!" My dad actually sounded interested, for some reason.

Mom looked at me with that level sort of look that said "You got some 'splaining to do, Lucy!"

I was a deer in the headlights. I had no idea of the storm that might sweep over our household any minute.

"Yeah," I said simply. "She needed some help moving some furniture around," I said. It was true. That's what she'd asked me to do the last time I was there. She was re-arranging the living room.

"Move ... furniture around ..." said my mother, staring straight at me.

"Uh huh," I said, loading up my fork with potatoes. "It was my good deed for the day."

"What?" That was my dad, and he sounded confused.

"You know ... Scouts? Good deed every day?" I helped him out a little.

"Oh," he said.

"Your good deed of the day," said my mother, her voice flat.

I had spoken clearly. Now it was me who was confused. Mom knew about good deeds. She had punished me for enough of them.

"Yeah?" I said, not sure any more whether something was wrong. Mom's demeanor said it was, but I hadn't screwed anything up, like before. In fact, I really was on a streak at Gloria's house. Everything I did over there turned out just like it was supposed to.

"What ... exactly ... did this ... good deed entail?" asked my mother.

Suzy had stopped eating, and was looking on interestedly. It sounded like I was in trouble, and she always enjoyed that.

Like a good Boy Scout, I told the truth. "Well, she was rearranging her living room, and she needed help with the couch and two chairs ... we had to pick them up so they wouldn't scratch the floor when we moved them."

"And what else did she do?" my mother asked. There was almost a triumphant note in her voice.

I really was confused now. She was obviously pissed off at me, but I had no idea why.

"She moved the lamps by herself," I said. "I guess I helped with some magazines. I'm not sure about that." I frowned, thinking hard. I smacked my forehead. "Oh yeah ... now I remember," I said.

My mother leaned forward, the fork in her hand somehow looking like a weapon.

"We moved the coffee table too," I said. I looked at Mom hopefully.

She blinked, and looked at my Dad, who was grinning for some reason.

"This is not funny!" my mother snarled at him.

"Clair, you're being ridiculous," he said.

"I am not!" she said archly. "Everybody knows what a harlot that woman is!"

"What's a harlot?" asked Suzy. She was eleven, that summer.

My mother almost choked and, for once, my father took the assertive role at dinner.

"He did a good deed, Claire. Nobody has called us to ask for damages, so I assume he's grown up enough that you don't have to worry about him every minute of the day any more." My dad looked almost proud of me.

"It's because he's grown up that I'm worried," she moaned.

"What are you worried about?" asked Suzy. "And you didn't tell me what a harlot is? Is Bobby in trouble?"

"Eat your supper," ordered my mother. She looked at me. "We'll discuss this further after dinner." She shot a look at Suzy, who was still looking at us interestedly.

After dinner my mother tried to explain how it was completely irresponsible for a young man, such as myself, to be invited into the house of a divorced woman like Gloria. Thinking back on it, if she'd have just said "We think she'll try to have sex with you!" things might have turned out differently.

But, instead, she hinted at all kinds of things that a teenager, such as myself, would never associate with "We think she'll try to have sex with you!"

For example, she said "What will people think?"

Now, how the heck am I supposed to know what people will think if I do a good deed for Gloria Wilson? I'd like to think they'd say "What a fine young man ... a true Scout ... helpful all the way!" But I knew that most people thought of me as a barely controlled menace, because most of my good deeds had gone so ... well ... bad.

It didn't matter what I thought people would think, though, because she didn't actually expect me to answer that question. She just went on.

"That woman has no visible means of support!" She folded her arms under her breasts which, I have to say, didn't have quite the same effect as when Gloria did it, though it was nice. I knew better than to look, though, at least not to look for more than a second.

"She doesn't work ... she gads about all day long!" my mother went on. "She drives a sports car, of all things!"

"She doesn't have to work," I got in edgewise. "She's rich."

My mother looked horrified. Dad was just sitting there watching. He had a really interested look on his face, but wasn't saying anything. Suzy had been sent on to her room, to "clean it", but I knew she was right around the corner, spying.

"And how would you know that?!" my mother gasped.

"She told me so, when I was fixing her toilet," I answered truthfully.

"You fixed her toilet?!?" My mother was beginning to look faint.

"Yes," I said hesitantly. "The flapper was worn out, and it leaked."

"You've been in that woman's house more than once!?" my mother squeaked.

Of course, by this time, I knew something was up. I didn't know what was up, but I knew something was up.

My mother's mouth was opening and closing, like the gold fish's mouth that Suzy had in a bowl until she killed it by dumping too much food in one week.

My dad finally said something.

"Claire, you're completely overreacting to this. He's just been helping her out occasionally."

"Helping her out?" my mother gasped. "My baby ... in that den of iniquity?" She turned to me. "How many times?" she demanded.

"Now many good deeds?" I asked. That was, after all, what I'd been doing.

"Yes," said my father loudly. "How many good deeds have you done for Mrs. Wilson?"

"I don't know," I said helplessly. "A dozen? Maybe two dozen? I didn't count them up or anything."

My mother turned this really pretty shade of purple, about then, and started gasping and making these choking sounds.

"You can go now, Bob," said my father. He sounded stern, like I'd broken some rule, maybe, but he didn't look mad, and he waved me out before I could ask what I'd done wrong.

He was a lot smarter than Mom, too. Because when they started talking again, he came and looked around the corner, to see if I was still there. I was. He jabbed his finger up the stairs, toward my room.

"You too, missy," he said to Suzy, who was sitting on the top stair. "To your rooms ... both of you."

You didn't argue with that voice, and we both went.

Even so, I heard bits and pieces of it. I heard "Who knows what that hussy has done to our baby?" That was my mother, of course. And later on, what sounded a little like "I've seen how you look at her!", though I couldn't be sure about that one. I did hear her yell "You have to talk to him, John!" I didn't want to get caught trying to listen in again, though, so I went ahead and closed my door.

Dad came up about half an hour later.

"Got a minute, Bob?" he asked, as he opened the door.

"Yeah," I sighed. "I'm in trouble ... right?"

"Depends," he said.

"What on?" I asked.

He didn't say "We think she'll try to have sex with you!" either.

"How friendly are you with Mrs. Wilson?" he asked.

"I don't know," I said. "She's a nice lady."

"Lady," he said, under his breath. "And how friendly is she towards you?"

"She gave me a Coke a couple of times," I said. "I didn't ask for them or anything." We had been taught it was rude to ask for things like that. "She talks to me and stuff." I added. I didn't think it would be a good idea to mention she'd baked me a birthday pie.

He looked puzzled. "What kinds of things has she asked you to do for her?"

So I thought up as many as I could. I didn't exactly tick them off on my fingers or anything, and they weren't in order.

"Has she offered to pay you for any of this?" he asked.

"Well, once, she offered me five dollars," I said. "That was the first time I did a good deed for her. I carried in her groceries. I explained about how good deeds aren't for making money or anything. She hasn't offered me any money since then."

He frowned, like he was thinking, and then smiled.

"You're a lucky guy," he said.

"Beg your pardon?" I responded.

He looked at me, and the smile disappeared. "Sometimes people jump to conclusions about other people," he said.

I could hear a lecture coming, but they didn't happen all that often, and he usually had something interesting to say, so I listened.

"When a ... nice looking woman ... like Mrs. Wilson ... isn't married, and doesn't have a job, sometimes people begin to believe things about her that aren't necessarily true."

He stopped, like he'd said something important.

"Like what?" I asked.

He looked uncomfortable. "Well, for instance, they wonder why she doesn't have a man friend."

What the heck did that mean? I must have looked puzzled.

"And," he went on, "They wonder where she gets her money."

"Oh," I said. "I know that. She's divorced from a big time basketball player, and he had to give her a whole bunch of money because she caught him with two college freshmen in their bed."

My dad looked stunned. "She told you that?" he asked, kind of softly.

"Yeah," I said. "She was pretty bummed out about it. She said she couldn't compete."

"She said that?" he asked, his eyes wide.

"Yeah." I looked at him. "Did I do something wrong?"

He looked at me strangely. "Did she happen to mention why she doesn't ... date?" he asked.

"Yes," I answered. "She says that all the men who show an interest in her only want one thing, and she's not about to give it to them."

He looked positively stunned.

"Did she ... um ... happen to mention what that ... um ... one thing was?" he sort of gasped.

"Not really," I said. "But, come on, Dad ... if she's rich, it isn't too hard to figure out."

OK, I know what you all out there are thinking. But you see, you all are adults, so you think about this stuff like an adult does. But I was still just a kid, and I didn't make the connection.

Now, I have to say here that part of the problem was a communication thing. When you're a seventeen-year-old male, you pretty much think about sex constantly. But what you don't know is that everybody else thinks about sex pretty much constantly, right along with you. And because nobody ever told you that, you think you're the only person in the world who thinks about sex pretty much constantly. So, while I was thinking about Gloria ... and sex ... and Gloria and sex, it never occurred to me that everybody else would think that too. Nobody had communicated effectively with me that I was completely normal. So I didn't think that other people would associate me and Gloria in terms of ... sex.

And, while I thought about Gloria naked, while I whacked off with a vengeance, that's completely different than thinking you might actually have a snowball's chance of actually doing something with an older woman like that. I thought about some of my friends mothers, when I whacked off too, but I would never in a million years have tried to act on that. It was just too foreign a concept, to a kid, to be taken seriously.

On the other hand, my father (and all of you) know exactly what you'd have liked to be doing with Gloria Wilson, behind her closed doors.

So you're probably saying "Man! Is this kid stupid, or what!?"

But it wasn't that way. If either my mother or my father had actually come out and said "We're worried that she might try to have sex with you!", who knows? I might have been able to make the jump to all that innuendo they were beating around the bush with.

And, if they had been asking, say, "What did you and Crystal Higgins do in her room, while you were supposed to be studying for that Chemistry test?", I'll be the first to admit that what would have come out of my mouth instantly was "We weren't having sex! Honest!"

But that's because, to my young mind, Crystal Higgins was "possible". While I purely loved thinking about Gloria naked, and would have given up a finger and two toes to actually see her naked, she just wasn't "possible". So I didn't think of her the way that my mother, and father, and every other able-bodied man and woman in the neighborhood thought about her.

My dad, apparently thinking I was a complete, but harmless idiot, basically gave up.

"Just be careful, OK?" he ordered.

"OK," I answered. Wasn't I always careful? I mean I tried to be. Sometimes it didn't work too well, like that time with the sling shot. But I always tried to be careful.

"OK," he sighed. "I'm glad we had this little talk."

Such, is the wisdom passed on from parent to son, concerning the thorny world of sex, and neighborhood politics.

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