Vision Quest by Terry Davis Read Free Book Online Page A

impressed with my trophies when I took her down to the basement to show her where she’d be staying.
    For a while I thought she had tried to gross me out. She took off her clothes, turned on the shower, and started in. She had a nice body, but she seemed awfully top-heavy and she had stretch marks low on her stomach. Otto has them on his back and shoulders. Then she turned from the shower and sat down on the toilet and peed. I stood open-mouthed. I do that a lot. I’m a pretty fun person to surprise. When she reached for the toilet paper, I split for the other room. All the time she acted like I wasn’t even there.
    She was unobtrusive through Mom’s leaving. I think she spent those three days and nights at the New Pioneer.
    I finally decided she really probably hadn’t tried to gross me out. I don’t think she ever did anything to purposely offend anyone, including me. She worked like crazy keeping the basement clean; she split the dishwashing with me andcooked when Mom went out of town. She even bought food after she got her job. After her first words down at Dad’s old store—“Fuck you guys!”—Carla turned out to be pretty gracious. I felt a real gentleness all around her.
    Carla had one record and two prints with her when she came. She played the record low and often. It’s a classical record by Johann Pachelbel. Her favorite band on it is “Canon in D Major.” It’s a simple tune played by three violins and a continuo, whatever in hell that is. The prints are by a French painter named Henri Rousseau and are very colorful and have monkey faces peeking through a jungle inhabited by soft, naked women and creatures I’m not able to identify. Maybe they’re oozlings.
    Several times Carla told Dad she’d worn out her welcome and each time Dad told her she hadn’t. He even lent her the money for a minor operation she had to have. It was a hemorrhoid operation, which I thought was pretty strange for a young girl. But since then I’ve read that people of any age can have hemorrhoids.
    After reading in Pathology about some different types of hemorrhoids and “striae,” which are stretch marks, I began to wonder if maybe Carla hadn’t been pregnant. So then I read about the effects of pregnancy in Obstetrics and Gynecology and was pretty sure she had.
    It seems that carrying a baby can stretch a woman’s muscles so far they can lose their tonicity. That’s one of the causes of stretch marks. And in a way it seems to be the samewith the veins in the anal cavity that become hemorrhoids. When a mother is giving birth there’s so much blood being pumped around and so much pressure being exerted that the veins get stretched so far they can’t regain their shape. The tissue bursts through the mucous membrane lining the anal canal and hangs around being a hemorrhoid.
    I figured if Carla could pee in front of me, I could ask her if she’d been pregnant. So I did.
    â€œDid Dad tell you?” she asked.
    â€œNo,” I said. “I just thought from your stretch marks that maybe you had been.”
    â€œI was,” Carla said.
    I didn’t know what to say then.
    â€œMy baby died,” she said. “I don’t believe in God, but I think it was a blessing.”
    â€œThat’s good,” I said, with incredible thoughtlessness. “I mean, I’m sorry it had to be a good thing.” Then I shut up fast.
    â€œMy milk’s almost gone,” Carla said. “I had to milk myself for a while.”
    â€œMilk yourself?” I’d never heard of that. “I thought women took shots for that. It’s supposed to hurt like hell when the milk isn’t nursed out.”
    â€œIt’s a wonderful pain,” Carla said. “Look.”
    Carla unbuttoned her shirt and squeezed a breast pretty hard. A bead of milk appeared on her nipple. I felt strange. I’d never seen anything like that