Gargantuan_ A Ruby Murphy Mystery - Maggie Estep [13]
“I’m so sorry, how can I help you?” I’d asked, and she’d looked at me curiously, tilted her head, and then very earnestly said, “Probably in all kinds of ways.”
Had I known precisely how many ways she had in mind, I might have simply helped her muck that blue paint off the linoleum and called it a day. Instead, I got her phone number. Right there at the geriatric home where she worked as a nurse’s aide.
On the night of our first date, I went to pick Ava up at her basement apartment on Hilda Street. She opened the door, grabbed my arm, and pulled me inside. She wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing. This wasn’t commonplace comportment for first dates in Grinderville, where there hadn’t been a town nympho since Nellie’s notoriety had gone up in a haze of age and kleptomania. Ava stood, absorbing her effect on me for a while before turning to her stereo system and putting on an album of strange folk music. She started dancing around, with her narrow but lovely ass moving beautifully. She had a small patch of light brown pubic hair and her breasts were good, not too big but very clearly there. She started touching herself.
“You stand there and watch,” she ordered as she shimmied.
I did as I was told. For a little while. Then I moved close to her, put my hand on her cheek, and stared at her. This seemed to disorient her. I kissed her. Head to toe. She started trembling. Her whole body gasping and coiling. I made certain she was very worked up and then I walked out.
That got her nose open.
Eight months later I married her.
There was a little chapel on Crookshank Road.
My mother was dead and my father was a drunk, but Ava’s parents came. They were stiff people who didn’t seem to take to me. But that didn’t matter.
That night, for our honeymoon, we drove to the ocean and stayed in a rundown seaside motel. Ava was on top of me and underneath me and sometimes behind me. Her body was thin. When we stopped making love long enough to go outside, we walked to the water. One of her now-familiar crazy looks overtook her face and she said, “I always wanted to be a welder.”
“A what?” I said.
“A welder. Especially underwater. In the sea. A deep-sea welder.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” she said, gripping my hand and pulling me into the ocean.
A few months after this blessed event, Ava had grown fat. It wasn’t what I had expected, but I didn’t mind. She kept me interested with her physical and mental transformations. When she was pregnant with Grace she became even more eccentric than usual. She read constantly. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, she would get up and go outside wearing her long white nightgown. She would pace in the backyard as she chain-smoked. Occasionally, her absence in the bed would wake me and I’d look out the window to see a pregnant, smoking apparition.
A few months after Grace was born, Ava got depressed and stopped eating. For the most part, I was left to take care of our daughter. Ava didn’t want Grace sucking on her breasts after the first weeks. I got Grace formula and fed her and changed her.
Ava went on lithium and got fat again. Grace turned one. Then two and three and so forth.
Through all of Grace’s and Ava’s transformations, I essentially remained the same. Physically at least. Every six months I changed jobs, from carpenter to working in a factory to landscaping to working on a dairy farm. Which is where I got on the first horse I’d been on since I was a little kid. The farmer had a couple of draft horses which his teenaged daughter rode. One day, the daughter asked if I wanted to get up on one of the horses. The moment she asked, I realized that I did want to. She led the horse over to a bale of hay. I stood on this and hoisted myself up onto the big gelding’s back. At first, the girl led the horse but, after a while,