Peck: A Book - Chapter 1 - In Which Peck Becomes a Woman

In Which Peck Becomes A Woman

Peck took her first lover at 17.  His name was Adam Jones, a smooth little thing, with the wispy moustache only a teen boy could grow and hardly an ounce of muscle tone on him.  When she brought him home from school, after he’d managed to break down her defenses with a daily barrage of charm in fifth-hour chemistry, Mom sized him up like a stud pony – so thoroughly, in fact, Peck was surprised she didn’t make him open his mouth so she could get a look at his teeth – and just threw her head back and laughed like a donkey.

“This is what you’ve been running around with?” Mom said.  “You realize he looks 14?”

“Don’t be rude, Mother.”

“Tell me, son,” Mom said and looked at Adam.  “Are you 14?”

“You don’t have to answer her,” Peck said and he didn’t. 

“Well, I always knew you were your Father’s girl – always after something younger,” Mom said.  “I suppose one day you’ll bring a real man home – just not today.”

Mom was known for a biting tongue that could whither men of greater substance than Adam – not surprisingly, she cycled through a fair number of lovers, at first attracted to, and ultimately repulsed by, her forthright manner – but though he withered he did not run for cover as others might.  Such was his resolve to become Biblically familiar with Peck that he shouldered Mother’s abuse, even though her every remark drove him into a smaller and smaller ball.

Peck, though, did not shrink.  She’d long learned Mother’s approval could be fleeting and rarely worth the effort to attain it.  Still, this did not stop her from rising to the fight.

“Aren’t you supposed to be getting married again?” Peck said, stinging Mother where it most stung.

“Don’t get smart,” Mom snapped.  “When you bring somebody into this house with more than peach fuzz on his lip, then you can sass.  But not before.”

In some ways Peck knew it wasn’t fair to call Adam a lover, as the term implied some sort of wonderful romance, or that he met her physical and emotional needs, or said he was something more than the hesitant, shy little boy he was, or that she wasn’t simply satisfying her curiosities, which was what she was doing.  Still, fair or not, in her own mind Peck thought fondly on him as a lover and even if he wasn’t, she would hear no arguments to dispute it.

***

Mother could be harsh, but there was no arguing Peck’s predilection for younger men mirrored her Father’s preference for younger women.

In all, her Father took three wives, bettering Mama by one – although in Mama’s accounting they were on equal footing – and the one trait his wives all shared was youth.  Of the three, only one completed her 21st year before the blessed marriage occurred, and of the three, none completed their 22nd year before the union came undone.

Daddy’s first wife predated Mama, coming when he was fresh from high school.  Peck knew little of the woman, only she was a good Catholic girl from a good Catholic school, who insisted on maintaining her good, Catholic purity until marriage.

“Sure, we waited ‘til we were married,” he said, offering his typically-frank assessment of the mysterious first-wife.  “But after that, what was the point of sticking it out?  Once you found the buried treasure, your job is done.”