And so it went for more days that Maynard cared to remember until one day Dad spontaneously took them all out for a steak dinner. It wasn’t quite the Peace of Westphalia, but hostilities ceased. It was stupid, he knew, but Maynard couldn’t help but wonder if Augie would have turned out differently if he’d been allowed to see more of the magazine.
The pile on Maynard’s bed contained a few more firsts. There was his first concert ticket, which was for some God-awful band he regretted he ever listened to. There was his first leather jacket, which was tattered and far too short. There was even a letter from the middle school vice principal commending Maynard for his quick reaction when Joey Bellanozza got hit in the head by a fly ball during gym class and passed out.
Looking at everything made the four corners of his room feel alive again. It brought Maynard precisely the nostalgia he’d hoped to avoid. This was supposed to be in and out, nice and easy. Instead, he found himself thinking. Maynard hated that. He’d done enough thinking in that room for one lifetime.
Then, at the bottom of the pile, Maynard found something that nearly made his heart stop: his diaper. She’d saved his diaper.
“For fuck’s sake,” he whispered.
When he was eight years old, Maynard was a helplessly prolific bedwetter. Like other mothers who tired of wet sheets, his resorted to diapering her son at night. To his adult self, it made logical sense. To an eight-year-old, it was catastrophic.
Maynard rubbed the old cloth between his fingers and the memories came. He found himself on his back on that bed more than 15 years ago, watching as Mom removed the diapers, pins, waterproof pants and powder from the plastic Food Lion bags. He had already been disrobed and positioned, but that part of him that swore she wouldn’t really go through with it was getting a second wind. Now that part compelled him to try to get back up.
“Maynard,” Mom cautioned.
“No, Mom,” he said. “I’m not gonna do it. I…I won’t drink anything before bed, OK?”
“We tried that,” she said. “Remember?”
“Well, try it again,” he said with his arms crossed. “Because I’m not gonna wear a diaper.”
She sighed. “Do I have to get your father?” she asked.
That sat him back down in a hurry and brought his dreams of escape to a crashing end. He was moist-eyed and red-cheeked as Mom slid the thick cloth folds under him, but the worst parts were yet to come. He would go on to experience being stuck with the pins courtesy of Mom’s slipping hand and suffering the indignation of her sliding the waterproof pants up and tucking every inch of extra fabric in. But the worst part was Augie, watching from his doorway and giggling. He shot his brother a look that could kill, but it took Mom’s admonishment to ultimately make him leave.
He wore those diapers to bed every night for about a month. Every evening, Mom would come and put them on him and they would remain on the following morning when he joined the family for breakfast. Every threatening gesture he made against Augie was negated by the words “…or I’ll tell about your diapers.” In short, life sucked.
The bedwetting passed, but the memories of the diapers did not. Maynard made a point of finding them and throwing them away before he cleared out. Apparently, there was one that had gotten away from him.
“Not this time,” he said. He prepared to fling it into the trash, but held it awhile longer. It was funny how something so innocuous could screw up his life so much. After all, if it hadn’t been for the diapers, things probably wouldn’t have gone the way they did with Christa.
He was 16 and he’d been on dates before, but she was the first one he’d felt he had a future with. It wasn’t that Christa was smoking hot (she was a little on the short side) or especially eager (if anything, she was guarded), it was that she seemed more real than the other girls. She was a stream, uncontaminated by the sewage pipe of adolescent bullshit.
It was that realness that led him to confess, within these same four corners, that he had once been a bed wetter. And though he felt emboldened enough to trust her with that, he still expected some degree of fallout. Taunting wasn’t likely, but a look of disgust or an abrupt exit seemed within reason. Instead, Christa merely shrugged.
“That’s it?” Maynard asked.
“Maynard,” she said. “You were eight. Eight-year-old boys do gross things.”
He laughed in spite of himself. All that time he’d been flogging himself over it, and for what?
The success of his confession led Maynard to reason – perhaps naively – that Christa was the only one who would ever understand him. And that reasoning, in turn, allowed him to drop the inhibitions he may have had with other girls.
It was again within the same four corners that Maynard made a play to lose his virginity. He and Christa had been together for a good while now and something in his teenage reasoning said the time was right. They were making out like they always did when he tried to slip a hand under her jeans.
Christa sat bolt upright.
“Maynard,” she said. “Don’t.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Just don’t.”
“I thought you liked me.”
“I do like you.”
“Then why…”
“There are some things I just can’t tell you about,” she said.
He felt like he was being treated like a child and he didn’t like it. He couldn’t picture some of the other guys his age being talked to like this.
“That’s great, Christa,” he said in a patronizing tone. “But I don’t see what that has to do with us fucking!”
Christa’s eyes welled up and she abruptly tore away from him, mumbling “Jesus fucking Christ” as she bounded out of the room. She was in such a hurry to get away from him and those four corners and that house that she took no notice of oncoming traffic and promptly got herself hit by a car.
Maynard’s curiosity is all that staved of suicide. Lord knows his guilt demanded it. It wasn’t until two weeks after the funeral that he got his answers. Christa’s sister took him aside and questioned him thoroughly about her relationship. It was an uncomfortable topic, but he felt he owed her some truth. He held nothing back.
“So you never actually…”
“No,” he said. “I didn’t. I wanted to, but she freaked. Then I wanted to ask her what I did and say I’m sorry, but she was gone. Marci, what did I do?”
The sister sniffled and gave him a pitying look.
“You reminded her of our uncle,” she said.
“You’re uncle?” Maynard ask. “What does your uncle….oh, shit. I’m sorry.”
“She was ten,” Marci said, solemnly.