Molly was small and pretty and shy and I loved her name— it was on her Dairy Queen blouse. I stopped there every evening after work that summer, and if the other girl came to the window I told her, “That’s okay, I’ll wait for Molly.” And when she came she always said hi and smiled. I would order a vanilla cone, one scoop, and make small talk while she fixed it. I had secret plans for us. I had that song in my head all the time:
Just Molly and me
And baby makes three,
We’re happy in my blue heaven.
First, though, I had to ask her out. So I finally did, and she said, “Um … okay.”
She still lived with her parents. When I picked her up, I had to come in.
“This is my mom and this is my dad.”
They were on the couch, Barney Miller on.
“Hello,” I said to them, nodding, smiling.
“Nice to meet you,” the mother said.
“Going to a movie, huh?” the father said.
“Yes,” I said, “a movie, right.”
“Well, you have yourselves a nice time,” the mother said.
“Thank you,” I said. “We will.”
“Don’t be too late,” the father told Molly, and glanced at me.
“I won’t,” Molly promised.
“It was very nice meeting you,” the mother said.
“Nice meeting you,” I told them both.
Walking to the car I said to Molly, “They seem awfully nice.”
“Uh-huh.”
As I drove us to the Dolton Theater, she told me about her cat Samantha giving birth to three kittens that morning.
I told her the Egyptians used to worship cats.
She said she didn’t know that.
I said it was true.
We passed the Dairy Queen. “There it is,” I said.
She told me an idea she had for a new ice cream flavor, featuring peanut butter and honey.
I told her that sounded awful, and we both laughed.
This was going great.
At the theater, she didn’t want any popcorn so I didn’t either and we sat together waiting for the movie to begin.
I told her this was about UFO’s.
She knew that.
I asked her if she believed in UFO’s.
She said she wasn’t sure.
I told her that was a very good answer.
We sat there.
I asked her if she’d ever heard that song, “My Blue Heaven.”
She didn’t think so.
The movie started. I laid my arm along the back of her seat.
About ten minutes later, I was about to very casually move my arm onto her shoulder, but just then she opened the purse in her lap and I watched from the corner of my eye as she lifted out a dark little bottle, unscrewed the cap and took a sip. I could smell it: Robitussin. I figured she must be working on a cough. My arm was going to sleep and I brought it back.
About ten minutes later, she opened her purse again and took another hit.
I whispered, “Is that … are you …”
“For my cough,” she whispered, putting the bottle back.
Halfway through the movie, she’d had six little hits and was now responding out loud to events on the screen, saying things like, “Whoa,” and “Aw, maaan?” And by the end of the movie, when those anemic-looking little doe-eyed aliens came walking delicately down the ramp of their space ship, Molly said loudly, “Oh, look at them, look at them …”
Afterwards, walking to the car, she was weaving and talking away. “What a movie. God, you know? I wish that would happen to me. I wish somebody from outer space, some cute little people like that … I would go with them, I wouldn’t even hesitate, I’d say ‘Let’s blow this popstand.’”
As soon as we got in the car she opened her purse and took out the bottle of cough medicine.
“How can you drink that stuff, Molly?”
“For my cough.” She took a hit. “Here,” she said, and held out the bottle.
“No, thanks. Listen, don’t take any more tonight, okay? Your parents are gonna be pretty—”
“Start the car. C’mon. Let’s go.”
“All right but … what did you feel like doing? Get something to eat? A pizza or something?”
“Nah. Just drive around. Go ‘head. Start the car.”
I started the car.
“Attaboy.”
I pulled out of the lot.
“Hey, y’know?” she said. “I wish … man, I wish something like that would happen to me.”
“A close encounter?”
“That would be so fucking great.”
We drove around. She talked some more about how much she would like to be abducted by aliens. I tried to change the subject. I asked her what she planned to do with her cat Samantha’s kittens.
“They’re so little,” she said. “You should see, they’re so … little,” and she started crying.
I didn’t know what to do. I put out my arm for her to move under it and she did, laying her head against me. I told her, “They’ll be fine, Molly.”
“They’re so tiny.”
“They’ll be fine. Really. Don’t worry. They’re gonna be just—”
“Hey,” she said, no longer crying. “Want a really close encounter? Of the fourth kind?” She started fumbling with my belt buckle.
“What’re you doing?”
She kept working away. “What’s it look like?”
“Will ya stop? Jesus.”
She sat up and looked at me. “S’matter? You queer?”
“I just don’t think you’re in your right … you know …”
“Miiind, you mean? My right miiind?”
I missed the little Dairy Queen girl.
“That shit you’ve been drinking…”
“I told you, it’s for my cough.”
“You don’t have a cough, you haven’t coughed all—”
“See? It works. C’mon,” she said, and put her hand on my leg. “Don’t be such a homo.”
“Maybe some other time,” I told her.
“What’sa matter, don’tcha like me?”
“I like you a lot, Molly.”
“Do you think I’m nice?”
“I think you’re very nice, yes.”
“Do you love me?”
“Well … I mean …”
“Want me to make you love me? I can make you love me,” she said, and went after my belt buckle again, just as I was making a turn, and she fell onto my lap.
“Molly, get off! I can’t steer!”
She also had her feet in the way of the brake pedal and we went over a curb, then onto a lawn while I kept kicking and stomping and was finally able to stop the car, sending both of us against the steering wheel.
“Whoa, fuck,” she said, and sat up.
We were three feet away from a large picture window, on the other side of which, across a stretch of carpet, a family of four—Mom, Dad, Bud and Sis—were arranged on a couch, staring bug-eyed into my headlights.
We sat there staring back at them.
“They prob’ly think we’re aliens,” Molly whispered.
I snapped out of it, backed off of their lawn, got out on the street again and resumed driving around.
She was quiet now. So was I. I kept picturing them— Mom and Dad and Bud and Sis—returning without comment to their television show, a sitcom, staring at it for ten seconds, then all of them laughing together briefly, stopping together, staring for another ten seconds, then laughing together …
I didn’t want that, I decided. No, thank you. I didn’t want any part of that. I told Molly I could see her point about wanting to be abducted by aliens. I told her I wouldn’t mind it either, not a bit. “I’m with you,” I said. “Life down here is getting just a little bit too—”
“Drive me home please?” she said quietly.
“Yours, you mean?”
“Yes, please.”
She was sitting forward, head lowered, her hand braced against the glove box.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“I don’t feel so good.”
“Well?” I said. “See?”
“Fuck you,” she said.
I drove her home. We didn’t speak. But I was thinking. And as I pulled up in front of her house I said, “Y’know, Molly, there’s a lot of ways we can look at tonight, a lot of different—”
“Thank you, I had a nice time,” she said, and got out.
I watched her walking carefully towards the front porch. Her father opened the door and I pulled away.