Page 29 of Devil in Disguise
Her mom chewed a while, and Dyma said, “Sorry. Tough question.”
Jennifer shook her head and swallowed. “No. Tough turkey. Huh. Do I? I don’t think so. I feel proud, mostly. I should just be proud of you, maybe, but I’m proud of me, too. I couldn’t do it, but you get to. That makes me …” Some more hesitation, and then she laughed. “I feel like the Grinch whose heart grew two sizes, that’s what. I worry about you some, but I’m so proud, baby.”
There were tears in her eyes, starting to spill over, and Dyma put her hand out and gripped hers. That ache in her chest was back again, too. “You should be proud of yourself,” she said. “What, after all those angsty talks about Life Choices and The Consequences of My Actions? Hey, those didn’t come easy. But look! Here I am! Still alive, going to college, haven’t lost my scholarship yet, and not, you know …”
“Pregnant,” her mom said, and wiped her eyes with a napkin. “OK, baby. I’m going to say it. Owen. I know it was hard to say goodbye to him. Did you two … make any promises?”
“You’re failing at the game,” Dyma informed her. “Way to not be sneaky, Mom. We’ve agreed to be exclusive, if that’s what you mean.” She tried to make it come off airy. It didn’t exactly work. “But since nobody’s going to treat me like Owen does, that’s not exactly hard for me.”
Her mom hesitated. Dyma looked at her, eyes narrowing. Oh, boy. She’dknownshe’d get one more Life Talk on the way out the door.
“Baby,” Jennifer said, “just don’t let him distract you from your goals. I know he seems wonderful, but you’re nineteen. You’re just starting out. You’ve got such a head of steam built up.”
“You know who you sound like?” Dyma asked. “Owen, that’s who. He didn’t evensaythe exclusive thing until last week! And I had to say it first!”
Jennifer drew in a breath. “You realize,” she said, in her SuperTactfulWoman voice, “that you could look at that two ways.”
“What, that he doesn’t want to promise me that? Mom. He wants to promise me that. And heisbetter than anybody else. Nobody else is going to …” She stopped. Her temper was getting away from her. Her temper had that tendency.
“Nobody else is going towhat?Harlan says I shouldn’t say this, but I’m going to anyway. NFL players have a lot of … sexual experience. That may give them an unrealistic idea of what kind of sex a woman’s ready for. Especially a very young woman.”
Dyma had set her sandwich down. She’d also crossed her arms. “Seriously? You want to have this talk in adiner?Grandma would have said, ‘Not dinner table conversation.’”
“Why, do you know anybody here?”
“I don’t think Harlan’s good for you,” Dyma informed her. “You used to bewaymore tactful than this.”
“I’m pregnant. And I’m driving away from my only daughter today. I’m entitled.”
“All righty, then,” Dyma said. “For the record, though, based on every single teen movie in the world? You’re supposed to be completely unaware of my party attendance or keg stands or sexual experimentation. I tell you I’m going to my girlfriend’s, and the rest of it is a blank to you.”
“Excuse me,” Jennifer said. “Explanation?”
Dyma sighed. “I’d say you could be a lot more worried about me wearing a collar or Owen having a room of pain or inviting me to do a threesome if we’d ever even had, you know, vaginal intercourse.”
“Oh.” Her mom definitely looked shocked at that. “Harlan said Owen told him that, but I thought … you came home pretty late the past couple times, and, well, realistically …” She set down her own sandwich and looked alarmed. “He’s not doing it some other way, is he? Thinking that doesn’t count, or something?”
Dyma sighed again. “If you want to say ‘anal,’ Mom, justsay‘anal.’No.Excuse me? What part of ‘We’re not being kinky’ didn’t you get from that? Also, I can’t. There you go. I can’t, and he still likes me and wants to be, you know, faithful and all that, so maybe he’s great, you know? Maybe he’s just …” Now, the tears were behindhereyes. She wasn’t crying about this, though, not on the day she startedcollege.It was stupid. “Maybe he’s great,” she finished up, and tried to take another bite of sandwich.
She failed. She put it down, and her mom said, “Baby. What do you mean, you can’t?”
“I mean,” Dyma said, “that he doesn’tfit.”
“Oh.” Her mom looked totally blank for a second, then roused herself and said, “Is he, uh, unusually large?”
“Mom. How would Iknow?It’s not like my life has been full of erect penises!” That caused a couple of older ladies at the next table to turn and stare, but Dyma couldn’t worry about that.
“He’s an awfully big guy,” her mom said. “Maybe that’s proportional? Length-wise, I guess? I don’t even know. But surely it’s more about, well, width. I mean, girth. Is that the problem? I don’t imagine that would have any, uh, correlation. To size. Height. Whatever.” She was turning bright red, and the two women next to them looked like they were listening as hard as they could while pretending not to.
“Again, Mom,” Dyma said, “no clue? Maybe he’s completely normal. Maybe it’s me. I’ve never had the doctor say I was deformed or anything when she was sticking the speculum in there, but who knows? Maybe they don’t want to tell you for fear you’ll kill yourself. And, no, it can’t be my hymen, if I even had one. Itstartedto go in. It just couldn’t make it. So maybe I just can’t.”
“If a baby’s head can come out of there,” her mom said, “a penis can go in. Trust me. It stretches.”
“Then why doesn’t mine? I looked it up, and there’s almostnothingonline.Which means nobody else must have this problem, becauseeverything’sonline.What am I supposed to do?”
Jennifer sighed. “First, you’re supposed to trust Owen. I can’t believe I’m saying that, but if he’s telling you it’s … Wait. What exactlyishe telling you?”
“OK,” Dyma said. “This is officially the world’s most embarrassing conversation. But I can’t exactly tell anybody else, so I guess I’m telling you.”
