"Eet ees different! Meester Penis has a secret."
"What secret?"
"What happened to Meester Penis is our secret, dahleen."
"Oh."
Had he agreed to share Mrs. Machado's secret? He felt the saint slip away, or maybe it was Jack himself who slipped away. Had the saint turned back into stained glass? (Or was it Jack's childhood he felt slip away?)
"Boa noite," Mrs. Machado whispered in Portuguese.
"What?"
"Good night, leetle one."
"Good night, Mrs. Machado."
From the bedroom doorway, she was backlit by the light at the far end of the guest-wing hall. Seeing her squat, thick silhouette made Jack remember Chenko's observation of Mrs. Machado's stance as a wrestler--namely, that she stood like a bear on its hind legs, as if Mrs. Machado might have felt more at home on all fours.
From the hall, as if to remind him of their secret, Mrs. Machado whispered one more time: "Boa noite, Meester Penis."
Jack didn't sleep well; he had dreams, of course. Was he worried that the stained-glass saint would slip back into his bed while he slept--or more worried that she had turned her back on him, as he feared he had turned his back on God?
Jack was aware that his mother and Mrs. Oastler had come home, not because he woke up when his mom came into his bedroom and kissed him--at least his mom said she came into his room and kissed him, every night--but because the lights in the hall had changed. No longer was there a light on at the far end of the corridor, but the door to his mother's room was ajar and the light from her bathroom glowed dimly in the hall. The light in Jack's bathroom was also on, and it cast a thin, bright line of light under the door.
Jack was aware of his wet dream, too, because the cold, damp area of his bed had dried--but near it was a wetter spot, still warm, where the little guy had shed a few more tears of joy. Maybe he'd been dreaming about Mrs. Machado. He wondered if he would tell Emma about his wet dream, which Emma had anticipated for so long. (Jack Burns wondered if he would ever tell anyone about Mrs. Machado.)
He got out of bed and crossed the hall to his mother's room, but his mom wasn't there; her bed wasn't even turned down. Jack went looking for his mother in the dark mansion. Mrs. Machado must have gone home, because the downstairs lights were off. The boy wandered from the guest wing into the hallway that led past Emma's empty bedroom. There was a flickering light; it came from under Leslie Oastler's bedroom door.
Maybe Mrs. Oastler and his mom were watching television, Jack was thinking. He knocked on the door, but they didn't hear him. Or maybe he forgot to knock and just opened the door. The TV was off--it was a candle on the night table that was flickering.
He thought at first that Mrs. Oastler was dead. Her body was arched as if her spine were broken, and her head was hanging off the side of the bed so that her face was turned toward Jack--but her face was upside down. The boy could tell that she didn't see him. She was naked and her eyes were wide and staring, as if the dim light from the hall had made Jack invisible--or else he was the one who was dead and Mrs. Oastler was looking right through him. Maybe he'd died during his wet dream, Jack imagined. (It would not have surprised him to learn that the experience with Mrs. Machado had killed him--not just the high-groin kick, but all the rest of it.)
Alice sat up suddenly and covered her breasts with both hands. She was naked, too, but Jack had not seen her in the bed until she moved. She sat bolt-upright with Leslie Oastler's legs wrapped around her. Mrs. Oastler hadn't moved, but Jack saw that her eyes had regained their focus; he was greatly relieved that she saw him.
"I didn't die, but I had a dream," Jack told them.
"Go back to your room, Jack--I'll be right there," his mom told him.
Alice was looking for her nightgown, which she found tangled in the sheets at the foot of the bed. Leslie Oastler just lay there naked, staring at Jack. In the candlelight, the rose-red, rose-pink petals of her Rose of Jericho looked like two shades of black--black and blacker.
Jack was in the hall, going back to his room, when he heard Mrs. Oastler say: "You shouldn't still be sleeping in the same bed with him, Alice--he's too old."
"I only do it when he's had a bad dream," Alice told her.
"You do it whenever Jack wants to do it," Mrs. Oastler said.
"I'm sorry, Leslie," Jack heard his mother say.
The boy lay in his bed, not knowing quite what he should do or say about the wet spot. Maybe nothing. But when his mother got into bed with him, it didn't take her long to discover it. "Oh, it was that kind of dream," she said, as if this hardly counted as a nightmare.
"It's not blood, it's not pee," the boy elaborated.
"Of course it isn't, Jack--it's semen."
Jack was thoroughly confused. (He failed to see how a wet dream could have anything to do with sailors!) "I didn't mean to do it," he explained. "I don't even remember doing it."
"It's not your fault, Jackie--a boy's wet dreams just happen."