“That ain’t what does it, sweetie.” Donna sits up, cheerfully vulgar. “I say the two of you will come back from spring vacation just as you’re going forth, prepared to talk about it every night for the next three hundred and sixty-four nights.”
“To judge from what I heard of his torrid journal, at least Mike will know what he’s about,” Julie says. “You won’t have to seduce him.”
Donna is still angry at me: because Lennie didn’t absolve her, because Julie is in the room, because she accidentally told Julie the truth. Because she is tired and wants to be asleep and we are clearly going to talk for a while. Because we all have to go home separated from our boyfriends and our little support group, and none of us want to.
Donna bounds up off the bed to pace, her snow leopard mode, all icy speed. Julie and I watch her bemused, our heads turning. Then she drops astride her desk chair and faces us, estranged from her by our inexperience. “Julie, you want it handed to you on a silver platter. If you do want him, get him. What’s stopping you? Put your hand on his prick if you have to. Rub against him. Sit on his lap and wriggle. Nothing easier, if you really want him. People don’t usually issue engraved invitations to have affairs with them. Not black tie…. And you, Jill, you’re just scared of men. You talk and talk and talk about honesty and integrity and then you find some picky reason why it’s honest and full of integrity to be scared shitless! I feel sorry for Mike.”
I feel as if Donna has kicked me in the belly. I blink very hard. Julie looks resolutely impassive, watching. Donna goes on, smiling sourly: “I bet each of you a dinner you won’t do it. That’s what men of the better social classes usually pay for it, isn’t it? A restaurant dinner?”
“In the restaurant of our choice?” Julie asks.
“No. The restaurant of my choice. I’m the one who’s going to be taken out. Twice.”
I agree to the bet, annoyed. Donna doesn’t perceive Mike clearly or she wouldn’t bother pushing. Me, I wish everybody began fucking each other when we were in kindergarten, to avoid this anxious nonsense.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HOT PASTRAMI ON WRY
“WHAT CAN I do, Mrs. S.?” Matt sits head in hands at the kitchen table. “I’m flat broke. But I swear I’ll pay you for last month, somehow.”
Mother washes, I dry, while Dad lies on the couch with the television on. Mother shakes the crisp unruly hair from her eyes. “Now, I’m not worried about that. But a big strong boy like you ought to be able to find work.”
“I tried, Mrs. S. Don’t I get up every morning stinking early no matter how it kills me and go the rounds? Do I lie in bed? Do I wait for them to come to me?”
How much like one of the family he sounds with that self-righteous rhetoric. Even begun to use his hands. Your best friends won’t tell you, Matt, but you’ve been assimilated.
“They’re laying off from the auto plants. And in the offices all they ask is, have you done your service and have you got your degree—and they don’t mean no high-school diploma.”
“It’s a fact,” Dad shouts from the front room. “A high-school diploma doesn’t mean what it did. They keep them in school too long anyhow.” He has grown tolerant of Matt. Sometimes he lets him cower in the basement, helping at the workbench as I used to. But only sometimes.
Mother’s eyes narrow. “Did you go to all those places I circled in red crayon in the Sunday paper?”
I dry the pots now, hurrying to finish so I can dress for Mike. I know where Matt spends his days. I saw him with Freddie’s younger brother and Le Roy next door rebuilding the engine on a hot rod at the garage where Sharkie works. Matt ducked behind the raised hood when Sharkie came out to yell at me, “Hey, Tits, how’s it goin’?” the way he does.
Matt half rises. “I’ll join the army. Let them take me! I’ll go down and enlist tomorrow….” He trails off, waiting.
Head cocked, birdlike, she deliberates. “That might be your best bet, Matt. Both my boys were in the army.”
Sure, and Leo came out a con man and Francis spent six months in stockade and pulled a dishonorable. What games they play. She’ll never let him out from under her thumb. I grab the bathroom, racing for the hot water left from dishes. Although I turn on the water in the tub and strew the floor with clothing to mark possession, when I pass him in the hall he will not respond to my stuck-out tongue. He shuffles along with his shoulders sagging in the tee shirt, all the fight wilted from him.
I put on my black shirtdress I bought two summers ago when I had a job at Sam’s Cutrate Department Store downtown, quickly so that Mother will not appear and realize I am not wearing a slip. Then I sit at her vanity hoping for inspiration. I arch my neck, strain as tall as I can before the mirror. The rite of unity that will forge us into one. On my face the pale intensity of decision. Maybe I should borrow Mother’s powder. Rachel No. 2. The act of love—such a taut phrase. I feel like the heroine of a novel or an opera. I should speak in verse.
She sits at the mirror in the last pared minutes of growing cool and separate as a birch tree while the moth of fear beats at her throat….
In her throat? Is pared too precious?
“Well, honey, a date.” Mother shuts the door with a clanging of hangers, a swishing of Dad’s ties. “What are you mooning about?”
If I ignore her, will she leave? Fat chance.
“Black! Why try to look drab?” She pokes at my shoulder.
I hang back from her touch. “I’m light. I can wear it.” Why do I always defend?
“You’d think your parents had died, black black black! Wait till you have your fill of funerals.” She sinks on the bed staring at me, her face reflected in the mirror next to my own. Her small lips are pursed as if over something sour. “What’s he going to do—this boy—Michael?”
“Teach in a college.”
“Urn. Teachers don’t make much.”
“I’m not going to marry him, Mother!” I feel stirred up already, as if she could reach a long spoon into my guts. She is always making arbitrary naive statements about the outside world. The faculty makes a lot more than my father, but she is firmly convinced colleges are raddled by genteel poverty.
“Can’t I make a simple statement?” She picks a loose hair from my shoulders. “What’s his father do?”
“He’s dead.”
“Poor boy.” She pinches my arm whispering, “He’s Jewish?”
I nod.
She eyes herself in the mirror. “Your father won’t like that. Orthodox?” She fluffs her hair.
“No.”
“You know what a bother it was with Grandma. Papa used to say you need new ways in a new land. He could read five languages and his English was perfect. She never learned to talk right.”
Actually I liked her food requirements, for they meant we ate differently and had to go down to the old Jewish neighborhood where Howie lives to shop. When Grandma came in the summer was the only time I ever had bagels, stuffed cabbage, smoked whitefish, ruggeleh. “Mike is studying German and French.”
She lets her hands fall on her thighs. “Never could see what good it did Papa, selling door to door, packing fish. Then getting himself killed and leaving us with all those kids. It’s a hard life, it’s a dog eat dog, and don’t let those professors tell you different.” She sits staring, then flares up as if I had contradicted her. “But he was a brilliant man, and don’t you forget it! A scholar and a man of action! A Jew who cared about everyone, even the Polacks, the shvartzehs. Too much he cared and ended up dead for it.” She touches my hair. A spark snaps to her hand. “Let me cut your hair the way I wore it at your age. Your face would look so sweet, chickie.”
The seductive power of the coaxing voice: give in, give in and all will be lovey-warm in the Garden of Was. I dare not remember how I loved her when I was small enough for her lap. “Mike likes it this way.” Why must she stare with that shrewd yearning not for me but through me, to make me a phantom acting out her dreams?
“He’s handi
ng you a line. So, what do you talk to him about? You have to know what to say and what not to say to a boy.”
“Mother, I talk to him just like I talk to Donna. To anyone.”
“You have to know how to flirt, Jill. Didn’t you learn anything from me?”
“I believe in being honest with men,” I snap, roused finally. She always gets through in the end and I start to talk. “I’m not going to pretend I’m somebody else with him. I think if you’re straight with men, they’ll be straight with you.”
“You poor idiot. Stick with that line and you’ll end up raped and dead in a ditch with your throat slit.”
The doorbell sounds with its three chimes, the middle one cracked, ding thunk dong. I run for the door.
“Now you hurry.” She nudges past me in the turn, patting her hair. Dad is already shaking Mike’s hand, both looking grim as captains going down with the ship, when Mother bounces up rosy with curiosity. “This must be Michael! Jill’s talked so much about you.”
“How do you do?” Mike could not look stiffer if he were nailed to the wall. His face frozen with blind formality, he stares straight ahead, sitting in a chair by the television. He is closed against this house, judging it. I ache for the wheel-shaped antimacassars on the bony arms of the sagging couch, for the gilt peacocks strutting on the high sills, the gaudy china chaos of the knickknack shelves, the souvenirs of the Blue Hole and Wisconsin Dells. He does not know how to read the meaning of this sacred battleground, this stuffed palace. Bedecked with flounces and gadgets, this house floats like a bubble on my parents’ pride. Never have they seemed as vulnerable, Mother forward on the couch, Dad well back behind a cloud of smoke, wondering why I could not remain ten and at least pretend to be a boy. Dad clears his throat. “What are you studying in school?” His voice implies that any answer carries shame.
“Literature, sir. I’m an English major.”
Mother pouts. “Your mother, what does she do?”
“She’s a social worker.”
My protectiveness flops over as I read the strain incised around his mouth and eyes. “We’ll be late for the show.” I grab my coat, colliding with Mike as he jumps nervously to help.
“Jill!” Mother clucks her tongue. “Now, Michael, I know we don’t have to tell you not to keep Jillie out too late. I’m sure you’re a nice boy and you understand we’ll be worrying. You won’t drive too fast.”
I can feel us turning into cartoon teenagers under her bright glance. Finally we are out, with Mike trotting me to his mother’s aging Dodge. “Oh, isn’t it good to be out of there?” He does not answer. “What have you been doing?” Still no answer. He must be angry because my parents asked too many questions. He drives as if shaking off a pursuer, turning down random side streets in erratic but widening circles north and west, past my high school, up Wyoming, over Plymouth to Schaefer. Nervousness sits like a third person between us. This is not our good silence. I can think of nothing to say that might unfreeze his face. He does not love me. His family has stolen him back.
He says finally, “Say something!”
“What do you want me to say?”
“You don’t know? Think.” He jabs his butt at the ashtray and a shower of red sparks streams down. “We’re lost.”
“We’re near Fenkell.” Actually it is not possible to get lost in this whole quadrant of Detroit. Everything is laid out in a grid, the numbers going up hugely but rationally. The main drags are lined with shops and factories and the streets between are set with little or bigger houses.
He drives more slowly, slumped forward. He looks straight ahead and I press against the window. “What have I done?” I ask.
“Maybe that’s it—the whole business of expectation and reality. Imagination wilts into fact….”
A train crosses before us, lights flashing and bells clanging on the grade crossing. A ball of cold slick quicksilver forms in my stomach. It is over. He does not want me.
“Suppose we dare suicide now, before we’ve tested the reality? Who knows how disappointed we’ll be.”
The train clatters past, empty cars. As the gates rise and we bump over the crossing, the street darkens ahead, small factories and warehouses with blank dismal facades. All I understand is that he does not want me.
“Answer me! Are you here? Are you bored?”
“I’m miserable. What do you want? I’m here, I’m willing. Why are you punishing me?” I lean my cheek on the glass. Vista of an empty parking lot.
“Why don’t you say it? Or don’t you?”
“Say what?”
“What would I want? Except that you love me. If you do.”
I stare at him in his hostile slouch over the wheel. “Of course I love you. What else am I doing here?”
Beside the loading ramp of a dark building he parks. “Why didn’t you say it?”
“When? You never gave me a chance.”
“You climb in the car and sit as far away as you can—”
“But you … Let’s begin again. Good evening, Mike.”
“God, I’ve missed you these three days. From the time I get up in the morning, and it’s not your voice waking me over the telephone …”
Dark, but for the faint bluish streetlight, the glow of the watch he takes off and stows on the dash. A metallic silence around the drumming of his fingers on the wheel. He reaches over to touch my shoulder, and shyly we kiss. Slow undersea caresses as we act out our lack of haste. My breath feels heavy. He kisses my throat, his silky hair against my lips. Under his hands the pulse thickens in my breasts. The buttons of his shirt are small and meek to my fingers, self-effacing. Underneath he is nude, with ticklish brass hairs. “Why do you have a hollow in the center of your chest?”
“Why …” he teases. “Why don’t you?”
To free each of us is different. He pushes my dress up, we pull his trousers down, unpeeling like the skin from an orange. His underwear is surprisingly familiar, for it’s like what Mother buys on sale for me, cotton, white, childish. I tug clumsily and he springs free. Almost comical: Francis gave me a jack-in-the-box once. You slid the top off and a hammer sprang up and tapped your fingers.
Gently he strokes my belly. “You’re made of moon.”
I do not know what to do with my panties hanging at my ankles, for he is drawing me down and they hobble me. I scrunch them in a ball and put them in my purse. Gravely he fixes himself in position, the bones of his spare hips pinning me. I can feel his penis pushed tight against me, but somehow it will not go in. He bumps and butts against me, till the excitement dies and I begin to hurt.
“Is that hurting you?”
“A little.”
“Look, am I in the right spot?”
I am scared that he is forcing the wrong opening. “I don’t know. Can’t you tell?”
“Maybe you should guide me in.”
“But, Mike, I don’t know how!”
“What did you do with all those little chippies?”
I cannot explain that I know perfectly well where my clitoris is, although I never had a name for it till recently; but none of our pleasures involved penetration and I have never poked anything into me. I have never yet used a tampon, for my mother would not have them in the house and the rudimentary diagrams in the manuals for teenagers do not seem to correlate with my body. How can he speak so harshly to me? “You’re the one supposed to know how.”
He groans, “I can’t believe it. Okay, brace yourself.” He tries a quick lunge and bangs his back against the wheel. The horn toots. I can’t hold back an outcry as he knocks against me bruisingly.
“Merde!” He sits up, rubbing his back. “The damn wheel’s sticking in my spine. Let’s get in back.”
Holding his trousers, he opens the door and I stumble after him into the back, there to begin all over again from the first kiss, as if rehearsing. But it does hurt. It hurts like hot hell, and still he pounds away and still my flesh denies him entrance.
“Oh, I do want to. I don’t
know what’s wrong, Mike. Maybe I’m misshapen.” Then trying to joke because tears are dripping down my cheeks, and my flesh stings and shrinks from him, “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
He wilts between my thighs. “If you wanted an expert, you should have picked one.”
“What’s happened?”
He draws back with a deflating sigh. “I’ve lost it.” We lean together, my head on his shoulder, hot and weary with vexation. He strokes my hair. I reach for my cigarettes and light one that we pass back and forth.
“Mike, am I different from other women physically?”
“How do I know?”
“Haven’t you—”
“I’ve had just as much experience as you’ve had.” He turns his head away.
“Please, look at me. I’m glad. Because we’re even, then.”
“You’re trying to make the best of it.”
“You should be glad too, dear. If you had a past, I’d drive you crazy with questions.”
He hugs me. “Still, like all new objects you should come with a set of instructions.” Drawing me closer, “The old man’s raised his bruised and bloody head again, but let’s try another position. Sit on me. Then you can exert as much pressure as you can take, and when it hurts too much, you can stop and rest.”
At least this way we can smile at each other. I dig my knees into the upholstery and brace myself. He slips down and we fumble him back. The sweat breaks out in the small of my back. “Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. Do you suppose I have a cast-iron hymen?”
Braced too, he strains against me. “Close to it. I don’t think I’ll be able to piss for a week.”
Even the laughter hurts and with pain ragged and hot I can feel myself tearing, while the blood spreads wet along my thigh.