“Hadn’t heard that,” Harland said.
“You’re not too talkative,” she commented.
“Sorry, ma’am.”
The bell rang, and the little blonde turned to leave.
“Is it a tragedy, Patsy?” he called out.
“So, the big football star knows my name,” she said. “Is what a tragedy?”
“Sitting out the rest of the cheerleading season.”
“Not really. I pretty much hate it.”
“Where’s your team spirit?”
Patsy shrugged. “Guess they’ll just have to find some other five-foot-tall blonde girl to drop on her head.”
She wasn’t beautiful. He corrected himself. She wasn’t his idea of beautiful. When he dated (which was not very often), he preferred leggy, dark-haired girls. But there was something appealing about her. And, in a way, she belonged to him. She was his game ball.
“Let me give you a ride home,” Harland said.
Her house was easy to find: it was painted stop-sign red. “A mistake,” she told him, though beyond that, she did not specify.
She asked him inside, where they watched Oprah on mute and told each other all their secrets.
He told her how he was waiting to hear from Harvard, but his mother thought he should go to a Big Ten school instead. That way, he had a better chance of playing professionally. And she told him how her brother had gone to Yale and how it had caused this big rift. “Basically the same as going to hell, my dad said, though I guess he recovered before Vinnie’s graduation because we all went to that. Kinda last minute. Just told us to get in the car, and twenty-three hours later we were in New Haven. My dad’s still crazy religious, though.”
“Crazy religious? What’s that mean exactly?” Harland wanted to know the likelihood that Patsy’s father would end up, say, hanging him from a tree.
“Um, different things, I guess. Depends on his mood. We don’t eat meat. And my dad occasionally goes on these fasts to be, like, closer to God or, like”—she pumped her hand in a jerking-off motion—“but really it’s just ’cause he thinks he’s getting fat. And I get in trouble for all sorts of things.”
“Aw, come on,” Harland said with a grin. He had concluded that this was the amusing (and not the fatal) kind of crazy religious after all. “A good girl like you, I bet you don’t do nothing wrong.”
“Well, my dad thinks so. Like a couple of months ago, I got punished for wearing too much makeup.”
“So do my sisters.”
“Yeah, but my dad wouldn’t let me shower for a week. It was supposed to prove to me that my body is a temple, but whatever. Mainly it was gross.”
“But he doesn’t mind those little cheerleading skirts?”
Patsy shrugged. “Guess not. Probably just hasn’t noticed yet. He hasn’t ever been to one of our games or anything, which is probably a good thing. But yeah, when he’s paying attention, he’s, like I said before, crazy religious and he thinks we should all go to schools within the faith.”
“Why you going to school with us sinners then?”
“Well, the only Sabbath Day one’s in Wyattville and ... I guess my dad thought that was a bad part ot town.”
“That’s where I used to live, you know,” Harland said. “Before I could drive, they used to bus me here.”
“Yeah.”
“Wonder what your dad would think of me?” Harland asked.
Patsy smiled so sweetly he could hardly stand it and then she shrugged. “S’pose the only question should concern you is what I think of you.”
Harland laughed. Her little Southern accent made her sound kind of ... well, dumb ... but he could tell she wasn’t dumb at all.
“They were gonna homeschool me, but I was, like, no way. My mom told my dad it would be fine for me to go to a public school as long as it was close to home and they could keep watch over me and if every summer I went to Bible camp.” Patsy rolled her eyes.
“Bible camp. That sounds pretty hard-core.”
“Yeah. It’s pretty much the highlight of my year,” she said. “You honestly would not believe how crazy horny the kids at Bible camp are. All that repression, I reckon.” Patsy started to undo her neck brace.
“Hey, are you allowed to take that off?”
For short times, she told him. To shower and to swim three times a week for physical therapy. “And how else am I gonna give you a blow job?” she added.
She looked at his face. He didn’t look nearly as stunned as she’d hoped. A big athlete like him probably got offered blow jobs “for real” all the time. She had thought she was going to sound worldly, but she had just ended up sounding stupid. She rubbed her neck with the meat of her palm. “Just kidding. First of all, I can’t, ’cause my neck’s totally screwed up. And secondly, I wouldn’t, ’cause I’m not that kind of girl.”
“I know you aren’t, little blondie,” Harland said. He ran his fingers along the smooth, white skin of her neck. “What time do your folks get home?” he asked.
“Late,” Patsy replied. “My dad’s in school, and my mom works two jobs.”
Around seven o’clock, Harland left, and Patsy put her neck brace back on.
As she watched him back his car out of the driveway, it occurred to her that this was probably the first time a black guy had ever been in her parents’ house.
PATSY WENT UPSTAIRS and called Magnum French, her long-distance boyfriend. He was from Buckstop, Tennessee, Patsy’s hometown, but he had moved there after she’d left. Bible camp in Alabama was where they had actually met.
“Magnum,” she said, “this can’t go on.”
There were tears, threats, and words not found in the Bible. It took nineteen hours of long-distance calls at the Pomeroy’s one-rate plan of ten cents per minute, but Magnum finally got the message.
“I just want you to know one thing.” His voice was thick with snot.
“All right,” she said.
He was sobbing. “Every ... day ...”
“I can’t understand you, Magnum. On account of you crying so much and all.”
“I said, every day you’re not”—deep sniffle—“with me”—another deep sniffle—“you’ll be thirst.”
“Thirsty? Why am I gonna be thirsty?”
“Cursed!”
“OK. Whatever.” She hung up the phone. He called her back, but she didn’t pick up. For the first seventeen hours, she had felt sorry for him, but in the last hour or two, she’d really started to despise him.
Outside, a car horn. Harland was waiting to drive her to her swimming lesson.
“Hey, little blondie,” he said.
“Hey.”
“Where’s your neck brace?”
“I’m all better now,” she said.
“A miracle.”
Patsy’s swimming therapy took place at the Olympic-size swimming pool at her dad’s college. While she worked with the therapist, Harland liked to watch from the bleachers. He had nothing else to do: football season was over, classes required no effort, and well, he liked seeing Patsy in her swimsuit. She was a bit thick-waisted and a bit small-breasted, and as he often liked to remind himself, Altogether Not His Type. On the other hand, she was really sturdy from all that cheerleading. Nice oval calves. Cute dimples for elbows. Cute dimples for dimples. An ass like an apple. Blonde eyelashes. He’d never known anyone with blonde eyelashes before. Not personally, at least. Not up close.
Patsy’s class ended at five o’clock, at which time the pool was declared open for free swim.
“Come in,” Patsy called.
Harland shook his head. “Naw.”
“Why won’t you ever come in with me?”
The reason should have been obvious. Harland couldn’t swim, but he hadn’t wanted to admit it to the little blonde.
“One of these days, I’m just gonna pull you in, Harland Bright,” she said. She pulled herself up to the edge of the pool and rested her elbows on the side. She reminded Harland of a seal.
&
nbsp; He kneeled down by the side. His full lips were practically touching her thin ones. “I’d probably drown,” he said.
“Then I’d have to save you.” She pushed herself out of the pool with short, strong arms.
“You’d like that, Little Blondie.”
“At least we’d be even.” She dried herself off, then wrapped the towel around her body.
“We’re already even,” he said.
“How do you figure?”
Harland took her hand, and they walked out to his car. Her hand felt pruny from the water, and a strange notion popped into his head. He imagined that he was holding hands with Patsy, only she was a very old lady and they had been married a very long time.
Someone would ask, “How did you two meet?”
And he would always answer the same way: “She fell from the sky.”
“Hey, Harland,” Patsy said. “I could teach you to swim, you know.”
“Mmm,” he said.
“Seriously. You ought to know how before you leave for Hahr-vahrd.”
He laughed. A Boston accent sounded ridiculous layered atop her Tennessean one. “You worried I’ll drown?”
“Maybe I am.” She dropped his hand. “Maybe I just want to leave a mark on you.”
Four Novembers later, Patsy will be a US Army Reservist stationed in Baghdad, and she’ll have bribed a pal of hers with candy and cigarettes for the use of his satellite radio. Her purpose should be obvious enough—she wants to hear a football game starring Harland Bright. It’s the big Harvard-Yale game, and the announcer will mention that “Bright, the famously disciplined wide receiver” swims every day as part of his conditioning. The little blonde will wonder if this is to be her sole contribution to society, the lone evidence that Patricia Pomeroy ever existed.
Toward the end of the third quarter, she will hear a small-to-averagesized explosion somewhere nearby. She will ignore it. She’s got the afternoon off, and no one’s screaming, so it can’t be that bad. She will simply turn up the volume on the radio and imagine Harland Bright in a crimson jersey, clutching the ball to his chest. Does he know she’s married? Does he know she’s in Iraq? Does he think of her when he swims?
December
“JUST PULL THE tip of your tongue over your teeth, then push it out. Th. Th,” Helen repeated for the two hundredth or so time in the last half hour.
“Sl, sl,” said her patient.
“Almost there,” she said brightly.
Violinist, Helen thought. I could have been a violinist. They said I had a real ear when I was young.
“Sluh.”
“Definitely getting better, Mr. Thayer. Push the tongue even harder. Th. It’s a thwack. A thwack.”
“Sluuuuuh,” said Mr. Thayer.
Helen wiped the spit from her forehead. She had considered wearing a visor to work but ultimately decided that it would be too demoralizing to the patients.
“Imagine a golf club just as it hits the ball. The-whack.”
Or a gymnast. I was so flexible. I could turn more cartwheels than anyone.
Helen realized that Mr. Thayer had not spoken for several minutes. She looked up at him. He was crying quietly, so she handed him a Kleenex.
“It’s going to get better,” she said.
He shook his head.
Or a lawyer. I’m terrific in an argument.
“You’re already doing so much better,” Helen said.
He shook his head again.
Or anything really. Anything but this.
She smiled at Mr. Thayer and clapped her hands together. “What do you say we work with the straw for the rest of today? Really get those sucking skills down.”
Mr. Thayer was forty-six years old, younger than Helen’s dad. Until his stroke last year, he had been an opera singer and a music teacher. An interesting case, as much as any of this could possibly be interesting to Helen anymore. He’d recovered physically and could write well enough, but his speech was still pretty much nonexistent. Helen suspected it was embarrassment more than anything that was holding him back. But the truth was, Helen didn’t much care. He was just her Thursday five o’clock. Last appointment of the day, thank you, Jesus.
She handed Mr. Thayer a straw to put in his mouth. He wouldn’t take it, so she stuck it in his mouth for him. He let it fall to the floor. This was annoying to Helen. She’d rather be thinking about the things she’d rather be doing than playing pickup sticks with Mr. Thayer. She stuck the straw in his mouth again. “Blow,” she said. Mr. Thayer shook his head and let the straw fall to the ground.
“Mr. Thayer, what’s wrong?”
He removed a notepad from his pocket.
“Will I always be like this?” he wrote.
“Only if you give up,” Helen replied.
“I’m so in love with you,” Mr. Thayer wrote.
Helen nodded. Out of the corner of her eye, she checked her watch.
“You’ve got the tightest little ass I’ve ever seen.”
“Mr. Thayer!” Helen shook her head and laughed, not unkindly. “I’m getting married, Mr. Thayer. And besides, I’m half your age. And you don’t even know me. And if you did, you’d know I was awful.” A bell rang. Hallelujah, time was up. “We’re done for today,” she said. “Hopefully, when next we meet, you’ll be ready to work.”
On the drive home, Helen stopped at the mall to do some Christmas shopping. She hated the mall, mainly because it reminded her of her credit card debt and of all the things she would like to buy but couldn’t afford. This bottomless wanting had started from her first breath; the debt, more recently in college. On registration day, in point of fact. A free glow-in-the-dark Frisbee and a student credit card with an eight-hundred-dollar limit. The debt just continued on from there. Use up one credit card, replace it with another. She told no one—not her mother, not her fiancé, no one. It was her secret.
For Helen, holiday shopping was a completely joyless affair. She selected gifts based on how large and expensive they appeared, but she didn’t particularly care if the recipients would enjoy them. For her mother, a towering basket of gingerbread-scented bath products; her father, slippers with built-in massagers; her sister, a terry cloth bathrobe with a terry cloth patch of a cow jumping over a moon; her brother, a seventy-five-dollar gift certificate to a record store. For her fiancé, she bought a wallet. She got Christmas ornaments for the secretaries at her office. And more bath products for her fiancé’s siblings and mother. And then a couple of generic, unisex emergency gifts for people she hadn’t thought of yet: the odd patient who unexpectedly brought her a present; the office secret Santa that she’d surely forgotten. By the time she finished shopping, she had spent almost fifteen hundred dollars, which brought her total debt to just over nineteen thousand dollars.
Helen was flushed with spending and even a bit pleased with herself. She had spent all that money in less than two hours.
She sat down in the mall food court, where a Muzak version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” blared over the loudspeaker. Despite herself, she thought about Mr. Thayer. Nothing was working, and it depressed her how little she cared.
Across the food court, she spied a little blonde girl kissing a tall black guy. It took Helen a moment to realize that the blonde girl was her little sister. Christ, couldn’t she be more discreet? Helen wondered if her parents knew about this. It wasn’t that they were racists exactly. Like, they’d had black friends and known black people at church. They had just always made it perfectly clear (without actually saying anything specific) that none of them should date a black guy. Helen had known, the same way she had always known exactly who her father had voted for (Dole, Bush, and Reagan) without him having to say.
OK, so they probably were racists.
Helen watched Patsy for a moment. For as long as she could remember, Helen had been the good one in the family, and as the good one, she had always been the family informant. She was about to take out her cell phone to do her job when a strange thrill shot through h
er typically selfish heart. Patsy’s in love, she thought, and then she tossed the phone in her bag and turned her back on the couple. This, not that pointless terry cloth monstrosity, would be Helen’s real Christmas gift to her sister: pretending she hadn’t seen a damn thing.
Helen’s fiancé, Elliot, arrived at precisely eight o’clock. “Hi, babe,” he said.
Per her religious upbringing, they had not yet had sex. This was not to say she hadn’t had any sex. She had had anal sex with her high school boyfriend. It might have been rape, though not because Helen had said no. She had definitely thought no, but the word had never made it out of her lips. Not the first time or the six and a half times that followed, either.
And once, she had fallen asleep in the arms of another girl in a minivan on the way back from a community service retreat. Nothing sexual had happened, but Helen felt it counted somehow.
And in the two years she’d been with Elliot, she’d given him forty-eight blow jobs. For Christmas, in addition to the wallet, she planned to give him his forty-ninth.
They were in premarital therapy at their church. During their last session, the therapist had asked them to complete the following sentence, “When I look at you, I ...”
“Say the first thing that pops into your head,” the therapist had implored her.
“When I look at you, I ...”
“Don’t think, Helen!” Elliot and the therapist had determined that Helen’s main flaws were thinking too much, secrecy, and trying to control every situation.
“When I look at you, I feel ...” Nothing had been what she wanted to say. Nothing, nothing, fucking nothing. “Content.”
Helen had tried surprising herself with the same question several times since it had first been posed to her: at church (“When I look at you, I feel lonely”); at his parents’ house for dinner (“When I look at you, I feel like a liar”); waiting for him to exit a public men’s restroom (“When I look at you, I feel pretty repulsed”); and now, at the mall food court (“When I look at you, I feel like I lack the ability to love anyone or anything. When I look at you, I feel broken”).
Elliot kissed her on the cheek. “My Christmas present in one of these?”