The Swallows

by Lisa Lutz

  I heard Mel ask Jonah if he was going to a bar mitzvah later. Jonah responded with thank you.

  That night, Gemma, Mel, Norman, and Jonah—a configuration I had never seen before—huddled together like they’d been friends their entire lives.

  My mother and Greg had a similar ease with each other. A small part of me wished it were more than a friendship, but I knew that wasn’t the case.

  I began hunting through Greg’s cupboards looking for wine that wasn’t mulled. Eventually, I located a jug of generic vodka that had my mother’s name written on it. Literally. I suspect it was from an abundant liquor stash that my folks had divvied up after the divorce. As I was pouring a shot, Coach Keith walked in and asked if he could use my kitchen the next morning. I asked why he didn’t use his own kitchen and he explained that he didn’t have a kitchen or a home, which was news to me. He apparently makes his home wherever it’s most convenient and cheap. He hadn’t had a permanent residence in ten years. When I asked why, he explained that he saves a lot of money on rent. I asked where that money went.

  “You’re getting really hung up on this,” he said.

  “It’s unusual,” I said. “How long do you think you can sustain this semi-nomadic existence?”

  “Hey, Alex. I’ve answered about ten questions so far. Will you answer my one question?” he said.

  “Sure. What was it again?”

  “Can I use your kitchen?”

  “Of course,” I said. “As long as I can take half credit for whatever you’re making.”

  The students left the cocktail/mocktail party early because it was filled with boring adults and they had a better shot at real booze back at their dorms. Even I began to eye my jacket on the coat rack. I looked at the clock and decided that two hours was a proper showing and planned my escape.

  The next thing I knew, my mother, Greg, and Coach Keith had surrounded me. I don’t remember how the conversation had begun, but Greg was rattling off Coach Keith’s varied school responsibilities for my mother’s benefit: football, basketball, lacrosse, wrestling, baking (I didn’t even know there was a baking class), botany—

  “I water the plants,” said Keith. “And I have two students who help me water the plants. I don’t have a degree in botany or even an above-average green thumb.”

  Greg ignored Keith and continued: “I had hoped we would be able to add fencing to our extracurricular activities. You can’t imagine how disappointed I was when Alex told me she never learned. I could have sworn I saw a photo of you in uniform years ago.”

  “It was probably a Halloween costume,” I said.

  “I’m surprised that you didn’t insist, Nastya. That’s so unlike you,” Greg said.

  My mother smiled and frowned simultaneously. She paused long enough to set my nerves on edge.

  “I tried,” my mother said. “But the weapons scared her so much. She would cry and cry before every lesson. I make her watch Errol Flynn, thinking he will teach her to love swordplay. I mean, who doesn’t like Errol Flynn?”

  Mentioning Errol Flynn was an overt challenge. My mother loathed Flynn. If an old swashbuckling film was on TV, she’d slander his image until you changed the channel.

  Fucking fraud, asshole, she’d shout at the set.

  Her hate was feral, but she never hinted at its origin.

  Greg laughed and said, “Who doesn’t love Errol Flynn?”

  “Errol Flynn was a piece of shit,” said Keith.

  My mother kept quiet, but I could tell that Keith had shot up a few rungs in my mother’s estimation.

  Greg ignored Keith’s hostile remark about the beloved swashbuckler and said, “Well, we’re glad to have Alex, whether she fences or not. Sometimes the apple falls off the tree and rolls down a very steep hill.”

  “Yes, that apple has mind of its own,” my mother said with a smile that suggested I was her bitch for the rest of the week.

  Gemma Russo

  Sparrows, loons, hawks, and owls.

  It was like the Hogwarts Sorting Hat. Each girl who had the honor of a Darkroom mention was first thrown into one of those four categories. The rough equivalents were virgin, crazy, bitch, and nerd. But the moment a girl blew one of the guys with access to the Darkroom, she became a swallow and was entered into the Dulcinea contest, all details hidden behind door number thirteen. Just about any male Stoner had access to the main Darkroom. But not just anyone could enter a name in the Dulcinea contest. The judges were carefully vetted by the editors.

  Maybe if Mel had had more time, she could have broken past the Dulcinea firewall on her own, but there wasn’t time. I’d told Mel that I knew she was working with Norman and that it was time we set up a meet. At first Mel denied even knowing Norman. I asked her why she was hanging with him at Mo’s. That really freaked her out. I told her that Linny had been doing some amateur spying. She relaxed. Then I told Mel that I had my own double agent. I didn’t think Jonah would like that moniker, but I took a gamble that no one would bring it up.

  We’d arranged for the four of us to meet in Milton Studio on Tuesday afternoon, before the dean’s thing. We all sat around the desk, in silence. Like an international summit without the translators. Mel took the initiative to break the ice.

  “Do you want to be on the right side of history or the wrong side?” Mel said.

  “The right side, I guess,” Jonah said. “Does anybody say, Yeah, I’ll take the wrong side?”

  “Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot,” Mel flatly replied.

  “I’m sure Hitler thought he was on the right side of history,” Jonah said.

  I should have had a brief conference with Mel before the meeting. It’s unwise to alienate new recruits. Norman, I noticed, remained quiet, picking at a hangnail.

  “It’s weird how easily you can relate to mass murderers,” Mel said to Jonah.

  “I don’t relate to them. I’m just saying—” Jonah said.

  “Okay,” I said, invoking Witt’s standard conversation ender. “We need your help.”

  “More help?” Norman said sheepishly.

  His hangnail was now bleeding.

  “I told you to leave it, Norman. You need to put some Neosporin on that,” Mel said.

  “Give us Dulcinea—all of the material related to it. I promise it won’t come back to you,” I said.

  “Do you know what they’ll do to him if they find out?” Jonah said.

  “They won’t find out,” I said. “And if they do, we’ll say I hacked it. It’ll all be on me.”

  “Like anyone is going to believe that,” Mel mumbled.

  I looked at Norman and waited.

  “Norman?”

  “I’ll do it,” Norman said, shoulders slumping.

  It looked like he was melting in front of my eyes.

  “When?” asked Mel.

  “After the party,” he said, checking his watch. “We have to go.”

  I was jumping out of my skin at that stupid cocktail party. We were only allowed mocktails, and I was terrified Norman might change his mind while we were not imbibing.

  “If you ask Norman one more time if he’s still cool, he’s going to have a nervous breakdown,” Jonah said.

  We got out of Byron Manor as soon as we could. Mel and I waited impatiently in my office for word from Norman.

  Two very long hours later, I received an email with a large file attachment from some guy named Magnus Pym. Mel told me it was Norman. I asked her why the hell Norman was going by the name Magnus Pym, and Mel said that Magnus was a double agent in a book and not to worry about it. Mel opened the file.

  We were both huddled over the screen, reading through the entries at the same time. I didn’t see it at first: 4Swallow135. Mel gasped and said a lot of cuss words, kind of like she was listing every one she knew from memory.

  “Do you need t
o see a doctor?” I said.

  “No—4Swallow135 is me,” Mel said.

  I’d seen angry Mel before. This Mel was about to turn green and split out of her clothes. I stepped aside and let her have some privacy as she went over the material.

  “Swallow, swallow, swallow,” Mel said. “Oh my God. It’s so disgusting. And obvious, and stupid. And—disgusting. Oh, and I didn’t swallow, I’ll have you know.”

  “Breathe, Mel. Breathe. Please,” I said.

  “I understand murderers now. I never understood them before. I one hundred percent get it,” she said.

  I took Mel outside. We found a runty tree that looked like it had some kind of root rot. I gave her an ax and told her to chop it down.

  It was almost 11:00 P.M. when Mel and I finished examining five years’ worth of Dulcinea entrants. I even found my own scorecard, the one Adam had mentioned.

  Bagman2 submits 4Swallow718 for consideration:

  Technique: 7 (Excellent, but inconsistent, suction)

  Artistry: 8 (Interesting assist with hands. Has had some practice)

  Effort: 7 (Got the feeling she wasn’t using her full potential)

  Finish: 8 (Satisfying and professional)

  I thought I’d be angrier, but having the evidence there, knowing that now I could take action, made it so much easier. It also helped that my entry was fake. I knew Bagman was the nickname for Jonah’s brother. Bagman2, I suspected, was intended to point the finger at Jonah.

  “If mine is fake, maybe some of the others are,” I said, hoping to offer Mel a lie she could tell herself.

  “No,” Mel said. “Mine is real.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I did accidentally bite him.”

  I didn’t probe for details, even though I wouldn’t have minded some. Breaking into the Darkroom was a cheap thrill. But this was different. It was private. It was ugly. It made you look at everyone you thought you knew in a different light.

  “This is bigger than I thought it was,” I said. “I see forty-seven unique entrants and one hundred thirty-four score sheets. I don’t even want to think about the math on that.”

  Mel curled up into a ball on the couch and covered her eyes with her hoodie.

  “There are fewer than two hundred girls at Stonebridge, which means around twenty-five percent of us are participating in this thing. And it’s probably over fifty percent in the senior class alone,” said Mel. “I feel sick.”

  “Me too.”

  “I’m too tired to chop down another tree,” she said.

  I gathered all of the paperwork and threw Mel’s laptop into her bag.

  “Let’s go,” I said, kicking her foot. “We need help.”

  Ms. Witt

  My father left a message while I was at Greg’s house. Dad insisted that I return his call that night, no matter how late I got in. I called. Dad had obviously figured out that my mother was at Stonebridge with me. He wouldn’t have minded, if Greta hadn’t left him after discovering his new mistress, or his mistress hadn’t gone home to her mommy for Thanksgiving.

  There was dead silence as my father waited for me to proffer an invitation.

  “Did you get that book yet?” I said.

  “I did.”

  “Can you send it to me?” I said.

  Silence.

  “Yes. I will put it in the mail posthaste.”

  “Thanks, Dad. And, if I don’t talk to you before then, happy Thanksgiving.”

  It was 9:00 P.M. when Mom dropped by my apartment. She made tea and poured brandy in it. I was already drunk from the neat vodka at the cocktail party. But we kept going.

  “I was good at keeping your secret, no?” said my mother.

  “Very good. Thank you.”

  She cradled my face in her hands and smiled.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “I love you too,” I said.

  “You know who I just saw in the bathhouse?” said my mom. “The tan man. You should have sex with him.”

  “The only reason you approve of him is because he hates Errol Flynn.”

  “No. Other reasons. Besides, if you don’t have sex with right person, you will have sex with wrong one.”

  Too late, I thought.

  My doorbell rang. It was a welcome interruption to the conversation.

  Mel and Gemma stood outside. Mel carried her laptop and Gemma had a stack of papers spilling out of a large file folder. They both looked frazzled and furious.

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  “We’ve seen it all,” said Gemma.

  “I’ve seen too much,” said Mel.

  * * *

  —

  It was surprising how quickly the girls opened up to my mother. Gemma told her the entire story of the Darkroom and the Dulcinea Award. She also reviewed the complete bird lexicon.

  My mother was as baffled as I was by the ubiquity of blowjobs as an introductory sexual act.

  “I don’t understand,” said Mom. “Don’t girls give hand jobs anymore? Much less effort required.”

  “The blowjob is the new hand job,” I said.

  “Really?” said Mom. “How many girls are entered in the contest? And what do they get—money?”

  “Most girls don’t even know there is a contest,” Gemma said.

  “If you don’t want to do something, why do you do it?” said my mom.

  “There’s this thing the boys do,” Mel said. “They make it seem like there’s something wrong with you if you don’t do it. So, you’re hanging out with some guy you like. You’re kissing and stuff and the next thing you know, he’s unzipped his fly. And you’re like, what happened? But you don’t say that because it’s awkward and—and you’re already not thinking clearly, because you like the person and everything you’ve done so far feels good. You don’t want to ruin the mood, so you do it. And while you’re doing it, you’re not feeling anything at all, and you’re telling yourself it’s not a big deal. But then, later, you feel something. You feel wrong, like dirty and used, and stupid. And you wonder what happened to you, the you who has a backbone.”

  “I need another drink,” I said.

  “Me too,” said my mother.

  Me too, said Gemma and Mel. My mother would have given them both a shot of bourbon, but I nixed that idea when I saw her pull two more glasses from the cabinet. Gemma showed us a few samples of the scoring system but wouldn’t relinquish the entire stack of entrants.

  “Swallows were spies, right?” said my mother, as she gazed down at the page.

  “Spies? What do you mean?” Mel said, perking up.

  “The Russians called female spies ‘swallows’ and male spies ‘ravens’ in the Cold War,” I said.

  “See, Mel. You’re a spy. That’s all,” said Gemma.

  “I would cut off the penis of any man who talk about me like this,” said my mother, as she gazed down at a score sheet. “You know what I would like to see? A bad-blowjob contest. That would teach them.”

  Gemma and Mel, who had seemed so lost, suddenly looked up at Mom like she was their new queen.

  Gemma Russo

  Ms. Witt made us promise not to castrate anyone.

  They were drunk, Witt and her mother. And they were laughing—like, really laughing. I wondered if that was what happy families looked like. Witt rolled her eyes and looked embarrassed, often. But there was so much love there it was hard not to feel jealous. I’m sure I saw my mother laugh now and again, but I couldn’t remember the sound of it.

  Mel was so ashamed. I just wanted to take her mind off things.

  I kept asking Nastya for advice. Whatever she suggested, Ms. Witt objected to it.

  “You must have bad-blowjob contest,” said Nastya.

  “I heartily discourage oral sex ou
tside of a committed, mutually respectful relationship,” Witt said. “Even if the goal is to subvert the desire.”

  Nastya waved her hand dismissively. “Of course, of course. We had long talk about blowjobs, remember?”

  “I remember,” Witt said, blushing. Her eyes time-traveled back to the memory. “I think it was around the time of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Do you remember Monica Lewinsky?”

  “Yes,” said Mel. “She had relations with President Clinton. Also, something about her dress?”

  Mel was finally emerging from her dark place; I could feel her cloud of shame lifting.

  “It was a vicious public shaming,” said Witt.

  “She never had intercourse with him,” my mother said. “She just give him blowjobs. I try to explain to my daughter that a blowjob-only relationship is not healthy relationship, and so Alex asks me when, in the relationship, you give a blowjob.”

  “Did you give your daughter the blowchart?” I asked.

  Nastya turned to Witt for translation.

  “I made a flowchart to help them decide whether they should perform oral sex or not,” said Witt.

  “Why do you need a chart?” Nastya said.

  “It’s really cool. You need to see it,” Mel said.

  Mel showed Nastya the picture of the blowchart on her phone, but the image was too small to make out the details. I asked for a pen and paper and we duplicated it for Witt’s mom. When we were done, Nastya nodded.

  “I see now. Okay, I get it.

  “This is good, but you are missing a few questions,” Nastya said, as she grabbed a red pen.

  Mr. Ford

  I regretted staying at Stonebridge over break. It was so goddamn lonely. I’d thought I might hear from Alex, but it seemed like whenever I looked out my window or ventured into the common areas, she was with Keith. Claude was completely AWOL. She hadn’t responded to a single one of my texts since the wake. I figured she was rolling around in her mother’s jewels. I left her a voicemail to see if she wanted to grab dinner or if she needed anything. Mostly I wanted to be sure she hadn’t fallen down a rabbit hole of unexpected grief. When I hadn’t heard from her by Wednesday night, I sent another text.