She's Come Undone

by Wally Lamb

  She put her lit cigarette in her mouth and closed it. When she opened it again, the cigarette was sticking out from beneath her tongue, still burning.

  “Oh my God,” I said.

  “Kenny taught me that. Me and him might get engaged this year. He’s thinking about it.”

  The school bell gave three short blasts. “Aw, crap,” Norma said. “Here!”

  She handed me the wet cigarette and ambled back toward the building.

  I stood frozen, holding it vertically and staring. Then I threw it on the ground and scuffed it out like Lassie.

  The school day ended in church for First Wednesday confession. Most of the eighth graders were pew monitors for the younger grades and the last to confess. I was one of the six in our class who had not been selected.

  Above me, a pious stained-glass angel hovered before the kneeling Blessed Virgin. The angel, as blond as Marilyn Monroe and my mother, looked heavenward. Thick white smoke billowed at her feet and I thought of the rocket launchings on TV that had made Daddy so excited. “Someday we’ll drive down to Florida and see one in person,” he had promised me. He was always full of promises. He had wrecked my whole life.

  Students’ confessions drifted out from behind the curtain. “Yeah, but Father, he started it is what I’m telling you . . .” one boy kept insisting. Stacia Pysyk, sitting amongst the seventh graders, kept looking back to make faces at her sister, Rosalie. Norma French, a bit apart from the others, had apparently forgotten her head covering. Amidst the row of mantillas and floral hats and velvet-netted headbands, she sat with a bright red sweater on her head, the collar button fastened under her chin, the sleeves hanging down the sides of her face like beagle ears. Norma represented my sole inroad at St. Anthony’s, and I cringed at my pitiful lack of progress.

  In the confessional, I listed my sins for Father Duptulski: pride, swearing, disrespect for Ma. I omitted impure thoughts and deeds and began the act of contrition.

  My detention lasted an hour. On Division Street, Jack’s MG rolled along the curb, following me. I pretended not to notice. It was a kind of game: if I turned around and looked, I’d lose.

  “Hey!” he finally called. “Want a ride?”

  “Oh, hi!” I said, faking surprise. “All right. Sure.”

  The top was down. He squealed his tires taking off.

  His cigarette was burning in the ashtray. I reached over and took a puff without asking permission. He shook his head and smiled at me. “Naughty naughty,” he said.

  “You should get a radio for this car,” I answered back.

  He smiled. “Oh, yeah? Says who?”

  “Says me. Dolores Del Rio.”

  7

  Jack began showing up after school two or three times a week. In my notebook I recorded the days he came but could see no real pattern in them. He waited on the Chestnut Avenue side of the church parking lot. Each afternoon I held my breath and rounded the corner past the rectory.

  His moods changed from ride to ride. One day he’d buy us ice-cream cones and tease me, calling me beautiful, reaching over to stroke my hair. The next time, he’d be sulky, mumbling complaints about Rita or his job. It was the format of the show that straitjacketed him, he said; that’s what the station manager didn’t understand. He was wasting his peak years, squandering himself—he almost welcomed nonrenewal. He’d be in New York right now at double—triple!—his salary if it wasn’t for her and her goddamned baby making. Living with Rita was like walking on eggs. He seemed to talk more to himself than to me, laughing sarcastically, or snapping his fist against the dashboard.

  Whenever he got that way, I felt embarrassed and fidgety—didn’t know what to say. Once I told him that in my opinion he should just try not to let things bother him so much. “And just who in the hell do you think you are, Hot Pants?” he said, his nostrils flaring. “Your best policy might be to just shut the fuck up.”

  Some days he took different ways home. “Mystery detours” he called them. Once we rode past his radio station. Another time we idled in the rear parking lot of an abandoned grammar school—a brick building with plywood windows and tall weeds growing through the blacktop cracks. Most of his teachers were probably dead by now, he said—good riddance. He told me how he’d once been benched during some long-ago basketball play-off game because he played the same position as somebody’s son. “They’re out to get us, kiddo,” he said, taking my hand, studying it. “We’ve got to be on our guard, you and me.”

  I told Grandma I’d joined the Bulletin Board Club at school—that I stayed after with other girls to decorate classrooms and hall showcases. Jack always let me off at Connie’s Superette instead of at Grandma’s. Inside, Connie watched me from behind the counter, her face impassive, her arms folded under her huge breasts. Sometimes one of the Pysyk sisters was out on the porch or in front of the store, watching, trying to figure us out. Jack’s rides made their staring unimportant. “Take a picture,” I called up one time to Stacia. “It lasts longer.”

  When I got back to Grandma’s—usually in the middle of “Edge of Night”—I was always hungry. I’d stuff down cookies, potato chips, overripe bananas—urgently, without noticing the tastes. Grandma sat with the shades drawn, mesmerized by her story, oblivious to my wild, risky rides.

  One afternoon when Jack didn’t show up, I walked downtown with Norma French. Her boyfriend Kenny met us at Lou’s Luncheonette. He called me “Dolly” instead of Dolores and blew straw wrappers in Norma’s face. I sat poker-faced, forcing myself to listen to the way he laughed from the back of his throat. Dozens of blackheads studded his oily forehead. “Wanna see something?” he asked me. He yanked up his yellowy undershirt, exposing two passion marks Norma had given him on the stomach. I got up and left rather than sit across from them in the booth and watch them kiss.

  Sister Presentation assigned us science reports, due the week after Halloween. From her list of mimeographed topics, I selected “The Miracle of Human Birth.” For over a month, I had kept Jack’s secret, waiting patiently for his and Rita’s announcement. Whenever I saw Rita, I studied her face, her middle, even the way she looked and laughed, for visible signs. She gave none. She was as good at secrets as I was.

  I had already appointed myself the Speights’ sole babysitter and picked out names: Christopher Scott for a boy and Lisa Dolores for a girl. In a recurring vision, Rita sat up weakly in her canopied deathbed and handed me the pink infant. “I’m sorry you have to leave school,” she whispered, barely audible. “Take good care of both of them. They need you more than I can say.”

  * * *

  “Cup of coffee?” Jack asked.

  He had taken a detour all the way down Chestnut and pulled abruptly into a doughnut-shop parking lot.

  “Okay,” I said.

  I studied him through the store window. He was wearing his wheat jeans and brown plaid sweater. The waitress patted her hair and laughed at something he said. She watched him from the back as he walked out.

  The coffee against my lips was too hot and I blew on it, watching the oily surface that swirled on the top. “Guess what I have to write a report on?” I said.

  “What?”

  “Babies. How they grow inside their mother before they’re born.”

  “Oh, yeah?” he said. He took a cautious sip of coffee and looked straight ahead. “Well, whoopee.”

  “When are you and Rita going to start telling people about the baby, anyways?”

  “Why?” he said, looking over at me. “Did you say anything?”

  “No. I was just wondering.”

  “Oh. Well, like I told you, she’s a little gun-shy after what happened before. There’s no hurry.”

  “Grandma will probably crochet it a whole wardrobe. When is it due?”

  “April. Middle of April.”

  “Really? I have a Life magazine here that I took out of the school library for my report. It’s got pictures of what babies look like as they’re developing. It’s weird. You want to see t
hem?”

  “See that waitress in there? Her name is Dolores, too.” He started the car up, rolled back out onto the street. “It’s on her tag. Right over her fat tit.”

  I tried not to hear it. “So do you want to look at the article?”

  “I don’t like to look at that kind of thing. Rita’s medical books have all that stuff in them.”

  “Can I just tell my mother about the baby? She won’t say anything to Grandma. Or can I at least tell Rita I know?”

  I knew he was mad from the way he shifted the car. “Look,” he snapped. “Either I can trust you or I can’t.”

  “You can,” I said. “I was just asking.” I took a large gulp of coffee. The hot bitterness of it choked me. I coughed and coughed. Coffee jumped out of the cup, spilling in my lap and onto the floor.

  Jack pulled to the side of the road. He reached down with a napkin and wiped the floor. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just that I’m under a lot of pressure lately.”

  “Forget it. I shouldn’t bug you. I’m the one who’s sorry.”

  His hand touched my ankle. He slid his fingers inside my sock and moved them up and down. I pressed my foot hard against the floor so it wouldn’t jump. I didn’t want him to tickle me. I didn’t want to make him mad. “You and me,” he said. “We’re special people.” Then he straightened up, put the MG in gear, and drove me back to Pierce Street.

  I started the report that night, lying belly down on my bed, copying facts onto index cards in the manner Sister had ordered. I counted backward from April fifteenth, then forward again to the current date. She had to be at least two months pregnant. Limb buds are quite discernible and the primitive heart beats rapidly, the article said. The embryo is the size of a peanut in a shell.

  Jack walked across the floor upstairs. He was just nervous about it; all expectant fathers were like that. On “My Three Sons,” Robbie Douglas had driven all the way to the hospital without even realizing he’d forgotten his wife. We were good friends, Jack and me. I’d help him through it.

  The fetus pictures took up several whole pages. Some of them reminded me of the sea monkeys I’d once seen advertised on the back of a comic book and sent away for. I’d waited weeks and weeks for them to arrive. “Place in a glass of ordinary tap water and watch them come to life!” the instructions said. But they remained brittle and lifeless, floating at the top for days until my mother made me flush them down the toilet.

  The following day in school, Kathy Mahoney placed a small box of party invitations on top of her desk. All morning long, I watched her walk back and forth to the pencil sharpener, dropping envelopes on desktops whenever Sister Presentation wasn’t looking. Just before lunch, she took her final trip, tossing the empty stationery box in Sister’s wastebasket.

  Norma ran up to me at the end of the day, calling my name loudly enough for others to turn and smirk.

  “What are you, deaf or something? You want to walk down to Lou’s?”

  “Look,” I said, loudly enough for Kathy and the others to overhear. “Stop bothering me, okay?”

  She looked more curious than hurt.

  “I just don’t want to be friends with you anymore. That boyfriend of yours gives me the creeps.”

  Norma sucked her teeth. “Look who’s jealous,” she said.

  “That’s a laugh and a half!” I said, with as much contempt as I could manufacture. “Maybe if he used a vat of Clearasil, I could look at him without puking.”

  Her lower lip protruded. She socked me in the stomach.

  “Girl fight!” someone shouted. People rushed around us in a circle.

  I swallowed vomit back down my throat. In tears, I screamed at Kathy Mahoney, at all of them. “I’m not your free show!” Then I ran past the rectory and onto Chestnut Avenue, their staring and laughing following me.

  “Drive fast!” I ordered Jack. “Get me away from this fucking school!”

  * * *

  That night, my father called. Ma held out the receiver, exasperated. “Then you tell him you don’t want to see him,” she whispered. “I’m sick of him accusing me of everything in the book.”

  I snatched the phone. “What?” I said.

  I listened to more of his promises: miniature golf, restaurant food, movies.

  “Do me a favor?” I said. “Just pretend I died.”

  I heard him draw a breath. Then he told me he had just about had it with my busting his agates, that it was about time I got off my high horse and realized—

  I hung up on his big speech.

  Jack showed up after school the next day. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t the Queen of Sheba,” he said as I climbed into the car. “I was about to take off if her highness kept me waiting any longer.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” I snapped. “Just get up and leave early?”

  He pulled away and down the street. There was a small brown liquor bottle between his legs. “Well, it’s over,” he said. “They’re shit-canning me. One more month and I’m out of there.”

  “Your job? Oh, my God . . . What are you going to do?”

  “Right now I’m going to take me and you on a little adventure,” he said. He lifted the bottle and took a quick, sneaky drink.

  “Where? I sort of have a lot of homework tonight. I’m still working on that report.” I didn’t like it when he was drinking. I didn’t want him touching my feet.

  “Fine. Forget I mentioned it.” His laugh was bitter.

  “You’ll get a job at a better station, Jack. W-PRO, maybe. Any station would be lucky to get you.”

  He shook his head and snickered.

  “I guess a ride would be okay. As long as it’s not too long.”

  “Forget it. Don’t do me any fucking favors.”

  “No, please. I want to. Really. Where should we go?”

  He turned to me and smiled. “If I told you,” he said, “it wouldn’t be an adventure.”

  He drove out on Route 6 until the stores became houses, then woods. The autumn air smelled of apples and wood smoke. Nothing looked familiar. I stuck my arm out the window and let it go limp. Pockets of cold wind kept pushing it up. Canada geese made an arrowhead in the sky.

  “My mother’s got this thing about flying,” I said. “In my room I’ve got this picture she did of a flying leg. When we lived at our other house, she used to have a parakeet who—”

  “I don’t want to talk about your mother,” he said. “Just shut up. I’m not in the mood.”

  “You’ll get a better job. Things will be all right.”

  He chuckled and sipped from his bottle. “Want some?”

  I shook my head, shocked that he’d ask.

  “That’s a good little pussy,” he mumbled.

  “Look, I don’t think that—”

  “You don’t think what?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Just forget it.”

  We rode and rode. When we were nowhere in particular, he turned his blinker on. A hand-lettered sign said “Animal Shelter—Town of Westwick.” Then we were on a bumpy road lined with pine trees.

  “I don’t get it,” I said.

  “I haven’t been out here for a while. There’s a reservoir off thataway. And a waterfall somewhere around here. Listen for it.”

  The road dipped and rose and Jack swerved his way around the ruts and puddles. I thought of the wild rides with my father in Mrs. Masicotte’s car. “So why are you taking us here?” I asked.

  “I was thinking about this place today while I was on the air. Thinking about you, too. You’d be surprised how many times a day I think about you. I want to show you something. This will break your heart.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t be impatient,” he said. He had on his teasing smile.

  “Has Rita ever seen it?”

  He took another sip without answering me.

  “Are you drunk or something?”

  “Hey,” he said. “Didn’t I tell you a while back to shut up?”

  “Ok
ay, fine,” I said. “Just remember, I have homework.”

  I listened for that waterfall but heard, instead, the sound of barking dogs up in the trees. It got louder, came down to the ground. Up ahead was a cement building.

  Jack slowed, pulled onto a crunchy gravel driveway, and cut the engine. “There,” he said.

  The dogs were behind chain-link pens that ran the length of one side of the building. Their angry barking filled up the air. A big white one kept lunging at us, buckling the fence with each charge.

  Jack got out of the car. He tried the doorknob of the building, called hello, knocked on the metal door. “Guy I know’s the dog warden but it looks like no one’s home,” he called back to me over the barking. “Come on out and see the pups.”

  I approached hesitantly. One had a cloudy eye; another had scratched his back raw. The white dog bared his pinky-gray gums at us and bit at the wire of the cage. “Why are they out here?” I said.

  “These are the poor fuckers nobody wants. Keep them here a couple of weeks. Then they gas ’em.”

  He reached out and placed his hand on the small of my back, drawing me in next to him. “Don’t they have sad eyes?” he said. “Makes you want to sit down and cry.”

  I couldn’t see it. They were riled and dangerous-looking and I felt no sympathy. Their claws clicked against the concrete floor as they paced, dodging their turds and their slimy water bowls.

  Jack started rubbing my back. The dogs seemed to calm. “The world is a lonely place, all right,” he said. “Just look at these guys.”

  “Yup. So where’s this waterfall?”

  “We’re friends, right?” he said. “Can I ask you for a favor?”

  “I don’t know. What is it?”

  “You promise you won’t take it the wrong way?”

  “I won’t,” I said.

  “Could I give you a kiss—just a friendly one?”

  My stomach pulled in; blood pounded in my head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Some friend.”

  Then he bent toward me and kissed me anyway—softly, on the mouth. His breath was smelly and sweet from the liquor. His fingers dug into my back. The dogs were barking again.