Justine

by Forsyth Harmon

  Justine picked up a bottle of Polo Sport. “Did you know,” she asked, nodding at the model’s face on the perfume display, “Bridget Hall only has an eighth-grade education and a weakness for red meat?”

  Bridget looked as though she’d just reached the mountaintop after a long hike, almost perspiring, shrugging off a sweatshirt to reveal a tight tank top underneath, the letters “USA” stretched across her chest. Justine dropped a set of keys to the floor, then bent down to pick them up and slipped a bottle of Clinique Happy into her bag. My chest got tight. I hadn’t expected that. I looked around at saleswomen behind the counters, cameras affixed to the ceiling. Justine shook her head and linked her arm with mine. I watched our feet cross the black-and-white-checkered tile, matching my step to hers. It made me feel like I was with her—like I almost was her—like I was free to enjoy the thrills of her exploits while being exempt from their consequences. We rode the escalator up arm in arm. I tried to slow my breath, my heart.

  Justine browsed swimsuit racks with brisk efficiency, occasionally pausing to look at something more closely. When she found something she liked, she handed me the hanger.

  Soon I had a whole armful.

  “Ten items,” she told the fitting room attendant, waving me into the little room after her. I sat on the stool in the corner and counted eleven hangers. She pulled her dress over her head and dropped it to the floor, naked except for underwear. She didn’t need a bra; that’s how flat her chest was. I sort of hunched a little, hiding my own. I held my breath as she sorted through the hangers on my lap, settling on a Calvin Klein string bikini. I watched her slip it on in the three-way mirror. I think she liked me watching her like that, maybe even needed me to do it. I stared at the gap between her thighs, my body buzzing. I crossed my legs, popped two pieces of Trident. She peeled a security tag from the bikini bottom and stuck it under my stool, her chest in my face. She held the bikini strings at the nape of her neck.

  “Knot them?” she asked, turning toward the mirror again.

  I stood, nose even with a trail of fine ashy hairs at her nape, and tied a bow, then patted it lightly, touching her neck. We smiled at each other in the mirror. She put her dress back on over the bikini and we walked out of the fitting room like nothing, giving friendly nods to the attendant, but everything was loud, bright, and weird, like some kind of incandescent version of the mall.

  Patent leather shoes shone on a multitiered display like sweets on a tray. Justine grabbed a black Mary Jane and shook it in the salesgirl’s face.

  “Nine,” she demanded.

  Our feet were the same size. We sat and waited on a mauve velvet bench. I tucked the bikini strings into her dress. She took her shoes off. So did I. We put our feet side by side. Mine were wider, toenail polish still chipped pink from junior prom. Her toenails were painted black.

  The salesgirl brought out a pebbled navy-blue box with “Prada” gold-embossed on the top. Just the box itself was beautiful. Justine removed a shiny black shoe from its white felt bag and slipped her foot inside, buckling the thin strap at her ankle. She raised her leg. We admired it.

  Once the salesgirl had disappeared in back, Justine put my sneakers into the empty Prada box and pushed her old lug sole Mary Janes toward me. Her breath was hot in my ear as she whispered: “You wear my shoes.”

  It felt intimate, sliding my feet inside. We leapt up, me in her shoes and her in the new ones, and left the department store arms linked. Passing back out those heavy glass doors into the humidity, I felt lit up and invincible, like when you catch that bouncing star in Super Mario. I felt nothing but my heartbeat.

  We drove along Jericho Turnpike, past Jiffy Lube, Petland, Tattoo Lou’s. Some Hondas and pickup trucks pulled out of the Saint Francis parking lot, others into the Taco Bell drive-through, arms hanging from windows, cigarettes dangling from fingers.

  I drove Justine home. Her street was lined with shabby split-levels, the shingle stain, shutter color, and lawn maintenance level varying but the layouts all the same. As we pulled up to her house, it started to rain. The potted plant on the stoop was dead. The metal number 7 on the front door was missing a nail and hung askew in a way that made me sad. Inside, the house was quiet and underlit. There was a woman sitting in the kitchen. I assumed she was Justine’s mother, but she didn’t look up from her newspaper as we came in.

  Justine curled her fingers around the iron banister and started up the stairs. What beautiful calves she had, long and narrow. Her new black patent leather shoes clacked against each uncarpeted step. I felt like I was following her into a dark trap.

  Justine’s walls, comforter, and furniture, the phone sitting on the hardwood floor by her bed: everything in her room was white. None of her personal belongings in sight, the room looked medical, sterile—I even smelled rubbing alcohol—with the exception of maybe a hundred magazine pages taped to the wall above the bed. There was a girl sitting in a shopping cart full of bowling balls for Guess, her long, dark, messy curls hanging to her waist. A hunched, eerie little blonde with heavy-lidded eyes posed in a shiny white trench for Jil Sander. Another one with a high forehead did a high kick in heels for Versace. In a Calvin Klein ad, Christy Turlington wriggled into a pair of jeans, a few strands of hair falling across her face.

  “Christy Turlington weighs fifteen pounds less now than she did in high school,” Justine said.

  And then there was that image of Kate Moss in the same string bikini Justine was wearing under her dress.

  A notebook sat open on Justine’s nightstand. The handwriting was all caps, tiny and neat. It read: “Tuesday: 3 containers Dannon Light fat-free strawberry yogurt: 300; 8 oz. low-fat ground turkey: 300; 4 oz. Häagen-Dazs raspberry sorbet: 150.” And that was it: 750 calories. On the opposite page: a line chart, tracking her weight over several days. I didn’t want to look too long. I felt a little sick. I sat down on the bed and the sickness mutated into a kind of nervous arousal. Justine straddled the only other seat in the bare room, a small stationary bicycle in the corner. She tucked her long feet into the stirrups and rested her skinny forearms against the handlebars like a praying mantis.

  *

  On the way home, I went by the Stop & Shop. The parking lot glistened in the streetlight, slick with rain. Thick mist rose from the asphalt. There were just a few cars, several abandoned shopping carts. The windows gave off a hazy yellow glow. I went inside. The selection of yogurts was extensive in the cool dairy aisle. I found the neat little rows of cups calming, the mixed berry and vanilla bean pictures reassuring. I placed fifteen containers of Dannon Light fat-free strawberry yogurt into my basket.

  There was only one register open. On the cover of Rolling Stone, Britney Spears reclined on hot-pink satin sheets in a black push-up bra and polka-dot boy shorts, holding a stuffed purple Teletubby, telephone receiver to her ear. “The Diana We Never Knew” smiled sheepishly on the cover of People. She shrugged, pressing her cheek to her bare shoulder in a way that seemed both humble and arrogant. I didn’t understand why people were so obsessed with Princess Diana. Her haircut was so weirdly dated, and she’d been dead for like two years. I put a copy of Vogue on the conveyor with the yogurts.

  The tag affixed to the checkout girl’s red apron read “Michelle.” I didn’t know her—we hadn’t shared a shift yet. She stuck out her thick lower lip and blew thin blonde hair back from her forehead, which was a bit narrower than her puffy jowls, giving her face an egg shape. The key sticking out of her register drawer teemed with key chains—a Tamagotchi, the Eiffel Tower, a mini Koosh, “Miami” in pink script. She passed the yogurts over the sensor with the white billowy hand of a baby, knuckles dimpled. When she punched one brown bag into another, I worried the thick paper would irritate her tender skin.

  As I passed the Hess station, I thought I maybe saw Ryan leaning into a red convertible.

  *

  At home, the house was dark except for light from the television flickering from our front window. The neighborhood was quiet
except for the pebbles sounding under the tires, the crickets.

  “Horror God, that Governor Bush is disgusting,” Grandma called from the living room in greeting. “He looks like a—what do they call them?”

  I set the grocery bag on the floor and opened the fridge, lighting the kitchen.

  “Squirrel!” she shouted. “At least Clinton is good-looking.”

  I knelt and moved an aluminum foil–wrapped dish up a shelf.

  “Have the banana cream pie or it’ll go bad.”

  I lined up the yogurts on the empty shelf.

  “You were at Matt’s house?” Grandma called over the Ally McBeal opening credits. “How’s he?”

  “We broke up.”

  “Nej. He’s so handsome. And Ally, she’s so nice. Don’t you like Ally? Ali, like you.” I heard the candy dish clatter on the coffee table. “Förbaskade katten!”

  Marlena raced into the kitchen.

  “Don’t hit her!” I yelled.

  “He’s klo!”

  “This isn’t a farm,” I muttered. “Jag vet,” I whispered to the cat, filling her food bowl. I rubbed her sides, feeling her little ribs. Eating was the only time she let me do that.

  I rooted around the junk drawer for a bottle of black nail polish and sat down on the couch next to Grandma with my dinner: one strawberry yogurt.

  Grandma’s face crumpled in disgust. “At least take bread with it.” She was having a slice of pie.

  I took my shoes off and put my feet on the coffee table.

  “New shoes?” She frowned at Justine’s old lug soles. “From Penney’s?”

  “There’s no s.” I applied polish to my big toes.

  “Vad?”

  “Penney. J. C. Penney. There’s no s on the end.” The pinkie toes were impossible. They hardly had nails. “Do you know who Walt Whitman is?”

  “The mall?”

  “The poet.”

  “Vem?”

  “The poet!”

  “Well of course,” she said. She didn’t, though.

  “He was gay.”

  “Who was?”

  I sighed.

  “They sued Jenny Jones.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “The gays.”

  Calista Flockhart fluttered across the screen like a little idiot bird in a skirt suit.

  “I hate this show.”

  “You miss Highway to Heaven?” Grandma flipped through channels. “I miss Highway to Heaven.” Piercing horns announced her favorite game show. “Millionaire!” she exclaimed, clasping her hands to her chest.

  I got in bed and paged through Vogue. They’d dressed up a girl with dark hair and wide-set eyes like Queen Amidala. She was frightening in white face paint and red spots penciled on each cheek, head hanging almost as though her neck were broken from the weight of her huge headpiece. On another page, three girls in red lipstick fought over a messenger bag. The girl wearing the bag held her hands up in surrender. Her eyes were covered by a second girl’s hands—this girl had snuck up behind her. A third girl with braids held garden shears to the strap, just about to cut. I tore out the page. I meant to tape it to the wall but found myself suddenly tired and even a little dizzy. I put the magazine down and lay back. My body was fizz, frothing, effervescent, a can of just-opened Diet Coke. I was so light it was like I was lifting—levitating—up from the bed, through the roof, over our tiny house, the trees, the school, hovering above all of Huntington—all of Long Island. I was so high nothing could touch me.

  I felt the weight of Marlena land on the bed beside me. She stepped in little circles, collapsing into a ball next to my head. I stroked her temples. She purred quizzically. Her tail beat the mattress.

  FOUR

  They looked like ghosts, the boys, skateboarding across the Stop & Shop back lot at dusk. Justine and I took off our aprons. I walked toward Grandma’s car, Justine toward Chris. She stood in his path; he spun his board, leaned back, and skidded to brake inches from her. Ryan slowed to a stop, kicked his board upside down, and climbed into the passenger side of the car just as I got behind the wheel.

  Why was he in the car? I felt that same self-consciousness, like he knew something about me I didn’t. He pulled a little plastic bag from his shirt pocket and rolled a joint, narrowing those black eyes, carefully tearing and folding the paper, sprinkling weed into the crease.

  “This shit”—he lit the joint and took a first puff—“is sinsemilla.” He ejected my tape from the stereo without even asking, holding it up in reprimand. It was Mariah Carey’s Butterfly. He tossed it to the floor, fished a cassette from his pants pocket, and popped it into the deck like he’d been riding shotgun in Grandma’s car all his life.

  “Mariah Carey went to my high school,” I said.

  He shrugged, handed me the joint, and exhaled. “Bust a lung.”

  I took a long drag. “She does have an incredible vocal range.”

  The music started out like static, like tuning into a radio station.

  “Do you know who this is?” he asked. I was pretty sure he knew I didn’t know, and the whole point was to see how stupid he could make me feel, sitting there, not knowing.

  “It’s not a test,” he said.

  It was a test. The beat kicked in. I shrugged.

  “Aesop Rock, ‘Wake Up Call,’ featuring Percee P, from the ’97 album Music for Earthworms.” He said it in a kind of monotone, looking into the distance as though he were reading, like it was written out there in the trees. “But I guess Mariah Carey’s the only local music you know.”

  “Billy Joel.”

  “Billy Joel.” He looked like he might spit.

  “‘Only the Good Die Young’ is a good song though, no?” I sort of half sang that part about the white confirmation dress, immediately regretting it.

  “Aesop Rock went to my high school,” he said.

  Northport kids always thought they were so cool, just because they had more art classes and drugs. We sat and hotboxed and listened to the rolling hip-hop bass, watching Justine watch Chris skate in the dimming dusk. The streetlights switched on, washing through the car and turning the smoke gold. I couldn’t tell if the music was good or not.

  “You know what they say about her, right?” I asked.

  “Justine?” He blew smoke. “Yeah. She’s fucking nuts.”

  “Mariah Carey. She never went to class, but when she did, she just sat in the back, and when a teacher called on her to like, answer a question—”

  He flipped the Music for Earthworms tape case in his hands, inspecting the label. “Isn’t this album cover dope?”

  “—no matter what it was, she’d just shrug and be like, ‘I’m gonna be a singer.’”

  He pulled the insert from the case and unfolded it.

  “Isn’t that funny?”

  Nothing. Just him and the insert.

  “They say she beat up all the cheerleaders. And she gave this guy my friend knows a drawing of her body with notes about all the things she wanted him to do to it.”

  At that he looked over at me with a crooked grin, but was immediately distracted by Chris pitching his arms and twisting his hips with an easy grace, gaining speed, grinding the edge of his skateboard on the curb dividing parking aisles. Chris popped his board into the air, tucking his knees while it flipped 360 degrees, then landed on it neatly and continued rolling without losing speed. What an elegant creature. Ryan got out of the car, like we hadn’t even been talking, leaving the door wide open, music spilling out into the lot.

  “Sick shove-it,” Ryan shouted, grabbing a forty from his bag, getting back on his board.

  Justine pulled a compact from her purse, studied her face from several angles, then snapped it shut. “We’re bored.”

  “Mobb Deep’s on tonight at the Bowery Ballroom,” Ryan said, rolling past.

  Justine made a face.

  “Again?” Chris droned.

  *

  The Kings Park Psychiatric Center entrance was papered with No Tre
spassing signs and condemnation notices. Justine shoved one foot, then the other, into open chain links, climbing a fence threaded with thick green ivy. She swung a long leg over the top, landing lightly on the other side. Chris and Ryan hopped over after her. I got on tiptoe to hand Ryan his open Olde E—my fingertip brushed against one of his rough knuckles—before struggling over after them, dropping down into knee-high weeds.

  Low hills rolled out in three directions—dotted with dense copses of rippling pin oaks and dozens of big brick buildings turning purple in the evening light—stretching all the way down to the Long Island Sound.

  Ryan took a swig from his forty and lit another joint. “Five hundred acres,” he said, pointing at one building, then another: “Power plant, fire department, bowling alley.” Bowling alley? “Pasture over there for livestock.” He indicated a field. “Mass grave.”

  We walked along a gravel path to the closest building: four-story, white-trimmed, red-brick. The windows were all boarded up. It looked like a dead school.

  “At its height, the Kings Park Psychiatric Center boarded over ten thousand patients,” Ryan continued, again going sort of monotone. “It operated from 1885 until 1996, when the state of New York closed the facility, either releasing or transferring its few remaining patients to the still-operational Pilgrim Psychiatric Center”—it was like he was reading from an encyclopedia—“ending Kings Park’s 111-year legacy.”

  Justine took my hand and threaded our fingers together. I smiled sideways, feeling a weird, tense pleasure, my attention stretched taut between Ryan and Justine like a jump rope being pulled from either side.

  Chris removed a camcorder from his backpack and flicked on the light. Ryan kicked the big front door, it swung open, he walked in. The entry was full of suitcases, boxes, and bags, piled high. It smelled like basement. Rotting periodicals were stacked along the water-stained walls. Chris filmed himself rearranging his hair in a broken mirror on the floor. Ryan opened a leather chest, pulled out a white nightgown, lassoed and launched it into the air, silk shimmering down a long hall like a molten ghost. I pictured Justine in the nightgown, curled up on the bed in her white room. I followed them all down the hall, steel-screened windows on the one side, door after door on the other. Paint peeled from the walls, coming off in little parallelograms. The floor had delaminated in places.