Halfway House

by Katharine Noel

  Evan said, “So, you’re the one who leaves all the fucked-up messages.”

  “I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  She blurted, “Abe tells me you’re from Minnesota.”

  “Do we really have to do this?” Evan Johansson grimaced. They were crossing the dark, windy quad; dry leaves scuttled across the sidewalk like crabs. “The whole where-did-you-go-to-high-school-what-do-you-think-your-major-is-going-to-be bullshit? The whole name game—‘You know Cindy Meyerson? Oh, my God—I know Cindy Meyerson!’” For this last, he pitched his voice into a sudden, painful squeal; several people jerked around, startled. He put his face close to hers and whispered loudly, “When really no one gives two shits.”

  “So,” she said, looking into his eyes. “Abe tells me you’re from Minnesota.”

  He tilted his head, a corner of his mouth tweaking into almost a smile. He must have been used to making people back down. Angie felt triumph and then, immediately, regret. Why did she care if she impressed Evan Johansson?

  “Minnesota.” He straightened up so he was no longer in her face. “Land of butter. Land of the Norse.”

  They’d come to the Freshman Union, where Abe handed her an ID card. “It’s a friend; she went home for the weekend.”

  “But she’s black.”

  “African-American,” Abe said quickly. Then, “They don’t check.” He was right; the cashier swiped the card without looking. When she handed the ID back, Angie looked at it more closely: Marisol Thompson was smiling, pretty, thin. Angie’s therapist was always saying that she couldn’t compare her insides to others’ outsides. Still. There was no way Abe was going to stay in love with Angie when he was surrounded by pretty, smart, interesting, normal girls, girls not retaking their senior year of high school.

  Ducking her head, she followed him into the Union.

  Sunday, Abe took her on a long tour of campus, showing her the buildings where each of his classes met, the library where he studied, the upper-class house to which he hoped to be assigned. At the statue of John Harvard, he told her the story of the three lies, the same story she’d heard two summers ago when she toured Harvard. For lunch, they went to Café Pamplona, where he kept saying, “Isn’t this place cool?” It was a basement room, tiny, whitewashed, with such a low ceiling that Abe had to duck when he came to a beam. The only food on the menu was ham, cheese, and butter sandwiches; they came wrapped in white paper, ham sliced so thin you could see through it.

  “Isn’t this great?” he said. “Don’t you love this place?”

  And Angie, who had already cried twice today—once with Abe when he tried to get her out of bed for breakfast, once alone in the shower—fought not to cry again. If she opened her mouth, she would be lost, so she just nodded and tried to smile. She had never felt so lonely.

  What did she feel like doing this afternoon?

  She shook her head; she didn’t know. Why had she come on a three-day weekend and not a normal two-day? If tomorrow weren’t Veterans Day, she’d be leaving soon.

  See a movie? Abe suggested. Go into Boston? Walk down by the river? Quincy Market?

  The air was so heavy she could barely breathe. Even shaking her head was exhausting. The only thing she could imagine doing for the afternoon was crawling underneath the table and sleeping. Something warm and light touched her cheek, and thinking a small insect must have landed there, she tried to wave it away. No. Fuck, she was crying again.

  “I’m not like this,” she said. “This isn’t me.”

  “I know it’s not.”

  She covered her face with her hands, taking deep breaths. “Okay.”

  “We could go to the aquarium.”

  “No.” She’d gone to Boston’s aquarium on field trips in grade school. “That’s someplace you’d take, like, your grandparents. Someone you didn’t know what to do with.”

  “What then?” Abe said, finally frustrated. “What do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know! I don’t know! Stop hammering at me!”

  “I’m sorry,” Abe said after a moment. He reached for her hand. “I’m being an asshole.”

  She jerked her hand away. “You’re not being an asshole, I’m being horrible to you. Why don’t you yell at me?”

  “I love you.”

  “You should just break up with me. You’re going to sooner or later, anyway. You’re going to meet someone who’s nice, and who’s smart—”

  “Jesus,” Abe said, flopping back against the whitewashed wall of the café. He closed his eyes. “I don’t know how to be with you when you’re like this.”

  “Do you think I do?”

  Abe shrugged. It was around two in the afternoon, and the restaurant had mostly emptied. The waiter cleared plates and crumpled paper napkins. Drab light filtered into the room from the staircase that led down from the street. The woman who had been working behind the counter got herself a cup of coffee and came out to sit at a table, tiredly unwrapping a sandwich. She must eat ham, cheese, and butter every day.

  “A walk,” Angie finally offered, hoping she could make good on it. Her legs felt very heavy. “A walk would maybe be nice.”

  And she did feel better, walking along the Charles. As they made their way downriver, Cambridge changed: more and more faces were dark; more and more buildings were boarded up or blackened by fire. They walked as far as MIT, then turned and made their way upriver again. Back near Harvard, Abe sat behind Angie on the grass, wrapping them both in his wool coat. On the water, sculls rowed past. The air was cold and fiercely bright, wind rattling last leaves from the trees.

  “See?” Abe asked. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  “It’s so peaceful by the water.”

  Another scull passed. The rowers bent forward together, straightened, bent forward. At this distance, they seemed like people genuflecting in prayer.

  “What I said before. …”

  Abe waited, then asked, “Which part?”

  “If you broke up with me. I couldn’t—oh, damn.” She stopped before she started crying again.

  Abe wrapped his coat more tightly around them. “You know those NRA bumper stickers: YOU’LL HAVE TO PRY IT OUT OF MY COLD DEAD HANDS?” He put his warm cheek down against her temple and whispered, “I want to be with you when we’re both, like, eighty and have no teeth.”

  By the time they made their way back to Harvard Square it was around four-thirty, edging toward twilight. The bagpiper was playing again, and a man sat on the pavement, head bent. In front of him were a paper cup and a sign: old, sick, tired, hungry. Chattering students parted around him and then closed again, a brook moving around a rock. A woman sold jewelry, silver spread out across black velvet on the sidewalk, and Abe bought a ring for Angie, tiny chips of green turquoise between two narrow strips of silver. A band played behind the T station: two guys and a girl, all with guitars, plus a drummer who wore sunglasses despite the sun being down, the streetlamps lit.

  “I’ve seen her before,” said Abe, pointing with his chin. “She’s a sophomore.”

  The girl’s hair fell forward, covering her face; she didn’t look at her audience. She sang “I Wanna Be Sedated,” a song meant to be fast and hard but that she sang slowly, soft and urgent. The members of her band watched her with what seemed like total concentration. Passersby would pause, listen a moment, occasionally drift over to the stairs to sit down.

  The band moved on to The Beach Boys’ “Be True to Your School,” then a Violent Femmes song that had been popular a few years ago. Making bouncy songs slow and eerie seemed to be the band’s one trick, but it was a good one; it turned the songs inside out. The girl sang that she’d waited her whole life for just one kiss, her voice a desperate-sounding whisper.

  At the end of the song, she looked up at her listeners for the first time, shaking the hair back from her face, giving a small self-conscious but delighted smile at their applause. Sadness rose again in Angie, gusting through her, blowing any sense of safety out l
ike a match.

  They saw a play with a group of people, and then went out to a place called Civili Tea. Angie couldn’t concentrate on the hundred varieties and picked the third thing on the list, something called green tea, which sounded light and fresh. Abe’s new friends tried to involve her in the conversation, but it was like hearing surface noise when you were swimming underwater: faint, bright, foreign. Her tea tasted like charred grass. She had to ask them to repeat their questions; then she would dredge up a one-word answer, and Abe would jump in and help. (Angie’s a swimmer, he offered. She won All-State last year. Angie’s probably going to Yale.)

  They complained about roommates and classes and how someone’s suite was smaller than suites in Massachusetts Hall. The luxury of their concerns made them seem conventional, untroubled, dumb.

  They were quiet walking back to his room. Abe closed the door behind them, turning to her and asking, “What is going on with you?”

  “You really like those people?”

  “Why, don’t you?”

  On the phone he’d told her about this or that spoiled rich kid, or about the new weird thing Evan Johansson had done, or about the Teaching Fellow for his econ class. In discussion section, the TF blew and blew his nose until the pile of used Kleenex on the table in front of him was as big as his head. On especially bad days, he ran out of fresh tissues and had to hunt and peck through the pile for the least soggy of the used ones. Angie loved when Abe told her stories, but she hadn’t realized until this minute that she wanted him to be unhappy at Harvard.

  “You have a whole life here.” She willed him to contradict her. “I’m a distraction.”

  “Please tell me you’re not doing this again.”

  Looking him in the eye, she said, “So get out, if you want out.”

  “This isn’t happening to us.” He slapped the wall with his hand. “Fuck.” He hit the wall again.

  God, what was she doing? “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I know I’m being crazy. I just love you, and you act like this is just some fun thing or something.”

  “Fine. I act like this is just some fun thing. What can I do? Tell me what more I could be doing and I’ll do it.” He was yelling, but his voice broke on the last words.

  “Like—” But she couldn’t think of anything. “Never mind. It’s not important. It’s okay.” She put her arms around his neck, trying to kiss him, but he shook her off, saying, “I don’t exactly feel like it right now,” and she cried and clung to him until he felt sorry for her and apologized and held her while she sobbed into his soft blue T-shirt. She should never have come to Harvard. She was terrified to think that tomorrow she would have to leave.

  They made love. As soon as they finished, she wished they could start again. She felt like she’d just drunk salt water for thirst.

  Abe seemed unsettled, too, though differently. “It can’t keep being like this,” he said. “I don’t know what I can say to prove I want to be with you.”

  She felt, starting up in her, the itchy desire to argue, to say so maybe we should break up, even though breaking up was the last thing she wanted. She needed to get out of this room. Standing, she fumbled on her clothes. “Maybe I’ll take a walk,” she managed to say.

  “It’s nearly one in the morning.”

  Dumbly, she made her way to the door, down the hall. The air would clear her head. Ten minutes of walking and she’d be free of this panic, able to go back to Abe’s bed and sleep.

  “Wait. Where are you going?” Abe had caught up to her, a sheet wrapped around his waist.

  “Just out. I just need … just let—”

  “Now?”

  She wrenched away from the hand he’d put on her shoulder. “I just have to get out.”

  She stumbled down the steps of his dorm. It was very cold. Wind lifted leaves from the ground; they rose and then banked, like a flock of startled birds. Pulling her sleeves down over her hands, she began to walk as fast as she could.

  Harvard’s freshman dorms faced each other in a neat rectangle. One of the buildings had a white sheet suspended between two windows, advertising a party. From inside came music, the bass so heavy Angie could feel it in her feet. A group of students talking on the front stairs suddenly cried out and looked up; a guy stood at the edge of the roof, pissing, the urine splashing a few feet from the group. One girl yelled, “Fucking asshole fucker—oh, hey, I know you.”

  “Hey, hi.”

  “You’re in my astro class.” The girl took a stumbly step back. “You should come over later.”

  Angie had to get off this campus.

  The news kiosk in the center of Harvard Square was dark, but music came from some of the restaurants. Near where the girl had sung earlier, a man settled into the lee of the T station, pulling newspaper over himself.

  She took a deep shaky breath. Okay. She was going to be okay. It was good to be out of Harvard Yard. She took another deep breath and began walking up the street. This was good. A man leaned close to her; startled, she looked into his face. His nose was red and seeded, like a strawberry.

  “Big tits,” he said. “You have nice fat titties.” She veered away from him. “Maybe someday you let me suck your fat titties,” he called.

  She began to run. Crowds of people were coming out of the bars. She bumped into someone who said, “Hey, watch it.” She took a step back, bumping into someone else, turning. In the dim neon light, faces seemed elongated, dark holes where mouths and eyes should have been. She moaned, stumbled back, and felt hands on her shoulder blades. “Whoa, there.” There was a hole in the crowd; she lurched toward it. Behind her, someone said, “That girl’s going to have one hell of a hangover tomorrow.”

  She caught sight of her own reflection in a shop window. Her face looked haggard, almost unrecognizable, and she realized with a shock that she wasn’t wearing a coat.

  She started back toward campus. The thought of Abe’s room, though—its darkness and heavy warmth—was suffocating. She veered off, turning down a side street, then turning again, finding herself on a brick sidewalk, some of the bricks loose, wobbling under her feet, so that she felt as though she’d just gotten off a boat and had sea legs. Ahead of her, dark buildings, then just darkness: the river.

  She crossed the highway and stood on the bicycle path that ran parallel to the water. She hadn’t noticed earlier, but the river smelled of fish. A car passed, headlights briefly illuminating the grassy bank. She was surprised to notice that she hadn’t thought of throwing herself in, and then that was all she could think of. She huddled behind a tree, where she couldn’t see the water, holding her knees to her chest, shivering. The cold felt as if it came from inside her bones. Cars passed, and passed, and then one slowed and pulled over. It was a taxi. The driver, a tall black man, got out.

  “Where do you want to go?” he called. His accent was foreign, musical.

  She shook her head.

  “It’s not safe, a girl down here by herself.” He swept open the back door of the cab with a flourish.

  She scrambled up and bolted in the other direction, toward the bridge. Her ankle struck something, a branch, and she fell hard, catching herself with her hands. Someone screamed, a face right next to hers, gray hair streaming, a few teeth jagged and yellow. Angie yelled, scampering away on all fours, whimpering even as she realized that she had stumbled over a sleeping woman. She gagged. “Oh, God, I’m sorry.” She ran, fell, picked herself up, and kept running, still panting Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry.

  Ten

  After dropping her daughter off at the bus station, Jordana drove to Ben’s. The first time she’d visited him, she’d thought Ben would live in an old industrial space or at least in one of the run-down Victorians crowding Cort’s outskirts. Instead, the Bonne Chance apartments: headache green, with external metal staircases.

  She’d been looking forward to seeing Ben, but as she climbed the rattling stairs to the second floor and knocked on his door, she found herself resenting him. Clouds rolled in, d
ampening the light. She’d hated watching her daughter board the bus for Boston, shoulders hunched, hair hanging in her face. But what would have been better? Angie holed up in her bedroom for another weekend?

  Ben opened the door, sweeping his arm behind her to bend her back in a kiss. She took a step away, righting herself. “You’re in a good mood.”

  Ben straightened. “Those pictures turned out really well.”

  “Pictures.”

  He turned and unpinned photos from the clothesline, handing them to her. Oh, those pictures. Her black hair puffed out on his white pillowcase; her sharp clavicle and hipbones contrasted with the wrinkled sheets and hazy smile.

  She realized that she’d expected the pictures to make her pretty. It wasn’t rational; she’d never looked pretty to herself. Still. In one shot, her mouth was half open, and she looked at the camera from the corner of her half-closed eye with an ugly, sly expression that clearly meant get it? She must have said something she thought was funny.

  If she’d been alone, she would have studied the photos, but she felt embarrassed looking at herself in front of Ben. She tossed them on a chair, then stepped forward and kissed him, hard, pulling him down to the floor. They had sex with her straddling him, holding his wrists down, moving so slowly that he groaned and bit his lips, and she didn’t know where the line was between wanting to give him pleasure and wanting to make him unhappy. She would have gone on for an hour if she could have, not letting him come, but he muttered, Oh, God, fuck me, and moved his hands from her grasp—he was too strong for her—grabbing her hips, pulling her down onto him.

  Afterward, they lay side by side. The photos overhead cast rippling shadows across their bodies. He moved his hand between her legs but she pushed it away, saying, “I should get home.”

  He turned on his side, trying to look over his shoulder. “I think I have rug burn.”

  “I don’t see anything,” she said, barely glancing. Standing, she found her underwear, pulled it on. If she had come, they would be even, whereas now she was owed, somehow morally superior.