Joe believed in sex; it was one of the best things in life. In fact, there were few things better. And yes, he had indulged himself; it was his right as a sexual male. If God hadn’t wanted men to enjoy sex, he wouldn’t have done such a knock-up job inventing the penis, the blessed erection, the vicious thrill of an orgasm. And why shouldn’t he take care of himself once in a while? What was so wrong with it? Was it a crime to have a little pleasure once in a while? He could have any woman he wanted! Why should he feel guilty? It wasn’t like he had invented it.
He refused to apologize for the choices he’d made! If people wanted to make a living fucking for money, so be it—he would be there to put it on film. They weren’t the first of the sacrificial lambs— people had been wading in pools of spilled blood since the dark ages. And if people wanted to pay to watch, then he was happy to reap the benefits.
Filling his chest with air, he stood taller, proud. He and his brother, Harold, had built that business from scratch. They had nothing to be ashamed of.
All the kids were pouring out of the temple into the grassy backyard: The rabbi had begun her sermon. Rabbi Zimmerman’s sermons were particularly thought-provoking, he gave her that. Like most women, she got straight to the point. On his way back inside he saw Willa and her friends dancing in the parking lot. They weren’t her regular friends from school, but rather the kids she’d grown up with in temple who’d been bar and bat mitzvahed the same year. Now they wore tallits around their shoulders to symbolize their adulthood; their braces were off; the boys had facial hair and deep voices and the girls bought their underwear at Victoria Secret. He couldn’t help noticing his daughter’s shapely legs, the playful bounce of her breasts. Feeling a sudden heat in his chest, all his liberated theories about sex instantly evaporated. He swore he’d kill anyone who tried to touch her—Claire’s son, Teddy, included. He would! He’d beat the hell out of him!
On the way home, he admitted to Willa that he worried about her. “You’re beautiful, honey, do you know that?”
“No,” she said. “Far from it.”
“Willa. The boys—this Teddy.”
“I know, Daddy.” She rolled her eyes.
“Be careful, that’s all I ask.”
“I know,” she said. “I will.”
“Talk to your mother,” he said.
“Don’t worry. I know everything. I know what to do.”
“But you don’t have to do anything.”
“I know, Dad. Okay!”
“You have the rest of your life to have sex. Don’t rush into it.”
“I won’t,” she muttered.
Later, when they got home, Willa wanted to ride. She raced up to her room to change. Together, they went out to the barn and he watched her tack up then stood at the fence to watch her ride. Although he’d spent three hours in temple and had deprived himself of food since the night before, he still didn’t feel absolved. He wore his guilt like a heavy coat, the pockets stuffed with worms. He felt light-headed, weary. His fingers burned.
Several days before, Harold had sent him their newest feature, Totally Blown Away. In one scene, a girl who looked to be about Willa’s age (the actress was twenty-four) was on her knees, surrounded by six or seven men, he couldn’t remember now, who were all getting blown by her, one after the next, and coming all over her face. Of course she was loving every minute of it. He’d flown to Chatsworth for the shoot and he remembered when they’d done that particular scene the girl had vomited several times. In the film, she made it look easy, she was a real professional, but it had been a difficult shoot. To show their appreciation, he and Harold had taken the girl out to Morton’s for a steak dinner.
His daughter’s horse had been named by its previous owner and Willa had decided not to change it. He couldn’t help seeing a certain irony in the name—Boy—and he couldn’t easily overlook the sexual aspect of riding—people had done studies of its attraction to adolescent girls. He’d once overheard his stable manager saying that girls rode till they could fuck for real. Thinking about it now, Joe suddenly felt overcome with regret. He felt uncertain about almost everything. He felt at a loss.
Willa rode by, the horse’s hooves beating the dirt. His daughter had a perfect seat. From the time she was a small child she had wanted to ride and took to the sport naturally. He could remember her playing with little toy horses, making them jump over her blocks. They’d hired the best trainers for her and whenever she showed, she generally placed well. There was something fine and aristocratic about a young girl in show clothes, the tight chaps, the jacket, the helmet, the shiny black boots. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt today, and her half chaps and paddock boots were covered with mud, but she was all blue-ribbon in his book. She took the jumps easily, gliding over them with what seemed little effort. She had a woman’s body now, he noticed, hips and thighs and breasts, and she moved with a newfound elegance. Again he thought of the boys who would want her and felt queasy. Maybe it was because he hadn’t eaten, but he felt weak. Dizzy. He thought he had better lie down.
He walked back up to the house, suddenly eager to see Candace. The house was quiet; he didn’t think she’d come down. In the bedroom, the curtains were still drawn. His wife was in bed, her face red and swollen, as if she’d been crying. “What’s wrong? What’s the matter?”
She shook her head. “I’m not myself.”
“Tell me.”
“I just feel . . .” she couldn’t seem to finish.
“What?”
“Everything’s dark.”
He lay down with her, pulling her into his arms. “Come here. Let me see you. Let me look at you.”
She looked up at him like a child. “Do you still love me?”
“Yes, of course I do.” He kissed her. “Yes, yes!”
She cried and he held her and he cried too. He didn’t think that either could say what they were crying about, but it was something they needed to do, right now, together, and then, quite suddenly, they were laughing, hard, brash laughter that came up from someplace deep.
He held her gently, as if to protect her. He did love her, he would love her forever. He began to kiss her, tenderly, almost afraid she might break in his hands. He looked at her face, her dark gaze, sad and beautiful and pale, like a Stieglitz photograph. There were things he could not explain. Why he cheated on her, why he simply couldn’t be honest, faithful. These were mysteries to him. He loved women— younger women, older, he loved her most of all and he hated her too, he couldn’t help himself. He hated her past, her unfortunate childhood. Her memories were heaps of old clothes that stunk of mildew, they needed to be burned. They took up space in their marriage. He hated that his wife had experienced terrible things and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. He kissed her, thinking of the girl in the movie, who, like Willa, was somebody’s daughter and deserved better.
27
On the Thursday before Halloween, Willa waited with the others for the community service van, but Mr. Heath never showed up. It was Mr. Gallagher who appeared, wrestling with his knapsack and a ring of keys, explaining that he would be taking over as driver. “Sorry I’m late,” he said.
Willa was relieved. She had been considering quitting the internship, but now, perhaps, she wouldn’t have to. Last week, after dropping the others at Solomon’s Table, Mr. Heath had asked her to sit up front. She had detected the odor of gin on his breath and he drove erratically, cutting people off, swerving around slower cars. Out of the blue he asked her where she wanted to go to college and, jokingly, she’d said, “Harvard, of course.” He had replied, seriously, that getting into college wasn’t always about the grades, that she had to be strategic, and he could help her with that. He had connections at Harvard, he told her, then put his hand on her knee and slid it up her thigh. It had happened so fast, like a wasp landing on her skin, that she’d been too frightened to brush it off. Without taking his eyes off the road, he had moved his hand under her kilt and put his fingers in her underpants.
“I know what you want,” he said. Then he’d pinched her there and she’d felt a throbbing up inside her and a wash of heat.
It had seemed to take forever to drive the short distance to Sunrise House and for a moment she had not been able to move. “Go on,” he said, his voice flat. “You don’t want to be late.”
She had felt at the time that she could hardly make it to the door and when Regina let her in she said in a voice that was not her own, high-pitched and quavering, that she needed to use the bathroom. “Right through there, honey,” Regina had said, and Willa had gone into the small bathroom, grappling for a paper towel to wash herself off with. She had told Regina that she was sick, and had called her mother to pick her up, but her mother was taking a riding lesson and sent Rudy in her place. Regina made her walk down to the corner to wait and when she saw his truck she whimpered with joy. “Don’t puke in the truck,” was all he said.
She hadn’t wanted to admit it, but she’d felt something with Mr. Heath, something awful and intense. It made her feel sick, despicable. Rudy had dropped her off and she’d run inside the house, up to her room. She’d kneeled over the toilet, but nothing came up. What Heath had done to her had made her wet. Wanting to wash it away, she’d gotten into the shower and scrubbed herself. It was a flaw, she realized, something in her blood, and she decided right then that what had happened to her in that van was nobody’s business. She’d put it out of her mind. She’d never tell a soul.
“Hey, you okay back there?” Gallagher said.
Their eyes met in the rearview mirror. He was almost squinting at her, as if he were intent on reading her mind.
She nodded. “I’m fine.”
Mr. Gallagher had a beard. As a rule, she didn’t like beards and wondered if food got into it while he ate. He was the only teacher at school who wore blue jeans. Every day he wore the same thing: a white buttoned-down shirt with blue jeans and red suspenders. In the beginning of the semester, when the weather was warmer, he wore fisherman’s sandals, the sort she’d seen on the men in Greece, when her parents had taken her to Corfu last year on spring break. But now he wore scuffed-up work boots, like a construction worker. In class, he would roll up his shirtsleeves as if to symbolize getting to work. She had never met a real writer before, and she was always a little nervous around him, like she might say something stupid.
He pulled on his seat belt and glanced at her in the big rearview mirror again and said, “All ready, mademoiselle?” in a pretend French accent that made her smile and she told him that she was. But she wasn’t. Not really.
It was hard going there. The faces of the women. Their hardened bodies, their bruises. The sadness that lingered in their eyes. You could see how they’d suffered in their smallest gestures, the way they’d light their cigarettes, a ritual, a stolen pleasure, having survived some ordinary terror. You could see it in the slightest tremor of their hands, the vague longing in their eyes, the words I have nothing, I am no one, ringing in their ears.
It came to her suddenly. I’m one of them.
A door had opened in her mind, luring her into a blurry place, the place where she’d started out, the murky womb of a stranger. She didn’t know what it meant, if it defined her in some way. Other kids could look at their parents’ faces and see aspects of their own; she could not. She had no blood relatives. Her parents had told her that it didn’t matter, but what if it did?
When she was little, her mother used to take her for blood tests every few months. It had something to do with her biological mother’s blood, something that could have been passed down to her. Not AIDS or anything like that, her mother had assured her, but something else. Of course, she’d been fine. But still, it had frightened her at the time. Sometimes she tried to imagine her own birth, forcing her brain to go back into that dark, anonymous tunnel. With her eyes closed very tight, she’d try to feel the snug, plush walls of the woman’s (her mother’s) vagina as it pushed her out. Sometimes she imagined it when they went through the carwash, when those long, black spaghetti strips swished across the windshield. It reminded her of birth, what it must have been like passing through that dark opening into daylight. Whose hands had caught her coming out? Had they been gentle? Or had it been some nurse at the end of a long shift, handling her with perfunctory care. Who had wrapped her in a blanket? Who was the first person to lay eyes on her? Who had been the first to feed her—her birth mother? And what had it been like for her, that woman, knowing she would be giving her baby away? After carrying her for all those months, then suffering through the birth, how was it possible that she could give her away? This was the part Willa could not begin to understand.
Thinking about it now she felt guilty. She had no business even questioning her good fortune. She had wonderful parents. She loved her mother, and she loved her father, and she couldn’t imagine being raised by anyone else. But when she went back to that single day, the day of her birth, she couldn’t help feeling sad. It hurt, the way a scar hurt when it rained.
She looked out the window at the people on the street. Most of the storefronts had been decorated for Halloween, but they still looked drab.
Mr. Gallagher said, “You’re awfully quiet back there.”
She sat up taller in her seat, pushed her hair behind her ears. “Just thinking.”
“What about? Halloween? You gonna dress up?”
“I’m going to be a witch. But I’m always a witch. Every year. It’s boring.”
“It’s not boring.”
“I have a good costume.”
“You’ll make a splendid witch.”
“What about you?”
“I’m too old.”
“No! You should be a pirate,” she told him.
“Aargh!”
“You’d make a good pirate. How long did it take to grow your beard?”
“A long time. What do you think, should I shave it?”
She shrugged and asked, because she was intensely curious to know if he had one, “What does your girlfriend think?”
“Don’t have one.”
“Why not?”
“I had one once. Then there were a few insignificant relationships.”
“What do you mean, insignificant?”
“Well,” he hesitated. “Let’s just say I wasn’t in love.”
“Well, you should find a girlfriend and ask her about your beard.” She tilted her head from side to side, trying to figure out how he would look without it. He had high cheekbones and gray eyes with little yellow flecks in them and he had a wide mouth that reminded her of a hammock. A smile you could sleep in, she thought.
“You know, that’s a very good idea. I think I’ll do that.”
“I think you would miss it, though,” she said.
“No doubt.” He stroked his beard contemplatively. “It’s kind of like having a pet.”
“On second thought, maybe you should shave it. Unless, of course, you have a chin issue.”
“No, not that I know of, no chin issue. In fact, I have a rather respectable chin.” He held it up for her to see, dignified-like, in profile. “But I think you’re right. Beards are totally out.”
“Off with your beard!” she proclaimed, and he laughed, but they both seemed to doubt that he would ever shave it.
He turned the van into the street. They passed small houses with tidy green lawns. People had put out pumpkins and skeletons and some had made gravestones out of Styrofoam that said R.I.P. on them. “How’s this thing going for you? The internship. Is it hard?”
Her throat went tight and she admitted that it was.
“You’re very bold to do it.”
They’d reached the end of the block, but for some reason she hesitated about getting out. She wished she could just go home, where everything was beautiful and orderly, unlike Sunrise House, where everything was not. They sat there another minute, looking at the small brown house. He didn’t rush her. Slowly, she gathered her things and got out. “Thanks for the ride, Mr. Gallagher.”<
br />
“You got it.”
There were two new children at Sunrise House, five-year-old twins. They were very shy, a boy and a girl, and said nothing to anyone. Their mother had snuck out of their apartment in the middle of the night and they had walked six miles into town—the mother had been beaten up by her husband. She was barefoot, the children only in socks and pajamas. Willa took the twins and Gracie and Tyrell out onto the back porch. Regina had bought small pumpkins for them to decorate. The grass was very green in the yard and beyond the high fence you could see the distant mountains. Willa liked how the mountains surrounded the town—all of the Berkshires were surrounded. They were like the walls around a castle, she thought, or like Regina’s big, open arms around the children. Regina was a big mountain of a woman, she thought. Willa spread out newspaper on the porch floor, which had been painted a gritty, tree-trunk brown. She put the pumpkins out in a row. “Everybody pick a pumpkin,” she said.
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