The Word for Yes

by Claire Needell

  Jess had flat feet and refused to do track club with her. Jess claimed that flat-footed people couldn’t run no matter what kind of shoes you put on them. Running on her feet, Jess claimed, was like running on hands. But there were some older girls who did track club, and Erika’s friend Binky, who was tolerable to run with, at least, had been there today.

  Melanie changed into her Uggs in the locker room and brushed out her hair. She had worn a knit hat with a funny red pompom that she had found with Jess at a thrift store in Williamsburg. But she hadn’t worn a warm coat, only a thick sweater, one that was too thick to fit under her parka. Her mother had said something about the snow this morning, but Melanie hadn’t listened. The sweater had a thick turtleneck and a black band around the cuffs. She’d looked cute with only the pompom hat and her thick black leggings, like a girl from a fifties movie, where they go skiing in the alps and sit around rustic fireplaces. But now she’d have to face the brisk wind, and the snow that was becoming steadier by the minute. Outside, the wind lashed her face, and the snow stuck to her eyelashes. She hesitated a minute at the heavy red door of the gym, as though contemplating ducking back in, when a boy burst out of the boy’s locker-room exit. It was Edward, and Melanie blushed at the sight of him.

  “Hey, kid!” Edward loped toward her. He was zipped into a large black parka, with the hood pulled up, so he looked like an Arctic explorer, with only his eyes unconcealed. She could tell, however, that beneath the coat’s heavy collar, he was smiling his crooked smile at her, being irresistibly friendly.

  “Well, you’re ready for this,” Melanie said, regaining her composure. The snow was already accumulating underfoot.

  “Can’t say the same for you,” Edward said, smirking at Melanie’s already soggy sweater. “Wait, maybe I can save your ass. I’d give you my excellent parka, but you don’t deserve it. Anyway, I don’t trust you to return a thing of such extreme value.” Melanie giggled. She had seen Edward in passing in the hall, but since all the trouble with Gerald, she’d been too shy to say hello, and so she’d turned her head whenever she thought he might glance her way.

  Edward fumbled around in his backpack, and then pulled out an enormous fleece-lined red and blue RD winter varsity track sweatshirt. “Put this on,” Edward said.

  “This is the most ridiculous thing ever,” Melanie said, as Edward pulled the sweatshirt over Melanie’s head. It went down to her knees, but she was instantly warmer.

  “Come on,” Edward said, “I’ll walk you.” He struck out in the direction of her subway stop on Houston, rather than his stop, which would have been up Sixth Avenue, by the movie theater, but Melanie didn’t say anything about Edward going out of his way.

  The wind had picked up and it was difficult to see or talk. Melanie walked with her head down, close to Edward, until they turned a corner toward the river and were blasted in the face by an arctic gust. Even Edward was blown backward. “Here, duck in!” Edward called. He pulled Melanie by the sleeve into a nearby store. It was a quiet place on a corner that was always something new. Now, it was a place that sold hot and cold tea in every imaginable flavor. It was empty in the shop, except for the shopgirl, who busied herself behind the counter arranging already neatly arranged paper cups. Edward and Melanie stood by the door staring out at the swirling snow.

  “I guess it won’t get any better,” Edward said.

  “No,” Melanie agreed. “Not like we can wait it out. We’ll be here all night.”

  “Okay,” Edward said. “Next time it looks even minutely less windy, we’ll make a run for it. We only have about another block or so.” Snow melted off Melanie’s hat and into her eyes. Her legs were already sore from running and she wanted to be home, to take a hot shower and change into dry clothes. Mom, she knew, had a late meeting in midtown. She’d said so this morning. Melanie didn’t mind being home alone; even if Erika were there, that would be okay. Things had been quiet between the two of them. It seemed like Erika felt almost as bad about calling Melanie a slut as Melanie felt about throwing the glass. When it was just the two of them in the apartment in the evening, it made Melanie wonder what it might be like to be in her twenties and have a job and a roommate.

  “Do you ever wonder where you’ll be in, like, ten years?” she asked Edward, following her own internal train of thought.

  “All the time,” he said. “I know I won’t be here, though.”

  “You mean here in the city, or here in this particular tea shop?”

  Edward laughed. “The city,” he said. “I’m not a city guy.”

  “Really?” Melanie said. “Then what kind of guy are you?” She realized what she said sounded flirty, but it popped out before she could think of something else.

  Edward contemplated her, and knocked some snowflakes off her hat. “I don’t know. I like it up in Massachusetts where we have our place. But maybe I’ll travel a lot. Have a job doing some kind of computer stuff, you know, consulting.”

  For some reason, it always made Melanie sad when people talked about moving away from New York. She took it almost personally, as though her presence there in the city should make it attractive to anyone she knew. But she suppressed the feeling. It wasn’t right to let some random thing Edward said hurt her feelings. “That’s like my dad,” Melanie said. “He writes. He’s in Hong Kong now.” When she mentioned her father, Melanie teared up without knowing why. “He’s coming back for Christmas, at least to visit, I’m not sure. He says he’s moving back soon. But he was always away anyway. I mean before my parents split up.” She was rambling, not sure why she was saying any of this to Edward.

  “When my dad died, the actual day he died,” Edward said, “it was snowing like crazy, like this. Lots of people, his brothers, his aunts, wanted to come down and sit with him at the hospital, but they couldn’t get here. It was weird. Like here he was dying, but all anyone could talk about was the weather. It was one of those storms just like this, where everyone goes rushing around like the end of the fucking world.”

  “I don’t know why people do that,” Melanie said. “It’s New York City. Duh. There’s how many grocery stores?”

  Edward didn’t say anything for a minute, but stared out the window. “I think it’s our moment,” he said. “Ready to make a run for it, little girl?”

  “It looks awful,” Melanie said. She was wet through to her skin, and though she knew she wasn’t warming up in the tea shop in her wet clothes, she had trouble forcing herself back outside.

  “Yup,” Edward said. “But, as you said, we can’t stay here all night.”

  “Right,” Melanie said. “I’m bracing myself.”

  “All right,” Edward said. “Tell you what. Since you remain miserably underdressed, and I’m practically ready for Everest, I’ll lead the way. Hold on to me, and try not to wipe out, because we’re going to make a serious run for it.” Melanie laughed.

  Edward gave Melanie his gloved hand and pushed open the heavy glass door. The snow immediately blew in their faces, but Edward pushed ahead. They ran down the block, Edward out in front, hooded, with the snow accumulating on his book bag, dragging Melanie behind. Melanie half shut her eyes and screamed, her feet slipping with every step.

  They ran down the block slipping on the thin layer of snow, and when they went down the subway steps Melanie still clung to Edward’s arm. In the station, she took off her hat, and shook the snow from it. Her wet hair clung to the side of her face, and she struggled to catch her breath. Edward shook the snow from his hood and sleeves. He had been kind and open with her, but now he became distracted, as though he didn’t know how it was he’d ended up with her at the wrong subway station. Melanie started to take off the sweatshirt to return it to Edward, who needed to go uptown, while she was going downtown. “Oh no, you wear it. It’s even clean. You’ll freeze in only a sweater. If I were really heroic, I’d have gotten us a cab. But I’m a cheap bastard.”

  “You’ve been really nice, though,” Melanie said. “Thanks.”
<
br />   “Modern chivalry demands these things,” Edward said. “I don’t think stupid little girls should be left to freeze to death just because they lack the sense to wear coats, like people with truly developed central cortexes.” Melanie chuckled and looked away.

  “I guess it was fairly stupid,” Melanie said. “It seemed like a good idea in the morning. They said it would snow later tonight. I took a gamble.”

  “Well, anyway, there’s something I wanted to say to you, and I never see you around anymore.” Melanie’s heart skipped a beat. She told herself she was being absurd. He thought of her as a child, Gerald’s friend, and besides, he knew everything that had happened, just like everyone else at school. He was in love with Volleyball Ellen. He was there because, like everyone else, he pitied her.

  “I wanted to tell you . . . ,” he started, then stopped, and began again. “I wanted to say that one of the things I really hated about when my dad died is how everyone talked about it. Not people who knew him, but everyone else, like it was a big deal to them that he died, not because they cared about my dad, but because what happened to him made them think it could happen to them, too. They came to the funeral looking all shitty. But it wasn’t about missing my dad, or him as a person. It was that death was all around, like some fucking monster. Like we were all in some freaky movie and my dad was the first to go, but some terrifying beast was coming back around for them. It made me want to puke.” He paused for a moment, and looked around the nearly deserted subway station.

  He took a deep breath. “There were other people who seemed less scared than shocked. That really got me pissed. It was like he wasn’t a human being. Like he was different from all of them, weaker than them, because he got cancer. It really isn’t shocking that people get sick and die. I mean it happens to fucking everybody at some point.

  “Anyway, that’s when people suck. When they say things without thinking. That’s what I wanted to say. I think most people are”—he paused for a moment searching for the word—“selfish. They don’t really think about how it is for you, when you’re part of the story of something bad that happened. They just think about how they would never let something like that happen to them. Like people could be too good or too smart to die. Or, you know, get fucked up. Anyway, I didn’t want you to think that was everyone. That no one saw what was happening at school.”

  An express train passed and shook the platform where they stood. Melanie wiped her eyes. She didn’t want to cry, but the tears kept coming.

  She shook her head, and forced herself to look straight at Edward. Of all the people at school who’d talked about her and Gerald, almost no one had said anything to her directly, or at least nothing she had wanted to hear. It was hard to listen to Edward’s sympathy. Even though she thought about him, thought about him too much, she had never imagined he ever thought about her, thought about her as a person more or less like himself, someone who might suffer in the same way he had.

  “At least now maybe people can find something else to talk about. They’ll talk about the blizzard, and everyone will forget.”

  “Yeah,” Edward said and shrugged. “Some crap.”

  “Well, thanks for the sweater. I mean sweatshirt. Fleecy thing,” Melanie said.

  “It’s yours until you wash it,” Edward said. “And then you’ve got to give it back. No stealing and shit.”

  “It’s not really my size anyway,” Melanie said. She hugged Edward, his wet parka pressing against her, and his cheek wet against her cold face. She kissed him on the cheek; he didn’t kiss her back, but pulled on her wet pompom. Then he paused for a minute, seemed disoriented, and jogged up the steps and back outside to the uptown station.

  Melanie smiled to herself and swiped through the turnstile. She looked forward to getting home, and curling up on her bed. Her mother had texted her when the snow started that she might come home earlier than expected, but that she shouldn’t worry, and the trains were all running fine. She hoped her mother had left something she liked for dinner, like chili. She wouldn’t even mind if she made the vegetarian kind that Erika would eat, so long as there was plenty of hot sauce and sour cream.

  The one train came quickly. The car was practically empty; so many people had gone home early in preparation for the storm. It was good to be inside and warm, if only for a few stops.

  Upstairs in her building, Melanie used her key to let herself in, but strangely, the door was unlocked. It wasn’t like Erika to leave the door open, even if she only went outside for a minute. Then Melanie noticed by the side of the door a snow-covered pair of man-sized Timberlands. Someone was over. At first, Melanie figured it must be Morris, but as she opened the door she heard a familiar gravelly voice.

  It was her father, sitting across from Erika at the dining room table sipping a cup of tea. His hair was rumpled. He looked a good deal thinner than he had over the summer. His jeans and sweater were baggy on him. He turned toward Melanie as she shut the door, his smile bright at the sight of her.

  “Dad?” Melanie called. He stood and opened his arms. There were no suitcases anywhere, no evidence of what he was doing there. Just Dad slightly unshaven, his glasses lopsided as usual.

  “So come on!” he called. “Give us some love! Not every day your old man pops in from halfway across the world!” He chuckled as she hugged him. He pulled off her snow-covered hat and tossed it toward the door, where it fell with a wet thud.

  Erika shook her head and scolded. “Dad, you’re making a mess and you don’t even live here!”

  “I know!” he said. “That’s the beauty of it. I’ll scram out of here before I get in any trouble.”

  “Oh, forget that,” Melanie said laughing. “I’ve tried that, and in this family someone is always coming after you!”

  “That’s my girl,” Dad said, keeping his arm around Melanie’s sodden shoulder. “Keeping everybody on their toes.” Melanie smiled uncertainly. She wasn’t sure what Dad knew. She was relieved, at least, that he didn’t seem angry at her.

  “If you’re not staying here, Dad, where are you staying—for how long?” Melanie asked. She had told herself she didn’t miss her father. But now that she saw him, she felt herself choking up at the thought of him leaving.

  “I’ll be at Liam’s until I find a place. Pretty great, right? I’ve got the first draft of the book done. No need to go back to Hong Kong for at least six months. I can make myself a big pain in both your asses, effective immediately.”

  “That’s awesome, Dad,” Melanie said facetiously, as she started to peel off Edward’s snow-covered fleece.

  “I think you need to deposit yourself in the shower,” Dad said, nudging Melanie away from the dining room rug. Melanie nodded and started toward the bathroom.

  Outside, the wind was blowing the snow down in sheets. Melanie was thankful for the warmth of the apartment, for her father’s presence. She was tired and hungry from running. She was tired of thinking about Gerald and Edward and kids at school. She was tired of her life being one big “situation.” Dad was back in New York. This was a simple fact and it was good. It meant that life had changed, but that some things, at least, could change back, like the way some roads have wide spaces where cars can turn around.

  “Dad, how about doing the heroic-dad thing and ordering us some Chinese food? I’m freezing and I want some hot-and-sour,” Melanie called from down the hall.

  “You can’t ask Dad to do that,” Erika called after her. “He’s visiting. He doesn’t live here, Mel!”

  “I know that!” Melanie shouted. “But he’s still my father! He can still buy the Chinese food!”

  Dad laughed. “She’s got a point there, Erika. She’s the boss, after all. She’s always going to be the boss!”

  After a hot shower, Melanie changed quickly into dry clothes, and brushed out her knotted hair. Her father was home! The reality was gradually sinking in. He was there, ordering her dinner, waiting for her! She put on a pair of fleece-lined slippers and pinned her hair up
in a bun. Outside, the snow fell heavier than ever. She could barely see the lights of even the closest buildings. Her view of the ice-covered river had been completely obliterated. The city would be shut down. Tomorrow would feel like a holiday. The snow was never beautiful for long in the city. It would soon turn brown and slushy and she would curse it when she walked to the subway. For one day, though, it would be pure. Her heart raced with a childish joy at the thought of a snow day, at the thought of her father’s return. He was bound to be annoying. He always was. For now, though, Melanie felt light at the thought of having her father home. It was amusing to have him surprise them. It was like when they were little and took walks around the neighborhood. He would race ahead, act like he was running away, then duck behind the side of a building, jumping out at the last minute and enjoying their shocked delight.

  Afterword

  WHAT READERS SHOULD KNOW ABOUT RAPE, SEXUAL ASSAULT, STRANGER RAPE, NONSTRANGER RAPE, DATE RAPE, ACQUAINTANCE RAPE, AND SEX WITH A DRUNK OR OTHERWISE INCAPACITATED PERSON

  ALL OF THE ABOVE ARE RAPE.

  Although all of the above are rape in the legal sense, only stranger rapes are regularly reported and prosecuted; rates of prosecution for stranger rape are relatively high, at about eighty percent. Prosecutions for nonstranger rape between minors, when drinking is involved, occur only in the most egregious cases, usually highly publicized gang rapes. Rapes such as the one described in The Word for Yes are not reported by victims except in very rare cases. Because such rapes are not generally reported, the focus on such crimes has been on prevention.

  Nonstranger rape prevention has generally focused on victim behavior. Prevention programs are not victim-blaming since the advice comes prior to, and with the intention of avoiding, assault. Girls are, rightly, warned not to drink heavily at parties, not to drink punch or other mixed drinks. Rape prevention experts are also critical of the “hookup culture” that seemingly gives would-be rapists both opportunity and cover for their crimes. Because “everyone is doing it,” and the lines are “blurry,” boys believe they can get away with rape.