Something Red

by Jennifer Gilmore

  Vanessa closed her eyes and lay back down on the bed, slamming her head onto the stripped, stained pillow, where she was overwhelmed by the heady mix of smells: the scent of Ben’s room after practices—sweaty balls and armpits, old socks, jockstraps—and also bong water and patchouli. The sharp and crushing fetor made Vanessa feel she would soon asphyxiate, and she lifted her head from the pillow to sit up. But it wasn’t just the pillow; the air was also thick, acute with the stench of old beer, the sickening sweetness of pot or maybe opium, thick cotton layers of trapped cigarette smoke. Vanessa leaned over to open the window and dangled her head into the unenclosed air, breathing in the eerie predawn. The odor of dew and stored, impending weather, the tree branches with their scent of crooked, brittle bones, also became unbearable, and Vanessa ducked back inside, hitting the top of her head on the sill.

  “Ouch!” Vanessa rubbed her fingertips in circles along her head, both to ease the blow and to check for blood. She brought her hand close to her face. The red light from the lava lamp cast a warm glow over her skin, and for a moment she thought it was blood.

  Her head began to ache, an all-over feeling at the front of her forehead, more like what she had once called a hangover than the focused pain of an injury. She remembered throwing up the morning after a Crosby, Stills and Nash concert at Wolf Trap, where she and Bee and Heather and Jessica had drunk several beers out of massive plastic cups and sat on the lawn on Heather’s mom’s quilt. An older couple, ex-hippies seated cross-legged on a Mexican blanket, kept passing them joints, the woman telling the girls over and over, You remind me of me! All of you! as her husband rocked to the music, hands placed on his knees, his eyes closed.

  Vanessa recognized a hangover, but she was also subdued by confusion; she watched Schaeffer for clues, searching for information about him, something that might indicate anything about herself. What time was it? She realized then she had no idea what time was, or how it operated, the way it moved and flowered, creating forward motion, age and wisdom, escape from the despondency of youth. Until time stopped, and with it, life. She was starving. Or, no, was she dreadfully full? She imagined filling herself up without remorse or redemption from her toes to the tippy top of her head, but as she envisioned herself at some baroque table filled with torn-open melons and figs, the cooked thighs of massive beasts, golden goblets overflowing with wine, feasting with kings, she realized that her mouth was not her mouth. These were not her teeth, she thought, knocking on a front tooth with the knuckle of her index finger, unable to feel the impact.

  “Can I have a cigarette?” she asked Schaeffer.

  “Hey!” he said, as if he had neither seen nor heard her wake, nor registered the thrashing up and down in bed, the opening of the window, the screech from the head wound. “How’s it going!” he said cheerily. He came over to the bed and shut the window. “Brrr, kitty.”

  The music bore down on her with a steel weight; she felt her head would explode from the pressure of unending drumming. The torturous sound came through the walls and began entering into her body through her pores. “I need a cigarette,” she said.

  “Absolutely.” Schaeffer handed Vanessa one of his Camels. “Here you go.” He unfolded her hand carefully and placed the cigarette inside it, a gift, gently folding her fingers around it.

  “Why are you up?” Vanessa placed the cigarette between her lips, where it dangled for a moment. I am James Dean, she thought. Then she gagged and spit the Camel out. “What was that?” she said, feeling the waxy sensation of a candle.

  “It’s a cigarette, sweetie.” Schaeffer cupped Vanessa’s face in his hands. “Just like you wanted.” He smashed her head to his heart. “Just what you needed.”

  “Okay.” Vanessa’s face felt good in his hands, supported, and she waited a moment at his chest before looking down to fish for her lighter in the pocket of her jeans. How long had it been since she’d left the party with Schaeffer? She remembered being on top of the tower of an old castle. They’d wandered around and found an entrance to the stairwell, through the laundry room, and run up the spiral staircase, the old brick walls filled with decades of graffiti, the hauntings of previous parties; perhaps Abbie Hoffman had written on these walls, she’d thought. Angela Davis. Criminals! They’d reached the top and gone outside, where they’d stood stood at the lip of the tower, shivering. He had placed her head in his hands then, and Vanessa remembered a kiss, the swell of air, the grand sweep of a foreign town blanketed beneath a sky pierced with stars.

  Vanessa’s fingers—no longer her fingers, did that make them Schaeffer’s?—skimmed her hips as she searched for her lighter, but they could not locate her pocket. These fingers could not locate the jeans either. “My clothes!”

  Schaeffer, who had darted back across the room, sat at his disorderly desk, the chair turned out, his legs crossed. He grinned. “I just took another tab about an hour ago, you want one?”

  Vanessa shook her head. She remembered clearly racing back down the staircase of the tower, then slowing as they hit the ground and began walking back to his dorm, her hand welded to his. Vanessa had a less clear memory of warmth and safety, the feeling of the heavy weight of animal skin spreading over her. She remembered the sweet feeling of mutual desire, of two people wanting to trade pelts.

  Now she felt confusion and also tremendous, unmitigated fear. She had imagined she was a princess in that tower, a Barbie princess, just like the one Nana Helen had gotten for her. A princess like the one her mother had relented to let her be one Halloween. Go ahead and let her, Sharon, she’s a girl, her father had pleaded on her behalf. You always insist that feminism is so damn flexible. Vanessa remembered closing her eyes as her mother brushed blue and purple eye shadow along her fluttering lids and tied long white ribbons in her hair with a sigh, then turned her around to resignedly zip her long pink dress up the back.

  When had Vanessa stopped wanting to be a princess? It had probably been the day her father had cast her as a witch. Wearing that awkward mask—living for an entire Halloween night behind it—had been uncomfortable, yes, but it had freed her. And who’s this? everyone said so loudly upon opening the door. Appearing unrecognizable and ugly made her sink into her inner state, and she had enjoyed watching people scan her for some clue that might give away the identity of the clumsy girl behind this perverse, bulging mask. How much easier it was to be a witch. No one would ever know you.

  But now Vanessa’s thoughts turned from fairy princesses and ivory towers to sleeping in a row of girls in a moldy camp cabin. She remembered Raymond, who taught photography, dark and enigmatic; all the girls scampered with their hands over their mouths when he came to their side of camp. She remembered a darkroom, the photos coming to life beneath the red light. Like this light, Vanessa thought, watching the lava lamp throw colored shadows onto the wall, remembering the smell of the chemicals and his close breath. Look here, he’d said, through this little pinhole. She had been picked by Raymond; she had felt chosen and wanted, and only when she had become a counselor herself had she thought of how she had been crushed by that challenge. She was careful with her own campers to make them feel equally adored, though it was hard not to always take the hand of Laura Erlinger, who sat outside the group at lunchtime, the one who made spectacular God’s eyes, and whom Vanessa knew would one day bloom into someone magnificent.

  From the castle to the cabin, to here in this dorm room and the devastating realism: I am in the world alone, she thought, angered at her brief, delusional period of wanting to be beautiful. She thought of Jason and felt the weight of her metal heart dropping. “I’m all alone!” she said.

  “No!” Schaeffer hurled himself to the edge of the bed. “No, you’re not ever alone. We’re in this world together.” He took both her hands in his and shook them, then kissed the top of her head. “Wow. I see so many colors in the fibers of your hair. A whole kaleidoscope of colors.”

  Vanessa threw the covers back from the bed and stood up. Did he really have Sesame Str
eet sheets? Big Bird soothed her temporarily, for a moment tethering her to the happy memory with Ben on their parents’ bed, arms flush, chins in their palms, waiting for everyone to see Mr. Snuffleupagus already! Ohmygod, where’s Ben? she thought. She had waved to him from the tower above as he’d stood outside with his girlfriend. Had it been his girlfriend? Just as she tried to remember the figure of the girl silhouetted beside her brother, Vanessa was overtaken by the sound of outrageously loud drums; she’d never heard music this amplified. As she stood, the air felt cold around her body, and she went to wrap herself in the sheet, but stopped herself in brief appreciation of all her body’s parts, pleased that she could see all of her at once.

  “I’m going,” she said.

  “Okay. You sure?” Schaeffer had pulled his chair in close to the desk and was pressing random typewriter keys, his head tipped low. At the same time, one hand kept pushing the release lever, the platen moving back and forth and back again.

  “Bye.”

  “Whatever is best for you,” he said, his eyes now trained on the type bars.

  Vanessa walked into the community part of the suite, empty but for the colossal mess, that disorder special to careless, privileged young men, and then into the stairwell leading out of Rosenthal. She felt the cold tile beneath her bare feet as she took the stairs two at a time, rushing out the back door of the dormitory. Outside, she breathed in and out, stomped her feet, and rubbed her naked arms for warmth. A mentholated breeze blew through her legs, and before her the field, the same one Ben’s roommate had made such a fuss over, appeared out of the gloaming. Vanessa imagined the grass receiving her gladly, each blade of the lawn with its own soft welcoming, and she could tell it smelled only of grass, deeply of grass, grass like summer camp, grass like the front yard of her parents’ house, plain green grass like Randall Park, where once she and Jason and Sean had all gone together. She remembered the way Sean had skated alone, jumping onto the rails, bending his knees and reaching down to grab his board, making sure they were both watching him. How they had both watched him. He was so lithe and easy in his skin; they both loved him. It was a perspicuous image, its outlines as clear as the image of the Hollywood sign she would never forget driving toward so many times with Nana Helen—There it is! Helen would say. Don’t let it break your heart. And Vanessa thought of Jason, warm, safe Jason, who expected nothing from her and so received it.

  The soft earth against her feet besieged her entire body. She wanted such intensity to stop, and for the whole night to end, to go backward prior to this weekend, before Sean had wrapped their house in toilet paper, before she’d climbed into the backseat of the car and driven with her parents to this dreadful place. Vanessa was freezing and she looked down to see her body, white against the earth and the lightening sky. She noted how thin and frail she looked, her skin goosefleshed, each pore bristling with the erection of its tiny hair, limbs trembling.

  Vanessa stood in the middle of the field and held up her arms, exalted. In this moment, this one single moment in a lifetime of moments, she did not look at her body with disgust. She mimicked a salutation to the sun, picturing her father in the basement.

  Ecch, Vanessa thought now, lowering her arms. She went to spit out the memory, but her tongue was stitched with thread, each strand hanging from her mouth. She tried to direct her tongue into forming words by moving these threads as one would impel a marionette, but there was only sensation: the smell of her father’s sweat and Ben’s sweat, and also the sweat of Schaeffer’s room, and Schaeffer’s sweat, slick on his skin, and then her own when she skimmed his stomach as he moved her on top of him, skinning her.

  Vanessa lowered herself down to the earth and onto her side, curling up in the grass, just as soft and silent as she had hoped and known it would be.

  In that eerie moment between night and daybreak, cloud cover reflected in the inky water of Yakus Pond, Benji got out of bed to look for Vanessa. He’d debated it for what seemed like a while, then realized what he’d first dreaded: his sister was still not there. Leaving the dorm, Benji pulled on and zipped up the frayed gray hood of his high school soccer sweatshirt and set out toward the castle. As he tromped along the edge of the pond, he wished for daylight savings, for dawn to break early, for the long, sunlit days when girls ran around campus braless, their nipples, cold and hard as buttons, pressing into halter tops worn long before encouragement from the weather.

  Memories of the previous night made their way to him in a series of undulations, gaining and receding in his consciousness. He remembered Andy and Larry’s room in the tower, the rounded walls swelling as if with breath, and he remembered sitting Indian-style facing a girl on Andy’s bed. Alice! It had been Alice, from the registration booth, showing him how to place his hands, palms together, at his heart center. He had closed his eyes and breathed, as instructed, a loud ohhhm, humming pleasantly through his body, calming him.

  Had he left the party with Alice? He remembered walking out the door, past Rachel, wishing instead he’d had a cheerleader on his arm. Now he couldn’t believe his cruelty; he’d been so pleased by Rachel’s face, fallen, like one of his mother’s soufflés ruined by the dribbling of a soccer ball through the kitchen. He remembered kissing Alice at his desk—her skin was freckled and white; her mouth was dry—and then she had sat on his answering machine, the messages playing Rachel’s voice: Hope it went well today . . . Benji was brought out of his momentary miasma of wanting a newly upholstered Rachel, someone who came to his rally and worked there, and he had pulled back and asked Alice to leave. Just like that; Benji thought he might even have pointed a finger toward the door, because he had thought, I am just like Lincoln, and he had imagined the memorial, Abraham Lincoln’s stern finger pointing out across the Mall and toward the Washington Monument, along with all the people who stood, brave and beautiful, chanting for the war to end, now, now, NOW.

  Poor Alice, he thought, remembering her hesitation at the door, a watery look, beseeching him, before she opened it and walked out. How he could have done that—regressed—he had no idea, but now he looked south at the horizon, the clouded darkness suspended above him, and knew it was the same sky suspended over Rachel, curled up, warm, asleep in her room. He tucked his hands in the center pocket of his sweatshirt, the fingers of each hand touching the thickness of the zipper that divided them, as if he were being banned from his own body’s warmth.

  But now Benji’s body sang with guilt. He thought of Rachel, then the look on his mother’s face, astonished that his evening plans did not include her. And his sister! Her eyes had cast downward as he placed the hit of acid on his tongue and closed his eyes. The weight of their disappointment! Then the defiance in his sister’s eyes—those huge eyes, lidded heavy like a movie star’s, he’d always thought—as she placed the tab on her own tongue. Had his sister been there when he’d left with Alice? His memory stopped there, and ashamed at his selfishness, he wondered at the places on this campus—or worse, in town—she could have ended up.

  Benji quickened his march up the steps along the path to Usdan, on his way to the Castle, a decent place as any to start his search. It was nearing six o’clock, anyone still at the party and not crashed-out would be a disaster. His shame transformed quickly into paranoia. What had happened to his sister? he thought as he headed toward Chapels Field. What had he allowed to happen to her?

  Walking toward the field made him slip back to yesterday, the high of the rally, then the worry over what he’d told that reporter. He had actually said the word revolution. He thought of his grandfather: we were under the spell of it, Sigmund had said. It all went back to the workers, 1917. Yet couldn’t anything new have meaning? Let’s just say it didn’t last; was there no value in something sudden and vibrant and, yes, important, even if it could not last?

  Benji knew their protest had been fruitless, that it had stood for nothing. He saw Professor Schwartz’s face, his raised eyebrows, which managed to tell Benji, This is wrong and your grade will r
eflect this. The sixties, Schwartz was always telling them, is gone. What will replace it? This? You?

  Why not me? Benji thought, looking out onto the field, where only two days ago he was one of many at the beginning of an idea they believed would inspire change. They had sat at tables and had conviction in the promise of their cause, and inside the pleasant bubble of his fervor, Benji had felt purposeful, as he had when he’d stood anywhere with Rachel, for anything she’d wanted, as he’d felt swaying back and forth, the Dead playing in the waning autumn light, as he’d felt that day he came upon his grandfather in a history book, everything connected, the time line extended by the tip of a finger to meet his.

  Now he felt severed from the cause, unbound to his personal history, his future, estranged from his own limbs. He noticed something stacked in the center of Chapels Field, at the very spot where all the shadows of these religious buildings met, cast-off tennis rackets and lacrosse sticks left behind yesterday perhaps. It looked like the land of misfit toys. Yet as he moved toward the equipment, stark white even in the moonless, predawn sky, the pile seemed to stir. Or perhaps I am just still tripping, he thought, tiptoeing closer and closer, his heart filling with dread as the wooden rackets and field-hockey sticks turned into a pair of legs rising and falling in the grass.

  “Hello?” he called out.

  Dawn was breaking; Benji could see a sliver of orange peeking out from beneath the cloud cover. He heard a groan.

  “Hey there!” he said, running toward the sound, and now, standing before it, he saw the naked figure, a bag of gray bones spilled out onto the grass.