Though she ran her house with the authority and efficiency of a general in wartime, Stacia Vishniak was not without her hobbies. Like most of the women in Oxford Circle, she collected green stamps. And being a saver of unusual energy, she not only saved her own, which she got mostly at the supermarket, but also those of anyone she knew who had a car, bought gasoline, and could be persuaded to hand the stamps over to her. Slowly, and then all at once, the books accumulated on top of the breakfront in the dining room. By the time Robert was in his first year at Central, the books of green stamps had gotten so high as to block out the light from the room’s only windows. And then, just as they threatened to spill onto the floor, the stamps began to disappear, sent off through the mail with mysterious purpose.
The aim of her new project, she announced to her family one night at the dinner table, was to spruce up the house and give it a needed touch of class. Robert wondered if his mother’s announcement had something to do with his getting into Central. He was now meeting kids from all over the city—had already received invitations to homes in Chestnut Hill, Germantown, and beyond. He’d even gone once to listen to records in the house of a boy named Andrew Malkin, who lived in a single house on the very edge of the city, a house so close to the Western suburbs that the front yard looked across City Line Avenue to the mansions of the Main Line. Though it was facing a highway, Andrew’s house had a circular front driveway and enough lawn to accommodate a touch football game played on grass, as opposed to the cement or asphalt Robert was forced to play on at home. Inside the house, Robert was introduced to wood paneling and something called a family room. But after the first visit, he found a way to decline further offers. Without a car, getting home took forever, requiring three switches on public transportation; with homework and all the other things he had to do, he simply didn’t have the time. He might have asked the boy’s parents for a ride, but then he’d have to admit that his own family had no car, and as much as he wanted to branch out beyond Oxford Circle, he would not do it at the cost of his dignity.
Could his mother, for the first time ever, be giving some thought to other people’s opinions? Was she worried that having experienced such heights, he’d find their house somehow lacking? Or, worse, that Robert would invite Andrew Malkin to Disston Street some afternoon? Mulling over this puzzle, he quickly decided that no, his mother would not give the likes of Andrew Malkin a second thought. This was simply an extension of her obsessive tidiness, her floor scrubbing and rug vacuuming at all hours of the day and night. Having finally purchased a house, his mother was as caught up with her investment as any other woman in the neighborhood. Here was her chance to beautify—for free—and any project that took her focus off finances could only be a good thing.
After much fanfare, the first painting arrived in the mail, covered in brown paper, then unveiled to great ceremony. Hanging in the bathroom was now a topless African woman painted on velvet, her hair bound up in a head scarf, her breasts round and high, with prominent dark purple nipples. The picture became the bane of Robert’s existence. Given his choice, he’d have stayed in there forever, his mind caressing those breasts over and over again, but there was only one bathroom—three others had to use it, too—and he had an after-school job at the supermarket, and so much homework. Then there were meals that his mother insisted he attend, household chores, friends who sometimes knocked on his door and wanted his attention—in other words, a life that he now sandwiched in dreamily between his needs to visit the bathroom. And that was how things would have remained until, weeks later, another picture arrived in the mail. This one was large and rectangular in a thick gold frame, an acrylic painting done with heavy brushstrokes that reminded Robert of whipped egg whites. He and Barry stared, mesmerized by the woman and man, both on their knees in front of a palm tree, pressing their pelvises toward each other. Around them were strange swirling bits of color, which his mother informed them implied movement.
“Why are they moving?” Barry asked. And Stacia told him to shut up, commanding Vishniak to hang the picture in their room, over the bed. Relatives caught on quickly and began to give them gifts—particularly as that year marked their twentieth anniversary. Eventually, a series of topless native women in grass skirts lined the wall along the steps leading to the second floor, dancing what Vishniak joyfully referred to as the Hoochie Coochie. Then a large pink and red flower came to hang over the couch. It bore, in color and shape, a remarkable resemblance to female genitalia.
Robert began to wonder if, rather than beautify the house, his mother was trying to torture him; there was hardly a corner that did not now inspire in him a profound and urgent reaction. But she assured him that while nudity in Tahiti, Provence, or any other place she had no chance of visiting was art, nudity on Bustleton Avenue was filth. He found little comfort in her philosophy; Robert’s life at home now became unbearable, a series of physical embarrassments, and life at school was not much better, as he was born with a fertile imagination. Very quickly he came to the conclusion that what he needed was a real live girl.
Pretty much any attractive live girl would do. They had wanted him before, back when the classroom had been coed, so surely he could land one now. He settled on Margie Cohen, the same girl he’d slobbered over during seventh-grade recess. He had a history with her and, best of all, she waited with him most mornings to get the bus. The Cohen girls were known in the neighborhood to be smart, like the Vishniak boys. Margie attended Girls’ High, as her sister had several years before. She was a tall, talkative girl, with pale brown hair, wide-set brown eyes, and long legs. And she lived on Knorr Street, just a few blocks away, which made her a convenient choice.
Robert formulated a plan. After school three days a week he went to work at Shop N’ Bag, where, as he often remarked to Barry, his job focused on the “bag” part of the equation. But on the other two days he generally got home at three fifteen, and Stacia did not return until around four. He would try to get Margie to his house on one of his free afternoons and see what could be done.
On the morning that he was to ask her, he stood in front of the only mirror in the house, which was on the medicine cabinet above the bathroom sink. Due to the close proximity of the topless woman, hung on the wall to the right of the toilet, he had barely bothered to look at anything else in that room, and even now it was difficult to look away from her. She stared at him, half smiling, as if she knew him well. But he managed, for a moment, to break away and look at himself in the mirror. He brushed his hair with a wide wooden brush of hard bristles and noticed the dark hairs on his upper lip and around his jaw. He would be shaving soon, perhaps should be shaving already. His body had filled out, was less of an outline now, and his shoulders were getting broader; his mother had complained recently that he was growing out of his shirts too quickly. His nose was longish and leaned slightly to the left—it was as if one day he had a small, childish button nose and the next, this one, a man’s nose (though actually it was remarkably similar to his mother’s). He did not mind. On the contrary, the nose made him feel mature and worldly, like a prizefighter, and it kept his face from a certain kind of prettiness—the fullish lips did not help, nor the dimple on his chin and cheek—and prettiness would have been death in his neighborhood. He tilted his head and looked up into his nostrils, made sure both the airways were clean, nothing hanging out, and then he brushed his teeth and left for school.
It was Tuesday morning, and the bus arrived as always at seven fifteen. The aisles were already packed with men holding thermoses or paper bags with their lunches inside and women of all ages—cleaning women and clerks, salesgirls and the occasional teacher —nodding off every few minutes in their seats, or standing and clutching at the handles above them as if for life itself. With some clever maneuvering he found himself pressed closely against Margie, willing himself not to think of the painting in the bathroom, or any picture in his mother’s house. He did not whisper compliments in her ear—Steve McQueen didn’t utter complime
nts, yet he got women. Instead he told her, his voice forceful and dramatic, that he needed her to come over after school, it was just that simple, he could not live without seeing her.
Margie looked up carefully, as if examining his face and intentions under a microscope. His black-brown eyes, staring back at her, were so dark that iris and pupil were almost one, the expression intense and unreadable, almost angry, and then his eyes suddenly softened and filled with longing. Variations of that look, and its pleading vulnerability—the vulnerability of a boy whose own mother had so often ignored him, leaving him to beg for love elsewhere—had drawn women to him, starting in Cece’s house, where aunts and cousins first took him on their lap, kissing him and hugging him as he nestled into pillowy laps of generous thighs and large breasts. He could feel the echoes of those sensations now, albeit in a more dangerous form, could still be that boy without even trying. The paintings in his mother’s house had only awakened him to what he always knew, even as a child, and knew now with the force of revelation: he loved women. Loved how they smelled, and the rhythm of their walk, and how their voices could go very high while laughing in surprise or making an emphatic point, and then transition effortlessly to a thrillingly low whisper. He loved all their mysterious secrets yet to be discovered, and having been introduced to those pictures on Stacia’s walls, he loved the curves of their naked bodies, though he hadn’t so much as touched one. And in return they would love him back, as they always had, because he needed them to so much.
Margie finally agreed, yes, she would come to his house after school, but then she turned away, either to look out a window or to contemplate other options, and when she turned back her expression was all business. She had questions: Could she use his phone? Would he help her with the paper she had to write on Great Expectations? Would there be cake?
There was hardly time on the ride to answer everything but he was persistent, talked fast, slipping his hand around her waist, lapping at her earlobe with his tongue. “Stop it,” she said, giggling. “You’re making me think of Ruff, our dog.” She paused. “He died last year. I opened the door for Grammy and he ran into the street and got hit by a car. Isn’t that sad?”
He nodded.
In homeroom at 8:00 a.m. he wondered how on earth he’d ever make it through the next seven hours. All day—through his test in pre-Algebra, then a salami sandwich he had no hunger for at lunch, and a game of volleyball in gym where, distracted, he’d gotten hit on the head with an oncoming ball—he could think of nothing but the bell signaling last period was over. He had a secret and this, too, was an aphrodisiac—what wasn’t?
On the way from the bus stop to his house, Margie raced to keep up with him. “Could you slow down just a little? You know my mother doesn’t let me go to boys’ houses when no one’s home, but since I’ve known you all my life, I mean —” She paused to catch her breath. They were almost at the door. “Anyway, you’re not like that, I mean, is there anything to eat?”
He took her into her mother’s kitchen and brought out various ingredients for a sandwich. “Why don’t you make us each one?” he asked her.
She obliged, finding it not in the least bit strange that she, a guest in his house, would be asked to make her own food. No one’s father or brother in any house she knew of actually made his own sandwich, or even toasted his own bread. She stood at the counter, smearing mustard on the rye. He came up behind her, cautious at first, and then he moved aside her mane of thick brown hair and put his lips to her neck. She giggled, as if ticklish, and then he moved his hands slowly around her waist, holding her from behind. His hands moved under her shirt, touching her stomach, as his erection pressed against her low back. She turned around, confused, and he kissed her. It was an awkward kiss, slobbery, not much different from the one she might have received from Ruff before his untimely demise. Robert was not thinking of romance, or a long, languid buildup; he simply wanted to get her upstairs and undressed as quickly as possible. It was already three thirty. But as he tried to unhook her bra, she told him to stop.
“We can’t do this unless you promise to be my boyfriend,” she said. “And only look at me, and not at other girls. And not go all the way.”
These promises he made, quickly, telling her to bring her sandwich with her—no, he replied, he wasn’t hungry—as he pulled her toward the second floor. She was still chewing when he took the plate from her hand, put it on his desk, and shut the door. He shut it hard, as necessity dictated. If shut with enough force, the door would stick, supplying several necessary seconds of warning. He moved quickly toward her. Using both trembling hands to unbutton her blouse, he reached inside and touched the thick cotton of her training bra. He couldn’t get the thing unhooked and had to ask her to take off her own underwear. It was a torturous conflict, his desire to stand back and look—to take in what was his first, full-fledged topless girl, the real thing, with a kidney-shaped birthmark by her collarbone and tiny breasts with pink, budlike nipples—and his need to move the process along. They had ten minutes left. She refused to take off her skirt, and when he tried, she shook her head.
“Come on,” he said, his eyes on the clock, “just down to your panties,” and without waiting for her to comply, he pulled up her skirt and began to tug at her stockings. He could not be doing anything so wrong, he told himself, because she kept interrupting him to demand kisses. But as he pulled down her underwear, she reminded him of his promise.
“Just for a minute,” he breathed in her ear. “I’ll be careful. I promise.” But she was a woman of her word, and she pushed his hand away, then stood up and began to put her clothes on. “Remember your promise,” she said, pulling up her pantyhose —which her mother, she informed him, had only recently allowed her to wear to school—and then quickly fastening her bra. “I have lots of friends I’m going to tell now.”
“About what exactly?” he asked.
“That we’re going out,” she said, pulling a sweater over her head, her face emerging a moment later. “We’re a couple now.”
“We are?”
“We are,” she said triumphantly, and pushed past him. She was remarkably strong, able to pry the door away with both hands after only two tries, and then she was gone.
It took two more Tuesdays until he finally lost his virginity, at three forty-three. It was she, strangely enough, who after endless mornings of ignoring his begging and pleading at the bus stop, led him upstairs, took off her clothing, eyes downcast, and stood before him, naked, biting her lower lip.
“If I give you what you want,” she said, “you have to promise that you love me.”
What a strange manual she was working from. She assigned him oaths, and he mumbled them mechanically, hardly aware of words as more than sounds repeating. Where did this knowledge come from? Certainly not experience. She was remarkably practical about the whole thing, too, as when she requested a towel, informing him there’d be blood.
“Blood?”
“Mine,” she said, fear creeping into her tone. He went to the linen closet to find a towel. Rushing back, he was out of his clothing in seconds. He kissed her, his hand traveling down her soft flesh, his fingers clumsily stroking her thighs until she laughed and told him she was ticklish. “Don’t touch me there,” she said. “Just do it now if you want to.”
“Really?” he asked. He understood vaguely the concept of foreplay, though not, logically, how any man actually put it into practice, particularly a man whose mother was expected home in seventeen minutes. Not that he needed more than two. And then it was over. He unloaded the burden of his virginity all over her pale, white belly and lay next to her, breathless and exalted.
“Kiss me,” she said, “on the lips.” He did so gladly, for he was feeling a combination of gratitude and warmth toward her that surely could be called love. But love, as Margie had warned, was a wet and bloody mess. They snuck the towel out in her book bag and buried it in a neighbor’s trash can, hoping that his mother would not come looking for it
.
The next time they did it, she had somehow acquired a condom. “My sister mailed it to me,” she informed him.
Robert heard her as if from very far away. He was racing to get his own clothes off as she got under the covers of his single bed. “Draw the shades. There’s too much light,” she said.
He did as she asked and got quickly into his childhood bed, drawing Margie’s body close to his. But when he touched her small breasts, took her tiny nipple gently in his mouth, she began to ask questions about the poster of the Brooklyn Bridge that hung over the bed. He stroked her inner thighs with his fingertips, and she talked about a trip she’d taken with her mother to visit an aunt once, in New York. He placed a finger between her legs, exploring the area, as she talked about Barnard College, and a girl her sister knew who went there, whose parents let her live in an apartment. Nothing he did got her attention, until he had no choice but to do as she urged and oblige himself quickly. During the act itself, she was silent. All she asked of him was the kiss, afterward, on the lips, and that was the only part she approached with any relish. Then she got dressed.
The news that Robert and Margie were officially “going together” spread to every girl, boy, and adult in the neighborhood. Even girls he’d never seen before, Margie’s friends from Girls’ High or her ballet lessons, girls from as far away as Welsh Road, so many he couldn’t even keep track, stopped to talk to him on the street, knowing his name. Had they all moved in while he sat in all-male classes, did his homework, and worked at the Shop N’ Bag? Had he just not been watching carefully enough? When they spoke they ran their fingers through their hair, and touched their necks, pulling seductively at their clothing, until he could barely stand it. More than a few offered him their numbers, but now he was roped in, he belonged to someone, and he could only contemplate those other girls in his imagination. It was his own fault; he had made a promise.
Rich Boy Page 3
