Lullaby for the Rain Girl

by Christopher Conlon

  “You look sweet. Sweet and innocent.”

  “I was. But not for much longer. That was the time I knew I was going to have to get out of there eventually.”

  It was growing late: the sky’s blue was darkening, the shadows creeping slowly across us.

  “I needed cities,” she said suddenly, passionately. “I needed people. Music. Art. Poetry. Restaurants. The first thing I did when I left a couple of years later was go to Fargo. I look back on it now, that place seems—sort of unsophisticated, you know? But it was a city. There were clubs where bands played. Even hardcore punk bands, if you knew where to look. Real bookstores and real record stores. I worked in Fargo as a waitress for a while.”

  “What made you leave?”

  “The winter,” she said. “The fucking snow. I’d lived with that too long. I decided I wanted to go somewhere it would never, ever fucking snow. My dad died in the middle of winter. He died on a gray day at the end of January with the snow pouring down outside.” She shook her head. “It poured for days. It didn’t stop for him, for his dying. It just kept dropping down. I hated it.” She brightened suddenly. “I’d been sending my little movie stories to Hollywood, so I thought, What the hell, I’ll go there, where the sun never stops shining.”

  I touched her hand. “I’m glad,” I said, “that you didn’t quite make it.”

  “Well, I might still. Just to go to the clubs on the Sunset Strip. Want to come with me?”

  “I want to go anywhere you’re going.”

  She looked at me. “Aw, shit, Benja-me-me.” She leaned over and kissed my temple. “So do I. With you.”

  7

  Those weeks, that summer: in memory they stand luminous, multi-hued, bright as High Plains sunflowers or the Santa Barbara sky. Rachel bowed to the inevitable and got a job—at the same restaurant where I worked, in fact, which made the days fly by; I would never have imagined that waiting on tables could be fun, but it was with her there, both of us in our employee uniforms, passing each other in the kitchen, sharing a quick kiss or grope by the condiment station. After a few days it became evident she was actually better at the job than I was; I was amazed to see how she could pour on the charm with customers, especially male ones. She certainly got better tips than I did.

  “It helps,” she said sardonically, “to be a cute girl.”

  And at work she was cute, in some odd, off-kilter sort of way. She could even turn her mistakes to her advantage. More than once I saw her roll her eyes prettily when someone complained about something she’d forgotten to do—roll her eyes and then hit herself playfully on the temple with the heel of her hand, as if to say, “Gosh, I’m so dumb!” The self-deprecating humor worked. And she could be funny in other ways, as when I passed her with a tray of food while she was taking an order from an elderly gentleman.

  “What do you recommend?” he asked her.

  “Going to another restaurant,” she deadpanned.

  It cracked him up.

  More often than not we had the same schedule, or close to it, so we would walk to work together in the morning and leave together in the afternoon. We’d wander the downtown area or go to the beach or just head home, shower together, have sex, scrounge something from the kitchen for dinner, eat, have sex again. On the odd occasion she had to get to work before me, I’d invariably find Post-It Notes—which were new then—stuck in various places around the apartment, covered with her childish scrawl: “Need toothpaste!” with a blue heart drawn beneath it, or “Pay the rent, Sexy Hippie Boy!”—or just, “I Love You, Benja-me-me!!!”

  We got rid of Peter’s empty file cabinet (“Fuck him,” Rachel said, “I don’t care if he does try to come back for it”) and emptied out what had been their room. The video camera we moved to our bedroom. It didn’t take long for Rachel to make a mischievous suggestion involving it—such were the days of early video cameras. (I wonder how many were purchased more or less for the exclusive purpose of recording their owners fucking.) Anyway, after some initial nervousness—she wasn’t nervous, I noticed; she must have done this with Peter all the time—we began to enjoy making our homemade sex videos together, always taping over each recording with our next session so it was just the one tape, not, God forbid, a homemade porn library. Though Rachel seemed to enjoy watching them afterwards, I was too embarrassed to look for long. Still, there was something about having that voyeuristic eye staring at us dispassionately as we went at it that was an aphrodisiac in itself.

  “Just think, Benja-me-me,” she said one afternoon, the camera on us. “Someday when we’re old and gray we can look back and see the way we were.”

  “Won’t that just depress us?” I asked.

  “It’ll inspire us!”

  It was an odd thought—an older self looking at the intimate activities of his younger counterpart. I wondered what that would feel like. Would it seem that I was looking at myself, at me, or would I feel such distance from that long-haired boy in the video that he would feel completely separate, a stranger? Were we one “self” throughout life, or many? What would an older model of me think of the Benjamin Fall I was now?

  Rachel and I wrote together, too—not collaboratively, but lying on the sofa or in bed together, me with my writing pad and pencil, she with her spiral-bound notebook and pen. It was an exhilarating feeling—an intimate one. I’d never imagined that I could write much of anything with another person in the room; I certainly never could have with Sherry. But with Rachel it was different. We could lay around for hours, generally with nothing on, each of us scribbling away. I was very aware that she was far ahead of me artistically, but the fact was that neither of us had published anything, so in that sense we were in the same boat. And we were both fiercely devoted to the process.

  It’s true that, as enveloped as we were in each other, Sherry and Peter had not vanished utterly from either of our minds. More than once I would wake in the middle of the night to feel the bed shaking and to hear Rachel’s soft weeping next to me in the darkness. I didn’t cry much myself, but there were times I woke in the morning and reached over, instinctively expecting to touch Sherry, expecting her wildly streaming hair, her soft and pliable and familiar body—after all, I was still sleeping in the same room, same bed—only to be shocked at the small, hard shoulder I found under my palm and the small, hard body I discovered next to me. It would take me only an instant to right myself, to regain my equilibrium, but in that instant a cold shrieking wind seemed to pass through me, a wind that somehow said, This cannot be—an instant in which I desired nothing more than to find Sherry O’Shea there with me again, to rediscover that everything had gone back to the way it had been, that nothing had changed in my life or ever would.

  News of Sherry and Peter eventually came through Alice, who called one evening.

  “Ben?” she said. “What happened?”

  “With what?”

  “Don’t give me ‘with what’? With Sherry. I just talked to Mrs. O’Shea. She says Sherry’s somewhere in the Southwest, traveling with some guy. Some guy who is not you.”

  “We broke up,” I said simply.

  “Wow. For good?”

  “I think so.”

  “I always liked Sherry.”

  “So did I.”

  “Mrs. O’Shea says she’s talking about coming back home and then maybe going to San Francisco State in the fall.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Gosh, I’m awfully sorry to hear about this, little brother. Are you okay there, all by yourself?”

  “I’m okay,” I said. “I got a new roommate.”

  “Well, that’s good. Does he pay his share of the rent?”

  I don’t know what it was, but something in me wanted to keep Rachel absolutely private. I didn’t want Alice to know, or Dad, or anybody. So I didn’t correct her.

  “Yep,” I said, “the rent gets paid.”

  “Has Dad told you that we’re moving?”

  That took me aback. “No. Moving? No. I haven�
�t talked to him in months.”

  “We are. He’s sold the house.”

  “Moving? Sis, where? Why?”

  “His job has transferred him to Washington. Washington, D.C. Well, they didn’t transfer him. They offered him the possibility of a job there. He’s decided to take it.”

  “Jesus Christ. The house is sold?”

  “They haven’t closed on it yet, but yeah, they made an offer.”

  “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe nobody told me.”

  “I’m sorry, Ben. I’ve been busy.”

  “I guess so. What are you going to do?”

  “Me? I’m going along.”

  “To Washington, D.C.? Why?”

  “Look, I was already considering George Mason as one university I might transfer to. George Washington is good, too. They’re both in D.C. It makes sense for me. And I don’t want to leave him alone. It wouldn’t be good for him.”

  “Alice—”

  “I know what you’re going to say. Don’t, okay?”

  I fell silent. First Sherry. Now what remained of my family. All gone.

  “Ben? Are you there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “You’re not crying, are you, Ben?”

  “No. I’m not crying.”

  # # #

  One night in bed, curled up under my arm, Rachel asked, “Do you miss her?” “No,” I said.

  She looked at me. “Are you sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure.”

  She looked dubious. “Not at all? Ever?”

  “Well, what about you? And Peter?”

  She buried her face against my chest. “A little bit. Sometimes.”

  The words hurt me, even though I knew they were the only possible honest answer.

  After a long time I admitted, “I miss Sherry a little bit too. Sometimes.”

  “Sex is better with you, though, Benja-me-me.” She smiled.

  “Is it?”

  “Yeah. Definitely. Peter’s a bigger guy than you—” she touched my crotch gently—“but not where it counts.”

  “I thought size didn’t matter.”

  “Ha! Propaganda to make little guys feel better. No, that’s not really what I mean, though. It’s—I don’t know. You love me. Don’t you?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Peter didn’t. Not really.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “But I think that’s the difference. You love me. We love each other.”

  “Sherry loved me,” I said.

  “Was she better in bed than I am?”

  “No,” I said, honestly.

  She chuckled. “We’ve got this fucking thing down pretty good, don’t we?”

  “Very good.”

  “I mean, Jesus Christ. We’re intense.”

  “We are.”

  “Has it ever been like this for you?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither.” She kissed my chest. “I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  “Love me more.”

  “You want to fuck again? I’m still worn out from last time.”

  “No. I didn’t say fuck me more. I said love me more.”

  “I love you as much as I can love you. More than I’ve loved anybody. Ever.” And yet as I said it, I wasn’t sure that it was true. How could I compare this abrupt explosion of a relationship with the years and years with Sherry? They weren’t the same thing.

  “Is that true?”

  “Of course it’s true.”

  I was surprised to see that she’d begun to cry, softly. Her tears moistened my chest.

  “I love you,” she said, “I swear to God, I do, Ben. Benjamin. Benja-me-me.”

  “Well, I love you too.”

  “Please don’t stop. Please don’t stop loving me. Whatever happens. Love me forever. Promise you’ll love me forever. Please.”

  “Hey, what is this? Rachel? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong.” She shook her head, smiled shakily. “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “Well, I’ll love you forever.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “You promise?”

  “Yes.”

  She hugged me, clinging tightly, pushing herself against me. “I promise I’ll love you forever, too. Forever and ever.” But she did not stop crying.

  # # #

  “Have I ever told you,” she said one night, “about my sister?”

  I drew my eyes away from the paper on which I was scribbling part of a story and looked at her. “Your sister? You said you were an only child. You have a sister?”

  “Had.”

  “She died?”

  “As an newborn,” she said, tracing the hairs on my chest with her finger. “She didn’t even live a day. She was older than me, so I never knew her. She was born years before I was.”

  “What did she die of?”

  “I’m not sure I know exactly,” she said. “Dad said she was born prematurely and was taken out of the incubator too soon. But who knows.”

  “That’s sad. I’m sorry.”

  “Back in Harman I have a safety deposit box,” she said reflectively. “In the bank there. Not much in it. Just Dad’s life insurance papers, some other legal shit. But I have a few things connected to her. I have her birth certificate with her little footprints on it. And a death certificate. And a photo.”

  “Well, it’s nice,” I ventured, “that you have a photo.”

  “It’s a photo of her in her coffin.”

  “Oh.”

  “Before they cremated her. It always made me angry that they didn’t put up a marker. There’s no headstone or anything. I don’t know what they did with the ashes. They never told me. I’ve always been sad that I could never find her. I used to walk out into the fields at night and imagine that I would discover her out there, a ghost, and that we’d run around and play together. She’d be like my secret friend.”

  “There were no records?” I asked. “In your dad’s things?”

  “Only what I mentioned,” she said. “No record of the disposal of the ashes. So it’s like...she could be anywhere, you know?”

  “I’m sorry, Rachel.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. Want to know my sister’s name?”

  “Sure.”

  “Her name was Rachel Lynn Blackburn.”

  I looked at her. “Are you kidding?”

  She shook her head. “If we were in Harman I could show you the birth certificate.”

  “Your parents gave you the same name as your dead sister?”

  “Yep.”

  “Wow. That’s...I don’t know if it’s touching or ghoulish.”

  “A little of both, maybe.”

  “It must be...weird.”

  “I don’t think about it much,” she said. “Sometimes. Sometimes it feels like I’m living her life for her, you know? Like it’s really her life I’m living.”

  I held her. “I’m glad you’re here, anyway,” I said, attempting a smile, “whoever you are.”

  “I’ve been writing something about her,” she said, turning over to the little table next to the bed and taking up her notebook. “Want to see it?”

  “Sure. If you want to show it to me.”

  She rifled through the chaos of papers sticking this way and that out of the book until she came to the sheets she was looking for.

  “It’s a little rough,” she said, handing me the papers. “I’ll take a shower while you read it.” She got up and padded to the bathroom. In a moment I heard the water running.

  I began to read.

  “What There Is”

  by Rachel Lynn Blackburn

  What there is

  is three pieces of paper:

  certificate of birth, 8:19 a.m.,

  second Tuesday in July;

  and of death, 4:23 p.m.,

  same day, “9 hours” typed

  antiseptically under Length of Stay

  in This City
or Town;

  and the third—

  head and two hands

  engulfed in waves of

  Kodak satin

  in a coffin smaller

  than any coffin should be.

  I speak to her sometimes,

  this little big sister—parents

  dead now too, and buried and burned

  with them answers, or what we take

  for answers. At times

  I dream I find her grave open

  in moonlight, her powdery bones

  left to splinter and crumble

  in spitting rain. At times

  I dream I hold her in my arms,

  still a baby, but my arms are air,

  as they are also when I’m awake.

  I speak to her sometimes

  to fill the hole that is my life,

  yet in speaking the hole

  only widens. O Rachel,

  O paper, ink, and footprints,

  what there is for me

  of love, what is it

  I so need to tell you?

  There’s nothing to say, and no one

  to say it to, and yet there is

  this need, this wild hunger raging

  in the place my heart should be,

  to tell you, to say it,

  to let you know.

  When I looked up, having read it through several times, I was surprised to see that she was out of the shower already, toweling off her hair in the doorway and looking at me.

  “Bad?” she said.

  “Good,” I said. “More than good.”

  “Aw.” She bounded over suddenly and leapt onto the bed. “You wouldn’t think that if I didn’t fuck you so well.”

  “Yes, I would.” I studied the pages. “It must have been—hard. To write.”

  “Hard?” She shook her head vehemently. “The hard part was living it, Benja-me-me. Writing it was easy. My writing is only good when it’s easy. It just sort of came out of me,” she said, “like diarrhea.” She took the pages from me and looked at them. “So just remember, the next time we have sex, that you’re sort of fucking a dead girl too.”