Since You Ask

by Louise Wareham

  I wouldn’t look at him.

  ‘You can’t do that, Betsy. You can’t just not say anything … So I fucked up. Did I fuck up? What did I say? What did I do?’

  ‘I can’t say.’

  ‘Yes, you can.’

  ‘If you don’t know…’

  ‘That’s bullshit. That is fucking bullshit.’

  I stopped and turned to him. He was so upset. He couldn’t be bad, could he, if he were that upset?

  ‘Okay,’ I said, looking up the street, at the patch of blue sky over the reservoir. ‘It’s okay. It’s all right.’

  The fact is, I was disgusted.

  ‘Disgusted?’ repeats Dr. Keats in his office.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s a strong word.’

  I shrug. ‘It felt the same,’ I tell him.

  ‘The same as—?’

  ‘As it did with Ray.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘ The way of the wicked is dark and deep,’ I cite from the Bible again.

  Keats raises his eyebrows. ‘You’re not wicked.’

  ‘We all are, don’t you think?’

  ‘What do you have after lunch?’ Keats asks.

  ‘Rec. Then Group.’

  We didn’t do anything again, after that. Or we did the usual, lying around in the park, sitting on the stoop with his friends, Beck picking me up and swinging me around upside down so coins fell from my pockets.

  Then Seth got a new car, shiny white with a gray modular interior. He wanted me to sit up front with him, but Beck wouldn’t let me. He’s rough with the ladies,’ Beck whispered. ‘Do you know what that means?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Either you do or you don’t.’

  We went out to Queens one Saturday. I called Sylvia but she wouldn’t come. ‘No way,’ she said. ‘Call me later.’ It was gray out, all the houses small and brick and in rows, plastic chairs on the porches. We pulled up outside a red brick house, a scraggly tree in the yard and cigarette butts in the grass.

  Beck had the keys. Inside it was dusty and damp. Dust lay on the shiny wood floor, and the couches looked like furniture put out on the street. Beck brought in a case of beer from the car.

  ‘Whose place is this?’ I asked, standing in the kitchen.

  ‘My dad’s.’

  ‘Your dad’s?’

  ‘He rents it out.’

  He put the beer in the fridge. A packet of duck sauce had leaked onto the bottom. Tommy turned on an old television, on the floor against the wall. ‘What happened to the fucking table?’ he asked Seth.

  ‘How do I know?’

  ‘Fucking useless.’ Tommy raised his eyebrows at me. He looked handsome sometimes. I liked his wavy hair and his eyes.

  On the television, a talk show was on. ‘I hate that shit,’ Beck said. Tommy turned the sound off, taking a pipe from his jacket and sitting on a long couch the color of lavender. He unwrapped some tin foil. Inside was a square block, dry and brown like stale chocolate. He squeezed a piece into his pipe and winked at me.

  ‘Want some?’ he asked, lighting it. The smoke smelled sweet.

  ‘Hey,’ Beck said, stepping out of the kitchen. ‘Don’t fucking give her that.’

  All right,’ Tommy said. ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Fucking prick,’ Beck said. He went out to the car, shaking his head. When he came back, he had a bottle of vodka in his hand. He swung it by the mouth, between his fingers. He was so beautiful, I thought, in his navy blue sweater, frayed at the cuffs. ‘All right, all right, give me that,’ he said to Tommy and sat on the couch. He wouldn’t let me have any though. He poured me vodka in a coffee mug.

  I didn’t know what time it was after a while. The room was smoky the curtains thin and gray like shirts wet from washing. I had stretched out on the couch and Beck opened his eyes. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Okay.’ His legs on mine lay hot as a cat.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He picked up his beer bottle from the floor. Seth and Tommy were watching Jackie Chan, Tommy leaning back on his elbows, Seth cross-legged, ashtrays and beer bottles and packets of cigarettes between them. Beck undid a button on my shirt. It was a nice shirt, white with buttons like small pearls. I had bought it in England. ‘Beck.’

  ‘Yes?’

  He moved his hand between my legs, touching me, so I smiled. He started kissing me, the kind of kissing you do when you have drunk too much so everything disappears. ‘Beck,’ I warned, the couch scratching my skin. ‘Beck.’ Then he came inside me. It hurt me for just a moment and then it was practically over.

  Beck groaned, and it was a groan so obvious, Tommy and Seth started laughing. I pulled my body from under him. My foot knocked over an ashtray.

  Outside, the fresh air made me dizzy.

  I wanted to go home, to start walking and not look back. Where was I, though? And I hadn’t brought my jacket, my money.

  ‘Betsy,’ Beck called, coming out onto the grass.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ’Nothing.’

  The sun was pale and hazy.

  ‘You’re just gonna wander around?’

  I hated him then: his beautiful face, his cropped hair and bruised mouth and green fatigue pants.

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘Christ, Christ, Betsy. I’m sorry. It just happened.’

  I started crying. I never did anything right.

  ‘Don’t get crazy,’ he warned.

  ‘I’d like to go home.’

  He swung his foot back and forth, scraping his clean white sneaker against the curb.

  ‘All right,’ he said, and turned back to the house. ‘All right. I’ll get the guys.’

  Eric had been in The Cherry Orchard and The Glass Menagerie and now he was Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I sat in the school theater and watched him rehearse, and he wasn’t the way he was at home at all. He had all this energy. He laughed and moved around and talked to people. He was interested, the way he never was with me.

  I walked down Third Avenue so I wouldn’t run into Beck. I lay on my bed and watched the lights go on in the rooms in the brownstones across the street. The doorbell rang and my mother called up to me.

  ‘Yes?’ I could see her face, looking up at me from the ground floor.

  ‘There’s someone outside for you.’

  “Who?’

  ‘That Beck boy.’

  ‘Can you tell him I don’t want to see him?’

  She said no. She said I wasn’t to hide from anyone and if I didn’t want to see him, I should tell him. I pulled on my boots and coat. ‘Just tell him you’re busy,’ she called as I passed the kitchen, its dim reddish-yellow light and the smell of roast chicken.

  Outside, it was cold. His face was washed out in the overhead light.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked, all cool the way my mother could be sometimes.

  ‘You weren’t at school.’ I held the door open, just slightly leaning on it with my back. ‘Can’t you come out?’

  ‘No.’

  He pulled my hand so I tilted forward slightly; the door shut behind me and he smiled, one of his smiles that changed his whole face, so I felt bad suddenly—him coming to see me and me just wanting to be rid of him.

  It was dark, early in December, and already night. I kept my hands in my coat so he couldn’t touch them. We crossed 64th Street into the park. A hot dog vendor was packing up his cart. A man in a double-breasted coat went up the stairs and smiled at me. We were near the zoo.

  ‘Come on, Betsy,’ Beck said. ‘What is it? It’s sex, right? You’re upset about that.’

  ‘Shouldn’t I be?’

  ‘I don’t need sex from you. I can get that anywhere.’

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘Sure.’

  I stepped toward him. ‘From who? Sharon?’

  He shrugged. There was a warm smell, of animals and dirt.

  ‘You shouldn’t have done th
at,’ I said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Right in front of your friends.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Did you go out with Sharon?’

  ‘Once or twice.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Don’t be jealous.’

  ‘Why not?’

  He put his hands on my shoulders, glancing around as if someone might hear him.

  “Cause I’m like—Betsy I’m like sick from you.’

  I looked away. ‘You are not.’

  ‘I can’t fucking sleep for thinking of you. I told my mother about you. My fucking mother, Betsy.’

  I smiled.

  ‘I don’t want to say that word, Betsy ‘cause it’s the word I said when I was eight.’

  ‘What word?’

  He moved his face right close to mine. He was close enough to kiss me. ‘I love you.’ He put a fist to his chest. ‘Right in here, Betsy right in here.’

  He gave me the pill. I don’t know where he got it, but it was a year’s supply a plastic canister and twelve packages. Sylvia laughed at me and said pills expired, pills were different for different people. We went down to Planned Parenthood and got new prescriptions.

  At Christmas, Beck gave me a pair of earrings. Because they were diamonds, Dad said he wanted to meet Beck. ‘Fuck,’ Beck said, sitting on the bench at the playground, rubbing his almost-shaved head. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’

  ‘He’s nice. You’ll like him.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because, Betsy parents hate me.’

  He came over after school, but my father was late. In the kitchen, my mother poured him a glass of orange juice and he moved his weight from foot to foot. He called my mother ‘ma’am.’ He said, ‘Yes, ma’am,’ and, ‘No, ma’am,’ and, ‘Ma’am, you have a beautiful daughter—and I can certainly see why if you don’t mind me saying.’

  ‘Not at all,’ my mother said.

  When Dad got home, we went into the living room. Beck and I were on the couch and Dad stayed at the fireplace, warming his hands behind his back. ‘How old are you, Beck?’ my father asked. His tie shone with flecks of silver, like flints.

  ‘Twenty, sir.’

  ‘Betsy is a little young to be getting diamonds.’

  ‘Sir?’

  I hated the way Beck said Sir.

  ‘She’s sixteen. She’s in high school—as I’m sure you know—and we don’t believe a girl her age should be wearing diamonds.’ Beck didn’t know what he was talking about. I didn’t either, really, to tell the truth. ‘I also understand that you met Betsy on the street.’

  ‘Yes, sir, I did.’

  ‘I’d rather you call the house in the future—if you want to see her.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Also—and this is no offense to you, of course—but Betsy knows we don’t like guests in the house when we’re not here—Betsy’s mother and I. You understand that, don’t you, Betsy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  His cuff links were pale gray cotton knots. He had a set in navy also, and in pink.

  ‘That’s a lot of money for a boy in school to spend.’

  ‘Not so much.’

  ‘Perhaps you make more money than I do.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  My father laughed. ‘It seems like a lot of money to me.’

  ‘Not so much.’

  ‘Are you still in school?’

  ‘No, sir. I mean, I’m just about finished, sir. Hawthorne, upstate.’

  ‘So you have a job?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Sometimes.’ My father laughed again. He took his hands from behind his back.

  ‘Well, that’s a good job.’

  My father had wanted to be a judge, until Raymond was arrested. After all the publicity though, he changed his mind. People came to Antigua on business or on charter yachts, and Dad invited them up to the house for cocktails and seared fish, fruit with brandy on the porch. They came by themselves or with their business partners or wives and children. They talked to Dad about Chicago and London and New York, and sometimes they offered him jobs, the last of which he took.

  From the day he met him, Beck did what my father told him. He called from the street and from Grand Central and from his mother’s at night. He took the telephone into the hallway outside the apartment, so his mother couldn’t hear. I met him at the schoolyard or at Houghton, and other times he sent Tommy to pick me up. Tommy had a new girlfriend who was twenty-eight and lived in Queens and had an eight-year-old son. Her name was Deborah, Tommy said, pronouncing this ‘Deb-OR-a.’ He walked me downtown, or sometimes just to Seth’s car, opening the door for me, closing it like a chauffeur, and singing, ‘She’s a rich girl, and she’s going too far’ so he and Seth started laughing.

  I didn’t want to go to Queens again. ‘It’s all right,’ Beck said, putting his arm around me in the car. He was wearing his winter peacoat, too short at the sleeves when he raised his arms. ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘She should fucking worry,’ Tommy said, so Beck pushed at his head from behind.

  It had rained all morning: a cold drizzling rain turning the tree in the yard black. Seth plugged in a space heater that smelled of burning dust. In the kitchen, we had vodka in plastic cups, the ice cubes from the fridge grainy.

  Beck put his finger in a loop of my cords. ‘You should wear skirts.’

  ‘Should I?’

  ‘Skirts, heels, girly things.’

  I loved his smile. I leaned up and kissed him. ‘Come here.’ He pulled me as Seth and Tommy prepared their hash. The floor was slippery under my socks.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Back here.’

  There was a room next to the bathroom, one I had never seen. In it was a double bed, high off the ground with thin white sheets. At the window was a yellow curtain flapping.

  When he kissed me, I heard rain and distant cars, the curtain flapping and Tommy laughing at the television.

  ‘I want you to meet someone,’ Beck said, lying beside me on the bed, elbow propping up his head.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Remember the guy in the photograph?’

  ‘Your dad?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You want me to meet your dad?”

  ‘Why not?’

  Pale weak light hit the ceiling through the window.

  ‘He lives downtown.’

  PART III

  I sat in the back with Tommy. Beck watched us in the rearview mirror, winking at me. His eyes were the clear light green of water in Antigua. On Mott Street, we walked into a red brick tenement, Beck close behind me, his palm on my back. There was a large wooden table and black folding chairs and two older men playing cards. I could smell beer. At the back of the room was a flight of stairs, unlit, concrete painted with thick gray enamel.

  ‘Beck,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ Everyone paused, stopping and surrounding me at the top of the stairs. On the radio a man and a woman were laughing. ‘We’re just saying hi.’

  We went down the stairs, Beck with his hands on my shoulders.

  ‘Dad,’ he said. There was a man on a black couch, feet up on a coffee table. He was long and thin in the way of people who hardly bother to eat. His pants were black and pressed, his shirt white, his shoes expensive. His shirt was undone at the neck but had gold cuff links. When he looked at us, it was as if he hardly took us in, as if his eyes could hardly be bothered to settle.

  ‘This here is Betsy.’

  ‘Betsy what?’

  ‘Scott.’

  He had a cigarette in his left hand. Behind him were strings of red beads where a door should have been.

  ‘Very pretty.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Nice pants.’

  He had great blue eyes. He tapped his cigarette into an ashtray the kind they sell at dime stores, red plastic with slots. Seth and Tommy moved to the refrigerator, opening bottles of beer.


  ‘Come here,’ Beck said. He took my forearm and sat me down between them.

  Above his jawbone, the man had a slight scar, shiny and raised like a razor blade. He didn’t move at all, not a fraction when I sat, and I got this feeling inside, suddenly that something serious was going to happen, the way when the keel of a boat touches sand, you know you’re going aground. I don’t like spiders and snakes, came into my head, but that ain’t what it takes to love me.

  A drop of sweat ran down my side.

  ‘What do you need?’ the man said.

  ‘Three hundred.’

  He turned his eyes on me. They were deep and almost beautiful, but they didn’t go with the rest of him.

  ‘I want you to talk to Steve.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Soon.’ He flicked ash from his cigarette into the red ashtray. ‘So, where’d you two meet?’

  ‘79th Street,’ I said.

  He laughed. ‘79th Street.’ He circled his wrist so the bones cracked. He had a gold tank watch with gold links. ‘What avenue?’

  ‘Lexington.’

  He stood up. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Dad’ll be right back.’ He went out the door. Beck wiped his forehead on his sleeve.

  ‘That’s not really your dad, is it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why’d you say he was?’

  He put his feet up on the table. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Frank.’

  The place I felt best was in Beck’s room. It was dark. There was hardly any sound. Beck’s body was smooth and also hard. I liked his chest, the hollow at the center and his slow heartbeat. He wrapped his legs around me, his hand on my bare back.

  Beside his bed was a cigar box full of matchbooks and cigarettes, a hash pipe, and his beeper, which he didn’t use. There was a picture of me on the porch of our Antigua house, Stewball moored in the bay. ‘Where’d you get that?’

  ‘Your house.’

  ‘You took it?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He kissed me. His skin was warm and damp.

  ‘That’s your house, right?’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘I’ve never seen a place like that.’

  ‘You should have asked me for it.’

  ‘I know.’

  He went to bars in Queens that he would never take me to. He went dancing, though I could not imagine him dancing. Some days, we’d be at the playground and Seth would drive up, Beck would go and talk to him, and sometimes he’d leave. Then Frank started coming, also. He had a silver Mercedes, which he kept idling at the curb. He smoked a cigarette out the window, sun on his gold link watch. It was like he didn’t even see me, like he was thinking of something else and hardly noticed me. Then I realized that he did see me, he did notice me. He drove up in his car and I could feel him coming—the way you feel weather. I started to look for him—from the bench or the basketball court, or leaning against a car beside Beck.