Since You Ask

by Louise Wareham

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You should wear skirts.’

  ‘That’s what Beck says.’

  ‘Does he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You shouldn’t hang out in Queens.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘First, because you’re too good for Queens. And second, because I own that dump.’

  ‘I thought Beck’s dad owned it.’

  ‘There is no Beck’s dad.’

  ‘Yes there is.’

  ‘Yeah, they met in court, when Beck was nine. He looked at the kid and said, “He’s not my son. ’’Nice dad.’

  ‘I thought the tests said he was.’

  ‘They did.’

  ‘How could he say that, then?’

  ‘The kid’s a bastard—not that that means much now.’ He got up. ‘Talking about Beck, I should check my machine.’

  He took off his sweater. Underneath, he was wearing a white T-shirt. I could see his shoulder blades, long and bony. He cradled the phone on his shoulder, folding his sweater on the countertop.

  ‘May I use the bathroom?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  Again, the towels were fresh and thick and white. The mirror at the sink was lit with round bulbs. I liked my corduroys.

  ‘You all right there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He was leaning against the counter, drinking his wine. The scar above his jaw was shining.

  ‘Beck got held up.’

  ‘He did?’ I took a breath. I wasn’t surprised at all. I would have been surprised if Beck had shown up, if everything had been all right.

  ‘I should go.’

  He held out my glass to me.

  ‘Finish your wine.’

  ‘No, really.’

  ‘Go on.’ What was Beck doing? On the coffee table was the New York Times, unopened.

  ‘I won’t hurt you.’

  ‘No—’

  ‘I like looking at you. I admit that. But there’s nothing wrong with that, is there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you like looking at me?’

  He wasn’t handsome exactly. His hair was almost unnaturally dark, his mouth not thin yet not beautiful, his skin marked from the sun. Still, he bristled with something—not anger but force, some kind of need.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he laughed. ‘You don’t have to say.’

  The wine was dark and heavy. I sat on one couch and he on the other.

  ‘I guess I do,’ I said. He spread his arms out. ‘I mean, I notice you.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Sometimes. At the playground.’ I looked at my glass.

  ‘The thing about you, Betsy—‘

  ‘Yes?’

  He smiled, a small knowing smile. ‘You have this purity.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Yet at the same time, you’re very sexy.’

  I set my glass on the coffee table. I walked over to the window on the Hudson River. The water was icy. The docks were full of snow.

  ‘Old Stewball was a racehorse, and I wish he were mine. He never drank water, he always drank wine. You know that song?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It was the name of our boat, in Antigua. We used to tie up at the docks and the boys on shore would sing it.’

  ‘To you?’ He went to the kitchen and poured himself more wine.

  ‘They were all fishermen’s sons. They’d get salt streaks all along their arms.’

  ‘What made you think of them?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I wish you’d look at me instead of out the window.’

  I turned around. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Come here.’

  I stepped back toward the kitchen. He set down his glass and stepped over to me. He lifted me up, by the waist, onto the kitchen console.

  ‘How old are you, Betsy?’

  ‘Sixteen.’

  I didn’t like his mouth. He had nice eyelashes, though, long and dark.

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Forty-one.’

  He leaned so close to me, grazing my cheekbone with his, his mouth so close I thought he was going to kiss me. I held his shoulders, steadying myself, pulling away.

  ‘You need someone older.’ He was tucking my hair behind my ear. ‘You’re not an easy girl, are you?’

  His hands were on either side of me then, pressed down on the black console so the muscles in his arms tightened. All this energy came to me, like heat or anger—or just the truth of what he wanted. When he kissed me, it was almost a relief, as if the wave I had seen building finally fell. He pulled me to the edge of the console. He moved his hand down my stomach and I moved my hips, ever so slightly to make it easier.

  ‘Lie down with me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just for a minute.’

  He was pressing against me. Then he picked me up and I laughed. Laughing made it seem less real. So did the wine. He carried me back to his bed and lay me down. His room was so quiet. I heard the mantel clock ticking. The light fell in pieces through the curtain. Then I closed my eyes, the way I did with Ray the better to feel him—and to ignore who he was. Frank moved my hand to his penis, but that was too much.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, moving from underneath him.

  ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘I have to go.’

  He pulled me over to him. He moved his tongue into my mouth. It was hard to stop. It was hard when I felt his hands, so smooth and firm on my legs.

  ‘Please,’ I said.

  He lay back and fixed his pants and stared at the ceiling. ‘You’re not a tease are you, Betsy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No one likes a tease.’ He turned his head and lay his eyes on me. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I can wait.’

  Then I didn’t see him. It was Valentine’s Day and Beck showed up at school with a rose. His mother was at home, sick, so we went to the boat pond where we had gone months ago, the day Raymond had left. Now everything was icy but Beck’s mouth and his breath. He blew on my hands, and rubbed them between his, so I moved them under his peacoat and his sweater and T-shirt onto his chest, which was warm and smooth.

  ‘You’re so sweet,’ he said.

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘You are.’

  He was so sure. My stomach felt queasy me with my chin on his shoulder, looking at the white pond. I hoped I never saw Frank again. If I did, I had decided, I wouldn’t speak to him. I wouldn’t speak to him or touch him again ever.

  In Queens, Frank let himself in the front door. ‘Hi, beautiful.’ I wasn’t speaking to him. I got up from the couch and Beck did as well, rubbing his head the way he had taken to doing, half yawning, and then straightening up. Seth and Tommy lit cigarettes.

  ‘There’s something in the car,’ Frank motioned, so Beck went out the front door and this flush went through me, like it did in airports sometimes, when it was too hot and I had to sit down. I went to the bathroom and one of the ceiling bulbs was out. The sliding mirrors were dark and speckled. On the sink was a blue disposable razor.

  ‘Betsy.’ Frank rattled the loose metal doorknob.

  Just like when my father spoke sharply to me, or when the headmaster in grade school called us to attention, I straightened up. I opened the door and Frank closed it behind him. ‘Are you all right?’

  I wasn’t saying anything.

  ‘What is it?’ He took my face in his hands. ‘You don’t look so good.’

  I heard television from the living room. I could smell leather and milky skin lotion.

  ‘Where’s Beck?’ I asked.

  ‘He’ll be back.’ He moved my hair behind my ear the way he had at his loft. ‘Don’t brush me off,’ he said. ‘I don’t deserve that.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Already I was talking to him.

  ‘Darling.’

  His voice was so dark and smooth. It was like night, a flower that opens in the dark.

  His thumb was on the b
utton of my corduroys. He slipped the button through, then moved his hand down. Once he had touched me, naked, inside, I didn’t try anymore. I lay back on the white tiles and he used his tongue on me. Dust drifted like tumbleweed under the door and he made me come. I knew it was coming, for the first time ever, because he told me so.

  Afterwards, in the living room, I couldn’t look at him. He raised his hand at the door, waving goodbye to us all. He shouldn’t have left me there, I thought. What if Beck had guessed? What if he found out? He was staring at me, arms crossed on his white T-shirt, legs spread on the scuffed floor.

  ‘What the fuck was that?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Frank—in the bathroom with you.’

  ‘He came in.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘He said you were using the car.’

  ‘Fucking A.’

  ‘What did Frank have in the car?’ I asked.

  ‘You know why I wouldn’t tell you that?’

  ‘Why?’

  “Cause I care about you.’

  I was scared he would kiss me, Frank still in my mouth.

  ‘Can we leave?’ I asked.

  I felt sick then, sick and afraid at how I was. I spent most of the day sick, so Sylvia frowned at me over chicken a la king in the cafeteria, so Henry asked what was wrong. I couldn’t say though. If I said, they would all tell me, ‘Stay away from Frank, ‘as if I didn’t know that, as if it were easy.

  At night, I lay in bed and the light from the streetlamp made a line across the floor—across the hallway to Raymond’s door, which was shut.

  I remembered the white tiles and the smell of leather and of dust and I wished Frank were there right then. I wished he were outside in a car waiting for me.

  Beck came to school and I told him I was sick and that the next week I had exams. I went to the pay phone by school and stood there, wanting to call Frank. At night, I took the telephone into my room and held his card in my hand, and once I did call but he wasn’t there.

  Then one day I came out of school and they were both there: Frank in his black four-wheel-drive with the front window down, Beck crossing the street to me. ‘Come on,’ he said, nodding to the car, and I shook my head. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I have to study.’

  ‘Now?’

  He took hold of my elbow. Frank tossed his cigarette out the window.

  ‘I have a test.’

  Frank closed his window and started the ignition. Miss Porter came over. Are you all right, Betsy?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  Beck turned up his palms, like he didn’t understand, walking backwards to the car. ‘You sure?’ he asked.

  ‘I can’t. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Do you know those people, Betsy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did someone say something to upset you?’

  ‘No.’

  We watched them drive off.

  ‘What a massive car,’ Miss Porter said.

  Every morning, I woke at seven-thirty. I left the house at eight a.m., stopping for a coffee to go at Eat Here Now. One day I stepped out the door and the sky was the clear clean blue of the blue inside a flame and Frank’s car was there, across the street, and my heart slammed as his car door did when he got out.

  ‘Betsy,’ he said, and I looked back at the house. My parents were inside. ‘Get in the car.’

  ‘No.’

  He took my forearm.

  ‘Just get in.’

  I turned my head from the house, as if my parents might be watching.

  ‘Oh, relax,’ he said once we had reached Park Avenue. It was warm in the car. On the floor was a bag from Starbucks. ‘Have one. Have a hot chocolate. All the girls in France drink hot chocolate.’

  I had been to France.

  ‘What’s going on with you?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You hurt my feelings the other day.’ ‘I did?’

  ‘Ignoring me when I came to your school.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘We had a few moments, Betsy. That’s all. It’s nothing to be scared about.’

  The trees were bare on Park Avenue. I saw a man in a fool’s hat, purple and made of fleece.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t like you,’ Frank said. ‘I do like you, very much. But I told you, I can wait.’

  He glanced at me, eyes heavy as if from sleep or thought, his skin smooth with lotion and his slight scar raised. We stopped at a light and his eyes fell on me with a sort of quiet fullness. He was still, suddenly. He was satisfied. He was not the man in the playground, striding across the pavement for Beck or for Seth, not the man on Mott Street with his legs up on the coffee table. I smiled at him.

  ‘You mean that?’ I asked.

  ‘Sure I do.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  Maybe he did. ‘That’s nice,’ I said.

  ‘I’m nice.’

  Maybe he was. Maybe I shouldn’t be so afraid. Maybe I was afraid not so much of Frank, but of Beck finding out.

  On 90th Street, before we reached my school, he stopped the car.

  ‘It is good hot chocolate,’ I said.

  ‘I thought you’d like it.’

  ‘Thanks for driving me.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ He turned off the radio.

  ‘I like Beck so much.’

  He looked straight ahead, drinking his coffee. ‘I know you do. But you’ll outgrow him.’

  ‘No, I won’t.’

  ‘You already have.’ He turned his face to me. ‘That’s why you’re talking to me.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  He wrapped my hair in his fingers, letting it fall and lifting it again. ‘Then why are you talking to me?’

  ‘You picked me up at my house.’

  ‘It’s a two-way street, Betsy.’

  I felt bad then. I put my hand on the door handle.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I want you to realize for yourself.’

  ‘Realize what?’

  ‘How attracted we are to each other.’

  I was attracted to him: to the wheel whirring beneath his palm, to his body with all this energy to his face hard one minute and open the next.

  ‘You’re not a little girl.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sometimes I think you act that way so you don’t have to make your own decisions.’

  I made decisions—I just didn’t keep them.

  ‘Don’t look that way,’ Frank said. ‘I think you’re more grown up than you let on.’

  Maybe I was.

  ‘You’re playing with Beck.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  Beck thought I was so pure, so untouched. He didn’t know me at all—though that was partly why I liked him, liked the way he saw me, the way he adored me.

  When Frank kissed me, he tasted of coffee and foam. He moved his tongue deep into my mouth and it was impossible, I thought. It would be impossible not to sleep with him.

  Beck asked what we did at Houghton for fun, and I told him we did the usual things: went to movies and parties and plays at school.

  ‘Plays,’ he laughed. ‘We don’t do plays.’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘You’ve seen.’

  ‘Go to Queens?’

  ‘Queens. Brooklyn. Sometimes the island.’

  ‘Do Seth and Tommy work for Frank?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Where did you meet him?’

  ‘He likes you.’

  ‘Who does?’

  ‘Frank—he likes girls.’

  ‘That means he likes me?’

  ‘He wanted to meet you. He saw you with me, in the playground. He told me to bring you around.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Months ago. Don’t worry. He likes lots of girls.’

  Like I said, some things happen all around you and they happen fast. Frank came to the playground and I pretended to ignore him and he pretended back. I cou
ld feel him, though. I could feel him the way I used to feel Ray, waiting and watching, sidling along the walls of the house.

  Beck and I went to the playground and his house. Sylvia and I watched cable and drank Cokes and smoked clove cigarettes. Then one day I met my mother at the Whitney. It was about four p.m. and just getting dark. We walked up Madison Avenue to a little store that sold linen. My mother’s hair was in a long blond braid, her scarf red and her boots shiny black. The stores and the galleries were still open and bright. Then I saw Frank in his silver Mercedes driving beside us. He had his right window down and was looking out at us. Maybe he didn’t see my mother or maybe he didn’t realize she was my mother. Either way, my face turned white.

  ‘Do you know that man?’ my mother asked, sharply.

  ‘No.’

  Just as I had imagined, she didn’t like him at all. She took my arm and pulled me close to the buildings.

  ‘He seems to know you,’ she said, as they looked at each other, neither of them smiling.

  The next day on Lexington after school, I stopped at a pay phone. The wind was blowing people’s scarves around. ‘Jesus Saves’ had been scratched onto the telephone.

  I dialed Frank’s cell phone number. ‘Yeah,’ he said, like he was being bothered.

  ‘Frank?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘It’s Betsy.’

  ‘Betsy.’ He paused. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘85th Street.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  I could hear some kind of techno music on his stereo. ‘Give me ten minutes.’

  There wasn’t any snow, but it was still cold. A woman stopped and fixed the barrette in her hair. Two boys went by with fencing equipment. What if someone went looking for me—Sylvia or Henry or my parents? What if they couldn’t find me?

  ‘So where will it be?’ Frank asked, picking me up at the curb. ‘Queens?’ He laughed, clipping his cell phone to his belt.

  ‘You scared me.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Yesterday. That was my mother.’

  ‘Attractive woman.’

  ‘She asked me about you, if I knew you.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said no.’

  ‘No harm done, then.’

  ‘She was suspicious. I thought she might tell my father.’

  He laughed. ‘All right. I’m sorry. I couldn’t resist. It was only a few blocks.’

  ‘You followed us?’

  He turned the music up. ‘It was nothing.’

  ‘Frank.’