“How tall are you?” she asks.
Ben smiles. “Six seven,” he says. Sethie thinks he sounds almost embarrassed.
Sethie tries to calculate; if he’s six seven, then Shaw can’t be more than five ten, right? Not nearly as tall as she always thought he was. Not like Ben, who is something out of a fairy tale. The giant who should frighten you but who is actually gentle, and kind, and good. The character who actually saves the day.
Sethie keeps her head tilted up at Ben even as they walk down the hall. She doesn’t even notice that he’s opened the bathroom door for her, and is gesturing for her to go in.
“Sarah Beth,” he says. “Here you are. Sorry it’s such a mess.”
“I guess you get sick of answering.”
“Answering what?”
“When people ask how tall you are.”
Ben shrugs. “I’m used to it.”
“But you still get sick of it, don’t you?”
Ben smiles and nods. Sethie says, “You should say you’re five ten. Just to mess with people.”
Ben laughs. “I’ll try that.”
Sethie smiles at him. “Your friends must all have sore necks,” she says.
Ben grins back. “Yeah, well, I have sore shoulders from bending down so much, so it’s fair.”
Sethie nods. “You’re right, it’s fair.”
Just for a second, Sethie wishes she were taller, so that she could be the friend who doesn’t make Ben’s shoulders ache. It’s a strange wish, and it doesn’t last long; all Sethie’s ever wanted is to be smaller; one of her favorite things about Shaw is how small he makes her feel. When she steps inside the bathroom, she has to remind herself why she’s there.
It’s a real bathroom, not just a collection of stalls: there’s a bathtub, a sink, and the toilet. She looks at the bathtub first. There are half a dozen shampoos lined up inside; three or four towels are hanging over the shower curtain rod. This shower must service all the guys who live on this floor, and she wonders if it gets crowded in the morning and how they decide who gets to use it first and what they do if someone uses up someone else’s shampoo.
The sink is crowded with toothbrushes and toothpaste. They all look the same to her. She wonders if she’ll get to college and accidentally use someone else’s toothbrush. She decides no matter what, she’ll keep her toiletries in her room. Though surely sorority houses and girls’ dorms are in better shape than this.
She’s avoiding the toilet. She’s scared of how dirty it’s going to be, scared to crouch down in front of it, resting her knees in the same spot where dozens of boys have missed the bowl. She looks around for a toilet brush. There’s some Mr. Clean next to the tub, and she grabs it. She points it at the toilet, still standing a couple of feet away. She wishes this were at least antibacterial cleaner.
She decides she’s being a baby. She’s not actually going to touch the toilet, after all, and she’ll keep her eyes closed. Really, only her knees are going to touch the ground, and they’re protected by her jeans.
And so she crouches. She keeps her eyes closed. She puts her hand in her mouth, and her fingernails scratch against the top. She wiggles her fingers until she gags. Dammit, she thinks, I should have rolled up my sleeves.
Vomiting happens in waves. First, she sees red. The tomato sauce. It comes up easy, smooth. So does the pink alcohol. But then there are white chunks—the bottom of the pizza, pieces barely even chewed. She shakes her head at herself; she’s supposed to be better about chewing. She thinks the chips will be next. If she can just get to the chips, she decides, she can stop. Only one more, she tells herself.
She raises her hand to her mouth and parts her lips.
She presses her fingers against her teeth; they won’t unclench. She almost laughs when she thinks that she might have to pry her own teeth apart.
Come on mouth, she thinks, just one more time. Then I promise, I’ll stop. She closes her eyes. If she weren’t in front of a toilet, it would look like she was praying. Or begging. Which she is—begging her mouth to open.
Someone knocks on the door.
“Just a second,” Sethie calls out. Her mouth opened easily then, but her voice sounds hoarse.
“Sethie, it’s me, let me in,” Janey’s voice calls out.
Shit, Sethie thinks, standing up. Her hand is covered in vomit, and when she flushes the toilet some of it falls onto the seat, some of it sticks on the flush lever. There are no paper towels in here, so she reaches for the toilet paper, and when she wipes up the mess, pieces of it stick to her hand.
“Sethie, let me in! I have to pee.”
Sethie looks around her. She doesn’t think Janey will be able to tell what she’s been doing in here. As she steps toward the door, she sees her face. Her eyes are bright red; it looks like she’s been crying. Her cheeks are wet, and she doesn’t know whether it’s from tears or backsplash from the toilet. There’s a piece of vomit in her hair; she brushes it out with her fingers.
She doesn’t know why she’s so bothered by the idea of Janey’s finding out what she’s been doing. Janey was the one who taught her to do it, after all.
“Just a second,” Sethie says again, but quietly, so that Janey can’t possibly hear. She opens the door, and Janey steps in. She’s moving quickly, drunk and excited. Sethie walks to the sink to wash her hands while Janey pees.
“I just love it here, Sethie, don’t you? There are always people around, even when you’re just upstairs in Doug’s room and not down at the party.”
Sethie nods. She leans over the sink, cupping water in her hands and trying to drink it before it slips between her fingers. The water isn’t cold, and the warmth feels good on her throat.
“You were gone so long the boys were joking about it. But I explained that skinny girls sometimes need time in the bathroom after a junk food binge like that.”
Sethie’s head snaps up. She looks at Janey, who’s crouched above the toilet, trying not to let her thighs touch the seat. Sethie can’t believe she told them—like it was nothing, no big deal, just something that all skinny girls do.
“How’s your stomach feel?” Janey asks, pulling up her pants.
“Huh?”
“Your stomach? I swear to God, when I eat like that, sometimes I wonder why I ever eat anything, my stomach hurts so much.”
Sethie doesn’t say anything. Janey thought she had a stomachache.
Janey stands close to Sethie now, washing her hands, sharing the sink. She turns and looks closely at Sethie’s eyes. Sethie doesn’t say anything. Maybe Janey will think that her stomach hurt so much she was crying.
“Oh,” Janey says finally. “I can’t believe you did that here.”
“Why not?”
Janey looks around her, wrinkling her nose. Janey would never get down on this floor. Janey would never crouch over that toilet. Well, fuck Janey, Sethie thinks, Janey doesn’t have to.
“You don’t understand,” Sethie says.
Janey shrugs. “I guess I can’t really blame you for it.”
Janey must mean that given how much she saw Sethie eat, she can hardly blame her for needing to throw it up. Even Janey is disgusted by the way she shoveled all that food in.
Janey adds, “I showed you how, after all.”
Sethie nods.
“Just, you know, be careful. Try not to make a habit out of it.”
Sethie nods.
“Come here,” Janey says, directing Sethie to the tub and sitting her down on its edge. “Let’s fix your makeup.” Janey reaches into her purse. Sethie looks up at Janey’s face obediently.
“Feels like you’re my big sister,” Sethie says before she can stop herself.
But Janey just says, “I know,” and runs a Q-tip under Sethie’s eyes.
“How do you just happen to have all that stuff in your purse?”
“Well, I need it for tomorrow,” Janey says. “I’m going to stay over.”
Sethie nods. Of course Janey’s staying over.
<
br /> “Don’t worry, though. Ben will put you in a cab. I bet he’ll even ride home with you, just to make sure you get there safely. He’s a really nice guy.”
Sethie shakes her head. “I’ll leave with Shaw.” With Shaw, she repeats to herself. It feels like it’s been a long time since she even thought his name, let alone said it out loud. But it can’t have been more than just a couple hours since she saw him downstairs.
“Shaw left.” Sethie looks down so fast that Janey pokes her in the eye with the Q-tip.
“Jesus, Sethie, be careful.”
“Sorry,” Sethie says, looking back up. Her eyes are wet, but Janey doesn’t comment. Janey must think that it’s from the Q-tip in her eye, or the vomiting, or both.
“Anyway, I don’t need Ben to take me home.”
“He won’t mind,” Janey says, smiling now. Sethie thinks she can see Janey’s collarbone spark as she leans over her.
“Well, I don’t mind going home alone,” Sethie says.
“Sethie,” Janey says, sounding exasperated. “Seriously. Ben wants to take you home.”
“Why would he want to take me home?”
Janey wrinkles her nose. “I know I just found you with your head practically in the toilet, but Jesus, do you really think so little of yourself? He likes you.”
Sethie leans back now, away from Janey’s hands fixing her makeup. She almost loses her balance and falls into the tub.
“Well, if he likes me,” she says deliberately, “all the more reason for him not to take me home. I don’t want to lead him on.”
“Why would you be leading him on?” Janey asks. She walks to the mirror now, brings her hands to her own face, fixes her own hair.
“We should get going anyway,” Sethie says. “The boys will wonder what we’re up to.”
Janey shrugs. “Okay, Sethie. But don’t you like Ben back?”
“I didn’t think of him like that,” Sethie says.
“You didn’t? You were flirting with him. I thought you liked him. Doug was patting himself on the back over it.”
“What do you mean, Doug was patting himself on the back. Was he—were you trying to set me up? Why would you do that?”
“I thought it’d be fun if we were both dating guys here. Think of all the time we could spend together!”
“Well, that’s not a bad plan,” Sethie says, trying to sound lighthearted. “But I’m not going to break up with Shaw just so that we can share cabs across town.”
Janey cocks her head. “Break up with Shaw?” she repeats.
“Janey, you know that Shaw and I are …”
“Screwing?”
“Shit, Janey, you know that Shaw’s my …”
“Fuck buddy?”
“Jesus Christ, Janey, why are you making me spell it out? Shaw’s my boyfriend, and you know it.”
Maybe it’s the acoustics of the bathroom, but the word boyfriend sounds hollow, tinny in Sethie’s ears. It sounds like it doesn’t mean anything at all. It certainly doesn’t sound like she thought it would when she finally said it for the first time.
Janey looks like she feels sorry for Sethie, but Janey doesn’t know what Shaw’s like when they’re alone. Janey doesn’t know that Shaw puts extra blankets on the bed when Sethie comes over so that she won’t get too cold.
“Ben is a really good guy,” Janey says finally. “I thought you should know what that was like.”
Like I’m the pity case that you set up with the “nice guy,” Sethie thinks but doesn’t say. Instead she says, “I’m sure he is, but I’m already dating a nice guy,” and opens the bathroom door.
She hears Janey mutter, “No, you’re not,” and she doesn’t know whether Janey means that Shaw isn’t a nice guy or that Sethie isn’t dating him.
Sethie wishes she could leave right now, but her coat and her purse are in Doug’s room. She turns away from the stairs and toward his door. Janey follows close behind. “I’m going home,” Sethie says.
“Okay,” Janey says as they walk into Doug’s room. “I’ll walk you to the corner to catch a cab.”
Sethie leans over Ben to grab her coat and purse off Doug’s couch. She shakes her head.
“Sethie, I’m not letting you walk out by yourself. It’s after midnight.”
Sethie shakes her head again. “You’d have to walk back alone then, anyway.”
She thinks Ben and Doug are exchanging looks, trying to figure out if this is some kind of girl code so that Ben will volunteer to walk her out. Too late, Sethie realizes she should have let Janey walk her.
“I’ll walk you out,” Ben says, standing up. He leans down over Sethie. “ ’Bout time I left these two lovebirds alone anyway.” Sethie smiles back at him. After all, it’s not Ben’s fault. And Janey looks genuinely sorry as she gives her a hug good-bye.
Sethie can’t help thinking that Doug looks like an idiot, quite pleased with himself because Ben is walking her out, just like he’d hoped, and he’s going to be alone with Janey, just like he probably wanted all night.
Sethie has to admit, as Ben holds open the front door for her, that he doesn’t seem like a pity-nice-guy kind of setup. He walks slightly in front of her, and he’s so tall that he can block the wind; he’s not wearing a coat, but the cold doesn’t seem to bother him.
“Does everyone think you play basketball?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you get sick of that question too?”
“Not as sick as I get of always being the one to change the lightbulbs.”
Sethie laughs. “Oh my God, me too!”
Ben looks down at her as if to point out that she’s still much too short to reach the ceiling.
“My mom, I mean. She’s littler than I am. So I always get stuck with doing things around the house.”
“Like being tall automatically makes you the handyman.”
“I guess. When there’s only girls in the house.”
“Where’s your dad?”
“California.”
Ben nods like that makes perfect sense. He says, “I still have to stand on a chair.”
“Me too. So it’s really no easier for us than it would be for them. Pisses you off, doesn’t it?” Sethie asks, cocking her head to look up at him.
“Sometimes, yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“Never thought I’d meet a girl who felt like that, though.”
Sethie shrugs, and they lapse into silence.
“Aren’t you cold?” she asks finally, to make conversation as he walks her to the corner of Broadway.
Ben shakes his head. “Nah. Grew up in Vermont. These NYC wimps don’t even know real cold.” Sethie giggles.
“See,” he says. He stops walking and reaches for her hand. “Feel.” He slips her fingers underneath his sleeve so that they brush against his forearm.
“Oh,” Sethie can’t help whispering. Ben’s arm is perfectly warm. Her fingers curl around it.
“Damn, girl. You’re freezing.” He doesn’t say it like the cold of her fingers bothers his warm skin; he says it as an offer to warm her up. “Here,” he says, and he moves his arm so that it’s wrapped around her, and his arms are so long that he’s able to take her left hand in his left and her right in his right, and his hands are so large that they cover hers completely, like gloves.
This isn’t holding hands, she thinks, because she isn’t holding his at all. Her hands are balled up into fists under his.
When they get to a corner, Sethie realizes that Ben will have to let go of her in order to hail a cab. But even when he drops her right hand, she still feels like he’s covering her completely.
“There you are, Sarah Beth,” Ben says as a cab slows to a stop in front of them.
“Here I am,” she says, and when he leans over to open the cab door, she finds that she’s facing him, her back to the open door, looking up at him like girls do at the end of dates, when they’re expecting to be kissed. Ben is standing close to her, but he doesn’t kiss her; instead, he p
uts his hand on her shirt, over her stomach. Sethie inhales sharply; normally she hates being touched on her stomach. When Shaw puts his hand on her stomach, Sethie leans away from him, curls her shoulders over to make her stomach seem concave. But Ben’s hand is so large that it makes her stomach feel small, and Sethie has to fight the urge to puff her stomach out, to lean forward, just to fill up his hand. Maybe then he could curl his fingers around it and pull her toward him.
But he’s not pulling her toward him. He’s actually guiding her into the cab, pushing her away from him. She is almost surprised to find herself sitting in the taxi, and the door closed behind her. She doesn’t remember saying good-bye, but they must have.
The cabdriver asks her where she’s going, and she gives him her address. At a red light, he turns back to look at her and says, “That’s your honey, huh?”
It takes her a second to realize what he’s asking.
She shakes her head. “No.”
The cabdriver laughs. “Maybe he will be.”
Sethie shakes her head again. Ben is not her honey. Ben is the friendly giant; giants are never the heroes at the beginning of stories.
Her stomach still feels warm.
13.
SETHIE IS READING a memoir by a girl who was both anorexic and bulimic. She gets some good ideas from it, like drinking a full glass of water before each meal will make her feel full faster and eating very spicy foods can speed up her metabolism. Sethie looks at the picture of the author; it’s a full-body picture, and takes up the entire back cover, as though the author wants readers to know that even though she’s better now, even though she’s stopped doing all those bad things she talks about in the book, she’s still thin. Sethie can’t ever stop; she knows the minute she stops, she will get fat.
Sethie waits until Tuesday, three days after she saw Shaw sitting on the couch with Jeff Cooper and that girl. On Tuesday, she waits for school to end, waits until the teachers let her go and the hands on the clock in the senior lounge roll around to the appropriate hour. She leaves school so fast she forgets her French textbook and will have to come in early the next day to finish her homework. She hasn’t spoken to Shaw since she saw him at the fraternity house on Saturday night, since she left without him, since she almost imagined herself kissing Ben.
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