by Sigrid Nunez
What sounded like some kind of dance step made them all turn their heads in time to see Starlyn lollop into the room.
“There she is!” said Tracy, flinging her arms wide. But Starlyn twirled past her and across the floor to flop down at the table with Cole.
“You look like you just run a race,” Tracy said, and Starlyn began to laugh. She had a brash toot of a laugh, one thing about her that was not delicate at all.
“Oh, she’s in a race, all right,” Taffy drawled. “The race to be all grown up.” This made Starlyn laugh so hard she lost her breath, and her mother said, “Uh-oh. Looks like Birthday Girl’s had enough excitement for one day. We better hit the road.”
Cole was studying Starlyn as closely as he dared. Her mouth looked fuller than usual—awesomely close to what he’d had in mind when he was drawing it—and there were pink marks on her upper arms where the flesh had been pressed, which made him think of other marks that he couldn’t see but that he knew must be there.
Tracy said, “It’s Cole’s turn next”—causing him to slosh root beer up his nose before he realized she was talking about his own birthday coming up. “Did I say? The boys are taking a little trip.”
Just then, Cole noticed PW standing in the kitchen doorway. He was staring at Cole with the same meaningful look on his face as before. How long had he been there?
Suddenly it was too crowded for Cole. As PW crossed the room to get something from the fridge, Cole quietly got up and slipped out. Behind him he heard PW say something that made Starlyn toot again, and though he had no reason to think it had anything at all to do with him, Cole cringed.
From his bedroom window he looked down on Mason, slowly pacing the front lawn and smoking a cigarette.
Cole sat on his bed and leafed through his drawing pad, which was filled with sketches of Starlyn. They all looked different now. Not everyone would be able to tell, but he could tell. She was not the same anymore. His brand-new portrait was out of date.
At the end of that long day he lies on his stomach, seeing Mason’s dark hands on Starlyn’s white skirt and the bright smile of underpants, thinking what a wild thing it must be to have someone rubbing and squeezing your cheeks like that, fingers digging into your crack, like he owns you. He crushes a pillow between his thighs and he kneads it, kneads it, seeing the hands, being the hands, and feeling them, all at the same time.
An hour earlier, in the kitchen again but this time alone, he’d found himself standing by the chair Starlyn had been sitting on in her scrap of a dress, and almost without thinking, he’d bent down and sniffed the quilted chair pad handmade by Tracy.
He’d have thought any smell would have faded by now. But there it was. Neither as good as he’d heard nor as bad as he’d heard. Wet sand at the beach.
After the unbearable tension has been relieved, he feels soiled and vaguely mournful, he feels a little sorry for himself and a little disappointed, too—he feels the way he always feels when he masturbates. He is tired, but when he tries to sleep the teasing image of white underpants is still there, like the grin of the Cheshire cat.
PART THREE
It was their secret, and Cole respected secrets. He would not tell anyone what he had seen. Only he wanted to know more himself. For example, he wanted to know if what he had seen was the first time Mason and Starlyn had ever made out. He thought probably yes, but this was mainly because of the number of times in recent weeks he’d heard Mason mention the fact that on her birthday Starlyn would become Sweet Little Sixteen.
And now, of course, she was sixteen. But she was still a girl, and Mason was not a boy. He was seven years older than Starlyn, and Cole knew most people would say it wasn’t right for a man to touch a girl like that, even if she let him. Even if she begged him. And the idea of this particular man and girl together was somehow particularly shocking. Her perfect face, his disfigured one. Her perfect skin, his snakeheads and skulls. Her shining blond hair, his shaved scalp. Her whiteness under his grease-monkey hands.
But she must have liked that, Cole thought. The eye-patch scar, the crusty palms and black nails. You’d think a girl would be turned off by those things—
And what about her boyfriend in Louisville?
Mason didn’t have a girlfriend, as far as Cole knew, and people were always teasing him about still being single. Everyone knew that, before his conversion, he’d sown his share of wild oats and, as he confessed, had not always been respectful of ladies.
“Maybe that’s why the Lord put all that on hold for me. When the time’s right, I expect he’ll introduce me to the one meant for me. I know the next step for me is to take a wife, but I’m leaving it all in his hands.” Meanwhile he lived with his mother. Lucinda Boyle, who’d raised Mason all on her own, was still in her forties but might as well have been an old woman. She was one of those people who, a year after getting over the flu, had developed symptoms of parkinsonism. She almost never left the house.
Cole wondered what was going to happen next. Did Mason believe that, even though she was so young, Starlyn was the one God intended for him? And did that mean they’d be getting married one day? But if that was the case, he thought, they wouldn’t have to keep their love a secret. Whatever the story was, he knew he shouldn’t be spending so much time thinking about it. It was none of his business. His mother used to say when it came to people’s love lives you should always look the other way. And: Never be the kind of boy who talks about what he did with a girl. Nice boys don’t kiss and tell.
Here the taste of cherry burst on Cole’s tongue, and he remembered: passing the cough drop from mouth to mouth—like kissing and not kissing and more than kissing all at the same time. And afterward, strangely enough, they’d gone on as before. Not girlfriend and boyfriend, not even friends, just ordinary classmates again—as if the accidental collision in the closet had never occurred. But he hadn’t talked about it. He’d never told anyone what he’d done in the dark with Jade.
Jade Korsky. Whose hair was like a poodle’s if poodles had been red. Who always had to sit in the front because she was both nearsighted and incapable of holding on to a pair of glasses for more than a week. First girl he ever kissed—and he’d forgotten all about her. How sad was that?
That had been sixth grade. In seventh grade, a boy named Royce had told him about an eighth-grader named Sage, a tall girl with hair like licorice twists and a faceful of piercings. A nympho, Royce said, and when Cole asked him what that meant he’d laughed and said, “It means you don’t got to pay her or nothing, dude. You just hook up and get your rocks off.” But Cole would have been terrified of hooking up with a girl he didn’t even know. Until Royce told him, he had no idea, either, what a chicken head was. He could not see how any girl could become famous for that. Enough boys had confirmed what Royce had said about Sage for Cole to think it could be true, but he could not imagine ever finding out for himself.
And now he could not imagine himself in Mason’s place. He could not imagine himself touching Starlyn the way he’d seen Mason touching her—like he owned her. But lately all that—kissing, touching, having sex (whatever that was really like)—had begun to take up more and more space in Cole’s head. It was another one of his “ideas” (he didn’t know what else to call them): you could never grow up, let alone be a hero, without the help of a girl. And say it didn’t happen. Say you couldn’t find a girl who would help you. Well, then, you’d be hopeless. Whatever else you might do in your life would be meaningless; there’d be no point in growing up at all.
He remembered how, in the period right after he got over the flu, it was as if he’d aged backward. Night terrors. Bed-wetting. Fear of the dark, fear of being kidnapped or lost—all his little-boy horrors had come back to him. He was smaller then, too, he’d lost so much weight, and it seemed to him his voice was higher—maybe the flu could do that, too. Later, studying himself in the mirror, he was dismayed at the scrawniness of his arms and legs, the thinness of his waist, and his sharply protruding rib
s and shoulder blades. His butt looked like a baby’s. He had skin like a girl’s: too pink and too pale. Even at its biggest the Yearning Worm did not reach the six inches he knew was the absolute minimum requirement. And who would ever want to kiss a mouth ringed with acne?
But he had gained back all the weight he’d lost plus a few new pounds, and he was a good two inches taller. His voice wasn’t exactly deep, but it had a certain resonance now, a huskiness at times, like when he had sinusitis. And he was shaving every other day. He knew he could barely be called a teen, let alone a man—even a man as young as Mason was obviously way different from him. But you couldn’t call him a child anymore. He was not a child. He had caught up. He had moved on. And now that he was almost there, fourteen felt even older than he’d thought it would feel.
It was all set. Early on the morning of Cole’s birthday, he and PW were going on a three-day camping trip. Not to the Bible camp some kids from Salvation City went to every summer and where Cole, too, would probably go later that year, but to a site in the Kentucky hills where PW used to go when he was a boy.
Ever since he’d been promised this trip, Cole had been looking forward to it. There’d been days when he could think of little else. He was still looking forward to it, but he wasn’t jumping up and down inside like a little kid anymore. In fact, he was embarrassed to remember how overexcited he’d been. He couldn’t say exactly why things had changed, but it saddened him to have to admit that the trip had lost some of its magic. He was afraid PW might figure this out and be saddened, too.
If it ever came out that he’d seen Starlyn and Mason making out and kept quiet about it, Cole was sure PW would understand. What he wasn’t so sure about was the way he’d caught PW looking at him the day of the party. It mortified him to think PW could have read his thoughts then. How many times had PW already told him, “If there’s anything you want to talk about, anything to do with girls, any feelings or urges or questions you might have, you just let me know. I believe you’ll always find me open to that kind of chat.” But Cole had always shied away from that kind of chat. He didn’t want PW to know how he felt about Starlyn. He wanted him to look the other way. Now he worried that sometime while they were away PW himself might bring up the subject.
Sex had been a topic in Bible class (“Good Sex Is Clean, Not Seen, and Never Mean”), and Mason had explained that, in this particular case, Jesus’ example was not meant to be followed. A man cleaving to a wife and the two of them creating a family—that’s what the Lord wanted to see. (“Cleaving,” though he knew what it meant, bewildered Cole and gave him a physically uncomfortable feeling.)
Cole was thankful sex was not one of the subjects he had to tackle with Tracy—though, since the day of the radio show, his feelings toward Tracy had changed. Whenever Cole thought back to that awful day, the most awful part was remembering what he’d done to her. A knee to the chest had to be a very hard thing for a woman to forgive, he thought. He’d been told that, for a woman, being hit in the chest was like a guy being hit in the balls. Not that he’d meant to hit her there—he hadn’t meant to hit her anywhere! On the other hand, he had been trying to push her away, so you couldn’t say it was purely accidental, either. Like the time his father threw his phone at the living room wall. He hadn’t meant to break the phone, or to mess up the wall. But, like Cole’s mother said: “It doesn’t matter what you fucking meant, it’s what you fucking did.”
“I won’t lie and say it didn’t hurt,” Tracy said. “But you know, any time I feel any kind of physical pain I think about our Lord’s three hours on the cross.”
Even weeks later, remembering her full and instant forgiveness could bring a lump to Cole’s throat. He had always wished he could like Tracy more than he did. He’d still have given anything not to have to sit through lessons with her. (“What I don’t know about geography could fill all the tea kettles in China.”) But to see her with different eyes—to feel a new affection and respect for her—was blessing enough.
“What’s wrong? You forget something?”
“Nope.”
“Then why do you keep looking back at the house? Didn’t we go over the checklist? You homesick already?”
PW was teasing. They had already had this conversation. The words hadn’t come easily to Cole, but he’d wanted it clear: he wouldn’t have any problem with Tracy coming along. In fact, it was her not coming along that had become the problem. Wouldn’t it hurt her feelings to be left out?
“You kidding? She’s probably happy as a clam to get us two lugs out of the house a couple days. Besides, she’s no camping fan. The great outdoors is definitely not that woman’s thing.”
But Cole had seen photos of Tracy in the great outdoors. She’d looked pretty happy to him.
“Yeah, well, maybe once upon a time.”
Was it Cole’s imagination or was PW annoyed with him? The suspicion alone hurt his stomach.
“But don’t take my word for it, Cole. Ask her yourself.”
“Sleep on the ground? Wake up with the birdies? Snakes and bats and creepy-crawlies everywhere? Yuck!” It was true she’d gone camping many times in the past and enjoyed it. But now: “I guess I’m getting soft in my old age.”
It was something, Cole thought, the way adults could almost always find ways of not telling the truth without actually lying.
So why couldn’t they all go on a different trip, then? It was his mother’s voice he heard asking this, and he thought how it wouldn’t have happened back then. He couldn’t recall ever going on any trip with just his father—a thought that was immediately overshadowed by a more significant one: he was starting to think of PW and Tracy as his parents.
This was another subject he was afraid might come up sometime in the next three days.
“We’re not going to push you, son,” PW had said. “We just want you to promise you’ll devote some serious time to thinking and praying on it.” And Cole had promised, but in fact he’d been mostly avoiding thinking and praying on whether or not to be adopted.
It felt good to be wanted—and PW and Tracy had a way of making him feel like the most wanted boy in the world. In most ways they were easier to live with than his parents had been. They were certainly a lot happier than his parents had been. He had heard them quarrel a few times, but he had never heard them curse each other, and he could not imagine Tracy walking out on PW. He knew how happy he would make them both if he agreed to be adopted. And why shouldn’t he make them happy? They loved him, they were kind to him, and what could there be to stand in the way? It wasn’t like anyone else wanted him.
And if he could have agreed to be adopted without having to see his parents’ horrified and wounded faces, then probably Cole would have done so.
There had been a time in his childhood when he used to pretend quite a lot that his parents were not his real parents. And sometimes then, when he was out in public, he would see a particularly cool-looking couple—a couple who looked like they never fought and never worried about money—and he would spin out fantastic reasons why they, his true parents, had had to give him up. (“It would’ve been wrong to expose a child to the dangers of our lives as secret agents.”) It was never a question of their not having wanted him but rather of their having been forced to make the supreme sacrifice.
When he looked back now it seemed to Cole he had played this game for years, and he writhed to recall those scenarios in which his long-lost mom and dad whisked him off to their private island or rodeo ranch or traveling circus or spaceship.
And he remembered how, when he was still in the hospital, he had convinced himself that once he was well Dr. Hassan was going to adopt him—a fantasy that had not conjured up his parents’ scandalized faces. On the contrary, Cole was sure his parents would have approved of his being adopted by someone like Dr. Hassan.
But if dead was dead—if they were truly nowhere and nothing now—how could his parents be horrified at anything? How could they approve or disapprove of any decision
he made? How could he hurt their feelings?
This was why he avoided thinking about adoption. It was too hard, too painful and bewildering. Sometimes it made him want to scream or break something; other times it just made him cry.
Up in the dark, and even though she wasn’t coming along Tracy was up with them, fixing peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches and filling the cooler with iced tea while Cole and PW loaded the minivan with their gear.
Now that the day was finally here, all Cole’s excitement had bubbled up again, and in that hushed hour before sunrise it was as if something epic was about to unfold. Once again, as on that day years ago when his parents came to pick him up from summer camp, he was overwhelmed by the terrible power of happiness, how it threatened to crush you, or to suck all the air out of your lungs, and his hands shook as he helped PW pile firewood into the van.
It was spring, but all that week had been hot as July and even at dawn the air felt like something sprayed on your skin.
“Now, don’t you all get eat by a bear,” Tracy warned.
PW said black bear—the only kind of bear to be found where they were going—didn’t eat people. And as long as you didn’t rile them they wouldn’t attack. Even so, Tracy said, she’d sleep better knowing PW had his gun.
The gun had taken Cole by surprise. Not one of the hunting rifles from the gun cabinet in the den but a 9 millimeter Cole had never seen before, and which he figured was kept somewhere in PW and Tracy’s bedroom. But how close would the bear have to be—
“It’s not for bear, son.”
“It’s not?”
“No. Now, don’t you worry, I’m just playing it safe. I wish it were otherwise, but the truth is, the scariest thing out there goes on two legs, not four.”
The rifles in the den hadn’t been used in years. It was one of Cole’s favorite stories. PW and some buddies had been out tracking a whitetail when one of them was accidentally hit by another hunter. PW had been standing close by when it happened.
