Quinn

by Sally Mandel

  “Listen, Huntington, can’t you be a friend and tell me what a shithead he is?” Their eyes had adjusted to the dark and they stared at one another helplessly, two pale moons in the murkiness. Quinn gave Van a wan smile. “Thing is, I can’t figure out how I’m going to live without him.”

  Van thought of Stanley and her eyes filled with tears.

  Quinn said, “Oh, for God’s sake, don’t you start or they’ll have to come in here with a pump. Go on. I’m okay now. Thanks. It helped.”

  Van hugged her, the long dark hair cool and smooth against Quinn’s hot cheek.

  “Van,” Quinn whispered. “I’m so glad about you and Stanley.”

  “I know.”

  Van stood in the doorway for a moment. The hall light shone on Quinn’s puffy face.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll get over it,” Quinn said.

  Chapter 26

  But she didn’t get over it. Each morning Quinn would wake up at 7:00 A.M., eager as always to jump out of bed and plunge into the day. It took about three seconds to remember, and then she wanted to roll over and go back to sleep. Sometimes she woke up crying before she knew why, and slunk through the hours with swollen eyes. She would stare at herself in the mirror and marvel that she didn’t look more sickly.

  The worst was seeing him. They knew each other’s schedules well enough to avoid confrontation when possible, but there were the three English classes. The first Monday, Professor Buxby raised his eyebrows when they took seats on opposite sides of the room. Mercifully, he did not remark on it. Quinn experimented with her view, and by Friday had discovered that if she chose the front left-hand corner of the classroom, only half a dozen students were easily visible. Neither she nor Will spoke up in class. Professor Buxby, making his own guesses, left them alone.

  The dormitory on Saturday night was an eerie place. Everyone, even poor Mavis Underwell, had gone out. Quinn decided to take advantage of the silence and get into bed early. Surviving the week had worn her out.

  She expected to fall asleep immediately, but instead lay in the dark and wondered what Will was doing. She imagined him out with another girl, perhaps the small dark-haired one she’d once seen him with. Maybe he was kissing her, or worse. She squirmed with jealousy, and flung herself over on her stomach. Time to start naming nuns.

  Instead of beginning with kindergarten, tonight she would work her way back from senior year, in imitation of anesthesia. One hundred; ninety-nine, ninety-eight; Sister Mary-Catherine; Sister Edwina; Sister Celestina; Sister Carmine—God, what a horror; Sister Margaret-with-the-Moustache; Sister Philippa. Who else that year? Sister Penelope, the home economics teacher. Quinn amused herself by inserting Will’s face into a wimple. Sister Wilhelmina. He would have made a great nun, she thought. Better than her, for certain.

  It was useless. The lump formed in her throat. Oh, no, you don’t, she vowed. Her pillow could not absorb another drop. She remembered an old shirt of Will’s, borrowed weeks ago, that hung in her closet. She crept out of bed, found it with her fingers in the dark, and held it to her face. Then she slipped back under the covers, clutched the flannel ball to her midsection until finally she drifted into sleep.

  On Tuesday she telephoned home, alerting John and Ann to expect her on Friday evening. A weekend in Medham would snap her out of it. She would take care of Ann, which would force her to stop feeling sorry for herself.

  But what Quinn felt when she set eyes on her mother was shock. No one had prepared her for the drastic change in Ann’s appearance. Quinn was still calling home twice a week and had always been assured that her mother was improving. Now it was obvious that her parents had either tried to spare their daughter or that they were unwilling to face the truth themselves.

  Quinn set down her suitcase and knelt beside the sofa in the living room. She kissed her mother’s pale cheek, but very gently, for fear of bruising her skin.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she pleaded. “I would have come home.”

  “The doctor says I’m doing very nicely. And besides, I don’t want you hopping back and forth to Medham when you should be studying. How’s Will?”

  “I don’t really know.”

  Her mother was silent.

  “We’re not together anymore.”

  “You didn’t tell us,” Ann said. They both smiled, acknowledging their habit of sparing each other bad news.

  “Was it the job?” Ann asked.

  “Sort of. Yes. We’re just so … going off in opposite directions.” Ann looked terribly sad, so Quinn added, “I tried to pine away, but I think I put on a couple of pounds instead. Anyway, think of all those other young swains out there ready to fall for my considerable charms.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ann said.

  “I’ll take a shower and come talk to you later,” Quinn said. “Have a nap, okay?” Ann’s eyes were closed before Quinn was out of the living room.

  Instead of showering, Quinn marched out to the driveway to confront her father, who was half-hidden under the hood of his decrepit Ford. He held a flashlight in one hand and with the other fingered wires, twisted bolts, tinkered, and hammered. Quinn knew his absorption, understood the comfort of working with one’s hands. The streetlamps cast erratic illumination. If she squinted, Quinn could transform her father into geometric patches of light and dark.

  She envied him in silence and admitted to herself that coexistent with the desire to nurse Ann had been the impulse to come home and lick her wounds. Her parents’ house had always offered solace. But tonight, instead of warmth and peace, she had found dread. A shadow that had skulked in an inaccessible corner of her mind for months had suddenly expanded into a black monster.

  John straightened up and handed her the flashlight. “Hold this, will you?” he said.

  She took it. “Why didn’t you tell me about Mom?”

  John began manipulating spark plugs. “A little closer. That’s it.”

  “The whole way from the bus station, not a word.”

  “She’s doing okay,” he said.

  “She’s not doing okay.”

  “You’ve got to have a little faith.”

  “She needs healthy kidneys, not prayers.”

  John glanced up at her. “I don’t like that kind of talk. All those ideas you get up at college don’t make you smarter than the Pope.”

  “You can’t convince me a bunch of Hail Marys and some holy water are going to keep her out of renal failure.”

  John snatched the flashlight out of her hand. “You’re coming to mass with me Sunday morning, girl, and you’ll pray for your mother and for forgiveness.”

  “Oh, come on,” she murmured.

  John whirled around, his hand raised as if to strike her. She ducked out of his way.

  “Just when did you get to be the big theologian?” she blurted angrily. “How can you go to mass and sit there kowtowing when Ann’s in there dying? She never hurt anybody in her whole life and she’s only forty-six Goddamn years old!”

  “It’s God’s will.” He held the flashlight like a weapon.

  “Bullshit it’s God’s will! There’s no way I’ll go to church and thank God for doing this to my mother. You’re not going to get me down on my knees to that bastard—”

  “You shut your mouth,” John said. He strode around the front of the car, but Quinn darted toward the sidewalk, keeping her eyes on him every moment. Then he stopped short and suddenly deflated. Seconds ago his face had been fiery and his eyes, defying the darkness, had flashed bright green. But now he was washed as colorless as the portrait on Quinn’s desk back at school. She halted her backward escape and gaped at him.

  “Do what you want,” he said finally. He turned and walked into the house.

  Quinn stood on the sidewalk for a moment, swallowing hard against the familiar ugly taste that rose in her mouth. Ivory soap. The first time she could remember challenging her father was when she was six years old. She had sassed him a
nd then refused to apologize. John dragged her to the kitchen sink by the pigtails, stuffed a bar of Ivory soap into her mouth, and held her jaw shut. It was a small piece, very shiny and soft. It melted quickly. The punishment proved effective, and was repeated on several occasions until one time Quinn swallowed a large chunk and suffered three days of diarrhea. The technique was thereafter abandoned, but even now an angry look from her father brought the same bitter taste to Quinn’s mouth. If she visited a public rest room that offered only Ivory, she washed her hands with water. The lingering sweet scent on her fingers invariably made her gag.

  She glanced across the street at the neighbors’ windows where faces quickly disappeared. The argument had drawn an audience. Well, they’d witnessed plenty of battles between Quinn and John Mallory, and they’d probably see more. She slammed down the hood of the car and went inside to take her shower.

  Dinner was uneventful, with John and Quinn being carefully civil so as to avoid upsetting Ann. It pained Quinn to watch her mother swallow a few slivers of chicken and set down her fork. Afterward Quinn cleaned up while John helped Ann to bed. By the time he came down again, Quinn was twenty minutes into Casablanca. John sat down gingerly on the sofa next to her and watched in silence. When Ingrid Bergman admitted that she still loved Humphrey Bogart, Quinn began to cry. The tears flowed straight through the foggy finale. John made no comment on the surreptitious sniffling, just fetched a box of Kleenex and tossed it into her lap. She said “Thanks” without looking at him.

  He went upstairs after that, but Quinn was too restless for bed. Her thoughts hopped back and forth between Will and her mother. She told herself how pointless it was to dwell on either subject. The trouble was, both were full of points, jagged, tearing points that pricked and stabbed, making her raw. She twisted the channel knob. The news was over, and the late movie was a grade D Jane Russell melodrama. Johnny Carson was host to Tiny Tim, displaying him like a freak for the amusement of insomniacs across the nation. She snapped the hirsute soprano off in mid-warble and headed for the kitchen where she consumed six Oreos, two glasses of milk, and a Fig Newton. Then she crept upstairs. Tonight, perhaps, she would have to resort to reading.

  Ordinarily she relished the moments before sleep. She would lie in bed in the dark thinking about life. In New York, Will had said she was like a small child in a crib who lay like a turtle on its back, counting toes and reliving the day out loud, reluctantly, gradually, giving it up to sleep. Mommy, it says—not calling, just remembering. Daddy … baby … stroller … rain, rain—a kind of evening news report to round off the day before relinquishing it. Quinn’s presleep ruminations often included the future as well, though perhaps a child’s do too. Planning, she called it. Plotting, Will said.

  As she tiptoed past her parents’ bedroom she saw that the door was ajar. Surprisingly, a light was still on inside. There were strange muffled sounds. Quinn peered through the crack and froze. Her mother sat in the rocking chair by the window. John knelt beside her with his head buried in her lap. He was sobbing quietly. Ann stroked his hair, her own tears falling so that the back of her hand was wet and gleaming. Quinn stared at them with a kind of horror. Her throat felt constricted, as if she were strangling, and yet she could not draw her eyes away from the tableau. She watched in silence as her father lifted his head and pulled Ann’s face down to his. They kissed, a deeply passionate kiss, not at all the chaste, mechanical parents’ kiss she had observed at least a thousand times, good-bye in the morning, welcome home after work. This was a lovers’ kiss.

  Quinn crept to her room, taking care to avoid the single groaning floorboard. She sat shaking on the edge of her bed. She felt disoriented, almost as if she were dreaming. In her dream she was standing at a threshold. Behind her was a comfortable room, a bit cramped, perhaps, but familiar. In front of her loomed a cavernous shadowed interior. Furniture with sinister carvings was dwarfed by towering stone walls. She felt an invisible hand pressed cold against the small of her back. A voice whispered Enter. This is where you belong. She was like a blind person in this dream, groping and feeling her way. If only she were allowed a few exploratory steps ahead, with comforting visits into the old place every now and then. But the door slammed behind her, and she was all alone.

  She shivered. Without undressing she curled herself into a ball under the bedspread and tried to pray. The irony of the impulse after her argument with John did not occur to her. She was a child lost in the dark, turning her face toward a light. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women. Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Mary’s face, hooded with gentle blue folds, melted into Ann’s, and finally Quinn fell asleep.

  Saturday she awoke stiff but rested. She peeled off her jeans and wondered if the seam marks on her thighs would ever disappear. Then she looked out the window at a startling deep-blue sky and imagined that if she reached up, her fingers would touch a solid iridescent shell. The bright morning had burned away the fear and loneliness of last night. She was young, tough, smart. Ann would be strengthened by the mere presence of such vitality. It had to be catching.

  And as for William Ingraham, well, what was one less intelligent, sensitive, poetic, sexy person to her anyway? A dime a dozen. She’d just shop around, that’s all. She tried to think of someone she could call. Not Tommy, of course. Jim was married. There was Dennis Riley, but his too-pretty face repelled her a little. No sober, reflective types, but someone out for a good time, someone lively. She thought of Johnny Sullivan and wondered what he was up to. He had appeared at her party without a date. When she got angry with Will, she had flirted with Johnny. He teased her and said he had always been crazy about her. She would call him.

  They decided upon a movie. Quinn was grateful, since she wasn’t sure how much she would feel like talking to him. It would be strange, looking into someone else’s face, walking beside a body whose proportions weren’t the same as Will’s.

  They saw The Pink Panther. She found herself laughing at the slapstick gags, and she was pleased with Johnny’s reaction too. Will was not fond of broad humor. He would have chuckled now and then, perhaps, but Quinn couldn’t imagine him howling unabashedly, like Johnny. After the film Quinn felt so grateful that she held hands with him during their short walk to the corner pub. He told her about his job at the print shop.

  “It’s got a future if I take a couple of courses to learn about the new machines. They’re starting with the computers now. You gotta look ahead and protect yourself. The unions can only do so much.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “I don’t mind it.”

  “I’m crazy about machines.”

  “I remember.”

  “You must be, too. Presses are really interesting.”

  Johnny shrugged.

  “You going to do it the rest of your life?” she asked. Johnny’s hand was smaller than Will’s, and his grip was a little too tight. She tried to wriggle her fingers.

  “Why not?”

  “Well, isn’t there something you really want to do?”

  “Sure. I want to make a bundle and retire at forty-five.”

  “Yes, but then what would you do?”

  He gave her a puzzled look and ushered her inside The Dugout without answering. The bar was noisy and crowded, but a booth soon emptied near the door. Quinn studied the handsome face across the table. Johnny had thick jet hair, blue eyes, an easy smile. He had always been surrounded by admiring girl friends.

  “How come we never went out?” Quinn asked him.

  “You were always too busy with Flanagan.”

  “Not all the time, I wasn’t.”

  “I asked you out once.”

  “You did?” She was surprised.

  “See? You were so stuck on him you don’t even remember. I heard you’d broke up, so I figured I’d make my move.”

  She shook her head. She believed him, and it bothered her to think she could have forgotten such a thi
ng.

  He ordered hamburgers and a pitcher of beer, and as they ate she asked, “Did you ever really want anything? I mean so much that it screwed everything else up?”

  He looked thoughtful for a moment. Then he replied, “Well, yeah, I wanted a white Corvette. I guess I still do, but I wouldn’t steal to get it.”

  “I was thinking more about, I don’t know, goals.”

  Johnny looked away, his eyes searching the bar restlessly. “I don’t think so, no. Hey, there’s Maureen and Jack Conley. Let’s get them over here.”

  Before Quinn could protest, he had beckoned to them. The four sat reminiscing for an hour and a half—about old times, about the destinies of their classmates; who had kids; who was married; who had a good job. The feeling that she had experienced at the party surfaced again. These were lifelong friends, and yet she was a stranger here now. The others’ voices seemed far away. Nothing touched her. She was no longer real. Not without Will. Not without Ann and Jake the way they used to be. She could not get rid of the image of her parents kissing, nor the sound of her father’s hoarse sobs, nor the scent of Will Ingraham’s body.

  “Johnny!” They stared at her. She must have interrupted someone in midsentence. Or perhaps she had shouted. “Take me home, okay?”

  “You all right?”

  “Uh, no. I think I’m sick. Sorry. Virus or something.” Johnny bid a reluctant good night to the Conleys and walked Quinn to his car. They did not hold hands. Johnny was proud of his new, bright blue Chevy, proud that it was almost paid for, and annoyed that Quinn hadn’t even remarked about it. She’d changed, that was for sure. She used to be such a good sport, funny, always up to something. And some body on her, too. That hadn’t changed, at least. Must be college that did it. He thanked his lucky stars he hadn’t bothered with it if it could take the piss and vinegar out of a live wire like Quinn Mallory.

  She listened to the tires squeal as he drove away, and thought, well, so much for that.