Ash Wednesday

by Ethan Hawke

Grandmother was a sixth-grade music teacher in Abilene, Texas, and Mrs. Roosevelt was rumored to be visiting her school as a part of some educational tour. Grandmother made herself a new dress and wore it every day religiously, waiting for the First Lady to arrive. After eleven days of wearing the same outfit, Eleanor did finally come, and she noticed Grandmother and actually commented on the dress, saying it looked like “desert flowers.” As Grandmother has grown older, that experience has ballooned in its importance. It was her only contact with something she knew to be “real.”

  I felt my belly. I wasn’t showing, but if you knew me well you could tell. My butt was expanding. If Jimmy had half a brain he would’ve noticed. I was averaging three ice creams a day.

  I stared out the window, and my thoughts turned to my own mother, Mary. She left me with the neighbors when I was twelve months old and never returned. They called my dad, who rescued me and took me home to Grandmother’s. I always thought there was no excuse for that kind of behavior. But now, with a baby of my own coming, I didn’t feel confident enough to judge anyone.

  My mother and I didn’t meet again till I was fourteen, in Austin, at Woolworth’s. The Woolworth’s on Congress Avenue was gigantic, not small and dumpy like the ones they ended up having but really big, like a slightly upscale Kmart. Sometimes my dad would drop me off there, to occupy me for a while, if he had a business lunch or some other appointment. I liked it there; the hours passed quickly. When you first walked in, all you could smell was popcorn and candy. As you strolled up the hospital-clean floors, you got a different smell for each section: Makeup, hardware, clothes, they all had their own smell. I would glide around, looking at the magazines or just pacing the aisles enjoying the air-conditioning.

  In back was a dumpy little restaurant that smelled like burgers and corn dogs. One Sunday I was sitting there, drinking a vanilla Coke, when a woman with auburn hair, pulled up tight in a bun, walked over and stood in front of me. She was tall. I looked up at her. She was wearing a deep-yellow, floor-length dress, with red flowers on it. I was wearing a tan skirt and a blue blouse, left over from church.

  “You’re Christy?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “Hi, I’m Mary Larson. I’m your mother.”

  “Oh,” I said. There was a long pause. I was instantaneously petrified. She might as well have been the Grim Reaper.

  My mother was ravishing. Sweet blue eyes and a long voluptuous figure. She could’ve been a model, easy.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Your father told me you’d be here.”

  He was sly like a fox, my father.

  “You can sit down if you want,” I said. “Is that what you want? I mean, do you want to sit down?”

  “I’d like to, yes,” she said. She had a strong southern accent. She smiled, smoothed her dress across her legs with her hand, and seated herself.

  She brought out a small gift-wrapped box and handed it to me. I didn’t open it. I hate opening a present in front of the person who is giving it to you. I poked it around the Formica table, feeling disoriented.

  “Your daddy’s getting to be a big shot these days, huh?” she asked, in an overly warm tone. My father had been elected to the Texas State Legislature.

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  My mother’s smile dropped. She began methodically running her hands over each other as if she were washing them. “I wanted to meet you.”

  “Oh.”

  “This must be very difficult for you,” she said, picking at her bright red fingernail polish. “It’s difficult for me.” She looked familiar to me, not like I recognized her as my mother, but more like maybe I’d seen her on a TV show.

  “Where have you been?” I asked. I was flicking my clogs off and on under the table.

  “I live here in Austin.”

  “You do? Why?” I couldn’t believe it.

  “I don’t know. This is my home.”

  “I thought you’d moved to California or something.”

  “I did. But I moved back,” she said. She stopped fussing with her hands and appeared to try and force herself to be still.

  “Oh. You look so familiar,” I said.

  “I’m your mother.”

  There was another pause. Mary reached over and gently caressed my arm. I wanted to swat her away.

  “Do you play any sports?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “You look like such a big strong girl,” she said, with her palm on top of the back of my hand.

  “That’s a stupid thing to say,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, withdrawing her arm.

  “It’s just a stupid thing to say.”

  “I’m sorry,” my mother said again. “You’re right.”

  “I mean, no, I don’t play any sports. Do you?” I continued, my own hostility surprising me.

  “Do you have a boyfriend?” she asked.

  I couldn’t look at her. “No,” I said.

  “You will, you’re very beautiful.”

  “Thanks, so are you,” I said. That was true. Her skin shimmered in the light and her hands were long like mine but more feminine. Her teeth betrayed her; they were an off shade of yellow and had little black lines along the gums.

  “Thank you,” she said. There was a silence. “Do you like your stepmother?”

  “Yes,” I said, which wasn’t true. “She’s funny. She tells a lot of jokes.” I decided to try and help out with the conversation. “You know, she’ll say something silly, like a pun, and then say, ‘No pun intended.’ It’s funny.” I was rambling. “Do you know what I mean?” I asked.

  “No. What do you mean?” Mary asked me.

  My mother’s stare scared me. She looked a little crazy. Her eyes moved too quickly. My mouth went dry. Then I recognized her. Oh, my God, she worked there. My mother worked in the makeup department at Woolworth’s. I’d seen her half a dozen times. For a period of five months my father had been dropping me off while he “ran errands,” so my mother could get a good look at me.

  We spoke for a while that day, a pretty uneventful conversation. She was moving to Houston. She had a boyfriend. The gift she gave me was a locket with a picture of the two of us when I was about three months old. She offered up a few half-baked explanations about why she left me. She was a baby herself. She was an idiot. She was having a nervous breakdown. Whatever. She didn’t offer an apology. I know for a fact she didn’t, because that’s what I was listening for.

  “I know you think we don’t know each other at all,” Mary said to me, when we shook hands good-bye, “we’ve been apart so long, but I do know you. You’re exactly like I thought you’d be. You were always such a terrific kid.”

  The second I walked out, I threw the locket away. I don’t know why, I didn’t even think about it. Right there on Congress Avenue, I jammed it down into an already full garbage can.

  Through the spotty bus window I could see hundreds of brown trees against the gray of week-old snow. In front of a farmhouse off in the distance I saw a lonely coyote-type dog chained to a big red doghouse. The dirt in front of him was littered with pits and holes he must’ve dug. The animal himself was sitting tranquilly on the roof of the doghouse, staring at the passing traffic, his chain hanging slack from his neck.

  A motorcycle drove right beside us, below my window. The guy on it looked miserable. He wasn’t properly dressed.

  “Do I sound like anything else?” I asked the blind man sitting next to me. I wasn’t sure whether a second or an hour had passed. “I mean, other than pretty?”

  “What do you mean?” He leaned his head down closer to me as if to hear better.

  “People can look like a kind person or an honest person or they can look shifty.” I was still facing the window, peering blankly out at the man on his motorcycle and the pa
ssing landscape.

  “May I touch you?” he asked quietly. He was still peacefully seated, facing directly forward, with his hands wrapped around the beer can in his lap.

  “Where?” Suddenly I was afraid. I react to any and every new situation with the exact same body-chemical result: adrenaline.

  “Your face, your chest, your skin.” He spoke in a perfectly normal tone of voice, not sly, not aggressive.

  “My breasts?” I asked.

  “Your heart,” he replied.

  “Are you flirting with me?” I couldn’t help but grin.

  “Are you flirting with me?” Now he was grinning.

  “You can touch me if you want,” I said, trying to sound casual. I thought maybe I should face more toward him, but I didn’t want to come off slutty. For the first time in weeks my mood was lifting. This was a new experience. It felt exciting, like waking up.

  He rubbed his hands together to heat them and blew a steady stream of warm moist breath into them. The skin on the underside of his hands was close to the same shade of pink as my own. First he reached up—he was on my left—and put his right hand on my left shoulder, as if to hold me still.

  “Breathe,” he said, and placed his left hand ever so gently across my face. He drew his finger around the sockets of my eyes and traced the bridge of my nose as if my face were a Braille poem. My skin rippled with goose pimples, like I’d never been touched before. It was all I could do to leave his hand there. Every fractional move of his fingertips tickled like a soft wind against a bare nerve.

  “You have a prominent nose,” he said.

  “Obvious, even to a blind man.” I laughed nervously. This takes the cake, I thought.

  He held the flat of his palm against my cheek. I stared at him. I wanted to see his eyes, to make eye contact. I imagined his irises to be gray and dead—or perhaps they were clear and luminescent, like the eyes of a saint.

  After Jimmy told me he didn’t love me, I cried for eight straight days. I went to work, I was pleasant, but in the bathroom and in the back hospital stairway where we used to smoke, I cried. I was a hollow glass sculpture of myself. A loud noise would’ve broken me into a thousand shards.

  I didn’t know what I would live for. Jimmy, I had thought, would take me away from my selfishness. I longed for some kind of center, some starting place from which I could judge how I was doing. How long can you live, opening your eyes in the morning, going to the bathroom, listening to the birds chirping, the cars driving by, and thinking, How can I please myself today?

  Not one person had touched me in the eight days since Jimmy and I’d broken up. His black hand was hot against the skin around my mouth. I’m sure my face was cherry red, and my neck was breaking out in hives.

  He touched my lips. My stomach flipped up into my lungs.

  “I’m pregnant,” I announced.

  “Congratulations,” he answered softly.

  “I’m all alone,” I said.

  This was so embarrassing. For a moment we both were perfectly still and silent together. Then he touched my eye again and then reached across my face and touched the other, wiping away the wetness.

  “You’re going to be fine,” he said.

  In some way this man was not real to me, not human, more like a ghost or a vision. I wondered if I could put my hand right through his chest. I felt if I took my eyes off him even for a second, the spell would break and a dove would fly up from his empty seat.

  Mustering all the courage I had, I said, “I’m very afraid.”

  “No reason,” he said, dropping his hand to my neck. I was sure he could feel the whamming thud of my heart. “No reason for fear at all.”

  He lowered his hand till it rested on the top of my chest, and his long fingers played along my throat. I worried people were looking at us. The sun was beginning to pull behind the mountains, creating gold streaks of light, shooting through the bus, hitting some people’s hair and making it appear as if their heads were glowing with fire. Others were left cold in the shadow. Everyone was oblivious of us.

  Outside, it was nasty cold.

  He moved his hand now on top of my cotton T-shirt and placed himself right between both my breasts. His skin was heated and encompassing like an electric blanket.

  We’d be in Kingston soon.

  I could feel my pulse in my fingertips, and the blood swooshing through the ventricles of my heart. Taking a deep breath, I scraped my fingers across the nail of my thumb, wondering how many molecules, how many atoms, were inside of me that were once part of another person’s body.

  I could hear his breathing beside me. I felt good. I did. I was aware of a sleeping confidence within me. I was not dead, I was alive. There would be life after Jimmy, and it had begun now. I tried to slide away from his hand, but he kept it firmly placed and moved it across my chest, passing over my erect nipple and resting directly on top of my left breast over my heart.

  “Would it bother you if I mentioned God?” he said in a whisper.

  “Yes,” I said. “It’d scare the shit out of me.”

  SMART WENT CRAZY

  Man, when I first met Christy, and this is no joke—a cliché, but no joke—it was like my heart was literally stuck on my esophagus. I couldn’t fuckin’ talk to her; I was mute. I remember the first thing I ever said to her. We were over at the Coach and Horses Tavern in downtown Albany. We’d been introduced maybe fifteen minutes before, and I leaned over to the guy who introduced us and said, “Does everybody fall in love with her?” She was sitting at this circular wooden table smoking cigarettes like some people eat grapes. I don’t remember what she was talking about—something to do with the Apollo Theatre in New York. I was just hung up on her voice: the cadence and the confidence. She had class, man. No shit, not one person in a hundred has intrinsic class—not affectation or money, not some lamebrain in a million-dollar gown drinking a highball or a private school chippie sashaying around like her daddy owned the joint, but natural poise, grace, dignity. She had that. You could take her and rub her around in the mud and kick her in the head and she’d still have it. Seated there in the green tavern light, with six or seven people listening to her every word, I lean over and say, “Does everybody fall in love with her?” Why did I say that? I don’t know. But still, I couldn’t talk to her ’cause I knew I’d just come off like another goomba trying to score, so I played it cool and didn’t say a peep till later. We were standing in a hallway waiting for the bathroom right next to each other in silence for like three or four minutes, and then I just blurted out—and she’ll back me up on this—I said, “I’m not afraid of you.” A bald-faced lie but gutsy; I’ll give myself that. The men’s-room door opened and I walked in and closed it. In the mirror I could see my reflection, and I looked good; I don’t often say that about myself, but that night it was true. I was clean-shaven, wearing a suit (there had been some function earlier, a buddy of mine was graduating from a Special Forces program, and I looked good). Later on, we all went back to the apartment Christy shared with her roommate, Chance. We all laughed and drank and Chance played the guitar, I remember that, and slowly people started going home and then Chance and her boyfriend, Bucky, went to bed. Somehow—I guess I’d been angling for it all night long—Christy and I were left alone, sitting across from each other on opposite couches, and she said, “So you’re not afraid of me, huh?”

  I smiled, and she did the strangest thing—she just lifted up her skirt and showed me her pussy.

  About a year and a half later, out of fear and emotional necessity, I broke it off with her. Eight days after that I’d arrived at an alternative solution.

  We were facing each other in the parking lot of the Kingston bus station.

  “I don’t want to fuck around, so I’m just gonna do this.” I had the damn thing in my pocket, but my hands were freezing and I was having trouble getting it out.

 
“Now, I got this from these very funky . . . artists—uh, jewelers, you know?—So I think you’ll like it. It’s handmade by some substantial craftsman, is what I’m saying.”

  Christy was in front of me poised like a wolf, long thin limbs balancing her weight, about to dart in four directions at once.

  She’d stepped off the Trailways bus behind some poky old lady. Her blond hair was dyed and cut differently. I didn’t say anything about it right off the bat, and I probably should have, but I’m bad with crap like that. She looked great, though, with her hair choppy, wild, and jet black. Her skin was all splotches of white and red from the cold and she was wrapped in a poofy black parka with her long blue-jeaned legs sticking out. She has a dynamite ass. If you look at her from the back you’d think she was a black chick. I could see breath steaming out from her cold blue lips as she stared down at me.

  You have to work on your confidence when you’re going with a girl like Christy. She’s got a fireball for a brain, she’s radiant—that’s not an opinion or a compliment, that’s just the way it is—and she’s taller than me. It’s easy to feel all bearlike and domineering when you got some kinda small-fry chippie to make your dick feel like it’s ten miles long, but with a girl like Christy you gotta hang on tight to any sense of self you got. She’s the best-looking girl I ever went out with, bar none.

  Anyway, we were standing in the freezing cold of this bus station parking lot. The wind whipped fragments of garbage across the asphalt. Empty bags of chips and newspapers were swirling everywhere. Behind us was the on-ramp up to I-87. It was five-thirty in the afternoon, so rush-hour traffic was still stinking up the air and creating a dull spitting rumble of engines all around us. In half an hour it would be dark. Up above the highway you could see the Catskill Mountains. They’re not grand or majestic; they seem more kind of tired and disappointed. They’re old, though—noble, even. They deserve better than to be obscured by the billboards dotting the horizon. Oldest mountains in North America, the Catskills, that’s a fact. There wasn’t too much hustle-bustle there at the station, just a few commuters running to the bus trying to keep their hats on. I didn’t have a hat on; neither did Christy. The point is we were both bitch cold, and my hands felt dead like clay. They didn’t have any blood in them. I was dying to get this puny thing out of my pocket. Christy was already just one moment away from being pissed off. She hates being cold or out in the open. She’s a very private person, and there’s something vulnerable about a parking lot that I knew she wouldn’t find appealing.