by Rachel Simon
I want to reply that it won’t be terrible, but I know it will. And I cannot be dishonest; after all, we have marriage ESP. I lie down on the bed and stroke his chest. His hair tickles my palm. I have not been aware of this, of him and me, for so long now. “Fabian,” I whisper, telling myself to remember how his hair feels beneath my hand, how his body feels next to mine, “I’m sure we’ll be all right.”
Breath of This Night
I have three daughters, young, pink, and brimming with questions. People tell me I am too young to have so many children. After college — bing! bing! bing! They came as if my life was a book in the wind, flipping madly to the chapter where the spine was made to bend. I love my little girls, my bevy of beauties. At night I gather them around me in their matching nightgowns of flannel rosebushes. I put the light on low, so my room looks golden and streaked with shadows, like the field behind our house at the end of the day.
They climb all around the bed and sprawl across my legs, propping up their heads. “Tell us about when you were a little girl, Mommy.”
And I ask, “What do you want to know?” There is so much to tell. Games, friends, schools, clothes. But always they pick the same thing:
“Tell us about rock ’n’ roll.”
These children. These babies suckling the curdled milk of Madonna. What do they know of rock ’n’ roll? Only that at one time it was more adventurous, more passionate. A time when old men, men now their father’s age, stood outside the world and made it come to them. A time when their mother was a child, sitting in the backyard with her brother’s transistor, hearing for the first time the deejays and melodies and harmonies of AM radio. “Radio!” “How’d they show videos?” “Is AM anything like B.C.?”
So they lie there and I tell them about the garage band on the corner, spraying my street every Sunday with guitar solos and Farfisa organ; the light show at the school dance, where transparencies netted with India ink were slapped wet and wriggling onto an overhead projector. I tell them about my first forty-five. I tell them about my first concert. “The Yardbirds,” I say, gushing. “Who’s that?” my girls ask. I smile and tell them, “That’s where the guitarist in The Firm came from.”
One night I tell them about when my brother took me to Woodstock, and all the people there, and how the bathroom lines were too long. “We couldn’t find a space as big as this bed to sit on.” I tell them to imagine an ocean full of people instead of water. “Oooh,” says Marjorie, the middle one, the one who believes in magic. Her round eyes echo the shape of her mouth. Liza, the youngest, asks, “Does that mean that when it rained, people fell from the skies?”
Tonight they ask me again. “Rock ’n’ roll,” they say. And I wonder what to tell them. Nothing after Woodstock; hairs began sprouting in new places on my body after Woodstock. I am not ready for them to meet up with puberty.
So I tell them this story. It’s a little story, lost for many years in my nightly rush of memories. I’m not even sure if I’ve ever mentioned it to my husband. I was in second grade. “Your age, Claudia,” I say to the oldest. Her face sits buried behind glasses, and she does not smile often. But for this, she grins.
“My neighbors, Emily and Wanda,” I say, “were very rich, and their daddy worked in New York. One night he took them to see — the Rolling Stones.”
They squeal, even Claudia, and roll all over the bed. The Rolling Stones, those trilobites of the Golden Age, those Angry Old Men, those Methuselahs whose wrinkles these young eyes so effortlessly iron out.
“And the next day, Emily came over and brought me the Rolling Stones’ breath.”
“How do you carry breath?” Claudia asks. Liza cups her hands, the tiniest in the room, and blows into them.
I say, “They trapped it in a bottle. A little vitamin jar. Their father typed up a label that said, ‘Rolling Stones’ Breath,’ and the date.”
“Wow,” Liza says.
“That’s better than having a genie,” Marjorie says.
“No it’s not,” Claudia says. “I bet all their daddy did was open up a bottle in the theater and then close it.”
Marjorie protests. “But it’s still got the Rolling Stones’ breath in it.”
“Breath is just air. That’s what my teacher says.”
“But Rolling Stone breath is special breath,” Liza says.
“All breath’s the same.”
The two younger girls begin to wilt. “No,” I say. “Everyone’s breath is special because it only comes once, and then it’s gone. It’s like taking a picture, except you can’t see what it looks like.” Liza sucks her thumb with her eyes closed; Marjorie makes half-hearted hand shadows on the wall. I lean forward and touch their knees. “You know,” I say, “I wish I could keep all your breath, from the day you were born.”
“You do?” Liza and Marjorie say, peering up at me, thumbs and shadows forgotten. I glance at Claudia. For a moment her eyebrows knit together as if she is working on a difficult arithmetic problem. But only for a moment.
Because then I say, “I know. Let’s save some tonight.” And I grab their hands and we make a chain and jump off the bed and run downstairs, the four of us, even Claudia, giggling like sisters. In the kitchen I rummage around until I find four jars. Liza breathes in one. Immediately I screw on the lid and label it. Then Marjorie goes. Then me. Claudia almost refuses. “No,” she says, watching us. I begin to label hers “Empty,” and Liza and Marjorie wail and groan. Claudia stares at her jar, then pushes me away and exhales into it as if she is blowing up the biggest balloon in the world.
Later, I line the four jars along my headboard. Someday, when I am old, and my husband is dead, and my children have children who ask about rock ’n’ roll, I will open those jars. I’ll turn the lids slowly, and sniff the contents like fine wines. I’ll put my face into each jar, as deep as the opening will allow, and breathe in my children’s breath. And I will remember this night. Suspended for long, then lost in an instant. So much, I’ll think then, like a flower under glass, crumbling into dust when its petals touch the air.
Skirts
He’s no different. That’s what I thought at first. He’s a townie from the streets like the rest of them. They come by, I do it with them, give them blow jobs, whatever. Him too, but he’s not like them. They’re easy. He’s not. He asks why I do it. I don’t have to tell anyone why.
What do I do it for? Can’t say. The college shrink has some ideas. R. A. walked by in September just as three townies were leaving my room. I was standing in the doorway, wearing a button-down shirt, nothing else. Standard operating procedure. She looks at me, peeks into my room, recoils. “You’re crazy, girl,” she says. She tells on me. There’s a big uproar, they say I have to get therapy or they’ll tell my mother. I land in the shrink’s office the next day.
I have to change where I do it, so the R.A. won’t know. I get word out to the guys; I lived in town last summer, I know how to reach them. I tell them, Meet me at the end of campus, by the brook behind Physical Plant, four o’clock every day. It’s still light then, and all the janitors are gone. I bring a blanket, a radio. Some Fig Newtons and M&M’s. Have my jeans off before they arrive.
They come in groups, mostly. Two, three. They’ve got long hair and their backs are greasy. What do you expect when all they do is panhandle from the tourists in town and sleep in the Revolutionary War park at night? Sometimes their pubic hair’s tangled. Sometimes they watch before it’s their turn.
I don’t know their names. A few tried to tell me, but I told them, Who cares, and they shut up. To myself I think of them like famous writers. Byron, Lawrence, Wilde.
This new guy, he wasn’t around last summer. I call him Lewis. For Carroll. He comes alone. I mean, he comes every day, waits behind a tree until he’s sure no one else’s showing up. Then he pops out like he just got there.
He’s older than the others. Got white streaks in his hair, wears a suit with holes all through it. First time he showed up, he says, “You got a
skirt? I prefer to do it with skirts.” “No,” I say, “I don’t wear clothes like that, only men’s jeans, jockey shorts.” He reaches into his pants pocket, grabs hold of a white scarf, pulls and pulls and pulls. When it’s all out, it’s the biggest scarf I’ve ever seen. “Stand up,” he says. He gives me a corner to hold, then walks around me seven times — I count them — until he’s wrapped me almost as tight as a mummy from my waist to my knees. Fastens it with a safety pin he takes from behind his ear. “Now stand in the brook,” he says. I walk in there, almost slip on the wet rocks. He doesn’t take off his pants. He knows what he’s doing. He barely even wrinkles the skirt.
His skin smells stale and wooden, like a rotting house on a lake. The hair on his head’s stiff as mannequin hair.
He takes a long time. After, he asks about my orgasm. Nobody ever asks that. It’s a myth, I tell him, that girls have them. For us, that’s not what it’s about.
“Then what’s it about?” he says.
“None of your business,” I say. “Some girls scratch their arms till they bleed. I do this.”
Every time he shows up, he stays longer. I take it for granted I’ll get to the dining hall too late for dinner. So I lie around on the blanket when he’s done, eating my Fig Newtons. The sun’s down by then, but there’s some light from the path in front of Physical Plant. Lewis likes to stay with me. I listen to the radio, watch the skirt ripple in the breeze. He smokes a joint.
We don’t say much. That’s how I like it.
My shrink thinks she’s sewed me up, that because of her, no man gets inside me. She crosses her legs under her full skirts, crosses her arms against her silk blouses. Her hair’s as meticulously styled as a model’s. Just like my mother’s. That’s why I wear a fedora, sometimes — to cover my hair. The shrink and my mother, they must spend two hours every day getting ready for the world. They must practice their smiles in the mirror when they’re done, making sure the corners curl up to just the right height.
“Summer’s ending too quickly for me this year,” she says when I sit down. “Would you like some tea?” She lifts a white porcelain teapot and holds the spout above the lip of a matching cup.
No.
Her hand freezes, then she lowers the pot without pouring. “So,” she says, leaning back, “have things improved since your last visit?”
There’s nothing to improve, I say. I’m fine.
“You look good. Like you’re getting more sleep.”
It’s still five hours most nights, four.
Her eyes get wide. “That’s little more than a nap. Do you sleep straight through?”
No. Never.
“What happens when you wake up?”
I lie there. Concentrate on the books I’m reading, keeping my eyes closed.
“You don’t open your eyes?”
No.
“Why? Some sort of test?”
I don’t need to test myself.
“Have you ever slept more than you sleep now?”
Yeah. Weekends when I stayed with my mother. She used to say girls needed beauty rest. She’d put me to bed at nine, wouldn’t let me get up till seven or eight. Checked on me during the night to make sure I was still asleep.
“How did you know that, if you were asleep?”
I could feel her. I’d be half-awake and I could feel her in the doorway, watching me.
“Did that scare you?”
I don’t get scared. I’d just roll over and sleep some more.
She looks at me like I’m a war refugee. She pulls out a pad and asks about my father (disappeared before I ever knew him), my uncles (send stock reports, never visit), my mother’s father (came by once, didn’t meet him). She asks if my mother had boyfriends. Yeah, after she sent me to school. Rich guys who worked in big companies. The maid told me about them. They took my mother to company functions, dropped her off before eleven o’clock. She’d walk in sober as a stone, her dress clear of wrinkles, her hair perfect in its mold. She’d ask the maid to leave the lights on all night. She’d go to bed.
“What did you think of her dates?” the shrink asks.
Nothing. Never met them. I imagine they were all frustrated, couldn’t get anywhere with her.
She scribbles. She asks more about men. She goes on and on, like if she lists enough, she’ll hit on the one who did me wrong. Like she’s going to win the lottery by buying every ticket.
It doesn’t get her anywhere. Because, truth is, no man made me do this. I made me do this. Not for fun. Just for. Why do people chop off their arms? Why do people burn down their houses with their children inside?
The days begin to get cold. I cut off all my hair. I’ve been making it shorter and shorter since last school year, and now I go at it until I can rest the sides of the scissors on my head as I clip. The cactus look.
Lewis, when he’s done one day, walks me over to the blanket, takes off his jacket, drapes it on me. I wiggle around beneath it so none of the holes leads directly to my skin. I hate being cold.
He sits next to me, lights a joint, offers it to me. I tell him I don’t do drugs. He laughs a little — first time I ever heard him laugh — coughs, spits, drags. Sounds sick, like he’s got cancer.
When he’s down to the roach, he says to me, “What’re you doing here?”
“Lying down. Watching the tops of the trees, the stars.”
“No,” he says. “I mean in this school. This girls’ school.”
“I’ve always been in girls’ schools. My mother sticks me in them. She wishes she’d gone to them. She thinks they’re safe.”
“But in school, any school. You don’t seem to belong.”
“You don’t think I’m smart?”
“I couldn’t know. You don’t say much.”
I listen to the water trickle between the rocks. Far away someone turns up a stereo. “I like it here,” I say. “It’s a nice place to live. I can do what I want. I get to read.”
He lies back, puts his hands behind his head for a pillow. “I used to read,” he says. “But reading keeps you alone too much.”
“I like being alone.”
“You could’ve surprised me.”
“This is like being alone.”
He looks my way, waits a second. Then blows out a laugh like a bullet from a gun.
The shrink is dipping a tea bag in a cup of water when I come in. I’m fifteen minutes late. She doesn’t say anything about the time. She says, “I got some hot chocolate for you.”
I don’t want any, I say, though my mouth tingles when I think of the chocolate sliding down my throat, thick and warm as semen. I sit and look at the collection of ceramic lions on the shelf behind her head. The males stand with their chests thrust out, their manes wild; the females lie cute and hairless, huddling around the cubs.
That’s such sentimental crap, I say. Idealized. Sometimes lions eat their young, did you know that? If they’re inexperienced and don’t know what they’re doing? They think the cubs will attract predators to the den. So they eat them.
“Do you think your mother ever felt that way?”
My mother? What way.
“Threatened or confused enough to try to destroy you.”
My mother doesn’t feel anything.
“Did you ever see her cry?”
She doesn’t cry. She’ll tell you that. She takes showers.
“Do you cry?”
Not now. When I was a kid I did. She used to brush my hair out every day. She’d rip through the knots. I’d cry. I’d tell her to stop but she wouldn’t till the brush made it from my scalp to my waist in one clean stroke.
“You had hair that long?”
Longer, even. She made me set it so the ends curled. So it looked perfect, and people would see it and know we were a respectable family. First time I ever got it cut was last May. Chopped it off myself. Used the gardener’s clippers. She wouldn’t let me stay home last summer because of it.
“It must have been very painful when she told
you that.”
No. Years ago it might have. But not now. I know what I’m doing now.
“If you weren’t hurt, what did you feel?”
Cold.
“In May?”
Yeah. Even thinking about her coming to visit me here again. Looking at my hair, what I’m wearing. The thought makes me cold.
North wind blows in, leaves scuttle around the banks of the brook. Some days I wear a tie. Some days I draw a mustache over my lip with an eyeliner, sideburns below my ears. I wear them to class, touch them up before I leave for the brook with my blanket. That’s when I put on aftershave lotion, sometimes.
Lewis’s jacket is not long enough to cover my legs. And the skirt’s too thin to do any good. One day, I sit up, go to put on my pants. “No,” he says. “Wear mine.” He stands up, unzips, pulls them off. I ease them on beneath the skirt. They’re wool. When the wind hits them, it feels like waves of insects scrambling up my legs.
Lewis sits in his shirt and underwear. “You may wonder how I can sit in the cold,” he says, sucking on a joint. He points to his head. “It’s control, self-control. Knowing I direct my own show, that I can take care of myself. I’d be crazy by now if I didn’t have it.”
“You don’t direct this show,” I say.
He scratches his chin, looks at the skirt, then up at my face. “No,” he says, “I don’t suppose I do.”
I grab a Fig Newton, stick the whole thing in my mouth, chew while I talk. “What’d you read?” I say.
“What?”
“What’d you read, when you read?”
“Just about anything. I taught English.” He waves his hand. “That way, a few towns over. It was a good life. I’d go back if I could.”
I try to imagine him teaching me, in his dirty shirt and underwear. I bet he did it with his students, he’s the type. For a second I wonder if I’d have slipped him a note after class, asking him to meet me in the janitor’s closet at lunch like I did with Mr. Wallace. Or if I’d have just stopped by his office after school one day, snapped off the light, stripped off my clothes. Like what happened with Mr. Reed that one time.
