“Kate,” I whispered, hoping she would answer, but there was nothing.
I looked back toward the house in the distance. There was no movement along the driveway. The sounds of laughter were far off, nowhere near the car, or me, or Kate, or my hand reaching between the front seat and the back and descending so slowly downward until the fingertips touched the softness of the skin, and moved gently, and it is wrong, and I know it’s wrong, and I cannot pull my hand away, and there’s a sound outside the car, and I jerk my body around to face forward, and close my eyes like I’m asleep, and when the car door flies open I act confused, blinded by the light.
“Get your asses up,” Jake said, and a few minutes later, when no one was looking, I put my hand to my face and it smelled like Kate, and I wondered again how anyone like her could chew her fingernails to the quick.
With Lori’s help, Kate woke up and lifted herself to a seated position. I climbed in the backseat beside her for the ride to take her home.
“My head hurts,” she said.
Jake turned up the radio, and I wished he’d turn it down again.
“Turn off the radio, please,” Kate said, and I looked at her. She saw me looking. “I look like shit,” she said.
“No, you don’t.”
She was seventeen. I was sixteen. She would be a senior in a few weeks, and I’d be a junior. Jake slowed down and then gunned it through a stop sign. We were almost to Kate’s street. I waited for Lori and Jake to start a conversation in the front seat between themselves.
“Why do you bite your fingernails?” I asked quietly.
She looked at me, straight into my eyes, the streetlights passing outside. It was a look I hadn’t seen from her before. Like I’d gotten a glimpse at something I wasn’t supposed to see. Like she was surprised I’d noticed anything about her fingers. But there was no answer. Just a stare, and then Kate noticed where we were.
“Stop here,” she said.
“What?” Lori asked.
Kate raised her voice, “Stop here.”
“Stop,” Lori told Jake. “She wants to get out here.” Jake slowed down. “But her house is up the—”
Lori pushed Jake on the shoulder like he was being inconsiderate.
“What?” he asked, not catching on to the signals of a woman.
Lori raised her eyebrows. “Stop here, please.”
The car rolled to a stop. Kate got out with no words and closed the car door.
“Go,” Lori said.
Jake asked, “You want me to leave her on the side of the road?”
Lori whispered, “Just go, Jake. I’ll tell you why.”
And the car rolled away, leaving Kate Shepherd on the side of the road. I looked back through the rear window. She stood, bent over slightly, looking at the ground near her feet. She was under a streetlight, and the shadow thrown by her body spread out on the pavement like a tall ghost. When we were far enough away, Kate started to walk.
Lori explained, “She doesn’t like people to go to her house.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“She just doesn’t. I don’t know why. I always pick her up at different places. I think something’s the matter with her father. Robin says he’s crazy or something, and the house is like a shack, all rotten, with dogs everywhere.”
I looked back through the rear window, but we’d already turned down another street.
“What about her mother?” I asked.
Lori stuck her head in the backseat. “You do like her, dontcha?”
I was weak. The night had taken its toll. “Maybe,” I said.
“What about her mother?”
“She never talks about her mother. I don’t know.”
“Does she have any sisters or brothers?”
“I don’t think so. I think she moved here from Oklahoma.”
After that night my focus became even stronger. Kate filled all the empty places in me. She rounded the rough edges and gave me purpose. She didn’t know it yet, but Kate was my girlfriend, and I had plans. Detailed, elaborate plans, considering every possibility. I could save her from all that was bad and protect her from the world. And who I was, who I would become, would have a starting point, a structure, a method of measurement. The difference between me and Kate would narrow into nothing.
seven
People who make bad grades in school sometimes like to say they’re bored, or it wasn’t challenging. The implication is clear. They made poor grades because they were smarter than everyone else, including the teachers.
I don’t know how my smartness compared with other people, but I know my grades weren’t too good. Of course, I spent a large percentage of my junior year in high school creating vivid sexual fantasies and searching for shortcuts. I’m not sure why there was such a contrast in my drive to work hard on a construction site and my quest for shortcuts in the classroom, but the contrast existed and I didn’t do anything to figure it out, despite the motivation for a college education caused by moronic co-workers.
Mr. Lee taught Biology. He was a small Asian man. Back then we thought all small Asian men were Chinese. We called him China Lee. I think he was from Vietnam, or Korea maybe, I’m not sure. His accent was strong and his fingers were thin like pencils, holding up things in front of his special safety goggles.
“Okay, cass. Weed pwoblem numbar fwee.”
It took Jody Gardner two weeks to understand Mr. Lee well enough to respond to his name at roll call. He was marked absent every day.
The first two tests didn’t go well. I needed to make a B on the semester exam to pass the class, so I decided to cheat. On a piece of paper about the size of a business card, I wrote, in super-tiny letters, the answers to every question in the damn book. I messed up once and had to do it again, but finally, in super-tiny writing, I had everything I needed to know.
I taped the piece of paper lightly to the backside of my thigh, just above the hem of my khaki shorts. The idea was to position the paper under my leg in the chair so I could simply move my leg to the side an inch and see the cheat sheet as needed during the exam.
Mr. Lee was like a prison guard. He roamed around the room watching with those beady eyes. Every time I looked up he was watching me, waiting, somehow knowing my plan, like he’d gotten inside my house and watched me write the tiny cheat sheet, twice.
Out of sheer frustration I started reading the questions on the test. To my amazement I knew almost all the answers. Answers I surely hadn’t learned in class in between sexual gymnastics and inappropriate thoughts. But there they were, coming out of my pen all over the page. Fill-in-the-blank. Multiple choice. Bing, bing, bing.
In my plan to cheat I’d learned I didn’t need to. Finding the answers in the book, identifying them as somehow important, and writing them down in such a focused and concentrated fashion burned the answers in my mind. They were there to stay, and more importantly, I learned a study method that served me well throughout my higher education. Prepare to cheat, and then don’t.
I was left with a peculiar dilemma. Beneath my leg was proof of my immoral intentions, but I never looked down. Under Mr. Lee’s burning eyes, how was I to get up and walk away? I’d managed, by fidgeting and sweating, to disconnect the cheat sheet from my leg. The tape was folded over and the evidence was left between my bare leg and the wooden seat.
People began to stand and walk to the front of the class, but Mr. Lee’s eyes stayed on me. I’d finished the test. There were only two questions I couldn’t answer. I’d never looked down, but who would believe me? Who would believe I could make an A on the final exam after making F’s on the other tests without cheating? I’d created a sticky quandary.
Everyone was gone but me.
“Meester Weenwood, au yuu feeneshed?”
We looked at each other. I wondered what was running around in that crafty mind of his. Had he seen me sneak my hand down to adjust the paper under the leg? Had he noticed the glistening of sweat on my upper lip in anticipation of the misdeed
? The room seemed overly warm. I felt a touch of asthma and moved my hand to feel the bulge of the inhaler in my front pocket.
I held the exam in my hand and reached it out in the direction of Mr. Lee, who stood to my right, twenty feet away. I held it there, waiting for him to move, or not move, or whatever came next. I half-expected police officers to arrive and take me into custody, but instead, Mr. Lee walked over to my desk and took the exam from my hand.
He studied the papers, looking occasionally at me over the top of the page. When he finished, Mr. Lee lowered the exam from his face. I held his stare.
“I didn’t cheat,” I said.
Mr. Lee’s mouth tightened. His chin seemed to rise slightly. There was not the tiniest hint of a smile.
“I know,” he said.
We were only a few feet apart. There was no way to snatch the cheat sheet and shove it in my pocket, or eat it, or anything else. I was left in the shaky hands of fate, with my eyes still locked upon the eyes of China Lee. I stood slowly from my chair, prepared for a small piece of paper to fall at my feet, taking the eyes of Mr. Lee with it to the floor.
But there was no such feeling. And his eyes stayed with mine. And I turned and walked, hands in pockets, out the door into the crowded hallway. Around the corner I reached my hand and felt the back of my leg. And there, hidden beneath the edge of my shorts, stuck to my sweaty leg, was the cheat sheet. When I’d sat down, the pants leg edge had pulled naturally further up the thigh. And when I’d stood, the edge naturally hung down lower, covering the evidence of my evil scheme. Fate had rewarded me and I made a D+ in biology. Maybe I was just bored.
I had a job as a waiter that year in a nice restaurant downtown. I found it difficult. Instead of being able to lower my head and work my ass off like I’d done in previous construction jobs, suddenly I had to talk to people. What’s more, I had to pretend like they were interesting and important, and I cared whether they wanted regular or low-fat ranch dressing on their stupid little salads.
The balance was difficult. It kept my mind off Kate, but not for long. She looked tired sometimes. I’d watch her across the baseball field sitting in the aluminum bleachers doing her homework. She’d look out across the green field at nothing for long stretches. Sometimes she’d shut her eyes and take a deep breath.
Everything she did was very mysterious. I’d never been around women much, except my mother, and I don’t think my mother was typical of women in general. I wasn’t comfortable asking my mother questions about anything at all, much less sex, or menstrual cycles, or the hopes and fears of teenage girls.
Instead I mostly watched Kate and tried to learn things. I practiced conversations with myself. I tried to imagine situations we might find ourselves in. I took notes on small pieces of paper, like my cheat sheet, in case I ever got up the nerve to call her on the telephone. Notes of things to say to fill the ungodly dead spots in a hypothetical conversation. As the year drug on, my obsession with Kate became familiar, like a favorite shirt. It wore well and aged one day at a time.
I continued, along with everybody else, to struggle with identity. I embraced the role of savior but slowly came to recognize a savior must have someone to save, or you’re really just a stalker. It’s hard to tell what Kate knew or didn’t know of my obsession. The sight of a certain face, Kate’s face, made me feel physically different. I didn’t need to actually see her. I could think about her and the chemicals would squirt out and leave me drunk. It was hard to understand why it didn’t happen to everybody else who saw Kate. People seemed to pass all around, even speak with her in the hallway, or sit next to her in the classroom, and then walk away unfazed.
In the middle of my junior year there was a school dance. I generally stayed away from any school-related functions, social clubs, or any other organized activity for that matter. I might have been average, but there’s a big difference between being average and being a conformist. A conformist is an average guy sitting around the room with a bunch of other average guys. I was average alone.
I went to the dance because I knew Kate would be there. She was on a date with a guy named Jeff Temple. I’d seen him around her before. Jeff was a senior, played on the baseball team, and had no appreciation whatsoever of the value of Kate Shepherd. I could tell by the way he walked with her, and the way he smiled at all the right times. He just didn’t know.
I wasn’t really mad at him. How could I be? I was more frustrated than anything else. Frustrated that neither one of them could recognize the obvious when they walked into the dance together. I sat over in the corner with Jake and Lori, hidden in the dark recesses of the high school fringe. Kate seemed to be having fun, but I knew she wasn’t. She acted like she liked Jeff Temple, but I knew better. It wasn’t possible at the time to understand the woman I believed I knew so well didn’t really exist. I’d created my own person. Built, like the bride of Frankenstein, to be exactly who I wanted her to be. That’s the problem with love. The chemicals make you drunk. People in love shouldn’t be allowed to operate heavy machinery.
He left her alone for awhile to stand next to his buddies. I wanted her to see me. I stood and walked out of the dark corner into a patch of light.
“You don’t belong here,” I wanted to tell her. “Let’s leave. You and me. Go drive around. Go sit together at night in the aluminum baseball bleachers and talk about nothing. Just hold hands in the dark, and you can tell me what I already know,” I wanted to say.
But we never say things like that in the real world, only in the movies. And in the real world, the boyfriend comes back before Kate sees me, and they walk off together, and I go home and masturbate.
It all came down to one night. The night of Kate’s graduation. I’d squandered the entire year, never gathering the nerve to ask her on a single date, or call her on the telephone. The fear had extended beyond the natural boy/girl fear into a category of being afraid the real Kate Shepherd couldn’t measure up to the Kate Shepherd inside my mind, the one that caused the release of all those chemicals. But I’d decided I couldn’t just do nothing. I couldn’t let her graduate, and maybe slide out of my life without something. Anything. I wasn’t even sure what it would be.
It ended up being one of those nights we remember our entire lives. There was a party at David Ansley’s house after the graduation ceremony. Kate was laughing and drinking. I’d heard stories of her drinking too much and worse.
From the other side of this party I watched Kate go from happy and laughing to alone and stoic, and eventually to drunk and angry. It was the talk of the party. She cussed out Jeff Temple by the pool and he broke up with her in front of the world.
For everyone else, it was high school drama at its best. For me, it was painful. Through the past year I’d melted into Kate Shepherd, and as I said before, the difference between me and Kate narrowed to nothing. I could see the brokenness. It wasn’t just a random act. It was the night of her graduation. It was everything coming together. It was Jeff going to college when she wasn’t. It was being dropped off a block from her home. It was the knowing and not knowing.
I followed her out to the road in front of David Ansley’s big house, but lost her in the darkness. I called out her name but didn’t get an answer, and wondered if she recognized my voice, or if she was passed out in the woods somewhere.
Back at the party Jeff Temple didn’t seem to have a care in the world. He drank a cold beer and laughed with his buddies. I watched him grab a girl on the ass with a cigar hanging from his mouth.
I wanted to beat the shit out of him. I wanted to make him stand before the crowd, blood trickling from his nose, tears in his blue eyes, and say, “I’m sorry, Kate. I was wrong. You’re too good for me.”
But of course I didn’t do it. Of course I just watched him from across the party as long as I could stand it, and then left alone to find Kate. There was still no answer on the street. I figured she might have gotten a ride home. One of her friends must have cared enough to get her safely to her b
ed.
I drove across town in the direction of Kate’s house. It was midnight, and I had no real plan. Of all the situations I’d envisioned, this wasn’t one.
I parked out by the road, near the mailbox. The dirt driveway snaked through the center of the wooded lot. Far back in the lot I could see a single yellow light. There were a few houses on the street, but everything was quiet. I got out of my car and closed the door gently. This was it. The moment I’d waited for. She needed me. I could tell her why. Everything would come together for both of us. She needed saving, and I could explain the reasons, and then I could proceed with the plan.
I put my hands in my blue jean pockets and started down the driveway. I could barely see the road at my feet as I twisted around one curve and then another. The yellow light came from the porch of a small wooden house. It hadn’t been painted in twenty years. A scruffy white dog crawled from beneath the porch. Her teats were engorged and hung below a fat belly. I could hear the whimpering of puppies. I stopped to wait for the dog’s decision to bark or not to bark. She wagged her tail and smelled my shoe.
I stepped up on the porch. The boards creaked under my feet. There was a dull glow from the single yellow bulb. It wasn’t until I reached the door that I realized it was only a screen door. Inside was dark like a cave. I pressed my face against the screen and tried to see anything at all. The outline of a piece of furniture, a couch, anything.
In a low voice, almost to myself, I said, “Kate?”
There was no answer. No sound of any kind inside. I put my hand on the handle of the screen door and pulled gently to test whether it was locked. The door opened a few inches, the hinges making a rusty squeaking sound.
In the silence my ears were raw for sound, listening for any noise. From below, on the other side of the door, came a deep gutteral groan, low and long. I froze with my hand on the handle of the door.
The Wait Page 5
