by Ann Hood
“You look awful,” Sue was saying. She opened the door for him and stepped aside. She was wearing a worn dark green cardigan that was too big for her, and she kept hugging it close around her chest.
“And you smell,” she said when he passed her.
Tom pulled up a chair and sat on it backward.
“Let’s see,” Sue said, “you need black coffee.”
He didn’t watch her as she moved about the small kitchen. Tom always felt slightly embarrassed in Sue’s presence. He knew too much. Back when Mitch was alive, they used to tell each other everything. Tom knew that Sue had a crooked scar on her inner thigh from jumping a fence when she was a kid. He knew that during sex, she liked to rake her fingers across a man’s back, leaving a red path behind. He knew everything, all the intimate details.
Sue was close to him now, putting a cup of coffee in front of him. The mug said Happy Holidays and was covered with red and green snowflakes. Tom stared at the cup so as not to look at Sue. He tried to make more words out of Holidays. There were day and days, of course. And say, and lay.
“I know it was hard,” Sue said. “Last night.”
Tom kept staring. Hay. Sad.
“I watched,” she said. “I kept thinking about how much she wants this. How much she always wanted this.”
Lad. Had.
“Harp? Say something.”
Tom looked up at her. “Do you have any beer?” he said finally.
When he opened his eyes, Tom could not figure out where he was. He didn’t feel frightened. Just confused. He tried to lick his lips, but his mouth was too dry. It made a little popping sound when he opened it. From somewhere far off he heard voices. Women’s voices, hushed and excited.
“I mean I’m really just a kid. Is this what I’m supposed to be doing?”
That was Dana.
“When I was your age, I had a dead husband and a baby.”
That was Sue.
Tom closed his eyes again and thought. He was on Sue’s couch, an old thing with busted springs digging into his back. She kept a fringed bedspread over it to hide all the tears and holes. But the bedspread was all bunched up and Tom could feel the scratchy upholstery underneath. He had sat at Sue’s kitchen table all day, drinking all her beer and then some Jack Daniel’s. He had cried.
Sue told him that was a good thing. The crying. Get it out, she’d said. He hadn’t really talked to her. There were no words for heartbreak, no vocabulary that really captured what it felt like. But Sue had been right. The tears had helped.
“She is the most selfish person on this planet,” Dana was saying. “I hate her. I really do.”
“Someday,” Sue said, “you are going to have to make a choice between what you want and what everyone else needs and then you won’t be thinking about what’s selfish and what’s not.”
“I would never hurt so many people,” Dana said. “Never.”
Tom sat up, unsteadily. It was dark outside, and dark in the room. He followed the light from the kitchen, pressing the palms of his hands to the wall as he walked. They all looked up when he stumbled in. Dana, Sue, Caitlin.
“Hi,” he said.
Dana was frowning at him. She had done something else with her hair, something new, but he couldn’t tell what.
Tom cleared his throat. “I could use that coffee,” he said.
“Let’s just forget her,” Dana said, her voice more intense than he could ever remember it being. “Let’s just start new.”
Tom reached out, touched his daughter’s head lightly. He was surprised how hard her hair felt, like armor. That was what was different, he realized. She had dyed one side bright orange, the side that used to have a peace symbol shaved on it.
He smiled at her. “Let’s go home,” he said.
Dana drove.
When they pulled into the driveway, Tom said, “I thought I saw somebody in the trees. Back there.”
“Nadine.”
The name sounded vaguely familiar to him. “Nadine?” he repeated.
“Troy’s old girlfriend,” Dana said. “She follows him around.”
“Uh-huh,” Tom said.
They stepped out of the car, into the darkness. The smell of rotting leaves was strong and there was a hint of frost in the air.
“Daddy,” Dana said.
This startled him. She had not called him that in a very long time.
Tom took a step closer to her. He still felt unsteady on his feet, so he placed one hand on the hood of the car.
“Thank you for the present,” she said. “The oil can.”
She didn’t wait for him to answer. Instead, she slipped into the house quickly, so he couldn’t see her face.
“I know,” Dana said. “Pineapple—”
The college boy shook his head. “No,” he said.
She thought. BillyBillyBillyBillyBillyBillyBilly.
“Andouille, shrimp, and hot pepper,” he told her.
“Oh. Now you’re going Cajun,” Dana said. Then repeated his order. “Andouille, shrimp, and hot pepper. Ten minutes.”
He smiled but he didn’t walk away.
“Something else?” she asked him, forcing her voice into nonchalance.
“What happened to peace and love?” he said. He pointed at her newly dyed hair.
Dana shrugged. “I like orange now,” she told him. She was trying for sassy.
“Well,” he said, “it’s certainly orange.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, trying to decide if he was making fun of her.
But then he said, “Want to go out later? There’s this thing at school.”
She didn’t answer right away. She had to wait for her heart to slip back into place.
“What kind of thing?” she said. She started to wipe the counter in front of her.
“A dance. There’s a band and some kegs.” He was smiling, showing off his dimples.
Dana felt Caitlin watching her. They were supposed to go out with Mike and Kevin after work. She tried to imagine a college dance, but kept picturing scenes from Animal House, crazy guys in togas rolling on the floor to “Shout.”
It seemed as if everyone was waiting for her to say something.
She shrugged. “Okay,” she said, as if it really didn’t matter at all.
There was an employees’ locker room at Pizza Pizzazz, where they could change their clothes or go during breaks for a cigarette. Dana was back there, getting out of her uniform, when Caitlin came in with a small pizza. Sausage, tomato, and fresh basil.
“A mistake,” she said, holding the pizza up for Dana to see. “With normal ingredients for a change.”
Caitlin sat on one of the long wooden benches that lined one wall, put her feet up, and bit into a piece of pizza.
Dana tried to smooth out the wrinkles on her shirt. She could feel her hands tremble. She thought, BillyBillyBillyBillyBillyBillyBilly.
“Maybe you could tell me what I’m supposed to say to Mike,” Caitlin said. She finished her first piece and started on a second.
“Tell him I got sick,” Dana said. Then she added, “Of him.”
“Ha ha.”
Dana wished she had worn something different. She had on a sea green bowling shirt that said Roy in black script above the pocket and PAULIE’S BAR AND GRILL across the back. She’d bought it at the Goodwill store along with a maroon and white letter jacket. She’d thought both things were hilarious when she bought them, but now, when she put on the jacket she knew that neither thing was funny at all. She looked completely stupid. She looked like exactly what she was—a townie.
Caitlin kept eating pizza, watching Dana look at herself in the mirror.
“You think this guy can save you or something?” Caitlin said. “You think he’s going to whisk you away to Westport, Connecticut?”
“I think maybe I can talk to him using three-syllable words. I think maybe he knows the capital of New Mexico. Who wrote Oliver Twist.”
Caitlin laughed. “I get it,” she said.
“You love him for his mind.”
Dana turned to her. “Do I look awful?” she said.
Caitlin shook her head. “You look great. Those college jerks won’t know what hit them. You look hip. Totally hip.”
Dana took a breath. “Really?”
“Yes.” Caitlin rolled her eyes. “Now go before the Neanderthals arrive.”
“You going to stay back here?”
Caitlin nodded. There was grease on her chin.
“Have fun!” she called to Dana. “Be good!”
Dana had grown up eighteen miles from Williams College but she had never been on the campus except for once, in fifth grade, when the music teacher took the entire class to hear the Boston Symphony play there. Now she was arriving on campus in a red sports car that still smelled new.
She expected the dorm to look more like a hotel inside. But it reminded her of high school—cinder blocks, cheap indoor-outdoor carpeting, bulletin boards. Billy took her hand and led her through a maze of hallways. Every room had different music blaring from it. David Byrne, the Beatles, Patsy Cline. Dana was glad it was so noisy. That way she was sure Billy couldn’t hear her heart pounding.
Finally he said, “Here we are” and opened the door into a kind of rec room. The room was dark and smelled like old beer. A band was playing some song from the fifties, like “Runaround Sue” or “The Wanderer,” and everywhere Dana looked there were people—dancing, talking, kissing in corners. She took a deep breath, decided she didn’t look too out of place. Even though most of them were totally prepped out, all Ralph Lauren and Pappagallo.
Billy did not let go of her hand.
“Want a beer?” he said.
She nodded, and let him lead her to a keg.
While he poured the beers into plastic cups, a girl that looked vaguely familiar came over to Dana.
“Don’t you work in Pizza Pizzazz?” she said.
Dana considered lying, but then changed her mind and nodded.
“They have the best pizza,” the girl said. “I always get roasted pepper and fontina.”
Dana nodded again. “That’s a good combo.”
Other people were joining them around the keg.
“Do you go here?” someone asked her.
“No,” Dana said.
Billy was holding her hand again.
“She’s from town,” he said, acting cool.
Suddenly, Dana hated everyone in that room. She knew they were laughing at her. A townie who sells pizza. She was sure that’s what they were thinking. The hell with them, she thought, feeling calmer.
“I grew up in town,” she said. She made it sound special, important. “Our house is a real dump because my mother went sort of loony.” She crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue. “She decided she wanted to be a movie star. But first she went to bed and thought about it for about ten years. Then she up and left.” She added, “She’s in a TV commercial.” And when she said that the band stopped and her voice echoed through the room. But she refused to feel embarrassed.
A few people moved closer.
Dana sipped her beer. “My loony tune mother. Of course in the meantime we’re all going to pot. My father’s practically drinking himself to death and my brother has completely mutilated his body by getting like a dozen tattoos.” She pointed to her own body as she explained, “John Lennon, yin and yang, Yosemite Sam.”
“Really?” the first girl said, the one who liked pizza with roasted pepper and fontina. “That’s really tragic. Like that Flannery O’Connor story.”
Dana nodded. “‘Parker’s Back,’” she said, happy that she’d just read it in English class.
Be outrageous, Dana told herself when she felt her heart do that jump again. Fuck them all.
No one had ever sat Dana down and explained the birds and the bees. Except Caitlin, and her information had been all wrong. “Sperm is like Superman,” Caitlin had told her. “It can leap through pants, through water, anything. You can get pregnant like this.” She’d snapped her fingers, fast and loud. In ninth grade health class they’d been given a pink booklet that said otherwise; the boys were given a blue one and a sample condom. That was it.
Every month Caitlin and Dana thought they were pregnant. The booklet hadn’t explained enough and they were never sure. They had sex on the same night for the first time, in tenth grade, at the quarry. They both thought it was completely boring. Kevin, Caitlin had said, sounded like the Amtrak train leaving Springfield just before he came. Dana said Mike sounded like a pig. Sometimes, when they got really bored with the guys, they made fun of them right in front of them and Mike and Kevin never caught on. Amtrak is not leaving tonight, Caitlin would say. And then she and Dana would start to laugh and not be able to stop. Isn’t that fucking funny? Kevin would say, and they’d laugh even more.
Caitlin was sure love would change all of that. Even though last year she’d had sex twice with an exchange student from Finland she had a big crush on, and it was just as dull. No train sounds, but he got there even faster, she’d said. It was over before it even began. They decided that Finland was such a cold country that people didn’t want to stay naked too long—they might freeze. And for a while, Dana and Caitlin had a new joke. Another Nordic winter, they’d say, and then they’d start to laugh. What’s that supposed to mean? Mike had said and Dana had looked at him completely straight-faced and said, “It gets very cold in Nordic countries. That’s all.”
Caitlin followed rules that Dana did not quite trust. You couldn’t get pregnant if you did it standing up or if you did it when you had your period. You couldn’t get pregnant if you did it in the shower or the lake. But Dana made Mike wear a rubber no matter what. You can’t get pregnant in the water, Caitlin insisted. But something seemed wrong about that to Dana. Mike said she was crazy. So you get pregnant? he’d say. Big fucking deal.
Once, last winter, Dana had masturbated. She did it by accident, when she was taking a bath. And something happened that felt much better than when Mike was on top of her, huffing and puffing. She didn’t tell Caitlin and, even though she wanted to, she didn’t do it again.
Just last week, Caitlin had seen her mother with some guy who tended bar at Tiny’s Tavern in town. Caitlin hated that her mother went there every Friday and Saturday night, but she also supposed that her mother was lonely so she pretended she didn’t care. What she hadn’t known was that while she was at Pizza Pizzazz, Sue brought guys home. They were always gone before Caitlin got home.
But last week, Kevin’s car was in the garage and Mike couldn’t get one so Caitlin had come straight home from work. She’d seen a motorcycle in front of the house, and a light on in her mother’s room. Instead of going inside, she’d crept around to the bedroom window and peeked and there was her mother with this guy who she knew was the bartender at Tiny’s. His name was Marty and he was a Vietnam vet who everybody said was fucked up over the war. But what Marty and her mother were doing looked nothing like what she and Mike did. This looked like something out of a movie, all slow motion and erotic.
The next night she watched the same scene except with a different guy. This one, who wore a gold wedding band, looked unfamiliar. Caitlin told Dana every detail, even though Dana did not want to hear and kept covering her ears. This is your mother, Dana kept saying, but somehow Sue had seemed like a stranger on those nights, like someone else, this sad little woman with too long hair who still talked about Mitch like he’d died yesterday instead of eighteen years ago. Sue was not a person who looked and acted like a porno star.
Anyway, now Caitlin had very romantic notions about sex. When we move to New York, she said, we’ll find out. Meanwhile, that same old Amtrak train kept leaving Springfield.
Billy’s room was small and messy. Dana couldn’t believe that this was what college was like. The furniture was worse than hers at home.
“You read a lot,” he said.
Dana shrugged. “For school and stuff.”
“You’re a … diamond in t
he rough,” he said, and he stroked her cheek lightly with the back of his hand.
Dana was sure that was an insult. But something had happened. She had played this role back there, a tough townie. And she had liked it. Billy had liked it too, she thought.
She studied his pale face in the soft light from the desk lamp. Every time her heart leaped the way it just did again, she had to get control. She couldn’t like him too much. She couldn’t fall for those dimples. She had to be the boss, to act like nothing mattered.
So this time, when he leaned over and kissed her on the lips, and her heart flip-flopped, she decided to really show him. She pulled back and laughed.
“What do you want, Mr. College Boy?” she said.
“I like you, Dana. A lot.”
There it went. A belly flop.
“Oh, really?” she said, and made herself laugh again.
“I never met anybody like you,” he said.
And another one, this time like her heart dropped from a high diving board.
She didn’t think it through until later. Right then, all she did was unbutton the shirt that said Roy above the pocket and wiggle out of her faded jeans until she was standing there in her white Jockey underwear. When she told Caitlin about it later, she said she wanted to keep him surprised. She wanted to make him fall for her, make his heart do some of those high dives. That’s all.
She wasn’t ready for what came next. It was like all that stuff Caitlin had been trying to tell her last week. The slow motion, the tongue, the carefulness of it. Not at all like Mike. This was something else. Real soft he whispered to her, “Are you protected?” and when she shook her head he reached for a condom in his desk drawer, real smooth. Nothing like Mike, who thought birth control was silly, who tried to convince her that rubbers reduced his pleasure.
“Is that what you learn in college?” she whispered to Billy afterward. It was hard to keep her tough-girl attitude.
Billy laughed. “No,” he said, “they teach me this.” And they started all over again.
There was something wrong in the silence the next day when Billy drove Dana home. She pretended everything was fine. She thought, If two people do all those things together at night, there must be something special between them. Not love exactly. But something like love.
