100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

by Lorrie Moore

  I don’t know. It’s been going on I guess as long as I can remember. I mean, not the sex, but my father. When I was a little kid, tiny little kid, my dad came in before bed and said his prayers with me. He kneeled down by my bed and I was on my back. Prayers. He’d lift up my pajama top and put his hands on my breast. Little fried eggs, he said. One time with his tongue. Then one night, he pulled down the elastic of my pajama pants. He did it for an hour and then I came. Don’t believe anything they ever tell you about kids not coming. That first time was the biggest I ever had and I didn’t even know what it was then. It just kept going and going as if he were breaking me through layers and layers of glass and I felt like I’d slipped and let go and I didn’t have myself anymore, he had me, and once I’d slipped like that I’d never be the same again.

  We had this sprinkler on our back lawn, Danny and me used to run through it in summer and my dad’d be outside, working on the grass or the hedge or something and he’d squirt us with the hose. I used to wear a bathing suit bottom, no top—we were this modern family, our parents walked around the house naked after showers and then Danny and I ended up both being these modest kids, can’t stand anyone to see us even in our underwear, I always dress facing the closet, Lauren teases me. We’d run through the sprinkler and my dad would come up and pat my bottom and the way he’d put his hand on my thigh, I felt like Danny could tell it was different than the way he touched him, I was like something he owned.

  First time when I was nine, I remember, Dad and me were in the shower together. My mom might have even been in the house, they did that kind of stuff, it was supposed to be OK. Anyway, we’re in the shower and I remember this look my dad had. Like he was daring me, knowing he knew more than I did. We’re both under the shower. The water pasted his hair down on his head and he looked younger and weird. “Touch it. Don’t be afraid of it,” he says. And he grabs my thighs on the outside and pulls me close to him, pulling on my fat.

  He waited till I was twelve to really do it. I don’t know if you can call it rape, I was a good sport. The creepy thing is I know how it felt for him, I could see it on his face when he did it. He thought he was getting away with something. We were supposed to go hiking but right away that morning when we got into the car, he knew he was going to do it. He couldn’t wait to get going. I said I didn’t feel good, I had a cold, I wanted to stay home, but he made me go anyway and we hiked two miles and he set up the tent. He told me to take my clothes off and I undressed just like that, standing there in the woods. He’s the one who was nervous and got us into the tent. I looked old for twelve, small but old. And right there on the ground, he spread my legs open and pulled my feet up and fucked me. I bled. I couldn’t even breathe the tent was so small. He could have done anything. He could have killed me, he had me alone on this mountain.

  I think about that sometimes when I’m alone with Glenn in my bed. It’s so easy to hurt people. They just lie there and let you have them. I could reach out and choke Glenn to death, he’d be so shocked, he wouldn’t stop me. You can just take what you want.

  My dad thought he was getting away with something but he didn’t. He was the one who fell in love, not me. And after that day, when we were back in the car, I was the one giving orders. From then on, I got what I wanted. He spent about twice as much money on me as on Danny and everyone knew it, Danny and my mom, too. How do you think I got good clothes and a good bike and a good stereo? My dad’s not rich, you know. And I’m the one who got to go away to college even though it killed him. Says it’s the saddest thing that ever happened in his life, me going away and leaving him. But when I was a little kid that day, he wasn’t in love with me, not like he is now.

  Only thing I’m sad about isn’t either of my parents, it’s Danny. Leaving Danny alone there with them. He used to send Danny out of the house. My mom’d be at work on a Saturday afternoon or something or even in the morning and my dad would kick my little brother out of his own house. Go out and play, Danny. Why doncha catch some rays. And Danny just went and got his glove and baseball from the closet and he’d go and throw it against the house, against the outside wall, in the driveway. I’d be in my room, I’d be like dead, I’d be wood, telling myself this doesn’t count, no one has to know, I’ll say I’m still a virgin, it’s not really happening to me, I’m dead, I’m blank, I’m just letting time stop and pass, and then I’d hear the sock of the ball in the mitt and the slam of the screen door and I knew it was true, it was really happening.

  Glenn’s the one I want to tell. I can’t ever tell Glenn.

  I called my mom. Pay phone, collect, hour-long call. I don’t know, I got real mad last night and I just told her. I thought when I came here, it’d just go away. But it’s not going away. It makes me weird with Glenn. In the morning, with Glenn, when it’s time to get up, I can’t get up. I cry.

  I knew it’d be bad. Poor Danny. Well, my mom says she might leave our dad. She cried for an hour, no joke, on the phone.

  How could he do this to me, she kept yelping. To her. Everything’s always to her.

  But then she called an hour later, she’d talked to a psychiatrist already, she’s kicked Dad out, and she arrives, just arrives here at Berkeley. But she was good. She says she’s on my side, she’ll help me, I don’t know, I felt OK. She stayed in a hotel and she wanted to know if I wanted to stay there with her but I said no, I’d see her more in a week or something, I just wanted to go back to my dorm. She found this group. She says, just in San Jose, there’s hundreds of families like ours, yeah, great, that’s what I said. But there’s groups. She’s going to a group of other thick-o mothers like her, these wives who didn’t catch on. She wanted me to go to a group of girls, yeah, molested girls, that’s what they call them, but I said no, I have friends here already, she can do what she wants.

  I talked to my dad, too, that’s the sad thing, he feels like he’s lost me and he wants to die and I don’t know, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He called in the middle of the night.

  “Just tell me one thing, honey. Please tell me the truth. When did you stop?”

  “Dad.”

  “Because I remember once you said I was the only person who ever understood you.”

  “I was ten years old.”

  “OK, OK. I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t want to get off the phone. “You know, I love you, honey. I always will.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  My mom’s got him lined up for a psychiatrist, too, she says he’s lucky she’s not sending him to jail. I am a lawyer, she keeps saying, as if we could forget. She’d pay for me to go to a shrink now, too, but I said no, forget it.

  It’s over. Glenn and I are, over. I feel like my dad’s lost me everything. I sort of want to die now. I’m telling you I feel terrible. I told Glenn and that’s it, it’s over. I can’t believe it either. Lauren says she’s going to hit him.

  I told him and we’re not seeing each other anymore. Nope. He said he wanted to just think about everything for a few days. He said it had nothing to do with my father but he’d been feeling a little too settled lately. He said we don’t have fun anymore, it’s always so serious. That was Monday. So every meal after that, I sat with Lauren in the cafeteria and he’s there on the other side, messing around with the guys. He sure didn’t look like he was in any kind of agony. Wednesday, I saw Glenn over by the window in this food fight, slipping off his chair and I couldn’t stand it, I got up and left and went to our room.

  But I went and said I wanted to talk to Glenn that night, I didn’t even have any dinner, and he said he wanted to be friends. He looked at me funny and I haven’t heard from him. It’s, I don’t know, seven days, eight.

  I know there are other guys. I live in a dorm full of them, or half full of them. Half girls. But I keep thinking of Glenn ’cause of happiness, that’s what makes me want to hang on to him.

  There was this one morning when we woke up in his room, it was light out already, white light all over the room. We were
sticky and warm, the sheet was all tangled. His roommate, this little blond boy, was still sleeping. I watched his eyes open and he smiled and then he went down the hall to take a shower. Glenn was hugging me and it was nothing unusual, nothing special. We didn’t screw. We were just there. We kissed, but slow, the way it is when your mouth is still bad from sleep.

  I was happy that morning. I didn’t have to do anything. We got dressed, went to breakfast, I don’t know. Took a walk. He had to go to work at a certain time and I had that sleepy feeling from waking up with the sun on my head and he said he didn’t want to say goodbye to me. There was that pang. One of those looks like as if at that second, we both felt the same way.

  I shrugged. I could afford to be casual then. We didn’t say goodbye. I walked with him to the shed by the Eucalyptus Grove. That’s where they keep all the gardening tools, the rakes, the hoes, the mowers, big bags of grass seed slumped against the wall. It smelled like hay in there. Glenn changed into his uniform and we went to the North Side, up in front of the chancellor’s manor, that thick perfect grass. And Glenn gave me a ride on the lawn mower, on the handlebars. It was bouncing over these little bumps in the lawn and I was hanging on to the handlebars, laughing. I couldn’t see Glenn but I knew he was there behind me. I looked around at the buildings and the lawns, there’s a fountain there, and one dog was drinking from it.

  See, I can’t help but remember things like that. Even now, I’d rather find some way, even though he’s not asking for it, to forgive Glenn. I’d rather have it work out with him, because I want more days like that. I wish I could have a whole life like that. But I guess nobody does, not just me.

  I saw him in the mailroom yesterday, we’re both just standing there, each opening our little boxes, getting our mail—neither of us had any—I was hurt but I wanted to reach out and touch his face. He has this hard chin, it’s pointy and all bone. Lauren says she wants to hit him.

  I mean, I think of him spinning around in his backyard and that’s why I love him and he should understand. I go over it all and think I should have just looked at him and said I can’t believe you’re doing this to me. Right there in the mailroom. Now when I think that, I think maybe if I’d said that, in those words, maybe it would be different.

  But then I think of my father—he feels like there was a time when we had fun, when we were happy together. I mean, I can remember being in my little bed with Dad and maybe cracking jokes, maybe laughing, but he probably never heard Danny’s baseball in his mitt the way I did or I don’t know. I remember late in the afternoon, wearing my dad’s navy-blue sweatshirt with a hood and riding bikes with him and Danny down to the diamond.

  But that’s over. I don’t know if I’m sorry it happened. I mean I am, but it happened, that’s all. It’s just one of the things that happened to me in my life. But I would never go back, never. And what hurts so much is that maybe that’s what Glenn is thinking about me.

  I told Lauren last night. I had to. She kept asking me what happened with Glenn. She was so good, you couldn’t believe it, she was great. We were talking late and this morning we drove down to go to House of Pancakes for breakfast, get something good instead of watery eggs for a change. And on the way, Lauren’s driving, she just skids to a stop on this street, in front of this elementary school. “Come on,” she says. It’s early, but there’s already people inside the windows.

  We hooked our fingers in the metal fence. You know, one of those aluminum fences around a playground. There were pigeons standing on the painted game circles. Then a bell rang and all these kids came out, yelling, spilling into groups. This was a poor school, mostly black kids, Mexican kids, all in bright colors. There’s a Nabisco factory nearby and the whole air smelled like blueberry muffins.

  The girls were jump-roping and the boys were shoving and running and hanging on to the monkey bars. Lauren pinched her fingers on the back of my neck and pushed my head against the fence.

  “Eight years old. Look at them. They’re eight years old. One of their fathers is sleeping with one of those girls. Look at her. Do you blame her? Can you blame her? Because if you can forgive her you can forgive yourself.”

  “I’ll kill him,” I said.

  “And I’ll kill Glenn,” Lauren says.

  So we went and got pancakes. And drank coffee until it was time for class.

  I saw Glenn yesterday. It was so weird after all this time. I just had lunch with Lauren. We picked up tickets for Talking Heads and I wanted to get back to the lab before class and I’m walking along and Glenn was working, you know, on the lawn in front of the Mobi Building. He was still gorgeous. I was just going to walk, but he yelled over at me.

  “Hey, Jenny.”

  “Hi, Glenn.”

  He congratulated me, he heard about the NSF thing. We stood there. He has another girlfriend now. I don’t know, when I looked at him and stood there by the lawn mower, it’s chugging away, I felt the same as I always used to, that I loved him and all that, but he might just be one of those things you can’t have. Like I should have been for my father and look at him now. Oh, I think he’s better, they’re all better, but I’m gone, he’ll never have me again.

  I’m glad they’re there and I’m here, but it’s strange, I feel more alone now. Glenn looked down at the little pile of grass by the lawn mower and said, “Well, kid, take care of yourself,” and I said, “You too, ’bye,” and started walking.

  So, you know what’s bad, though, I started taking stuff again. Little stuff from the mailroom. No packages and not people I know anymore.

  But I take one letter a Saturday, I make it just one and someone I don’t know. And I keep ’em and burn ’em with a match in the bathroom sink and wash the ashes down the drain. I wait until the end of the shift. I always expect it to be something exciting. The two so far were just everyday letters, just mundane, so that’s all that’s new, I-had-a-pork-chop-for-dinner letters.

  But something happened today, I was in the middle, three-quarters way down the bag, still looking, I hadn’t picked my letter for the day, I’m being really stern, I really mean just one, no more, and there’s this little white envelope addressed to me. I sit there, trembling with it in my hand. It’s the first one I’ve gotten all year. It was my name and address, typed out, and I just stared at it. There’s no address. I got so nervous, I thought maybe it was from Glenn, of course, I wanted it to be from Glenn so bad, but then I knew it couldn’t be, he’s got that new girlfriend now, so I threw it in the garbage can right there, one of those with the swinging metal door, and then I finished my shift. My hands were sweating, I smudged the writing on one of the envelopes.

  So all the letters are in boxes, I clean off the table, fold the bags up neat and close the door, ready to go. And then I thought, I don’t have to keep looking at the garbage can, I’m allowed to take it back, that’s my letter. And I fished it out, the thing practically lopped my arm off. And I had it and I held it a few minutes, wondering who it was from. Then I put it in my mailbox so I can go like everybody else and get mail.

  1986

  RICHARD FORD

  Communist

  from Antaeus

  RICHARD FORD was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1944. At nineteen he worked as a switchman on the Missouri Pacific Railroad, and he later earned a BA from Michigan State University. Ford has experienced dyslexia all his life and has said, “Being a slow reader made me pore over sentences and possibly, helpfully, become more receptive to the ‘poetical’ aspects of written language.”

  Ford is known for the Bascombe books, which include The Sportswriter, Independence Day—winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award—The Lay of the Land, and the recently published Let Me Be Frank with You. His short story collections include Rock Springs and A Multitude of Sins. He is Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University in New York.

  In an interview, Ford said, “Fiction always uses language to refer the reader to lived life and to express life’s consequence. This
is true irrespective of how ‘realistic’ or how hermetic, self-referring, or abstract an individual story happens to be. It always takes us back to life.”

  Richard Ford lives in East Boothbay, Maine.

  ★

  MY MOTHER ONCE had a boyfriend named Glen Baxter. This was in 1961. We—my mother and I—were living in the little house my father had left her up the Sun River, near Victory, Montana, west of Great Falls. My mother was thirty-one at the time. I was sixteen. Glen Baxter was somewhere in the middle, between us, though I cannot be exact about it.

  We were living then off the proceeds of my father’s life insurance policies, with my mother doing some part-time waitressing work up in Great Falls and going to the bars in the evenings, which I know is where she met Glen Baxter. Sometimes he would come back with her and stay in her room at night, or she would call up from town and explain that she was staying with him in his little place on Lewis Street by the GN yards. She gave me his number every time, but I never called it. I think she probably thought that what she was doing was terrible, but simply couldn’t help herself. I thought it was all right, though. Regular life it seemed and still does. She was young, and I knew that even then.

  Glen Baxter was a Communist and liked hunting, which he talked about a lot. Pheasants. Ducks. Deer. He killed all of them, he said. He had been to Vietnam as far back as then, and when he was in our house he often talked about shooting the animals over there—monkeys and beautiful parrots—using military guns just for sport. We did not know what Vietnam was then, and Glen, when he talked about that, referred to it only as “the Far East.” I think now he must’ve been in the CIA and been disillusioned by something he saw or found out about and had been thrown out, but that kind of thing did not matter to us. He was a tall, dark-eyed man with thick black hair, and was usually in a good humor. He had gone halfway through college in Peoria, Illinois, he said, where he grew up. But when he was around our life he worked wheat farms as a ditcher, and stayed out of work winters and in the bars drinking with women like my mother, who had work and some money. It is not an uncommon life to lead in Montana.