Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker Page 9

  When I had to leave, Chris walked me to the bar to say hello to Mark, who was talking to a girl.

  “Look,” the girl said. She held a lock of my hair up to Mark’s, and you couldn’t tell whose pale curl was whose. Mark’s eyes, so close, also looked just like mine, I saw.

  “We could be brother and sister,” Mark said, but his voice sounded like a recording of a voice, and for a moment I forgot how things are divided up, and I thought Mark must be having trouble with his eyes, too.

  From then on, I always went straight to Jake’s after leaving the doctor, and when I passed by the bar I could never help glancing into the mirror to see Chris’s face. I would just sit at my table and drink my Coke and listen for his laugh, and when I heard it I felt completely still, the way you do when you have a fever and someone puts his hand on your forehead. And sometimes Chris would come sit with me and talk.

  At home and at school, I thought about all the different girls who hung around with Chris and Mark. I thought about them one by one, as if they were little figurines I could take down from a glass case to inspect. I thought about how they looked, and I thought about the girls at school and about Penelope, and I looked in the mirror.

  I looked in the mirror over at Maureen’s house while Maureen put on nail polish, and I tried to make myself see my sister. We are both pale and long, but Penelope is beautiful, as everyone has always pointed out, and I, I saw, just looked unsettled.

  “You could use some makeup,” Maureen said, shaking her hands dry, “but you look fine. You’re lucky that you’re tall. It means you’ll be able to wear clothes.”

  I love to go over to Maureen’s house. Maureen is an only child, and her father lives in California. Her mother is away a lot, too, and when she is, Carolina, the maid, stays over. Carolina was there that night, and she let us order in pizza for dinner.

  “Maureen is my girl. She is my girl,” Carolina said after dinner, putting her arms around Maureen. Maureen almost always has some big expression on her face, but when Carolina does that she just goes blank.

  Later I asked Maureen about Chris. I was afraid of talking about him, because it seemed as if he might dissolve if I did, but I needed Maureen’s advice badly. I told her it was just like French class, where there were two words for “you.” Sometimes when Chris said “you” to me I would turn red, as if he had used some special word. And I could hardly say “you” to him. It seemed amazing to me sometimes when I was talking to Chris that a person could just walk up to another person and say “you.”

  “Does that mean something about him?” I asked. “Or is it just about me?”

  “It’s just you,” Maureen said. “It doesn’t count. It’s just like when you sit down on a bus next to a stranger and you know that your knee is touching his but you pretend it isn’t.”

  OF COURSE Maureen was almost sure to be right. Why wouldn’t she be? Still, I kept thinking that it was just possible that she might be wrong, and the next time I saw Chris something happened to make me think she was.

  My vision had fuzzed up a lot during that week, and when Dr. Wald looked at my eyes he didn’t get up. “Any trouble lately with that sensation of haziness?” he asked.

  I got scorching hot when he said that, and I felt like lying. “Not really,” I said. “Yes, a bit.”

  He put some drops in my eyes and sent me to the waiting room, where I looked at bust exercises in Redbook till the drops started to work and the print melted on the page. I had never noticed before how practically no one in the waiting room was even pretending to read. One woman had bandages over her eyes, and most people were just staring and blinking. A little boy was halfheartedly moving a stiff plastic horse on the floor in front of him, but he wasn’t even looking at it.

  The doctor examined my eyes with the light so bright it made the back of my head sting. “Good,” he said. “I’ll see you in—what is it?—a month.”

  I was out on the street before I realized that I still couldn’t see. My vision was like a piece of loosely woven cloth that was pulling apart. In the street everything seemed to be moving off, and all the lights looked like huge haloed globes, bobbing and then dipping suddenly into the pocketed air. The noises were one big pool of sound—horns and brakes and people yelling—and to cross the street I had to plunge into a mob of people and rush along wherever it was they were going.

  When I finally got through to Jake’s my legs were trembling badly, and I just went right up to Chris at the bar, where he was listening to his friend Sherman tell a story. Without even glancing at me, Chris put his hand around my wrist, and I just stood there next to him, with my wrist in his hand, and I listened, too.

  Sherman was telling how he and his band had been playing at some club the night before and during a break, when he’d been sitting with his girlfriend, Candy, a man had come up to their table. “He’s completely destroyed,” Sherman said, “and Candy and I are not exactly on top of things ourselves. But the guy keeps waving this ring, and the basic idea seems to be that it’s his wife’s wedding ring. He’s come home earlier and his wife isn’t there, but the ring is, and he’s sure his wife’s out playing around. So the guy keeps telling me about it over and over, and I can’t get him to shut up, but finally he notices Candy and he says, ‘That your old lady?’ ‘Yeah,’ I tell him. ‘Good-looking broad,’ the guy says, and he hands me the ring. ‘Keep it,’ the guy says. ‘It’s for you—not for this bitch with you.’”

  One of the girls at the bar reached over and touched the flashing ring that was on a chain around Sherman’s neck. “Pretty,” she said. “Don’t you want it, Candy?” But the girl she had spoken to remained perched on her barstool, with her legs crossed, smiling down at her drink.

  “So what did you think of that?” Chris said as he walked me over to my table and sat down with me. I didn’t say anything. “Sherman can be sort of disgusting. But it’s not an important thing,” Chris said.

  The story had made me think about the kids at school—that we don’t know yet what our lives are really going to be like. It made me feel that anything might be a thing that’s important, and I started to cry, because I had never noticed that I was always lonely in my life until just then, when Chris had understood how much the story had upset me, and had said something to make me feel better.

  Chris dipped a napkin into a glass of water and mopped off my face, but I was clutching a pencil in my pocket so hard I broke it, and that started me crying again.

  “Hey,” Chris said. “Look. It’s not dead.” He grabbed another napkin and scribbled on it with each half of the pencil. “It’s fine, see? Look. That’s just how they reproduce. Don’t they teach you anything at school? Here,” he said. “We’ll just tuck them under this and we’ll have two very happy little pencils.”

  And then, after a while, when I was laughing and talking, all at once he stood up. “I’m sorry to have to leave you like this,” he said, “but I promised Mark I’d help him with something.” And I saw that Mark and a girl were standing at the bar, looking at us. “Ready,” Chris called over to them. “Honey,” he said, and a waitress materialized next to him. “Get this lady something to drink and put it on my tab. Thanks,” he said. And then he walked out, with Mark and the girl.

  But the strange thing was that I don’t think Mark had actually been waiting for Chris. I don’t think Chris had promised Mark anything. I think Mark and the girl had only been looking at us to look, because I could see that they were surprised when Chris called over to them, and also the three of them stood talking on the sidewalk before they went on together. And right then was when I thought for a minute that Maureen had been wrong about me and Chris. It was not when Chris held my wrist, and not when Chris understood how upset I was, and not when Chris dried off my tears, but it was when Chris left, that I thought Maureen was wrong.

  MY GRADES were getting a lot worse, and my father decided to help me with my homework every night after dinner. “All right,” he would say, standing behind my chair a
nd leaning over me. “Think. If you want to make an equation out of this question, how do you have to start? We’ve talked about how to do this, Laurel.” But I hated his standing behind me like that so much all I could do was try to send out rays from my back that would make him stand farther away. Too bad I wasn’t Maureen. She would have loved it.

  FOR me, every day pointed forward or backward to the last Thursday of each month, but those Thursdays came and went without anything really changing, either at the doctor’s or at Jake’s, until finally in the spring. Everyone else in my class had spent most of a whole year getting excited or upset about classes and parties and exams and sports, but all those things were one thing to me—a nasty fog that was all around me while I waited.

  And then came a Thursday when Chris put his arm around me as soon as I walked into Jake’s. “I have to do an errand,” he said. “Want a Coke first?”

  “I’m supposed to be at my sister’s class by six,” I said. In case he hadn’t been asking me to go with him, I would just seem to be saying something factual.

  “I’ll get you there,” Chris said. He stood in back of me and put both arms around my shoulders, and I could feel exactly where he was touching me. Chris’s friends had neutral expressions on their faces as if nothing was happening, and I tried to look as if nothing was happening, too.

  As we were going out the door, a girl coming in grabbed Chris. “Are you leaving?” she said.

  “Yeh,” Chris told her.

  “Well, when can I talk to you?” she asked.

  “I’ll be around later, honey,” Chris said, but he just kept walking. “Christ, what a bimbo,” he said to me, shaking his head, and I felt ashamed for no reason.

  When Chris drove his fast little bright car it seemed like part of him, and there I was, inside it, too. I felt that we were inside a shell together, and we could see everything that was outside it, and we drove and drove and Chris turned the music loud. And suddenly Chris said, “I’d really like to see you a lot more. It’s too bad you can’t come into the city more often.” I didn’t know what to say but I gathered that he didn’t expect me to say anything.

  We parked in a part of the city where the buildings were huge and squat. Chris rang a bell and we ran up flights of wooden stairs to where a man in white slacks and an unbuttoned shirt was waiting.

  “Joel, this is Laurel,” Chris said.

  “Hello, Laurel,” Joel said. He seemed to think there was something funny about my name, and he looked at me the way I’ve noticed grown men often do, as if I couldn’t see them back perfectly well.

  Inside, Chris and Joel went through a door, leaving me in an enormous room with white sofas and floating mobiles. The room was immaculate except for a silky purple-and-gold kimono lying on the floor. I picked up the kimono and rubbed it against my cheek and put it on over my clothes. Then I went and looked out the window at the city stretching on and on. In a building across the street, figures moved slowly behind dirty glass. They were making things, I suppose.

  After a while Chris and Joel burst back into the room. Chris’s eyes were shiny, and he was grinning like crazy.

  “Hey,” Joel said, grabbing the edges of the kimono I was wearing. “That thing looks better on her than on me.”

  “What wouldn’t?” Chris said. Joel stepped back as Chris put his arms around me from behind again.

  “I resent that, I resent that! But I don’t deny it!” Joel said. Chris was kissing my neck and my ears, and both he and Joel were giggling.

  I wondered what would happen if Chris and I were late and Mother saw me drive up in Chris’s car, but we darted around in the traffic and shot along the avenues and pulled up near Penelope’s dancing school with ten minutes to spare. Then, instead of saying anything, Chris just sat there with one hand still on the wheel and the other on the shift, and he didn’t even look at me. When I just experimentally touched his sleeve and he still didn’t move, I more or less flung myself on top of him and started crying into his shirt. I was in his lap, all tangled up, and I was kissing him and kissing him, and my hands were moving by themselves.

  Suddenly I thought of all the people outside the car walking their bouncy little dogs, and I thought how my mother might pull up at any second, and I sat up fast and opened my eyes. Everything looked slightly different from the way it had been looking inside my head—a bit smaller and farther away—and I realized that Chris had been sitting absolutely still, and he was staring straight ahead.

  “Goodbye,” I said, but Chris still didn’t move or even look at me. I couldn’t understand what had happened to Chris.

  “Wait,” Chris said, still without looking at me. “Here’s my phone number.” He shook himself and wrote it out slowly.

  At the corner I looked back and saw that Chris was still there, leaning back and staring out the windshield.

  “WHY did he give me his phone number, do you think?” I asked Maureen. We were at a party in Peter Klingeman’s basement.

  “I guess he wants you to call him,” Maureen said. I knew she didn’t really feel like talking. Kevin was standing there, with his hand under her shirt, and she was sort of jumpy. “Frankly, Laurel, he sounds a bit weird to me, if you don’t mind my saying,” Maureen said. I felt ashamed again. I wanted to talk to Maureen more, but Kevin was pulling her off to the Klingemans’ TV room.

  Then Dougie Pfeiffer sat down next to me. “I think Maureen and Kevin have a really good relationship,” he said.

  I was wondering how I ever could have had a crush on him in eighth grade when I realized it was my turn to say something. “Did you ever notice,” I said, “how some people say ‘in eighth grade’ and other people say ‘in the eighth grade’?”

  “Laurel,” Dougie said, and he grabbed me, shoving his tongue into my mouth. Then he took his tongue back out and let me go. “God, I’m sorry, Laurel,” he said.

  I didn’t really care what he did with his tongue. I thought how his body, under his clothes, was just sort of an outline, like a kid’s drawing, and I thought of the long zipper on Chris’s leather jacket, and a little rip I noticed once in his jeans, and the weave of the shirt that I’d cried on.

  I CARRIED Chris’s phone number around with me everywhere, and finally I asked my mother if I could go into the city after school on Thursday and then meet her at Penelope’s class.

  “No,” Mother said.

  “Why not?” I said.

  “We needn’t discuss this, Laurel,” my mother said.

  “You let me go in to see Dr. Wald,” I said.

  “Don’t,” Mother said. “Anyhow, you can’t just . . . wander around in New York.”

  “I have to do some shopping,” I said idiotically.

  Mother started to say something, but then she stopped, and she looked at me us if she couldn’t quite remember who I was. “Oh, who cares?” she said, not especially to me.

  There was a permanent little line between Mother’s eyebrows, I noticed, and suddenly I felt I was seeing her through a window. I went up to my room and cried and cried, but later I couldn’t get to sleep, thinking about Chris.

  I called him Thursday.

  “What time is it?” he said with his blistery laugh. “I just woke up.” He told me he went to a party the night before and when he came out his car had been stolen. He was stoned, and he thought the sensible thing was to walk over to Mark’s place, which is miles from his, but on the way he found his car parked out on the street. “I should’ve reported it, but I figured, hey, what a great opportunity, so I just stole it back.”

  Chris didn’t mention anything about our seeing each other.

  “I’ve got to come into the city today to do some stuff,” I said.

  “Yeh,” Chris said. “I’ve got a lot to do today myself.”

  Well, that was that, obviously, unless I did something drastic. “I thought I’d stop in and say hi, if you’re going to be around,” I said. My heart was jumping so much it almost knocked me down.

  “Great,” Chr
is said. “That’s really sweet.” But his voice sounded muted, and I wasn’t at all surprised when I got to Jake’s and he wasn’t there. I was on my third Coke when Chris walked in, but a girl wearing lots of bracelets waylaid him at the bar, and he sat down with her.

  I didn’t dare finish my Coke or ask for my check. All I could do was stay put and do whatever Chris made me do. Finally the girl at the bar left, giving Chris a big, meaty kiss, and he wandered over and sat down with me.

  “God. Did you see that girl who was sitting with me?” he said. “That girl is so crazy. There’s nothing she won’t put in her mouth. I was at some party a few weeks ago, and I walk in through this door, ’cause I’m looking for the john, and there’s Beverly, lying on the floor stark naked. So you know what she does?”

  “No,” I said.

  “She says, ‘Excuse me,’ and instead of putting something on she reaches up and turns out the light. Now, that’s thinkin’, huh?” He laughed. “Have you finished all those things you had to do?” he asked me.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “That’s great,” Chris said. “I’m really running around like a chicken today. Honey,” he said to a waitress, “put that on my tab, will you?” He pointed at my watery Coke.

  “Sandra was looking for you,” the waitress said. “Did she find you?”

  “Yeah, thanks,” Chris said. He gave me a kiss on the cheek, which was the first time he had kissed me at all, except at Joel’s, and he left.

  I knew I had made some kind of mistake, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I would only be able to figure it out from Chris, but it would be two weeks until I saw him again. Every night, I looked out the window at the red glow of the city beyond all the quiet little houses and yards, and every night after I got into bed I felt it draw nearer and nearer, hovering just beyond my closed eyes, with Chris inside it. While I slept, it receded again; but by morning, when I woke up and put on my school clothes, I had come one day closer.