by Wally Lamb
“Nobody knows what they’re doing at that stupid school! We’ll probably have to go through this big rigmarole just to undo one person’s stupid mistake.”
“There’s no mistake,” I said.
“First they’ll tell you to go to this office! Then when you get there, they’ll say, ‘Oh, no, you don’t want this office. You want this other office!’”
“There’s no mistake,” I repeated. Thomas and Ma both looked at me, waiting for the punch line. Unable to look at my brother, I addressed Ma instead. “I’m not rooming with him. . . . I’m rooming with Leo.”
I could feel, rather than see, the panic taking over my brother. He flopped back on one of the kitchen chairs and crossed his arms over his chest. He craned his neck as far away from me as it would go.
“When did you decide this, Dominick?” Ma asked me.
“I don’t know. A while back. We went up to school and put in a request.”
“We?” Thomas said. “You and Leo? The two of you just snuck up there behind my back and switched things on me?”
“It’s not that big a deal,” I said, still looking at my mother. I watched her face go pale. Saw the fear creep into her eyes. “You asked me to room with him freshman year and I did. . . . I’ve been meaning to say something. I just . . . I’ve just been so busy.”
“Don’t tell me,” she said. “Tell your brother.”
I turned to Thomas. “It’ll be good for you, man. You’ll meet new friends. How do you know this new guy—what’s his name? Randall? How do you know he’s not a great guy? He’ll probably be a much better roommate than I ever was. We’re too close, you and me. We get on each other’s nerves.”
He sat there, pouting, saying nothing. A minute or more went by.
“Well,” Ma said, “why don’t you two boys go upstairs and get cleaned up? Supper’s going to be ready in about half an hour, soon as your father wakes up. Thomas, do you want ziti or shells? You pick.”
He didn’t answer her.
“I don’t really have time to eat, Ma,” I told her. “I’m going out.”
“Who are you going out with?” Thomas said. “Your two little buddy-buddies from work?”
“No, I’m not,” I said. “I’m going out with my girlfriend. Is that all right with you?” I was planning my escape as I spoke. Dessa was working that night at the Dial-Tone. Her shift was over at 1:00 A.M. Maybe I’d ride down there on my bike. Surprise her.
“Oh, you mean Mystery Woman?” Thomas said. “The girl you’re too ashamed to have your family even meet?”
“I’m not ashamed to have you meet her. You want to meet her? Fine. You can meet her.”
“Okay, when?”
“I don’t know. Sometime.”
His laugh was sarcastic. I stood there, watching him fiddle with the salt and pepper shakers—making little piles on the table. “Traitor,” he mumbled.
“Look, Dominick, you have to eat something,” Ma said. “I’ve got eggplant in the refrigerator and there’s some grinder rolls left over from yesterday. Why don’t I fry up some peppers and make you a couple of sandwiches? Come on. Get me the provolone.”
That was Ma for you: pissed and hurt but ready to feed you, anyway. Ready to make you feel even more guilty.
I headed toward the upstairs bathroom, then stopped at the doorway and looked back at Thomas. “Hey, numskull?” I said. “You want first shower?” I meant it as a kind of apology, I guess—to show him I wasn’t a complete bastard. Fighting over who had first shower had been a ritual of ours since we were kids.
But Thomas ignored me. He picked up the salt shaker and started talking to it. “Hello, I’m Thomas Dirt,” he said. “Feel free to lie to me and walk all over me. Everyone does it. It’s fun!”
It was just this side of a suicide mission: riding down to the beach in a Friday night drizzle on a bike with no light and no reflectors. The trip was an hour and a half’s worth of honking horns and cars swerving away at the last second and drivers cursing me out. Although I knew damn well I wouldn’t mention anything to Dessa about what had happened that day at work, I imagined myself telling her all about it. Saw the two of us at one of the back tables. Felt the sympathetic touch of her hand on my face, the compassionate kisses she’d give me. All along the way, I comforted myself with her imaginary understanding.
The place was packed. Dessa acted surprised, not happy, to see me. “It’s a zoo here tonight,” she said. “I won’t even be able to talk to you until quitting time. God, you’re soaked.”
“Dance with me,” I said.
“I can’t dance with you, Dominick. I’m working.”
“Just one dance.”
“Dominick, no. I have orders to pick up. I have tables that have been waiting—”
I walked away from her explanation and grabbed a seat at the bar, ordered a beer. Later, on her break, she handed me the keys to her mother’s car. When the manager wasn’t looking, the bartender sold me a two-thirds-empty bottle of vodka and I headed outside. I threw my bike in the trunk and slumped down in the driver’s seat to wait for her. Played the radio, swigged vodka. Watched the windows fog up. I wanted a joint. I wanted Dessa. I kept trying not to see my brother out there at the reservoir, bawling like an idiot, his pants down around his knees. . . . Traitor, he’d called me. Hello, I’m Thomas Dirt. Jesus, how long was I supposed to keep carrying him? When was I ever going to be able to get on with my own life? Starting in September, that was when. Fuck him. Let him sink or swim. I closed my eyes. Shifted around to get more comfortable. The vodka, the thump of the ocean, the beat of the rain on Dessa’s mother’s car roof made me sleepy. . . .
By the time Dessa nudged me awake again, it was after two in the morning. “Hi,” she said. I yawned and stretched and kissed her. She had work stink on her: beer and booze, cigarette smoke in her hair. When I went to rub her leg, my hand ran into the tumor of tip money in her jeans pocket.
I hadn’t seen her in a week. Hadn’t screwed her in two. Since the Constantines’ return, we’d been reduced to making out in parking lots. But that would change in a couple of weeks. Dessa was a supervisor at her dorm, which meant a single room and a double bed. If that car deal went through with Dell, then Dessa and I would be stretched out up there in Boston instead of sitting inside her mother’s Chrysler-fucking-Newport.
“Guess what?” she said.
“What?”
“My father’s not speaking to me. We had a fight.”
“About what?” I said.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter. . . . Well, yes it does. It was about you.”
“Me? What about me?”
“Oh, it was my own stupid fault. I accidentally left my dialpack out on my bathroom counter. My mother saw them.”
“Your birth control pills? Oh, shit.”
“So instead of saying something to me, like a normal mother would, she went to my father instead. He came into my room last night and said he wanted to talk to me. I was embarrassed to death, but I said, ‘Look, Daddy, I’m a big girl. I can make my own decisions about things.’ So then he starts in on you.”
She pulled in closer to me. Put her head on my shoulder.
I asked her what he’d said.
“That he had nothing against you personally, but if all you were planning to do with your life was teach, then maybe I should think twice before I got myself pregnant and realized I’d sold myself short.”
I cleared my throat. Somehow, I was feeling both drunk and hung over. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.
“Oh, Daddy thinks I should be the wife of a doctor or a businessman or someone who owns property. I pointed out to him that I was training to be a teacher, too, and he said, oh, teaching was a perfectly acceptable job for a woman. Women weren’t expected to provide for a family. Men were. Then, I just let loose. I couldn’t help it. I was so pissed! I told him I judged people by who they were inside, not by their income potential. Money might be his god, I told him, but it wasn’t mine. That mad
e him furious. He told me it was a sorry day when daughters spoke to their fathers so disrespectfully—when children had that little gratitude for what had been provided them. So now we’re not even speaking. And it was all . . . If my mother had just come to me about the pills instead of . . . Sometimes I hate him, Dominick!”
We sat there for a couple of minutes, neither of us saying anything. Then I reached over and started putting the moves on her—kissing her, stroking her a little. But I couldn’t get her interested. She wouldn’t shut up about her father.
“How can he possibly think that selling cars is more valid than educating kids? And how dare he dismiss you like that. He doesn’t even know you, Dominick. I don’t think I ever realized before how shallow my father is.”
I reached down and diddled her the way she liked—the way she’d taught me—but she stopped me. “Dominick, I can’t just finish a seven-hour shift and . . . well, you know. And now I’m angry all over again at Daddy. I’m sorry. I’m just not in the mood.”
“What about me?” I said.
“What about you?”
“Well, for starters, I drove down in the pouring rain to see you. I been waiting out in this friggin’ car for over four hours. Maybe I am in the mood.”
“Dominick, what was I supposed to do? Just tell my manager, ‘Oh, sorry, but my boyfriend decided to show up unexpectedly so I guess I can’t work the rest of my shift’?”
“No, you didn’t have to tell them that. All’s you had to do was act like you were at least half-glad to see me.”
“I am glad to see you,” she said. “I’m just keyed up. You know how I get working here. And then with this thing with my father. I mean, I am an adult, right? I do get to make my own decisions. But, God, when your mother finds your birth control pills—”
“Do me a favor, will you?” I said. “Just shut up about your parents!” The car filled up with silence.
After a while, I sat up and opened the door. Got out and went into the backseat. “Hey,” I said.
No response.
“Hey, you?” I tried again.
“Hey me what?”
“Come back here.”
She didn’t move for a minute or so. Then she climbed over the seat and into the back, flopped down next to me. Wrapped her arms across her chest, as tight as tourniquets. “As if his relationship with my mother is some kind of great model,” she said. “You should see the way she has to ask him for household money every morning at breakfast. She tells him what she needs, accounts for every penny, and then if he’s satisfied, he reaches into his wallet and counts twenty dollar bills into her hand. It’s disgusting.”
I fumbled at the opening of her pants, reached up inside her blouse. She wasn’t wearing a bra, but there was something covering her nipples. “What’s this?” I said.
“What?”
“This.” I took one of her breasts in my hand, rubbed my thumb where the nipple was supposed to be.
“Band-Aids,” she said. “You put them on so your nipples won’t show. That’s the last thing I’d need with the animals I wait on.”
I pulled up her shirt, peeled off the Band-Aids. Started kissing her breasts. If she wasn’t in the mood, well, I was horny enough for both of us. I shifted a little, got us both down onto the seat. I pried her legs apart with my knee, rubbed her a little.
“Hey, you know what, Dominick? I already told you, I’m just not . . .” Shut up, shut up, I thought, undoing myself. “I’m just too keyed up right now. I don’t feel like—hey, stop it!”
But stopping didn’t seem like an option. I’d been out in that car for hours. She owed me something. And she was right, now that I thought of it: how dare that rich fuck of a father tell her to aim her sights higher than me.
I started dry-humping her. Her not being wet seemed like a kind of stubbornness. Stupid rich girl. I reached down and grabbed myself, rubbed it against her.
I kissed her hard. “I fuckin’ love you,” I said. Kissed her again. Pushed myself inside of her. She grunted a little. I heard her telling me to stop it—saying it hurt, that I was scaring her. But what I needed was stronger than her fear, and when she tried to get out from under me, I wouldn’t let her. “I love you,” I told her each time I hammered into her. “I love you. I love you. I love you.” But my head was filled with hatred: what right did Dessa’s fucking father have to assume he was better than me? . . . I might as well have been swinging that scythe out at the reservoir. Rattling that pinball machine down at Tepper’s Bus Stop. I only realized she was trying to fight me off when she stopped fighting. Just lay there and took the fuck. The springs squeaked, the whole car rocked with what I needed, and then I came, cursing and clutching her, my one hand slapping the upholstery.
I was sorry before I was even soft again. Before I could even catch my breath. “Oh, Jesus,” I said. “That was intense. I guess I got kind of carried away.”
Dessa burst into tears. She was shuddering against my shoulders and chest.
“Hey, really. I’m sorry. I’d just been waiting out here so long. Drinking vodka and—” When I reached up to stroke the side of her face, she slapped my hand away. Punched me.
“I couldn’t help it, Dessa. I’m sorry. I just wanted you so bad, I got a little wild.”
“Shut up!” She punched me again. “Get off of me!”
I reached down to put myself back together again. Dessa did the same and climbed back in front.
“Is it really that bad?” I said. “That I went a little out of control because I wanted you so much?”
“You know what ‘wanting me’ like that is called, Dominick?” she said. “Rape.”
“Yeah, right. It’s not like you and me. . . . Look, I would never—”
“You just did, you jerk!” She started to cry again.
“Hey, hold on a second. That’s not fair.”
“I have had such a horrible week,” she said. “And now this happens.”
“Hey, you know what?” I said. “I’ve had a really horrible week, too. Did you ever think to ask me what kind of a week I’ve had?”
She started the car. “I’m going to drive you home,” she said. “Then I’m going to go home myself. Take a hot bath and wash off this little ‘experience’ we’ve just had. Just do me a favor, all right? Just stay in the back and don’t talk to me. Just don’t say anything.”
“You accuse me of raping you and I’m not even supposed to defend myself? Well, fuck that, Dessa! Fuck you!”
I got out of the car and slammed the door. Opened it and slammed it again. I started hoofing it away from her—out of the parking lot, onto the road. I jabbed my thumb at a passing car.
She rolled up next to me. The whirring sound of the power window was in my ear. “Come on. Let’s not do this, okay? Just get in and I’ll take you home. We both need to cool off and get some sleep.”
“Just go,” I told her. “You wouldn’t want a rapist in your car.”
“All right, I’m sorry,” she said. “That was a little strong. It’s just that after my last relationship, I’m kind of—”
I started screaming at her. “I am nothing like that guy! Don’t you ever . . . I am nothing like that guy at all!”
The power window went whirring up again. She gunned it. Just drove away. That’s when I remembered my bike, stuck in her mother’s trunk like a dead body.
I got home two hours and three rides later—relieved, for once, to be back there. I walked through the dark house and up the stairs. Dropped my clothes on the floor and climbed up into my bed.
When I rolled over, I heard crinkling paper. I lay on my back, squinting in the dark at whatever it was—trying to decide whether or not to get up and look at it. Another couple of minutes later, I had to take a leak anyway. I jumped down from the top bunk and made my way to the bathroom.
All these years later, I still remember what that note said. Can still see it, even—this weird version of his regular handwriting. He’d addressed it to Dominick Birdsey, Trai
tor.
Do you think it’s easy having your sleep stolen every night? Do you think it’s fun to feel the wings of the Holy Ghost fluttering against your throat?
Sincerely,
One Who Knows
I stood there, squinting at it in the bathroom light, trying to make it make some kind of sense. He’s nuts, I told myself. Told it to the mirror in front of me. He’s fucking nuts. Then I balled up his stupid note, tossed it into the toilet, and pissed on it—pushed it around and around the inside of the bowl. Flushed it away.
I stayed awake until dawn, coming up with dozens of arguments about why I wasn’t a rapist. Why not being Thomas’s roommate was something I deserved.
I dozed off watching the first watery gray light coming through the venetian blinds.
21
1969
It was after two the next afternoon by the time I woke up. My head ached. The room smelled sour. I reached down to scratch an itch and felt my own stiff jiz. The night before—what I’d done to Dessa—hit me like a fist in the gut.
“Hey?” I yelled down the stairs on my way to the bathroom. “Anyone home?” The silence was a relief. I needed to get on the phone with Dessa to repair the damage and didn’t want anyone overhearing me.
I stuck my face in the sink and splashed cold tap water, put my mouth to the faucet to sluice out the sour taste. Pissing into the toilet, I suddenly remembered that goofy note of my brother’s. Do you think it’s easy having your sleep stolen? Feeling the wings of the Holy Ghost against your throat? What the hell was wrong with him, anyway? First that typewriter crap. Then that stunt out there at the reservoir. . . . I got halfway under the shower, then got out again and went dripping down the hall and back to our room. I stood there, staring at Thomas’s unmade empty bed. What was going on?
Back in the shower, soap and hot water helped wash away the night before. Dessa and I had just had a misunderstanding, that was all—a communications misfire. She usually wanted it as much as I did. Maybe if I’d just slowed down a little. My bike in the trunk of her mother’s car gave me an opening. Maybe she could drive it over and we could talk—straighten things out. Pack a picnic and go out to the Falls, maybe, if we were both feeling in the mood. Undo the crap from the night before. God, I needed a car.