by Tom Perrotta
“Where's Keith?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Who cares?”
“Don't you?”
She shook her head. “Not anymore. We broke up tonight. He tried to give me a ring, but I wouldn't take it.”
We pulled to a stop. Laura lived in a small house that was mostly hidden from the street by a big evergreen in the front yard.
“You'll have to be quiet,” she said, fitting the key in the front door lock. “My dad sleeps on the couch.”
“Your parents are home?”
“My dad is.”
“Where's your mom?”
“Ohio, last I heard.”
The door opened right onto the living room. Laura's father was sleeping on his back, breathing unevenly through his open mouth. One arm dangled off the couch. He stirred and mumbled something in his sleep. There was gunfire on TV, but I couldn't tell what show it was.
We tiptoed upstairs. Her room was small, the walls almost completely papered over with posters and photographs of Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. She lit a candle on the nightstand and turned off the light. The door locked from inside.
“Is this all right?” I asked. “What about your father?”
“Don't worry,” she said. “He's out for the night. If he hears anything, he'll just think you're Keith.”
We lay down on the bed and started rolling around. After a while I started touching her through her clothes, but it only made her laugh.
“Look,” she said. “Wouldn't this be easier if we got undressed?”
“Okay.”
“You first,” she said.
She sat on the edge of the bed and watched me strip.
“Those too,” she said.
I stepped out of my underwear and was instantly embarrassed by my erection. There was something absurd about the way it called attention to itself, like an exclamation point or a funny hat.
“You're beautiful,” she said, and I felt goose-bumps rising on my arms and legs.
She pulled back the covers on the bed and I climbed in. The sheets were cold. She pulled her sweater over her head and reached back to unhook her bra. Her breasts were small, her skin ghostly pale in the candlelight.
“Here I am,” she said, spinning slowly, like a model, wearing only socks.
I had spent so much time fantasizing about naked women that I expected the sight of one in real life to be a momentous event. But there was something strangely ordinary about the sight of Laura's body, her skinny arms and narrow hips, the tight, boyish curves of her butt.
“I knew this was going to happen,” she told me. “Ever since the day we smoked that joint.”
“Me too,” I lied.
“It's mystical, Buddy. It was meant to be.”
She got into bed and we found each other, her socks warm and scratchy against my cold feet. She kissed my chest and neck, then rolled me on top of her. Shivers passed through my body in taut, pulsing waves. She took me in her hand and spread her legs.
“Help me,” she whispered, guiding me inside.
All I could do was gasp in astonishment. This is Laura, I told myself, my partner in driver's ed, but that daytime world no longer seemed possible as we slipped and writhed, locking together like parts of a single machine. Fucking. Screwing. The words popped into my mind, then dissolved instantly. Nothing had a name anymore.
A voice said, “Slower. Take it easy.”
I opened my eyes. I opened my mouth.
A voice said, “Not yet,” a second too late. My arms buckled and I collapsed on top of her, as startled as if I'd crashed through the ceiling.
“Shit,” said the voice, and this time I recognized it as Laura's.
It took all the energy I had just to separate myself from her and flop onto my back. For a time, I felt like a stranger to myself. My body wasn't a body, but a humming void, peaceful and weightless. But the moment didn't last. The usual sensations returned to my arms and legs. The loud voice started up again in my head, the endless drone of my own thinking.
Laura had rolled onto her stomach and buried her face in the pillow. When I asked if she was okay, all she did was shrug.
“I'm sorry,” I told her. “I'll do better next time.”
“It's okay,” she said in a muffled voice. “There's nothing to worry about.”
We got dressed and tiptoed back out to the car. With our clothes on, we seemed not to recognize one another. Except for directions about where to turn, we didn't say anything the whole way home. She drove faster than usual, like she was trying to get it over with.
After we kissed good night, I paused with one leg outside of the car. I wanted to tell her something that would do justice to the things I was feeling: that I thought she was beautiful, that I missed her already, that I would spend all night staring at the ceiling in my room, trying to remember the way she looked with her shirt off. But I chickened out.
“Well,” I said. “See you in school.”
She was absent on Monday and didn't answer the phone when I tried to call in the afternoon. By the time driver's ed rolled around on Tuesday morning, I was desperate to talk to her. I needed to know where we stood, what would happen next. I got to the gym a few minutes early, hoping we could have a few minutes alone, but Bielski was already there, doing jumping jacks by the bleachers. He was in high spirits when he finished.
“Garfunkel,” he said. “Have a good weekend?” He held an imaginary joint to his lips and took a long toke. “Smoke a little dope?”
“Not me,” I said, pulling off my hat. “I got a haircut.”
He was impressed. “Jeez, Garfunkel. You look like a mental patient.”
Laura was smiling when she entered the gym.
“You're late, Daly.”
Bielski tossed the car keys to her, but she made no effort to catch them. She kept her hands in her coat pockets and watched them land at her feet on the hardwood floor.
“Elizabeth today,” Bielski said. “Wolfgang's Sporting Goods on Broad Street. I need to pick something up for the indoor meet.”
Laura and I lagged behind as we walked through the parking lot.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “Why?”
“You're not mad at me?”
She shook her head. “I'm not mad at anyone.”
It was her turn to drive. She was quiet behind the wheel, and I wondered if Bielski noticed a difference in the car, if he sensed that things had changed.
“Guess what?” Laura said. We were stopped at a red light in Darwin.
“What?” Bielski and I blurted out, almost in unison.
“Do you guys notice anything different about me?”
She waited a few beats for an answer that didn't come.
“My hand,” she said.
She twisted in the driver's seat and held up her left hand so Bielski and I could see the ring sparkling on her finger.
“It's a diamond,” she said. “Keith and I are getting married this summer.”
“I thought you two broke up.” I was amazed at how normal my voice managed to sound, as though I were simply curious.
“We made up,” she said. “We had a really long talk.”
“Are you quitting school?” Bielski asked.
The light changed. “Not really. I'll get an equivalency degree at night. We've got it all figured out.”
“How are you going to support yourselves?”
“Keith's a mechanic,” she said. “I'm a hairstylist.”
Bielski shook his head. “You're too smart for that. You should go to college.”
“What for?”
“What for?” Bielski said. “To get an education. Broaden your horizons.”
“Oh yeah,” Laura said. “And if I do really well, maybe I can be a gym teacher. Maybe they'll even let me teach driver's ed.”
“You just better think about what you're doing,” Bielski said. “Marriage isn't a date for the prom. If you make a mistake you'll have to live with it.”
“And I was so happy,” she said.
“Oh Christ,” he said. “Garfunkel, why don't you take over.”
I drove the rest of the way to Elizabeth. Traffic was heavy, but for the first time, I felt like I was part of it, like I had a rightful place on the road. I maintained a steady speed and changed lanes without hesitation. Bielski didn't seem to notice; he was busy examining a pink piece of paper he'd taken from his pocket, a receipt of some sort. I heard Laura sniffling in the back seat.
Bielski got out of the car at Wolfgang's and slammed the door. I watched through the plate glass window as he entered the store and shook hands with a stocky, gray-haired man wearing a suit and tie. The man disappeared down an aisle, and Bielski walked past a row of bicycles to a punching bag. He hit it twice, barely making a dent.
“You could at least look at me,” Laura said.
“Why?”
“All right,” she said. “Don't look at me. I don't care.”
I was searching for something suitably nasty to say when Bielski came out of the store with his new discus. He was gripping it with one hand, like he just might send it flying into the middle of Broad Street. He looked pathetic; like he'd gotten lost on his way to the Olympics.
“Just so you know,” Laura told me. “I'm three months pregnant.”
That Thursday, Bielski let me drive on the highway. Laura cut class, so he was my only passenger. We took Central Avenue into Clark and followed the curving ramp onto Parkway South. It was a boring stretch of road, no scenery except bare trees, squat office buildings, and the pale gray sky.
On my way to homeroom that morning, I had turned a corner and seen Laura and Keith up against a locker, kissing and laughing. They hadn't even noticed me as I walked by. Only now, at sixty miles an hour, could I even think about it without wanting to punch a window. With my hands on the wheel, I felt better and stronger, no more alone than anyone else.
Memories of my time with Laura flashed by like billboards. Our faces in the mirror, looking scared. Her body in the candlelight. Her father mumbling in his sleep. I want you. When I remembered her saying that, I laughed out loud.
“What's so funny?” Bielski asked.
“Nothing.”
“It's quiet without Daly,” he said a moment later.
“I know,” I said. “I miss her.”
He nodded. “She reminds me of a girl I knew when I was your age. Arlene Müller. I still think about her sometimes.”
I kept my eyes on the road and waited for him to finish the story. It took me a minute to understand that it was already finished.
The Jane Pasco Fan Club
I was watching Wake Up, America! one gray morning in 1978 when the show's host, Nancy Vernon, almost made me choke on my Pop-Tart.
“You know,” she said, in that soft, oddly intimate voice that made her such an agreeable morning companion, “we hear a lot about the habits and opinions of so-called Average Americans. But lately we've got to wondering: who are these elusive creatures? Where do they live? What are their hopes and fears?
“Well, Wake up, America! decided to find out. After weeks of snooping and statistical analysis, our staff located a town that can only be described as uniquely ordinary. Darwin, New Jersey, isn't too big and it isn't too small. The 5,342 people who live there aren't rich and they aren't poor. They're … well, they're just about average.”
I was thinking I must have heard wrong— Darwin, New Jersey!— when the video screen behind her head blossomed with a face that didn't belong on TV. It was lumpy and mismatched, like a bad composite portrait, with beady eyes, a false-looking nose, and a high forehead decorated with thin strands of strategically combed hair. I felt a strange thrill. It was the first time I'd ever seen someone I knew on television.
“Mario Moretti is the mayor of Darwin. Good morning, Mr. Mayor.”
The mayor straightened his tie and showed his teeth.
“Good morning to you, Nancy.” Nancy Vernon thoughtfully stroked her chin, as though she were about to address an important world leader.
“Tell us a little about your town, Mr. Mayor.” “Well, Nancy, there isn't that much to tell. It's your basic small town, a nice friendly place. Everyone knows everybody else.”
He was at least right on that last count. Mayor Moretti, for example, had grown up with my father and coached me in the Little League. His wife had served with my mother in the PTA. His son Mike had gone out with my girlfriend for two years before breaking her heart. Now he wanted her back in a big way.
“What kind of problems does the town face?” “We Darwinians are basically concerned with inflation, high taxes, drugs, crime, and the skyrocketing cost of gasoline.”
“Crime?” Nancy Vernon sounded a note of surprise. “Is there a lot of crime in Darwin?”
The mayor backpedaled. “Heck no, hardly any. Maybe a little shoplifting.” His smile brightened. “If you want to get murdered in broad daylight, you can always catch the bus to Manhattan.”
Nancy Vernon didn't crack a smile. “Mr. Mayor, we'd like to give our viewers a closer look at an Average American Town. Would you mind if we paid Darwin a visit?”
“We'd love to have you, Nancy.”
“One more thing. While we're in town, we'd like to drop in on an Average American Family. Could you arrange that for us?”
“I'd be delighted.”
The next day every family in town received a letter from the mayor's office inviting them to apply in writing to be featured on Wake Up, America! It said that although everyone was technically eligible for the honor, the show's producers had expressed a preference for a family of four, consisting of a blue-collar husband, a working wife, two kids (girl and boy), and a dog. Right after I read the letter I called my new girlfriend, Jane Pasco.
“Hey,” I said. “It's too bad you don't have a dog. You could be on TV.”
I meant it as a joke, but she didn't laugh.
“Jane?” I said. “Are you there?”
* * *
Mr. Pasco convinced Jane to go with him to the Humane Society. She dragged me along for moral support.
We passed through an anteroom filled with cats stacked one on top of the other in stainless steel cages. Most of them were fast asleep, despite the alarming volume of dog noise coming from the adjacent kennel. From a distance the barking had sounded relatively innocuous, but up close it took on an angry and desperate edge, as if each dog were crying out in its own private language:
“Take me!”
“Save me!”
“Hey you in the green shirt!”
“Help!”
The dogs were confined in two rows of remarkably clean cells separated by a cement walkway. The cells were narrow, about the size of bathroom stalls, with cinder block dividers and chain-link fencing across the front. Jane clutched my shirtsleeve. Her father adopted the cool, noncommittal air of a man browsing through a used car lot.
A Samoyed flipped her food bowl, sending dry kernels skittering across our path. A shepherd banged his head repeatedly against the fence. A handsome black Lab stood on his hind legs, barking spit into the air. A beagle frantically chased her tail.
“This is the one,” Mr. Pasco declared.
He was pointing at a quiet, intelligent-looking mixed breed, identified by his information tag as “Sparky.” He was a yellow dog with a dark face, flat ears, and sympathetic eyes. The tag said he was four years old and had been surrendered due to “owner allergy.” He stared back at us and thumped his tail twice, as though he knew he'd been chosen. In spite of herself, Jane smiled.
Sparky was a good dog. When we took him for a walk that night, he moved at our pace without straining at his leash. At the park, he politely sniffed the other dogs, but showed no interest in fighting or humping.
“Well,” I told Jane, as we followed Sparky down the dirt path, “even if you don't get o
n TV, at least you saved a life.”
“I don't know,” she said. “Dad's got his heart set on winning. He thinks it'll be good for Matt.”
Jane's brother, Matt, had dropped out of college in the middle of his first semester. During a late-night acid trip, he had hallucinated that his dorm was on fire. He'd pulled the alarm, then braved the imaginary inferno to knock on doors up and down the hall, waking his neighbors and herding them to safety in their pajamas and robes. The administration had asked him to leave.
He came home and spent a couple of months in his room with the door shut, rereading The Lord of the Rings and cultivating a scraggly beard. Then, one bright morning in January, he hopped out of bed, showered, shaved, and put on his only suit. For the next day and a half, until the police made him stop, he went door-to-door, asking people to sign a petition in favor of making his birthday a national holiday: Matt Pasco Day.
On his rounds, he collected thirty-seven signatures, a bad reputation, and a girlfriend who was an even sadder case than he was. Pam Devlin had been a classmate of Jane's until junior year, when she suffered some kind of breakdown. First she stopped washing her hair; then her spine began to curve like an old lady's. She went for days at a time without speaking to anyone. Her parents blamed her friends for warping her mind. Her friends accused her parents of beating her for minor offenses, even of locking her in a closet once for trying to sneak out of the house in a halter top. She spent a year in some kind of institution, but looked no better on her return.
She and Matt became inseparable companions. Her parents, who had once been sticklers on such matters, no longer seemed to care if she spent the night—or several consecutive nights—away from home. By the time I started going out with Jane, Pam was pretty much a live-in guest at the Pascos’. Jane's parents weren't thrilled with the situation, but they accepted it. Pam was Matt's only friend. It was almost sweet to watch him guide her around the house, patiently explaining the operation of the toaster or the windowshades, as though she were an exchange student from another planet.
“It's funny to think of Matt on national TV,” I said.