by Tom Perrotta
“Most people use metaphors to talk about love and that's why they get it wrong. It's physical, Paul. It's a feeling you carry around in your body. I'd lost that with your mother.”
I stared down at my sneakers, as though trying to see through them to the clenched toes inside. It didn't seem possible that he was telling me this, any more than it seemed possible that he had actually traded Mom for Mrs. Stiller. Mom was slender and quiet, a pretty, thoughtful woman with a soft laugh. And Mrs. Stiller…
“She's fat.” I just blurted it out. My father's girlfriend was a loud fat woman who sold real estate.
He nodded. “I thought I'd be disgusted by her body, but I wasn't.” His eyes grew slitlike as he gnawed on a thumbnail. “I was moved, Paul. By the sight of her.”
I stood there, trying to breathe. My lungs didn't seem to be working right.
“She's gross,” I said. “She's a fat fucking pig.”
He took a step in my direction. I wanted to make him mad, but it wasn't working. This crooked little smile started to take shape on his face.
“You know what? She doesn't eat any more than you or me. She's just heavy. There's nothing she can do about it.”
He reported this to me as though it were some marvelous fact, something I'd want to share with my friends.
“Heavy?” I said. “She's a fucking sumo wrestler.”
I tried to say something else about what a tub of fucking lard she was, but I was too busy choking back sobs. My father moved closer, laying one hand on top of my shoulder. He put his arm around me and pulled me against his chest. He smelled the way he had the last time I'd hugged him, way back in third or second grade.
TAMMY WARREN
I HADN'T GONE out in a long time, and Mom was all excited, like it was prom night or something. She supervised my hair and kept trying to get me to change into a dress.
“Mom,” I said. “Would you get real? These guys play Nintendo like nineteen hours a day. I'll be overdressed if my socks match.”
“Are they cute?”
“Cute?” I clutched my head. “These guys sleep in their clothes, Mom.”
She waved her hands in surrender.
“All right, all right. Forget I even asked.” She started backing out of the room, but stopped in the doorway to offer one last piece of advice. “Believe me, honey. A little lipstick never hurt anyone.”
So I put on some lipstick, just to make her happy. It didn't look bad, though I might've cared a little more if there'd been someone in the world I wanted to kiss who had the slightest desire to kiss me back.
The party was across town, and Mom had enlisted Paul to drop me off on his way to Lisa's and pick me up on the way home. He was waiting in the living room with his coat on, impatiently tapping his foot. He jumped up when he saw me, and told me I looked great. Being in love had turned him into a much nicer person.
“Doesn't she?” Mom smiled, brand-new wrinkles tugging at the corners of her eyes and mouth. “Your baby sister's growing up.”
She kissed us goodbye and stood alone beneath the porch light, waving as we backed out of the driveway.
“Poor Mom,” I said.
Paul nodded, frowning as he wiggled the gearshift. He'd only been driving for a couple of months.
“I wish she'd get out more,” he said. “Meet some new people. Lisa's mom belongs to a singles' group. She's out on a date tonight.”
“Really?” I tried not to sound too interested. “What are you guys doing?”
He shrugged. “Hang out. Maybe watch some TV.”
We drove in silence for a few minutes, long enough for me to realize that it was the first time we'd ever been alone in a car. It was amazing in a quiet way, the kind of moment we couldn't have even imagined as little kids, pinching and tickling each other in the backseat. On long drives I used to fall asleep with my head in his lap. Sometimes, out of the blue like that, even when I was mad at him, I'd suddenly remember that Paul was my brother and I loved him. He looked at me, almost like he could read my mind.
“You know that brunch tomorrow?”
“Yeah?”
“You mind if I bring Lisa?”
The speedometer glowed on the dashboard, a ring of luminous green.
“Do what you want.”
We turned down Grove and stopped in front of number 71.1 unbuckled my seat belt and reached for the door handle.
“Hey,” he said. “Whatever happened with you two anyway? ”
“Why don't you ask her?”
“I do. She never answers.”
MR. M.
FOR SIX OR SEVEN MONTHS Diane and I had been trying to get pregnant, dancing to the joyless tune of calendar and thermometer. On doctor's orders, I traded in my briefs for boxers, which I found uncomfortable, and we restricted ourselves to the sexual positions most likely to facilitate conception (not that we'd been that wild to begin with). When it was over, Diane lay perfectly still for ten minutes, hugging her knees to her chest as she visualized the hoped-for collision between sperm and egg.
All that hard work took its toll. Despite my wife's misgivings, I found it increasingly difficult to perform on demand for several consecutive nights without the aid and inspiration of dirty magazines. It wasn't that Diane objected to pornography on feminist grounds; she just disliked comparing herself to the women in the pictures, whose bodies seemed to her so effortlessly and inhumanly beautiful. After a few inconclusive fights, we struck a tacit bargain, whereby I was allowed to consult my magazines as long as she could pretend not to know about it. Practically speaking, this meant that I spent a lot of time in the bathroom right before sex, trying to coax myself into the right frame of mind.
And sometimes even that wasn't enough. After losing my erection on a couple of occasions, I took the advice of a TV sexologist and began fantasizing about women other than my wife. One night it would be Ellen DiNardo, the sexy new art teacher, and the next it would be Michelle Pfeiffer, or Mary Tyler Moore in her incarnation as Laura Pétrie.
One night, shortly after the Candidate Assembly, as Diane impassively spread her legs, I closed my eyes and pretended she was Tracy Flick. The fantasy was vivid and explosive; we were fucking without tenderness beneath the bleachers during an important football game, the noise of the crowd barely muffling our animal grunts and exchanges of foul language. Skirt pulled up, tights yanked down, she thrashed her head from side to side on the confetti-speckled pavement, arching her hips to meet my powerful thrusts. I came with a series of violent shudders that racked my whole body. I was barely finished when Diane shoved me off of her, drawing her knees to her chest as the doctor had instructed. I rolled onto my back, raggedly panting, my skin filmy with sweat. Diane turned her head and studied me with what I took to be mild interest.
“Jim,” she said, “would you turn on Jay Leno?”
TAMMY WARREN
A PRETTY GIRL I'd never seen before answered the door and took my coat.
“I'm Dana,” she said; “Jason's my stepbrother.”
Jason Caputo and Lance Breezey, the Nintendo geeks, were in the living room, drinking beer and playing Super Mario Brothers. It didn't seem like much of a party.
“Am I early?”
Lance shook his head, working the controls with furious concentration. All sorts of annoying sounds emerged from the TV as the little cartoon men jumped and shot fireballs.
“You're right on time,” he assured me.
“Where's everyone else?”
Jason looked at me for the first time since I'd arrived, his excited face opening into a slow, crazy-eyed smile. His hair was a mess of cowlicks, his pink and green rugby shirt too tight even for his painfully thin body. He looked like he'd just rolled out of bed after a long illness.
“You are everyone else,” he told me. “We wanted to keep things intimate.”
I followed Dana into the kitchen, surprised that a dork like Jason could even have a stepsister as cool as her, a girl you wouldn't have been surprised to see dancing on MTV, he
r body loose, her face a mask of sultry boredom. She wore baggy overalls and a tight, striped jersey that didn't reach her navel. Her dark straight hair fell at a severe angle across one eye.
“I'm glad you came,” she said, grimacing as she twisted the cap off a beer bottle. “Those two drive me crazy after a while.”
“Where do you go to school?” I asked.
She handed me the beer. “Immaculate Mary.”
“Do you like it?”
“It's okay. At least we don't have to go through the bullshit with the makeup and clothes every day. You can show up looking like a wreck and nobody even cares.”
I took a tiny sip of beer, holding my breath so I didn't have to taste it.
“You wear uniforms?”
“Yeah.” She pushed the hair out of her face, momentarily exposing a large shapeless birthmark spreading from her cheekbone to her forehead. It was amazing how thoroughly it was concealed by her haircut. “Blue knee socks, gray skirts, white blouses. Five days a week. And saddle shoes.”
“No overalls,” I said, thinking again how cool she looked, and how exotic with that secret birthmark.
“Nope.” She reached into one of her many pockets and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Want one?”
“Sure.”
We had to go out on the deck because of Jason's allergies. I lit my cigarette off hers and smoked it in tiny puffs that felt like razors going down my throat. Dana was even clumsier than I was, choking on every other drag.
“I only smoke at parties,” I said, admiring the sophistication of the remark.
“Same here,” she said. “Only when I drink.”
The night was chilly, but I didn't mind. I'd forgotten how good it felt to get out of the house, to escape into something new.
“I guess I should warn you,” she said. “Jason's got this really big crush on you.”
“On me?” I laughed too loud, as if this were the most ridiculous thing I'd ever heard.
She nodded gravely. “He talks about you all the time.”
Dana flicked her cigarette into the yard. I did the same, relieved to get rid of it. They landed just a couple of inches apart in the grass, burning through the darkness like two orange stars.
MR. M.
ANOTHER WOMAN I fantasized about was Sherry Dexter, but with her I was slow and careful, a healer of sorrows. It was especially exciting for me because we spent so much time together in real life.
Diane and I drove to her house almost every night and stayed until ten or eleven, doing double duty as friends and babysitters, giving Sherry a chance to take a shower, eat a meal in peace, maybe run a quick errand without having to worry about Darren. She said it was heaven to go to the supermarket by herself; she felt so streamlined and free gliding up and down the aisles without a baby in tow, so much like a real person.
It was marvelous to watch the transformation she underwent in our presence. She answered the door in a food-stained sweatsuit, hair pulled back any which way, her face pasty and frazzled. After a few minutes of small talk she escaped upstairs for a shower that sometimes lasted as long as a half hour. I could imagine the luxury of it, the steam and privacy, the chance to be alone in her own body for the first time all day without worries or distractions.
She was a different person when she came back down. Her wet hair was loose, freshly combed, her skin rosy. The smell of shampoo clung to her like a warm aura. Sometimes she got dressed, but I preferred the nights when she rejoined us in her crimson terry cloth robe, a garment that had figured prominently in a couple of my fantasies.
A strange intimacy seemed to have sprouted up between us that spring, as if she'd somehow gotten wind of the things we did together in my head and wanted me to know that she approved. She smiled at me on the flimsiest of pretexts, spoke my name as if it belonged to another Jim, a witty, fascinating man whose company brought her immense pleasure.
If Diane noticed, it didn't seem to bother her; she only had eyes for Darren. As soon as we arrived, her eyes lit up with fresh wonder at the sight of his scrunched and quizzical face, so eerily reminiscent of Jack's. For the next hour or two, until Darren grew cranky with exhaustion, they played together on the floor—sorting shapes, reading nursery rhymes, building the same four-block tower over and over again—leaving Sherry and me free to continue our flirtation at a slightly higher altitude, safe in the knowledge that it couldn't really go anywhere.
One night, though, about a week before the election, Sherry came down from her shower dressed to go out. On what seemed like the spur of the moment, she invited Diane to drive with her to the mall.
“I need to pick up a housewarming gift for my sister,” she said. “I hate to drive all that way by myself.”
Diane didn't answer right away. She was kneeling on the floor, adding the last alphabet block to a precarious tower as Darren looked on, gleefully awaiting her permission to demolish it.
“Take Jim,” she said offhandedly. “I'm happy right here.”
Sherry and I exhanged a swift glance of collusion and alarm. The color deepened in her cheeks and throat.
“Oh no,” she said. “I'm sure he'd be bored to death.”
“Not at all,” I told her. “I'm happy to be your escort.”
TAMMY WARREN
DANA HAD A VCR in her bedroom and her own copy of Truth or Dare. We sat on her bed in the flickering darkness beneath a huge poster of Jason Priestley, watching in almost religious silence. Whenever a song came on we jumped off the bed and started dancing around like maniacs.
Dana did a great Madonna imitation. She knew most of the routines pretty much by heart, except for the really complicated parts, and didn't seem embarrassed about running her hands up and down her body.
“Don't worry,” she told me. “I won't do the masturbation scene.”
The first time I saw Truth or Dare was in a movie theater, and I was totally hypnotized by Madonna. She was all I remembered: Madonna at her mother's grave, Madonna putting that bottle in her mouth, Madonna sad and lonely in a beautiful hotel room. It was like she gave off this exclusive brightness, blinding you to anyone and anything that wasn't her.
On the smaller screen she was less dazzling, more like a human being. I found myself paying closer attention to the other people in the movie—the dancers, the chubby makeup girl, the childhood friend who asks Madonna to be her baby's godmother. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be a member of her family, how hard it would be to keep your spirits up, to wake up in the morning and actually believe you have a life worth living.
One of her brothers worked for her, and one had just gotten out of rehab. Her father seemed both awed and frightened by who she was and what she did in front of thousands of people. The father's wife didn't like Madonna very much. It must have been strange for her, marrying a completely ordinary man whose daughter turns out to be the most famous person in the world.
I thought about my own father, and how satisfying it would be to bring him and Mrs. Stiller to one of my concerts, then invite them back to my dressing room afterward so they could get a close-up glimpse of what a huge star I was. I also thought about Paul, how I'd spent so much time resenting him for being so handsome and clueless and successful, when he was really just another nobody. Madonna wouldn't have given him the time of day.
“I can't believe she does this with her dad in the audience,” Dana marveled. “It's so weird.”
Madonna was writhing on the bed, pretending to give herself an orgasm. My breath quickened as I watched, my blood beginning to hum. Dana and I were a couple of inches apart. We didn't look at each other or move a muscle. We just sat wide-eyed, staring straight ahead until it was over.
MR. M.
SHERRY SMILED at me as we pulled away from the curb.
“Well,” she said. “Here we are.”
“Yup,” I replied. “Here we are.”
The humid smell of her shampoo wafted through the car like a mysterious tropical breeze. I breathed deeply, taking a
s much of it as I could into my lungs.
“It's been a long time since I've been out with a man,” she told me.
“Don't worry. I'll behave myself.”
She laughed merrily.
“I know,” she said. “That's what worries me.”
TAMMY WARREN
THE TAPE WAS rewinding when Lance and Jason pushed open the door and asked if we wanted to play spin the bottle.
“No way,” said Dana. “There aren't enough of us.”
“Sure there are,” said Jason.
“Forget it,” said Dana. “I'm not kissing you.”
“You don't have to,” he assured her. “I can kiss Tammy. And both of you can kiss Lance.”
Lance snickered. “And you two can kiss each other.”
I had the weirdest feeling then, like it might really happen. Dana stood there, shaking her head.
“You guys are pathetic,” she said.
MR. M.
SHERRY BOUGHT a toaster. I behaved myself. Both of us seemed relieved as we slipped back into the car, as if we'd passed some sort of test.
“Thanks,” she told me. “I appreciate the company.”
“No problem.”
“You guys are great friends. I don't know what I'd do without you.”
If we'd made it home on that note, everything would have been okay. But fate conspired against us. We happened to catch a red light just outside the Benedict Motel, one of those hourly-rate places that exist solely to provide a haven for illicit sex. Nine o'clock on Thursday night and the parking lot was almost completely full. I'm still not sure what possessed me to open my mouth.
“Should I pull in?”
She didn't laugh or feign shock. Her gaze was level, her voice tight and serious.