The Virgins

by Pamela Erens

  He remembers the dog because Jill used to walk it around the park while his team was having track practice. Now he wonders if that merging of schedules was really just a coincidence. The dog would get inspired by the runners and charge along the lanes in pursuit, exhaust itself after a loop, and lie down whimpering like a diva in an extended death scene. Jill would stand with her hands on her hips and laugh at the poor thing, then scoop it up in her arms and scold it affectionately. The team called the pooch, a female, Jessie, for Jesse Owens.

  Seung and Jill stand together in the drizzle, Pebbles yipping and jumping—like a pup, still—around Seung’s feet, tangling him in the leash.

  Jill throws her arms around Seung in a hug, as if they’d been good friends in the way back when. “It’s great to see you,” she says, asking if he still goes to Auburn. She has a good memory, he tells her.

  “Oh, no,” she says. “I mean . . . you were memorable.”

  She is wearing a hooded windbreaker but the hood is not up. The rain sifts down on her nose and cheeks, her eyelids. There is thick mascara on her lashes and a hint of blue on her lids. The dog is very wet but does not seem to mind. Jill lets go of the leash to let it play in the puddles. It rolls in the cold water, waving its paws around frantically.

  “Filthy dog,” she says.

  Jill too is on vacation, she tells Seung. Or really she should say that it’s her parents who are on vacation. They went into the city, to stay at a hotel and take in some museums and theater. She stayed back to watch over Pebbles. She hates to board her. And really she doesn’t mind. She prefers the company of Pebbles to looking at bunches of old paintings.

  “Do you want to come in for hot chocolate or something?”

  Her house is not far. She disappears into a bathroom to peel off her wet clothes and emerges in a thick white bathrobe. The door to the bathroom remains open and he can see the soggy jeans she has discarded. She’s combed out her hair, and for some reason this stirs him: the smooth, even grooves running the length of the shaft. She’s wiped away her mascara and now looks fresher, younger—younger than Aviva, even though she’s not. Her generous breasts are visibly bare beneath the robe.

  “We could make that hot chocolate,” she says.

  “That’s okay,” he tells her.

  In response she seats herself on the bed, waiting, and he realizes that she means to watch him undress. With Aviva, he is always pressed up so close that he cannot see himself, his own nakedness. They are always touching or so close to touching that there is no space for looking. Seung quickly removes his shirt, then unzips his jeans more slowly. Jill scoots back against the headboard and unties her robe. She spreads the folds back to reveal herself fully. When Aviva does let him look, she turns her eyes away, as if to remove herself from her vulnerability. And he cannot remember ever having the sensation that she has looked at him entirely, complete, not in pieces: an arm, his chest, his cock. He feels weak in the knees, in this room of Jill’s with posters of Cheap Trick and Blondie and the stuffed animals propped on her dresser and nightstand. In a moment, he is on top of her. It goes so fast. He can’t help himself. Perhaps he kisses her once or twice, maybe his hands graze her breasts. He is inside her before he knows it. She inhales sharply. He knows it’s all wrong, he’s come into her too soon. It’s boorish, inelegant. He can’t help it, can’t help it. He tries to compensate by brushing his hand against her hair, pressing quick kisses against her forehead, but it’s too late. He groans, pushing frantically, and comes in several long spasms that seem to last longer than everything that has come before. He is wet from head to toe with sweat and excitement. He stays inside her for a long time, silently thanking her, praising her, apologizing to her. Perhaps she will not despise him, if he lies here like this and holds her for a while.

  After a while she wriggles beneath him, signaling that his weight has become too much. She sits up. “Well,” she says.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “That was . . . I just lost my head.”

  She shrugs, tips her head to one side. A beautiful, forgiving girl. An angel. “Again,” she says. “Just let me go put in more goop.”

  She slips into the bathroom. There’s the sound of a drawer opening, a short blast of water.

  This time he slides in slowly, gently, only after kissing and stroking her breasts and thighs, the soft hollow of her collarbone, murmuring sincere endearments about her hair, her lips, the way she feels. She sighs and shifts to bring him in deeper. He is amazed at the grace they achieve, the way they pass pleasure back and forth between them like the intake and outflow of breath. Her exhales grow longer, deeper, louder, and then she clutches him tightly, her nails pricking him, and he can actually feel the muscles inside her spasm around his cock. He has been languid and cool this time around, but now he suddenly seizes and spills into her. He shouts out without knowing it.

  They shower together and, as grateful as he is to her, as happy as she seems, he can hardly bear the minutes until he can dress and leave. Her nakedness now seems too much, a feast that has gone on too long, a picture of excess. He is afraid he will try to take her again in this stall, the door smeared with steam. The hot water floods down on them in endless eruptions. He fucked her the first time for his honor, the second time for her pleasure. The third time would be the crime.

  As he slips on the wet shoes he left at her front door, the loafers he wears when he comes home from Auburn so that his mother will not ask, What do they teach you up there, to wear dirty sneakers?, he reminds himself that the whole time he hardly gave Jill his mouth, nor took hers. That would have been a greater betrayal of Aviva than his cock inside this girl has been. Jill’s cunt could never feel as dark to him, as mysterious, as Aviva’s mouth when she opens it to him. He could never fall as deeply inside.

  Jill takes her coat from the coatrack and puts a hand on his sleeve. “Let’s go out and get something to eat,” she says.

  He is a gentleman. They go to the diner, order hamburgers, root beer. He listens to her talk about the girls’ soccer team, the tickets she has to a Fleetwood Mac concert. He pays the bill and walks her home.

  46

  Aviva can see the difference that just four months have made. The tide of money that always washed in without pause, without even being noted, has permanently withdrawn. The maid, Dotty, no longer lives in. Mrs. Rossner says she comes twice a week; it was necessary to cut back. There are dishes in the sink waiting for a scrubbing. The grout in the tiled kitchen countertop is sticky and discolored. The cookies in the cookie bin taste stale, as if her mother has felt it too much of an indulgence to replace them, although her economies could hardly extend this far. Mrs. Rossner mentions that she’s given up the box at the symphony. “I called the box office and gave it back before your father could get it in the settlement,” she says. “There’s a wait list of ten, twelve years for one of those now. My one small act of revenge.” She smiles her wintry smile.

  Marshall is at school all day; he already had his spring vacation. Aviva plans to rise early each morning and walk him to the bus stop, but when her alarm clock goes off she feels a brutalizing heaviness that makes her turn over and sleep again. She stays in bed until eleven o’clock, sometimes noon, then goes to walk along Clark Street, looking at the shops. The weather is sunny and brisk and helps her waken at last. She buys herself a late breakfast at the Parthenon Diner, even though her bank account at school is running low and she is afraid her father will not send her May allowance on time. Last month he was ten days late. She stops in the little stores where she used to spend her pocket money on dangling earrings, embossed pencils, decorated mugs, stuff that seems like junk now. Some of the salespeople are the same as always and they greet her.

  On her second day home, Aviva walks into a hair salon that has a cleanly swept window and artful head shots at the front and asks a hairdresser who’s free to give her a short cut. The woman takes three steps back, studying, then comes forward to heft Aviva’s curls in one hand. She lets them
fall. “Are you sure?” she asks.

  Aviva is sure.

  The woman gives her magazines to look at, asking her to choose a picture. “This would be cute,” she says. A young woman is seen in profile, the tips of her dark hair, which reach no lower than her earlobes, plastered against her cheek.

  “All right,” Aviva agrees.

  It causes some notice in the salon. Other customers comment on the long black ropes on the floor.

  “Well, it’s more modern,” says one.

  “You should save a lock,” offers an elderly woman. She produces a Baggie from her purse.

  Aviva watches herself in all the shop windows as she walks home. She appears, disappears, appears again. She likes the haircut. Her head looks sleek and clean. She looks like someone who cuts to the chase, who doesn’t overthink or waste time. She smiles at herself and catches the smile in profile. People are watching her move down the block with such certainty, such intention.

  “Whoa!” Marshall shouts when he arrives home from school. Suddenly Aviva doubts herself.

  “What do you think?”

  “Whoa whoa!”

  “That bad?”

  “No! You look like a model. Only you made such a big deal when I shaved my head.”

  “Well, you did a terrible job.”

  “It’s better now, isn’t it?” he asks anxiously. His hair has pretty much grown back in, although unevenly, and is for some reason darker than before.

  “Much.”

  “Why did you do it?” he wants to know.

  “Why did you shave your head?”

  They look at each other.

  “Will Seung like it?” Marshall asks her.

  “I don’t care what Seung likes.”

  The hunger that she flew home with is gone and she can no longer eat her meals. The cereals and biscuits in the pantry make her mouth go chalky. Now that Dotty isn’t around there is little fresh food and no cooked dinners. Mrs. Rossner catches meals on the fly—a bowl of cereal, peanut butter on crackers—or forgets. In the evenings Aviva makes herself and Marshall scrambled eggs or tuna fish sandwiches. They go out one afternoon and stock up on a few things at the supermarket. But most of what they throw together she can’t put in her mouth.

  Their mother is emptying cabinets, going through old boxes shoved to the back of closets. It’s an ominous sign. Is she planning to move? “Look what I found,” she says. She is not a woman prone to nostalgia, yet once upon a time she apparently took the trouble to fix black-and-white family photographs to an album with sturdy black pages. The photographs are held in place with little white corners, but many fall loose when Aviva turns the sheets, their backs stained yellow with old glue.

  Their father is almost absent from the photographs, as if all that time ago he already anticipated his disappearance. Of course that is nonsense. It is because he was the one taking the pictures. Their mother looks slim and severe, more European than she does now. America has smoothed her out, created a bit of slack in her face and posture. Marshall is a chubby boy with full cheeks and various expressions of inward delight. He seems never completely present, but his absence is benevolent, fond. Aviva appears as the responsible older sister, her hand on Marshall’s shoulder turning him toward the camera, or sitting with him on the rug holding up the flash cards she’s made, large capitals in thick marker, to teach him how to read.

  A couple of days later, after Aviva washes her hair, the cut doesn’t look as sleek and sculptural as it did at the salon. The hairdresser did something special with the blow-dryer and some gel. Aviva can’t replicate it. Her hair stands away from her head, bushy, dull-looking. She ties one of her mother’s silk scarves around it and that’s better. But later she takes it off. She tells herself her hair looks fine the way it is.

  Marshall will turn thirteen the week after Aviva returns to school, so they have a small celebration, with cupcakes Aviva bakes but cannot manage to eat. Marshall says now that he’s going to be a teenager he will become responsible and good all the time. He will do all his work and be interested in his classes. Mrs. Rossner says that is wonderful news if true. Marshall is going to summer school after all, to do catch-up work in English and social studies especially. No summer baseball for him this year. For a gift, Mrs. Rossner has bought Marshall an enormous book of baseball statistics, which makes him leap around with delight. Aviva, with careful budgeting, was able to buy him a Walkman. Surprised, awed, he throws his arms around her.

  They sing a round of “Happy Birthday” for Aviva, too. Her birthday is not long after Marshall’s, on the sixth of May, and she won’t be home until June. Marshall says he’ll send her present in the mail, once he figures out what it is. In the past he’s given her a painted snail shell, three of his beloved Plastic Man comic books, a poem with stanzas praising her best qualities, one for each year of her life, and, back when collecting these was the center of his existence, a package of Matchbox cars.

  A few days before the end of Aviva’s vacation, she and Marshall make a trip downtown to see their father. Edith is on a visit to her sister’s in New Jersey, but the apartment is still magically filled with the scent of her perfume. Although Aviva and Marshall have not mentioned their mother, Mr. Rossner announces that he prefers not to talk about her, now or in the future. It was time for things to come to an end, that’s all. He’ll always be there for them. He takes them to the enclosed pool on the roof. The air is cold under the glass dome but the water is supposedly heated. There’s a lifeguard with floppy blond hair who crouches alertly over the vacant pool, ready to address any misfortune. Muscled, anchored, he looks maybe twenty or twenty-one. Someone masculine and competent who can’t be bothered with college. Aviva feels his eyes on her ass and legs as she places her things on a lounge chair. She’s glad she didn’t put on a bathing cap. Marshall is white and flabby and unhappy in his red trunks. He sits at the side paddling his feet in the water, and pronounces it cold. Aviva bends down to test with her hand—he’s right. Their father retreats to a chair at the back to read some radiology reports.

  Aviva stands at the deep end and pretends to be Seung, imagines the way he positions himself in a crouch and then plunges into the water without hesitation. She is aware too of the lifeguard’s interest and wants to look confident. She dives. The cold clamps around her, knocks her forgetful for a moment. She kicks to the surface, startled, having briefly lost her sense of direction. For a moment panic flits through her as she instinctively feels what it would be like to turn and turn under the water and never find up again. It’s okay, she thinks. I’m here—above. Very quickly her body warms, and she swims the way Seung taught her, each arm wheeling up straight and strong, each kick tight and clean. She is surprised at how quickly the wall comes forward to meet her, how fast she moves. How strong she is. She counts sixty laps and then hoists herself to the deck, tingling, content.

  Marshall is still dithering at the shallow end. “I’ll pull you in,” she warns him.

  “No!” He shrinks back, genuinely horrified. She is sorry. You can’t spread happiness, can’t force someone into your pleasures.

  She looks around the atrium. “Where did Dad go?”

  “Back to the apartment to do some work. He said see you for dinner.”

  Her hair is weightless; she roughs it up with her towel a few times and it’s nearly dry. As she tosses the towel into the hamper by the door the lifeguard trots up to her and says, “Hey.” He smiles and hands her a piece of paper. In the changing room she opens it. He’s written down his name, his phone number. She folds the paper and slides it into her jeans. For the rest of her Chicago stay she carries it around and looks at it, thinking about his desire for her, imagining the solidity of him, how he might come inside of her and put an end to the awful spell that keeps her lacking, but she knows she won’t call him. No one thinks she’s a good girl, but she’s more loyal, more chained, than anyone knows.

  47

  When I saw her shorn like that it struck me for the first
time that things weren’t exactly as we had all believed. To see them walking around campus, Seung’s hand shoved in the back pocket of her jeans, to see them in the common room, him stretched out like some sort of pasha, Aviva perched on his hips—they were fully dressed but might as well have been naked—you thought that here were two people completely abandoned to each other, oblivious to anything else. We wanted that, too. We wanted to be drugged by sex; we wanted to be shameless, impolite, entitled. We wanted to worship and be worshipped. How they got away with it, we didn’t know. Why they didn’t get caught, disciplined. In the butt rooms, over dinner, boys would say, “Fuck, who do they think they are?” They’d say, “If I tried that you know it would be the boot for me.”

  But the haircut. And she looked thin. Drawn. You don’t hack off hair like that, hair that looks and smells like sex, for no reason. She held herself almost as though she were being punished. I imagine how Seung reacted the first time he saw the change. She wouldn’t have told him in advance. She didn’t call him on the phone the whole time she was in Chicago. That’s what I imagine. He would have held his hand above her shoulder where the heavy fall of hair used to be, cupped the emptiness. That would be his way. He wouldn’t say anything about it, and no expression would cross his face. He was good at that kind of self-containment; it was bred into him. He’d be the first to acknowledge that. He’d just hold that negative space, feel it, remember. He couldn’t even bring himself to mind the loss. He loved her so much, he still thought she looked beautiful, even with that frizzed, lopsided bush, so awkward and strange.