For one thing, he loved his dog so much that it was heartbreaking. This dog, a wire-haired thing he found in a dumpster in Cohasset, was named Stinky Lewis. Brad taught him how to roll over, and they were both proud.
I would have pinned Brad as the golden retriever type, but I was wrong.
Another thing was, Brad kind of understood me. At least, he knew what it was like to be expected to feel lucky that you’re pretty. Also, the way he touched my hand so carefully gave me the impression that he knew I didn’t really want him, and maybe even why.
Stinky Lewis jumped into my lap, and I curled my fingers in his wiry fur.
As it turned out, Brad and I didn’t have sex right away. There was some groping and kissing, sometimes he touched my boobs, but then I would laugh, and instead of going further we would take a walk or watch a movie, or play with Stinky Lewis.
The dog spent a lot of his time running around inside Brad’s house, wagging his tail hopefully. The O’Hallorans had a fenced-in backyard, where Stinky Lewis also liked to go, running around in circles and eating his own poop.
He jumped from the couch now and did a few laps.
It was raining. We watched Stinky Lewis run back and forth between the front door and the back door, and I said, “I wonder if he thinks the doors lead to two different worlds.”
Brad rubbed his feet together. He wore striped wool socks and suede house shoes.
“Yeah,” said Brad. “He’s like, hey—it’s raining in Walking World, but let’s check Poop-Eating World!”
Stinky Lewis did another lap from the living room to the kitchen. He barked and raised his ears, eager.
“He wants out,” said Brad. He stood to open the back door, and Stinky Lewis wiggled everywhere, spinning in circles, until he saw the rain. Then he whined and sat down on the kitchen floor.
“Sorry, buddy,” said Brad, sitting beside me again. “It’s raining in both worlds today.”
Honestly, what hurt the most was that he was nice. And Susan was nice. And they probably belonged together. Being Brad’s girlfriend built a wall between them and gave me power that I knew was probably temporary, but imagining them together still hurt.
Thinking of Susan and her niceness, and how it matched with Brad and his niceness, made me say, “Want to go up to your room and fuck?”
Brad looked surprised.
I tugged at the blanket, and he stood. I wanted so badly to be normal, and I thought maybe this would help. I led him up the staircase, the walls lined with photographs of Brad’s smiling family over the years, wearing matching navy-and-white sweaters and khakis, mostly taken at the Sears photo center. Their faces were genuine, hopeful. I felt like they were asking me to join them.
We reached his bedroom, and the air was charged.
This was it.
I let him take off my clothes and run his hands all over me, and then I closed my eyes. I could feel everything happening: The pain of him entering me, the warm blood coming out of my body. The noises Brad made that seemed different from any noises I would make—if I were to make any while this was happening.
I stayed silent, kind of held my breath, and told myself that sex was going to make me normal.
To help with not concentrating on the pain, I pictured Johnny Moon inviting Susan and me into his mansion, then I imagined him as Rasputin, marrying us in front of an altar of yellow roses.
When Brad finished, I let him keep his arm around me. I closed my eyes and concentrated on whether or not I felt different. I couldn’t tell.
I reached for his bedside table and turned on the radio. A female announcer with a British accent was reporting on the EgyptAir flight that had crashed off the coast of Massachusetts a few weeks ago, killing all 217 passengers on board.
“They never made it to Egypt,” I said. I thought of the plane going down, the lights flickering, the screaming. I wondered if the people on the plane held each other’s hands while it was happening, even if they were strangers.
Brad was sweating. I tried to pretend it didn’t gross me out.
“Can you even imagine Egypt?” he asked. “I mean, what it’s really like, not how it looks in textbooks.”
“No,” I said. “For all I know, Egypt is fake.”
“Asia too,” he said.
“Don’t you want to go places?” I asked. Listening to the radio, even though that particular plane went down—maybe because it went down—gave me the urge to go on a plane for the first time. It sounded exciting and dangerous.
“Yeah,” Brad said, “I love Hopuonk, but sometimes I imagine going away.”
“Why don’t we ever go anywhere?” I asked. I imagined myself as a pilot, even though I wasn’t smart enough to be one.
“I guess I’m scared,” he admitted. “I mean, what if I like somewhere else so much that I decide to stay and not take over my dad’s business?”
“So what?” I said. But I knew what he meant. It was like we’d made a promise to our parents and our grandparents, to everyone who came before us, that unless we were going to run off and cure cancer, we would stay here and keep Hopuonk going.
I thought of the beautiful cedar houses lining the edge of Humming Rock Beach, and how I didn’t know a single person who owned one. The best properties in town belonged to the leaf peepers—those smiling, shiny-haired, crisply dressed people from Boston and New York who came to watch the leaves turn in fall, or to sunbathe on the beach in the summer. We collected their money for beach parking, but mostly, we didn’t notice them and they didn’t notice us.
Brad shrugged.
“It feels like everything is already decided,” he said.
“Is it?”
“It feels that way,” he said. “My dad’s already started training me to take over. It’s like I was born to be a landscaper.”
“Do you like it?”
“You know, I actually do. I’m a really good landscaper,” he said. His voice was hard.
I stayed silent, letting him finish.
“Sometimes,” he said, “the fact that I’m so good at it really pisses me off.”
I sat up and pulled on my shirt, leaving my bra on the floor.
He looked at me.
“What is it that makes me so good at it?” he asked. “I mean, is it because I’ve been watching my dad all these years, or is it, like, in my actual blood?”
I got what he meant.
“I think about that all the time,” I admitted. “Like, is it our bodies that make us stay, that hold us back, or is it just that we’re obedient?”
I didn’t want to be obedient.
His eyes changed, like he’d just realized that we’d done it, that we’d had sex. He reached for my shirt and slid it back off.
“I want to make you feel good,” he said. I couldn’t look at his naked body.
Gently, but still abruptly, he disappeared under the covers and started going down on me again. This was the first time since the Datsun and the herpes.
I thought of Susan—her wet-laundry smell, her salty-girl smell, her smell that matched the air in Hopuonk, her arm in mine, her laugh like a champagne glass shattering on tile, the sweaty curls escaping from her bun after ballet practice, her neatly tucked spine, her battered feet, her Herbal Essences shampoo, her Stradivarius-shaped body, the nip of her nose, her tiny, silver-dollar-sized nipples—and I went away.
My body pulsed, and I came. Ashamed, I returned to where I really was, on Brad’s Eddie Bauer sheets.
What should my next mistake be? I wondered.
“Taylor?”
There was Brad’s face, his lips moist with me. I shuddered all over again but tried to pretend it was out of pleasure.
Don’t say it, I thought.
“Taylor?” he said again.
“What?”
“Are you okay?” he asked.
<
br /> The Same Pajamas
The night of the sleepover we’d arranged to destroy Corvis, we sat in the middle of my bedroom in a circle, playing with Corvis’s Ouija board. My stomach knotted up, thinking of what I was about to do.
Corvis lived in a beautiful old Victorian, not quite as old as Susan’s house, but nicer. It was painted in actual Victorian colors, bright fuchsia and turquoise, ornamented with gingerbreading.
We were all pretending everything was normal, waiting for the right moment to out her.
I kind of liked the Ouija board, but Susan said it was creepy and weird after Corvis wouldn’t let her ask the spirits if Brad liked her. Heather said it was embarrassing. We were right in the middle of establishing contact with Kurt Cobain when Heather interrupted.
“This is gay. Kurt Cobain was just a grungy loser anyway.”
Susan shifted uncomfortably.
“I’m scared,” she admitted.
“Susan’s scared,” Heather said, looking at me rather than at Corvis.
“Maybe we should stop,” I said to Corvis, taking my fingers off the planchette, though I wanted Susan to be scared so she would ask me to share her sleeping bag. I felt like Corvis knew this, and had brought the Ouija board for this reason.
At every sleepover, my pajamas and Corvis’s were most alike. Long-sleeved. Plaid.
After that night, I started wearing nightgowns.
“You don’t believe in ghosts, do you?” Corvis asked Susan, smirking.
“No,” Susan said uncertainly. She was wearing Laura Ashley floral pajamas: a matching tank top and shorts, with lace on the edges and at the neckline.
“Do you believe in God?” Corvis asked, her eyes narrowing.
“Of course I do,” Susan said in a small voice.
“Well, he’s basically just a ghost,” said Corvis. “In churches, they even call him one.”
Heather, who was Catholic, said, “You’re so weird, Corvis.”
Heather’s mind was made up about Corvis the second she saw the note. Heather had always competed with Corvis—I think because Corvis never seemed insecure—and this was her chance to win.
Heather looked at me.
“Remind me,” she said, “why did you start inviting her to sleepovers?”
To see if her pajamas were like my pajamas.
“Shut up, Heather,” I said. Heather wore a nightgown with bunnies on it. Also, the collar was lace.
“You’re probably going to grow up to be Wiccan,” she said to Corvis. “Aren’t you?”
Corvis looked surprised. She was the last member to join our group, but she’d been accepted so long ago that she wasn’t used to Heather treating her this way.
“I’m Catholic,” Susan said.
“It’s stupid to try and guess what’s going to happen,” said Corvis, who wasn’t anything.
I wasn’t Catholic either. My problems were accumulating. Corvis and I had the same kind of pajamas, and we were both heathens. I had to go through with the plan.
“Think about Kurt Cobain’s daughter,” I said, to change the subject. “Like, he’s her dad.”
“I know,” Susan said. “And her middle name is Bean.” She shuddered.
“He’s not her dad anymore,” Heather said.
“Of course he is,” said Corvis. “When someone dies, it doesn’t mean they’re not still your dad.” She looked at me. “Or if they leave.”
“Taylor doesn’t have a dad,” Heather said.
“Yes,” said Corvis, “she does.”
“Well then,” said Heather, “where is he?”
I stiffened. I didn’t like when other people talked about my missing father. “I don’t know,” I said.
Heather crossed her arms over her chest.
“We could try to find him,” said Heather, gesturing to the Ouija board.
“No,” I said.
“That’s what I thought,” Heather said, looking at me with a satisfied expression on her face.
We’d somehow gotten away from our plan.
“I know what to ask it,” I said. “Let’s ask it who Corvis loves.”
Heather’s eyes lit up again.
Susan looked nervously from Corvis to me, to Heather, and back to me.
“You’re supposed to ask the spirits questions you can’t answer in real life,” Corvis said. “If you wanted to know who I love, you could just ask me.”
“Fine,” said Heather. “Who do you love, Corvis?”
“No one,” said Corvis.
“Liar,” said Heather.
I pulled the note from my pocket, unfolded it, and held it up. Corvis’s eyes widened.
“You weren’t supposed to show that to anyone,” she said to me.
Game time. Adrenaline kept me going.
“It’s Taylor,” Heather said. “Isn’t it? She’s who you love.”
This shocked me. I hadn’t considered this as part of Corvis’s gayness, and I found it sort of strange that Heather had jumped to that conclusion.
Corvis said nothing. She looked about seven times smaller.
“Prove it,” said Heather. “Prove you don’t want to kiss Taylor.”
Susan hugged her legs to her chest.
“Do it,” I said. “Kiss me. Then we can tell if it’s real or fake.”
“No way,” said Corvis.
I leaned back, my pajama top slipping off my shoulder.
“I know you want to,” I said, struggling to maintain a confident tone for Heather. “Prove me wrong.”
Corvis rolled her eyes.
“Fine,” she said.
She crawled toward me on all fours and leaned in. This was one of the slowest seconds of my life—I had enough time to smell the scent of pine on her, a nice smell, like she used her father’s deodorant or something. I had enough time to register that her lips were chapped, that she’d just brushed her teeth, that her hair was coarse and prickly. I remember everything about that moment—I would remember it even without the photograph that circled the school the following Monday, making the event visible and permanent.
Heather pulled out Susan’s Polaroid and snapped the photograph. It showed Corvis leaning toward me, and me leaning back—evidence that I didn’t initiate.
Corvis instantly pulled away when she heard the click of the camera.
Though I recognized our sameness in the kiss, I also knew that Corvis didn’t want to kiss me. It was true that she wanted girls, but I was not one of them.
If everyone had looked closely at the photograph, they would have seen that Corvis didn’t mean it, but no one looked closely. No one looked closely when Heather and I made copies of both the photograph and Corvis’s note and tossed them everywhere around school.
“What are you doing?” Corvis demanded.
Heather held up the photograph.
“You’re disgusting,” she said. “Lesbian.”
Corvis turned to me. I raised my eyebrows.
“Don’t try to deny it,” I said. “Just go home.”
The following week, after the picture circulated, everyone kept coming up and asking me if I was okay. As if she had poisoned me.
The Pirates
After Brad and I had sex, I wasn’t sure when I was supposed to do it again, or how often. To dodge it one night, I suggested we steal Scottie’s father’s boat instead.
“Can I take you on an actual date?” Brad asked on the phone, and I said, “Yes, let’s go steal a boat and find some gold.”
Even though Susan and I had shopped for my date outfit with Brad back at Halloween time, we’d never actually done anything but hang out at each other’s houses.
I knew he was thinking dinner at O’Reilly’s as an actual date, but I hadn’t been into dinner lately. I’d been into cigarettes, whiskey in the bathtub, and Dr Peppe
r–flavored ChapStick.
When he picked me up wearing an ironed button-down and khakis, I felt defeated. He looked too eager, and I felt a constant nagging inside me that I was disappointing him—almost the same way I felt about Sandra. I wore a pair of ripped corduroys and one of Sandra’s lover’s old Patriots sweatshirts with thumb holes, and zero makeup, except for the Dr Pepper ChapStick.
“Okay,” I said, trying to get into the mood, “put on your best pirate face.”
“Are you sure about this?” he asked. “I can still take you to dinner. Lobster, even, if you want.”
Lobster would definitely make me puke, especially if it was followed by sex, especially if the sex was followed by cuddling.
“I’m sure,” I said. I got into his car, saw his lacrosse helmet in the back seat, and pulled it over my head.
We drove to the pier, and when we got out of his Datsun, we were greeted by November’s hateful winds. I stared out at the ocean. Tonight, it was black, reflecting only the pale moon and the small lights of boats.
“You know I’m allowed to borrow the boat whenever,” said Brad, “but it’s choppy out right now.”
“I love choppy,” I said, adjusting the helmet.
I started down the dock, and reached for the rope, struggling to untie it.
Brad stopped me and undid the knots in two seconds. I was jealous of him for making it look so easy.
I climbed on board, and he followed. The night was felty and close to our faces. The smell of salt was overpowering, and the waves crashed angrily against the shore. I stood at the wheel of the boat, ready to steer us to some imagined island. It would be named Infinity Island, and it would be inhabited by barefoot women with purple skin and many bracelets, who ate things like ostrich eggs and drank the blood of cats.
But when Brad tried to start the engine, it puttered and stopped.
We found ourselves in the cabin, freezing, and I had the startling realization that this was where Brad had lost his virginity to Heather.
I think Brad realized the same thing.
“What was it like, when you and Heather did it here?”
Brad looked embarrassed.
“Why would you ask me that?” he said. “It was a long time ago, and now I’m here with you.”
We Were Promised Spotlights Page 7