“Did you like growing up in that area?” she asked.
“Like it? It was the greatest time of my life.” Some extremity in his voice made her look away, and as she did, he looked more fully at her profile. She didn’t look that much like Patty; she wasn’t even blond. But the small physical resemblance was augmented by a less tangible affinity, a telling similarity of speech and movement.
Patty belonged to a different crowd at Meadow. They were rougher than the Coate people, but the two groups were friendly. Patty was a strange, still presence within her group, with her hip thrust out and a cigarette always bleeding smoke from her hand. She was loose even by seventies standards; she had a dirty sense of humor, and she wore pants so tight you could see the swollen outline of her genitals. She was also shy. When she talked she pawed the ground with her foot and pulled her hair over her mouth; she looked away from you and then snuck a look back to see what you thought of her. She was accepted by the Thorold people the way you accept what you’ve always known. The stiffness of her face and body contradicting her loose reputation, her coarse language expressed in her timid voice and shy manners, her beauty and her ordinariness, all gave her a disconnected sexiness that was aggravating.
But he liked her. They were often a team at work, and he enjoyed having her next to him, her golden-haired arms plunged in greasy black dishwater or flecked with garbage as she plucked silverware from vile plates on their way to the dishwasher. She spooned out quivering red Jell-O or drew long bland snakes of soft ice cream from the stainless-steel machine, she smoked, wiped her nose, and muttered about a fight with her mother or a bad date. Her movements were resigned and bitter, yet her eyes and her nasty humor peeked impishly from under this weight. There was something pleasing in this combination, something congruent with her spoiled beauty.
It was a long time before he realized she had a crush on him. All her conversation was braided together with a fly strip of different boys she had been with or was involved with, and she talked of all of them with the same tone of fondness and resentment. He thought nothing of it when she followed him outside to the field behind the union, where they would walk along the narrow wet ditch, smoking pot and talking. It was early spring; dark, naked trees pressed intensely against the horizon, wet weeds clung to their jeans, and her small voice bobbed assertively on the vibrant air. The cold wind gave her lips a swollen raw look and made her young skin grainy and bleached. “So why do you let him treat you like that?” “Ah, I get back at him. It’s not really him, you know, I’m just fixated on him. I’m working out something through him. Besides, he’s a great lay.” He never noticed how often she came up behind him to walk him to class or sat on the edge of his chair as he lounged in the union. Then one day she missed work, and a buddy of his said, “Hey, where’s your little puppy dog today?” and he knew.
“Did you like Thorold?” he asked the girl next to him.
“No, I didn’t.” She turned toward him, her face a staccato burst of candor. “I didn’t know what I was doing, and I was a practicing alcoholic. I kept trying to fit in and I couldn’t.”
“That doesn’t sound good.” He smiled. How like Patty to answer a polite question from a stranger with this emotional nakedness, this urgent excess of information. She was always doing that, especially after the job at the cafeteria ended. He’d see her in a hallway or the union lounge, where normal life was happening all around them, and she’d swoop into a compressed communication, intently twining her hair around her finger as she quickly muttered that she’d had the strangest dream about this guy David, in which a nuclear war was going on, and he, John, was in it too, and—
“What did you do after Redford?” he asked the girl next to him.
“Screwed around, basically. I went to New York pretty soon after that and did the same things I was doing in Thorold. Except I was trying to be a singer.”
“Yeah?” He felt buoyed by her ambition. He pictured her in a tight black dress, lips parted, eyes closed, bathed in cheap, sexy stage light.
“Didja ever do anything with it?”
“Not much.” She abruptly changed expression, as though she’d just remembered not to put herself down. “Well, some stuff. I had a good band once, we played the club circuit in L.A. for a while six years ago.” She paused. “But I’m mostly a paralegal now.”
“Well, that’s not bad, either. Do you ever sing now?”
“I haven’t for a long time. But I was thinking of trying again.” Just like Patty, she looked away and quickly looked back as if to check his reaction. “I’ve been auditioning. Even though . . . I don’t know.”
“It sounds great to me,” he said. “At least you’re trying. It sounds better than what I do.” His self-deprecation annoyed him, and he bulled his way through an explanation of what he did, making it sound more interesting than selling software.
A stewardess with a small pink face asked if they’d like anything to drink, and he ordered two little bottles of Jack Daniel’s. Patty’s shadow had a compressed can of orange juice and an unsavory packet of nuts; their silent companion by the window had vodka straight. He thought of asking her if she was married, but he bet the answer was no, and he didn’t want to make her admit her loneliness. Of course, not every single person was lonely, but he guessed that she was. She seemed in need of comfort and care, like a stray animal that gets fed by various kindly people but never held.
“Will you get some mothering while you’re at home?” he asked.
“Oh, yes. My mother will make things I like to eat and. . . stuff like that.”
He thought of telling her that she reminded him of someone he’d known in Coate, but he didn’t. He sat silently, knocking back his whiskey and watching her roll a greasy peanut between two fingers.
Out in the field, they were sitting on a fallen branch, sharing a wet stub of pot. “I don’t usually say stuff like this,” said Patty. “I know you think I do, because of the way I talk, but I don’t. But I’m really attracted to you, John.” The wind blew a piece of hair across her cheek, and its texture contrasted acutely with her cold-bleached skin.
“Yeah, I was beginning to notice.”
“I guess it was kind of obvious, huh?” She looked down and drew her curtain of hair. “And I’ve been getting these mixed signals from you. I can’t tell if you’re attracted to me or not.” She paused. “But I guess you’re not, huh?”
Her humility embarrassed and touched him. “Well, I am attracted to you. Sort of. I mean, you’re beautiful and everything. I’m just not attracted enough to do anything. Besides, there’s Susan.”
“Oh. I thought you didn’t like her that much.” She sniffed and dropped the roach on the raw grass; her lipstick had congealed into little chapped bumps on her lower lip. “Well, I’m really disappointed. I thought you liked me.”
“I do like you, Patty.”
“You know what I meant.” Pause. “I’m more attracted to you than I’ve been to anybody for two years. Since Paul.”
A flattered giggle escaped him.
“Well, I hope we can be friends,” she said. “We can still talk and stuff, can’t we?”
“Patty LaForge? I wouldn’t touch her, man. The smell alone.”
He was driving around with a carload of drunk boys who were filled with a tangle of goodwill and aggression.
“Ah, LaForge is okay.”
He was indignant for Patty, but he laughed anyway.
“Were you really an alcoholic when you lived in Thorold?” he asked.
“I still am, I just don’t drink now. But then I did. Yeah.”
He had stepped into a conversation that had looked nice and solid, and his foot had gone through the floor and into the basement. But he couldn’t stop. “I guess I drank too much then too. But it wasn’t a problem. We just had a lot of fun.”
She smiled with tight, terse mystery.
“How come you told me that about yourself? It seems kind of personal.” He attached his gaze to hers as he said
this; sometimes women said personal things to you as a way of coming on.
But instead of becoming soft and encouraging, her expression turned proper and institutional, like a kid about to recite. “If I’m going to admit it to other alcoholics in the program, I can admit it in regular life too. It humbles you, sort of.”
What a bunch of shit, he thought.
He was drinking with some guys at the Winners Circle, a rough pickup bar, when suddenly Patty walked up to him, really drunk.
“John,” she gasped. “John, John, John.” She lurched at him and attached her nail-bitten little claws to his jacket. “John, this guy over there really wants to fuck me, and I was going to go with him, but I don’t want him, I want you, I want you.” Her voice wrinkled into a squeak, her face looked like you could smear it with your hand.
“Patty,” he mumbled, “you’re drunk.”
“That’s not why. I always feel like this.” Her nose and eyelashes and lips touched his cheek in an alcoholic caress. “Just let me kiss you. Just hold me.”
He put his hands on her shoulders. “C’mon, stop it.”
“It doesn’t have to mean anything. You don’t have to love me. I love you enough for both of us.”
He felt the presence of his smirking friends. “Patty, these guys are laughing at you. I’ll see you later.” He tried to push her away.
“I don’t care. I love you, John. I mean it.” She pressed her taut body against his, one sweaty hand under his shirt, and arched her neck until he could see the small veins and bones. “Please. Just be with me. Please.” Her hand stroked him, groped between his legs. He took her shoulders and shoved her harder than he had meant to. She staggered back, fell against a table, knocked down a chair, and almost fell again. She straightened and looked at him as if she’d known him and hated him all her life.
He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, an overweight, prematurely balding salesman getting drunk on an airplane.
“Look at the clouds,” said the girl next to him. “Aren’t they beautiful?”
He opened his eyes and silently looked.
Shrewdness glimmered under her gaze.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Lorraine.”
“I’m John.” He extended his hand and she took it, her eyes unreadable, her hand exuding sweet feminine sweat.
“Why do you want to talk about your alcoholism publicly? I mean, if nobody asks or anything?”
Her eyes were steadfast, but her body was hesitant. “Well, I didn’t have to just now. It’s just the first thing I thought of when you asked me about Thorold. In general, it’s to remind me. It’s easy to bullshit yourself that you don’t have a problem.”
He thought of the rows and rows of people in swivel chairs on talk-show stages, admitting their problems. Wife beaters, child abusers, dominatrixes, porn stars. In the past it probably was a humbling experience to stand up and tell people you were an alcoholic. Now it was just something else to talk about. He remembered Patty tottering through a crowded party on smudged red high heels, bragging about what great blow jobs she gave. Some girl rolled her eyes and said, “Oh, no, not again.” Patty disappeared into a bedroom with a bottle of vodka and Jack Spannos.
He remembered a conversation with his wife before he married her, a conversation about his bachelor party. “It was no women allowed,” he’d told her. “Unless they wanted to give blow jobs.”
“Couldn’t they just jump naked out of a cake?” she asked.
“Nope. Blow jobs for everybody.”
They were at a festive restaurant, drinking margaritas. Nervously, she touched her tiny straws. “Wouldn’t that be embarrassing? In front of each other? I can’t imagine Henry doing that in front of you all.”
He smiled at the mention of his shy friend in this context. “Yeah,” he said. “It probably would be embarrassing. Group sex is for teenagers.”
Her face rose away from her glass in a kind of excited alarm, her lips parted. “You had group sex when you were a teenager?”
“Oh. Not really. Just a gang bang once.”
She looked like an antelope testing the wind with its nose in the air, ready to fly. “It wasn’t rape,” she said.
“Oh, no, no.” Her body relaxed and released a warm, sensual curiosity, like a cat against his leg. “The girl liked it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. She liked having sex with a lot of guys. We all knew her, she knew us.”
He felt her shiver inwardly, shocked and fascinated by this dangerous pack-animal aspect of his masculinity.
“What was it like?” she asked.
He shrugged. “It was a good time with the guys. It was a bunch of guys standing around in their socks and underwear.”
Some kid he didn’t know walked up and put his arm around him while he was talking to a girl named Chrissie. The kid’s eyes were boyish and drunkenly enthusiastic, his face heavy and porous. He whispered something about Patty in John’s ear and said, “C’mon.”
The girl’s expression subtly withdrew.
“What?” said John.
“Come on,” said the kid.
“Bye-bye,” said Chrissie, with a gingerly wag of her fingers.
He followed the guy through the room, seizing glimpses of hips and tits sheathed in bright, cheap cloth, girls doing wiggly dances with guys who jogged helplessly from foot to foot, holding their chests proudly aloof from their lower bodies. On the TV, a pretty girl gyrated in her black bra, sending a clean bolt of sex into the room. The music made his organs want to leap in and out of his body in time. His friends were all around him.
A door opened and closed behind him, muffling the music. The kid who’d brought him in sat in an armchair, smiling. Patty lay on a bed with her skirt pulled up to her waist and a guy with his pants down straddling her face. Without knowing why, he laughed. Patty twisted her legs about and bucked slightly. For a moment he felt frightened that this was against her will—but no, she would have screamed. He recognized the boy on her as Pete Kopiekin, who was thrusting his flat, hairy butt in the same dogged, earnest, woeful manner with which he played football. His heart was pounding.
Kopiekin got off her and the other guy got on; between them he saw her chin sticking up from her sprawled body, pivoting to and fro on her neck while she muttered and groped blindly up and down her body. Kopiekin opened the door to leave, and a fist of music punched the room. John’s body jumped in shocked response, and the door shut. The guy on top of Patty was talking to her; to John’s amazement, he seemed to be using love words. “You’re so beautiful, baby.” He saw Patty’s hips moving. She wasn’t being raped, he thought. When the guy finished, he stood and poured the rest of his beer in her face.
“Hey,” said John lamely, “hey.”
“Oh, man, don’t tell me that. I’ve known her a long time.”
When the guy left, he thought of wiping her face, but he didn’t. She sighed fitfully and rolled on her side, as if there was something under the mattress, disturbing her sleep, but she was too tired to remove it. His thoughts spiraled inward, and he let them be chopped up by muffled guitar chords. He sat awhile, watching guys swarm over Patty and talking to the ones waiting. Music sliced in and out of the room. Then some guy wanted to pour maple syrup on her, and John said, “No, I didn’t go yet.” He sat on the bed and, for the first time, looked at her, expecting to see the sheepish bitter look he knew. He didn’t recognize her. Her rigid face was weirdly slack; her eyes fluttered open, rolled, and closed; a mix of half-formed expressions flew across her face like swarming ghosts. “Patty,” he said, “hey.” He shook her shoulder. Her eyes opened, her gaze raked his face. He saw tenderness, he thought. He lay on her and tried to embrace her. Her body was leaden and floppy. She muttered and moved, but in ways he didn’t understand. He massaged her breasts; they felt like they could come off and she wouldn’t notice.
He lay there, supporting himself on his elbows, and felt the deep breath in her lower
body meeting his own breath. Subtly, he felt her come to life. She lifted her head and said something; he heard his name. He kissed her on the lips. Her tongue touched his, gently, her sleeping hands woke. He held her and stroked her pale, beautiful face.
He got up in such a good mood that he slapped the guy coming in with the maple syrup a high five, something he thought was stupid and usually never did.
The next time he saw Patty was at a Foreigner concert in Minneapolis; he saw her holding hands with Pete Kopiekin.
Well, now she could probably be on a talk show about date rape. It was a confusing thing. She may have wanted to kiss him or to give Jack Spannos a blow job, but she probably didn’t want maple syrup poured on her. Really, though, if you were going to get blind drunk and let everybody fuck you, you had to expect some nasty stuff. On the talk shows they always said it was low self-esteem that made them do it. If he had low self-esteem, he sure wouldn’t try to cure it like that. His eyes rested on Lorraine’s hands; she was wadding the empty nut package and stuffing it in her empty plastic cup.
Because They Wanted To: Stories Page 14