Rich Boy

by Sharon Pomerantz

  On Saturday nights before it got too cold, he was required to pick Margie up, shake hands with her father, and take her on the bus to Adams Lanes for bowling and candy; she liked snowcaps. Or they’d go to Lenny’s Hot Dogs for orangeade. Once winter came, they sometimes sat on the couch in her parents’ house and watched Perry Mason or, more often, her father drove them to a diner on the Boulevard where they met a large group of her friends, and then some parent or another showed up to take them all home. He had not been aware, when he chose Margie, of how much she cared about her social standing. She and her girlfriends traveled in a pack. Even when doing their homework, they were on the phone with each other, and Margie once mentioned falling asleep with the receiver by her ear. How much, he wondered, could one girl possibly say?

  She was the first of her group to have a steady, and this fact, when spoken aloud by Margie or, more particularly, by any of her girlfriends, made her eyes shine and her cheeks flush. He wondered if there was any way he could do that for her in private, but he was beginning to doubt it. Just as she met his demands in the bedroom, uncomplainingly but with little enthusiasm, he appeared with her on weekends wherever she asked, which was always in crowded places where Robert and Margie would spend half the night in groups of her friends, hardly speaking to each other. When, in their booth at the diner, one of her friends pressed closely against him, or put her hand on his arm when making a point, then and only then would Margie move in very close or, for a few teasing seconds, put her hand on his thigh under the table.

  Her parents seemed pleased that Margie had a boyfriend, having no idea what was actually going on. They saw him as a steady boy, smart, college-bound, from a decent if slightly peculiar family. And they themselves had met in high school, as had many on that block. His own parents were less enthusiastic. Stacia swore she’d never give him a cent to take out a girl—was this how he was going to burn up his paychecks? He reminded her that most of his paychecks went to her, for the college fund, but this made no impression. A girl, she continued, would only disrupt his schoolwork. When he came home late on Saturday nights, she looked at him as if she could read his mind and see into his very soul, told him more than once that he was not to bring that girl, or any girl, above the first floor. But Vishniak, passing Robert in the living room one morning—the exhausted father on his way to sleep, the drowsy son on his way to school—put his hand on Robert’s shoulder and handed him a few dollars, adding, with no explanation, that Robert should take it easy.

  Sex with Margie did not take away Robert’s desire for other girls, but it did calm him down, allowing him to function in his own home. Within a few months, he grew used to the activity on his mother’s walls. Real flesh was what held him in thrall now. His first winter exams at Central came and went in several feverish weeks of studying. During that time, his family left him alone, and if he was studying he could make demands, even on his mother: to eat dinner upstairs by himself, to skip putting out the garbage, to get some quiet. He spent hours in his room reading British novels and thick history books, taking notes, doing algebra problems and, every few hours, jerking off to relieve the tension he felt at the thought of so many tests.

  That winter the resulting good grades, and the twenty-cent hourly raise that he got from his boss at Shop N’ Bag, brought him the first respect that he had ever earned from Stacia. He gleaned this mostly from overhearing her occasional telephone conversations with other members of the family. It was Cece who came over and kissed him and praised him and handed him a dollar.

  One afternoon just before the Christmas holidays, Margie told him that her family would be spending the week at the Jersey shore, visiting her grandmother. She was dressing at the time, and he watched her pull the season’s thicker winter tights slowly up her long, shapely legs.

  “It’s not fair,” he said. “Almost a week. How can I survive without you?” He was aware now that when he talked to her, he said things he didn’t quite mean. He felt guilty about this, for he’d come to like Margie and, in moments, to wonder if he loved her. He certainly respected her opinions on things; she believed that space travel was inevitable and that someday people would see Truman as a much better president than Eisenhower. She introduced him to her favorite books, J. D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, and On the Road by Jack Kerouac. But despite her fascination with eccentricity in literature, she was not an adventurous girl—amazing that she’d given up her virginity before marriage—and she seemed to talk all the time, except when he wanted her to; in the act of making love, she was silent as a corpse.

  That day would be their last for over a week, and as she pulled up her skirt, glancing over her shoulder at the clock, he put his hand on her back and asked: “Am I doing something wrong?” He still had no idea.

  “Isn’t it enough that I let you do it?!” she asked. “Do we have to talk about it, too?” She pulled on her sweater, adjusted her hair in the mirror, and walked toward the door.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, seeing that she was on the verge of tears. “We’d better get out of here. I’m just sad that we’ll miss six days.”

  “Of what?” she asked. “Of me or of doing it? Is it me you’ll miss?”

  He said what she wanted to hear, aware that he had a schedule to keep, aware that the truth and the lie were now so intertwined in his mind that he could not separate them. Ushering her quickly down the steps, he grabbed his coat and shut the front door behind them, leaving the key, as always, under the mat. They walked the three blocks to her house in silence, and when they arrived at her doorstep, he kissed her good-bye. Only on his way home did it dawn on him that his mother, too, would be home over Christmas, as would his brother. How strange that this had never occurred to him. How thoroughly his desire now blotted out everything in its wake, even thought and reason. It was like a giant tank, unmanned and rolling relentlessly toward its destination. Would he ever, he wondered, be in control of himself again?

  During Christmas vacation, he tried to block all thought of sex out of his mind. He got extra hours at the supermarket, spent his days helping old ladies load bags into their rolling carts and carrying boxes of soda to people’s cars. The weather was freezing cold, and with the doors opening over and over again in the market, he had to wear his coat and gloves all day long. For his hard work, he was rewarded with Christmas tips and a busman’s holiday: on his one day off, he and his brother went with Stacia back to the same market to help her carry the groceries home. At least it was a triple-coupon day, which guaranteed she’d be in a good mood.

  Finally, there were only two days left until Margie returned. He had gotten one postcard with Mr. Peanut on the front—the giant plastic nut with legs and a top hat that stood out on the Boardwalk in rain or shine. She lamented that it was too cold to go to Steel Pier or the beach. She would bring home saltwater taffy, she said, and signed her card “with love.”

  New Year’s Day, Robert’s father was off and so was everyone else; the entire family was to come over to watch football and eat dinner. His mother needed more folding chairs, and she sent him two blocks away to pick up a few from a cousin.

  He never got there.

  He was walking down Bustleton Avenue when he spotted a familiar form across the street; it was Margie, wearing the pale blue coat and the white wool hat that she’d worn every winter day for the past two months. Worse, she was strolling along as if nothing were the matter.

  “What the hell happened?” he yelled. “Did you get back early? Why didn’t you call me?!” Had she lied? Why had she said she’d be gone until after New Year’s? Could the postcard have been sent by someone else? Scenarios of betrayal struck him again and again, like blows.

  Margie, uncharacteristically, was silent, did not even run toward him with her arms dramatically outstretched, as she often did, imitating a perfume ad that she liked in a magazine. Instead, she continued walking slowly, in a rhythm he did not recognize. And then, as she got within twenty feet of him, he realized that something was very
wrong. It was not Margie at all.

  “Robert Vishniak, right?” the girl asked, removing her hat. She wore pale pink lipstick, and her hair was streaked blond in places and flipped upward. Margie, at five foot six, was one of the taller girls in her class, but this girl was over five ten, about Robert’s height, so that the two of them stood eye to eye. Her face was broader and her entire form more filled out, as if Margie were only a pencil sketch of a person. “I’m Donna. Her sister. I’ve heard all about you.” She took out a cigarette and lit it. “I guess it was the coat. She let me borrow it while I’m home.”

  He noticed how differently the coat fit her, straining the buttons across the front.

  “You’re fourteen, too?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “You look older. You could pass for eighteen, easy.”

  “I guess because I’m tall,” he said, pleased by the compliment. “Back from college?”

  “Penn State. I just finished my first semester.”

  Robert had never met anyone before who’d left home to go to college. The few college students he knew in the neighborhood stayed local, going to Temple or Drexel, or in one rare case, the University of Pennsylvania, and commuting from home. Penn State had a nearby campus, but Donna had gone to the main campus, hours away. He had much to ask her, but before he could, she announced that she was walking to a place on the corner for a beer—did he want to come along?

  “I’m underage.”

  “You’ll pass,” Donna replied, and put her arm through his. He was aware of the heavy smell of hair spray, the sound of snow crunching under their boots, and a lovely pressure creeping up his spine as she put her hand in his jacket pocket—she had not brought any gloves.

  At the restaurant, he held the door for her and then followed behind to the small bar. They sat down and she signaled to the bartender. It was a Wednesday night, not very crowded. She ordered a beer for each of them and asked for some peanuts.

  “He legal?” the guy asked. She handed him her ID. “I’ll buy both,” she added, and leaned over the counter, smiling, waving a bill. Two tepid beers and two glasses appeared in front of them. She poured half the bottle into the glass, tilting it expertly to cut back on foam. She had learned to drink at school, she said; in college people drank beer as if it were as necessary as the air they breathed. Before he took a sip, he asked her to tell him more about Penn State, peppering her with questions about the level of difficulty, and how she got her parents to let her go away.

  “College,” she said, and sighed, then spun him around on his seat to face her, their knees touching. She told him about football games and frat parties, which she called moronic, and people who thought they knew more than they actually did. Then she took out a cigarette, and the bartender came over and lit it for her, plunked down an ashtray. Robert made a note to himself — carry a lighter, light their cigarettes.

  “You might be able to get money,” she added, taking a drag, “if your grades and SATs are high enough. And then it’s a lot of paperwork, tons of forms.”

  “I’d do anything to get out of the Northeast,” he said.

  “I can understand that.” She leaned back in her seat, her face turned toward the ceiling, exposing her smooth throat as she blew a series of intricate smoke rings. Then the door opened suddenly, and the cold air erased her efforts.

  “Why aren’t you with the rest of your family?” he asked.

  “Now that I’m in college, I do as I please. I’m like a god to them.” She took another sip of her beer and added: “I don’t think she likes it much.”

  “Who?”

  “Margie,” she said. “My sister. How many other girls are you doing it with?”

  “Just her,” he whispered, horrified. How much did Donna know of his failings?

  “She’d never have agreed if it weren’t for me.”

  He stared at her. “You told her what to do?”

  “She wanted a boyfriend so badly—something to do with those twits she hangs out with. I said if she didn’t do it with you, you’d dump her for sure.”

  He had never met a girl like this before. She told the truth, effortlessly, as if it were easy.

  Donna was right; had Margie said no, he would have moved on. He was a terrible person. A terrible person who could not stop staring at his girlfriend’s sister’s breasts, which now strained against the buttons of her pink blouse. The buttons stood up, as if about to pop off at any moment, exposing what he could only imagine. He felt dizzy.

  “But I couldn’t exactly be there to instruct her,” she said, putting out her cigarette in the glass ashtray. “To be honest, I can’t stand her. She’s always getting the parents in an uproar. So uptight about everything. Always competing.” She leaned closer. “I thought it might help her loosen up, you know, to break the rules for once. And now I understand why she chose you; you have physical magnetism.”

  From the depths of a thick cloud of lusty thoughts, he heard her words, and his pride was injured. “I chose her,” he said.

  “You never choose us,” she said. “We always choose you. Don’t you know that by now?” She laughed, and her laugh was deep and a little dirty. “I’m home all alone. Nothing to do but smoke and watch TV,” she said. “Why don’t you come over? If you’ve got an hour?”

  As he helped her on with her coat, his longing was excruciating, so much so that he could no longer speak. She threw a few more dollars on the bar and they left.

  What a relief, he thought, walking with her to the Cohen house—Margie utterly vanquished from his mind. There might be more to the thing than met the eye. And someone was going to show him. He grabbed her hand and they ran toward her house.

  Once inside the living room, she made no pretense of offering him a drink, or wanting to talk, only looked over her shoulder and walked up the steps to the second floor, expecting him to follow, which he did. Their house was the same model as his, and it was a strange feeling, both familiar and utterly new, walking up those same carpeted stairs to the bedroom that, in his house, belonged to his brother. “The first thing you need to learn,” she said, standing in front of him in her bedroom, “is how to stop staring at my breasts. Women don’t like that. They’ll show them to you in a million ways, but you have to pretend not to look.” Slowly she unbuttoned her blouse. Underneath was a tiny, lacy sort of undershirt the likes of which he’d never seen before, and under that was a black lace bra. He got up and stumbled toward her, but she held him back. “Come stand behind me, and unhook it.”

  “I can’t,” he said. “Just take it off.”

  “No.” Her voice was firm. “You’ll thank me for this some day.”

  He complied, though it took several tries.

  “Slow down, it’ll work better. Now try with one hand. When you’ve done that, we’ll move on to the next lesson. Panties: how to remove them.”

  There was no thirty-minute limit, no fear of his mother running up the steps or his brother returning from school. The hours flew by like minutes. Her body was like the bodies that had first tempted him on his mother’s walls; her breasts were round and heavy, her hips curved out from her waist, expanding to make way for the roundness of her behind. All of this held his attention as if she were the only naked woman he’d ever seen or would see again. She stood in front of him, aware of what she had, letting him look at her for a while, and then suddenly, with no warning, she licked two fingers and slipped them between her legs, closing her eyes and moving rhythmically, moaning in a way that he found both frightening and beautiful, until her voice got louder and then, with a long sigh, she was quiet.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  “That’s the object. The object, and your job. And now, before you explode all over the rug, let’s get on with it.”

  He began to wonder if what he’d had with Margie was even sex at all, so different was it from this other loud, wet, and powerful choreography. She taught him to list the U.S. presidents to keep himself from coming too quickly,
and what it meant to go down on a woman—fellatio, she mentioned casually, was still illegal in many states, wasn’t that thrilling? Then she gave him his first blow job.

  She owed it all, she said, to a series of dirty books that her father kept hidden in the basement broom closet in a Korvette’s bag. Practical experience had arrived in the form of her philosophy TA, visiting from Canada. Her mother demanded that she be a virgin, of course, but anything her mother demanded couldn’t possibly be right. The only person more in need of straightening out than her mother, she insisted, was her sister.

  The idea occurred to Robert—was this all a way to get at Margie? Was he part of some strange sisterly competition? He didn’t know, and for much of the afternoon he didn’t care. He might never meet another such girl again, and so it obliged him to seize the opportunity until, as the sun set beyond a distant window, he felt that he had somehow left his body, abandoned it on her bed, as if discarding a useless husk.

  He walked back to his house just before dinner, missing the chairs he’d been sent for—Stacia’s request felt like weeks ago —and he received a loud, public scolding from his mother as Cece tried to silence her, and Robert begged to be able to go upstairs and sleep. His brother sat in the corner, grinning at him sinisterly, as if he knew exactly what had distracted Robert for the last three hours. Why hadn’t Barry gone for the chairs? Why was he expected to do everything? “You’re not going to eat anything?” Cece asked.

  “I’m not hungry,” he mumbled. All around the room, his relatives stared at him, surprised, abashed. Why was he separating himself? He was already taller than most of the men in the family, and even standing on a lower step he seemed to look down upon them from a great height, and they wondered: Did he think himself too good for them?