by Sheila Heti
Anyway, it turned out some kind of expedition was coming up and they wanted three pretty girls from our town. It was to colonize a new community, somewhere in the middle of the ocean where no people had ever been. I’m not one of the prettiest girls, not even in my school, but I decided I was going to go. If everyone else was going to go.
Just so turns out I did go, and guess who was chosen? Me and two others! Two girls I didn’t know but who said to me privately, like in confession, that they thought I was the prettiest of the bunch. Well, imagine that! Me with my misshaped tooth and my hair of straw. If that wasn’t the craziest thing I’d ever heard!
Just so happened that we went and ended up staying three whole years. When we got back Bobby was married to that slut from the prom. Turns out they even had a kid on the way. When Bobby saw me he pulled me by the hand into a little parkette and said, “Look at you. You’re miraculous.”
I had gotten a bit of confidence in that time, and I said, all cheeky and indifferent, “I know.”
Now it so happens that Bobby is making me his lover on the side. I’m having a real good time fucking him and all. I learned all sorts of crazy things in the colonies, and one of them is about fucking, about how asses really matter.
One day I’m going to the moon, and when I go, I’m going to bring back a teaspoon of sugar.
THE PARTY AT HER PLACE, WITH HER PIANO
THE GIRL PLAYED the piano as everyone found their corner, or their spot in the alley out by the house, and the neighborhood women leaned through their windows to yell, lights on, curlers in their hair. The girl had a famous piano-playing brother who she never stopped thinking about, even in moments of relaxation, and never let her friends stop thinking about, even when buying drugs.
When she went to the front door after her set, climbing over bodies, spilled beer, all that, she met two boys. One she had known from an old friend’s breakup, the other she had never seen before. He was tall and lanky with mystery in his eyes, a cigarette in his hand, and the perfect entrance, and she fell instantly in love and forgot about her brother.
“Hello,” she squeaked, then scurried away.
The boy walked in tall and smooth, did not climb over anybody’s legs, and made his way to a wall upstairs to pose against while the other one found a circle of friends to show off his drunkenness to.
The girl was lost for several minutes. No one knew where she had gone. When the music returned she was found back at the piano with no audience waiting, and the boy she had been preparing for was nowhere to be seen.
She ran downstairs and out the door. There he stood in the alley, smoking a joint with several guys and two pretty girls, who laughed and huddled; their own little party.
The boy looked over and she forgot her successful brother, who was not only successful but gay, and successful at that too, and probably fucking right now, and she looked down at her boot and stammered, “Oh, nothing, nothing,” and jolted her body and shook her head and walked inside.
The drunken boy who had been entertaining was now tired of that and went up to the girl and said, “Hey, come on, play the piano for us. Come on, come on,” dragging her by the hand.
“Who’s your friend? Is he the one you’re living with now? Is he the one you’re living with?” she asked, sitting down at the piano. “He seems awfully shy or strange or something.”
“Play!” he demanded, then plunked himself down and put his hands on the keys and began a song, the tedious song that everyone knows.
“No, come on,” she pushed him off. “Get away.” And she played her own song, and it was not her brother’s; it was low and romantic and moody, and she sang aloud in a halting way. Her voice was into it, trembling and all that, but her soul was looking out for the boy, her heart was searching the room.
Her lyrics were terrible and finally she stopped. No one was listening anyway. She went downstairs and back outside but the boy was gone and so was the group, and she ran inside but found neither of the boys.
“Have they gone?” she asked a girl who ought to have known. “Where’d they go? Did they leave?”
“I think they left. He thought the party sucked.”
“Oh.” She walked outside and looked down the alley, then went back in. “They really left.”
“That’s what I told you. Is your brother in town?”
The girl answered as she had before, looking around. She talked about his plans in LA, who he was meeting, what he would be wearing for his good-bye concert.
And the boys down the block, turning onto the next block, said nothing to each other.
One had nothing in his mind, the other just had nothing.
THE GIRL WHO PLANTED FLOWERS
WHEN SHE WOKE in the morning there beside her was the boy she had dismissed the night before as far too ugly and ingratiating, and on the other side, even more of a surprise, the boy she had dismissed as far too pompously intellectual. And there she was in the middle, and though she thought she was in the house where she had partied the night before, she wasn’t sure, she just wasn’t sure.
She climbed gingerly over the one and went to the window and looked out into the backyard where she saw huge piles of sand, little mountains with peaks, and as she had no idea why or where they had come from, she quickly decided, “I must have blacked out.” Then she went to the bathroom and returned as the two boys were rising.
“Hello boys,” she said lazily, without surprise or enthusiasm. And the boys, first one, then the other, said hello and looked at each other, and as they did not smile or seem to commiserate, the girl took her seat at the foot of the bed.
“I’m hungry,” she said. “Are you two hungry?”
One boy nodded while clearing the sleep out of his eyes, and the other boy looked around trying to figure out where he was.
“Well then, let’s go,” she said. And since they were all in their clothes there was nothing to do but leave.
One boy was taller, and the three moved slowly down the road, and it was cold. It was already November and should have been colder, but still, it was cold, and the girl thought nothing. When the sidewalk narrowed the intellectual hung back, and the ugly boy and the girl walked ahead.
After five minutes they reached a good place to eat. It had eggs, it seemed, and bacon and potatoes and unlimited coffee and no sign that forbade smoking, so they took a booth at the back, and the booth was brown, and the lighting was dim, and the sun wasn’t shining, and they were all wretched and existing in states of humility and banality.
They all ordered the same thing, except for the ugly boy who was a vegan, and he ordered nothing but black coffee and orange juice, and the girl thought drearily in her head, “Oh God, I slept with a vegan.” And the tall intelligent boy kept his eyes on the table and said nothing, and none of them said anthing except the girl, who made comments like, “Are you sure you don’t know what happened last night?” and, “Your name is Dave, I think I remember.”
Eventually she grew irritated with their silent and purposeful ignorance, their childish posturing, and she thought that since they weren’t fessing up to anything or saying anything, probably something like that had never happened to either of them before. But the thought was so terrible she pushed it from her mind.
“Well,” she said, when the food arrived, and inwardly cursed these humorless boys, whose dark moods succeeded in pulling her down with them, and she knew, even then, that it would be much better if they were cocky and glowing and gay.
They ate their food in silence, and the intellectual, she could tell, wanted terribly to go. Before he was finished he asked for the bill, and the young waiter brought it and then left, and the intellectual left while she was still eating. Then the ugly boy gulped down his juice and left, and neither said more than “okay” or “good-bye.”
Now she was alone. She put down her money and realized for the second time that she was out of cigarettes, and she felt horrible and hungover and nothing like a slut.
The gir
l walked through the city that day, and it was cold and dark, and the sky was uglier than it had ever been, but not as ugly as the boy she had slept with, and she realized that she was twenty-one, and she thought of her life, “What a waste,” and nothing convinced her otherwise.
ELEANOR
ELEANOR WAS FINE, but she had troubles fitting in with the family at first. The young boys looked at her as though she had never had sex, which wasn’t true. When she was nineteen she had slept with her boyfriend many times.
In those improbable days he was always hanging around, pushing her legs up over her head. He was always tying her spread-eagled to the bed, always rolling her onto her front, and if not onto her front, then onto her back. Other times she was pulled up by her hips and made to kneel in a kind of a bridge at the edge of the mattress. He died tragically three years later, and ever after brown-haired men made her cry.
The three young brothers knew nothing of this. They had seen nude pictures here and there, sat across from her at meals as though they’d been through things she’d never understand. They had no idea about her at all. They were naive in the way young boys are about middle-aged women who don’t seem so cool.
The mother was distracted. The nurse was distracted.
The grandmother, meanwhile, insisted that Eleanor was responsible for her stroke. It was Eleanor’s fault, she said, and so she stuck out her cane to trip Eleanor whenever Eleanor walked by, and pointed her chin at Eleanor. Finally the old woman locked herself in her room and complained about it to her friends over the phone: how Eleanor caused her stroke. Eleanor discussed this with the nurse. They agreed that the phone was making her excited, and so they took away the phone.
One morning many months before, the old woman had stood at the top of the stairs, clutching at her head dramatically and wailing, “I’ve been poisoned! I’m dying!” Then she fell down both flights and collapsed in a brittle heap in the main hallway, where she convulsed for several minutes before losing consciousness.
Tim had been the only witness to the scene, and the others grew very jealous as he described it to them later, vividly acting the whole thing out. They wished they’d seen it too. It would have been very funny.
They all went to visit the old woman in the hospital: the nurse, the boys, the boys’ well-mannered mother, and Eleanor. Eleanor liked the old woman. The old woman, she felt, understood her. She regarded Eleanor as a real cheapie, which was right, Eleanor thought. After all, she had been taken, and allowed herself to be taken, and still thought about it a bit, sometimes.
Lying under the white sheets, and without moving much, the old woman pulled a notepad out from under her body. It was her will. She passed it around. She had decided to leave everything funny to Tim.
IT WASN’T THE first time Tim had left school feeling sullen. Walking home that afternoon he kicked the bigger stones at cars, hoping to cause some damage, even if it was only minor. Down the block men were digging up the road and dust blew into his nose and eyes. He had to keep spitting. He found the butt of a cigarette in the gutter and picked it up and wiped it off and lit it, still walking. It made him feel cruel.
“This is my life,” he thought deeply and soberly. It felt as dramatic and decrepit as riding the rails. When he arrived home the nurse took off his jacket. In his room he lay on his bed under the model airplanes hanging from his ceiling and thought it again, “This is my fucking life.” His curiosity returned. Was this the first time he had ever thought the word fuck?
Eleanor was at the door. He could feel it.
“What do you want, Eleanor?”
Eleanor apologized and wondered if she could come in a bit, and she squeezed herself carefully through the opening, not wanting to budge the door. She looked slowly at Tim, then sat on his bed, but upon catching his expression she stood.
“What do you think of this letter?” she asked, and pulled it from the pocket of her skirt, unfolded it, and handed it to him.
He took it blithely and held it in front of his face, reading it beginning to end while Eleanor waited anxiously.
“I think he’s in love with you,” said Tim, handing it back.
“Really, really?” Eleanor tried not to seem excited, but she shouldn’t have tried; it was useless. She had lived long enough, one would have thought, to have learned some things about herself, like that she couldn’t hide her feelings. Obviously no friend had been good or wise enough to tell her.
“He loves you,” Tim affirmed. He wasn’t the least bit surprised. There were all sorts of pathetic and desperate people in the world, he knew that. He looked briefly at Eleanor from under his lids. It was the second time he had ever looked at her with a man’s eyes. First time was when she had moved into the house, but that was just for an instant.
Eleanor began to blush. She wasn’t sure whether to leave the room or not. She felt she should, but she also wanted him to say something more, something that would explain it all. Tim said nothing. He just looked.
ELEANOR WAS VERY fond of ice cream. She told the man, when he called, that he would have to buy her ice cream if he wanted to take her on a date. He agreed and she dropped the receiver twice before hanging it in the cradle properly.
The next evening she sat at the little table in her room, wearing red lipstick and pinning up her hair. The old woman pushed her walker past the open door on her way to the toilet. She stopped when she saw Eleanor fancying herself up.
“Eleanor,” she shouted, “are you going out with a man?”
“Yes,” Eleanor said, not turning around.
The old woman thought about this, then nodded. “Good for you.” She continued down the hall.
ELEANOR WALKED OUT of the house and stood waiting by the front gate. The night was cool; it was only seven o’clock so it wasn’t completely dark out. It was blue. The man came along the sidewalk and when he saw Eleanor he started running toward her, shouting out her name. Eleanor was delighted. He came to an abrupt stop right where she was standing and looked down at her proudly, huffing and grinning.
“I have a gift for you,” he said, and held out a big box covered in wrapping paper and tied with a bow.
“Shall I open it now?” Eleanor wondered.
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
“I’ll wait,” she decided, and hurried up the path to take the box inside. Her dress was swishing and he watched it as it moved. He watched the top of the dress as it left the house and hastened back toward him.
“Shall we go, Eleanor? Are you ready to go, Eleanor?”
His saying her name twice made her a little uneasy.
“Why not,” she said.
He held her by the elbow and they walked the three blocks to the ice cream shop. It was uncomfortable for her to be held in such a way, but she didn’t mind enough to say anything about it. He seemed very pleased and neither of them talked much. When they arrived at the parlor he held the door open for her. After she had picked out her flavors he made her sit in one of the booths while he paid and brought over the bowls himself. He sat down across from her.
“I like to wait on you, Eleanor,” he said. “You’re beautiful.”
“Thank you,” she replied, and felt smarter and more assured than before, as though she had several other men after her tail as well. She felt removed and superior. She was content to find herself judging him.
Within a few minutes they were bent down over their bowls, eating their ice cream in silence. Then Eleanor felt a chill cover her arms and neck. She looked across the table and caught the man grinning up at her, head tilted, eyes bright.
“What is it, John?” Eleanor put down her spoon and looked around uncomfortably.
“Ah, you’re just so…” He shook his head as if in awe, then happily went back to eating his ice cream.
This happened two more times.
As they were getting up to leave she told him that it might be best if he just walked her home now. Once outside, he attempted to put his coat around her shoulders but she told hi
m it was unnecessary, that the coat she was wearing was fine. When they reached her gate, he held it open and stood there politely, not expecting a kiss.
“Well, I am pleased about the ice cream,” she said with dignity, aware of herself as considerably more mature than when the evening began.
“You’re welcome, Eleanor,” he said, and produced that same moony smile he’d given her at the ice cream shop. She wondered if he could see through her dress.
IN THE HOUSE it was warm, like summer, and the lamps shed a peachy light on everything. It was the perfect house to come home to. As she hung up her coat with a weary hand, she noticed the present he had given her resting on a stand in the vestibule. She wasn’t so interested in opening it now. It was as though she expected to see his grinning face winking up at her from the bottom. She lifted it and took it into the living room, sat down in a plush armchair, and rested it on her knees. She didn’t usually drink, but she would have gone and poured herself some booze from the cupboard if it hadn’t been for that big box in her lap. She began untying the ribbon when the boys’ mother softly appeared around the edge of the doorframe.
“Oh,” she said in her gentle voice. “You’re back.”
“Yes,” Eleanor said, with slight pride. “He gave me this present.”
“Well that’s very romantic,” said the mother. “That’s very sweet and romantic.” She looked around. “I should think.”
“Do you want to open it?” Eleanor asked pointlessly, and her newfound refinement faded into mush. The boys’ mother always made her feel common and awkward. She was upset. The change within her had seemed permanent, but it was nothing.