Speak Softly, She Can Hear

by Pam Lewis

  Eddie unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt, took it off, and threw it on top of the sweater and parka. She wondered if he would just keep on going and take off all his clothes. Then what? It was all happening too fast. But he stopped and sat staring at her in his undershirt and khaki slacks. Her father sometimes looked at her the same way. He’d once said she was never going to be cute. “No sirree,” he had said. “You’re going to be handsome. A handsome woman.” She hadn’t dared to tell that one to Naomi. She didn’t want anybody to know. It was so awful. At the time, she didn’t even dare ask what he meant—what women did he think were handsome? What if he said Golda Meir or Lillian Hellman? Well, no, she knew she didn’t look like them. That much she could say. She didn’t have a great big nose and little eyes, for one thing. Her nose was nice. And she had arresting eyes, everybody said, which was, in her opinion, too much like “handsome” to be much comfort. Her eyes were pale blue, like ice. In her wildest dreams she wondered about Sophia Loren. She hoped to God that Sophia was handsome. Generous features on Sophia, that was for sure. But dark. And Carole was so fair. Maybe, just maybe.

  “Stop that thing with your foot, will you?” Eddie said. “It makes me nervous.”

  She took a breath and looked around.

  “So?” he said.

  “So?” she said.

  He took a bottle of scotch from his suitcase, poured two little cone-shaped paper cups, and handed her one. The hot liquor ran down to her stomach like fire. He poured her another. “So you’re eighteen?”

  She remembered what Naomi had said. Whatever you bloody do, don’t bloody tell him you’re only bloody sixteen. Bloody was Naomi’s word of the month. Naomi said he might not go through with it if he knew. He might think she was too young. “I got held back in the fourth grade. I couldn’t get my multiplication tables.” She added the last bit to make it authentic. Actually, she was young for her year and headed to Vassar in the fall. She had been accepted on early decision, the only girl in her class who had, and she would turn seventeen in her first month of college. She was a brain. She’d spent her whole life getting straight A’s.

  Eddie crumpled the cup in his hand and looked her up and down. There was something so bold in the way he stared at her breasts that it took her breath away, and when he slowly raised his eyes to meet hers, she felt so weak she could barely move.

  “Give,” he said. He reached for the parka she held, loosely now, in her lap. “Stand up and turn around. Let me get a look at you.”

  The old dread came back full force. She was fat, and her thighs rubbed when she walked.

  “Just be natural. Trust me. Look at yourself in the mirror.”

  She stood and turned to the mirror over the dresser. Her face was flushed from the walk and the liquor. “Nice,” he said. He stood behind her, examining her in the glass. He cupped her chin, pulled her hair back. It was blond and curly, almost frizzy. He lifted it from her back to the top of her head and kissed her neck, playing with the hem of her sweater at the same time. When she felt his hands along her bare midriff, she pulled in her stomach on reflex. “Don’t do that,” he said. “Just relax. You’re fine.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “It isn’t what you do. It’s what I do. Lesson number one.”

  His hands lifted the sweater and she raised her arms automatically, like a child. When he pulled the sweater over her head, she was ashamed of the twisted and frayed straps of her bra. She covered the rolls of fat on her midriff with her arms as best she could, but again Eddie stopped her, smiling at her from behind in the glass. He undid the hooks of her bra and pulled it away. “Look,” he said. She watched in shock as his fingers took her nipple and pinched it. It hurt just a little, but she didn’t let him know that. She wanted to be brave. “They change.” His smile held a trace of cruelty that only made her like him better. “Did you know that?”

  Of course she did, but she shook her head. He’d said it was what he did, after all.

  He unhooked her pants, ran the zipper down, and pulled them to the floor. She shut her eyes. She hated seeing herself all bigger than life. Without looking, she remembered the underpants she had on and blushed. They were gray and soft from so many washings. He pulled them to the floor and stood up behind her as his hands slid across her belly, down to the place between her legs, his fingers making small circles that suddenly felt good. Incredibly good. “You like that, don’t you?” he said, and she opened her eyes and glanced at what he was doing, riveted now by the sight of his hand on her and the feel of his breath on her shoulder. She nodded. She could not speak.

  Then he turned and went to the bed, where he lay down, leaving her stranded, with her panties and slacks around her feet. She wished he’d make this easier. But he didn’t. He didn’t tell her anything now, which wasn’t fair. It was supposed to be about what he did.

  He lay back on the pillows. “Beautiful,” he said, and she was able to smile for the first time all night. “You’re a diamond in the rough, you know that?” He beckoned her over and she went, kicking out of her pants. She lay down beside him easily. She felt as fluid as water while his hands traveled over her body, exploring, and she was carried along for what seemed like hours until he rolled away, stood beside the bed, dropped his pants, picked them up, and took something from the pocket. A rubber. He fumbled with himself, and she saw for the first time his thing in the dim light, bobbing and unruly. She couldn’t take her eyes off it. The bulk of it, and that stocking thing dangling off the end. The fact of her looking at it that way did something to him, made him bigger. He lay down next to her. He touched her. “God, you’re wet,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  It made him laugh so hard that he had to roll onto his back. He turned back to face her. “It’s a good thing,” he said. “I see we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

  She felt pleased with herself for making him laugh out loud, thrilled at his evident enjoyment of her although she didn’t know exactly what had been so funny. Well, not funny. The way he laughed wasn’t so much comic as appreciative. He liked her better for what she had just said. It’s a good thing. She smiled, remembering the nice way he’d said that, as she felt his hands trace lightly over her abdomen and breasts and then make gentle, tantalizing circles, spreading slowly down, to her navel, below her navel. Her hand slid down his arm to his hand, wanting, needing whatever was next. She opened easily to him and felt again that sweet tugging and the sense that the place between her legs was the only part of her that existed, that everything else—body, thought, even consciousness—was gone, fully in the service of this sudden enlargement.

  And then there was a moment of searing pain, and she realized that he was inside her. He started pumping rhythmically against her, aggravating the pain. She didn’t want to cry out in case she was mistaken again and lay waiting for that flicker of pleasure to return, but it didn’t. She shifted under him a little, and it did something odd. He hesitated as though he was listening for something, his body rigid and absolutely still. He seemed to get a second wind and boom boom boom. Then he slumped down on top of her with all his weight and stayed there until she could hardly breathe and had to squeeze out from under him.

  Were they finished or was this still the middle? She waited for some other new thing to happen, but nothing did. She was getting her own second wind and wanted to go another round or whatever you’d call it. This couldn’t possibly be all there was to it, not after what everybody said. “The central moment of the young wife’s life,” according to the book her mother had made her read. But he was snoring. She felt so wide awake. How could he be asleep so soon? She stared at the ceiling. It reminded her of summer camp with its plain pine boards. She used to lie on her bunk and stare at the knots until they looked like faces or animals, but she was too jumpy for that now. She considered racing out of here so she could tell Naomi. For once she’d have a leg up on Naomi. I did it first. But if she left, she might miss something. It wasn’t ev
en nine o’clock.

  She looked around the room for something to do. There was no TV or radio. Not even a book as far as she could see. Just his stuff. She tiptoed to the suitcase on the floor and opened it up, but it was cold in the room and she went back and got his T-shirt from off the floor. The suitcase was olive green. Inside were a few pairs of those same khakis, all folded, and some shirts and underwear. She opened a drawer. Inside, there were a magazine, a box of rubbers, and some ten-dollar bills in a paper clip.

  She opened the magazine. It was a dirty magazine on bad paper, with drawings of naked men and women in it and some fuzzy photographs. She pulled it out carefully and looked through it, glancing often at Eddie in case he woke up. She had a feeling he’d be mad if he knew she was in his stuff. She’d never seen pictures like this. Everything was the color of raw beef.

  She opened the other top drawer and started to fill it with his underwear until it occurred to her that if he found all his things put away, he’d know she’d seen the magazine. That might not be okay. She didn’t really know him that well. What if he thought she had taken some of the money? She undid everything, quietly slipping the clothes out of the drawer and back into his suitcase.

  She went to the mantel, where his shaving things were all lined up. There was a little rectangular hairbrush and a tortoiseshell comb. She ran her hands over all his things as though they were her own. She picked up the hairbrush and ran it through her tangled curls. He had a leather toilet kit filled with half-used tubes and bottles. She went into the bathroom, emptied the kit out on top of the toilet tank, held it under hot water, and scrubbed. She flattened his toothpaste and rolled it tightly from the bottom. She wanted to take care of him now. Make everything easy and clean for him.

  Her mother had explained about sex when Carole turned ten. It had been just awful. Her mother had been embarrassed, looking away most of the time and not meeting Carole’s eyes. She had said that one day Carole would fall in love, get married, and then have intercourse. She’d blushed when she got to the part where the man’s penis became rigid and was inserted into the woman’s vagina. Even at ten, Carole had been pretty sure something was missing from the explanation, and now she knew. Her mother had left out the urgency of it all, how at a certain point there was no stopping. It had to be the whole reason anyone wanted to do it in the first place. Sex wasn’t a chore at all but an unstoppable pleasure that could have gone on forever if only Eddie hadn’t fallen asleep. When Carole had asked her mother about falling in love—what it meant, how it happened, how you knew—her mother had said, “You’ll just know.” Maybe it was happening right now.

  “Where’d you go?” He was calling from the bedroom. She opened the door and looked out at him. “Don’t go touching my stuff.”

  She sat on the side of the bed. “Do I look different? Now that … you know. They say girls look different after. That men can tell. I just hope Daddy can’t tell. He’d kill me.”

  “You look fine. Don’t worry.”

  “I feel different.”

  “You should.”

  “Can I see you back in New York?”

  He lay back down and grinned at her. “So?” he said.

  “So what?”

  “Do you like me?”

  “Yes,” she said, flattered and a little taken aback to be asked. She wouldn’t have dared ask him that question herself. What if he said no?

  He pulled her down beside him. “Sure, you can see me back in New York.”

  “Can I go to one of your actor parties?” There was no question in her mind that he’d want her to. That really she was just making this easier for him. Saving him from having to ask. He’d said she was beautiful, after all.

  “Maybe I can come to your place,” he said.

  The thought of Eddie in her bedroom electrified her.

  “So tell me,” he said. “You walk into your apartment, and what’s there? Is it like a hall or what?”

  She walked him through the apartment, starting with the dining room and the den off that, the corridor to her parents’ room. He wanted every little detail—what was on the walls, what the furniture was like, what they could see out the window. She told him about the home for unwed mothers across the street and all the pregnant girls her age who played cards, watched TV, and waited for their babies. Her mother said it served them right.

  “She’s pathetic, isn’t she?”

  “Who?”

  “Your mother.”

  She’d said her mother was pitiful a thousand times to Naomi. But she hated hearing him say it. “I don’t know.”

  “I know, and I only met her for two minutes.” He laughed. “Hot to trot.”

  “She has a hard life.” What she meant was personally. Her mother wasn’t cut out for the life she was leading. She should have stayed in the Midwest, where the people didn’t scare her. Her father’s business friends made her mother so nervous that she sometimes drank too much.

  “What if she knew?” Eddie said and laughed. “About this. Her little girl giving up her virginity to a cad.” He rolled over and started kissing her neck, her breasts. “What if she knew I was doing this?” His hand slid down between her legs. “So answer me. What if they knew? Your parents.”

  “Well, they won’t.”

  “But just say, just suppose you were going to give me something in return for my keeping our little secret. What would it be?”

  “That’s not funny.”

  He sighed and rolled onto his back. “It’s a game, for chrissake. Pick me out a present.”

  “Well, you don’t have to shout,” she said. Eddie sighed deeply. “Okay,” she said. “There’s a silver cigarette box lined in ivory, about yea big.” She made the small shape with her hands. “There are always cigarettes in it left over from parties.” It was her favorite thing. She loved the way it smelled of tobacco and the smooth, cool bone lining.

  “You can do better than that. Something big,” he said. “Something valuable.”

  She was a little hurt because she treasured that box. The only expensive items they owned, or at least the only ones she could think of, were the ancestor prints in the hall, but they were huge.

  “Oh, forget it. Turn over,” he said. She lay with her back to him so he could curl himself around her. “I like you,” he said, running his hand back and forth along her thigh, then pushing up the T-shirt to help her remove it. “I like big women. That Naomi is skin and bone. A real Bony Maroni.”

  “She’s going to be beautiful. Everybody says.”

  “Not if she doesn’t put some meat on her.”

  Carole took a deep breath and relaxed. She’d never once expected him to like her better. It just never happened. “Naomi’s mother went insane,” she said and then stopped short. Maybe she shouldn’t be telling him this.

  “Oh, yeah?” Eddie said. She could hear the interest rise in his voice.

  She nodded. Now she hoped he’d just let it go. She shouldn’t have said anything.

  “Insane how?” He tickled her side. “Come on, Carole. How?”

  Well, when she thought about it now, she remembered how on her first day at Spence, Amanda Howe had pointed out Naomi and said, “That’s the girl whose mother slit open her wrists with a fork and bled to death in a mental hospital.” Her words exactly, so okay, maybe it wasn’t really privileged information. It wasn’t as though Naomi had ever sworn her to secrecy. Everybody knew.

  “She died in an institution. She killed herself. Her stepmother, Elayne, she’s Czech, she does Hazel Bishop commercials on What’s My Line?” She paused to let him speak, but he didn’t. “You know, Dorothy Kilgallen, Bennett Cerf, Arlene Francis, John Charles Daly. When they have a break, this red light goes on over on the left side of the set, which means she’s on. Then her hands get all lit up. She’s only twenty-four. She holds up a bottle of nail polish so you can see the lipstick and nails together.”

  Eddie ignored the story. “I bet that Naomi ends up in an institution too. Like mother
, like daughter, don’t you think?” It shocked her again, the way he was talking, but she liked it even though she shouldn’t. “That one has a screw loose, no question about it.” Eddie turned over, and in a few moments he began to snore again.

  She’d been so afraid that she wouldn’t know what to say and there she was saying too much. And it had all been so different from what she’d expected. Nothing like that idiotic book of her mother’s, which mostly told how to use your elbows to keep a boy from touching your breasts. Oh, cripes. She had been afraid of Eddie seeing her naked, but he’d liked the way she looked. She’d been afraid he’d like Naomi better, and here he thought Naomi was skinny and crazy. She’d been afraid of everything, and now here she was, perfectly relaxed and not a virgin anymore. She pulled the covers to her chin and smiled. It must have been midnight, and he obviously expected her to stay overnight. She had never dared to think that might happen. Never in a million years.

  She woke later because of a meowing sound at the door. It took a minute to remember where she was. The sound was human, though, somebody pretending to be a cat. Eddie sat up like a shot. “I’ll get it,” he said.

  “They’ll go away.” Carole grabbed for his arm. “They’ll go away if no one answers the door.” She was afraid it was Naomi ruining her night.

  “Let go.” Eddie pulled away, wrapped the bedspread around his waist, and went to the window. He opened the curtain and strained to see out. Then he let the curtain fall. “Oh, for crying out loud,” he said.

  “Who is it?”

  He turned the doorknob. Carole sat up, drawing the covers over herself.

  Eddie opened the door slightly and pressed against the opening, whispering to whoever was out there. Carole strained to see, but Eddie was in the way. Then he said something she couldn’t make out. She got up and stood behind him, her hand on his bare back. Startled, he turned from the door to face her. The woman outside used the opportunity to push herself past him and into the room. She shuddered, hugging herself and stomping her feet against the cold.