by John Cariani
“Don’t!” begged Marvalyn.
Steve whacked his head again. “Now you try!” he said, offering Marvalyn his book again.
“NO!!” insisted Marvalyn, and she grabbed the book out of Steve’s hands so she could put an end to his twisted game.
“Okay,” said Steve. “You don’t have to hit me. Most people don’t. Hit me. When I ask them to. Most people just go away. You can go away, too, if you want to. That’s what most people do when I tell them about myself. My brother Rob says I just shouldn’t tell people about myself, because I scare them—that’s why they go away, he says—so I’ve actually recently put ‘myself’ on my list of things to be afraid of, but—”
Before Steve could finish his sentence, Marvalyn’s curiosity had gotten the better of her, and she crept up behind him and walloped him on the back of the head with his THINGS THAT CAN HURT YOU book.
“Oh, my gosh! I’m sorry! I can’t believe I just did that!” Marvalyn was horrified by what she had just done.
But Steve was thrilled. “You hit me! Most people go away, but you didn’t! You hit me!”
“Yeah! I had to see if it really wouldn’t hurt—did it hurt? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I don’t feel pain!”
“Right, you don’t feel pain, of course you’re okay! But—are you sure?”
“Well, is there any blood?” asked Steve.
“No,” answered Marvalyn, kindly, but a little condescendingly, because a smack on the back of the head with a composition book wouldn’t cause someone to bleed.
“Any discoloration?”
“No,” smiled Marvalyn. A smack on the back of the head with a composition book wouldn’t cause someone to bruise.
“Or swelling?”
“No,” smiled Marvalyn. A smack on the back of the head with a composition book wouldn’t cause any swelling.
“Then I’m okay,” said Steve, giving Marvalyn a thumbs-up.
“Well, you can be hurt and not even look like it,” said Marvalyn.
This didn’t match up well with Steve’s worldview. And he started to protest. “But—”
“Trust me,” interrupted Marvalyn. “There are things that hurt you that make you bruised and bloody and there are things that hurt you that don’t make you bruised and bloody and … they all hurt.”
Steve pondered this paradigm-shifting piece of information.
And Marvalyn felt like she had overshared.
And then decided that she needed to get back upstairs, because Eric might be wondering where she was. So she got up and said, “Here,” and gave Steve back his THINGS THAT CAN HURT YOU book. And then she went to gather her laundry and head back up to her room. But then stopped. And turned to Steve, who was staring at her. And wondered how it was possible that she had never even seen him before and suddenly asked, “Do you live here?”
“Yeah.” Steve nodded. “Through there.” He pointed toward the hall beyond the entrance to the laundry room. It led to the basement apartment he and his brother shared.
“I haven’t ever … seen you,” said Marvalyn. “I mean—I’m new here—but I’ve never even … seen you.”
“I don’t go out much.”
“Oh.”
“It’s not safe.”
“Oh.” Marvalyn imagined that there was a lot in the world that was unsafe for someone who couldn’t feel pain. And then she pitied him for a moment. And then just wanted to know more about him. And wanted him to know more about her. Like her name, for starters. So she said, “I’m Marvalyn.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Steve. “Ma Dudley told me when I asked her who you were. We saw you and your husband move in.”
“Oh—no—he’s not my husband,” corrected Marvalyn so quickly and defensively that she made Steve feel like he had done something wrong.
“Oh. Sorry,” said Steve.
“No—it’s okay. We probably seem like we’re married. But he’s just my boyfriend,” clarified Marvalyn, smiling.
“Oh.” Steve wondered why Marvalyn was smiling. She didn’t seem happy. Which made Steve wonder if she had chosen the wrong facial expression to go with her emotional state.
“But maybe someday he’ll be my husband, because I love him!” declared Marvalyn. And then she wondered if that was true—and then realized that she didn’t want to be wondering such a thing in front of a stranger, so she stopped and went on: “Anyway, our roof collapsed from all the snow in December. We’re just here until we can get our feet back on the ground.”
“Oh, well that’s good, ’cause that’s what Ma Dudley says her boarding house is—a place where people can live till they get their feet back on the ground.”
“Oh,” said Marvalyn, smiling.
“Yeah, we’ve been trying to get our feet back on the ground our whole lives, my brother Rob says.”
Marvalyn nodded, wondering how long it would take for her and Eric to get their feet back on the ground.
And then she pitied herself a little. And then pitied the odd manchild again—whose name she still didn’t know. And suddenly asked, “So, what’s your name?
“Steve.”
“Steve what?”
“Doody.”
“And you’ve lived here for … how long?” she asked.
“Couple years.”
Marvalyn wondered how it was possible that she didn’t know these brothers, Steve and Rob Doody, who had been living at Ma Dudley’s in Almost, Maine, for the past couple of years.
She didn’t know that the brothers were from Winterville and had moved to Ma Dudley’s after their house had gotten foreclosed on. And she had never met them because Rob worked nights and Steve never went out.
And she suddenly felt like something wasn’t right about Steve’s situation. And like he needed help. And like she could help him. But before she could figure out how she might help him, Steve said, “You guys are loud.”
And Marvalyn got flustered and stammered, “H-huh?”
“You and your boyfriend. You yell and bang.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Marvalyn and Eric were going through a rough patch. And there had been some yelling. And maybe some banging. But she didn’t think that Steve could possibly have heard them all the way down in the basement. So she asked, “Did you … hear us … from down here?” She was afraid to hear the answer.
“No. But the new lady who moved in on the second floor said that you guys yell and bang a lot and that she can hear you.”
“Oh.” The “new lady” Steve was talking about was Vivian—or Vicky—or Veronica—from the second floor. And Marvalyn realized she’d better apologize to her for the noise.
In the meantime, she apologized to Steve. “Sorry about that. We’re goin’ through a rough patch. Sorry.”
“Didn’t bother me. I didn’t hear ya.”
“Well—I’m glad! So, um, listen, it was nice to meet you, but—”
“Nice to meet you, too.”
“Yeah, but I’ve gotta get back to my boyfriend, ’cause he’s waiting for me, actually, I think. We had a fun little stay-at-home date night,” she said, wanting Steve to know that she and Eric were happy—when they weren’t yelling and banging. “So I’m gonna go back up and hang out with him, so maybe I’ll see you around, okay?”
“Yeah.”
Marvalyn gathered her laundry basket and started to go. The washing machine that had Steve’s laundry in it buzzed to let him know his wash was done. Marvalyn was startled by the sound. And stopped. And, from the entrance to the laundry room, she watched Steve get up and remove the clean clothes from the washer and transfer them to the dryer.
She was fascinated by him.
“What’s it like?” she suddenly asked. Marvalyn didn’t feel like she was the one who had just asked that question. She felt like another version of herself somewhere deep down inside her had asked it for her.
Steve jumped a little at the question. He didn’t know Marvalyn hadn’t left. And he was happy she hadn’t, for some reason. “Huh?”
he asked.
“What’s it like? To not feel pain.”
“Oh. I don’t know,” Steve answered honestly. “I’ve never known what it’s like to hurt, so … I don’t know. I guess it just feels … normal, to me.”
“You’re kind of lucky, you know. In a way.”
“Yeah. I know. My brother Rob says I’ll never have to worry about getting addicted to painkillers. So that’s lucky.”
That wasn’t quite what Marvalyn had meant when she said that Steve was kind of lucky to not feel pain, but she couldn’t deny that it was true. “Yeah, I guess,” she concurred. And then she wondered if Steve’s condition was genetic or the result of some sort of trauma, so she asked, “So … were you born this way?”
“Yeah, congenital means ‘present from birth,’ so yeah.”
Okay, so—how did they figure out you had it?”
“I never cried.”
This was true.
Steve didn’t cry when he was born.
He didn’t cry when he had a diaper rash.
He didn’t cry when he started growing teeth and bit his tongue until he bled.
He didn’t cry when he burned his hand reaching into a campfire to retrieve a rogue toasting marshmallow.
He didn’t cry when he reached for a spoon that had been dropped into boiling water.
He didn’t cry when he stepped on a nail with his bare foot.
He didn’t cry when he fell down the stairs and broke his ankle and walked around on it for hours before anyone noticed the swelling and the bruising.
But his mom cried a lot. She felt all the pain her son couldn’t feel. And it was all too much for her.
And the way she took care of her pain took her away from her family.
So Steve and Rob’s grandma raised her daughter’s sons.
And when she died, Rob became Steve’s legal guardian. Which was nothing new, because he had always been Steve’s main caregiver anyway.
“So … can you … feel … things?” asked Marvalyn.
“Kinda.”
Marvalyn suddenly poked Steve. “Did you feel that?”
“Yup,” laughed Steve, surprised by Marvalyn’s forwardness. “I can feel the pressure. But … that’s it. ’Cause I don’t have fully developed pain sensors. They’re immature, my brother Rob says, and because they’re immature—”
“How does he know that?” interrupted Marvalyn.
“Oh, he reads, and because they’re immature, my development as a human being has been compromised, he says, but he teaches me what hurts, though.”
“Why?”
“So I won’t ruin myself. I have to know what hurts, so I know when to be afraid. See, my mind can’t tell me when to be afraid, ’cause my body doesn’t know what being hurt is, so I have to memorize what might hurt.”
“Okay.” This made sense to Marvalyn.
“And I have to memorize what to be afraid of.” Steve opened his book of THINGS TO BE AFRAID OF to a random page, eager to show Marvalyn all the things that his grandma—and Rob—had helped him learn to be afraid of. Almost all of them corresponded to items in his THINGS THAT CAN HURT YOU book. “Things like”—Steve pointed to a random item on the page—“guns.”
He turned to another page and pointed to a random item on it. “And bears.”
He turned to another page and pointed to a random item on it. “And oven burners that are orange and red.”
Then he turned to a page almost at the end of the book and pointed to a random item on it. “And—oh, this one’s newer: fear, I should fear fear itself. I don’t really know what that means, but the second President Roosevelt said it.”
He turned the page and pointed to a random item and said, “And—this one’s new, too—pretty girls.”
And then he realized something.
And he looked at Marvalyn. And got extremely uncomfortable.
“Pretty girls?” asked Marvalyn.
“Yeah,” said Steve, looking at Marvalyn. “Like you.”
Marvalyn laughed. And then almost cried. Because it had been a long time since anyone had told her she was pretty. She knew she used to be pretty. But she didn’t think she was anymore. She thought she was just fat. And old enough looking that she wasn’t getting carded anymore.
“Like me?” she asked.
“Yeah.” Steve was uncomfortable. And confused.
“Well, why should you be afraid of pretty girls?” asked Marvalyn, smiling.
“Well, because my brother Rob says they can hurt you ’cause they make you love them, and that’s something I’m supposed to be afraid of, too—love—but my brother Rob says that I’m really lucky, ’cause I’ll probably never have to deal with love, because I have a lot of deficiencies and not very many capacities as a result of the congenital analgesia.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa—wait—what do you mean you’re never gonna have to deal with love? Why would he say that?”
“’Cause I’m never gonna know what it feels like, Rob says.”
“Well, how does he know that?”
“’Cause it hurts.”
“Well, it shouldn’t.”
“And, plus, I have a lot of deficiencies and not very many capacities, Rob says.”
“You know what, a lot of people do.”
Steve had never thought about what Marvalyn had just said—that maybe a lot of other people had a lot of deficiencies. And not very many capacities. It made him feel like maybe he wasn’t as different from other people as he had always been told he was. And he hadn’t felt like that in … well, he couldn’t remember ever feeling like that.
He looked straight into Marvalyn’s eyes—and he hardly ever looked straight into anyone’s eyes. And Marvalyn felt a strange lightness fill up her insides. It made her feel like she had sunshine from a sunny spring day inside her. And like she had just let go of the rope swing at the quarry pond and was suspended in time and space.
And it made her feel like she had some promise in her.
And it made a strange combination of compassion and desire surge through her body.
And it made her lunge toward Steve and want to kiss him.
So she did.
Hard.
Steve made a sound that was part gasp and part groan upon receiving Marvalyn’s kiss. And his instinct was to resist. But he gave in to the kiss before he resisted. And he felt still and calm as he did.
And he couldn’t remember the last time he had felt still and calm.
And then he felt a strange lightness fill up his insides. It was as if a gentle fire from a fireplace was flickering inside him—and it made him feel like he was floating. The last time he remembered feeling that way was when he was little and had fallen asleep on the couch in front of the fireplace and his grandma would carry him to bed.
He felt safe in her arms. And protected—and wanted.
And he felt the same way while Marvalyn was kissing him.
Better, even.
And then he started kissing Marvalyn back. Which made the lightness Marvalyn was feeling grow. And it almost hurt—because it made her feel like her organs were shifting. It seemed to be reviving something in her that she didn’t even know was dead. And that scared her. So she broke away from Steve, horrified by what she had just done.
“Oh my God!” she gasped. “I’m sorry—I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I just did that. Are you all right? Are you okay?”
Steve was staring at Marvalyn, dopey and confused.
“Hey! Are you okay?” Marvalyn asked again, more urgently.
Steve touched his lips. “Well … is there any blood?” he asked, which was the question he had been trained to ask.
“No,” answered Marvalyn, touched by the sweet response.
“Any discoloration?”
“No.” Marvalyn smiled with a mix of pity and wonder. “And no swelling, either,” she added to save some time.
“Well, then … I’m all right,” said Steve unconvincingly.
Marvalyn and Steve
sat in a stunned silence for a moment.
Neither of them knew what to do.
And then Marvalyn realized that she actually did know what to do: she needed to get out of there. And go back upstairs. To Eric.
“I’m … sorry,” she said as she scrambled to her laundry basket. As she tried to pick it up, it slipped out of her hands and its contents flopped out all over the place. “Come on,” she growled, and she started gathering the spilled laundry so she could go back upstairs to Eric.
She checked in on Steve as she did.
He was lost in thought, trying to figure out what had just happened to him.
“I’m so sorry I did that to you,” said Marvalyn. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“No. You shouldn’t have,” agreed Steve. “Because you have a boyfriend.”
“Yes, I do,” answered Marvalyn sheepishly. She had gathered all the spilled laundry and was starting to go—because she really needed to go.
“And you just kissed me.”
“Yes, I did,” said Marvalyn, stopping. And not knowing why she was stopping.
“And it’s Friday night and you’re doing your laundry.”
Marvalyn wished that she had gone to Sandrine St. Pierre’s bachelorette party at the Moose Paddy. Or that Eric hadn’t fallen asleep in front of the hockey game. If either of those things had happened, she wouldn’t have just kissed a kid who she hoped to God was eighteen. “Yes, I am,” she acknowledged.
“And people who love each other, they don’t kiss other people and do their laundry on Friday nights—I’ve learned that.” Steve was working hard to solve the riddle of the girl who had a boyfriend but who had just kissed another boy. “And,” he continued, “people who are in love with each other—they go to the Moose Paddy on Friday nights. And they kiss each other. They don’t kiss other people.”
Marvalyn heard the truth Steve was speaking. And it paralyzed her for a moment. “Yeah, well…,” she began—and didn’t know how to finish the sentence.
“You know what?” Steve added, building a case. “I don’t think that’s love, what you and your boyfriend have.”
“Yeah, well, you know what?” Marvalyn tried to put a stop to Steve’s line of reasoning and then tried to refute his assertion—but couldn’t. And just said, “I have to go. I’ve been down here longer than I should have been and he’s gonna wonder where I am, and he doesn’t like it when he doesn’t know where I am.”