Men, Women & Children: A Novel

Home > Other > Men, Women & Children: A Novel > Page 22
Men, Women & Children: A Novel Page 22

by Chad Kultgen


  Her mother, Liz, said, “We don’t know, baby. The doctor just said somebody found you at school bleeding in the bathroom. We’re waiting for them to come in and tell us what’s going on.”

  Allison said, “Am I okay?” It was then that she realized she’d stopped bleeding. She looked at the needle in the back of her hand and wished that the bleeding hadn’t stopped. She could accept the thought of fluid coming into her body if some of it was also leaving in equal or greater measure.

  Her father, Neal, said, “They think so. The doctor’s supposed to be in here in a second. How do you feel?”

  Her eyes never left the needle in the back of her hand. Allison perceived it to be throbbing with the tick of a clock that was hanging on the wall over the door in her room, pumping her body full of things she couldn’t get rid of, bloating her, making her thick and watery. She wanted to tell her father that she felt fat and disgusting, but she said, “I guess I feel okay. I just want to know what’s happening.”

  Her mother said, “So do we, baby, so do we.”

  Dr. Michael Stern came into the room holding Allison’s chart, shutting the door behind him. He sat down and said, “Hi. I’m Dr. Stern. How are you feeling, Allison?”

  Allison said, “Okay, I guess. Am I, like, okay, though?”

  Dr. Stern said, “The short answer is yes. The longer answer is a little more complicated.”

  Liz said, “What does that mean?”

  Dr. Stern said, “It means that I need to tell you a few things that might be a little shocking, but the main thing to keep in mind here is that your daughter is going to be fine.”

  Neal said, “Okay.”

  Dr. Stern said, “Allison, you had what’s called an ectopic pregnancy that self-terminated.”

  Liz said, “Pregnancy? What? How? Allison, are you . . . ?”

  Allison immediately began crying. She said, “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  Neal said, “I can’t believe this. You were pregnant? How many . . . I don’t even know what to say. This is just . . .”

  Dr. Stern said, “Again, I know this is a difficult thing to hear, but you have to remember that the most important thing here is that your daughter is okay. An ectopic pregnancy means that the fertilized egg develops in a place other than the uterus. In Allison’s case, it was growing in one of her Fallopian tubes. It’s actually very serious and if it’s not caught in time it can be extremely bad. So the fact that your pregnancy self-terminated was actually a very good thing. It probably saved your life. We did notice that you’re a little undernourished, which can sometimes happen with an ectopic pregnancy—the fetus, because it’s growing in an environment that’s less than optimal, can sometimes take more than it normally would from the mother’s nutrient supply. Do you have any questions about anything?”

  Allison, still crying, said, “Can I go home?”

  Dr. Stern said, “The pregnancy was only in about the fifth week, and it doesn’t look like it caused any excessive damage to your Fallopian tube, but we’d like to keep you here overnight for observation, just to be on the safe side.”

  Allison said, “I want to go home.”

  Liz said, “They have to keep you here.”

  Allison said, “Will you guys stay with me?”

  Neal said, “I can’t believe . . . I just can’t.” Neal began to cry. It was the first time Allison had seen her father cry. She began to sob harder at the sight of it.

  Dr. Stern said, “If you need anything, just have a nurse page me. And obviously take as much time as you need.” Dr. Stern left.

  Neal said, “Alli, I’m glad you’re going to be okay, but I can’t stay here tonight. I just—I don’t know what to think. You were my little girl.”

  Allison said, “I still am, Daddy.”

  Neal said, “I don’t think so,” and left the room.

  Allison began to cry convulsively. She said, “Mom, will you stay with me?”

  Liz said, “Yes, baby.” She hugged her daughter.

  Allison said, “Does Daddy hate me?”

  Liz said, “No. He loves you. He’s just a little confused. So am I. Alli, how could you do this?”

  Allison said, “I’m so sorry.”

  Her mother stayed through the night with her, sleeping in a chair in the corner of the room. Allison didn’t fall asleep for a long time into the night. She stared at the ceiling, trying not to think of the needle in her hand, of the fluids being pumped into her body. She thought about the fact that Dr. Stern had never mentioned the possibility of anorexia or bulimia being the cause of her miscarriage, and of the fact that these things hadn’t even been detected by the doctors. Once she left the hospital she would still have those things; she would still have control.

  Liz went home to pick up some supplies for the night, and then stopped by Goodrich Junior High School to collect Allison’s things before coming back to the hospital. Among them was Allison’s phone. While her mother slept, Allison logged into her Angels of Ana account and began composing a post about her experience with the miscarriage and about how proud she was that the doctors hadn’t detected her eating disorder. She complained about being fed intravenously but claimed that she would get the weight back off as soon as she left the hospital the following morning. Within a few minutes of uploading her post, she had two responses, each one congratulating her on keeping her secret and on maintaining the proper attitude about losing the few pounds she might be gaining while in the hospital. This support from girls she felt were her peers was important to Allison. It was support she knew she would get nowhere else.

  After reading the responses, she opened her Facebook application and found that she still had no response from Brandon Lender to any of the multiple messages she had sent him. She took the opportunity to send him another message, one that carried enough gravity to perhaps garner a response. This one read, “I just had your miscarriage.” Two minutes later she received his response, which read, “Whoa, that is some seriously fucked up shit.” She was happy that he responded and took it as a sign that he was still interested in her.

  As she began to feel the exhaustion of the ordeal setting in, she closed her eyes and thought again of that day at SeaWorld when she was younger and her father had bought her an ice-cream cone without her having to ask. She wondered if her father would ever see her as that little girl again and knew that the answer was no. She would never be that little girl again.

  chapter

  sixteen

  Dawn Clint shot almost thirty minutes of new footage of her daughter answering various questions about her goals in the entertainment industry, performing various activities in and around Goodrich Junior High School, and wearing different outfits, all at the request of the producers of the reality show Undiscovered.

  The most important and rigid of these requests, however, was that the video submission be no longer than five minutes. Having only rudimentary video-editing skills, Dawn was in the process of looking for a professional video editor when her daughter, Hannah, informed her that her friend Chris Truby was very skilled at video editing and would probably be happy to do it. Dawn was skeptical of allowing a thirteen-year-old boy to edit what could be the most important piece of video that her daughter had yet appeared in, but there were still a few weeks before the video was to be turned in and she decided that if Chris did a bad job she would still have time to hire a professional editor. Dawn made a copy of the video file containing all of the footage and e-mailed it to Hannah, along with footage of her performance as Annie in the local production of Annie from the year before.

  As she e-mailed the file, she thought about the last time she had sex with the theater director. It was at least five months ago. She hoped that she wouldn’t have to do it again, for reasons that included her burgeoning feelings for Kent Mooney as well as her desire to see her daughter succeed on a level higher than the local community theater.

  Hannah sent Chris a text message that read, “Want 2 edit my video for the reality show?” Chris
replied with a text message that read, “Sure, want 2 come over and help 2night?” Chris assumed that at some point after editing the video, he and Hannah would engage in some kind of sexual interaction, and he was anxious to attempt intercourse, confident in his ability to perform after having practiced with his various makeshift vaginas. Hannah replied with a text message that read, “Y.”

  Dawn picked Hannah up from school and drove her to Chris Truby’s house. She said, “It can only be five minutes, but make sure he gets all of your outfits in it and make sure he gets the answers to the questions that were in the producers’ e-mails.” Hannah said, “I will, Mom,” then got out of the car and went into Chris Truby’s house, where she was greeted by both Don and Rachel Truby. She had been to Chris’s house three times before, and each time she had noticed something distant between Don and Rachel. This time they seemed much happier to her, closer. Don said, “Chris is in his room. He has his computer all ready to go.”

  Rachel said, “So this is pretty exciting. A reality show.”

  Hannah said, “Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I’m not on the show or anything yet, but it could be really cool, you know, like a start to my career and everything.”

  Rachel said, “Well, good luck. We’re pulling for you.”

  Hannah said, “Thanks,” and went into Chris’s bedroom.

  Chris was sitting at his computer when she walked in. He had already broken the large video file Hannah had e-mailed him into smaller clips and was in the process of making a rough assembly of them in an order he thought made more sense than the order in which they were originally presented. He had trimmed many of the clips down, as well, and added a selected portion of Hannah’s performance as Annie. The total run time of the new clip was twelve minutes. He told all of this to Hannah and then said, “So you should watch it, then tell me what you think we should cut out.” Before he played the clip for her, they talked briefly about Allison Doss and her episode in the girls’ restroom. Neither of them knew exactly what happened, but had both heard that it was serious enough to have paramedics take her away. Allison had not updated her Facebook and had posted nothing on Twitter, so no one knew exactly what was happening with her.

  After the conversation about Allison, Chris played his version of the video back for Hannah, who claimed to feel that all of it was integral. She found it too difficult to make any decisions about what should be omitted. Chris said, “Okay, let me take another pass at it and I’ll see what I can do.” Hannah sat on his bed and watched as he worked. She didn’t understand the subtleties and nuances of what he was doing, but was able to follow most of the broader actions he was taking. She offered protests a few times when she perceived him to be cutting out a portion she found especially interesting. In these cases, Chris told her that she misunderstood what he was doing, that he wasn’t cutting these portions out at all, just moving them into another bin so he could rearrange them and edit them as individual clips.

  Eventually, Hannah just let Chris work. She lay down on his bed, smelling his pillow. It smelled like his shampoo, a smell that was now familiar to her. She didn’t like the way it smelled, like a stereotypical male bath product—like deodorant, almost. She assumed he used Axe or some other product that was marketed for men and wondered if he was the person who decided what type of products he used or if his mother just assumed that Axe would be something her son would like, and Chris never offered any protest because he didn’t care, and thus his body soap and shampoo would forever remain Axe. She wondered if he would ever buy a different kind of shampoo when he went away to college and had to buy his own bathroom products, or if he would just succumb to habit, to familiarity. She wondered if anyone had control over these types of things.

  After almost forty-five minutes of editing, Chris said, “Okay, I have it down to around six minutes. See what you think.” Hannah watched the clip and, although there were a lot of things she’d liked in the original video, she had to admit that it was much better the way Chris had arranged it. She wondered if one day she’d be sitting in a real editing room working with a real editor, maybe even on the reality TV show for which she was making this video. She had the impression that once a person was featured on a TV show, reality or scripted, or was given a part in a movie, they had complete control over the production and over how they were edited. Chris was a good editor from what she had seen. Maybe she would take him with her when she became famous and he could be her personal editor.

  She said, “I think it looks good. I mean, I miss a bunch of the stuff, like with me talking about what I like to do with my friends and with me doing gymnastics and everything, but it’s cool. I’m pretty sure we still have to cut out a minute, though, right?”

  Chris said, “Forty-three seconds, to be exact, but that’s not a problem. Just let me tighten some stuff. I just wanted to see if you thought it was okay with these major chunks. I won’t take any of the basic parts out of it, I’ll just trim the heads and tails and take out pauses and things like that.”

  Hannah said, “How long will that take?”

  Chris said, “Not too long. I can do it after you leave and e-mail it to you tonight.”

  Hannah said, “Cool,” then got up off Chris’s bed and walked over to where he was sitting. She swiveled his chair around and sat in his lap.

  Chris said, “My mom and dad are still up.”

  Hannah said, “We can be quiet.”

  Chris said, “Hang on,” then got out of his chair, cracked his bedroom door, and snuck out into the living room to find his father asleep in his chair and his mother nowhere to be seen. Chris assumed she was in her bedroom. He snuck back into his room, shut the door, and put a T-shirt by the crack under it. He went back to Hannah and said, “What time is your mom coming to get you?”

  Hannah said, “Whenever I text her. But it can’t be too late. We have time, though.”

  Chris said, “What do you want to do?”

  Hannah said, “I want you to fuck me.”

  Chris would have preferred her to say, “I want to fuck you,” but he had been preparing for this moment and felt that he was ready to assume the dominant role that Hannah required. Chris said, “Okay, let’s fuck.”

  They moved to his bed. Hannah lay down, removing her clothes as she did so. Chris removed his clothes as well. Chris looked at her naked body and started masturbating. Hannah said, “Do you want me to suck your dick?”

  Chris tried to recreate the exact circumstances in which he’d been able to successfully ejaculate into a cardboard paper towel tube filled with lotion-saturated Nerf foam. Then he said, “No, just spread your legs.”

  She did as she was told and watched Chris standing at the edge of his bed, his flaccid penis in his hand, his eyes closed. She wondered what he was thinking about. She wondered if she wasn’t attractive enough to fully arouse Chris. She assumed that there could be no other reason for his inability to achieve an erection in her presence unless some abnormal sexual behavior was employed. She knew that men liked big breasts, which she had, but she wondered if she was missing some other quality that they also liked or liked in a more profound way. She wondered if her vagina smelled bad, if she was slightly too fat in any area of her body, if her face wasn’t pretty enough, if her hair wasn’t done well enough, if her makeup wasn’t applied properly enough, if her voice was too shrill, if her feet were too big, if she should have painted her toenails, if her hands were too rough, if her teeth weren’t straight or white enough, if she had some innate deficiency in dealing with men because she never had a father.

  Eventually, Chris achieved erection. Hannah remembered reading a post on a website about what men liked during sex that recommended complimenting the size of their erect penises in pornographic terms. She said, “Your hard cock is huge.” Chris said nothing in response. He knew that he had a small window of time to insert his erection into Hannah’s vagina before it withered.

  He had a difficult time entering her due to the fact that her vagina was dry. With n
o foreplay, not even kissing, Hannah wasn’t aroused in the least. The combined complications of Hannah’s dry vagina and Chris’s lack of interest in traditional sex were taking their toll.

  With each thrust, he could feel his penis losing rigidity. He forced it in with his fingers as it softened anyway. Once in, his penis was fully lifeless again. Hannah said, “Are you in?”

  Chris said, “Yeah, I think so.”

  Hannah said, “Uh . . . I’m pretty sure you’re not.”

  Chris said, “No, I am.”

  Hannah said, “Are you moving?”

  Chris said, “No,” knowing that the most minor movement of his hips backward would result in the full extraction of his penis, which was now far too limp to be put back in.

  Hannah said, “Well, don’t you have to, to, like, have sex?”

  Chris said, “Yeah.”

  Hannah said, “I’ll move, then,” and moved her hips under him, causing his penis to slide out.

  She said, “Put it back in.”

  He rolled over on his back, frustrated. Hannah stared at the ceiling, not knowing exactly what to say, convinced that something was wrong with her, that every encounter she ever had with a man would result in similar disappointment. She said, “Is there something I’m doing wrong, or . . .”

  Chris said, “No, I don’t know. I’m sorry.” Chris wanted to tell her what he found to be sexually arousing, but based on her reaction when he asked her to put a finger in his anus, he knew it was a waste of time. He assumed his sexual preferences were aberrant, and wondered if he would ever meet a girl who would not only indulge him but also enjoy the same things he did. He didn’t think he would. He convinced himself in that moment that his life would be filled with sexual frustration and secrecy.

  Neither of them made any attempt to engage in further sexual activity. Hannah said, “I guess I should text my mom.” Chris said, “Okay.” They averted their eyes from each other as they both put their clothes back on. Chris liked Hannah and Hannah liked Chris. Part of Hannah wanted to just be held by Chris, wanted to wait to have any kind of sexual encounter with Chris or anyone, and there was a part of Chris that just wanted to hold Hannah and fall asleep with her, smell her hair, wake up with her, wanted to wait to have any kind of sexual encounter with Hannah or with anyone.

 

‹ Prev