When Watched

by Leopoldine Core

  “We’re starved period,” Susan said.

  Henry stared at her. “Do you want some coffee?” he asked.

  “No. More coffee might push me into another dimension.”

  Henry laughed. He finished the sandwich with one last, dissatisfied bite. Then they walked to the gate and sat in a couple of gray chairs. Susan put her head in Henry’s lap. “I’m so weary,” she croaked.

  “I think you already told me that.” Henry smiled.

  “Oh shut up,” she said and quickly fell asleep.

  Henry watched a pair of young girls a few feet away. One had a head of short platinum curls, the other a long goldish braid. They sat cross-legged on the gray carpet facing each other, slouched over two separate piles of candy. They were trading. Their parents sat nearby, mutely pawing their phones. Henry wondered what sort of people gave their kids candy before boarding an evening plane. He watched as one girl, the one with the long braid, handed a Tootsie Roll to the other. She was compensated with a fat-headed lollipop. Fascinated, he watched a few more trades pass in the same girl’s favor. Henry went from admiring her skills of manipulation to actually sort of feeling sorry for the one with the curls. Maybe she’s a little younger, he thought, deciding she was being taken advantage of.

  “Look,” he said to Susan, patting her shoulder. “They’re trading.”

  Susan opened her eyes only slightly.

  “The one with the braid is hoarding all the good stuff,” he said. “It’s breaking my heart.”

  Susan’s yawn curled up into a cat-like smile. “Cheapness is always expressed through candy at that age,” she said and coughed, clearing the sleep from her voice. “It’s the money of childhood.”

  Henry nodded, grinning. They watched as the girls ate from their two separate piles, then stumbled around in spacey states of bliss. “Kids are such drunks,” Henry whispered.

  “Staggering and gleeful,” Susan added.

  Soon they were called to board and Susan groaned. “Can I crawl?”

  “Come on, love,” he said.

  And it was a surprising relief to enter the familiar capsule, to know that now nothing was expected of them. Even the lift-off was pleasant, easy to succumb to. They simply sat there, letting the rumbling machine have them, then the sky.

  Susan looked down at the blinky orange-lit city. How beautiful and monstrous, she thought. She imagined the land below them two hundred years ago. Just dark and trees, a canoe riding by. “Look at it down there. It’s so endless,” she said to Henry. “Civilization. It only grows.”

  “Well, yes and no,” he said. “There are things like blackouts that give you a little taste of what’s possible. It’s all so fragile really.”

  Susan nodded with a hum and leaned her head against his shoulder.

  “I love the way you smell,” he said and she smiled. It was the smile of someone who would never in her lifetime tire of flattery.

  “And how is that?” she gleamed.

  Henry gave her hair a deep, theatrical sniff. “Like bread,” he said. “And the ocean.”

  To this she laughed. It felt good. “I love your mind,” she said in an underwater way, nodding off on his shoulder.

  “It kicks up a beautiful pearl once in a while,” Henry said calmly, though his shoulder hurt like hell. “Susan,” he said gently and kissed the top of her head. “Susan.”

  Memory

  Alice is standing by the stove when she thinks of him. Joe. She lights the pilot, sets her red kettle down, and proceeds to stare into space. He had kissed her neck when she was fifteen. He had been old but she wasn’t sure how old. He had graying hair and a red tan. Alice begins cracking her knuckles. She doesn’t know what has summoned the memory of Joe’s face and this bothers her. It is like a bat flung from darkness.

  She can’t remember how Joe knew her mother, only that his son had died, and that this gave him a lonesome, saintly quality. Her mom had been a single mom and so she needed help and he was glad to give it. He picked Alice up from school and sometimes took her out for sushi, which Alice liked. She remembers him sipping sake from a little white cup and talking about his son. She remembers him bringing out his wallet and showing her a bent picture of the boy, who wasn’t a boy at all. Alice remembers being surprised to see a grown man grinning back from the snapshot. Alice had until that moment figured him to be a child.

  Joe reported that his son had died during his freshman year in college and Alice watched the bubbles in her soda glass. She remembers that she wanted him to stop talking about his son. He was a little drunk and she felt herself recoiling from his grief, its endlessness. She remembers that he did stop talking about his son, almost as if he had heard her thoughts. He stopped talking altogether and stared at her and she could feel that he was admiring her.

  “You’re very beautiful,” he said. Then, “Do you know that?”

  Alice remembers how thrilled she was. She remembers that she could feel herself blushing, the heat rushing to her face. She remembers how this sublime feeling mingled almost immediately with dread. She remembers getting into Joe’s silver car and putting the seat back slightly. This was something she always did but when she looked up at Joe, she wished she were upright. She remembers turning toward the purple sky, the sinking red sun.

  “You have a tan on your belly,” Joe said with a sideward glance. He was looking at the strip of flesh between her T-shirt and jeans.

  “I know,” she said.

  Alice remembers that all the lights were off when she got home. She remembers mounting the stairs to her white house and going inside. She remembers sitting on the couch with Joe. She remembers him putting his arm around her, his gold wristwatch ticking in her ear. She remembers him moving her hair and kissing her neck. She remembers being amazed that a kiss could land so gently.

  She remembers that she could not speak. If he had lunged toward her, she thinks now, she would have screamed. But it was as if he was moving underwater.

  She remembers that he continued to plant soft kisses on her neck and then her ear. She remembers that he asked her if she wanted to go to the bedroom. She remembers that her voice sounded strange when it arose, like it belonged to someone else. She said, “I have to do homework.”

  She remembers that he looked scared when she said this. She remembers him staring at her. It was as if she had in her hands a new and damning videotape of him. A tape she would have until she died. He continued staring and the tape’s footage blazed between them. Then with a low smile, as if he were safe, he left.

  Alice remembers going upstairs and getting into bed with all her clothes on. She remembers her sage green sheets and the round black clock by her bed, its loud, insistent ticking. She remembers picturing someone knocking from inside a coffin. “I’m not dead! I’m not!”

  She remembers pulling a blanket over her head. She remembers hearing her mom come home. She remembers the phone ringing. She remembers her mom’s laughter, how it seemed obscene. She knew it was Joe calling to see if her mom knew. And what was there to know?

  She remembers breathing through her blanket. No words had yet glued themselves to the videotape in her mind. It only played itself again and again. She remembers that she was very still as she watched it. She remembers feeling like an animal with no language. She remembers that she closed her eyes but that she did not sleep.

  Alice remembers going to school the next day. She remembers her depression, how adult it felt. She remembers wanting to tell her friends but feeling that there was nothing to tell. She remembers wanting to exaggerate certain elements of what had happened. She remembers wondering if what Joe had done was even a crime. She remembers wanting to say, “I was raped.”

  She remembers Joe picking her up from school in his silver car and how calm he looked, but with occasional flashes of worry, like dark fish darting under a frozen pond. She remembers how angry she was and
letting it show. She remembers his worried smile. She remembers the car stopping in front of her house. She remembers saying, “I don’t want to see you ever again.”

  She remembers him saying, “I’m sorry you feel that way.” She remembers that his eyes were full of violence. She remembers sensing—almost smelling—that he wanted to kill her. Or that for a split second the thought was spreading itself in his mind. She remembers the terrible little theater of his eyes, which she had always thought to be blue. But looking at them in the afternoon glare, she saw that they weren’t even a little bit blue. They were gray.

  She remembers getting out of the car and running into her house and locking the door and locking all the windows. She remembers going into the broom closet and sitting in the dark until her mom got home. She remembers crawling out of the closet and telling her mom about the kisses. She remembers that her mom cried. She remembers looking away. She remembers their black cat, how he slunk through the flap door obliviously and hopped up the stairs.

  She remembers her mom saying, “Did he do anything else?” and she remembers saying “No” and wishing that he had, if only to affirm that he was a bad man.

  She remembers that her mom called Joe and left several messages. She remembers how they began as hysterical speeches and evolved to briefer, even-toned threats.

  Alice remembers going to the police station with her mom in the morning. She remembers that there was one male cop and one female cop in a large room full of white light. She remembers describing what had happened. She remembers that they seemed disappointed. She remembers her mom asking what they were going to do.

  She remembers the man saying, “We’re gonna go to his house and talk to him.” The woman said, “We’re gonna give him a little scare.”

  Alice turns off the burner and stares at her red kettle. It has a dent on one side. She remembers her embarrassment at the police station and feels it anew. She wishes that Joe’s kiss hadn’t been soft. She wishes he had bitten her. She glances at her forty-two-year-old forearm, dark-haired and pale. Her gaze freezes there a moment. She wonders what she would do now if someone kissed her softly, someone whose kiss she didn’t want. The police would laugh, she thinks. And maybe they had been laughing then. Maybe they hadn’t been to Joe’s house at all.

  Alice pours herself a mug of tea and holds it with both hands, watching the steam rise and curl. She wonders if Joe has an Internet presence. She doesn’t know his last name so there’s no way of checking. Maybe he’s married, she thinks. Maybe he’s with his wife right now and she’s laughing at something he just said. Maybe they love each other more than they’ve ever loved anyone. Or maybe he lives alone but likes living alone. Or maybe he’s dead.

  Teenage Hate

  Joan and Dennis were lying in bed. It was late but the lamp on Joan’s side was still on. She wouldn’t turn it off. She had been talking about their daughter all evening.

  “She said she hated me.”

  “They all say that.”

  “But do they really?”

  “Yes.”

  “And it’s not just me. Cindy hates everything.”

  “Teenagers are mean. They need to be. It’s the first interpretation of seriousness.”

  Neither spoke for a few seconds.

  “What is it?” Dennis asked.

  “I’m just thinking about what you said. I think you might be right.”

  “Oh, I am.”

  • • •

  In the morning Joan made pancakes and Dennis made coffee. Then they sat together sipping from their mugs. Under the table a cat careened into Joan’s shin and slid away, purring wildly. They had two cats, one orange and one white, named Carrot and Sneaker respectively.

  Cindy appeared in blue shorts and a white T-shirt. She was taller than both of her parents, with blonde hair and pale green eyes. Without a word she padded into the kitchen and withdrew a cereal box from the cupboard, then stuck half her arm in. After eating a few handfuls she walked off with the box.

  “I made pancakes!” Joan called after her. Then she heard Cindy’s door slam shut. “Now what the hell was that?” She turned to Dennis, her nostrils hard.

  But he had barely looked up from his food. The sight of Cindy’s new body made him cringe. There was something blurry about it, how she tipped moment by moment between woman and child. Cindy was so beautiful—almost too beautiful. And while Dennis looked away, the whole neighborhood was peeping. Now that she was fifteen it had only gotten worse. It seemed no glance in Cindy’s direction did not attach itself to her as she moved grumpily through a room or down a hall or across a street. As a result she stayed home a lot, playing the same pop songs over and over until she hated them. It was summer and she had no desire to go to camp or spend time with any of her friends. Generally she looked tired because she was. Tired of marshaling the world’s lust for her.

  “I don’t think she’s eating enough,” Joan said. “She lives on diet soda . . . these teenage girls—they’re like automatons—they’ll eat anything that does nothing.” She caught his eye. “You think I’m controlling but I’m not.”

  He made a neat cut in his pancakes. “You can’t conduct this conversation with yourself in front of me.”

  Joan had to laugh at that. She tucked a slice of butter under her top pancake and licked the excess off her knife. “I had to eat at the table when I was a kid. If I had behaved like her my mom would’ve smacked me so hard.”

  “Yes, well, my mother smacked me no matter how I behaved,” he said. “We don’t have to demonstrate the abuse we experienced.”

  Joan softened. “You’re a lovely man,” she said.

  • • •

  When Dennis went to work, Joan washed the dishes and cleaned the kitchen. Then she walked to Cindy’s door and knocked.

  “What?” came the voice of the demon on the other side.

  Joan strode right in with a cheery show of confidence that made her daughter tense. Cindy distrusted her mother’s smile. In fact the merriness of all middle-aged women felt fraudulent to her. They seemed dangerous with their tight grins and burning coal eyes. They were jealous of course and it made her lonely. It filled her with hate.

  In her robe and slippers, Joan walked around freely. She picked a worn copy of Franny and Zooey off the bed and touched its fragile cover. “Are you reading this?” she asked.

  “You can’t just come in here.” Cindy sat on the floor next to an open magazine.

  “I loved to read when I was your age,” Joan said. “But my brother was always stealing my books.” She smiled reflectively. “He didn’t even read them. He just put them on his shelf. What he wanted was my enthusiasm.”

  “Mom, get out.”

  “I believe this is my book.”

  “It was on the shelf.”

  “You can have it.” Joan set the book back down on the bed. “It’s good, isn’t it?” she said, but there came no reply. Cindy sat with her arms crossed, a homicidal song in her eyes. Still Joan was too captivated to look away. It was a marvelous view of something utterly gone: her youth.

  She left the room, leaving the door ajar. Then Cindy slammed it.

  Joan walked to the bathroom and felt it too, the forbidden feeling: hate. Cindy had left the hair dryer on the floor and one by one the cats were examining it like a spaceship had landed. Joan shooed them away and the orange one jumped up onto the sink, then into the toilet with a splash.

  “Carrot!” Joan cried.

  The cat hopped out, shaking and appalled, then ran off.

  Sighing, Joan wiped down the toilet seat and sat on it. Then a blast of music made her jerk, bracing the wall as she peed. It was a small apartment and the walls seemed porous, the way they spilled noise from one room into another. Many times she heard Cindy crying in there. Maybe, she thought, the shrill pop song was actually announcing such a moment.

  Joa
n wiped herself roughly. She flew off the toilet, stomped to Cindy’s door and stood there. Just then the song ended. But an instant later it began again, the canned screams. Joan’s face tightened. Stepping away from the door, it occurred to her that she was a little bit afraid of her daughter.

  It seemed there was only one thing to do so Joan did it—she left. She didn’t know where she was going, only that she was going. Maybe she would never come back. Maybe she would jump in front of a car and a certain grim little girl would get a cold, hard taste of reality. But no, she would go on living. She knew it. She was doomed to function.

  Joan walked out into the sun, past an ice-cream truck and a pile of dog shit and an old man selling batteries. She walked on and on until she wasn’t in their neighborhood anymore. She imagined herself getting thin this way, speed-walking through the streets for days, bolstered by hate.

  A pair of wealthy-looking women walked by. They had such similar plastic surgery that they looked like sisters. It made Joan laugh. Maybe I’m crazy, she thought with the breeze in her hair. But the world is deeply insane. Suddenly she felt happier than she had in weeks. Joan looked up at the blue sky and thought it might be even more beautiful than her daughter.

  She passed a man on a stool with his easel before him. He was painting a cheesy panoramic of some buildings, even though there was a drooling junkie behind him. Why don’t you paint that? Joan wondered. A man bumped into her and she realized, as she had so many times, that she was invisible. It made her want to do something obscene like take her top off. But no, that would disgust people. She pictured herself getting arrested with her breasts out and felt incredibly sad. There’s no reward for being an older female, she thought. Because no one wants to look at your flesh.

  She didn’t feel older, that was the confusing part. She felt seventeen, just as hungry. Maybe she always would. Maybe the energy that was sizzling and repressed in high school would keep unfurling all her life.