Don't Cry

by Mary Gaitskill

  Teresa coursed by like a shark, her low forehead predominant as a snout. Dolores felt impotent detestation. Teresa saw the false fingernails, now standing out from Dolores's hands like evil thoughts. Dolores stared at her nails, like a sea blob heaved up on a hot beach, dimly realizing that its soft, flat flippers won't help it get back into the water. Teresa sneered and began scribbling on her little gray pad. She ripped off Dolores's check and threw it at her, mumbling something about needing more table space.

  Was strength the ability to make someone leave a restaurant, mostly because they couldn't bear to be in your presence anymore? Was it being big and loud and going to a bar with other big loud people and making more noise than anyone else there? Insulting someone? People insulted Lily often, and though she pretended not to be affected, Dolores knew she was hurt by it. But she couldn't stop them from doing it. Did that mean she was weak? On the other hand, Dolores sometimes pushed Patrick around and all he did was say “Dolores!” But he was a promising actor and a successful musician, and she was a flop.

  She sweated wonderfully as she ran around the gym. Every day there were lots of other people sweating around the track with her, in headbands and sweatsuits. They were all trying to be strong. The day before, in the checkout line at Kresge's, Dolores had overheard a girl with pounds of wavy blond hair and bulging calf muscles say to her friend, “And I'm getting up every day and running!” like it was the best thing ever.

  Anyone would do anything to be stronger. In the gym next to the track, college students took karate classes. Little teenage girls padded out of the dressing rooms in their white karate uniforms, some of them wearing small gold chains and nail polish. She could hear the instructor yelling at them. “Everyone wants to have control!” he shouted. “And to have control, you have to fight for it, work for it!”

  Lily and Patrick were obsessed with working. Whenever you asked Lily how she was, she would either say that she was good, she'd been very productive, or that she was awful, she'd been so unproductive. All night, they would sit at the kitchen table eating toast and working on their projects. Lily had her work for school and her articles for local papers and magazines, and Patrick had his rehearsals and homework, plus his music to write. Lily worked with her long legs drawn up under her and her shoulders in a curl; Patrick sat on his tailbone, his legs spread and his cotton shirt open, his head hanging from his neck like a heavy flower.

  After she ran, she stopped by Majik Market to shoplift several eyeliner pencils and a box of peanut brittle. Then she went home to share the candy with Lily. They sat at the kitchen table and ate big slabs of it out of the open box.

  “People have told me that my sexuality is death-oriented,” said Dolores, crunching her mouthful of candy.

  “People have dumb ideas about sex,” said Lily. “How long have you been having sex?”

  “Twelve years.”

  “If your sexuality was death-oriented, you'd be dead by now.” She was picking through the candy; it looked funny to see her serious face bent over it.

  “Well, they didn't mean literal death. They meant death in the abstract.”

  “There's no such thing as death in the abstract. You're dead or you're not.” Lily's hand dived into the box and emerged with a nut-encrusted chunk. “You can't have a facsimile of death.” She leaned back in her chair like Patrick and popped the candy into her mouth. She sucked on it, her face slowly becoming tranquil.

  “How do you know that if you don't know what death is like?” Dolores ran her tongue over her molars and found them coated with gnawed candy.

  Dolores often wanted to die, even though she didn't know what it was like, either. Allan used to tell her about the recurring nightmares he had, in which his father humiliated him sexually He said it was the same thing as dreaming about death. Dolores thought that if to be humiliated was to be dead, she would be decomposed beyond recognition. But she was crazily alive, stuffed with blood and muscles, going to the bathroom regularly, having conversations.

  If she were dead, her blood wouldn't suffer the pain of struggling to sing while life's constant attack made it hurt to move in her veins at all. Why couldn't people be nice? Why did you go into a restaurant and get attacked by a bitch who hated you for no reason? Why did Allan's friends, when they saw her, look at her with that vague leer and the concern they thought they should have for a disturbed older woman, the expression that felt like a razor across her face? Allan's friends were young and loud, their bodies hideously forceful in the occupation of space. Even though he was in art school, most of them were law students, always apparently happy and grabbing. Just the sight of them, with their rough, healthy skin and big legs and heavy, porous head hair made her feel horrible, especially when one of them cornered her and tried to be nice. Sometimes she encouraged it, and she was always sorry later.

  She remembered a time she'd met one of them at a student party She and Allan had broken up a few days before. She was fairly drunk and slumped on a couch with a few kids whom she could no longer remember except as a mass of T-shirts and long hair. She was staring at a group of people stomping their way through a dance in the middle of the room. Harvey approached her and shouted through the music that he wanted to walk her home. She chattered to him all the way to her apartment, some grim inner monitor manipulating her shrill babble to impress him with her normality her happiness. She told him about her projects, her courses at school. He made his voice go gentle; he touched her elbow, put a hand on her shoulder. They sat on her front porch steps, watching ants run in and out of their grainy little nest in the crack of the second step. He was very careful with the way he talked to her; he wanted to show that he respected her. He talked about books and art. He asked her, “But seriously, what is your favorite Faulkner novel?”

  Alan had said, “I don't like people who feel sorry for themselves. In the past, I have had the patience of Job with weak and neurotic women. Not anymore.”

  But he was neurotic; he was weak. Once when they were arguing, she said, “And everyone in the art department hates you,” even though she had no idea if that was true.

  They were sitting on her front porch in the dark of night; she could not see his reaction, but she could feel it: He withdrew into himself and almost began to quiver with emotion. For a moment, she thought he would cry. “Not all of them,” she said hastily. “Just a few.” And he said, “Who? Who are they?”

  And still he held her and said, “I want you to be a strong woman. I know you can be. I want you to be productive.” He held her and she talked about her adulterous, alcoholic father as if he were a character on TV “He ruined my mother financially and mentally I don't even know where he is now. Somewhere in South America, trying to set up a tropical-fish business and fucking some fat eighteen-year-old who's in the Peace Corps. He's been through five failed businesses in the last eight years. He ruins everything he touches. Everybody said my mother was crazy when she went after him with the scissors. But I didn't think so.”

  Her mother was putting her life back together, even though she was murderously unhappy Right after Dolores got out of the hospital, her mother invited her over for sandwiches cut up into four pieces. Her mother sat on the very edge of the couch and Dolores sat on the edge of a chair, with the sandwiches on a table between them. Her mother gripped her cream cheese and olive morsel like she had tweezers for hands. “The problem is that I just never asked ‘What about me?’ “ she said furiously “And now it's time for me. Me!”

  Dolores had pitied her terribly.

  But her mother was tough in her way. She ran her travel business and went to a yoga club and was even having an affair. She was strong, even if her face looked as if it were a mask held in place with staples.

  Dolores lay in the dark of her room and said, “And now it's time for me! Me!” She said it as vehemently as she could, but she knew she had nothing but the dozens of eyebrow pencils and the nail polish and face cream she'd stolen and piled up on her dresser.

  Lil
y and Patrick were having a fight. Dolores looked on with interest, although there wasn't much to watch. They were only eating breakfast, but they were doing it furiously. “You don't have to pretend that anything's normal,” said Lily.

  “I'm not.” Patrick held up his slice of rye bread and spread it with apple butter evenly and meticulously Lily was angry at Patrick for not telling off his friends who were mean to her. Maybe they would break up, and then Lily and Dolores could spend more time at the bar talking about how awful men were.

  Lily got up in the middle of eating her soft-boiled egg and began sweeping the floor like a robot. “This place is fucking filthy,” she said.

  It was. Lily had already swept up a huge pile of dirt and dust and papers and food, and she hadn't even come close to finishing.

  “You don't have to act like we're living in a nuthouse,” said Patrick.

  “We are.” Lily threw the broom on the floor and went back to her egg, which sat in its rose cup. “It's not surprising that your friends treat me like shit, when it's obvious you don't have any respect for me. You let them do it. If I had friends who called me up and invited me to parties and wouldn't invite you, I wouldn't go. I wouldn't treat you like that.”

  “You could've gone.”

  “I wasn't invited. You and Dolores were. Sasha's always nasty to me anyway. You saw how she was last week.”

  Patrick put down his bread, picked up the knife, and began resmoothing the apple butter. “I saw how you were, too. You didn't extend yourself at all.”

  “Whenever I say anything, she ignores me or pretends to misunderstand. I'm tired of your dumb friends anyway, especially that dumb bitch Sasha. I'm tired of hearing these middle-class bitches who've never worked in their life, whose parents pay their rent and buy them college degrees, sit around and talk about how depressed they are. I don't have any parents and I don't have any friends and I've had to work for everything I ever got, which hasn't been much.”

  She was yelling now. Patrick's eyes had become very soft.

  What a mess I live in, thought Dolores. Isn't it interesting, even though she could be talking about me.

  Mark walked into the room with his hair on end and his shoulders knit together, his eyes flickering at Lily. “Oh God,” spat Lily She grabbed her eggcup, tossed the egg in the garbage, and left the room.

  “It's so horrible living with two people who are involved in a relationship,” hissed Mark at Dolores. “Especially when one of them is mentally ill.” He raised his voice. “Who threw the broom on the floor?”

  The bar was full of familiar, attractive people; plates of cheese sat on several tables, and plants hung above all heads. Dolores had been coming here almost every night. No waitresses were mean to her here. Lily was disappointingly calm, though, and only half-interested in talking about how awful men were.

  “I know we have to break up eventually,” she said. “I just don't want it to be about something as stupid as this. It's just gotten to the point that I can't tolerate it anymore. I mean the way his friends act toward me.”

  She wasn't showing anger at all. Her voice was flat, her expression blank. Dolores wondered if Lily looked that way because it was her nature or if the outside world had been so painful for her that she couldn't stand to be in it fully. She looked at Lily's long, slender fingers against the iced glass of her drink and felt touched by her vulnerability Why should people dislike her? “It's really shitty” said Dolores.

  “I don't know why it's happening.”

  Her passivity made Dolores feel a little contemptuous. She ordered another drink. “It's a small town. People like to gossip, and you're a natural subject because you're different.”

  “How am I different?”

  Dolores sighed and looked at the ceiling, both hands on her drink. The question stirred memories of answering a professor's questions and loving the sound of her intelligent voice. “Because on one hand you seem completely unaware of people, completely self-contained and happy to be that way. And then you'll suddenly be so open and needy. I think the abrupt contrast disturbs people. And they can be aggressive with you because you're actually gentle. Even if you don't talk that way.”

  Lily didn't answer, but Dolores thought she looked pleased with the explanation.

  “I'm sort of glad you're dumping Patrick. I know he's my brother and everything, but it's about time somebody dumped him. He's been picking up and putting down girls for years. It's sickening.”

  Lily shrugged. “He's told me all about what a heartbreaker he is. I guess it means I'm supposed to be the one to bring him down.”

  “You should. It would do him good.”

  “I don't see how it would do him good.”

  “Because it would teach him something about life. He's never been hurt before in that way. He thinks everything's so easy and that he's never been hurt because he's so smart.”

  “Being hurt doesn't teach anybody anything,” said Lily. “It doesn't help. It just feels bad.” She nipped up a piece of cheese and munched. “Although there is the Jesus stuff” she said through her cheese. “Suffering and redemption, suffering and purity”

  “That's not what I'm talking about,” said Dolores.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Dolores sighed abruptly; her eyes went ceilingward. “Morally, in the Christian sense, strength isn't necessarily a good thing. You're supposed to turn the other cheek, be sacrificed, you know? But I think that kind of meekness is weak, and when you think about it, weakness is really … evil in a way. It's like being connected with the ugly things in the world. You're the clubfooted straggler endangering the herd. You make people depressed and sentimental.”

  “Did you vote for Reagan? That's his whole thing; he's for strength. People despised Carter for being weak.”

  “No. No, no. I didn't vote for anybody. I'm not talking about anything political. I don't mean you should despise people for being weak, if it's a kind of weakness they can't help. But when they're weak on purpose, it's another thing. When they don't even try When they let people hurt them and don't fight back. It's gross. It's letting down the whole human race.”

  “Oh. I think I see what you mean.” Lily looked out the window for a minute. “It's funny. When Reagan won, I was secretly relieved. Even though I hate him. Secretly, some part of me must feel like he's right. Even though I think Carter is the better one.” She turned to face Dolores. “Tell me again why you think I should dump Patrick.”

  “Well, to … to make him see that he could be weak and damaged like anybody else.”

  Lily smiled. “That would just make Patrick stronger.”

  “Think so?”

  “Some people are like that. Patrick is like that. The more he was hurt, the stronger he'd get. It's like Ann Landers says: ‘The same heat that melts butter tempers steel.’”

  “If it's that way, maybe you really should dump him.”

  Lily made a face. “The thing is, I don't want to hurt his feelings.” She played with the wheat crackers on their plate. “I wonder how many other people feel that way about Reagan? Even if they hate him?”

  Dolores had begun to work on her history papers so she could graduate. There were only three weeks left to get them done, and she hadn't even started her research, so she had to get up very early in the morning. She went to the Oasis before many people had a chance to get there and start gossiping. She smoked and drank coffee and read about socialism in England. It was wonderful to be constructive. No wonder Lily clung to it so. Dolores wondered if it would change her appearance the way masturbating had. After Lily and Patrick broke up, she masturbated for the first time in six months. People kept telling her how relaxed she looked all of a sudden. Lily said her “energy” had changed. Maybe doing her history papers would have an even greater effect.

  At night, she went to the bar and saw Sasha and her friends. Sasha looked fat and tragic, her eyes bitterly flat and smeared with kohl. Dolores told her about the papers. “Good girl!” said Sa
sha. “I never did my papers. Is it true that Lily and Patrick broke up?”

  “For a few days now. I think they might get back together, though. They're being very seductive at breakfast.”

  Dolores was surprised when Sasha didn't say anything nasty She just started telling about how she'd gotten kicked out of her best friend's apartment after a fight, and how she had to stay with George Hammond as a result. “Of course, he'll probably kick me out as soon as he gets tired of me. He loves me most when I start talking about moving to Chicago.”

  Lindsay walked in wearing her little black leather jacket. Her large, heavy brown eyes looked smug and almost crossed under her tortoiseshell glasses, and her little nose was in the air. “Sasha!” she cried, advancing toward them. “Hi, you look great.”

  “Being an outcast is very becoming,” replied Sasha. “I hear you're going to New York.”

  “Yeah, I'm going to become a disc jockey. I know people there who can get me connected. At least I hope they can. Hi, Dolores.”

  “Oh, you'll do great. You're the kind of person who's successful.”

  “I can just hear her on the radio in New York,” said Sasha after Lindsay had left. “Have you heard her show? It's called ‘No Feelings’ and she reads her poetry on it. All this stuff about splinters of night reaming her eyes. She's retarded. She'll probably get a great job in New York. Every pretentious asshole I know went to New York and got a job in film or publishing.”

  “I'm an asshole and I don't have a job in film or publishing.”

  “That's because you're not pretentious. You wouldn't even be an asshole except you can't get out of Ann Arbor. And who am I to talk? I've been trying to get out for years.”

  “I'm going to get out soon,” said Dolores.

  Dolores rolled her car windows down as she drove home, so she could feel the spring air and look at the little residential houses. She drove her car up onto the lawn and almost over the tulips. She heard herself thunder across the porch like an ogre.