Polly

by Amy Bryant

  “I know.”

  “So what happened?”

  The car lighter popped out and I pressed it to my cigarette. “Down in Mike’s basement. After you guys left.”

  “So he just jumped you? Jesus. You must have been so freaked. Did you just start screaming or what?”

  I exhaled and watched the smoke melt into the windshield. Mike had thrown my headband, and now it rested on the right wiper.

  “I think I forgot to scream,” I said. “It’s complicated.”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. This is totally huge.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Oh, God!” Carrie’s cigarette froze in midair. “Brendan’s probably here.”

  I shrugged. “I know.”

  “If I were you, I wouldn’t go in there.”

  As we entered the school I was struck by the leaden, oppressive school smell of mildew and, as we neared the gymnasium, the hot, stale odor of old sweat. The dull paint job and low ceilings were so familiar, I felt as if it had been nine days instead of nine months since I had been in the building.

  Lyle was waiting for us by the door to the gym. He took Carrie’s hand without looking at me. Carrie and I paid the five-dollar admission and got our hands stamped, and then I pushed the heavy doors open and we stepped inside. Guns N’ Roses blasted out of the P.A. system. People moved around the gym in clumps. Some of them were lugging band equipment. Todd Wilson passed us, his guitar case dangling from one muscled arm. He curled his lip up as our eyes met, and I looked away.

  “Lyle, come talk to me for a second,” Carrie said.

  Lyle looked toward the stage. “I need to set up.”

  “I’ll come with you,” she said. “We need to talk.” They hurried away from me. “We’ll be right back,” Carrie said over her shoulder.

  I nodded. Mike was at the foot of the stage, talking to Adam. Adam was holding up his hands and shaking his head. Then Brendan Davis came around the corner and was standing beside them, and I felt the floor drop out from under me. I looked around for Carrie, or anyone I might know. There were scarcely thirty yards separating me from Brendan.

  I looked back over in time to see Mike give Brendan a shove. Brendan took a step backward, his brown flannel shirt swinging out behind him. Then Brendan put both his hands on Mike’s shoulders. He was saying something. Mike shook his head and looked down at the floor.

  Adam was staring at me. I edged along the wall until I got to the water fountain. I needed to find someone to stand beside.

  Adam tapped Brendan and pointed, and Brendan fixed his eyes on me and started walking.

  I ran. I dodged legs and backpacks and amps and various-sized drums that were moving through the growing crowd. I plunged out the gymnasium doors and down an empty hallway until I reached the girl’s bathroom. I ran all the way to the far wall of the bathroom and sank down on the tile, gasping for breath.

  One of the sink faucets was dripping as steady as a metronome. I lit a cigarette and blew smoke up at the fluorescent lights. There was nothing to do now but wait. At least I could smoke in the school bathrooms now, without worrying about getting suspended. I lowered my head to my knees and wrapped my arms around my legs. This was all Mike’s fault. I should have begged him not to tell Brendan what I’d said.

  I made a plan. I’d stay in the bathroom until the first band came on and then sneak out to Carrie’s car. I wasn’t sure I’d be safe waiting there by myself, though. On the other hand, it was a big school. There were plenty of places to hide. Carrie was bound to come looking for me eventually, and when I found her I’d make her drive me home. She’d understand. And tomorrow I’d be leaving. Tomorrow I’d be back at college, away from all this.

  The door creaked open and I lifted my head. A frizzy-haired girl came in and went into a stall. I put my cigarette in my mouth and left it there, letting the smoke trail up to sting my eyes. I watched the frizzy-haired girl’s black Doc Martens move under the stall as I listened to the sound of her peeing. When she’d flushed and gone (without bothering to wash her hands, I noticed), I stood up. I went into the nearest stall and flushed my cigarette into the toilet. Then I walked over to the sinks.

  “Polly.”

  He was leaning against the first stall, not four feet from me.

  “You’re not supposed to be in here,” I said. There was no way I could get around him and out the door.

  Brendan hooked his thumb through one of the belt loops of his corduroys.

  “Why are you saying I raped you?” He sounded as if he were just curious.

  “I don’t want to talk about this. Please just go.”

  Brendan blinked a few times, and I wondered if he was stoned. “Listen,” he said. “If you still lived here I would go out with you.”

  I took a step sideways. “Please. Just leave me alone, okay?”

  He shook his head, narrowed his eyes. “Why are you being like this?”

  The door swung open and three girls filed in. “He so totally makes me want to smack someone,” one of the girls was saying. She was wearing a leather motorcycle jacket that was much too big for her. Brendan turned around to look at them. His thumb was still hooked through his belt loop. All three girls started giggling.

  “I can’t pee if you’re in here,” one of them said through her laughter. She was wearing dark pink lipstick and blue eyeliner. She looked about twelve.

  “Well, I don’t even care if he is here, ’cause that’s how bad I have to go,” another girl said. She ran into a stall and latched it. The other two burst into new fits of giggles. I stared down at my shoes.

  Brendan disappeared out the bathroom door as quietly as he had come in. As soon as the door swung shut behind him the two remaining girls rushed into adjoining stalls.

  I listened to their chorus of peeing. My legs shook when I tried to walk and my breath was shallow. I washed my hands in cold water.

  As I left the bathroom I heard applause and a few howls coming from the gym. There was the hiss of feedback and then the high wail of a guitar. Then came the drums, echoing through the empty hallway.

  seven TODD

  I went back to school. I did math. I stopped goofing off around the dorm and in town and went to the library between classes instead. My favorite class was Introduction to Fine Arts. At first I wasn’t good at drawing, but then I learned how to do the proportions. I liked painting better than drawing, and I liked sculpture even more. Sam was in my class, and he showed me how to stretch a canvas. We sat together in the studio, our easels before us. Sam wore his glasses to see far away but took them off when he painted. He looked older without his glasses. He liked to paint outdoor scenes, and he brought in photographs to help him remember.

  When we did collages I painted the word traitor across a canvas in big black letters. Over that I glued all of Mike’s drawings that I had saved. Then I splashed red and black paint over everything until there wasn’t any more white space. You could see only parts of Mike’s drawings, and parts of the letters. I got a B-, but the teacher complimented me on my layering.

  When we did sculpture I made a plain-looking suburban house that was about half a foot tall. While it was still wet I broke a highball glass that I bought at the Salvation Army over the roof. The top of the glass shattered, and I spread the pieces of glass around until they jutted out all over the house. I left the bottom of the glass intact, embedded in the roof. Everyone in class thought I was trying to say something about glass houses. I didn’t tell them it was about my dad.

  I spent the most time on my painting of Brendan Davis’s face. I painted him even uglier than he already was. I exaggerated his heavy eyelids, made them so droopy he looked inhuman. I put dark circles under his eyes and gave him a thin, cruel mouth. I painted his nose stubby and wide, like a boxer’s. By the time I got to his straggly, matted hair, I realized I was having trouble remembering what he actually looked like.

  “Who the hell is that?” Sam asked when he saw it.

&nb
sp; “Nobody,” I said. “I’m not a good enough painter to do anyone real.”

  “You got that face out of your mind? Scary.”

  On the phone I told Mom and William that I was thinking of majoring in art and minoring in math.

  “You’d be better off reversing that,” William said.

  “Let her do what she wants,” Mom said.

  I wrote Theresa a letter about the rape because everyone else in Reston knew. I wrote about how stupid and embarrassed and angry I felt. She wrote me back a long letter about the oppressive origins of rape, how it was a violent act and not a sexual one. She wrote that she understood why I hadn’t called the police, but that I needed to take control of what had happened to me in my own way, or at least go see a therapist. After I read her letter I was sorry I’d told her.

  Julie was the only one I told at school. We were drunk, on our way home from a party. I thought maybe she wouldn’t remember it, but the next day she told me it had happened to her, too, in high school. She’d lost her virginity that way.

  “Don’t you just hate all boys?” she asked. And then, “It’ll pass.”

  I did hate all boys, except for Sam and Andrew.

  “The thing you have to remember is that one day you’ll be fine, just like I am,” Julie said. I was glad to hear it. I felt different now. More serious.

  I saw Ian in the math building. He didn’t want to be friends, but he stopped whenever he saw me and asked how I was. I told him I was fine, everything was the same, nothing to tell, and did he have a cigarette. I expected him to sense that something had happened, maybe ask if I really was okay or tell me I seemed different, but he didn’t. Nobody did.

  The weather got warm and then warmer—the temperature went into the eighties for three days straight before returning to a normal spring. We spread bedsheets out on the grass in front of our dorms and lounged in our bathing suits. Summer was almost here. I didn’t want to go back to Reston, but I had nowhere else to go.

  I was home only a week when Mom nagged me to apply for a job at The Disney Store. She got the idea because a girl in our neighborhood, Missy Marshall, applied there and put Mom down as a reference. Missy was three years younger than me, and spent most of her free time parading around our street with her friends, giggling at the skaters’ wipeouts and feigning an interest in their ollies and rail slides. Mom was friendly with the Marshalls from neighborhood cleanup days and garage sales. When the manager of The Disney Store called, Mom gave Missy a stellar reference, told him about me, and set up an interview.

  “Don’t forget to tell them about your theater experience,” Mom said as I left for my interview. She was referring to the two summers I had spent at a drama day camp when I was eleven and twelve.

  The manager of The Disney Store was named Jeffrey. He was an effeminate, balding gay man who I guessed was about ten years older than me. He interviewed me in front of the store, on a bench surrounded by a forest of fake potted plants. One of the mall’s many fountains roared behind us. Jeffrey scribbled things on a clipboard while I sat up straight, pointed my head toward his, and pasted a smile across my face. I didn’t mention drama camp. Instead I talked about my years of babysitting and my uncanny ability to communicate with kids.

  Jeffrey pushed a wisp of blond hair back from his forehead and drew his face into an expression that let me know we’d come to the most important part of the interview. “When you think of the Disney characters, the films, the songs, the multimedia experience of Disney, how do you feel?” he asked.

  I pretended that Jeffrey had asked me my feelings on winning the lottery, and broke into a wide grin. “Who doesn’t love Disney?” I said.

  Jeffrey flashed me a quick smile and scribbled something on his clipboard. The next morning he called to tell me that I was hired.

  I told myself it wouldn’t be that bad. It was only for the summer, and it paid a dollar an hour more than most of the other mall jobs. And Missy Marshall had taken a job at The Limited, so at least I wouldn’t be expected to forge a friendship with her.

  Before I could actually begin working, I had to go through Disney’s orientation. This is where I was given my uniform (costume was the official word Jeffrey insisted we use). The Disney costume consisted of white Keds, white bobby socks, flesh-colored panty hose, a gray polyester skirt, a pink oxford shirt, and an oversized turquoise button-up sweater adorned with a bright pink M, for Mickey.

  No jewelry was permitted, but I was allowed—even encouraged—to wear Mickey Mouse earrings. The earrings were miniature flat gold studs in the shape of Mickey’s head. I told Jeffrey I was allergic to gold.

  Then there were the ears. We all had to wear them, even in the bathroom. I hated the ears most of all.

  Mom and William decided that since I’d be required to work some evenings I needed my own car. They surprised me with it at the end of Disney orientation. It was a 1983 maroon Subaru stick shift with no power steering and more than 100,000 miles on it that William had taken off the hands of one of his coworkers for next to nothing.

  “William won’t say it, but he’s proud of you,” Mom said when he drove up in it.

  I gave Mom a hard look. “You didn’t tell him, did you?” I asked. We hadn’t talked about Brendan since it happened.

  Mom put an arm around me. “I wouldn’t do that,” she said. And then, “Look how much better you did this semester. Can’t he be proud?”

  My new car stank of air freshener and the tape deck didn’t work, but I loved it. I had wanted a car for as long as I could remember. The scratchy costume, the infernal forty-five-minute Disney medley that piped into the store on a loop, the screaming children and demanding parents—my car made it all worth it.

  Sometimes, especially when I was alone in the car, I would imagine Brendan Davis crossing the street in front of me. There was one intersection I saved for him in particular, a four-way stop close to my house where there was rarely any traffic. I’d slam my foot on the gas and picture Brendan Davis crumpling under my tires. I’d imagine the bump his body would make under the Subaru’s frame, picture his lifeless form in my rearview mirror.

  There were two reasons why I didn’t have to worry about running into Brendan Davis. The first reason was that Brendan had taken off to follow the Grateful Dead. The second reason was even better than the first. I had Todd Wilson.

  “That’s not very punk rock,” Todd said when I told him where I was working. We were sitting together on his single mattress, chain-smoking and drinking Milwaukee’s Best.

  “Yeah, well, not all of us are punk rock enough to get a job at Circuit City,” I said, a blush rising on my cheeks. Todd was probably used to dating strippers sand cocktail waitresses, not Disney cast members. And at least Circuit City wasn’t in the mall.

  “What do you know about being punk rock?” Todd asked. “Did you take a class on it at school?” He said school like I should be more embarrassed about going to college than working at The Disney Store. Like college was a secret he knew about me.

  “Yeah, the class is called Hanging Out with Loser Rock Assholes,” I said. “I’m doing the summer seminar part right now.” “You think you can impress me with a big vocabulary? Is that it?”

  “What’d I say?”

  Instead of answering me, Todd pulled a new beer out of the case he was using to prop up his feet. He opened the beer, then pulled another one out and handed it to me. Besides the mattress we were sitting on, Todd’s room was unfurnished, unless you counted the boom box that sat on top of an amplifier in the corner. The guitar that went with the amplifier was strangely absent. The rest of Todd’s room was strewn with empty beer cans and cigarette packs, dirty clothes, tapes, and old copies of Playboy and Hustler. The magazines were right there on the floor, like he didn’t care who saw them.

  I took a drink of my beer. “This is the worst job I’ve ever had,” I said. “The costume is unbelievable.”

  I leaned my head against the wall and shut my eyes. I was drunk. Todd lifted
my T-shirt up and felt for the clasp of my bra. There was no shade on his window, and I was grateful that his mattress was too low to be seen from outside. Todd wasn’t one for foreplay, unless you counted the frantic way he tore our clothes off. I didn’t mind. He still made my stomach drop when he so much as looked at me. That was all that mattered.

  Things started up between Todd and me a couple of days after I got home from school. I was at a party in a newly built section of Reston. Reston had a way of staying unfamiliar. You could make a wrong turn a mile from your own home and get hopelessly lost in the web of a new neighborhood that wasn’t there the last time you drove by. It wasn’t uncommon to spot a homeless deer bounding across someone’s front yard, searching for the vanishing woods.

  Todd came up next to Carrie and Theresa and me while Carrie was telling us about prom. Lyle had worn a purple tuxedo shirt and gelled up his hair for the occasion, and Carrie’s mother still hadn’t gotten over it. Instead of joining the conversation Todd leaned against the wall and stared at us as we talked. When Todd finally opened his mouth it was only to ask for a cigarette. He caught my eye for a second when I offered him my pack, and I didn’t look away.

  An hour later he came up behind me and put his arms around my waist as I climbed the stairs to the bathroom.

  “Is there somewhere we can go?” I could feel his breath on my neck.

  I leaned into him, and he rubbed his hand back and forth across my stomach. I arched my back so that the top of my head pressed into his chest. Todd Wilson’s hand on my stomach was the most exhilarating thing I could remember happening to me in a long time.

  We found a bedroom that obviously belonged to the younger sister of the guy who was having the party. The walls were painted pink, and there was a queen-size canopy bed in the center of the room. A bulletin board was covered with horseback riding ribbons. Todd pulled a beat-up-looking switchblade out of his jeans and tossed it aside before pressing me against the pink carpet, which was littered with stuffed animals.