Since You Ask

by Louise Wareham

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t talk about your brother.’

  I left her at her building and walked east. I didn’t like people coming over when Ray was there. I stood on Lexington and 79th Street, waiting for the light to change. That’s when I saw someone looking at me. He had close, almost shaved hair and his arms were crossed over a white T-shirt. He had big muscles, as if from weight-lifting.

  ‘Hey,’ he said.

  He was leaning against a car, and he didn’t look like the kind of boy who would speak to me. He was too good-looking and he was Raymond’s age and he didn’t look like he went to school or even worked anywhere.

  ‘I’m Beck,’ he said, pushing off the car, walking over to me. ‘Beck Thomas Delaney.’

  The light changed.

  I smiled at him the way you might smile at someone on a bus. I started walking and he walked beside me, moving around parking meters and people and traffic signs to stay in step with me.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Betsy.’

  Even then, he looked like someone in the Marines; his face was all hard bones: strong jaw, strong forehead. He had freckles on his cheekbones.

  ‘I’ve seen you,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen you before.’

  He didn’t even have a jacket.

  ‘You have a friend, don’t you? With blond hair.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He wanted to meet her. Lots of guys wanted to meet Sylvia.

  ‘I wanted to talk to you, but you were always with her.’

  I glanced sideways at him.

  ‘You’re not from here, right?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘See, I knew it. I told this friend of mine, I just bet you were from somewhere else.’

  He was so excited. I started to laugh.

  ‘You’re from the country right?’

  ‘Antigua.’

  ‘Antigua, shit. Don’t mind my ignorance.’

  Most people didn’t know where Antigua was. Most just pretended. ‘It’s this little island,’ I explained, ‘in the Caribbean.’

  ‘British, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wow. Shit. I’m glad I talked to you, Betsy. I really am.’ He seemed nice. He was polite.

  On my block, we stopped outside Eat Here Now. Inside, an old woman in a blue raincoat was eating rice pudding with a long silver spoon.

  ‘You want some?’ Beck asked. ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘I’ll buy you some.’ No, really.’

  ‘You’re going to leave me now? We just met and you’re going to leave?’ He had an accent, the kind of New York accent I only heard on TV.

  ‘I live here.’

  ‘Right here? Or down the street?’

  ‘Down the street.’

  ‘Where do you go to school?’

  I shouldn’t tell him. I shouldn’t have even spoken to him, a stranger on the street.

  He took hold of my shirtsleeve with his finger and his thumb. He held onto the white edge of it.

  ‘Houghton,’ I said.

  ‘Houghton?’

  ‘You know it?’

  ‘Sure.’

  At midnight, the light from the streetlamp made a line across my room. I heard a siren on Lexington. I heard a car outside idling. I heard Ray’s door and then the bathroom door and then tap water running in the sink. I don’t like spiders and snakes, Ray was humming, using his special acne soap, but that ain’t what it takes to love me.

  The next day, Beck was at school, leaning against a car again, his arms folded on his white T-shirt. ‘Betsy,’ he said. ‘What’re you doing?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  He pushed up off the car. He came and stood close to me, closer than he had in the street. ‘I was up all night,’ he said, so quiet no one else could hear him. All night, thinking about you.’

  I laughed. ‘You were not.’

  Sylvia came out, raising her eyebrows at me. ‘You ready?’ she asked. Henry was with her, lagging behind.

  Beck nodded his head, motioning for me to step to the curb with him. ‘You going somewhere with her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He smelled warm. He smelled of mints. “Cause you can just tell me if I’m bothering you.’

  ‘You’re not.’

  ‘I mean, you know—‘ he looked down 91st Street ‘—you’re like this beautiful thing.’

  I was not beautiful. I was beautiful enough, my mother said.

  ‘You know where PS 6 is, on 81st Street? I’m there, every day after four. You can find me there.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Henry winked at me. His hair was soft and fine like a child’s. His black cashmere scarf was starting to pill. We watched as Beck turned and waved to me, heading down to Lexington.

  ‘Who was that?’ Henry asked.

  ‘Beck.’

  ‘Beck? Like the singer Beck?’

  Sylvia rolled her eyes. They were the color of caramel.

  ‘Where does he go to school?’ Henry asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I just met him.’

  ‘Henry—‘ Sylvia said, pushing him with one hand on the chest, kissing him at the same time on the mouth. ‘Bye.’

  ‘Wow,’ she said as we walked down Lexington.

  ‘He’s got attitude, hasn’t he? Like, this don’t-mess-with-me thing.’

  ‘Beck?’

  ‘Where’d you meet him?’

  ‘On the street.’

  ‘The street? Jeeze, Betsy.’

  ‘I know. He just started talking to me. Then he walked me home. He was nice.’

  ‘He doesn’t go to private school.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘You can tell. I mean, his hair. Those sneakers. The way he stands.’ She shrugged.

  ‘Not that that’s bad.’

  Sylvia and her parents lived on 79th and Fifth. They had a penthouse, white marble with a white foyer and white living room and hallway. The carpet had vacuum lines on it.

  ‘Hello, Mother,’ Sylvia said, in the kitchen.

  She was in a white nightdress and robe, drinking tea. Her hair was short and blond and spiky.

  ‘Hello, darling. Did you have a good day?’

  ‘It was okay.’

  ‘Betsy?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘There are grapes,’ she said.

  ‘And strawberries.’

  ‘Thank you. Thank you, eely tentacle. Are you going out tonight?’

  ‘Not till ten.’

  Sylvia’s mother shuffled off in her white spongy slippers.

  Sylvia’s room was like a hotel suite: It had its own hallway with a door that locked. It had a double bed, a brown velvet couch, and matching chairs. She lay on her couch with her riding boots on. ‘Pass me a Coke.’

  I took one from her mini-fridge. ‘I can’t believe you called your mother an eely tentacle.’

  Sylvia shrugged. She had been named after Sylvia Plath. ‘Medusa,’ she told me, ‘Ariel. She’s heard it before.’

  ‘Where are they going after ten o’clock?’ I asked.

  ‘Regine’s, probably, dancing with the orthodontist.’

  ‘What orthodontist?’

  ‘My old one. He goes there, too.’

  ‘Do you ever go with them?’

  ‘No.’

  We went out with our parents, Eric and Ray and I. We went to plays, mostly, and the movies.

  From the couch, Sylvia’s hair fell to the floor, just brushing the dark brown carpet.

  ‘I have something for you.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  I raised my eyebrows.

  ‘By my bed.’

  Her brother Sean was in boarding school and sometimes sent her cocaine. It came in envelopes made from the pages of magazines. I found one at the back of Sylvia’s nightstand. Sylvia tapped it out on her coffee table, cutting it extra fine with a razor blade. We drank Cokes and listened to Neil Young.

  ‘How’s Henry?’ I asked.

&n
bsp; ‘A bore.’

  ‘No—‘ I said, ‘not really?’

  ‘We have sex all the time. It’s not healthy.’

  Once, before Raymond left, I went into his room. It was large and dark and on the garden. Green leaves stuck to the bottom of the windowpanes. The carpet was rough and blue and worn shiny in patches. On the floor, a pile of CDs had gathered dust, old ones that belonged to my parents: Simon & Garfunkel and Jose

  Feliciano. Above the desk was a photograph of Raymond and Eric smoking cigars at L’Hotel Oiseau in Paris. There was a picture of some kids from his school—I didn’t know which because he had been to a few, but the girls had long hair and down jackets and peasant skirts, so maybe it was the Berkshires.

  In his desk was an empty packet of Rothmans cigarettes, postcards from Key West and Paris and Los Angeles.

  Dear Raymond

  Dear Raymond

  Dear Raymond

  BACCI, one girl wrote at the end of every card, instead of a name.

  There was a packet of pictures from Antigua. I wasn’t in any of them.

  The next day, the day after Beck came to school, Ray left for Antigua. My parents made Eric and me stay home. Ray wasn’t allowed out, so he and Eric played billiards in the basement. I kept to my room, mostly, rearranging pictures and postcards on my wall.

  For lunch, we ordered in burgers and fries from Eat Here Now. We didn’t sit together, because Ray was busy getting packed. Afterwards, Dad went into Ray’s room and shut the door. I was trying to read The Basketball Diaries, only I could never concentrate when Dad went into Ray’s room. Sometimes they fought and I didn’t like to hear it. Or maybe I did. Finally, Dad went out and downstairs and I realized that Ray would be coming out soon, with all his things, so I went down ahead of him. We had said goodbye to Raymond about five times now. Maybe it was normal, but I had noticed that every time someone was going away, everyone else became especially nice. We all stood around the cab, piling Ray’s suitcases in, and at first Dad was his usual self, slightly sarcastic, slamming down the lid to the trunk and saying, ‘It’s your life.’ Ray was wearing a red and white checked shirt my mother had given him once. He had showered and shaved and it was a super bright clear day, all the streets washed clean and the sky fresh like a wet painting. Dad shook Ray’s hand and then put his arm around him, whispering something, and Ray nodded, his eyes on the pavement.

  ‘Say goodbye to Ray,’ Dad said, so Eric and I shook his hand. Then my mother hugged him. Finally, when he got in the cab, in his checked shirt to try to please my mother, in his black jeans and boots, it was as if, just for a moment, we actually were sad that he was leaving, so Ray rolled down his window, leaning out to prolong the departure.

  ‘Well, there it is,’ Dad said, memorializing in advance, as the cab rounded the corner. My mother hardly ever cried, but when she did her eyes went almost lavender-colored and no one could talk to her. She went up the stairs, to her room, probably, Dad still looking out toward the cab even after it turned the corner. Finally he asked, ‘What are you up to, Eric?’

  Eric was twelve then and into everything: chess, soccer, math. ‘Practice,’ he said.

  ‘Betsy?’

  ‘I guess I’ll go to Sylvia’s.’

  Dad was going to his club, which was on the way to Sylvia’s, so I walked him up Park Avenue. A breeze was tossing around dry leaves in the gutters and neither of us spoke. His club was on 68th Street, and he played squash there, and backgammon. We went for dinner sometimes, in a dining room with crimson coxcomb and portraits of the founders on the wall. One night my father had taken me down to the games room in the basement. The floor was white and black in great stone slabs, the sofas and chairs lacquered red. Two men were playing cards at a table, their jackets undone so you could see their cumberbunds.

  ‘No women,’ one of them said, jumping up when he saw me. He had a cigar in one hand. His eyes were bright gritty black, like stones at the bottom of a river.

  My father laughed. ‘Oh, so sorry,’ he said, in this mocking way he had. He pulled me back to him, covering my eyes with his hand, the way he did at the movies, during sex scenes.

  ***

  I thought of going to Sylvia’s. I really did. I walked up Madison Avenue and the sky was blue as a baptism and Raymond was gone, I thought. Raymond was gone and would not come back. Happiness spread out in me like warm weather. I stood at the telephone outside Sylvia’s. I lifted the receiver and put it down. I walked uptown to 81st Street, and turned left. By then, the sun had gone. I stood on the sidewalk in my corduroys and white shirt and boots, doing up the zipper on my jacket. The schoolyard was fresh with tar, the basketball court lit with streetlamps so the white painted lines gleamed. The sidewalk shone with flecks of glass, and Beck was running backwards down the court, in his green fatigues and T-shirt. He was like this great force, so confident and strong. He moved the whole time, never stopping, never showing anything on his face. Then when he saw me, he stopped in his tracks. I saw myself enter him, saw the moment his brain recognized me, and it was amazing, because his whole face, which had been expressionless until then, just started to shine, his smile like this beautiful thing—which is what he’d called me. On the court was Tommy, tall and lanky with dirty blond hair. There was Seth, heavyset, his skin pale and pockmarked on his cheeks. Beck dropped the basketball from his hand, flicking it behind him, so Tommy picked it up, turning it over in his long hands. They all called after him, but Beck didn’t look back. There was just him and me, and when he reached me, he touched my hair. Hey, beautiful,’ he said. ‘What are you doing?’

  My hands made fists in my pockets. I moved them up and down. ‘I came to see you.’

  ‘No shit.’ He wiped his forehead on his sleeve. ‘I didn’t think you would.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I’m flattered, I really am.’

  My hands were sweaty.

  There was a girl on the bench, her hair thin and blond, her legs solid in tight denim jeans.

  ‘Let’s go somewhere,’ Beck said.

  We went to Central Park. The leaves were orange and yellow and red. A breeze turned them over, like cards.

  ‘You been at school?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘My brother went away today.’

  ‘Yeah? Where to?’

  ‘Antigua.’

  Down at the boat pond, the benches shone with new coats of green paint. Two old women in fur hats were eating ice cream. Their mouths were small with pink lipstick.

  ‘Sit here,’ Beck said. ‘No, not there, here.’ I sat on his legs. They were warm from basketball. I put my hand on his shoulder, to balance myself. ‘My mother’s from Iceland.’

  ‘Is she?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s not even icy there. It’s green.’

  ‘Antigua is green—green and also blue.’

  ‘Like your eyes.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your eyes are blue.’

  His eyes were the color of dry grass in summertime.

  He put his arm around my lower back. ‘You like your brother?’

  ‘Not much.’

  He laughed. Patches of light shone on the pond water.

  ‘How many brothers do you have?’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘No sisters?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Two parents?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t have any of that. No brothers. No sisters. No father. Just my mother. She’s a waitress.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ I said.

  He laughed. ‘ That’s nice,’ he repeated, and tightened his grip.

  ‘It’s not so nice.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re like—a girl, you know that?’

  ‘I am a girl.’

  ‘Not the kind I know.’

  ‘What kind do you know?’

  ‘I don’t know. Girls who wear makeup and shit, who are always brushing their hair.’

  ‘I brush my hair.
’

  ‘You have nice hair.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  My hair was my best feature, according to my mother, long and dark and straight.

  ‘The first time I saw you, it was like—‘ he held a hand to his chest, ‘my heart stopped.’

  ‘It did not.’

  ‘It did. I felt it.’

  ‘You did not.’

  ‘Right here.’

  We started laughing then. He was so close to me, his warm skin, his full slightly bruised-looking mouth. I bent backwards, him holding me by the small of my back, my hair almost touching the ground, the red and yellow leaves damp, translucent, pasted to the ground as if with clear liquid glue.

  ‘Beck Thomas Delaney,’ I smiled, sitting up, breeze shifting through the tops of the trees. I slipped off his legs onto the bench.

  ‘Yes.’

  He watched me like I was a kid.

  ‘Where do you go to school?’ I asked.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, man.’ Something light left his face and something else came into it. He took a packet of Marlboros from his jacket and lit one. ‘You shouldn’t ask.’

  ‘Why not?’

  “Cause I don’t go to regular school, Betsy.’ He blew smoke above his head, into the trees. ‘I go—I don’t want to scare you—I go to Correctional School. You know what that is?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ’You do?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ***

  Raymond had been in Correctional School in Antigua. It was in St. John in an old courthouse, whitewashed, two stories high. Around it was a yellow lawn, scrubby with a black iron fence. We went to visit one Sunday, sitting at the picnic benches out back, the ash wooden planks bleached and split from the sun. My mother set out ham sandwiches and pint-sized cartons of chocolate milk. ‘Everyone’s staring,’ she said. She often thought people were staring. Maybe they were.

  ‘Not that I have to,’ Beck said. ‘I mean, I’ve done my time. It’s over. I’m clean. I can walk. But I didn’t, you know. I stayed on ‘cause I want to learn.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He dropped his cigarette. We watched as a puddle soaked it brown. ‘Now you won’t talk to me,’ he said, ‘right?’ His hair looked soft as a cat’s pelt.

  ‘I’ll talk to you.’

  ‘Will you?’

  ‘Sure.’

  He kissed me then. It was like when leaves start rushing in the trees above you. It was like that, only in my chest.