Since You Ask

by Louise Wareham

  ‘Where’d you get this?’

  ‘From school.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do with it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Carry it in my wallet?’

  I took it back from him. ‘You don’t have to be mean.’

  For spring break, my family went to Bermuda. Our hotel was dark pink, the lawns green. Hibiscus trees flowered by the walls. Henry’s mother sang there sometimes; her photograph was in the lobby. Dad didn’t like resorts. He’d rather sail, he said, and the people were boring. I didn’t see that the people at the Princess were so different from the people at Dad’s club, but he did.

  My mother didn’t go out in the bright day sun, but came down to the beach in the late afternoons. She wore a straw hat and sunglasses and put her hair in a braid. She sat on a towel and watched Eric and me swim. Sometimes she swam also, and then it was for a long time, a long way out, her limbs pale under her bathing suit and the dark sea surface.

  Eric was reading Respect for Acting, and I had brought The Moviegoer, which was Eric’s favorite book. I got the darkest tan possible in six days, partly because I tan easily and partly because I thought Frank would like that. At night, we had piña coladas at a table looking over the sea. The air smelled of red bottle trees and dark patches moved on the water. In the sky, red light bled into violet and the sun was orange.

  ‘It’s quiet without Raymond,’ my father said.

  ‘It is,’ my mother said.

  Eric laughed, tipping back his chair. His hair looked bleached from the sun. I had no idea what he thought.

  ‘A toast to Raymond,’ my father said and we all moved forward, holding up our glasses.

  Later, Eric and I read in our room. When I put down my book, he asked if I was finished and I said yes. With the lights out, I could see the black night outside and Eric’s shiny head on his pillow.

  Our last night in Bermuda, my mother came into the bathroom. I was in the bathtub. The door was closed but not locked. ‘Betsy.’ She was in her nightgown, long and sheer.

  ‘Yes.’ I was using lavender bath salts, The Moviegoer on the bathmat.

  ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She rested against the sink counter. Her hair was down.

  I covered my chest with bath bubbles.

  ‘Nothing’s going on, nothing you want to talk about?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Nothing with Beck?’

  ‘No.’

  She rubbed one foot against the other, her toenail polish pale pink.

  ‘Of course, you’re allowed to have your private life. It’s just I don’t want you to feel you can’t talk to me, or to your father.’

  I turned on the hot tap. I didn’t know what to say so finally I said, ‘Okay,’ in this neutral voice because I didn’t know what she wanted. She lifted an eyebrow brush from the counter, playing with the bristles.

  ‘I was married at nineteen, you know. That’s not so much older than you are now.’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘You’re looking older, suddenly.’

  ‘Am I?’

  The mirror behind her was cloudy with steam. She looked at it and then back.

  ‘Yes, I think you are. Not that it’s bad. I just, you know, miss the little girl, too.’

  ‘Of course she’s right,’ Frank said, lying on his ivory sheets with crimson flowers, his wall of window white with a sky full of snow. ‘You are older.’

  ‘But how can she tell?’

  ‘She can tell the way I could tell that you had something going on.’

  ‘You mean with Beck?’

  ‘No. I mean something else.’

  He got up from the bed. I saw him in the bathroom mirror, looking at his head left to right, checking himself.

  ‘Do you want to know my secret?’ I asked.

  ‘Not really.’ He ran his hand over his jaw.

  ‘No?’

  He lathered his face.

  ‘Okay, a little bit.’

  He was so uninterested. I opened the drawer beside the bed. There was a blank note card inside, ‘66 Leonard’ engraved in blue on the bottom.

  ‘You have nothing good to look at.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘No letters, no photographs.’

  ‘I threw it all out. When my daughter died.’

  ‘Where did your wife go?’

  ‘My ex-wife.’

  ‘Your ex-wife.’

  ‘That’s not my business anymore. That’s why they call it cc ex.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  He snapped the drawer shut. ‘Anyway, don’t snoop.’ He tugged at the sheet. ‘Get up. Take a shower.’

  Sylvia came around the corner with me, her blond hair like a waterfall down her back. She was wearing black pants and high-heeled boots and a white long-sleeved T-shirt.

  Frank had his hand on the gearshift. ‘Darling,’ he enthused. ‘Get in. We’ll take you home.’

  She was meeting Henry.

  ‘Is that your boyfriend?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We should go to dinner, the four of us. What’s your favorite restaurant?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Sylvia shrugged.

  ‘Lutece? Raoul’s?’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘We’ll decide. I’ll have Betsy tell you.’ ‘All right.’

  She waved to me. Frank watched her walk down Park Avenue. ‘Nice look,’ he said.

  ‘He’s old,’ Sylvia told me.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Someone should tell your parents.’

  ‘You wouldn’t.’

  ‘No, but he’s weird. He’s like from this whole other world. So is Beck. No one knows what you’re doing.’

  ‘I’m not doing anything.’

  ‘You’re never around.’

  I was glad not to be around. I didn’t like Houghton. I didn’t like the girls with their fancy clothes and the boys who made jokes about blowjobs. I didn’t like Houghton parties, twenty of us in an apartment uptown, girls locking themselves in the bathroom, seniors getting drunk with their hair falling into their eyes.

  ‘What did you mean that I was pure?’ I asked Frank. He was squatting with his thin knees against the tub, the hair on his legs black and wet. He swirled the razor in the water.

  ‘It’s just a quality.’

  ‘But I’m not, really.’

  He was shaving the hair between my legs, carefully infinitely slowly.

  ‘Maybe not. But you seem it.’

  He pressed a warm washcloth to me, then soaked it in the tub. ‘Some people will value it. Other people will want to fuck it up.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  The water was white with soap.

  ‘Tell me,’ I said.

  ‘What do you think?’

  I thought it was both. I thought he both cared and didn’t care, for reasons I would never know.

  ‘I value you,’ he finally said.

  Cherry blossoms bloomed white in the park. Leaves came in on the maples and the oaks. We went to Raoul’s on Prince Street, Henry in a blue button down, Sylvia in a tight black halter and pants, like her mother would have worn. Our waiter was Japanese, young with dyed yellow hair. ‘Sir,’ he kept saying, the way Beck did.

  Henry dipped bread into a pool of olive oil. ‘What business are you in?’ he asked Frank.

  I was in the crimson dress Frank had given me. He had bought me high heels to match, taking me to a store in Soho, having the salesman give him the shoes and then slipping them on me himself.

  ‘Freight,’ Frank said, resting his arm behind me on the leather banquette. At the bar, two women were drinking Cosmopolitans. The red was the color of rock candy with sun shining through it. ‘Air freight.’ He smiled at me the way a teacher might, when you had said something right.

  A group of young men stood at the bar. They were drinking beer, all of them in suits, their shirts the color of grape or dark blu
e. They were like boys at Houghton, I thought, loud and laughing as if no one else were around. ‘Bankers,’ Frank said, seeing me looking at them. Their lips were smooth as if from lip balm.

  ‘Where do you work, Frank?’ Henry asked.

  ‘Kennedy, Newark, LaGuardia.’ A woman was walking up the spiral staircase. Her stiletto heels were red.

  Frank poured us wine.

  ‘Well,’ Frank said. ‘It’s really good to meet Betsy’s friends. Order whatever you want.’ Sylvia glanced at me. ‘Price is no object.’ She started to laugh so I shook my head at her not to.

  ‘Thanks, Frank,’ I said.

  ‘Though I would recommend the steak frites.’

  We had steak frites.

  ‘So, what do you do for fun?’ Frank asked Henry, long fingers cupping his glass.

  Henry sat up straight, his wrists against the table. ‘Go to parties. Movies. Study.’

  ‘What do you study?’

  ‘I’m in high school.’

  Frank moved his hand across my plate and took one of my fries.

  ‘So, what do you study?’

  ‘Math, English.’

  ‘What level math?’

  ‘Calculus.’

  Frank nodded. ‘That’s good. Good for business. I was great at math, and physics. I ran my own business when I was in high school.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ I said.

  ‘Sure. All three boroughs.’

  ‘Precocious,’ Sylvia said.

  ‘I pulled in $1,000 a week. Not bad for seventeen.’

  ‘What were you doing?’ Henry asked.

  Frank laughed. ‘Kid stuff.’

  After the steak, we had salad. Frank speared lettuce on his fork. ‘Let me guess what your father does,’ he said to Henry.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘He’s not a dentist.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Doctor, lawyer, banker.’

  ‘My parents are bankers,’ Sylvia told us.

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘Investment.’

  ‘Very lucrative.’

  ‘If you’re good at it.’

  ‘I assume they’re good.’

  Sylvia smiled.

  ‘But back to Henry here.’

  ‘He’s a journalist,’ Henry said.

  ‘Newspaper?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which one?’

  Henry motioned to the waiter that he was finished. ‘Different ones,’ he shrugged, holding up his hands. It was embarrassing to him that his father owned newspapers. He owned one in New York and one in London and a few smaller papers in Los Angeles and Singapore and Japan.

  He flicked his hair from his eye. As usual, it was just a little too long. ‘What are you interested in, Frank—besides work?’

  ‘Well, I quite like Betsy here.’

  ‘We know that,’ Sylvia said. ‘What about me?’

  ‘What about you?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t see why the guys are talking about what they and their fathers do. What about us?’

  ‘You’re right,’ Frank said. ‘We will talk about you. Dessert, first?’

  Sylvia took a dessert menu. ‘Crème brûlée,’ she decided, so Frank ordered four. ‘I would like to teach.’

  ‘Teach what?’

  ‘English. Poetry. I like Plath.’

  ‘Everyone likes Plath in high school,’ Henry said. ‘Do you want to be a cliché?’

  ‘I don’t like her,’ I said.

  ‘You do so.’

  ‘I like some things, maybe.’

  ‘You like that poem “Tulips.”’

  ‘I do like that.’

  ‘The hospital poem,’ Sylvia said. ‘She didn’t want flowers. She wanted to lie in bed and be empty.’

  ’Anyway,’ Henry said, ‘people act like she’s the only poet in the world. It’s ridiculous.’

  ‘The point is, you want to teach,’ Frank said to Sylvia.

  ‘I think I’d be good.’

  ‘Passion. That’s the most important thing for a teacher, and you have that.’

  Henry rolled his eyes at me, but I had to ignore him; Frank noticed everything. He hailed a cab for Henry and Sylvia and tried to give Henry some money but Henry wouldn’t take it. ‘Bye, Frank,’ Sylvia called.

  ‘She’s sweet,’ Frank said.

  ‘I don’t know about sweet.’

  ‘He’s got a problem, though.’

  ‘What kind of problem?’

  ‘I don’t know. Insecurity probably.’

  I would have laughed. It was Frank who seemed insecure, bragging about how great he was in school. But I didn’t laugh. You should never laugh at people, my mother said, especially not at men.

  Inside the apartment, Frank pushed me the way you push a swinging door, his hand flat on my chest. I didn’t have to fall. I could have righted myself. Falling was easiest, though, a slow deliberate giving way a lying down. The pear wood floor was smooth. My hair was smooth on my back.

  He wasn’t rough this time, so much as cold. He was so cold, I thought I could die of it. That death itself had entered me, impersonal and final.

  When he had finished, he staggered up and back from me, with his bare knees and black trouser socks. He pulled up his pants, his shirttail hanging out. Light fell on the low clouds so they looked like pools.

  I took a throw from the couch and wrapped it around me. I heard the rustle of his clothes as he walked, the click of his belt when he hung it in his closet.

  I heard the shower as he rinsed himself off. Then he stepped out, knotting a towel around his waist, opening the vanity cabinet.

  He washed his face with yellow soap, took out his pink tincture for his pale skin. He looked at himself as he flossed, at the lines around his eyes, the stain of wine on his tongue. He dropped the coil into the toilet where it spun in a wide circle.

  ‘Frank?’ I called.

  His light went out. The duvet rustled, his legs lean with the muscles of a runner pushing down underneath his covers. Then there was nothing: hum of the refrigerator, idle cars in the street, the elevator going down, gears shifting. He wasn’t coming back to me; I wasn’t going to him, either. My voice was a bird in the hallway desire an emptiness.

  Later, it was still dark, I heard his bare feet, the bubbling of water from the water tank, the filling of a paper cone cup. He stood and drank, crumpling the cup and its waxy rim, dropping it to the wastebasket.

  Then he came toward me, naked. I closed my eyes before he reached me.

  I smelled his fresh skin and lemon soap. Then the blanket moved. The air moved—like water on my nakedness.

  His fingers on my legs were warm. His tongue was like a rivulet: a cool, infinitely gentle, painstaking thing.

  When I came, he went for a washcloth, white and heavy and hot with water. He pressed it to me, his fingers cupping me, thumb grazing my pubic hair.

  ‘Did you like that?’ he asked.

  I knew better than to turn my face from him.

  ‘Did you?’ he pressed.

  ‘Yes.’

  He pulled me up, the throw falling soundless to the floor.

  ‘Shall I carry you?’

  I started walking. The floor was cold.

  I tried to accept the hurt, to open up and not resist. That would make it easier, I thought. That would make it finish fast.

  He didn’t want to finish, though, his hands on the headboard.

  He went on and on, moving so hard I cried. I cried and I bled.

  ‘Frank,’ I said, and it was hot between my legs.

  But he wanted it to hurt. That’s what I realized. Finally when he came, he pushed my head into the pillow, sideways, holding it there, the bones of his palm against my temple.

  When he released me, I sat up, trying to inhale. I pulled the sheet around me and once I could breathe I started sobbing, and once I started I couldn’t stop. I sobbed without restraint so he grabbed my wrist, the sheet falling and exposing my breasts.

  Stop it, he sa
id. Stop it Stop it. I wouldn’t, though. I wouldn’t and I wouldn’t. My body ached from him. His mouth was sour at the corners. Christ, he said and he hated me. I saw hatred in him and then he slapped me, suddenly—slapped me so it felt as a branch does against your face when you are walking—so I froze for a second, I went completely quiet, and he got up.

  He was gone a long time. His sheets were bloody. I didn’t touch them or get up. I didn’t move right or left. Finally he sat beside me. He undid my fists. He curled out my fingers.

  Outside, the sky was still dark. He gave me pills and a paper cone of cold water and he ran a bath. He lifted me into it, bath salts sharp on the bottom. He passed me a bar of wet soap and my hand shook so I dropped it on the marble floor and he said, ‘Jesus Christ, Betsy,’ and I started crying again, and he said, ‘For fuck’s sake,’ sitting by the tub in his blue bathrobe and bare feet.

  Eventually he got up. I heard him strip the bed, I heard the washing machine. He lay down new sheets. ‘Come on,’ he said, helping me out of the bath, patting me down with one of his great, white towels.

  He gave me a T-shirt and put me beside him in his bed and he didn’t touch me again. He lay on his back, his chest moving slowly up and down, hands on his ribs.

  It was noon when I woke. The lace panels were half open. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, still lying beside me on the bed, now dressed in his black pants, white T-shirt, and white shirt.

  I nodded.

  ‘You lost control,’ Frank told me, his voice flat and quiet. Between the drapes, the sky was weak. Sun streaked the windows, which had dirt on them.

  ‘Maybe I’m not good for you,’ he went on.

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I hurt you last night.’

  ‘You know what my brother said once?’

  He didn’t answer. His hands were on his chest again.

  He said, ‘I don’t want to hurt you because if I hurt you, you’ll bleed and they’ll want to know why.’

  Frank rolled his head to look at me. ‘You need to eat,’ he said.

  When the delivery came, Frank set it on the coffee table by the couches: scrambled eggs and bacon and home fries, pancakes, coffee, and orange juice.

  He made up a plate for me. He ate the bacon.

  ‘It’s two o’clock,’ he said, putting on his polished shoes. ‘I should get you home.’