by Ann Packer
“Do you let these guys think you’re twenty-one?”
She laughed and I realized that she’d had a drink or two already, that she was in fact on her way to being drunk. I wondered what was in her purse, a big, slouchy hobo she’d dropped between her feet. A pint of something, probably something cheap and sweet, like peach schnapps, Jamie’s favorite drunk when she was eighteen.
Lynn turned toward me with a giggle. “Carrie, don’t tell, but I sometimes play this little game with them? I let them buy me a couple drinks, then I say I have to get home for my curfew or my parents’ll get mad, and they just, like, freak. ‘Your parents? How old are you?’ I said to this one guy a couple nights ago, ‘I’m sixteen’—just to see what he’d do?—and I swear he had a heart attack. ‘You’re sixteen? I thought you were twenty-two at least. My daughter’s sixteen.’ Guy gave me a twenty not to tell anyone.”
“Lynn!” I stared at her. “Jesus, are you kidding?”
“It’s fun.”
“It’s stupid!”
Her eyes got big. “You’re not going to tell Jamie, are you? She’d tell my mother for sure.”
I couldn’t think of anything Jamie’d be less likely to do, but I didn’t say so. “You have to stop. How long’s it going to take to go from getting money not to do something to getting money to do something?”
“Carrie!” She reached for her purse, then put her hand on the door handle. “I’m sure!” She pushed open the door and extended her legs, gleaming faintly in black nylons. She got out of the car but turned around and leaned into the open door. “Promise you won’t tell her? Please?”
I sighed.
“Please?”
“OK, I promise. But you promise you’ll stop, all right?”
She settled her purse strap on her shoulder and tilted her head at me, her expression earnest all at once. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m a big girl.” She lifted one leg and kicked the car door closed, then took a few steps backward until she was under the entrance light again.
I started the car, thinking for some reason of Jamie—of how, within a couple weeks of the first time Mike and I made love, she found a guy from another high school to screw. “I don’t see what the big deal is,” she said to me afterward. I looked at Lynn, her chubby legs, her overly made-up face. A big girl was right, a big, big girl. And I drove away.
CHAPTER 13
I had the next day off from the library, and when I woke up I decided to sew all day, just sew and sew, music playing loud, no room in my head for questions or thoughts.
I started my coffeemaker and then took what was done of the silk robe from the pillowcase where I’d been keeping it because the usual paper bag seemed too rough. I was about to sit down at the machine when on a whim I slipped the body of the robe on over my T-shirt and boxers. The feel was wonderful, and I turned from side to side so it could sweep against my bare legs, then went into my bedroom for a look in the mirror.
The fabric was extraordinary, so soft and light. And the robe didn’t feel the same as the nightgown, with its alluring second-skin sensation; instead, it was voluminous, an embodiment of plenty—a cloak of everything I wanted from the world. I thought I’d wear the two of them together until they were in pieces again, frayed and softer than ever.
Late in the morning, just as I’d finished attaching the first sleeve, there was a knock at my door, followed by Jamie’s voice from downstairs calling up to see if I was home. I looked around the room. Why I didn’t want Jamie to see what I was making was a question I hadn’t posed to myself, but I knew I didn’t. In a hurry I set the robe down and started for the stairway, where I could already hear her footsteps.
“Woman.” She was about halfway up, and she didn’t stop when she saw me. “I was on my way by, so I figured I’d stop in. If I don’t get my hair cut today I swear I will die.”
“Better get it cut, then.” I leaned against the wall in an effort to suggest that we could have our chat on the landing and then she could be on her way.
She wore a short denim jumper over a ribbed white T-shirt, and her legs gleamed as if she’d just shaved and oiled them. She said, “I’m going to, they’re having a special at that place near Hilldale.” She reached the top step and held out her palm for mine. “Want to come?”
I touched my hair: I hadn’t had it cut since the accident, and the ends were dry and splitting. I shook my head. “I’m broke.” This was only half a lie, since I was feeling pinched from spending so much on the silk.
She gave me an exasperated look. “Come on, put it on your credit card, it won’t kill you.”
I never used my credit card as a way of buying more than I could afford; my mother had warned me again and again about how quickly interest would build, how I’d end up paying double or more for everything I bought.
“You’re such a responsible citizen,” Jamie added, and I flinched: it sounded like an insult, like saying someone was a really good person.
“Sorry,” I said. “I can’t.”
She frowned and crossed her arms over her chest, then let them drop again. “I was going to treat Lynn, but she was still asleep when I called, the little slug.”
I thought of Lynn standing in front of the Alley last night, her big, teased hair. It had been almost one when I’d driven away, probably three or later before she’d gotten home.
Jamie turned a little, and just as I was thinking she might actually leave, she flapped her hand at me once and then stepped past me through the doorway into my apartment. “I have got to pee,” she said, and then she stopped in her tracks.
It was a sight: pieces of silk hanging from chair backs; my table littered with pattern pieces, pin cushions, lengths of ribbon; my sewing machine sitting there with its little lightbulb burning, like a porch light on in the middle of the day.
“What is going on here?” Jamie said.
“I’ve been sewing.”
“So I see, but the question is what.” She advanced toward the table.
“Is this silk?”
“It’s a nightgown.” My voice sounded dead as stone, and I tried again. “It’s kind of a combo nightgown and robe.”
“God, Carrie, and you didn’t even tell me.” She reached for the robe, which I’d left next to the machine.
“Don’t!” I hurried past her to pick it up. “I mean, here, I’ll show it to you.”
She looked at me strangely. “You’re afraid I’ll wreck it,” she said slowly. “In fact, you didn’t want me to see it at all. That’s why you came out to the stairs.”
I looked away from her.
“It’s true?”
I was holding the robe tightly against my chest, and I forced my arms to relax a little. “No,” I said. “It’s just—I didn’t know how they’d turn out.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know about you,” she said, but she seemed to relent a little, and I forced myself to show her what I’d done so far, the finished gown and then the robe. By the time she asked me to try them on I was feeling resigned, and I carried the pieces into my bedroom, took off what I was wearing, and put the gown and then the robe on, quickly pinning the second sleeve into place.
“Totally amazing,” she said from the doorway. “You could go into business and make a ton of money, I’m serious.”
“Right,” I said, although I was flattered.
“You could. How much did the material cost?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“A hundred? One fifty?” Her eyes widened. “Two hundred?” She came over and felt the robe. “Still, I bet you could charge four hundred for the two pieces. Look at yourself, you look like some incredibly glamorous actress in an old movie.”
I turned and looked in the mirror. “Really?”
“Definitely. All you need is a cigarette in an ivory holder.”
I held out one leg.
“Well, and the flip-flops have to go. But with those sort of high-heeled backless slippers with fur trim—what are they called?�
��
“Mules?”
“Mules, exactly. It’s so romantic, don’t you think?”
“I guess.”
“Honeymoon City.”
“Ironically enough.”
Her eyes met mine in the mirror, and we looked at each other for a long moment. “Well, you never know,” she said.
“I do kind of know is the thing.”
She turned from the mirror and stared at me. I was shaky with the shock of having said it, and for a while I just stood there, my face hot, my heart thudding. Then I turned around, slipped the robe off, pulled the gown over my head, and got back into my T-shirt and boxers.
“You’re breaking up with him?”
I folded the gown into neat thirds, then made a single vertical fold in the robe and laid it carefully on my bed. I didn’t want to see the horror on her face again, but finally there was nothing else to do, and I reluctantly turned and looked.
She was staring hard, her mouth open. “Oh, my God,” she said. “My God, my God. Do you want to talk about it?”
I shook my head.
She crossed the room and stood at the window. All you could see from there was the ramshackle old garage I shared with my downstairs neighbors, but she stood looking for a long time. Finally, her back still to me, she said, “I’ve been wondering what you were thinking. I mean, I figured you were thinking about it but I didn’t know how you were feeling. I didn’t know if you would go ahead and—well, get married anyway. I mean, I knew that would be really hard, and things weren’t even so great before the accident, but—” All at once she turned to face me, and I saw that she’d been fighting tears. “God, this has been so hard for you!”
“Not as hard as for him.”
“Yeah, but that almost makes it harder.”
I shrugged, and all at once the compassion on her face was gone, replaced by massive irritation. “Carrie!”
“What?”
“I just have this weird feeling that I don’t really know you anymore! Did I do something? Are you mad at me? Are you even in there?”
I turned away. It was a question I understood, because lately what I mainly felt was hollow, as if the feelings I should be having had vanished and left me clanking around inside my own mind looking for them. “I’m sorry,” I said in a low voice.
She came over to where I was standing and touched the back of my shoulder, then reached around me and hugged me hard. “Forget it,” she said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything, I just wish I could help.” She turned me around and I let her hug me from the front.
“Are you OK?”
I nodded.
“When do you think you’ll do it?”
“I don’t know.”
“But pretty soon, right? I mean, don’t you sort of think you should now that you’ve decided?”
“I guess,” I said, although I didn’t really feel that I had decided, had chosen. It was more as if I’d been traveling somewhere unknown and I was there now, looking around, trying to get the lay of the land.
“God,” she said quietly. “God.” She looked me in the eye. “Do you want me to stay for a while? I can get my hair cut tomorrow.”
I shook my head. “That’s OK. I mean, thanks, but I really just feel like sewing.”
Once she was gone, I sat down at the machine again, but I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t focus on the pattern, what I was supposed to do next. I grabbed my keys and locked up, then set off down the stairs and out onto the sidewalk. I felt terrible for Jamie—it was like a chain reaction, what had happened: the accident felled Mike, that knocked me loose, that hit her … Although of course I’d been knocked loose long before the accident, by whatever—my own fickle heart—and she’d been the target almost as much as he had. There’d been times in the months before the accident when it had taken all my strength not to tell her that I didn’t care what so-and-so said about such-and-such, or who had a cute butt, or anything else. But to think of her worrying it over in her mind, wondering what it was she’d done—I felt awful about that.
As for Mike, I didn’t have any idea when to tell him, what to tell him, how … There were too many variables. The only thing I was sure of was that afterward I would be a pariah. Look at how shocked she’d been—and that was Jamie. There’d be no more Mayers in my life and definitely no more Rooster. And my mother—what would she say? Approve of Mike or not, how could she be anything but disgusted to see me do the thing that had been done to her?
And Mike. What if there was no more Mike in my life? There was that smile he had when he had something up his sleeve: his mouth stretched wide, all but closed. What if I never saw that smile again? What if I never heard him say “wrong” again in that annoying, endearing way he had? What if I never watched him fall asleep over late-night TV again, never saw the way his eyelids drooped lower and lower, his mouth opened slightly, his breathing deepened? There were things I’d seen in him that perhaps no one else had ever seen or noticed—wouldn’t those things disappear along with my apprehension of them? Because we were caretakers of each other’s habits and expressions, weren’t we, witnesses who didn’t just see but who gave existence? Our coming apart would erase all those tiny moments and gestures and looks from everywhere but our separate memories, until even there our history would begin to fade.
I’d been heading toward James Madison Park, and now I slowed down and looked around me. I took in the lake, pale blue and rippled in the early fall breeze; and the people setting up for picnics, throwing Frisbees, running with their big, beautiful dogs. What a simple thing, I thought: to run, to walk.
CHAPTER 14
I knew I should talk to Mike, but for days I stumbled over the word “but.” I hope we’ll always be friends, but … I wish it didn’t have to be this way, but … I still love you, but … Night after night I sat with him, held his hand and tried to interest him in something, anything; and all the while I was racked by my own silent voice picking over words, looking for some that would serve.
One evening John Junior came to the hospital with Mrs. Mayer. He seemed nervous. He started telling Mike about the new hockey coach, and almost immediately I felt the familiar sliding away of Mike’s attention. “Mom,” he interrupted John at one point. “I thought you were bringing the new Sports Illustrated tonight.” A little later he asked me for a drink of water, moments after that a Kleenex.
John stood up in the middle of a sentence and walked out of the room.
“Where’s he going?” Mike said.
I was leaning against the wall, and when he looked at me I shrugged a little. “You were kind of ignoring him—I think maybe he’s a little hurt.”
“I was not. What—he was talking about Coach Henry or someone, the new hockey coach. I heard him.”
“Henderson,” I said. “You heard, but maybe you weren’t quite listening.”
He rolled his eyes. “Well, excuse me. Who’s visiting who?”
“Whom.” Mrs. Mayer was sitting very straight, her arms crossed over her chest. “Who’s visiting whom.”
“Gimme a break.”
“Son.” Mrs. Mayer frowned, uncrossing her arms and then recrossing them. She lifted a hand and touched her hair. “We’re all trying awfully hard, but lately it seems no one can do anything right by you. I think you owe your brother an apology. I’m going to go get him, and then I think we’ll go home.” She stood up.
“You don’t have to go.” He glanced at me. “I’m sorry.”
“I’ll get your brother.”
She left the room, and I went over to the bed and took his hand. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I started it.”
“No, I am.” He was flushed and teary, ready to cry. “I’m an asshole.”
“You’re not.” I drew the curtain between his bed and Jeff’s, then sat on the edge of the bed and took his hand again. “You’re not at all,” I said quietly. “John just misses you. I think he’d probably like some time alone with you, but that never seems to happen.”
“Mom,” he said.
“Yeah, but me, too.”
“You’re different.” He looked me in the eye, and then quickly looked away. “I don’t know, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I’m just so bored! Isn’t that crazy? As if that were anything like my biggest problem. But I’m so fucking bored sometimes I just want to scream.”
“They don’t call them patients for nothing.”
He smiled. “You know what I was thinking about the other day? Remember that party Jamie had for us, for our five years? At Fabrizio’s?”
“We were supposed to meet her for dinner there, and we couldn’t figure out why she wanted to go to Fabrizio’s.”
“Then everyone was in that little room.” He closed his eyes and sighed.
“What made you think of that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on, what?”
His eyes met mine. “Well, I always thought we should go there after the next five. I mean not with everyone—just us. But I guess we won’t now, will we?” He looked at me evenly.
I hesitated. This was the edge, the opening I’d been looking for, but I couldn’t bear to use it. “I don’t know,” I said. “I really don’t.”
“It’s OK,” he said. “You don’t have to feel bad.”
“We can’t have this conversation right now. Your mother and John’ll be back any minute.”
He licked his lips. “We’ve had it, haven’t we?”
“No. Please.”
He gave me a look of piercing quietude. “It’s a relief to me, actually,” he said. “I was really tired of wondering.”
“Mike—”
He moved his arm, pulled it closer to his body, and I stopped talking. He lifted the arm onto his lap, his hand dragging behind.
“Let’s not,” he said. “OK? Let’s just not.”
At home, I filled my tub with hot water and took a long bath. It was September now, the first really cool night of the coming fall, and I lay soaking for a long time, waiting to be filled by tears and terrible regret or by relief—whatever it would be. I lay and lay, and waited and waited, but all I could think—all I could feel—was that I was tired. If an era of my life had ended, its passing was remarkable only for the quiet it left behind, the whisper of myself asking myself what there was now.