Where did I lay my purse after we came in? I can’t remember. And what were the lock mechanisms on the doors like and how quickly could I get through them?
But won’t he get mad at me?
What will happen after?
Keep him happy and you’ll be safer than if he’s not, a voice apart from but inside me says.
He leads me outside his office space.
We are small inside the vast space of the main floor the ceiling goes up up and beneath it I am smaller more kissing more jabbing into me his face leering at me he is—
Ugly. Skin stretched too tight across the sick, giddy, intoxicated face.
“Is this too rough?” he leans in to whisper in my ear as he jabs at me.
The words are more than themselves: a challenge.
My only reply is to in the dimness hold his eyes.
“Get down on your hands and knees.”
* * *
Quiet, only the sound of their breath in the darkness. He holds her. They lay on their sides with her spooned into him, a sheet he apparently remembered to in advance have on hand (did he get it when they went back to the apartment?) over them. She is cold and in as much shock as relief because he seems tamed and settled, extinguished, and though the light of the morning doesn’t yet touch the window she knows that it can’t be very much longer, can it, till it comes?
The feeling that with the light she’ll be safe and eventually free of him.
Is she asleep? he wants to know. He is oblivious that she’s become a half person. He seems to assume she’s the same person he knows (and doesn’t know) from before.
May he masturbate over her? Is that okay?
Okay.
Then she sees what she thought might’ve been a distortion of her own damaged consciousness is real: something is wrong with his leg, or the skin of it. Patches of discoloration and a texture that seems too rough in one way and too smooth in another. It runs the length of one leg, into the groin area, and shows on part of the other upper leg. Something about his erect penis looks unnatural too. Something is different about it. Its thickness does not appear blood-swollen in that way she knows; there is something dense about it; the erection more rigid than it ought to be. The smooth parts of the skin of his leg have a plastic sheen. Burned, she understands.
Through a big picture window she sees the night-draped facade of the building across the street. All night the lamps to someone’s living room have been on, but no one has entered it, and even if they had, it’s far away enough that if they’d looked out, they probably wouldn’t have noticed the couple across and above. Briefly they might’ve been able to see his long, naked white back as he stood over her masturbating, his semen gleaming in the half-light.
In what seems only a very short time later he is again erect, wanting her, wants her to put it in her mouth.
She sees in the dimness how its skin is more coarse and opaque than her husband’s; no sign of a vein. She has no feelings about the act. He doesn’t seem put off but rather turned on by the stunned-animal quality of her.
She thinks she should swallow but she feels she will choke; she spits; apologizes for fear of insulting him.
He wants to put his mouth between her legs. She lies there feeling his tongue work at her, the feeling as always like the sound of someone tapping from the other side of a glass pane. More pronounced than any sense of arousal is the occasional scratch of the bristle of his beard.
Why won’t she come? What is it going to take? he wants to know. He is irritated.
She tells him she can’t.
Oh. His pity. Disappointment. It’s okay. That’s how some people are.
Still. They lay in the dark a long time. Is he asleep?
But then:
“You’re beautiful. You’re so beautiful. You know, don’t you? People treat you differently. My sister was beautiful. You get treated differently.”
The wonder in his voice undercuts the envy: she finds it affirming, reassuring, maybe because it is so close to reverence, which carries with it the hint of a promise. Safe now, she thinks. Saved. The reverence passes into his hand, his fingers moving lightly from the caved-in space between her breasts to her navel, where a finger traces the curve of it. The touch is so light that sometimes the finger seems to be hovering. Then for some reason the fingers are at her neck, the lobe of her ear. Wonder. She can feel it in the touch. Radiating.
* * *
Into her hair he murmurs everything that comes to him. His family was poor but he went to an elite private school paid for by his grandfather. They lived on the bad side of town. Years ago he loved a woman whom he thought he’d marry but it didn’t work. He walked out. He tried to get her back but she laughed at the idea of it. He liked another woman but that woman chose his best friend. He could make his sister laugh but it had never been easy. She said, “About forty percent of your jokes are funny and the other sixty percent are really bad.” When she was ill, he got into the habit of before bed thinking of what he’d do to make her laugh the next morning. “The stakes got higher and higher,” he said. “She was trying to not laugh unless it was really funny. She was trying to help me improve, she claimed. It was the service she was providing for me for my taking care of her as I was. She thought the strangest things were funny. Every morning I brought her tea and oatmeal, and one morning I paid a student to dress like me and bring it to her. This was a student who everyone said resembled me. People at the school had asked if we were related. She didn’t see him come in. She just woke up to find a man who looked similar to me, dressed like me, with her breakfast. She started crying. I’d thought it would be funny but when I appeared and she finally understood, she was furious. ‘I worried I was losing my mind, you asshole. How would you like it if you were dying of cancer and someone was screwing with your head like that?’ Hours later she was laughing about it though. She laughed about it on and off for days.”
He is crying. “I’m not crying,” he says. “It’s my contacts.” With his finger he wipes away the drops.
Then: “Your eyes look like the eyes of this dog I wanted as a kid.” An Alaskan husky. He seems to think she should take this as a compliment.
He is sorry for being annoyed with her for being late at the gallery. He’d thought she wasn’t coming. Once he waited for two hours for his mother in a park in the middle of the day in July. By the time he left sweat was pouring down his face. His mother didn’t call to explain. Later he found out his mother had forgotten she was supposed to meet him. “That is because she decided she didn’t want to meet me,” he explained. “She didn’t want to and so she forgot.”
He tells her he used to paint too but he wasn’t any good, and that the mixing of colors disturbed him.
“Every time I mixed a color I liked I was afraid I could never get that color back again,” he says. “Do you ever worry you can’t mix the right color again?” he says to her.
“No,” she replies. This seems rather ludicrous to her. Though challenging at times, it certainly isn’t that hard to mix the right color; certainly not hard enough to merit fear of loss. She’s been coming a little back into herself as he holds her and rambles on. Her sense of bafflement at him—at the way his mind works, at him as an individual man rather than any man, at someone becoming not a stranger—is strange enough to through her increasing sense of curiosity nudge her into a more complex state of consciousness.
“I was in a house fire,” he tells her. “Our living room caught on fire. It was like one of those stupid public-safety commercials they used to run—my mother fell asleep holding a cigarette. She feels so guilty about it she doesn’t like being around me.”
* * *
“Get on top of me,” he said, and I did, as I’d have most likely done whatever he’d told me, as I had already, except for earlier in the night being able to come as he’d wanted.
It is almost over and it will never happen again, I thought, staring over at the gray wall across from me as I found the rhythm.
I can go home to my husband and figure out how to fix whatever is wrong with me that has led me into this bizarre situation.
“Look into my eyes,” he said, trying to draw me away from the wall.
“Look,” he said again, when I resisted. I had never looked into my husband’s eyes during sex.
The sun was rising, the light flowing in through the windows.
I did as I was told.
“Now kiss me,” he said.
“Eyes.
“Kiss me.
“Eyes.
“Kiss.
“Eyes.”
A shiver went through me. Something was happening I couldn’t understand; something stirring in my arms and legs.
He shuddered.
His eyes rolled back as he came.
He held me. I stayed quiet not because I was upset or scared anymore but because I no longer wanted to escape. His legs with their cool, hairless skin pressed into my legs. His arm curved over my waist; his hand reached for mine, laced our fingers. At the airport his musk would be all over me like the animal stares of strange men who sensed what had happened. The scent of us I would for hours breathe in by pressing my arm to my nose when no one was watching—a drug to dull the ache of the bruises ripening between my legs.
It would be six months before he ended it, when sitting across from me at a table at lunch he saw in my face watching his that I was in love with him.
“Are you asleep?”
He wanted me to claim him that morning. I could hear it in his voice.
“Why are you being so quiet? Are you all right?”
In my dreams he appeals to me still.
“Hey. Are you with me? Are you there?”
Please don’t leave me.
That morning it seemed as if something monstrous and terrible—something until then looming over both of us—had been avoided.
“I’m here.”
* * *
There is nowhere else to go now. The room fills with light.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you—
To my parents, Martin and Lavada, and to Jason, Terra, and Jonas, for their love and support during the writing of this book.
To Chad Lawson, for believing in me back in the days when I didn’t much believe in myself.
To those whose companionship strengthened me at various times during the writing of this book: Suzanne Bodson, Wensi Chin, Elizabeth Mira, Nick Bazin, Joanna Stein, Amanda Stewart, Laura Dyar, Jillian Weise, Leighton Gleicher and Joe Feczko, Stephanie Snyder Benouis, Travis Scott, Jessica Alexander, Seth Rouser, Emilia Autenzio, and Dani Frid Rossi, and with special thanks to Sarah Gray for her steady, considerate, and loving presence these years.
To teachers, professors, and mentors who made me better and/or gave me encouragement at the right time: Scott Ely, Marjorie Sandor, Ann Pancake, David Huddle, Stan and Judith Kitchen, Adrianne Harun, Tom Barbash, Kevin Clark, Justin Cronin, Dr. John Bird, Dr. Steve Choate, Sherry Organ, Beverly Austin, Juanita Marrett, Bill Evans, Eva Esrum, Betty Fleming, Jeff and Cindy Payne, Emma Chandler, and Brian Delaney.
To Carl Lancaster, for his consistent kindness, wisdom, humility, faith, generosity, optimism, and trustworthiness.
To everyone who prayed for me when my life was not going so well.
For those who read parts of this manuscript and at critical times graced me with their constructive criticism, encouragement, and/or reading suggestions: Marjorie Sandor, Cameron Cottrell Walker, Ann Pancake, Chad Lawson, Donald Antrim, David Huddle, Rebecca Nagel, Sarah Gray, Amanda Stewart, Amie Barrodale, Adrianne Harun, Jamie Quatro, Karen Green, Scott McClanahan, Jillian Weise, James Yeh, C. Michael Curtis, Rivka Galchen, David Gordon, Blake Butler, Seth Rouser, Jonathan Franzen, Emily Cooke, and Louisa Thomas.
To the magazine and literary journal editors who’ve supported and published my work: Darren Pine; Garrett Doherty, Anthony Varallo and Crazyhorse; David Daley and Five Chapters; Amie Barrodale, Clancy Martin, Ryan Grim, and VICE; Jamie Quatro, Roger Hodge, Eliza Borne, and Oxford American; Laura Cogan, Oscar Villalon, and ZYZZYVA; and with special thanks to Lorin Stein and The Paris Review for their extraordinary promotion and support of my writing.
To the board of The Paris Review for honoring me with the Plimpton Prize for Fiction and for their generous support.
To the Corporation of Yaddo, for time and space and community, and to the Whiting Foundation who with Yaddo gave me much-needed financial assistance.
To the Rainier Writing Workshop faculty and students from 2004–2008.
To Mitzi Angel, formerly of FSG, for her faith, patience, love of my writing, and for the honor of her attention; to Emily Bell of FSG, for so warmly picking up where Mitzi left off and for being such wonderful hands for this book to fall into; to both Mitzi and Emily for their sharp vision and editorial brilliance; and to Maya Binyam and Brian Gittis and the FSG team for their support.
To Michael Shavit, formerly of Granta, for wanting this manuscript, and to Laura Barber of Granta, for her understanding of and enthusiasm for my writing and for this book.
To Andrew Wylie and the Wylie Agency, for their excellence; to Tracy Bohan of the Wylie Agency, for taking me on and believing in my writing and for her kindness; and to Rebecca Nagel of the Wylie Agency, for her compassionate and reassuring presence, for her understanding of and insight into my writing; and to Cecilia Kokoris for her support.
To Amie Barrodale, for offering me a hand when I was down in a hole.
And to Donald Antrim, for his love and spirit, and for wanting the best for me.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
April Ayers Lawson is the recipient of the 2011 George Plimpton Prize for Fiction from The Paris Review, as well as a 2015 writing fellowship from the Corporation of Yaddo. Her fiction has appeared in the Norwegian version of Granta, Oxford American, VICE, and ZYZZYVA, among other publications. She has taught in the creative writing department at Emory University, and is the 2016–17 Kenan Visiting Writer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
DEDICATION
VIRGIN
THREE FRIENDS IN A HAMMOCK
THE WAY YOU MUST PLAY ALWAYS
THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF HOMESCHOOLING
VULNERABILITY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2016 by April Ayers Lawson
All rights reserved
First edition, 2016
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publications, in which these stories originally appeared, in slightly different form: Crazyhorse (“The Way You Must Play Always”); Five Chapters (“The Negative Effects of Homeschooling”); Oxford American (“Three Friends in a Hammock”); The Paris Review (“Virgin”); VICE (an excerpt from “Vulnerability,” published as “Three Love Stories”); ZYZZYVA (an excerpt from “Vulnerability,” published as “Vulnerability”).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lawson, April Ayers, 1979– author.
Title: Virgin; and other stories / April Ayers Lawson.
Description: First edition. | New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016002077 | ISBN 9780865478695 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780865478701 (e-book)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Short Stories (single author). | FICTION / Literary.
Classification
: LCC PS3612.A9515 A6 2016 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016002077
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Virgin and Other Stories Page 15