by Lev Raphael
And now Jenny—that night and this letter.
In the morning, he would go to Mrs. Mannion’s house. He had to get away. At breakfast Stefan asked: “Do you think I could go to Rockaway this weekend? Did your lease start?”
Sasha frowned, holding a piece of toast in midair as if he suddenly didn’t know what to do with it.
“Yes, to both questions.” He put the toast down on the breakfast-strewn table. “You’ll go alone?”
Stefan nodded.
“I’ll call Mrs. Mannion—” Sasha began.
“I can do it.”
“Just for the weekend?”
“I guess.”
But Sasha eyed him steadily until he said “Well, maybe longer.”
“Because she should know.”
Mrs. Mannion, in her distant drifting way, seemed pleased.
“So you’re not going to graduation?” Sasha guessed when he got off the phone.
“I’m tired of all those people.”
“Take linen, remember. Do you need money?”
“Some.”
Sasha always gave him money in an envelope with his name on the front, so Stefan never knew right away how much was inside. He never asked for specific amounts; he couldn’t, it was Sasha who checked now and then, and Stefan felt off-balance, because the money came from his parents, maybe even from Leo, and he didn’t want to have to take it. The only time he’d earned his own money was working at the del Greco’s cleaning store, and then last year as a tutor of history and math in a city after-school program at George Washington, but the pay was so low and the people he worked with so unpleasant, he stayed just one semester. The tutors were all much harsher than Jenny’s friends, sarcastic and gossipy, always clustering in whispers, disappearing from the large classroom to obscure corners of the empty echoing school to trade secrets. The atmosphere was so mean and stifling he’d had to quit.
On the endless train ride to Rockaway with his repacked bag and an envelope, he almost wished Sasha had asked why he wanted to leave.
Mrs. Mannion was waiting on the porch, rocking and knitting; she smiled as he trudged up the peeling cracked tan stairs, looking at him over the tops of her glasses.
“Would you like some lunch?” she asked. “Something to drink? You’re much taller.”
Over lunch they talked in a vague disconnected way, merely filling the time until he was done and she could wash up; they had little in common except Sasha, and Mrs. Mannion seemed to hover around his uncle more than actually discuss him.
Stefan went upstairs to unpack. Everything smelled fresh and unused, and the sight of the large bare mattress in Sasha’s room depressed him, so he closed that door. It took only a few minutes to hang his towel, store the few toiletries he’d brought and empty his bag. The closet swallowed everything up and once the bed was made he felt displaced, as if the room were someone else’s. He plugged in the radio Sasha had reminded him to take, placed it on the blue-painted table, but didn’t turn it on. Mrs. Mannion had cleaned the now-buzzing fridge and the cabinets; all he had to do was go down the Boulevard “into town” and buy food.
He put on a windbreaker and went off to the beach.
“It’s cool,” Mrs. Mannion remarked. “On the beach.”
He strode down to the brown-gray weathered boardwalk, stood at the rail for a long time watching the sea. It was all lines here. The endless stretching planks, the shifting line where the sand became mud, the dull senseless waves that foamed and returned, the horizon that was interesting only when it captured a ship. The water was too cool still, and the empty beach looked dirty, so he just ended up sitting on the nearest staircase down to the sand, hands in his pockets, sand occasionally blown up into his hair, and he listened for voices or bird cries or something.
When he got back, someone else was there, Phil, Mrs. Mannion’s nephew, who was stopping on the way from Temple University to see a friend in Montauk. Phil shook his hand so strongly Stefan wondered if it was a joke. Phil was very dark and slim; his aunt said, “Phil’s on the tennis team. Doesn’t he look like Tony Curtis?” And Stefan thought of Spartacus , which he had never seen with Louie.
When Stefan said he was just planning on going out for pizza, Mrs. Mannion quietly insisted he eat dinner with them. He felt more relaxed at their second meal, told her about the demonstration and strike at school. Phil seemed very interested, and he kept staring at Stefan as if challenging or daring him.
“And how,” Mrs. Mannion began, smile poised to widen, “How is your mother?”
Stefan mumbled something.
“Well I hope we see her this summer.” She nodded in a mixture of graciousness and solemnity.
They helped her with the dishes and Stefan played a Clementi sonatina for her he knew so well his fingers breathed the music.
“Very lovely music,” Mrs. Mannion pronounced. “Delicate.”
“Nice,” Phil said.
When Mrs. Mannion went out to call on a neighbor Stefan drifted upstairs. He wondered if he wanted Sasha to come here—or anyone. He lay on his bed, eyes closed, trying to relax with what the radio played, but it became too plaintive and melancholy and he had to turn it off before the long sweep of the strings got to him. Sleep was what he wanted, not feeling.
“What’s up?” Phil asked, pushing open the door, leaning in the doorway, his shirt unbuttoned on a smooth hairless torso.
“Can’t sleep,” Stefan blurted, and then was furious for telling that to a stranger.
Phil grinned, showing movie star teeth, amazingly big and white. “You need a massage,” he said. “That always works for me.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll look for some oil. Roll over.”
Stefan, wearing just his shorts, lay on his stomach, waiting, feeling sad. He was remembering Louie. He had not touched another guy or let anyone touch him since Louie left for college and never came back because Mr. del Greco sold the store and they moved. He made Louie mad the very last time they talked in Louie’s room, with almost everything packed and boxed. Stefan had been desperate for Louie to say that this wasn’t the end, that Louie would write to him, that he could go out to California and see Louie. When he tried talking about the future, Louie had just cut him off: “Let’s just cool it, okay? I don’t want to think about this anymore.” Louie had then put down his glass of Coke and gone to the bathroom. Knowing he might not see Louie for a long time, Stefan snatched up the glass, gulped the Coke and then kissed the rim of the glass at the place where Louie had been drinking. He’d closed his eyes, holding the glass to his lips. “Get out of here,” Louie was suddenly saying, grabbing the glass. They didn’t even shake hands.
“I’m back,” Phil said. “Ever been massaged?”
Stefan moved his head sideways to say no, not really.
Phil got on the bed behind him, straddled him lightly, weight mostly on his own legs and thighs. “I’m really good at this,” he said, and as he squeezed some oil onto Stefan’s back, he said, “My aunt’s playing cards. We have time.”
Stefan started to groan as Phil’s strong hands spread the oil across his back, pressing, rubbing, fingers going in circles, or up and down Stefan’s spine. It was amazing, as if he’d never been aware of his own body. Phil’s hands were like Louie’s in a way, commanding, strong, sure.
It seemed to go on forever as he felt himself sinking into the bed. Phil massaged his hands, his legs and feet.
“Wow,” Stefan kept saying.
Phil rolled him over, crouched at his side on the bed to grease his chest and stomach. Stefan could now see that Phil was also only wearing shorts, and in the near-dark room, the white slash across the dark length of his body was like a flag of surrender. Phil was as slim as Stefan, but more sharply defined.
“Are you sleepy yet?” Phil asked.
“No.”
“Good.” And Phil pulled at Stefan’s shorts, slipped them off and onto the floor.
“Do you want some more massage?” Phil asked, lightly
sliding an oiled hand across Stefan’s crotch, which didn’t stir. Face up, he was too aware of this as Mrs. Mannion’s house, the house Sasha and he came to every summer. To lie there naked with her smiling quiet nephew was like a betrayal. But he didn’t ask Phil to stop.
And when Phil slid a finger between Stefan’s cheeks, circled, teased, plunged, starting to massage inside, Stefan couldn’t believe how hard he was getting. He reached for Phil’s shorts, but Phil said, “Wait a little,” and bent down. “God, I love sucking cock!”
The words were sharp and shocking to Stefan—not just spoken, but flung out, like a discus powerfully hurtling across a field. He had never heard anyone say that. He closed his eyes, his whole body revolving around the finger that played music inside of him. He thought of Tony Curtis, and slipped into Spartacus , imagining that it was Louie who stroked and soothed him, as tunic-clad servants waited nearby.…
Phil was gone when Stefan got up in the morning and went downstairs. Stefan didn’t know how he could ask where Phil was or anything like that without giving himself away. He ate no breakfast, just made coffee and headed for the beach. It was a grim damp-smelling day, enclosing, oppressive, but it hadn’t rained yet, so he slipped off his moccasins and went down to walk along the beach. No one was there and the orange wire garbage cans marched off down in each direction out of sight as if they meant something. He ambled to the water line, avoiding the blotches of tar and seaweed, the few bottles and cans of someone’s late-night fun, but he didn’t look at the sea, or off to where the beach line curved and obscured itself in mist. The steady slow waves spitting and hissing were unpleasant today—he was alone, though, if nothing else.
He felt calmed, simplified—smoothed out like cloth; no wrinkles threatened him, he walked near the water’s edge dangling his shoes, not pushing his hair back into order when the breeze blew up, just walked and was only the walking, blissfully nothing more.
But after a while he heard shuffling steps somewhere behind him, and turned.
It was Jenny, her face very pale, her hair all blown and tangled. She held her shoes like a weapon as she came across the rippled sand to where he stood unable to move away. But even when she approached, he felt very far from her.
“You never called me.”
He hesitated and she nodded.
“I bet you didn’t even read the letter, did you? I can’t believe it.” She followed as he set off down the sand. “What’s wrong? It wasn’t so bad.”
The mindless consolation made him want to strike her so she’d shut up.
“Stefan…Stef.…”
“Don’t call me that!”
“Okay, I’m sorry. I—”
They walked in silence, Stefan unable to escape—there was no such place as “away” he thought, grinding inside with the pain of this.
“I told my folks I was going to visit a friend in Sayville.”
“Sayville.”
“It wasn’t so bad, Stefan. Stefan?” Jenny took his arm and made him stop. He turned, seeing her pale anxious wind-pinched face as if from so great a height it might not have been a face at all.
“Tell me what it is, Stefan. Please?” She paused, and rushed on in her firm public voice saved for large statements of truth: “You don’t really like me, do you?”
“That’s what it is,” he affirmed, staring her down. Without a word Jenny trudged back across to the boardwalk. She would leave him alone; he believed that—it was done between them.
When Jenny was out of sight Stefan let go his shoes and sank onto the sand, sat hunched over, his head down on his knees.
10
Things seemed very false that summer. Stefan couldn’t stand talking to anyone for even a moment—the chatty girl in the bakery who was always gabbing about the weather or the onion rolls drove him out onto the street feeling all tight in the throat. Mrs. Mannion bothered him too with her slow, split sentences. He heard her nephew Phil was working on a ranch in Wyoming, but it didn’t interest him. He kept away from Sasha as much as he could, went to the beach by himself in the morning and at sunset, at night, just so he wouldn’t have to talk about anything. He began to hate conversation. He retreated, drew in, spent hours and hours in the fog, blank. He wondered sometimes if Jenny had really believed him, if she wouldn’t walk up the porch steps one day, tentatively, hoping for a smile.
He had torn up her letter without reading it.
Sometimes he pictured Jenny sitting at the back of Dooley’s with friends or another guy, and perhaps his name came up. What would she say? Was he dead for her?
Sasha said one still heat-soaked morning: “You and Jenny aren’t—?”
“That’s right,” Stefan agreed, getting up from the table. Sasha didn’t ask any more questions about Jenny.
Stefan thought of her now more than at school, more than even when they’d been side by side in a movie theater idly holding hands, but in a curious unclear way—like a reflection seen in a rippled pond. She seemed blurred, representative, more a figure now than a girl.
But he’d never see her again, unless by accident in their neighborhood which wouldn’t be often or important, would just hurt. So it didn’t matter what he thought of her, really.
It seemed a terrible thing to him, though, what he’d said to her—this came to him mostly at night, keeping him from even considering sleep and he would walk through the cool sea-scented air to the beach, sit perhaps at the base of the staircase, watching the black and white show of waves. Sometimes there’d be a couple far off, laughing or arguing or silent, or a wild little group round a bonfire that split the night.
He had lied to Jenny to push her away—that was the worst kind of lie, hard and isolating. Even if she doubted him, or wanted to it would always fill the air between them like a clamoring fire alarm at night. How could she forget what he’d said or the way he said it? He had cut her from his life. It was as ugly as how Louie had treated him their last afternoon together.
“And I did that to Jenny,” Stefan would murmur, trying to claim the harshness, the lie, understand and own it—but it resisted, and poisoned his mind.
He no longer even had the hope of telling someone about himself, about what his parents had escaped but been imprisoned by nonetheless, and about Louie. He listened to very little music; none of it soothed him enough to stop his thoughts. The only remedy was reading—books he’d always avoided—long graceless Victorian novels. The words flooded him, bore him down where there was no other reality.
Sasha seemed amused. “No more science fiction? No mysteries?”
“I guess not.”
“A good book,” Mrs. Mannion contributed from the wicker depths of her rocker, and she paused even longer than usual before finishing: “A good book is a good book.”
Stefan, in the shade on the swing at the side of the porch, didn’t look up from the largest Mrs. Gaskell novel he’d found on the library’s shelves. He liked the faded gilt binding, the yellowed pages and most of all, the book’s weight.
“What do you do all day?” Leo asked him a week later, leaning on the boardwalk rail. It was not yet dark and they’d all taken a stroll to the beach. His mother, Sasha, and Mrs. Mannion were barefoot down at the water’s edge, their voices high and edged, like children, hands waving shoes at the water, at each other. Leo—in white shorts and polo shirt, smoking his “after dinner cigarette”—seemed very strange and young, as if in disguise. “Looks quiet here.”
“I read. I go to the beach.”
“Whatever happened to that pretty girl?”
When Stefan didn’t answer, but turned to stare at the gleaming light-wild stretch of arcade shops, Leo put a hand on his shoulder.
“It never looks like there’s going to be someone else, but let me tell you, there always is, when you’re ready. And you should have no trouble.”
He wanted Leo not to touch him, and he wanted it, wanted Leo to say more things like that about everything being all right. He wanted to hear that simple confidence, w
anted to believe it for just one night.
But he was too old to be comforted like that. And Leo wasn’t his father.
Then Stefan smiled. Who was his father?
Leo caught the smile. “I knew it. Bet you have eyes on someone already.”
Stefan heard his mother’s laugh; she was leading them across the cool sand to the steps.
Leo grinned at her.
Leo and his mother spent the night, sleeping in Sasha’s room. Mrs. Mannion lent Sasha a cot which he silently set up later in Stefan’s room. He didn’t know which made him more uncomfortable: Leo and his mother next door, or Sasha here in his room. After lying in the breezeless dark for a while, he began to hope the two might cancel each other out. He wore underwear because he wasn’t alone and the unfamiliar enclosed feeling was unpleasant. Sasha was still awake, Stefan thought, facing the wall.
“Stefan? Have I done something?” The question was faint, hardly louder than the vague rustle of leaves outside. “Did I do something to make you so quiet?”
“No.” Stefan said heavily, to make it sound as if he were almost asleep. “No.”
And Sasha soon dozed off, breathing slowly, strangely.
“I should’ve said something,” he thought bitterly, his shoulders going tight. But he never did—he never knew what to say—there was always too much—the time was wrong. How did people have the “long talks” he was always hearing about? How could they stand it and where did the words come from, what drove them out across to someone else? The distances were enormous.
He sat up very quietly so Sasha wouldn’t wake, reached to his chair and slipped on his cutoffs, padded around Sasha’s cot out to the stairs and down, glad Mrs. Mannion didn’t have a dog that would come slobbering and snorting from its sleepy corner ready to play a new game. When he got downstairs, though, the door stopped him—the inner one made no noise, but how could he open the screen without waking someone?