Like Normal People

by Karen Bender

  “Yes,” Shelley said. “I’ll keep them safe.”

  She was glad to be holding Lena’s teeth, to touch the pebbly lumps in her pocket.

  “Thank you,” said Lena, and pressed her fingers against her mouth, trying to push the gratitude back into her lips.

  Lena stood up and brushed off the sand. “Let’s go,” she said, putting her new possessions back into her pockets. Suddenly, she was in a great rush. A boardwalk, like a fat silver road along the sand, was crowded with people both rich and shabby, smug and desperate. There was the smell of fried foods, the sweetness of coconut oil on hot skin, the sourness of salt water and urine. Shelley and Lena were not invited, but they joined the crowd.

  Everyone was looking at everyone. It was as if each person had a wish that could not be spoken, that was so obscene or private that it would be shameful to speak it aloud. Rows of older teenagers rested against a stucco wall covered with graffiti, huge purple and pink letters. The teens were white and black, their hair water-stiff or curled high in combs. They all wore the same bored expression. An enormously fat woman roller-skating around in a black vinyl bathing suit and bobby socks passed out leaflets that said Learn about your life. Palm reading $5. She rolled toward Shelley and Lena and said, “Come on, ladies! Two for one, seven bucks. Don’t pass this one up.”

  “No, thank you,” said Shelley.

  The woman’s face dropped. “We’ll tell you whatever the fuck you want,” she said. “Seven bucks is all—”

  Shelley meant to explain that they didn’t have seven bucks, but the woman had skated away.

  Roller skaters came at them at violent speeds, their thighs buttery in neon blue or yellow or pink Spandex. Just before colliding with them, the skaters parted around them like a sea.

  Lena and Shelley passed a booth with posters of almost naked ladies, including three leaning over a motorcycle with the caption Nothing butt fun. Some people seemed to find this funny. They walked by others crouched on faded movie towels, Jaws and Star Wars and Saturday Night Fever. They looked as though they were bowing to the others who passed them on the boardwalk, their heads bent, shoulders burning. Everyone was selling things: incense curling off long sticks, four-minute massages, unflattering oil paintings of Farrah Fawcett, toe rings. One woman sat on a concrete wall behind random food items arranged carefully on her towel: a bottle of Heinz ketchup, a bottle of A-1 sauce, a package of Cheerios.

  This was the first time Shelley had been outside in her tank top. It was pale blue cotton with little lace straps and ended right below her belly button. She felt almost naked; she was aware of the watery motion of her new breasts inside.

  Sometimes, when she was alone in her house, she would walk around with her hands under her shift, feeling her breasts. It was daring to touch her breasts in the kitchen, the backyard, the living room; the action marked these places in a way no one would ever know. She cupped her breasts with her whole hand or pressed her fingers on the nipples to create a doughnut shape.

  Now something new was happening around her as she walked. She could feel men staring at her in a way no one had done. Their gaze was unblinking, and their faces were both severe and babyish. It was as though they were involved in a silent conversation with her. She thought it was because she was doing threes against her hips, and her hands froze, briefly, as she walked. But they were looking at her with an altogether new expression, one she had often seen on the faces of boys looking at other girls. One man sent out a whistle, a low, sultry sound.

  Shelley found the world separating itself into two streams. She was walking down one stream, and Lena down the other. Hers was brighter, for she was illuminated in this new and unexpected way. She had not allowed herself to hope that others could look at her in this flattering manner. She also noticed how people regarded Lena. Their eyes settled on her, stopped, moved on.

  She looked at Lena, trying to see what made others want to look away. Lena’s green eyelids were a little faded, and she had licked her lipstick off; now she looked as if she’d been drinking red juice. Her housecoat was faded in the sunlight, and Shelley saw an orange stain on the back. Her thin hair riffled back from her scalp like little flames. But she gazed at the crowds in a direct, open way. Though few people looked at her, Lena stared intently at everyone else.

  She brushed up beside Shelley. “Where are they going?” She gestured to the crowd.

  “I don’t know. Different places. Some are probably just walking along.”

  Lena slowed down. “They like being almost naked,” she said. This seemed to stir her up. She stormed forward, watching the girls in thong bikinis, the fathers in their swimming trunks, pale, with forearms pink to their elbows, like gloves. She carefully opened the top button of her housecoat. “Why?”

  This seemed a complicated question. “Because they want to get tan,” Shelley tried.

  Lena nodded and undid another button; she was pleased to join in. They walked together down the boardwalk. Sometimes Lena stopped, closed her eyes, and lifted her face, letting the warm salt wind blow through her hair.

  A large group was assembled around a wire fence, watching what was going on inside. Shelley and Lena pushed to the front, and Lena clapped a hand over her mouth as a man, packed tight into pink Speedos, walked into the pit.

  “He’s wearing panties!” She giggled. “Outside!”

  The man was walking royally, past the other body builders. His hairless bronze arms were swollen with muscles; he held them out, like wings, by his sides. His behind looked like two grapefruits stuffed into a plastic bag.

  “Let’s watch,” Lena said. Bleachers surrounded the fence. Shelley and Lena found space on the bottom rung.

  There were seven men in the pit, and they were walking around the rubber mat, lifting steel weights. Someone had turned a portable radio to a Donna Summer song, and her high voice threaded delicately through the pit.

  Shelley had never seen men with bodies like this; she was mesmerized. One man, in a red bandanna and zebra-striped tank top, was lifting a barbell. He grunted, a sound like huh, and muscles popped out of his arms like oranges or walnuts. His face was burning red and his jaw was clenched and his eyes were white and murderous. The people in the bleachers were silent. He clutched the barbell, arms trembling, for a few seconds, and then set it down with a little scream. Some spectators applauded. Another man bent his arms behind his head, girlish, exposing hairless, cavernous armpits. He stood that way for a moment, admiring his reflection in a blurry sheet of steel.

  They stood in their trunks of fire red and lemon yellow and lime green, and their bodies swelled up around them like weird, hopeful dreams. Their thighs were hammy hunks, and their chests had hard, womany breasts. Their bodies were covered with veins. Some had blurry tattoos on their arms. They were shiny with oil and sweat, and they kept glancing at their bodies in the steel sheet. The rubber mat smelled rich and sour in the beach heat. A woman in the bleachers burst out in an appreciative whoop.

  Shelley thought of the couples in her school. Once, she’d passed a boy rolling on top of a girl; he was kissing her and pressing his hips into her. The girl, limp underneath him, was looking into his face with deep understanding. Students walked by, whistling at them or staring. Shelley’s throat felt cool as she wondered what it would be like to be that girl. It made her hurry away, brought up a dark taste in her mouth.

  She had seen her parents do this, too. Recently, she had been up one night, trying to stop her threes, and she’d spotted them in the dark living room. They were completely unaware of her. Her mother, in a thin peach nightgown, was curled up in her father’s lap. Her father had wound her mother’s long hair in one hand. His other hand ran up the back of her nightgown, as though he understood everything about her, and her mother held his head in her hands, with an urgency, as though she were pulling herself to a new place. Her father rolled down her mother’s nightgown to reveal her pale breasts, and her mother’s hair fell back and her back arched. They had become someth
ing to each other that she did not understand.

  Her own desire seemed potent but formless. It was an incredible feeling, to touch her breasts under her shirt—it was cool and stormy and as though she were breaking many rules. She wondered whether the feeling would be different if it was an actual hand of a real boy, and the thought was almost unbearably thrilling.

  She had her own ideas about what would happen when she kissed a boy. She could imagine the strange pressure of his lips on hers, and she hoped that, as their lips touched, his thoughts would come pouring into her head. His thoughts and feelings would pour into her head, as hers would into his, and they would both be so full of their brilliance that they would not care about anything else at all. She had never asked anyone about this theory, because she secretly hoped she was a genius and had figured it all out by herself. She wanted to chase this feeling, to capture it in her hands. Now the feeling flew about, big-winged in her chest, uncontrollable. What would it be like to be loved in this way? Did she deserve it? What would she become?

  The men were like lonely monsters, their huge shoulders turning pink under the dry blue sky.

  “I think you should like him,” Lena said. Her aunt pointed to the biggest man, the one with the delicate, fawn-like face. “You do this. You wait for them to be alone and you go up and say hi. At Goodwill, I told Bob, ‘You’re a good parker.’ He was. No one else told him that.”

  “I can’t say hi to him.”

  “You have to. That’s what I did.” Lena crossed her arms. “He has blue eyes. I like blue eyes.”

  “You have brown eyes.”

  “I know. Bob has blue eyes. I like something different from me.” Lena was breathless, trying to tell Shelley everything she knew. “The best thing is when he runs to you, when you’re walking to your room alone and knock on the door. When you hear the feet running.” Her hands squeezed into balls and her face seemed to broaden with thought. “And then he comes and kisses me. Smack! He waits for me.”

  One of the body builders was moving slightly to the music. He was maybe in his thirties, with a haggard, boyish face and wispy brown hair. He was wearing a short turquoise unitard that fit like a sausage casing, worn Puma sneakers, and a Dodgers cap. He was listening intently to the disco playing on his boom box; he looked up at Shelley and winked.

  She felt that wink land in her like a cold weight. He looked at her as though he understood something marvelous about her. He winked again. And then he walked toward them. It was a slow, casual walk. He shook his arms out once, though they did not appear to be wet. She and Lena watched, alert.

  He smelled of sand, of the beach. He grabbed the wire fence with one hand and leaned away from it, pretending to stretch.

  “Hey,” he said, “what’s going on?”

  Shelley and Lena looked at him. It was as though he was continuing a conversation they’d been having for a while.

  “Fast songs,” he said. “Sometimes I’m just not in the lifting mood unless there are fast songs.”

  He closed his eyes, nodding to the beat coming from the boom box.

  “Music gives me that edge,” he said. “It gets my blood going, you know? It gives me thoughts. You think a lot of these guys think when they’re lifting? No way. My mind opens up.”

  His eyes flicked from Shelley’s face to her tank top. “Some of these guys,” he said, leaning in toward her, “they make this their whole life. They eat, sleep, and do body building. They don’t stop to smell the roses.” He was trying to convince her of an important fact. “I’m not like that. Listen. The rest of the day, I’m a human being.”

  She wasn’t sure what he was talking about. His eyes were surprisingly radiant, as though reflecting a tiny sun in his mind. She believed the radiance was directed at her. This was astonishing and unreasonable. She had no idea what she thought of him, but she sensed a vague direction to her restlessness, a discernible current; it was flowing toward him.

  Lena gripped her hand.

  “What’s your name?” the man asked Shelley.

  She did not know what to answer. It was as though he were asking her to be born.

  “You can tell me,” he said.

  She would tell him her name was Sequina. He would be the first person in the world she would tell.

  Lena stood up. “We have to go!” she announced.

  The man swung away from the fence.

  “Come on!” said Lena. She yanked Shelley up, and before she could tell him her name, Lena was hurrying her across the beach.

  The sunbathers luxuriated on their towels, prone and open to the rays. What had just happened? The man had asked for her name. Shelley kept glancing back at the body-building pit, but the man was gone.

  For a couple of minutes, Lena would not speak to Shelley. “You didn’t like the one I picked,” she finally said.

  “I didn’t tell him to come up to us.”

  Lena bit her lip. “When I met my husband at Goodwill, I went up and said, Good parker. That’s what you should do.”

  “Why not the other way?” asked Shelley.

  “I know how.”

  “I think he liked me.”

  Lena released her hand. “I know.”

  “But why?” It was a reasonable question. “How could he like me?”

  “Maybe he thought you’d like him?”

  “But how would he know?”

  Shelley looked at the people lying on the beach. Invisible strands of longing connected them to each other, like spiderwebs. She had an urge to run through them to feel what they were like.

  “You’re Sequina!” said Lena, plowing through the sand in giant steps. “That’s why.”

  “It was based on nothing,” said Shelley. She was now convinced that he was in love with her. The next moment she thought he was a crazy bum. Then she was certain that he’d been making fun of her. She was full of conflicting theories. “He just wanted money for more music tapes,” she tried. Or, “I saw him looking at my top.”

  Lena rushed ahead. “Stop talking about him.”

  “Why?”

  Lena stopped. “You’re not supposed to say why.”

  Shelley stepped back; she had never heard this sharpness in Lena’s voice. “I can say why if I want to.”

  Lena’s whole body seemed to be straining toward a vague and hopeful authority. Her brown eyes were large, staring at Shelley. “I say you can’t,” Lena said.

  Now there was some distance between them as they moved down the shore. The foam bubbled up around their ankles, luscious as cream. Lena eyed Shelley suspiciously. Every so often Lena plucked a potentially useful item off the sand. “We can use a nice rope,” she announced, picking up a strand of seaweed, “and an ashtray.” She peered into a curved pink shell. She carried these discoveries for a few yards, then dropped them back on the sand.

  About a mile down the beach, they reached the Lahambra Beach pier. It was old and rickety and stretched out into the glittering water. It contained what looked like a small, happy city; Shelley saw game booths, a merry-go-round, a Ferris wheel.

  Lena took a great interest in the underside of the pier. The pier rose up on the sand; its pillars surrounded by gray boulders. Lena walked over and placed her palms on them, as though she were thinking about climbing up. There was a space where a few were missing, and she crouched down and wriggled inside.

  Shelley followed. The space beneath the pier was the coolest part of the beach. Lena settled herself delicately on the hard-packed sand. The wood above her head was velvety and moist, speckled with mollusks. The pier smelled like the salty inside of an oyster. There were thin cracks between the pier’s slats, and the light fell through them in translucent bars. Though she and Shelley could hear the footsteps of people traipsing across the pier, the other people seemed very far away.

  “Let’s sit here for a while,” Lena said. “We don’t have to talk to anyone else.”

  Shelley found herself sitting like a child, cross-legged, hands in her lap. She did not want to
admit that she, too, was relieved to be hidden, in this private place. Lena took a pack of cigarettes from her pocket, slid out two, and handed one to Shelley. “You may have one before dinner,” Lena said. She flicked a Bic lighter, and the two began to smoke.

  Shelley held the burning cigarette for a little while before she tasted it; the last time they had done this they had been three. Bob and Lena had taught her how to smoke. Lena had dared Shelley to do it. Six months ago, Lena had taken a cigarette from the pocket of her housecoat, handed it to Shelley, and lit it with her Bic.

  “Just relax,” she’d said. “Breathe in a little, then out.”

  Shelley, Lena, and Bob then took a walk along Mango Boulevard with their cigarettes. Bob smoked in short, authoritative puffs while massaging the soft muscle in his upper arm. He blew smoke briskly out one side of his mouth, like a gangster, and his blue eyes squinted. He looked manly, and was aware of that.

  When Lena smoked, her right shoulder drooped; she moved back from her cigarette as she exhaled. Her eyes were half-shut, as though she were overwhelmed by the beauty of her action. The three of them blew long streams of smoke into the air. They were like a great factory, creating some essential product.

  Now there were just two of them smoking. It was shocking, impossible, that the two worlds could live side by side: one in which three of them smoked and one in which only two of them did.

  Shelley no longer wanted to smoke. Grinding her cigarette into the sand, she did threes, grabbing larger and larger clumps of sand in a series, until her hands felt as if they were going to split.

  “You didn’t even start it,” said Lena.

  “I don’t feel like it right now.” She kept grabbing handfuls for a while; then stopped.

  “When we find a house,” said Lena, “we can have dinner. I can show you to anyone who comes to see us. I’ll say, This is Sequin. You have to meet her. She is special. I can tell them about your day.”

  Lena looked at Shelley slyly, like a child who has just been caught holding a fragile object.