The Fainting Room

by Sarah Pemberton Strong

  Now she straddled her bike on the sidewalk in front of the Harvard Coop, wiping sweat from her forehead. Across the street by the subway entrance was the spot kids referred to as the Pit. It was a sunken seating area, down a few steps from the rest of the brick plaza, with a semicircular ledge designed for commuters to sit on while waiting for their bus. But the ledge was perfect for skateboarding on, and so the Pit had been named and commandeered by teenagers, at whom the displaced commuters scowled and referred to as punks.

  Today was no different. From across the street Ingrid could see a preponderance of punk haircuts, heads with hair the colors of Easter eggs, hair whose Mohawk cuts revealed ears sporting safety pins or skulls, heads shaved bald. Spiky metal bracelets the white kids called slave bracelets, black denim and threadbare plaid and combat boots that, she had to admit, looked slightly ridiculous in the July heat.

  The Pit had been Ingrid’s destination once she’d pedaled off the Shepards’ front lawn this morning, but now, eyeing it from across the street, she hesitated. Over the summer, with no one but the Shepards to notice, she had let her hair grow, and now, three weeks into July, the light brown roots were taking over the black. Though she had rubbed soap into her hair as usual, it was getting too long stick up very well. She had left her combat boots at home, since she was biking, and she hadn’t bothered with a leather bracelet or safety pins or any of that stuff.

  She lit a cigarette and stayed where she was on the other side of the street. Sometimes, she thought, it was easier talking to adults than talking to other kids. Adults thought you were weird and didn’t expect you to act like them, so to the degree they accepted you at all, they accept you on your own terms. But kids spoke the same language, and so were constantly jockeying for position. She could almost hear the anxious tinny soundtrack playing inside the Easter egg skulls across the street: Am I cool enough? Ironic enough? Am I rad enough? Am I bored enough?

  Boring, Ingrid thought viciously, and jaywalked her bike across to Boylston Street instead, past the Tasty and the Garage, past Crimson Travel with its Please Go Away on the marquee, past the Harvard buildings and down to the river.

  Once, over Columbus Day weekend, she and Jessica Rosen had stayed at the house of another girl who lived in Cambridge. The girl’s mother was a stoner who didn’t care what they did, so the three of them went down to the river in the middle of the night and drank the mom’s beer, and then at three in the morning a huge rat crawled out of the river right in front of them.

  Was it Lenin who said about someone, “He is with us but he is not one of us?” Mister, I am not one of you, Ingrid thought.

  Ray arrived home just before seven to find the first floor empty: no Evelyn, no Ingrid, no dinner. On the second floor, still no Ingrid, but there was Evelyn in the bedroom, lying on the bed watching the little black and white television with a pile of unsorted laundry beside her.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Hi, Ray. What do you mean? Nothing.”

  “Are we not having dinner tonight? And where’s Ingrid?”

  “She just left—we have our own delivery boy, now—she’s bringing back Chinese from Lotus Garden.”

  “That’s a good five or six miles from here.”

  “It was her suggestion. She’s a biking fiend—it’s her second major bike ride of the day. How was work?”

  “I missed a zoning meeting and got kicked off the project and reassigned to something even worse, but other than falling even lower on Dunlap’s shit list, work was fine.” Ray went over to the TV, which was singing loudly about the Jordache look. “Do you mind?” He switched it off. “We have to talk about last night.”

  Evelyn picked up a shirt from the laundry pile. “What about it?”

  “First of all, I don’t like you getting so drunk.”

  She wrinkled her forehead at him. “I wasn’t ‘so drunk,’ Ray.”

  “You were drunk enough to be acting ridiculous.”

  “In my own home, no less? God forbid we were having some fun. Don’t worry—no one from your office saw me.”

  “Ingrid saw you, which brings me to the more important point—what were you doing letting her get drunk like that?”

  “I didn’t ‘let’ her—”

  “Of course you did. You’re the adult and she’s the child. And she was suspended from Newell in the first place for drinking, remember? For all we know, we have a budding alcoholic on our hands.”

  Evelyn shook her head. “Come on, Ray. Getting drunk for one night doesn’t make you an alcoholic. I was married to one for ten years, I ought to know.”

  “But she’s only sixteen.”

  “Exactly—so don’t tell me, don’t even tell me, that when you were a teenager you never got smashed and acted a little crazy a couple of times.”

  Ray was silent, remembering that just a few weeks ago he’d told Ingrid all about his drunken escapade at Yale, the one Evelyn knew nothing about.

  “That’s the point,” he said finally. “When you’re drunk you act crazy and do things you wouldn’t otherwise do.” Like telling me to kiss her.

  “You don’t have to be drunk to do things you wouldn’t otherwise do,” said Evelyn. Her eyes darted toward the study. Ray noticed her gaze move without understanding what it meant. She looked back at him. “A person could be cold sober and still do something crazy,” she finished.

  That was true, Ray thought. He’d been cold sober when he’d kissed Ingrid. And enjoyed it. And, oh fuck, oh hell, he was getting hard.

  Evelyn was folding a towel with annoyed, jerky movements. “I mean, Jesus, Ray, it’s summer, we were having fun. So we had a few glasses of wine and went for a walk. Don’t be such a fucking tight-ass.”

  He was arguing with his wife and thinking of Ingrid kissing him, and he was painfully hard.

  He touched his wife’s arm. “Hit me,” he said softly, not knowing he was going to say it.

  “What?”

  He wanted her to feel it also, this sudden and monstrous desire that was hurting his skin, hurting his cock. She had crossed her arms over her breasts, was eyeing him with a scrutiny left over from her days with Joe.

  “Hit me,” he said again.

  Evelyn put down the towel and took a long look at her husband. What the fuck was this?

  “Please, baby,” he said. “Not too hard, but do it.”

  Her hand went out and she slapped him, harder than she’d meant to. She was angry, she realized, furious, because he didn’t understand her, he didn’t understand her happiness last night, he didn’t get it, and there was no way she could even explain what it was he didn’t get. Smearing your face with chicken grease? Laughing so hard you fell off your chair? Drinking champagne from coffee mugs?

  “Again,” he said.

  She smacked his face again. Tears sprang to his eyes and she felt herself get wet. Oh God, was this why Joe used to hit her? Because it turned him on?

  “Again,” Ray said, and she saw it race through him in a shudder that ended in his cock, a shudder of pleasure. She hit him again across the face with her open palm. She knew what would leave a bruise and what wouldn’t. He moaned and she was dripping wet and she hit him again, again. Oh what did this mean, that she was enjoying this? Had Joe enjoyed it? She was sure he hadn’t. He hit her because he didn’t know what else to do with the rage inside him, hit her because his remorse afterward gave him such relief it was like shooting drugs. But she was hitting Ray because she liked it, and even if he was asking for it, what kind of a monster did this make her? She knew there were people who did this for fun, but she’d always thought they were a little nuts.

  “Again, baby.”

  He was asking for the worst in her, the deepest shame, he was begging for it on his knees on the bed. If he wanted this from her, perhaps he might actually know her and want her still. Perhaps he might see her and somehow, miraculously, continue to love her.

  “Ray,” she whispered. “Say you want me.”

  “I want you
, baby. I need you.”

  “Say it like you mean it.” Smack.

  “I’m sorry. I want you, baby, I want you to hit me. I need you to fuck me. Please.”

  For the first time she saw how a man’s cock was a terribly vulnerable thing, unprotected and tender as a baby, trembling alone so far from the safe center of his body. She was the one with the power here, and she pushed him backward onto the bed, both of them fumbling at their clothes. She crouched over him and fucked him, slapped him again and pulled away before he could come, knelt over his face and buried her fingers in his hair, pulled his head up to her pussy, held him there until she was exhausted with moaning, and only then let him fuck her until he came as well.

  They fell back on the bed. Maybe there was hope after all, if they could do it like this. Maybe this was the place where they understood everything, where there was no need to negotiate how the rest of the world saw them, because the rest of the world would never see this. They fell asleep together, sweat-slicked and spent, laundry scattered, limbs wound together with the feeling that they’d solved everything, though nothing had been solved at all.

  When Ingrid came in with the bags of take-out, called “Evelyn!” and then “Ray?” no one answered. She went upstairs and peeked through the inch of open door at the sprawl of naked bodies, the eyes closed in post-coital sleep.

  She went back to the kitchen and ate the wonton soup by herself.

  I work alone, Mister. Don’t let me forget it.

  Ray woke at four-thirty in the morning tangled in sheets and tattoos. Beside him, Evelyn was snoring lightly. He rubbed his cheek. The rough sex with his wife had driven away his thoughts of Ingrid, but no sooner had this occurred to him than the thought of Ingrid was back. Ingrid lifting her face to his in the hallway. The taste of her mouth, warm champagne and tobacco and girl.

  She is sixteen. Ray lifted Evelyn’s arm from his chest, slowly so as not to wake her, and went into the bathroom.

  He would ignore Ingrid as much as possible without actual rudeness. He would work late for a week so as not to have to see her. He’d tell Evelyn that Ingrid should find some friends her own age, that they should find something for her to do on to the weekends rather than hang around here, some volunteering somewhere maybe. And then, surely, his feelings would blow over. This was a classic midlife crisis moment that would soon pass. A week from now, he would wonder what he’d been thinking.

  And now he would get dressed and go into the office early. He would work on his book for a couple of hours before anyone else arrived. Focusing on the book would take all of his attention, nothing left over for fantasy or chastisement. He had always been able to concentrate to the degree that could lose himself in work completely, blocking out anything else. He had always believed that the discipline that came with such steadiness of attention carried over into the rest of life and gave one a kind of moral discipline as well: a trained mind was a mind more apt to think clearly, make intelligent choices.

  Ray reminded himself of this as he dressed in the darkness, then went downstairs and put on water for tea. When he rested his cheek on his hand, he winced in surprise at the pain. His face was still sore from the slapping.

  15.

  Afternoon and hot; Evelyn and Ingrid driving to the grocery store.

  “How’s this sound,” Ingrid said. “‘Three twenty-two p.m., and Mister, outside it was as muggy as a wet towel.’ No, that’s stupid.”

  “I need to get this air conditioner fixed,” Evelyn said. She held her hand out the window of the Olds to direct the breeze onto her face. It was impossible to be outside for more than a minute or two without feeling the sweat start from your pores. And yet she was feeling so happy this afternoon, and in the strangest way. The feeling reminded her of something from when she was younger. It wasn’t the weather, though broken air conditioning on the hottest day of the summer was certainly a familiar feature of her Jones and Wallace years. And it wasn’t driving either, though that too had been a fixture of her childhood. The Olds was a better car than anything she’d ever driven in the circus; it was fifteen years old, but Ray’s mother had kept it nice by never driving it. Even so, it was showing its age. Besides the broken air conditioning, Evelyn had noticed the transmission slipping lately.

  “How about this? ‘Three twenty-three p.m., and it was as hot as a torch singer’s closer.’ No, that’s lousy too.”

  “What are you talking about?” Evelyn asked. She glanced over at Ingrid, who was looking at her intently.

  “As hot as a pair of lips you’ve been kissing.” Ingrid looked away quickly, jammed in the automatic lighter on the dashboard.

  It was Ingrid, Evelyn realized, it was the way Ingrid looked at her, the feeling it produced: it reminded her of the way she used to feel when she was playing Dream Life. When she was a kid there were times she would get lost in her collages, so intent on creating an imaginary home that she forgot for moments at a time that it was not her real one. A feeling of possibility opened up around her as she pasted in her wishes: a sense of creativity, of power. And now Ingrid’s presence beside her was producing the Dream Life sensation. They were driving to the grocery store, but they could drive anywhere—why not? They could do anything they wanted to.

  Ingrid got her cigarette lit and after a few drags, Evelyn felt the eyes on her again. Another tingle of happiness went through her. Ingrid looked at her the way people used to look at Alice Marie when she came down off the wire after turning a cartwheel thirty feet in the air. Though Evelyn’s mind said not to trust it—what had she done to earn it besides skip along a guard rail?—her heart was turning cartwheels of its own. Someone liked her. Someone liked her fine.

  The Dream Life acrobatics continued as they pushed the cart down grocery aisles. It made Evelyn feel reckless. After loading the cart with Ray’s requests—steaks and butter lettuce, Boursin, a new jar of capers—she pulled from the shelves cherry ZaRex, a jar of chocolate-flavored Koogle peanut butter, Sunbeam bread, cheap bologna. She hadn’t realized how much she’d been craving what she used to eat on the road, and now, fairly salivating at the thought of a fried bologna sandwich, she wondered how long she’d been wanting it without noticing. Into the cart went frozen waffles, Aunt Jemima syrup, grape jelly, bright yellow mustard.

  “You already got a jar of mustard,” Ingrid said, indicating Ray’s Grey Poupon.

  Yesterday Evelyn would have mumbled that she’d a mistake and put the cheapo mustard back, but Ingrid’s face was that of conspirator, not judge.

  “As long as we’re buying food Ray won’t eat,” Ingrid continued, “can we get Pop Tarts?”

  They looked together at the boxes.

  “My first husband loved Pop Tarts,” Evelyn said.

  “He did?”

  “He used to eat them when he had a hangover. He said they made him throw up and then he felt better.”

  “Weird. Couldn’t he have just stuck his finger down his throat?”

  No sword swallower has a gag reflex, Evelyn thought, and said aloud, “What flavor?”

  Blueberry, said the ghost of Joe Cullen.

  “Can we get two?” Ingrid asked. “One chocolate and one cinnamon?”

  “Sure,” Evelyn said distractedly. Joe, Joe, why had she mentioned Joe? She knew it was her own guilty mind, turning the circumstances of his death over and over, trying to make the past come out differently. Payday nights she’d be lying on her back, gritting her teeth at the ceiling while Joe grunted on top of her. She had pushed him off before, and received a black eye or a badly bruised jaw for her trouble. She had never intended this to be her youth, but her youth came and went regardless. At twenty-six, she simply spit on her hand and wiped it on his cock so he wouldn’t hurt her going in. I spit on your dick, I spit on you, she thought, but his drinking had reached the stage where she was no longer sure what he might be capable of. If she acted on her anger, she was liable to wind up in the hospital, so while Joe raged over the surface of her body, her own rage struggled
to sink in the quicksand of her insides—there was nothing else for it to do. No rope to grab hold of, no route reflected in Joe’s eyes, glassy with cheap vodka and the singularity of his mission. When he was done she pushed him off her, banging his head against the partition.

  “Jesus, Evie,” he started, but by this time his reflexes were thick and slow, and he couldn’t do anything to her now because he’d already done it.

  She slid away from him, stepped from bed to floor to door and down the three aluminum steps to the cold stony ground where she walked back and forth for an hour, shivering but too angry to care, until at last she heard Joe snoring and knew it was safe to go back inside.

  It was after a number of nights like this that were too similar to count—and one very bad Sunday that she did count because it left her with three broken ribs—that Evie, browsing in a pawnshop in Savannah, spent a week’s earnings and came home with a small .22 caliber revolver.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” said Alice Marie, when Evie showed her the gun. She cast an anxious glance toward the back of the Winnebago where her younger child lay sleeping and lowered her voice. “Jesus, Evie. You’re not really gonna shoot him, are you?”

  “No, I’m not really gonna shoot him.” Evie mimicked Alice Marie’s voice. “I just want to scare him a little. Just long enough to get out of the trailer, dig?” She leaned back against her sister’s tiny sink. Because Alice Marie and her husband were two of the best-paid performers, they owned not a hitch trailer but a genuine Winnebago—the kind, Alice Marie had informed her once—that movie stars had. They had bought it used, but not very used, and Alice Marie had managed to keep it looking close to new. The only thing she had been unable to maintain was the new-car smell: when you opened the door of the Winnebago, now it smelled like their lives, hamburgers and shaving cream and diapers. Usually, whenever Evie entered her sister’s trailer she drew a deep breath, inhaling all these smells to remind herself that the Winnebago wasn’t so much, not like Alice Marie made it out to be. But today she didn’t bother.