Winning the City Redux

by Theodore Weesner

  CHAPTER 30

  UNABLE TO RAISE HIS EYES FROM THE GRIMY FLOOR OF THE bus, Dale knows he is breaking down, losing it again like a ten-year-old. His thought is that maybe he is messed up, deprived in the ways that Miss Furbish indicated.

  Exiting the bus face down, he pushes along, struggling against panic, heading for the garage house that will be empty (his father still out carousing), only at the corner to the alley to suffer another wrenching gasp and half-collapse in being messed up in ways he cannot control. An added gasp in the alley where he lives has him leaning to a cinderblock wall in an effort not to break again like a child.

  In a moment, forcing himself to move, he turns back. His impulse: to appeal to Miss Furbish, as if she has answers and is able to save him from himself, tell him what to do in his horrible disintegration, what to think and how to stop hurting, how to breathe normally . . . as if she will know, like the mother he wants her to be, what he can do to hold himself together and not disintegrate. Anything to be closer to her, closer to the comfort and person, the strength that makes her who she is.

  All feels lost within Dale as he moves along . . . not least of all his virginity being lost to a sickening aroma in darkness. His pride being lost to a bully. His hurt is hardly different from what gripped him on learning he was ousted from his own team, the team of his dreams on which he had every reason to believe he was going to be co-captains with Sonny Joe Dillard, the city’s most illustrious junior high school athlete. His problem is he knows exactly why he’s losing control . . . how true it is that he was a phony and a suckass in aping their Little Missouri accent.

  Defeat. It feels like the end for Dale as a man before he has even become one. Do men lose their pride all at once at any age? Has his pride been smashed earlier than most others? Holding against being overheard on the unlighted sidewalk, he presses on, hoping to not lose altogether the wounded heart Chub Coburn found so inviting to smash with his words, the loser the Bothners reduced him to being, the beaten child he is in keeping his face averted where it cannot be seen.

  Except by Miss Furbish, the one person he loves after his father, the one person he knows who cares, understands, has heard him out. He wants—as if to breathe, as if not to die—to hear her speak if only for a moment. To order him away if she must . . . if only he can hear her voice through the slightest crack in her door.

  # # #

  GARLAND STREET WITH its lawns and three-story apartment houses that were mansions in an earlier era; his desire to see her is one of a child racing home in a desperate need to escape himself. Following the driveway beside her house, up the rear stairway, swallowing a gasp not to be heard, his heart falls away, however, on finding her windows dark. Leaning to her door, whimpering to catch his breath, afraid he is losing his mind, he raps knuk-knuk against the door frame beneath his blotched tears.

  Nothing.

  She is out, has friends, goes to movies, dinners, dances. If anything had joined them as friends, it was his discovery that she was human. Face on wood, taking in his own half-silent wailing, he taps again, and again, before admitting he has to get a grip and make his way back the way he came.

  Should he try a Coney Island with its windows and jukebox, songs letting him know he loves her and can’t help himself? What of a gun with which to kill Chub Coburn, Mr. Bothner, Burkebutt . . . his miserable self? Did they think he wasn’t resourceful?

  # # #

  “WHO IS IT?” a voice whispers in darkness as he has lifted away.

  “Me,” Dale whispers. “Dale.”

  “Who is it?”

  “God, me!” he whispers to the closed door. “It’s Dale.”

  After a moment she says, “Dale? What is it you want?”

  “I dunno,” he cries. “I dunno.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I dunno.”

  “You don’t sound all right to me.” On which word there comes the wider opening of the door, though not the glass door, while all within remains dark. “Has something happened?”

  “I had to see you,” Dale cries. “I’m okay. I wanted to see you.”

  She is barely visible, a width of silhouette, hair high as if she bathed long ago on going to bed. “Can you say why? Are you hurt?”

  “I’m messed up, I dunno. I didn’t know what to do . . . I wanted to see you. I’ll leave if you want . . . I wanted see you because I don’t know what to do.”

  A moment passes before the glass door opens and there is the warmth and aroma of her person, her apartment and existence. “You can come in for a minute . . . to say what’s happened. I’d like to help you. I know how traumatized you are . . . having your dream taken away. But I can’t have you coming here like this . . . crying at my door. You need to see how improper it is. You can stay for one minute, to tell me what has happened. I’ll see if there’s anything I can do . . . to get you some help. Then you’ll have to leave. There are places where you can go with the problems you’re having . . . but this isn’t one of them.”

  CHAPTER 31

  DALE BLURTS HIS CONFESSION STANDING IN HER DARK kitchen. All of it, the car, gangbanging Crazy Johnny, the putdown by Chub Coburn for being a phony . . . all of it comes gushing forth in darkness. Miss Furbish leaves the lights off, as if not to be seen in her nightclothes, and in darkness Dale is able to bawl his terrible truth without being undone by whatever disgust might enter his favorite teacher’s eyes. He bawls and breaks in the face of the forces controlling his fate, disperses his hurt, the unfairness, unable to keep himself from breaking all the more as his regret and confusion come forth and seem to cover the floor.

  Shadows, silhouettes, black wells and corners. He sits on a kitchen chair to which she has directed him in darkness before seating herself opposite. He can decipher her form but nothing of her eyes or expression. She says little before saying, “This is awful,” and “It’s incredible,” and finally, “Dale, I’m sorry to hear all of this but I don’t know what I can do to help.”

  “I’ll leave,” he says. “I only wanted to hear anything from you, because I like you so much . . . I felt like I was losing my mind. I think I was.”

  “There were how many of you?”

  “Eight,” Dale says at last. “A couple teammates didn’t show up.”

  “Was it rape, is that what it was? If it was, you know I’m going to have to notify the police.”

  “It wasn’t that. She wanted to do it. I guess she does it all the time. She told Grady he could come do it to her anytime he wanted.”

  “Is she underage?”

  “No, she’s pretty old . . . forty or something.”

  “There were eight of you . . . you believed you’d lose face if you didn’t take part?”

  “I guess that’s what it was.”

  “Was . . . Dale . . . did penetration occur?”

  “For me?”

  “Yes, for you! Let’s not play games!”

  “I don’t know. Sort of. I was a virgin. I never thought that was how I would lose my virginity.”

  “You don’t think there was penetration? There was or there wasn’t! You can’t have it both ways!”

  “There was . . . sort of . . . it was all . . . all this mess. I did it . . . I guess. It was dark.”

  “There wasn’t any force involved?”

  “Nothing like that.”

  “You . . . ejaculated?”

  “I guess I did . . . maybe I did.”

  “Dale, you did or you didn’t! How can you not know?”

  “I guess I did . . . don’t wanna think I did.”

  “I’m sorry to hear this pathetic story. This woman . . . she lets boys do this?”

  “I guess so. It was . . . you know . . . to launch the season . . . that was the reason.”

  “Well I won’t embarrass you any further. Still it sounds like you participated, penetrated . . . that sexual contact did occur.”

  Dale gives no reply to what is sounding like a judgment, a wrapping up, presumably to be fo
llowed by punishment.

  “I’ll tell you what you’re going to do right now,” Miss Furbish says in the dark. “You’re going to use the bathroom. You’re going to wash yourself with soap and water. That’s what you’re going to do. The light switch is on the left. Please turn it off before you come back out. I don’t want my neighbors knowing that someone is in my apartment using my bathroom at an hour like this even if it is of a medical nature. Then you are going to leave. So go now and do as I say! I am so disappointed in you, Dale. I thought you had better sense . . . would exercise better judgment. To let yourself get involved in such a way.”

  “If I chickened out . . . I wouldn’t be on a team at all!” Dale pleads.

  “‘Gangbanging!’ That is some concept! Using an apparently retarded woman to launch your team’s season? I have to tell you . . . I find your behavior reprehensible! Go wash yourself, so you won’t come down with some disease! Use hot water and soap. I mean it! GO! Then you are leaving and I am going to decide what has to be done.”

  Wanting her to understand the greater blow he’s suffered, Dale cries, “What messed me up . . . more than that . . . was being put down in front of everybody by Chub Coburn. He’s the biggest guy on the team . . . is really big, and there wasn’t anything I could do anyway because he was right! I was being a phony. Everybody knew it because it was true.”

  “You weren’t being a phony with this retarded woman? Dale, I’m not sure I appreciate either your values or your logic. Do as I say! Now!”

  “I wasn’t hardly with her. It was dark. I was barely with her.”

  “This takes the prize. I thought I had seen it all. I wonder what else my students are doing that I’m unaware of.”

  “Please don’t be mad at me. I was going crazy. Seeing you was all I wanted to do from the beginning.”

  “What in the world did you think I would do?”

  “I don’t know. I wanted to see you. I like you. You always make me feel good.”

  “Dale, go do as I say! Extremely hot water.”

  “I just love you. . . .”

  “Dale, go!”

  CHAPTER 32

  WASHED AND RE-BUCKLED, RETURNING THE WAY HE CAME—entering pure blackness on exiting the lighted bathroom—he hears her say in the dark living room, “Sit down over there. I’m going to say one last thing to you before you leave.”

  “What I hoped . . . ” Dale says into the darkness on sitting in an armchair. “What I hoped is you would say something so I wouldn’t go crazy. I was going crazy.”

  “What you did . . . I want you to understand this. I find your actions more than troubling. You are not going crazy. You’re upset. Guilty. Maybe your life has been dysfunctional . . . being deprived of growing-up guidance. But it isn’t as if you’re going crazy, so you can stop saying that as if it’s an excuse for your extremely poor behavior.”

  “Everything happened, like I didn’t have any choice.”

  “Dale, don’t say you didn’t have a choice. Lining up to take turns with a retarded woman? That is unbelievable . . . that a boy from my homeroom, someone I’ve respected, would do such a thing! Don’t tell me you did not have a choice! I know better than that!”

  “They said it was community service . . . her way of keeping teenagers off the street.”

  “You think it’s funny? It isn’t funny at all.”

  “All I know is I love you so much,” Dale says to the silhouetted shape of Miss Furbish across the room. “I wanted to see you . . . I didn’t know what else to do.”

  After a moment there comes through the darkness, “You climbed into the back seat of a car and joined in the violation of this woman? I’m astonished.”

  “I feel dirty thinking about what I did.”

  “I should hope you would feel dirty.”

  “When Chub Coburn put me down in front of everyone . . . called me a phony . . . I wanted to die. You were the only person I could think of . . . who might help me stay alive.”

  “Let’s not get melodramatic.”

  “I’m just saying what I felt.”

  “You should feel more awful even than that. Still I do believe you’re trying to be honest . . . which is why I’m trying to be understanding.”

  “The truth of it is even worse than I can say.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “All I wanted to do was win the city. Be a team leader going into high school. That was all I wanted. Then it got taken away by the Bothners for no reason at all. Nobody but you cared about any of it. Which is why I love you like I do . . . though I liked you a lot before that anyway.”

  “Listen, enough love references. I understand how awful it was for you to be left off that team. I know your dream was real and something you had worked for. I understand how unfair it is to have a dream like that, something you’ve worked for, just shattered.”

  “I love talking to you . . . even in the dark.”

  “Maybe at a time like this, there’s something to be said for talking in the dark.”

  “Can I sit closer, on the couch? I feel far away.”

  There is no reply, seeming to signal a negative response. “No,” is what she utters then, as if in a delayed call by a referee.

  “I’d love to sit closer.”

  “Very soon now I want you to leave.”

  “I’m really sorry for what I did. With that woman. I always dreamed it would be with someone . . . you know, like Zona. In a field or something.” Upon a pause, he confides, “I dreamed it would be with you. That’s what I’ve been dreaming . . . for weeks.”

  “Dale, that is unworthy of comment . . . is going to have you leaving sooner than later.”

  “I knew you’d say that,” Dale says. “Still it’s how I feel. As if for a girlfriend.” Upon a pause, when no reply is forthcoming from the darkness, a rush of daring compels Dale to move through darkness and sit beside her. “I want to sit closer,” he says.

  Miss Furbish doesn’t throw him off, nor, for a moment, does she speak or move. She allows him in her silence to remain beside her, whereupon, having begun to weep in helpless hurt and desire, he extends his face to her shoulder, to her collarbone, only to hear a faint gasp as on an intake of tears of her own as she pulls back.

  “I’ve never sat with anyone . . . even with my mother when I was a baby,” Dale utters.

  “I understand,” her voice says beside him.

  Silence proceeds in darkness but for breathing coming from each of them. Hearing an intake of breath, experiencing another surge of helpless daring, Dale turns his face as it is pressing her neck, her housecoat and collarbone, whereupon his lips are unable not to kiss. Face turning downward as she pulls away, he finds her exposed collarbone, discovers the skin of her neck and throat, which he also kisses and into which he presses deeper in search of still more warn flesh, which contact she does not reject but rather lays an arm down on his arm to contain him . . . not from added touching, nor in full rejection.

  Miss Furbish, the teacher and person he adores above all others. His mother, sister, girlfriend. They are on a couch in her dark living room and have entered into an unknown area of heart, mind, intimacy. “Oh God,” he cries, nuzzling at her throat, at the swelling of her breast, nuzzling further until his lips reach home and latch onto her nipple . . . against which she checks him by turning her shoulder, not entirely disallowing the suckling connection he has made. Miss Furbish, allowing him to have at her as a starving child as she is also gasping, sobbing, uttering “You poor child . . . I understand, I do,” as they hold briefly in the dark in primary roles the mother and child neither has ever been allowed to know, until she jerks away, closing down her housecoat, saying, “Enough of that, really.”

  CHAPTER 33

  A MOMENT PASSES. LOWERING HER HEAD, SHE LETS HER FACE meet his hair for a moment, while restricting his added move to be at her. “You are so needy,” she utters just audibly. Mother and child. Teacher and pupil. Maternal friend to a damaged child. In the dark they�
�ve been all of these . . . lost souls within the fluid universe through which they’re sailing.

  In the merest whisper she says, “Dale, you know . . . this became known, it wouldn’t be understood for what it is. You won’t mention it to anyone, will you?”

  Unable to believe she allowed him to do what she just allowed him to do (her nipple in his lips and mouth! if only for a moment and no matter having forced the brief sensational connection), he says, “I won’t tell anyone,” wanting only to really suckle her, to stay longer and talk further, to maneuver himself in ways that will allow him to have more of her within his lips. Sensing that he’ll soon be told to be on his way, he tries to lengthen their conversation by saying, “We didn’t do anything.”

  “That’s not how it would be seen. If anyone knew you were simply in my living room, on the couch in the dark, it would be the end. I’d probably have to end my life. Maybe I’ve only mothered you . . . but that’s not how it would be seen . . . so please, let’s just forget this happened . . . as you get on your way.”

  Her throat covered, Miss Furbish remains (amazingly) within his arm as well as in his desires. He wants to reassure her, but has no wish to be shown the door any sooner than necessary . . . can’t shake the sexual urges gripping him to be at her. “It was just a kiss,” he says in the face of his powerful desire. “I mean I’d really love, really love to kiss you all the more, if you’d let me,” he can’t help adding.

  “Romeo, you are out of here right now!” she says, giggling some on getting to her feet. “What are you saying to me? I tell you I would probably have to end my life if anyone found out, and you say you want more! Come on . . . you’re leaving, lover boy.”

  Getting to his feet as instructed, following his teacher’s silhouette into the dark kitchen, he hears her explaining again how serious it is, how important that he not breathe a word to anyone about visiting his teacher’s apartment! “I’m not joking when I say I’d probably have to kill myself? It shows how young you are concerning the ways of the world. Listen, Dale, people can be cruel, as you must know. No one would be sympathetic for one minute to what really did not happen here . . . or willing to understand. You say you want more?! Get your coat on. Remember—not a word! Do you understand how important it is that you do as I say? Believe me, no one would understand.”