Whitegirl

by Kate Manning

  So we went. But it was strained. It had been strained. Or strange, or something. Something was off.

  Milo had been flying around the country, working. He had gotten up the morning after our Cop Stop and kissed me good-bye for four days.

  “Don’t go,” I said. I was crying. He wasn’t safe. Nothing was.

  “Charlotte,” he said, “I have to.”

  “No, stay.”

  “Get over it,” he said, the tough coach. “Put it behind you.”

  He finished the knee surgery story with Joe Namath, the two of them rolling up their pants legs for the cameras, comparing scars, comparing surgeries, then started his next assignment, profiles of Heisman trophy candidates for the ’81 college season. In between he was working out at the gym, lifting weights, running along the Hudson. What he had not been doing was talking about it, about what happened. He hadn’t told anyone, he said, when I asked.

  “What would I say?” he said. “Who would I tell?”

  “Your parents? Your mother?”

  “Now why would I want to do that?”

  “She’s your mother?”

  Milo nodded. “Precisely,” he said. “Don’t dwell on it. Move on.”

  He was the expert. But, I thought, he’d never had a choice but to move on, whereas, I was used to choice.

  I couldn’t put it behind me. I was too angry. The fucking cops. How could they! How dare they! Even a week later, when I saw a cop I stared as if I’d never seen one before, swallowed, felt betrayed. And even that bothered me. What was I expecting them to be loyal to? Me? Had they betrayed me? No thought was comforting. I told everyone. Claire of course, and Kevin, all the girls. Claire cried. She worried about me. About Milo. It’s not safe to be him, she said. I told my sister, who said, It must be an aberration. My voice cracked, telling her. I couldn’t get over it.

  Milo was over it, it seemed. Sick of me going on about it. There was something hard in his eyes I couldn’t read, something like victory or possibly accomplishment. So now you know.

  Up in the Berkshires he ran miles in the afternoon and again in the morning. He came back to our room where I was still sleeping and sat on the edge of our bed. I woke up to see him gazing down, fondly and seriously, as if he was trying to figure something out.

  “What?” I was groggy and worried my eyes were puffy.

  “Shh,” he said. “Don’t wake.” With his fingertips he pushed the hair off my forehead. “Shh, now.” He looked away and went back to unlacing his running shoes, peeling off his sweaty knee brace, a so-called flesh-colored one that looked dirty on his shining leg. I put my hand lightly on his wet back. “Don’t touch me,” he said, “I’m sweaty.”

  “I don’t care,” I said. Since the day the police stopped us, Milo and I had spent a lot of time staring at each other glassily. He was gentle with me. If I was teary in front of him, or pensive, he stroked my head. He said he loved me, and I believed him. The way he said it now was different, or maybe the way he looked at me, with something in his gaze small and helpless as a baby rabbit. I love you, he said. I said it back. We had gotten used to the words now. But they still worried me. What was that going to mean, love? Was it even true what I said? What he said? I was brooding a lot about what it really was, love, and kept thinking of the naked white baby Cupids with wings shooting darts at people, and checking to see if I felt pierced. Love was an arrow. It had to point somewhere, to something.

  Claire said, “You’ll either get married or you won’t.”

  “Stop with the marriage stuff. I’m not you, Claire.”

  “But it’s true, either you will or you won’t.” She was hoping it was will, I could see. She liked Milo. She no longer thought he was using me. When he came over she hugged him and offered him things to eat.

  “What if it’s won’t?”

  “Then you’ll have to split up, right?” Claire saw things so clearly sometimes it gave me headaches.

  In terms of weddings I had never gotten past the fashions, the plain white sheath or the antique veil, the big spread I did once in Brides, wearing a lace train longer than Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor line, with seed pearls clinging to my bodice like larvae. I had never considered the scary aftermath of a wedding, what the real purpose of it was: having a life with somebody. Children. I never thought about them except to think I would most likely have them someday, or a pet. Now, thanks to the Connecticut State Police and Milo’s parents and my friend Claire, the questions for me boiled down to: stay or go? And what would happen if the answer was, stay?

  “You know,” Claire said, when I was telling her about the police, “if you stay with him you just have to accept that’s part of your life.”

  There was that that again. But I saw clearly now, she was right. It was there. You couldn’t accept it. You could send it away but it would always come back, like the cat that knew how to find its way home from hundreds of miles away.

  Let’s go somewhere and be alone.

  We couldn’t be alone except in private. It was annoying. In the Berkshires I got tired of the small-town looks of the desk clerk, and the dining room families, and the dough-faced maid who jumped back when Milo answered the door wearing spandex bike shorts on his way to go running, and you could see the word trash practically tattooed on her face as she sniffed and tidied around our things. The maid was followed a half hour later by the morning desk clerk on the phone who said, “I have a Mr. Robicheaux to see you?”

  “What?”

  “Mr. Robicheaux says you’re expecting him?”

  “That’s my boyfriend!” I shouted at him. “He forgot his key!”

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” said the clerk, “is this Room 302?”

  “Right.”

  “Well …” He was stumped. He said: “It’s just a precaution but could you describe him for me?”

  “No,” I said. “You describe him for me.”

  “He’s a black gentleman,” the clerk said.

  “Really?” I said. “I guess I need glasses.”

  It was fun, in a sick way, chumping the desk clerk, leaving behind the empty tube of spermicide for the benefit of Doughface. It made me feel righteous. But it was not fun, for example, having to dine in the Lodge Room, where pastel families were having their surf and turf and looking over their elbow patches at me and Milo in the corner. Maybe there was a time when I would have said, It’s just innocent curiosity. Of course they look and why not? Maybe they’ll learn something, think of the educational value. But it was exhausting, being a human public service announcement.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Sure!” I said. “Just tired.” Move on, don’t dwell on it.

  “Wake up,” he said. “We’re going hiking.”

  We climbed and climbed and ate a picnic at the top of the biggest hill. It was the last warm day of the year, crisp and blue. The foliage was raging. Milo and I stood looking out over the valley and he put his arms around me.

  “You do seem tired,” he said wickedly.

  “Maybe I do.”

  “What you need is to lie down,” he said, as if it were a medicine he was recommending. He sank me to my knees, spread his sweatshirt out for me in the grass by a big tree and pulled me over him, kissing. His long eyelashes curled in a fringe. Shadows from the leaves overhead dappled his skin. His fingers tapered up to the tips near my eyes and when he felt they were open, he smiled and brushed my lids down, shut them as I imagine the coroner does on a body. And it was like that a little, in the sense that I forgot about my earthly worries. Milo unbuckled his belt and unzipped my jeans and flipped me under him so I felt cold grass on my bare back. I gave in, like going under the influence of a drug, without saying what was on my mind, just liking so much how we couldn’t help ourselves.

  We rested. We lay and looked up through the branches and felt the cool air drying our skin. Milo was looking at me, but now I wouldn’t turn my face to his, serious and weighed down again. Because I couldn’t trust anything, especially not
myself. How could I be lying there next to him with these snakes of doubt worming around in my heart? It was not honest.

  “Milo.” I hid my face in his shirt so my voice was sad and muffled.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What don’t you know?”

  “If I can stay with you.”

  “What does that mean?” He got very focused and sharp right away, like a doctor in an emergency.

  “I am confused,” I said.

  “Fine,” he said. “Let’s go home.” He got up and buckled his belt. He looked at me where I was lying, cold and exposed. “Come on.” He picked up his backpack and went back down the path without looking back.

  “Milo!”

  But he was gone. I could see him running ahead of me, dodging low branches along the path. He was a blur in the tree trunks, then he was the far-off crack of a stick underfoot. He had packed up the room and was paying our bill when I caught up to him. “We don’t have to leave,” I said, out of breath. We were supposed to stay another night. It was only Saturday.

  “We do. You do. You have to leave.”

  “I just said—”

  “Why would you want to stay?” he said. “For what?”

  “Milo, I just said—”

  “Either you know you can stay with me, Charlotte, or you leave.”

  We got in the car. He backed up quickly and pulled out.

  “Milo?”

  “Say what’s on your mind, Charlotte. I’m listening.”

  But I could see he was closed up. He hit the gas and held the wheel and his tongue curled up over his lip as he steered the narrow road, faster and faster.

  “Milo, it has nothing to do with what you think.”

  “Oh, yeah, I know,” he said. “I know.”

  “What?! What do you know?” I said. “You don’t know. You won’t talk about it. You won’t discuss it. It just happened and it’s like it never happened.”

  “I don’t need to talk about it,” he said. “I know what it is and what its name is and how long it’s lived here and you know, too, I think you do.”

  “I’m confused,” I said with a trembling lip. “I don’t know where we’re going.”

  “We are going home,” he said. “Jiggety jog.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Where do you want us to go?”

  “Where do you?”

  “That,” he said, “depends on you.”

  “Why?” I shouted at him. “Why does it depend on me? Why not on you, too?”

  “I told you my feelings,” he said.

  I was quiet all the way home. It got dark while we drove, and started raining. I rested my head on the window glass and stared into the lights of all the cars coming toward us. I let them blind me.

  First of all, I don’t owe you anything, don’t owe you just because you’re famous, or black, or an acquaintance of my stupid school days, or because I’ve been sleeping with you, or because I said “love.” I don’t have to love you for those reasons. And what’s more, everything doesn’t have to be about color, you know, buddy. It’s not like I haven’t had confusion about white boyfriends, or haven’t dumped white guys or said I loved white guys and then taken it back, so why are you accusing me? Of what? I’m just trying to be honest and never hurt you or especially myself again because God knows I’m lonely, too, in the world. Yes! even fashion models can be lonely! It’s funny, right? You laugh. You have no idea. No idea how exhausting and hurtful it is always having to think of color color color.

  Right. He had no idea.

  “We didn’t have to leave,” I said.

  “Oh really,” he said.

  “I’m sorry—” I reached my hand over toward his leg.

  “No,” he said, and stopped me with a look.

  I’ll tell you one thing: Men detest pity. They hate it more than bleeding. Most men prefer you to throw the china at them in a jagged-edge rage rather than feel the cool compress of your being sorry for them, whether it’s because of something big or something small: their sore throat or their crummy childhood. Perhaps Milo thought I pitied him and so was forced by masculine dread to push me away. But in fact it was only self-pity, just me, thinking of how tragically misunderstood Charlotte was and trying to figure out what Charlotte wanted to happen. It was too late for Charlotte to decide that now, however. Milo had already done the deciding.

  He said one thing, finally, when we were almost home: “Look, Charlotte, the way I approach life is as what we used to call a lights-out race. It’s all or nothing. All out every second till your legs are on fire and tears come out your eyes and never losing that tuck for one unnecessary goddamn second, and never catching an edge or otherwise fucking up, because if you lose your tuck in the wrong place you will lose your race, and if you catch an edge you will either get badly whacked or permanently. Wham! into the rock! Wham! off the cliff! You don’t get to make mistakes. You don’t get second chances. You mess up, you lose. Confused? you lose. That is my philosophy and my style, too, and I have got no room for I don’t know.”

  “Fine,” I said, thinking That’s fine for you. For you it’s yes or no. It’s stay or go, it’s black or it’s white. But not for me. I spend most of my time in the gray area. Maybe this maybe that. I can’t make up my mind, probably haven’t got enough of a mind to make up, dumb blond vapid bimbo airhead.

  Milo drove straight to my building. Pulled up in front. He grabbed my bag from the backseat, got out, and held my door open. “Charlotte,” he said, clipped and polite, “thanks for the weekend.”

  He handed me my bag.

  “Milo, don’t,” I said.

  “Don’t what?” he asked me.

  “I just—”

  “Figure it out, Charlotte. Work on it.”

  Milo drove off. He never looked back.

  I stood in the dirty rain with my bag, leaves and sticks still in my hair from where we had lain down in the woods, and watched the taillights of his car cutting in and out of the traffic. I started getting the chills, stunned at the feeling I was going to be sick, holding it off, swallowing in the elevator up.

  Crashing into the apartment, I found Carl and Claire having dinner. They had candles and wine. “What are you doing here? What’s the matter?” Claire asked me. I ran past them, ran to my room.

  I sat perfectly still, except for trembling, on my bed. Just sitting here in this black depression of dark gloom and panic. Only you can’t say gloom is dark or sorrow is black because why shouldn’t these be white? I was not blinking. The newly terrifying idea of Milo driving off and leaving froze me there, with this Ping-Pong of black thoughts and white thoughts relentlessly cropping up now, whatever I did. Would they always crop up, from now on? Could I ever get away from them?

  Claire came in after a few minutes and sat on the bed edge, put her hand on my knee. “Charlotte? What happened?”

  I told her.

  She predicted he would be back. She predicted the phone would ring in an hour or in the morning or in just a few days when Milo got home from L.A.

  “You’re wrong,” I said. “This is a lights-out race. It’s all or nothing. You keep your eye on the finish line. There’s no room for mistakes. You fuck up you wipe out. You hit the wall. It’s all about knowing what you want and going out and getting it.”

  “Wow,” said Claire, “he said that?”

  “Something like that.”

  I got on a plane the next morning after no sleep. I already looked bad and soon would look worse. First class was full of us models, heading for six days in Palm Beach. Half of the others were about twelve years old. I knew they had packed their stuffed animals in among their blow-dryers and their sable powder brushes. They were excited, chewing gum and reading Women’s Wear Daily, Vogue. “Isn’t this a gas?” said Andie, my seatmate.

  I smiled at her and said, “It’ll be fun.” But it wasn’t.

  I missed Milo. I lost my appetite, which was the only dividend. I slept b
adly and had problems on the shoot, trouble moving, finding the right feelings for the pictures they needed. I kept bumping into things and tripping. For the first time in years I got a Bible out. There was one there in my room at the Palm Beach Hotel and I have to say, it comforted me that week, thinking Hello, Mr. Bible, what have you got to say for yourself? I used it like a fortune cookie, opening it at random with my eyes closed, pointing down to see if it would tell me what I wanted to hear: Turn the other cheek, don’t look back. I was doing this the night before coming back to New York, sitting on the terrace of my hotel room drinking dark rum, looking out at the dark sea, at the far dots of light from tanker ships working their way up the coastline. What was Milo doing? Who was he with? I couldn’t picture him except with me, holding me, dancing.

  You have to leave, he had said, handing me my bag, driving away.

  I held the Bible, turned the pages, thumbing blindly, landing on a passage. The Book of Ruth.

  Entreat me not to leave thee or return from following after thee: for whither thou goest I will go, whither thou lodgest I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also, if even death parts me from you.

  While I was reading this, an image of Milo strayed into my system with the rum and biblical language, Milo fast asleep with one arm flung up over his head and his face turned in profile on the pillow. He slept sometimes like this, with his mouth open, so the rhythms of his breathing were deep and peaceful and dear to me.

  Entreat me not to leave thee. It didn’t matter to me that Ruth in the Bible was talking to a woman, her mother-in-law, or that the passage was about the Moabites and the Ephrathites. It was the words “entreat me not to leave thee.” Men did not tell me to leave them, as Milo had. They entreated me to stay. Dave had. Jack. Simon. All of them. Milo was the only one. Go, he said.

  I still believed in the Lord’s Will, even though now I called it Fate. At the time I pretended that finding the passage from Ruth was a big stick of Fate, pushing me to be with Milo: Thy people shall be my people. But I know now it was my own will, choosing him happily, and I thought he was happy to be my fate and have me be his.