A Stranger in This World (4 page)

His mother’s handsome face darkened with concern. She was a fan of emotional honesty, she thought it was healthy, a guarantee of a good childhood, her specialty. Although he would have to think of something to tell her later.

Paul said, Can we talk later? Right now I just want to think some things through. I’m basically OK. OK?

OK, his mother said, little furrows of concern rising at the inner edges of her eyebrows. She waved her chef’s knife helplessly in the air as he retreated to his room, not one o’clock yet, watery afternoon light, the afternoon and the evening to be gotten through before there was any prospect of sleep, and sleep was all he wanted, the black invisibility. Paul wanted to become invisible to himself, he seemed like evidence. Thinking of his tennis racket, ticking like a terrorist’s dream in Judy’s room, thinking, I will be punished for this. The discovery, trial by disappointment, maybe worse.

Whatever, he thought. Anything he could touch would be easier than this. Anything outside himself. Jimi Hendrix stared down at him from the wall, psychedelic purple and green, a dirty mouth under a thin, sinister mustache. Paul took his purple Telecaster from its case in the closet, a better guitar than he should have had but money was not a problem in this house.
He plugged it into a Tube Screamer and then into a headphone amp and turned the distortion up to ten and played his same stupid chords and clumsy leads. He was never better, never even good, but it passed the time, he could lose himself completely, a closed loop, fingers to guitar to amp to ears, no one else to hear him, like jacking off. Hendrix’s eyes, eyes that could look at anything. The afternoon disappeared, a pencil line under an eraser. He played until his fingers hurt, and then till one of them bled a little.

Paul put his guitar away as the light was leaving the windows, no lamps yet, a gray, ghostly light, and from behind the pile of records at the back of his closet he took a tattered
Penthouse
, and opened it to a photograph of two girls faking sex with each other, ghostly girls in the half-light, secret skin in tight close-up, and Paul knew, looking at the picture, that he had thought of nothing else all afternoon: tongue in his mouth, animal voice in his ear, hard little carpenter’s hands.

I will be good, he told himself, no idea what he meant.

That night he dreamt of her, woke up hard in the darkness of his room, a room that was newly strange, images of birds, of houses seen from a great height, persisting from some earlier part of his dream. A stranger to himself, an unsolvable problem, if train A leaves city X at five-thirty and travels north, he wandered the dark hallways toward the kitchen, hoping for ice cream. He’d barely eaten at dinner. Even his father had noticed.

——

Summer, school was out, his few friends had left town, nothing days. His mother sat with him after breakfast, inquired about drugs, he was scheduled to start a job in three weeks, did he need something to fill the time? Anomie, he said, bringing a smile to her face with the new word, the one thing he did right all day. The tennis racket ticked in a corner of Judy’s room, without going off. Tuesday nothing Wednesday nothing Thursday nothing, but he prowled the streets, a thief of opportunity, telling himself that he was only going to get the racket back. His nights were populated with versions of Judy,
Penthouse
dolls, secret skin, not the child who called to him still, Hi Paul! when he walked by to see if Mrs. MacGregor’s car was in the driveway—it always was—or the cleaning woman was there, but the tongue in his mouth, cries in his ear. He could not connect the two, could not believe that the afternoon had been anything but a dream, though now it was his everyday life that seemed like a dream, nothing weighed anything, nothing mattered, he found himself trying to read the clouds. It continued to rain, never hard, never letting up. Judy was growing inside him like a child, taking shape, stretching to be born, feeding on his blood. Even his father noticed.

He was only going to get the racket back. Friday morning he saw Mrs. MacGregor’s car swish by under the arching trees, a flash of imitation woodgrain, a chance. A man two streets over had built a speedboat in his basement, a beautiful shape of varnished, steam-bent maple, without thinking how he was going to get it out. This was twenty years before, the house had been sold twice, the boat was still there.

——

Paul, she said, Pauletta Paulotta Paulola Pauleeleelu.

There in the corner was the tennis racket, and there she was. The air was turning fire-engine green, a whining in his ears like television, he wanted to lie down on the floor and cry like a baby boy.

She said, My mom is gone all day.

He lay down on the floor. Without affection, she came and lay beside him. The carpet was thick, soft and green, like a lawn, and as her clumsy fingers fumbled with his pants Paul wondered what the name for this was, fucking seemed too hard, making love seemed preposterous, maybe, as he lost the name for anything, maybe that was part of it, no name because it wasn’t anything human. Paul gave up his thoughts, met Judy on the carpet as body to body, equals, he remembered, equals. As he gave himself over to her hard little hands, he realized that only the things around it were at all human: courtship and roses, satin, magazines, going steady, we only owned the box, the thing in the box belonged to someone else, before words; and words extinguished themselves in his brain, though his eye kept recording, memories like pictures, her face, which was like an empty house, the rain in the trees outside, the plaid bedspread. Better than anything, but he wondered, in the shocked quiet afterward, what he was letting himself in for. He didn’t know anything.

She said, I want some ice cream, Paul. Get me some, please.

Left her lying on her side, her back to him, like an accident victim, heavy and inert. Nearly left, when he got to the kitchen, but remembered that his racket was still upstairs—the first joke, first hint that he was being played with. He thought of Judy and her cars, go left, now stop, and wondered who or
what was watching him. Ice cream, two spoons, back along the morose hallways. What would it be like? A mommy, a daddy, a house. The ghostliness of these recent days came over him again, and he imagined that he would one day have all this, a house as big and fine as this one, a wife like Judy, only more intelligent, like looking down a deep hole into the future. A wife like Judy, what was so different? What was so wrong? But he knew as soon as he saw her, dressed again, big and drooping. They sat in the window seat and finished the ice cream, and when another kid walked by, Paul ducked out of sight and watched her lean out the window and wave, stretching her limbs eagerly like a plant bending toward the sun, and her smile and her sweet voice, Hi Larry! and the happiness that came and left her face so quickly, like breath on a mirror.

She seemed disappointed when her eyes turned into the room again and found him still there. Too much to think about. He pulled her down to the floor again.

Then a weekend at the beach with Mom and Dad, a relief in a way, he hoped things would become clearer, or go away. For the first time Paul was afraid of himself, what he was capable of. He thought of Judy in dirty particulars, every waking minute, he couldn’t stop, he wanted air. He sat in the breakfast nook talking about the design of kites with his father, at the same time swearing to himself that he would never walk down her block, at the same time starring in his pornographic memories. He lay in the dunes alone, a hollow pocket of sand rimmed with saw grass, out of the wind, feeling the warm,
cleansing sun pour down on his skin, and the whole world seemed to turn into Judy: Judy in the softness of the sand, in the warmth of the sun, in the ebb and tickle of the wave’s retreat, especially Judy in the way the sand retreated from under his feet in the outwash, left him standing uneven, unsure of even the ground.

He swore that he would never see her again, never closer than the sidewalk, but this was not the truth. He decided that the kindest thing to do would be to be friends, like regular people. He dreamt about putting his hand between her legs, and it was always her. In practical terms he watched a lot of television, played his guitar, took solitary walks. It seemed impossible for his parents to know nothing, he was wearing her on every inch of his skin, but they were too caught up in their own romance, getting to know each other again was how they put it. They seemed like children to Paul, willful, self-absorbed children.

He stole a chance to see her on Monday, she was glad to see him and he was so pleased to see her smile that he wondered if he were in love. More words for something that there weren’t any words for, he was learning. No time for anything that day, though, he had to slip out over the roof to avoid the cleaning lady. A near miss, he was taking chances. He felt tainted but he knew he couldn’t turn away from her. Friday was her day alone, he knew, her mother went to volunteer at the Anglican Senior Citizens’ Day Care Center, her father worked, the cleaning lady disappeared back into the dark reaches of the invisible city. How would he live till Friday? He would not see her Friday, he made up his mind again and again. He was definite on this point.

——

Then the miracle: Mrs. MacGregor drove away at ten Wednesday morning, leaving Judy undefended in the house. Paul saw the station wagon from the window of his room, and knew as it turned the corner, went away, that it didn’t matter what he thought, he was going. He stayed in his room for another half an hour, but it was futile, the only idea that presented itself was that it didn’t matter, right or wrong, crazy or real, he was going. His will seemed to count for nothing at all. I will treat her with compassion, he declared to himself, like the human being that she is. This sounded like the Boy Scouts, even to his own ears: when he closed his eyes, trying to think, he saw her blank-eyed shiver at the touch of his fingertips. Sleepwalking, dreaming his hand in front of his face. He was wrong, he was born wrong, he was broken.

Judy, he said, is your mother gone?

She nodded.

All day?

All day, she said happily, just like a child, just like the child she really was. Mom said to get my lunch on the table.

I want to take you to the zoo, he said, surprising himself with a sudden rush of moral correctness. Go see the animals, the bears and the giraffes and the elephants. Do you want to?

No, I want to do it. I want you to do it.

We can do it later, don’t you want to go?

She looked at him, the window, the carpeted floor. OK,

she finally said, still reluctant. He was just starting to realize how much time she spent in a bad mood.

He asked, Are those the clothes you want to wear?

But she didn’t know, too complicated a question, and so he let it drop, wondering if her mother dressed her still: a pink sweatshirt with a big yellow sun on it, blue sweatpants, Keds. Big sunny Judy. They could just stay, Paul knew it, the thought of all that tangible skin, the slippery, solid bulk of her beneath him, a thickness of cloth away from his empty hands, but he was going to be right today.

Out the back door, then, through the alley as quickly as he could drag her along, the terror of discovery behind every fence. Even on the avenue, he kept his eyes fixed straight ahead, magic vision, if he couldn’t see anyone then they couldn’t see him, or sun-bright Judy either, waiting docile and obedient next to him in the bus shelter. He started to breathe again on the bus, the happy couple, Judy looking neat and nearly pretty on the seat beside him; and she was pretty to Paul, despite her size, he could touch her anywhere in memory and she seemed to him so much softer and enclosing than any normal girl could ever be. They rode across town without talking, watching the streets; and Paul felt that she could be anyone, that nothing was really so wrong, that they were different but other couples were different, too. The comfort of her nearness, her side pressed to his; but when they went through the poor part of town, deserted streets bright with advertising, a car on fire down one of the side streets surrounded by a village of flashing police cars, he remembered what a dangerous place the city was; a moment’s worry, memory of things that hadn’t happened yet.

The zoo was empty, the bears asleep, the giraffes staring thoughtfully as they ate, evaluating the flavor of every eucalyptus leaf. Paul felt the weight of how much he knew: elephant, sycamore, the distance to the stars, how to check the oil in his father’s car, how to pay for things, her blank uncomprehending stare at the ticket booth, not even caring: beyond her. Yet her company was right for this place, she saw the strength of the tiger, ignored the path he had worn in the grass. The sadness of the rhinoceri, lying sideways in the mud like wrecked trucks, the manic intensity of the monkeys’ stare and the bare patches on their skin where they had picked away each other’s fur, all this eluded her; and she ran from cage to cage, laughing, delighted when anything moved. Her hair, glossy and fair as a blond child’s, shined in the scattered sunlight, and her face in happiness was nearly pretty.

At first Paul liked her company, her cheerfulness, young and strong in the sun, delightful things to see, the promise of ice cream later. Gradually, though, he began to lose heart, there was too much she didn’t see, and the other patrons stared at her when she talked in her overloud voice, Look Paul, look Paulie, elephants! He wanted to flip them all off, wanted to be transported, back to Judy’s room. In his black heart he knew he had betrayed both of them. He wasn’t interested in her, or she in him; what held them together was sex and nothing more. He was angry with her; she should have known.

Suddenly she whirled to face him, fear and anger on her face. No! she screamed. No, Paulie!

What?

I don’t want to, Paulie!

People were staring, he looked around and saw a straggling band of badly retarded adults staring down into the empty otter pen, the pool where they weren’t, their keepers explaining.

I don’t want to!

What?

Go with them! I don’t want to!

You don’t have to.