Tenderness (2 page)

“I think I’m coming down with a cold,” I said. But I wasn’t coming down with a cold.

My mother is a waitress. A professional, proud of it. Always shows up on time, whether she has a hangover or not. Knows the proper way to hold a tray above her shoulder. Knows when the customer wants the check, whether the soup is not hot enough or the steak well done and not medium as requested.

She has bad luck with men. Always picks the wrong guy except in one or two cases, like Gary, for instance, and my father, who she says was kind and gentle but without any luck at all, hit by a car on a rainy night when I was two years old. I don’t remember him at all. I have never seen a picture of him, not even a wedding picture. “It all happened on the run,” my mother said. Which is the way things always happen with her.

On the run. Maybe that’s the story of my mother’s life and mine, too. Moving from place to place all the time. Always looking for a better job or following somebody she met who makes promises that are always broken. Like Dexter Campbell, who she followed from Wickburg to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he abandoned her while she was in the hospital. She went to the hospital emergency room after he beat her up that time. I sat with her in the waiting room watching the small lump on her forehead actually grow into the size of an egg.
She told the doctor she walked into a door after getting up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

“How about this?” the doctor asked, pointing to the bruise on her arm.

“I bruise easy,” my mother said. “My skin is sensitive.”

The doctor looked at me and I looked away.

“Are you all right?” he asked, touching my shoulder with a gentle hand.

I nodded. Dexter never touched me. Touched my mother, his hands everywhere and half-undressing her and himself, too, in front of me while my mother whispered, “Not here, not in front of the kid,” but he went on anyway.

Anyway, Dexter was gone when we returned from the hospital. My mother said, “He was afraid, the bastard, that I was going to turn him in.” The apartment belonged to Dexter, rent was paid for the next month, but we left anyway, caught a bus to Manchester, where my mother knew someone who ran an all-night diner and would give her a job maybe. Then from Manchester to this town, my mother apologizing all over the place as usual for making us move so much, changing schools.

“Lucky you’re so smart,” she says all the time. “Smarter than your dumb mother …”

“You’re not so dumb,” I tell her. “You’re a very
good waitress. You never get fired. You always quit.…”

“I worry about you.” My mother says this all the time, too. Last week she said it again and added, “Look at you, fifteen years old. I can’t believe it.…”

What she means is that she can’t believe she’s thirty-six.

“I always think of myself first,” she says. “I’m not a very good mother, Lori.”

“You’re a very good mother,” I tell her. It doesn’t cost anything to say that, and it makes her feel good.

“I wonder what will happen to you in that terrible world out there,” she says. Her optimism deserts her now and then, when there’s nothing to drink in the house and no money to buy any.

She doesn’t know, of course, what has already happened to me. She still thinks I am a virgin and I guess I am. Technically, that is. I mean, I have had my moments with boys in the rear seats at Cinema I and II at the mall, and in the backseats of cars and with some others, like the CD guy, but never all the way.

I have been trying to figure out what love is and the difference between sex and love and that other thing, lust. I think one of my teachers was in love with me, but he never touched me. Mr. Sinclair. He told me that I had a beautiful
spirit, that I had a talent for writing and should keep a journal, and his eyes on me made my legs quiver, all that longing in his eyes and maybe sadness, too. I used to linger after school outside his classroom. He discovered me there one afternoon as he came through the doorway and we almost bumped into each other. He broke into a smile but stepped back right away, the smile wiped away like erasing a scribble on a blackboard, and he looked worried and concerned, glancing around.

“Hi, Mr. Sinclair,” I said, so glad to be with him alone in the corridor, my heart dancing.

He was not handsome, eyes deep in their sockets, hair always askew, harsh lines in his cheeks. I always wondered whether he got enough sleep.

He blushed and coughed there in the corridor, slapping his briefcase against his hip and stammering something I couldn’t understand. But I saw the longing in his eyes and the pain there, too.

“Oh, Lorelei,” he said, saying that name I hated—I was named for my mother’s favorite aunt—thank God for nicknames.

I wanted to take his hand and place it on me and tell him not to be afraid, but instead we just looked at each other, and he turned away from me, looking at me over his shoulder, such sadness in his eyes, still looking at me as he turned the
corner, taking with him all my longings and maybe his longings, too.

I wondered again what those longings were.

Yet what I think I want most of all is someone who would be tender with me.

Mr. Sinclair once asked the class to make a list of the ten most beautiful words in the English language, and the only word that really seemed beautiful to me was
tenderness
.

I am on my way. With my backpack and Reeboks and my cutoff jeans. It’s a beautiful June morning, everything green by the roadside. The bus from Hookset to Garville dropped me near Route 2, and I am standing by the side of the road hitching to Wickburg. I have hitched all over the place. Times I got mad at my mother, I would take off and hitch someplace. Like taking a lottery ticket. I always dreamed of a great-looking guy stopping and picking me up and telling me he’s heading for California via the Rocky Mountains and I say let’s go and he’s also kind and gentle and we drive all over the USA through small towns and big cities. But it never happens that way.

There’s a pause between passing cars, the highway empty, and the whole world seems empty suddenly and I want to go home and have Gary be tender with me. Or somebody.

Forget it, I tell myself.

I left my mother a note. Not a long one.
Going away for a while, Mom. Don’t worry. I’ll be staying with my friends in Wickburg, Martha and George
.
There are no friends in Wickburg. I made them up. She actually believes they exist, that I visit them when I take off. I wonder if she only pretends to believe and this eases her conscience for letting me go and not calling the cops to find me. Or is it cruel to think of her like that? Anyway, I pretend that I receive letters from Martha and George. She never sees the letters, of course, because there are no letters. I pick a day when she’s not at home at the time the mail arrives. When she arrives home and asks, “Any good mail today?” (meaning letters without windows, because windows mean bills), I tell her, “Yes, Martha wrote to me.” And my mother drifts away, looking for a drink as she always does when she arrives home, either from work or shopping or maybe a walk around the block. She has never connected my friends with Martha and George Washington.

I left the note where she will find it easily. I am glad this time that she won’t be alone, that she has Gary with her now.

I am always careful when I hitch. Standing on Route 2 at the junction of Interstate 190, which goes to Wickburg thirty-five miles away, I am aware of the rotten things that can happen.

I brace myself against the traffic, especially the big trucks that almost suck me down and under, between the axles, with the
whoosh
of their passing.

Finally a small red car stops and I run to it. A guy is alone in the car. He is sleek and elegant. The smell of aftershave emerges from the car as the window slides down. A briefcase is on the front seat. He smiles, a fake salesman smile, and his hand is between his legs. “Hello there, sweetheart,” he says. “Jump in.”

“Take off, sicko,” I tell him.

Meanness shoots out of his eyes and the window flashes up, almost catching my hand, and the car peels off, spitting up a cloud of dust.

Cars keep passing by and I don’t always stick out my thumb. I see them approaching and try to figure out what kind of person is driving. I skip sports cars, of course, and ignore pickup trucks. If I see something like dice dangling above the windshield, I also skip that one. Finally, a blue van approaches, dusty, needing a good wash. The handle of what is probably a lawn mower sticks out of the side window. I stick out my thumb, arrange what I hope is a pleasant expression on my face. The van doesn’t stop. I shrug and turn away but something makes me turn back. The van is backing up, approaching me in reverse.

As I open the door and slip in, the driver squints at me, worry lines creasing his forehead. I figure he’s in his middle thirties. He is nice looking, neat. He is wearing a blue sport shirt open at the neck. His eyes, too, are blue.

I settle into the seat, shifting my backpack to the floor at my feet, and turn to see him looking doubtful about my presence. I want to ask him what’s the matter but I know what’s the matter.

“Going to Providence?” I ask. I never tell them my real destination and I know this man with his lawn mower is not going all the way to Providence.

“Monument,” he says. “Is that far enough?” Then: “I never did this before. I mean, this is something I never do, pick up a hitchhiker.”

Especially a young girl.

“I’m glad you did,” I tell him. I smile at him. I am aware of my short shorts and move my legs.

He looks at me for a long moment. He is trying not to look at my legs, but he looks anyway. Quickly, then away. As the car begins to move, he asks, “Why are you going to Providence?” Then immediately: “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pry.”

I am not lonesome anymore. He seems gentle, someone who would be tender. I spread my legs a little more and sigh, my shoulders at attention, knowing what this does to my top.

A breeze drifts through the open window in the rear of the car. Perspiration dampens his forehead. He smiles at me, an uncertain smile.

We are in the country, long fields on either side of the highway, trees shimmering in the heat, bushes heavy at the side of the road. His knuckles
are white as he grips the steering wheel. His Adam’s apple jiggles as he swallows.

“Would you like to kiss me?” I ask, the words popping out unexpectedly. Although I think it would be nice to be kissed and held by him.

I am surprised to see a grownup person blush. His hands, trembling, leave the steering wheel for a wild moment and the car swerves. He grabs the wheel again.

He opens his mouth to speak but no words come out.

“You seem very nice,” I say. Much nicer than the CD guy. “And the way you look at me, I think you’d like to kiss me. Make out a little.”

I know this about him: he has maybe dreamed about something like this—otherwise, why did he stop to pick me up?—and I am his dream come true. I also know that I can handle him: that gentleness about him.

“Why don’t you pull over?” I say. “Seems like a lot of places we can stop.” The CD guy only gave me CDs and videos. Maybe this man can give me more. I need all the money I can get if I’m going to stay away.

“Why?” he asks desperately, his voice a whisper, his eyes agonizing.

“Because I like you,” I say. Then: “And maybe you could help me out a little. Like, say, twenty dollars …”

He keeps his eyes on the road. A vein leaps in his temple, seems about to burst. This is the moment when he will decide what to do. I don’t move. I don’t do anything with my legs or my top. I realize I am holding my breath.

“I never did anything like this before,” he says.

“I know, I know.” Like he’s the young person and I’m the old one.

He pulls into a spot by the side of the road, eases into a place that’s hidden from passing cars. The handle of the lawn mower bumps against the window glass as we stop.

He reaches for me, eyes closed, and I go toward him, letting him have me, and he kisses my cheeks and throat and his hands move over my body. He makes a funny moaning sound when he touches my top and his hand remains there, caressing. I begin to drift with it all, letting him squeeze and caress, and he’s not rough at all, his fingers trembling sometimes. I open my mouth to him and he moans again as he kisses me and he is all over me now, and I let him continue because he is tender with his touch. He is breathing fast, too, gasping as he takes his lips away, his heart throbbing against me, and suddenly he shudders like an earthquake throughout his body and I know he is finished. He curls up on the seat beside me, his head turned away.

And he’s, like, crying.

I have never seen a man cry before.

I touch his shoulder and he looks at me and his face makes me angry at myself because it’s the saddest face in the world and I made him sad.

He looks down and sees my wrists.

“What’s that?” he says, sniffling, the way little kids do when the tears stop but the hurt goes on.

“A dog bit me there. A wild bull terrier.”

If you are going to lie, you have to be specific, not vague. Words are very important. Like with
bull terrier
. Which sounds authentic even though I haven’t the slightest notion what a bull terrier looks like. In the fifth grade, old Mr. Stuyvesant told me about lying. He was the handyman at the project and would put me on his lap and tell me lots of good stuff. His touch was always gentle.