The Beginners (6 page)
Authors: Rebecca Wolff
WHEN I GOT HOME I called Cherry and told her to meet me in the morning at the mill. No, I assured her, we would not stay there long. We had somewhere new to go.
6.
Saturday
T
he long walk gave Cherry ample opportunity to tell me all about her afternoon with Randy. It seems that they had hung out for a while in his truck, just parked there on Main Street, and then had gone for a drive out to the reservoir where, to no one’s surprise, least of all mine, he had kissed her. Cherry’s narration was prosaic. It was up to me to imagine that it was shady under the new green leaves, that their quickened breath sounded loudly in the cab of the pickup, that they had kept the windows shut against gnats. That the radio was broken. That she was surprised when he did not press her to take her shirt off, or at least to let his hand wander beneath it, to her white, teardrop breasts, their pink, untried nipples.
he long walk gave Cherry ample opportunity to tell me all about her afternoon with Randy. It seems that they had hung out for a while in his truck, just parked there on Main Street, and then had gone for a drive out to the reservoir where, to no one’s surprise, least of all mine, he had kissed her. Cherry’s narration was prosaic. It was up to me to imagine that it was shady under the new green leaves, that their quickened breath sounded loudly in the cab of the pickup, that they had kept the windows shut against gnats. That the radio was broken. That she was surprised when he did not press her to take her shirt off, or at least to let his hand wander beneath it, to her white, teardrop breasts, their pink, untried nipples.
Cherry was more voluble on the subject of Randy’s recent initiation into the ranks of real manhood. He had been invited, after several visits under the supervision of his own father, Teddy Thibodeau, who ran the town dump, to become a member of the Wick Social Club, and was thereby privileged to take his after-work beers on those hallowed stools, rather than in the darkened office of the auto-body shop, or at an even less distinguished establishment. Rumor had it, Cherry said, that he and a few of his buddies had been hanging out at the Lamplighter. I wondered what they’d seen there. “Live girls”—girls from some other town? Maybe girls from another country. Cherry was relieved that Randy would have no need for the Lamplighter now. Her proprietary pleasure made me anxious; it implied a connection I could not see, an invisible tether being woven between them. Magic.
IT SEEMED EERIE and wrong to walk by the high school just one day after its evacuation. It was a husk. But to get to where we wanted to go we must pass it. And now there were two cars in the strangers’ driveway, one dark red, shiny, recent, and one a scuffed powder blue, a little hatchback from some other era entirely. Up close, in the early-afternoon sun, the house looked positively unclean.
It was small, and had stood empty for a long while. It had been the site of after-school mayhem in the form of silver graffiti on the eastern side—“Sox in ’86”—and then, in black, a pentacle had been described, with the word “Sabbath” inside it, a reference to an antique but deathless heavy-metal band. The siding under its coat of grime was sea-foam green, a color peculiar to objects of a certain era. Dishes, in thrift shops. The shallow front porch was a shabby white, nothing on it but an empty plant hanger and an aluminum beach chair with a shredded seat, folded up and leaning against the wall.
Something about this house would always put me in mind of a stage set, or even a sketch for a stage set. Each room had in it only exactly what was sufficient to lend it the characteristics of whatever sort of room it was. The dining room featured a rickety, square wooden table, painted black, around which sat four mismatched straight-back chairs and upon which stood a brass candelabra, with holders for three candles, all covered in wax drippings. And that was all.
In the living room, a fireplace, a couch, a big stuffed chair, a braided rug, and a lamp. In the kitchen, a round brown table with three chairs and a stool. Later we would discover the rooms’ more intimate contents: a Scrabble set, with letters missing; a complete service for four in the cupboard; a Chinese wok and a few pots and pans; one big knife, exclusively Theo’s, which he wiped clean immediately after use. They had a coffeepot unlike any I had ever seen before, a glass and chrome device they referred to as the Plunger, because you pressed the grounds down to the bottom of the beaker, leaving, invariably, some very strong coffee that was lukewarm and had grounds in it. I was accustomed to the coffee at the Top Hat, grown muddy as it burned off throughout the day. The Plunger came from Europe.
WE STOOD on the porch for a second, Cherry and I, and then I knocked on the frame of the screen door, and the woman from the café appeared behind it
immediately,
as though I had summoned her from out of thin air, or as though the door was a television we had turned on by knocking, and she the show that filled the screen.
immediately,
as though I had summoned her from out of thin air, or as though the door was a television we had turned on by knocking, and she the show that filled the screen.
Again I was struck by the warmth of her address. “Hello, Ginger!” she cried, with obvious pleasure—it almost seemed like relief—and then became abruptly self-conscious. “It’s just I haven’t seen anyone for days and days—I’m like a little mole in a warren, or whatever you call the holes underground that moles live in. But here’s Theo . . .” And the tall man appeared behind her.
“Come on in,” he said, and Raquel swung the door wide. We stepped into a miniature hallway. The house looked much bigger from outside.
I introduced Cherry and then there was a slightly awkward pause. What were we doing here? What did we have to offer this handsome couple? They reminded me of models I’d seen in a mail-order catalog, representative of people with extensive wardrobes, people fluent in other tongues, people who evidently didn’t live in the small town in which they had been born.
“What can I offer you?” Raquel simultaneously echoed and preempted my unspoken question as she led us into the little kitchen, its diamond-patterned wallpaper and dark-painted cabinets in uneasy relationship. We accepted glasses of iced tea from a pitcher—not scooped in individual portions from a can of powder, as my mother made it—and then we were seated at the table.
All right,
I thought.
What can you offer us.
All right,
I thought.
What can you offer us.
“What an extraordinary town we live in, don’t you think?” Raquel began. “I just feel like my life is starting all over again, fresh, here.” Cherry and I looked at each other. This was a promising beginning.
Theo came in and took a beer from the refrigerator—at only one o’clock—and leaned against the counter, twisting the top off. His cotton shirt was unbuttoned and I could see a thin slice of thorax, abdomen, the little hairs on his lower belly. This could be discussed with Cherry later. “So these are the daughters of Wick?” he said, and smiled, and slugged. Cherry, across from me at the table, sipped nervously from her iced tea, looking up over its rim. Like me, she couldn’t tell whether he expected an answer.
“And what fine daughters they are,” Raquel sang out. “This is the proof we were seeking. Look at you! Wick is just the sort of wholesome environment we would want for our own little hatchling.” Raquel smiled sweetly at Theo.
“Oh, are you expecting?” Cherry found her footing in this familiar subject. Lots of girls in Wick got pregnant by senior year and were married shortly afterward. I scrutinized Raquel’s flat belly in her white T-shirt, one that looked like it belonged to Theo.
“Not yet, but with any luck by the new year . . .”
“Raquel,” interrupted Theo, gently. “I’m not sure that Ginger and—Cherry?—need to learn everything about us all at once, huh?”
“Theo, these are growing girls. The more information they can gather the better, don’t you think? Why be coy? And I’m sure we have a lot to learn from them, as well. The wisdom of youth, country wisdom . . . you know, the simple things in life being so difficult to grasp and all that. Why, when I was a young girl I would have given anything for someone to just be honest with me, you know? I grew up thinking babies came from a man and a woman sitting too close together on a park bench. I mean, I wish someone had talked to me about birth control”—at this Theo groaned, and left the room, while Cherry giggled in apprehensive delight—“and orgasms, and different positions . . .” That was it. We were hooked, small silver fish with our jaws open wide.
We had received concise instruction in birth control in a special unit of gym class, somewhere between volleyball and basketball, but no adult had ever spoken to us about the activity that made it necessary. We knew very well that it went on, and Cherry had spent more than a few thrilling evenings rolling around, fully clothed, on the couch in her parents’ den with this sweaty boyfriend or that, but to hear it—sexual intercourse—spoken of in the context of actual living adults, free to pass their time as they liked . . .
The afternoon flew as we three sat around the kitchen table, drinking iced tea and later eating popcorn (Raquel swore it was the only thing she knew how to cook), and Raquel told us all about how she had tried the Pill but it caused her to fall asleep wherever she was, at odd hours of the day; how condoms made her queasy just to look at (especially
used ones
); how the diaphragm was just right as the insertion of it gave Theo time to
calm down,
as she said, matter-of-factly, so he could
hold off longer.
And about how she, Raquel, required all sorts of manual stimulation, simultaneous with penetration, to reach orgasm, and how this was best accomplished by Theo’s approaching her from behind; and about how she would like to have a child sooner rather than later. How (and she leaned closer and said this in a very low voice) she had a plan to prick her diaphragm with a pin: Theo would never know.
used ones
); how the diaphragm was just right as the insertion of it gave Theo time to
calm down,
as she said, matter-of-factly, so he could
hold off longer.
And about how she, Raquel, required all sorts of manual stimulation, simultaneous with penetration, to reach orgasm, and how this was best accomplished by Theo’s approaching her from behind; and about how she would like to have a child sooner rather than later. How (and she leaned closer and said this in a very low voice) she had a plan to prick her diaphragm with a pin: Theo would never know.
So now, already, we had a secret, the three of us, and when Theo eventually came back in Raquel sat straight up and fabricated. “. . . so that’s really the whole story of how we settled on Wick as the right place for us. It’s wonderful to be in this town that has so much history. It means such a lot to me to feel a sense of continuity, of connection, to think that I may actually belong somewhere, after all.” She concluded her partial speech triumphantly, and gave Theo another, sweeter smile. “I have to go to the bathroom. Will you entertain the girls for a moment, Theo?” She left the room and made her way noisily up the stairs.
Her empty chair faced us. Theo slung himself into it. He looked at us steadily and for a moment we looked at him; then at each other—I registered Cherry’s flush; then down. His gray, reflective gaze put me in mind of a body of water. One could not make an impression upon it; only be washed over by it, dashed by it, drowned in it.
He leaned forward suddenly. The table squeaked. His voice was round, articulated. “Don’t you girls have something more wholesome to do with your time?” He was stern, even severe, though what he said was, I had to assume, meant as a joke. We had been invited. Or at least I had. “Why aren’t you out milking cows, or braiding one another’s hair in a field, or slaving over your college-application essays?”
We tittered like mice. “That’s next year!” Cherry exclaimed, literal as ever. I was embarrassed for her and was about to make an interjection that I hoped would impress him with its sophistication, when Theo sat back and spoke so quietly that we had to cease all motion and lean in slightly to hear him.
“I remember when I was your age . . .” Cherry rolled her eyes. “I thought the sun rose and set in my own asshole.” We laughed again, in surprise, looking to each other for reinforcement, and I saw Cherry grip the arm of her chair as though to push up out of it. “I thought there was nothing I couldn’t have, or do, if I wanted it badly enough.” He regarded us for a moment, his flat gaze flicking from Cherry’s face to mine, and back again, like the forked tongue of a snake, while the single pointed tip of his own pink tongue slipped out of the corner of his mouth and rested there for a moment, as though he wished to have a taste of his own skin.
“I’ve been waiting to be disabused of this notion for a long time. Do you think you could help me, girls?”
It was impossible to tell what he meant. I could read neither his tone nor his face nor his actual utterance. It was all I could do to laugh again.
But Cherry took him too seriously. Or not seriously enough. “It’s true! No one can do whatever they want to,” she chided him.
But he didn’t seem to have heard her.
“Giggling is fine,” he said, and though he looked at both of us, his eyes still darting, I felt as though he spoke only to me. “I encourage you to giggle all you want, all you can. . . . But I also encourage you to take care of yourself. Stand up for yourself. Guard yourself carefully . . .” He spoke to me as though I was a single representative unit of
you,
as though Cherry and I could not be divided. But I thought that what he ought to have said was that we must take care of
each other,
stand up for
each other.
“You won’t be able to tell when . . .” and then he raised his eyes and we looked around to where Raquel stood in the doorway.
you,
as though Cherry and I could not be divided. But I thought that what he ought to have said was that we must take care of
each other,
stand up for
each other.
“You won’t be able to tell when . . .” and then he raised his eyes and we looked around to where Raquel stood in the doorway.
“Are you conspiring? You’re not planning a surprise party, are you?” She looked from one to the other of us, around the table. She joked lightly, but the uncertainty in her eyes was genuine. I felt as though I had somehow betrayed her, though I had done nothing but attempt to understand. We wouldn’t be able to tell when
what
? When we had heard enough? I didn’t think I could ever hear enough. It was difficult to say whom he might be trying to protect. Perhaps he had been about to issue one of those bland proclamations about how these years were the best in our lives and we had better enjoy them while we could. Though it seemed obvious to me—something in the way he held himself, loose-limbed, coiled—that he took great pleasure in his present time of life.
what
? When we had heard enough? I didn’t think I could ever hear enough. It was difficult to say whom he might be trying to protect. Perhaps he had been about to issue one of those bland proclamations about how these years were the best in our lives and we had better enjoy them while we could. Though it seemed obvious to me—something in the way he held himself, loose-limbed, coiled—that he took great pleasure in his present time of life.
Then he uncoiled, and all levity, and duplicity, resumed. “I know you don’t like surprises, sweetheart. No, Ginger was just telling us a ghost story. The one about the girl whose head falls off when she unties the ribbon from around her neck.” I knew that story. It was one of my favorites, though I could never remember its premise, only the denouement.
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