conduct is slutty. I suppose it is. She, like most girls, including the Jennifers, has a different relationship to boys than I do. She engages in sexual acts with them if she wants, but from my vantage point it looks like she can take them or leave them if they are not just right.
She considers whether she actually likes someone before she jumps into bed with him. She isn’t wracked with anxiety when there aren’t any boys around. And she doesn’t need them to live, which is what it feels like for me.
Or at least this is what I assume, that I’m the only girl who feels this way.
I also don’t tell her about my friendship with Mr. Kearney, the new history teacher. He is young, fresh from college, no older than some of the boys Amy and I hang out with at Dorrian’s. He is the faculty advisor for the yearbook, which I have joined in order to have something on my résumé for college. At the meetings, he is all business, assigning tasks to each of us. But when I find him in his office, and it is just the two of us, things are different. He becomes relaxed, flirtatious. He compliments my hair or my shirt. He laughs at my jokes. I like his attention. Soon I start going to see him almost every day after school, even when we don’t have yearbook meetings. I tell him about Dorrian’s and some of the boys there. He asks me lots of questions, and after a while our conversations turn to sex. We discuss blow jobs and virginity. We talk in explicit terms, using words like
“cock” and “cum.” When I leave, I feel tingly and light, high on Mr.
Kearney’s attention. On weekend days, driving around with Amy or my dad, I try to determine where his house is. He told me the general area, and I fantasize about surprising him there some night, dressed the way I dress for Dorrian’s, in short skirts with no stockings. Perhaps this is why he never tells me exactly where he lives. Perhaps he fantasizes about the same thing.
Many Sundays I’m still asleep when Mom calls. I sleep heavily.
•
54 •
A H o u s e w i t h N o M e n Tyler tells me when I’m up that she came in to wake me for the phone call, but I was so out I didn’t budge. She looks at me suspiciously. I know what she’s thinking. She thinks I’m sleeping off a hangover or I’m stoned. That’s not it at all. It’s just I’d rather sleep through the days so I’ll be awake for the nights, when the boys are out.
“You don’t know what Dad did,” she says to me one of these Sundays. I’ve come down our hallway to use the bathroom after watching TV with Dad. She calls me in to her room.
“What?” I stand at Tyler’s doorway. The Cure croons from her record player, the voice tortured and sad. Her room is baby blue, the color she chose when we first moved in, but someone wrote we are the dead in black marker over and over again around her door-frame. I have to assume it was her. Clothes I know she bought at Fiorucci and Canal Street Jeans litter the floor. She wears her hair short and spiked lately, and she draws black lines around her eyes.
She must be a part of that downtown scene, the one where kids jump around in mosh pits, getting out their aggression. I shift uncomfortably. She’s my sister, but I don’t even know her. I don’t know how she really spends her time, locked away in this room.
“Remember Harriet?”
I nod. Mom’s good friend from art school.
“She jerked off Dad. Right in our house when Mom was home so she would find them.”
“Mom told you this?” I say. My voice squeaks when I do. That familiar combination of jealousy and relief that our mother chooses Tyler as her confidante sits just beneath my skin.
“He wanted to be caught, the coward. Rather than just face her and say he wanted a divorce.”
“Shut up.”
“I don’t know how you can hang around him.” Her voice is bitter, full of hate that belongs to Mom, not her.
“I don’t know how you can stand her,” I say.
I walk away, annoyed, deeply bothered. I
She considers whether she actually likes someone before she jumps into bed with him. She isn’t wracked with anxiety when there aren’t any boys around. And she doesn’t need them to live, which is what it feels like for me.
Or at least this is what I assume, that I’m the only girl who feels this way.
I also don’t tell her about my friendship with Mr. Kearney, the new history teacher. He is young, fresh from college, no older than some of the boys Amy and I hang out with at Dorrian’s. He is the faculty advisor for the yearbook, which I have joined in order to have something on my résumé for college. At the meetings, he is all business, assigning tasks to each of us. But when I find him in his office, and it is just the two of us, things are different. He becomes relaxed, flirtatious. He compliments my hair or my shirt. He laughs at my jokes. I like his attention. Soon I start going to see him almost every day after school, even when we don’t have yearbook meetings. I tell him about Dorrian’s and some of the boys there. He asks me lots of questions, and after a while our conversations turn to sex. We discuss blow jobs and virginity. We talk in explicit terms, using words like
“cock” and “cum.” When I leave, I feel tingly and light, high on Mr.
Kearney’s attention. On weekend days, driving around with Amy or my dad, I try to determine where his house is. He told me the general area, and I fantasize about surprising him there some night, dressed the way I dress for Dorrian’s, in short skirts with no stockings. Perhaps this is why he never tells me exactly where he lives. Perhaps he fantasizes about the same thing.
Many Sundays I’m still asleep when Mom calls. I sleep heavily.
•
54 •
A H o u s e w i t h N o M e n Tyler tells me when I’m up that she came in to wake me for the phone call, but I was so out I didn’t budge. She looks at me suspiciously. I know what she’s thinking. She thinks I’m sleeping off a hangover or I’m stoned. That’s not it at all. It’s just I’d rather sleep through the days so I’ll be awake for the nights, when the boys are out.
“You don’t know what Dad did,” she says to me one of these Sundays. I’ve come down our hallway to use the bathroom after watching TV with Dad. She calls me in to her room.
“What?” I stand at Tyler’s doorway. The Cure croons from her record player, the voice tortured and sad. Her room is baby blue, the color she chose when we first moved in, but someone wrote we are the dead in black marker over and over again around her door-frame. I have to assume it was her. Clothes I know she bought at Fiorucci and Canal Street Jeans litter the floor. She wears her hair short and spiked lately, and she draws black lines around her eyes.
She must be a part of that downtown scene, the one where kids jump around in mosh pits, getting out their aggression. I shift uncomfortably. She’s my sister, but I don’t even know her. I don’t know how she really spends her time, locked away in this room.
“Remember Harriet?”
I nod. Mom’s good friend from art school.
“She jerked off Dad. Right in our house when Mom was home so she would find them.”
“Mom told you this?” I say. My voice squeaks when I do. That familiar combination of jealousy and relief that our mother chooses Tyler as her confidante sits just beneath my skin.
“He wanted to be caught, the coward. Rather than just face her and say he wanted a divorce.”
“Shut up.”
“I don’t know how you can hang around him.” Her voice is bitter, full of hate that belongs to Mom, not her.
“I don’t know how you can stand her,” I say.
I walk away, annoyed, deeply bothered. I
Similar Books
