Читать книгу Tully - Paullina Simons - Страница 16

‘So when am I going to meet your mother?’ Robin asked one afternoon when he called Tully.

‘Never,’ she said jovially, but after they hung up, she sat in her room and did not feel so jovial. So she called Julie. Julie would cheer her up. But Mrs Martinez said Julie was doing something or other with her history club. Who cares what she is doing? Tully thought as she hung up. She’s never around anymore to talk to.

Tully called Jennifer, who wasn’t home, either.

Nobody’s home but me, Tully thought petulantly.

She turned on the radio and danced in her room with the windows open. Hers was the only room besides the bathroom on the tiny second floor. It almost felt like the attic. ‘I will fly away,’ she sang. ‘I will fly away/fly away/so far/I will fly away.’ She stopped dancing, went to her closet, and took out a National Geographic map from one of her milk crates. Spreading the map open on her bed, Tully knelt down in front of it. With careful fingers, she touched the towns, villages, hamlets, cities, oceans, and deserts of the state of California. Palo Alto, here we come, Palo Alto, San Jose. Nowhere else but Palo Alto nowhere else but Palo Alto nowhere else but –

Tully remembered the time. She ran downstairs to the kitchen before her mother came home. Sometimes Tully made hamburgers nicely, putting bread crumbs and egg and fried onions in them. There was no time for that tonight. It was five forty-five. She slapped the patties together roughly, unevenly, and threw them in the frying pan. Then she peeled the potatoes and put them on to boil.

Hedda walked through the door a little after six, hung up her coat, and walked past Aunt Lena and Tully on the couch. Aunt Lena was watching TV, and Tully was reading a magazine. They both looked up and said hello when Hedda came in, but Hedda rarely looked at them, rarely said hello back. Tonight was no different. She grunted past them to the kitchen. They ate in near silence a half hour later. Aunt Lena kept jabbering on about something or other; Tully did not pay any attention. After dinner, Tully cleared her throat and, not looking at her mother, asked if she could go to the Homecoming dance. Hedda, also not looking up, sullenly nodded. ‘Thank you,’ said Tully, and went to make some tea before clearing up.

Hedda took her tea into the living room, sat on the couch, and watched Walter Cronkite, then ‘Let’s Make a Deal,’ and then an old movie. Tully washed the dishes and went upstairs to her room, where she danced quietly so they wouldn’t hear her down below.

At eleven o’clock, Tully came downstairs to wake her mother and tell her to go to bed. Aunt Lena had long gone to her rooms. What does my aunt do all day? thought Tully. Every day she’s by herself, sitting there, watching TV, knitting; knitting what? She always has the knitting needles in her hands, but I never see any knitting. I’m convinced she’s had the same ball of yarn in her plastic bag since Uncle Charlie died four years ago. Poor Aunt Lena. I’m afraid mother and I aren’t such good company. But then, neither is Aunt Lena. If she really is knitting, she’s knitting with one needle, for sure.

Upstairs, Tully washed her face and brushed her teeth. After staring at herself in the mirror for a few seconds, she got a pair of tweezers from the medicine cabinet and plucked her eyebrows. In her room she took off her jeans, baggy sweater, socks, bra. She used to not wear a bra under her baggy sweaters, but her mother had recently taken to giving her surprise quizzes, and Tully made sure she was always prepared. Putting on an old summer tank top, Tully climbed into bed. She left the light on, lay on her back, and looked around her room.

The walls were painted light brown and stood bare of all the trappings of obsessive teenagehood – no pictures of the Dead or the Doors, no Beatles, no Stones, no Eagles, no Pink Floyd. Not even her favorite Pink Floyd. No Robert Redford, John Travolta, Andy Gibb. No Mikhail Baryshnikov, Isadora Duncan, Twyla Tharp. No postcards, no photographs obvious to the eye. No bookshelves, no books. No records. Near the window there was an old wooden table that served as a desk, a makeup stand, and a bed for Tully. In front of the table there was one chair. There was an old dresser by the corner near the closet. On the nightstand near the bed, there was a lamp and a phone. Tully did not have a TV, but she had a small AM/FM radio.

And that is all Tully saw as she lay in her bed and fought sleep. But she knew that in the closet, four milk crates belonged to her: one was filled with National Geographics, a subscription gift from Jennifer, and the others with all the books she had read, ‘presents’ from Jennifer or Julie. And in the top drawer of her table, beneath some general debris there was a photograph of little Tully, about six years old, blond and skinny, flanked by a chubby Jennifer and a dark-haired Julie. In the photo, Tully held a toddler in her arms.

Tully fought sleep for about an hour or two. She turned and tossed. She sat up, rolled her head, rocked back and forth. She laughed, stuck out her tongue, mumbled. Getting out of bed to open the window, she stuck her head out – it was cold, nearly freezing – Tully thought of screaming at the top of her lungs. But the Kansas Pike, the trains, the river, were already screaming. No one would hear Tully. Leaving the window open, she got back into bed and pulled up the covers. Finally she was restlessly asleep, sleeping just as she was awake, tossing and turning, rolling her head back and forth, rocking on her back. Tully kicked back the covers and lifted her arms up above her head, then put them back down again, sweating profusely.

As Tully dreams, she finds herself lying on her bed, trying to keep awake; she sleeps and dreams of trying to keep awake, closing her eyes, her head snapping with pre-sleep, but she is sitting up, and finally lying down, finally sleeping in her dreams, and as she sleeps she hears the door open and footsteps creaking on her wooden floor. The footsteps are slow and careful; Tully tries to open her eyes, but she can’t, she shakes her head from side to side, side to side, but it’s no good; the footsteps are close to her, they are next to her, she feels someone bending over her – to kiss her? – and then – the pillow, the pillow over her face, as she flails her arms up and twists, but the body is on top of her, holding her down, and she is twisting, twisting, she tries to scream, but she cannot open her mouth, there is no breath, she is choking, wheezing soundlessly. Tully tries to draw her knees up, but there is a body on top of her, holding her down, the pillow, oh no oh no oh no – and then she comes to, sitting up sharply, gasping for breath, drenched with sweat.

She panted and wheezed, her eyes closed; she panted, her hands around her drawn up knees; she tried to get her breath back. Then she went to the bathroom and threw up. She took a shower, dried herself, put on a sweat suit, and sat behind her desk in front of the open window. She sat there in the cold until her head was too heavy to hold up, and she put it down on her wooden desk. When she heard the first birds, Tully fell asleep.