Читать книгу The Abstinence Teacher - Том Перротта - Страница 9

IT WAS A LITTLE AFTER SIX ON FRIDAY EVENING, BUT ALREADY Bombay Palace was packed, the entrance overrun with cranky families who'd just been informed that they'd have to wait half an hour for a table at the town's only half-decent alternative to Applebee's. Tearing off a piece of alu paratha, Ruth registered a flicker of pleasure at her own free agent status. It was one of the few compensations of divorce, she thought, the one night a week when Frank took the girls and she was able to do what she wanted, no babysitter to pay, no one to report to when she got home. A perfect opportunity to be bad, if she'd had anyone to be bad with.

“Look on the bright side,” Gregory told her. “At least you're practicing what you preach.”

“I don't think it qualifies as abstinence if it's involuntary,” Ruth told him. “It's just pathetic.”

“And it's definitely not abstinence if a vibrator's involved,” Randall added.

“You're right about that,” she said. “The new curriculum clearly states that masturbation of any kind is strictly verboten. Apparently it's habit-forming and interferes with your schoolwork.”

“Damn,” said Gregory. “So that's why I didn't get into Harvard.”

“Frankly,” said Randall, “it's a miracle you got your real-estate license.”

Gregory nodded. “I'm just glad I didn't have to take the test when I was fifteen.”

“Believe me,” said Ruth. “The kids didn't look too happy when I broke the news.”

“I bet Homo Joe was pretty devastated, too,” Randall observed. “What's he gonna do with that economy-size jar of Vaseline he carries around in his coat pocket?”

“Or that Burt Reynolds centerfold in his wallet?” said Gregory.

It was a running joke between Randall and Gregory that Principal Venuti was actually a closeted gay man—aka “Homo Joe”— who took extralong showers in the boys’ locker room, kept a stash of pilfered jockstraps in his “Confidential” file cabinet, and was frequently seen dancing at The Manhole in tight jeans, a fishnet shirt, and a Prince Valiant wig. Whenever possible, a new perversion was added to the list.

“I really don't get the logic behind the whole abstinence thing,” said Gregory. “I mean, I grew up being taught that premarital sex was wrong, and gay people were going straight to hell, and playing with yourself was a sin. And look how I turned out.”

“Greg was wearing leather hot pants and a studded dog collar on the night we met,” Randall told Ruth.

“I know,” said Ruth. “You showed me the pictures.”

“It was a Halloween party,” Gregory explained. “And I'd just left the seminary. I was trying to make up for lost time.”

“I'm not complaining.” Randall reached across the table and gave his boyfriend's hand a furtive squeeze. “And I wouldn't say no to a reenactment later on.”

“We can try,” Gregory said skeptically. “But you'll need a crowbar to get my fat ass into those shorts.”

“The collar will suffice,” Randall assured him.

As she often did in their company, Ruth wondered how much of this banter was serious and how much was manufactured for her entertainment. Either way, dinner with Randall and Gregory was a lot livelier than the occasional girls’ night out she shared with Donna DiNardo and Ellen Michaels, a longtime colleague who taught History Defying the Sex and the City stereotype of randy, uninhibited single gals dishing colorful secrets to their friends, the three women rarely spoke about anything but work and movies. Ruth and Donna made a special effort to steer clear of the problematic realms of sex and romance, lest they trigger one of Ellen's weepy, chardonnay-fueled tirades against her ex-husband, Marty, a lawyer who'd run off with a much younger colleague and started a new family, leaving her all alone in a big empty house, her kids grown up and gone, nothing but the goddam TV for company, probably for the rest of her life.

Tonight, especially, Ruth was grateful to have such diverting companions. It had been a rough week, a sustained attack on her dignity and self-esteem. Here she was—a woman who had always prided herself on being a fighter—standing up day after day in her own classroom and, under the watchful eyes of her three “guest observers,” betraying everything she'd ever stood for as a teacher, the values on which she'd built her entire career. She'd done what she could to let the kids know she wasn't buying what she was selling—grimacing, talking in a robotic voice, stressing as often as she could that the curriculum didn't necessarily reflect her personal opinion—but it didn't matter much. She still felt dirty at the end of each class, unable to meet her students’ eyes as they filed out of the room.

“Abstinence is perfectly reasonable in theory,” Gregory said. “It just doesn't work in practice. It's like dieting. You can go a day or two, maybe even a week. But eventually that pizza just smells too good.”

“Just ask Father John,” Randall said.

“Who's that?” asked Ruth.

“The priest who molested him.” Randall looked at Gregory. “What were you, twelve?”

“Thirteen,” said Gregory.

“What?” Ruth was taken aback. “You guys are kidding, right?”

Both men shook their heads.

“Really?” she said. “By a priest?”

“Finally.” Randall pumped his fist in mock triumph. “A story we haven't told her.”

“Molested is too strong a word,” Gregory said. “I think it's more accurate to say it was consensual.”

“Come on,” Randall protested. “Nothing's consensual when you're thirteen.”

“Not technically,” Gregory conceded. “But I did enjoy it. And I certainly volunteered for more.”

“That's putting it mildly,” said Randall.

“Don't mind him,” Gregory told Ruth. “He's just jealous.”

Ruth nodded, trying to look as nonjudgmental as possible. No woman she knew would have admitted to enjoying sexual advances from an authority figure at thirteen, but she had come to believe that certain things really were different for men.

“He was a cute little altar boy,” Randall said. “The whole thing was such a tawdry cliché.”

Ruth had no trouble believing this. Even at thirty-eight, with his apple-cheeked face and lank, sandy hair, Gregory still looked like a member of the Vienna Boys’ Choir, despite the weight he'd put on in the past couple of years. At thirteen, he must have been an angel.

“Father John was a sweet, mixed-up man.” Gregory smiled wistfully at the memory. “He died of AIDS, but none of the parishioners would admit it. To this day, they still call it cancer.”

“Thirteen's too young,” Randall insisted. “I agree with the abstinence people on that.”

“Maybe,” said Gregory. “But the other kids had been calling me a fag since second grade.”

“So?” Randall said. “What's that got to do with anything?”

“I don't know.” Gregory looked thoughtful. “It was just kind of a relief to make it official.”

“You were lonely, and he took advantage,” Randall said. “You should at least be able to see it for what it was.”

“It happened to me,” Gregory snapped. “Not to you. So don't tell me what it was.”

“I just don't think it's right,” Randall muttered.

“I guess I wasn't as lucky as you.” There was an edge in Gregory's voice that Ruth hadn't heard before. “I didn't meet Mr. Perfect on the first day of college and have a storybook romance.”

“Honey, I'm not criticizing. I'm just trying to make a point.” Randall turned to Ruth. “Don't you think thirteen's too young?”

“Everybody's different,” Ruth said after a brief hesitation, reluctant to take sides in the dispute. “It's hard to generalize.”

“That's too easy,” Randall shot back. “You're a mother. Do you want your daughters having sex at thirteen?”

Ruth shrugged. “I hope they wait till they're in college. But a lot of people don't.”

Gregory pounced. “Did you?”

Ruth poked at her sag paneer for a moment before answering.

“I had my first real boyfriend in college,” she said. “There were a couple of weird experiences in high school, but I didn't really know how to process them.”

Randall and Gregory traded prurient looks, allies again.

“Weird experiences,” said Randall. “Now you've got our attention.”

“Come on.” Gregory made a coaxing motion with his hand. “Don't hold out on us.”

“It was nothing,” Ruth insisted. “Just, you know, the standard groping.”

“The standard groping's always been good enough for me,” Randall said.

“As opposed to the substandard?” Gregory inquired.

“Even that's better than nothing,” Randall said with a laugh. “Who wants another Kingfisher?”

RUTH HAD trouble falling asleep. This was often the case when she'd had too much to drink, and she almost always had too much to drink when she hung out with Randall and Gregory. She'd gone to their house after the restaurant, ostensibly to watch a Margaret Cho video, but they'd gotten sidetracked. First they headed down to Gregory's basement studio to look at his latest work, an unusually large installation that placed several French Resistance Fighter GI Joes in a maze of soulless office cubicles, each doll staring at identical miniature computer screens displaying the smiling face of the late Pope John Paul II. Ruth was puzzled by the piece until Gregory explained that it was an allegory designed to illustrate the way that existentialism/atheism had lost ground to organized religion in recent years as a result of the widespread anxiety generated by the ever more intrusive presence of digital technology in our lives.

“Wow.” Ruth was impressed. “You really packed a lot into it.” Gregory seemed pleased. “Art is all about compression.” “It took me three months to round up those action figures,” Randall said, reminding them of his own contribution to the project. He wagged a finger at Gregory. “From now on you're going to have to start working with Barbies.”

“Yeah, right,” Gregory muttered, as if this quip had been intended seriously. “That'd be really original.”

Randall smiled the way people do when they're hurt and trying not to show it, then herded them upstairs to try out a recipe for chocolate martinis that he'd cut out of last Sunday's paper.

The experiment was not a success. After a couple of sips, they dumped the vile concoction into the sink and switched to Manhattans, a much safer bet. While Randall mixed her drink, Ruth picked up a MotoPhoto envelope resting on the table and shuffled through the pictures, which documented the Massachusetts wedding of Dan and Jerry, two of Randall and Gregory's oldest friends. They made for a striking pair, one man tall and bald and amiable in a black tux, the other in white, bearded and stocky and a bit too intense. The two grooms danced cheek to cheek, fed each other cake, and posed with their elderly parents, who smiled gamely, if a bit uncomfortably, at the camera. Randall had found the ceremony to be incredibly moving—like a dream, he said—while Gregory took a darker view, knowing what he did about Dan and Jerry's troubled relationship.

“These guys break up every six months or so,” he said. “They only get back together because they're so devoted to making each other unhappy.”

Ruth laughed. “Sounds like a lot of couples I know.”

“Dan and Jerry have every bit as much right to a bad marriage as anyone else,” Randall said.

“People shouldn't get married just because they can,” Gregory said.

Randall glared at him, his face flushed from a combination of alcohol and anger.

“Everything doesn't have to be perfect, you know. You just have to love each other for better or worse.”

Gregory turned to Ruth. “This is about us, you know. He's mad at me for not proposing.”

“I'm not mad ax. you,” Randall insisted. “I just can't figure out why you're so scared. We've been together for twelve years.”

“I'm not scared,” Gregory said. “I just don't see the point of getting engaged if we can't get married.”

“We're making a commitment,” Randall said. “Once it's legal, we'll be first in line.”

“Let's cross that bridge when we get to it,” Gregory said.

“Forget it.” Randall's face tightened into an unconvincing smile. “It's really not worth fighting about.”

“Who's fighting?” said Gregory. “We're having a calm discussion.”

Randall drained his martini.

“Let's just watch the movie.”

It was already after ten. Ruth tried to make a graceful exit, but Randall insisted she at least watch the first ten minutes, where Margaret did the hilarious imitation of her crazy Korean mother. She reluctantly agreed, but then got sucked in and stayed to the bitter end, by which point both her hosts had fallen asleep—Gregory dozing in an armchair, hands resting on his belly, and Randall snoring softly on the couch, his face naked, almost babyish, without his glasses. It didn't look to Ruth like anyone would be breaking out the dog collars anytime soon. She kissed them both good night and showed herself to the door.

RUTH MADE a point of sleeping in the nude when her daughters were out of the house. It was a simple indulgence, and, sadly enough, the erotic highlight of her week. This private ritual—shedding her clothes in the dark, slipping between the cool sheets, savoring the soft touch of cotton against her skin—had come to seem like a kind of foreplay, automatically nudging her toward that vibrant fantasy realm that, by default, was her sole source of sexual pleasure. And if these fantasies sometimes inspired her to break out the vibrator she kept hidden in a shoe box on a high shelf in her closet, well, so what? It was her body— her lean, muscular, lovely, unloved body—and didn't it deserve to feel good every once in a while, especially if there was no one around to overhear the humming of the busy little machine, or the grateful cries of a woman who had no one to thank but herself?

Tonight, though, her mind was elsewhere. She lay in the dark, exhausted and wired at the same time, her eyes wide open, the weight of solitude pressing down on her like a heavy blanket. She missed her daughters, wondered if the house would always feel this empty when they left for college, vast and unmoored, ready to lift away from its foundation like a hot-air balloon. She comforted herself with the thought that she still had seven years before Maggie graduated high school, long enough to make some changes. Maybe there'd be a man by then; maybe the exodus of the girls would feel more like a honeymoon than an abandonment, a transition from one rich phase of her life to the next.

Maybe.

Because it was just too creepy to consider the alternative: nothing changing at all, everything shrinking into the sad belated recognition that the best days had come and gone without her even realizing it. Ruth's mother had sounded this note a lot in the weeks before she died, a kind of desperate nostalgia for everything she hadn't appreciated when she'd had the chance.

“Remember that house in Manasquan?” she'd say, propped up in the hospital bed, clutching the “pain button” that allowed her to dispense her own morphine. “The one we rented in what… 1978? That was a fun vacation. You enjoyed that, right?”

“I did,” Ruth would say, because it would have been cruel to remind her of the truth, which was that they'd all been disappointed by something they'd been dreaming about for years. The house they rented was small and smelled bad; the beach had been closed for two days because of medical waste that had washed ashore. But mainly, that vacation had just come too late. Ruth was a teenager by then, a claustrophobic adolescent trapped in close quarters with her family, just gritting her teeth and waiting for it to be over. The only good times she remembered involved sneaking out at night with her older sister and smoking cigarettes on the boardwalk.

“It was so lovely by the ocean,” her mother whispered, though it seemed to Ruth that she'd spent most of the week inside that cramped bungalow, cooking and cleaning and watching TV, the exact same things she did at home. “Let's go there again sometime.”

Ruth shut her eyes tight and rolled onto her side, feeling perilously close to crying. The night had taken a toll on her, all that bickering between Randall and Gregory. She'd suspected they were having problems for a while now—Randall had certainly hinted at this in various ways—but until tonight, she'd allowed herself to assume that it was nothing serious. Now, for the first time, she felt it necessary to consider the possibility that they might be headed for a breakup, and she was surprised by how much it disturbed her. She liked them both as individuals, but she liked them even more as a couple. Sometimes, when she tried to imagine her future and couldn't summon the image of a man who loved her, she found herself entertaining an alternative scenario, in which she and Randall and Gregory traveled the world together, a witty trio visiting interesting places and eating adventurous food, laughing everywhere they went. It was hard to trade this in for an imaginary future in which she'd have to deal with them separately— like a child of divorced parents—watching what she said, trying not to take sides, eventually having to meet their new boyfriends, all the while pining for the good old days.

Beneath this worry, though, something else was gnawing at her. One of the things she most valued about her friendship with the guys was how honest it was. It had occurred to her more than once in the past couple of years that Randall and Gregory were the only people who really knew her anymore, the only ones she could trust with her secrets. Among other things, she'd confided in them about her lackluster sex life with Frank, about the two men she'd slept with in the year after her divorce—the memorable one-night stand at the Teachers’ Association Conference in Atlantic City, and the divorced computer guy who'd decided to move to North Carolina just when things were heating up between them—and about the dry spell she'd endured since then. They were good listeners, worldly yet easily shocked, hungry for details, curious and nonjudgmental at the same time, always happy to give advice, but only if it was requested. That was why she'd been so surprised to find herself lying to them at dinner when Gregory asked her if she'd waited until college to become sexually active. It would have been the perfect time—and a huge relief—to finally tell the truth.

Because the fact was, she'd never told anyone about Paul Caruso— not her mother or sister, not her college roommate, none of her boyfriends, not her husband, not even the two therapists she'd seen.

And she really didn't know why There was nothing particularly shameful about it. Just two bored teenagers exploring their sexuality together, a necessary passage from curiosity into experience. It happened every day.

Or at least it used to, she thought.

PAUL CARUSO was Ruth's next-door neighbor growing up, a fat kid two years ahead of her in school. Because he happened to be a cool guy and a talented musician, he had been spared some of the ritual humiliations visited upon the other “big boys” at Oakhurst Regional. Alone among this long-suffering cohort, Paul had avoided being saddled with a nickname like Wide Load or Truck or Blob or Blivet or Butterball or Lardass or Tiny or Two-Ton or Chubby Checker. He was just Paulie C, star trumpeter of the jazz ensemble and the marching band, an award-winning outfit renowned for its complicated routines and high-stepping military precision. People seeing a Wolverines’ halftime show for the first time would invariably find their gazes drawn to the tubby kid with the gleaming horn and the dark hair spilling out from the ridiculous toy soldier hat with the too-tight chinstrap, and feel compelled to remark on his nimble footwork, the surprising grace he displayed for someone lugging around such a heavy burden.

In the spring of his senior year, Paul broke his ankle stepping off an escalator at the North Vista Mall. It was a freak accident; he said he put his foot down wrong and the bone just snapped like a pencil. With only a couple of months to go before graduation, he found himself hobbling around on crutches, the lower half of his right leg encased in a bulky plaster cast. He couldn't practice with the band, couldn't work the clutch on his Civic hatchback. His girlfriend, Missy Prince—a broad-shouldered softball pitcher widely considered the prettiest girl jock in the school—picked him up in the morning, but she had practice in the afternoon. Apparently, Paul's other friends were occupied as well, because he was soon reduced to taking the bus home from school, the transportation choice of very last resort for a senior.

Paul had been riding the bus for about a week when Ruth approached him on the sidewalk; he had just completed a laborious dismount from the vehicle, hopping on one foot with his crutches tucked under his arm, backpack in one hand and a trumpet case in the other. He gratefully accepted her offer of help, and the two of them set off on the slow trek to Peony Road, making stilted small talk about Ruth's sister, Mandy, who was nearing the end of her first year at Rutgers. She helped him up the steps to his front door—he used her shoulder for support, bearing down so hard she thought she might crumple like an aluminum can—then followed him inside, through the hall and into the kitchen, which seemed instantly familiar to her, despite the fact that she hadn't been there in years, not since she, Mandy, and Paul had played together as little kids. Everything was exactly the same as she remembered: the cushiony red benches of the breakfast nook, the toaster that accepted eight slices of bread, the needlepoint sampler over the stove that said, Take All You Want, But Eat All You Take.

“Here you go,” she said, setting the backpack and trumpet down on the table.

“Thanks.” Paul smiled, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a pale green dish towel. He seemed to be having a little trouble catching his breath. “Didn't know … how I was gonna … carry all that shit.”

“No problem,” said Ruth. “It was on my way.”

He used his pinky and ring fingers to lift a few strands of hair from his forehead and tuck them behind his ear, an oddly girlish gesture that made Ruth suddenly conscious of the delicacy of his features— small nose, feathery eyelashes, the ghost of a narrower face encased in the flesh of a broader one.

“You, uh, want a sandwich or something?” he asked.

Ruth hesitated. The kitchen was dim and silent, and it was no longer possible to ignore the obvious fact that they were alone in the house. Mr. Caruso worked on the assembly line at the GM plant; Mrs. Caruso ran the office for Ruth's dentist. His brothers and sisters were older, living on their own.

“I don't think so,” she said.

“We got roast beef, ham, turkey—”

“I'm not really hungry.”

“You sure? How about a soda or something?”

“I better get home.”

He gave her what Ruth later remembered as a searching look, focusing a whole new kind of attention on her, as if he'd suddenly realized that she'd grown up, and had become something more interesting than his next-door neighbor's little sister.

Embarrassed by his scrutiny, Ruth felt her eyes drift down over his soft belly and broad thighs before finally landing on his cast, which was almost completely covered with psychedelic graffiti. There were still a couple of empty spaces near the toe, and she wished she knew him well enough to fill them with her name and a brief, cheerful message. She gave an apologetic shrug.

“Lotta homework,” she said.

THAT WAS an odd, unsettled spring for her, the first time she'd ever really been alone. Ever since Mandy left for college, Ruth had been sunk in something approaching a state of mourning. Her big sister was the one indispensable person in her life—ally, best friend, consoler, explainer of the world. They'd shared a bedroom for thirteen years, trading gossip, complaining about their parents, mumbling secrets to each other until they nodded off, then waking up together to the tinny music warbling out of the clock radio on the table between their beds. With Mandy away, the house seemed perpetually out-of-whack—distressingly tidy and much too quiet, as if something more than a single person had been subtracted from the whole.

It hadn't been so bad for the first couple of months. Mandy called most nights and came home every other weekend, full of fascinating new information and unusually strong opinions. But then, at Thanksgiving, she solemnly informed the family that she'd fallen in love—she delivered this announcement at the dinner table, with an air of self-importance that Ruth had found both thrilling and vaguely sickening— and since then, she hadn't come home at all, except for an obligatory couple of days at Christmas. Now Ruth considered herself lucky if she spoke to her sister once a week, and when she did, Mandy's mind was a thousand miles away; she couldn't even fake an interest in the details of Ruth's pathetic teen dramas. All she wanted to talk about was Desmond, the Irish grad student with the beautiful eyes and soulful voice, who had awakened her to the suffering and injustice of the world. They were planning on traveling to Nicaragua over the summer to see the Sandinista Revolution for themselves, to cut through the fog of lies and propaganda spewed out by the American government and its toadies in the media.

Great, thought Ruth. And I'll be home with Mom and Dad, waitressing at the IHOP.

It wasn't that Ruth had a bad relationship with her parents, at least not compared to a lot of kids she knew. They weren't especially strict or even normally vigilant; for the most part, they trusted her to make her own decisions about who she hung out with, where she went, and what time she came home. It probably helped that Ruth got good grades, didn't have a boyfriend, and rarely got invited to parties.

She had only one real problem with her parents, but it was a big one: they were just so depressing. With Mandy around, she had barely noticed. Now, though, Ruth had no choice but to observe her mother and father during their interminable, mostly silent family dinners, and wonder how it was possible that two reasonably attractive, reasonably intelligent people could sleep in the same bed and have so little interest in what the other was thinking or feeling. They rarely spoke a kind or curious word to each other, and hardly ever laughed when they were together. They did kiss good-bye in the morning, but the act seemed utterly mechanical, no more tender or meaningful than when her father patted his back pocket on the way out the door to make sure his wallet was there. They paid so little attention to each other that a stranger might have assumed they'd been randomly assigned to live together, roommates who wanted nothing more than to keep out of each other's way.

It hadn't always been like this, though. Ruth had the photographic evidence to prove it—wedding albums, honeymoon snapshots, happy family portraits from when she and her sister were little. In the old pictures, her mother and father smiled, they touched, they looked at each other. So what happened? Every now and then, when Ruth was alone with her mother, she tried to find out.

“Is something wrong? Are you and Dad mad at each other?”

“Not at all. Everything's fine.”

“Fine? You never even talk to him.”

“We talk all the time. We have a very good relationship.”

Conversations like this made Ruth glad her mother had gone back to work full-time, which meant that she at least had a few hours to herself when she got home from school, some time to mellow out and do her homework in peace. It hadn't mattered so much in the fall, when Ruth had been a jayvee cheerleader, an activity that kept her busy in the afternoons and gave her a ready-made social life. But she'd hung up her pompoms at the end of football season—she just wasn't peppy enough—and immediately found herself exiled from the clique of pretty, popular girls she'd drifted into freshman year, coasting on the widespread misconception that she was a younger version of Mandy, who actually was a pretty and popular varsity cheerleader, though she now regretted it on feminist grounds.

All Ruth really knew as that fateful April cracked open was that she was living in a kind of limbo, a waiting period between what had happened before and what would happen next. Temporarily sisterless and friendless, she spent a lot of time in a state of vague anticipation, staring at the phone, willing it to ring, hoping to hear a friendly voice on the other end, a mystery boy who confessed that he'd been watching her and thinking about her, and wouldn't she like to put away her homework and maybe have a little fun?

SO IT was nice to suddenly have a regular date with Paul Caruso, even if it didn't amount to anything more than a fifteen-minute walk home from the bus stop. They hit it off right away, slipping easily past the awkwardness of the first day into a realm of relaxed intimacy that made her feel like they'd been friends for years instead of neighbors who'd barely acknowledged each other's existence until a few days ago.

He confided in her about his troubles with Missy, who'd become increasingly clingy as they approached the end of high school. They were heading to different colleges—she'd been recruited to play soft-ball at the U. of Delaware; he was going to major in Music at William Paterson—and Paul had no illusions that they could survive as a couple beyond the end of summer. But Missy was adamant about committing to a long-distance relationship.

“It never works,” he told her. “Have you ever heard of a case where it works?”

Ruth liked the serious way he asked these questions, as if she were a mature adult with a wide experience of the world, someone he could count on for good advice.

“It didn't work for my sister,” she said. “And she and Rich were only an hour apart. I guess she just wanted to make a fresh start or something.”

“That's kinda how I'm feeling,” Paul admitted. “But I don't know how to say it. Missy's just so emotional these days. She cries over every little thing.”

Ruth usually considered herself a compassionate person, but she found it impossible to scrape up any sympathy for Missy, who refused to say hi to her in the halls even though they'd spent several Saturday mornings together in the fall, sorting glass and metal at the Recycling Center. Ruth just hated that, the way someone could be so nice to you one day, then cut you dead the next.

“She's probably just scared,” Ruth speculated. “About going away and everything.”

“Personally, I can't wait. I mean, don't you think it gets a little boring around here?”

“A little?” she said, and he gave a knowing laugh that made her feel thrillingly conspiratorial, like the two of them knew something that crybaby Missy didn't.

Every day she followed him inside and set his backpack and trumpet down on the kitchen table, then suffered through an excruciating moment of suspense, waiting for him to ask if she'd like a sandwich or a soda, or even a glass of ice water, but he never did. It was as if he'd taken her refusal on the first day as a statement of principle, a philosophical objection to food and drink.

THE WEATHER turned warm at the end of April, a glorious stretch of perfect days—birdsong, blue sky, blossoms dropping from fruit trees in little blizzards of pink and green. If Ruth had owned a dog, she would've taken it for a walk, but instead she changed into terry-cloth gym shorts and a T-shirt, spread a beach towel out on the lawn of her backyard, and lay down on top of it, her face to the sun. She could hear the sound of Paul's trumpet wafting out from his bedroom window, quivering in the air above her. He was playing a jazzed-up version of “My Favorite Things,” and she let herself imagine that he was watching her from his window, including her among the raindrops and roses and brown-paper packages.

Even at that age—especially at that age—Ruth wasn't in the habit of thinking of herself as beautiful. At best, she figured, she was a 6 on the 1-10 scale that lots of ugly, obnoxious boys were happy to use on girls, but wouldn't have dreamed of applying to themselves. She believed that she deserved an above-average score due to the fact that there was nothing obviously wrong with her—she had a decent body and an okay face, no weird moles or facial hair or skin problems, nothing disfigured or bizarrely out of proportion. On the other hand, she lacked any of the truly outstanding features that would have qualified for the top group—her boobs were little, her face “cute” rather than “pretty,” her hair mousy and a bit limp. You developed a fairly realistic assessment of yourself growing up in the shadow of an older sister who'd been turning the heads of grown men since she was twelve. If Mandy had been out here in her string bikini—she was a devoted sun worshipper, always happy for an excuse to show some skin—Ruth would've made sure to stay far away, out of range of unkind comparisons. But today she was alone, without a doubt the prettiest girl in the yard, and she wished she'd been brave enough to wear a bathing suit or at least a tube top, to allow her body to be appreciated on its own modest terms.

She picked up the copy of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues that she'd checked out of the library on Paul's recommendation, and tried to get started. But it was hard to coax her mind into visualizing an imaginary reality when the one right in front of her was so vividly and insistently alive—the marshmallow clouds drifting overhead, the garden ducks pinwheeling their wooden wings in the breeze, the inchworm making its ticklish journey up her shin. At some point she realized that the music had stopped, and couldn't keep herself from casting an anxious glance at Paul's bedroom window. But all she saw was the sunlight reflecting off the glass, a blinding glare where his face would've been.

THE NEXT day they were careful with each other on the way home from school, less talkative than usual. They had already turned onto their block by the time Paul asked her if she was enjoying the Tom Robbins novel.

“I'm not really sure,” she said. “I tried to read it yesterday, but I couldn't concentrate.”

“Why not?”

“I don't know. I guess my mind was on other things.”

“That's weird,” he said. “I was trying to practice my trumpet and the same thing happened to me. Couldn't keep my mind on the music.”

“Spring fever.”

“Must be.”

Her heart felt big and jumpy as she followed him into the kitchen, certain that they'd crossed a point of no return. She set his stuff on the table and turned to him with a solemn expression.

“So,” she said.

“Yeah,” he agreed.

She didn't really know where to go from here, how you got from the talking to the rest of it, and he seemed just as baffled as she was, though he had less excuse, being older and more experienced. They stared at each other until the silence got embarrassing. She addressed her next question to the floor.

“I guess you have to practice, huh?”

“An hour a day.”

“You're really disciplined.”

“What about you?” he asked. “Will you be out in the yard?”

“Probably.” She hesitated for a moment, giving him one more chance to save her. “I guess I better go, huh?”

All he had to do was say, No, don't go. Stay here with me for a while. But he didn't say anything, didn't make the smallest gesture to stop her, which made it impossible for her to do anything but leave. She could feel the frustration in his eyes as she headed for the door. It was painful, like being trapped in a bad dream where all you had to do was say one thing, but you didn't know the words.

RUTH LAY down on her towel in a purple one-piece bathing suit and pretended to read. It was a kind of torture, knowing how close he was, how simple it would be if she could only find the courage to take matters into her own hands, to walk across the lawn and ring his doorbell.

He was playing his trumpet again, but it was just scales, no more songs that might be secret messages, and the mechanical up-and-down-and-up of it started to drive her a little crazy, as monotonous as a chain saw or an ice-cream-truck jingle. She rolled onto her stomach, sealed her ears with her index fingers, and forced herself to concentrate on the novel. The story was ridiculous—something about a girl with big thumbs and her friend named Bonanza Jellybean—and it suddenly seemed like Paul had made a fool of her, convincing her to lie outside in a bathing suit and read this stupid book for nothing.

For nothing.

She cried out in frustration and scrambled to her feet, leaving the towel and the book behind as she hurried across the lawn to her house. She had just reached the patio when she heard a window being raised. Paul poked his head outside, peering down at her from the second floor.

“Ruthie,” he said. He'd never called her that before, and she felt a warm blush spreading across her face.

“Yeah?”

“The back door's open.”

WHAT AMAZED her wasn't that she went to him, crossing the lawn in her bathing suit, letting herself in, and climbing the stairs to his bedroom. That part of it was a foregone conclusion, all she'd been waiting for since the first day they had walked home together. What amazed her was what she did when she got there.

It was mystifying, really She was a month away from her sixteenth birthday, and still fairly innocent, at least compared to a lot of girls she knew. She'd played a few rounds of spin-the-bottle in junior high, and had kissed three different boys in her first two years of high school. The most recent one, Scott Molloy, had touched her breasts, but only briefly, and only through her bra.

Ruth really didn't know how to account for the recklessness—the complete absence of fear—that came over her the moment she stepped into his room. He just looked so harmless—so sweet and nervous— sitting on the bed, the trumpet resting on his bedside table next to a bag of Ruffles, his injured foot propped on a pillow. He started to say something complicated—it was part apology for keeping her waiting so long, mixed in with guilty mutterings about Missy—but she shushed him with a kiss and started fumbling with his belt. His mouth tasted like tuna on rye.

“Ruth?” His voice trembled slightly, as if she were about to burn him with a cigarette. “What are you doing?”

“Let's find out,” she told him.

It had something to do with Mandy, Ruth understood that much, because she had the distinct impression that her sister was watching her, an invisible third person in the room, smiling with approval as she unzipped Paul's fly and tugged his pants down to his knees, nodding in encouragement as she peeled off her bathing suit and tossed it on the floor.

“Ruth?” Paul said again. “Are you sure—”

She pressed a finger to his lips as she climbed on top of him.

Go ahead, Mandy seemed to say. Don't be afraid. It'll only hurt a little, and then it'll get better.

“It's okay,” she whispered, reaching down and guiding him inside. And it did hurt, a lot more than she'd expected, though she tried not to show it, still keenly aware of the sensation of being judged by her sister, of proving herself to a beloved teacher.

Because, of course, that was how Ruth had learned everything she knew, lying in bed at night, listening drowsy and aroused to Mandy's half-sheepish, half-triumphant confessions about what she had and hadn't done with this boy or that—the first time she made Billy Frelinghausen hard with her hand, the first time she used her mouth on Danny Wirth, the night she lost her virginity in Rich Lodi's parents’ bedroom, with a gallery of family photos smiling down upon her.

But this is different, Ruth thought, as Paul released a series of astonished grunts beneath her. Mandy had been working up to that for years, taking things one step at a time, inching methodically toward the goal line. She'd had serious boyfriends since eighth grade, and had somehow managed to postpone sexual intercourse all the way to the end of high school, and to save herself for a boy she really believed she loved.

“Ho, God!” Paul shouted. He seemed to have overcome his doubts, and was bucking his hips wildly, almost like he was trying to throw her off the bed. “Holy shit!”

For as long as she could remember, Ruth had felt herself trailing far behind her sister, so far that she couldn't even see her anymore. But now, in a matter of just a few minutes, in a single giant leap forward, she'd gotten herself all caught up.

“Jesus.” Paul stared at her in bewilderment when it was over. His face was slick with sweat, his hair plastered against his cheek. “I just thought we were gonna make out a little.”

IT LASTED for a little over two weeks. There was a feverish quality to those stolen afternoons that Ruth had never forgotten, a hectic intensity that left her feeling exalted, set apart from the world.

They'd head straight to his bedroom after school, yank down the shades, and pick up right where they'd left off the day before. Because of his limited mobility, Paul spent most of this time flat on his back, with his shirt still on (he was shy about his body) and his pants down around his knees (it was a big production to get them off over the cast), staring up at Ruth with an expression of awestruck gratitude as she sat astride his waist, basking in his admiration. He couldn't believe his good luck, couldn't believe that something so miraculous had been made possible by a broken ankle.

“It seemed like such a drag at the time,” he said. “But it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“You mean it?”

“Nothing even comes close.”

At four o'clock she'd kiss him good-bye and head home, her body ripe and sore and unfamiliar, a subject of constant fascination. Sometimes she'd shower, but usually not—it was exciting to possess a sexual aura, to move around inside the memory of what she'd just done, an outlaw in her own house. Schoolwork was out of the question, so she occupied herself by cooking dinner, singing along with the radio as she peeled the potatoes or tossed the salad. Even her mother, usually so dense and indifferent, noticed that something was afoot.

“You seem so cheerful lately,” she said. “If I didn't know better, I might think someone had a boyfriend.”

“Yeah, right.” Ruth rolled her eyes.

“Pretty soon,” her mother told her. “Just you wait.”

IF SHE'D been a character in one of JoAnn Marlow's abstinence fables, Ruth thought, she would have paid dearly for that brief interlude of after-school pleasure, and spent the rest of her life enshrined in a cautionary anecdote: Poor Ruth, who found out she was pregnant on her sixteenth birthday; Poor Ruth, who went blind from a rare venereal disease; Poor Ruth, who was exposed as the little slut she was, and driven out of her own high school….

And it could have happened, of course, at least the pregnancy. In all their time together, Paul had never once used a condom, and Ruth never asked him to; it just seemed out of the question somehow, too bald and practical, as if they were operating in the real world of choices and consequences, rather than this sealed-off dream capsule where you could do whatever you wanted and not worry about anything. Sexually transmitted diseases, on the other hand, were a nonissue; Paul turned out to be as inexperienced as she was, though his virginity was more a matter of his girlfriend's preference than his own.

Missy won't do that, was a constant refrain on those afternoons, a phrase that not only applied to actual sex, but to less momentous stuff like ear-licking, or finger-sucking, or letting Paul see what you looked like in just your underwear and socks. She thinks it's gross.

“Why don't you break up with her?” Ruth asked.

“I can't do it now,” he explained. “Not this close to graduation.”

SHE HAD only one bad memory from those days, but it had stuck with her over the years, its power undiminished by the passage of time. It happened on a warm evening near the end of school, a couple of weeks after Paul's cast came off and he was reclaimed by real life, Missy, and the marching band. Ruth was in the kitchen, helping her mother clean up after dinner when her father called from the living room.

“Hey, get a load of this.”

What he wanted them to see was the white stretch limo parked in front of the Carusos’. A small crowd of curious neighbors had gathered around to admire the vehicle—it was gleaming in the dusk, giving off a soft shimmery luster—some of them chatting with the uniformed driver, others circling the car, peering into the windows and kicking the tires, as if they were thinking about buying one for themselves.

“Must be the prom,” Ruth's mother said.

Ruth's father was a man who liked to know what was going on. Whenever an ambulance or fire truck appeared on Peony Road, no matter what time of day or night, he headed out to investigate, buttonholing as many bystanders and emergency workers as he could, then returning home with the bulletin: Mrs. Rapinksi was short of breath, it was a grease fire in the oven, the old man felt dizzy. Ruth wasn't surprised to see him putting on his shoes.

“This oughta be interesting,” he said.

“Who's his date?” her mother asked. “Is it that big girl? The baseball player?”

“How should I know?” Ruth snapped.

Her parents headed outside, unable to resist the glamorous pull of prom night. Ruth stayed in, staring out the window, wishing she had the courage to return to the kitchen and continue loading the dishwasher but finding it impossible to turn away from the spectacle.

The limo driver—he was an older man with a carefully expressionless face—had just pulled out a handkerchief and begun rubbing at something on the windshield when the people around him began to clap, as if applauding his diligence. It took Ruth a moment to realize that Paul and Missy must have just emerged from the house, though she couldn't see them from where she stood. Even with her face pressed against the glass, her field of vision only encompassed the bottom half of the front lawn, where Paul's father and another man—a burly guy in a windbreaker who must have been Missy's dad—were kneeling and snapping flash pictures.

Onlookers shouted out jokey-sounding comments that Ruth couldn't quite make out; she saw her own mother and father laughing on the sidewalk. Finally, she couldn't take it anymore, the sense of being cut off from the action, of being stuck in here while it was all happening out there.

She headed for the front door, hesitating for a moment as she took stock of her unflattering outfit—baggy sweatpants and an old South-side Johnny T-shirt inherited from her sister—nothing you'd want to be seen wearing in public. She wondered if there was time to at least grab a jean jacket from her room or run a brush through her hair, but there wasn't.

She stepped onto her porch just in time to see Paul and Missy making their way toward the limo, where the driver was waiting, holding the back door open and extending an eloquent gesture of invitation with his free hand. They stopped by the curb, posing for one last photo, Paul bulky and imposing in his rented tux, Missy a bit awkward in a sleeveless orange dress with a poufy skirt, a tight bodice—an unwieldy corsage had been pinned directly over her left breast—and spaghetti straps that emphasized the powerful girth of her shoulders. Her blond French twist seemed strangely luminous, almost iridescent, as she kissed Paul on the cheek, straightened his bow tie, and then ducked into the car. He was just about to follow her when he turned suddenly, as if drawn by Ruth's gaze, and looked straight at her.

That moment of eye contact couldn't have lasted more than a second or two, just long enough for Ruth to see that he'd gotten a haircut— nothing drastic, just a trim of a couple inches all around—and to notice his peculiar expression, as if his face had gotten stuck halfway between a fake smile for the cameras and a mute apology to her.

Or maybe she was imagining the apology part, because what did he have to apologize for? Ruth wasn't his girlfriend, never had been. They'd just had some fun, and now it was over. She had no right to be jealous, no right to wish herself inside the limo in a pretty dress after having just been applauded by her neighbors, no right to call out and ask him to reconsider, to remember how he'd stroked her hair and told her that she was the kind of girl guys wrote love songs about.

He held his arms close to his body and shrugged, as if to say there was nothing he could do. She had the feeling he was about to say something, but the limo driver stepped in before he had the chance, placing his hand on Paul's shoulder and guiding him gently into the car. He was still looking at her as the door slammed shut, his face baffled and unhappy, then lost behind the tinted window.