Short People (13 page)

Greeting her, Sarah will tell her she “shines.” Mary won’t even think about running to the bathroom to search her face for the blemish that might have provoked such a witticism. Instead, she’ll blush even more and return the compliment with neither paranoia nor skepticism. Soon, enough people will be fawning over Mary that Stephanie will leave her on her own and drift into the crowd across the lawn. Pumping another beer from the keg, Mary won’t even notice she’s gone.

Normally, Mary can’t think of anything to say at parties. They feel like exercises in masochism to her, and when trapped in them she sinks toward an isolation so deep that her own voice sounds like it’s talking down to her. Most of the time she leaves early. When she stays, she drinks herself dizzy attempting to push herself into a more sociable state of mind until, by the end of the night, she needs help walking and has to be carried home by someone she vaguely recognizes as Stephanie. Tonight, surprising herself more than anyone, she’ll drink just enough to maintain a nice buzz.

Slightly mystified, tingling with the sensation of winging it, she’ll speak casually with people she’s always thought were stuck-up about their plans for the summer. Without betraying how incredibly disconcerting she finds it, she’ll listen as they bad-mouth people she’s always thought were their best friends. She’ll even toss out a few nasty crowd-pleasing comments herself, which will be no less satisfying for being unintentional. At some point she’ll realize that Stephanie has wandered off, but instead of inspiring the usual panic, this will be simply an observation, giving her no more pause than any of the other random things that flit through her mind: “It’s sort of interesting that everybody smokes Marlboro Lights” or “I think I just stepped in spilled beer, oh well.” Tonight, Mary’s life will have the soft-lit feel of a romantic movie and, for the first time she can remember, she’ll compare it favorably to
Manhattan
and let herself fall into a deep, cozy joy.

Sometime near midnight, she’ll take a deep breath and the air will smell perfumed and sweet. With a sudden desire to feel the night breeze, to get lost in the blanket of romance it conjures up in her mind, Mary will wander off alone along one of the wooded trails that meander past the house on their way around the lake. Still within earshot of the party, she will find a boulder that juts out into the water and, hoping there’s no poison ivy, she’ll forge off the trail to climb onto it.

Sitting with her knees to her chin, her plastic cup of beer tucked neatly into the crook beneath them, Mary will marvel at how the surface of the lake shimmers like a robe of white gold in the moonlight, almost as if it could be unhooked from the black water below and folded away, to be brought back out only on special occasions, when the moon wants to wax romantically at someone who can appreciate the subtleties of its beauty. Mesmerized by the white gold, she’ll lose track of time and space, to be brought back only when Justin calls out from the trail behind her.

“Sarah said you were out here somewhere. Are you hiding or something?”

She’ll look over her shoulder at him. “No . . . I like the quiet here.”

“I was looking for you.” He’ll sound embarrassed.

She will smile and curse herself, remembering how much she likes him.

Mary and Justin went out for three weeks in January. They never really did anything, mostly sitting on the concrete wall behind the gym during basketball games and wandering around Franklin Park on weekday nights when no one else was there. They hardly even made out, maybe five or six times tops, and even then she only touched him a couple times through his jeans—and he never tried to go further than massaging her breasts lightly and sucking her nipple once after midnight as they rocked on a swing in the park. Mostly it was just sloppy kisses and long, beautiful conversations. Justin seemed like a die-hard romantic. One night, after talking on the phone so long that they’d both grown tired and incoherent, he told her they shouldn’t hang up, they should sleep with the receivers next to their ears and it would be like they were in bed together. “I’ll cuddle the phone,” he said, “and pretend it’s you.” She had thought they were falling in love until he inexplicably stopped calling and got his sister to say he was never home. He pretended not to know who she was in the hallways at school.

Justin is smart
and
good at sports. He floats around between all the cliques, so even though he’s not technically the most popular guy in school, he’s actually more popular than the most popular guy. One of the things Mary hadn’t understood when they were together was why he wanted everything to be such a secret. He’d said it was because if everybody knew how much the two of them felt for each other, it would end up as gossip and their feelings would begin to get warped and diluted; their feelings would belong to everybody else as much as they belonged to him and to Mary. To make him happy, Mary had kept the relationship a secret even from Stephanie. She’ll remember, now, how she had felt like bursting with no one to talk to about either her happiness while they were together or her confusion afterward. She’ll remember how she’d felt manipulated and secretly humiliated for weeks. She will put this out of her mind, though, as he asks if it’s okay for him to climb up and sit next to her.

She’ll nod and scoot over, taking a sip from her beer. She’ll be conscious of how sweet her face feels from smiling as she watches him come close to losing his balance in the trench of mud between the trail and the boulder, grabbing and almost breaking a nearby sapling just in time. As he scrambles up the side of the rock, he will almost spill his drink—some kind of fruit juice concoction, probably vodka and cranberry. She’ll take it from him and suck a long draught through the straw, not giving it back until he settles down next to her.

He’ll grin like he doesn’t know what to say.

“Look at the water, doesn’t it look like it’s almost got skin?”

He’ll stare gravely out at the lake for a while, then nod. “Uh-huh.”

“Or maybe not skin, like a coat or something . . . you know what I mean?”

“I wanted to say happy birthday.”

She’ll smile again. “Sweet sixteen—yeah, right.” For a moment she’ll ponder the danger involved in continuing the conversation. “Did I tell you that? I mean, before?”

“Sure.”

He’ll reach out to take her hand.

They will sit in silence, watching the water lap lightly against the boulder.

She has desperately wanted to know why he stopped calling, but she’ll refrain from asking, afraid that his answer might vandalize the story she’s constructed to explain his actions. She figures he ran from his feelings because of a fear of overload, a fear of desiring more than he could hold on to; he wasn’t ready yet to test his own boundaries and she can forgive him for that—it’s only human. She can still like him this way. If he tells her his side, it might contradict this.

Gazing at him, she’ll try to catch his eye, but he’ll be transfixed by the water. The expression on his face will be so sad and distant that the urge to kiss him will be hard to resist.

“Was it good?” he’ll ask.

“What?”

“Your birthday.”

“It was okay. I watched
Manhattan.
”

“What’s that?”

“A movie. You probably wouldn’t like it. It’s black and white.”

“Did you like it?”

“Uh-huh. I’ve watched it every year on my birthday since I was about twelve.”

“I’d like to see it, then,” he’ll say, squeezing her hand.

She’ll squeeze back and massage the soft spot beneath his thumb. Slowly, the two of them will reach for a kiss. She’ll take his lower lip between hers, lick it, and then, pulling a few inches away, blow on it softly, kiss him again and nestle her head up against the tender part of his shoulder between the neck and the blade. She’ll think about movies and moonlight, about people in love in their own little bubbles with nothing outside of the frame of their film.

After a while they’ll wander back to the party. Mary will hold Justin’s hand, unafraid of being seen, and guide him along the path so he can continue to examine the treetops.

As they come out of the woods and move across the lawn toward the house, Mary will realize how late it is. The handful of people left will be sitting around in half-drunken stupors, trying to sober themselves up for the drive home. They will be negotiating rides and complaining about how stale the beer has become.

It will seem to Mary that she and Justin are in a world separate from that of the party, as if they are seeing their friends from a distance, as if high school’s meaningless, not worth her fear, not worth any consideration at all.

When Stephanie sees her, she’ll tell Mary that she was worried she’d gotten lost or fallen, drunk, into the lake or, truthfully, that she’d had one of those panic attacks and was quivering under a tree somewhere.

Mary will smile abstractly and say that she’s fine.

Stephanie will go on and on about how she wishes Mary had let her know there was nothing to worry about. When she notices Justin standing there, her whole demeanor will suddenly change, and she’ll flash a fake smile and offer him and his friend Mike a ride home.

Mary won’t pay much attention to any of this. The broad smile still on her face, she’ll gaze at everything glimmering under the lamp in the front yard, finding patterns in the minuscule grains of glass that seem to float in the paved driveway, virtually tasting the dew that clings in perfect circles—each one enclosing a tiny diamond of reflected light—to the grass.

She’ll climb into the back seat, squeezing up close to Justin, who will put his arm around her shoulder.

They’ll make out for a while, rubbing their cheeks together like seals, nibbling each other’s lips, brushing each other’s teeth with their tongues.

They will giggle conspiratorially when—as the car bounces over potholes—they are jolted apart or their foreheads and noses bump together.

As the car heads onto the better roads in town, Mary will let the rest of the world disappear completely. To her, the back seat of this Escort will be all there is, she and Justin, alone in a velvet-lined pocket. She’ll awkwardly shift her weight to one side and work her free hand gradually down Justin’s chest, finally resting it on his belt buckle. With just a tinge of trepidation, she’ll check to see how turned on he is.

Leaving her hand on the bulge in his jeans, she will look into his eyes.

She’ll think of all the things they didn’t do during those three weeks in January and wonder if the things they did do had meant anything to him. He said they did at the time. They had in-depth conversations about the difference between getting sexy with someone because you mean it and getting sexy with someone just because they’re there. They both agreed that it must feel different when you mean it, although neither had the experience to back up this conviction.

Justin will scrunch up his nose and squint in a goofy way.

She’ll wonder what Mariel Hemingway would do in this situation. She would be bold. She’d be scared, of course, but she’d still go where her emotions led her. That’s what it is to be sophisticated: to walk through the world like there are no rules holding you back.

Still staring into his eyes, Mary will begin to move her fingers slowly up and down like a snake charmer.

He’ll slide his own hand under hers and fidget with his belt. When he has it undone, he will unhook the top button of his jeans. He’ll stretch his hand up behind his head, then change his mind and brace it against the door, moving it every few seconds until finally—scrunching up his nose again—he’ll rub her cheek with his knuckles and hide his arm, up to the elbow, behind his back.

She’ll finish unbuttoning his jeans for him. As she takes him out of his underwear, she’ll try to remember how they describe this in the tasteful “massage” books and how-to books on her parents’ bookshelf. She’ll look down as she begins to massage and tickle the length of his penis with her fingertips, and trying to invoke in her memory the illustrative line drawings of naked people with seven-ties haircuts, she’ll flick her finger back and forth across the tip like the wrong end of a magnet swinging in and out of his field of attraction.

When she leans up to kiss him again, he will open his eyes and study her face through weighted lids. His pupils will be dilated, his irises almost not there. He’ll scrunch up his nose and roll his bloodshot eyes in self-mockery.

Mariel Hemingway, Mary will wonder, how far would she go for love? She’ll twist her body around, bending at an uncomfortable angle, her elbow digging into his chest. She’ll take him into her mouth.

He won’t moan. He won’t gasp. He won’t breathe heavily. She’ll have to crane her neck to see his face. He’ll bite his lip in an ecstatic grimace, then, once she’s turned back to his penis, he’ll gyrate his hips and run his fingers roughly through her hair. A few times she’ll gag and, trying to be subtle, pause and gulp down air and adjust her mouth.

She’ll wonder where that feeling—the romance and soft light—went.

When Justin abruptly pushes her away, she won’t know how much time has passed. The look on his face will be cruel and judgmental. The slight alcoholic buzz will be flushed from her blood by racing red cells that burn in her face like shame.

As she slides across the cracked seat away from Justin, Mary will notice that his friend Mike is looking back at them, shaking his head. Stephanie will be driving intently, as if her peripheral vision has been forcibly blocked off.

Justin will slip his underwear up and over his still-hard penis, quickly button his jeans and buckle his belt, then turn completely away from Mary to watch the street glide past out the window.

They will drop Mary off first. Crawling out of the car, she’ll want to say goodbye to Stephanie, but the look she’ll receive as she opens her mouth will stop her. Stephanie will stare until Mary can’t bear it. Lowering her eyes to the curb at her feet, she’ll faintly hear Stephanie’s flat “Happy birthday” as the car rolls away down the street.

Mary will watch them turn at the corner, then stare at the empty street. She’ll imagine what Justin is saying: “She wanted it.” But no, she doesn’t, she wants that other thing—the romance, all the gauzy, riled emotions she’s sure she would find if she were in
Manhattan.
She’ll look at her clothes and think, “This stupid Benetton sweater, it’s too big. This stupid shirt with its stupid fake-pearl buttons. And this stupid silk bra, and these stupid jeans—as if Guess even means anything.” She’ll feel more naked than if she actually were.