The Virgin Suicides (13 page)

After that portrait was taken, the girls waited for the boys in individual ways. Bonnie and Therese sat down to play a game of cards, while Mary stood very still in the middle of the living room, trying not to wrinkle her dress. Lux opened the front door and wobbled onto the porch. At first we thought she had sprained her ankle, but then we saw she was wearing high heels. She walked up and down, practicing, until Parkie Denton’s car appeared at the end of the block. Then she turned, rang her own doorbell to warn her sisters, and disappeared inside again.

Left out, we watched the boys drive up. Parkie Denton’s yellow Cadillac floated down the street, the boys suspended in the car’s inner atmosphere. Though it was raining, and the windshield wipers were going, the car’s interior had a warm glow. As they passed Joe Larson’s house, the boys gave us a thumbs-up.

Trip Fontaine got out first. He’d pushed up his jacket sleeves as male models did in his father’s fashion magazines. He was wearing a thin tie. Parkie Denton had on a blue blazer, as did Kevin Head, and then Joe Hill Conley vaulted from the backseat, wearing an oversize tweed blazer belonging to his father the schoolteacher and Communist. At that point, the boys hesitated, standing around the car, oblivious to the drizzle, until Trip Fontaine finally headed up the front path. We lost sight of them at the door, but they told us the beginning of the date was like any other. The girls had gone upstairs, pretending not to be ready, and Mr. Lisbon took the boys into the living room.

“The girls’ll be down in just a minute,” he said, looking at his watch. “Jeez. I better get going myself.” Mrs. Lisbon came to the archway. She was holding her temple as though she had a headache, but her smile was polite.

“Hello, boys.”

“Hello, Mrs. Lisbon” (in unison).

She had the rectitude, Joe Hill Conley later said, of someone who had just come from weeping in the next room. He had sensed (this said many years later, of course, when Joe Hill Conley claimed to tap at will the energy of his chakras) an ancient pain arising from Mrs. Lisbon, the sum of her people’s griefs. “She came from a sad race,” he said. “It wasn’t only Cecilia. The sadness had started long before. Before America. The girls had it, too.” He had never noticed her bifocals before. “They cut her eyes in half.”

“Which one of you is driving?” Mrs. Lisbon asked.

“I am,” said Parkie Denton.

“How long have you had your license?”

“Two months. But I had my permit for a year before that.”

“We don’t usually like the girls to go out in cars. So many accidents nowadays. It’s raining and the roads will be slick. So I hope you’ll be very careful.”

“We will.”

“OK,” Mr. Lisbon said, “third degree’s over. Girls!”—delivered to the ceiling—“I’ve got to get going. I’ll see you at the dance, boys.”

“See you there, Mr. Lisbon.”

He went out, leaving the boys alone with his wife. She didn’t meet their eyes but scanned them generally, like a head nurse reading charts. Then she went to the bottom of the stairs and stared up. Not even Joe Hill Conley could imagine what she was thinking. Of Cecilia perhaps, climbing those same stairs four months ago. Of the stairs she had descended on her own first date. Of sounds only a mother can hear. None of the boys ever remembered seeing Mrs. Lisbon so distracted. It was as though she had suddenly forgotten they were there. She touched her temple (it
was
a headache).

At last the girls came to the top of the stairs. It was dim up there (three of twelve chandelier bulbs had burned out), and they held the banister lightly as they descended. Their loose dresses reminded Kevin Head of choir robes. “They didn’t seem to notice, though. Personally, I think they liked the dresses. Or else they were just so happy to be going out they didn’t care what they wore. I didn’t care, either. They looked great.”

Only when the girls reached the bottom did the boys realize they hadn’t decided who was taking whom. Trip Fontaine, of course, had dibs on Lux, but the other three girls were up for grabs. Fortunately, their dresses and hairdos homogenized them. Once again the boys weren’t even sure which girl was which. Instead of asking, they did the only thing they could think of doing: they presented the corsages.

“We got white,” Trip Fontaine said. “We didn’t know what color you were wearing. The flower guy said white would go with everything.”

“I’m glad you got white,” said Lux. She reached out and took the corsage, which was housed in a little plastic case.

“We didn’t go for wrist ones,” Parkie Denton said. “Those always fall apart.”

“Yeah, those are bad,” said Mary. No one said anything more. No one moved. Lux inspected her flower in its time capsule. In the background, Mrs. Lisbon said, “Why don’t you let the boys pin them on?”

At that, the girls stepped forward, shyly presenting the fronts of their dresses. The boys fumbled with the corsages, taking them out of their cases and avoiding the decorative stickpins. They could sense Mrs. Lisbon watching them, and even though they were close enough to feel the Lisbon girls’ breath and to smell the first perfume they had ever been allowed to wear, the boys tried not to stick the girls or even to touch them. They gently lifted the material from the girls’ chests and hung white flowers over their hearts. Whichever Lisbon girl a boy pinned became his date. When they finished, they said good night to Mrs. Lisbon and led the girls outside to the Cadillac, holding the empty corsage cases over the girls’ heads to protect their hair from the drizzle.

From that point on, things went better than expected. At home, each boy had pictured the Lisbon girls amid the stock scenery of our impoverished imaginations—cavorting in the surf or playfully fleeing at the ice-skating rink, dangling ski-hat pom-poms like ripe fruit before our faces. In the car, however, beside the actual living girls, the boys realized the paltriness of these images. Inverse properties were also discarded: notions of the girls as damaged or demented. (The crazy old lady in the elevator every day turns out to be, when you finally speak to her, perfectly lucid.) Something like this revelation came over the boys. “They weren’t all that different from my sister,” Kevin Head said. Lux, complaining she never got to, wanted to sit up front. She slid in between Trip Fontaine and Parkie Denton. Mary, Bonnie, and Therese crowded into the backseat, with Bonnie getting the hump. Joe Hill Conley and Kevin Head sat on either side against the back doors.

Even up close, the girls didn’t look depressed. They settled into the seats, not minding the tight fit. Mary half sat in Kevin Head’s lap. They began chattering immediately. As houses passed, they had something to say about the families in each one, which meant that they had been looking out at us as intensely as we had been looking in. Two summers ago they had seen Mr. Tubbs, the UAW middle-management boss, punch the lady who had followed his wife home after a fender bender. They suspected the Hessens had been Nazis or Nazi sympathizers. They loathed the Kriegers’ aluminum siding. “Mr. Belvedere strikes again,” said Therese, referring to the president of the home-improvement company in his late-night commercial. Like us, the girls had distinct memories tied to various bushes, trees, and garage roofs. They recalled the race riots, when tanks had appeared at the end of our block and National Guardsmen had parachuted into our backyards. They were, after all, our neighbors.

At first the boys said nothing, too overwhelmed by the Lisbon girls’ volubility. Who had known they talked so much, held so many opinions, jabbed at the world’s sights with so many fingers? Between our sporadic glimpses of the girls they had been continuously living, developing in ways we couldn’t imagine, reading every book on the bowdlerized family bookshelf. Somehow, too, they’d kept up on dating etiquette, through television or observation at school, so that they knew how to keep the conversation flowing or fill awkward silences. Their dating inexperience showed only in their pinned-up hair, which looked like stuffing coming out, or exposed wiring. Mrs. Lisbon had never given the girls beauty tips, and forbade women’s magazines in the house (a
Cosmo
survey, “Are you multiply orgasmic?” had been the final straw). They had done the best they could.

Lux spent the ride dialing the radio for her favorite song. “It makes me crazy,” she said. “You know they’re playing it somewhere, but you have to find it.” Parkie Denton drove down to Jefferson Avenue, past the Wainwright house with its green historical marker, and toward the gathering lakefront mansions. Imitation gas lanterns burned on front lawns. On every corner a black maid waited for the bus. They drove on, past the glittering lake, and finally under the ragged cover of elms near the school.

“Hold on a sec,” Lux said. “I want a cig before we go in.”

“Dad’ll smell it on you,” Bonnie said from the backseat.

“Nah, I’ve got mints.” She shook them.

“He’ll smell it on our clothes.”

“Just tell him some kids were smoking in the bathroom.”

Parkie Denton lowered the front window while Lux smoked. She took her time, exhaling through her nose. At one point she jutted out her chin at Trip Fontaine, rounded her lips, and, with a chimpanzee profile, sent forth three perfect smoke rings.

“Don’t let it die a virgin,” Joe Hill Conley said. He leaned into the front seat and poked one.

“That’s gross,” said Therese.

“Yeah, Conley,” Trip Fontaine said. “Grow up.”

On the way into the dance, the couples separated. One of Bonnie’s high heels got stuck in the gravel and she leaned on Joe Hill Conley while she detached it. Trip Fontaine and Lux moved on together, already an item. Kevin Head walked in with Therese, while Parkie Denton gave Mary his arm.

The light rain had stopped for a moment and the stars were out, in patches. As Bonnie’s shoe came loose, she looked up and called attention to the sky. “It’s always the Big Dipper,” she said. “You look at those charts and they have stars all over the place, but if you look up, all you see is the Big Dipper.”

“It’s because of the lights,” Joe Hill Conley said. “From the city.”

“Duh,” Bonnie said.

The girls were smiling as they entered the gymnasium amid the glowing pumpkins and scarecrows dressed in school colors. The Dance Committee had decided on a harvest theme. Straw was scattered over the basketball court and cornucopias spewed tumorous gourds on the cider table. Mr. Lisbon had already arrived, wearing an orange tie reserved for festive occasions. He was talking with Mr. Tonover, the chemistry teacher. Mr. Lisbon didn’t acknowledge the girls’ arrival in any way, though he might not have seen them. The game lights had been covered with orange gels from the theater and the bleachers were dark. A rented disco ball hung from the scoreboard, dappling the room with light.

We had arrived with our own dates by then, and danced with them as though holding mannequins, looking over their chiffon shoulders for the Lisbon girls. We saw them come in, unsteady in their high heels. Wide-eyed, they looked around the gym, and then, conferring among themselves, left their dates while they took the first of seven trips to the bathroom. Hopie Riggs was at the sink when the girls entered. “You could tell they were embarrassed by their dresses,” she said. “They didn’t say anything, but you could tell. I was wearing a dress with a velvet bodice and taffeta skirt that night. I can still fit into it.” Only Mary and Bonnie had to use the facilities, but Lux and Therese kept them company, Lux looking in the mirror for the instant it took to reconfirm her beauty, Therese avoiding it altogether.

“There’s no paper,” Mary said from her stall. “Throw me some.”

Lux ripped a bunch of paper towels from the dispenser and lofted them over the stall.

“It’s snowing,” Mary said.

“They were really loud,” Hopie Riggs told us. “They acted like they owned the place. I had something on the back of my dress, though, and Therese got it off.” When we asked if the Lisbon girls had spoken about their dates in the confessional surroundings of the bathroom, Hopie answered, “Mary said she was happy her guy wasn’t a total geek. That was it, though. I don’t think they cared so much about their dates as just being at the dance. I felt the same way. I was there with Tim Carter, the shrimpo.”

When the girls came out of the bathroom, the dance floor was getting more crowded, circulating couples slowly around the gym. Kevin Head asked Therese to dance and soon they were lost in the tumult. “God, I was so young,” he said years later. “So
scared
. So was she. I took her hand and we didn’t know which way to do it. To interlace fingers or not. Finally we did. That’s what I remember most. The finger thing.”

Parkie Denton remembers Mary’s studied movements, her poise.
“She
led,” he said. “She had a Kleenex balled in one hand.” During the dance, she made polite conversation, the kind beautiful young women make with dukes during waltzes in old movies. She held herself very straight, like Audrey Hepburn, whom all women idolize and men never think about. She seemed to have a picture in her mind of what pattern their feet should make over the floor, of how they should look together, and she concentrated fiercely to realize it. “Her face was calm, but inside she was tense,” Parkie Denton said. “Her back muscles were like piano strings.” When a fast song came on, Mary danced less well. “Like old people at weddings trying it out.”

Lux and Trip didn’t dance until later, and instead moved about the gymnasium looking for a place to be alone. Bonnie followed. “So I followed her,” Joe Hill Conley said. “She pretended she was just walking around, but she kept track of Lux from the corner of her eye.” They went in one side of the dance mob and out the other. They hugged the far wall of the gym, passing beneath the decorated basketball net, and ended up by the bleachers. Between songs, Mr. Durid, Dean of Students, opened the voting for Homecoming King and Queen, and while everyone was looking toward the glass ballot jar on the cider table, Trip Fontaine and Lux Lisbon slipped underneath the bleachers.

Bonnie pursued them. “It was like she was afraid of being left alone,” Joe Hill Conley said. Though she hadn’t asked him to, he followed her. Underneath, in the stripes of light coming through the slats, he saw Trip Fontaine holding a bottle up to Lux’s face so she could read the label. “Did anybody see you come in?” Lux asked her sister.