“You’re so smart,” she said. “But if you’re so smart, why aren’t we plotting the perfect murder?” She had the edge in her voice that meant I wasn’t playing well.
“Who hit you?” I said.
“I fell.”
“You’re a liar, Tell.”
“Why won’t you fuck me?”
“Because someone hit you.”
“Listen to you,” she said. “Listen to that. You and all that power in your voice. You won’t fuck me because someone hit me? You won’t drive your car because you fuck me when someone hits me.”
This was the point in the fight-routine at which I could either make her cry by shutting down or fix it up by showing some novel form of affection. I didn’t want her to cry. I put a slug on her knee.
“Hi there, gross cutie,” she said to the slug.
“I want you to meet my family.”
“Let’s get the car and go.”
“We don’t need the car,” I said. The house was across the street.
I let us in through the side door. I could hear them making noises with dishes. We stopped at the threshold between the hallway and the kitchen. My mom and dad were at the table, eating ice cream. Tell stood behind me.
My mom saw me first. “Ben!” she said. “Come here!”
We walked over to the table. “This is Jane Tell,” I said. “We’re getting married.”
I don’t know if it was because they hadn’t seen me in so long or because I shocked them with the marriage bit or because she’d pulled her hood back on, but neither of my parents really saw Tell until after we’d sat down and I’d been kissed by both of them.
Then it registered. “Oh my God!” my mom said. “What happened to your face, baby? Ben, what happened to her?”
“I just fell down some stairs,” Tell said.
“You fell down some stairs?” my dad said. He looked a wish away from flattening me.
“We need to clean those wounds,” my mom said. She was frantic. She made for the bathroom down the hall. “I’ll be right back,” she said.
I said, “I’ll come with you.”
Tell said, “Don’t go, Ben.”
I left with my mother. I sat on the second step of the stairway, just outside the entrance to the kitchen, waiting while she made noise with the cabinets in the half-bathroom.
I watched the kitchen through the spaces between the bars supporting the banister. I could see my father’s back and Tell’s face. She was crying, and through her tears she winked at him. I didn’t know if she knew that she did it or why she did it and I couldn’t see what she saw. My father’s shoulders moved and I couldn’t see what he was doing with his arms, and, for a second, everything seemed possible, and the horror of that, of unlimited potential, made me feel so strong, almost as if I were bodiless, and I knew the feeling had less to do with body than with law, that it was lawlessness, and I would have remained lawless had Tell’s face not right then been obscured by my father’s hairy hand, shaking out the fold of a white cotton handkerchief. She took it, and, rather than putting it to her cheek, she folded it back up and held it in her lap to have something to look at.
“Listen,” my father said softly, “I know you don’t know us, but we’re good people and we would never hurt you. We need to ask if Ben—”
“He didn’t,” she said.
“If he did,” my father said, “it’s okay to tell us. We won’t harm you. We’ll make sure you’re safe. You can stay here if you need to.”
She shook her head.
“You really fell down the stairs?” he said.
“No,” she said. “But Ben didn’t hit me.”
“Someone else hit you?”
“Could we talk about something else? I’m sorry, I just—”
“Hey,” my father. “Hey hey. It’s fine. We’ll talk about something else. How about… Well, the engagement. I mean, my son’s a great kid, but I’m fairly certain he put every last penny he had to his name toward buying you that obscenely lavish invisible ring you’re wearing. I mean, do you really think it’s good idea to get married before he finishes college and gets a real job?”
Tell laughed for him. She said, “Ben was just kidding about the getting married thing. He likes to exaggerate.”
“Well, look,” my dad said. “I know you’d rather not talk about it, and I’m trying not to, but I just — I’m a parent, and I feel like I have to tell you that whatever’s going on, whatever happened, Jane, you don’t deserve to get hurt.”
My mother rushed past me with a first-aid box and Tell looked up on hearing her. She spotted me sitting there. I ducked back, reflexively, like I’d been caught at something. I didn’t know exactly what.
I stayed on the stairway for a little while. My mom turned a brown bottle onto a ball of cotton and pressed the cotton to Tell’s bottom lip. My dad offered her some ice cream. Tell declined. My mom told him to get her some anyway. Tell asked her what kind of accent she had and my mom started talking about immigration.
While my dad was getting a bowl together for Tell, he said, “Where’s Ben?” and I crept outside to smoke on the driveway and figure out how to say that I loved her so it meant something better than I accept you.
By the time Tell came out front, it had been raining for at least twenty minutes and I was on my third cigarette, pacing carefully to avoid stepping on the worms that had come up onto the pavement.
“You wanted to see if he’d Rick me,” she said.
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“You know, you could have just asked me if he’d do it, instead of testing me out like a fucking lab rat. I feel like such a piece of shit now. It’s your fault this time. Feel guilty.”
“I don’t think I was testing you out,” I said.
“You don’t think you were?” she said.
“Quit it,” I said.
“Quit it and stop it and cut it out,” she said. “Smoke. Walk. Park. Tracks. Denny’s. All we do is repeat, you know that? Like an error message. Like a beeping fucking circuit board.”
I couldn’t tell if she was crying or if it was anger cracking her voice.
“Everything repeats,” I said.
“Look at these worms,” she said. “They think they’ve saved themselves from drowning in the grass.”
Anger.
I said, “Quit analyzing the imagery, Tell. It’s manipulative.”
“Listen to you!” she said. “It can’t be that manipulative if you know to call it imagery.” She slammed me on the nose. It broke. “If I was so manipulative,” she said, kicking my legs out from under me, “you’d be manipulated by now.”
Coughing, my face flat on a dead red worm, I said, “I was jealous.”
“You just figured that out?” She made for the street. “I’m moving out,” she said.
“Wait,” I said, “I’ll drive you.”
Soaked and bleeding and limping beside her, I felt romantic, like I could prove something simple.
Then we were standing next to my car.
“Take me to my mom’s,” she said. “I’ll come back for my stuff tomorrow when you’re gone.”
I got in the car and started it. I hadn’t driven in months and all the dread came on. I closed my eyes and there they were: the trucker and the tow-trucker and the sales clerk with his glasses. Manx. The therapist. A soldier. A café owner. Any number of cops and vice principals. Every man whose face I could remember but for me and my father. They waited in line to leave their impression and Tell told me it was okay, take it easy, she liked it. I opened the door and got sick in the lot.
“I’ll drive,” she said. “You sit shotgun and by the time we get there, you’ll be used to the car. You’ll be able to get yourself home.”
I kept my mouth shut. I did what she told me.