Eileen, p.12
Eileen, page 12
“All set,” I told her. She took her coat back from Randy and sat across the table from Leonard, or Lee, as he was called. Mrs. Polk was shifty-eyed. The boy just smiled. I looked from mother to son. If Rebecca’s theory of Oedipus was correct, perhaps I had grossly misjudged what kind of women young men found attractive those days, because Mrs. Polk was nobody I could imagine anyone would kill for. Then again, maybe Lee Polk was out of his mind. It was impossible to tell what he might be thinking. His mask didn’t waver. It was not my stony, flat mask of death, nor was it the stiff, cheerful posturing popular among housewives and other sad and deranged women. It was not the cutthroat bad boy mask set to ward off potential threats with the promise of violence and hot rage. Neither was it the lily-sweet bashfulness of men who pretend they’re so weak, so sensitive, they would crumble if anyone ever challenged them even a little. Lee’s look of calm contentment was an odd mask, peculiar in its falseness as it hardly looked fake at all.
In an effort to keep from crying, it seemed, Mrs. Polk pinched her eyes shut and exhaled. After a moment she folded her hands and placed them on the table, opened her mouth to speak. But then, from down the hall, loud clicking footsteps made us all stop and turn. It was Rebecca. Here she came strutting toward us. She carried her notebook in one hand, a cigarette in the other. Mrs. Polk, Randy and I all froze as she approached, a wobbly silhouette at first, and then a vision in lavender, loose russet hair bouncing around her shoulders. When she got closer, she was serious, quiet, and I saw that her fingers clutched her notebook like the legs of a lizard grappling a rock. There was something tense about her. She tried to smile, her eyes nervous and glittering. She was human and neurotic underneath that beauty, after all. That was comforting. The coincidence of her timing struck me. Had she invited Mrs. Polk? What had Rebecca done with Leonard’s file? She nodded to me and Randy and stood between us in the open doorway, holding the notebook close to her body. As she watched mother and son sitting there, she wrote continuously without looking down at the paper, ashing her cigarette absentmindedly at the floor as it burned down to her fingers.
Mrs. Polk kept her nose in the air as she spoke. I don’t remember what she said to him, but it wasn’t much. Such and such about his cousins, maybe something about money. Nothing important. Her son remained silent. At some point Mrs. Polk sighed, frustrated, and stared off at the wall in exasperation. When I tried to peek under Rebecca’s hand to read what she’d been writing, it looked like chicken scratch. Since I’d never seen shorthand before, I assumed it was simply nonsense, lines on a paper she’d made so as to appear that she was taking notes. I didn’t understand it. Dr. Frye, when he’d come to observe the family visits, had never taken notes. I wondered, of course, why Rebecca was there at all. Dr. Bradley never made a single appearance.
After a minute of silence, the boy staring at his mother’s hands on the table between them, Mrs. Polk lifted her face, looked Lee straight in the eyes. Her wrinkles were long and saggy, as though her face had once been bigger, fuller, but had been deflated, leaving deep folds dug like trenches. She began to cry. If I heard what she said, I don’t remember it precisely, but I assumed the gist of it was, “How could you do this to me?” her voice plaintive and soft. Then she cleared her throat and grunted aloud. Her hands were small and red and cracked, I saw as she pulled out a tissue. She blew her nose into it, then balled it up like an angry child and stuffed it violently back in her pocket. In that moment, she reminded me of my mother and her quick switches, how one minute she’d be sunshine and singsong and the next she’d be cursing in the basement at the laundry, kicking at the walls. It was that kind of duplicity: talking one way but acting another. Rebecca had stopped scribbling and was leaning on one leg, twisting her opposite heel into the floor, stubbing out her cigarette. Randy looked at that arrant, flirtatious foot out of the corner of his eye, or at least I think he did. Rebecca had her pencil in her mouth, and when I turned to face her, I saw her tongue well up and a bubble of saliva burst as her teeth closed down on the pencil’s eraser tip. To see inside her open mouth like that, the mouth of a child, clean, pink, bubbling with youth and beauty, hurt me deeply. I burned with envy. Of course Randy would choose Rebecca over me. She was easy to love. I donned my death mask, bristling underneath with shame. When Lee’s seven minutes were up, I knocked on the door frame and Randy motioned to Rebecca to step aside so that Mrs. Polk could exit. But first Mrs. Polk made sure to let a few tears splat on the table, and then said, more to us than to her son, “I blame myself.” Lee looked up at the clock, unfazed.
I followed Mrs. Polk back out into the office, but turned to watch as Rebecca stepped into the visitation room and slid the mother’s now vacant chair up close to Lee’s. She spoke to him, and his grin faded. His head bowed as he listened. It looked like they had an intimate rapport, but when could that have developed? Rebecca had just arrived at Moorehead, and already she was leaning in close toward him, bending her face down below his, her eyebrows raised, eyes sparkling and searching up at his. I guided Mrs. Polk toward the counter, handed her a pen, and watched her sign her name: Rita P. Polk. It wasn’t an angry penmanship. It was casual, unconcerned—irrelevant. She didn’t look back at her son, just blinked heavily, sighed as though clocking out at work, then swung her coat up around her shoulders and walked back down the hall. I imagined her returning to her home to crochet another terrible sweater, swear and grind her teeth every time she missed a stitch. I felt sorry for her. I knew instinctively that the woman, this widow, had no other children.
Following protocol, I signaled to James to prepare for the next boy’s visit. But Rebecca was still talking with Lee. Lee had turned away from her and laid his hands across the table. I walked into the room to tell them to clear out, suddenly full of courage. I saw clearly then the word tattooed on Lee’s fingers. It was “LOVE.” That disturbed me deeply. I said nothing, but watched as the boy sniffed, and gruffly swept a tear off his cheek with the butt of his hand. Rebecca put her hand on his shoulder. And then she put another hand on his knee below the table. This, in plain sight, and with me standing there, she dared get so close to the boy, touching him like that, leaning over enough that he might simply lift his gaze to peer down the front of her blouse, that he could easily raise his chin to meet his lips with hers. I stared disbelievingly. Did they really not see me? How was it that the boy didn’t fidget and squirm? He seemed quite comfortable, really. How could I interrupt them? I stared at the floor. When James returned with the next child, he knocked lightly on the door frame.
“I’m sorry,” I managed to say, “but we need the room.”
“Of course,” said Rebecca. Then she spoke quietly to Lee. “We can talk more in my office. You want a Coke?” Lee nodded. “I’ll get you a Coke,” she said. As they got up, Randy came in with handcuffs. “Oh no,” Rebecca said. “That isn’t necessary.” And she took Lee by the arm back down the hall, leaving James stunned and blushing until I cleared my throat, pointed at the new boy at his side. I watched Lee’s now tepid gait as they walked away. It was so very odd, and it angered me because I couldn’t understand what had happened and because Rebecca seemed to care more for this Lee Polk than she did for me.
For the remaining visiting hours, I replayed the scene again and again: Rebecca leaning so close to the boy, her hair spilling across her back and shoulders, so near that surely he could smell the scent of her shampoo, her perfume, her breath, her sweat. And she must have felt him responding to her, the tension in his shoulder building under her hand, chest rising and falling with every breath, the heat coming off of him. But then to put her hand on his knee, I couldn’t imagine what that could mean. If I hadn’t been there, if they’d been alone, would her hand have begun to knead the boy’s thigh, travel up along his inseam, gently cup his private parts? Would he have swept Rebecca’s hair away and would his lips have parted as he inhaled the scent of her neck? Would he have kissed her neck, held her face between his almost manly hands, run his fingers, LOVE, over her slender wrists and up her arms to her breasts, kissing her, pulling her toward him, feeling all of her, warm and soft and all there in his arms? Would they have done all that?
I fantasized as best I could, jealous first of Rebecca, then of Lee, and switching back and forth as I considered their roles and how they’d betrayed me, since already I’d decided that Rebecca was mine. She was my consolation prize. She was my ticket out. Her behavior with this boy really threatened all that. Was this what they’d taught Rebecca to do at Harvard—to win these boys over with charm and affection, then educate them? Perhaps this was some new way, I tried to think, some kind of liberated thinking. But the more I considered it, the crazier it seemed. What was she saying to him? How close could they have become in a matter of days? What had Rebecca done or said to earn Lee’s trust? I imagined the scene back in Rebecca’s office. I wanted to know what was happening. Visitors came and went. I felt sick with abandonment. I was so very dramatic. I figured I ought to leave then and there, to spare myself any more misery. Once again I imagined driving my Dodge off the cliffs and down onto the rocks by the ocean. Wouldn’t that be thrilling? Wouldn’t that be the way to show them all that I was brave, that I was tired of following their rules? I would rather die than stand around, be among them, drive on their nice streets, or sit in their nice prison—no, not me. I nearly cried standing there. Even Randy, beautiful and smelling of smoke and polished leather, couldn’t cheer me.
But then I saw it—the notebook. Rebecca had left it on the ledge of the window behind the table. And so when the last visitor left, I snatched it and walked down through the corridors toward Rebecca’s office, quite pleased that I’d found such a good excuse to poke my nose in. I hoped that Lee was still in there with her and I could catch the two of them red-handed. I don’t know what I was expecting to find, but I put my ear to the door, straining to hear sighs and moans, or whatever people sounded like when they made love. I’d never heard my parents make love. If they made love, they did it silently, like bank robbers, like surgeons. I heard, felt nothing. I knocked on Rebecca’s office door.
“Oh, Eileen,” she chirped when she opened it. “Are you all right?”
I took a step back, feeling like a child, a nuisance. I extended the notebook toward her. She took it, thanked me, said she hoped I hadn’t read it.
“Of course I didn’t,” I told her. I couldn’t have, anyway—that chicken scratch was indecipherable.
“I’m only teasing,” she laughed. “My book of secrets.” She clutched the notebook to her chest. She had a way of laughing, head thrown back, jaw cut so smooth and white and hard, as if it were rimmed in porcelain, eyes first pinched in ecstasy, then wide and wild—devilish eyes, beautiful eyes—then face lowered, beaming with affection or derision, I couldn’t tell. I turned to leave, but she stopped me by laying a hand on my shoulder. This sent chills down my spine. Nobody had touched me like that in years. I forgave her instantly for betraying me with the boy. I could hear him inside clearing his throat.
“Say,” she began. “Would you be up for a drink after work tonight? I don’t know anyone in this darn town, and I would love to treat you to a cocktail, if you’re game.”
The way she talked was so canned, so scripted, it inspired me to be just as canned. “Say.” People didn’t really talk like that. “A cocktail.” If she seems insincere, she was. She was terribly pretentious, and later, in hindsight, I felt she’d insulted my intelligence by selling me her scripted bunk. “Darn it all.” But at the time I felt I was being invited into an elite world of beautiful people. I was flattered. And I was flustered. I had never received such an invitation in my life, so this was as thrilling and terrifying as hearing someone tell me, “I love you.” I was full of gratitude. I didn’t think of my father, my evening duties, any of that. I just said, “OK.”
“OK? I’ve twisted your arm?” Rebecca joked. She let the door swing open a bit. I could see Lee Polk sitting in a chair in front of her desk, looking through a large book of pictures. When he saw me he held the book up to hide his face.
“Sure,” I said. “How about O’Hara’s around seven?” I was shocked by how easily the words came out of my mouth. I hoped my death mask had not betrayed me, prayed I sounded cool. O’Hara’s was just a dark dive with hard wooden booths, a place working-class locals went. The usual clientele were cops and firefighters and men from the shipyard who stank powerfully of sweat and salt. Two single women alone at a place like O’Hara’s would inspire strange looks, or worse. But I was game. I was a peon and I was a child, but I was not a coward. “It’s the only bar in town,” I added.
“Sounds perfect,” Rebecca whispered. She made a playful, conniving face. “I’ll see you there. With bells on! Is that the expression?” She shut the door.
So that was something. You have to remember I was what you’d call a loser, a square, a ding-a-ling. I was a wet blanket. I had never gone out at night. Even in college, the dances were chaperoned, and among the girls in my dorm was the sense that to stray from the flock meant you were a floozy, a prostitute, a sinner, greedy, disgraceful, a threat to civilization, bad. Setting foot in a place like O’Hara’s would have been frowned upon. But if Rebecca was doing it, I would do it, too. What did I have to lose? I left work early to give myself time to go home and change. I figured I had to put on a dress, do my makeup, find my mother’s perfume. Getting dolled up was completely silly, of course. You can always tell something when a woman is overdressed—either she’s an outsider, or she’s insane.
I wasn’t a stranger at O’Hara’s. Sandy, the bartender, was a thick and slow-moving man with deep acne scars and a gold cross, a flirt. I’d been there plenty of times, first as a young girl sent in to fetch my father from an extended after-work beer with his fellow cops while my mother waited in the car, and later as a sober escort when he’d get drunk and refuse to accept a ride home. I remember one autumn evening in particular when I was home from college for the weekend, my mother sent me to the bar to pick up my dad. Driving home along the moonlit streets, he laid his head on my shoulder, told me I was a good girl, that he loved me, that he was sorry he couldn’t be better, that he knew I deserved a real father. It moved me at first, but then his hand went to my breast. I beat him off easily. “Quit fussing, Joanie,” he said, slumping back in his seat. I never mentioned it to anyone.
Before I left Moorehead that day, I finished the vermouth in my locker, and then I drove to the liquor store for more gin and beer for my father and another bottle of vermouth for me. I’d need a drink before meeting Rebecca at O’Hara’s, I was that nervous. At home, I set the bag of booze down next to my father, who was sleeping in his recliner with his face smushed against the cushion, eyebrows raised, forehead clenched, body twisted and clunky under the flannel robe. I ran up into the shower as silently as I could. Let me be clear about this: I was not a lesbian. But I was attracted to Rebecca, yearned for her attention and approval, and I admired her. You could call it a crush. Rebecca might as well have been Marlon Brando, James Dean. Elvis. Marilyn Monroe. In such company, any normal person would want to look right, smell good. I worried what might happen if Rebecca wanted to lean in close to me the way she did with Lee. What if she could smell that I was menstruating, and that I hadn’t washed? What if she smelled it clear as day but didn’t say anything? How, then, would I know whether or not she’d smelled it, and how ought I act to pretend I didn’t know Rebecca smelled it? My poor nether regions. My body’s readiness to bear a child seemed classless and vulgar to me, and I felt that if Rebecca had any idea that I was menstruating, I would be humiliated. I would die. These were my thoughts as I scrubbed.
Once I got out of the shower, I put my hair up in a towel and listened for the sound of my father fussing downstairs, hoping I could sneak out without having to talk to him. The prettiest song I’d ever heard was the silence of the house that night, just the pipes gently clanging, the wind howling outside. I dressed per usual from my mother’s closet, choosing what I thought would look nice—a black wool dress with a high neck, a golden broach of leaves in a circle. I brushed my hair, which was still wet, put on my new shade of lipstick, pulled on a fresh pair of stolen stockings, then stood perplexed at my mother’s closet full of shoes, which were all one-half size too big. I didn’t own any shoes besides my beat-up loafers and my snow boots, so I wore the snow boots. They made me feel oafish and silly, but it was winter, after all. I chose a black cape from my mother’s collection of winter coats, grabbed my purse, shut the door softly, and ran out to the car. It was so cold that by the time I was out of the driveway, my hair had frozen in strips. They rattled like dead insects by my ears while I drove with the windows up, holding my breath. I parked under a broken streetlamp across from O’Hara’s, reapplied my lipstick in the rearview mirror and skidded over the ice to the bar.
When I opened the door to the dark, warm din, there was Rebecca, legs crossed high on a bar stool, facing a booth full of scruffy young men. They all seemed to be sweating a little, smiling, nervous as kittens and swirling their beers. Each wore the customary heavy wool jacket in blue, gray, or red plaid, and a hat—either a tight-fitting knit cap or the kind with the flaps that come down over the ears—and their faces were red and chapped from windburn and sunburn and cold. The four of them listened as Rebecca went on about something I couldn’t hear.
