I believed her. I remember that I really did believe her, though it made no sense. She sat next to me, our shoulders touching, and we listened to the rain. She told me I was lucky I wasn’t allergic to bees.
I said, “I am lucky,” and she said, “You are lucky.” She picked up my hand and wove our fingers together. I looked at our hands. Flesh and flesh and flesh. I looked at her face. She looked back at me. And then I kissed her.
It wasn’t a long kiss. It was just a little kiss, a closed-mouth kiss, on her lips, and though I felt an answering pressure, her mouth against my mouth, she pulled back almost immediately. That was the end. That was all. So many things happened because of that kiss. But it barely existed. It could so easily have been erased.
And I don’t even know, Jennifer, if it meant what you doubtless think it means. You probably think I’m lying when I say this, in this age when all love must be neatly categorized. But I’m not lying. I don’t know, Jennifer. I just don’t know. I’d been so shaken, so upset. That boy, the screaming. I did love her. But I don’t know what kind of love it was.
I saw in her face that I had changed things, and I was sorry, immediately. “Oh,” I said, “I didn’t . . .” But we had no language to discuss these matters. So I couldn’t finish the sentence.
“It’s all right,” she said. But she didn’t look at me. “I’m going to turn in.”
She moved slowly, painfully, over to her bedroll. I wanted to offer commiseration but my tongue throbbed in my mouth, bee-stung. I couldn’t speak. In the midst of horror I’d had one person. Now I couldn’t speak.
Once upon a time there were two girls. And then I ruined everything.
Jennifer, you told me I should be glad. I should be glad I’ve lived so much of my life alone, in the tidy confines of solitude. Maybe you were right. Maybe I should be glad.
Girls’ Night
Surrounded by people—Megan and six of her numerous friends—Jennifer is doing her best to pretend she belongs there. There, and not at Margaret’s house, helplessly listening. It’s begun to seem to Jennifer that when she goes to that house she enters a fairy tale; Margaret’s story is a spell she’s casting, and at the end, when they reach its awful heart, Jennifer’s transformation will be complete. And what will she be then? She’s thought about quitting but can’t. She needs the money. Behind this need, there’s another, despite her efforts to wish it away: she wants to know. What happened to Margaret. What Margaret knows. But there will be a price for understanding. Bodies upon bodies upon bodies.
After their session today, Jennifer went home and took a drained accidental nap on the couch. A hand touched her side as she lay there. She could distinguish each component part of the hand, the heel against her back, the palm cupped over the curve of her side, and against her front the pressure of each insistent fingertip—a pressure somewhere between a threat and a caress. She was close enough to the surface of consciousness to be aware of herself curled up on the couch. If she knew where she was, then the hand must be real. She woke, with a jolt of terror, to find herself alone.
Even now the feeling of the hand on her side remains uncomfortably vivid. The lively talk among the other women is a welcome distraction. They’re at a fancy restaurant at one end of Sewanee, occupying a table in the back. The place is BYOB, and each person, even Jennifer, brought wine, with the result that they have a great many bottles. The waiter opened half, to start, and they all filled their glasses quite full. Even Jennifer, as that seemed simpler than explaining that she doesn’t want any at all.
It’s their monthly girls’ night. Some of the women say girls’ night with a touch of irony. Some of them say it in a toast-making voice, a pep-rally voice. We’re gonna whoop it up. Tommy used to talk about “the boys.” Going out with the boys. Jennifer remembers riding in the back of a pickup truck, the driver Tommy’s most sober friend. She’s pressed against Tommy. His hand is on her knee. She’s warm where he touches her, cool otherwise. She feels the stereo’s bass in her throat. The wind makes a flag of her hair. We call ourselves girls and boys when we want to go back in time.
Jennifer is, at Megan’s request, one of two designated drivers; the other—Amanda—is making a great show of taking only the tiniest sips of her wine. “The only good thing about being the designated driver,” she says, “is that next month I don’t have to do it.”
“Oh, poor Amanda,” Terry says. She leans over and gives Amanda a squeeze. “Don’t you know you don’t need booze to have fun?”
Megan turns to Jennifer and says, “Thanks again for driving tonight.”
“Oh, you know,” Jennifer says. “It’s not much of a hardship for me.”
“Last month it was my turn,” Megan says. “I hate my turn.”
Erica, who sits on Jennifer’s other side, leans in. “Sebastian’s the one who made the rule.”
“Yup,” Megan says. “We used to just see who was sober at the end of the night, but he didn’t think that was sufficient.”