None of Us Have Any Fathers
My freshman year of high school, I sleep over at Tara’s for the first time. We waste no time cutting across the creek to her neighbor’s backyard because they have recently installed an above ground pool. They are a late-20s couple with no children. They howl with pleasure over their loud music when we pop out of the bushes in our swimsuits. They have a friend over whose name is Dennis or Morris and he has a staring problem. He is tall and lanky, very tanned, and always seems to sit somewhere between us and the other adults. He doesn’t say much but Tara seems to like him. We go swimming in the pool. I wait until Dennis or Morris has gone inside before I climb out of the pool. We hang out in the living room of their trailer home, watching the three adults drink their beers. Tara and I are talking mostly about this boy, Scott, who has recently moved from Oregon into our neighborhood buried in the woods of the Texas Hill Country. She’s going to make a big deal of my crush on him, so I pin it on Richelle. Our friend, Richelle, definitely has a crush on the new boy, I say. Dennis or Morris is always looking at me when I glance around the room. I become mostly silent under his near constant gaze, waiting to go back to Tara’s house.
A couple days later, Tara calls me to tell me that Dennis or Morris likes my thighs. He has asked her to tell me this. I don’t know why anyone would like thighs. It takes me thinking about it for days to understand. I’m not sure how old he is, but I know his attention to my purple scalloped bathing suit and black cutoff shorts is criminal. I tell my mom that Dennis or Morris is creepy. She is irritated with me. I have interrupted her TV show. She tells me, without making eye contact, “Then, don’t go over there if you don’t want to.” I could push the matter, but I don’t. She is tired after work. Tara’s mom is tired after work. Richelle’s mom left her with her grandparents and, although they are not tired after work because they are retired, they are always taking naps and snoozing.
***
I’m sitting at my laptop this morning, waiting to take a work meeting with my boss, Dennis, wherein I’ll announce my resignation. Looking out the bedroom window at the grey tree trunks, I think, not Dennis. Tara’s guy wasn’t Dennis or Morris. I’ve tried like this to remember his real name, stumbling over consonants. But it’s only when I force my memory to meet his gaze again and hold it, that something turns in on itself. My body goes still. Like a lark, I hear his name. Tara’s preciousness for him drags across the “i” in “Miiiiitchell.” His dark, unsmiling eyes come back. I hear her saying it again. Mitchell. The pock marks on his cheeks come back. The deep “V” of his chin and the long, oily hair grazing his shoulders. Tara in full, so young, a sophomore holding onto baby fat that looked matronly under JNCOs and oversized band t-shirts, comes back. How was any of that part of this life, I think as I reply “NP” to an email from Dennis, who is telling me he’s running a few minutes late for our chat. I wonder if he’s stalling the break up. It won’t be easy to replace me.
***
Tara has an infected ingrown toenail the last time I sleep over at her house. She is dating Mitchell now. She’s a junior, not college bound. Her buoyant baby fat has morphed into exaggerated, sharp curves, like she has skipped right over a teenage body. I’m a sophomore, breastless and running through my SAT flashcards every night before bed. I watch her picking at her toenail, pressing a cotton ball into the corner where blood and pus is oozing. I bury my face in one of her teen magazines, asking if the bathroom didn’t have better light. She says she can see fine from where she’s sitting on her bed. I make a mental note to sleep on the other side.
***
I have prepared a speech to give Dennis, replete with witticisms like “while it may seem that I’m going against the grain by moving on” and careful self-deprecation that downplays my many and substantial contributions. I keep changing small words as I wait for him to get on the line.
Tara’s father died in another state the year she met Mitchell. It was a construction accident. I wonder if the presence of Tara’s father would have changed anything. He kept a handgun wedged between the seat cushion and side of the recliner in the living room. I found it when I spent the night with Tara once. I pulled it out and held it in my hand. It was so smooth and heavy. Tara told me to put it back. It was loaded. I never met her father. I don’t know if she looked like him. He was always in another state working in construction. It seems suspicious now that he was never around, but our worlds were much smaller then and the order of the wider universe was still undefined. There were things in her house that seemed to me signs of his existence. An unused BowFlex in the dining room. A row baseball caps nailed on a hallway wall. A taxidermy sailfish on the living room wall. A bowl of dusty pistachios on the coffee table. A jar of more pistachios on the floor next to the recliner. A stack of magazines by the jar, the bottom few filled with breasts and hairless vaginas. Richelle’s mother once had a boyfriend who kept an entire row of pornography videos just behind the row of blockbuster movies. When asked, Richelle’s mom had said, “Those videos back there are boring for middle school girls. It’s just Calvin’s umpire videos.” As soon as Richelle’s mom left for work that day, we were fast-forwarding through a video called, “Halloweenie.” It was my first encounter with adult male anatomy. We didn’t try to watch any others. Just knowing what they were was enough. So, it was no revelation to find the porn magazines poorly obscured in Tara’s living room a few years later. It was only unimaginative. I think, with my adult brain, Mitchell must have triangulated this as a path of least resistance. “Hi, it’s Dennis.” My meeting starts.
***
It feels childish to spend the night with Tara, now that I’m a sophomore. In the ways that matter to us, we aren’t girls any longer. She’s the first person I call after I lose my virginity over the summer. She acts surprised when I tell her. She promises not to tell my mom. She congratulates me and Scott. By the time I’m sleeping over with her this September, Scott has broken up with me. He says he needs his freedom. I feel all used up and unsure I’ll ever have another boyfriend. I try to talk to Tara about it at this sleep over. She tells me that Mitchell thinks I’m really pretty. She says she might be able to sneak him over tonight if I want. He could bring a friend if I want. I tell her this is gross. She doesn’t respond. She applies antibiotic ointment down the length of her toenail and wraps it in three band aids. I pull two bottles of Sprite out of my overnight bag and pat the floor next to me. “Let’s do a quiz,” I say. “Oh!” She says. She runs across the room to her dresser and presents several mini bottles of vodka straddled between her fingers. I don’t have to ask who bought these for her. There are three quizzes to choose from: What type of college is best for you? Are you a good flirt? Is she really your best friend? We rule out the first and last. “I already know I’m a good flirt,” Tara says. “Well, do you want to do the college one, then?” “Hell, no,” she says. The soda causes her to burp loudly. She knocks a fist against her chest. I’ve seen Mitchell do this. She passes the Sprite to me. I take sip. “Come on, you have to drink it for real,” she says. “Okay, okay,” I say and tip the bottle back. She raises the bottom of the bottle with her finger so that I’m gulping it. When I pull away, I belch uncontrollably and we’re laughing together. For the first time tonight, it feels good to be here with her.
***
There are puddles of brown leaves on the pool cover. I’m working from home this week and I’ve already scheduled vacation for the December holidays so it’s unlikely I’ll go back into the office until my last day. I’ll get offboarded with HR, box up the few things that have accumulated on my desk, shake hands with everyone. I’m the VP of Branding for an organic coffee roaster. You can find my designs, or designs I’ve approved, in groceries stores and coffee shops up and down the Hudson River. It’s not that I haven’t enjoyed my job. I’m actually right where I thought I wanted to be after getting my MBA at Columbia. The plan has always been to work my way up a company I am passionate about, then leave to start my own company. I’m on track.
***
While talking with a guy, you feel most comfortable when:
a. He starts the conversation.
b. You have something in common to talk about.
c. You can drop little hints by touching his arm or poking his side.
d. You are the center of attention.
Tara says she likes being the center of attention, but she tells me to select “b.” She think that’s more like me. She says I was always trying to talk to Scott about stuff he liked. Honestly, I tell her, I don’t think I ever knew what he liked. Riding his bike? Beavis and Butthead? Whatever movie was playing at the discount theater? She just rolls her eyes at me. Scott and his mom moved here from Portland last year. They live in a new double-wide trailer with his mom’s friend, Jamie, who collects frog figurines. We’re all pretty sure they are a gay couple when no one is looking. Some people think my mom is gay, too, because she doesn’t have a boyfriend and has short hair and is six-feet tall. When I ask her if she’ll ever remarry and force a stepdad upon me, she asks me where she’s going to meet a man worth all that again.
At your crush’s soccer game, you:
a. Cheer him on, from the sidelines, as loudly as you can.
b. Wait until after the game to tell him he played really well.
c. Give him pointers after the game.
d. Wave to him from your seat, then leave when the game is over.
We both laugh at this one. We don’t know anyone who plays sports. That costs money. None of us have any of that. Tara reframes the question for us.
re: At your crush’s fight in the woods, you:
a. Cheer him on, from the sidelines, as loudly as you can.
b. Wait until after the fight to tell him he punched really well.
c. Give him pointers after the fight.
d. Watch from behind a tree, then run off to rat them out.
“Oh my god,” I say, “That’s so white trash, Tara!” “I’m just being honest,” she laughs. We decide on “a.” There were fights in the woods, all the time. Scott smashed a kid’s head in out there. He was five years younger than Scott, just a sixth-grader. The kid called his mom a “homo.” We all covered for Scott. My mother swore to take away all privileges if she caught me out in that short and thick forest of Cedar and Live Oak. But she needn’t have worried. Always keep your eyes out, she told me. Your father might show up at any moment and kidnap you to get back at me. They divorced when I was eight-months old. She won’t tell me about him. He’s only this looming, uncontained threat on my person. But I don’t go in the woods, not even when Richelle and Tara call me a baby or tell me I’m going to miss out on a major ass-kicking. They don’t know, really, that I don’t get into that stuff anyway. They don’t know that I’ve made some new friends my sophomore year, that we talk about Tarkovsky and Carl Sagan and what we’ll major in at college. “Tar-what?” Tara would say.
You think of the opposite sex as:
a. Intimidating
b. Fun
c. Mysterious and challenging
d. Easier to get along with than girls
We agree, finishing off the first bottle of Sprite and fourth bottle of vodka, “c,” for the sake of irony.
***
I don’t need the job exactly. My husband is a psychiatrist. He doesn’t take insurance and a consultation with him will cost you $600 upfront, nonrefundable. We met at Vassar. His website describes him as a premier mental health doctor. I tease him about this. If you’re so great at your job, I like to say, why do you have so many patients? He has a long waitlist, too. If the ever-increasing number of mass shootings this year is any indication, business is good for those who hand out pills. It’s not that I don’t think his work is important. I do. It just takes up all the air in the room.
***
What’s the best way to get a guy’s attention?
a. Act aloof but smile when you make eye contact
b. Find reasons to run into him socially
c. Give him lots of compliments
d. Wear your sexiest clothes and prettiest make up
Tara becomes very earnest. She says she didn’t do anything at all to get Mitchell’s attention. I tell her that Mitchell doesn’t count. “Just put ‘a’ down, okay?” But I want to talk about this. “Tara, Mitchell is 34. He’s not even a guy, not like Scott or any of the others. He’s a child molester!” She says, “You’re such a goodie-goodie. Put ‘a’ down. What’s the next question.”
***
I’m a VP at 32 and my C-suite trajectory is starting to feel like a thing that’s only useful for throwing around at other people when I feel threatened. Like when my husband’s parents ask when they’re getting grandchildren, I can say, playfully, “Well, I’ve sort of got my hands full running a whole department, you know.” Or, when I hear that yet another old schoolmate from Vassar has crested to CEO, I can say something about how we’ve all done so well in our careers. But my husband, he’s either talking about a novel new drug with great promise for treating PTSD or he’s saying nothing because of patient confidentiality and because he doesn’t take his work home with him. I can’t stand it any longer. So, I’m quitting. I’m going to take some time off. I’ll make pots or plant a garden or canvas the neighborhoods to get the good guy elected.
***
What do you do if he tries to kiss you?
a. Go with it, kiss back.
b. Push him away but snuggle up to him.
c. Play hard to get so he’ll come back for more.
d. Tell him you’re not that kind of girl.
I yell, “D!” Tara rolls her eyes at me. “Like, what kind of girl are you? You fucked Scott. You are that kind of girl.” In this moment, I hate her, and I want to leave. I have this whole bright future in front of me. Tara’s just this blemish on my youth, like Scott and Richelle too. All I can think to say is, “I loved Scott.” She laughs at me as she pours two more bottles of vodka in the second bottle of Sprite. She goes to take a drink and I raise the bottom of the bottle with two fingers so that she’s forced to drink more. I cup the bottom of the bottle and turn it up even farther. Sprite is dripping from the corners of her lips but she’s trying to drink it. I push down on the bottle, and she starts coughing and I keep pushing it farther down into her mouth. I hear the plastic scrape her teeth. Her face is flushed, and she squirms now that I’m crouched over her. Sprite and vodka are spewing all over her face. And I only pull away when I see she’s been struggling to breathe. She’s now lying on her side, gasping for air.
QUIZ RESULTS: As far as you're concerned, slow and steady always wins the race—and the guy. You like the type of boy that can pick up on hints and who pays attention to detail. Clever and intuitive fellas gravitate toward you.