The Pillow Friend Page 11

  Her mother kept breaking in on her thoughts with unwelcome advice.

  “I don't wear makeup. I'm not going to suddenly start now.”

  “Why don't you wear something a little more—”

  “Nobody dresses up for a football game!”

  “I wasn't going to suggest a formal. But that top you're wearing isn't the most flattering thing in the world. What about that little pink blouse?”

  “I'm wearing this.”

  “You could do something different with your hair; do you want me to help you put it up?”

  She had already rejected Roxanne's offer to help her with hair and makeup; this pressure now from her mother was intolerable.

  “Just leave me alone, would you? I'm going like this. I don't need any help getting dressed, thank you.”

  “Are you going to wear one of your ‘Equality NOW' buttons? Do you want him to think of you as just one of the boys? Is that what you want?”

  “No I don't. I'm not a boy. But I'm not just a girl, either—I don't want him to see me as just a girl. I want him to see who I really am. I want him to know me, and not play silly games with makeup and high heels and acting helpless and flirting . . . pretending. . . .”

  “Then what are you doing going out on this date with him, pretending you have the slightest interest in football? Isn't that pretending?”

  She felt hot and itchy, caught out, and hated having her own deep discomfort so quickly uncovered by her mother. “He's not exactly the world's biggest fan. It's just something to do, somewhere to go and sit outside and eat hot dogs. Look, it's my business, all right? Aren't you going somewhere? Don't you have shopping to do?”

  “It'll wait,” said her mother with a self-satisfied smile. “I want to meet your young man.”

  Agnes went and locked herself into her own bathroom. Then, because she couldn't bear to look at herself—her plain, round, bespectacled face, her plain straight brown hair—she sat down on the closed seat of the toilet and put her head in her hands, leaning over like someone afraid of fainting. She was doing this all wrong. She should have taken Roxanne's advice and her mother's, bought contact lenses and a new pants suit, let her friend paint her face, learn to flirt—either go the whole way into it, or stick to her revulsion against dating and the high school social scene. Why had she let Roxanne talk her into this? Why had she asked Alex to the dance? She didn't want to date him. She didn't want that awkwardness between them. She wanted him, simply, in love with her. She wanted something dramatic to happen, the way it did on television, throwing them together.

  Trapped in a basement while a hurricane roared outside, or taken hostage by gunmen, their bus hijacked—there could be other people around, that was all right, but in adversity they would find themselves drawn together. They would realize they loved each other, there would be no need for words. She'd imagined so many ways it might happen, but she hadn't had the patience to wait and let fate throw them together.

  Her mother knocked at the door. “He's here.”

  Something like stage fright made her stomach lurch. She got up like somebody else, without even thinking about what she would say, and went downstairs to greet Alex.

  It all went smoothly enough. Her mother was friendly but not intrusively so, and said nothing embarrassing. Alex declined a soft drink, and they were outside in under five minutes.

  He apologized for the car, a battered white station wagon which smelled ripely of dog.

  “You have a lot of dogs?”

  “They're my mother's—so's the car. She collects waifs and strays.”

  “Don't you like dogs?”

  “Not really. They're so, so doggy, the way they stare at you with their big brown eyes, willing you to love them, and loving you no matter what you do.”

  She thought, sickly, of her own doggy eyes, always turned his way, trying to compel his love. “I would be your spaniel,” she said sadly.

  “What?”

  “It's a line from a play. I think that's right. From Women Beware Women. I think. I didn't memorize it, it just came into my head. Doesn't it happen like that to you? You read something and then bits of it just stick and turn up in your head, not when they're useful, but like dog hairs stuck to your clothes.”

  “I've always got dog hairs on my clothes. You will, too, after riding in this car. I'm sorry.”

  “It's all right. I don't mind. They're just ordinary clothes.” She looked out the window while he drove in silence. The route they were traveling was the same one she traveled most days to school, so nothing she saw surprised her. The only surprising thing was that she was in a car with Alex Hill. Maybe someday that would seem as ordinary as sitting beside Roxanne.

  “So, you like football?”

  “No,” she said, without thinking, and then bit her lip. “I mean, well, I don't know, really. I don't care about it on television, I never watch it, and—well, actually, I've never been to a game. So I'm really looking forward to finding out. If I like it, I mean.” She felt hot and sweaty with effort. “So, are you an Owls fan?”

  “God, no. They're hopeless. I got the tickets 'cause my Dad teaches there.”

  “Oh, yeah? What subject?”

  “Architecture.”

  “Will you go to Rice?”

  He snorted. “Not even if they'd have me. I can't wait to leave home.”

  “Where're you going?”

  “UT. How about you?”

  If he became her boyfriend they wouldn't be separated after graduation. “Probably UT. My sisters went there—one of them still lives in Austin. Do you know what you want to major in?”

  “I might go Pre-Law. I've got the grades for it. I don't know that I'd want to be a lawyer, but Pre-Law's a good start anyway. How about you?”

  “Well, I've been thinking about anthropology, or maybe philosophy. Those are the things I'd really like to study. The thing is, I don't know what kind of job I could get afterward. The only thing I want to do is write, but you can't make a living out of poetry, so I thought maybe if I could get a job that had something to do with books, like maybe working for a publishing company, or as a librarian. Even working in a bookstore, but of course you don't exactly need a degree to do that. Anyway, I guess I'll worry about the job when the time comes, and enjoy my time in college. I'm really hoping I can manage to get something published before too long—so far, it's been nothing but rejection slips. I couldn't even make it into Visions last year! How about you? Do you send stuff out?”

  “What?” He rolled his eyes, startled, in her direction.

  “Poetry. I noticed you didn't have anything in Visions either. Kind of makes me wonder about the teachers who judged the entries, considering some of the stuff they . . .”

  “What makes you think I write poetry?”

  “Well—you're the poetry editor.”

  He snorted. “Not my choice. Miss Beadle makes the choices. I wanted to be editor, actually, but Freer got that, of course, he's her bright-eyed boy. I don't know why she made me poetry editor. Not that it makes that much difference, you know the editors don't choose the material, we're just responsible for position and layout and making sure there aren't any typos.”

  “I know, but I guess I thought you must have a special interest—”

  “I don't even like poetry. I don't understand it. Especially all this modern stuff, this free verse that doesn't even rhyme. I mean, what's the point? I think if you're going to have poetry, it should at least rhyme.”

  The football game itself turned out to be the best part of their date. There wasn't so much opportunity to talk then, and what talking they did could easily be focused on the game they were watching. She asked questions and he explained what was going on. She enjoyed his nearness, the safe thrill of body heat as they sat thigh to thigh, his flesh separated from hers by only two layers of sturdy denim. Warmed by his body, aware of his every movement, she could for a little while simply enjoy her love.

  Once the game was over, though, they wer
e back in the difficult world of their differences, or of his differences from the romantic figure she'd created in her dreams. She struggled to build bridges, initiating conversations intended to bring them closer together, but she had an uncanny knack for saying the wrong things, hitting his sorest spots, drawing out of him always the things she didn't want to hear. Maybe it was because she was tossing the conversational ball to a man she couldn't see, to the figment she imagined in his place.

  They went to a Burger King for hamburgers, and it was there, in that artificially cheery atmosphere, in a rare few moments of silence between them, while watching him eat, that she had a sudden, vivid memory of a childhood disappointment.

  She'd had a dollhouse when she was small, before their family had broken apart, and in the kitchen of the dollhouse there were several tiny plates and bowls of artificial food. They were more real to her even now than whatever it was she'd had for dinner the night before, and she regretted now having let them go with the house, having agreed with her mother that, at thirteen, she was too big to play with dolls and dollhouses. And yet she knew that if she had them now, if she could put her hand into her purse this minute and pull out the tiny loaf of bread, the bowl of fruit, the beautiful brown roast chicken, they would not make her happy, they would still stir the same frustrated longing in her that they had then. They had always looked good enough to eat—they looked to her even better than the things she really had to eat—and yet they had been inedible. She knew that, she had always known it, and yet she had never, as a child, entirely believed it. There must be a way of approaching them, a special attitude or a particular time of day or night when they would be transformed into something delicious. Once, or maybe more than once, she had gone so far as to bite a tiny piece of the roast chicken. It tasted awful, like dust and old glue, and there had ever after been a notch in the breast where her tooth had chipped out a piece to spoil it and remind her of how silly she had been—and even then she couldn't quite shake off her belief that somehow, someday . . .

  All of the food was realistic and identifiable, all except one, the most fascinating for its mystery, the plate of pink meat. She was sure it was meat, but what kind she could not imagine. It must have come from an animal she had never seen before. Her mother said it was ham, but it looked to her like no ham she'd ever seen. And why was it so big? On a plate the size of a quarter, it filled the whole space, there was no room left for the potato salad, or sweet potato pie, or succotash or green beans that normally accompanied slices of ham. The thought of the greedy carnivore who would devour a whole plate of strange meat was unsettling. She longed to taste this meat above anything else. It would be like nothing she had ever tasted before, and it would be better, she was sure, better and more satisfying than any meat had been.

  She understood why Alex made her think of that imaginary meat. He wasn't the passionate, poetic, romantic boy she had imagined throughout the long, hot summer, but he still looked like someone that she loved, and not even a recognition of their incompatibility stopped her from wanting him. Surely there had to be a way for them to meet and understand each other? Surely the love she felt could not be wasted, meaningless?

  Impulsively, she put down her hamburger untouched and tried again to reach him.

  “Do you think people can want things that aren't right for them? Really want them, I mean; like, need them.”

  “Of course they can. All the time. Look at drug addicts. They ‘need' something that's killing them. Or wasn't that what you meant?”

  “Oh, well, I wasn't really thinking about addictions, things like drugs or cigarettes. I guess I meant more like, well, food, for example.” She suddenly realized she could not use love as an example. If people never fell in love with the wrong person there'd be no broken hearts and no divorces.

  “Food?” He looked baffled, and waved his burger. “We don't ‘need' this stuff, that's for sure. If people only ate what they needed there wouldn't be so many fatsos in this country.”

  “I guess you're right,” she said sadly. Wanting something fiercely was certainly no sign that it was good for you; maybe even love could be an addiction, a bad habit, like cigarettes or booze.

  She didn't know why it should hurt so much. Alex Hill didn't love her, but he wasn't the man of her dreams. He was just a boy she wasn't getting along with very well. The person she had loved all summer wasn't real. She'd just have to reject her fantasies about that person in the same way that she'd refuse to swallow pills offered her by a sinister stranger. She didn't love Alex; she didn't love anyone. She didn't know why that should hurt so much. It shouldn't hurt at all, but it did.

  It was barely seven o'clock when he took her home. They were both very polite when they said good-bye at her door, mouthing the little formula they'd been taught by their mothers to utter after every childhood party, visit or treat: “Thank you so much; I had a nice time.”

  She didn't invite him in, and he didn't try to kiss her.

  Tears filled her eyes as soon as she was indoors; she shoved her hand in her mouth and bit down on it as she stared around her like a wounded beast.

  Her mother had left a note where she always did, on the refrigerator door. It said she wouldn't be back until very late. There was chocolate chip ice cream, also cold cuts and chips, if she and Alex wanted a snack. . . .

  She took her fist out of her mouth and howled out loud. Then she staggered around the downstairs rooms, weeping and clutching at herself until she dropped to the floor, exhausted, and just lay there, snuffling and breathing raggedly. It was over. That was it. She got up and went into the kitchen, where she splashed some water on her face and blew her nose on a paper napkin. Then, feeling hungry (she hadn't managed much after the first bite of hamburger) she put a couple of slices of pickle loaf on a plate with a pile of chips and a blob of mayonnaise, and took it upstairs with a glass of Dr Pepper. She wasn't even thinking about her broken heart or Alex when she walked into her dark bedroom and, glancing through the glass of the balcony doors to the courtyard and swimming pool below, saw him.

  Her heart leaped up. The figure was in shadow, standing away from the light, close to the ragged bamboo hedge which divided the courtyard from the parking lot, but she was absolutely certain it was Alex. She had watched him for so many devoted hours, memorizing his every movement and stance, that she could not be mistaken.

  He hadn't gone. He must be feeling as miserable as she was at their failure to connect, at the stupid way their first date had ended. But he was afraid to knock at the door; he didn't know what to say to her.

  She put down her plate and glass, turned and ran down the stairs and out of the apartment. She didn't know what to say, either, so she wouldn't say anything. That would be best; words had come between them before.

  He must have started walking toward her as soon as he saw her come through the door. They collided by the side of the pool.

  It was a curiously embarrassing shock to feel his body so close against hers, and she would have pulled away, apologized, if his arms hadn't gone around her at the moment of impact. Not a bump, then, but a hug. An embrace.

  They just stood there holding each other for a while. She moved a little, turning her head, looking up, wanting to see his face, but the harsh, bright poolside light was directly behind him, and she couldn't make out his features. The only thing she could see were the twin glittering circles of his glasses.

  With a little shiver she recognized something creepy about this. He didn't try to stop her pulling away, which reassured her. When she put a hand out he took it. His fingers were warm.

  “Let's go inside,” she said.

  By the warm glow of the corner lamp in the living room Alex looked wonderfully familiar, just wonderful. She was going to say something, she didn't know what, something to express her happiness, when he put a finger to her lips.

  She smiled. He took his finger away and kissed her.

  “Agnes? What are you doing down here? You weren't waiting up for me?”<
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  She blinked up at her mother, disoriented. What was she doing here? Had she fallen asleep? Where was Alex? Her mother smelled of soap, like she'd just washed her face. Where were her glasses? “What time is it?”

  Her mother laughed. “And what time do you call this, I'd like to know? No fair. I didn't give you a curfew, so don't try to pull that on me. It's after two. You weren't worried, I hope? I said I'd be late—didn't you get my note?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” She found her glasses on the coffee table and put them on. Alex's glasses, like Alex himself, were gone. She remembered, with a slippery, warm sensation low in her stomach, the tender practicality with which he had gently removed her glasses before taking off his own.

  Her mother patted her shoulder. “I'm going up to bed, dear. I think you should, too.”

  When her mother had gone she searched the room in case Alex had left her a note, but found no sign of him. But did she need a sign? Her lips were still swollen from his kisses; she had only to close her eyes to feel them again, the way, after a day at the beach, she would go on feeling the steady, insistent rhythm of the waves against her skin.

  So, that was what kissing was about. She went up to bed happier than she'd ever been in her life.

  Roxanne called her a little before noon the next day for the details.

  “Well, the date was pretty much of a disaster, really.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “I hate dating. It should never have been invented. I hate football. I hate trying to make conversation and all that getting-to-know-you garbage.”