Let's No One Get Hurt Page 13

  I want to say, “Congratulations, you’re now a human being.” But that might be pushing it.

  * * *

  Before Wythe climbs back in his golf cart, he tells me the details. The dance isn’t at the school but at a warehouse the rising seniors all chipped in to rent so they can drink there and not get caught. Mason can’t pick me up beforehand because he’s still waiting on a new golf cart.

  “Is that cool to just show up?” Wythe says.

  “That’s cool.”

  Before Wythe pulls away, I stop him.

  “What is it?”

  I don’t care how I sound. “Why me?”

  He doesn’t even hesitate. “Because he wants to show you off, Pearl.”

  I TELL MY FATHER ABOUT the dance, and he says absolutely not. I try to tell him who Mason Boyd is, that his father bought up all of the land nearby, and my father smirks, like I don’t know what I’m talking about.

  “I already told you we’re not squatters.”

  I want to believe it, to believe how my father thinks all of this around us, even if we could buy it and put our name on the deed, would still be borrowed: the land, the money it represents, the river that doesn’t care whether we’re here to drift on it or not. All of it is borrowed, he would say.

  I shrug and leave it alone. I can’t bring myself to believe any of his shit right now. All I know is there’s this dance that will happen whether my father wants it to or not.

  * * *

  “This is the same boy?” my father says.

  “What do you mean the same boy?”

  “The one you were running with.”

  “I wasn’t running with anyone.”

  “Pearl.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “Okay. Is it the boy you would visit on occasion? Is that better, more precise for you?”

  “We didn’t visit.”

  “Now you’re being obtuse.”

  “I’m sorry I’m being obtuse.”

  “Whatever it is you did together.”

  “We didn’t do anything.”

  “Is it the same one? Is it the same boy?”

  “I just want to go to the dance.”

  “Since when do you care about dances?”

  “I’ve always cared about them.”

  “I’m just trying to understand you.”

  “You’re just trying to understand me?”

  “Let’s start over.”

  “Okay, let’s.”

  “I don’t want you to go,” he says.

  I hear Dox playing a riff outside. It’s not a happy song. “Why?”

  “Because you’re my daughter, and I don’t know anything about this boy or who will be there.” My father crosses his arms and I get a glimpse of his former self, but he and I both know he’s so far past that, it won’t hold. “You know, you’re asking a lot of me.”

  I bite my tongue.

  “You are. When you’re a parent, you’ll understand.”

  “I will never be a parent. I wouldn’t dare bring a child into this world.”

  My father does a slow blink.

  “Sorry, but I wouldn’t.”

  “You keep running with this boy, and—”

  “And what?”

  “Don’t make me say it.”

  “You think I don’t know how it works.”

  “I’m sure you know.”

  “I haven’t even started.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Started? I’m not repeating myself, not to my father.”

  He forces a cough. “Well, that doesn’t matter. You know you can tell me these things.”

  “It’s not fair. I shouldn’t have to tell you these things.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m talking about something else.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  MY FATHER GOES BACK TO his typewriter and his pages. It’s all sadness, and I can’t stand it. Dox, on the other hand, gathers all of Fritter’s old T-shirts for me, and even some of the curtains. We just need materials.

  Though we have a yard full of washing machines, the irony is that we don’t have electricity to run even one of them. I take the bundle and scrub them by the river. I don’t even keep an eye out for moccasins and copperheads anymore. I wash the shirts and curtains and wring the river out of them and hang them on branches.

  After they’ve dried, Dox tells me he could soak them in a pan of transmission fluid, to give them a little color.

  “Maybe next time,” I say.

  He points at me and laughs.

  * * *

  We rinse the shirts and curtains again, and Dox fills empty cans with sassafras and other aromatic herbs. We let them soak and dry again. Gone is Fritter, all the ripeness of him. Dox takes my measurements. I blush when he wraps the measuring tape around my waist and then around my bust.

  “Can you give me some boobs?”

  “I was thinking something simple.”

  “Elegant.”

  “Yes. Elegant.”

  * * *

  He salvages large cuts of cloth and fashions them into wide panels that he stretches across the floor in his room. With tailor’s chalk, he marks dotted lines along the edges. He lets me watch him work. The light blue marks make me think of the map Main Boy has of the county, how each line is a demarcation of property.

  “So what can you tell me about him?” Dox says. “What’s this boy like?”

  “You’ve seen him.”

  “When?”

  “When we were playing. He’s the guy who put a twenty in the basket.”

  “Oh, yeah. Mr. Big Bucks. Mr. Sunglasses.”

  “His family is rich.”

  “Like I said. Mr. Big Bucks.”

  “You also said he looked like Andy Warhol.”

  “I did?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Does that boy wear a wig, too?”

  “No, it’s his real hair.”

  “And how would you know?”

  “I touched it, Dox. It’s real.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  THE MORNING OF THE DANCE, I wake before the others. The sun hasn’t come up yet. I still look in the corners of rooms. I want to see Marianne Moore step out of the shadows. I run my hand along the dress.

  “Sweet Dox,” I whisper, and keep moving.

  When I pass Fritter’s room, I expect to see him sprawled on his mattress or turned onto his side with those pink splotches of scar tissue I’d seen during our float on the river. All I see, instead, are the painted walls. It’s all black, from the floor to the ceiling. I wonder if this means he’s finished.

  * * *

  In the kitchen, I take the cluster of old soap bars we’ve squeezed together. I cut off a slice like it’s a sliver of cake. In the corner are the fly rod and the creel that don’t belong to me.

  * * *

  Trees begin to fill with sunlight. I shake my head. They’re just trees. I push away branches with my free hand. The branches swing back and cover the path behind me. I can smell myself. I smell like my father. I smell like Dox when he opens his mouth. I smell like Marianne Moore’s matted fur that would sit in clumps on her back.

  Yet there’s one thing I’m certain of, and it’s that I don’t smell like my mother. It’s something else I’ve forgotten. It’s like she never existed.

  * * *

  I take off my clothes and leave them on the bank. I hold the soap to my nose and take a deep breath. I drop the soap with my clothes and pick up the rod and the creel and wade into the water. I’m careful where I step. There are a few large rocks, but it’s mostly a muddy bottom. My reflection isn’t me.

  My face isn’t even mine.

  * * *

  What does Main Boy even see in me?

  But I can’t help smiling. I think about the dress Dox made. I smile when I picture myself in that dress and Main Boy watching me walk into the room. All eyes will be on me for a change, and not in a bad way.

  * * *

&nb
sp; I fish the floating line through the guides of the rod and tie on to the end of the leader the same muddler I’d used to catch the bullheads the other day. I get some excess line in front of me. I false cast. I pull back and go forward, feeling the rod tip load and unload. Once I’ve found my rhythm, I open my eyes to see the line hovering. I’m naked in the water. Don’t even think about it.

  The floating line goes back and forth.

  It leaves me and returns to me.

  There is no translation for the ache I feel.

  * * *

  I get skunked by the river. Nothing rises. Nothing hits. I return the rod and the creel to the bank, and I grab the soap. It’s going to dry out my hair, but I don’t care. Better that than have it reek. I lather my entire body. My eyes burn.

  The river slips over me and I hold my breath. It’s warmer in the shallows. I crouch down, pressing my feet into the muddy bottom. I push off like I’m my father launching off the end of the pier.

  * * *

  The deeper into the river I go, the cooler the water becomes. I sink into it, and the river wraps around me. When I surface, I see a few sailboats in the distance. They’re tiny. Their open sails are like the petals of fragrant water lilies. My father would say Nymphaea odorata.

  * * *

  I step out of the water, but I don’t dry off. I don’t want to use my old clothes. This is my body. Even if I had a clean towel, something from Main Boy’s bathroom closet that was fluffy and perfectly folded, I wouldn’t use it. I gather up everything and carry it through the woods. The air warms even more.

  I try to keep the leaves from brushing my arms. I don’t care how stupid I sound, I go in search of a corsage. There are so many things flowering. A bunch of spatterdock and pickerelweed. There’s too much to choose. I walk until my hair dries by itself.

  * * *

  Instead of heading toward the field where I first met Main Boy, I go off in the opposite direction. I keep west until the path vanishes and the rest of the woods pull away easily. What are left are small marsh islands thick with corollas of spartina and cattails. I don’t walk out to them. The sailboats from earlier look larger, though they’re still a ways away.

  * * *

  When I get back to the boathouse, I find the truck gone. I call out for my father, but no one answers. I peek inside the kitchen and say Dox’s name, but again, it’s only silence. I run inside and find some clean underwear, and I slip on the dress, too. Dox made it long, so that it sweeps along the floor.

  * * *

  “This way,” he said, when we were doing the fitting, “they can’t see you wearing those trifling shoes.”

  “What’s wrong with these shoes?” I laughed.

  I knew they were barely shoes.

  “Mercy me, mercy me.” Dox shook his head. “If I were you, I’d just go barefoot.”

  * * *

  Dox told me he first met her when he used to work for her uncle. Dox had even helped him build this boathouse, but then Dox went off, left his family, and lived in a bunch of places. He worked all kinds of jobs, from construction to apprenticing with a tailor, and when Dox came back through town, the uncle had been sick for a long time and needed someone to run his boats. Most of the boats were sold off to pay the mortgage on the land.

  Dox stayed on and worked the river, mainly because the uncle’s wife was still living in town, and according to Dox, she was always good to him, giving him a place to live, even the run of the boathouse if he wanted. By this time, my mother had stopped coming to visit. Dox said he always wondered what had become of her.

  In his mind, she still had that girl body from all those summers before, all tan and gangly. She loved to jump off the pier. He remembered her as being fearless. This was a trait I could never assign to my father.

  “I worry my father and I are the same person.”

  “Maybe you are, but you’re her, too. I can see it plain as day.”

  I didn’t tell him that’s what I was afraid of.

  THEY FIND ME IN THE kitchen boiling rice for a late breakfast. I’m wearing the dress, and it’s so humid, my hair sticks against the sides of my face. I ask Dox to help me braid it later.

  Fritter comes through the door. His head is shorn down to skin. I almost don’t recognize him. There are scars on top of his head. He touches them lightly when he sees me noticing.

  “What happened to your hair?” I say.

  “Got it cut.”

  “Makes it look like you’re in the army.”

  Fritter won’t meet my eyes now.

  EVENING COMES. I WALK OUT to the pier to see my father, Dox, and Fritter. The men are sitting at the end. My father is quiet as Dox worries over the fretboard.

  “I’m going,” I say.

  “Then go already.” My father laughs for no good reason.

  I wait until he has his moment. I say it again but he only shakes his head.

  “Well, what do you think?” I hold out my arms. I twirl in place.

  My father looks at Dox and asks if he has any dollar bills left.

  “You don’t have to be mean,” I say.

  “Then go, so you don’t have to listen to me being mean.”

  Fritter says he wants to be the one to drive me to the dance.

  My father is wearing his pin-striped vest with no shirt. The top button droops. One good pull and it will break. Next to him is the bottle they’ve all been sharing. I’ve stopped asking him what the doctor said. I walk over and kick the bottle into the river. It bobs. Without hesitating, my father goes in after it, like he’s saving a child.

  * * *

  It’s Dox who puts down his guitar and comes up to me. He touches the sides of my hair, which he helped me braid and sweep back. He kisses my forehead. I think he might say some words for us all. I’m hoping he will. Instead, he returns to his seat and slips his pale feet back in the water. The guitar lies upside down. It looks like an oar. Dox’s body heaves, but there’s no sound. My father lifts the bottle onto the pier and climbs up the side ladder.

  * * *

  “Wash your face off,” my father says.

  “You know I’m not wearing any makeup.”

  “It looks like you are.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I didn’t mean that in a good way.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  Dox grins wide and his lips split. I see the gaps in his side teeth.

  “I just don’t want you to get hurt,” my father says.

  I shake my head now.

  “What’s so funny?” he says.

  “You.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “I know. I am, too.”

  FRITTER HOLDS OPEN THE DOOR for me. His head is so shiny. I wipe my face with my arm. The ride to the main road takes nothing. We pass the empty field. Down the road, I see where kudzu drapes. Everything is tangled.

  “We could just keep going,” Fritter says.

  “Sure thing. Let’s go and find our raft.”

  “Don’t tempt me. I’ll do it.”

  * * *

  Because it’s starting to get dark, I focus my attention on the engine and the rattles in the fenders that come from the bumps in the road. Some lights shoot across my eyelids, but I don’t budge. I stay that way until we eventually slow. When I open my eyes, I see stoplights. Increments of red mark the town. At the far end, buildings scatter and eventually dissipate back into fields.

  * * *

  When our stoplight turns green, Fritter stares at me. Cars gathered behind us begin to honk. The air fills with their frustration. People on the sidewalk stop what they’re doing and glance over at us. All the stoplights up ahead have finally turned green, but all we can do is sit there. We try our hardest not to bust out laughing.

  * * *

  We pull into the parking lot. We drive over to the side and find a row of golf carts. Fritter asks me to check the directions again, that maybe we’re in the wrong place.

  “These boys must be assholes,” Fritte
r says.

  “They’re all right. They’re just boys.”

  “You want me to go in with you?”

  “Yeah, that wouldn’t be weird at all.”

  * * *

  The parking lot is a powder of crushed oyster shells. I sink into every step. I lift the bottom of my dress so it doesn’t get covered in the dust. When I get to the door, I turn and Fritter is still there in the pickup. The vehicle looks abandoned. The inside of it is empty of any light.

  I PULL ON THE HANDLE and the door into the building opens easily. An overhead bulb makes the wide hallway glow yellow. I can see I’m leaving my footprints on the floor. At the end is a set of swinging doors with blackened-out windows.

  “Hello?”

  The floor is slick and cold. It’s like I’m walking on fish. I push through the swinging doors. The room ahead is dark, save for a single chair at the opposite end that sits directly under a light stand with mounted lamps.

  Beyond it is another door. I call out again. The space is cavernous and swallows my voice. I think I hear people in the shadows. I smooth my dress. The way Dox was able to bunch the top of it makes it look like something is there.

  “Mason?”

  There’s no answer.

  I look down at the floor. The floor is no longer cold. My legs are suddenly burning. There’s no one here. It’s all a setup, just another joke. A part of me wants to run, but I don’t. The warmth rises into my chest and up into my throat. I won’t scream. I won’t give them the satisfaction. I don’t care how stupid I look standing here.

  * * *

  Just for a moment, I pretend that there is music, and the flies are dressed in black suits, and there are other girls here who are my age, maybe even the alpacas but who aren’t bitches and who will see me and not scoff at what I’m wearing and not tell others that I’m a slut, and not snub me in the bathroom when I go there to check my face. I study my wrist and see the ghost of the corsage Main Boy would have bought for me. It is so light and delicate it has no choice but to evaporate when someone comes up behind me and throws a hood over my head.

  “WHAT THE FUCK is she wearing?”

  “It’s a dress, dumbass.”