The Night Gwen Stacy Died (4 page)

It was only after a week of eating lunch in front of her locker freshman year, dodging
hall monitors, that Sheila attempted to stake out a more modest seat in the cafeteria.
She had sat down at the other end of a safe-looking, half-populated Large Caf table
and busied herself taking her sandwich and drink out of her paper bag, looking as
extraordinarily preoccupied with it all as possible, when she heard the boy at the
other end of the table say, “It’s Sheila Gower, right?”

Sheila looked up from her sandwich slowly. It was always a shock to hear people you
didn’t know say your name. It made you wonder what else they knew.

“Yes,” Sheila admitted.

“You’re in my English class,” the boy said.

He looked familiar. For a moment the words
pig
and
toenail
inexplicably flashed into her brain; she heard the words in tandem as a half-chant,
a whisper. “Second period, Mr. Clemmont?” she asked.

“That’s the one,” said the boy. “I’m Anthony.”

“Anthony what?”

“Pignatelli.”

Pig Toenail.
Tony Pig Toenail
. That’s how some of the other boys in her English class referred to him. But the
name sounded different the way he said it.

Anthony seemed to see that this is what she was thinking because he said, “The ‘G’
is silent.”

“Okay,” Sheila said. “Is that like Spanish?”

“Italian,” he said. “The ‘G’ is fucking silent anytime it comes before an ‘N.’”

“Sure,” Sheila said. “Cool.” She nodded, but in her brain a neat row of pink toes
persisted, nails pointed uniformly, dangerously in one direction. She stabbed her
straw into the mouth of her juice box and gulped furiously.

“Wait,” said Anthony, “Didn’t you used to sit in the Small Caf?”

“Briefly,” said Sheila. “But it turns out I don’t have an eating disorder, so it’s
not really my crowd.”

Anthony smiled. “You like the stuff we’re reading in English?”

There had been a lot about disembodied hearts all that year. The hideous telltale
variety, noisily thumping through the floorboards of a murderer’s home. Then, there
was the way some poet’s heart was stolen during the cremation of his drowned body,
and how his wife wrapped the damaged organ in a poem, like a piece of meat in butcher
paper, and placed it in a drawer of her desk for thirty years. The point of everything
they read—even freshman year—seemed to be about how life was short and everyone should
just sleep together before they all died.

“You mean all that gather-ye-rosebuds crap?” Sheila asked.

It wasn’t crap, not really. It was fascinating to conjure one’s death and imagine
life to be so brief a glint of a thing that all it made sense to do was grab hold
of the closest breathing body and not let go. “I think Mr. Clemmont is maybe a little
too invested in this unit,” Sheila said finally.

Anthony was laughing. “Definitely,” he said. “The guy is like obsessed with sex. If
I have to ‘unpack’ one more metaphor about virgins and coy mistresses this semester
I’m going to vomit.”

“Second period is way too early for unpacking virgins,” Sheila agreed.

This is how their friendship began. One of them would make observations about stupid
people or stupid metaphors, and the other would laugh. For a while it seemed like
she and Anthony weren’t simply clinging to one another out of desperation, but actually
had something in common. It wasn’t until her senior year when she was enrolled in
Mrs. Gavin’s English class that Sheila considered the possibility that Mr. Clemmont
had not been sex-obsessed at all. All of English literature was obsessed with sex.
When she shared this observation with Anthony at lunch, Anthony seemed to agree wholeheartedly
with this as well. After a while, it seemed there was little she could say that was
disagreeable to him.

Today, Anthony was already sitting at their table, halfway through his sandwich, by
the time Sheila got through the line and sat down.

“Didn’t bring your lunch today?” he asked.

Sheila shook her head. “I didn’t have time to pack one. I was at the station until
late.”

“That’s so cool that you have this whole other life.”

“Not really,” Sheila said. “It’s a gas station.”

“Still,” Anthony said. “Maybe some night I’ll borrow a car and come and visit you.
We could steal a pack of cigarettes and smoke them and make fun of all the people
who come in.”

“That’s against the law,” Sheila said. She could feel all the hairs standing up at
the back of her neck. Her reaction surprised her. The thought of Anthony walking into
the station made her uneasy. “I mean, you don’t even smoke,” she said.

“Yeah, but you do.”

“Not really,” Sheila said. “Only every once in a while to pass the time.”

“Whatever,” said Anthony. He took a bite from his apple. “Are you going to this pep
rally thing next Friday?”

“No,” said Sheila. “Are you?”

“I don’t know,” Anthony said. “Maybe. You’re not even a little curious who’ll get
nominated?”

“Nominated?”

“Jesus, Sheila,” Anthony chided her. “Spring Fling? They’re nominating the court at
the pep rally. They’ve only been talking about it over the PA for the last three weeks.”

Sheila looked up at Anthony from her side of the table as if from the other side of
the room, past the lunch line and panes of glass. He was wearing his favorite blue
jeans and a faded T-shirt with a vintage ad for Orange Crush soda. It wasn’t immediately
obvious that these were the school colors, but there was no denying that that’s what
they were. It made her feel a little sad for him, and for an instant she wanted to
grab ahold of Anthony’s hand and save him from some obscure threat. She had been kissed
by two boys in her entire life—once by a college boy she met swimming at the reservoir,
once by a boy in the fluorescent-lit parking lot of a movie theater the summer after
eighth grade—and both times the transition from talking to having his tongue in her
mouth had felt non-existent in a way that made her wonder what had been going on in
the boys’ brains up until that moment. Was there something specific she had said,
some obscure invitation, that made them think touching their tongues to hers was the
obvious course of action? The thought occurred to her that this was happening all
over the country. There were kids in every cafeteria draping themselves in the representative
colors of cougars and falcons and mythological animals, pushing their tongues into
one another’s mouths, chanting things, casting votes for the kings and queens who
would represent them.
But so what?
Sheila had to remind herself. This was high school. It was a regular thing. It was
no cause for alarm. It was nothing to be depressed about.

Pickup trucks were always pulling into the station. They had bumper stickers at eye
level that said things like
AMERICA: LOVE IT OR LEAVE
, not even
LEAVE IT
, which at least would have been a parallel construction. Sheila knew all about parallel
construction. She knew all about past participles and all about subjunctive tenses
because she was teaching herself a whole new goddamn language. Her father’s critique
seemed to place her knowledge of French around that of a traveler with a well-read
phrase book, but by her own assessment she had to give herself more credit. She had
studied vocabulary for a wide range of social situations and predicaments, chapters
with titles like “At the Library,” “A Doctor’s Visit,” and “Accepting and Declining
Invitations.” She knew how to borrow rare books, blow off important social engagements,
and describe obscure sources of pain in her body—vocabulary clearly way beyond the
grasp of the prudent traveler. Behind the counter she had her English to French dictionary
and a CD and workbook set. Sheila could play whatever she wanted over the speakers
at the Sinclair station, so sometimes she played the workbook CD, and she’d join in
conversations between ringing people up. Today she and the French CD woman had met
at a museum.

“Ça va?” said the French woman on the CD.

“Ça va,” said Sheila.

“Tu as de la chance d’être à Paris pour cette exposition.”

“Pump four, sixteen dollars,” said Sheila.

Ned never mistook her for one of the college girls, but if her French CDs were playing
in the station when Sheila paused in her lesson to count out his payment, he’d solemnly
repeat the foreign phrases along with the woman on the CD, as if he were taking the
responsibility for saying the things that needed saying.

Truckers who walked into the station to buy a box of condoms or a bag of Doritos would
stare at Sheila’s lesson speechlessly for the eternity it took for their tanks to
fill with diesel before saying something like, “You ever heard the French invented
the threesome?” Sometimes they winked. With this particular kind of customer, Sheila
played ignorant to her native language completely.

“Je suis désolée! Je ne comprends pas!”

Peter Parker usually let the lessons go without comment, but today he entered the
station especially riled by something.

“What’s that you just said?” Peter asked.

“Oh nothing,” said Sheila. “There was a demonstration in the street, and one of the
organizers was trying to give me a leaflet to read.”

Peter snickered. “Did you take it?”

“Oh no, I refused to take it because I was practicing being furious over how this
student demonstration has created a huge traffic jam in the street,” said Sheila.
“But the next time I practice this dialogue I will take the leaflet and practice being
sympathetic to his cause.”

“Lots of opportunities to speak French with student organizers around here?”

“For your information,” Sheila said, “I’m getting the hell out of this town.”

“Let me guess,” said Peter. He raised his finger in the air as if it were an antenna
picking up signals from Sheila’s brain. “You’re moving to Paris.” He continued to
hold his finger in the air and the smile persisted—knowing, accusing.

Sheila started to ring up Peter’s pack of cigarettes. She said, “You owe me $6.25.”

Peter made no attempt to reach for his wallet. He closed the distance between Sheila
and himself and leaned in across the counter. “Tell me if I guessed wrong,” he said.

Sheila placed a hand on her hip. “You’re right,” Sheila said. “I’m glad that amuses
you. Now take your cigarettes and get out of my station.”

“I’m not the least bit amused,” said Peter. He didn’t take his eyes off her. “I just
don’t quite understand what you’re waiting for. If you want to leave, leave.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” said Sheila.

“Says who?” said Peter.

“I’m saving money.”

“How much money is in the register when you close out the books?” asked Peter.

“It doesn’t work that way,” Sheila repeated. “That’s not how the world works.”

“If you say so, sweetheart,” said Peter, and he threw seven dollars on the counter
and left before she could make change.

Sheila sat behind the counter of the station and continued to watch the doorway he
had walked through. Peter was wrong. Still, she felt a kind of electricity coursing
through her, some kind of foreign energy she didn’t know what to do with, and when
it was time to go her hands shook as she counted down the register and turned off
the pumps for the night.

“Bring me to the bar with you?” Sheila asked her sister.

She had ridden straight to Andrea and Donny’s from the station. Why ride home to her
parents’ to eat microwaved mashed potatoes alone in an empty kitchen, when Andrea
and Donny would be eating tamales and popcorn out of greasy paper-lined baskets, splitting
pitchers? She and Donny were friends with most of the bartenders, so it shouldn’t
be that hard for Sheila just to walk in with them. Her sister wouldn’t deny her; Andrea
liked to feel older, more experienced, showing Sheila how the adult world operated.
Usually Sheila resented this attitude, but sometimes she saw how useful it could be.

“Sure,” said Andrea. “Okay.”

Sheila would turn eighteen in a few weeks, so it seemed conceivable that she could
pass for twenty-one in a college town inundated with fake IDs. She had never wanted
to try it before. Donny dropped Andrea and Sheila off at the door and parked around
the corner. Sheila felt nervous for only a second before following her sister inside.
Immediately, she was impressed with how many people were clearly trying to get away
with the same subterfuge, unsuccessfully. There were two college girls up to the bar,
fluttering their eyelashes, who asked the bartender for a vodka tonic and for a Cape
Cod, and when they were asked for identification the girls shrugged and giggled and
said they had forgotten their wallets in the car. As the girls turned to leave, the
men at the bar’s eyes fell to the words ironed into the asses of the girls’ sweatpants:
“princess” and “volleyball.”

“I’ll take ‘princess’?” one suggested to the other. “You take ‘volleyball.’”

“Sure,” said another man, “I’d do ‘volleyball.’”

“Gentlemen.” Andrea nodded in their direction, and they greeted her as she made her
way toward the bar. “Hey Carlos,” she said to the bartender, “What does a girl have
to do to get a drink around here?” Andrea ordered a drink for herself and then turned
to Sheila. She was impressed by the way her sister commanded the attention of the
men in the bar. She never would have guessed her capable.

Sheila tried to think of the least likely drink an underage girl would ask for. She
heard one of the men sitting at the bar order a Maker’s and Coke. Sheila asked for
the same. The bartender didn’t even look up. He just started making the drinks Andrea
ordered.

“Damn,” Donny came up behind Andrea and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, “Your
sister doesn’t mess around with her liquor!”

When the drinks arrived, Donny threw down enough to pay for all of them, and they
made their way to the far side of the room. Donny and his friends added their names
to a list on the chalkboard by the pool table, started placing bets on games. Sheila
sat with her sister in the wooden booth and watched the ice bob and twirl in her drink.
The first few sips felt like fire, but then the taste turned sweet, like the fire
was responsible for caramelizing everything as it passed her tongue. There was this
heat expanding throughout her body; there was Pasty Cline on the jukebox correcting
some jerk who had done her wrong; even Donny didn’t seem so bad when Sheila was watching
him calculate shots on the pool table. In the corner by the bathrooms, a couple was
dancing.