Authors: Joyce Maynard
That was Jimmy’s plan too. But then I don’t know what got into the boy. Come to think of it, it was what he got into that screwed up his head. Pussy. The fucker got hold of her tail and lost his head.
So there he is, sitting on that couch of hers, while she’s sticking the camera in his face, and he’s answering her questions like this was a goddam congressional investigation. “Well,” he says. “Like I always said, if you got a friend that’s drunk and they say they’re going to drive someplace, it’s your responsibility as their friend to stop them, whatever it takes. I’m not saying I never get loaded myself. But if I do, at least I got the sense to stay off the highway.” Yeah. Right.
This one time she gets us over there. You knew it was going to be major on account of instead of Oreo cookies she’s got pizza waiting for us. “This time, I thought we’d tackle adolescent attitudes to sexually transmitted disease,” she says. Maybe I got my attitudes, maybe I don’t, I want to say to her. One thing’s for sure, you’ll never hear about it.
“All right, let’s put our cards on the table,” she says. Like you know she’s been studying tapes of “60 Minutes” or some shit like that. “What do you think of when I say the word
AIDS
?”
“Homos,” I say. “Queers. Perverts. Ass fuckers.” You knew they weren’t going to use that. Keep those four-letter words coming, is my motto.
“How about you, Lydia?” she says. “Supposing you were in a sexual relationship with a fellow student”—we’ve clearly entered the world of fantasy here—“Would you expect that person to wear a condom?”
She is a little on the dim side, that one. “It would depend,” says Lydia, “on how well I knew them. And what kind of a person they were. I don’t think I’d get involved with someone that was untrustworthy.” Mrs. Maretto there always shoots old Lydia from the side, so her cross eyes won’t show so bad.
“How about you, Jimmy?” says Mrs. Maretto. “Are you concerned about AIDS? Personally, I mean.”
I love this part. He gives her a look like you know he’s thinking about what she looks like bare-ass naked. “In my present situation, in the relationship I got going, I don’t think I need to worry,” he says. “She’s not that type of person, if you know what I mean. She’s real clean.”
Right around there Mrs. Maretto says maybe we want to take a break for some pizza. When we get back to it, she’s on to a new subject. Should they put warning labels on rock music. You knew she wasn’t going to touch the sex part again. Not on camera, anyways.
W
E WERE LAYING ON
her bed this one time, Mrs. Maretto and me. Most times after we did it she’d want to get right up and take a shower, but this time was different. She lets me just lay there, leaned up on the pillows, and she’s laying next to me, bare naked. Don’t ask me why, with a body like she got, but after that one time she did her cheerleading for me, she was shy about me seeing her. “What are you looking at?” she’d say. “Then she’d turn off the lights or pull up the covers or something. But this time she didn’t seem to mind. I didn’t want to stare, but it was the first time I ever got to see a girl like that, all the parts together at once, and not in a magazine but for real. She was just so pretty. I was scared if I reached out to touch her she might remember she didn’t have nothing on and cover up. So I just lay there, trying not to look too hard. Thinking, This is all I ask for. If she’ll just stay with me, I won’t need nobody else.
She’s petting me, kind of like she used to pet Walter. Real gentle. She rubs her hands over my chest. I’m wishing I had hair there. Figuring Larry probably does, him being Italian, and old. But she’s with me, not with him, right? So I guessed it was OK I didn’t.
She musses up my hair, kind of like those moms on TV shows that muss up their kid’s hair when they’re running out the door to play baseball or catch the school bus. Come back here and have something to eat. Then they hand the kid a Pop Tart. Those moms that shake their head, only you know they aren’t really mad at their kid. Really, they love him. Mrs. Maretto was like that. “You silly boy,” she’d say. “You idiot.” But you knew she liked you.
I get up from the bed and put on the tape that was playing when we were making love. Motley Crüe,
Theater of Pain.
Then I get back in bed next to her, put my arms around her and stuff. She was facing the wall, curled up like. Even though she was married, with a car and everything, I always had this feeling like I’ve got to take care of her. She was so delicate and sensitive.
When she turned around there was a tear on her cheek. “What is it?” I say. “What did I do?”
“Nothing,” she says. “You don’t understand. You never could. If I didn’t love you so much I wouldn’t be crying this way.”
“What then? What’s the matter? You gotta tell me.”
“I can’t go on this way,” she says. “I can’t keep living a lie. Loving you and then seeing him walk in the door, wanting to kiss me and everything. I feel like I’m a split personality. I feel like I’m going to lose my mind.”
“You think it’s easy for me, going home and leaving you here, knowing he gets to sleep with you?” I say. “Just thinking about him touching you, kissing you, I go nuts.”
“If all he wanted to do was make love that would be bad enough,” she says. “But that’s not all. When he drinks he gets violent. He can tell I don’t love him anymore. And instead of accepting it, he won’t leave me alone.”
“You got to divorce this guy,” I say. “You got to get away from him.”
“You don’t understand,” she says. “He’s violent as it is. If he knew there was someone else, if he knew he couldn’t have me, he’d never leave me alone. And then there’s Walter. I know Larry. He’d take Walter. And I’d have nothing.”
That’s when I told her I wanted to marry her. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. She was all I ever needed. “Look,” I said. “I may be young and I may not be some hot-shit restaurant owner, but I swear to you, I’ll always take care of you. I’ll never let you down. I’d do anything to make you happy.”
For some reason this just makes her cry more. Now she’s got her face buried in the pillow and her whole body’s shaking. I put my hand on her shoulder, I lay down on top of her just to stop the shaking. “Suzanne,” I say. “Suzanne. Suzanne.” It’s the first time I ever called her that. I just kept saying it.
“I can’t see you anymore,” she says. “I can’t see you ever again.”
For a minute there—Jesus, I don’t know how long—I couldn’t even talk. I couldn’t hardly breathe. Everything I ever heard about that people sing about, having their heart broke, that was me. The room’s spinning. It’s like someone punched me in the gut. It’s like—what can I say?—it was like nothing would ever be OK again in my whole life.
“No,” I say. “There’s got to be another way. I love you too much to ever let you go.”
“And I love you too,” she says.
“I’d do anything,” I say. “I’d die for you.”
“Larry would never leave us alone,” she says. “He’d be like that woman in
Fatal Attraction.
He’d never give me any peace.”
All I could do was keep saying it. I love you. I love you.
“He used to say if he couldn’t have me, he’d want to be dead,” she said. “And I believe it. He’d lose his mind.”
I said I saw a show one time where that happened. Guy went mental, ended up in the state hospital, drooling and banging his head against the wall.
“Larry wouldn’t want to live if he knew I’d stopped loving him,” she says.
“I know how he feels,” I say. “But me, I could never lay a finger on you, to hurt you. A guy does that to someone like you, he doesn’t deserve to live.”
And that’s when she says it. “Well,” she says. “I did have this one idea.”
I
KNOW YOU COULD
think Suzanne was some cold-hearted person. Like she didn’t have any feelings. But you don’t know her the way I did. All the hours we spent, pouring our hearts out and stuff. You can’t understand.
For instance, how hard it is for a person that wants to get into television. A person like Suzanne that has a dream. A person like that’s not like the rest of us. The only way you can reach your goal is if you just keep your focus and never let anything get in the way. It’s not like you’re selfish or anything. That’s just the only way a person like that has to be if they’re going to get ahead in this world.
She had to make a lot of sacrifices, and that was hard for her. Kids for instance. I know Suzanne would’ve liked to have a couple of kids. Somebody like her, married to a nice-looking guy like him, you know they would’ve had the cutest kids. Sometimes we’d be out shopping and she’d see these little smocked dresses or these little tiny shoes or something, and we’d both say, “Oooh” and stuff, thinking about how neat it would be. But she told me she wasn’t going to have any kids, on account of she had to focus on her career. And I happen to know that hurt her. But you can’t have everything.
Another thing people don’t know about her is how generous she was. One time when we are at the mall she took me into The Gap and bought me a whole entire outfit. Shirt, skirt, pants. They were size 9/10 so I couldn’t try them on, me being a 13/ 14. She said I should put them in the very front of my closet, to be motivation for my diet. I finally gave them away, it got so depressing looking at them all the time. But that was Suzanne for you. She just can’t understand a person like me that doesn’t have willpower, because she’s got so much of it herself. Whatever she wants, you know she’ll be able to pull it off.
The ankle bracelet she bought me though. I wear that all the time. Suzanne said it’s the little things like that people notice. Things like having a real leather watchband and not plastic. She taught me it’s better to have one pair of gold earrings than a whole pile of plastic ones. Look, the chain is small. But it’s real gold. Suzanne said it would draw attention to my feet, and how petite they are. We’re the same size actually. Same shoe size I mean. Don’t I wish we were the same jeans size.
Larry didn’t understand her. Her career and everything. And how a person’s got to follow their dream. She said he used to be this wild musician, like Tommy Lee, but then he sold out and now he wanted her to do the same. He acted like a nice guy and everything, when I saw him at their condo, but Suzanne said I wouldn’t believe what he was like, when no one was around. She didn’t like to talk about it, but once we got to know each other real well she admitted to me how he’d drink, and then he’d hit her. He even forced her to have sex. It was like he wanted this slave, she said. Someone to just stay at home and cook meals for him, and never have any life of her own. If she didn’t have her career, and me and Jimmy and her dog Walter, she told me she would probably have lost her mind by now.
You’ve never seen someone care about an animal the way she cared about that dog. It was like he was her baby. She’d cook him a hamburger—ground round, not chuck—just like he was a person. Gave him baths all the time. She was always buying him some little chew toy. You know how some people carry around pictures of their kids in their wallet? Suzanne carried around pictures of Walter. Not just one, but a whole bunch.
In fact, it was her loving that dog like she did that was the reason she couldn’t just divorce Larry. Because Larry was crazy about the dog too, and she told me she knew if they ever got a divorce he’d fight her for custody of the dog, and most likely he’d win since it was him that bought the dog in the first place. Which wouldn’t be fair of course, on account of Walter was actually a present to Suzanne. But you knew she was right, on account of how it was Larry’s name on the bill of sale from the kennel. She’d lose the dog. And that would’ve killed her.
And then of course there was their condo, that she’d worked so hard on decorating. She had a real touch. It was just like in a magazine. She had all these neat ideas, like this lamp she had that was made out of one of those plastic geese people put in their lawn, and this mirror that had the words
Time Magazine Person of the Year,
so when you looked in it there you’d be, on the cover of the magazine. She had this vase on the dining-room table, but instead of having flowers in it like everybody else would do, she had these peacock feathers. She always came up with ideas like that.
If they got a divorce, he’d get the condo, since he was the one that had come up with the down payment. While she was just a struggling television journalist.
“I’d be like one of those homeless people,” she told me. “If I leave Larry, I’ll end up with nothing but the clothes on my back.” There were her parents of course, but she said they’d side with Larry, and they’d just figure she was crazy, especially after they spent so much on the wedding and the reception. As for Larry’s parents, them being Italian and everything, they had connections everywhere. There was no telling what they’d do to ruin her reputation, her career, everything she’d worked so hard for.
I told her I could ask my mom if she could stay with us, but she said no thanks, she had to take care of herself. I’d be embarrassed to have her see where we lived anyways. It’s not like Russell’s family, but my mother just doesn’t understand about things like decorating.
So one time—I think it was the day we bought me the ankle bracelet—we’re driving home from the mall and she gets to talking. “You’ll think I’m terrible if I told you what I was just thinking about, Liddy,” she says to me. That’s what she called me. “You wouldn’t even want to be my friend anymore. And then I’d have no one.”
I told her I could never hate her. No matter what. I told her I was her friend for life. Just like that song, “Just call my name and I’ll be there.” You know the one I mean? They play it a lot on the oldies station. I’d do anything for her.
“You don’t know what I’m really like,” she said. “You just think I’m so nice. Sometimes these ideas come to me, and I hate my own self for having them, but I can’t help it. I can’t get these thoughts out of my head.”
“I know what you mean,” I said. “Sometimes I used to think about Chester and wish he’d get hit by a car. I’d have these dreams he got cancer. One time I even dreamed I killed him with my bare hands.”