Paullina Simons - Tully

‘Why did you tell me I could come to your mother’s house?’ he asked her.

She flashed him a smile. ‘I didn’t think you’d come.’ Beaming at the waiter, Tully ordered black coffee and lemon meringue pie.

‘You really transform yourself for a party, don’t you?’ Robin said.

‘What’s the matter? Regret you came today?’ Tully asked.

He shook his head quickly. Gray is not an especially warm color, he thought, never having seen gray eyes before. ‘No, you look better now, but different.’

They sat and talked for an hour.

‘What do you do, Robin?’ Tully asked him. ‘With yourself? When you’re not accompanying high school seniors to parties?’

‘I work for my dad,’ he told her. ‘DeMarco & Sons. Fine men’s clothing.’

‘In Manhattan?’ Tully seemed surprised. ‘Is there a market for that sort of thing out there?’

Robin shrugged. ‘We have no competition. It’s not bad.’

‘Well, that explains why you’re so well dressed,’ said Tully, smiling lightly.

As Tully talked, she gestured with her hands, which reminded Robin of his profoundly gesticulate family, and he found her hand motions very Italian and very endearing. They were having a good time. She was funny, nonthreatening, and, well, seemed entirely normal to him. They both smoked. He lit her cigarette for her, and she stared into his face as she inhaled.

But while Tully was holding up her hands – thin, white, and thoroughly pleasing – to imitate a friend of hers during a police raid on a dance club, Robin saw her wrists. On both her wrists, very close to her palms, he saw two horizontal scars, jagged and dark pink, scars about an inch long. He inhaled sharply. She stopped talking and looked at him; Robin could only imagine what his expression looked like to her – fear? pity? more fear? How often had she seen these expressions on the faces of men who encountered her and those wrists of hers? All that mixed with lust and tenderness. How often?

Instantly, her demeanor changed. She wasn’t animated anymore, and her eyes were cold.

To sit and say nothing seemed somehow unthinkable, somehow worse than acknowledgment, so Robin steadied himself and acknowledged Tully. Touching her sleeve, he said, ‘Are you okay?’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I’m great.’

Robin looked at her wrists, and so did she. ‘Oh, these,’ Tully said. ‘I cut myself shaving.’

‘Oh,’ Robin said, letting go of her sleeve and feeling himself go pale. ‘I hope you don’t…shave them very often.’

‘Not too often, God help me.’ She attempted a smile.

I love her, Robin thought then and there with a spasm of emotional clarity that pulled at his stomach and tugged at his throat. I love her. How is that possible? How? What has she done?

After leaving The Village Inn, they drove to 45th Street and headed east, in the direction of Lake Shawnee and Lawrence. Tully was much quieter than she had been at the restaurant. Basically, she just sat and stared at the road, commenting that the weather was certainly turning chilly.

‘Shawnee County is really beautiful,’ Robin said. ‘Look at this place. Hills and valleys and meadows.’

‘And long grass,’ said Tully impassively. ‘It’s the prairie, Robin.’ She looked out the window.

‘Yeah, but looking at this, you wouldn’t think it was the prairie,’ said Robin.

‘It’s the prairie, nonetheless,’ said Tully.

They parked at Lake Shawnee and had sex again; it was just as brief this time, just as confounding. There was no one around. Tully stroked Robin’s hair, and then gently pushed him off her. He sighed and got dressed. ‘Done with me, are you, Tully?’ he said.

‘I’m not done with you at all,’ said Tully, touching his cheeks. ‘But I have to get back.’

‘What’s the matter? Your mother sick?’

‘Very sick,’ said Tully. ‘If you only knew.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Nothing to tell,’ said Tully.

Robin took a deep breath and told her about his dad’s cancer.

‘I’m sorry, Robin,’ said Tully, cracking her knuckles. ‘My mother is not really sick, nothing like that. She is just…strict, that’s all.’

‘How strict, Tully?’ he wanted to know. ‘Is there a curfew? Does she insist you do your homework all the time and not go out? Does she make you do housework?’

‘If only,’ said Tully. ‘No, nothing like that. Robin, it’s really hard to explain about my mother. She is not very communicative.’

‘From what I understand, neither are you,’ said Robin.

‘Right,’ said Tully. ‘So, me and my Mom, we just don’t talk much.’

Silently, Robin looked at the lake. ‘She is still your mother, Tully,’ he said. ‘She’s the only mother you’ll ever have.’

Tully glanced at him. ‘Robin, that’s not necessarily a good thing,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

It was nearly seven in the evening when they hit 45th Street again. The sun was hiding behind the hills. The trees, the barns, and oblong grain silos were dusky silhouettes along the road. Robin and Tully had been driving for about ten minutes on 45th when a car coming the opposite way passed them and all of a sudden something hard and black bounced off the other car, and then the Corvette smashed it with its right fender, and the black thing bounced off and fell with a thump to the ground.

‘Robin!’ exclaimed Tully. Both cars stopped. Two young men in plaid shirts came out of the other car, and all four of them carefully stepped to the middle of the road to see a Doberman, prone on its side still breathing but unable to move any part of itself.

‘Oh, God,’ said Tully.

‘Hey, where did he come from?’ said one of the plaid-shirted men excitedly. ‘I was driving, didn’t see nothing, and then all of a sudden this thing just jumps out in front of my car, poor bastard.’

‘And I hit him,’ said Robin, shaking his head.

‘Nah, he bounced off my car, man, there was nothing you could do. I feel bad, though, he must be a guard dog for one of them barns over there. His owners are gonna be pretty sad when they find him.’

‘My God,’ said Tully. ‘He’s not even dead.’

And it wasn’t. The Doberman was trying in vain to lift its head, but all the while its black eyes were open, staring mutely at Tully and at Robin. They looked at each other, and then at the road. A car was coming. ‘We gotta move him,’ said Tully.

‘Nah, he’ll be better off if a car puts him out. Look at him, he is suffering,’ said the guy.

‘We gotta move him!’ said Tully louder, looking at Robin.

All four of them had to move out of the road. The car slowed down but didn’t stop as it went barreling past them and over the Doberman, flinging the animal a little closer to the shoulder, but not close enough, because seconds later another car went by, and this one didn’t even slow down as it ran over the Doberman. The dog remained in the road, no longer trying to move its head. Amazingly, it was not dead. Its mouth was open as it slowly gulped some air, its black eyes still open, and still watching. The four of them stood motionless. The only sound in the air was the dog’s belabored, difficult breathing. Tully wrung her hands and moved toward the three men. ‘Guys, please! Just move him, move him, don’t let him be hit again, please! Robin!’

Robin stepped over to the dog. ‘I wouldn’t do that if I was you,’ said the plaid-shirted driver. ‘You don’t know how that thing’s gonna react, man. It’s a Doberman, for God’s sake. He may just get crazy right then and there, rip into you or something. I wouldn’t do it. Just let him be. He’ll die soon enough.’

Robin stopped. ‘He is right, Tully,’ he said.