Paullina Simons: Tully

‘He’s an idiot,’ said Tully. ‘I think he is a bad influence on Julie.’

Tully wanted to change the subject and ask Jennifer, who seemed absentminded and listless, about the brown-haired boy, but Mrs Mandolini came in with a clutter of people wanting more ice, more strudel, more Jennifer.

Jennifer left Tully in the kitchen peacefully stuffing her face and smoking.

‘You shouldn’t smoke, Tully,’ said Mrs Mandolini from behind her. ‘It’s bad for you. And your mother would kill you if she found out.’

How right you are, thought Tully, taking a deep drag and moving toward the living room.

Tully stood against the wall in the living room and watched Jennifer offer a beer to a blond guy. In the way Jennifer handed it to him and looked up at him and minutes later danced to ‘Wild Horses’ with him, Tully took a shot in the dark and guessed it was the guy. He sort of looked like the guy at the lockers. It was dark and Tully couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t wearing a football jersey.

Look at her, Tully thought, amused. Jennifer was stumbling over her own feet, looking at them instead of at him. She looked awkward, especially when compared to the boy’s tall, fluid grace.

Tully lit another cigarette and sighed. She wanted to dance, too.

Dancing. Tully had learned when she was young how to dance; with a God-given talent and a love for music, both classical and rock, she had learned at twelve how to move, dancing naked in her room late at night in front of the mirror. Tully had spent endless solitary hours in her room, banned from the living room or the dining room, or avoiding sleep – dancing. She had learned to make good use of that mirror, of her naked body in front of that mirror, of music and her naked body, breastless, hipless in front of the mirror; and then, when she began to bud and grow, Tully had already worked out her own private, emotive, erotic act. She started to dance at the spin-the-bottle parties, at first with others and then tentatively by herself in the corner, and soon in the middle of the room. She danced fast and she danced slow, the boys clapped, the girls joined in or just watched; in any case, it became quickly known around Robinson Middle School that Tully Makker was a fine dancer.

But it was at fourteen, when Tully volunteered to dance at a special talent show one Friday night, that the whole faculty was made aware of her ‘gift’ as she danced with her eyes closed to Beethoven’s Emperor. The principal, labeling Tully’s dancing morally reprehensible, called Hedda, who had missed her daughter’s performance. Where had a fourteen-year-old learned to dance like that? the principal asked Hedda. Mrs Makker wrung her big, clammy hands and cried, but Tully was suspended for a week anyway.

The full-length mirror was taken away and Tully was never locked in her room anymore, but it was too late. Tully had grown to love the reaction of her peers and her elders. Feeling that she had a true talent, Tully, in the next three years, proved to the enchanted and drunk patrons of Topeka’s nightclubs and bars, to the students and the rugby players and the farmers, just how prodigious and how wasted her talent was. Tully was sure the punishment Hedda meted out when she found the condoms in Tully’s room would have been a lot harsher had she been aware of the hundreds of dance contests that Tully had won, of the money her daughter had made, of the boys and men Tully had danced with, and more.

And tonight, Tully stood alone and smoked only briefly, barely managing to finish her cigarette before three guys from school came over to her and asked her to dance, all at once; and she smiled and did. She was so breathless afterwards that she even danced with Julie. Cheek to cheek, Tully danced with her friend, knocking into people and bouncing off. And then she grabbed on to Jennifer, but there were now too many guys around Tully who, having recognized her, would not let her alone, and Tully, still wanting to have a word with Jennifer, managed only a quick whirl with the birthday girl to part of Neil Young’s ‘Hey, Hey, My, My.’

Afterwards, Julie got Tully alone for a moment.

‘Tully,’ Julie said, ‘I’m sorry about Tom.’

Tully waved her off. ‘But Jule, how could you have told him anything at all about me?’

Julie looked embarrassed. ‘Tull, I’m sorry. He is my boyfriend. I thought I could trust him.’

‘Oh,’ panted Tully. ‘Don’t you get it? It’s not yours to trust him with.’

Julie lowered her head. ‘I’m sorry, okay?’

‘Okay,’ said Tully, and went back to dance.

After an hour of frenetic dancing, a sweaty and exhausted Tully sat down on the sofa in the living room, soaking up the lights, the music, the smoke, the booze, the guys.

I spy with my little eye something beginning with – ah, but I don’t know his name. She spied the brown-haired guy, dancing with his girl, though dancing was a strong word for what she was doing. Tully did not pay attention to his dancing; she was much more forgiving when it came to the male sex.

Jennifer was talking to her blond footballer in the corner. As Tully studied him, she had to grudgingly admit that with the lights off, strobes blinking, music blaring, cigarette smoke fogging up the room, he did not look bad. In fact, he almost looked kind of…okay. He was tall and broad-shouldered. It impressed upon Tully in some visual, non-specific way that he held his head high, impossibly high, even when he was bending down to hear Jennifer.

The Stones were ‘Waiting for a Friend’, and the brown-haired boy and his girl, deciding to sit this slow one out, snuggled on the couch next to Tully. She watched them out of the corner of her eye. Eventually he got up – to get a drink, apparently. His girl sat still, not turning her head to look at Tully. She sat there with her little skinny doe-like legs uncrossed and close together.

The boy came back with the drinks and sat down, not between Tully and his girl, but rather at the very end of the couch. Well, that’s all right, thought Tully. Now I can see his face.

After a few moments, he looked away from his date and stared calmly at Tully, then politely smiled and once again faced his girl.

He is even better looking than I first thought, Tully mused, sipping her beer, but older than most guys I know. She appraised his groomed slick look, his southern European, round, clean-shaven face. When he talked to his girl he tilted his head and smiled, showing perfect white teeth. When he laughed, his eyes lit up. Tully noticed his Levi’s were ironed (what kind of a man irons his Levi’s!) and even his pink Izod shirt looked freshly pressed. He doesn’t look very tall, thought Tully, but in every other way – Tully smiled inwardly – well, let’s just say I wouldn’t climb over him to get to his date. But it was obvious that the little mouse was not about to let him out of her sight and in fact kept turning around and shooting lethal glances at Tully.

Tully supposed that if she had a hunk like that, she would be throwing lethal glances at everybody, too. Tully was eager to ask Jennifer about him, but Jennifer had not stopped talking to her blond, who by now seemed quite drunk (how come he has a full beer bottle in his hand at all times while the rest of us are still nursing the beer we latched on to at seven?) and was leaning over her, his arm strapped around Jennifer’s neck. Her face, usually devoid of expression, tonight was a happy face. Tully saw it and felt a stab of pleasure and light envy. She looked at the blond’s face and immediately felt something else, too – anxiety, small and sharp.

For there was no happiness in the blond boy’s face; only beer.

Tully sought Julie out with her eyes and found her talking heatedly to a group of people, including Tom. Probably about whether or not the Americans should have been helping the French in Vietnam in the first place, thought Tully.