A. Homes - Safety of Objects - Stories

Sally was holding Robert’s old flashlight and kept flicking it off and on with her thumb.

Her mother looked down at Sally. “I put a night-light on down there.” Sally shrugged. “Good night,” her mother said, kissing her again and then kissing Ben even though he pretended to pull away.

“What are those red marks on your leg?” she asked Ben.

Ben looked down at his burns. “Poison ivy,” he said.

“Well, just don’t scratch,” Sally’s mother said.

* * *

“Ben and Sally went quietly downstairs, Sally following Ben. The recreation room was dark except for the glow of the night-light, which threw long shadows across the cool linoleum floor. There was enough light for Sally to see her reflection in the sliding glass door. She pressed her face up to the glass and tried to look out but saw nothing except her face pressed close against the glass, Ben standing behind her, and blackness beyond that.

The trundle bed, pushed against the wall under a window, was all made up. It looked small, lost in the big room.

“Pick,” Ben said, and Sally couldn’t decide which was better, safer, the higher or the lower; near the floor where a burglar or killer might not notice her but where something could crawl across her in her sleep, or up in the air at normal height, but unprotected, vulnerable to the night and the big room.

“I’ll sleep down here,” Sally said, picking the lower bed.

She pulled back the covers, looked for crawly things, and then got in, pulling the blanket to her chin and from the inside pulling it tight around her like she was burying herself.

“What’s in there,” Ben said, pointing to the furnace room door.

“Why?” Sally said.

“I thought I heard something.”

“It’s just the furnace,” Sally said.

“It sounded like a man,” Ben said.

And Sally hated Ben.

“A man with a hook instead of an arm, scratching to get out.”

Ben was silent. Sally kept thinking that she could just run upstairs. She could just jump out of the bed and run screaming upstairs and if she screamed enough they wouldn’t make her come back down. Ben would hate her but she wouldn’t care.

“Did you hear it?” Ben asked.

He was silent and then he started laughing.

He started laughing and laughing and he fell off the bed laughing and finally he was snorting and laughing and when he couldn’t breathe anymore he stopped laughing and just sat up on the high bed smiling at himself.

“’Night,” Sally said, and she pulled the sheet up over her ears and turned so she could keep an eye on the furnace room door, but it was hard because there was a window behind her and she felt like she should be looking that way too.

* * *

With no warning Ben pulled up his nightshirt, held it up under his chin, pulled down the front of his underpants, and turned the flashlight on himself.

“Look at my boner,” he said to Sally.

The last penis Sally had seen belonged to someone she’d played doctor with in the downstairs bathroom of his parents’ house when his testicles were the size of green grapes and his penis was like a crayon stub at the point where you don’t bother sharpening it again, you just throw it out.

“When I’m older,” Ben said, “I’ll have hair.” Ben swayed back and forth, thrusting his penis into the air.

Sally sat up on the trundle bed and stared.

She fixed on the way this part of Ben seemed separate from the rest of his body. It stuck up and out like the gearshift in Robert’s Karmann Ghia.

Ben pointed his thing toward her and Sally made a sharp sound. Ben laughed and it bounced slightly.

“When it’s like this I can’t pee,” he said.

Sally was impressed with Ben’s knowledge and the way he presented it, as though he were the exhibit in a science class.

“Touch it,” he said.

She shook her head.

Ben’s underwear hung down around his ankles and he stepped out of it.

“I have a hair,” Sally said.

No you don’t,” Ben said.

Sally shrugged.

“Let me see,” he said.

“No.”

As far as Sally was concerned there was nothing to pull up her nightgown for. She had nothing to show except for the lone hair. She had nothing and was increasingly aware of both the nothingness and Ben’s interest in the empty space.

Ben just stood there. He thought Sally was being stupid and Sally knew it.

“Okay,” she said. “But don’t touch me.”

Sally lay down, lifted her nightgown, and pulled her underwear down to her knees.

Ben moved in closer. “Where’s the hair?” he said, shining the light on her.

Sally raised her head and looked down at herself, tripling her chin. It was there before but now she couldn’t find it.

“You don’t have one.”

“I do so.”

“Maybe it’s inside,” he said.

Ben pulled her underwear the rest of the way down. Sally was surprised but didn’t say anything.

“Move your legs apart,” Ben said.

Sally turned her head away from Ben and spread her legs. She looked at the furnace room door and imagined that the man with one arm was in there looking at her through the slats. She tried to stare at him.

Sally spread her legs and Ben stood at the end of the bed — his shirt down but caught on his erection — looking carefully at the inside of Sally.

“I don’t see one,” he said.

“Well, it was there before,” Sally said.

Ben shrugged and moved in a little closer. “It looks like a peach pit in there.”

Sally tried to remember what a peach pit looked like. She looked at Ben’s face to see if he was making fun of her. His expression was serious and intent. He had the flashlight in one hand and was bent over her, almost into her, with his other hand pressed into the mattress between her legs, keeping him propped up. He examined her carefully, as though he was looking for something in particular that he just hadn’t found yet.

She started to pull her nightgown down but Ben caught her arms and stopped her.

“I’m not done yet,” Ben said. And he held Sally’s arms until she relaxed and lay back on the bed with her nightgown gathered around her belly button and her underwear on the linoleum floor.

“Let’s see your boobs,” Ben said.

“I don’t have any yet,” Sally said in an annoyed tone. She was not happy with Ben.

“Let me see.” Ben started to yank her nightgown up but Sally stopped him and did it herself.

Her breasts stuck out from her body just enough to look like a fat boy’s chest; there was nothing female or sexy about them. The nipples were puffy soft spots that looked slanted like Chinese eyes and sometimes felt like bruises.

She lay naked with Ben standing over her, and in their nakedness whatever they knew about how to move, how to walk or talk, completely disappeared.

The recreation room was spread out underneath the whole house. They could hear footsteps, muffled TV voices, water running, and Sally’s father locking the front door.

“Let’s do it,” Ben said, softly.

Sally knew what he was getting at but thought it was one of those things like reading the newspaper that you just didn’t do until you were grown up. She wasn’t as big on taking chances as she liked to think she was. Sally shook her head.

Ben pulled his nightshirt off. Sally looked at his nipples, small and flat like dimes.

“Oh, come on,” Ben said. “You’re no fun.”

And they were stuck there, silent, waiting, staring at each other’s nakedness until finally Sally said, “All right.”

“All right,” she said, and rolled over onto her stomach and poked her butt up into the air.

“What are you doing?” Ben asked.

“Go ahead,” she said.

“That’s not how you do it,” Ben said.