Emma Cline - The Girls

“Aw, it’s fine,” Suzanne said. “I got something to cheer you up.”

I thought she was going to apologize. But then it occurred to me — she was going to kiss me again. The dim room got airless. I almost felt it happen, an imperceptible lean — but Suzanne just hefted her bag onto the bed, the fringe pooling on the mattress. The bag was full of a strange weight. She gave me a triumphant look.

“Go on,” she said. “Look inside.”

Suzanne huffed at my stubbornness and opened it herself. I didn’t understand what was inside, the odd metallic flash. The sharp corners.

“Take it out,” Suzanne said, impatient.

It was a gold record framed in glass, much heavier than expected.

She nudged me. “We got him, huh?”

Her expectant look — was this meant to explain something? I stared at the name, engraved on a small plaque: Mitch Lewis. The Sun King album.

Suzanne started laughing.

“Man, you should see your face right now,” she said. “Don’t you know I’m on your side?”

The record glinted dully in the dark room, but even its pretty Egyptian gleam failed to stir me — it was just an artifact of that strange house, nothing so valuable. Already the weight was making my arms tired.

The clatter on the porch startled me, followed by the sound of my mother’s dissolving laughter, Frank’s heavy steps. I was in the living room, stretched out in my grandfather’s chair and reading one of my mother’s McCall’s. Its pictures of genitally slick hams, wreathed with pineapple. Lauren Hutton lounging on a rocky cliff in her Bali brassieres. My mother and Frank were loud, coming into the living room, but stopped talking when they caught sight of me. Frank in his cowboy boots, my mother swallowing whatever she’d been saying.

“Sweetheart.” Her eyes were filmy, her body swaying just enough so I knew she was drunk and trying to hide it, though her pink neck — exposed in a chiffon shirt — would have given it away.

“Hi,” I said.

“Whatcha doing home, sweetheart?” My mother came over to wrap her arms around me, and I let her, despite the metallic smell of alcohol on her, the wilt of her perfume. “Is Connie sick?”

“Nah.” I shrugged. Turning back to my magazine. The next page: a girl in a butter-yellow tunic, kneeling on a white box. An advertisement for Moon Drops.

“You’re usually in and out so quick,” she said.

“I just felt like being home,” I said. “Isn’t it my house, too?”

My mother smiled, smoothing my hair. “Such a pretty girl, aren’t you? Of course it’s your house. Isn’t she a pretty girl?” she said, turning to Frank. “Such a pretty girl,” she repeated to no one.

Frank smiled back but seemed restless. I hated that unwilling knowledge, how I’d started to notice each tiny shift of power and control, the feints and jabs. Why couldn’t relationships be reciprocal, both people steadily accruing interest at the same rate? I snapped the magazine shut.

“Good night,” I said. I didn’t want to imagine what would happen later, Frank’s hands in the chiffon. My mother aware enough to turn out the lights, eager for the forgiving dark.

—

These were the fantasies I goaded: that by leaving the ranch for a while, I could provoke Suzanne’s sudden appearance, her demand that I return to her. The loneliness I could gorge myself on, like the saltines I ate by the sleeve, relishing the cut of sodium in my mouth. When I watched Bewitched, I had new irritation for Samantha. Her priggish nose, how she made a fool of her husband. The desperation of his doltish love turning him into the punch line. I paused one night to study the studio photo of my grandmother that hung in the hall, her shellacked cap of curls. She was pretty, awash in health. Only her eyes were sleepy, as if just woken from flowery dreams. The realization was bracing — we looked nothing alike.

I smoked a little bit of grass out the window, then fingered myself to tiredness, reading a comic book or a magazine, it didn’t matter which. It was just the form of bodies, my brain let loose on them. I could look at an advertisement for a Dodge Charger, a smiling girl in a snow-white cowboy hat, and furiously project her into obscene positions. Her face slack and swollen, sucking and licking, her chin wet with saliva. I was supposed to understand the night with Mitch, be easy with things, but I had only my stiff and formal anger. That stupid gold record. I tried hard to mash up new meaning, like I’d missed some important sign, a weighted look Suzanne had given me behind Mitch’s back. His goatish face, dripping sweat onto me so I had to turn my head.

—

The next morning I’d been pleased to find the kitchen empty, my mother taking a shower. I tipped sugar in my coffee, then settled at the table with a sleeve of saltines. I liked to crumble a saltine in my mouth, then flood the starchy mess with coffee. I was so absorbed in this ritual that Frank’s sudden presence startled me. He scraped out the other chair, hitching it close as he sat down. I saw him take in the debris of saltines, inciting my vague shame. I was about to slither away, but he spoke before I could.

“Big plans for today?” he asked me.

Trying to pal around. I twisted the sleeve of crackers closed and wiped my hands of crumbs, suddenly fastidious. “Dunno,” I said.

How quickly the veneer of patience drained away. “You just going to mope around the house?” he asked.

I shrugged; that’s exactly what I’d do.

A muscle in his cheek jumped. “At least go outside,” he said. “You stay in that room like you’re locked in there.”

Frank wasn’t wearing his boots, just his blaring white socks. I swallowed a helpless snort; it was ridiculous to see a grown man’s socked feet. He noticed my mouth twitch and got flustered.

“Everything’s funny to you, huh?” he said. “Doing whatever you want. You think your mom doesn’t notice what’s going on?”

I stiffened but didn’t look up. There were so many things he could be talking about: the ranch, what I’d done with Russell. Mitch. The ways I thought about Suzanne.

“She got real confused the other day,” Frank went on. “She’s missing some money. Gone right from her purse.”

I knew my cheeks had flushed, but I stayed quiet. Narrowing my eyes at the table.

“Give her a break,” Frank said. “Hm? She’s a nice lady.”

“I’m not stealing.” My voice was high and false.

“Borrowing, let’s say. I’m not gonna tell. I get it. But you should stop. She loves you a lot, you know?”

No more noise from the shower, which meant my mother would appear soon. I tried to gauge whether Frank really wouldn’t say anything — he was trying to be nice, I understood, not getting me in trouble. But I didn’t want to be grateful. Imagine him trying to be fatherly with me.

“The town party is still happening,” Frank said. “Today and tomorrow, too. Maybe you could go on down there, have some fun. I’m sure that would make your mother happy. You staying busy.”

When my mother entered, toweling the ends of her hair, I immediately brightened, arranging my face like I was listening to Frank.

“Don’t you think so, Jeanie?” Frank said, gazing at my mother.

“Think what?” she said.

“Shouldn’t Evie go check out that carnival?” Frank said. “That centennial thing? Keep busy?”

My mother took up this pet notion like it was a flash of brilliance. “I don’t know if it’s the centennial, exactly—” she said.

“Well, town party,” Frank broke in, “centennial, whatever it is.”

“But it’s a good idea,” she said. “You’ll have a great time.”