Lorrie Moore - 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

Only thing I’m sad about isn’t either of my parents, it’s Danny. Leaving Danny alone there with them. He used to send Danny out of the house. My mom’d be at work on a Saturday afternoon or something or even in the morning and my dad would kick my little brother out of his own house. Go out and play, Danny. Why doncha catch some rays. And Danny just went and got his glove and baseball from the closet and he’d go and throw it against the house, against the outside wall, in the driveway. I’d be in my room, I’d be like dead, I’d be wood, telling myself this doesn’t count, no one has to know, I’ll say I’m still a virgin, it’s not really happening to me, I’m dead, I’m blank, I’m just letting time stop and pass, and then I’d hear the sock of the ball in the mitt and the slam of the screen door and I knew it was true, it was really happening.

Glenn’s the one I want to tell. I can’t ever tell Glenn.

I called my mom. Pay phone, collect, hour-long call. I don’t know, I got real mad last night and I just told her. I thought when I came here, it’d just go away. But it’s not going away. It makes me weird with Glenn. In the morning, with Glenn, when it’s time to get up, I can’t get up. I cry.

I knew it’d be bad. Poor Danny. Well, my mom says she might leave our dad. She cried for an hour, no joke, on the phone.

How could he do this to me, she kept yelping. To her. Everything’s always to her.

But then she called an hour later, she’d talked to a psychiatrist already, she’s kicked Dad out, and she arrives, just arrives here at Berkeley. But she was good. She says she’s on my side, she’ll help me, I don’t know, I felt OK. She stayed in a hotel and she wanted to know if I wanted to stay there with her but I said no, I’d see her more in a week or something, I just wanted to go back to my dorm. She found this group. She says, just in San Jose, there’s hundreds of families like ours, yeah, great, that’s what I said. But there’s groups. She’s going to a group of other thick-o mothers like her, these wives who didn’t catch on. She wanted me to go to a group of girls, yeah, molested girls, that’s what they call them, but I said no, I have friends here already, she can do what she wants.

I talked to my dad, too, that’s the sad thing, he feels like he’s lost me and he wants to die and I don’t know, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He called in the middle of the night.

“Just tell me one thing, honey. Please tell me the truth. When did you stop?”

“Dad.”

“Because I remember once you said I was the only person who ever understood you.”

“I was ten years old.”

“OK, OK. I’m sorry.”

He didn’t want to get off the phone. “You know, I love you, honey. I always will.”

“Yeah, well.”

My mom’s got him lined up for a psychiatrist, too, she says he’s lucky she’s not sending him to jail. I am a lawyer, she keeps saying, as if we could forget. She’d pay for me to go to a shrink now, too, but I said no, forget it.

It’s over. Glenn and I are, over. I feel like my dad’s lost me everything. I sort of want to die now. I’m telling you I feel terrible. I told Glenn and that’s it, it’s over. I can’t believe it either. Lauren says she’s going to hit him.

I told him and we’re not seeing each other anymore. Nope. He said he wanted to just think about everything for a few days. He said it had nothing to do with my father but he’d been feeling a little too settled lately. He said we don’t have fun anymore, it’s always so serious. That was Monday. So every meal after that, I sat with Lauren in the cafeteria and he’s there on the other side, messing around with the guys. He sure didn’t look like he was in any kind of agony. Wednesday, I saw Glenn over by the window in this food fight, slipping off his chair and I couldn’t stand it, I got up and left and went to our room.

But I went and said I wanted to talk to Glenn that night, I didn’t even have any dinner, and he said he wanted to be friends. He looked at me funny and I haven’t heard from him. It’s, I don’t know, seven days, eight.

I know there are other guys. I live in a dorm full of them, or half full of them. Half girls. But I keep thinking of Glenn ’cause of happiness, that’s what makes me want to hang on to him.

There was this one morning when we woke up in his room, it was light out already, white light all over the room. We were sticky and warm, the sheet was all tangled. His roommate, this little blond boy, was still sleeping. I watched his eyes open and he smiled and then he went down the hall to take a shower. Glenn was hugging me and it was nothing unusual, nothing special. We didn’t screw. We were just there. We kissed, but slow, the way it is when your mouth is still bad from sleep.

I was happy that morning. I didn’t have to do anything. We got dressed, went to breakfast, I don’t know. Took a walk. He had to go to work at a certain time and I had that sleepy feeling from waking up with the sun on my head and he said he didn’t want to say goodbye to me. There was that pang. One of those looks like as if at that second, we both felt the same way.

I shrugged. I could afford to be casual then. We didn’t say goodbye. I walked with him to the shed by the Eucalyptus Grove. That’s where they keep all the gardening tools, the rakes, the hoes, the mowers, big bags of grass seed slumped against the wall. It smelled like hay in there. Glenn changed into his uniform and we went to the North Side, up in front of the chancellor’s manor, that thick perfect grass. And Glenn gave me a ride on the lawn mower, on the handlebars. It was bouncing over these little bumps in the lawn and I was hanging on to the handlebars, laughing. I couldn’t see Glenn but I knew he was there behind me. I looked around at the buildings and the lawns, there’s a fountain there, and one dog was drinking from it.

See, I can’t help but remember things like that. Even now, I’d rather find some way, even though he’s not asking for it, to forgive Glenn. I’d rather have it work out with him, because I want more days like that. I wish I could have a whole life like that. But I guess nobody does, not just me.

I saw him in the mailroom yesterday, we’re both just standing there, each opening our little boxes, getting our mail — neither of us had any — I was hurt but I wanted to reach out and touch his face. He has this hard chin, it’s pointy and all bone. Lauren says she wants to hit him.

I mean, I think of him spinning around in his backyard and that’s why I love him and he should understand. I go over it all and think I should have just looked at him and said I can’t believe you’re doing this to me. Right there in the mailroom. Now when I think that, I think maybe if I’d said that, in those words, maybe it would be different.

But then I think of my father — he feels like there was a time when we had fun, when we were happy together. I mean, I can remember being in my little bed with Dad and maybe cracking jokes, maybe laughing, but he probably never heard Danny’s baseball in his mitt the way I did or I don’t know. I remember late in the afternoon, wearing my dad’s navy-blue sweatshirt with a hood and riding bikes with him and Danny down to the diamond.

But that’s over. I don’t know if I’m sorry it happened. I mean I am, but it happened, that’s all. It’s just one of the things that happened to me in my life. But I would never go back, never. And what hurts so much is that maybe that’s what Glenn is thinking about me.

I told Lauren last night. I had to. She kept asking me what happened with Glenn. She was so good, you couldn’t believe it, she was great. We were talking late and this morning we drove down to go to House of Pancakes for breakfast, get something good instead of watery eggs for a change. And on the way, Lauren’s driving, she just skids to a stop on this street, in front of this elementary school. “Come on,” she says. It’s early, but there’s already people inside the windows.