Uses for Boys (14 page)

The sun is on my face and I’m thinking about nothing at all.

About half a block past the school I hear a knocking. A rhythmic tapping and I look
at the building I’m passing and then into the street where the cars are rushing by.
I look all around and the tapping continues and then I see him, knuckles against the
window, in a parked car by the sidewalk.

He’s sitting in the passenger seat. He’s skinny and white and not wearing any pants.
His hand tugs at his penis. He stares at me with wet eyes and an open mouth and he’s
not smiling, but I can see his gums. He’s searching out my eyes and for a second I
look right at him. Then I look away. I walk faster. I feel a floodrush of nausea,
like something rotten is stuck in my throat. I try to swallow past it. The feeling
chases me back to my apartment. The street is empty, but I look around before unlocking
the front door to my building.

sam

At Sam’s house I become the garlic bread maker. I’m responsible for slicing and buttering,
for wielding the garlic press, for keeping an eye on the broiler. Sam teaches me how
to cut and steam the green beans and Em shows me how to slice a bell pepper. I fill
pitchers with water and carry them to the table.

I watch Sam’s dad sauté garlic, blanch tomatoes and simmer pasta sauce. I eat at Sam’s
house three nights a week. I have my own seat at the table.

On the other days I experiment with feeding myself at home. I make small salads and
dress them in oil and vinegar. I buy a floral apron at the thrift store and a set
of wood-handled knives. Sam and I make love.

We have ninety minutes between when I get off work and when he’s expected home. We
have all day on the weekends. It’s nearly summer now and Sam likes to take off my
shorts and my underwear and leave on my T-shirt. I like to wear his shirt with nothing
underneath and we like to have sex and then make toast with lots of butter on it,
eat it, and then have sex again. Sam circles my legs with his and locks his ankles
together. He rubs my cheekbones. He closes his eyes when he comes.

mom

I’m so happy I forget to wonder about Toy. I forget to count the days since I last
heard from her. I forget to remember things to tell her. I stop thinking about the
dream and I almost believe the boy from Little Birds cafe never happened. I don’t
wander the streets of Portland after work anymore or stop outside Josh’s apartment
and look to see if the light is on. I spend my afternoons with Sam or I go home and
make little dinners. I take baths and listen to music. I cut out pictures of magazines
and pin them to the walls.

I don’t call my mom. She calls the cafe sounding angry. She says it’s been more than
a month and she’s been worried. It’s been two months. More than two months. And she
hasn’t worried or she’d know that. I make a dinner date with her for the next night.
She’s only in town for a few days, she says.

In the restaurant I order pasta and a salad and she looks surprised.

“I could never get you to eat a salad,” she says.

“Did you try?”

“Of course I tried,” she says. “You were such a fussy eater.”

“I’ve been learning to cook,” I say.

“In that tiny kitchen?” she says. Then she gets to her point. “I think this little
experiment has gone on long enough. I think it’s time for you to come home.” She looks
at me, finishes her glass of wine and motions for the waiter. The lighting is not
kind to my mom. Her face has settled. She tells me about the man she’s dating and
I picture him with a thick carpet of hair and hacking morning cough. He’s shocked
that she lets me live alone in the city. He’d looked at her like she’s a bad mother.
Now she’s taking control. I’m going to come home, she says.

“You are my daughter after all.” Our salads arrive. I listen. I don’t argue. I wish
I could tell her how it is for me.

I could go to a new high school, she tells me, a private school. I’ll live at home.
We’ll recarpet the downstairs. Do I have a boyfriend? “I’d like to meet him,” she
says. She motions for the waiter and he brings her another glass of wine. Her face
becomes animated. Her boyfriend has a house on the coast. We can go together. Meet
his children. “The coast is beautiful this time of year,” she says.

He has two daughters and a son. They’re very close. When we’re done with the salads,
the pasta arrives. Would I prefer to move upstairs? I could redecorate my old bedroom.
Of course we’ll move when she gets married again. More wine.

The abortion: Did I go to my follow-up appointment? Is everything alright? Will I
be able to have children? Do I ever see Josh anymore?

“What a loser he turned out to be,” she says. Good-looking, though. Even she could
see that. Young women have it tough. Pregnancy, birth control, marriage—no upside
for young women at all. Even worse in her day. She got pregnant young too. Miscarried.
Wasn’t sure she could even have kids. Surprised when she was pregnant with me. She
wanted a baby, she says. She’d been so lonely.

“It’s difficult, though, meeting men with a small child.” Getting married with a young
daughter. “And being a stepmother? The worst.” I shouldn’t marry a man with kids,
she says. This she says emphatically. “Don’t marry a man with kids, Anna. It’s a burden.
Too much of a burden.” She finishes her wine. “And relationships are hard enough without
it.”

“What about my dad?” I ask. It isn’t like I never asked before.

“That was my mistake, Anna,” she says. She always says that. And then she says, “He
was useless.” She always says that too. And then, a pause. “But he gave me you.”

The dinner is over. She shrugs on her sweater and says that she’s OK to drive. I say
I’ll think about it.

She looks at me. “You’ve gained a little weight,” she says. But it looks good, she
says. Not to worry.

sam’s mom

Sam’s mom asks to talk to me privately after dinner and I’m sure it’s about sex. I’m
sure she sees it or senses it or smells it on us. It’s like a fog that envelopes us.
She pulls her chair back from the dining room table and asks me to follow her and
in that moment, looking at her, I realize that Sam and I could have waited. He would
still be a virgin and it would be worth it, I think, to not have to lie. To not have
to have this conversation. To not have to sit in her office waiting for her to say
something. But then I think about all of the warm corners of Sam’s body and how I
know each one. And how different it would be if I didn’t know him like that. I sit
in a stiff chair and look at the floor.

“Anna,” she says. “I’m worried about you.”

She looks like Jane, just then. Like she would stay with me and listen to me and not
leave until I ran out of things to say. And she’s comfortable with silence. She simply
watches me when I have nothing to say. She doesn’t struggle to fill the space. In
my head, I’m trying out the stories I could tell her.

I live in a blue room, I could say. And I don’t know what comes next.

Her cheeks are red from being in the garden. “We love having you here,” she says.
“Em and Sam love your company.”

At Sam’s name I get nervous again. I look at the ground.

Sam’s parents think he’s a virgin. When they came to his room to talk to him about
me, he lied. He lied and they believed him. “We understand,” they’d said. “What it’s
like.” How it is. How much he likes me and how easy it would be. “But sex,” they’d
said, “is a responsibility.” A responsibility Sam isn’t ready for. So he lied.

“We’re waiting,” he’d told them.

Then, according to Sam, his mom had said how smart she thinks I am. How strong. How
I could do anything.

And that’s what she’s saying now. “You’re so smart, Anna,” she says. “You could do
anything.” Her face is lined and her hair is brown with threads of gray. She tucks
a piece behind her ear like a girl. She doesn’t wear any makeup and when she looks
at me her eyes are wide open. Her eyelashes are so faint, I can barely see them.

I think how different she is from my mom. From Toy’s mom. When she says I can do anything,
she doesn’t mean a boy, a boyfriend, a husband. She means me. Me. I could do anything.
I don’t know what to say. I can’t concentrate when she says these things.

I think about climbing into Sam’s mom’s skin and wearing her blue shirt and living
in her wooden house. I’d garden and read thick books about history. I’d paint and
work and write. My husband would bake bread. My daughter would want to be an artist.
I’d tuck my hair behind my ears. I’d have two sons. I’d wonder if they were keeping
secrets from me.

She’s still watching me and I know that she expects some kind of response. I swallow.
I make my eyes round.

“Thank you,” I say.

“Anna, what you’re doing is hard,” she says. “You’re not supposed to have to do it
on your own, you know.” She looks at me hard. “You don’t have to do it alone,” she
says.

“Thank you,” I say again.

sam

Sam stands at my window looking out at the redbrick wall. He’s naked and holds his
penis idly in one hand. I’m still on the mattress, naked too, but wrapped in sheets.
I had an orgasm when he rubbed me with his fingers and he watches me with his eyes
round and his mouth a little open. Surprised by the suddenness of it. He goes to get
a glass of water and comes back to the bed. He unwraps me from the sheet and follows
the curves of my legs with the tips of his fingers. He’s surprised how easy it is.
He’s surprised that a girl wants to have sex with him. But I’m not surprised. I’m
thinking about what his mom said.

“Sex is the easy part,” I tell him, looking out the useless window.

toy

The next day Sam is dreamy and talking quietly. “It’s almost like Toy is imaginary,”
he says. “Will I ever meet her?”

stories

My bell rings and the walls vibrate with the sound. I run down the stairs thinking
it’s Sam, but a woman’s figure shifts on the other side of the wavy glass. Sam’s mom,
I think. Or Jane? But I haven’t seen Jane since the abortion. I pull on the heavy
door and the woman turns toward me. It’s my mom in her yellow dress with a sweater
wrapped tight around her. She looks unfamiliar on my worn steps. The traffic moves
relentlessly behind her.

She holds her purse in one hand, and in the other, a large shopping bag.

“Anna,” she says and there’s so much in my name. She puts down the shopping bag and
turns away from me back toward the street. “We used to live near here, you know,”
she says. She seems smaller somehow and for the first time I can see that she looks
like that picture, the one of her mom.

“Mom?”

“Not that far.” She gestures up the street. “Only a few blocks from here.” She looks
off into the distance.

“Do you want to come in?” I ask.

“No, I have to go, I’m meeting Mike,” she says and I don’t ask who Mike is. I don’t
ask what happened to the other one. This is how I see my mom, how I’ve always seen
her: coming and going. Carrying her purse. Leaving, never staying. I step out onto
the landing and close the door behind me. I follow her gaze.

“What was it like?” I ask.

“I loved that apartment,” she says.

I look at her. “I thought you hated being alone,” I say and she laughs.

“I was never alone,” she says. “You had your own room, but you always slept with me.”

“I remember that,” I say. “You used to bundle me up in your arms when you slept.”

“You fit right under my chin,” she says, remembering. She puts down the shopping bag
and curves her arm around my waist. “If I were stronger…” she says, but then she doesn’t
finish.

“If you were stronger?”

“I don’t know. After your dad left, I guess. But you’re too old for these stories.”
She sounds tired, but she holds me tighter.

“Mom?” I say.

“What is it?” she says and I can hear that she’s prepared for anything.

“Do you think I’m strong?” I ask.

She doesn’t answer right away. Then she does. “Anna,” she says and the traffic pauses
between lights. And again, there’s everything there in the way she says my name. “So
strong.” She stops. The traffic starts up again. We’re both silent and her arm is
still around me. I think about our rooms, painted blue. About her, then, and me, now.
“Stronger than I ever was,” she says.

How would our stories be different, I think, if I asked different questions?

“Mom,” I start, but she looks down at the bag.

“I got you this blanket. It’s cotton, so I thought it would be good for summer,” she
says.

“Mom,” I say again.

“I still want you to come home,” she says and she hands me the shopping bag. She drops
her arm, getting ready to leave.

“I know,” I say.

summer

Sam’s sick. He has a high temperature, he says, and his mom’s worried. He’s staying
home from school. He calls me at the cafe. He’s all alone, he says.

“Come over.” His voice is thin.

I’m making a latte for a woman in a brown linen dress and I hold the phone between
my ear and my shoulder, tracing a pattern with the coffee in the milk and hand it
to her. She takes a sip of the drink and sighs. She smiles at me.

“We’re slow,” I tell Sam. “I’ll ask to leave early.”

“We have hours,” he says, meaning before anyone else will be home.

I change out my tips for bills and put thirty-seven dollars in my pocket. One twenty,
one ten, a five and two ones. Everything’s perfect. I’m wearing a red cotton sundress,
white Converse sneakers and it’s warm, warm, warm. The streets between the cafe and
Sam’s house are perfect. My anticipation is perfect. Everything happy bubbles up in
me and I run my hand along brick walls and trees and lampposts. The sky is a perfect
blue holding a round yellow ball and I walk past the beating roar of Ira Keller Fountain
and then the university and then the streets get quieter and more residential. I feel
like this day was made for me and I have somewhere to go. Somewhere to be.