Uses for Boys (7 page)

And the city. The city! Only a bus ride away and full of possibilities. We get dressed
up and do our makeup. We go downtown and stand around.

I belong here, I tell Toy. I’m hungry for every city block. Every brick building.
Every crowded intersection. Electric. I feel brand new. My hair is shaggy and getting
longer and I wear the wingtips with dresses from the forties and old-man cardigans.
A broken leather belt knotted around my waist. Toy wears tunics over skinny jeans
with high heels and thick socks.

“The city will transform us,” I explain. “We’ll never be alone.”

But Toy’s not alone. She has Seth. “And the camp counselor,” she adds.

“He could come with us,” I say. Sometimes about one and sometimes about the other.

“They’re busy,” Toy says. And I know what she means. She means they’re only interested
in her.

Sometimes, after I’ve gone home, one of them will pick up Toy and they’ll go out.
“Seth took me to his apartment,” Toy will say the next morning, or she’ll say something
about the camp counselor, the way he holds her and how it makes her feel like it’s
only the two of them in the whole world.

I don’t know what to say. Sometimes I forget about the city. Sometimes I want what
Toy has. My life will never compare to Toy’s. I feel sick with a fever of want.

the boys skate around us

In the afternoons we go to the skatepark under the Burnside Bridge. We lean against
the concrete barrier and watch the boys start and skate and stop again. They call
out to each other and laugh. We meet a girl named Angel who carries vodka and orange
juice in a jar. The three of us smoke pot and tell stories. Toy talks about Seth.
Angel tells us about leaving home. About running away and ending up here. I watch
how Angel tucks her hair behind her ear when she smokes. The boys skate around us
and we pretend to shine them on.

the empty house

I’ve had the dream again and I’m alone in my room. It’s midday. I call Toy, but the
phone just rings and rings. She’s with Seth, I think, or the camp counselor, and I
try to go back to sleep.

I’m in the kitchen eating cereal when my mom comes home.

“Is that all you ever eat?” She stands in the doorway wearing a white linen jacket,
her purse in one hand. She doesn’t sit down. She walks back into the kitchen and looks
in the refrigerator.

“You should go grocery shopping,” she says. And then she looks in her purse and pulls
out two twenties. She’s wearing high-heeled burgundy shoes with straps around the
ankle and there’s a streak of orangey makeup on her collar. I wonder if she’s getting
old and if this is what it’s going to be like. Bits of her coming off on her clothes.

“Sure,” I say, but she doesn’t seem to hear me. She’s looking through some papers,
some mail on the shelf below the phone.

“You hate being here,” I say. It’s not a question. “You wanted this house so bad and
now you’re never here.” Louder now. This lying house. I hate this house.

She looks up and then she looks confused. Then she looks at me in a way that makes
me think she really does understand. This isn’t what she wanted either. This empty
house. But what does she want? Her face stretches tight over her cheekbones. Does
she remember the tell-me-again times?

Up close her eyes are watery and bits of mascara litter her cheek. I can see how much
makeup is on the collar of her jacket.

“I could stay home, Anna, if you want,” she says, but she’s looking back at the papers
in her hand and hasn’t put her purse down.

I’m done with my cereal. I take the bowl to the sink, rinse it, and put it in the
dishwasher. “That’s alright.” I look past her into the still cul-de-sac. The sky’s
clear and cloudless. “I’m going downtown anyway.”

josh

Downtown the sun is back behind the bridge and there are only a few boys left, skating
back and forth on the concrete ramp, dreamy and stoned. I meet a boy named Josh and
he and Angel and I sit close together, our shoulders touching. We cup the end of the
pipe for each other, sheltering the flame from the wind. I’m trying to describe the
dream. I’ve had it ever since I can remember and it’s familiar, but when I try to
describe it, it breaks apart. The wind picks up and I shiver. I’m ready to give up
because I can’t make it sound right.

I stare at the changing sky and try again.

“I’m far from the world and I see it like a brightly lit ball in the distance. The
sky behind it is mostly gray. It starts in silence, but I can see the people. Everyone
is in a hurry. They’re racing around the globe. They each hold a thread, like a bit
of string, and it unravels, covering the planet. The buzzing starts. The buzzing gets
faster and louder. They’re all racing to one spot on the earth. I’m outside of it
and I can see everything. I can see every person in the world racing to a single spot
on the earth. The buzzing is all I can hear. It gets so I can’t take it. Then I wake
up.”

Angel’s sitting on my left.

“You’re a stoner,” she says. But Josh puts his arm around me.

“I know that feeling,” he says. “It’s like everything is standing still, but underneath
it’s all frantic and rushed.”

I’m surprised and look at Josh full in the face. The boys are skating lazy figure
eights and the sky is streaky with bits of light and stars showing through. I lean
against him as he lights a cigarette and I feel good. Really good.

*   *   *

We go to his small apartment in Northwest to have sex. He looks right at me in a way
that I almost don’t understand and I look away but then I look back. He holds my eyes
with his and even when I turn, he touches my chin and leads me back. His irises contract
and the black centers have ragged edges. There’s a distorted reflection of myself
there, my own tiny face.

“Anna, Anna,” he repeats like it’s one long chant. “Anna, Anna, Anna, Anna.” I keep
staring into his eyes like he wants me to and he sits up with me on top, like we’re
hugging, but he’s inside of me. “You,” he says like there might be some kind of confusion,
“are so beautiful, Anna.”

And then he hugs me. Really hugs me. Like he thinks that there’s only one of me and
I’m special and I’m enough for him. Like he doesn’t need anything else. Like he was
alone and then I came along and this is dumb, really dumb, because it feels so good
and I like him more every second and I’m rehearsing how to tell Toy and because even
though his apartment is ugly and small and the walls are yellow when they’re supposed
to be white, the streetlight through the curtainless windows does something; it makes
our bodies pink and radiant and it fills the room with a kind of grace and this is
the stupid part, I cry. Right there with him inside me. I cry really hard so the snot
runs out of my nose and I have to wipe it on my arm.

This, I think, and I flash on Desmond Dreyfus and I flash on Joey and I flash on Todd,
but this boy, Josh, is so solid I can feel the weight of him in my hands. I had no
mother, I had no father, I start, as though it’s my own story. I was all alone. And
then I found you, I say, and then I say his name. Josh.

“I found you, Josh, and everything changed.”

We have sex all that night and all morning. Fast and slow and fast again. My thighs
sting and I have little bruises from where his fingers hold me. It isn’t just the
sex, I tell Toy in my head, it’s his hands. His fingers. The way he needs me, because
he’s alone too. I can see it in his movements, his deliberate touch. And it’s the
me I see reflected, the thin grainy image of me, how it reflects in his serious eyes.

It rains, a summer rain that starts in the forgotten hours of morning and gets heavier
and grayer and more punishing. There’s no food at Josh’s house and we’ve used all
of his condoms and we’re raw and sore and happy in a way that I imagine Toy means
when she talks about sex with the camp counselor. I’m naked and he’s watching me walk
around his small rooms, touch his few things.

We get dressed and walk to Little Birds cafe in the slanting rain. It’s Portland rain
and the city folds under the weight of it, young trees bending in the wind. Josh takes
my hand in his.

He orders for us at the counter and I take a seat, my fingers worrying an old gouge.
The girl behind the counter nods at us and smiles at me. She has dreadlocks and I
think, I always think this when I see girls with dreadlocks, that she knows something
about herself that I don’t know about myself. Our breakfast comes but Josh and I are
looking at each other. The food grows cold in front of us. When the rain slows and
the wind stops we go outside again and start walking south up the alphabet streets.
Quimby, Pettygrove, Overton, Northrup, Marshall. Josh says the names under his breath
and I watch the film of moving concrete under my sneakers, taking long steps to keep
up with his. I had no father and I had no mother, I tell him again, and I describe
the empty house. The silent carpet-covered halls and the aborted cul-de-sac. We walk
down to the park blocks, in and out of shallow puddles, past the sculpture of Theodore
Roosevelt and the one of Lincoln, then the abstract bronze shapes outside the art
museum.

Josh is a story I tell myself. He’s my Seth, my camp counselor. A story that’s true.
I’m telling myself the story of Josh and I look at his profile against the clouded
sky.

“I was alone,” I say aloud. “And then I found you.” And when I say this he stops.
We’re standing in a puddle of leaves and rainwater and my feet are wet. It’s cold,
but I’m sweating and our breath is steaming. Everything is dripping. My chest moves
up and down and I wait. Josh takes my chin and points my face up at the mottled gray
sky. He looks serious, like he’s going to kiss me, but he doesn’t.

toy

I tell Toy everything about Josh. He’s the most romantic boy I’ve ever known, I tell
her.

“Does he give you things?” she asks. “Presents?” She looks off into the distance.
“Seth gave me a ring,” she says and she gestures. I look at her hand, but she’s not
wearing it. “I’m not wearing it,” she says.

“No,” I say. “But he said he loves me,” I tell her. “He whispered it,” I say. I’d
been waiting to tell her that. He’d whispered it against my back. His arms around
me, his chin tucked between my shoulder blades.

“Oh,” Toy says. And she looks at me hard, like she thinks I’m lying.

“He did,” I say again. “And I love,” I say, “the way he whispers things in my ear
when we’re having sex. Things that don’t even make sense.”

“Yeah,” she says and she sounds wistful. “Seth does that.”

mom

My mom doesn’t come home on Wednesday. Or on Thursday. So I practice telling her.

“I’m moving in with Josh,” I’ll say. Or I’ll say, “Josh and I are in love.”

Or maybe, “I have to get out of here.”

“Who’s Josh?” I imagine her saying. In my head she’s angry and her manicured hands
scatter the air by her face. She doesn’t listen. She calls me ungrateful and ridiculous.
She calls me juvenile. She breaks down and wet-eyed she leans in so her face is even
with mine. She touches my cheek. “My baby,” she says.

Other times I imagine that she’s happy for me. She remembers the tell-me-again times
and the apartment we shared. She takes my hand in hers and sits down on the bed, looking
at our two hands in her lap. She asks about Josh. She asks about his apartment. She
offers to buy us new sheets and a set of dishes. She talks about thread count, she
talks about duvet covers. She looks at my face and I see myself in hers.

On Friday afternoon, she comes home to pack for the weekend and when she rounds the
corner with her dry cleaning, I’m waiting.

“Will you be alright?” she asks. She’ll be home Monday, she says.

I follow her into the master bedroom. She pulls her suitcase out from under the bed
and lays it open. She takes off her work clothes and stands in her slip.

“I’ll be back on Monday,” she says again. “Will you be alright?” She always asks that
before she leaves. What if I said no? What if I said it’s not alright?

She’s wearing nylons under the slip and I can smell that warm smell she gets at the
end of the day.

Maybe I’ll tell her how much I hate this house. Maybe I’ll describe the buzzing that
follows me from room to room. How nothing drowns out the sound. Not the TV or the
stereo or turning on every light in the house.

“I’m moving out,” I say. “I’m moving in with Josh.” But she doesn’t hear me. She pulls
a red-and-yellow dress from the closet and asks me to get her jewelry box so she can
find her coral necklace. I stay still. I’m standing next to the bed and I say it again.
I say it again and again and again. Josh gives me what I need, I say.

“I’m moving out.”

Her mascara is smudged and I can see the reflection of the flat spot in the back of
her hair in the mirror on the wall. She lays the red-and-yellow dress across the suitcase
and moves to get her jewelry box. She’s looking for the necklace that one of the stepfathers
gave her. I lean back against the bed and look down at my boots. She hates it when
I wear boots in the house.

She goes on packing and the suitcase fills with summer clothes.

“Mom?” I say. But she goes on. A pair of sandals, a light sweater, a silk scarf, some
yellow pants. She takes a dress from the dry cleaner’s bag and puts it on, hangs the
other one in her closet. She zips up the suitcase and looks at me. Then she looks
at her watch.

“You’re going to do what you’re going to do,” she says.

She calls that weekend from the resort. She’s thought about it, she says, and I can’t
go.

“I don’t want to be the only one,” she says, “alone in that big house.” And then she
says, “You don’t appreciate what you have.” Then she says that I don’t love her. That
Josh doesn’t love me.

And how will I live? She won’t give me any money.