Tully

The oaks stood ancient and tall on opposite sides of the street and their branches intertwined in the middle, casting Texas Street in perpetual shadow through which glimmers of sunshine struggled.

Tully and Jennifer parked near the dead end of the street, opposite ‘their’ house. They sat on the Camaro’s warm hood for a long time, not speaking.

‘Still looks magnificent, doesn’t it?’ said Tully finally.

‘Yeah,’ said Jennifer. ‘Sure does.’

‘What are you looking wistful about?’ said Tully. ‘You who live in a master bedroom on Sunset Court.’

‘Look at that porch,’ said Jennifer. ‘Have you even seen a porch that size?’

‘Yeah,’ said Tully. ‘On Tara.’

‘I think Tara’s was smaller,’ said Jennifer, jumping off the hood. ‘Come on Scarlett, let’s go.’

Tully didn’t move. ‘I wonder what the houses are like in Palo Alto.’

‘Who cares?’ said Jen. ‘We’re going to live under the shadow of the El Palo Alto, under its leaves and thousand-year-old branches. We won’t need a house.’

‘Still, though,’ mused Tully. ‘I wouldn’t mind living in this house.’

‘Who would?’ said Jennifer, looking at its four wide white columns. ‘It needs paint,’ she said. ‘Imagine having a house like that and not painting it every year. Let’s go.’

On the way back, Tully looked over at Jennifer and said, ‘Jen, you okay?’

‘Great,’ said Jennifer.

‘How’s cheerleading going?’

‘Uh, you know.’

‘I don’t know. How are things?’

‘You know,’ said Jennifer.

Tully looked away.

4

‘So when am I going to meet your mother?’ Robin asked one afternoon when he called Tully.

‘Never,’ she said jovially, but after they hung up, she sat in her room and did not feel so jovial. So she called Julie. Julie would cheer her up. But Mrs Martinez said Julie was doing something or other with her history club. Who cares what she is doing? Tully thought as she hung up. She’s never around anymore to talk to.

Tully called Jennifer, who wasn’t home, either.

Nobody’s home but me, Tully thought petulantly.

She turned on the radio and danced in her room with the windows open. Hers was the only room besides the bathroom on the tiny second floor. It almost felt like the attic. ‘I will fly away,’ she sang. ‘I will fly away/fly away/so far/I will fly away.’ She stopped dancing, went to her closet, and took out a National Geographic map from one of her milk crates. Spreading the map open on her bed, Tully knelt down in front of it. With careful fingers, she touched the towns, villages, hamlets, cities, oceans, and deserts of the state of California. Palo Alto, here we come, Palo Alto, San Jose. Nowhere else but Palo Alto nowhere else but Palo Alto nowhere else but –

Tully remembered the time. She ran downstairs to the kitchen before her mother came home. Sometimes Tully made hamburgers nicely, putting bread crumbs and egg and fried onions in them. There was no time for that tonight. It was five forty-five. She slapped the patties together roughly, unevenly, and threw them in the frying pan. Then she peeled the potatoes and put them on to boil.

Hedda walked through the door a little after six, hung up her coat, and walked past Aunt Lena and Tully on the couch. Aunt Lena was watching TV, and Tully was reading a magazine. They both looked up and said hello when Hedda came in, but Hedda rarely looked at them, rarely said hello back. Tonight was no different. She grunted past them to the kitchen. They ate in near silence a half hour later. Aunt Lena kept jabbering on about something or other; Tully did not pay any attention. After dinner, Tully cleared her throat and, not looking at her mother, asked if she could go to the Homecoming dance. Hedda, also not looking up, sullenly nodded. ‘Thank you,’ said Tully, and went to make some tea before clearing up.

Hedda took her tea into the living room, sat on the couch, and watched Walter Cronkite, then ‘Let’s Make a Deal,’ and then an old movie. Tully washed the dishes and went upstairs to her room, where she danced quietly so they wouldn’t hear her down below.

At eleven o’clock, Tully came downstairs to wake her mother and tell her to go to bed. Aunt Lena had long gone to her rooms. What does my aunt do all day? thought Tully. Every day she’s by herself, sitting there, watching TV, knitting; knitting what? She always has the knitting needles in her hands, but I never see any knitting. I’m convinced she’s had the same ball of yarn in her plastic bag since Uncle Charlie died four years ago. Poor Aunt Lena. I’m afraid mother and I aren’t such good company. But then, neither is Aunt Lena. If she really is knitting, she’s knitting with one needle, for sure.

Upstairs, Tully washed her face and brushed her teeth. After staring at herself in the mirror for a few seconds, she got a pair of tweezers from the medicine cabinet and plucked her eyebrows. In her room she took off her jeans, baggy sweater, socks, bra. She used to not wear a bra under her baggy sweaters, but her mother had recently taken to giving her surprise quizzes, and Tully made sure she was always prepared. Putting on an old summer tank top, Tully climbed into bed. She left the light on, lay on her back, and looked around her room.

The walls were painted light brown and stood bare of all the trappings of obsessive teenagehood – no pictures of the Dead or the Doors, no Beatles, no Stones, no Eagles, no Pink Floyd. Not even her favorite Pink Floyd. No Robert Redford, John Travolta, Andy Gibb. No Mikhail Baryshnikov, Isadora Duncan, Twyla Tharp. No postcards, no photographs obvious to the eye. No bookshelves, no books. No records. Near the window there was an old wooden table that served as a desk, a makeup stand, and a bed for Tully. In front of the table there was one chair. There was an old dresser by the corner near the closet. On the nightstand near the bed, there was a lamp and a phone. Tully did not have a TV, but she had a small AM/FM radio.

And that is all Tully saw as she lay in her bed and fought sleep. But she knew that in the closet, four milk crates belonged to her: one was filled with National Geographics, a subscription gift from Jennifer, and the others with all the books she had read, ‘presents’ from Jennifer or Julie. And in the top drawer of her table, beneath some general debris there was a photograph of little Tully, about six years old, blond and skinny, flanked by a chubby Jennifer and a dark-haired Julie. In the photo, Tully held a toddler in her arms.

Tully fought sleep for about an hour or two. She turned and tossed. She sat up, rolled her head, rocked back and forth. She laughed, stuck out her tongue, mumbled. Getting out of bed to open the window, she stuck her head out – it was cold, nearly freezing – Tully thought of screaming at the top of her lungs. But the Kansas Pike, the trains, the river, were already screaming. No one would hear Tully. Leaving the window open, she got back into bed and pulled up the covers. Finally she was restlessly asleep, sleeping just as she was awake, tossing and turning, rolling her head back and forth, rocking on her back. Tully kicked back the covers and lifted her arms up above her head, then put them back down again, sweating profusely.

As Tully dreams, she finds herself lying on her bed, trying to keep awake; she sleeps and dreams of trying to keep awake, closing her eyes, her head snapping with pre-sleep, but she is sitting up, and finally lying down, finally sleeping in her dreams, and as she sleeps she hears the door open and footsteps creaking on her wooden floor. The footsteps are slow and careful; Tully tries to open her eyes, but she can’t, she shakes her head from side to side, side to side, but it’s no good; the footsteps are close to her, they are next to her, she feels someone bending over her – to kiss her? – and then – the pillow, the pillow over her face, as she flails her arms up and twists, but the body is on top of her, holding her down, and she is twisting, twisting, she tries to scream, but she cannot open her mouth, there is no breath, she is choking, wheezing soundlessly. Tully tries to draw her knees up, but there is a body on top of her, holding her down, the pillow, oh no oh no oh no – and then she comes to, sitting up sharply, gasping for breath, drenched with sweat.

She panted and wheezed, her eyes closed; she panted, her hands around her drawn up knees; she tried to get her breath back. Then she went to the bathroom and threw up. She took a shower, dried herself, put on a sweat suit, and sat behind her desk in front of the open window. She sat there in the cold until her head was too heavy to hold up, and she put it down on her wooden desk. When she heard the first birds, Tully fell asleep.

5

Robin wanted to come and pick Tully up on Homecoming day. He also wanted to meet her mother. But Tully thought it was a bad idea and said so.

‘Tully, but I’m tired of playing these games. Involving Jennifer, lying, sneaking about. There’s got to be a better way.’

‘Sure there’s a better way,’ said Tully. ‘You can go out with another girl.’

‘She can’t be that much of an ogre,’ said Robin. ‘Doesn’t she want you to have a good time?’

‘I haven’t thought about it,’ said Tully vaguely. ‘Probably not.’ She only hits me in the face, because she knows it’s the only place I care about, Tully thought. Good time? I don’t think so.

‘Don’t you think she’d like me?’ Robin asked her.

Tully sighed. ‘I’m sure she’d like you, Robin.’ she said. ‘You’re very likable.’

‘How are you getting to Home Bowl? Are you walking?’

‘Sure, why not?’

Tully heard Robin’s breathing through the receiver. ‘Let me get you a bike,’ he said at last.

She laughed. ‘Robin, I don’t need a bike. Thanks, anyway,’ said Tully.’

Tully walked over to Julie’s on an October Saturday afternoon and Julie’s dad drove them to Home Bowl at Washburn University. The Topeka High Trojans played all their home games but one at Home Bowl. The girls cheered on the Homecoming football heroes and tried to get Jennifer’s attention, but she seemed so busy throwing her pom-poms that she did not notice them.

Robin arrived shortly before the game. Tully introduced him to Julie and Tom and then climbed down the bleachers to say hi to Jennifer, who was sitting on the ground during a short break. Jennifer stared at Tully and didn’t say a word.

She’s silent a lot these days, thought Tully. Not just quiet, for Tully spent many quiet years in Jennifer’s company, but silent. Like a voice stopped talking inside Jennifer’s head and she was just sitting around waiting for her body to go silent as well. Like a TV with the sound permanently off. Maybe that thing is coming back into Jen again. But so late?’

‘I gotta go, Tull,’ said Jennifer at last, getting up from the grass.

‘Go on, go on,’ said Tully. ‘Go and cheerlead us into victory.’

Tully climbed back up, and she and Julie tried to figure out which uniform-clad butt was Jack’s.

‘Didn’t Jen say he was number thirty?’ said Tully.

‘Is he a linebacker?’ asked Julie.

‘He’s a throwbacker,’ Tully replied.

‘He is the captain of the football team,’ interjected Tom.

‘Yes, he is, isn’t he?’ said Tully icily.

Despite the relentless rain that started in the first quarter and did not let up, the High Trojans won 12-10, and afterward the two couples went to the Sizzler. Robin had to relay drive, since he was the only one with a car – a two-seater. Jennifer stayed with the cheerleaders. Before Tully and Julie left, they hollered on three, ‘Well done, Jen!’ but she didn’t look up.

Twirling her pom-poms, Jennifer stood there with rain falling on her face, unable to see in front of her. She thought of being eight and running home with Tully after they got caught in a terrific Kansas summer storm. In the end, they got a little frightened and, drenched, climbed under someone’s porch and huddled together. And Tully, getting out her sodden handkerchief and wringing it, was laughing and tenderly wiping Jennifer’s face – her forehead, her cheeks, her mouth, her eyes. Jennifer could smell Tully’s breath – warm fruit gum – and see Tully’s own wet face. That is what Jennifer thought of, when she looked and looked but couldn’t see Jack in front of her.

The Homecoming dance was in the Topeka High School cafeteria. Their Senior Banquet later that year, catered and all, would also be in the Topeka High School cafeteria. Not that it was a bad cafeteria – it had a fireplace and everything. It was just amazing to Tully how she never left the school unless she went up to College Hill. I wonder if the Senior Prom is going to be in the cafeteria, too. The Junior Prom was.

Tully killed most of the four hours until Mr Martinez came to get them at eleven by dancing. Mostly with Robin, but Robin didn’t seem to want to be there, not even to dance with Tully. When she rubbed up against him, though, she felt hardness against her leg and thought, Well, maybe he does want to be here after all.

Julie was arguing with Tom, and Jennifer was standing in the corner. Tully went over to Jennifer.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ Tully said, guiding Jennifer onto the dance floor. ‘You seem so out of it.’

Jennifer grunted something incomprehensible in reply, something about bad wet weather and Tully’s not being there.

‘What are you talking about? I was there.’

Jennifer mumbled something.

‘What?’

‘I said, I couldn’t see him…the rain.’

Tully stopped dancing. ‘We were talking about me a second ago. Who are you talking about? Jack?’

Jennifer looked at Tully with sweet sad eyes. ‘Jack,’ she said, and before Tully could ask, was dragged away by her cheerleader buddies.

In a little while, Tully left with Robin, but the name, ‘Jack’ continued to ring in her ears. Jack, Jen said. Or, Jack? Tully wasn’t sure if Jennifer meant it as an answer or a question.

Jennifer stood in the corner, sipped her Coke, and watched Tully leave with Robin. Julie was busy with Tom, and Jack was just plain busy. Often, Jennifer couldn’t even find him. He would dance with this girl and that, or stand and laugh with his friends. His other friends. His team won and he reaped the accolades. He was the captain. Too busy to come near her. Two girls came around collecting ballots for Homecoming Queen. Jennifer had forgotten to fill hers out, so now she scribbled Tully’s name and put the paper in the basket. ‘I think Shakie’s gonna win,’ said the shorter girl.

‘Shakie?’ asked Jennifer.

‘Shakie, Jen! She is only on your cheerleader squad,’ said the girl. ‘Last year’s Homecoming Queen.’

Oh. Shakie. Yeah. I guess. But can Shakie dance? And then Jen saw Shakie dancing with Jack, and all she could think of was that at least it was a fast song and they weren’t touching each other. Not like we were touching during ‘Wild Horses,’ she thought. Where is that Tully? Tully, Tully, Tully. Please come back.

Jennifer stood there for a little while longer and then decided to go home. She walked slowly around the dance floor. Then she heard his voice. ‘Oh, Jennifer, ohhhhh, Jennifer! Where do you think you’re going?’

Holding her breath, she turned around and faced Jack. ‘Where are you going, Jennifer? I thought we were going to dance.’ Her mouth began to widen to a smile, and just then two of his teammates and some girls ran up, giggling, talking, and grabbed his arms and pulled him away. Jack just made a face, a what-are-they-doing-to-me face, but not an I’m-sorry-we-didn’t-get-to-dance face. Jennifer watched him being dragged away and then went home.

At eleven, Mr Martinez came to drive Julie and Tully home. Julie was sullen; she was thinking of breaking up with Tom again. She wanted to tell Tom she did not want to see him anymore. All they ever did was argue about politics. They took their history club and their current events club with them everywhere. But what’s the point of breaking up? she thought. It’s not like I have anyone else I like. At least this way I have someone to go out with. Julie was sad. She really wanted to like somebody. She wondered if Tully liked Robin. She could never tell with Tully. Julie looked over at her friend. Tully was sitting with her head thrown back against the seat and her eyes closed. She is always kind of the same on the outside, thought Julie. What’s not to like about Robin?’

There had been several boys who were interested in Tully, several who even spoke to Julie about her, but Tully was always so indifferent. Julie would have liked to like a guy like Robin. If a guy as handsome as Robin with a Corvette really liked Julie? She’d never leave his side. Tully, however, was the type who wouldn’t care if her guy drove a beat-up Mustang and wore jeans and T-shirts all day. Tully always was the kind of girl, Julie thought, who did not jump up and down for a guy. Any guy. Kind of like Julie herself. Would Tully like to jump up and down? Julie wondered. Would I? Would Tully ever tell us if she fell in love? Julie didn’t think so. Jennifer likes Jack, Julie thought, she likes Jack hard, it’s obvious as the eyes on her face, and look where it’s getting her. Jen’s regressing again to her old ways, for sure. She hasn’t been this bad for some time.

Julie had been seeing Tom since the Junior Prom, but their sexual relationship had never developed. They made out often, and once or twice Tom felt her breasts, but he was awkward, and she wasn’t into it at all; it didn’t do anything for Julie when Tom touched her, so they stopped and discussed politics instead. Watching Tully sit there with her eyes closed, Julie wondered if she and Robin had just had sex. If they did, Julie knew it would be far from the first time for Tully. Tully apparently had some pretty interesting years. Tully told her best friends about some of the boys she met in those bars. Julie had felt that some of the boys were disrespectful to Tully, but now, as she said good-bye to her friend, came home, and sat down with her parents to watch ‘Saturday Night Live,’ Julie wished someone would be disrespectful to her.

6

The following week Gail called Robin up to scream at him for ignoring her at the Homecoming dance, and in a heated discussion told Robin some nasty things about Tully that he did not want to hear and did not believe. But something rotten got inside him, so he got indignant and hung up, and on the ride from Manhattan to Topeka to pick Tully up from school, he could not stop thinking about it.

Tully climbed into his car, kissed him on the lips, and smiled. He did not smile back, but revved the engine and drove.

‘Robin, what’s the matter?’ Tully said after a while.

‘Nothing,’ he said, and continued to say it was nothing. He told her he’d had a bad day at work, this and that and the other thing. Tully had to be home before Hedda, around six. Robin and Tully went to ‘their’ deserted lot again. It wasn’t actually deserted, it was the after-work parking lot of the Frito-Lay factory. It was far from her house, as far as they could go without actually leaving Topeka, but somehow that Frito-Lay sign was familiar to them already.

They parked in the farthest corner of the parking lot and had sex. It wasn’t so cold that afternoon, even though it was nearly November. Robin did not leave the car on, and Tully moaned a little again and he came fast again. He lay on top of her and thought of asking her if she liked it, if she came, if she ever came, if maybe next time she wanted to go to a motel or something, but he asked her none of these things, saying instead, ‘Tully, are you a virgin?’ Knowing full well that she could not be.

Tully laughed. ‘Robin, that’s a very funny thing to be asking me after we just had sex. Yes, Robin, of course I’m a virgin. What else could I be after having sex with you?’ She laughed some more, but he didn’t laugh. He got off her, pulled up his pants, and climbed over the stick shift to the driver’s seat.

‘You know what I mean,’ he said. ‘Were you a virgin before me?’

She moved the chair from horizontal to vertical, found her underwear, put them on, pulled down her skirt, buttoned her blouse. Then sat and looked at her hands and said nothing.

‘Tully, are you going to answer me?’

‘No, Robin, I’m not.’

‘Why? I’m just curious. I simply would like to know.’

‘It’s none of your business.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘That means take me to Jen’s, Robin, right now.’

He started the car, began to drive. This just was not going the way he wanted it to. Tully was not playing ball. But he was angry with her now and needed her to be angry back.

‘Tully, I heard that you had a reputation in school. I heard,’ he said, feeling braver, ‘that you were labeled the girl most likely to.’

‘Oh, you heard that, did you?’ she sneered. ‘You must have heard that from one of my friends.’

‘Well?’

‘Well, what? Well fucking what?’

‘Do you?’

‘Robin!’ she shouted. ‘It’s none of your goddamned business!’

He persisted. ‘I think it is my business. You are my girl now, and I don’t want people to be talking behind your back about you.’

She laughed an awful laugh. ‘I’m your girl? Since when am I your girl?’

He was baffled. ‘I thought it was understood.’

‘Nothing is understood, Robin. I am not your girl and you are not my boy. We meet once in a while and you take me to lunch and then fuck me in your car! Let’s not make a mountain out of that, shall we?’ Her voice was loud and cold.

‘And tell me something,’ Tully said. ‘If you thought for a moment that I was a virgin, is this what I got from you, is this the very best you had to give a virgin, taking my virginity from me in your Corvette, without even keeping the engine on? Is this your very best, you asshole?’

‘Okay, Tully, okay,’ he said. ‘I got my answer.’

‘Yeah, you got your fucking answer, all right,’ she said. He drove her to Sunset Court, and she got out of the car, slammed the door, walked into Jennifer’s house, and did not look back.

Robin went home feeling like shit. It did not go as well as he had hoped at all. Maybe it was difficult for a thing like that to go well. Maybe she was right. Maybe it was none of his business. But what should he do? She wasn’t his girl? It had only been about four weeks, but he liked her, that much was obvious. How she felt was less obvious – Tully always had the mental equivalent of one arm’s length, maybe two, separating herself from him. But he didn’t want to stop seeing her. Stop seeing her and do what? Go back to Gail?

Robin worked and moped for a couple of days. Being at home depressed him and now there was not even a Tully on Sunday to look forward to. Robin’s dad was home from the hospital. There was nothing more a hospital could do. Stephen DeMarco, Sr, had been sick with lung cancer for about six months now and the whole family was waiting for him to die, Robin included, because he could not stand the sight of his father in pain, or worse, on morphine – delirious, debilitated, and dying. The entire house smelled of chloroform and death. To make himself feel better, Robin took Gail out to dinner, apologized to her, brought her back to his house, and had sex with her, all the while thinking of Tully groaning beneath him, her arms wrapped tightly around his neck.

Two weeks passed, and Robin couldn’t stand it anymore. One day he left work early and drove over to Topeka High. He sat in front of the main entrance for two hours without turning the radio on.

Jennifer and Julie walked out of the school together, schoolbooks against their chests, and when Robin saw Jennifer and Julie looking at him, he thought: they know. They know, and they think I’m an asshole. Robin asked them where he could find Tully. He was surprised by their answer. Washburn University Day Care?