Tully

Driving over to Washburn University, he parked on the southwestern corner of the campus and watched Tully through a wire fence play with a group of children. The sign on the fence read KEEP OUT. PRIVATE PROPERTY. WASHBURN UNIVERSITY NURSERY AND DAY CARE. Robin noticed all the kids clung to her, and Tully, bending down or kneeling in front of them, listened to each of them speak. Then the children chased her around the playground at manic speed and she ran from them a little slower so that they could catch her. Robin saw that Tully was laughing, and the kids were laughing, too.

Robin waited until five o’clock and then beeped the horn. Tully saw him, and slowly came through the gate to the car. She did not get in.

‘Please get in, I want to talk to you,’ Robin said.

She got in.

‘I gotta get home. My mother’s home by six o’clock.’ Robin drove to the Potwin Elementary School, a block away from the Grove, and parked there.

‘So what’s this about the day-care center?’

She shrugged. ‘Just something I do on Thursday afternoons.’

‘Every Thursday afternoon?’

‘Sure.’

‘For how long?’

Tully rubbed her hands together. ‘This is my third year.’

‘For God’s sake, why?’

Tully shrugged again. ‘All the teachers – they’re all older. The kids need someone young to play with.’

Robin touched her hair tenderly. ‘It’s obvious they like you.’

‘Yeah, you don’t know what we play. I’m the Wicked Witch of the West, and they’re supposed to kill me when they catch me.’

Robin smiled. ‘You like children, Tully.’

‘Yes, for two hours a week, I like other people’s children,’ she said, moving away from his hand on her hair.

Robin cleared his throat. ‘Listen, I’m sorry about the other day. I didn’t mean to upset you. Please go out with me again, and if you don’t want to tell me anything, I won’t ask you. You can set the rules, Tull, just don’t break up with me.’

Tully was glad he had come. She missed him, but she also thought it was a good time to be honest with him about some things. ‘Robin, I’ll be glad to go out with you,’ Tully said. ‘I like you, you’re a nice guy, but you just have to understand a couple of things about me. One – I don’t much like to talk about my business. And two –’ Tully struggled to find the right words. ‘And two, this – we – can at best be a temporary thing.’ She felt a little tight inside seeing his reaction, his blank stare, a hurt, mute face. What does he expect? she thought. What the hell did he think was going to happen?

‘Robin, what?’

‘Why temporary, Tully?’ he asked.

‘Robin, because I have plans. I got plans.’ That just don’t include you.

‘Plans?’ he said wearily.

‘Yes. I’m a senior, you know. I’m going to be eighteen years old. I’m going to do something with my life.’

‘Like what? Dance?’

Tully shook her head. ‘No dancing. All that practice, all that competition, those grueling hours, that’s not a life, not a life for me, anyway. From one jail to another,’ she said. ‘No, I like to dance, been dancing since I was young. You could say’ – she half smiled – ‘that dance was my first passion –’

‘That’s nothing to be proud of, Tully,’ Robin said.

‘Who is proud?’ she said defenselessly. ‘I’m not proud of it, that’s just the way it is.’

‘So pursue it.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to be trapped by dancing.’ She rubbed her hands together. ‘Classical dance is out of the question and every other kind involves taking your clothes off.’ And I just don’t want to take my clothes off. She never had been able to spend the hundred-dollar bill she won the time she took off her shirt during a dance contest in Tortilla Jack’s on College Hill.

‘You don’t seem like you much want to be trapped by anything,’ said Robin.

‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘So?’

Robin wanted to know what else was there.

‘College.’

‘Good, college is good,’ he said. ‘So?’

She sighed. ‘Jennifer and I are applying to Stanford. My grades aren’t great. I’ll never get in of course…’ she trailed off.

Robin interrupted her. ‘Stanford. That’s an Ivy League-type school. Where is that?’

‘California, actually,’ said Tully.

‘California?’ exclaimed Robin. ‘I see. So what do you plan to do at this Stanford?’

‘If you’d let me finish, I said I’ll never get in. But UC Santa Cruz is nearby, so I applied there too. Get a degree, get a job, dance on the weekends, see the ocean,’ said Tully.

‘A degree in what?’

‘Whatever. Who cares? A degree.’

‘What about Jennifer?’

‘Jen is going to be a doctor. A pediatrician. Or a child psychiatrist.’

‘And Jennifer wants to do this, too, does she? Go to California?’

‘Of course she does,’ said Tully. ‘She suggested it.’

‘Oh, well, then I guess that’s that,’ said Robin, looking away into the side window. ‘I guess that’s that.’

Tully sat quietly. ‘So I see,’ said Robin.

‘So what do you want to go out with me for? Do you just want me to tide you over till next year?’

‘Next year?’ said Tully. ‘I was thinking more like till next week.’

‘Yes,’ said Robin. ‘Oh, yes, I’m sure,’ he said sarcastically, hitting the wheel. ‘I’m sure. So, Tully, tell me, what do you want to be, in California, when you grow up?’

‘Dream-free,’ replied Tully.

FOUR Winter

November 1978

‘What do you mean, you want to go to California with Tully?’ said Lynn. Tony stopped eating his steak.

‘I mean,’ said Jennifer, ‘just what I said. We want to go to California. We are going to California.’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Tony. ‘You are going to Harvard. I thought it was all agreed.’

Jennifer shook her head. ‘We’ve applied to Stanford. That’s where we’re going.’

Lynn and Tony exchanged a long look. Lynn said, ‘Jenny Lynn, honey, whose idea is that? Is it Tully’s?’

Tony raised his voice. ‘Of course it’s Tully’s! Tully, Tully, Tully! I’m tired of hearing that girl’s name!’ He turned to his wife. ‘I kept telling you she was a bad seed!’ And then to Jennifer, ‘What do you want to do, Jennifer? What do you want?’

‘I want to go to California,’ Jennifer said stubbornly.

‘Goddamn it!’ shouted Tony, throwing his fork down on the plate. It made a loud noise that rang in everybody’s ears. ‘I will not let that girl make a loser out of you, Jennifer! I will not let that girl make another her out of you.’

Lynn asked Tony to lower his voice. Jennifer put her utensils down and laid her hands on her lap. ‘Dad. Going to Stanford is not a loser thing to do. It just isn’t.’

Lynn and Tony talked for a while, heatedly and passionately at first, then slowly, pretending to be reasonable. Jennifer withdrew completely and watched as her parents argued with one another about just who was responsible for letting this happen to their Jennifer.

‘You’re the one who is always here talking to her!’ yelled Tony.

‘Yes, and you’re the one who is never here talking to her!’ Lynn yelled back.

Tony said, ‘I told you and told you about that girl. And you wanted to bring her into this house. I told you: she is no good, Lynn. She came from no good and she will come to no good, and in between she will do no good for anybody. That’s Tully.’

‘That’s not true, Dad,’ said Jennifer. ‘Tully will come to good. She will. You watch. Tully wants to help kids. Be a psychologist, maybe.’

‘Help kids? Tully is not helped herself!’ Tony screamed. ‘A psychologist? Jennifer, to be a psychologist, one needs to like to talk! And your friend Tully is nearly a deaf-mute!’

‘Dad! What are you talking about?’ Jennifer said. ‘To be a bad psychologist, one needs to like to talk. To be a good one, one needs to like to listen. And Tully is not a deaf-mute, Dad. Just because you don’t hear her, she is not a deaf-mute. She’s not the one.’

Standing up, Jen cut her father off before he began again. ‘Dad, Dad! Besides! This is not about Tully, goddamn it!’ she screamed, backhanding her glass of Coke across the room. It smashed against the dining room wall and shattered loudly, echoing through the quiet house. Her parents sat there and did not react. Lynn finally said sadly, ‘Jenny, we thought you always wanted to go to Harvard.’

‘No, Mom,’ said Jennifer. ‘No. You always wanted to go to Harvard.’

‘Well, honey, there is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong with Harvard.’

‘Yes. And there is nothing wrong with Stanford either.’

How to tell them, how to explain just how much she wanted to go to California! How to explain to them that her poor Tully just wanted to be close to her. Alone upstairs, Jennifer laughed softly. They’d never believe it if I told them. They’d never believe that California is not Tully’s idea at all. How little it actually has to do with Tully. Jennifer strongly suspected that, left to her own devices and despite all her protestations, despite all the maps and all the dreams and all the talk of palm trees, left to herself, Tully would not go to California. Oh, Tull would certainly disagree with that, certainly. But Jennifer just had a feeling about it. Without Jennifer, Tully would never go. But how to tell her parents that? And how to tell them that despite a number of colleges nationwide wanting him to play football for them, Jennifer alone knew that Jack Pendel, nineteen years old this November, captain of the High Trojans for the second straight year, would be going nowhere else but Palo Alto.

2

‘…Take me now

Baby, here as I am

Pull me close

Try to understand

Desire and hunger’s the fire I breathe

Love is a banquet on which we feed…’

Robin was singing very loudly in the shower. It was Saturday night, and he was going to see Tully. Somehow – miraculously! – she made Saturday night happen. He booked the best room at the Holiday Inn three days ago when she told him she could make it.

Robin got out of the shower and toweled himself off in front of a huge floor-to-ceiling mirror. The mirror was all fogged up, but Robin ran a towel over it and then stepped back to look at himself. ‘Hmm, I look pretty good,’ he said aloud, and got dressed.

His great mood was marred only by the anxiety of leaving his family store’s money to be counted on the busiest day of the week by a nineteen-year-old assistant. I really need to relax, man, thought Robin, pulling on his best tan slacks and a Polo sweater. Look at my brothers.

Stephen DeMarco, Sr, too ill to get out of bed, left his store to be managed by his three sons, but Robin’s brothers were not at all interested in the family business. Bruce and Stevie were too busy dating and playing ball. Dating and playing ball was all Bruce and Steve wanted to do.

Stevie was a sophomore at Kansas State University at Manhattan, majoring in rugby, beer, and girls, while Bruce had been playing the guitar since his high school graduation five years ago. He was ‘trying to find himself.’ At present, he had apparently found himself in dairy products. Bruce became convinced that he could ‘self-actualize’ only through farming, and, with that in mind, he bought, with his dad’s help, a hundred-acre farm twenty miles north of Manhattan. Replete with horses, chickens, and corn. So instead of wearing Pierre Cardin suits and Polo shirts like Robin, Bruce wore overalls and got up with the cows. He played his guitar to the horses, and they seemed to like that; so did the girls.

That left only Robin to work the store. Before Tully, Robin worked the entire seven days the store was open. When he told Tully that he was off Sundays, he wasn’t telling the truth. The truth was that Robin hadn’t taken off a Sunday in seven years, but seeing that Tully could drag a dying Doberman single-handedly off the road, Robin figured he could also show some backbone and take off one day. He realized, though, that no one knew the merchandise as he did, no one could sell it as he did, no one could offer the customer exactly the right thing or know the customer’s style and size and price just by the way the customer dressed and talked, quite as Robin did.

And then, of course, there was the small question of cash. Not much was cash – mostly it was VISA and personal checks. But on a good Sunday, there could also be five hundred to a thousand dollars in small bills. Okay, okay, no big deal, he was insured against theft, and in any case what was a grand to a company whose annual gross sales were nearly $2 million? But theft! And there were plenty of ways to steal from him. There were some expensive Ralph Lauren and Pierre Cardin shirts in his store. Some pricey ties and belts, some $200 Bally shoes. Robin’s floor guys could just walk off with three or four $75 shirts, and that wouldn’t make Robin happy at all. So he methodically made note of the merchandise on display, and the following day matched what was missing to the receipts in the register. It was neurotic, he knew, but he just hated the thought of being taken.

Robin put on Paco Rabanne and blow-dried his hair. After a few months of taking off Sundays, Robin locked the supply room, locked away the inventory sheets, and began to take off Wednesdays, too. A couple of times he brought Tully to Manhattan on Saturdays to watch him play soccer in the afternoons. Playing soccer on Saturday afternoons felt to Robin like cutting school – wrong and slightly delicious. Usually he went back to the store after a few hours, but not tonight.

‘…Because the night Belongs to lovers…’

he sang, locking the house and starting up his car.

‘…Because the night Belongs to us…’

Even though Robin was fretting about work, he was thinking of Tully most of all.

He was stroking her hair after they had just finished making love.

‘Tully,’ Robin whispered. ‘Tully.’

‘What, Robin, what?’

‘You do this with many guys?’

She laughed. ‘Well, never in a Holiday Inn.’ She looked around the room. ‘Nice. Great bed. I’ve never been on a bed like this before. This big.’

‘I’m serious.’

‘Yeah, I’m sure you are.’ She smiled and sighed. ‘Not so many.’

‘Do you remember your first?’

She stiffened, and her body became lifeless. ‘Who doesn’t?’ she said evenly. ‘Don’t you?’

‘Sure.’ He smiled. ‘It was with an older woman. Meg. She came into Dad’s store, you know, to buy something for her husband.’

‘But was looking for something for herself, too?’ offered Tully.

‘I guess,’ Robin said. ‘A little for herself.’

‘How much older?’ Tully wanted to know.

‘I was sixteen, she was twenty-five.’

‘Kind of like you and me, reversed,’ said Tully.

‘Kind of,’ said Robin. Except that for Meg he had felt nothing but gratitude. ‘Was your first older, too?’

‘Yeah,’ said Tully. ‘He was older.’

‘How old were you?’

‘I,’ said Tully, ‘was younger.’

3

‘Is this all you got?’ said Tully to Julie in early December. The girls were getting ready for their Senior Banquet. As always, Tully was borrowing a dress from Julie, who was about two sizes larger with bigger breasts. Tonight’s dress was flower print. ‘Got anything black?’

‘No, Tully, I don’t have anything black. Don’t be so picky.’

‘All right, all right,’ said Tully. ‘I’m a beggar, after all.’

‘You’re not a beggar, Tully. I just don’t have anything, all right?’

‘All right,’ Tully said, putting on the dress. ‘God, look at me,’ she said in front of the mirror. ‘I look like a bouquet. Hope nobody comes up and smells me or pins me to their chest like a corsage.’

Julie rolled her eyes, and Tully laughed.

‘Tully, how did you get your mom to let you stay out so late on a school night?’

‘Oh, you know. Jen this, Jen that. Of course I’m not going with a boy, Mom, to even think! This is not the prom, you know! This is a dinner for us seniors! So we can get to know each other better.’

‘And she bought it, huh?’

‘Yeah, well, she’s a little suspicious. She wants Jen to come in and say hi to her. At midnight! But that’s my mother. Suspicious for the right reasons but at the wrong time.’

‘How is Robin?’ asked Julie.

‘Fine,’ said Tully. ‘How is Tom?’

‘Fine.’ Julie cleared her throat. ‘Umm, speaking of Tom, will you ever tell me what you meant by your cute remarks back on Jen’s birthday?’

‘God, Jule, you got a long memory. Why haven’t you said anything before?’

‘I’ve been busy,’ Julie said. ‘I just thought of it.’

‘Don’t think so much about it,’ said Tully.

‘Well?’

‘Well, what? Julie, I got him mixed up with another guy.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ said Julie.

‘So what the hell are you asking me for?’

‘Please tell me, Tully. I won’t be upset. It really doesn’t matter.’

‘Well, if it really doesn’t matter,’ Tully mimicked Julie’s voice, ‘then what the hell are you asking me for?’

‘He was there, wasn’t he? In some club? And he made a pass at you, before he even knew who you were, and you must have turned him down, didn’t you? And this really riled him, really really did, because, you see, he was under the impression that you didn’t turn anybody down. That’s what happened, isn’t it?’

Tully bent her head for a few minutes, and when she looked up, she said, quieter, ‘Well, Julie. Since you think you know everything, what the hell are you asking me for?’

‘Do I? Do I know everything?’

‘Yes,’ said Tully, taking her friend by the shoulders and spinning her towards the door. ‘You know everything.’

‘Is that really what happened?’ Julie asked Tully when they were on their way to Topeka High in Jen’s Camaro.

‘Yes, uh-huh,’ said Tully. ‘Don’t think about it so much. Does it bother you?’

‘No, uh-uh. What Tom did before he met me is his own business. It amuses me, though.’ She turned around in the front seat to face Tully in the back and saw Tully’s slightly embarrassed face.

‘What?’ said Julie. ‘What kind of an expression is that –’ And then her eyes opened up and her mouth, too. ‘Ahhhh,’ she said. ‘Wait. I don’t know everything, do I? I thought of everything, except the when, didn’t I? Well, Tully, you did say it was over a year ago.’

‘I was using the term “year” loosely,’ said Tully. Jennifer stifled a laugh.

‘So exactly when was it, then?’ said Julie. ‘Try to be specific.’

‘August,’ said Tully.

‘What? This August? The one that just passed?’

‘Yes, uh-huh,’ said Tully, and her face became blank and inscrutable.

Julie faced the front again, mouth slightly ajar. ‘What do ya know,’ she said. ‘Well, I’ll be damned.’

‘Forget it, Julie,’ said Jennifer.

‘Yeah, Jule, it’s no big deal,’ echoed Tully.

‘Yeah,’ said Julie. ‘No big deal.’

When the three of them were walking toward Topeka High, Julie leaned over and asked Tully, ‘Listen, tell me, did you refuse him because you were my friend or because you just didn’t like him?’

Tully put her arm around Julie. ‘I refused,’ she said, ‘because I am your friend. But if I wasn’t your friend, I would have also refused, because I don’t like him.’

Makker, Mandolini, and Martinez – or the 3Ms – sat at the same table in the decorated cafeteria. The food was nondescript, to go with the nondescript music. But after dinner, everyone was able to walk around to the other tables. Tully saw Jennifer pass by Jack’s table. He waved to her, and she waved back but didn’t stop. Tully was amused but became less amused when afterwards Jennifer was mute for a half hour until Tully dragged her out to what was passing for a dance floor and the girls danced together, their flushed faces inches away from one another.

Gail was there, looking almost nice in a blue dress and new hair, Tully thought grudgingly. Tully stopped by Gail’s table to talk to a guy in her math class, and Gail did not even look Tully’s way. Strolling over to Gail, Tully lowered her head and said quietly, ‘I’d ask you to dance, but I can’t take your rejection.’

‘Get away from me, you tramp,’ said Gail.

Tully recoiled as if her mother had slapped her. But her face was a Tullyface, and she coldly smiled when she said, ‘Gail, you’re a sore loser.’

‘Get away from me,’ Gail repeated, shaking.

‘Ooops, what I meant was,’ said Tully, ‘Gail, you’re just a plain loser.’

Tully and Jennifer danced together some more. There wasn’t much of a dance floor and there wasn’t much dance music, either. Wait till the prom, the girls said to each other, and then Jack, in a suit and unshaven, walked over and took Jennifer’s upper arm and asked if he could cut in. When he said it, however, he stared right at Tully, making her go red. Watching them dance, without touching each other, Tully felt even more uncomfortable, feeling another stab of the anxiety that moved her at Jennifer’s party. Tully saw in Jennifer’s face lost deer and something else, too. Insanity. Sheer, raw, naked insanity. All she needs is a straitjacket for that expression she’s got on her face. She never talks about him! thought Tully. She never talks about him, yet where does it all go? Where does all that’s behind the crazy look on her face go? Who sees it? Not me. And if not me, who? Julie? No, Julie and I both have no clue. Does he see it? I hope so, thought Tully, I fucking hope so.

And then the inexplicable happened. When the song ended, Jack and Jennifer came over to Tully. A new song began. Yvonne Elliman not wanting nobody baby if she couldn’t have you, and Jack asked Tully if she wanted to dance.

‘You’re famous, Tully,’ he said. ‘Let’s dance.’

Tully shot Jennifer a quick look. She seemed fine about it, if a bit vacant. And then Tully and Jack danced. Tully toned it down so much that she even heard some guy shout from across the room, ‘Come on, Tully Makker! Show him your stuff!’

But Tully wasn’t going to be showing Jack any of her stuff with Jennifer standing there looking at them. Tully made sure she barely touched him. He was much taller than she was, even with her heels. Tully usually danced with her eyes closed unless she was drunk, but tonight she wasn’t drunk and her eyes were open. She casually looked up into his face. Jack smiled at her, and again Tully saw something in his eyes. Something…clear.

‘Jack-ieeee!’ squealed a voice near Tully. She turned around. A girl was standing next to them. Shakie Lamber. Everyone knew Shakie. She was the Homecoming Queen.

‘Jack-ieeee!’ whined Shakie again. ‘Pleeeease, can I cut in?’

‘Do you want to dance with me or Tully?’ asked Jack.

Shakie gave Tully a perfunctory smile. ‘With you, of course, I’m afraid Tully is just too good for me.’

‘Well, then, you’ll have to ask Tully if you can cut in, won’t you?’ said Jack.

‘Be my guest,’ said Tully, relieved to get off the floor and not be stared at anymore by Jennifer.

Soon the noise got to be too much for Jennifer. She never liked noise, and Tully joined her in a walk down the school corridors.

‘How many lockers on the first floor?’ asked Tully, passing by the front doors.

‘Counting the ones in the Admin office and the wings? Five hundred and twenty.’

‘How many handmade bricks did it take to build our school?’

‘Nine hundred thousand,’ answered Jennifer automatically.