Tully

‘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?

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.