Tully

And I missed you, too, guys, thought Tully, but remained silent.

‘Tell me, Tully,’ said Jennifer. ‘Tell me about the first time with your wrists.’

Tully moved away slightly. Jennifer reached around and pulled her back. ‘Go on.’

‘Not much to tell,’ said Tully.

‘Tell me why you do it.’

‘Jennifer, what the hell is wrong with you, what are you asking me this shit for?’

‘Just tell me, Tully,’ whispered Jen. ‘Tell me. Do you do it to die?’

Tully sighed. ‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘I don’t think I do it to die. I do it because I want to feel what death feels like. I just want unconsciousness to wash over me, I do it almost like they did it in the ancient times – to heal myself. And then when all the bad is out of me, I come to and go on.’

Tully trailed off, thinking of the very first time she sat down inside a bathtub filled with water with a double-edged razor in her hand. She thought her young breastless body was all relaxed, but when she put the razor near her wrists, her fingers were shaking so badly, she had to put them back in the water for a few minutes until she calmed down. Am I going to die? thought Tully. I mean, is that what’s going to happen to me? Am I going to die? I’ll cut my wrists and lose consciousness and bleed to death like the Romans did, except that nobody will find me until next week, after I will have been stone dead for so long. Am I going to die? I cannot count on anyone to come and save me, that’s for fucking sure, so before I put this steel blade to my hand and watch my veins pop open like dough out of a Pillsbury can, I want to be sure that I don’t want to die. Tully looked around the bathroom, looked at the towels near her, at the gauze bandage, at the iodine, and thought, I am ready. For whatever. For what-fucking-ever. And she took the blade out of the hot water and sliced an inch-long horizontal gash in her left wrist, thinking Oh, goodness me, my hands are so steady, oh, my goodness me, look at all that blood. She put her wrist down and watched the water near her slowly turn pink. She lifted her hand and, fascinated, watched her prepubescent blood pour down her arm. She touched the blood with her fingers, then tasted it. It was salty and slick. And then Tully cut her other wrist. She put both her hands under the water and closed her eyes, but that wasn’t as good as watching herself bleed. She opened her eyes and lifted both her hands up high, lying down all the way up to her neck in the blood water, and gazed in disbelief as the bright red blood oozed down her arms. It was when Tully’s eyes started to close, it was when she started to hear strange noises and see water and waves and rocks in front of her eyes, it was when she started to smell the salty sea, that Tully thought, It’s time, or I will die. If I don’t get up now, I will die. She felt herself to be in slow motion, moving with all the deliberate speed of a tanker on the horizon – seemingly immobile and soundless – when she lifted her body out of the water and bent over for the towel. Again, rocks were washed over with water in front of her eyes, water broke against the rocks, making gurgling sounds. Gurgling, burbling waves rose up and crashed in front of her, whooshh…whoooshhh…whoooshhh…whooooshhhh…Let me lie down for a moment, Tully thought, just for a moment. But she didn’t. She pulled herself up and grabbed on to the towel instead, pressing it to one wrist, then the other. She kept herself up, kept her arms up, got out of the bath, got another towel, and, wrapping it around the other wrist, pressed her wrists together hard and sat there naked on the cold tile floor, with her arms up and together, eyes closed, trying to will the blood to stop. And it did, eventually. The towels were ruined. Tully didn’t even need to dry herself off, so long had she sat on the floor. When she unwrapped her wrists, her gashes were black and swollen, but no longer fluid. That was good. Pouring iodine on the wounds was not so good. Tully whimpered and grit her teeth, and finally bit her lip to blood to keep herself from screaming.

She bandaged her wrists tight, went to her room, and prayed, swearing to God that she would never, never do that again.

But time passed, and her wounds healed, ragged, jagged scars though they remained. Tully forgot the closeness to death, remembering only the closeness to the waves and the rocks. And so she cut her wrists again some time later, and again and again, longing to be washed away by the salty water.

Jennifer’s back was to Tully. Nudging her and getting no response, Tully sighed and said, ‘Jen, what’s wrong with you?’ feeling tightness around her stomach. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Of course. Why shouldn’t I be?’

Tully patted Jennifer’s shoulder. ‘Jennifer, you’re not playing ball. Want to talk?’

‘Tully, there’s really nothing to talk about.’

‘Don’t I know it,’ said Tully. ‘There never is. You forget who you’re talking to. Still, though,’ she said, using one of Robin’s phrases. ‘Something you want to tell me?’

‘Nothing to tell, Tully,’ said Jennifer sadly. ‘Wish there was.’

Taking a deep breath, Tully said, ‘Jennifer, have you slept with him?’

Jennifer didn’t answer, and then began to cry. Tully was speechless. Crying! She touched Jennifer’s hair and managed only, ‘Please, please.’ Crying, my Lord, over what? I cannot believe, just cannot, is she really crying over –

‘Oh, Tully,’ Jennifer sobbed, sitting up against the wall. Tully sat up, too. Oh, Tully? What the hell was Oh, Tully? Jennifer was smearing tears all over her face with her fist, like she used to when she was young, but God, it had been since about then that Jen last cried in front of Tully. ‘You just don’t understand.’

‘Then explain it to me,’ said Tully softly.

‘It’s nothing like you think.’

Tully thought Jen was wrong there. Tully was afraid it was exactly as she thought.

‘Jennifer, my God, but are you crying over him?’ Tully, shaking her head, got up for a box of tissues, sat on the edge of the bed and gently wiped Jennifer’s face. It was minutes before Jennifer was collected enough to speak.

‘Jennifer,’ Tully said. ‘You’re fucking crazy. Have you slept with him?’

‘No, Tully, I haven’t,’ said Jennifer. ‘But do you know why I haven’t? Do you know why? Because he hasn’t asked me. He hasn’t asked me!’ she cried. ‘And if he had asked me, I would say, When? Now? And if he asked me to jump before I did it, I would say, How high, Jack Pendel, how high? Here I am, a virgin till I die, as you say, and I would give it to him faster than I could say Jack.’

Tully was at a complete loss for words as she wiped Jennifer’s face. At a loss, and helpless, too. Helpless in part because she did not understand her. Tully Makker just did not see what the problem was.

‘So go after him, Jen, go after him. You want him. Tell him you want him. Let him know you want him. They get it after a while, they do, believe me.’

‘Oh, Tully, you really don’t understand, do you? It’s not a matter of going after him, don’t you see?’ Jennifer began to cry again. ‘Don’t you see that if he wanted me, he would’ve seen by now what’s so plain to me and to everyone else? He would’ve seen it. But he doesn’t see it because he doesn’t feel the same way.’

Tully disagreed. ‘Jen, he doesn’t get it because he is a football jock.’

‘No, Tully, he doesn’t get it because he doesn’t love me. When you don’t love somebody you never get how they feel. You don’t even look for it.’

‘Hmm,’ said Tully. ‘I know plenty of people who love each other and still don’t get how they feel.’

Jennifer waved her off. ‘Who do you know, Makker?’

Tully wavered. ‘Well, your parents, for one. Julie’s too.’

Jennifer was still crying. Tully coughed and switched tactics. ‘Jenny, okay, so he doesn’t get it,’ she said. ‘For whatever reason. So you just say fuck you and move on. That’s it. Just move right on,’ said Tully, making a sweeping motion with her hand. ‘Move right on to Palo Alto,’ she added. ‘Where there are so many Jack Pendels, where there will be so many Jack Pendels dying to steal your heart and with it your bikini, you will have to buy twenty just to keep up. Bikinis, I mean.’

‘Tully, you just don’t get it, do you?’

‘Honestly, Jen?’ Tully said apologetically. ‘No, I don’t. See? I don’t get it, but we love each other.’ Tully was trying to make a little light of it, but Jennifer hit at Tully impatiently.

‘It’s not the same, now, is it?’ said Jennifer.

‘It’s not?’ said Tully.

‘Well, of course it’s not!’ exclaimed Jennifer. ‘Makker, that’s why I don’t want to talk to you sometimes. You’re just so obtuse.’

Tully saw in Jennifer’s face that thing, that crazy crazy thing. She is so far out there that where she is, not even I can reach her.

‘Don’t you understand, Tully?’ Jennifer said. ‘I love him, I love him.’

‘You do?’ said Tully distastefully. ‘So, okay. So, un-love him.’

‘Tully, you don’t – you just can’t – just stop loving the people you love.’

‘You can’t? Why the hell not?’

‘I don’t know, I can’t,’ said Jennifer brokenly. ‘He is my first love. My very first. And I will never stop loving him.’

Tully sighed and tried to reason with her. ‘Jen, I know, but everyone says that. Everyone feels that way, that we will never stop loving someone, that we will never love anyone else, that we can never feel more than we do right now, but yet…we do, somehow, stop loving. We do get over it. Don’t we? We have to. We must. Otherwise, how could we go on?’

‘Tully, I know you, of all people, are skeptical. I don’t expect you to understand. I just know the way I feel about him and have felt about him for a long time. I will never love anyone else for the rest of my life.’

Tully patted Jennifer’s head. ‘And it may be a very short life indeed, Mandolini, because if you don’t stop crying, I’m going to have to kill you.’

Jennifer laughed a little and wiped her face with her arm.