On Cleveland Ave

It is 2 a.m. and his body makes only a soft thud as it hits the bumper. A sound like a heavy suitcase being tossed into a car trunk, followed by a squeal of brakes. The car stops. The engine idles and the keys dance back and forth above my thigh. I am breathing heavy and slow.

The car is illuminated by a streetlight, the yellow glow drifting from somewhere above. There might be stars. It’s hard to tell from here. The road is empty and swimming in dark ahead and behind the yellow circle of streetlamp. The leaves have started to change, without my noticing, again. I always pick up on details too late.

The engine cuts with a turn of a key.

I assume he is dead. I suppose it would be wise, though, to check. Before leaving the car, I pocket my cell phone and glance in the rearview. Fix my hair.

I drop, barefooted, to the asphalt, then search back beneath the seat for my heels. My body wavers as I lean against the open door, placing my right foot in, then my left. The door closes with a click.

It is awkward to approach a body, in heels. It is even more awkward to attempt to bend and peer, while balancing precariously on thin wood. My skirt rides up as I fold and lean. The white of a slip sneaks out as I tip forward, my face coming closer to his.

It is, as I suspected, him.

It was a Tuesday or perhaps a Wednesday. He sat sullenly on a set piece, his old man’s cap skewed to the left, his feet dangling. He watched us walk. We called him “Wandering Eyes” because he couldn’t be trusted to look a girl in the face. As we passed, our silly costumes floating about us like a sea of humiliation, he watched. It was Oklahoma and we all looked absurd in our turn of the century get-ups. The girls wore shoes with buckles, the boys wore cowboy boots. The dress they put me in was far too tight in the waist and I couldn’t breathe. I’d rather have died than admit to the costumer that I can’t fit into a size 2. It was the 90s and we were all obsessed with thinness. We were all trying desperately to disappear.

But he watched, his eyes wandering. He found the soft spots, the round spots, the hidden spots. He dripped desire.

It was that Tuesday, or Wednesday, when he first spoke to me. Lifted himself from his perch on Ado Annie’s travel trunk, painted to look like aged leather. He stood and walked towards me, his body rocking in those boots. They clinked on the gym floor as his dancing taps connected metal with wood. I expected him to call me “little lady”, in that outfit, but he didn’t. He just smiled. I stared at the floor.

“I’ve noticed you. I’ve seen you.”

Something rose in me, from my stomach to my throat. What was it? Not lust. No. Bile.

He wanted to take me out. He had been watching me. He stared at my breasts, pumped ridiculously upwards in the tight dress. The buttons strained against the calico. My heart tapped, then raced. A date was set, a plan was made. He clicked away, hands in blue jean pockets. Turned back at the last moment to wink.

He is most certainly dead. I am surprised that only the impact of a car was enough to kill a man. There is blood on the asphalt, red turning slowly black as it spreads. I am not sure where he is bleeding from. He is facing upwards, as if searching for stars. Or the moon.

I shift my weight onto the ground, sitting with my legs curled under me. The heels dig into the muscles of my ass. I watch him. I watch him. He does nothing.

Our first date was to the ballpark to watch a minor league game. The Wilmington Blue Rocks chewed tobacco and missed pitches. The fans drank heavily and shouted in their comical accents, a mixture of Southern and Jersey. Fat men belched around us. I sat silently, my hands fiddling nervously in my lap. He gorged on popcorn and hot dogs. My stomach lurched and tumbled, threatening to empty at my feet. Did we exchange words? I don’t remember. I remember my lap, my stomach. I remember when he laughed with his mouth open, popcorn let loose into the air. His eyes were blue.

In his jeep on the ride home, he played Lenny Kravitz. He lit a joint, then let it dangle from his fingers resting on the gearshift. It was a new smell to me, then. It reminded me of my mother’s feet, sour and rancid when she plops them on the ottoman after work. Or of my locker, filled with the aroma of aged gym clothes, stuffed and lost somewhere behind a mountain of paper. But sweeter, too. Perfumey.

He smoked and he drove and I said nothing. The leather of the car seat stuck to my thighs.

On Concord Pike, he turned the engine off, sucked the last bit of his joint, then hopped out of the car. I followed. He leaned me against the side of a yellow recycling container, its ridiculous podlike shape silhouetted against the summer sky. He kissed me, our teeth making awkward contact between our lips. His tongue was in my mouth and I wondered what I should do with it. It was warm and wet. His smelled like my father’s cologne.

He searched for my breasts and I squirmed. He laughed and called me a prude. Cars fled past on the highway behind us.

It is now 2:10, according to my cell phone clock. I know there is something I should be doing. There is some responsibility, here. Instead, I touch his face, the stubble on his cheeks like sandpaper on my hand. His lips are thick and full, his eyes luminescently blue. I had forgotten how beautiful he was.

He has, apparently, let himself go quite a bit body-wise. His physique is not what it was fifteen years ago. The fat at his waistline spreads out around him. I poke his stomach. It is soft and yields to my finger. Once, he was a wrestler.

Now he lies, sprawled and contorted, one leg bent unnaturally to the right. The whole of his frame seems off center, as if his spine simply shifted a few spaces. There is a strange noise, suddenly, from his mouth. A gasp? A breath?

“What’s the matter with you?”

It was an accusation. I didn’t know how to respond to it. It was our third date. Or maybe our fifth. He held my hand at school. The other girls told me I was out of my mind to date him. He was “creepy”, said the senior girl with the jet black hair. She pulled me aside in the locker room, gripped my arm with her palm. Her hand easily circled the width of my forearm. “You should stay away from him,” she said, and I stared at her lanky frame in shorts and sports bra. Wondered why I couldn’t be so thin, so tall. I’d give anything to look like other girls. I’d give anything to be sexy.

“What’s the matter with you? Why do you always play so fucking hot and cold with me?” he said, words slurring. I wasn’t aware that I had been playing anything. I was just doing what I was told to do, I thought. He told me to lie down, I did. He told me to shut-up, I did. He told me that I called himtoofuckingmuchgoddamnityou’resofuckingpathetic, so I didn’t call. I sat with my hands in my lap. The car seat stuck to the back of my thighs. His voice echoed in the car, booming and angry from windshield to bumper. The words rang in my ears.

It is now almost 2:30. I am amazed that no cars have passed this way. There is a chill seeping through my skirt, up from the night ground. It is my work skirt, my classy skirt. I try so hard to be like other women. I buy the clothes, the shoes, the perfectly elegant earrings that match but don’t overwhelm the ensemble. My last boyfriend, Drew, said I was in disguise, that I was hiding. I drift away in bed, my mind always two clicks away. I am not present, in my body, when he enters me. It is easier that way.

At the office, I wear my poker face. The women at the vending machine call me uptight. They laugh while they plunk their change for another candy bar. My fingernail polish is perfectly applied, without bubbles.

I remember this. The playground at night, a week after my fifteenth birthday. Sticky air coated our skin, left us damp and irritable. He was angry with me. I couldn’t make a decision about where to eat dinner. He accused me of being too passive. Too silent. “Why don’t you fucking say something?” he said.

I remember this: he cut the engine, wordlessly. His anger is evident in every movement, the turn of the key, the slam of the door. The gruff words, “Get out.”

And so I did.

The playground at night. Cut grass against my back. My heart in my throat, my stomach in my heart. The moon was full, above. It was grey and round and majestically clear. Someone was screaming, choking sobs exploding from a dry throat. Someone, that night, was ripped apart.

Afterwards, he said he loved me. I was confused. I wiped my tears with the back of my hand, crawled through the grass to find my clothes. He drove me home. He seemed less angry, as though something had been resolved, some task accomplished. In the driveway of my parents house he kissed me, sweetly. My knees were shaking.

Inside I sat on the stairs, bones clattering. My mother greeted me, then passed into the kitchen. In the bathroom, I lowered my underwear. There were fallen oak leaves in the curve of fabric that fits between my legs. They were dry and brown, and crunched in my hand when I crushed them.

Too much time has passed. I need to do something. I am not a bad person. I am not the kind of person who sits while a man soaks blood into blacktop, arms and legs tossed about. I want to throw up, perhaps. I touch my hands to his neck where a sticky red streak is drying into a paste. I feel for a pulse. I do not, incidentally, know how to check for a pulse. I am hoping it will become obvious. I feel nothing, only the warmth from his skin. When I pull my fingers away, they are red.

I swallow, then open my cell phone.

In the time after, there is little I remember. A feeling like floating, a drifting in and out of reality. Staring at walls too much. At the beach with my family, I dug my toes into the sand, then stared as the flecks of mica and quartz danced on my toenails. Toes go in, then are lifted, then sparkledusted sand pours off. My mother said something to me. My father was laughing. I watched my toes and emptied my mind. It is best not to think about it, my brain said.

I stared into mirrors, I memorized the door jam. I watched the ceiling for signs of something. Somewhere, outside of me, voices asked questions. It is best not to think about it.

A car is approaching. I am not prepared for this. I crawl to my feet, peer past my car to see who is coming towards us. Headlights swerve left and right, and the sound of a revving engine rises. A packed car of teenagers swings past, laughter ringing from the windows. There is a sudden squeal of brakes as they stop the car just past where he is lying. A head pops out of the passenger side. A young man in sunglasses shouts, “What the fuck? Is he okay, lady?” A matching head pops out of the driver’s side, looking back at us. “Holy shit!” says that companion.

“He’s fine.” I say. “Just drunk.”

Their engine idles and the sound of their music bounces around the quiet street. They watch me for a moment. The heads drop back into the car, the engine revs, the taillights fade away. I hear the echo of one last burst of laughter before they turn onto Paper Mill Road.

I saw him again only once, after the night in the park. He was drunk. We ate at the Mall, his ample hands and ample body ingesting mountains of food at the TGIF restaurant. I stared at my plate. Watched the light of the overhead fluorescent bulbs glimmer in my baked potato.

Suddenly, from the ground, there is a noise. A cough. A groan, of sorts.

I open my cell phone. Intake air, then breathe out. Dial 911.

Tonight was an evening of thin stemmed glasses and puffs of cream on pastry shells. Folded cloth napkins and dried flowers as centerpieces. It was the engagement party of an old high school friend, hosted by her blushingly pregnant sister. Her house with the Southern front porch, its beams painted a fading white. The women at the table cooed their appropriate nonsense over the ring, the men said little. No one asked after my latest beau. No one wants to hear that I was dumped again. Someone asked me, “So how are you Marianne?” and I offer the usual pleasantries. Life is fine. Work is great. Couldn’t be better, see? I received smiles and nods in return, pathetic little offerings from acquaintances. Someone complemented me on my blouse. “I bought it on sale,” my voice replied.

The party ran far later than I had anticipated. I did not want to be the first to leave. I drank until I was giddy and the party goers, more entertaining. By one a.m, my buzz had worn off and I was again bored and dull. My hand, ringless. I headed out into the night near two to begin the hour long drive back to the city. The roads were empty and brisk. I had forgotten what it is like in the suburbs, to drive at night. Everyone is somewhere asleep.

I turned onto Cleveland Avenue and saw him. The lone figure on an empty street. I drove past, my head turning only slightly to register this figure. And then it registered. It is him. A face recognized in a split second. In the rearview mirror I saw that he was crossing the street. My body moved. My hand turned the wheel, my foot shifted to brake, then gas. I made a uturn then headed forward. The tires of my SUV screamed on the asphalt.
He was almost across the road when I made contact. His body collided with a soft thud.

“You think you’re something special?” he said, his body sprawled on the living room couch. Upstairs, his mom made grilled cheese sandwiches and sang Patsy Cline off-key.

“No. Of course not.”

“I’m just saying. I don’t want you to get a big ego or anything. I don’t want you to think you’re some hot shit or something. I mean—you’re not too bad looking. But, you know what I mean, you aren’t one of those girls. The head turning kind of girl. Leggy and busty. You know what I mean. I just think you need to be careful. You start to think of yourself as too special—you’re going to get your heart broke. I’m just trying to be honest. That’s the kind of guy I am.”

Thank you. That’s helpful. Thank you.

The open phone in my palm waits for me to press the green call button. The white numbers against the black background stare out. There is a small, desperate groan. I close the phone. My heels sing against the asphalt as I walk back to the car.