Uses for Boys (12 page)

The girl smiles up at an older woman, a mother or an aunt, and the woman smiles back
at her. The water for the macaroni comes to a boil. I look at the family, each one
touching another one. Some casually on the shoulder or with their arms around another
one. I strain the macaroni and mix it with the orange powder, the butter and the milk.
Another girl, a younger one, squints into the sun. I take my dinner to the bed and
turn on the TV. When I’m done I carry the bowl to the sink and turn out the light
but leave the TV on for company. I lie in bed listening to the voices on the television
until I fall asleep.

sam

Sometimes kids come into the cafe after school and sometimes I’m invisible to them.
I want someone to ask me why I’m there. Why I’m not in school. I want someone to recognize
that I’m a kid just like they are.

And then Sam does. He’s a skinny boy with hair in his eyes studying with three other
kids.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Do you work here?” he says but then he laughs because I’m behind the counter wearing
an apron and making a hot chocolate that he ordered.

After a while. “Hey,” he says again.

“Hey,” I say, but quietly, so he can’t hear it above the espresso machine. His friends
are all sitting at a table, thick, highlighted books open in front of them.

Before he leaves he comes back again. “I’m Sam,” he says and he holds out his hand.
I wipe mine on my apron and then take his.

“I’m Anna.”

the river

Saturday. No Toy. She hasn’t been back for days. She doesn’t answer the phone. I get
dressed and it’s getting warmer and it’s easier, I think, to be in the city without
Toy. I get to be the girl in the black dress. I get to be the romantic one with nobody
to contradict me. No best friend to remind me of what I’m not.

Finally, Sunday. My date with Sam. The stores are closed and the sidewalk is empty.
Nobody sees me. I pass the liquor store, the grocery store, the park blocks. I pass
office buildings, ivy-covered restaurants, boarded-up strip clubs. Down by the water,
it’s as if I have the river to myself. I lean over the railing, looking at the muddy
gray.

“Anna,” I imagine him saying it. I imagine how I look, leaning over the railing with
the sun warming the backs of my calves like a blush. I’m wearing the black dress and
black Converse and I have a sweatshirt tied around my waist. One leg kicks up as I
lean over. The dress rises in the back and my hair falls forward. I try to hold the
position, because I can imagine how it looks like I’m falling, but I’m not.

I lift both feet from the ground and think about the picture of Toy dropping from
the sky.

“Anna,” he says and this time it’s for real. He stands behind me, looking past me
at the indeterminate color of the river. The sun is still unfamiliar and I slide down,
turn around, and squint.

“Sam,” I say. We made a date, but I guess I thought he wouldn’t come. His eyes flicker
and stop on mine. He has little crinkles when he smiles. He’s smiling and so am I.

Suddenly the park is full of people, joggers and children and dogs. We get spare changed,
we get busked. We don’t know what to say. Sam is my age and that makes him seem so
young. But he’s tall, really tall, and floppy and his hands are large.

We lean together against the railing over the slow-moving river. Now I’m a character
in a black-and-white movie, a working girl out with her boy on the waterfront. I’m
sixteen years old and Sam and I wear identical black Converse. I can feel my face
crinkling too.

“Anna?” Sam says.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he says. And then he says it again. “Anna?”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

We walk to the end of the park and down the steps to the water. A dead fish, larger
than any fish I’ve ever seen, rotting. A tire. Three plastic bottles, one Coke, two
water, bobbing. Sam takes off his jacket and spreads it out on the dock. I sit cross-legged,
leaning forward. The sun casts out over the river and Sam sits cross-legged too, leaning
back on his hands.

He admires my skin in the deep V in the back of the dress, then leans forward and
touches it, lightly. His touch startles me. I don’t expect it. I don’t know what to
expect. He touches me, then stops and leans back. Just enough.

He’s looking at the water and he’s looking at me. I’m talking about the stepbrothers.
I have funny stories about the stepbrothers.

“Where are they now?” he asks and I say I don’t know. They left when their father
left. All that’s left, I say, is a pair of perfectly broken-in Levi’s.

“My favorite jeans,” I say and we talk about his family. His mom and dad and little
sister and older brother. They live at the edge of downtown in a cluster of old Victorian
houses. Not that far from my apartment.

“Come to dinner,” he says and I picture me with his family around a big table, napkins
in our laps. What would we talk about? What would they think of me? I don’t know about
parents, I think. Self-conscious now, I sit up straighter and look at him. Does he
really want me to meet his family? My cheeks are sun-flushed and tight. Sam smiles
into my face and says that he’s hungry, that everybody would be happy to meet me.

“I can’t,” I say. But it doesn’t hold up.

“Why not?” he asks.

And by the time the sun has leaned into the distance, I’m walking to his house.

a real family

Sam’s house is everything I wanted, but didn’t know to want.

“I’m home,” he calls, pushing open the heavy wooden door with me close behind. Past
him, worn hardwood floors stretch through archways into a patchwork of deeply colored
rugs. The house thrums with the smell of roasting meat, the murmur of voices, rustling
movement. There are thick curtains in muted patterns draping the windows and sheltering
Sam’s family from the city outside.

I want to wrap myself in this house like a blanket.

Instinctively I take Sam’s hand and then, just as quickly, I drop it. He keeps walking
but I’m still in the entry, fixed in front of a wall of framed family pictures. Dozens
of them: here is Sam and a similarly featured little sister; a solemn and masculine
brother; and the mother, casual, relaxed and happy. Here is a bookish bearded father.
Black-and-white. Color. The house is warm and I feel flushed. This home pulses with
their shared life. I don’t belong here. I turn to leave, but Sam puts his hand against
my back.

“Look, this is when I was three.” He points to a picture of a squirming boy in his
mother’s lap. Her arms tight around him. But I’m caught by another picture. A shot
of them all together. A composite of kindred features, like a repeating theme of crinkly
smiles. A moment, a little blurry of everyone looking in one direction, at something
that’s happening off-camera, everyone laughing and leaning against everyone else.

“I have to go,” I say, but it comes out in a whisper and when I look up, Sam’s mom
is standing in front of me.

“Hello,” she says, holding out her hand. She wears no makeup, and looks at me with
honest, even eyes. Gray mixes with blond in her hair. She gives me a strong handshake.

“Hi.”

“Mom, this is Anna,” Sam says. “Can she stay for dinner?”

“Sure, Anna.” She looks at me. “Do your folks know you’re here?” she asks. And of
course I have nothing to say to that.

dinner

We’re upstairs in Sam’s bedroom. He leaves the door open. Here are a lifetime of interests:
posters of the night sky, an electric guitar, a skateboard, piles of books and magazines.
He has heavy wooden furniture. Adult furniture. Solid. He has a bed with a headboard
and a desk with a matching chair.

“My grandparents,” he says, meaning the furniture. I sit down at his desk and look
through his school books. I can see Sam at the center of his life. Connected.

Hours earlier he kissed me, just lightly, catching me unaware as I studied the river.
He doesn’t kiss me now, but leans against the bed, watching me.

“Hungry?” he asks, and I am. His dad steps into the doorway.

“Dinner’s ready.”

*   *   *

Sam’s family tumbles out of their rooms to the kitchen. Everyone’s talking at once.
We each carry a dish to the dining room, mashed potatoes with bits of skin; a crusty
steak cut in long strips, showing red in the middle; green beens with bell peppers,
everything in rough heavy dishes. Sam points to a pitcher of water and I carry that.
He carries the beans and his older brother grabs a stack of mismatched cloth napkins
and a handful of silverware. Sam’s father takes off his apron and sighs.

“That’s that,” he says.

I sit next to Sam and his brother reaches across the table and shakes my hand.

“I’m Mark,” he says and then they all start talking. Sam’s sister tells a story about
three girls from school. Nobody likes them.

“What does that mean, nobody likes them?” her father asks. Sam’s mom, in a soft shirt
and faded jeans, talks to Mark about his car.

“How much work does it need?” she asks.

Sam explains to his dad about the three girls and his voice combines with the others.
Rising and falling with the sounds of the silverware. I arrange the slivers of steak
around the mashed potatoes and the green beans. It’s all so good. I keep stretching
to take another piece of steak or spoon of potatoes and Sam’s mom looks over and smiles.
Then she turns back to say something about Mark’s transmission.

I look at each of them, from one to another, puzzling over their similarity. I measure
their features, their expressions, their posture. I can’t place it. And then I do.
They dress alike. Like a tribe. Not in the same clothes or the same fabrics, but everything
fits the same way, layers in the same way, there’s an unconscious way of combining
color so that I might recognize them as a family even if I just saw their laundry
piled together.

Sam wears a blue T-shirt with a worn neck and a plaid shirt that I find out later
is his brother’s. I’m tracing how Sam’s curls are the twins of his sister’s when she
stops talking and looks at me.

“I like your dress,” she says and I blush even though Toy and I always say that nothing
can make me blush. It’s the black dress, of course, and I have a necklace made out
of a chain and a bit of frayed black ribbon. Everyone turns to look at me and I get
so hot that I’m sure my chest, framed by the square neckline, is bright red.

“It’s from the sixties, isn’t it?” Sam’s mom says. “I love those dresses, they’re
so pretty.” She turns to her daughter. “I think I have one, Em,” she says. “You should
look and see if it fits you.”

“It’s pretty,” Sam says, looking at me, crinkling. Mark looks at me and the dress,
and then turns back to his dad and asks something about the car.

*   *   *

Sam walks me home like it’s a real date. Kisses me at the door to my apartment building.
I wear his jean jacket to stay warm and he lets me keep it. I lean against his chest,
close my eyes, and picture how we look, silhouetted against the brick building. I
save every second to tell Toy. Now I have a romantic story that rivals hers. Sam’s
gone all week, it’s Spring Break, but he promises to meet me next Monday, after I
get off work and he gets out of school.

Monday feels too far away, but I don’t say that.

“Bye,” he says.

“Bye,” I say and I go up to my apartment and turn on the lights. I turn on the TV
so the room will be filled with voices. I take off the black dress and hang it from
a hook on the wall. It’s dark outside and my little apartment is warm and full of
light. I listen to the TV and watch the dress until I fall asleep.

where i belong

When I wake up in the morning, at first I can’t tell what’s different. And then I
remember. Sam’s family. The sound of silverware against plates and talking and everyone
asking questions and interrupting. And the way sometimes I forgot and it felt like
I belonged there. The parts that I forgot to remember to tell Toy. The worn cloth
napkins and how everyone carried their dish to the sink and how Sam and I washed and
Em, Sam’s sister, dried.

I scrub my face clean and wear a striped shirt like Jean Seberg with skinny jeans
and flat shoes and I curl my eyelashes and wear mascara and my cheeks are pink and
my hair is light and curls slightly and hangs in my eyes and I know. I know that everyone
else will see it too. I wear Sam’s jacket and a cotton scarf and I storm through the
park blocks. The cherry blossoms rage around me. And when I get to work, cappuccinos
are made! Lattes! The tea is piping hot! Miguel is singing and my apron is tight around
my waist and even the women with painted nails leave me a tip.

I replay the day with Sam. I can see us stretching into the future, me in his jacket
and his arm around my shoulders. I’m bursting. I call Toy after work and the phone
just rings and rings. I walk down to the river where Sam kissed me and I stare at
the water. I find a pay phone and call Toy again. Nothing. I walk over to the train
station and back up to my apartment as the sky gets soft and dark and the warm spring
rain starts.

The city, I remember, is full of possibilities.

Back in the apartment the black dress still hangs on the wall and the pictures of
girls in summer dresses gaze at me, their faces turned toward the light.

But it’s early and there’s only Top Ramen to eat. I go back out to the pay phone and
try calling Toy again. Nothing. I hang up and then I call again. And then I hang up
and call again. But no one answers.

I call my mom, but she doesn’t answer either. I rest my forehead against the earpiece.
It’s dark outside and I go back to my apartment and think about Sam’s house. I turn
on all the lights and the TV and I boil water for tea and I draw a bath, but I don’t
get in.

*   *   *

The next morning I’m back at the cafe. I wish it wasn’t Spring Break and that Sam
would come after school. Just surprise me, like he couldn’t wait to see me. I imagine
hearing him say, “Hey.” And turning and seeing him standing there. I turn the image
over like a secret stone.