The Abstinence Teacher

  She had only one real problem with her parents, but it was a big one: they were just so depressing. With Mandy around, she had barely noticed. Now, though, Ruth had no choice but to observe her mother and father during their interminable, mostly silent family dinners, and wonder how it was possible that two reasonably attractive, reasonably intelligent people could sleep in the same bed and have so little interest in what the other was thinking or feeling. They rarely spoke a kind or curious word to each other, and hardly ever laughed when they were together. They did kiss good-bye in the morning, but the act seemed utterly mechanical, no more tender or meaningful than when her father patted his back pocket on the way out the door to make sure his wallet was there. They paid so little attention to each other that a stranger might have assumed they’d been randomly assigned to live together, roommates who wanted nothing more than to keep out of each other’s way.

  It hadn’t always been like this, though. Ruth had the photographic evidence to prove it—wedding albums, honeymoon snapshots, happy family portraits from when she and her sister were little. In the old pictures, her mother and father smiled, they touched, they looked at each other. So what happened? Every now and then, when Ruth was alone with her mother, she tried to find out.

  “Is something wrong? Are you and Dad mad at each other?”

  “Not at all. Everything’s fine.”

  “Fine? You never even talk to him.”

  “We talk all the time. We have a very good relationship.”

  Conversations like this made Ruth glad her mother had gone back to work full-time, which meant that she at least had a few hours to herself when she got home from school, some time to mellow out and do her homework in peace. It hadn’t mattered so much in the fall, when Ruth had been a jayvee cheerleader, an activity that kept her busy in the afternoons and gave her a ready-made social life. But she’d hung up her pompoms at the end of football season—she just wasn’t peppy enough—and immediately found herself exiled from the clique of pretty, popular girls she’d drifted into freshman year, coasting on the widespread misconception that she was a younger version of Mandy, who actually was a pretty and popular varsity cheerleader, though she now regretted it on feminist grounds.

  All Ruth really knew as that fateful April cracked open was that she was living in a kind of limbo, a waiting period between what had happened before and what would happen next. Temporarily sisterless and friendless, she spent a lot of time in a state of vague anticipation, staring at the phone, willing it to ring, hoping to hear a friendly voice on the other end, a mystery boy who confessed that he’d been watching her and thinking about her, and wouldn’t she like to put away her homework and maybe have a little fun?

  SO IT was nice to suddenly have a regular date with Paul Caruso, even if it didn’t amount to anything more than a fifteen-minute walk home from the bus stop. They hit it off right away, slipping easily past the awkwardness of the first day into a realm of relaxed intimacy that made her feel like they’d been friends for years instead of neighbors who’d barely acknowledged each other’s existence until a few days ago.

  He confided in her about his troubles with Missy, who’d become increasingly clingy as they approached the end of high school. They were heading to different colleges—she’d been recruited to play soft-ball at the U. of Delaware; he was going to major in Music at William Paterson—and Paul had no illusions that they could survive as a couple beyond the end of summer. But Missy was adamant about committing to a long-distance relationship.

  “It never works,” he told her. “Have you ever heard of a case where it works?”

  Ruth liked the serious way he asked these questions, as if she were a mature adult with a wide experience of the world, someone he could count on for good advice.

  “It didn’t work for my sister,” she said. “And she and Rich were only an hour apart. I guess she just wanted to make a fresh start or something.”

  “That’s kinda how I’m feeling,” Paul admitted. “But I don’t know how to say it. Missy’s just so emotional these days. She cries over every little thing.”

  Ruth usually considered herself a compassionate person, but she found it impossible to scrape up any sympathy for Missy, who refused to say hi to her in the halls even though they’d spent several Saturday mornings together in the fall, sorting glass and metal at the Recycling Center. Ruth just hated that, the way someone could be so nice to you one day, then cut you dead the next.

  “She’s probably just scared,” Ruth speculated. “About going away and everything.”

  “Personally, I can’t wait. I mean, don’t you think it gets a little boring around here?”

  “A little?” she said, and he gave a knowing laugh that made her feel thrillingly conspiratorial, like the two of them knew something that crybaby Missy didn’t.

  Every day she followed him inside and set his backpack and trumpet down on the kitchen table, then suffered through an excruciating moment of suspense, waiting for him to ask if she’d like a sandwich or a soda, or even a glass of ice water, but he never did. It was as if he’d taken her refusal on the first day as a statement of principle, a philosophical objection to food and drink.

  THE WEATHER turned warm at the end of April, a glorious stretch of perfect days—birdsong, blue sky, blossoms dropping from fruit trees in little blizzards of pink and green. If Ruth had owned a dog, she would’ve taken it for a walk, but instead she changed into terry-cloth gym shorts and a T-shirt, spread a beach towel out on the lawn of her backyard, and lay down on top of it, her face to the sun. She could hear the sound of Paul’s trumpet wafting out from his bedroom window, quivering in the air above her. He was playing a jazzed-up version of “My Favorite Things,” and she let herself imagine that he was watching her from his window, including her among the raindrops and roses and brown-paper packages.

  Even at that age—especially at that age—Ruth wasn’t in the habit of thinking of herself as beautiful. At best, she figured, she was a 6 on the 1-10 scale that lots of ugly, obnoxious boys were happy to use on girls, but wouldn’t have dreamed of applying to themselves. She believed that she deserved an above-average score due to the fact that there was nothing obviously wrong with her—she had a decent body and an okay face, no weird moles or facial hair or skin problems, nothing disfigured or bizarrely out of proportion. On the other hand, she lacked any of the truly outstanding features that would have qualified for the top group—her boobs were little, her face “cute” rather than “pretty,” her hair mousy and a bit limp. You developed a fairly realistic assessment of yourself growing up in the shadow of an older sister who’d been turning the heads of grown men since she was twelve. If Mandy had been out here in her string bikini—she was a devoted sun worshipper, always happy for an excuse to show some skin—Ruth would’ve made sure to stay far away, out of range of unkind comparisons. But today she was alone, without a doubt the prettiest girl in the yard, and she wished she’d been brave enough to wear a bathing suit or at least a tube top, to allow her body to be appreciated on its own modest terms.

  She picked up the copy of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues that she’d checked out of the library on Paul’s recommendation, and tried to get started. But it was hard to coax her mind into visualizing an imaginary reality when the one right in front of her was so vividly and insistently alive—the marshmallow clouds drifting overhead, the garden ducks pinwheeling their wooden wings in the breeze, the inchworm making its ticklish journey up her shin. At some point she realized that the music had stopped, and couldn’t keep herself from casting an anxious glance at Paul’s bedroom window. But all she saw was the sunlight reflecting off the glass, a blinding glare where his face would’ve been.

  THE NEXT day they were careful with each other on the way home from school, less talkative than usual. They had already turned onto their block by the time Paul asked her if she was enjoying the Tom Robbins novel.

  “I’m not really sure,” she said. “I tried to read it yesterday, but I couldn
’t concentrate.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. I guess my mind was on other things.”

  “That’s weird,” he said. “I was trying to practice my trumpet and the same thing happened to me. Couldn’t keep my mind on the music.”

  “Spring fever.”

  “Must be.”

  Her heart felt big and jumpy as she followed him into the kitchen, certain that they’d crossed a point of no return. She set his stuff on the table and turned to him with a solemn expression.

  “So,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he agreed.

  She didn’t really know where to go from here, how you got from the talking to the rest of it, and he seemed just as baffled as she was, though he had less excuse, being older and more experienced. They stared at each other until the silence got embarrassing. She addressed her next question to the floor.

  “I guess you have to practice, huh?”

  “An hour a day.”

  “You’re really disciplined.”

  “What about you?” he asked. “Will you be out in the yard?”

  “Probably.” She hesitated for a moment, giving him one more chance to save her. “I guess I better go, huh?”

  All he had to do was say, No, don’t go. Stay here with me for a while. But he didn’t say anything, didn’t make the smallest gesture to stop her, which made it impossible for her to do anything but leave. She could feel the frustration in his eyes as she headed for the door. It was painful, like being trapped in a bad dream where all you had to do was say one thing, but you didn’t know the words.

  RUTH LAY down on her towel in a purple one-piece bathing suit and pretended to read. It was a kind of torture, knowing how close he was, how simple it would be if she could only find the courage to take matters into her own hands, to walk across the lawn and ring his doorbell.

  He was playing his trumpet again, but it was just scales, no more songs that might be secret messages, and the mechanical up-and-down-and-up of it started to drive her a little crazy, as monotonous as a chain saw or an ice-cream-truck jingle. She rolled onto her stomach, sealed her ears with her index fingers, and forced herself to concentrate on the novel. The story was ridiculous—something about a girl with big thumbs and her friend named Bonanza Jellybean—and it suddenly seemed like Paul had made a fool of her, convincing her to lie outside in a bathing suit and read this stupid book for nothing.

  For nothing.

  She cried out in frustration and scrambled to her feet, leaving the towel and the book behind as she hurried across the lawn to her house. She had just reached the patio when she heard a window being raised. Paul poked his head outside, peering down at her from the second floor.

  “Ruthie,” he said. He’d never called her that before, and she felt a warm blush spreading across her face.

  “Yeah?”

  “The back door’s open.”

  WHAT AMAZED her wasn’t that she went to him, crossing the lawn in her bathing suit, letting herself in, and climbing the stairs to his bedroom. That part of it was a foregone conclusion, all she’d been waiting for since the first day they had walked home together. What amazed her was what she did when she got there.

  It was mystifying, really. She was a month away from her sixteenth birthday, and still fairly innocent, at least compared to a lot of girls she knew. She’d played a few rounds of spin-the-bottle in junior high, and had kissed three different boys in her first two years of high school. The most recent one, Scott Molloy, had touched her breasts, but only briefly, and only through her bra.

  Ruth really didn’t know how to account for the recklessness—the complete absence of fear—that came over her the moment she stepped into his room. He just looked so harmless—so sweet and nervous—sitting on the bed, the trumpet resting on his bedside table next to a bag of Ruffles, his injured foot propped on a pillow. He started to say something complicated—it was part apology for keeping her waiting so long, mixed in with guilty mutterings about Missy—but she shushed him with a kiss and started fumbling with his belt. His mouth tasted like tuna on rye.

  “Ruth?” His voice trembled slightly, as if she were about to burn him with a cigarette. “What are you doing?”

  “Let’s find out,” she told him.

  It had something to do with Mandy, Ruth understood that much, because she had the distinct impression that her sister was watching her, an invisible third person in the room, smiling with approval as she unzipped Paul’s fly and tugged his pants down to his knees, nodding in encouragement as she peeled off her bathing suit and tossed it on the floor.

  “Ruth?” Paul said again. “Are you sure—”

  She pressed a finger to his lips as she climbed on top of him.

  Go ahead, Mandy seemed to say. Don’t be afraid. It’ll only hurt a little, and then it’ll get better.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered, reaching down and guiding him inside. And it did hurt, a lot more than she’d expected, though she tried not to show it, still keenly aware of the sensation of being judged by her sister, of proving herself to a beloved teacher.

  Because, of course, that was how Ruth had learned everything she knew, lying in bed at night, listening drowsy and aroused to Mandy’s half-sheepish, half-triumphant confessions about what she had and hadn’t done with this boy or that—the first time she made Billy Frelinghausen hard with her hand, the first time she used her mouth on Danny Wirth, the night she lost her virginity in Rich Lodi’s parents’ bedroom, with a gallery of family photos smiling down upon her.

  But this is different, Ruth thought, as Paul released a series of astonished grunts beneath her. Mandy had been working up to that for years, taking things one step at a time, inching methodically toward the goal line. She’d had serious boyfriends since eighth grade, and had somehow managed to postpone sexual intercourse all the way to the end of high school, and to save herself for a boy she really believed she loved.

  “Ho, God!” Paul shouted. He seemed to have overcome his doubts, and was bucking his hips wildly, almost like he was trying to throw her off the bed. “Holy shit!”

  For as long as she could remember, Ruth had felt herself trailing far behind her sister, so far that she couldn’t even see her anymore. But now, in a matter of just a few minutes, in a single giant leap forward, she’d gotten herself all caught up.

  “Jesus.” Paul stared at her in bewilderment when it was over. His face was slick with sweat, his hair plastered against his cheek. “I just thought we were gonna make out a little.”

  IT LASTED for a little over two weeks. There was a feverish quality to those stolen afternoons that Ruth had never forgotten, a hectic intensity that left her feeling exalted, set apart from the world.

  They’d head straight to his bedroom after school, yank down the shades, and pick up right where they’d left off the day before. Because of his limited mobility, Paul spent most of this time flat on his back, with his shirt still on (he was shy about his body) and his pants down around his knees (it was a big production to get them off over the cast), staring up at Ruth with an expression of awestruck gratitude as she sat astride his waist, basking in his admiration. He couldn’t believe his good luck, couldn’t believe that something so miraculous had been made possible by a broken ankle.

  “It seemed like such a drag at the time,” he said. “But it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “You mean it?”

  “Nothing even comes close.”

  At four o’clock she’d kiss him good-bye and head home, her body ripe and sore and unfamiliar, a subject of constant fascination. Sometimes she’d shower, but usually not—it was exciting to possess a sexual aura, to move around inside the memory of what she’d just done, an outlaw in her own house. Schoolwork was out of the question, so she occupied herself by cooking dinner, singing along with the radio as she peeled the potatoes or tossed the salad. Even her mother, usually so dense and indifferent, noticed that something was afoot.

&
nbsp; “You seem so cheerful lately,” she said. “If I didn’t know better, I might think someone had a boyfriend.”

  “Yeah, right.” Ruth rolled her eyes.

  “Pretty soon,” her mother told her. “Just you wait.”

  IF SHE’D been a character in one of JoAnn Marlow’s abstinence fables, Ruth thought, she would have paid dearly for that brief interlude of after-school pleasure, and spent the rest of her life enshrined in a cautionary anecdote: Poor Ruth, who found out she was pregnant on her sixteenth birthday; Poor Ruth, who went blind from a rare venereal disease; Poor Ruth, who was exposed as the little slut she was, and driven out of her own high school. …

  And it could have happened, of course, at least the pregnancy. In all their time together, Paul had never once used a condom, and Ruth never asked him to; it just seemed out of the question somehow, too bald and practical, as if they were operating in the real world of choices and consequences, rather than this sealed-off dream capsule where you could do whatever you wanted and not worry about anything. Sexually transmitted diseases, on the other hand, were a nonissue; Paul turned out to be as inexperienced as she was, though his virginity was more a matter of his girlfriend’s preference than his own.

  Missy won’t do that, was a constant refrain on those afternoons, a phrase that not only applied to actual sex, but to less momentous stuff like ear-licking, or finger-sucking, or letting Paul see what you looked like in just your underwear and socks. She thinks it’s gross.

  “Why don’t you break up with her?” Ruth asked.

  “I can’t do it now,” he explained. “Not this close to graduation.”

  SHE HAD only one bad memory from those days, but it had stuck with her over the years, its power undiminished by the passage of time. It happened on a warm evening near the end of school, a couple of weeks after Paul’s cast came off and he was reclaimed by real life, Missy, and the marching band. Ruth was in the kitchen, helping her mother clean up after dinner when her father called from the living room.