Tully

FIVE Jennifer

March 1979

The days spun on. Their pattern was the same, small and uninspired, but each blade of grass brought with it the field of spring, each rainfall washed away the smell of winter. Each breeze carried off the last of winter air. The process was slow, of each tree’s and flower’s rebirth, of each day’s light getting longer by the minute and nightfall’s coming yet later and later. Had they all seen what was growing in the spring of all their lives, they would have paid more attention to those petty things that slip by so unnoticed, so unremembered. Time, however, is slow when nothing happens; and those cracks in the foundation seemed so unrelated, so trivial, that each incident was absorbed and forgotten, the way breakfast and sunset are forgotten – as part of the sameness that filled everyone’s days, especially theirs, especially the days of the young, when they gulped the air and lived to see the better world, the grown-up world, when they could not wait for the days to end so that they could get on with the rest of their lives.

February snowed into March. And in March, it rained.

The smell of spring came with the winds and the storms. There was a tornado alert every day, and rain every day, and sun every day, too. A typical Kansas March.

Tully was busy with Robin, with keeping him away from her mother, and busy keeping herself away from her mother. She received a small scare in the first week of March when she found a letter addressed to Hedda Makker in the mailbox one afternoon. What surprised Tully about the letter wasn’t that it was addressed to Hedda Makker, but that the address was handwritten. Hedda, besides bills, never received anything – certainly nothing handwritten. Upon closer examination, Tully noticed Hedda was misspelled. Heda Makker, it said. The Grove. Okay, thought Tully, and took it upon herself to commit a federal offense.

She was glad she did when she tore open the envelope. ‘Mrs Makker,’ the note said. ‘Your daughter is fooling around with my boyfriend. A lot. Every week. She stole him from me and now she’s lying to you every Wednesday and Sunday.’

The note was unsigned. Tully wasn’t so much stunned by the arrival of the note. She half expected some form of sabotage. What surprised her was the depth and accuracy of Gail’s knowledge. Not only did she know what days Tully met Robin, but she also knew to a useful extent the difficulties Tully had with her mother.

Tully tore up the letter, deciding to keep very quiet about it to everyone. She figured that Gail must have gotten all that information from the guileless, unsuspecting Julie, who was in the same English class. If Gail now thought her ploy had succeeded in getting Tully in deep shit, then she wouldn’t attempt any more war missions.

Julie was busy with the debating society, the history club, the current events club. ‘Talk is the one four-letter word you and Tom can enjoy together,’ Tully called it.

Jennifer continued to lose weight.

Monday, March 12, at Sunset Court, when Jennifer left the kitchen for a moment, Tully mentioned the weight loss to Lynn Mandolini. Lynn got a little defensive, saying her daughter never looked better.

‘Mrs Mandolini, yes, twenty pounds ago she never looked better. I’ll be surprised if she is a hundred and ten now.’

‘Oh, Tully!’ said Lynn, lighting up and taking a drink. ‘A hundred and ten! Really!’

‘Jen,’ said Tully when Jennifer returned. ‘How much do you weigh?’

Jennifer looked as if she’d been hit. ‘I – I don’t know. Why?’

‘Jennifer, you used to get on the scale twice a day. How much do you weigh now?’

‘Tully, don’t badger her!’ Lynn said loudly.

‘Mom, Mom. It’s okay. I weigh about a hundred and fifteen,’ answered Jennifer.

Lynn looked at Tully with an I-told-you-so look. Tully stared back defiantly.

‘Oh, I see,’ she said. ‘One hundred fifteen. Would you say that’s about a thirty-five-pound loss since September?’

Later, when they were alone, Tully said, ‘Mandolini, you lie. You lie. How much do you really weigh?’

‘Tully, I did not lie – ’

‘Jennifer, stop! I know your lying face even if your own mother doesn’t. Now, how much?’

Jennifer mumbled something.

‘What?’ said Tully.

‘Ninety-six,’ whispered Jennifer.

Tully was cold for the rest of the evening.

Later that night, in her own home, she slept, after hours of anxious restlessness, after counting 1,750 or 2,750 sheep. She slept at her desk, wind blowing about the curtains and her hair. Her hands were under her face, between her and the wood. Tully slept and dreamed that she was in the desert. She was walking in the desert by herself, she was completely alone, and she was thirsty. It seemed that she had walked for days and had not drunk for days. God! how she wanted to drink. To drink or to die, thought Tully in the desert.

‘Julie, there is something very wrong with Jennifer,’ said Tully, Tuesday morning, March 13, right after homeroom. Julie seemed a little absent-minded. ‘I think she’s anorexic.’

‘Are you crazy?’

‘Julie, I know you haven’t been paying attention to a lot of things lately, but don’t tell me you haven’t noticed Jennifer is now thinner than me.’

Julie looked thoughtful. ‘Well, maybe she does seem a little thin, but –’

‘Julie!’ Tully exclaimed. ‘She is ninety-six pounds! Ninety-six!’

Julie turned red and said, ‘Tully, don’t scream at me! Yes, that seems very thin. Sick, even. But what do you want me to do about it?’

‘Julie!’ Tully folded her hands together, pleading. ‘Don’t you care?’

‘Tully, of course I care. But I have an English report to write by sixth period, and after school we’re going to the Statehouse on a fact-finding mission – Look, she’s always been a little plump and she lost weight lately. And you kind of gained weight lately.’

Tully shook her head. ‘Don’t you get it? I haven’t gained weight lately. And Jen hasn’t just lost weight, she is sick.’

‘I’ve got to get to class,’ said Julie. ‘We’ll talk to her.’

‘You and your stupid fact-finding mission. Where have you been all these months? Where? I don’t know who has more of a problem. Do you know Jen got sixty-fives in all her classes and that’s only because the teachers felt sorry for her? Do you know she has not passed one test since January and is still failing everything?’

‘How do you know that?’ asked Julie, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

‘I know, that’s how. I know because I was talking in gym to two girls who are in Jen’s math class. They told me Mr Schmidt is worried about Jennifer. He keeps talking to his students about her.’

The bell rang. Julie sped down the hall. ‘We’ll talk to her, we will,’ she yelled.

Tully stared after Julie dumbly. Wanting to feel better, she had approached Julie, but now she felt worse. Books pressed hard against her chest, Tully went to class with a punched-in-the-stomach worry.

Four days later, on St Patrick’s Day, at eleven in the morning, Tully passed her driving test. Jennifer was with her.

‘I guess Saint Paddy listened to my prayers,’ said Tully, smiling.

‘Guess so,’ said Jennifer.

‘Thanks for teaching me how to drive, Jen.’

‘You’re welcome, Tully,’ said Jennifer.

Tuesday, March 20, after school, Julie gingerly approached Jennifer. She had wanted to do it earlier, or over the weekend, but there was so much to do. The president of the history club asked her to talk about Indonesia’s involvement in World War II, and she knew nothing about it. Today she had her current events club meeting, but she hadn’t read the paper over the weekend or Time or Newsweek on Monday, so she decided to spend Tuesday afternoon with Jennifer instead.

‘So, Jen, how is everything?’ Julie said as the girls ambled down 10th Street to Wayne.

‘Fine, thanks,’ Jennifer replied, kicking stones out from under her feet.

‘You and Tully excited about Stanford?’

‘Tully’s going to UC in Santa Cruz. She’s pretty excited.’

‘What about you? Are you excited?’

‘For sure,’ said Jennifer.

Julie just did not want to ask Jennifer, just did not. She did not want to bring up a subject Jennifer so obviously had no interest in discussing. How long ago did Tully and Julie stop teasing Jen about her crush on Jack? January? When Julie made some silly remark about how Jennifer could not hide her obsession with Jack’s butt, and Tully glared at her and Jennifer looked away. Julie never brought the subject up again, but now, two months later, she wondered why she never asked Tully about it. Why she never asked Tully if something happened between Jennifer and Jack.

Julie sensed uneasily that something had happened. Something happened to make Jennifer go from a plump, content girl to a darkening shadow. But, truthfully, Julie just did not want to deal with it. Just did not want to, and Julie felt ashamed on this windy, sunny March afternoon as the girls walked to Julie’s house. Ashamed that Jennifer’s heart was too much for Julie to help heal because it would take so much time and so much energy and so much of their day, which, instead of being spent in jokes and TV and their senior year, goddamn it! would be spent in tears.

Julie lowered her head; and when she did, she remembered school days the last few months when she would see Jack stroll by and smile his jock smile and feel Jennifer physically stiffen, remembered her own lowered head at this sight – of smiling Jack and stiff Jennifer – and Julie recognized that then, too, she was lowering her head in shame.

Julie looked at Jennifer’s gaunt, pale face. Her lips used to be so red, but now were bluish pink. All the highlights were out of Jennifer’s hair and it looked a lot like Tully’s hair before she had it bleached and permed for her eighteenth in January. Jennifer’s body was well hidden by a long, loose black skirt (Tully’s?) and a large sweatshirt. That’s all Jennifer wore nowadays. Loose skirts and large shirts. Ninety-six? Was it possible? And what to do about it? Julie cleared her throat.

‘Jen, have you lost weight?’

‘God!’ Jennifer said in a raised, exasperated voice. ‘What is it with you people? Everybody keeps asking me the same question! Can’t you be original and ask me something else? What about how I’m doing in school –’

‘Jennifer, how are you doing in school?’ said Julie quietly.

‘Great! I actually got a sixty-two on my English lit exam. Mr Lederer said I was improving. Anything else?’

‘Yes,’ said Julie. ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’

Jennifer did not reply.

At Julie’s house, they played with Julie’s two youngest brothers, Vinnie and Angelo. Jennifer seemed to cheer up a little playing with Vinnie, who was her particular favorite because he would latch on to her and not let go until she left.

She did leave, though, before dinner, saying she wanted to eat at home. Julie walked her to Wayne and 10th, and they stopped at the corner.

Julie skipped a beat and said, ‘Jennifer, tell me what’s bothering you.’

‘Nothing, Julie,’ said Jennifer. ‘I forgot when to stop dieting. I’m a little low on energy. I’m going to have to start eating more.’

Julie was unconvinced.

‘I’ve been going through a little period of self-doubt,’ admitted Jennifer.

‘How long a little period?’ asked Julie.

‘Oh, about seventeen years,’ replied Jennifer, and they both laughed.

‘You? Self-doubt?’ said Julie. ‘Jen, what do you have self-doubt about? You’re brilliant, beautiful, strong…what self-doubt?’

Jennifer paused, then said, ‘Yes, well, it’s hard to argue with all that,’ not answering Julie’s question.

They hugged each other good-bye and as Julie watched her, a pit developed in her stomach. She loves that asshole, thought Julie, and was nearly knocked out by sympathy and pity and envy, yes, envy, goddamn it. Loves him! But then pity swam back into Julie. Loves him with all the bittersweetness of first love and now she’s trying to find a way to cope. Jennifer should talk to Tully more, thought Julie, heading back to her house. Tully would teach Jennifer how to cope.

Bright, beautiful, brilliant, billowy, blighted, blind, thought Jennifer as she meandered home, looking straight ahead with unseeing eyes. Yes, I’m all these things, I am so many things, so many of them good, some of them wonderful. I should know: I’ve been told nothing else my entire life, so how can it not be true? Yet it is as I have always suspected. All those things mean shit, for the world is full of beautiful people, full of beautiful, brilliant, billowy people. And so what? Ugliness is now inside me. Beautiful! What does beautiful have to do with anything? He does not want me. Everyone told me he was worthless and I was precious, but this worthless guy did not want precious me.

So if he was so worthless and still did not want me, how in this world could anyone worthwhile want me?

And he is not worthless. He is serious and strong. He is a lot like Tully. Maybe that’s why I just can’t stop. I’ve tried to do what Tully tells me to do. I’ve tried to study and drown myself in Tully’s heart because I know she cares so much. I’ve tried to eat, to sleep, and to listen to music. I’ve tried to look at other guys and think of Stanford. But what’s California to me without him?

I’ve tried to forget him. But every day I see his face above my face. Above me. I see his smiling face when I was a cheerleader and he was a football captain. When we played softball together. When he danced with me to ‘Wild Horses.’ When he was my friend. I have but a few memories, but the ones I have are all in my throat, the ones I have are all in my face when he walks by and smiles his ‘Hey, Jen, what’s happening?’ smile at me. I cannot even hate him. He has done nothing, this is not his fault. This is no one’s fault. Not even mine. Tully taught me how to fight, but even she cannot help me heal this sick, tired feeling inside me. And that’s how I feel. Sick. And tired.

Wednesday, March 21, Tully reluctantly went to dinner at Jennifer’s. There was something in the Mandolini household nowadays that reminded Tully too much of her own.

Silence.

Silence in the kitchen, silence at the table. Jennifer, Lynn, and Tony Mandolini sat and passed the spaghetti and dug into the meatballs and chewed on the bread, and around them there was no TV, no radio, no words, only silence! Just like home, thought Tully, and swallowed her bread too fast and started to cough, breaking the sound barrier. When she quieted down, she thought, I want to go home.

Lynn chain-smoked, unable to wait until she finished her dinner. Tony drank and looked only into his plate.

Tully could see that Jennifer was practicing voodoo self-control. She was counting the squares in the tablecloth and then the number of hairs on her arms.

My God, at least the radio used to be on. Maybe they started turning the radio off so that they could hear each other.

She’s doing it to them. They have no idea what’s going on, and she won’t tell them. They’re as lost now as she is. At first they thought she was doing so badly in school because she was so happy and having this great time, but they can’t even fool themselves with that one anymore. She is so obviously not happy. Maybe they’re afraid that thing is coming back to stay. I’m sure she’s anorexic. I wonder if she throws up? Would she tell me if she does? Would she tell even me that? Would she speak even to me?

After dinner, the girls washed the dishes and Mr and Mrs Mandolini went to catch The Deer Hunter before the Oscars, which were in a few weeks’ time.

‘So, Jen,’ said Tully when they were finally alone. ‘Tell me, Jen, how often do you pass dinner like this?’

‘I’m sorry,’ she answered. ‘Were we quiet?’

‘Quiet?’ said Tully. ‘What the fuck is wrong with all of you?’

Jennifer did not answer her, just kept on drying.

‘You gotta snap out of it, Jen,’ Tully said. ‘You just gotta.’

Jennifer said nothing.

‘You are making everyone miserable. We don’t know what to do for you,’ continued Tully. ‘And we all would do everything, anything, to have you back to your usual semi-normal self again.’

Jen smiled a little, but again did not speak.

‘Jennifer, tell me, are you anorexic?’ asked Tully.

‘Anorexic? God, no!’

‘Are you throwing up in the toilet?’

‘Tully, please!’

‘Jennifer, you really need to talk to somebody who doesn’t know you; you need to do something for yourself.’ Tully’s voice was getting louder. ‘And if you can’t, you have got to tell your parents to open their eyes and take you to a doctor, get you healthy again, get you on your feet again.’

‘On my feet again,’ repeated Jennifer dully.

‘Jenny, you have been taking this lying down, you lay down three months ago with him and you are still lying down, you have not gotten up, and you have to.’

‘I have to,’ said Jennifer.

Tully turned off the water and turned to her friend. ‘Yes, have to. You have no choice. Gotta do it, Jen. Just think, three months and you’re out of school, out of him, and then it’s summer! We work, we hang out, we go swimming in Lake Shawnee, and then it’s August and we’re off! Off we go. Hi-ho, hi-ho. Palo Al-to. A new life. I’m so excited. A beginning. So cheer up. And keep going. Come on, Jen. You’re stronger than all of us.’

‘No, Tully,’ said Jennifer. ‘You are stronger than all of us.’ Jennifer stood there blankly, her hands down at her sides.

The girls watched Love Story on the ‘Million Dollar Movie.’ They had seen it three times already, and the fourth time found them sitting and watching the flickering screen, absorbed in everything but Jenny Cavilleri’s death. Tully sat curled up on the couch entirely dry-eyed, entirely without movement as she looked unflinchingly and frightlessly at Oliver Barrett IV sitting at the Central Park ice skating rink without his Jennifer.

Tully’s own heart, however, was as frightened and tight as a narrow path in the dead of night in the dead of winter.

Jennifer did not even see Oliver sitting in Central Park. She was imagining Harvard and meeting someone like Oliver in Harvard. She tried to imagine holding her heart with both hands so it wouldn’t jump out of her chest for an Oliver in Harvard and drew a black blank. Instead, she remembered lying out in the middle of the night in her backyard on Sunset Court with Tully when they were kids. When they were about seven, eight, nine, ten. Eleven. Even twelve. Every summer, Tully would come over and make a tent in the backyard, and they would dig and twig, doodle and dawdle, talk and talk, and smell the Kansas night air.

‘Do you think the stars are this bright everywhere in the world, Tully?’

‘No, I think Kansas is closer to the stars than everywhere else in the world,’ said eight-year-old Tully.

‘How do you know?’

‘Because,’ said Tully, ‘Kansas is in the middle of America. And in the summer America is closest to the sun. Which means it’s closest to the rest of the sky, too. And Kansas, being in the middle, is the most closest.’

‘Are you sure about this?’

‘Positive,’ answered Tully.

Jennifer was quiet for a while, absorbing, thinking. ‘Tull, do you think the stars are still there when we go to sleep?’

‘Of course,’ said Tully.

‘How do you know?’

‘Because,’ said Tully slowly, ‘I see them all night long.’

‘You don’t see them when you sleep,’ argued Jennifer.

‘I don’t sleep,’ said Tully.

‘What do you mean, you don’t sleep?’

Now it was Tully’s turn to be quiet.

‘What do you do if you don’t sleep?’

‘I dream,’ said Tully. ‘I have…bad dreams a lot. So I wake up and look outside a lot.’

‘Much?’

‘Every night.’

Jennifer clicked the TV off, and the girls sat there in darkness, with only the blue light from the street coming in through the bay window.

‘Tully,’ said Jennifer hoarsely. ‘Tell me about your dream again.’

‘Which dream?’ Tully looked at Jen.

‘The rope dream.’

‘Oh, that old dream. Jennifer, I don’t wanna tell you about any of my dreams. You know them all.’

‘Humor me,’ said Jen. ‘Tell me again.’

Tully sighed. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘Do you still have it?’

‘Yes, every once in a while.’

‘How often?’

‘I dreamed it a few weeks ago,’ said Tully.

‘Is it still the same?’ asked Jen.

‘It’s a little different,’ answered Tully.

‘What’s the same?’

‘The rope,’ said Tully. ‘The rope is always around my neck. I fall off the tree and pray that this time my neck would break so I won’t have to suffocate.’

‘Does it?’

‘Never. I just can’t breathe.’

Jennifer was quiet. ‘What’s different?’

‘The setting. Last time, I was in the desert. In a musty palm tree. I guess I’m thinking about California.’