She's Not There Read online

  This legacy of cheerful wit became the thing that sustained me and also, at times, burdened me. In spite of a sense of ever-present exasperation with my own body, I was rarely depressed and reacted to my awful life with joy, with humor, and with light. (In the nineties, when various critics reviewed some of my early novels, they would question how it was possible that the characters in these books could react to the conflicts in their lives with comedy. I never understood this comment. What else should they use to express their sorrow? Tears?)

  Wearing my sister’s and mother’s clothes wasn’t exactly satisfying, though. For one thing, it was creepy, sneaking around. Even I knew it was creepy. For another, the thing that I felt wasn’t satisfied by clothes. Dressing up was a start; it enabled me to use the only external cues I had to mirror how I felt inside. Yet it was the thing inside that I wanted to express. I was filled with a yearning that could not be quelled by rayon.

  Still, the nights when I was alone in the Coffin House,“being female,” were always a great relief for me. For a few short hours, I felt as if I didn’t have to put on a show, constantly imitating the person I would be if I’d actually wound up well-adjusted.

  It was nearly Christmas. Light snow was falling, dusting the rhododendrons and azaleas that lined the driveway. A few minutes after my parents and sister were gone, I put on a peasant skirt and a paisley top. The sad thing was how normal I looked in this. As a boy I looked thin and startled. As a girl I just looked like a hippie.

  After a while, I got back into my boy clothes and went downstairs into the kitchen. I saw my distorted reflection in the toaster. I had shoulder-length blond hair and glasses that were shaped like television tubes. I checked the clock. Ten of eight. Onion wasn’t expected till late, if she came at all.

  The encounter with Onion had been arranged by a guy I knew in my rock band, which was called the Comfortable Chair. I played a Vox Continental, a classic draw-bar organ with the black keys white and the white keys black and the whole business supported by two chrome Z-shaped legs. The Comfortable Chair—which was a name the guitarist had stolen off a television show—didn’t actually play anywhere other than people’s basements. But it was great fun being in a band, making all that noise. We played songs like “Turn on Your Lovelight,”“Hard to Handle,” and, occasionally, “Stairway to Heaven,” if the extremely cool flute player deigned to join us.

  Onion hung out with the band. She went to one of the local public schools, unlike most of the girls I knew, who went to Shipley or Baldwin or Agnes Irwin—the right-wing finishing schools of the Main Line. I was coached, briefly, for my upcoming encounter by my worldly friend Zero, who went to the same private school I did, the all-male Haverford School. Zero and I had been best friends since the seventh grade, when we were both sent to summer school. Each of us had learned the “new math” at our public schools, and now that we were going to Haverford we had to unlearn this and master the old math. My problem, of course, was that I didn’t like math. The Haverford School decided to solve this problem by making us do five hundred math problems each day—literally, five hundred. We started at eight in the morning and kept going until five. I guess their thinking was, This’ll make ’em like math! They called it “immersion learning.”

  Another thing I’d learned at the Haverford School was how to tie a hangman’s noose. It was fun; we all loved doing it. The window shades that fell from the blinds were all tied in hangman’s nooses, dozens of them across the huge study hall. The master, a sour man named Mr. Deacon, had to come around and untie them all, one by one.

  It was like going to high school in a Charles Dickens novel. Haverford’s Upper School was a decaying haunted house, with desks from the 1930s and a headmaster from some era even earlier than that. In the corner of each of our desks was a hole for an inkwell. My classmates in the class of 1976 included Mike Mayock, who later played for the New York Giants, and John DiIulio, who went on to direct George W. Bush’s Faith-Based Initiative. And then there was Zero, and me, and another guy we just called “Doober.”

  I didn’t know a lot about Onion. She was very blond, and she was missing one finger, the pinkie on her left hand. And she did boys. She had boys the way some people had a paper route.

  I got out a tall glass and filled it with ice and Hi-C orange punch. Then I poured in about half a cup of Virginia Gentlemen, which was my father’s brand of bourbon. I mixed this around with a swizzle stick my parents had got at some hotel. I raised the glass to my lips and tasted the drink. It was sweet.

  The ice cubes clinked in the glass as I carried my drink through the house. Moments later I was in the rec room, which had been decorated by the Hunts in a kind of Wild West motif. It had wagon wheel chandeliers and zebra-striped paneling and red curtains and no heat. I turned on NBC, and for a moment I imagined myself watching the whole Friday night lineup with Onion: Sanford & Son, Chico & the Man, The Rockford Files, Police Woman. I took a sip of the Hi-C and whiskey, shivered, and turned off the set. This wasn’t the way I imagined myself.

  The way I figured, I’d get Onion a drink, maybe one of these Hi-C things I was having, then we’d sit in my room upstairs and talk. I’d try to show her I was not like the other guys she knew.

  Once I had sex I wouldn’t keep wanting to be someone else all the time; at least that was my newest theory. I hadn’t given up on Love shall cure you, either. I still believed that.

  I walked up the creaking stairs to the beat-up library. Coals from a fire my father had lit were still glowing in the fireplace. Large sheets of stained wallpaper hung down from the ceiling where a pipe had burst. I got out a book my mother owned called Art Masterpieces of the World, looked at some of the great paintings. Starry Night. Sunday Afternoon at the Island of La Grande Jatte. Nude Descending a Staircase. Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear. There was this one called The Turkish Bath that I liked. Lots of nude women, sitting around. They all looked very clean.

  A car pulled in the driveway and sat there idling for a few moments, then drove off. I wasn’t surprised. Mrs. DePalma had told us that the Hunts had had an enormous Christmas party every year since 1958. They were the kind of people who went nuts in December, covering the house from roof to shrub with strings of lights. The Friday before Christmas they always had a wild black-tie party. Every year since we’d moved in (in 1972), strangers had showed up at our door this Friday, sometimes in costume, hoping to attend a party given by people who no longer lived there.

  I went back out to the living room. A portrait of my grandfather James Owen Boylan hung over the fireplace. I’m named after him, or at least I was then. I was always a little afraid of that painting and frequently suspected that the eyes followed me around. Even now, twenty-five years later, I often see my grandfather’s portrait in my dreams, grinning at me.

  I lay down on the couch. You weren’t supposed to sit on the furniture in the living room, which was kind of odd considering the fact that the ceiling was collapsing. I got out my parents’ wedding album and looked for a while at the pictures. It was April 1956, and my grandmother was still with her third husband. My uncle Sean looked pretty sane, too, so you knew it was a while back.

  The phone rang. I picked it up.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello? Is this Jim Boylan?”

  “Yes, this is me,” I said. I didn’t recognize the voice. “Who’s this?”

  “It is?” the voice said. There were other voices in the background, laughing. “It’s Boylan?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “You’re a fag, man.”

  He hung up.

  I stood there holding the phone. Somebody somewhere was having a big old time.

  I put the phone back in the cradle, picked up my orange Hi-C and bourbon. It wasn’t the kind of phone call you wanted to get, actually.

  Grampa looked at me from the wall. That kid on the phone, Grampa said. He’s right.

  I walked across the room and sat at the piano. I put the glass on the windowsill behind me
.

  “Good evening, everyone,” I said. “It’s great to be back here in Philadelphia.”

  I blew into a microphone that wasn’t there. “Check, check,” I said. “One two. One two. Check.”

  I looked out into the audience. “Well, all right,” I said. “I said, yeah.”

  The audience said, Yeah.

  Then I started playing “Mrs. Robinson” in the key of G. I did a long crazy jam before I went into the main riff. When the audience recognized what tune I was playing, they went nuts. People in the front row were standing on their chairs.

  We’d like to know a little bit about you for our files. . . . Thank you. Thank you very much.

  There was a screeching of tires in the front driveway, a car engine revving, then falling silent. Footsteps came up the stone stairs. The doorbell rang. A moment after that, the knocker that no one used was swinging.

  I got up and opened the door. A girl with nine fingers was standing there.

  “You’re Boylan?” she said. “The piano player?”

  “Onion,” I said.

  “You got it,” she said. She fell forward across the threshold. Onion was very drunk. I could see that her car was parked half off the driveway. One of my mother’s azaleas lay crushed beneath the tires of her Camaro. Snow had dusted the front porch.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” I said. My heart was pounding in my shirt. “I didn’t know if you were going to make it.”

  “Sure I’m going to make it,” Onion said, annoyed. “Why wouldn’t I make it?” She took off her orange down coat and dropped it onto a chair in the living room. She sized things up. “Jeez what a place you got here. Gives me the fuckin’ creeps.”

  “It’s creepy all right,” I said. I was still looking at her. She had long blond hair. Onion was wearing blue jeans and a tight black top. It was definitely something I’d have looked good in.

  “Was that you playing?” she said. She was looking at the piano.

  “Yeah,” I said. The fruit juice and bourbon was sitting on the windowsill.

  “Sounded good,” she said. “It’s good to play something.”

  Onion walked over to the piano and let her hands fall on the keys with a tremendous clang. The noise was startling, and I was annoyed at her careless disregard for the instrument.

  “Ha ha ha,” said Onion. “What a hoot.”

  She banged the keys again, letting her fingers skitter randomly up and down the keyboard.

  “Can I get you something?” I said, trying to move her away from the piano. “Are you thirsty?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Onion said. She got up again. “What do you got?”

  We walked into my parents’ kitchen. “I’m drinking bourbon,” I said.

  “Whoa,” said Onion. “Hard-core.” She looked at me as if for the first time. There was more light in the kitchen. “Hey, you’re cute,” she said. “You look like my sister.”

  I thought about this for a while. “Thank you,” I said.

  “You know how to make a daiquiri?” Onion said. “Here, I’ll do it.”

  A moment later she was getting out bottles of rum and gin and pouring them into the blender. She opened the refrigerator, got out some strawberries and a banana. She got ice out of the freezer. It didn’t take her long to set things in motion.

  While her drink was grinding away in the blender, Onion got out a package of Newports, stuck one on her lip Jerry Lewis style, and lit it. She did a French inhale. She held the pack toward me and said, “Smoke?”

  I took a cigarette from her. After I got it lit she blew smoke in my face, then laughed.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Well, what do you think, Boylan, you want to do it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I couldn’t believe she’d just come out and say it. I figured she was talking about something else.

  Onion leaned toward me, clamped her mouth down on mine, and injected her tongue into my throat. She sucked on me like a vacuum cleaner. With one hand she reached out and grabbed one of mine and placed it on her breast. It was soft.

  “Well, all right,” Onion said, leaning back. She took another drag off her cigarette. “Now do you want to do it?”

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay.”

  She lifted the pitcher off the blender and poured it into one of my mother’s Waterford tumblers. “Cool,” she said. “Then let’s go. Lead on.”

  We clomped up the back stairs. As we ascended she said, “I heard you’re a nice guy, Boylan.”

  “I guess,” I said.

  “Nice but shy.” She paused, out of breath, dizzy. “Man, you got a lot of stairs in this house.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I just nodded and blew smoke that I had not inhaled toward her. She smiled at something that seemed to be known only to herself.

  We reached the top of the stairs and passed the door of the room that had the fingernail scratches on the other side. Earlier in the evening I’d sat on a chair in that room, wearing a bra and reading Lord of the Rings.

  “Yeah, I’m shy, I guess,” I said finally.

  As we walked down the second-floor hallway, she slowed again. Onion was scraping against one wall.

  “You okay?” I said.

  “Sure I’m okay,” she said. “Long day, that’s all. You’re my last stop.” She drank her daiquiri. I started up the steps to the third floor.

  “Oh man, not more stairs,” Onion said. She looked into my parents’ room. “What about in here?”

  I thought about it.

  “Okay,” I said. “This is a better room anyway. Mine doesn’t have any wallpaper right now. Just plaster.” I stubbed out my cigarette on an ashtray on my mother’s bureau.

  “Whoo-hoo,” Onion said, sitting on the far side of the bed. She put her drink on a table, set her cigarette in an ashtray, and pulled her top off over her head. The straps of her bra traversed her broad, tanned back.

  I sat on my side of the bed and took off all my clothes except for my socks because it was cold. I got under the covers. Onion stood to take off her jeans. She took a diaphragm case out of her purse and put it on my parents’ bedside table, next to a tube of Ortho jelly—a tube, I noticed, that was rolled neatly from the bottom like a tube of toothpaste.

  I saw Onion from the back, looking at her lovely round buttocks, her smooth shoulders, the hair falling down her spine. She picked up her daiquiri and downed the whole thing in a single shot. Then she turned to me and lay down upon the sheets.

  On her right shoulder was a blue-and-green bruise the size of a man’s fist. I stared at it.

  “Jeez,” I said. “How’d you get that?”

  “Never you mind,” Onion said. She looked over at a picture of my father that stood upon my mother’s bureau and said, “Some asshole.” For a moment I thought she meant my dad.

  She took a final drag off her cigarette, then stubbed it out in the ashtray. “Okay,” she said then. “It’s clobberin’ time.”

  She lowered her face onto my own again. I felt her fingers trace my ribs. Onion was forceful. It was a little scary, being swept along by her, like standing in some very strong gale.

  Her fingernails scratched softly down the front of my bony chest. The hand that was missing the pinkie clasped me like a golf club. “Whoo-hoo,” she said. “That’s the way.”

  She paused for a moment, looked at me. “So what do you think?” she said. “Am I pretty?”

  I was still thinking about the bruise she had, was trying not to look at it. “Yes,” I said. “You’re pretty.”

  “Whoo-hoo,” she said, and kissed me again. This is great, I thought. So far, sex was turning out to be pretty interesting. I definitely wasn’t going to keep wanting to be a girl after this!

  I guess this too was immersion learning.

  “Whups,” Onion said, pausing.

  “You okay?” I said.

  “Yeah, just give me a second.” She let go of me, sat up in the bed.

  Her breasts lay there before
me, veined and amazing. The nipples were a soft pink. Her hair fell over one shoulder. For a moment I wished that Onion were a mirror instead of a human. It was too bad.

  “I could really fall in love with you,” I said in a dreamlike voice. Onion wasn’t listening. “Are you all right?” I said.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. You got a bathroom around here?” she said. “I’m just a little woozy.”

  “Woozy?” I said. “Yeah. Right in the hallway.”

  “Okay,” Onion said. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

  I saw the nude girl walk out of my parents’ bedroom and heard her going into the bathroom. I lay there alone for a moment, filled with wonder. A moment later I heard the sound of Onion puking.

  “Hey,” I said. “Are you okay?”

  It happened again.

  “Onion?”

  I waited for what seemed like a while. All was silent. Then, maybe ten minutes after she’d first excused herself, I heard a soft clunk. The sound of a body hitting the floor.

  “Onion?” I said. I went into the bathroom and opened the door. She was lying on the floor. There was puke all around her.

  “Oh man,” I said. “Shit.”

  I tried shaking her, but all she did was moan once, then nothing. She was breathing heavily. The smell of liquor rose from her like a vapor.

  I got some washcloths and got most of the puke off her, then wiped the floor. I tried to wake her up again. “Oh man,” she mumbled. “I don’t feel good.”

  She couldn’t just stay there on the floor, so I picked her up in my arms and carried her up the stairs to one of the guest rooms. I put her in an old bed that Gammie and Mrs. Watson slept in when they visited and covered her with a quilt. Onion looked very peaceful there.

  Then I went back to the bathroom and collected all the washcloths and towels, carried them to the laundry room, and put them in the washer. After this I walked into my parents’ bedroom, made the bed, and picked up my clothes off the floor.

  I wasn’t sure what to do next. About all I could think of was trying to make up a good story for my parents to believe, once they got home. I could say Onion was a friend of a friend, which was the truth. I could say I didn’t know her very well, also the truth. I could say she’d had too much to drink. And she had called from some party down the street given by these people I did not know and said she needed a safe place to sleep it off because it was dangerous for her to drive like this. I thought about this story for a while, and it seemed pretty good. Not airtight, but pretty good. As long as Onion didn’t wake up suddenly and start talking, they might go for it.