When they had finished making love, as she slowly put her clothes in order in the back seat of Tommy Ross’s 1963 Ford, Sue Snell found her thoughts turning back to Carrie White.
It was Friday night and Tommy (who was looking pensively out the back window with his pants still down around his ankles; the effect was comic but oddly endearing) had taken her bowling. That, of course, was
a mutually accepted excuse. Fornication had been on their minds from the word go.
She had been going out more or less steadily with Tommy ever since October (it was now May) and they had been lovers for only two weeks. Seven times, she amended. Tonight had been the seventh. There had been no fireworks yet, no bands playing “Stars and Stripes Forever,” but it had gotten a little better.
The first time had hurt like hell. Her girl friends, Helen Shyres and Jeanne Gault, had both done It, and they both assured her that it only hurt for a minute-like getting a shot of penicillin-and then it was roses.
But for Sue, the first time had been like being reamed out with a hoe handle. Tommy had confessed to her since, with a grin, that he had gotten the rubber on wrong, too.
Tonight was only the second time she had begun to feel something like pleasure, and then it was over. Tommy had held out for as long as he could, but then it was just . . . over. It seemed like an awful lot of rubbing for a little warmth.
In the aftermath she felt low and melancholy, and her thoughts turned to Carrie in this light A wave of remorse caught her with all emotional guards down, and when Tommy turned back from the view of Brickyard Hill, she was crying.
“Hey,” he said, alarmed. “Oh, hey.” He held her clumsily.
“‘S all right,” she said, still weeping. “It’s not you. I did a not-so-good thing today. I was just thinking of it.”
“What?” Re patted the back of her neck gently.
So she found herself launching into the story of that morning’s incident, hardly believing it was herself she was listening to. Facing the thing frankly, she realized the main reason she had allowed Tommy to have her was because she was in
(love? infatuation? didn’t matter results were the same) with him, and now to put herself in this position-cohort in a nasty shower-room joke-was hardly the approved method to hook a fella.
And Tommy was, of course, Popular. As someone who had been Popular herself all her life, it had almost seemed written that she would meet and fall in love with someone as Popular as she. They were almost certain to be voted King and Queen of the high school Spring Ball, and the senior class had already voted them class couple for the
yearbook. They had become a fixed star in the shifting firmament of the high school’s relationships, the acknowledged Romeo and Juliet. And she knew with sudden hatefulness that there was one couple like them in every white suburban high school in America.
And having something she had always longed for-a sense of place, of security, of status-she found that it carried uneasiness with it like a darker sister. It was not the way she had conceived it. There were dark things lumbering around their warm circle of light. The idea that she had let him fuck her
(do you have to say it that way yes this time I do) simply because he was Popular, for instance. The fact that they fit together walking, or that she could look at their reflection in a store window and think, There goes a handsome couple. She was quite sure (or only hopeful)
that she wasn’t that weak, not that liable to fall docilely into the complacent expectations of parents, friends, and even herself. But now there was this shower thing, where she had gone along and pitched in with high, savage glee. The word she was avoiding was expressed To Confirm, in the infinitive, and it conjured up miserable images of hair in rollers, long afternoons in front of the ironing board in front of the soap operas while hubby was off busting heavies in an anonymous Office; of joining the P.T.A. and then the country club when their income moved into five figures; of pills in circular yellow cases without number to insure against having to move out of the misses’
sizes before it became absolutely necessary and against the intrusion of repulsive little strangers who shat in their pants and screamed for help at two in the morning; of fighting with desperate decorum to keep the niggers out of Kleen Korners, standing shoulder to shoulder with Tern Smith (Miss Potato Blossom of 1975) and Vicki Jones (Vice President of the Women’s League), armed with signs and petitions and sweet, slightly desperate smiles.
Carrie, it was that goddamned Carrie, this was her fault. Perhaps before today she had heard distant, circling footfalls around their lighted place, but tonight, hearing her own sordid, crummy story, she saw the actual silhouettes of all these things, and ye]low eyes that glowed like flashlights in the dark.
She had already bought her prom gown. It was blue. It was beautiful.
“You’re right,” he said when she was done; “Bad news. Doesn’t sound a bit like you.” His face was grave and she felt a cool slice of terror. Then he smiled-he had a very jolly smile-and the darkness retreated a bit.
“I kicked a kid in the slats once when he was knocked out. Did I ever tell you about that?”
She shook her head.
“Yeah.” He rubbed his nose reminiscently and his cheek gave a small tic, the way it had when he made his confession about getting the rubber wrong the first time. “The kid’s name was Danny Patrick. He beat the living shit out of me once when we were in the sixth grade. I hated him, but I was scared, too. I was laying for him. You know how that is?”
She didn’t, but nodded anyway.
“Anyway, he finally picked on the wrong kid a year or so later. Pete Taber. He was just a little guy, but he had lots of muscle. Danny got on him about something, I don’t know, marbles or something, and finally Peter just rose up righteous and beat the shit out of him. That was on the playground of the old Kennedy Junior High. Danny fell down and hit his head and went out cold. Everybody ran We thought he might be dead. I ran away too, but first I gave him a good kick in the ribs. Felt really bad about it afterward. You going to apologize to her?”
It caught Sue flat-footed and all she could do was clinch weakly:
“Did you?”
“Huh? Hell no! I had better things to do than spend my time in traction. But there’s a big difference, Susie.”
“There is?”
“It’s not seventh grade any more. And I had some kind of reason, even if it was a piss-poor reason. What did that sad, silly bitch ever do to you?”
She didn’t answer because she couldn’t. She had never passed more than a hundred words with Carrie in her whole life, and three dozen or so had come today. Phys Ed was the only class they’d had in common since they had graduated from Chamberlain Junior High. Carrie was
taking the commercial/business courses. Sue, of course, was in the college division.
She thought herself suddenly loathsome.
She found she could not bear that and so she twisted it at him.
“When did you start making all these big moral decisions? After you started fucking me?”
She saw the good humor fade from his face and was sorry.
“Guess I should have kept quiet,” he said, and pulled up his pants.
“It’s not you, it’s me.” She put a hand on his arm. “I’m ashamed, see?”
“I know,” he said. “But I shouldn’t be giving advice. I’m not very good at it.”
“Tommy, do you ever hate being so .. . well, Popular?”
“Me?” The question wrote surprise on his face. “Do you mean like football and class president and that stuff”
“Yes.”
“No. It’s not very important. High school isn’t a very important place. When you’re going you think it’s a big deal, but when it’s over nobody really thinks it was great unless they’re beered up. That’s how my brother and his buddies are, anyway.
It did not soothe her; it made her fears worse. Little Susie mix ‘n match from Ewen High School Head Cupcake of the entire Cupcake Brigade. Prom gown kept forever in the closet, wrapped in protective plastic.
The night pressed dark against the slightly steamed car windows.
“I’ll probably end up working at my dad’s car lot,” he said. “I’ll spend my Friday and Saturday nights down at Uncle Billy’s or out at The Cavalier drinking beer and talking about the Saturday afternoon I got that fat pitch from Saunders and we upset Dorchester. Get married to some nagging broad and always own last year’s model, vote Democrat-“