Marble

It’s true they spent money on me. They fed me. I never went down on their son but he’d hold my hand and enjoy all of those predictable things like car trips and soda bottles, flannel sheets, and sneakers. We made dinner once in the dorm kitchen—two microwavable meals wrapped in plastic. I got to fold and smell his sheets but I can’t remember their smell. He drove my car, he killed spiders in tissues, he fixed broken doorknobs or car parts.

I think I was pretty then—maybe my prettiest. We watched television all the time, we didn’t laugh at talk shows or hockey games. We went to shopping malls, thought of going to Disney World. I ordered a brochure and a videotape. I wore pink shirts. American flag colors. I took birth control pills. I ate McDonald’s. I wasn’t embarrassed to order a cheeseburger. Two. He was a Republican. I didn’t know any better. Why didn’t anyone tell me? We went to hotels that I paid for when my parents sent money. We stayed on 8th Avenue and off Long Island highways and outside Stuart Airport. His hands were square. His hair was pasted, it was shaved too close, it was cut. I wore SPF and rubber sandals and worked at a summer camp. He worked at a golf course. He drove a sedan. He kissed other people in cars and in bathrooms. They were masculine girls with too many car keys or they wore the wrong perfume. He wasn’t a bad kisser, he just was. He never talked dirty. He was never anxious or aroused. His name was the sound of a marble dropping on a carpet. Someone once stuck her finger into the arm of the couch, pushing an imaginary thumbtack. See, she said, this is what he does to you.