Fiction: The Kindest Blow
a short story
Lilou St. John was twelve when her mother pulled her along to the mall for a particularly tempting Estée Lauder gift-with-purchase, where the two spotted Lilou's Aunt Aveline looking through her purse outside the Macy's. When Lilou's mother called out, Aveline glanced up at them; the shock took minutes to drain as her sister-in-law and niece came close enough to touch. Lilou smiled politely but said nothing. She barely knew her aunt, who had immigrated to the United States with her father's brother, Uncle Peter, two years prior, and had given Lilou a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo with blurry, tiny font as a gift of greeting. "I hear say you like reading," Aunt Aveline had said in her stiff English. Now she spoke quietly to Lilou's mother. She pulled up the sleeves of her turtleneck and turned out her scabby, skinny white wrists. Quickly she shoved her sleeves back over the wounds and said, "It's been very hard."
That afternoon Lilou sat in the back seat of her mother's Lexus as she drove the three of them back to Sutherford, neither woman speaking a word until they crossed the threshold of the St. Johns' linoleum-tiled kitchen. "Go to your room, Leels," said Lilou's mother. Aunt Aveline sat at the kitchen table, running her fingertips along the wood grain. She seemed small despite her great height, and did not look at Lilou, who was glad to escape the tension of that quiet space.
And then Aunt Aveline went missing. Uncle Peter knew that something was wrong when she left with their baby girl, Becky, for a grocery excursion and did not return. Her disappearance became still more alarming when Becky appeared, screaming, in a cardboard apple box behind the Safeway, discovered by a stock-boy who'd gone out back to smoke. Would Aveline have—could she have—abandoned her daughter? This was the great question that whirled through the family; it was impossible to agree upon the answer. It was most likely, Lilou's mother told her, that Aunt Aveline had run away, and Lilou thought of the day they had run into her aunt at the mall, the burgundy slashes that looked like monstrous stitchery. Perhaps, she thought, Aunt Aveline had gone off to die, the way their cat had earlier that year—they had found Bastian's stiff body beneath a bush after days of searching the neighborhood. Lilou knew enough about life to understand the appeal of suicide, at least abstractly, and considered it most likely that the quiet woman who had briefly been her aunt had gone somewhere to end her life. But there was no body after a week, and after a month there was no body, and after a year Aunt Aveline was still missing, with not a sighting of the six-foot tall Chinese woman anywhere.
Lilou turned sixteen in June. She tested for her driver's license and passed on the first try, which meant that her parents allowed her to drive them to Effie's, her favorite restaurant, for a celebratory dinner. Mr. and Mrs. St. John saw Effie's for what it was: a corny chain eatery designed to look like a 1950s diner, complete with miniature jukeboxes at each table, glum waitstaff in paper hats, and mediocre food; Lilou adored it without irony. She fed quarters into their jukebox and selected "Can't Buy Me Love," "(Hit Me) Baby One More Time," and "Born to Run." She ordered chili cheese fries and a strawberry milkshake when the waitress came, and regaled her parents with the long and intricate plot of the book she was reading—it was about a group of boys, she explained, who were in love with a mysterious family of girls—until she paused her storytelling for the milkshake set in front of her, tall and pastel pink in a glass alongside a frosty cup, right as the opening bars of "Born to Run" began to play.
Lilou loved her parents, who had decided not to have more children after Mrs. St. John's near-fatal experience with post-partum depression; her psychiatrist had warned the couple that another pregnancy would risk the same brutal abyss. They doted on Lilou, though they feared that her combination of brains and disinterest in the pursuit of cool had a negative impact on her social life. Yet, Mr. St. John often pointed out to his wife, this was only a problem if Lilou perceived it to be one, which she did not, and wasn't it good that she liked to spend time with them, especially because their daughter would leave the nest in only a few short years?
The driver's license meant, to a certain degree, freedom. Lilou had a curfew, but staying out late wasn't what interested her—she loved books, and being able to drive meant that she could go to the library and the local bookstore without waiting for an adult to shuttle her there. She began to visit the bookstore next to Effie's once or twice a week, often racing through an entire book in one long sitting. When she loved a book, she saved up for it and brought it home.
On one of these summer afternoons in the bookstore, Lilou noticed a boy watching her. He stared at Lilou openly, as if they knew one another, and he was simply waiting for her to exclaim with recognition. He had dark hair that flopped across his forehead and sharkish eyes with pale green irises; a white t-shirt clung to his body, tucked into cuffed jeans like a wannabe James Dean's. Her stomach clenched. Her heart flew up like a helium balloon suddenly let go, and it was stupid, she knew it was stupid, but she let him drive her to the home he shared with his friend, whose grandmother, who lived in hospice care, let the two young men live in her cottage home. His name was Matthias, and his friend, who was not home, was named Nathan. Matthias and Lilou sat on the orange carpet and she flipped through his records and his books, very few of which she recognized. The only book that she knew was I Love You Forever, a picture book that she, too, had owned since childhood; his copy was inscribed by his mother, who had written, "For my baby boy/forever my baby you'll be." He didn't seem embarrassed that she had seen the book, or the inscription, and she was charmed by it. Matthias went to the front porch and smoked a joint—Lilou had never seen anyone do drugs before—but he didn't ask her if she wanted to smoke. He shoved the butt into one of the Budweiser beer bottles that lined the edge of the porch; she yanked a handful of weeds sprouting from the cracks and used the bottle as a vase. Soon he was kissing her. All of her muscles and bones loosened as she kissed him back. His hand snaked up her shirt, which surprised her even as it slipped under her bra and found her nipple. She yelped when he pinched it, and he laughed with his mouth still against hers. Here was the threat of sex. She wasn't ready, she was still a virgin. She pulled away.
"I need to head home," she told him.
He seemed amused rather than angry, which was a relief. "I'll drive you back to the bookstore," he said.
In the car Matthias played music Lilou didn't recognize. It had no words; it reminded her of a sci-fi movie. It whined along a series of long strings. The music made her skin vibrate—perhaps it was from sitting next to him. She wanted to ask him what they were listening to, but it embarrassed her to try, just as it embarrassed her to think of telling him that she had never before had sex and did not want to just yet.
As they pulled into the parking lot, Lilou said, trying to smooth over any awkwardness, "I had a really nice afternoon."
"I did, too," he said, and leaned across the center console to kiss her on the mouth. "I'll see you again soon, chickadee," he said, and pressed his lips against her forehead.
On the next day she went to the bookstore and waited for Matthias to come. She sat on the long bench that stretched beside the magazine racks with her copy of Moby Dick, opening to the chapter on whiteness, and tried to read while periodically glancing up, hoping to feel his hand on her shoulder. The hope remained live in her for the first hour, and then the second, until she felt herself wilt. For the next few hours she looked at magazines. She dawdled and doodled in her journal. She had begun to sketch her shoelaces when she saw that an hour remained before she would be expected home.
In the car before turning onto Main Street, singing along to a Best of Neil Diamond tape, Lilou instead kept driving. She drove until she was on Highway 9, and then she was on the long, busy road toward Matthias's cottage home—it took only two turns off the highway before she reached the lane, and her memory guided her well to the cottage behind the enormous elm there. She sat in the driver's seat, the engine running, until someone emerged from the front door: not Matthias, but another boy. She thumbed the lever to make the windows go up and prayed that he wouldn't notice, but of course he would. This must be Nathan, she thought as they stared at one another. "Sweet Caroline" continued to burst from the speakers. The boy gestured to either guide her down the driveway or to coax her inside. Because she didn't know which he meant, she pulled a few yards closer to the cottage and switched off the engine to silence.
The boy slowly came down the porch steps. By the time he was at her passenger-side door she was beginning to feel ridiculous, if not yet afraid. Curved lines of dust collected in the hollows of his collarbones and in the creases of his white elbows. He put one hand on the roof of the car, rotating his other hand even though her car was too new for a roll-down.
She slipped the window down a few inches. "What?"
Bemused, he said, "You're in my driveway."
"Nathan?" she asked, and he smiled bigger, a secret kept to himself, with his eyes pressed to the crack.
He said, "Matthias isn't home."
"Oh." She looked at the time; it was 5:13. "When will he be back? Do you know?"
He gestured to the cottage. "Not long. Come wait with me." And when he saw that she wasn't getting out of the car, he said, "I don't bite, but you can come back later if you want. He went to pick Derek up at the airport."
Who was Derek? Someone she ought to know, apparently. She tried to see into the future; she wasn't naïve, and almost all of her friends had been raped or otherwise sexually assaulted, but to have avoided that fate thus far seemed more like dumb luck than the consequence of anything she'd done or chosen not to do. She imagined Nathan sitting her down with a glass of—water? Orange juice? Could he hurt her? Anyone could hurt her, she knew, but she'd let Matthias guide her through that same door the day before, and he'd been kind.
"Or," Nathan said, "you could stay in the car, I could go back inside, and you could wait in there for him."
The air conditioner was broken. She wondered if he knew that. Maybe he'd guessed because she'd had to put the windows up when he emerged, and he could see the sweat stains at her armpits and the gleam on her brow. It was in the nineties outside and would soon be even hotter in the car. She'd have to leave. Her lips burned. She looked at Nathan, trying to assess him and how good or bad he might be. Her mother always claimed she could tell a person's goodness by looking at them, but Lilou doubted she had the same gift.
So she nodded. She unlocked the doors and came out of the car, squinting in the light and letting what little breeze there was cool her skin. Satisfied, Nathan led her toward the cottage. She'd been there just the day before, she reminded herself, but it felt different to go in with someone else. He locked the door behind them and she tried not to let the sound make her flinch—it was normal to lock up behind you; he wouldn't know how scared it could make a girl.
"I'm watching 'The Simpsons,'" he said, waving his hand at the TV. "Matthias has tapes and tapes. You like it? The cartoon?"
"Sure," she said. She had maybe watched two episodes of "The Simpsons" in her life, but it seemed easier to say yes.
Nathan laughed. "You're an awful liar," he said. "What's your name?"
She thought about lying again, but it scared her how easily he'd been able to call her on her earlier fib. "Lilou," she said.
"Lilou," he repeated, sinking into the couch. "I've never met anyone with that name. How do you know Matthias?"
"I met him in town."
"I see. Well, you can wait for him in his room, if you want. Or you can watch TV in here with me. I don't care either way."
"I think I'd rather wait for him in his room," she said.
Matthias had three posters: a black-and-white Nirvana poster, a Being John Malkovich poster, and a Batman Returns poster taped to his door. June of 44 vinyl records and Björk CDs on his desk. In the bookshelf: three Francis Bacon monographs; one Gustav Klimt; a how-to book about polaroid transfers; Salinger's Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters; Nabokov's The Defense; and, of course, I Love You Forever, which Lilou could not bring herself to touch. A shoebox full of mail, including a handwritten envelope with no return address. A computer. Old photographs that she assumed were printed by him in a darkroom, sprocket holes printed and sharp; a sketchbook lying open on the floor with an unimpressive line drawing across both pages; a yellow-toed dirty sock, dirty jeans, a flowered bedsheet; a window next to his bed; a large knife, MCI bills, bank receipts saying his account was overdrawn; a small bathroom, a small closet, more miscellaneous art books, and art supplies beneath the bed. A Built to Spill CD. More vinyl records in a milk crate: June of 44, Bedhead, the Cure (Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me), Oingo Boingo, a Moog symphony compilation. To be in his room without him was like the old adage about the blind men and the elephant, with her hands groping for anything of Matthias she could grasp.
"You really like him, huh," Nathan said.
She blushed. He was leaning against the door jamb with his arms folded, watching her, and he continued: "I mean, it's fine. Girls like Matthias. They always have."
"Does he..." She tried to sound worldly, pushing her voice into a casual shape. "Does he date a lot?"
"You could say that."
Lilou didn't know what to say then. She was in his room, touching his things. He slept in this bed. He had kissed her on this bed. In the end, she was one of a long line of girls Matthias had kissed. She tried to rotate her perspective, telling herself that it didn't matter as long as she could be held by him again, as long as she could feel his mouth on hers. It was possible that she was a slut who had never before known she was a slut; when he kissed her, and when he had slipped his hand beneath her shirt and then her bra, she had felt herself grow warm and wet at his touch. Slut, she thought. It didn't matter.
Nathan entered the room and sat next to her on the floor. They both faced the bookshelf with their legs crossed into pretzels.
"How long have you and Matthias been friends?"
"Since high school," Nathan said. "We met in art class."
"Where did you go to high school?"
He named an old oil boom town in Northern California. She had heard of it, but never been there before.
"I don't like how much Matthias fucks girls over, you know," he said. "I'm sorry about that."
"I don't care," Lilou said.
"Well. That's good." He tapped his fingers against his bent knee. "I hope you know what you're doing. I know what—this—is," he said, gesturing up and down to her entirety. "I've seen it before. You don't need him, okay? You're fine without him. You don't know me, but I know what I'm talking about."
She nodded. She had worried that Nathan was dangerous, but now he seemed avuncular. He seemed truly concerned. She remembered running into her Aunt Aveline years ago, and how she had seen the cuts on her wrists without understanding the full story: her uncle, who had brought Aunt Aveline to America, had cheated on her over and over again after their child was born. Her father had talked to Uncle Peter, but Lilou knew nothing of what the men had said to one another, only that they spoke in low voices in the living room, and Uncle Peter had seemed more angry than apologetic. Meanwhile, her mother noisily washed dishes and handed them to Lilou to dry. She said nothing of the intervention even after Uncle Peter left, but Lilou had a sense of her parents' disapproval.
"I have to go," Lilou said.
Nathan reached out and grabbed her wrist tight. Surprised, she tried to wrench it away, but his fingers tightened around her and wouldn't let go. He was terrifyingly strong and said nothing as she continued to fight, punching him with her free hand until he grabbed that one, too, and she fought him to no avail until she realized she could scream. When she opened her mouth, he let go.
She jumped to her feet. She ran out of Matthias's room, to the front door, and unlocked it, scrambling into the hot air and toward the car, into the car, switching on the ignition, and away, smashing into the mailbox as she backed up and out to the street. She was crying. She cried harder as she drove home.
Lilou expected that she would have to lie when she got home and saw her parents, who would ask about her red eyes and fret over how disheveled she was. In a way she looked forward to it. She wanted to be coddled, to admit to doing something stupid. She wanted to tell them that she'd been hurt by a stranger.
But when she came through the side door, prepared to say it all, the first person she saw was a tall Chinese woman sitting at the kitchen table. She was with Lilou's mother in a silent tableau, the two of them gone quiet with their hands wrapped around tea cups as soon as Lilou came through the door. It was a bewilderment to see Aunt Aveline not so long after thinking of her for the first time in ages, as though she'd been conjured—as though Aunt Aveline were here, after so many years of escape, to tell her how stupid men could make them without saying a word at all.