Men and Dogs (12 page)
Authors: Katie Crouch
13
What Happened Before She Left
S
HE NEVER TOLD him good-bye.
She could have. She thought about it. But it just seemed better to do it the other way—to leave three days earlier than he thought she was.
“DeWitt’s throwing a party the night before I go,” she told him. “Friday night. He’s going to let us have beer.”
“I don’t want beer,” Warren said. They were naked in Nowhere. They were teenagers and naked as much as possible. “I’ll be too sad.”
Hannah stared at the tapestries bellying down from the ceiling. It was a mercilessly humid summer afternoon. They’d spent the day at the beach and then, when the sun got too strong, driven back and slipped into the DeWitt House, where they kicked off their sandy bathing suits.
They were quiet for a long time. This didn’t mean something was wrong; Warren and Hannah were often quiet together. It was what they did.
Things with Warren and Hannah began in tenth grade. It was a very distinct shift in her life. She’d accepted a dinner invitation,
and then, at his mother’s prompting, Warren walked Hannah home. After that, they were together. It was that simple.
How to explain the young Warren Meyers? Hannah’s best answer, looking back, is that he was an endless puzzle. She had known him when they were children, of course—her father was friends with his mother. But she didn’t really
see
him until high school. When she finally did, it was as if he were from some other dimension. He was a quandary.
Hannah was always comfortable around boys. She liked them. And they, in their ninth-grade, hormone-addled way, liked her back.
She knew what to say to them, knew that just by being direct and smart she could get them to do what she wanted. She wasn’t pretty, but she was one of the first girls with breasts, which kept their attention. Nor had she ever been a prude, so she was game to satisfy their curiosity under the bleachers at lunch or behind the gym after school. She still remembers them all: Tommy Nelson was the first to feel her chest, while Dave Logan, who later served as Charleston Prep’s fatal-drunk-driving cautionary tale, stuck his tongue so far down her mouth she gagged. Hannah felt the occasional penis, she let them yank at her zipper and explore the territory in her underwear. She knew the girls called her a slut, but Hannah didn’t care about girls; what she cared about was the boys wanting her, which, for certain things, they did.
Hannah knows this is all totally textbook. The missing father, the desire for male attention. Her actions might have been idiotic, but she was always a smart and inquisitive person. Even back then she’d read
Madame Bovary, The Bell Jar, The Catcher in the Rye;
she understood characters and motivation, the wound, the consequent actions. But that’s the thing the therapists don’t really like to talk about, isn’t it? Just because you finally realize
why
you’re acting unhealthy doesn’t mean you’re not going to screw up again.
Warren, though. He was the one boy to throw off the pattern. Even though she was fooling around with what seemed like half the class, Hannah found Warren unapproachable. It was as if he were surrounded by an invisible force field. And so all during ninth grade, she let trembling football players paw her. When, really, Hannah was just watching Warren Meyers.
It was an interesting study. Warren loped on the edge of a group of boys that were hard to define; some were athletes, some pot smokers, but they had formed a loose sort of band, and Warren existed on its fringe. The other girls, as far as Hannah could tell, didn’t notice the depths of Warren Meyers. This wasn’t surprising. Although he had a square jaw and steady eyes,
his right cheek had erupted in a case of volcanic acne. (The left side of his face stayed oddly clear, affording a glimpse of what he might look like if only the Clearasil fully kicked in.) He wasn’t popular or cool or funny, but by second semester,
Hannah figured out that he was the smartest out of anyone—a stealth nerd who silently made excellent grades. He never raised his hand, but on those occasions when called on, he would respond, however reluctantly, with succinct answers on ancient Greece or Shakespeare or the Constitution that were so thought-out and articulate, the rest of the class would inevitably turn and look over with surprise.
None of that would have even mattered, though. There were lots of smart boys, lots of loners to bond with. It was the way he stared that brought Hannah down. Warren was always staring absently out the window or at the wall. He did so with a constancy that’s really only acceptable when you’re a teenager; an adult acting the same would be written off as either a stoner or mentally challenged. And such an intense stare. This wasn’t your ordinary boy space-out in contemplation of breasts or what
Alyssa Milano might look like naked. No. Warren Meyers was fully
away
.
Hannah had not spoken to Warren other than to borrow a pen or to ask about a writing assignment. And when she did risk those questions, palms sweating, heart beating high in her throat, the answers she received were monosyllabic:
“Here.”
“You want a blue one?”
“ ‘History of the Ages,’ pages thirty-three to forty-nine.”
As she continued to observe, Hannah became more and more desperate to know him. Warren Meyers, Warren Meyers, Warren Meyers.
He was a Rubik’s Cube with a block missing. Something to solve.
It took a while to understand how to get to him. He didn’t fall for the easy tricks other boys did: stretching in class while wearing a tight sweater, or bending over to pick up a pencil she’d “dropped.” He didn’t stiffen when she brushed up against him. Hannah even stooped to hooking up with boys with whom he seemed friendly—Alex Winters, the boy who talked only about sailing, and a chunky, quiet kid with rainbow braces named George. This didn’t work any better. And when she ever so casually asked about Warren, they didn’t know anything about him that she didn’t. Hannah thought they might at least talk about her among themselves in titillating, graphic terms (she’d eavesdropped enough on Palmer and his friends to know it was a distinct possibility), but if they did, Warren Meyers seemed not to be listening. He didn’t even so much as glance at her.
In tenth grade, Hannah decided on a different tactic: she signed up for Virginia Meyers’s Music Appreciation class. Hannah already appreciated music plenty, but she thought perhaps by observing Ms. Meyers, a notorious pothead, she might collect at least a few little crumbs about Warren’s life. As it happened, Virginia was delighted to have Buzz Legare’s daughter in her class. She was the sort of teacher who got in trouble for having favorites, and that semester Hannah was her favorite by far. Virginia took her to lunch and gave her free concert tickets. After school, they would sit and talk in the classroom.
“It’s one of the things in my life I am gladdest about,” Virginia said on one of these afternoons, tipping back in her chair.
“Water-skiing by the light of the moon. Your father’s idea, completely. We all piled into this boat and—”
“What do you mean?” Hannah asked. “Where were you?”
“Oh, we were at some party. There was always a party.” Virginia and Buzz had briefly dated in high school. It was a period that Daisy never wanted to talk about, but one Hannah was endlessly fascinated by.
“But where was the party? What party?”
Virginia then did that maddening thing adults do to teenagers when they don’t want to talk anymore: she simply pulled rank.
“You know, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something,” she said in an entirely different tone.
“My dad?”
“Your behavior.”
“What about it?”
“You’re too easy.”
“What?”
“Well, for example, look at you now. Your shirt is inside out.”
“Oh.” Hannah’s face turned scarlet. Joel Firth in the parking lot.
“Hannah,” Virginia said, “I’m not your mother. God knows that! But I’m close enough, I think, to tell you that you’ve got to stop slutting around.”
“What?”
“You’ve got no girlfriends, sugar.”
“I don’t need friends. I don’t even really like girls.”
“What about a nice boyfriend? One nice boy?”
Hannah paused. She knew this was an important, important moment.
“I would date Warren,” she said carefully. “He’s a nice boy.”
A long, cruel minute of silence passed before Virginia finally sighed and laughed. “I thought so.” Her laughter died, and she paused again. “Poor Warren. He’s never had a girlfriend.”
It killed her, but still, Hannah said nothing.
“All right, sugar,” Virginia said. “Come to dinner. Sunday night.”
And that’s all it took. Virginia’s approval. Once Hannah realized this, she was shocked she hadn’t figured it out sooner.
Warren adored his mother, and after a magical supper where wine was served to the minors, it was clear that Virginia was endorsing
Hannah. So he turned that stare, the one she’d been observing for more than a year, on
her
. She felt it in every hair follicle, every cell.
After dinner, they walked home together, and Hannah could almost hear in her head the quiet, reassuring sound of a latch falling perfectly into place.
“Should I pick you up for school tomorrow?” Warren asked.
She nodded.
.
Click
“I’ll be there at seven forty,” he said.
In the morning, Warren Meyers’s Honda Civic was waiting out in front of the DeWitt House. It was there the next day, and the next. After the first week, Hannah couldn’t remember what school had been like without him. He defected from his group of friends. It was all still perfectly civil, but Warren was with Hannah now. He sat with her on the lawn at lunch; he found her at break; he came home and hung out at the house during those delicious afternoon hours while their parents were out.
Hannah still received grins from the under-the-bleachers boys, but learned to let her gaze slide idly over their bewildered faces, so that soon the message was clear that if Hannah Legare used to be an easy feel, she was with Warren Meyers now—
Yeah, Meyers, palming that
ass. Dude, he must be getting some serious action, nice.
It took two weeks for Warren and Hannah to have sex. They were both virgins—Hannah never having let the feelers go all the way. The first few bouts were a joke: multiple tries with the condom, fits of uneasy hysterics. And then, again:
click
. They did it at least once a day, and usually two to three times, as if storing up for a long drought. They went deep and long. Searching. This is when Hannah learned about the athleticism of sex, the closeness, the orgasm, which she mastered after a few busy weeks. Hey, she thought—she was riding the wave—look, I’m good at this, too.
But there was more to the sex than this. When Hannah was there, she knew she was close to the place in him that remained undefined. She could hear it. It was there, in a moan, in the glint of an eye. Visiting the shady borders of Warren Meyers’s subconscious was completely addictive to Hannah. It was the first place in a very long time where she felt she was supposed to be.
They were close enough to elicit lectures by her mother, intense enough to cause the other kids to whisper about them when they passed. They weren’t invited to parties, and their teachers disapproved of them. Still, at the top of their class (she first, he second) and with almost perfect SATs, they were untouchable. Indeed, other than the vigorous sex, which was tacitly tolerated, they were pretty much models of good behavior.
Although Warren was indisputably a good kid—among the smartest in school—Daisy was, from the start, adamantly against the relationship. “I just think you should see more than one boy,” she lectured.
“I don’t like other boys,” Hannah said. “Besides, that sounds kind of schizo. Why look for someone else when you’re with someone you like?”
“Interesting theory.”
“Don’t you like Warren?” Hannah asked.
“He’s fine. Not the most sparkling boy, but fine.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“Mediocrity, Hannah, is my problem. He’s just not all
there
. Lord, what if you get pregnant? And you’d have to marry him? And then—”
“Mom, this is crazy. Besides, you’re the one who got me on the pill.” Daisy, ever the cerebral organizer, sent Hannah to the gynecologist as soon as Warren began picking her up for school. “It’s a boyfriend, Mom. People in high school have them.”
“Well”—her mother sighed—“I suppose college will solve the problem.”
But, as the application period grew near, it turned out that Daisy was wrong; college would solve no problem, because Warren and Hannah applied for school together. It was easy. Warren wrote their essays. (This was how they did all of their homework—she did the math; he did the writing assignments.) They applied to all the same schools, save Warren’s safety, Chapel Hill.
Hannah didn’t bother with safety schools; her grades were good, and there could be few better college-essay topics than a father who goes missing when one is eleven years old. Hannah and Warren were both accepted almost everywhere. Warren didn’t get into Stanford; Hannah was wait-listed at Brown. Yet when both were accepted at Harvard, the choice seemed pretty obvious.