He was already going out with Marie Levesque, and he worried that she would show up. He walked down the hall away from the gym, where Marie was practicing—she was a cheerleader—and Dorie followed him. So at the other end of the school, near the band room, they talked. He could not now remember all they said that day, or the other days, when she would suddenly appear and they headed toward the band room and stood outside it and talked. He did remember that she never said he should go to college, she must have known—of course, “Frenchie”—that he did not have the grades, or the money, to go; she would have known because of the classes they were not in together, just as he knew she would go to college.
For two years they did this, talked maybe once a week. They talked more often during the basketball season, when Marie was practicing in the gym. Dorie never asked Denny about Marie, though she’d have seen him in the halls with her. He saw Dorie with different guys, always a different fellow seemed to be following Dorie, and she’d laugh with whoever it was, and call out, “Hi, Denny!” He had really loved her. The girl was so beautiful. She was just a thing of beauty.
“I’m going to Vassar,” she said to him the spring of their senior year, and he didn’t know what she meant. After a moment she added, “It’s a college in upstate New York.”
“That’s great,” he said. “I hope it’s a really good college, you’re awfully smart, Dorie.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “Yeah, it’s a good college.”
He could never remember the last time they spoke. He did remember that during the graduation ceremony, when her name was called, there had been some catcalls, whistles, things of that sort. He was married within a year, and he never saw Dorie again. But he remembered where he was—right outside the main grocery store here in town—when he found out that she had finished Vassar and then killed herself. It was Trish Bibber who told him, a girl they had been in school with, and when Denny said, “Why?,” Trish had looked at the ground and then she said, “Denny, you guys were friendly, so I don’t know if you knew. But there was sexual abuse in her house.”
“What do you mean?” Denny asked, and he asked because his mind was having trouble understanding this.
“Her father,” said Trish. And she stood with him for a few moments while he took this in. She looked at him kindly and said, “I’m sorry, Denny.” He always remembered that too: Trish’s look of kindness as she told him this.
So that was the story of Dorie Paige.
* * *
—
Denny headed back to his house; he went up Main Street. A sudden sense of uneasiness came over him, as though he was not safe; in fact, the town had changed so much over these last few years that people no longer strolled around at night, as he was doing. But he had not thought of Dorie for quite a while; he used to think of her a great deal. Above him the moon shone down; its brightness continued, as though the memory of Dorie—or Dorie herself—had made it so. “I bet your house isn’t quiet,” she had said.
And suddenly it came to Denny: His house was quiet now. It had been getting quieter for years. After the kids got married and moved away, then, gradually, his house became quiet. Marie, who had worked as an ed tech at the local school, had retired a few years ago, and she no longer had as much to say about her days. And then he had retired from the store, and he didn’t have that much to say either.
Denny walked along, passing the benches near the bandstand. A few leaves scuttled in front of him in the harsh breeze. Where his mind went he could not have said, or how long he had walked. But he suddenly saw ahead of him a heavy man bent over the back of a bench. Almost, Denny turned around. But the large body was just draped over the back of the bench—such an unusual thing—and appeared not to be moving. Slowly Denny approached. He cleared his throat loudly. The fellow did not move. “Hello?” Denny said. The man’s jeans were slightly tugged down because of the way he was hanging over the bench, and in the moonlight Denny could