The Tin Horse A Novel - By Janice Steinberg Page 0,122
believed him when he said no. Yet that didn’t dampen my rage.
“Please, the whole thing was crazy. It’s like I’m in some kind of fever, getting ready to leave. She came by to wish me luck, and she gave me a kiss goodbye, that was all, but then … you know.”
“Then what?”
“I feel terrible that I hurt—”
“Did she give you a blow job?” You do that with Danny, right? she’d said to me.
“Elaine, won’t you let me apologize?” Now he sounded angry. Had he thought shedding a few tears would fix everything? Did he think I was so hopelessly in love with him?
“Did she?” I said. “Don’t lie to me!”
“Okay, yes. But it was only—I’m being completely honest with you, okay?—it was because she used to, back when we were going together.”
“How come you never asked me to?” I demanded.
“To give me a … You’ve got to be kidding! I have too much respect for you. I didn’t ask her the first time, she just did it.… Look, I don’t blame you if you hate me right now. I deserve it. But I’m leaving tomorrow. Won’t you wish me luck?”
I hope you get killed! But just thinking that made me feel sick.
“Good luck,” I said.
“I love you.”
He paused, and I formed the response in my mind: I love you, too. I had felt that way until only hours ago. I had loved Danny with no reservations, nothing held back. As deeply as he’d hurt me, still in the balance between love and loathing, there were years of love. And this might be the last time I would ever see him, the last time I could tell him. Part of me ached to say those words. And part of me felt like saying them would twist a knife in my gut. I had clamped down on my tears, but now I wept.
“Elaine.” To my horror, he dropped to one knee in front of me. “It’s a terrible time to do this, but I was planning to, tonight. And I’m not going to have another chance.”
“Danny, don’t,” I murmured, though I felt mesmerized as he took something out of his pocket and held it on the palm of his hand. A small box.
“Elaine, will you marry me?” He flipped the box open, and in the dark room I saw the shape of a ring.
“No!” If he was only proposing because of what he’d done, as a sort of grandstand apology—if he thought that would make me forgive him and fall into his arms—it was demeaning. And if he were telling the truth and he’d actually planned this, then how could he have betrayed me with Barbara?
“It’s my mother’s ring. I told you, I was planning to ask you. Tonight.”
“Danny, go!”
“Tell me you’ll think about it, at least?”
“Go!” I pushed him.
After he left, I sobbed in Pearl’s arms. And begged her again to let me move in with her. Just as Barbara had led sexually when she and Danny were going together, I suspected she was the one who had turned this afternoon’s goodbye kiss into something else. That hardly excused Danny, but my sister? I couldn’t bear spending one more night breathing the same air she breathed.
Barbara must have felt the same. The next day she was gone.
I DIDN’T KNOW ANYTHING was wrong until I got home from USC the next afternoon. I was planning to eat dinner at home and then return to Pearl’s; she’d agreed to let me stay at least one more night.
I steeled myself as I turned onto our block, about to face Mama for the first time since my life had disintegrated—and anticipating an argument over my staying at Pearl’s. It was a fight for which I had no strength. After a wretched, sleepless night, I had forced myself through the day at school, fumbling if a professor asked me a question and fleeing to bathroom stalls for bouts of tears. The last thing I wanted on top of that was Mama grilling me about why my own home wasn’t good enough for me. But if I didn’t get it over with now, she’d storm over to Pearl’s.
“She’s here! She’s here!” called Harriet when I came up the porch steps.
Mama pounced on me before I’d taken three steps inside the door. She brandished a sheet from a notepad with a few lines written in black ink. “What do you know about this?”
“About what?” My frayed nerves crackled as I took in my whole family—everyone but Barbara—gathered in