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Kristina Riggle Short Stories |
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"The Last Time I Failed"
I haven't worn my good black shoes since my great aunt died last year, so it takes me time to hunt them down. While I'm on my hands and knees in my closet - holding my breath against the stench of sweat socks and gym shorts that never made it to the laundry hamper - I search for my one serious necktie that doesn't have a cartoon character on it. I find them both in the far corner: a dark place where my serious clothes usually end up, the stuff I have to wear when it's time to be a man. Back in the fresh air of my room, I notice that the laces are broken on the right shoe. At the same time, my radio plays that song, the one that was playing at Prom, the one that makes Beth pop up into my mind every time I hear it. And I hear it all the damn time, because it's so popular right now. I punch the "off" button on the radio and poke my head out into the hallway. "MOM! The laces are broken!" Mom calls back that she'll look for some. The shoes can wait anyway. I step into my black suit pants, freshly ironed and still warm. I've known Beth for so long she was like my own reflection; there all the time. We grew up down the street from each other. Our moms were friends, and we liked each other from our first action figure battle. They'd joke all the time about her being my girlfriend and that we'd get married someday, and then we'd wrinkle our noses. It seemed to us that married people are supposed to kiss, at least once, at the church. Nothing could be more gross. We played Nintendo together, and explored the woods behind the school when we weren't supposed to, and re-enacted episodes of Power Rangers. We made an odd pair, because boys and girls didn't mix that much in grade school. The boys called me gay, which is funny when you think about it. What they meant was, I was too skinny and clumsy to hang around with them and play football. That much was true. And Beth was more interested in playing "Around the World" on the basketball court than trading stickers or talking about unicorns or whatever it is that most girls did. Beth's skinny arms and legs were always splotched with yellowing bruises from her latest tree-climbing adventure or tumble off the monkey bars. That was before the bruises turned scary. Puberty did hit us eventually, and it was like getting a new pair of glasses. We saw things we never noticed before, in perfect clarity. Well, I did, anyway. Like her breasts. I couldn't help it, as weird as that was for me. I mean, Beth was like my sister, except we didn't fight like I did with my real sister. Beth's clowning around took on a little more touchy-feely mood, too. She'd brush my knee with her fingers, or lean against me when she laughed a little longer than she used to. Or maybe that's wishful thinking playing tricks in my memory. As I got older, I just got stretched out. Taller, but no heavier, so that I looked like a drinking straw. I took up cross-country running, but that only made me skinnier yet. I dated a few girls, bookish National Honor Society types who liked to talk to me about Shakespeare. Beth fell in love with gymnastics. I could see the way her eyes widened when she'd fly through the air on the uneven bars, getting an even bigger thrill than climbing my aunt's walnut tree. She'd always been small and pixie-like, and wore her black hair short. Now her body took on a bizarre flexibility. She would be standing, talking to you, and out of nowhere just pick up her foot in one hand raise it over her head with a satisfied sigh. She had these freckles across her nose, and bright green eyes. She seemed so unreal. Something out of a sword-and-sorcery book, a fairy that could take flight any time she pleased. Even though as kids we would make barfing noises when our parents talked about it, we did date now and then. But it was weird when we kissed the first time, and we both got the giggles when our tongues touched. So after a while we just settled into walks after school, MTV in my living room, and trips to the Dairy Queen. Her boyfriends never even bothered to get jealous, which bugged me, sort of. I thought, what, am I that pathetic? I almost wished for it. It kills me to think of that now. Because then there was Kurt. As I root in my dresser drawer for my one pair of black socks, I can see the snapshot someone took of us at the Prom, thumbtacked to my bulletin board. I'm standing there in my tux with my bow tie that looks like a platform for my gigantic Adam's apple, with one arm around Beth, who's wearing a silky white dress that made her look angelic. I look like an old man with my round professor glasses. Beth had handed the camera to some random classmate and grabbed me around the waist for the picture. Behind us, in shadow, I see Kurt. I'd never seen him in that picture before. His arms are folded and he glowers at us. I get the impression his arms are folded to keep himself from tearing me limb from limb. But that's probably hindsight working, again. I reach up and take the photo off the board and turn it around, thumbtacking it back in place. I just can't look at it now. Kurt had this old-fashioned gallantry that none of the other boys had. He'd run up ahead of Beth and open the door for her. He'd carry her books to class and he started driving her home from school. He'd pull his car up to he front door, whether it was raining or not. When it was raining, he'd get out with an umbrella and walk her to the car. He bought her jewelry. I don't mean she wore his class ring. I mean he bought her a necklace that said "Princess," because that's what he called her. Beth acted like she was high. She was giddy all the time and her eyes always seemed to be fuzzy and out of focus when she talked about Kurt. They started seeing each other around the time of the Valentine's dance. In the spring I was really busy with cross country, but I still missed our trips to the Dairy Queen. Even when Beth had dated other boys, she'd still found time to have an ice cream cone with her oldest friend. So one day when I didn't have practice I walked down to her house. It was no big deal. We dropped in on each other all the time. I mean, we were neighbors. She opened the door only a little bit when I got there. "Oh, some other time, Pete," she said. "What, you're so busy? Come on..." I reached out for her hand to playfully pull her out the door. When I looked down I saw a blue smear across her tiny forearm. "What's that?" I asked. "I fell at gymnastics. I gotta do my homework. I'll see you at school." She shut the door in my face but just before she did, I looked over her head and saw Kurt stretched out on the couch fixing me with a nasty stare. I chose to believe her, and that was the first time I let her down. It didn't seem that odd. Even though gymnastics season was over, she practiced at a local gym almost year-round, she loved it that much. And sure, she fell sometimes. She liked to push herself just a little too far, to see how high she could fly. Thinking about it now, trying to picture that bruise in my mind, I can almost see fingermarks. The print of a meaty hand. Then there was that other day. She wasn't at school, which was weird because there was a sports recognition assembly, and the gymnastics team was going to do a demonstration in the gym. She was supposed to do her favorite routine, the uneven bars, representing the junior class gymnasts. I figured she'd have to be near death to miss that. So I searched all over the school for one of her teammates until I found Shannon, who said she hadn't heard from Beth, but I should ask Becky, so I tracked down Becky...and so on. None of them had heard from her. Beth wouldn't answer her phone or answer the door all day. It wasn't strange that her mom didn't come to the door or pick up the phone. Beth's mom had some sort of chronic illness and she stayed in bed a lot. Beth's dad moved away long ago. I was sick with worry the next day when I found her at Kurt's locker. I'm ashamed that I felt a little quiver in my gut when I walked up to them. What was Kurt going to do, attack me in the hall? And for what? But I must have suspected more than I wanted to admit, even then. Beth forced a tight smile and said she'd fallen down the stairs and smacked her face on the railing and just hadn't felt up to her routine, but she felt better today. A shiner under her eye beamed through a thick layer of orangey make-up. Beth hardly ever wore make-up. And then I failed her again, because I didn't grab her and run away from Kurt, because I let her lie to me some more because it felt better than thinking about it. The shiner was gone by Prom. I went with some girl named Jenny who'd seemed so charming and cute just the week before, but the allure had worn off that evening. It was like she showered in perfume, and her make-up kept leaving a creamy smear on my shoulder whenever we danced. Her dress was no bigger than a washcloth. I gazed at Beth's graceful maturity and hated Kurt for being so dashing and charming. Jenny had wandered off with a bunch of girls to the bathroom and was gone for two whole songs. Kurt was over at the punchbowl telling some story to some other big beefy guys. He was gesturing and his voice was booming and they were all laughing, slapping each other on the back, their bulbous necks squeezed by their tuxedo collars. So when that song started up, Beth tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to dance. This was after the snapshot. The picture had taken about 90 seconds early in the evening and Kurt had snatched her away and gone off to their own table before the flashbulbs had faded from my vision. We rocked back and forth together, holding each other in a completely relaxed way, unlike those on actual dates who sweated about where they should put their hands. We kidded around about my date's half-dress and I told Beth she looked beautiful. I'll remember the smile she gave me for as long as I live. The song hadn't wound down yet when Kurt stormed up and grabbed her arm and yanked her away from me. "What're ya doing with my date, asswipe?" he demanded. I pushed my glasses up my nose. They'd slipped down because I'd broken out into a sweat. "We're just dancing." Beth started talking in a gush. "Really Kurt he's an old friend and we were just dancing and my God he's practically like a brother to me really it didn't mean anything." That hurt. Didn't mean anything? At all? Kurt had just snarled at me and said, "I'm ready to go." He turned and stomped out, not releasing Beth's arm, so that she was forced to backpedal out in a stumbling walk, looking back toward me. She shrugged, I remember, as if Kurt had done something embarrassing, like taken a piss in public or belched at a fancy dinner. And there again I failed her, just standing there while he hauled her out to the car. When she called me the next day at dinnertime, her voice shook. "I just broke up with Kurt. Can you come over?" she'd said. I was halfway to the door before she said another word, leaving my mom to hang up the phone for me. We sat on her couch and I held her curled up in that space under my arm and along my side. Her pixie head rested on my skinny chest. Her mom was asleep upstairs. She told me about how at first he was just really protective and jealous, but then he'd shoved her a couple times, and yanked her arm. She actually did fall down the stairs that day. Kurt had pushed her. Each time he'd apologize and turn back into gallant Sir Kurt, protecting his Princess. He'd get her ice, he'd cry, even, over his lack of control when she made him so angry. Beth wouldn't talk to me about Prom night itself. She'd only say that Kurt had finally gone far enough to make her face up to reality, and she broke up with him over lunch at his parents' house, while they were there, so she could leave under their watchful eyes. She didn't have any bruises then. At least, not ones I could see. It seems insane now to think we were surprised when Kurt bashed the door in. He started kicking it and bellowing like a wounded animal. Beth screamed and I hollered for her to get out of the house, while I ran into the kitchen for the only weapon I could find. When Kurt burst through the door with that horrifying crack I was standing in front of him with a bread knife raised, Psycho-fashion. I really was going to stab him right through the heart, and half-believed I might turn the knife around afterward and stab myself for letting it get this far. Crazy, the things that go through your mind at a moment like that. But Kurt just caught my scrawny arm in his giant fist and socked me in the face. Good thing for me he used his left hand instead of his right or they might still be putting my face back together. I crumpled right to the floor. Willpower had nothing to do with it. My will was screaming to get up and help Beth but my body just laid on the floor while Kurt grabbed Beth by the shoulders and slammed her up against the wall, up off the floor, so her tiny legs kicked at his barrel chest and he was screaming at her, so loud you couldn't understand the words, and she was crying and shrieking in the panicky way people do in movies when they're about to die. She must have managed to call the police while he was hitting me because they came while he was still pinning her on the wall. Kurt then set her down like a china doll and turned with his arms up, suddenly morphing into someone calm and befuddled, as if he'd just walked into a room to discover one person beaten on the floor, the other crying and wailing in a heap next to the wall. Beth's mother, frail and washed out, had made it down the steps by then and was cradling her terrified daughter. Kurt went off handcuffed in a police car and Beth went with me in the ambulance. At the hospital they X-rayed my face and discovered no serious long-term damage, though I'd be swollen for a while and my nose would probably be off-kilter for the rest of my life. A sheen of tears covered Beth's face through the rest of the evening. I told her I wanted to stay the night with her, when my parents were driving us home, two dark shadows of anxiety in the front seat of the car. "No, you go home, you'll sleep better in your own bed, and I'm just going to bed anyway," she'd said, hugging me around the waist in the backseat. "He's in jail. What's he going to do now?" Then she'd looked up at me, her face reflecting the neon colors of streetlights and advertisements going by outside. "You know, you saved my life. If he'd gotten right to me, I couldn't have called the police, and who knows what he would have done?" Her voice cracked on that last word, and she sank into my shoulder. I decided then I would ask her out again, for a real date. I'd wait a few days for the terror to ebb away. I'd take her out to a movie, then to walk along the river in the moonlight. I'd confess I still really loved her, right down to the soles of my shoes, and I would protect her as long as I lived. We drove her home, and I saw her into her bedroom, gave her a good-night hug, and left her there, with her invalid mother as her only company. That was three days ago, and it was the last time I failed her. Now that I'm in my black suit, I stand before my bedroom mirror, struggling with my tie. The ends won't come out even. If I'm trying to make myself feel better, I think, how were we to know that Kurt could do such a charm job on the police? That he would convince them he was just a broken-hearted boy upset at the guy who stole his girl? He'd been drinking, he said, and he didn't mean it. He was really sorry. His parents promised to keep an eye on him and bring him back the next day with a lawyer for a formal arraignment. So he'd been fingerprinted, booked, and sent home in his parents' custody. The broken door was no obstacle for him. He'd just tossed it aside and stormed into the house with his father's shot gun. Beth got halfway through the backyard in her nightgown before he pumped two shots into her back. The cops said she was dead before she hit the ground. Kurt then tried to shoot himself but that's awkward to do with a shotgun. He's in the hospital and may never wake up again. My mom comes in the room with some shoelaces, and without saying anything she takes over tying my tie for me, just like she used to do when I was a kid. When she's done, she hugs me. I wish she wouldn't because I don't deserve it. Then she hands me the laces. "Are you almost ready?" "Yeah. I'll be out in a minute." I sit down on my bed and start taking out the broken lace. I glance up to my bedroom window. I can see Beth's house from here. Her front door -- splintered, buckled and scuffed -- still stands, off its hinges, on the porch. ### This story was first published in The Scruffy Dog Review, January 2006. ( www.thescruffydogreview.com ) |
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