Later he would tell her something he’d said in conferences when he’d taught in them: that you’re not really started until someone has cried. He had said it to lighten tough moments, but everyone knew it was true.
Then Jimmy asked her if they could change the routine and not talk about the story she’d given him three days before, but instead read the manuscript on her lap, the one she was wrinkling in her grip.
She began quietly steady and measured without inflection, word for word reading as if presenting each sentence for inspection. In the story, the two young people are deliriously happy and exchange strange presents as their courtship ascends. She named them Steve and Eve and stopped the first time she’d read that and pointed at Jimmy Brand sitting in the bed. “I did that on purpose,” she said. “If it’s stupid, I’ll change it later, okay?”
Jimmy said, “It’s fine. It’s like the words ‘woman’ and ‘man.’ They’re not stupid.”
Eve runs a roadside bait stand, selling night crawlers for two dollars a dozen. She gathers them at night from the city parks and from the four acres of sod behind the house where she lives with her mother. There is a good deal of night crawler lore—Eve has developed a knowledge and skills about gathering the creatures. Steve, who lives in town, has less patience for her work, even though he understands it is going to pay her way to college. The summer before, she made thousands of dollars. Eve has plans to go to the University of Hawaii and study oceanography. Steve wants to use her hours to neck in his pickup, but she soon learns that if she goes out after midnight, she has less success, and she doesn’t get enough sleep. Eve’s mother likes Steve. Everybody likes Steve. Eve likes Steve, but there is wear and tear in their relationship. It is impossible to go so far in his pickup. Eve wants college—she’s wanted it all her life, but Steve is right there in her face. After he gets her shirt off, he wants her pants. Without her shirt, in his truck, she feels as if she cannot breathe. All the final scenes are about her pants. She isn’t giving them up. Steve says that she can have his. “I don’t want your pants off,” she says.
While Wendy read, there was a noise outside and then a knock. She started and put her pages in the folder before answering the door. It was a kid Wendy knew from school, Michael Ganelli, who delivered for Walgreens. “Hey, Wendy,” he said, coming into the small room. “Mr. Brand?”
“Yes?”
“They said the garage.”
“This is it.”
The boy stepped out and returned with a folded walker, bright blue aluminum with wheels. He opened it and secured the little basket on the handle and stood it by the television. “From Mrs. Gunderson at the clinic,” he said.
“It’s Christmas,” Jimmy said.
“Sir?”
“Presents,” Jimmy said to the boy.
“Can you sign?” Michael Ganelli held out his clipboard, and Jimmy Brand initialed it. “Thanks. See you, Wendy.” The boy closed the door and went out along the driveway.
“That’s cool,” Wendy said. Her eyes were sad now, in the story.
“Sit down,” Jimmy said to her. “I’ll go for a stroll later. Please, let’s read. That’s how you know you’re doing it, Wendy. Someone gets a present in the middle of your story, and he still wants the rest of the story. I’m serious.” She resumed the story of Eve and Steve. She was reading faster now but soon slowed as the story unfolded. Steve is pressing Eve for sex, and every night they go out becomes a kind of skirmish. They twist tighter into this corner, until it becomes apparent one night that Steve is going to go ahead with his plans for her, over her wishes. In the struggle he cuffs her, and they stop. He is standing in the open pickup door above her, and they are contesting her pants, which are now at her knees, where he has pulled them. There is one moment when he might apologize, but he lets it pass. They both hear the unmarked silence. He’s hit her on the cheekbone, and it was a surprise to both of them. “Let go,” she whispers. The blow has hurt her head and changed something in her. Steve cannot let go. Her pants and underpants are fisted in his hands. He tugs again. “No,” she says. He is looking at what he is doing and avoids her eyes. “No,” she repeats. Steve now has the clothing bunched at her ankles. Suddenly she stops and says, “Okay.” This causes him to look up. He’s already thrown one of her shoes behind him onto the gravel shoulder. “Okay,” she says. “Steve, Okay.” He makes an odd smile, his eyes narrow.