From the Streetcar by Stephen O'Donnell
“the sudden flex of his hip as he throws his leg over my leg”
Fiction by Stephen O’Donnell
+++
The boy stands, leaning into the corner, shifting gently with the motion of the streetcar. His curly dull brown hair low across his eyebrows, his baggy jacket, his baggy pants, his Vans. One hand rests on the edge of his up-ended skateboard. The curve of his wrist and tilt of the board and the turn of his hips as he braces against the wall is accidentally elegant.
He looks and I look away.
In the glare of the overcast sky and the streetcar's hard fluorescent light, the other passengers look gray and rounded off, thick in their winter clothes. The rain stopped hours ago, but it's damp and sour in here. And too hot. When the doors slide open at someone else's stop, the sharp air that blows across my face, I pull it in and hold it in my lungs.
The boy got on at the same stop as I did. Right away, from the other end of the streetcar, I noticed him looking. That back and forth game. Look and he looks away, look again and he looks away. I remember this game from when I was younger. But this boy is fourteen, fifteen at most, and I'm more than thirty years older than he is. Balding, soft in the belly. So it can't be the game. Not with me. He looks and I look away.
I turn toward the window and stare out at the blur of cars and sidewalks, shift the weight of my bag. When I reach my stop, I keep myself from looking one last time. To see if he'll look away one last time.
I pivot out through the opening streetcar doors, down from the concrete platform, and down the three more blocks toward my apartment. I walk fast. The sidewalks are pasted thick with fallen leaves. The tapping of my shoes, the sharp gray sky. The air is cold in my lungs. And how pathetic I am. How stupid.
I climb the front steps, the rasping of my shoes on the wide concrete treads. My bag is too full and too heavy. I turn the key in the lock, pull open the door to the foyer. I step back with the swing of the door and have that feeling, that pull in the air that says someone is standing behind me. I turn and it's the boy.
I can't make sense of the skateboard tucked under his arm, the baggy clothes, the heavy tangle of hair, the dark brown eyes looking at me. I stare at the boy, there on the steps, maybe six feet away, and have no idea who he is. And, of course, I know exactly who he is. But I can't knit together this moment. Two, three, four seconds.
I turn, walk in quick and up the stairs, the heavy front door closing soft behind me.
+ + +
Inside my tiny apartment, three flights up, I lean back against the door and catch my breath, turning the bolt behind me. The boy on the steps. I put my bag and umbrella into the corner where I always leave them. The umbrella slides then clatters to the floor. I take off my gloves, fold them, put them into my left coat pocket. I take off my coat, unwind my long scarf. In my mind I see the boy standing there in front of me on the steps, looking at me, and then I turn and leave. I'm home, this is where I live and he doesn't, so I turn and leave. I hang up my coat, I hang up my scarf. I take off my watch and leave it where it goes, in the dish on the small table by the door.
I go into the kitchen and part the curtains with the back of my hand. The apartment building is U-shaped and I can see the front door from my kitchen window. He's still there. Just sitting there, now, his skateboard angled on the steps beside him. But then his face tilts upward into the light, and he turns his head side to side, searching. I step back, the thin curtain holding to the sleeve of my sweater, arcing out until I shake it free.
It's cold, and I turn on the old electric wall heater. The rows of horizontal coils come on, clank and buzz and glow bright pink.
I sit at the kitchen table, trying to concentrate on the work I brought home, tapping the thick stack of papers with the dull end of my pen. I go and stand at the window. Hidden by the thin edge of the curtains, I roll the pen between my fingers and I watch him sitting there, the teenage jittering of his feet on the steps.
The sky looks like rain again. The slow howl of a fire engine a few blocks away. I look over at the clock. I sit down, stare at my work, listen to the breathy pull of traffic down below. I go and stand at the window. Two of my neighbors are there in the courtyard talking to the boy. He looks up at them, his face tilted up into the light again. He smiles, then looks down and they go into the building.
I toss my pen onto the table, start to go into the living room, stop and stand in the wide archway that separates the kitchen and the living room. I scan the room, looking for something, I don't know what. I turn around and go back into the kitchen. And there's the pale green of the shopping bag, folded, on top of the refrigerator.
When I push open the big front door, he turns his head. His shoulders lift, his back straightens. It's only a slight movement he makes, but he expands a little, unfolds.
I look away, squinting up at the sky. I start down the steps. "Waiting for someone?"
I pass him on the steps.
"No...." His voice is soft, but deeper than I expect.
"Oh." I'm past him now, and there's nothing else to say as I walk away.
+ + +
Maybe twenty minutes later I turn into the courtyard, carrying my bag. Walking the length of that space, I look at the ground, I look up at the windows, I look at the leafless bushes in the planters. Because the boy is still on the steps.
As I get closer to him, he straightens his back, slides his hand over the flat of the skateboard. The scrape of its wheels on the concrete as he pulls it toward him, holds it against his hip.
Not looking at him, looking at his hand, at the soft bend of his wrist. "It's getting kind of cold out here."
His head tilts up and he searches past the roofs and trees, frowning into the dim light. And in that moment I look at the boy and try to calculate the breadth of his shoulders, the bright childish color of his cheeks.
His eyes still scanning the heavy gray sky. "Yeah, a little bit. Hope it doesn't start raining again." He looks back at me now, his mouth, still a child's mouth, twisting slightly, almost a smile.
I look down again, at his fingers curved over the edge of the skateboard. And then I look just past his eyes, make a carefully vague smile, and continue up the front steps. I pause at the door, but don't turn around.
+ + +
An hour later. An hour and a half. I go and stand at the window. It's night, it's completely dark, and he's still there, sitting in the green glare of the two big standard lamps at either side of the front steps. His arms crossed tight into his chest, shifting his weight on the cold concrete. And his face tilts up again, flashes of green lamplight in his eyes as he looks from dark window to bright window to dark. I take a step back, but he squints away from the hard green light and looks down again. He pulls his skateboard closer.
A thin grit of rain on the window. As I step up into the shadow of the curtain again, it comes faster. Down on the steps the boy grabs his collar, pulling it up, pulling it tight against the back of his neck. He draws his elbows in, and tucks his head down into his knees.
+ + +
"Hey, kid! You can't sit there. You can't just sit there in the rain."
He turns and looks up at me, his shoulders hunched tight. I stand with the door propped open, under the shelter of the porch, the light of the foyer at my back, and he squints hard, searching to find my eyes in the shadow of my face. I wait for him to say something. But he just sits there shivering, the rain heavy, weighting down the soaked mass of his hair, dripping off his nose and his chin.
And this is the moment.
"Come here for a second."
He grabs his board and climbs quickly out of the rain, two steps, three. He stops in front of me, green lamplight in the falling, dripping rain behind him, green lamplight in the wet of his hair. A thin wedge of yellow from the ceiling lamp in the foyer lights up half his face, one shoulder, his pale, wet hand gripping the up-ended skateboard. The rest of him in my shadow. I step to the side, and the yellow light spreads across him. With the palm of his hand he pushes the dripping hair sideways off his forehead, his chin lifts. There's no smile there, just the shine of the rain on his mouth. I can smell his wet hair. His wet clothes.
"What are you doing out here?"
His mouth goes soft and he looks away. And I ask him stupid questions, where his family is, if he has somewhere to stay tonight. But he doesn't say anything.
The light is full on him but my face is in shadow, so I'm not afraid to look at him now, to look at his dark brown eyes. I watch them focus on my hand, my hand that holds the door open. I watch as they trace the rectangle of the doorframe. I watch when they tense and try to focus on my own eyes, eyes they can't make out in the dark of my silhouette. And when they look past me, past my shoulders, into the bright foyer.
The two of us waiting. He shivers, his head tilting back. He looks at me, searching my face again, something of a smile in his eyes. He looks away. He looks like a good kid. There's kindness in his eyes.
And this is the moment.
"Well... I guess you can stay here tonight. I guess you could sleep on the couch. You have to go in the morning, though, OK?"
There's a low sound in his throat, and he looks up at me, the same half smile in his eyes. The smallest nod of his head, and some last beads of rain roll down and drip from his hair. I can smell his hair.
+ + +
Up three flights, our thudding, scuffing footsteps on the stairs, the creak of the banister, the dampened dust of the carpet. The whole time going up, with him in back of me, I keep questioning this thing I've done, this opening I've made or let happen, by letting him come in. And my thoughts keep running into corners.
In my apartment the light is low, like always at night. But that seems like an odd thing, now, how dark it is. And it feels awkward locking the door behind us. He leans his skateboard up against the wall in the corner where I always leave my umbrella. I turn the heat up and give him a towel for his wet hair. He takes off his jacket and shoes. Otherwise, he's not that wet. He asks if he can use the bathroom. He doesn't close the door all the way. I don't know what to do then, and I go into the kitchen and straighten things on the counter and re-stack the work papers on the table until I hear the toilet flush.
We're both hungry. Spaghetti is fine with him. He sits on the hard wooden chair at the kitchen table, not saying much, while I cook the pasta. His plain, dark eyes follow me, watching every routine movement I make, as if it were an unusual thing I was doing or somehow strangely graceful.
And I watch him, too, trying to fill each quick, dishonestly casual glance with as much as I can. I take in how the dim light shining down catches the blond ends of his lashes, the blunt end of his strong nose. I notice, in the shadow of the messy fullness of his hair, the strength of his neck, the still childish bones arching at the stretched out collar of his t-shirt. His calm hands. The loose set of his knees. And his big feet, the damp, not very white socks.
I open a bottle of wine, and as I hold the wineglass up into the dim light and the red wine pours into it, our gaze connects though the thin glass.
"So, how old are you anyway?"
"Not old enough. But I drink wine sometimes."
I pour him half a glass.
He takes a small, cautious sip of the wine, holding the bowl of the glass cupped in his hand. He turns in his chair, tilting his head toward the window, and looks out at the rain, the heavy, slicing threads lit up with streetlight.
I think about how young he must be. What grade in school he must be in. I think about what I remember about high school. What time has made in my mind of those ugly years of high school. And I try to remember who I was then. And I wonder how I became the way I am now, how a person gets from one place to the other. And if I'm any different, really, than the boy I was then, if anyone is really any different.
And then I'm looking at his mouth, the stain of red wine on his mouth, and I haven't noticed that he's not looking out the window anymore, but at me. He takes another careful sip of wine. He smiles at me and I look away.
+ + +
We eat our dinner at the little table and talk about his favorite movies and graphic novels and the latest music, none of which I know anything about. I tell him I have to finish some paperwork. He goes into the living room, turns and asks if he can look at one of my books. He chooses a big picture book of old palaces and sits on the couch, tucking one leg under him, the slanting light from the lamp making bright gold and shadows of his tangled hair. I wash the dishes, then sit at the cleared kitchen table with my stack of papers. Never once, when I look over at him, does he look up.
Later, I say it's time for me to go to bed. I get him a spare blanket and pillow. It feels too weird to offer him something to sleep in, so I don't. I tell him what time I have to leave in the morning, so he'll be ready.
Of course I find it almost impossible to sleep with him in the apartment. I lie in the cold bedroom, listening. Maybe I fall asleep for a little, but I wake up sharp and listen. I get out of bed, carefully cross the bare wood floor and put my ear against the door, warm from the heat in the other room. I go over to the window, watch the rain fall, listen to its grating on the glass. It's cold, I get back into the cold bed. I fall asleep, but wake again, listening. I get up, cross the icy floor, slowly ease the groan of the bedroom door.
He's lying on the floor, not the couch. One foot, with a saggy sock, pokes out from under the blanket. He's on his side, hugging the pillow. His hair in his eyes, his mouth loose, he's covered over with the vibrating pink light from the wall heater, sleeping in its electric hum.
+ + +
I wake up late. As I dash through to the bathroom for my shower, all my clothes with me, he's lying on the couch now, the blanket pulled up over his chin. But his eyes are open, and he lifts his head when he sees me. I tell him to eat anything he can find. When I come out of the bathroom, he's sitting forward on the couch, with his jacket on, ready to go. Beside him, the blanket is folded perfectly, the pillow smoothed and squarely placed on top of the blanket. He sits there, watching me, as I scramble after my shoes and my coat, my scarf and my watch.
"OK, gotta go!"
I grab my bag and umbrella. He grabs his skateboard and we go out, I lock the door. We're quick down the stairs, down the front steps and out onto the sidewalk. I want to say something to him, I don't know what to say to him. I need to catch the streetcar.
"Hey, you take care, OK? You're a good kid. I hope it all works out, you know – I really gotta go! Take care!"
"Thank you." He says it plainly. I can't find any calculation or expectation in his tone. Only the lovely deep voice.
I’m down at the end of the block, turning the corner, when I look back. He's just putting his skateboard wheels-down on the sidewalk. He holds up his hand, palm facing, as a goodbye wave. I wave back large and turn the corner.
+ + +
My workday is a mess. I'm too tired, I made a mistake in the paperwork, I have meetings all day, and I don't have time to think about the boy at all. But when I'm on the phone and at lunch, I can't seem to follow a conversation. Digits go missing from the long strings of numbers I add and subtract. I can't find the hole punch.
I'm exhausted during my trip home. Yet I strain to see who gets on at every streetcar stop. And with each face I search, the focusing just erodes my memory of the boy's face, the boy who keeps altering, fading. My feet are a heavy scraping on the sidewalk, my three blocks home, just wanting to be home. I step off the sidewalk, into the courtyard.
And there's the kid, sitting on the front steps. He stands up. He's smiling, or trying not to smile. And I can't believe how happy I am to see him. Happy to see him standing there. Happy that he's trying not to smile.
I have to strain to lower, flatten the texture of my voice. "So, have I adopted you?"
He looks right into my eyes and smiles. And doesn't try not to.
+ + +
And then the next night. And the night after that. He waits for me, we eat. We watch movies, he looks at my books. He sleeps on the couch – or the floor – and folds away the bedclothes in the morning. I go to work and he goes away. And every night for a week now he comes back.
My apartment is so small. Four small rooms. There is barely enough room for me and my things, and yet he fits in so easily. When I make dinner, he walks around the apartment, asking me questions about everything, all the stuff I've crammed into this tiny space. He picks up each item, examines it, places it back exactly where he found it. A carved wooden box, an old tapestry pillow, a silver-plated bowl. Junk mostly. He'll carefully pull a book from a shelf, then put it back so precisely I'd never know anyone had moved it. He seems to recognize that everything fits just so, everything has its specific place. The chair, the bookcase, the umbrella, the watch taken off, the coat hung. He never disturbs anything. He makes no imprint.
+ + +
I wonder what the neighbors must think. What would I tell them if they asked me? How would I explain this teenage boy with a skateboard waiting on the steps for me to come home every night? This boy who doesn't live here. This boy who sleeps over at the apartment of a man who lives by himself. How could I make them understand this friendship between a boy and a middle-aged man? When I'm that man, a man who currently finds his meager, calculated life centered around the comings and goings of a teenage boy. And you are that boy.
And what would I tell you? That you make me happy. That you make me confused. Am I in love with you? I don't know that I am, really. But maybe I'm in love with all the life that's still in you. Because most of the time it feels like my own life has somehow drained away from me. That I gave up or forgot how. But you always shake me out of that when you're here. Or when I think about you. But you, what would you say if I asked? What would you tell me if you could, if you let yourself tell me? Because the thing we don't acknowledge, the thing we pretend isn't there at all times, this question and maybe an answer, stammering between us, is why. Why did you follow me? Why do you come here?
+ + +
I don't see him at first. It's pouring and, already wet through, he stands in the shadow under the porch by the door, not caring anymore if people ask him who he's waiting for. He shivers and laughs when I come up, safe under my umbrella, and when I grab his baggy, soaked jacket sleeve and drag him into the foyer.
We run in and then up the stairs. I turn the heater on full blast and he runs over to it, shaking loose from his jacket, dropping it, hopping on one foot then the other, yanking off his shoes, his wet socks stretching long when he pulls them off. I get a towel and throw it to him. His shirt is wet through, and he laughs when he pulls at the soaked fabric, to show me how it clings to his skin. He looks down at the floor, frowns, then strips the shirt off, too. I've never seen him without his shirt. His broad shoulders, his chest is smooth and white, but dark hair leads down his belly. I look away.
He pulls in close to the glowing, buzzing heater, bouncing up on his toes, shivers and laughs. Shivers and rubs the towel rough on his head, then his shoulders and chest. He turns one side then the other to the pink, rolling warmth of the heater, hugging himself tight, rocking his cradled arms. He laughs, then turns to me and goes still, a bright, hard smile in his eyes, and twists the towel between his hands.
"You're hardly wet at all! Your stupid umbrella keeps you all dry!" He snaps the towel at me.
High school, gym class, sissy. He snaps it at me again, laughing. Laughing, because a snapped towel is only a game with this boy, a game you laugh along with. So I laugh along with the boy, and try to get the towel away from him.
He seems so much taller now, not a boy now. Shirtless, his wet skin, the smell of his wet clothes. Turning and dancing and too quick for me. He twists and shoots the towel out again, hard, and I catch the end of it with both my hands. He pulls back and we wrestle for it, stumbling, pulling hard on the towel, his face shining in the pink light, his wet hair swinging out away from his head. "Oh my God, you're so dry! You're sooo delicate – what a fag!"
High school, gym class, sissy. We stop, the towel pulled taut between us.
His breath in, pinched, held. The smile sits there stupid on my face.
He takes a step toward me, his eyes so dark and so bright. "No, I would never – I didn't mean – " He reaches toward my hand, barely touches his fingers along the cuff of my sleeve, then drops his hand away.
I say it quiet. "I know."
I let go my end of the towel. I take a step closer to him, crossing in front of the heater, the warmth of it curving across my back, the shadow of me taking all the light from his eyes and his skin. But when I reach up and push the tangled mass of wet hair back from his forehead, his face is warm. His smooth, warm skin and the rough of my fingers.
And this is the moment.
"It's OK."
+ + +
But then it isn't, not for him. We eat. We watch a movie. But he hardly says anything all evening, and he won't hold my gaze. When I say goodnight, I look at him full on when I say the word. I try to somehow show it in my eyes, to let him know that I'm OK, that it's all OK. He looks back at me, but I can't tell what’s in his eyes, and he looks away.
I lie in bed, in my pajamas. I lie here in the cold bedroom, listening. I pull the covers up over my chin. I hear the hum of the heater on the other side of the wall, and along the bottom edge of the door, a thin line of pink light, but the warmth is only in there where the boy is.
I sleep. I don't know if I dream. The wind is muffled by walls and thin window glass, but rain still grates on the window. Wind and streetlight and shapes of trees that slide and blur along the plain white walls, the shadows on a kind of delay, dragged along against the light, shadow crossing shadow. I lie in bed, facing the wall that separates me from the boy.
I sleep. I wake. The covers lift, a brush of cold air against my back. There is weight on the bed that isn't mine. Then heat that isn't mine. I turn as the boy moves beside me. I put out my hands, afraid, but where I touch is all skin and warm, his warm skin, and I pull my hands away. He drops his curly head into the space beneath my chin. The smoky smell of his hair and the hot dampness of his cheek against my throat. He clutches at my sleeves, pulling the fabric tight against my shoulders, and he murmurs something. His deep voice. He raises his head and looks at me. The light is behind him and I can't see his eyes. He kisses my mouth before I can stop him. I try to hold myself away from him, but he kisses me with stupid, awkward boy kisses.
I'm in my pajamas because I'm no one's lover, he fumbles with the buttons and I push his hands away. I lift my hand to his face, the sweat on his forehead, and brush his hair back. I want to see his eyes, I want a moment to find something more there in his eyes, but he wraps his arms up around my shoulders, his hot fingers curving against the back of my neck, into my hair. He pushes his head into my chest, his lips against my chest, the thin fabric between. And I can't help but touch him, then, touch his straining arms and his broad, smooth shoulders, the tightness at the small of his back, the sudden flex of his hip as he throws his leg over my leg. His arm comes down fast, and his hand rough at my waist, groping clumsy through the fabric. Arching his back and a sharp breath in, the weight of his leg on my leg, his opening fist shoving past my belly, he is down into my pajamas, takes me in his hand, his skin and my skin.
And, now, this is the moment.
I turn away from him, pulling away his hand. Then the elastic's soft return, my outstretched arm, my fingers tight on his wrist, my letting go. With my elbows and feet I push myself to the edge of the bed. I drop down onto the floor, the sheets and blanket caught, pulled half off of the mattress. I kneel, turned away, twisted up in the blankets. I don't look at him. I won't look at him.
"You have to go back in the other room."
There's no sound. No sound at all but wind and the muffled rattling of branches. But now I hear his body release itself slowly down into the bed. The sound of exhaling, the sound of his hair spreading on the pillow. The dry brush of his hand, his arm along the sheet, and the soft groan of the mattress as his body relaxes, unfolds. He makes a low noise in his throat, maybe a word. The bed shifts gently as he lifts himself again, then a dull creak and another as he turns, slides over, and gets up. He walks across the cold room, the sound of his feet patting on the cold wood floor. I don't look at him. I don't move. Except that I can't stop my eyes from tracing the heavy, twisting curve of sheet and blanket, the rising line that tethers me to the empty bed.
He stops by the door and turns to me. And I look up at him, now, standing naked in the waving tangle of tree and streetlight. His soft and hard young body, white where the light strikes it, whiter than the white wall, shadows curving and turning along his skin. His damp hair pushed back from his forehead, the shadows rising and falling across his face, the sweat on his forehead, across the light in his eyes. And he looks away. He turns, makes that low sound again in his throat, maybe a word, and goes out, closing the door.
+ + +
The morning is bright. The bright you only get late in the fall, when the leaves are all gone. That sun is the hardest kind of bright, with nothing left to shade or deflect.
I get out of bed and the floor is cold on my feet. The sound of my feet on the cold wood floor. I know before I open the door. He isn't in the living room. The blanket is folded neatly, perfectly, the pillow sitting squarely on top of the blanket. He isn't in the kitchen. The bathroom door is open. He isn't in the bathroom. I stand right outside my bedroom, still holding the doorknob, and I can see all this. My world is only this big and I can see it all. Everything is in its place, nothing is missing.
Except in the dish on the little table by the door, where I always leave it when I take it off, my watch is gone. It wasn't a new watch or nice at all, but the leather strap kept the curve of my wrist, and the inside lining, the thin leather lining that comes in contact with my skin, the sweat and perfume, smells of me.
+ + +
If you liked this piece of fiction, we recommend reading "From the Black, Twitchy Place," by Frank DiPalermo, here.
Stephen O’Donnell is a mid-career fine artist. His work is widely collected, both in this country and abroad. Entirely self taught, he is best known for his self-portraiture, paintings which most often employ a great deal of gender ambiguity and a rather droll humor. His work usually exemplifies the genre known as the portrait historié, or historicized portrait, in which a recognizable subject is portrayed in period costume or mythological guise, a conceit often used by seventeenth and eighteenth century artists. He is married to writer and graphic designer Gigi Little. They live in Portland, Oregon with their dog Nicholas.
The projected title of the painting included in the header image of this article is "Autumn Into Winter," a work in progress by the author.