On the El
Kirsten Hammerstrom
We were sitting in the kitchen at the old butcher-block table. I was stenciling polka-dots on my Keds and Danny was trying to get me to The Rocky Horror Picture Show after The Clash at the Aragon. He said he’d change in the bathroom there so my Mom wouldn’t find out and tell his Mom. They worked together at the thrift store our school ran, selling our classmates’ parents’ used stuff to fund our scholarships. It was a little weird to realize that you were wearing a shirt that the father of the girl sitting next to you had “worn out” long before your own father would, your mother turning the cuffs and collars of his shirts. Danny’s mother was raising him and his sister alone, down in the Robert Taylor homes. We lived in a house in Old Town that my Dad might never finish.
“I don’t want to go. It’s not my scene,” I said. I’d been flirting with the bassist from Naked Raygun; I knew there’d be an after-party at the band’s loft and I wanted to go.
“What, are you afraid?” Danny’s puggy nose wrinkled up even more when he tried to catch me being a prig. I didn’t understand what he did in the dark dressed up in thrift-shop bras and garters, but it made my stomach queasy for him.
“No, I just don’t want to.” I finished the last dot and tossed the spent Sharpie into the trash. I scooped up my tights and skirt from the table, handed them to Danny. “Shove this in your bag, will you?”
He held up the black-and-red checkerboard miniskirt with the side zips and appraised it. “Well,” he said, “You’d totally fit in,” and zipped his bag around my clothes. By the time I came home, my Mom would be asleep and wouldn’t see what I was really wearing. I tied my sneakers and Danny followed me to the front door. My Mom sat like a pretzel in the leather and chrome sling chairs my Dad liked.
“Bye, Mom,” I said. “We’ll be back late. MJ’s Dad is picking us up after.” He wasn’t really. MJ had her own car or I’d take the El with the bassist while Danny—well, I wasn’t sure.
“Okay,” she said to her New Yorker. “Have a nice time.”
“Bye, Mrs. Faulkner,” Danny called. “Nice to see you.”
Mom waved, and took another sip from her wine glass. Nobody knew when my Dad would be home, not even Dad. He was probably drinking from his own glass at a club downtown. I tried to picture Danny there someday, in a blue suit with red suspenders over his striped Brooks Brothers shirt, squashed into a fat leather chair. A vision of him in green satin corset and fishnets appeared instead, spread-legged in a chair with an older guy—
“Hey, race you to the corner,” I yelled, and took off.
We sat next to each other on the El, swaying into each other’s shoulders as the train twisted above backyards lined with laundry. Mom at home, Dad downtown, me with Danny. It all felt so lonely, suddenly, as if the boys I kissed in the backs of cars were ghost boys, and as if all of the men Danny met in the park by school were dreams. There didn’t seem to be anything inside any of them anymore, and I wondered if anybody knew what they meant by love. Maybe I would just go home after.
“Hey Danny.” I looked at the pale hands limp on the lap of his black jeans, the washed cotton of the old Members Only jacket he wore. “Do you think I’ll ever get married?”
“What, and give up your whole ‘deb-gone-wrong’ gig? I don’t know. Why would you?” He wasn’t really teasing me, he seemed a little sad himself. Maybe it was the setting sun that blinked through the dirty windows of the car; maybe it was the crush of commuters.
“I don’t want to be lonely. I don’t want to be a crazy cat lady, not really.” I always said that was what I was going to be when they teased me at school.
“Okay, well, look. If I get AIDS, or if you get pregnant, we’ll get married. How’s that?”
“All right. At least I’ll always have you, right?” I slipped my hand around his arm and squeezed; he dropped his head onto to mine, and we kept riding and rocking on the train like little kids in a hammock all the way up the North Side.
Author’s Note
Kirsten Hammerstrom grew up in Chicago where she skipped school to visit the Art Institute and the Public Library; she’s been indulging in art and literature ever since. Since 2000 she has lived with her husband, son, and three over-indulged cats in Providence, RI where she works for a non-profit organization. Her short story, “Where the Bicycle is King” won second place in the 2008 Dirt Rag literature contest.
