They say, Who do you think is most likely to marry first? and Who do you think will get with the most boys? and Who is most likely to cheat? and Who will be best in bed? and then, inevitably, Who is most likely to be a lesbian, out of all the girls in our form?
The last question is always met with shrieks and slaps and a swift intake of merry breath. In their minds they weigh up the girls with the least conquests, the girls currently not in their favor, the girls that are marginally less attractive than the rest. Unpopularity, silence, bookish introversion, any disinclination to follow in the footsteps of the flock—all these are symptoms, the girls agree, as they huddle round to diagnose. They shout out names and laugh and laugh like a coven of giddy witches casting a terrible fate.
If Julia’s name is mentioned, however, the girls will frown and flap their hands and say, “Yes, but apart from Julia.” Julia is no fun to diagnose. She somehow does not exist in this breathy, shrieking realm of social and sexual investiture where girls are named without their knowledge, convicted, and condemned. The girls cannot alter Julia’s fate by saying, I reckon Julia’s most likely to be gay. Their power has no meaning for her. She is like a loaded gun cast into their toy-box and half-buried among the plastic rifles, the plastic revolvers, the toy cannons, the caps. They fear the glint of her.
A few of them have kissed each other for the satisfaction of the St. Sylvester boys, perhaps to earn a ride around the block in a low-seated car, or in exchange for a stolen bottle or a crate of beer. A few of them have kissed each other at parties in their mates’ front rooms while their friends are outside being sick into flowerpots. Not passionately—that is their defense—but casually, and experimentally, and with no eye for affection or the promise of a sequel or a trend. These are not romances, but selfish tallies that they will later use as a mark of their own liberalism, their own worldly free-spiritedness: the kiss is an insurance, a proof for the later remark, Yeah course, I’ve kissed a girl.
By not speaking of Julia, the girls have the subtle advantage: they reduce the threat to almost nothing. When they pass her in the hall, they turn their heads and simply walk on by.
Monday
There is a message waiting on the saxophone teacher’s answer machine after Julia’s lesson. The speaker swiftly and gracefully identifies herself as one of the uninspired mothers, one of the cloying snatching mothers who would rather smother their daughters in the fold of their bosom, clasp their daughters’ faces tight to their chests and let them be stifled and choked than lengthen the ribbon of their leash and see them walk away.
The saxophone teacher pauses the machine with the edge of her fingernail, and stands a moment with her finger on the dial.
“The mothers always imagine that my allegiance lies with them,” she says aloud, “that our mutual adulthood functions to bind us together against the daughter, the child. They imagine that the daughter is simply the pursuit that draws us together, the activity we both enjoy, the monthly book club, the tennis game. The daughter is simply a medium for our friendship, an opportunity for our togetherness, a shared interest that allows us to explore and reflect upon our adult selves.
“The mothers imagine that I am their ally against the daughter, and that they are mine: they imagine that I have to work as hard as they do in order to forge a connection with the girl, and they roll their eyes at me and shake their heads and laugh like the daughter is impossible, and the both of us know it. They invite me to be tender toward the girl, frustrated with her, even despairing of her, but above all to treat her as an object, as the mere occasion for this reciprocal connection, adult with adult, like with like.”
She comes to a halt now and then stabs the machine again, bringing the voice back to life, bringing the woman back into the room.
“So I look forward to hearing from you,” the recorded woman continues. “Stella’s fourteen, been studying the clarinet for almost three years now, and before that nearly six years piano. She’s really very interested in moving on to the sax. There’s just something so dowdy and unfashionable about the clarinet, as you know, and I think she’s looking to make the move on to something a bit sexier. Something with a bit more bite, that gives her a bit more appeal. It’s a welcome move, in actual fact. We were worried for a time that she wasn’t interested enough in that sort of thing, just didn’t care enough. About boys and nice clothes and all the rest of it. We were worried for a time, I don’t mind telling you that. Not that she had trouble making friends—it was almost the opposite, really, that the friendships were just so close. You couldn’t prize them apart. Whoever it was, the current favorite. Always one after another, there was always a favorite, right the way through. I’d ferry them around, to and from the cinema and all that, and they’d always sit together in the back seat with an old rug thrown right over their heads so they could talk quietly and I couldn’t see. I’d watch in the rear-view, this shrouded tartan thing with their two heads together and both of them whispering away. Looked like they were kissing, even. It unnerved me. I don’t mind telling you that.
“If you could call me back on this number,” the woman says in closing, and then there is a little pip to show that the message has come to an end.
Saturday
It is thirty-five minutes before Bridget is going to die, and she is sitting on her high upholstered stool in the video store, the till already cashed up and waiting under the counter in its dirty canvas slip. The car park outside is empty and slick, and she can see the line of yellow streetlights peeling away from her into the black.
Bridget is remembering two girls at her primary school who had for a time become obsessed with gathering facts about sex. They always referred to the act as It, and sat together for hours in grave dutiful conference as they revised and expanded their combined wisdom on the subject, from time to time closing their eyes in long-suffering horror and saying something like “Two-on-one It. That is so gross.” They were secretive and guarded and unwilling to share their wisdom, like proud and weary sphinxes guarding the door to a world that the others could not hope to understand.
Bridget recalls one athletics lesson from this period, the two girls standing together with their arms casually linked, and watching the PE teacher with the expression of forbearing solemnity that was appropriate to their studies of It. The PE teacher called out, “Today we’re practicing sprints from a crouch start,” and the smaller girl immediately whispered, “Crouch start for It.” They exchanged a grave nauseated look as if the conjured image had pained them both. Bridget felt a little jealous as she watched these two girls share their mutual feeling of pious disgust. The smaller girl’s deliberate revulsion fascinated her. “Crouch start for It,” she said. The subject was just too painful to say more. The taller girl looked down in sympathy and shook her head as if to acknowledge how sickening and inescapable the whole business was. It was all around them.
The eight-year-old Bridget had been unable to comprehend the terrible relation that this particular athletics lesson bore to the act of It, and now as she reflects upon the scene she realizes that she still has no idea how to recognize or execute a crouch start for It. Is there even such a thing? she asks herself doubtfully, but then she recalls once more the poise and perfect confidence of this ten-year-old girl, who is eighteen by now and probably thoroughly schooled in arts beyond the reach of Bridget’s imagining. Bridget reflects on how little she knows. The raindrops reach the sill and quiver there. She feels ashamed.