Adultery & Other Choices by Andre Dubus Page A

Mr. Miller. He ate a hamburger with her and gave her bourbon and water from the one-man bar he had set up to get him through the cooking. He was a stout, pleasant man, and he told her she was the best-looking girl at the party.
    As soon as she entered the kitchen she knew people had been waiting for her. The music and talk were loud, but she also felt the silence of waiting; looking around, she caught a few girls watching her. Then, at her side, Rhonda said: ‘Where you been, Bobbie?’
    She glanced down at Rhonda, who sat with her boy friend, a class ring dangling from a chain around her neck, one possessive hand on Charlie Wright’s knee. She doubted that Rhonda was a virgin but she had heard very little gossip because she had no girl friends. Now she went to the keg, pushed through the boys, and filled a cup.
    Some time later, when the second keg had been tapped and both she and Calvin were drunk, he took her outside. She knew by now that everyone at the party was waiting to see if Calvin would make out. She went with him as far as the woods, kissed him standing up, worked her tongue in his mouth until he trembled and gasped; when he touched her breast she spun away and went back to the kitchen, jerking out of his grasp each time he clutched her arm. He was cursing her but she wasn’t afraid. If he got rough, they were close enough to the kitchen so she could shout for Mr. Miller. Then Calvin was quiet anyway, realizing that if anyone heard they would know what had happened. When they stepped into the kitchen people were grinning at them. Bobbie went to the beer keg and Calvin danced with the first girl he saw.
    When Charlie Wright got drunk he came over and danced with her. They swayed to ‘Blue Velvet,’ moved toward the door, and stumbled outside. They lay on the ground just inside the woods; because of the beer he took a long time and Bobbie thought of Rhonda waiting, faking a smile, dancing, waiting… Charlie told her she did it better than Rhonda. When they returned to the kitchen, Rhonda’s face was pale; she did not dance with Charlie for the rest of the night.
    At breakfast, near dawn, she sat on the bar and ate bacon and eggs with Mr. Miller, hoping Rhonda would worry about that too. Calvin tried to leave without her, but she had taken his car key, so he had to drive her home. It was just after sunrise, he was drunk, and he almost missed two curves.
    â€˜Hell, Calvin,’ she said, ‘just ’cause you can’t make out doesn’t mean you got to kill us.’
    He swung at her, the back of his open hand striking her cheekbone, and all the way home she cried. Next day there was not even a bruise.
    The lawnmower woke her that afternoon. She listened to it, knowing she had been hearing it for some time, had been fighting it in her sleep. Then she got up, took two aspirins which nearly gagged her, and made coffee and drank it in the kitchen, wanting a cigarette but still unable to tell her parents that she smoked. So she went outside and helped her father rake the grass. The day was hot; bent over the rake she sweated and fought with her stomach and shut her eyes to the pain pulsing in her head and she wished she had at least douched with a Coke, something she had heard about but had never done. Then she wished she had a Coke right now, with ice, and some more aspirin and a cool place in the house to sit very still. She did not want to marry Charlie Wright. Then she had to smile at herself, looking down at the grass piling under her rake. Charlie would not marry her. By this time everyone in school knew she had done it with him last night, and they probably thought she had done it with Calvin too. If she were pregnant, it would be a joke.
    That night she told her parents she wanted to finish college as soon as possible so she could earn her own money. They agreed to send her to summer school at L.S.U., and two weeks later they drove her to Baton Rouge. During those two