First Love and Other Sorrows: Stories by Harold Brodkey

in a minute—
    “We went out Sunday night…” she began after a few seconds. They had gone to Medart’s, in Clayton, for a hamburger. Joel had talked her into drinking a bottle of beer, and it had made her so drowsy that she had put her head on the back of the seat and closed her eyes. “What kind of car does Joel have?” I asked.
    “A Buick,” Eleanor said, surprised at my question.
    “I see,” I said. I pictured the dashboard of a Buick, and Joel’s handsome face, and then, daringly, I added Eleanor’s hand, with its bitten fingernails, holding Joel’s hand. I was only half listening, because I felt the preliminary stirrings of an envy so deep it would make me miserable for weeks. I looked up at the sky over my shoulder; clouds had blotted out the moon, and everything had got darker. From the next block, in the sudden stillness, I heard the children shouting, uttering their Babylonian cries as they played kick-the-can. Their voices were growing tired and fretful.
    “And then I felt his hand on my—” Eleanor, half-drowned in shadow was showing me, on her breast, where Joel had touched her.
    “Is that all?” I said, suddenly smiling. Now I would not have to die of envy. “That’s nothing!”
    “I—I slapped his face!” She exclaimed. Her lip trembled. “Oh, I didn’t mean—I sort of wanted—Oh, it’s all so terrible!” she burst out. She ran down the front steps and onto the lawn, and leaned against the trunk of an oak tree. I followed her. The pre-storm stillness filled the sky, the air between the trees, the dark spaces among the shrubbery. “Oh, God!” Eleanor cried. “How I hate everything!”
    My heart was pounding, and I didn’t know why. I hadn’t known I could feel like this—that I could pause on the edge of such feeling, which lay stretched like an enormous meadow all in shadow inside me. It seemed to me a miracle that human beings could be so elaborate. “Listen, Eleanor,” I said, “you’re all right! I’ve always liked you.” I swallowed and moved closer to her; there were two moist streaks running down her face. I raised my arm and, with the sleeve of my shirt, I wiped away her tears. “I think you’re wonderful! I think you’re really something!”
    “You look down on me,” she said. “I know you do. I can tell.”
    “How can I, Eleanor. How can I?” I cried. “I’m nobody. I’ve been damaged by my heredity.”
    “You, too!” she exclaimed happily. “Oh, that’s what’s wrong with me!”
    A sudden hiss swept through the air and then the first raindrops struck the street. “Quick!” Eleanor cried, and we ran up on her porch. Two bursts of lightning lit up the dark sky, and the rain streamed down. I held Eleanor’s hand, and we stood watching the rain. “It’s a real thunder-shower,” she said.
    “Do you feel bad because we only started being friends tonight? I mean, do you feel you’re on the rebound and settling on the second-best?” I asked. There was a long silence and all around it was the sound of the rain.
    “I don’t think so,” Eleanor said at last. “How about you?”
    I raised my eyebrows and said, “Oh, no, it doesn’t bother me at all.”
    “That’s good,” she said.
    We were standing very close to one another. We talked industriously. “I don’t like geometry,” Eleanor said. “I don’t see what use it is. It’s supposed to train your mind, but I don’t believe it….”
    I took my glasses off. “Eleanor—” I said. I kissed her, passionately, and then I turned away, pounding my fists on top of each other. “Excuse me,” I whispered hoarsely. That kiss had lasted a long time, and I thought I would die.
    Eleanor was watching the long, slanting lines of rain falling just outside the porch, gray in the darkness; she was breathing very rapidly. “You know what?” she said. “I could make you scrambled eggs. I’m a good cook.” I leaned my head against the brick wall of the house and said I’d like some.
    In the