On the ride over to her first day of work at DiNuccio’s, Patty’s brother, Matt, turned on the radio. Eleanor recognized the warbly strains of “Crimson and Clover.”
“My sister goes for all this sugar crap,” he told her. “But I’m thinking you might appreciate Led Zeppelin.” He changed the station.
He was back at the restaurant at four to bring her home, and every day after that, he drove her. Both ways.
“This must mess up your plans,” Eleanor said. “Having to go back and forth to DiNuccio’s all the time.”
“I have no plans,” he told Eleanor. “My dad’s got me on a short leash on account of my grades. He basically laid down the law: if I don’t pass this stupid Spanish class I need to graduate and get a decent score on the LSATs, he’s taking back the car. The good thing about driving you is I get an excuse to bust out of the coop twice a day.”
Eleanor liked sitting in the front seat with Matt, listening to the radio. Sometimes they rode without speaking—Matt pounding on the steering wheel when a good song came on, Eleanor looking out the window—but more and more, he talked with her. She felt special and grown-up, that a boy as old as Matt would pay attention to her this way. It was almost like having a real brother.
One day he handed her a joint. “You smoke?”
She never had, but she didn’t want to seem like a goody-goody.
“Sometimes.”
She inhaled, more than a person should. She started coughing.
“Not much I guess, huh?” he said. His laughter sounded like some kind of animal. A hyena, or the way hyenas sounded in cartoons anyway.
“What do you figure the story was with this guy Billie Joe McAllister?” he asked her. “Ode to Billie Joe” had come on. “Like, whydidthe guy jump off the Tallahatchie Bridge?”
Eleanor didn’t know what to say, so she kept quiet. Something about “Ode to Billie Joe” always made her uncomfortable. Nobody ever explained what they threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge.
“You have a boyfriend?” he asked her.
“No.”
“You ever have a boyfriend?”
For a minute, she thought she’d lie, but she figured he wouldn’t believe her anyway. “Not really.”
“Any guy ever kiss you?”
She shook her head.
They were at the point in the road where, if he went left, they’d be back at the Hallinans’ in around two minutes. There was anotherroad, off to the right. Smaller. No sign of houses. She’d never been down that one.
That’s where he took her. Not saying anything, he pulled the car over.
He leaned over to her side of the wide bench seat and put his hands on her shoulders. He pressed his face against hers. At first the kiss was the normal kind, as much as Eleanor had imagined. Then his tongue was in her mouth.
After that, he always turned down the other road when he picked her up after work. They didn’t talk about it. This was just something he did, and Eleanor let him. It usually lasted only a few minutes. Then they went back to the house.
After a couple of times Matt started putting his hand down the front of her shirt. Inside her bra, pinching her nipple. She wondered if that was supposed to feel good. If someone had told him it did. If he cared about things like that.
Then he had his hand in her underpants. The next time—middle of July, probably—he pulled her skirt all the way up. He unzipped his pants. Except in museums, on statues, and one time when she’d walked in on her parents, Eleanor had never seen a man’s penis. Now he was pressing his against her. Then he was thrusting it inside. At first it wouldn’t go, but then it did.
Eleanor lay there on the seat, letting him move up and down on top of her. She closed her eyes.
It got to be a regular thing. Driving to work, listening to the radio. Eleanor tried hard to focus on that, rather than what would happen in the car with Matt.
They always seemed to be playing Creedence Clearwater that summer. “Bad Moon Rising.” Though sometimes Matt put on the news.
There was a riot in New York City in reaction to some policemen beating up homosexual people. As far as she knew, Eleanor had never met a homosexual, but she couldn’t understand why anyone would want to beat them up.
“That’s one way to get out of the draft,” Matt said, listening tothe broadcast about the Stonewall riots. “Just tell them you’re a fag.”
