The Stone Girl (7 page)

S

ethi e spends the weekend studying. These are her senior year finals, after all, the grades that colleges will look at. She stays up late to reread
What Maisie Knew
cover to cover for her English exam, even

though really she’s just procrastinating having to study calculus. She stops reading when she notices the picture frames on her windowsill are crooked, and she has to getup to straighten them. She takes Valium to sleep, because it’s perfectly sensible to take Valium to sleep, perfectly sensible to need help relaxing when finals are coming. It’s perfectly normal to be so busy that you don’t have time to eat. Perfectly normal that her phone never rings, not because she’s let the battery die, but because, of course, all of her friends are busy studying too. Perfectly normal that she keeps her bedroom door tightly closed and comes out only to go to the bathroom. Rebecca needn’t wonder why she’s staying home every night; she can, Sethie thinks, be grateful to have such a conscientious, ambitious child.

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Janey shows up the evening after Sethie has taken her last final: essay questions on American history; Sethie wrote about black soldiers during the Civil War. Sethie thinks that she’s been taught the same history over and over but with different twists. When we were seven, they taught us that slavery didn’t exist in America after the Civil War. At seventeen, we have a teacher who tell us that slavery still hasn’t ended; it’s just not quite so visible, not quite so clear.

Janey eyes Sethie carefully as she stands in her doorway. Sethie wonders what she’s looking at so closely. This morning, Sethie put on makeup, though it’s smudged now. After finals, they took photos of all of the different clubs for the yearbook. Sethie was in two; one for the yearbook editorial staff, and one for the White Environmental Action Club, the acronym for which is WEAC, which amuses all the members, since the club doesn’t really do any thing or represent any actions, other than the action of allowing its members to list it on their college applications.

Sethie’s been on the club since seventh grade. Then, she wanted to make a difference; she started a campaign for recycling bins to be placed on every floor and next to the copy machines in the library. Everyone acted like it was such a big deal. The teachers were proud of her, and the headmistress even spoke about it at that year’s graduation ceremonies. But after a while, Sethie noticed that people still threw recyclables in the trash cans, or they threw the wrong things into the recycling bins, like soda cans into the paper bins and paper into the bins for plastics. It really hadn’t made any difference at all. But they did make her the

144 president of WEAC this year, maybe, Sethie thinks, as an homage to her seventh-grade activism. So this afternoon, she had to sit in the center of the picture, even though she’d have much rather been in the back; being behind other girls would have covered up the fat around her belly.

Worse, though, was the yearbook editorial picture. Sethie felt like an imposter there. Everyone looked at her like they knew why she’d stopped going to meetings, and good riddance too. Who wants a managing editor who can’t even be responsible enough to keep from eating pizza at our meetings, their looks seemed to say. That girl can’t possibly be responsible enough to put a yearbook together.

“You’re staring at me,” Sethie mumbles to Janey finally. She is holding open her front door; only halfway, so that Janey knows she is not invited in.

“What?” Janey asks. “I didn’t hear you.”
“Nothing.”
Janey blinks. “You’re not answering your phone.” Sethie shrugs.
“You look like hell,” Janey adds.
“Well, you know, finals.”
“I had my English final yesterday.”
“Oh?” Sethie stops herself from asking how it went. “I think I did okay. Well, I mean. Thanks to you.” Sethie shrugs. She had liked helping Janey with English.

It made her feel good.
Janey says, “I know you’re mad at me.”
Sethie shrugs again. She’s not sure what she is, other

than hungry.

145 “I should have told you sooner. About Shaw, I mean. I just felt this loyalty to him. Like, he was my friend first or something.”

All Sethie can think to say is “You said that already.” Janey asks if she can come in.
“Why?” Sethie says, and Janey’s face crumples. Janey

is wearing a turtleneck sweater but Sethie imagines that if she could see her collarbone now, it would be dull and dry.

“Sethie, you’ll be my friend last, that’s what I wanted to say. My loyalty is to you, and he hurt you.”
Sethie shrugs. “He didn’t hurt me. I just misunderstood.”
“He misrepresented.”
“No, he didn’t. He never called me his girlfriend. It wasn’t his fault.”
“It wasn’t yours.”
“I really don’t want to talk about this, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I don’t really want to talk at all.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
“But if you change your mind”—Janey reaches into her pocket and offers Sethie a slip of paper— “this is the number where I’m staying in Virginia. Doug’s parents’ place. He said I might not have cell service there.”
Sethie takes the number and puts it in her own jeans pocket. She’s not quite sure what to do with it.
“We’re leaving tomorrow morning.”
Sethie nods. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve.

146 “Merry Christmas,” Janey says.
“Okay.” Sethie considers making a joke about being

Jewish, but it seems like it would take too much effort. “I’d say Happy New Year too, but we’ll talk before then.” Sethie shrugs. “Sure.”
“Okay.” Janey turns around and presses the button for

the elevator. Sethie thinks that she would have better believed that Janey wanted to come in if she’d unzipped her winter coat. But then, Sethie made it clear that she wasn’t exactly welcome.

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L

ater, Sethi e fi nds another piece of paper, with another phone number. She puts it next to her phone, on her nightstand. She hates the furniture in her room; white wicker, leftover from a phase she went through when

she was ten and wanted everything to be white. White wicker dresser and desk, white bedspread. Rebecca says there’s no point in replacing anything with Sethie going away to school next year.

Sethie glances at the paper on her nightstand as she changes into her pajamas and gets her bottle of water. She takes a vitamin called chromium picolinate before she begins to drink, because one of the girls at school said it makes you lose weight.

By the time she picks up her phone to dial the number, she’s already memorized it. She slips the paper into her desk drawer. She plugs her phone into its charger so that it will have the power it needs for one call. She stretches the cord to stand in the center of the room and holds her phone

148 out in front of her, presses the numbers. Ben picks up on the second ring.

“I read ‘Everything That Rises Must Converge’,” Sethie says instead of hello. “I should have been studying, but I read your story instead.” Sethie steps over to her bed and sits up tall in the center of it, her legs crossed underneath her.

“It’s not my story.”
“It is as far as I’m concerned.”
Sethie thinks Ben is smiling now. “Well, what did you

think?”
Sethie takes a deep breath before answering. “I loved it.
The hat.”
“Yeah.”
“And the mom.”
“I know.”
“Brilliant.”
“Positively.”
“If I get in to Columbia, you’re going to have to tell me
which class it was that you read that in. I want a teacher to
help me figure out what it all means.”
Ben laughs. “When you get in to Columbia, I will be
happy to guide you in your course selection.”
“Hey, I’m perfectly capable of picking my classes.” “I’m sure you are. I’m just also perfectly capable of
helping.”
Sethie smiles. She uncrosses her legs.
“I’ve done two bad things,” she says slowly. “But I can’t
seem to decide which one to tell you first.”

149 “Is one worse than the other?”
Sethie closes her eyes.
“Yes.”
“Then tell me in order of badness.”
“I’m not honestly sure which one is the worst.” “Hey at least you know they were bad. That’s half the

battle.”
“All right, G.I. Joe.”
“Tell me both at once, and I’ll figure out which one was

worse.”
“I sent Janey away.” Sethie’s shoulders slump as she
says it. She makes herself sit up straight again; sitting up
straight is good exercise for your abs.
“What do you mean you sent her away? She’s going
away, with Doug.”
“I don’t mean I sent her to Virginia, numnuts.” “Dude, you know nothing about my nuts,” Ben says, and
Sethie giggles.
“I sent her away from my door. She came over to talk to
me, to check up on me I think, but I sent her away.” “Why?”
“Well, I’m angry at her.”
“Why?”
“She should have told me about Shaw sooner.” Sethie
assumes he knows what she’s talking about.
“Maybe she should have.”
“And maybe she only came over here because she was
feeling guilty for not having told me sooner and wanted to

150 make sure I wasn’t, like, slitting my wrists over it or something.”

“Were you?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s a good first step.”
“Thanks, I worked hard on it.” Sethie smiles; even now,

she is flirting with Ben. The retorts come so easily; that was never the case with Shaw. She was always scared to irritate Shaw.

Ben says, “So you sent her away, because she waited too long to tell you, exposing you to all kinds of heartbreak and humiliation? Even though, when she realized how wrong she was, she felt bad about it, and wanted to make sure you were okay?”

Sethie considers this. “I guess not.”
“That’s not why you sent her away?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
Sethie tries to take a deep breath around the lump that’s

formed in her throat. “I think I was embarrassed.” “Embarrassed?”
“Yeah. Embarrassed. That I fell for Shaw, that everyone knew he was sleeping around, that I was so stupid.” Sethie can hardly believe the words can make their way past the lump.

“That’s what happens when you’re in love. That’s where that whole ‘love is blind’ thing came from.”
“I thought that meant that when you’re in love, the

151 person you love becomes more good-looking to you. That you can’t see if they, you know, gain weight.”

At least Sethie certainly hopes that’s what it means, so that someday maybe there will be one less thing to scare her about gaining weight.

Doug says, “That too. But also that you can be totally blindsided by the person you’re in love with.”
“I don’t think that’s what they meant.”
“Well, that’s because you’re not up on my modern, hip interpretation. You have nothing to be embarrassed about.”
Sethie closes her eyes. “Well, there’s something else. The other reason I sent Janey away.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I knew if she came in I would probably tell her the second bad thing that I did.”
“What’s the second bad thing?”
Sethie keeps her eyes shut. “I’m not sure I can say it out loud.”
“Try saying it like it’s about someone else.”
Sethie opens her eyes. She lies down so that her feet are on her pillows. Even though she’s washed her sheets since the last time Shaw was here, she believes that the pillowcases still smell like him.
“Someone who slept with the guy she thought was her boyfriend but discovered he was really only using her for sex and probably also for a place to smoke pot? Someone who slept with him while he told her about his new girlfriend who is, apparently, the kind of girl that he could really fall in love with?”

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Sethie is surprised to have said all of that, surprised at the ease with which the words came out of her mouth. Ben was right; saying it about someone else did make it easier. She said it, and she’s not even crying. In a minute, she will even be laughing.

“Jeez,” Ben says. “That girl has issues.”
“Tell me about it,” Sethie says, and now she laughs. She’s grateful Ben made a joke; it’s a relief to be a punch line, even if it is a punch line about being a basket case.
“Keep me the hell away from a chick like that,” Ben continues, and Sethie stops laughing. Maybe she had no business confiding all of this in Ben.
“Sethie?” Ben says when he hears how quiet she’s gotten.
“Yeah?” She knows when she speaks, her voice sounds small. She imagines that when someone’s as tall as Ben is, even his voice is bigger.
“I don’t think you really are a girl like that. I think you only were for a second there, or a few months there. But I don’t think that’s who you really are.”
Sethie quietly says, “Who do you think I really am?” But she doesn’t intend for Ben to answer; she doesn’t even intend for him to hear.
“You’re the only girl I ever met who understood that it’s not so great, being this size. And you’re the only girl I ever met who wants to write a paper about Ernest Hemingway.”
Sethie likes the girl Ben thinks she is. She likes who she is on the phone with Ben, just like she liked who she was at dinner with him, and on the couch beside him. She

153 is brazen and brash, flirty and opinionated. She isn’t a girl who curls over toilets and counts calories. This girl is so much easier than that. By the end of this phone call, this girl nicknames Ben “the Giant” without even worrying that it might offend him.

Ben says, “As long as you don’t say ‘jolly green.’ ” “Nah,” Sethie says. “That’s not you. You’re the friendly giant, like in
The Princess Bride.
You look scary, but you’re the one who really rescues everyone in the end.”
“I never saw that movie.”
“You’re kidding. It’s my favorite. I practically burned a hole in my copy I watched it so many times.”
“And you just gave away the ending.”
Sethie laughs. “Don’t worry. I really didn’t. We’ll watch it sometime, and I’ll prove it to you.”
“All right then, it’s a date. After the break.”
“Okay,” Sethie says. “After the break.”
“And Sethie?”
“Yeah?”
“I figured out which one of the two bad things you did was worse.”
“Oh yeah, how long did that take you?”
“I knew the answer even before you told me number two. It was sending Janey away. And you know it, too.”
Sethie doesn’t say anything.
“Okay, well, till after the break, then.”
“Right, after the break.”
“You take care of yourself while I’m gone.”

154

“You too. I mean, while you’re gone. Stay warm up there.”
“Dude, up there is my only chance to cool off.”
Sethie smiles, and says good night and Happy New Year. When she hangs up, she unplugs her phone so that the battery will die again. Now that Ben is off to Vermont, there honestly isn’t anyone left she wants to talk to.

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