The Lonely Hearts Hotel(15)
Two years passed in this way. In 1929 they were both fifteen years old, and so what happened next was probably inevitable.
When they were inside the orphanage, they were often separated, as all the girls and boys were. Rose was coming out of Confession when she saw Pierrot. He was sitting on a bench by the wall outside the visitors’ coatroom, with a big, stupid smile on his face.
“What are you thinking about?” Rose asked him.
“I don’t want to tell you because I think I might upset you and make you really rather angry.”
“Oh, just tell me what you were thinking about and stop playing this ridiculous game.”
“Can I tell it to you in your ear? I don’t want anybody who is passing by to hear what I am saying.”
“Nobody can hear us.”
“I would be mortified if anyone else knew what I was thinking.”
Rose turned her head forward so he could get up close. She could feel his lips against her ear. His breath entered into her ear before his words did. Her impulse was to both pull away to stop this unpleasant thing from happening and to pull his head closer to her. The duality of this sensation made it so intense.
“I want to take off your stockings, and I want to look at each and every one of your toes. I want to put each of your toes in my mouth.”
The words were just shocking. The reason they were shocking was because she did not quite believe them. She had heard rumors of such words, naturally. But she hadn’t quite accepted them as being absolutely true. It was as though he were holding up a jar with a mermaid in it. Or walking down the street holding a unicorn attached to a leash.
She opened her mouth to respond, but she found that her mouth was dry and her throat seemed to be empty, with no words at all. It was like opening an icebox and expecting to find bottles of milk but finding nothing.
“And then I want you to touch my penis. Just take it in your fist and squeeze it really hard.”
She looked down and she could see his penis pushing up his pants.
“It grows and gets hard anytime I think about doing these types of things to you.”
? ? ?
SISTER ELO?SE NOTICED that they were whispering. She hurried into the chapel and went into the coatroom through its back door. She sat on the couch in the room and listened through the transom to what Pierrot and Rose were saying on the other side of the wall. There was an opening of some sort in every wall for this purpose: no one could have any privacy.
Pierrot wasn’t actually whispering when he put his mouth up to Rose’s ear. All he had done was lower the register of his voice to make it huskier. It was almost like his words had taken their clothes off. And so Sister Elo?se heard each of them.
She was so angry. It was so vulgar. He didn’t want to have anything to do with her physically yet pretended that he was a pure child wanting an innocent and holy union. And now here was Pierrot with the vocabulary of the Marquis de Sade, as sophisticated and well versed as Casanova.
She was filled with a terrible and uncontrollable rage. But, as always, her rage was not directed toward Pierrot. She was filled with loathing toward Rose, who was really only the passive listener. Rose hadn’t even been able to respond. It was as if Rose were being offered a box of chocolate-covered cherries to eat. It was as if Rose were going to receive everything Sister Elo?se had ever talked herself out of wanting.
? ? ?
ON THE OTHER SIDE of the wall Rose stood up quickly, frightened by Pierrot’s words. Or it wasn’t exactly that she was afraid of them, but they made her feel like doing odd things. It was as though her body had a mind of its own. She wanted to strip naked. She wanted him to call her Mrs. Pierrot.
Rose needed to reflect upon these strange knee-jerk reactions before acting on them. The new sensations and desires she was feeling were delightful and confusing all at once. So she jumped up and darted off. She had just entered the dormitory and was leaning against the wall when Sister Elo?se came for her.
? ? ?
SISTER ELO?SE hated Rose’s face too. It was so calm and blank, open to everything. It was a face that all sorts of people fell madly in love with. She always wanted to take that face like it was a piece of wet clay and mold it into a different expression, one that was bitter and filled with rage and discontent. But no matter what she did to Rose, Rose always looked up at her afterward with that same unscathed face.
Elo?se stopped herself from doing anything to Rose at that moment. She thought she would kill the girl if she didn’t walk away. She hurried off down the stairs.
Rose looked after Elo?se. She had never understood the Sister.
? ? ?
ROSE WAS MOPPING THE FLOOR in the vestibule by the front entrance of the orphanage. The tiles at the bottom of the flight of stairs were brown and white. There was a yellow stained-glass window with an image of a lamb that the light shone through. It shone on Rose as she assiduously mopped up the area, for it was where the most footprints seemed to gather, like they were fish in a net.
Sister Elo?se was waiting and waiting for Rose to make some sort of mistake, to perpetrate an infraction. It usually didn’t take very long. You only had to observe a child for several minutes before they made some sort of ridiculous mistake. What on earth was as flawed and imperfect as a child? She needed Rose to make a mistake not only to justify to the other children the punishment she was going to rain down upon Rose, but to justify it to herself.
Rose found the sunlight intoxicating. It made her sleepy. It made her dreamy. It blinded her to the physical world around her. The mop in the bucket made the sound of a pig rooting for truffles. She flopped it onto the floor. Rose began thinking of the words Pierrot had said to her. She couldn’t help it. She then, for a short moment, took the mop in her hands and began to dance with it while washing the floor. She began to fantasize about dancing with Pierrot, his arms around her waist and his fingers secretly reaching down to her behind.