Men, Women & Children: A Novel Read online

  She said, “So are you and Danny going to like do it this year or what?”

  Brooke said, “My opinion is I don’t think so. I don’t know if we’re ready, you know? And it’s not really like either of us feels like we have to or anything. You know?”

  Allison said, “Yeah. I guess so. I’m not rushing to do it or anything either. It’s just like, you guys have been together for so long, it wouldn’t be like you were doing it with some random guy just to do it or anything.”

  Brooke said, “I guess.”

  Hannah Clint, the first and only member of the Olympiannes to have C-cup breasts, joined the conversation, having overheard the last few comments as she worked on her own banner a few feet away.

  Hannah said, “Um . . . I’m pretty sure you know next year we’re going to be in the ninth grade—high school—and you know Mike Trainor is going to be a senior. He’ll be the starting quarterback for North East and, Brooke, you’ll probably have a pretty good shot at him. You’re seriously way hotter than pretty much any of the cheerleaders who’ll be there next year. And you’re definitely not going to want to have it be your first time with him. He’ll be able to tell that you don’t know what you’re doing.”

  Brooke had never liked Hannah. She tolerated her because she was a fellow Olympianne, but she felt that Hannah wasn’t worth her friendship. Although she had no direct evidence, she felt that Hannah had been jealous of her since they were children. Brooke felt that Hannah was jealous of her beauty. Brooke felt that Hannah wanted to be everything that Brooke was, but that she always came up slightly short. Hannah had gotten her breasts before any other girl, and Brooke felt that had just made Hannah that much more pathetic in her quest to be the prettiest girl in school, because she clearly flaunted them more than necessary. Every so often, Brooke would lay awake at night thinking about Hannah’s wardrobe and makeup and wonder if any male students had found Hannah more attractive than her that day. Hannah was unaware of any of this.

  Brooke said, “He won’t be able to tell anything.”

  Hannah said, “Are you kidding? You should just do it with Danny now, so you’re not completely terrible for Mike.”

  Brooke said, “How would you know? You haven’t done it with anyone,” as she sent Allison a text message that read “Hannah is such a bitch.”

  Hannah said, “I gave a blowjob over the summer.”

  Allison said, “To who?” as she replied to Brooke’s text message with “I know. She thinks her tits make her god’s gift or something.”

  Hannah said, “This guy I met when my mom and I were in Florida. Here, look.” Hannah took out her phone and began searching through her photos until she came to a photo of her with an unknown boy’s penis in her mouth, clearly taken by herself during the act, the boy’s head cropped out of the image. She showed the photo to Allison and Brooke.

  Allison said, “Oh my god, was it gross?” as she sent a text message to Brooke that read “What a skank.”

  Hannah said, “No, it wasn’t that bad. It was kind of salty, I guess.”

  Brooke said, “Did you let him, you know, finish in your mouth?” as she replied to Allison’s text message with “I know, right?”

  Hannah said, “Uh . . . yeah. How else would I know it was salty?”

  Brooke and Allison simultaneously sent each other a text message that read “Gross!!!”

  Hannah said, “Anyway, after this summer, I’m pretty sure that I’m seriously ready to actually do it, and I’m going to before I get to high school so I’m not completely retarded when I do it with a high school boy for the first time.”

  Brooke said, “My opinion is that you should probably know who you’re going to do it with before you make that kind of decision.”

  Hannah said, “I was thinking Chris.”

  Brooke said, “Oh my god. That’s gross. He’s seriously repulsive. He showed me the grossest porn I have ever seen in my life today at lunch.”

  Hannah said, “So he showed you porn? Who cares? I just don’t want to get to high school without having done it. And he’s cute enough and I think he likes me so . . . whatever.”

  Hannah looked at her phone as it beeped to indicate a new text message and said, “My mom’s here. See you guys tomorrow.” Hannah picked up her purse and left the gymnasium.

  Brooke and Allison had a short discussion about the likelihood of Hannah and Chris having sex before their eighth-grade year came to a close. They both seemed to think it was unlikely that this event would come to pass, but neither was willing to rule it out completely. And if they did have sex, Hannah and Chris would be the first among their peers to have done so, which was significant to both Allison and Brooke. Despite not being ready to have sex, Brooke confided in Allison that she had always thought she and Danny would be the first couple to have sex among their peers. They had been together longer than any other couple at Goodrich. To allow Chris and Hannah to have the distinction of being the first of their peers to have sex seemed wrong somehow to Brooke. Allison agreed and added that all of her dedication to a strict diet over the summer was done to attract a boy this year and she hoped that it would pay off.

  Brooke did not discuss the fact that the competitive nature her father had instilled in both her and her little brother since birth made her incensed at the thought of Hannah beating her in anything, including being the first girl to be sexually active. It wasn’t that Brooke had any desire to become sexually active. The opposite was true. She knew she wasn’t ready to enter that phase of her life and even thought that doing it in the eighth grade was somewhat clichéd. She had seen enough episodes of Tyra, Dr. Phil, Oprah, and other talk shows dealing with teen pregnancy and prostitution to have developed an idea that sexual activity before the age of sixteen or seventeen was nothing she was interested in. But she could not ignore the desire to at least perform oral sex just to have done it at least once so that Hannah Clint would have nothing over her. Brooke had never received a grade below A-minus on any report card, test, or assignment. She was the captain of the Olympiannes and was determined to be the varsity cheerleading captain at North East High School by her junior year. That right was most normally reserved for a senior, but Brooke had resolved to achieve this rank as junior and was fairly certain that she would be able to attain her goal if she worked hard enough at it.

  This ultracompetitive mode of thinking led Brooke to believe that, as the captain of the Olympiannes and the best-looking girl in the school, she should be the best at anything that any of the Olympiannes did, including being sexually experienced.

  In the south parking lot of Goodrich Junior High School, Hannah Clint emerged from the building and got into her mother’s fourteen-year-old Mercedes. Her mother, Dawn, said, “I bought you some underwear. We got a request from a subscriber so we have to do a quick shoot tonight.”

  As Dawn drove back to her mother’s house, where she and Hannah had been living since Hannah was born, she looked at the leather armrest where her initials were monogrammed. This car was the last piece of her old life, the last real reminder of what she had left behind.

  Dawn had once lived in Los Angeles. She had aspirations of becoming an actress, just like her mother, Nicole, had been. Nicole had a moderately successful career as a character actress in the 1950s. She appeared in only a handful of films, but her career gave her the chance to socialize with various people who were prominent in the entertainment industry and even become romantically involved with some of them. When she was in her early thirties, she was involved with three different men, any one of whom could have been Dawn’s father. Upon becoming pregnant, she made the decision to move back home with her parents and have the baby. Once Dawn was born, Nicole had difficulty imagining herself moving back to Los Angeles in an attempt to pick up where she had left off. So she stayed in her hometown and raised her daughter by herself.

  When Dawn graduated from North East High School, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue her own dream of becoming an actress. She was not met
with the same early success as her mother, having been cast in a play or student film once or twice a year, but nothing substantial. As an attractive young woman, she had engaged in relationships with several men who subsequently expressed their intent to marry her and raise a family, but she wouldn’t allow a relationship to stand in the way of her career goals.

  On her twenty-eighth birthday, she was celebrating by drinking with some friends at Bar Marmont. She began to think about the fact that she was getting older, about the fact that even the inconsequential auditions she forced herself to go on were generally filled with girls ten years younger than her, about the fact that maybe her lifelong dream was over. That night a television producer of moderate success bought her a drink, convinced her to give him her telephone number, and took her out to dinner the following week.

  After a little more than a year of dating, they moved in together. A few months later he sold a show to CBS and in celebration he bought her a Mercedes with monogrammed seats. The show required an actress for the small role of an attractive, but slightly older, next-door neighbor. He promised Dawn that if CBS were to order the pilot to be produced he would give her the role. CBS did order the pilot to be produced, and he was true to his word, but the pilot didn’t test well and the show was never ordered to series. Dawn was unimpressive in her minor role and, as a result, drew no new attention from agents, managers, or network or studio executives.

  Two weeks after the pilot was officially rejected by CBS she became aware of the fact that she was pregnant. Her boyfriend reminded her that he had always maintained he never wanted children and said that he would have nothing to do with the child if Dawn elected to give birth to it rather than abort. He told her he would pay whatever amount of child support was required of him by law, but would in no way be a father.

  The combined emotional trauma of the failed pilot, and the subsequent disintegration of the longest relationship she had ever had, led her to move back in with her mother in her hometown, just as her own mother had done. Hannah was born nine months later, and although the living arrangement was initially supposed to be temporary, the three generations of Clint women had lived under the same roof ever since that day.

  At an early age Hannah told her mother and grandmother that she, too, was very interested in acting. Nicole, having more years of insight into what the pursuit of such a statistically improbable goal can do to a person psychologically and emotionally, warned Dawn to encourage Hannah’s interest in other areas. But Dawn, having been so close to some success of her own in this area without really getting what she felt was a fair shake, saw in her daughter the opportunity for another chance.

  Because her child support checks were moderately substantial, Dawn never needed to have a job. She devoted every waking hour to making sure her daughter would find the success as an actress she had never had—that even her mother, who had acted in legitimate studio films, had never had. She enrolled her in acting classes, singing classes, dancing classes. She stayed up nights with Hannah, coaching her with techniques from countless books about acting, dancing, singing, and auditioning for jobs in all three of these fields. She was so willing to do anything to give her daughter the experiences in life that she was unable to achieve that she found herself locked in a relationship based on casual sex with the local community theater director, whom she found repulsive, just to ensure that Hannah would be cast in every production.

  It was this fervent desire to help her daughter that gave Dawn the idea to create a website for Hannah. In the beginning it was no different from any other aspiring actor’s website. It listed contact information, displayed headshots, a résumé, and a few video clips from various productions Hannah had appeared in. It wasn’t until the summer before eighth grade, when Hannah began developing breasts, that Dawn had the idea to put a few images of Hannah in her bathing suit on the website, hoping that she might be able to get work in print ads for summer fashion.

  A few weeks after uploading the first two images of Hannah in a one-piece red bathing suit, the site received its first e-mail—a request asking if a few more images of Hannah, this time in a two-piece bathing suit, could be posted. The e-mail went on to request that the photos of Hannah be taken lying down or bending over.

  Curious, and also excited that the site had generated interest in Hannah, Dawn replied to the e-mail asking its sender if he was an agent or manager interested in representing Hannah or a photographer looking for models. The sender replied that he was neither an agent nor a manager nor a photographer, just a self-proclaimed fan of Hannah’s.

  Dawn then realized that the person e-mailing her might very likely have a sexual interest in her daughter. But the person hadn’t yet asked for anything illegal. Dawn told herself that posting more photos of Hannah in various bathing suits wasn’t a bad thing if it generated further interest, no matter where the interest came from. She also recognized that there might be an opportunity to turn the website into a business, to make some money. She e-mailed the sender asking if he would be willing to pay a monthly fee for access to a private section of the website that would feature the photos requested. The sender replied by explaining that he would gladly pay a monthly fee of twelve to fifteen dollars to have access to such photos and also to be able to request certain outfits or poses once or twice a month.

  Despite being fully aware of the fact that what she was about to do was, at the very least, exploitive and possibly bordering on criminal with regard to the treatment of her own child, Dawn quickly set up a PayPal account and hired a web designer to build a members-only section on her daughter’s website. She had a talk with Hannah to make sure she had no reservations about wearing some more revealing outfits on this section of the site. Hannah explained that she was proud of her body and understood that if she was to be discovered by a director like Darren Aronofsky or Paul Thomas Anderson and they wanted her to participate in a nude scene, she wouldn’t hesitate to oblige them. This, she reasoned, was just practice for any such feature-film roles that might come her way in the future.

  After four months of the member’s-only section going live, Dawn had eighty-seven subscribers each paying $12.95 a month to see her daughter in bikinis and underwear in various poses. Dawn split the money with Hannah and told her not to tell anyone about it, including her grandmother. Hannah felt there was a salacious element associated with what they were doing and decided it was better to keep it a secret than to tell her friends at school. She liked doing it too much to risk being discovered and shut down. Hannah felt like she was famous every time her mother got an e-mail asking for a new pose or new outfit or just asking how she was doing or what her favorite color was. Even though her mother would never let her answer any of the e-mails or interact with any of her subscribers, she considered herself to have fans, and she viewed the experience as a type of training for what her life would be like when she had real fame, which was an inevitability in her mind.

  As they got out of the Mercedes, Hannah said, “Do you think we could put up a video blog for the subscribers? Just like a little one-minute thing I could do every week? Like talk about my life and stuff? I think they’d like that.”

  Dawn said, “We’ll see. Let’s just stick with the pictures for now. Here.” She handed her daughter a matching set of Hello Kitty bra and underwear along with a pair of Hello Kitty knee-high socks.

  Hannah said, “Socks? What for?”

  Dawn said, “To wear with the underwear,” and shrugged at her daughter, offering no further explanation.

  chapter

  four

  After school, Chris Truby did his homework; ate dinner with his mother, Rachel, and his father, Don; watched an episode of Two and a Half Men with them; and then told them that he had a difficult science test the following day that would require him to put in multiple hours of studying if he was to make a decent grade. And certainly he would need a good night’s rest as well, so Chris retired to his bedroom earlier than usual, leaving his parents in the living roo
m.

  Don looked at his wife. She had started a new job as an accountant for a nationwide collections agency six months before. The job offered no opportunity for exercise or movement beyond picking up the phone, typing on a keyboard, and making occasional trips to the bathroom or her car. Don could easily notice that Rachel had put on weight, maybe as much as eight or ten pounds, as a result of the job’s sedentary nature.

  Don’s physical attraction to his wife had waned over the years of their marriage due to the combination of her aging features and his overfamiliarity with her body. But no matter how unattractive she had become to him, the basic need to engage in sexual intercourse spurred him to try to initiate some form of physical intimacy on a regular basis. Despite his frequent attempts, the last time Rachel had been willing to have sex with him was more than a month and a half ago.

  With Chris headed off to his room for the night, Don leaned over to his wife and said, “Hey, what do you think?”

  Rachel said, “About what?”

  “About, you know . . .”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yeah—it’s been almost two months, Rachel.”

  “No, it hasn’t.”

  “The last time was after that barbecue at your sister’s house. Chris was at a friend’s house.”

  “Really? How do you remember that?”

  “How do you not?”

  “I don’t know, I guess my new job is just making me tired.”

  “It’s still early tonight. We can do it and you can be asleep by nine.”

  Rachel looked at Don. She knew she wasn’t satisfying him and she didn’t know exactly why, but the idea of sex with her husband was almost completely unappealing to her. She didn’t know if it was because they had been together for so long, or because she knew she had gained some weight and felt less attractive, or because, like Don, she found his aging body and face less appealing than they once had been, but she certainly knew it was not for any reason having to do with her job, which was the excuse she used most often. Despite the fact that it was the last thing she wanted to do that night, Rachel said, “Okay, but it has to be quick.”