31. Motel Room

I drove to the motel in the afternoon and registered and got the key. It was in north Jersey, along a stretch where there were ten or fifteen of these near-identical motels. I guess they were big with truckers. I’d driven by these places many times, with Lisa on our way to Paramus Park, or with my parents to visit my cousins in Bergen County. I had it in my mind to register using a funny name, Holden Caulfield or something like that, but in the end I used my real name and even my real license plate number. The lady behind the desk was middle-aged, with a hard look on her face like she’d been through some rough times. I thought if I tried to lie about anything she would see right through me.

She barely glanced at the information I wrote down, though. She just gave me the  key and told me the check-out time.

I needed to get home to get ready, but I couldn’t resist taking a quick peek. It looked like every motel room I’d ever seen on television, or stayed in with my parents during road trips to Washington or Pennsylvania Dutch Country: beige rug, faded comforter, lots of molded plastic in the bathroom. Still, I got flutters in my stomach standing in the doorway.

There was no reason for this. Lisa and I by this time had had every kind of sex we could think of. It was just the thought of being there with her, overnight, in a motel room. That was maybe the one kind we hadn’t had: in a bed of our own, without any need to immediately put on our clothes when we were done.

Back at home, I took a 45-minute long bath until I reeked of Dial soap and then put on my tuxedo. It was powder blue, with a black cumberband, and I’d made lots of jokes about black and blue being appropriate colors for me as I left high school. I drove over to Lisa’s: she looked beautiful, her white dress tight and gauzy, angel’s breath threaded in her hair. I knew it was angel’s breath because she’d insisted the corsage I bought her include angel’s breath, to match her hair.

“Look at us, we clean up good,” I said, and kissed her.

“Don’t even imagine a lot of effort didn’t go into this,” she answered.

Her parents took pictures: in front of the living wall unit, in front of the hedges in the front of the house, entering the car to be on our way. “Did you get it?” Lisa asked, as we drove off.

I motioned toward the glove compartment. She opened it and took out the diamond-shaped red plastic keychain. “8,” she said, reading the number. “Think we can do it that many times tonight?”

“No,” I admitted, “but I’m enjoying thinking about trying.”

We stopped back at my parents house. They took pictures: in front of the living room wall unit, in front of the weeping willow in the backyard. “Give a call if you need anything,” my father said as I got in the car. I’d explained to him how the night was going to go, the sleepover party at Cliff Kennedy's, the drive to the shore the next morning. I think he both believed it and trusted that I knew what I was doing if it wasn’t true. My mother, she just thought I looked good in powder blue.

The Prom itself was sort of like the motel room: standard issue, the same thing I’d seen too many times on television. There was dancing to terrible soft-rock songs, the kind I’d loved when I started high school four years ago. There was food: chicken cordon bleu, crumbly blueberry tart for dessert. There were sarcastic conversations about the decorations with the few my friends who’d made it. Jack was there with a girl named Christine Rock, but only as friends, and Andy with a very beautiful though nearly-mute girl named Heather Leonardo. She’d transferred to our school in the fall, and Tony had immediately asked her out. “Does she talk more in person?” we asked, and Andy told us no, she never had much to say, but she was lonely and missed her friends back home and loved to fuck. “She’s so grateful I’m being nice to her,” Andy explained. “She’ll do practically anything for me.”

There was even some TV-show style drama: Pete Veeck, Lisa’s former boyfriend, came over and asked her to dance. He was there with a junior, the girl he’d broken up with Lisa to pursue. She said a cold no and turned her back to him. After he left I told her it was okay with me, and that maybe she should dance with him, just for the closure. We walked out to the back porch of the Meadowbrook Lounge and talked it over for a half hour, until Lisa decided yes, she should have one last dance with Veeck, but she should be the one to ask him. By then it was getting near the end and people were starting to leave and she never got a chance.

A bunch of us went to a McDonalds in our Prom clothes. Someone had seen it in a movie. After, most people were heading off to the party at Cliff Kennedy's. There really was one, which was the beauty of our cover-up story. Lisa and I promised to meet everyone there, but as soon as we got in the car we headed for Jersey.

Lisa was grossed out by the room, which did look seedier under electric light than it had in the sunlight, but I could tell she was trying to be a good sport. I suggested a shower: “If the room isn’t clean, at least we can be.” We soaped each other and attempted intercourse standing up but the shower enclosure was too small so we toweled off and hit the bed. It crackled with every move we made: there was a plastic sheet underneath the regular one.

The first time went quick. We talked a little more about Veeck and then about how drunk Mary Anne Massimano had been—one of the teachers had escorted her out about midway through the prom—and then we gave it another try. It took longer, a while actually, the whole exhaustion and excitement of the day catching up with me, and when I finally came I had a thought that there was no way I was getting to 8 but maybe there’d be time for one more tomorrow morning.

I reached down to make sure my condom stayed on as I pulled out. Only I couldn’t find the condom.

“It’s not there,” I said.

“What?”

“The rubber. It came off. It’s not on me anymore.”

“Where is it?”

“Still inside you, I think.”

This had never happened to us before. We’d always been so careful.

First, we dealt with the mechanical part, the recovery. We were both very calm doing this. We found that the condom hadn’t just come off, it had split into two pieces.

Lisa started crying as soon as she saw. “I’m scared,” she managed to say, her body shaking.

“I can’t get pregnant. I can’t.”

I did all the right things. I took her in my arms. I let her cry. When she was through the worst part of the crying, I tried to take a light tone. “Getting pregnant on Prom night? What are the chances?” I said. I talked about how we should bring a lawsuit against the condom company. I asked what kind of world it was where you couldn’t even trust latex. I tried to attribute the breaking of the condom to my enormous endowment.

“Don’t worry,” I kept saying as Lisa nodded off in my arms. “Nothing’s going to happen. It’ll all be all right.”

I didn’t believe any of this. I was as full of panic and dread as Lisa. She was right: she couldn’t be pregnant. Being pregnant would ruin everything.

I turned on the TV. I gunned around until I found a “Twilight Zone” episode about a dummy who takes over the ventriloquist’s act, and then I scored an “I Love Lucy” with Lucy making a Western movie starring Fred and Ethel because she’s jealous of Ricky. The movie is of course awful. Lisa was asleep by now. I thought of that “I Love Lucy” episode where Lucy is pregnant and can’t find the right moment to tell Ricky, and she ends up going down to the club and requesting a song about having a baby. My brother and I had seen it about ten times, it was one of our favorites. I remembered how Ricky walks from table to table, asking each couple if they’ve requested the song, until he comes to Lucy’s table. She nods at him, smiling, to indicate yes, she’s the one.

I thought about the glowing, beatific look on Lucy’s face. Then I thought about the hard look on the face of the woman who’d rented me this room. How long, I wondered, would I be able to keep doing the right thing, when the right thing got harder than mouthing comforting words and making jokes about lawsuits?