Moon Shadow: The Totally True Love Adventure Series (Volume 1) (10 page)

Mike had insisted I erase my artwork, and I’d refused. “You’re lucky Dad didn’t come in here,” he’d told me. Then Mike had angrily scratched over my obscene artwork with his car keys.

I finally say to Sarah, “I guess Mike was upset because I took so long in the restroom.”

“I sense you’re not telling me everything, Daniel, but that’s okay. I can be a little too nosy sometimes.”

Despite my reckless behavior at Marechiaro’s, my desire to ruin my father’s relationship with Cate, there’s something about Sarah that prevents me, at least for now, from telling her about my father. I want, I need, something I cannot name, from Sarah, and from Mrs. Hartford. Cate is not, it seems, just some old chatterbox.

My father, I’ve come to realize tonight, understands the situation perfectly, which is that he’s after Mrs. Hartford’s money because his re-election campaign for next year is already in financial trouble. Unfortunately, for Cate and Sarah, they don’t know that the congressman is a monster, and they don’t know that he’s bankrupt, either.

The congressman desperately needs money to save his political career and eventually to live out his dream of running for the Senate. That’s why he’s selling The Gables, and that’s why finding my mother’s diary is so important. The diary may be the smoking gun that brings my father down once and for all. That way, Cate and Sarah are saved from having to endure the misery my father will bring them if he manages to trick Cate into marrying him.

“Do you want to see a picture of Liz?” I ask Sarah.

“Sure.”

I take out my wallet and hand her the high school senior picture of Liz taken two years ago. I switch on the dome light.

Sarah studies the photograph.

Already, I’m beginning to feel close to Sarah, a natural sort of thing. It’s not unlike my experience of Devon, Liz’s sister. I have a gut belief that Sarah is someone with whom I can communicate openly, someone I can trust.

“She’s pretty. Do you love her?” Sarah says.

I meet Sarah’s eyes. Of course I love Liz. I adore her. But like Oedipus in Sophocles’ tragedy, fate seems to trump my will, and I hear myself answer, “I don’t know.”

***

I sit next to Sarah in the red and blue bleachers, as we wait for Liz’s recital to begin. Fletcher College has no proscenium, no theater of any kind. The green and yellow concrete gymnasium on the north side of campus will serve as colossal venue for tonight’s dance performances.

From our elevated seats we’d watched several performances, accompanied by show tunes. We had arrived just in time for the dimming of the lights at the start of the first performance; the program pamphlets were sold out.

The gymnasium’s deck, the basketball court, has been converted into a sort of stage and dance floor. Black wrestling mats are arranged side by side to cover the court. Additional lighting has been installed, including strobes, spotlights and a rotating prism on the ceiling that bathes the audience in yellow, red, blue and green light. Musical accompaniment originates from a stereo system with two mammoth speakers positioned at the back of the gym, near a corner doorway used by the performers for entrances and exits.

The building is filled to capacity. Between numbers the feathery rustling of dresses converges with hundreds of voices that resonate like the distant rushing of water. Earlier, as Sarah and I had searched for two unoccupied seats, I saw Liz’s parents, and her sister Devon. They noticed me as well. Mrs. Santini smiled and Devon waved; Mr. Santini had stared at me coldly.

Sarah turns and looks at me, smiles and jiggles her eyebrows up and down in a parody of Groucho Marx. I laugh. She has begun to display her playful side. Her gentle teasing makes me feel free. I begin to wonder if Sarah knows that she disturbs me physically.

The overhead lights grow dim, and the rustling and the whispering cease. A wedge of pale light emits from the corner doorway. Liz, wearing a black leotard, enters the room under a gliding spotlight and runs at full gallop towards the rectangular floor mat. When she reaches the plastic cushion she springs high into the air, executing a double forward somersault and landing with feet planted. She drops to one knee, arms flared, head lowered, her long black curls flowing earthward—and she is still. Her face and neck and bare arms and feet are coated with ghostly white florescent paint.

“She’s not only a dancer,” Sarah decries, “she’s a gymnast.”

“She’s magnificent,” I whisper to myself.

The wedge of light appears in the doorway again, and Peter Rutledge, also wearing a black leotard and coated with white paint, enters in the same manner and stands, motionless, next to Liz.

With the sound of the first guitar-plucked note, I recognize the haunting tune that will accompany Liz’s performance. It is “The End,” by The Doors, my favorite classic rock song. I’d fallen in love with the mind-blowing expression of Oedipal doom when I heard The Doors’ premier album in J-man’s apartment near Valley High two summers ago. I marvel over the song with the belief that great tunes mirror not just their own times, but also every other epoch since the dawn of humankind.

Liz and Rutledge have begun to move about to the stirring, seductive music. The dancers—as they face one another several feet apart—glide to and fro in a semi-circle, heads thrown back, legs kicking, toes pointing and arms flared, with hips twisting and gyrating rhythmically to the slow beat. They draw together in the center of the circle they’ve outlined, and they begin to move as a couple, stroking and fondling each other, until Rutledge lifts Liz over his head and turns around and around while Liz maintains a steady horizontal pose.

I struggle to contain my jealous rage, my irrational yet irresistible envy of Rutledge, though I can see myself standing and shouting something provocative at the top of my voice.

I glance at Sarah. She’s watching with such a rapt expression on her face that I wonder if perhaps she is herself a competent dancer, able to see things the common observer, like myself, might miss.

In my view, the dance number isn’t erotica, with overt artistic qualities, but rather a base and wanton attempt in that direction, a failed attempt, and the disgusting performance goes on for eleven minutes and thirty-five seconds. Finally, Liz sinks to the mat like a crumpled butterfly, as Rutledge falls over her in a mock sexual posture. It is done lasciviously, I conclude, in the manner I would imagine that dances at a strip club are performed.

When the music has stopped, after arriving at its terrifying Oedipal climax, the dancers remain absolutely still in their final poses. It is then I experience the great chasm between my world, Liz’s world as well, and that of the mostly middle-class, uptight conservatives in attendance tonight. The audience remains silent, stunned. There is no applause, unlike the thunderous clapping of hands that was offered to every other dance number tonight. Instead, I hear grumbling and even a few boos.

Sarah begins to clap her hands feverishly, and so does Devon, and although I loathed the performance, what with Rutledge’s hands all over Liz, I join them in applauding. Perhaps a dozen or so others in the audience begin to clap as well. The dancers stand, holding hands, and face the audience from the middle of the floor. Liz curtsies, and Rutledge takes a bow.

“I could kill Rutledge,” I say.

“Oh, I don’t think you could kill anyone,” Sarah replies.

I turn to her and smile. I am awed by her show of infectious courage. Unlike me, she had applauded when no one else did.

“I liked it a lot,” Sarah says, “even the unusual music.”

The lights are turned up for intermission. As we walk nimbly down the bleachers, I tell Sarah, “I’m going backstage to congratulate Liz. Would you like to come with me, or wait? I’m going to ask her out, too.”

Sarah considers my question. “We should’ve brought flowers,” she says, and then adds, “I’ll wait by the front door.”

“I won’t be long.”

Dusk has given way to a starry, moonless night. Behind the gym, Liz stands with a few other dancers, talking, laughing. She’s wearing the yellow print dress I know well. Prince Peter is nowhere to be seen, nor Liz’s family.

Liz excuses herself and walks over to me. I lead her to a quiet spot around a corner of the building.

“Did you like the dance?” she asks.

“I can’t believe it. My song!”

“Come with me, I’ll introduce you to a few of my friends.”

“No, wait, please. Let’s go to The Palace.”

Liz shakes her head. “I can’t, not tonight. Maybe another time.”

My heart sinks. “Why not?”

“We’ve all planned to watch the performances and then go out together, for coffee or whatever. Why don’t you come with us?”

“With Rutledge?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

I try hard to suppress my anger. “I’ll forget about what you did with David if you’ll come with me tonight.” I extend my arm in a chivalrous gesture. I know I’m being unreasonable, but I feel she should offer me some sort of compensation for what she did with my best friend.

Liz says, with unmistakable decisiveness, “I told you, I can’t.”

“I don’t know if there will be another night.” I’m bluffing, but Liz, easily inflamed, ignites, and she walks away.

I follow and grasp her hand. She stops, turns around and faces me. We scowl at each other in silence. As I’m looking at her I try to gauge the measure of her love. I go to her and take her into my arms, but she doesn’t respond. Her body is stiff and unyielding, and I realize it means nothing less than total rejection.

She breaks away and raises a reproving finger, giving me a look of pedagogic disapproval. “These past two years with you were fun. But it wasn’t real;
you
weren’t real.”

I remain silent. Each ticking moment seems to bear Liz further away from me. I peer at her, and I notice for the first time something vitally different about my bandit queen who is nearly nineteen years old: beneath her wild and crazy and carefree bent, there lives a dispirited and troubled girl. Liz has grown up.

She closes her eyes and shakes her head in frustration. Suddenly she says, turning away, as though addressing not me, but the darkness that surrounds us, “I’m back with Peter. It’s better than living at home, and he treats me with respect.”

Now she’s playing the demure innocence game. She doesn’t even look at me. I’m trying to quell my own fire, with a deluge of cruel intentions her revelation about Peter has brought on. I’m tired of having a capricious girlfriend. “I’ll bet Rutledge respects you, all right,” I say contemptuously. “I thought you were going to let him take you right there on the dance floor.” I’m filled with cold, ivory anger.

Turning to face me, she snarls, “I think I shouldn’t ever see you again. You don’t want to mature, you want nothing to change.”

I shrug and smile grimly. Her words have sent a chill through me. She’s always been good at conveying her feelings dramatically. She sounds just like my father. It seems I’m resigned to her lack of understanding. I’ve wasted a vast amount of energy on her. But I’m afraid to stop wanting her, and I summon in my mind an image of her, naked and subdued.

She looks at me with mute, reproachful eyes. “I have to go on,” she says, “but in a different direction. I hope you find peace.”

As Liz begins to cry, she turns her back on me and walks quickly away, and then breaks into a trot. She’s gone forever, and I tell myself that I don’t care.

It’s as though Liz has herself fixed on some wholesome future in which I have no part, but I don’t give a shit. She’s screwed me again. For the last time!

I recall vaguely a line from a Shakespearean sonnet, words to the effect that nothing under the stars is quite as wretched as love turned to hate.

I’m madder than hell but I can still see how much I will miss Liz. I’ll miss the weight of her wrist on my heart when I lie beside her, and the way she lies beneath me without the mask and mystery of her long hair to hide her beautiful face.

I turn around and stride dutifully on, to meet Sarah, gaining speed as I walk because I am losing control. I’m treading on the sidewalk adjacent to the gym, moving towards the front of the building, when Devon and her parents appear, strolling along in the warm night air.

I stop and smile devilishly to myself. I can’t help it; this is just what I need to dilute my anger, a little revenge for Liz’s shameful manipulation of David. Why not? She deserves retribution, and Devon deserves to know the truth. I sense that I’m becoming entangled in evil, but some unknown force urges me on.

As the Santini family draws near, Liz’s mother, a tall, pale-skinned woman of Anglo-Saxon heritage, calls to me. “Hello, Dan. How’ve you been?” She’s always treated me well, with respect. Liz’s father, on the other hand, short, dark-skinned, Sicilian, doesn’t speak; he averts his eyes as we pass each other.

Devon slows her pace, letting her parents walk ahead. “I’ll catch up,” she says to them.

She smiles at me with the usual wide-eyed innocence. She’s wearing a white blouse with pleated blue skirt. At fifteen (sixteen in three months), with aquiline nose and big brown eyes, Devon resembles her sister, but she’s taller and thinner than Liz. Her reddish-brown hair is long and straight. In many ways she’s been like a little sister to me. I’ve watched the shy, pimply-faced eighth-grader develop into a talented high school actor.

“I have something to tell you, Devon.” I can hardly contain my excitement. “You won’t believe it, I’ve lost Liz, it doesn’t matter; nothing matters now. We’ve always been honest with each other. I want to keep it that way, so I have to tell you that your sister slept with my best friend.”

I wait, first for Devon to hear the words, and then for the meaning of the words to penetrate her sphere of being. It was that way with me, when Liz had told me about David.

“What? Daniel, is this some kind of cruel joke?” Devon has already begun to cry because she knows I would never joke about such a thing. She says faintheartedly, “Why did you tell me this?”

She runs, not after her parents, but in the opposite direction, across the courtyard, and when she reaches the other side she collapses on the lawn near a young tree. She lies in the grass with her head in her hands, sobbing.