"Maybe that's the way all artists, creative people are. You're the first girl I knew who does anything creatively, seriously creative, I mean. I'm sorry. I don't mean to be so personal."
"Yes, you do," I said. Then I smiled when he thought I was angry. "It's all right. I can't answer everything about myself because I don't know the answers yet myself."
His eyebrows rose, and he nodded.
"I like that," he said. "I think that's pretty smart. I think it's true for me as well. Maybe it's not as true as it is for you, but nevertheless, I like the idea that we're still making discoveries about our own identities. We get so much pressure on us at our age, don't we? What do you want to be? What do you like? Why are you interested in this or that? It's almost as if we should have our whole lives laid out like . . . like that damn assembly line. I know my parents have plans for me that might not exactly be my own."
Speaking of his parents, I wondered what they would say to him when they found out he had been seeing me, especially his mother, who had been so unnerved and disturbed about what my mother had done in her house. Wouldn't she think I'm bringing all that back?
I suppose I'll find out soon enough,
I thought as we pulled into the Doral House driveway.
"Thanks for the ride home," I said.
He looked up at the house.
"What about your promise?"
"What promise?"
"To show me the attic, your art studio?"
"You really want to see that?"
"Very much," he said.
"Okay."
He shut off the engine and followed me into the house.
"My grandmother is still at work," I said. "My grandfather won't be home for another hour probably," I added, and he looked like that relaxed him.
I watched him take in everything.
"I knew this house would be interesting. The ceilings aren't that high, but the rooms are big. They didn't make ceilings high in those days because it was hard and expensive to heat the rooms," he explained. "Wow, that fireplace looks like it goes back a century," he muttered when he looked into the living room. "This is really a historical property."
I had to laugh at his enthusiasm. "You're not too far off. Sometimes my grandmother treats it as if it was a museum," I told him. "This way."
I led him up the stairs to the short stairway to the attic. Before I opened the door, I hesitated. For a moment I felt as if I were possibly betraying someone, betraying a secret to be kept under lock and key. I hardly knew Craig really, but something in me was so eager for his companionship and affection that I was willing to do it. Was that selfish? Would I be punished?
"Something wrong?" he asked, seeing my hesitation.
I shook my head and opened the door.
"Pretty nice," he said as soon as he entered. "I guess it's been changed a lot." He sounded a little disappointed about that. Was he expecting to find it exactly as it had been when my mother hid out here?
"Yes, completely," I said.
He walked about, looking at my pictures and then pausing at the one I had started depicting my mother at the window.
"Is this a self-portrait?"
"No," I said. He studied what lines were there and looked at me and then at the window.
"It's supposed to be your mother? Up here?"
"Yes," I admitted. I actually looked about, studying the corners, thinking I was being watched, heard, revealing a secret.
"I can't wait to see it when it's done. I like the stuff you've done, Alice, as much of it as I've seen, I mean."
He sat on the sofa and nodded as he looked around. "I can believe someone could have hidden up here for some time. Not without help, of course," he added.
"It wasn't always that. My aunt and my mother used it as their sort of clubhouse."
"Oh yeah? Why not? I would have." He smiled. "I would now," he said.
"That wasn't the exact sofa, but there was one here and they used it to pretend they were in a car, traveling, seeing America."
"Would you like to do that?"
"Pretend?"
"No, silly. See America?"
"Why not? Who wouldn't?"
"Right. I've been to a few places for vacations," he said, leaning back. I drew closer, envious.
"Where have you been?"
"We've spent part of the summer up at Cape Cod. We've gone to the Finger Lakes, once to Wyoming and lots of times to Florida during the winter break, of course. My mother wanted to see Nashville, and once we visited some relatives in Chicago. How about you?"
I shook my head.
"Not anywhere as much as that. New York City." "That's it?"
"And my aunt's place in New Paltz."
"No wonder you sit on the sofa."
"I didn't say I do that. I said my aunt and my mother did," I said sharply.
"Wouldn't be terrible if you had," he replied, undisturbed by my reaction. "C'mon," he said, patting the spot beside him. "I'll take you for a ride."
I hesitated.
"Just for fun. Remember, I don't bite."
"I don't think so," I said, shaking my head.
"Stop being so afraid of everything," he warned. "You'll never get those answers about yourself you're looking to get if you remain so timid and afraid."
I had heard that before--and recently, too. He was truly like a marksman hitting the bull's-eyes, I thought. Again I wondered if it was all part of a clever seduction. I inched closer, then he reached up for my hand and I sat beside him. He put his arm around my shoulders, drew me closer and kissed my cheek and then my lips before leaning back and pretending to have one hand on a steering wheel.
"Okay," he said, "we're entering Provincetown, Cape Cod. It's at the very tip of the cape. You look to your left and right and you see the dunes . . . it looks like desert going on and on to the ocean. Now there are houses and soon we're entering the village. Smell the sea?" He took a deep breath. "Do you?" He looked at me, and I laughed.
Was this exactly what my mother and Aunt Zipporah had done sixteen years ago?
"Isn't it breathtaking? We're going to eat fresh lobster tonight. Look up at the sign above that restaurant . . . The Lobster You Eat Today Last Night Swam in Cape Cod Bay."
I laughed again and again he kissed me, only this time it was a longer kiss, one that drew me into him, one that relaxed my shoulders and softened me enough to turn. His hand went down my back. He pulled away to kiss my nose, my closed eyes, and then my lips again.
"Alice," he said, but he wasn't just saying my name. He was calling to me, calling to something deep inside me, to a longing, awakening the sleeping curiosity that came in dreams and quiet moments, the curiosity about my own body and the way it struggled to discover and find answers about itself.
His hands were at my waist, moving under my blouse, gliding over my ribs to my tightly held breasts clamoring to be free. He fidgeted only for a moment behind my back to undo the bra, and then I moaned under the first touch of his fingers over my breasts and nipples. I closed my eyes as if I couldn't watch because if I did, I would stop him from lifting my blouse away, from bringing his lips to my breasts, from letting him take off my blouse and my bra and then from feeling his lips working a path of kisses down to my waist as he unzipped my skirt.
I felt as if I were lowering myself into a warm, erotic bath of pleasure. His mouth followed the downward movement of my skirt and panties. My arms and hands were above me. It was as if I was holding onto a bar to keep myself from going too deeply and I was losing the grip on the bar, sliding, sliding . . .
"Alice," he said again. "You're beautiful."
All my grandmother's admonitions about sexual promiscuity rang in my head like distant church bells sounded to send out alarms and warnings, but I wasn't heeding them even though just below the cacophony of bongs and cries, I could hear him undoing his own pants, preparing . . .
And then, like some Lone Ranger, some great comic hero arriving at the last possible moment to save the day, we heard my grandfather call up to us.
An icy sheet of reality froze us both. The sensual fingers that had so gripped me inside and out released me. Craig sat up quickly and straightened himself. I rushed to do the same.
"Alice? Are you upstairs?"
"Yes, Grandpa," I called back as I fixed my bra and blouse. Craig leaped off the sofa and brushed back his hair. When we heard my grandfather's footsteps on the attic stairway, Craig went to one of my paintings and stared at it as if he had come here to consider making a purchase.
I sat back on the sofa and waited. My grandfather stepped in and looked about the attic.
"Oh. I wondered whose car that was in the driveway." "Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Stein. Did I block you?"
"No problem," my grandfather said. He looked at me, his eyes full of questions.
"Craig wanted to see where I worked and some of my paintings."
"They're really good," Craig followed quickly.
Anyone, even a complete idiot, I thought, could see how nervous we were. My grandfather smiled softly and nodded.
"Yeah. She's good. Well, I'm just going to get out of my lawyer's uniform," my grandfather said. "You want to stay for dinner, Craig?"
"Oh, no, thanks. I've got to get home. My parents were in the city and came back this morning after I had already left for school, so I had better get my rear end moving," Craig replied.
"Sure," my grandfather said, nodded at me and left. Craig and I looked at each other. Then he walked over as I stood up.
"This is a magical place," he said. Then he kissed me softly and walked to the door. "I'll call you later. And I'll pick you up for school tomorrow." He nodded toward the window. "Finish that," he said and left.
My heart was pounding so hard and fast that I felt faint for a moment. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and started out of the attic, too. When I reached the door, I thought I heard the sound of two girls giggling. I turned and looked back at the sofa and envisioned my aunt and my mother, sitting there and conjuring the scene I had just played.
"She's just like me, Zipporah," I could hear her say. "See? She's just like me after all."
I fled down the stairs, exactly how someone running from herself might, regretting both what I had done and what I had not, for a part of me was happy I was saved, and a part of me was not.
Am
I really so much different from any other girl my age then?
I wondered.
Or am I simply traveling a longer; more convoluted route to the same answers, driven by the same questions.
Who am I?
What do I want?
Where am I going?
When will I know if I'm home?
I warmed the dinner for my grandfather and myself and set the table. He came out of his den when I called for him. I was holding my breath, waiting for his comments about finding Craig and me in the attic. For a while, I thought he wasn't going to say anything about it. He talked
-
about some case he was on and about some ideas he had for fixing the front of the house, but then he put his fork down and clasped his hands and looked at me with those intense eyes he could switch on whenever he was ready to say or do something very serious and important.
"I'm glad you've a friend, Alice. Whether you put
boy
in front of
friend
now or soon is no problem either. And I won't give you any of the lectures your grandmother is fond of giving. All the advice I'll give you is centered on two words."
"What two words?" I asked when he paused too long for my patience.
"Go slowly.
Like anything, most things in life, if you take your time, you're usually better off. Some of those old adages are so true. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. You know what I mean. I'm sure. That's it. That's my fatherly or grandfatherly advice. The rest is up to you. Enjoy yourself. Have a good time. Goodness knows, we're always worrying you won't. I don't want to put the wrong interpretation on anything and put you back in some cage. Just know I trust you will always make the right decisions."
"Why do you trust me?" I challenged.
"I just do," he said.
"You mean you just hope," I countered, and he laughed.
"That's why I trust and not just hope," he said. "Why?"
"You're pretty smart. You've got something special. You have that artist's insight, that third eye."
I didn't have his confidence in me. I didn't know why he should have any. I had no doubt I would have gone too far with Craig if my grandfather hadn't arrived when he had and I couldn't claim I was happy that we had stopped. I was at least a little
disappointed. What did that say about me?
My grandfather either couldn't or wouldn't see that in me. In the end, everyone sees and believes what they want to see and believe, I thought. Maybe my mother wasn't so different from everyone else after all. She just had a different shade of rose-colored glasses.
Craig called after my grandmother had come home from work at the hospital. Her face was a movie marquee full of questions about him and me. She came at them indirectly by asking, How was school? What did I do after school? I knew my grandfather had told her Craig had been up in the attic with me. They never kept secrets from each other. Because my answers were so simple, she finally asked about him, and I said he was very nice and was going to take me to school again in the morning. She didn't approve or disapprove. She simply nodded, and I went up to do my homework. That was when he called.
"Is everything all right at home?" he asked. He was sure my grandfather was at least suspicious.
"Yes."
I could almost feel his relief through the phone.
"Good. Listen," he said, "I know you might think I'm moving too fast, but I was never one to procrastinate."
"You don't have to convince me of that," I said, and he laughed.
"I never know what you're going to do or say," he told me. It was becoming a chant. "But I love it," he quickly added.
Was it his way of dealing with my cold truthfulness, or was I really like that? Was I spontaneous and unpredictable, the very words Aunt Zipporah had used to describe my mother?
"Anyway," he continued, "I've been thinking about you all night and wondered if you would go with me to the prom."
"The prom?"
"It's not quite a month off, but I know a girl needs time to prepare. You probably heard that we're having it at the Cherry Hill Hotel this year. As a community service, the hotel owners donated their ballroom. You know how we all hate to go to dances at the school. You're there all day. Who wants to return at night for a dance? This is more like a night out. It's going to be great, probably the best prom the school's ever had."
I didn't know how to react. One of the most popular boys at school was asking me to be his prom date. Because I didn't say anything quickly, he kept talking.
"They've got this four-piece band that's supposed to be terrific, and the hotel's providing the food. Some of the guys want to rent a limousine, but I haven't decided whether or not to join them. We could just go ourselves, of course. It's up to you. We don't have to make that decision right away.
"It's traditional for us to stay out all night," he continued without pausing to take a breath. "The next day we drive to Bear Mountain and have a picnic. It's the boys' responsibility to get the food and drinks. We throw out blankets and listen to music, do some barbecuing. I'm babbling," he finally said.
I smiled to myself. Then I thought about his parents and how they would react. Would it spook them to hear that their son was going out with the daughter of the woman who committed a murder in their home?
"Are you sure you want me to be your prom date?" I asked.
"About as sure as anything I've ever done or wanted to do. What do you say?"
"All right," I said. "Yes."
"Good. I'll stop holding my breath."
I laughed, and then we talked about his baseball schedule, the away games, which was specifically to let me know when he could and could not take me home after school. Finally, before we ended the call, I asked him if his parents knew he was picking me up for school and that he was asking me to the prom.
"They'll know soon," he said. "Don't worry about it," he added, but I was sure I felt and heard some note of nervousness in his voice.
"Okay. I have to finish my homework. See you in the morning."
"Absolutely," he said. "Good night, Alice, and . . ."
"Yes?"
"I'm looking forward to another ride on the sofa in the attic." He laughed, but I felt a sharp, electric chill both of excitement and fear.
How did he see me? What did he really think of me? Was my inexperience showing, and did it put me at a big disadvantage? Should I have accepted the prom invitation so quickly, or should I have said,
"Let me think about it"?
Should I go slowly as my grandfather had advised? Only a short while after he had given me advice, I had ignored it. Some third eye, I thought. Eveirif I had that magical vision, I was asleep when I should have been the most awake.
I decided to take my time telling my
grandparents about Craig's invitation to the prom. After all, I wasn't sure I wasn't going to change my mind about it. As he had pointed out, it was nearly a month off. What if I decided I didn't like him after all? And yet I couldn't keep it secret too much longer. Craig was right about that as well. I needed to think about my dress, my hair, all of it.
I knew Aunt Zipporah would be excited for me. I wondered how Rachel and my father would react to the news. Would she think or say my new romantic success was all because of her contributions? Helping to decide my new wardrobe? Helping me put on makeup? Maybe that would be good; maybe she wouldn't want me out of their lives so much.
Craig was there right on time the next morning. Amazingly, his first question for me was, What did my grandparents think of his asking me to the prom? I countered with, What did his parents think of it?
"I didn't get a chance to talk to them about it all yet," he said diplomatically.
"Neither did I," I told him, and he looked at me, surprised, and then smiled.
"What do we care what adults think of it anyway? It's our decision, right?"
"Right."
However, in the small community in which we both lived, our seeing each other wasn't going to be unnoticed and unreported long. I was sure he knew that even better than I did. He was more in the thick of it all. We were spending every free moment we had in school together, whether it was moving from class to class or our lunch period. On Thursday, he had an important away game, and I went home on the bus. It was the first time all week we were separated. I could feel the eyes and the attention on me all the time.
Some of the other girls besides Charlene Lewis began to talk to me as well. It was mostly friendly banter about something I was wearing, some lipstick or some homework. Sprinkled in their conversation were comments about Craig. I could see the envy on the faces of some of the girls and how some still couldn't understand his attraction to me. In every way they could, they tried to learn how I could win the attention of one of the school's most popular boys. I know I frustrated them with my silence or cryptic short replies. However, for the most part, when I wasn't with Craig, I tried to stay to myself. I didn't trust them, didn't even trust Charlene enough to reveal any of my feelings or thoughts about Craig.
Word got out before the end of the week that he had asked me to be his prom date, and that started a whole new wave of conversations in the girls' room or physical education class. Suddenly, it was important for them to know what I planned on wearing, where we planned to go right afterward and whether or not we were going to go in the limousine. They all wanted very much to know if I would be permitted to be out all night and go to the picnic the next day. I didn't want to tell them that I was actually still thinking about going at all. I had yet to tell my grandmother and grandfather, so I didn't have any answers for them.
"I'm not sure yet," was my stock reply.
Craig asked me to go for pizza and a movie with him on Friday. It would be our first formal date. I decided that if all went well, I would tell my grandparents about the prom the following morning. The team had won its away game, which meant our school was in the play-offs for the league title. Everyone was in a mood to celebrate. I didn't know what we would really be doing Friday night until Craig picked me up and told me that our plans had changed.
"Mickey Lesman's having an open house to celebrate the play-offs," he told me as soon as I got into his car. "Most of the team's going. His parents are off on a holiday, and his little sister's sleeping over at a friend's house. You cool with it?"
I shrugged. How could I tell him I didn't know what to expect? This would be the first open house party I ever attended.
"We could still go for pizza and a movie, if you want," he said. "Or we go to the party and if we don't like it, we could always leave," he added.
I knew it was what he wanted to do, and my own curiosity about it was strong enough not to say no. "It's fine," I said.
Mickey Lesman's house was a sprawling, modern, ranch-style, rich-looking home outside of the hamlet of Hurleyville, which wasn't much bigger than Sandburg, where I lived. Like most country roads, Mickey's road had no streetlights, and the houses were well spaced apart, some home owners having ten or so acres. Mickey's father was the owner of a major department store. By the time we arrived, there were at least two dozen cars parked in front of the house. The moment we stepped out of Craig's car, we could hear the loud music. I felt the ground rumbling beneath my feet with the vibrations from his big outside speakers. It was lucky the neighbors were far away, I thought.
Whenever my grandfather and I rode these back roads and saw these homes at nighttime, I often thought about the similarities with the way we lived, especially how I lived. To me people wrapped their homes around themselves and, like the citizens of a fortress town in the Middle Ages, pulled up their drawbridges. Instead of looking out of the windows at the world and imagining all sorts of things going on outside in the darkness, they sat around television sets and looked at what someone else had imagined for them.
My grandfather told me that when he was young, a few years younger than I was, he and his family listened to the radio and had to create their own pictures in their own minds from the words and sounds they heard.
"People," he said, "used to sit around campfires before that and tell each other stories. Nothing's changed except the delivery system. What's important, what seems to matter the most, is not being alone in the dark."
I listened and looked at him and thought,
But Grandpa, that's where I've been most of my life, alone in the dark.
I
so wanted not to be alone anymore. Maybe I wanted it so much that finally I was willing to take risks, and maybe, just maybe that was what happened to my mother. She had been alone and she had put her trust in someone, and she had been betrayed. Why else would she have been so creative and dependent on that imagination of hers? It was all she had. It was her personal fortress, and when she pretended, imagined, created, she pulled up her drawbridge and felt safe.
"You look worried," Craig told me as we stepped into the glow of the house lights. "Don't be. They're just a bunch of stupid kids like us."
"I'm not worried about them," I said. "And I'm not a stupid kid."
He laughed and put his arm around my shoulders just before we entered the house.
The sight of us seemed to stop people in midsentence, or mid-laugh, or even in the middle of a kiss. There was a pause and then some cheers.
The girls gathered around me when Craig went to talk to his teammates, everyone talking at once. Suddenly, everyone wanted to be my friend, to give me advice about dating, about clothes and about boys in general. I felt like a foreign exchange student who was finally being accepted. With an amused smile painted on my lips, I listened and nodded but said little. One girl, Marlene Ross, either jealous of the attention I was getting or simply frustrated by my noncommittal nods and smiles, burst out with, "So why don't you tell us what finally brought you into the twenty-first century?"
Everyone was quiet, waiting for my response.
"Probably the same thing that brought you, Marlene, the union of a sperm and an egg. Don't you know about that stuff yet?"
There was a pause, as if everyone had and was still holding her breath, and then a roar of laughter that sent Marlene and her red face off to pout. Craig and his friends heard the commotion, and he came hurrying back to me.
"What's up?"
"Nothing. Just girl chatter," I said, suddenly full of self-confidence.
He raised his eyebrows, glanced at the other girls and then put his arm around my waist.
"Let's get something to eat and drink," he said.
A few dozen assorted pizzas had been delivered, and everyone flocked to the table. The boys were drinking beer mostly, but some had harder alcohol and the party began to expand out of the house, to the backyard where the Lesmans had their pool, now all lit. It wasn't really warm enough to swim, but I could see that before the night ended, a few would be pushed in or even jump in. There was already some horseplay going on with just that purpose in mind.
Craig and I stayed off to the side to watch, as if we had been sent by some newspaper to report on the behavior of some primitive tribe. The music was piped out to the backyard, too, so that the partygoers were dancing on the patio, I was nervous again when Craig asked me to dance. By myself, sometimes up in the attic, I played tapes and danced in front of the mirror there, but I wasn't confident about my moves and rhythm. I knew we were still the center of attention, me especially, and it was impossible not to be selfconscious.
"You need to relax, Alice," he told me. "You're too stiff, uptight."