"Wow!" he whispered, hugging me close. "You did that better than me!"
We were in the back gardens of Foxworth Hall, where all the rooms were dark, though in the servants' quarters over the huge garage every window was brightly yellow. "Lead on, MacDuff, to the swimming hole," I said in a low voice, "if you know the way."
Sure, he knew the way. Momma had told us how she and her brothers used to steal away and go swimming with their friends.
He caught my hand as we tiptoed away from the huge house. It felt so strange to be outside, on the ground, on a warm summer night. Leaving our small brother and sister alone in a locked room. When we crossed over a small footbridge, and knew we were now outside the realm of Foxworth property, we felt happy, almost free. Still we had to be cautious and not let anyone see us. We ran toward the woods, and the lake Momma had told us about.
It was ten o'clock when we went out on the roof; it was ten- thirty when we found the small body of water surrounded by trees. We were fearful others would be there to spoil it for us, and send us back unsatisfied, but the lake water was smooth, unruffled by winds, or bathers, or sailboats.
In the moonlight, under a bright and starry sky, I looked on that lake and thought I'd never beheld such beautiful water, or felt a night that filled me with such rapture.
"Are we going to skinny-dip?" asked Chris, looking at me in a peculiar way.
"No. We are going to swim in our underwear."
The trouble was, I didn't own a single bra. But now that we were here, silly prudery wasn't going to stop me from enjoying that moonlit water. "Last one in is a rotten egg!" I called. And I took off, on the run toward a short dock. But when I reached the end of the dock, I somehow sensed the water might be icy cold, and most gingerly I cautiously stuck a toe in first--and it was ice cold! I glanced back at Chris, who had taken off his watch and flung it aside, and now he was coming at me fast. So darned fast, before I could brave myself to dive into the water, he was behind me, and shoved me! Splash--flat down in the water I was, soaked from head to toe, and not inch by inch, as I would have had it!
I shivered as I came to the surface and paddled around, looking for Chris. Then I spied him crawling up a pile of rocks, and for a moment he was silhouetted. He lifted his arms and gracefully made a swan dive into the middle of the lake. I gasped! What if the water wasn't deep enough? What if he hit the bottom and broke his neck or back?
And then, and then. . . he didn't surface! Oh God,. . . he was dead. . . drowned!
"Chris," I called, sobbing, and began to swim toward the spot where he had disappeared beneath the cold water.
Suddenly I was seized by the legs! I screamed and went under, pulled down by Chris, who kicked his legs strongly and took us both up to the surface, where we laughed, and I splashed water into his face for playing such a dirty trick.
"Isn't this better than being shut up in that damned hot room?" he asked, frolicking around like someone demented, delirious, wild, and crazy! It was as if this bit of freedom had gone to his head like strong wine, and he was drunk! He swam in circles around me, and tried again to catch my legs and drag me under. But I was wise to him now. He kicked to the surface and backstroked, he also did the breaststroke, the crawl, side- stroked, and named what he did as he performed. "This is the back crawl," he said as he demonstrated, showing off techniques I'd never seen before.
He surfaced from a dive under, and treaded water as he began to sing, "Dance, ballerina, dance,"--and in my face he threw water, as I splashed it back at him--"and do your pirouette in rhythm with your aching heart. . . ." And then he had me in his embrace, and laughing and screaming, we fought, gone crazy just to be children again. Oh, he was wonderful in the water, like a dancer. Suddenly I was tired, extremely tired, so tired I felt weak as a wet dishcloth. Chris put his arm about me and assisted me up onto shore.
Both of us fell on a grassy bank to lie back and talk.
"One more swim, and then back to the twins," he said, lying supine on the gentle slope beside me. Both of us stared up at a sky full of glittering, twinkling stars, and there was a quarter-moon out, colored silvery-gold, and it ducked and hid, and played hide and seek with the strung-out long, dark clouds. "Suppose we can't make it back up to the roof?"
"We'll make it, because we have to make it."
That was my Christopher Doll, the eternal optimist, sprawled beside me, all wet and glistening, with his fair hair pasted to his forehead. His nose was the same as Daddy's as it aimed at the heavens, his full lips so beautifully shaped he didn't need to pout to make them sensual, his chin square, strong, clefted, and his chest was beginning to broaden . . . and there was that hillock of his growing maleness before his strong thighs, beginning to swell. There was something about a man's strong, well- shaped thighs that excited me. I turned away my head, unable to feast my eyes on his beauty without feeling guilty and ashamed.
Birds were nested overhead in the tree branches. They made sleepy little twittery noises that for some reason made me think of the twins, and that made me sad and put tears in my eyes.
Fireflies bobbed up every so often and flashed their lemon- colored tail-lights off and on, signaling male to female, or vice- versa. "Chris, is it the male firefly that lights up, or the female?"
"I'm really not sure," he said as if he didn't care. "I think they both light up, but the female stays on the ground signaling, while the male flies around looking for her."
"You mean you aren't positive about everything-- you, the all-knowing?"
"Cathy, let's not quibble. I don't know
everything--a long way from it." He turned his head and met my eyes; our gazes locked and neither of us seemed capable of looking elsewhere.
Soft southern breezes came and played in my hair and dried the wisps about my face. I felt them tickling like small kisses, and again I wanted to cry, for no reason at all, except the night was so sweet, so lovely, and I was at the age for high romantic yearning. And the breeze whispered loving words in my ears . . . words I was so afraid no one was ever going to say. Still, the night was so lovely under the trees, near the shimmering moonlit water, and I sighed. I felt that I'd been here before, on this grass near the lake. Oh, the strange thoughts I had as the night-fliers hummed and whirred, and the mosquitoes buzzed and somewhere far off an owl hooted, taking me quickly back to the night when first we came to live as fugitives, hidden from a world that didn't want us.
"Chris, you're almost seventeen, the same age Daddy was when he first met Momma."
"And you're fourteen, the same age she was," he said in a hoarse voice.
"Do you believe in love at first sight?"
He hesitated, mulling that over . . . his way, not mine "I'm not an authority on that subject. I know when I was in school, I'd see a pretty girl and right away feel in love with her. Then when we'd talk, and she was kind of stupid, then I didn't feel anything at all about her. But if her beauty had been matched by other assets, I think I could fall in love at first sight, though I've read that kind of love is only physical attraction."
"Do you think I'm stupid?"
He grinned and reached out to touch my hair. "Gosh, no. And I hope you don't think you are, because you're not. Your trouble is, Cathy, you have too many talents; you want to be everything, and that's not possible."
"How do you know I'd like to be a singer and an actress, too?"
He laughed soft and low. "Silly girl, you're acting ninety percent of the time, and singing to yourself when you feel contented; unfortunately, that's not very often."
"Are
you
contented often?"
So we lay, silent, from time to time staring at something that drew our attention, like the fireflies that met on the grass and mated, and the whispering leaves, and the floating clouds, and the play of the moonlight on the water. The night seemed enchanted and set me to thinking again of nature, and all its strange ways. Though I didn't understand fully many of its ways, why I dreamed as I did at night now, why I woke up throbbing and yearning for some fulfillment that I could never reach.
I was glad Chris had persuaded me into coming. It was wonderful to be lying on grass again, feeling cool and refreshed, and most of all, feeling fully alive again.
"Chris," I began tentatively, afraid to spoil the soft beauty of this star-filled moonlit night, "where do you think our mother is?"
He kept right on staring at Polaris, the north star.
"I have no idea where she is," he answered finally.
"Don't you have any suspicions?"
"Sure. Of course I do."
"What are they?"
"She could be sick."
"She's not sick; Momma's never sick."
"She could be away on a business trip for her father."
"Then why didn't she come and tell us she was going, and when to expect her back?"
"I don't know!" he said irritably, like I was spoiling the evening for him, and of course he couldn't know, any more than I could.
"Chris, do you love and trust her as much as you used to?"
"Don't ask me questions like that! She's my mother. She's all we've got, and if you expect me to lie here and say mean things about her, I'm not going to do it! Wherever she is tonight, she's thinking of us, and she's coming back. She'll have a perfectly good reason for going away and staying so long, you can count on that."
I couldn't say to him what I was really thinking, that she could have found time to come in and tell us of her plans--for he knew that as well as I did.
There was a husky tone to his voice that came about only when he was feeling pain--and not the physical kind. I wanted to take away the hurt I'd inflicted with my questions. "Chris, on TV, girls my age, and boys your age--they start to date. Would you know how to act on a date?"
"Sure, I've watched a lot on TV."
"But watching isn't the same as doing."
"Still it gives you the general idea of what to do, and what to say. And besides, you're still too young to date guys."
"Now let me tell you something, Mr. Big Brain, a girl of my age is actually one year older than a boy of your age."
"You're crazy!"
"Crazy? I read that fact in a magazine article, written by an authority on the subject--a doctor of psychology," I said, thinking he was sure to be impressed. "He said girls mature emotionally much quicker than boys do."
"The author of that article was judging all mankind by
his own
immaturity."
"Chris, you think you know everything--and nobody knows everything!"
He turned his head and met my eyes and scowled, like he used to do so often. "You're right," he agreed pleasantly. "I know only what I read, and what I'm feeling inside has me as mystified as any first-grader. I'm mad as hell at Momma because of what she's done, and I'm feeling so many different things, and I don't have a man to talk them over with." He rose on an elbow to stare down in my face. "I wish it wasn't taking your hair so long to grow back. I wish now I hadn't used the scissors . . . didn't do any good, anyway."
It was better when he didn't say anything to make me think of Foxworth Hall. I just wanted to look up at the sky and feel the fresh night air on my wet skin. My pajamas were of thin white batiste, scattered all over with rosebuds, and edged with lace. They clung to me like a second skin, just as Chris's white jockey shorts clung to him.
"Let's go now, Chris."
Reluctantly, he got up and stretched out a hand. "Another swim?"
"No. Let's go back."
Silently, we headed away from the lake, walking slowly through the woods, drinking in the sensation of being outside, on the ground.
We headed back to our responsibilities. For the longest time we stood by the rope we'd made, fastened to a chimney far above. I wasn't thinking of how we'd make the ascent, only wondering what we'd gained by this brief little escape from a prison we had to enter again.
"Chris, do you feel different?"
"Yes. We didn't do very much but walk and run on the ground, and swim for a short while, but I feel more alive and more hopeful."
"We could get away if we wanted to--tonight-- and not wait for Momma to come back. We could go up, make slings to carry the twins, and while they sleep we could carry them down. We could run away! We'd be
free!"
He didn't answer, but began the ascent to the roof, hand over hand, with the sheet-ladder caught fast between his legs as he worked his way up. As soon as he was on the roof, I began, for we didn't trust the rope to hold the weight of two people. It was much harder going up than coming down. My legs seemed so much stronger than my arms. I reached above for the next knot, and lifted my right leg. Suddenly my left foot slipped from where I'd notched it and I was swinging free--held only by weak hands!
A short scream tore from my lips! I was more than twenty feet from the ground!
"Hold on!" called Chris from above. "The rope is directly between both your legs. All you have to do is squeeze them together quick!"
I couldn't see what I was doing. All I could do was follow his directions. I grasped the rope between my thighs, quivering all over. Fear made me weaker. The longer I stayed in one place, the more fearful I became. I began to gasp, to tremble. And then came the tears . . . stupid girlish tears!
"You are almost within reach of my hands," called Chris. "Just a few more feet up, and I can reach you. Cathy, don't panic. Think of how much the twins need you! Try . . . try hard!"
I had to talk myself into letting go with one hand, to reach higher for another knot. I said over and over again to myself, I
can
do it. I can. My feet were slippery from the grass--but then, Chris's feet had been slippery, too, and he had managed. And if he could do it, then I could too.
Bit by terrifying bit I climbed up that rope to where Chris could reach down and grasp my wrists. Once his strong hands had me, a surge of relief tingled my blood down to my fingertips and to my toes. In a few seconds he hauled me up, and I was seized in a tight embrace while we both laughed and then almost cried. Then we crawled up the steep slope, keeping fast hold of the rope until we reached the chimney That's when we fell down in our accustomed place and shivered all over.
Oh, the irony of it--that we would be glad to be back!
Chris lay on his bed and stared over at me. "Cathy, for just a second or two, when we were lying on the bank of the lake, it seemed a bit like heaven. Then when you faltered on the rope, I thought I might die too, if you did. We can't do that again. You don't have the strength in your arms that I do. I'm sorry I forgot about that."