The Unwelcomed Child (11 page)

“Spying on us again?” Claudine asked as they drew closer.

“No. I . . . Mason told me to come here. I just came earlier because I brought a picnic lunch.”

“A picnic lunch?” She laughed. “Now, why didn’t we think of having a picnic, Mason?”

“Not a bad idea.”

He maneuvered the boat as close to the shore as he could.

“Get in,” he said.

I hesitated.

“We won’t bite you,” Claudine said. “At least, I know I won’t. Mason might have another idea.”

“Stop it. You’ll scare her. I told you . . .”

What did he tell her?

“Oh, just get in,” she said. “I’m getting hungry, too. I’ll make us some sandwiches, and we’ll row out to the island.”

“Island? What island?”

“It’s not really an island,” Mason said. “It’s just a large clump of land with wild grass and some trees. It’s just around the turn in the lake there. C’mon,” he urged.

I stood and looked back at the woods. They could never understand how hard my grandparents’ house pulled on me. It was like leaving some sort of safe haven and venturing out into a world full of dangers, despite the hard childhood I had been living in it all these years.

“I’ve got to be home by three,” I said, figuring that if I said that, I would be sure to be home by four.

“Then get a move on,” Claudine said.
“Allons!”

I started to step onto the rocks.

“Maybe you should take off your shoes and socks,” Mason suggested.

I looked up quickly, as if the suggestion was shocking.

“That’s right. You’ll begin your strip-down slowly,” Claudine teased.

“Will you stop it?” he told her.

She laughed. “Okay, okay. He’s right. Take off your shoes. The water is not really that cold.”

I slipped off my shoes but hesitated to take off my socks.

Claudine shook her head. “Haven’t you ever gone barefoot?”

Actually, no,
I wanted to say, but I didn’t. I took off my socks and held them and my shoes tightly as I went over the rocks. There was no way to keep completely dry, so it was good that I had done it. They wouldn’t understand, but just the feel of the water on my naked feet excited me. Mason helped me into the rowboat. It rocked so hard I thought it would turn over, and I screamed.

“Relax. We’re all right. Just sit down,” Mason said, laughing.

I did. Claudine immediately slipped next to me, crowding me like someone who wanted to cuddle.

“Don’t you wear toenail polish?”

“No.”

“Your toes need it,” she said.

“They do not,” Mason said. “Don’t listen to her. She wishes she had your feet.”

She stuck her tongue out at him, and he laughed.

“What do you have for lunch?” she asked.

“Peanut butter and jelly, milk, and an apple,” I told her.

“Peanut butter? I haven’t had peanut butter since I was six or seven.”

“I like peanut butter,” Mason said.

“So why don’t you ever eat it?”

“Never think of it. Doesn’t Dad like peanut butter? I bet we have some. It’s healthy.”

“Oh, good. Let’s be healthy,” she said.

He dipped the oars in and pulled hard, turning the boat around in one fluid move. Then he rowed rapidly, as if he wanted to be sure to get me away from the shore before I could change my mind.

I looked back to where I had stepped forward barefoot and suddenly felt like an astronaut stepping out into space, free from anything that had once had a hold on me. I was, however, still tethered to the ship that had brought me here, held firmly in check by an invisible umbilical cord that kept me from being fully born.

Would that happen now?

“C’mon,” Mason said after Claudine had stepped out and tied the rowboat to the dock. He kept a hold on it to steady it. Claudine held out her hand for mine. I hesitated.

“You’re not going to wait out here while I make our picnic lunch, are you?” she asked.

I glanced at Mason. He nodded, and I stood up carefully and reached for her hand.

“You can leave your stuff in the boat,” Mason said, taking it all gently from me.

I stepped up the short part of the ladder and stood on the dock, looking across the water at where we had started. Standing on the dock made me recall my seeing them both naked. The memory made
me
feel naked. I embraced myself and waited for Mason to step up, too.

“My parents won’t be back until late tomorrow,” Mason said as we started toward their house.

“Not that they would care about us bringing you here,” Claudine added.

“No, no. They’re always after us to make some friends up here. We’ve tried.”

“Tried,” she emphasized as we all walked toward the summerhouse. “We went to a mall and hung out, but neither of us saw anyone we would want to know, even for a few summer months.”

“Even for a few summer hours,” he added, and they laughed.

“You’re the first interesting person we’ve met,” Claudine said, and surprised me by reaching back for my hand. “You must trust us and tell us all about yourself, especially how you’ve grown up under lock and key.”

“I didn’t say that she was brought up under lock and key, exactly,” Mason told her.

“He made it sound clearly like that.”

I looked from one to the other. “I suppose he’s right,” I said, surprising both of them as much as I surprised myself. After all, it was the first time I had trusted anyone other than my grandparents with anything, especially the truth.

Claudine opened the rear screen door and stepped back for me to enter first. Their summerhouse was larger than our home. It was a three-bedroom house with a large eat-in kitchen and a living room about half again as large as ours, with very modern acorn-brown leather furniture, glass tables, and a fireplace with fieldstone up to the ceiling. Mason explained that they had a basement, too, with sliding patio doors that opened to another approach on the lake.

My attention was attracted to all the paintings on the walls. They were lake scenes and scenes of mountains and valleys, some with people and some with wild animals. I wondered if I could ever paint a picture that looked as good as those. I couldn’t help looking for any religious icons or pictures. There was none in the rooms I was in.

“Ham and cheese or peanut butter?” Claudine asked him.

He glanced at me and said, “Peanut butter.”

“Great. We’ll all return to the sixth grade,” she said.

“C’mon. I’ll show you the basement,” Mason told me. “We have a pool table down there.”

“What?”

“Pool table.” He took my hand and brought me to the door for the stairway. I had heard of pool tables and seen some on television but had never seen one firsthand. We descended.

The walls of the basement were paneled in a light oak, and there was wall-to-wall matching brown carpeting, a bar with stools, and another fireplace, with almost as much furniture as I had seen in the living room. Again, there were beautiful scenic paintings but no religious icons or pictures.

“You ever play pool?”

I shook my head. I knew you had to knock a ball into a hole, but that was it. How foolish I felt. Was this the way it was going to be for me when I attended public school, feeling dumb about things everyone else took for granted? After they knew me for a while, surely they would be asking when I had landed on planet earth. Yet Mason didn’t seem startled. In fact, he seemed happy to have to explain things.

“We of the upper class,” he began, imitating a stuffy Englishman, “refer to it as billiards. We have a six-pocket table here and prefer to play eight ball.”

He started to describe it and then had me try to hit a ball, coming behind me to show me how to hold the pool cue properly. Putting his hands over mine, he manipulated my fingers. His lips were so close to my neck I felt his warm breath caress my skin and his body pressing gently against mine. For a moment, I thought I couldn’t breathe. Then he stepped back and said, “Go on. Try it.”

I did, but I only brushed the ball to the side a few inches.

“You’ve got to hold your hands steady and concentrate on the center of the ball,” he told me, and came up behind me again, his arms over mine, his hands over my hands, his lips touching my right earlobe this time as his voice softened, and he whispered, “A little tighter. Concentrate on the ball. Forget me,” he added, which was impossible.

I had never been so close to anyone, even my grandmother, and certainly not a boy. I wondered if he could feel how my heart pounded or hear how my breath quickened. A pleasant warmth flowed up around my breasts and into my neck. I had the urge to lean back into him, to close my eyes and be cradled in his arms.

“You’re moving fast,” we heard, and he pulled back as Claudine stepped off the stairway. The warmth in my body quickly fell away.

“She never held a pool stick,” he said, in what sounded like a weak defense.

Claudine laughed. “She almost got two.”

“Shut up,” he told her.

“Sandwiches are ready. I put in some chocolate milk,” she said. “One for you, too, Elle. Or don’t you drink chocolate milk?”

I shook my head. “But I will,” I said quickly, and they both laughed.

“Never chocolate milk? The forest princess, not the forest nymph,” Claudine said. “Shall we? You can go out the patio doors, Mason. I’ll get a blanket for us and meet you on the dock.”

“Check,” Mason said, and saluted while clicking his heels together.

“You idiot,” she said. She looked at me suspiciously. “Are you sure you knew nothing about pool?”

“What?”

“Just get the blanket,” Mason said.

She hurried up the stairs, and Mason directed me to the patio doors and took my hand.

We stepped out onto a slate walkway that would take us around the house and toward the dock. There were views of the lake from every angle, it seemed. We paused to look.

“My parents fell in love with this view and the fact that the house is on an inlet, so we’re not bothered by so many motorboats and such.”

“It is very pretty.”

“We get great views from all the bedrooms, too.”

What would he think, I wondered, if I told him I had no window in my bedroom, and the only view I had was of religious icons and statues?

“How long has your family had this house?”

“About ten years. Before this, we spent summers on Long Island and sometimes went to southern France and Italy.”

“That’s fantastic,” I said.

He shrugged. “I was too young really to appreciate it all. I’ll just have to go back.”

“Will you?”

“Of course. Don’t you think you will go to Europe someday?”

“I don’t know.”

How could I tell him that I was surprised I’d be leaving the house to go to school, much less leaving the state or the country?

“C’mon,” he said. “I’m starting to get hungry.”

He took my hand and led me around toward the dock. Claudine was already at the boat.

“And what took you so long?” she asked.

“Long? What was it, two minutes?”

“It’s all it takes,” she said. She held up something. “Brought my iPod and a speaker,” she said. “So we can have some music on the island.”

“Great,” Mason said. He helped me down the ladder and into the rowboat. Claudine followed, and then he untied it and got in. “We’re off for an adventure,” he declared.

“Steady as she goes, Captain,” Claudine said. She snuggled up against me again.

Mason turned the rowboat and began to row with steady, strong moves.

“He’s showing off,” Claudine said. “I can always tell when he does.”

“Like you don’t half the time,” he said.

“No. More than half the time,” she replied, and they both laughed.

I didn’t know whether I should laugh or not. Sometimes they sounded as if they were really critical of each other but a moment later laughed about it. I hoped I would soon be able to tell the difference between real anger between them and joking.

I wondered if being twins meant they could sense each other’s moods and feelings faster than other people could. Sometimes the way they anticipated each other’s actions and words made me think so. It was impossible for me not to be fascinated with them.

Mason continued his steady rowing rhythm. Claudine put her hand over the side and into the water. I did the same, and we laughed.

“Doesn’t it feel great?”

“Yes,” I said. I felt like a newborn baby discovering all sorts of new feelings, scents, and sights.

When we made the turn, the small parcel of land in the middle of the lake came into view. Now that the lake itself was wide open to view, I saw the other boats, most motorboats and a few sailboats. Grandfather Prescott and I never went far enough to view the main part of the lake like this. I was mesmerized. In some ways, it looked like a toy world, with the boats and people small in the distance, the sunlight glittering off the water, and the hum of the motors and thin sounds of laughter rolling toward us. I took a deep breath. How wonderful it was to be out and free.

“It is beautiful, isn’t it?” Claudine asked me.

“Oh yes, very beautiful.”

“I can’t believe you’ve lived here all your life and haven’t been out on the lake like this.”