The Unwelcomed Child (28 page)

He turned on his side to look at me.

“She’s my conscience sometimes, just like I’m hers. You wouldn’t think it from the way we talk to each other and tease each other, I know, but it’s true.” He paused and stared at me a moment. “Are you mad at me?”

“No,” I said. “I guess I should be mad at myself for letting it go as far as I did.”

“No. You can’t blame yourself. I know this sounds conceited, but I’m not the easiest guy to reject. Hey, if you don’t know yourself, feel comfortable in your own shoes, you’ll fail in this world. My father taught me that.”

“Conceit was what brought Lucifer to hell,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“Satan. He was an angel first, an angel jealous of God.”

“Oh, right. You believe that stuff?”

“It’s all I know,” I said.

He nodded. “I’ll call you in ten years after you’ve been out there and see if you still take it all literally. I’ve got to go into the water for a few minutes. Cool down, if you know what I mean.”

He rose, smiled, and went back into the lake. I watched him dunk himself and swim. I didn’t think my body was calm enough for me to return to my painting, but I went to it anyway. Whatever sexual explosions had taken place in me wanted me to put some suggestion of them in my scene. Grandmother Myra’s interpretation of one of the clouds gave me an idea. I put in another, making the strokes carefully. It began to take the shape of a boy and a girl side by side. I did my best to disguise it. Then I stepped back to look at it. Satisfied, I put the brush down. Mason was floating on his back. As quietly as I could, I returned to the lake, and before he realized I was there, I splashed him. He cried out and then laughed and began splashing me. He pursued me as I stumbled along and finally caught me. He pretended he was going to dunk me, and then he kissed me.

He held me for a moment. Neither of us spoke, and then he said, “When you’re ready, I want to be the one.”

I didn’t say anything, but I think he saw it in my eyes.
Yes, you’ll be the one.

After a few more minutes of swimming, we returned to the small beach and began to pack up. He had brought towels. I dried myself quickly and decided it would be all right to take off my suit and roll it up so I didn’t have to worry about Grandmother Myra catching me wearing it. He didn’t turn away, but he didn’t say anything until I had my dress on.

“I am definitely going to beat my head against that wall tonight,” he told me.

“Not too hard. I want to see you again.”

“You will. Oh, you will,” he swore.

We got everything into the rowboat and very quietly, neither of us saying anything, began to move away from the small and now magical little island.

When we reached my side of the shore, I asked him if he was going to tell Claudine everything. I had the sense that they really didn’t keep any secrets from each other.

“Probably,” he admitted. “Just to prove to her that you’re not the foolish innocent she thinks you are and that I could restrain myself, too. She’ll ask you for sure, and she’ll know if you were lying, so no problem.”

“Okay.”

“Be prepared, however, to get a Claudine lecture and a dozen lessons on how to handle men. Admittedly, she knows of what she speaks. If she was a fighter pilot, she would have dozens of kills represented on her fuselage. Claudine has quite a fuselage.”

“Didn’t she ever have one boyfriend for a while?”

“When it comes to boys and sex, Claudine has ADD. You know what that is?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Attention deficit disorder. She loses interest, because she’s always thinking there’s someone better around the corner. When I tell her she’s probably thinking of me, she usually throws whatever’s available at me. Once that was nearly a dozen eggs.”

As before, Mason wanted to walk me as close to my house as he could. While we walked, he told me more about his own romances, his ambitions, and why and how he and Claudine had become so independent and dependent on each other.

“I suppose,” he said when we were very close to the end of the walk, “just like you, we were deserted in some important ways, but we also had ways to compensate. We love our parents, but we’ve never fooled each other when it comes to what we can and can’t expect from them. Hey, that’s just the way it is. ‘Live with it,’ Claudine always says.”

“I guess I really would have benefited from a brother or sister.”

We paused. We could see the house now. It looked as quiet as ever. Grandmother Myra was not out on the back porch waiting for me. After my afternoon, it really looked more like a prison.

“I hope we can figure out some way soon to let me visit and take you out,” Mason said. “Maybe I can be just walking by with Claudine or something.”

“I don’t know. I’ll think about it. I’ve got to go slowly with them, or my grandmother will put an end to my going to public school, Mason.”

“Okay. I won’t give up. I’ll be watching for that ribbon,” he added, then kissed me quickly and started away.

I knew he was getting frustrated with meeting me secretly all the time. I wondered how much longer it would last. Both depressed and excited by the afternoon, I headed for the house.

The first thing that struck me after I entered was the same silence. I went into the living room, saw that no one was there, and put my things away as quietly as I could, assuming that they were both taking naps now. I hid the bathing suit and then sat on my bed thinking. It was getting to the time when Grandmother Myra would begin working on dinner and having me do things.

I rose and went to the stairway to listen. There were no sounds coming from upstairs. Quietly, I walked up the stairs and went to their bedroom. Surprisingly, the door was open. I peered in and saw no one there. Confused now, I hurried back down the stairs and looked in the garage. Grandfather Prescott’s car was not there. They had gone somewhere.

I wandered back to the kitchen and stood wondering if I should start preparing a salad. Wherever they had gone, when they returned, Grandmother Myra would be very happy I had. I started for the refrigerator and stopped. I didn’t know how I had missed it. I had walked through the kitchen, but there it was.

A note.

It read, “Taking your grandmother to the hospital in an ambulance. I’ll call when I know more. Grandpa.”

The thing that struck me most was his using the word “Grandpa” instead of “Grandfather.” Never in my life did I call him Grandpa or Papa. Grandmother Myra always made a point of calling him “your grandfather.” I especially never called her “Grandma.” The formality seemed very important to both of them.

Not now.

I stood staring at the note as if the words might change, like words on a television screen. Very rarely was either of my grandparents sick. Oh, they had their colds and aches, but never once did either of them spend any time at a hospital. Consequently, it was likewise very rare for me to be home alone and not to anticipate hearing or seeing Grandmother Myra at any time. During my early years, she would hover over me or surprise me as if she believed she was stopping an evil thought or action from occurring.

The silence around me suddenly made me aware of sounds usually floating beneath the surface in the house. It wasn’t only the familiar creaks in the wooden structure that were heard at night. It was the ticking of clocks, a small drip in one of the kitchen-sink faucets, and the tapping of tiny birds as they strutted on the porch floor just outside the back window. I heard the swish of automobiles passing by on the road, but most of all, I heard the trembling of my heart. I could almost feel it cringing under my breast, folding over itself because of the blanket of fear that had fallen over me.

I wasn’t sure what frightened me most.

Was I afraid my grandmother would die or afraid she wouldn’t?

Was I frightened by the possibility that if she died, my grandfather would claim that he couldn’t be responsible for me any longer, that it was too much for an elderly man to raise a teenage girl and perhaps it was better if some social agency took control and placed me in a foster home? Or perhaps even worse, send me to live with my mother, something I once dreamed of doing and now feared?

I turned slowly to look through the house, to study every shadow, listen to every creak, so I could distinguish the ordinary from something new. Was Satan himself there with me? Grandmother Myra claimed that death came into the world when Adam and Eve committed original sin. I imagined it to be like a great dark cloud that swirled over us all, everywhere, and when it sensed an opening, it pounced. Was something seriously wrong with Grandmother Myra? Had death taken a firm grip on this house? Could I smell it, feel it, or see it?

Throughout my childhood, Grandmother Myra had molded so many different terrifying creatures, children of Satan and sin, for me to visualize. She had me watching for them constantly. She designed them, the seven deadly sins and their offspring, grotesque imps, spidery dark shadows, just waiting to embrace me and make me one of their own. She would categorize something I had done, pointing her finger of accusation at me.

“That’s lust.”

“That’s sloth.”

“That’s wrath.”

I was on constant alert all my waking hours. Just think a bad thought, just weaken once to the temptation of cheating and lying, and one of them would seize me. If they didn’t do it right away, she told me, they would come at night when I was asleep and helpless. They would crawl into my bed beside me, and slowly, like a paper towel absorbing something spilled, my body would absorb them.

And when I woke in the morning, I wouldn’t even know it had happened, she said. But she would know. She would be able to take one look at me and see immediately that one of Satan’s own was inhabiting not only my body but my very soul. During those early years, I would look anxiously at her to see what she saw in me. She kept the warnings warm and frequent.

“And once they get a grip on your soul, only God’s deific forgiveness could rescue you from the fires below.”

I walked out of the kitchen and sat on the sofa, thinking. Shouldn’t I start preparing dinner? If they returned from the hospital, Grandfather Prescott would probably be hungry, even if Grandmother Myra wasn’t. Both of them would be very impressed that I had done what had to be done and not waited for instructions.

But as the minutes passed, contrary to what I anticipated in myself, I didn’t continue to worry about Grandmother Myra’s condition or what would become of me if the worst happened. I couldn’t stop it. What came over me was not continued and increased fear but a warm excitement. I closed my eyes and actually moaned, recalling the passion between Mason and me on that tiny beach. Those images and feelings swept everything else aside.

Once again, I felt the electric moist warmth of his lips on my neck, my breasts, and my stomach. I replayed his hands gently widening my legs and his fingers moving under the bottom of the bathing suit, inching it down. It excited me more to remember it all in my grandparents’ living room, on the sofa. It was more than simply sex. It was defiance, and that defiance heightened the passion, quickened my breath, unfolded my fearful heart so it could beat to a different rhythm, a rhythm that began between my legs and thumped up my body until I couldn’t restrain the cry of pleasure that reverberated under my breasts and made my body tremble and tremble until I could feel it explode.

The relief that followed was welcomed, but it was as if I had been lowered back into my body, into the house, and into all the rules and restrictions that had kept me caged for so long. I looked around fearfully, expecting to see some distorted, slimy creature smiling licentiously and joyfully at me.

“You’re one of us now,” it would say. “Welcome to your destiny.”

But there was nothing there, nothing in any shadow, and nothing hovering in any corner. There was only that silence. Passion between two people wasn’t the doorway to hell after all, I thought. It was something wonderful, something that made us feel alive. Yes, it opened doors but not the doorways to death and damnation. God didn’t do this to us to test us and then punish us. He did it so we could enjoy the full blessing of the gift of life. Yes, you could misuse it. Yes, you could ruin your life the way my mother had, but it didn’t have to be that way, to cause that dreadful destiny. This didn’t confirm any prophecy. I was strong enough when I had to be.
I will be the master of my own fate, the captain of my own soul.

It was truly a liberation. I laughed in defiance and stood up slowly but confidently. There was nothing there to fear; there never was. This was simply the home of people who had become afraid and who had tried to impose that fear on me. Why couldn’t they understand that by doing all this, they had permitted my mother, my self-centered, rebellious mother, to win, to control their lives, and almost to control mine, too?

Still riding on that stallion of defiance and new confidence, I practically galloped up the stairway. I had wanted to do this for a long, long time. I went into their bedroom and began to search drawers, not taking great care to cover up that I had done so. That was part of my new defiance.