PAST THE CLUBHOUSE
The four of us stood under a magnolia on the corner, near Larchmont Shore Club, by Lynn and Jay’s house. Lynn and Jay Wyeth were brother and sister. I was going to be with Jay, and Lynn was going to be with Jay’s friend Fletcher Dunne. Fletcher stood with us, too, his bottom lip hanging just enough so you could see the jail on his teeth, but all I thought of when I looked at him, every time I looked at him, was his blind father and dead mother.
Jay, with all his smarts and calculations, was figuring out how we could get into Fletcher’s father’s basement without interference. This was one of his words. Jay stood there with his collar turned up under his bomber jacket, which later would teach me the smell of a boy. He went over the plan again and again until we got it straight, using his hands as if he was a man at a podium. He never once looked me in the eye while talking strategy.
Fletcher stared with a blank expression out into the street at nothing while Jay strategized. I figured this look was passed down to him from his father.
I’d heard that Mr. Dunne had a decent job that allowed him to work from home, probably with Braille and tape recorders. Jay said this fact had never been verified.
Fletcher never uttered a word to anyone about his blind dad or his dead mother, not even to Jay, so we all had to rely on rumors, especially as to how his dad had become blind in the first place. Jay told Lynn and Lynn told me that the events leading up to the fatal accident, which killed Fletcher’s mother and caused his father’s blindness, were horrific.
The powerful whacks of tennis balls from the club’s courts were so loud I felt them in my chest, and I couldn’t help but look in that direction, where the green canoes were piled high up against the fence, stacked like empty clam shells. But Jay was so focused on our plan the noise never disturbed his concentration. “What’s the big deal?” I said. Everyone looked at me, and I immediately realized that I could not explain what I meant in front of Fletcher.
Jay checked his watch, following his own advice to synchronize.
“Never mind,” I said.
It was so much easier to kiss Jay than to talk to him. I’m not sure we ever talked, except while kissing, about the kissing. He was teaching me, and he said it might take us several Saturdays to perfect it.
Everyone started to walk toward Fletcher’s house, but I hung back. Of course, Jay noticed, but I was still surprised that he slowed and walked next to me.
I kept my gaze forward and said, “All we have to do is sneak in the Dunne’s basement. Mr. Dunne might be able to pick up the vibrations in the floor, but he will never see us. We’re lucky he doesn’t have a dog. The seeing eye kind.”
“He will never be able to verify our identities.”
This was our first real exchange.
Jay yelled up to his sister. “Elizabeth made a good point.” He ran ahead to catch up to Lynn, who was kicking dead leaves aside with her feet, making a path. It looked like getting into a basement to make out was the last thing on her mind.
We walked through the well-worn trail of Palmer Woods, and I was the last in line. I followed Lynn’s skinny legs. She hopped on stones, jumped across the littered stream, and motioned to me to hurry. Her agility reminded me of the way she did math, scratching her way down the sheet of problems without hesitation.
“Lynn. Lynn!” I had to say her name several times to get her attention. “Fletcher’s Dad will never see us.”
“Oh really.”
“What I mean is—why is Jay making such a production out of it?”
“He makes a production out of everything. Besides, if that doesn’t work, why don’t we just go to your house? No one’s there either.”
When we came out of the woods we were in New Rochelle, and Fletcher took the lead. As we approached the Dunne house, everything about it said ‘blind man lives here.’ The shades were drawn and the bushes were all straggly, not like the ones at the Wyeth house, which were carved into clubs and diamonds. Three cats by the door acted hungry.
We followed Fletcher up the driveway, past a Weber grill, and into the garage, where he made an effort to walk around the huge black stain on the floor. Jay poked his sister and pointed. The look on his face was talking evidence, as if this stain had something to do with everything. Seconds later, we were in the basement, spinning ourselves in chairs shaped like barrels.
Fletcher got up and went into the bar area to hunt for sodas. I went with him, because I always felt like the odd-man-out whenever I was alone with Lynn and Jay. They had their own language and never shared the definitions—like the word ginge. What’s the ginge? they would say to each other, right in front of me. I know they made it up as some kind of signal.
“So,” I said, watching Fletch, surprised that he wasn’t concerned with the racket he was making, “at least we can use your house, I mean, seems like no one is home.”
“Like your house,” he said in his usual blandness.
I wanted to say that I didn’t have a blind man hiding upstairs, but I didn’t have the heart.
“You don’t have to pretend with me,” Fletch said, standing on an upside-down Dewar’s crate, looking up on a top shelf. The seat of his jeans appeared empty. I know all about your mother.” I was such a jerk. I had been so afraid to upset him, and there he was, handing me a soda like he already forgot he was out of line. He should have known something about what it felt like. My mom hadn’t been in a horrific accident, she’d just floated away.
“Here,” he said, “carry these.”
“Thanks a lot.”
He gave me the once over like he was checking me out, but I knew this couldn’t be. Everyone liked Lynn better.
I walked to the other side of the basement and held the can of soda over Lynn’s head, waiting for her to take it. She had fallen off the barrel laughing, and I wondered how anyone could kiss a boy with her brother in the room. She grabbed the bottle of Coke and immediately chugged it.
For the first time all day, Jay stared at me. I feared my embarrassment accentuated the apples of my cheeks, which were bigger than anyone else’s, and for which I was always self-conscious. I had let my hair grown long to hide them, and it seemed that I was growing into the name Jay teased me with, when we were alone.
“Hey, Pocahontas,” he said, crawling to me on his hands and knees.
I could not believe that Lynn and Fletcher were already going at it on the couch, their heads bobbing. Jay and I always had to work up to it.
Jay put his head on my lap and looked up at me, but I couldn’t look down, not with those slurping sounds. He didn’t seem to hear it, his intensity shifted in my direction. I focused on the framed print over the fireplace of kittens crawling out of a basket.
My hair hung in my face, and Jay took a lock and studied it. At first I thought he was looking for split ends, but he began to use it like a soft paintbrush, brushing his lips and then his eyes, which were closed.
He sat up and held my face, his two strong thumbs pressing into my heated cheeks, and kissed me. My nose pressed so hard against him that I had to maneuver my head so I could breathe. He stopped and looked at me. Then he put his hand on my chest, and began to outline, with his finger, the form he felt underneath my shirt. All I could think of was the blue and pink flowered bra I was wearing, the one I’d bought at Wanamaker’s, while my father sat outside in his car and smoked a cigar.
I felt a warm gush in my underwear. Great. I had white jeans on.
“What’s the matter, Poke?” He smiled, looking at me carefully, taking his hands away, assuming he had done the wrong thing.
I noticed our hair was exactly the same brown-black, but his eyes were light blue.
“I really have to go to the bathroom.”
“Hey—Fletch,” he said, twisting his neck but keeping his body in the same place. “Elizabeth has to go. Fletch. Fletch. Oh, Fletch,” he said, dr
agging out the “oh.”
“Gotta go upstairs,” he responded as Lynn pulled him right back down.
“What about Mr. Dunne?” I whispered in Jay’s ear, my lips mistakenly touching his soft lobe.
Now he was talking into my ear, his lips very deliberately on my lobe. “Sounds like no one is up there. And, look at Fletch here. Does he seem worried? Besides, we would have heard discriminatory sounds by now.”
“Well, you don’t hear too much when you don’t want to.”
“Only when I’m fixated.” He pulled me to him and we were back in his warm mouth.
When I got up, the taste of him was familiar, like I had known it my whole life. And, I felt something genuine from him for the first time. He was looking at me, directly in the eye.
“Do you want me to go with you?”
“No, it’s OK.”
“I am lying-in-wait then.”
I began up the stairway. It turned a corner and led to the next floor. I tiptoed up the steps and opened the door slowly. I could see part of the living room, with furniture positioned around the perimeters, as if the middle was left for dancing. I heard the hum of the refrigerator and the ice cubes dropping from the icemaker into the freezer bin.
The room next to the kitchen, where a bathroom might be located had a closed door. I crept down the hallway, thinking I really did look like Pocahontas with my hushpuppy slip-ons and my shirt with the fringe. Now the creeping.
I used the bathroom and washed my hands with cold water. There was no soap in the soap dish, and the towel was damp. My face looked flushed in the mirror. When I came out, I didn’t bother creeping.
“You’re not Fletch.”
I stopped. I saw the figure of Mr. Dunne sitting at a desk in front of the window in the living room. I was sure he had not been there before.
“No, Mr. Dunne.”
“Ah, one of Fletch’s girlfriends.”
“I’m just a friend,” I said, wanting to make that clear and feeling lucky he couldn’t see the disgust in my face. “I’m sorry. I had to use the bathroom.”
“Don’t be sorry. If you have to go, you have to go.”
Mr. Dunne, seated at the empty desk, stared out the picture window. He was lanky like Fletch, unshaven, in a wrinkled dress shirt, the cuffs flopped open. I wanted to ask him about all the things a blind man can’t do; I could count a few just by looking at him.
“And, you are…?”
“Elizabeth. Elizabeth Pearly. Lynn Wyeth’s friend,” I quickly added, since that is how I was referred to. The Wyeths had me practically living at their house, thinking they were helping my father.
“Yes, I knew your parents from the Shore Club.”
A cat appeared at my feet, surprising me. I petted it, and its scratchy meow frightened me.
“That’s Tiger. He was one of the kittens.”
He was talking like they were famous or something.
“What kittens?”
“One of the survivors.”
He must have been talking about the horrific accident. God, I didn’t want to know. I started to back up. Maybe he was referring to something else. How could a kitten be involved?
“You haven’t heard this? Fletch hasn’t told you?”
“No.”
“Knowing Fletch, he was trying to spare you. He knows you have had your own troubles.”
“Yes, he’s kind that way,” I answered, pleased he couldn’t see me rolling my eyes. I sat down in the spot where I was standing because my legs were getting rubbery.
“There were three new litters and the basement area near the garage stunk,” he began. “My wife couldn’t stand it, said our house smelled like a shanty with all the cats and litter boxes.”
I looked around to see if I could sneak away.
“There must have been eighteen. I had a solution in a tin can. No label on it. I doused the cement floors, thinking it would clean and disinfect. My wife came in, finishing a cigarette. She had a habit of tossing and stamping. Then, the explosion. She was my last vision. Now she is my only vision. Smoking a Winston,” he added the last part like it was the best part.
“Oh.” I said, feeling something similar. All this time, since Mom had died, the things I saw in my head—I never thought they were outside of me, they were just a part of me. “I see things, too.”
It was as if he was staring at my forehead.
“What do you see?” he asked, his voice lower than before.
“I mean, I’m not sure. Sometimes I see my mother dragging the canoe on the beach. The green one. Then she’s hopping in, floating out past the Clubhouse. It’s foggy, then I lose track of her.”
He turned back to face the window and rubbed his chin. Maybe he forgot I was there.
I managed to get up, trying not to make a sound, realizing his remaining senses must be more acute now.
“Come to the window here,” he said.
I felt as if he was pulling on a rope tied around my waist. The room smelled like fireplace ashes. The window looked out onto the street, and it was getting dark.
“Look,” he said. “You can come anytime and see your mom.”
He must have been off his rocker, and Jay would love to know this tidbit. Now I was the only one who knew the whole story, the real story. I wasn’t even sure of my own.
I could see his face, and he didn’t look sad or blind. Just kind of mesmerized.
“What is your wife doing now?”
“Still smoking,” he said. “In her way.”
Maybe he was nuts, but I couldn’t help myself. I walked to the window. Beyond the street, above the houses in front, I could see Mom in her canoe, her dark hair in a long unraveling twist down her back, paddling on one side in the air, then the other. “Mom,” I called and waited. She didn’t hear me.
I walked downstairs with the image of my mother with me. I moved in a trance, worried that I was like Mr. Dunne. We lived in our own kind of foursome. But I got to see my mom and that was all that mattered. I loved seeing her long delicate arms again, arms she used to put around me. I would keep that for myself.
When I entered the basement, Lynn said, “We stopped sucking face because you took so long. We were about to come up and get you. Look at her Jay, she looks mal.”
Even Fletch didn’t know what that meant in the Wyeth language. I wondered if he knew what his father was up to up there. Hardly a decent job with Braille.
Fletch looked up at me for quite a while, and we found ourselves in a stare contest. Jay was riveted.
I waited for a remark from Fletch, like ‘Is your father any good at conjuring up your mother?’ He stood up on top of a footstool, and made his announcement. “Yeah, she’s mal alright. Whatever the fuck that means, she’s it.”
Lynn jumped up and gave him an exaggerated karate chop in the back of his neck, and when he fell back on the floor laughing, I noticed his lips were red and raw. I was sure I could see his tonsils dangling like punching bags.
Jay got up and put his arm around me, maneuvering me over to the bar area where we could be alone. He put me up on the high stool and sat on the one opposite, so our knees could interlock. All I wanted to do was go back upstairs. It was better to be with the crazy and the dead.
“Do you know what happened to my mother?” I asked him.
The detective look returned to his expression, as if he was coming upon the ultimate evidence that would close his case.
“Do you?” I repeated, feeling my throat close, knowing that I would never be able to ask again.
“Well,” he said, stamping his lips on mine as if he was transferring a discovery that he had kept hidden all along. He pulled away and looked down at the floor. “I heard she did like the Indians do.”
I pictured Mom in the canoe, placing her paddle inside, next to her feet. I pictured her ro
cking from side to side, going faster and faster until the flimsy canoe tipped over.
“You mean.” I was never able to say the word that was worse than death, more than death.
“Yes,” he said.
I watched him pick up my hand, but I didn’t feel his touch. He had more to say, he always did.
“But, I’m not gullible like everyone else in this town,” he said, finally looking up at me. “I’m sure it’s only hearsay.”
EFFECTS OF THE WATERFRONT
After Dad died, I never dreamed I’d be able to get him back. As I dragged the skimmer over the pond, all I saw in my mind were the bulky hospital orderlies, joking with each other over Dad’s body as they removed him from the bed. I studied this image, their heave-ho motions, my father’s grand figure without him in it.
I flung the dead leaves off the net over my shoulder, paying no attention to the Koi that were hiding under the duckweed. I kept thinking about those orderlies—did they just grab his arms and feet and yank him off the bed? One, two, three, upsy daisy old man, or did they slide their forearms under his back and kind of roll him on the gurney before wheeling him down to the morgue? Did they stop at the soda machine for a Pepsi, leaving him under the sheets on the side of the hallway, waiting, while they checked out the uniformed asses on the thirteenth floor?
Ray and I had just moved into an old colonial on Mohegan Road. The house had a long driveway draped by weeping willow trees, a rose garden off to the right, and a fishpond in the shape of a bottom-heavy figure eight. The pond was surrounded by tufts of reeds that hunched over in the slightest breeze. In the back of our house, a silky body of water reflected purple clouds, a pattern that drifted into one swollen form after another with the sluggishness of cake batter.
The surrounding homes were too close for the privacy I had hoped for. Next door, the kids and their dog usually hung out in a small mass at the end of the driveway. If I stopped and listened, I could hear the rhythm of their voices, like the background noise of the Connecticut turnpike that was often punctuated by rumbles and blasts. Their faces always looked suspicious when I drove by them, and I figured that one day they would make their way over the fence and into our backyard, a slow moving, single file line of vengeful Indians.
This Side of Water Page 16
