by Rachel Kane
A few months ago, I’d had that Victorian on the nicer side of town. At night, I could open my curtains, turn down my lights, and watch the wind stir the trees in the park.
I had to admit it to myself: I was lonely.
I was willing to take on all the work in the world to avoid that feeling…but somehow, it wasn’t working right now.
There was enough going on in Braddock’s case to occupy my mind for months.
I just didn’t care.
It felt like all the important things in life had slipped out of my grasp.
When had life gotten so claustrophobic? When was the last time I had tried to have fun…or to have anything in my life that wasn’t strictly necessary?
That kiss hadn’t been strictly necessary.
Yes, but I’d given up on it, hadn’t I? I hadn’t pursued things any further. Hadn’t tried to get to know Theo, the man he was today as opposed to back when I knew him. If anything, I’d pushed all that aside, because I didn’t want to deal with it.
That was my whole life these days, really, pushing everything aside.
You could call him.
Well, no, what would that solve? A tense, awkward conversation on top of the chaos Braddock Moore had just plunged me into? What good would it do?
I wasn’t planning on pursuing Theo. There wasn’t room in my life for that, even if he was still drop-dead gorgeous, even if he was thoughtful and strange and interesting and…
“I only talked to him for like thirty seconds!” I said to the empty room. “A couple of conversations, and a kiss, and that’s it! It didn’t mean anything!”
* * *
The first time we kissed, it was absolute silliness, two boys being crazy.
Although what people always remembered about the lake was those long summer afternoons, other seasons descended too; the lake was still part of the world, after all, and come winter, a stiff breeze would roll across the water. You didn’t want to be out on a boat right then, unless you were young and stupid and never thought about dying.
“What was it like?” I asked Theo, shivering in my jacket. There were a million places to get away from the grownups in the house, yet we always chose the water. Now we floated away from the dock, the chop making me feel unsteady, yet I was warmed by curiosity, and an excitement I couldn’t quite hide.
“It was weird,” he told me. “She stuck her tongue in my mouth!”
“Gross!” I said, disgusted and titillated at the same time. Also jealous, in a way I didn’t understand.
He shook his head. “I don’t get it. Kissing is stupid. Why do they all want to do it?”
“Nobody wants to do it with me,” I said. I’d been feeling jealous a lot lately, hearing about Theo’s adventures at his school. At my school, kids weren’t exactly shunning me, but I didn’t have many friends, and the boys were all getting interested in girls, which made no sense to me at all. Hadn’t they always insisted girls were bad news? One minute they had cooties, and the next, all the boys wanted to be near them all the time.
And here was Theo doing the exact same thing, with some girl back at his rich-boy school.
“Don’t worry, it seems to happen to everybody at some time or other,” said Theo. “Nobody can escape. It’s like a monster took over everybody’s brains.”
“Like yours,” I said. “I see that look on your face.”
“Nah, no, been there, done that. I don’t think I’ll ever kiss another girl for the rest of my life.”
A gust rocked the lake, and I held on to the sides of the boat. It was so cold, I knew we’d have to go back inside soon. Neither of us were dressed warmly enough to be out here. But I couldn’t suggest turning back, not while there was all this valuable, private information to be shared still.
After all, since I’d already made my mind up that I was never going to have a girlfriend, this might be my only chance to understand what the appeal was, what all the boys at school were going so crazy over.
“I still don’t understand what it’s like,” I said. “I tried kissing my hand the other day, pretending it was a person, but I don’t think it was the same.”
Theo shook his head. “Yeah, it wouldn’t be. No, this is really different. I mean…do you want me to show you?”
I cocked my head to the side. “What do you mean, show me?”
“I could do it to you, what she did to me. You’ll see. It’s pretty strange.”
How to describe the frisson I felt at that moment? It felt like the whole world was watching, like I was on the verge of getting into the biggest trouble ever. I could picture Consuela and the butler and other staff staring out the windows, watching everything we did, ready to yell at us the moment we came inside. Or worse, if our parents saw. My mom, his mom.
I knew the word gay. I wasn’t sure at that point whether it applied to me. From what I’d seen on television, it mostly meant dressing very snappily, and having well-groomed hair. In theory it meant having boyfriends the way other people had girlfriends, but I didn’t really see that on TV.
Down here, it wasn’t allowed. Gay was an insult, something the older boys sneered at you when they pushed you around.
It’s like, it wasn’t something you chose, and it wasn’t something you were born with, it was just a word other people applied to you. And it could get you in all kinds of bad trouble.
So I knew I couldn’t tell Theo that I wanted him to kiss me. That would be gay. But this might be my only chance in my entire life to find out if I really liked boys more than girls. No one else was interested in kissing the gawky kid with the big adam’s apple.
“Okay,” I whispered, my assent lost in the wind.
“What?” he said.
“I said okay. Try it. Do I have to close my eyes?”
“I think you do, yeah. When she kissed me, she had her eyes closed. I think you have to worry about bumping your eyeballs together if the kiss goes on too long.”
“That’s how they do it on TV,” I agreed.
So now the world was dark. Around us, the wind whistled, and the boat rocked, but I could see none of it. It was like waiting for someone to play a practical joke on you, one you know is coming, but you don’t know when, and so it just builds suspense, every moment that it doesn’t happen.
And when it did happen, it was just as strange as he’d described. His lips were warm and tight, mashed against mine. I could practically feel his teeth, right behind his lips, and I started to laugh, but when I did, his tongue touched mine.
Time stopped, just for a moment. His skin was cool; warmer than the wind around us yet somehow cool enough to be markedly other. He tasted of mint and grape, his favorite bubble gum.
It was so startling that I pulled back, my eyes flying open.
“Agh!” I said. “That was so weird!”
“I know! Why does everybody do it all the time?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, but I’m not worried about missing out anymore. I’ll probably never kiss anybody again.”
“Me either. Do you want to go back in? I’m cold.”
There had been nothing romantic about that kiss, nothing at all. We hadn’t mentioned it again. We treated it as though it had never happened. Not out of shame or anything like that, but there were more important things to talk about, like how to spend the rest of winter break, and how to sneak cookies out of the kitchen without Consuela noticing, and how best to torment Val.
But that kiss had planted a seed, just a small one, in my heart. A seed that, in coming years, would sprout and blossom, as Theo became my first real kiss…my first everything. I’d end up giving my heart to him just a few years after that, when we were older, but I think it all started back then, on that little boat, tossed by the waves.
What had happened to that boy? The Micah I used to be? So interested in everything, scared and hesitant but still brave enough to try things, even if they didn’t turn out to be nearly as interesting as everyone made out.
Why had I give
n all that up, in exchange for growing up?
What would it be like if I took a moment, just dropped work, dropped all my worries about my mom, forgot all the awkwardness and embarrassment of the weekend, and asked myself this one question:
What do I really want?
He had been my best friend back then. He’d been my first love, really my greatest love.
It shouldn’t be any surprise that on meeting him again, I felt that old feeling.
Maybe it was dumb to fight it.
What did I really want?
Maybe I wouldn’t know the answer to that, until I was honest about how I felt right now, and how I’d felt then, and…
…and until I’d really talked to him, gotten to know who he was these days. Because right now, I didn’t feel like I knew him at all, like present-day Theo was standing in front of the young man I’d fallen for all those years ago, and no matter how I turned my head, I couldn’t quite see that younger Theo, even though I knew he was there, even though I could feel his presence with every word.
“Oh fuck,” I said. “What am I going to do?”
15
Theo
I put a stripe of yellow ochre across the canvas. Just a thick line, not thick enough to be impasto, but heavy, clumsy, my hand no longer quite knowing what to do with the brush. It was a color of autumn, the color of dogwood leaves as they traveled from green to red.
The brushes I’d loved best were too stiff to use. Everything had happened so fast when my life changed, there had been no time to clean everything and put it away properly. But this brush had still been in its wrapper, untouched for years, and so I dipped it in the paint and drew it over the white.
I missed this so much. That’s what Nicholas, with his weird mix of meditation and bluff bonhomie would never understand. Yes, I should call my mother more, of course I should. What son would disagree with the principle? The entire masculine world is bad at calling. But my life was different. To call here, to listen to a recitation of the latest domestic events, was to be reminded of everything I’d given up.
Everything, including the way the light reflected on the paint, and the way those reflections changed as you watched, as the paint began to dry, and the highlight softened, evened out.
I was so alone here.
Val had gone in to talk to my mother. Not about anything, necessarily, but to have a conversation with her, because for all that he could be robotic and weird sometimes, he was still a better son than I was.
Would he come out with an agreement to sell us the house? Or would she convince him of her side of things, that the house needed to be excised from our collective memory, as though it were haunted, as though we’d lived in an old castle that needed to be torn down to exorcise the ghosts?
If I dipped my brush in Mars black, and smoothed it over this section of ochre, what would happen? Could I remember what it would look like, before I actually did it? Was my memory strong enough?
I tried it, and just before my brush made contact, I could remember the deep brown I’d been able to make with it, the color of a shadow in the forest, the color of old lake mud.
It was foolish to think I’d been abandoned by everyone. That wasn’t the case at all. People had their own lives, their own agendas, and there was no reason to assume that theirs would line up perfectly with mine.
I’m sorry, Micah had said just before leaving.
But what was he sorry for? The suddenness with which he’d been called away? The chaos we found ourselves in?
The kiss?
I added more black, until all the brightness was gone. This will be a picture of midnight, a picture of the dark, and you are standing outside in it with your eyes closed, head tilted up, seeing nothing, smudges of false color at the corners of your eyes. That’s what I would paint. The emptiness I felt when Micah had driven away, the unwarranted, inexplicable emptiness.
We were nothing to each other anymore. There was no reason his leaving should hurt me.
“Oh!” said a voice behind me, startled. “I’m sorry.”
I turned and saw Micah’s mom in the door, her bucket with its brushes and rags in hand. “Hi, Mildred. It’s okay. Do you want me to move, or can you clean around me?”
She smiled, but there was a tentativeness to it as she entered the room. Understandable. She didn’t know whether I was an enemy or an ally. Was I trying to cast her out, or keep her here? (”Does your mom know?” I’d asked Micah, years ago, as we walked down to the caretaker cottage to get away from prying eyes? “God no,” he’d said. “She’s my mom. I can’t tell her anything.”)
“I’m surprised you’re still doing all the cleaning,” I said, watching her dust off the nightstand and the unused alarm clock. Tomorrow I’d have to go back to the world of alarms, wouldn’t I? As stressful as the house had been, it was a respite from the cold emptiness of my work.
“Why wouldn’t I clean?” she said. “The house gets dusty, no matter what’s going on.”
“I just mean, everything’s up in the air right now.”
She paused, as though something were on her mind, some reply she would have to think through for a bit before making it. Was it fear that she wouldn’t strike the right tone? Or was she trying not to hurt my feelings by saying whatever came next?
“Micah was happy to see you here, you know,” she said.
I didn’t drop the paintbrush, but could feel it trembling in my fingers. A dot of black paint fell onto the canvas.
“He didn’t seem very happy,” I said. “None of us do. I apologize for that; I know you’re used to a peaceful home. I feel like we’re intruding.”
Without looking at me, she walked to my bed, and began removing the pillows. “I saw his face, when you two were talking outside. If it’s not overstepping my bounds to say, I think he misses you. You used to be his best friend. He doesn’t have many friends anymore.”
“Well, I’m sure he’s got all of his law buddies, and—”
The quick shake of her head stopped me. “I worry about him, Theo. Always working. Do you know what he told me, before he left today? That he had to go represent a gangster. What kind of life is that? He used to want to protect the world. Do you remember?”
I had to set my brush down before I made a frantic mess of my painting. I was perfectly still, and yet the entire world vibrated around me, as though every molecule had gone ever-so-slightly mad. “I do remember. I used to rib him about it, saving the owls.”
“No matter what happens with the missus, I’ll be all right,” she said. “With Micah’s help, I can get through it. But will he be all right? The hours he works, Theo! Of course you know all about that, you and your brother. You probably never leave the office.”
It was untrue, of course. I left the office more than I was in it. There was always a lunch to buy, a dinner to schedule, drinks and a night out for investors and clients. Always planning more entertainment for the out-of-towners. My life squeezing out of me, one laugh at a time.
“Mildred, you’ll have to forgive me, these past couple of days have rattled me: What are you asking me to do?”
“Nothing, nothing.”
If I held on to the easel, the room might still itself, at least for the few moments it took to speak to her. It felt as though I were falling, as though the room were slanting forward, and I had to stop that fall.
“Just tell me. He’s sad. He’s overworked. But what can I do about that?”
“Be a friend to him,” she said. “I don’t know whether you two are on opposite sides of this house business. I hope that I haven’t come between you like that. But no matter whether you’re fighting over the missus’ decision or not…be his friend. Please?”
* * *
“We have to go home, regardless,” said Val. “We have the Missouri people flying in, and we can’t delay that meeting any longer.”
It was time to go down to dinner. The Last Supper, I thought, scrubbing the paint off my hands. There was a painting for you.
Brilliant, dark and beautiful, and yet falling apart from the moment it was finished. I wondered sometimes if that was the point, if Leonardo had known that the paint would begin to flake almost right away, that the colors would lose their luminosity, and that the beauty would be clouded over. As though he were expressing something about mortality, about memory, about the way things once bright and beautiful always fade, no matter how important they are to us.
Or maybe I was just in a morbid mood because I would have to face Nicholas and Mother one last time before leaving. Face them, and my guilt for letting Val do all the talking to her, even after Nick had practically ordered me to talk to her. I’d stood next to the study door, watching her, before realizing I couldn’t go in. I couldn’t do it. I felt like anything I would say to her, would be guarded, like we were fighting, at odds, even though honestly I wasn’t mad at her, I had no intention of fighting.
I’d watched her, and then had gone to ask Val to speak to her.
“Did you find anything else out?” I asked him. “Were you able to nudge her plans at all?”
He shook his head, watching me from the bathroom door, as though to make sure I did a good job cleaning my hands. “She thinks that keeping the house in the family is a bad idea. That we will always feel the pull of it, dragging us down. I’m not clear on what she means by that. She makes the house sound haunted.”
“For her, it is,” I said. “But if we buy it, and she moves out, then why should it matter?”
“There is still the question of why we would buy a house solely to employ two staff-members we don’t need,” he said.
I looked at him through the mirror. “Is that what you think this is? You think all this effort is just to save Consuela and Mildred’s jobs?”
Blinking, he said, “Did I miss something? I thought that is exactly where the tension was coming from.”
“It’s more than that. This house…it means a lot to me. I think it means a lot to you, too, but I can never tell with you. Didn’t you enjoy growing up here? Don’t you feel tied to this house, in a way you’ve never felt tied to anywhere else?”
