When Conrad first started coming into my room at night, I wanted to call Anna and tell her. But I knew Anna would tell Mum, even if I made her promise not to. Anna’s not like me. She thrives on confrontation. She doesn’t give a shit what other people think. She doesn’t need to be liked. Anna is a warrior. She would never, ever have allowed Conrad to get away with it. Nor would she have understood why I had allowed it to go on—that the only way I could protect myself from the shame and humiliation I felt was by denying any knowledge of it. But if I told Anna, she would attack him, tear everything open, expose me to him in a different way. Conrad would know I had known his dirty secret all along. And then it stopped, and I thought: Nothing terrible really happened. He touched himself, but he never touched me. No one ever needs to know. But recently, his visits have started again, and I wish I had told her when I could.
Anna wanders back holding my grandfather’s copy of The Great Gatsby.
I glance up as she comes in. “Haven’t you read that book a hundred times?”
“This is a first edition,” she says reverently.
“Did he say you could take it?”
“I didn’t want to bother him. He’s upstairs in his study.” She settles down on her bed. “Anyway, I’m not going to read it, I just want to lie in bed and stroke it. Who knows, maybe we’ll even get to second base.”
“You’re such an idiot.” I laugh.
“I am,” Anna says. “‘That’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’”
“Can one of you girls come help me get supper on the table?” Granny Myrtle calls from the kitchen. “The potatoes need peeling.”
“I’ll go,” I say to Anna. “You stay and get felt up by your book. Can I do the carrots instead?” I ask, coming out of our room. “I’m bad at peeling potatoes.” I always end up with pale pentagonal lumps, most of the potato still attached to the peels. I will disappoint Granny Myrtle, which I hate.
“Why don’t you run down to the road and get the mail,” Granny says. “I’ve left it all day.” She goes to the sink and starts peeling potatoes. Their razor-thin skins fall elegantly into the basin. I come up behind her and nuzzle her cheek, making soft, burring pony noises.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, you silly girl,” she says. But she’s smiling. “My rubbers are in the front hall if you need them.”
Outside, the drizzle has turned to pelting rain. Lightning cracks the sky, silhouetting gravestones across the road. Seconds later, a thunderclap.
May
I wake in a flop sweat, my back to the door. I have fallen asleep on my watch. A streetlamp casts tree shadows on the wall above me—witch fingers. I can’t see him, but he’s there behind me, beside the bed. Watching me. Deciding. I shift my position, murmur in REM, wait for him to leave. But he doesn’t move. The tip of a finger touches my ankle, draws a line up my leg, stops at the border of my hem. It presses into my thigh. A damp, squishy press. And I realize then, it’s not his finger. I jerk away before I can stop myself. Too quick. Too aware.
“Elle?” softly.
I curl away into an inverse proportion, shoulders concave, knees to chest, whimpering at a nightmare. “It’s not a peacock,” I mumble. My arm thrashes at nothing. “Your house is here.”
Conrad steps away into shadow. He waits for me to settle. When my breathing slows, he lets himself out. The door sighs behind him.
16
1983. June, New York.
Eight a.m. and already the city is stifling and muggy, giving off the dusty gray smell of warm sidewalks, dog piss, oil stains on asphalt, the sweet, pale scent of linden trees. We are leaving for the Back Woods today. The car is double-parked. I’m helping Leo load. He’s anxious to get on the road. We have a six-hour drive ahead of us and he wants to beat the traffic. But Mum still hasn’t managed to catch the cat, and the car is only half packed because Conrad, who’s in charge of bringing our bags downstairs, is moving so slowly he looks like he’s swimming through honey.
“Can you move those short legs of yours a bit faster?” Leo says.
“Asshole,” Conrad says.
Leo says nothing.
My mother leans out the window of our third-story apartment. “Elle, did you want me to pack your Waterpik? Oh, and I need you to run across to Gristedes and get me one more cardboard box. Something I can use for kitty litter in the car.”
When the car is finally packed, Mum comes out of our building holding a picnic basket and the cat-carrying case.
“He was hiding under the bed.” She puts the cat case on the back seat, hands me the picnic basket. “Can you fit this at your feet, Elle? Leo doesn’t want to stop for lunch. There’s an apple and three nectarines. I made peanut butter and mayonnaise, or roast beef.” She settles into the front seat, fans herself with a piece of junk mail from the dash.
I move the cat case to the middle of the seat to make a wall between Conrad and me.
“Why can’t we get a car with air conditioning?” Conrad says.
“You’ll be swimming in the pond in a few hours.” Leo slams the rear door shut.
I roll down my window letting in the swampy breeze. I can’t wait to get to the woods. Anna is spending the summer at a kibbutz in Northern California, so I’ll get our cabin to myself. I’m signed up for sailing lessons. And Jonas will be back this summer. Last year his parents were on sabbatical in Florence. His mother is working on a biography of Dante. I’m excited to see him again. I wonder whether he will have changed a lot, or if I will have outgrown him.
Traffic is bumper to bumper. Somewhere in Rhode Island, our radiator overheats. Leo pulls over onto the scrubby verge, cursing.
“I needed to stretch my legs anyway,” Mum says.
Twenty yards ahead of us another car has broken down. Beyond it, on a massive billboard, a man in a zebra suit advertises a car dealership. I watch the cars creep past, feeling vaguely resentful, as if we have lost our rightful place in line.
“I filled up an empty half-gallon milk jug with water, just in case,” Mum says. “It’s somewhere behind you, Conrad.”
“Hand me that water, would you, Con.” Leo unbuckles his seat belt. “I’ll need to let the heat out from under the hood. Cool down the radiator.”
Conrad glances over his shoulder. “It’s too far back. I can’t reach it.”
“Then get out and go around.”
“You’re getting out of the car anyway.”
“I’ll get it,” I say before Leo has a chance to respond. I wiggle my way over the back of the seat, stretch over paper bags filled with groceries, suitcases, a basket of pears, strain to grab the water. “Got it,” I grunt.
“Elle, you’re an angel,” Leo says. “I’ll deal with you later, Conrad.” His voice is stony with contempt.
“I’ll deal with you later,” Conrad mocks his father under his breath. He looks at me with loathing. “Kiss ass.”
Between us, on the seat, my mother’s cat howls and scratches at its box.
* * *
—
By the time we reach the Woods it’s almost midnight. The camp has been locked up all winter. Our canoes are stacked on the porch. Everything is covered in pollen and spiderwebs. Some large animal has managed to get in over the winter, knocking plates off the open shelves. Shards of ironstone are skittled across the living room floor. The mice have made their annual nest in the silverware drawer. Mouse shit in the fork tines, afterbirth on the teaspoons. The hot water needs to be turned on. The flashlights are all dead. No one feels like making beds.
I pee in the bushes, walk down the path to my cabin, and throw myself onto the bare mattress. I’m so happy to be here. I lie there listening to the boom and croak of bullfrogs, the stillness of the trees, as the full moon shines through the skylight. A twig snaps. Something is moving outside my cabin. I hold my breath. Wait. Footfalls shuffle past toward the edge of th
e pond. Soon I hear splashing and a sound like a soft baby’s cry. I climb out of bed and creep to the screen door, peer out into the darkness letting my eyes adjust. A large mother raccoon and her four kits are fishing in the shallows. She stops, sniffs the air, sensing me, before turning back to her task. She swipes her paw across the surface of the water and brings up a fish. Careful not to make a sound, I step out onto the path. She freezes, wary now. I take a step forward. She turns her bandit face toward me and snarls. Within seconds, the raccoons have disappeared into the trees. No sign of them. Only the slight warble of the pond. The moon is so bright I can see pebbles under the water. I pull off my nightgown and wade out until I am waist-high among the reeds, and then I melt into the pond. I’ve never swum alone like this—at night, naked, in the silence. It feels luxurious, secretive.
I step out and shake myself dry, grab my nightgown from the branch, dash up the steps into my cabin, and pull the door shut behind me.
A hand comes out of the darkness then, covers my mouth.
“I was watching you,” Conrad whispers in my ear.
My stomach drops into my feet. My entire body cold with panic. I scream, but all that comes out is a muffled moan.
“You should skinny-dip every night.” He rubs his hand over my naked body, sighs. “Your skin is soft, rubbery.”
He pushes me onto the bed.
I struggle to get free of him, but his grip is too tight.
“You knew I was watching,” he says.
“Stop it, Conrad,” I beg.
“Cocktease. You like it. You let me come into your room at night. You never tell me to leave. I know you just pretend to be asleep.”
I shake my head, no, thrashing, desperate. “That’s a lie,” I manage to whisper.
“I told all my friends you let me touch you.”
He stabs himself into me then. I feel a searing pain as he tears through my hymen. Rips me open. I think about the mother raccoon listening to my soft baby-like cries from the tree branches above. When he comes, I weep.
* * *
—
A bluebird flies across the sky, wings from tree to tree. I lie on the mossy ground deep in the woods by my secret stream in a fetal curl. After Conrad left, I ran to the bathroom and washed myself from the hot tap. Scorched him from me. But it did nothing. I am no longer myself. I can’t go home. I can’t stay here. I won’t let him ruin this place for me. The pond is mine. The woods are mine. I need to sleep. The night hates me. I am walking death.
Hours later, I come to, my body frozen, teeth chattering, clothes drenched in sweat, numbed. I can’t get my bearings, still caught in the fog of a dream that lingers and evades. I want to stay there, but the here won’t allow it. I wash my face in the cool stream, smooth my hair. My flesh revolts me. I have to go home. I can never go home.
* * *
—
I approach the camp in stealth, hover in the bushes outside the pantry. My only objective is invisibility—to creep past, find a hole, crawl into it, shut my eyes too tight, see nothing but floaters. Leo’s station wagon is gone. My mother is alone in the kitchen making dinner. I watch her from my leafy blind. She is humming, filling a large pot with water. I take a step toward her. She looks up, alert, like a deer, as if she senses my presence. She shuts the tap, comes to the window, peers out. I wait for her to turn away before emerging from the woods, letting myself in through the pantry door.
“There you are!” she says. “I haven’t seen you all day. I was starting to worry.”
“I walked into town.”
“Your friend Jonas dropped by earlier.”
“Where is everyone?”
“Leo and Conrad went to the package store. I forgot beer. We’re having bluefish tacos.”
“I think I might skip dinner. I have a terrible stomachache.”
My mother shreds a cabbage on the counter; a pile of pale green bones.
“Mum?”
“Mm-hmm,” she says without turning around.
“I need to tell you something.”
“Can you grab me the sour cream?” She cleans off the blade of her knife with a dish towel and picks up a pile of washed parsley. Gives it a quick shake.
“Mom.”
“Please don’t call me that, you know I hate it.”
I hear a car coming down the driveway.
“Oh good,” she says. “They’re back. I can put the bluefish on the grill.” She pours a bit of olive oil into a cast-iron pan, throws in a few crushed cloves of garlic. “So. Tell,” she says.
The car doors slam.
“I think I have a fever.”
She feels my forehead with the back of her hand. “You are a bit hot.” She goes to the sink and pours a glass of water. “Take this. I’ll bring you some aspirin as soon as I get the fish on.”
I walk down the path toward my cabin, stand outside it, afraid to go in, afraid of what I will find.
The strange thing is, nothing has changed. There are no traces of violence, no smell of fear. My yellow floor is bright and cheerful. Mum has left a pile of fresh cotton sheets and floral pillowcases on the end of the mattress. Nothing has changed but me.
* * *
—
I stay in my room for four days, shaky, weeping, managing to avoid Conrad the entire time. At night I lock my door, put a chair in front of it. Mum thinks I have a stomach virus. I put my finger down my throat, force myself to throw up into the garbage can any food she brings me. I flush the toilet over and over again, faking diarrhea. Mum keeps everyone out of my cabin. “The last thing we need is you infecting everyone else.” She brings me bowls of chicken broth with rice, and cool compresses. My mother isn’t a warm person, but she has always been an excellent nurse. Each day, Jonas comes to visit, but she turns him away.
Monday morning, the first day of sailing camp, I make a miraculous recovery. My mother is dubious, but I promise to call home if I feel sick. The sea air will do me good, I tell her. She drives me to the bayside yacht club and drops me at the dock.
“Leo will be here at five to collect you.”
“I thought you were coming to get me.”
“Leo will already be out of the Woods. He’s taking Conrad to Orleans to get new swimming trunks. Apparently, the ones Conrad packed no longer close at the waist.”
“Why does Conrad need a bathing suit? He barely ever gets in the water. I don’t want to be sick in the car with Leo.”
My mother sighs. “Fine. Five o’clock.”
I watch the station wagon pull away before heading down to the boat slip. My body feels foreign to me, weak, see-through. But I’m glad to be away from the camp, from him.
A group of kids are standing around on the dock, waiting for our instructor. Beyond them, legs dangling in the water, Jonas is sketching something in the harbor that has caught his eye.
“Hey,” he says, as if we just saw each other yesterday.
“Hey, stranger. What are you doing here?”
“Learning to sail.”
I stop a few feet away from him, afraid he will smell the shame on me, but he jumps up, a huge smile on his face, and comes over to give me a bear hug. I’m shocked by how much he has changed—he’s still tan and ramshackle, shirtless, but he looks so much older than fourteen. He must be six feet tall, and he has gotten very handsome. For a moment, as we hug, I feel oddly shy. I wish I had washed my hair.
“You look different,” I say, pushing it away. “Same shitty shorts.”
He laughs. “About ten sizes bigger, but yeah, you know me, a creature of habit. How have you been?”
I am saved from dishonesty by the arrival of the sailing instructor, who yells at us to grab a life jacket and climb aboard, three to a boat. Five Sunfish are moored in the bay. They look like hard candies, their sails striped in green, turquoise, lemon, orange, red, and la
vender.
“I hope you don’t mind me being here,” Jonas says as we climb aboard. “Your mother told me you signed up. I got all your postcards. Thanks.”
“Are you kidding? Of course I’m happy to see you,” I say. And I am.
“You look different, too,” Jonas says.
“I’ve had stomach flu.” I am an Untouchable.
He considers me. “No,” he says, “I don’t think it’s the diarrhea.”
“Yuck.”
“Indeed.”
“I’m probably fatter.”
“That’s not it. You’re lovelier than ever.”
“You are more ridiculous than ever.” I laugh. But I’m glad he thinks so.
An older girl climbs onto the boat and squeezes in between us. “I’m Karina,” she says. “I did this last year.” She takes hold of the mainsheet. Shoves us aside.
We sail out onto the choppy bay. Beyond us, a boat capsizes. Someone stands on the centerboard and rights it. The wet sail thwacks against the mast. The kids pull themselves out, drenched and happy, squeezing water out of their T-shirts. They pull the boom in, grab for the line. Our instructor dodges in and out around our flock of boats in a small white skiff with an outboard motor.
“Ready about! Hard alee! Watch the boom! Pull the sheet!”
“Is he speaking Mandarin or ancient Greek?” Jonas asks. “I can’t quite make it out.”
We laugh, but within an hour Jonas is captaining our boat like a pro, marginalizing the bossy Karina, shouting at me to trim lines, make knots, lean out. Our sails luff, we turn and zip, slow to nothing. None of it matters. I’m happy to be breathing. Happy to be here with Jonas. Safe from Conrad. I can do this, I think as we sail out farther and farther. I can survive this. No one needs to know. I’ll put a kitchen knife under my mattress. If he touches me again, I’ll kill him. The thought of that uplifts me. I close my eyes and let the salt wind coarse my face.
The Paper Palace Page 17
