Had it not been for Louey, upstairs, asleep, oblivious to the wreckage awaiting her, he would have taken a drink. Yet somehow he felt he should be as clear as possible for Louey. Maybe it was a conceit that she needed him, but it was one he wanted to believe.
At twelve-thirty, he climbed the steps to her room, knocking and calling out her name. There was no answer.
He knocked again, hesitating, then opened the door. She was fast asleep. How could anyone sleep so late with the sun streaming down on her? He stood over her bed, looking. Her face was pink, crushed against the pink pillow, her body twisted around in an inverted question mark. She could be four years old, he thought.
“Louey?” No response. He spoke louder: “Louey?” She groaned. “You awake?” He touched her shoulder gently.
“Who wants to know?” she muttered, turning over on her stomach with a loud sigh.
“It’s past noon, Louey.”
“Think that’s funny?” she said into the pillow. After a moment she pulled the covers around her as if unwilling to let even the air come between herself and slumber.
He smiled at her furrowed brow; he’d never seen anyone so ferociously dedicated to sleeping.
“My mother’s beginning to wonder if you survived the night.”
She turned over on her back, this time with less of the sheet following her. To his shock he realized that she was naked under the blankets, and out of them, too, for much as he wanted not to believe his eyes, her breasts were exposed as she flung an arm over her eyes in protest against the light.
He nearly bent to cover her, stopping as his hands hovered suspiciously close to her bare flesh. Christ. After all the trouble he’d taken to undress her the night she’d gotten drunk and passed out at his place, here she was, displayed as matter-of-factly as could be. He looked away, then looked back for an instant. Her skin was so creamy, like a little girl’s, but she wasn’t a little girl, with beautiful breasts that called out to be cupped, caressed, concealed by his hands. Jesus, enough of this; he bent to tug the blanket over her, but her arm had it pinned too securely to move. He was in the process of trying again when she moved the arm that was shielding her face and surveyed him with two narrow blue smudges. He had never seen anyone so asleep with her eyes open; her face was barely recognizable.
“What are you doing?”
“Covering you up.”
She looked down at herself and color rose in her cheeks. “How friendly.” She tugged the sheet, then pulled the blanket completely over her head, shaking with laughter. “I’ll just be a moment, thanks. Have to get ’em ready to point at your mother.”
“That’s okay,” he said. “You will have some explaining to do about the sheer amount of sleep you’ve managed to accumulate, though. It’s nearly one.”
The layers were lowered abruptly. “Why didn’t you wake me earlier?”
“We were counting on putting you on the mantel, after we had you stuffed.” He sat on the bed next to her and toyed with the pattern on the bedspread.
“Tell you who’ll get stuffed,” she muttered. He looked at her creased face and laughed.
“Not too cheerful in the mornings, eh?” The pillow she hurled at him only seemed to confirm that he was right.
After he’d seen to her breakfast (“fried eggs, fried bread, fried milk”), Clay ran into town to do some errands for his mother. Everywhere he looked it seemed that people were staring at him; he’d forgotten what it felt like to live in a small town. Was it his imagination, or did things seem shabbier, the people frailer, more subdued?
The last thing he expected on his return was to find Louey and his mother earnestly engaged in conversation. From the distance he could see them sitting together on the patio, the sunlight glinting down on Louey’s face, the greenery against his mother’s hair a pretty sight, her obligatory tall drink at her side. He nearly stopped in his tracks when he saw his mother’s face, more animated than it had been since his father had left. Louey gestured emphatically with her hands. He could only wonder what they might be talking about so heatedly. As he came closer, he noticed another unusual sign—his mother’s drink was hardly touched, and the full pitcher next to her seemed to indicate that it was her first. He hastened his approach, making sure they heard him.
“Oh, Clay dear.” His mother’s face closed instantly, and the two women faced him blankly, as if caught doing something illicit. “Done so soon?”
“I’ve been gone over two hours. Missed me terribly, I see.” He seated himself beside her on the ground and nodded to Louey. “Everything is so damned slow around here; I’d forgotten what it was like.”
“You’re just out of practice, darling,” his mother said. Louey studied him, as if searching for secrets between him and his mother.
“So what have you two been talking about?”
At this his mother took a large sip. He regretted having intruded. How could his own mother be uneasy at the sight of him?
“Your mother and I have been talking about men,” Louey said. She cocked her head, waiting for his wisecrack.
“Had a thing or two to teach Mama, I’ll bet,” he said.
“Louey has been very enlightening.” His mother surveyed him almost warmly. To his surprise, she reached out and took his hand. He bent to kiss her soft cheek, warm from the sun. He had loved his mother so much when he was little there were times he was overcome with a feeling of panic at the thought of losing her. “You are a sight for sore eyes, Clayton.”
“I should hope so,” he remarked. “I got all my mother’s looks, after all.”
“Now that is the truth,” his mother said, patting his cheek. A quiet overtook the three of them suddenly, and for a little while they sat gazing out across the tall grass and gently sloping hills, listening to the birds, content.
“Where do you go to get away?” Louey asked after dinner.
“Have I got something to show you.” He wiped his hands with a towel, finished with the dishes. “Come with me.”
They walked through a veritable forest of tall brush and uncivilized terrain. How had he maneuvered through this when he was a boy? Clay wondered, gazing at a lone wild-flower.
“It’s so warm here,” Louey mused. “And so quiet.”
“You’re just used to the screams of drunks and murdered editors.”
“True.”
Finally they reached his destination, the haven of his childhood. The pond was still and gleaming, as if it had been waiting for him, undisturbed, an oasis quietly nestled in the middle of wild, untamed brush.
“This,” she said, “is something.”
“I think of it as my own private lake.”
She gazed across the water. “Did you come here a lot with friends when you were a little kid?”
“Nope.” He thought of his sister, swallowing. “Not really.”
“You never brought girls here?” She snorted. “Come on. This is a perfect setup.”
“Well …” He wondered if he could tell her about Charlene, but couldn’t think of a way to put it that wouldn’t make him sound like a jerk. “I had a girlfriend, but I never took her here.”
“Why?” She sat down at the edge of the pond, smoothing the ground with her feet.
He stood looking out onto the water. “She wasn’t someone you could really share things with. She didn’t care about much.”
“Except you.”
He sat down next to her. “Sometimes not even that. She had fun displaying me, and I guess I had fun having as much sex as was humanly possible.” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine how I kept on with it. I’m so damned—things just take me over, and I let them. I hate myself for it.”
She was silent for a moment. “You’re not so bad.”
They lay back, resting on their elbows and looking out over the shimmering expanse. “So beautiful,” he murmured.
“Did you love her?”
“Don’t think I’ve ever been in love.” It gave him a queer feeling in the pit of his s
tomach to say it, as if he were deceiving her. “I used to come here with my sister.”
She glanced at him. “You never told me you had a sister before today.” He nodded, looking at his feet. “Is she the girl in the picture by your bed?”
He ran his fingers through the dirt. “She killed herself when I was nineteen.”
“Oh, Clay.” She put a hand on his knee; he felt it even after she had taken it away. “Were you very close?”
“Not close enough to stop her.”
“No one can do that.” She sighed. “I used to think of killing myself, when I was younger. I felt so”—she frowned—“I don’t know, so different when I was a kid. There weren’t many Jews where I grew up, for one thing, just these blond cheerleader types.” She stopped, sneering. “No offense.”
“I never made the squad, myself.” He studied her. “Did you have many gay friends?”
“I don’t know.” She laughed. “I didn’t know I was gay until I was nearly in college. I just knew I didn’t feel like talking about shopping and makeup.”
“Or boys.”
“I guess no one feels normal in high school. It’s funny; I guess most people wouldn’t be gay if they had the choice, but I’d feel so deprived if I weren’t. I feel so lucky—I can’t explain it without sounding ridiculous. It’s—it gives everyone you know the chance to be their best selves, in a way. Do you know what I mean?”
“Once you tell them, you mean?”
“Somehow when you’re open about something people expect you to be ashamed of, they surprise you by not being nearly as small-minded as you assume they’ll be. Most are actually far more sensitive than you’ve given them credit for.”
“Do many people disappoint you?”
She shook her head. “You know, when I told my mother I was gay, she said she wished I was straight, because it would make life easier.”
“Easy’s overrated.”
“I know!” She touched his leg. “I asked her if she’d rather not be Jewish if she’d had the choice, because it would be easier.”
“It’s no gift being average. At least you have things that make you special.”
“I’d hate to be conventional.” She smiled. “I told my mother I thought life was fuller when you don’t take everything for granted. I’m glad I know what it means to fight for things.”
“And to have things to fight for. My life was completely programmed.”
“Do you think your sister felt that way?”
He stared at his feet. “She could have been a great musician. She was twenty times more talented than I am.” His voice sounded hollow. “She could have used someone to help her appreciate being different.”
She touched his arm. “When Kevin died, I started thinking about losing everyone I loved. I’d call my mother just to make sure she was still alive. I think maybe it was the suddenness of it, his just being dead one day without warning; maybe if he’d been sick for a while I wouldn’t have felt so panicked.” She sat up and took off her shoes, trailing her toes in the water. “I don’t understand why I’m so unnerved by this. You’d think having my father die would have prepared me.”
“It never goes away completely. And Kevin was just a boy.”
“Younger than I am.” Her voice faltered.
“You have to give yourself time. You can’t live forever in a state of paralysis.”
“Not in New York, that’s for sure.”
“When I first moved, people back here said, Be careful, in New York they kill you on the street just as soon as look at you. If I’d listened to them, I would have spent my days locked up in my apartment. You ride the subway? they’d say, horrified, In the evenings? As if I’d confessed to grand larceny. A person can lock himself in away from life forever if he worries about what might happen. Hell, I could get killed here falling down in my own bathtub.”
“It’d take days to find you, too.” She swished the water back and forth. “I agree with you, I do. I know I can’t live in fear—but I still can’t sleep at night. I tell myself I’ll always have my memories of Kevin and I should be grateful for the friends I do have, but …”
“I wish I could help you.”
“You do.” She looked over at him almost shyly. “I never expected it to help so much just to talk to you about it. You understand what I feel without looking at me as if I’m having some sort of nervous breakdown.” She squeezed his arm, then jumped to her feet, stretching her arms toward the sky as if in supplication. “So is this water forbidden, or what?”
“You mean to swim in?”
She lit up. “Can we go for a swim?”
“Uh—if you want, sure. You like to swim?”
“Like to?” She put her hands on her hips, then suddenly pulled down her jeans in one quick motion. After a moment’s hesitation, she pulled her shirt over her head, diving in before he had a chance to blink. By the time he’d made up his mind to join her, she had swum the length of the pond and back. “Freezing!” she called out. In the lake she seemed like a completely different person, making her way through the water with such assurance. He’d never seen her do anything physical before, he realized. Taking off everything but his briefs, he jumped in, swimming out to her. “And here I thought you were the delicate type,” he teased.
“Didn’t expect me to jump naked into your private lake as soon as I got the chance?” She splashed him, but he ducked. “Well, seen two, seen ’em all.”
“Not true,” he said, and she pondered his words for an instant before splashing him again. “Race you,” he dared.
“Silly boy.” In a minute they were speeding across the lake. He was panting by the time he’d beat her, but she’d given him a good race; she might even have won, if he hadn’t been so much taller.
“Humiliating,” she announced when they reached the shore, shaking her hair.
He let her get dressed first, turning his back and doing a few more strokes. The blood was coursing fiercely through his body; he was incredibly happy, as if he’d been given a glimpse of the life he’d always wanted.
He could just turn and lift her in the air, he thought, just reach out and suspend her high above him. It took nearly all the strength he had just to keep his back to her until she’d finished dressing.
Louey hesitated at the doorway to the living room. The music beckoned, but she felt out of place, uninvited, like a prowler.
Clay sat at the piano, playing Chopin as his mother listened in a high-backed chair, her eyes closed and a peaceful smile on her face. She looked at Louey briefly as Louey sat down on the couch, then nodded toward her son.
What a mass of contradictions Clay was! Watching him in earnest concentration on the music, Louey thought of how she’d taken him for someone aimless, thoughtless, casual as air. Yet here he was, playing gorgeous music so sweetly. It was like discovering a secret part of him. The way he treated his mother—gently, as if she were a priceless vase, a wounded bird—fit in with his playing. Glancing at Dulcie, Louey thought she saw her body fill out with the music. She wondered if Clay’s mother had ever shown him the surprisingly resilient self she’d revealed to Louey, the side that wanted more.
Clay played for them for hours, fingers flying, lingering to summon poignant melodies. This was life, thought Louey, listening to beautiful music: pure emotion.
“What did you and my mother find to talk about?” he asked her the next night.
“I’ve never met a woman who hates men so much.”
“Dad.”
“Yeah.” She thought of the confusion on his mother’s face as she’d spoken of her husband. “She hates herself for having loved him.”
“But all men aren’t like my father. She hasn’t taken an interest in anyone else since he left.”
“She can’t let herself fall for something any man might tell her, since she was so trusting with your father. She has no faith in her judgment; she made such a terrible mistake.”
“Poor Mom. I’d hoped she’d get over it and mak
e a new life for herself. Whatever else it was, this house used to be alive. She was a master at big lavish scenes, making people adore her. Now she seems to have lost the stomach for any of it.”
“She thinks she’s a failure. The one thing she created, her family, turned out to be completely fraudulent.”
He was silent. “I’m not fraudulent.”
“No, but she’s never made her peace with you. She doesn’t trust the love she has for you because in some ways you’re an extension of your father. She wants to love you but she hates herself for it.”
“Wonderful.”
“She’s terrified that what she feels for you is as misplaced as what she felt for your father.”
“I lost touch with her a long time ago.” Her words should have upset him, but he felt calm, as if he now understood clearly a truth he’d always suspected. “I’ve been at a loss to know what she really does think of me.”
“She loves you more than anyone in the world, Clay. When I told her she should be proud of having raised such a good person, it was as if I was confirming some dream she’d been afraid to hope for.”
“Right.” He was surprised at the bitterness in his voice.
“Right,” she said emphatically. “It’s no small thing to raise a boy who genuinely cares for women. Most men are filled with contempt or fear, as if women were aliens from another planet.”
“We’re all obsessed with the same things, aren’t we? That’s no big revelation.”
“But it is, to most men. I told your mother it’s because of her that you’re not fucked up about women. And look at what fabulous women friends you have.” She poked his arm.
What a heel he was; now she was congratulating him on his hypocrisy.
“We are friends, aren’t we?” she said softly.
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