It was there, in the eyes. A disturbing glow had come into them, as if she was lit by some kind of internal, sinister force. Her mouth had also changed, ever so slightly. The corners of the smile had receded, sunk, turned into a sneer. What could it mean? Doreen looked from the image to her reflection and back again. Her own face remained unchanged, but the difference in the picture could not be blinked away.
A tap came from her window and Doreen screamed. She put her hand on her heart, trying to regain her breath. “It’s just a tree,” she told herself. “It’s just the wind. You’re being hysterical.” But then she heard the tap again and she could hear the sound of her name being called through the small opening in her window.
“Doreen,” someone whispered. “Doreen Gray. Come to the window.” Should she run to get her RA? Call campus safety? But what would she say, that the trees were calling her name? “Doreen!” said the voice again, even more urgently.
Doreen closed her eyes and took in big, deep breaths, feeling her heartbeat begin to slow down. Another tap came at the window. “Dorie,” said the voice, “Come on! I’m freezing my balls off out here!”
Doreen rushed to the window and saw Gordon Lichter standing under a tree in the mostly dark. He was rooting around in the grass, probably looking for another pebble to throw. She hoisted up her window and stuck out her head. “Gordon!” she whispered as admonishingly as she could. “What are you doing here?”
“Doreen! There you are. Come down, okay? I want to talk to you.”
“I can’t, Gordon. It’s after check-in. You want to get me kicked out of here? And shouldn’t you be back at your dorm, speaking of?”
“I’m a senior, remember? I have until ten.” He looked around. “Fine. I’m coming up.” He wiped his hands on his khakis. “Screw it. All those years of gymnastics should be good for something, right?” And with that he jumped up and pulled himself up the drainpipe, using the trellis as a ladder to climb his way toward her second-story window.
Doreen quickly slipped the picture into the top drawer of her desk, hiding it under a notebook. He was coming to ask her to the Fall Dance. She’d been dodging him for days, and now here he was and what could she say? What would she do? She would turn him down. She’d have to, it was the right thing to do, wasn’t it? She didn’t give a whit about him, and her breakup with Simon was barely an hour old.
Gordon came flying feetfirst through the window, landing with a light thud on his feet. He was no Simon Vale, she thought, but he was impressively nimble.
“Huh?” he said with a little bow. “How you like me now? Bet you don’t know a lot of guys who would shimmy up a drainpipe just to talk to you. Do you?”
“No. I don’t suppose I do. Here.” Doreen plucked dry leaves from his hair with a laugh. “You’re a bit of a mess.”
“Oh. Thanks,” he said, bending at the neck and closing his eyes as she picked through his hair and clothes. He was barely taller than she was, but his hair was glorious. It was shiny and white-blond, like corn silk—the sort of hair one might expect to see blowing in the headwind on the bow of a yacht.
“There. I think I just about got it all.” Gordon opened his eyes, gazing directly into hers. She saw pain in his eyes and need, a kind of hunger unique to men.
He reached out and grasped the edge of one of her curls. “Not fair. Shouldn’t I get to touch, too?”
Doreen escaped from his grasp. “If I ever have dead leaves in my hair.” She walked over to the waste bin near her desk to throw out the detritus.
“You’re so cruel! How can you be so cruel!” Gordon cried. He buried his face in his hands.
As she saw cocky Gordon Lichter reduced to sniveling, she wondered if he could be right. Could she be cruel? After all the cruelty she’d suffered in her life? The change in the picture seemed to suggest at least that much. But how absurd. She must have imagined the change in the photo. Of course! It was some sort of trick her mind was playing on her. A little leftover guilt from her breakup with Simon. Doreen was a nice girl. It wasn’t her fault that Simon wanted something from her that she couldn’t give him. Staying with him when she didn’t love him, now that would have been wrong.
“Me? Me cruel?” she said. “What about you?”
“Me?” asked Gordon. “I’ve been nothing but kind to you. I dote on you, Doreen. I’d do anything for you, you know that!”
“And what about Samantha Brooks? Huh? I’ve seen the way she follows you around. And you won’t even condescend to say hello to her. The poor thing obviously just wants you to acknowledge that she exists.” Doreen had noticed chubby, unloved Samantha Brooks on Gordon’s tail like a bad stink. She’d never spoken to the girl, but she would. She would do it soon. Tomorrow! Tomorrow she would be so good!
“But she’s . . . I’m not . . .” Gordon sighed deeply, with resignation. “You’re right. You’re right.” He sat down on the edge of her bed and grinned up at her. “The amount I’ve suffered because of you, Doreen. I probably have it coming to me. But I don’t care. I don’t care how much you hurt me. And you do hurt me, Doreen. But I’ll take a punch in the gut from you over some other girl’s kiss any day of the week. Doreen Gray, you know I love you, right?”
“Hush now, Gordon,” she said, though it pleased her enormously.
“I won’t. I won’t hush. Doreen, look. I bought you something. Here, come sit next to me, okay? I’m not going to bite. Please? After all I did to get up here?” Doreen sat beside Gordon on the bed. It amazed her how little his closeness affected her. With Simon, every centimeter closer he came to her she could feel all over her body.
“Doreen?” Gordon said. “Are you listening?”
“Yes, of course, Gordon. What is it?”
“Here.” He pulled a black velvet box from his pants pocket. “Open it.”
Doreen took the box. It had a pleasant weight to it. Whatever was inside (a necklace? Earrings?) would certainly be more elegant that anything she’d had back in the Midwest. Gordon was so rich. And popular. And he clearly had very strong feelings for Doreen. So her own feelings for the boy weren’t the stuff of rock songs, so what? He would get her a dress, wouldn’t he? And a hotel room.
“Oh! Oh, Gordon,” she said breathlessly when she saw the ring—rose gold, with a single, perfect pearl beset with two small diamonds on either side. “It’s beautiful.”
“I thought you would like it. Listen, Doreen, why don’t you go to the dance with me, okay?”
“Mmm?” said Doreen. The look and feel of the ring had her completely transfixed. How it relaxed her, to see such beauty beam up from her own hand.
“Earth to Doreen!” said Gordon with a laugh. He grasped her bejeweled hand and turned her chin to look at him. “To the dance, Doreen. I want you to come to the dance. Listen, we’ll get you all decked out, okay? Whatever you want. And you’ll go, we’ll go together. What do you say? Me and you, Dorie. Please. It would make me so happy.” Gordon looked at her with pleading, pitiful eyes. The poor kid couldn’t be accustomed to the sort of runaround he’d received from Doreen during these past months. Life for him had been nothing but open doors and green lights until he’d met her, and now that kind of life would be hers, too.
She slipped her hand from his grasp and moved a pesky strand of hair away from his eye. “Of course, Gordon. It would be my pleasure to attend the Fall Dance with you.”
“Oh, Doreen!” Gordon leaned over to kiss her, and she let him. He should have his fun, she thought, as he moved himself around her mouth like it possessed some necessary nutrient of which he’d been long deprived. “I love you! Oh god, I love you so much!”
It wasn’t hard. To keep her eye on what counted: the work, the vision, the realization of an idea. Youth mattered only because it gave Biz time and energy. Not like her mother, a beautiful dancer once, who allowed herself to become distracted with the business of society and all its attendant o
bligations. For Biz, the only obligation she felt was to her art. Her family, her few friends, even her own heart came second to the daily grind of learning the language of expression in pictures.
And so she remained locked in her own world, closed off from the inane teenage dramas unfolding around her. She took care of herself, and when her work was going well, nothing could hurt her. But lately the work was not going well. The pictures, her flying carpet over the banalities of everyday life, had lost all their magic dust. She sat alone in the basement photo lab of the Carver Arts Center one Friday evening in late October desperately paging through her most recent batch, but not a single shot had liftoff. With her face inches from her Mac monitor, Biz clicked and clicked and clicked, but nothing made her feel as she knew she could, like she had contributed something meaningful to a meaningless world.
Biz turned off the monitor and leaned back in her chair. The Gryphters, a coed a cappella group, rehearsed a familiar pop ballad in one of the rehearsal rooms on the floor above. Normally she was too wrapped up in her work to hear anything—even, on one occasion, a fire alarm. But her photos had betrayed her, or she had betrayed them. In any case, she was no longer protected. Not from the saccharine music or the clanking pipes or sorrow or loneliness or memories or hope.
Biz squeezed her eyes shut. Her mind played, loudly, a memory from childhood. They were at the Connecticut house, preparing to move out to the beach for the summer. In the playroom, Biz had her little pink-and-yellow toy suitcase open while she studied the bookshelf. Maria had promised to help Biz choose the books to take with her to the beach house. They would be there such a long time, more than a month, and so Biz had to think hard about what books she would want to read, not just now, but in the future. She tried to imagine herself one month older. What would future Biz want? How could she be sure not to disappoint her? She put one book after another in the suitcase, then took them all out. She could not decide.
She needed Maria. Maria always knew the right books to pack. They would go through, one by one, and together they would finish the job. Only Maria knew how to say words that made the sticky sensation Biz felt, the feeling that she was going to make the wrong choice, go away. But Maria never came. Biz waited and waited. Finally, she padded down the back staircase, the one with the blue carpeting that led to the kitchen. She found her mother there with her assistant, Frederick. Her mother had her red leather planner open and her reading glasses on. As she spoke, Frederick wrote furiously in his notebook and nodded.
“. . . and make sure that my husband is on the early train on Saturday. He will want to drive, but please try and dissuade him. There are plenty of cars in Amagansett already, and I don’t need him arriving in a foul mood from sitting in traffic all day—oh, there you are, Elizabeth. Are you finally ready? Addison is waiting out in the car. Why don’t you join him and I will be out momentarily.”
“But where’s Maria? She said she would help me pack.”
“Maria? Oh, she’s not coming, I’m afraid, my darling. A family emergency. Her son—”
“Daughter,” said Frederick.
“Are you sure? I thought she had a son. Oh well, no difference. Her child, my dear, has had some sort of medical, uh, happening. And so she had to go. Anyway, you’re too old for a nanny now, don’t you think?” With a wave of her hand she turned back to her planner.
“But she promised me,” said Biz, trying to comprehend what her mother had told her. Maria had a daughter? How old was she? Where did she live? Maria lived here in their house. She had a room upstairs where she kept her things like her Bible and lotion that smelled like peach ice cream. But she never said anything about her daughter. She said she was born in Honduras, and that she was the youngest of seven children, including one sister who died. Was Maria’s daughter going to die, too? Biz’s eyes welled up. “She promised to help me pack.” Her voice came out in a wail.
“Oh, sweetie,” said Mumzy. She slid her reading glasses on top of her head. “You don’t need to pack. Frederick made sure you have everything you could possibly need. Okay? It’s all folded up in a suitcase in the car, ready to go.”
“But my books. Maria was going to help me pack my books.”
“Elizabeth.” Biz could see that she was wearing down her mother’s patience. It was easy to do. Which is why it was better not to bother her at all. Better to take all her concerns to Maria. But Maria was gone. She had a dying daughter and so she had to go. “Just pick a few books and let’s go, okay? There are bookstores in the Hamptons. There’s even a library. Anything you forget we will get for you, or we can tell your daddy and he can bring it over the weekend. Sound good? We are going to Long Island, my dear, not to war. Provisions will be made available.”
Frederick giggled. Mumzy crouched down in front of Biz and took her hands. “I’m sorry about Maria. I know that you were fond of her.”
“She didn’t even say good-bye.”
“Now don’t be selfish, Elizabeth. You can’t expect her to put you before her own daughter, can you? That wouldn’t be right. Maria is not your mother. I’m your mother. And I am not going anywhere except to the sanitarium when you finally drive me over the edge. Now run upstairs and pack your books. I expect you to be in that car in the next ten minutes. Understand?”
The Gryphters switched to a dance song. Through the floor vents Biz could hear the rhythm section spitting out percussion sounds while a white girl attempted melisma. Since Doreen had reappeared, useless memories, things she hadn’t thought about in years, seemed to haunt her at every corner.
The picture of her cousin in the red dress was the last Biz could say she was proud of. But she could not even look at it for comfort. As she had promised she would, she’d destroyed all digital evidence of it. It was a shame, really. Thinking of that picture gave her a sinking feeling. A grief, a loss without closure—just the way she felt when Maria went away. Was that the summer that Doreen came to the beach? It was undoubtedly that summer when her mother informed her father that Elizabeth had spent far too much time indoors, moping about.
And so her father brought a camera for her. He said, go out and take some pictures. Let’s see what you find out there, little Bizzy.
The fluorescent overheads flickered on in the lab, giving Biz a jolt.
“You will go blind. You know that, don’t you?” said Seth Greenbaum. He was a film guy, with film guy facial hair and glasses and black jeans. He clocked in a fair amount of time in the lab, too, editing. He made short films around campus with names like The Delinquent Exterior and What Everyone Says about Hester.
“Wait, your monitor isn’t even on. What were you doing in here, Biz Gibs? Thinking?”
“Something like that.” Although Seth’s posturing could grate her nerves when she was deep into her work, Biz was happy to see him now. Without photography, she craved the company of others. How strange it was to need people. “What are you working on? A new opus?”
“Oh yeah, this one is going to be epic. It’s a love story between a young man and a teacher. They have a fiery, sexual connection they cannot deny. But she’s a moral person who loves her job. So he has to seduce her. It’s called Another Morning in Tomorrow’s End. Shooting over fall break. Incidentally, are you going to be around? Man, I would love you to be DP. I’m going to be in it, see? So I could use someone with your eye.”
“What’s a DP?”
“Director of photography. You know, the cinematographer. Like, you’d shoot the camera. I tell you what to shoot and you just aim it, hit Record. That sort of thing. The way you take pictures, man, except it’s video.” Seth started up a computer station across from Biz. “Yeah, since I gotta act, too, I’d love to have someone I can really trust in the trenches with me, you know? Granted, you’re more of a lone-wolf type, but maybe it will be good for you to engage in a little artistic collaboration. See what that’s like for a change.”
“I don’t kno
w.” The prospect of making someone else’s vision come alive instead of agonizing over her own was tempting. But what could she offer Seth? Nothing she made had any value anymore.
“Think about it. I’d really love to have you on board.” He smiled at her.
“Seth! Oh my god, there you are.” Miyuki Moto swept into the lab, and without any acknowledgment of Biz’s existence, she headed right for Seth. She kicked a high-heeled boot over his legs and straddled him in his desk chair. With a flick of her purple hair, she gave him a long, deep, pornographic kiss. When she detached herself, the boy was practically panting.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said in a pouty baby voice. “I don’t like to wait. Even for geniuses.” The girl’s fingers danced on his chest.
“Sorry, Miyuki. I told you, I have to get this screenplay in tip-top shape before go time. I’m worried about the second act and—”
“Se-eth,” said Miyuki. She leaned in to whisper something in his ear. Her fingers crawled lower on his body. Biz looked away.
“Okay, okay. Just give me a minute.”
Miyuki sprung up from Seth’s lap and huffed across the room, disappearing down the hall.
“Miyuki! Miyuki, don’t be mad! Shit. Okay, dammit. All right. Can you shut down for me? She’s my star, you know. And she’s hot as hell. But it’s all for the movie and everything. I mean, it’s for the good of the movie.” Seth raced after Miyuki. “Think about what I said, Biz Gibs.”
Biz shut down her own computer and Seth’s and turned off the lights. The Gryphters were calling it a night. Nothing was happening, so Biz figured she may as well do the same. With nowhere in particular to go, she took the long way back to the dorms.
She felt embarrassed for Seth, and angry on his behalf. Miyuki obviously didn’t really like him. She was just using him to star in his movie. Why that could be important to anyone, Biz could not imagine. But it gnawed at her, to see him so quick to turn his back on his work to appease a pretty girl.
Doreen Page 10
