The River's Edge

by Tina Sears

  The first to spin was Freckles. The bottle clanked on the concrete floor, spinning until the bottle finally rested on Julie. She got up and walked over to Freckles, who stood up too. He leaned in and pushed his lips firmly on hers. She broke away from the kiss first and then smirked at me as she sat back down.

  Next, it was her turn to spin the bottle. With a great whoosh, it clanked around the circle, spinning, spinning. Finally it slowed and landed on me. Everyone looked at me.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  Julie walked over to me and sat down. “You’ve never played this before, have you?”

  I shook my head. My heart fluttered as she leaned closer to me as if trying to connect to my lips. I shivered and turned my head quickly, causing her to kiss my cheek instead. Her breath was warm against my cheek.

  “Well, New Girl. If it lands on someone of the same sex, you’re supposed to kiss the person to the right.” Leaning over, she kissed Reds directly on his lips. She held the back of his head and brought her open mouth to his. She didn’t close her eyes like she had with Freckles. Instead she kept them focused on me. She pulled his head away from her after an intense minute of kissing and then smiled. My stomach fluttered.

  After a few turns, Tommy gave the bottle a great spin and it landed on Wendy. He walked over to her slowly and closed his eyes, pressing his lips gently against hers. Julie harrumphedand ended the game then. Spinning the bottle was more than just a game; it was a measure of friendship. It seemed Wendy was crossing over Julie’s measuring tape by kissing Tommy.

  At the pavilion the music stopped. We heard a man’s voice from across the pavilion. It was getting closer. “Come on, don’t leave yet. The night is young.”

  Someone laughed a happy, genuine laugh. Even from a distance, I could tell it was Aunt Lori.

  “Your parents are coming!” I squealed and grabbed Wendy’s arm. We ran out the door and to the cottage with battery-powered feet without saying goodbye.

  We turned off the light and jumped into our beds. A few minutes later, I heard the muffled voice of Uncle Butch as they entered the bedroom. “I can do it, Lori.”

  We both giggled, and I tucked deeper into my blanket, covering most of my face. I heard a drawer open.

  “Butch, careful or you’re going to bang your . . .”

  “Ouch.”

  The bed squeaked against the wall next to me, followed by the slide of dresser drawers and then all was quiet, for a while.

  Later, as my eyes closed, Uncle Butch spoke. I swear it was as if he were right next to me. “Come here, baby, and give me a little love.”

  My eyes blinked open. With my heart racing, I turned to look at Wendy on the bottom bunk. A slice of moonlight showed that her eyes were closed and by the heavy breathing, I guessed she was asleep.

  “You’re drunk,” Aunt Lori said, shutting the bedroom door between us.

  “Oh, come on, you said that last time.” Uncle Butch’s deep voice was muffled as if it was underwater.

  I shoved my pillow over my head. I wished I were somewhere else—anywhere else. I heard the undeniable sound of a slap, and felt the sting on my own face as if it had happened to me.

  “Don’t, you’re hurting me.” Underwater voices again. “No.” Another slap. “You’re just like your father,” Aunt Lori whimpered. “A mean nasty drunk who thinks he owns women. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

  I pulled the afghan my grandmother had made over me and buried my face, trying to drown out the voices. A few minutes passed before I felt the bed bumping against the wall next to me. Repeatedly it bumped like the beating of a heart. The pounding became overwhelming. I thought of my favorite writer, Edgar Allan Poe. I was listening to my very own Tell-Tale Heart. I pushed the bed away using my feet so I wouldn’t have to be near that wall with the beating heart inside it.

  I was embarrassed. And confused. It changed the way I thought about sex. I thought it was something that was special between two people in love. Something private and magical that they shared with one another. But what I just heard was a drunk taking advantage of someone. Someone he was supposed to love and protect.

  I wondered how Aunt Lori could put up with him. As far as I could see, she acted like every time he farted it was glorious. There was no glory to bad gas. Or bad people.

  Chapter Five

  Disconnected

  SATURDAY MORNING THE sun crept under my eyelids, forcing them open before I was ready. A dull headache made me groan. I knew Aunt Lori was already up because the radio was on. She always turned the radio on first thing in the morning. At my house, we never listened to the radio unless we were in the car.

  “Good grief,” I said, waking Wendy. She looked as sick as I felt.

  The smell of bacon and eggs made my stomach turn, but I got out of bed and faked a smile at the breakfast table. Uncle Butch was absent, but it didn’t seem to bother anyone, especially me after what I heard last night.

  As we ate, small sounds came from Uncle Butch’s bedroom. A groan, the slide of a dresser drawer, and his slippers sliding across the wooden floor. I looked at Wendy with apprehension.

  “I have a Herculean headache,” he said as he stepped into the room. His voice was gruff, like two bricks scraping together. He was wrapped in a bathrobe and his hair was all disheveled. “Where’s the aspirin?”

  Aunt Lori pushed him aside, avoiding eye contact with him. “I’ll get it. Go sit down before your breakfast gets cold.” When they danced, they were a single unit of grace. Now they were two people on opposite sides of the river.

  She was singing to that song about rocking the boat. Singing the words as if she was trying to convince herself of their meaning. Singing her song of denial.

  As he sat down at the table, Aunt Lori put the aspirin bottle in front of him abruptly. He pushed his plate away and struggled to open the lid. The aspirin rattled as he popped open the bottle. Dusty white tablets spilled on the floor. They sounded like a string of beads breaking.

  “Dammit,” he grumbled. He plucked three aspirin off the floor with his large fingers and shoved them into his mouth. He chewed a little before forcing them down his throat without water.

  “Paige, pick the rest of those up for Daddy, would you, sweetie?” He drank coffee from his “World’s Best Dad” cup.

  She slid out of her chair and started picking up the pills and putting them back into the bottle. He narrowed his eyes at me. I wondered if he was trying to figure out if I heard anything last night. He seemed dark like my mother had at times and I didn’t want any part of it.

  Paige was being unusually quiet. Maybe she knew about my attempt to hide my headache. I wondered if my cousins had heard anything last night. I hoped they didn’t, but I couldn’t be sure. I felt bad for them.

  Aunt Lori was a good cook, but my stomach was on a roller-coaster ride without me. I pushed the eggs around my plate, slid the bacon into my napkin, and tucked it into my pocket. The cats would appreciate it more than me today.

  “Do you want to go see the cats with us?” I asked Paige.

  “Yeah,” Paige said, scooping her breakfast into her napkin.

  Wendy evidently was not feeling well enough to object, so after breakfast we all walked to Crazy Mary’s house, glad to get out of the cottage.

  “How do you feel?” I asked Wendy as we crunched along the gravel road, passing the game room.

  “Ugh, terrible.”

  “Me too, but it was so much fun,” I said, pushing the tell-tale heart incident out of my mind.

  “I’m glad Julie is talking to me again.” She said it like it was an unspoken thank you, and I admit, it was nice having that sisterly bond between us.

  “Yeah, me too.”

  We walked a little in silence. I thought about Aunt Lori and Uncle Butch, and how close they were last night dancing. How happy they seemed. Until . . . I pushed the thought out of my head.

  “I want to learn how to dance before next week,” I said. “I can’t go sl
ow dancing through life. I need to learn how to dance like your parents.”

  “You want to learn how to dance so you can dance with Reds, huh?” Wendy teased.

  “Do not. Shut up.”

  Wendy turned dramatically, mouth open, and put her hand on my shoulder as if remembering an iron had been left on a hundred miles away from home. “How about that kiss last night?”

  I knew she was talking about my kiss with Reds, but I turned the question around on her. “I know. Is Tommy a good kisser?”

  “You kissed Tommy?” Paige asked.

  “Shut up, and don’t tell Mom or Dad,” Wendy said, big-sistering her.

  “I wasn’t talking about the kiss with Tommy, I was talking about your kiss with Reds. I saw him kiss you outside last night,” Wendy said.

  “Oh, that.” I tried to pretend that I wasn’t excited, but that never worked for me.

  “Yeah, that.”

  I smiled. “It was good, I guess.”

  Paige giggled and put her hand over her mouth.

  “Don’t tell, big mouth, or else . . .”

  “Okay.” Then Paige kicked her foot at the dirt. “Dad was drunk again last night, wasn’t he?” She stuffed her hands into the pockets of her shorts, looking down.

  “Yeah, Dad was drunk again.” Wendy put her arm around Paige’s shoulder. That was the first time I had seen her do that. Wendy always treated Paige like she was a pesky little sister. “Why?”

  He acts weird when he’s drinking,” Paige said.

  “Yeah, I know. Mom said he was born with it.”

  “With what?” I asked.

  “The drinking disease. It runs in our family.”

  “What? That’s not true,” I said.

  “Is so, Mom said. Said he was born with the drinking disease just like Grandpa.”

  Why didn’t I know this stuff about my blood relatives?

  “Did Grandpa drink too?” I asked.

  “Every night. But he hid it from Grandma after she threatened to leave him if he didn’t stop taking up with the devil. Craziness runs in the family too,” Wendy said.

  “What? You’re kidding me.”

  “No, I’m not kidding,” Wendy said. “Great Aunt Pat goes through queer spells every so often and no one can get through to her. Mom says she’s just taking time off to find her brain.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. Is this what I had to look forward to? Bad blood running in the family? Would I end up like my mother with shadows crawling over me even at night? Or, would I become a drunk like Uncle Butch and Grandfather? I didn’t want to go climbing up my family tree with all those rotten, broken branches. It seemed like my family was full of disease and sickness and I didn’t want to become like any of them, not even my dad. I wanted more. I wanted to write in purple ink again.

  We walked the rest of the way in silence until we got to Crazy Mary’s house.

  Paige’s eyes lit up. “I’m scared.”

  I looked up at the window, but I didn’t see the woman behind the curtain. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Paige. It’s just a house, and we’re here to see the cats anyway.”

  I walked slowly over to the steps while Paige and Wendy waited beside the road. I took the napkin out of my pocket and unwrapped the bacon from it. I held the bacon out for the cats to smell. “Here, kitty, kitty.”

  The black-and-white cat peeked out tentatively, sniffing the bacon. For a couple of minutes, I sat still as a statue so she would learn to trust me. Finally, she crept toward me, took the bacon, and ran back into the shadows. I noticed a movement next to the cat and held out another piece of bacon. Again, still as a statue, I waited. But this time I was rewarded by the appearance of a little black kitten, a spitting image of its mother. The kitten crept up slowly, its whiskers tickling my fingers.

  “Wow,” I whispered so I wouldn’t scare it.

  Paige came over to the steps to look, but Wendy stayed on the road in front of the house.

  “It’s a kitten!” she said.

  “Quiet, Paige,” I whispered. “Don’t scare him.”

  Paige took a pinch of egg from her stash and held it out.

  “He looks like an Oreo cookie with a little bit of cream on his chest,” I said.

  Unaware of us, the kitten ate the egg and smelled around for more. Slowly, he came out from the shadows. He wasn’t as shy as his mother, but when we ran out of food, he quickly returned to his place next to her.

  “I’m going to name him Oreo,” I said.

  I looked up at the front door and saw Crazy Mary peeking out from behind the curtain. She didn’t appear mad, or weird, or crazy. Just curious. She looked at me with apprehensive eyes. Her white hair was pulled back into a neat bun making her look like an eloquent queen, all prim and proper. She was wearing a blue dress and she looked so—normal. I was expecting wild, wispy hair and big bulging eyes with spinning pupils.

  I waved to her, trying to be friendly.

  She smiled at me, then stepped out of view.

  “What are you doing?” Wendy said. “She’s crazy! And she hates kids.”

  “Sorry, but she doesn’t seem as crazy as everyone says she is. Plus she smiled at me, so she couldn’t hate kids that much. I think she just needs someone to care about her. Maybe she’s lonely. I would be, if I was locked up in a big house all day with no one to talk to.”

  “Me too,” Paige said.

  I smiled at her. For being so young, she seemed to have a lot of compassion, unlike Wendy.

  “Let’s go,” Wendy said.

  I looked at the door one last time before we left.

  LATER, AT THE cottage, we played music on the radio and danced with each other. Wendy lifted her hand and I turned under it. Then she put both arms up and we both turned. We laughed.

  “I want a turn!” Paige said.

  Uncle Butch came on to the porch. “What are you girls up to?”

  “We’re trying to dance, Daddy,” Paige said.

  “We don’t know how to dance like you and Mom, but it’s still fun,” Wendy said.

  “Here, let me show you. Your mom can help too.” He put his cigarette in the ash tray. “Lori, come here for a minute. We need your help. The girls want to learn how to dance.”

  “Is that so?” Aunt Lori came in from the kitchen, slinging a dish towel over her shoulder and wiping the strands of hair away from her face with the back of her hand.

  “Daddy, are you really going to teach us how to dance?” Paige jumped up and down like a bean on a hot plate.

  “Sure, honey.”

  “Chris wants to learn how to dance so she can dance with Dave,” Paige said innocently.

  I cringed, embarrassed. What a tattle-tale. “No I don’t.”

  Wendy elbowed Paige. “Shut up.”

  “Does she?” Uncle Butch asked. He studied me, like I was some kind of secret he was trying to figure out, some sort of combination for him to unlock.

  I sat on the arm of the couch embarrassed that Uncle Butch knew I liked Reds.

  “Well then, let’s get started,” Uncle Butch said.

  Aunt Lori held out her hands and asked me to join her. Then Paige and Wendy stood in front of each other joining hands as my uncle told us what to do.

  “Now, when I say, lift your arms for a turn. Chris and Wendy, you will be the men, or leaders, so you will hold up your left arm to let the ladies turn under them.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “Do the men always lead? Why can’t the ladies ever lead?”

  “Because. It’s the rule. The men are always the leaders,” Aunt Lori said.

  “That’s right. Every man should know how to lead and every woman should learn how to follow, right, honey?”

  “That’s right, sweetie,” Aunt Lori agreed.

  Wendy and I held up our left hands and Paige and Aunt Lori turned underneath them, Aunt Lori ducking to clear my raised hand.

  Paige squealed, “I’m a lady!”

  Next we worked on footwork. Step tap,
step tap, rock step. This was a bit more complicated but after practicing a while, we got the hang of it.

  Uncle Butch kept directing us. “When you raise your hand, make a bridge for the lady to turn under it, and then use your other hand to guide her through the turn.”

  We got lost in the music and soon, we were actually dancing with each other. I was having fun.

  “Let’s change partners,” Uncle Butch said.

  I hesitated, but Uncle Butch grabbed my hand and Aunt Lori took Wendy’s. Paige directed our turns.

  Uncle Butch danced with experience. He lifted his arm and his other hand on my back gently guided me through the turn. Then he showed off some fancy footwork. I was following his lead and knew what he wanted me to do through various hand signals. It was like a secret sign language.

  I got carried away, spinning and laughing. It was so much fun, and I turned again, but my uncle’s hand never left my body, and his fingers brushed against my breasts as I spun. I pulled my hand away from his and stopped dancing. I looked around to see if anyone noticed, but they weren’t looking in my direction. His hands always seemed to be reaching for me and touching me in some way or another, like he was trying to figure out whether I was real or not.

  “Okay, that’s enough dancing for one day,” Uncle Butch said.

  “That was fun,” Paige said.

  “Now what?” Wendy asked.

  Uncle Butch walked over to the table and picked up the car keys.

  “I’m going to drive Chris over to the house so she can call her mom.”

  “I want to come,” Wendy said.

  “I think I’ll just take Chris myself so she can talk to her mom in private. She doesn’t need you around bothering her when she’s on the phone. Besides, you guys have been glued to each other all week. Give her some breathing space.”

  I hadn’t been apart from Wendy since the moment I arrived, except for showers and bathroom breaks. I actually liked having her around. She was a sister I never had. “She won’t bother me, really.”

  “Let her go, she won’t get in the way. Plus, I need you to go to the grocery store, and she can help,” Aunt Lori said, handing him a grocery list that had been tucked into her apron pocket.