His callused fingertips gripped her skin and she quivered, excitement building as he thrust harder into her and she touched his face with the back of her hand. His mouth was next to her ear, his voice hoarse, and his breathing fast. “Te Amo,” he said.
She gritted her teeth and shut her eyes to shut out the light coming through the windows. “Don't say it.”
His voice was low in his throat and his words cracked. “I love you. Why can't I say it?”
She bit the inside of her bottom lip. “Just don't.”
His fingers clutched the insides of her thigh, his wet mouth hot against her shoulder. His energy was frenetic, intense, no longer playful or teasing, his words breathless. “I can't help myself.”
She willed her body to separate from him but the climax was upon her and like something slippery and unconnected, invaded her and she shuddered and cried out, half wail, half scream. Still inside her, he cried out too, a low abrupt gasp, and buried his face in her neck. After several seconds, he pulled away from her onto his back. She stayed on her side, drew her legs up and lay in the fetal position, the sweat from him still wet on her skin, the dampness between her legs warm and ripe. He was stiff beside her and she felt him shiver and cover himself with the blanket. She stared at the sunlight drifting through the spaces in the slats of the shades.
The bed moved and she heard his feet on the floor, the closet door creak open and shut. She turned to see him pull boxer shorts over his lanky legs. Her eyes drank him in until he faced her and she pretended to look at the ceiling.
His voice sounded tired and sad. “You want breakfast?”
“I should shower first.”
“Eggs or oatmeal?”
“Oatmeal.”
Tommy's oatmeal sat in his bowl, untouched. He appeared to be reading the paper but he hadn't turned a page in fifteen minutes. She dropped her spoon into her empty bowl and it clattered in the thick, silent room. “I'm the one that should be angry.”
He turned a page of the paper with a deliberate movement, his mouth a thin line.
She shook the newspaper. “I don't think a person should be hijacked right before an orgasm. It's hardly fair.”
In two paces he was at the kitchen sink. “You're making a joke.” His shoulders sagged and he hung his head over the sink. He pushed on the side of the counter with his hands, as if it took all his strength to hold himself up, his voice resigned. “I can't do this anymore.”
Frigid fear crept of her spine but she used a scathing tone as if his statement was juvenile and needy. “Do what?”
He turned to her and his eyes were glassy with unshed tears. “I can't be in limbo with you anymore.”
“I don't even know what that means.”
“What are you hiding?” She saw he noticed her flinch and his face softened. “What are you so afraid of? We need to talk about the future. The baby's going to be here before you know it and I want to be a part of it.”
She glanced down at the spoon and saw her face reflected in its shallow curved cup, deformed and ridiculous. “I'm not ready.”
“You say that, yet you're here every night.” He picked up the newspaper and threw it across the room. “Stop lying to me. Tell me what you're so afraid of.”
She stood, pushing the chair into the table. In one heated shrieking breath she screamed at him. “You're right. I have a secret and it's something that you could lose your life over if I get you involved.” She stopped and took a deep breath, willing herself to gain control. “I'm trying to protect you.”
He was next to her in one stride and grabbed the tops of her arms in his large hands. “What is it? Tell me the truth, so help me, Lee.”
She bit the words. “You cannot help me, even with all that love for God and your mother and this house that pulls in sunshine.”
“I will do whatever it takes to help you. Do you get that? Anything.”
She stared at his Adam's apple and spoke through tight lips. “Life is not a sentimental three chord song.” She started to shake from her insides. Her teeth chattered and she clamped her mouth shut, pulling away from him.
He inched towards her and put his hands on both of her shoulders. His eyes were dim and red rimmed. “You're running from something or someone. Who is it?”
Her lips trembled and there was a lump in her throat so big she couldn't swallow. “Tommy, I love you. There, I said it. I love you but this is something you need to leave alone.”
He jerked away from her and paced, pressing his eyes with the tips of his fingers. He stopped at the sink, crossed his arms and looked at the ceiling. “See, the thing is - I know you love me. I know you. You think keeping this secret is to somehow spare me from whatever it is. But I can't be with you if you will not tell me the absolute truth about your life.”
“Why are you pushing this? Why can't it just stay the way it is?”
“Because I need to know if you're going to be here in a month, or a year, or ten. Because I don't want to fall in love with the baby too, only to have you leave me.”
She didn't know what to say, except that he was right. The truth was she wasn't free, couldn't be free until she paid DeAngelo.
“This thing that happened between us this morning in bed-.” His voice broke and he looked at the ceiling. He drew in a deep breath, the vein on his forehead popping. “I'm in too deep. I can't go on this way, not knowing where we stand, feeling like you've got one foot out the door all the time, reserving the right to leave.”
She reached for him, took his hands. “I don't want to leave you.”
His eyes filled and he put his hands on her stomach. “Lee, I'm begging you, tell me what it is so I can help you.”
She stared at him, helpless to think of what to say. “No good will come from you knowing the truth. It will put you in danger and I can't risk it. Can't you just trust me?”
He turned from her, sinking into a chair and burying his face in his hands. “You need to go now.”
“Tommy, I-”
His hands still covered his face. “Come back when or if you decide to tell me the truth.”
Her legs shook as she walked to his bedroom to gather her things. She reached for her bag and there on the bureau was a small jewelry box. Unable to stop herself, she opened it. Sitting inside was a diamond engagement ring. She snapped it shut and left it on the bureau. She ran to her car and drove half blind down his dirt driveway. She didn't allow herself to cry until she pulled onto the highway.
Chapter Twenty-Two
At home, Lee stumbled to her bedroom. Joshua had left the upstairs windows open but the paint fumes permeated the stuck August air. Lee shivered as if her blood, bones, every organ were slush. She phoned Annie's voicemail and left a message that she was ill and to have John act as host for the next several nights. She pulled on long sweat pants and a sweater and fell into bed, pulling the covers over her head.
She dreamt of her mother, her slender hands moving in a white bowl sprinkled with cobalt blue flowers. Eleanor took a warm cloth from the bowl and laid it gently on Lee's forehead. Her mother's skin was unwrinkled, dewy with youth, her eye's clear, her brown hair in a shiny sheet on her shoulders. Lee's star necklace, Tommy's gift, nestled in the hollow of her mother's neck. She put the cloth back in the bowl and her green eyes, so like Lee's own, were sorrowful. “There's so much you don't know.”
Lee awakened with a start, the feel of her mother on her skin. The windows were wide open and the night's breeze smelled of dust, dry grasses, and the sweet rose of late fading summer. A memory of another dry August night, long forgotten, surfaced.
The August Lee was thirteen was hot, the temperature running up to 108 in the late afternoon for five days in a row. Day after hot day Lee sat on the front porch sketching and making lists, longing for the feel of the water on her scorched skin. With each day of intense heat Eleanor seemed to disappear further inside herself. On the 16th of August Lee awakened around midnight, heart pounding, alarmed from either a dream or sound.
The air had cooled slightly but her skin harbored the day's heat. She threw her feet onto the hardwood floor, the fine hairs on her scrawny arms sticking up under her worn cotton nightgown. She tiptoed to her mother's room and peeped through the crack in the door. The bed was empty. She sprinted down the stairs and searched the living room and kitchen. She was not in the house. Lee went to the screen door. Her mother was sprawled across the thirsty grass. The screen door creaked as she opened it and her mother called out, “Come see the stars. They're falling.” She sounded as if she had a mouthful of cotton balls. Fully clothed in a flowered cotton dress with puffy sleeves and a full skirt that seemed a size too large and that Lee had never seen before, she held an half empty bottle of vodka next to her slack and puffy face. Lee looked up at the sky and indeed a meteor shower was in full expression across the Milky Way. Stars dripped across the black sky, brilliant as they took their final journey and disappearing as if they were an imaginative fancy, or nothing more than a memory.
Lee crept to her and rested her fingertips on the pale flaccid skin of her mother's forearm. “Mommy, it's late. Come inside.”
“They were supposed to come home on the 16th of August. Everyone's gone. I'm all alone.”
“Mommy, I'm here.”
“You don't count.”
Stunned, Lee raised her head and stared at her, disoriented for a moment. Then she was above the scene. She saw her mother's emaciated body and unfocused eyes that moved around the night sky as if on fire. Her cheeks were stained with tears and dust, her hair tangled and scattered on the parched grass. A girl, her skinny white arms wrapped around stick legs, a pinched nervous face, leaned over the woman. And she knew her mother was right, she didn't count. She might not even exist, she thought.
Now, she went back to sleep, knowing it was the only relief she would find.
“Lee, wake up.” She opened her eyes to Ellen shaking her. “You sick? I've been calling you for two days.”
Lee rolled over and pulled the cover over her head. “I'm just tired.”
Ellen yanked the covers from the bed. “Have you eaten?”
“I don't know.”
Ellen opened the shades and threw back the covers. “Take a shower. Come down for lunch.”
Lee flopped onto her other side, squinting at the bright light bolting through the window. “I don't want to.”
Ellen stood over her, hands on her hips. “I don't want to have to drag you by the hair, but I will.”
Ellen stood at the stove, frying a frozen turkey burger on the skillet. There were slices of wheat bread on the plate next to the stove, covered with mustard and mayonnaise. Ellen looked up when she came into the kitchen. “Sit. Eat.” She dropped the burger onto the bread and set the plate in front of Lee. “Annie says you haven't been to work in two days.”
Lee took a small bite of the burger. It tasted like dust in her mouth. She choked down another bite and pushed the plate into the middle of the table. She rubbed her eyes and felt pain in every part of her body.
Ellen washed the pan in the sink and dried it with the cotton towel hanging on the stove handle. She crossed her arms over her cotton dress. “Rumor has it Tommy's sick too.” She raised her eyebrows and gave her a quizzical look.
Lee felt tears start in her throat and turned to grab a napkin from the holder. There was a weathered envelope on top of the stack of napkins. There was a sticky note from Joshua that said: “Found this behind the dresser in one of the bedrooms. See you next week.” The postage date stamp said August 14, 1974. It was addressed to Eleanor Johnson. “What is it?” said Ellen.
“Some old letter addressed to my mother. Joshua found it.”
Ellen peered over her shoulder and Lee felt her stiffen. “That's from Christopher. My son.”
Lee looked at the address in the corner and saw the name Christopher White and Ellen's address scrawled in black pen. “It's to my mother?” She glanced up at Ellen and noticed her suntanned face was white.
Ellen put a trembling hand on her shoulder and spoke in a strangled voice. “Open it.”
Lee lifted a weathered school-lined paper from the envelope and tried to hand it to Ellen. Ellen stared at the wall above the kitchen table, gripping the back of the chair so that her knuckles were white. “You read it to me.”
Lee took a deep breath and read, “August 14, 1974. ‘Ellie, I've thought of nothing else since you told me about the baby and I hate that I've been at the fair knowing you are home alone scared and unsure of the future. I can't get the look of your frightened eyes out of my mind or the way you waved at me as I drove away with my mother, so small and fragile. I don't want you to worry anymore, because I have a plan. When I get back on Saturday, we'll sit down and tell our parents about the baby and that I'll forget Princeton and go to the University of Oregon with you. I called this afternoon and they'll enroll me for the fall. We can live in campus family housing. I'll work and go to school and all our dreams will still come true, just not exactly as we planned. But, I love you and you love me and we will love this baby. I know you're worried about my mother and your father, but their love won't disappear just because we've made a mistake. I'm going to sleep now and dream of sunning on our favorite rock before we plunge head first into the deep, deep water of the river. All my love. Chris.”
Lee stared at the letter. “What does this mean?”
Ellen's face had the shell shocked look of a warrior after a battle. “It means Chris was your father.”
“That's impossible. That would make us related.”
Ellen nodded yes and reached for the letter but then pulled back her hand and smoothed the front of her dress. “I had no idea.” She pulled out a chair and looked as if she might sit but jerked up and stood next to the counter instead. “I wanted to die myself when I got the news. For years and years every night before I went to sleep I prayed I wouldn't wake up in the morning. If I'd known about you...” She trailed off and stared into space as if the past were there on a screen.
Lee picked up the letter. His cursive looked like her own, especially the way he looped the p's and b's. “How can this be?”
Ellen spoke as if she hadn't heard her. “I told Christopher he wasn't allowed to date, so they must have hid their relationship from us. I wanted him to concentrate on his studies. He wanted to go to Princeton more than anything in the world and I knew the only way we could pay for it was for him to get a scholarship. He did, y'know. He got that scholarship.”
“But why didn't she tell you?”
Ellen sank into a chair and absently rubbed one knobby hand with the other. “I think she tried, once. Your mother went away to college the fall after they were all killed. When she came back in the spring, you were with her. She came to see me one day. You were several months old. I wouldn't look at you or hold you. It's no excuse, but I couldn't without breaking down about my own baby and maybe it was that bitterness that drove me to it, I don't know, but I told her she should've put you up for adoption, that she had no skills and no business trying to raise a baby when she was a helpless child herself. I gave her a lecture about morals and I don't know what else.” She paused and took a long shaky breath. “It's my own fault she didn't tell me.”
Lee was too shocked to speak.
“Next thing I knew she was living here and instead of trying to help her, I judged her every time I drove by and saw the yard going to weeds and the paint on the house peeling.”
Lee cradled her stomach and stared at the letter. “What was he like?”
She looked at Lee with new eyes. “He was kind of like you. Whip smart. Kind-hearted but reserved at the same time. The way you figure and plan things, that was him too.” A trace of a smile crossed Ellen's face. “He used to rescue all these animals he found in the woods, lizards with no tails, birds with hurt wings - always bringing them in my clean house.” Her eyes snapped and she chuckled. “Those hurt animals were kind of like your crew at Riversong, now that I think of it. He was ten when his dad died in the woods
and overnight he had to grow up and take on things a boy shouldn't have. Just like you did.” She studied Lee's face. “These months since you've been home, I've dreamt of him almost every night.” She smoothed Lee's hair, her eyes sad, even as her mouth moved to a half smile. “I should've known.”
“Did it never occur to you?”
Ellen shook her head no, gazing out the window. “You get these ideas about the people you love, these stories you tell yourself. I couldn't imagine my little boy grown enough to make a baby. I still saw them as the children they once were, swimming and splashing at the river's edge.”
Lee's words were choked as she tried to fight the lump in her throat. “I had these elaborate fantasies as a kid about my father, that he would come rescue me from her, from all this. But he never came and I hated her for that.” She shook her head and wiped the tears from her face.
“If I'd known, I would've looked after you.”
Lee wiped her face with a napkin, bitterness rising from her gut. “If I'm like him, why didn't my mother love me?”
Ellen pulled Lee to her spare chest. “Your mother felt alone in this world and it made her crazy.”
“Just like me.”
“No, you're strong and steady. And, you have me. And your gang at Riversong. And, Tommy.”
The next morning, Lee hiked to Ellen's swimming hole, carrying a small shovel. The early morning dew glistened on the flowers that poked through the wild grasses above the river. A decayed wooden swing swayed from a large oak as if a child, moments before, had rocked and gazed at the blue sky while he swept his toes above the tickle of the grasses' dry blades. Lee peered down the steep rocky trail to the patch of sand but her stomach made her too unsteady to risk taking the trail. She perched on the grass under the oak tree instead, breathing in the sunny rock smell of the river and watching the still luscious late summer leaves that rustled in the branches.
Riversong Page 25
