by R. L. Fox
Frank remains standing as he speaks. “We’re having an informal birthday dinner next Thursday evening, at a quaint Italian restaurant in the Valley called Marechiaros. My daughter-in-law, married to my eldest son, Mike, is turning twenty-three. My younger son, Dan, seventeen, will attend as well. It will be a quiet celebration and I’d be exceedingly pleased, my family too, if the both of you would come. I’d love for you to meet my two sons, and my daughter-in-law, of course.”
I turn to my mother, and in my most convincing voice, I ask, “Oh, Mom, can we, please?”
“I don’t think so,” says my mother, firmly. “It’s a school night and you’re performing in the chorus on Friday.”
“There won’t be any homework,” I say. I’m looking into my mother’s eyes (“the beggar’s look,” my mother calls it) trying to convey to her how important this is to me. If Frank’s youngest son is sort of hot, and I can somehow hook up with him, I’ll be proving to myself that things are going to be different.
But I can’t help noticing that my mother’s face appears unusually strained, with a dreadful look of worry I’ve seen only once before, right after my dad died. That surely means my mother will say “no.” Surprisingly, however, she finally answers with, “I suppose it will be all right.”
I give my mother a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks, I owe you one, Mom.”
Frank says, “I have a meeting early tomorrow morning at Palomar Observatory. It’s a long drive and I have preparatory work to do. I enjoyed meeting you, Sarah. I’m looking forward to seeing more of you in the future.”
I smile and then turn away, red-faced. Frank’s eyes can penetrate my mind, or so it seems.
My mother stands. “I’ll walk you to your car, Frank.”
“No need, Cate.”
“It’s all right. You can give me directions to Marechiaros.”
Frank winks at me. “Goodbye, Sarah.” He puts a cupped hand to his mouth, and in a loud whisper says, “Tell your mother to relax. We’ll have fun on Thursday. The cuisine is out of this world.”
I giggle again, uncontrollably. As my mother and Frank walk away I imagine seeing them in a long embrace, kissing passionately. Perhaps my life will be easier now. I can tell my friends all about Frank, and how I’ll be meeting his two sons, one of whom is seventeen. Everyone will know that my mother wasn’t just sleeping around, that this is actually a very serious relationship. I only wish I could figure out what it is about Frank that sends goose bumps up and down my arms and legs.
I wait a few minutes before standing and discreetly walking to the front door. I get there just in time to see Frank giving my mother a kiss. Then he gets into his car and drives away.
“Mom, Mom,” I call, “I’m so happy!” As the lazy arms of the trees along D Avenue sway in the warm breeze, I spring out of the house and sprint towards my mother. After we hug, I say, “He’s even more handsome than George Clooney. Tell me all about him, Mom. Is Frank a scientist, an astrophysicist or something?”
“No dear, Frank is a U.S. Congressman representing the East County. He’s a member of the Joint Select Committee on Perturbations of the Lunar Orbit. Most importantly, young lady, you’re not to reveal to anyone, for now, that Frank is a congressman. The last thing we need is a visit from the media.”
“Got it, Mom. This is so exciting! And I know what the word ‘perturbation’ means. We’ve been discussing the moon’s orbit in Honors Critical Thinking. Did you know that for billions of years, until recently, the moon was moving away from Earth at an average rate of two inches per year? And that now it’s headed our way at an average rate of more than ninety miles per year, which means—”
“Remember,” my mother says, interrupting, “I have the auction tomorrow. Carmelita won’t be in until Monday. Please don’t make a mess.”
It’s clear that something is really bothering my mother. She seems a little frightened, and she hardly ever interrupts me. “I’ll find something to do until you get home,” I say. “No worries. I won’t have anyone over, and I won’t tie up the phone, and I won’t spend more than one hour surfing the Net, including Facebook and chat rooms, and I won’t watch TV unless I’m finished with my homework, and I won’t eat us out of house and home, and—”
My mother interrupts me again, but gently this time. “Okay, sweetie, pick up your books.”
“Mom, can we do something special this weekend? I wish we could spend more time together, just having fun like we used to.”
My mother sighs deeply. She smiles vaguely, unconvincingly. “Yes, you’re right. We need to do something together, like start watching movies again on Friday nights. Just you and I, okay? We can begin tonight.”
“That’ll be cool, Mom. Totally. You know, I was wondering, did Frank ever have a wife?”
“Yes he did. She died last January, took her own life, accidentally.”
“Wow, like Sylvia Plath, the great American poetess?”
“Something like that, darling. We’ll talk about everything in due course. You’re getting a late start on your homework today.”
“Some of us had free study time in Spanish because we didn’t have to retake the test. I did most of my homework then.”
“Smart girl.”
4
Daniel
Saturday night, July 26
El Cajon Valley, California
My eyes have adjusted to the near-dark. I look up at the new moon that rides like a ship through scudding clouds, moving closer and closer to us. I hear the hoot of an owl.
Something strange is happening to me. I don’t doubt it anymore because I’ve decided, if we play the secrets game, to tell Liz about the congressman. I won’t mention my hatred of him, imprinted on my soul like a grim tattoo, the indelible desire for revenge that masquerades as anxiety and stays hidden most of the time. I’ll offer Liz a subdued version of my dark secret.
“I’ve missed you,” she whispers in my ear. Then she stands before me and removes her dress, deliberate and dreamlike. Her purple mini dissolves in shallow light, even as her white panties glow in the dimness. A cluster of stars palely hovers over us, between the silhouettes of long thin leaves.
My heart begins a pounding commotion. I’ve always wanted to wait until I’m married, or at least until I find my true love, but Liz, more than a year older than me and quite experienced, just doesn’t understand. There was a time, before she dumped me and I joined the Army, when I thought Liz was the one. Now I’m not so sure.
She settles on the blanket, and I arrange myself next to her. The contours of her Sicilian form soften in the gloom. I detect the familiar fragrance of cheap shampoo in her long, frizzled hair. With the gusting wind a shadow of leaves passes over her face and the faint sound of a barking dog reaches us from another world.
In the stillness I feel her heartbeat, her breath against my cheek. Liz teases, her tongue in my ear, which is bothersome, but perhaps it means she still cares. I’m holding the girl who’s been my only heartmate, whom I thought until tonight had forsaken me. I kiss her as I dreamed of kissing her, when I was Private First Class Rosen on my first off-post pass, alone, after six weeks of Basic Training.
My mind wavers between rapture and apprehension as the moonlight streams across my back. I really don’t want this to go too far, though I am definitely ready. Half my blood supply has localized down there. Liz stares eagerly at me. I avert my eyes and stop kissing her. I’d reach for my talisman, but I’ve left the rabbit’s foot in my motel room.
“I’ll make you want me,” Liz says, as she stands.
Clad only in modish leather boots and white panties, my former she-god begins to sway her hips and shake her bottom, an upside-down valentine, with magical articulation. Her thin hips remind me of a photo of Mohandas Gandhi I saw at a junk shop outside of Kandahar. Nonetheless, I attempt to regain my focus, feigning total interest. Liz urges me on, as if dancing the Macarena at half-speed, her fantastic body bathed in silvery light.
But soon, as I lay
dormant, Liz stops dancing. Apparently she’s become pitifully aware that it’s no damned use and I won’t be giving away my virginity. Not tonight. No, I won’t be creating a favorable impression on Liz with any rousing display of manliness.
After a brief, uncomfortable silence, she puts on her dress. I zip up my jeans and buckle my belt. “It’s late, I’ll take you home.”
“You have a lot on your mind,” she says, gently, as she walks towards the car. It seems she still doesn’t get it.
I throw the blanket into the back of my ragtop Mazda and sit down heavily on the driver’s seat, hoping to learn before long if there’s a chance I might recapture Liz’s heart without sleeping with her.
Liz, sitting beside me, says, “It’s good to have you back, Itty Boo Baby. You didn’t belong in that war.” She scrunches up her face and wriggles her nose in the usual parody of a chipmunk. I want to laugh, but I don’t.
I gaze below, in the middle distance, at the iridescent lights of El Cajon Valley, shimmery and wet-looking like they’re underneath the sea. “I had no choice,” I say. “About coming back, I mean.”
“Daniel,” she says quietly, “I have something important to tell you. A secret. But I want you to go first.”
I suppress a groan. No longer do I wish to tell her about my father. I don’t feel like playing the secrets game, and yet I make an attempt, just schmoozing to pass time. “I’m going back to school in the fall,” I say matter-of-factly. “I’ll have to find a job working nights.”
“Major in physics?”
“Of course. With a minor in film studies.”
“But baby, I want to hear a real secret, something mad deep.”
“What the hell,” I mutter. I feel like a flesh-eating zombie, unable to tap the source of my discontent, but ... “All right, Mr. Christie thinks the moon has become a giant Earth-crossing asteroid and has developed a collision path with us.”
“Really? Shut up!” She giggles. Her inquisitive eyes are beaming.
“I’m serious,” I say. “But don’t tell anyone, please. I wouldn’t want Mr. Christie to know that I’ve repeated what he told me.”
“You’re not worried, are you? They’re saying it would take something like two thousand years for a collision to happen, and—”
“But only a few years,” I interject, “and perhaps much sooner, before other potentially dangerous things begin to occur, like radical changes in the tides and the weather. The changes have already begun, on a small scale. We don’t know with certainty how this thing is going to play out, how the moon’s new orbit will actually develop.”
“Well, I’m not to going to space out over it, no pun intended, though I’d really like to know how all this shit came about. Did the Russians nuke the moon or something?”
“I don’t think so,” I say. “But who knows for sure. It’s hard to rely on the government for accurate information. Theories of what caused the orbital shift are copious, some involving the Bible or the Ancient Mayans or a dead star that crossed the moon’s orbit on an oblique angle and knocked the moon out of its orbit.”
“What’s a dead star?” asks Liz.
“A dead star is a dense burnt-out star that rotates very rapidly. But the most plausible theory is that Earth or Mars or Venus drew the moon away, or perturbed it, from its original orbit, with gravitational pull. It sometimes happens with asteroids that get drawn away from their orbits in the main asteroid belt.”
“Whatever,” Liz says. “You’re so smart.”
I laugh, and then I look sharply at her, with regretful shyness, feeling more naked than being naked. “Another possibility is that a wiggle has occurred in the curvature of space, which Einstein predicted with his general theory of relativity. Two stars or planets moving in orbit can cause a rhythmic change in the curvature of the space around themselves as they circle. This can cause the planets to spiral closer together in the grip of gravity. Eventually, they must collide in some way.”
Liz leans over and puts her arms around me, hugging me warmly. Six months of loneliness are instantly erased. I thank Mr. Christie, silently, for reuniting Liz and I at Valley High’s cast and crew party earlier tonight. Under Mr. Christie’s direction I’d played Oedipus in last fall’s production of Oedipus the King, and Liz had played Io the previous year in Prometheus Bound.
She rests her head on my shoulder and wraps her hands tightly around my arm, kneading the muscle.
“I like sharing secrets with you,” I say. It seems I have Liz where I want her, yet I curse myself for achieving our born-again togetherness in such a shameful fashion. I turn away as my eyes moisten and the lights in the Valley blur.
When I look again at Liz, she smiles sweetly and flutters her eyelashes, as if apologizing for breaking up with me and moving in with her modern dance instructor at Fletcher College, Professor Rutledge.
After the breakup I had stayed away from Liz a long time, several weeks, licking my wounds. I struggled miserably in my first semester at Fletcher, descending deeper and deeper into the elaborate hell I’d created for myself—until I joined the Army.
“Did Mr. Christie see us leave the party?” I ask.
“Of course, Mr. Christie sees everything.”
I shrug. “He connects with me, unlike my father.”
Liz pauses, pensive. “I think Mr. Christie was in love with your mother.”
“That’s crazy.”
“He tells stories, about working with your mom. Your father wouldn’t let her talk to Mr. Christie because he was jealous.”
My brow furrows with concentration. “That doesn’t prove anything,” I say amicably. “The congressman can charm birds from the trees, crocodiles from mud, but he’s really a monster, always has been, always will be. He likes to brag about how he started with nothing and scratched his way upward from sheet-metal worker in the Boston shipyards to a seat in the U.S. Congress. He’ll do anything to advance his political career, but he’s bankrupt so I wouldn’t be surprised if he starts chasing after some rich old lady, now that my mother is gone. My mother and her illness, her failure to join him on the campaign trail were but a small bump in the road for him.”
“Your mom should have left him. I would have.”
Rolling my eyes, I say in a flustered tone, “She loved him.”
“You didn’t let him hurt her, did you?”
I feel a twinge of something like fear, and then my anger takes a great inner lurch. I’ve never wanted to tell my secret more than now. “He slapped her once,” I say, hastily distorting the truth. “Last year, she found your letters and got drunk. I went after him. He grabbed me by the throat. Pinned me against the wall. I backed off.”
Actually, I hadn’t just backed off. I had retreated to my room like a beaten dog. Next day I left home permanently.
I continue, and Liz listens as in a trance. “I’m ending my self-imposed exile. Going home. The congressman is never there. To him, I’m just another mouth to feed.” I pause, and then calmly add, “If I find out that bastard hurt her, if she felt compelled in any way to take all those pills because of him, I’ll ... do something ... I’ll ... tell the world about him ... ruin him.”
Liz plants several kisses on my shoulder. “Your mom was lucky, with you.”
I blush. “Can we change the subject?”
From our lofty refuge, The Hill, a weed-strewn parcel hidden by a stand of Eucalyptus trees, I can see the dark outline of Rattlesnake Mountain to the northeast. The congressman’s house, The Gables, lies at the foot of the mountain.
“I have a recital next Thursday,” Liz says, “in the gym. I’m dancing with Professor Rutledge. Will you come?”
I bite my tongue. “Okay.”
“Smoke a bowl? I copped some pot from J-man. He’s moved to the beach. Still goes to The Palace a lot.”
“You know I don’t smoke,” I say, smiling thinly. “I still have to get on with my life, remember?”
“It’s funny how you used to roll the most perfect doobie
s, even though you never smoked.”
I’m surprised, and somewhat disappointed, that Liz is still getting high. Yes, we had hung with friends who get stoned, like J-man, but we never indulged. I imagine that making love to her probably has to be awfully good before it’s better than on pot, but that’s something I’ll never know about. Anyway, stoned or not I possess the soul of a clown, a schlimazel, and inevitably my poor luck impels me to blow it at the most opportune moments.
“Let’s go, then,” she says, pulling a watch from her gaudy purse. “My dad locks me out at midnight.”
I engage the clutch, start the engine and put the floor shift into neutral. Liz grasps my hand firmly. “Daniel,” she says, “I know this might not be the right time, but before we go I have to tell you my secret. It’s going to hurt you, a lot. Please don’t hate me.”
“I could never hate you,” I say, thinking about how I still close my eyes at night and dream of marrying Liz. I’ve given my entire being to loving her, assured that our life together is pre-ordained. Fate led to my meeting her, at The Blues Studio one amazing night, when I played piano in the house band and Liz declared to the world that she was my sweetheart.
Now she closes her eyes, bites her lip and says, sort of prosaically, “My secret is ... that I slept with David.”
My first reaction is an incredulous inward repetition of my best friend’s name: David? As his name bounces around on the inside of my skull, I stare fixedly at the eucalyptus trees as they sway slowly back and forth in the moon’s cold blue light. I am wondering what my next life-changing strategy might be. If I have even a shadow of self-knowledge, I can use it now. But I’ll still be me, and that, it seems, is the basic problem.
“How the hell did it happen?” I ask Liz, after a long silence.
She casts down her eyes prettily and doesn’t speak for a minute or two. Finally, she says, “My parents were gone. David was waiting for Devon. We were stoned, and I know that’s not an excuse. It was a one-time thing. I’m so sorry.”
