by R. L. Fox
I decide to veer towards plain candor. “Look, my mother died just six months ago and now my father, looking dapper in his ostentatious suit, brings your mother, and you, into the picture and he wants to send me away for the summer. He would have us believe that the government, made up of people like him, is going to save us from our plight with the moon. He wants to sell the house I’ve lived in for fifteen years, would have me major in professional greed at college, didn’t bother to attend my high school graduation because his political meeting was more important, and all I want is to get my girl back.” I add, with a hint of bitterness, “You’re the classic only child, snotty and self-absorbed. You were no doubt an eagerly awaited baby, born with a sense of theater, of carefully choreographed exits and entrances. Don’t bug me, Queen Alice.”
Sarah’s pale skin blushes pink as a carnation. I sigh expressively. I hadn’t intended to hurt her feelings. Sarah is as direct and truthful as I am devious and dishonorable. I’ve behaved with gross insensitivity, blowing it as usual.
Sarah looks so sad I fear she’s going to cry again. “I know what you’re thinking,” she says. “Poor little rich girl, what does she know about suffering? Well, I’ll tell you something, you’re not the only one who’s lost a parent.”
“What’s that mean?”
“My dad, two years ago. His fighter jet crashed in the South Pacific during a storm. He went down in rough seas and was never found. I still want to believe he’s out there somewhere, like on a little island or something.”
“That really blows,” I say, with deeply felt empathy.
Sarah is right. I’ve been acting as if I despise her simply because I was feeling envious of her, before I heard about her father. I wanted to become just like her, or what I had assumed is just like her: living without financial worries, making a lot of friends, having a loving parent, living a totally carefree life.
I open the car door for Sarah and then run around to the driver’s side and get behind the wheel. Turning to face her, I say, softly, “Hey, listen, I’m sorry.”
Her eyes seem to generate their own light as she catches my gaze and holds it. “That’s okay,” she says, in a whispery tone. She pauses, and averts her eyes. “So you’re having a crisis with your girlfriend? What’s her name?”
“Liz, Liz Santini. I haven’t the words to describe how she makes me feel; she’s beautiful.”
Sarah glances at me. A trace of a sad smile skims her lips. “Wow. That’s romantic.” It’s as though I’ve touched a nerve. She pushes up into a dignified posture and raises her chin.
“Do I look like I’m having a crisis?” I ask.
“Everyone our age is having a crisis,” Sarah says. “I know you’re not supposed to get them until mid-life, but I think something’s happened to our metabolisms.”
“Our metabolisms?”
“Yes, the world is moving so fast now and we’re all chasing something so fast that we start freaking out long before our parents did. Here, feel my heart.”
Sarah takes my hand and places it over her heart. “Feel how fast it’s beating?” she says.
Now it’s my turn to blush. “Yes,” I answer. “It’s fast all right.”
She releases my hand and says, “Because we don’t ever stop to breathe anymore. You have to remember to breathe or you’ll die.”
“That’s interesting,” I say, for lack of something better, as I start the engine and begin to drive west on Broadway, towards Fletcher College.
Sarah goes on, cheerfully, “Where’d you get the car? It’s cool. I like the gold color, and the rag top.”
“My grandma bought it, last summer.”
Sarah’s slender legs are crossed just inches from my hand on the gearshift. She smells of scented soap. For a kid, I conclude, she’s quite attractive. She possesses a shapely body, indecisive between adolescence and maturity. Her form and posture bring to mind images of a ballet dancer, but her coloring belongs to a movie star. She is pale without a touch of pink in her creamy white skin. In the restaurant, each time she’d taken a drink of Pepsi, I glimpsed the liquid going down her throat. Or so I had imagined. She will be a goddess, soon, with her saintly Roman nose, full lips and lovely swerving cheekbones.
But she’s only a kid, I tell myself. Perhaps she hasn’t even reached puberty yet. I recall the words of Rousseau, who’d termed puberty “the second birth.” “Henceforth no human passion is a stranger—”
Interrupting my reverie, Sarah says, “So you don’t believe your father’s plan to nuke the moon is going to help us?”
I glance at her as I’m driving. “Well, even if we could create a force large enough to change the moon’s orbit without blowing it to bits, one slight miscalculation with a nuclear device will spell immediate doom.”
“How so?”
“What if we accidentally blow up a part of the moon? A shower of rocks will come raining down on us like a million radioactive asteroids. The dust and ash from such an explosion could block the sun and cause a nuclear winter here. The fallout would enter the stratosphere first and then the troposphere. I’m not trying to scare you or anything, it’s just that I’m against using a nuclear device.”
“What would you recommend?” Sarah asks. “I mean, we have to do something.”
“I’d put primary emphasis on figuring out why the orbital shift happened in the first place. That might lead to a solution. But if we end up trying to blast our way out of this, let it be done with conventional bombs. There would still be problems, like tsunamis if large chunks of debris fall into the oceans.”
After several long moments of silence, during which Sarah seems to ponder my remarks anxiously, she says, “Thank you for saving me back there. You’re very quick on your feet.” She gets to her knees on the seat and leans towards me. “Hold still.” She brings her face gently over to mine, her lips within an inch of my lips, as though she were going to kiss me, but instead she flutters her eyelashes softly on my cheek, affecting a tickle.
I flinch, and then hold steady as she continues to move her eyelashes against my cheek for a long moment. The closeness between us is disturbing, almost frightening. “What are you doing?” I smile, and my heart races, although I’m not sure exactly why.
“It’s a butterfly kiss. Don’t worry; it’s not a real kiss. My dad showed me when I was a child and I used to kiss him goodnight that way, so it’s okay. It’s a way of expressing my gratitude.” She laughs, a girlish giggle.
My face flushes again, from an emotion I can’t quite identify. I feel Sarah’s eyes on me. I want—again, without knowing why—to impress her in every possible way. I love her smile, which is sweetness itself. A few strands of her chestnut hair, tied back severely, have come loose, and that seems to add just the slightest touch of wantonness to her virginal beauty. For fifteen, Sarah is remarkable, doe-eyed and gypsy-like, with no plastic synthetic gloss about her.
I recall how I had stolen a few peeks at her in the restaurant. She would catch me looking, smile, and turn away. I had caught her looking at me just as often, and she would blush when our eyes met. Somehow, it seems, I see a little bit of myself in Sarah.
As we ride in comfortable silence, my thoughts turn to Julie, who looked sexy tonight in her low-cut red dress. I’m perplexed by how she had stealthily (underneath the table) taken off a shoe and placed her foot in my crotch, and with her bare toes clawed at the denim material on the inside of my thighs. Usually, Julie behaves with indifference towards me, although I know she’s aware of her power over me. She’s never done anything remotely like what she did tonight. All this while my father was giving his lecture to me. Finally, I got up, shot Julie a look of puzzlement and went to the restroom.
Sarah asks suddenly, “Why did you and Liz break up?”
After gathering my thoughts for a moment, I say, “That is a long, unhappy story.” I glance at her with a smile as I drive. “And I prefer to spare you the misery of hearing it.”
“Fair enough. But can I ask if
you’re planning to go back with her after the dance recital?”
“Yes, I am.”
“I don’t want to be a hindrance. Tell me how I can help.”
“Thanks,” I say. “I think I can handle it.” Sometimes, I suppose, I exult in my refusal to be helped. “I’m going to ask her out. I’ll take you home; Liz and I will go to The Palace, a dance club near the Sports Arena. There’s live music until two a.m.”
“I’m really sorry about your having to drag me along.”
I slow the car and give Sarah my serious look. “I don’t normally hang out with girls your age, but you seem pretty cool.”
Sarah’s eyes appear to become kind of dreamy, and then after a brief interval, she says, “At the restaurant, why did you argue with your brother?”
“You definitely ask a lot of questions.”
“I’m asking because I find you interesting.”
I really don’t mind her questions. I want to avoid hurting her feelings again. Her precocious nature has gained my respect.
But I certainly don’t want to tell her the truth, which is that I’d lost control when the congressman announced he was selling The Gables. Effectively, by selling the house, my father will destroy a significant piece of my mother’s blessed memory. So I had walked into the restroom, and with my trusty pocketknife I’d scratched out, on the stucco wall, a devilish stick figure with a huge erect phallus, and alongside it the words “Frank killed Mary.” In those moments I had wanted to let the world know the truth about my father. I considered it a gentle form of revenge, a meal that is best served cold. Being praised by a vile man like my father, I’d thought, was as bad as being praised for vile deeds. Now, I feel like a meshuggener, a crazy person, for doing such a thing.
Mike had insisted I erase my artwork, and I’d refused. “You’re lucky Dad didn’t come in here,” he’d told me. Then Mike had angrily scratched over my obscene artwork with his car keys.
I finally say to Sarah, “I guess Mike was upset because I took so long in the restroom.”
“I sense you’re not telling me everything, Daniel, but that’s okay. I can be a little too nosy sometimes.”
Despite my reckless behavior at Marechiaro’s, my desire to ruin my father’s relationship with Cate, there’s something about Sarah that prevents me, at least for now, from telling her about my father. I want, I need, something I cannot name, from Sarah, and from Mrs. Hartford. Cate is not, it seems, just some old chatterbox.
My father, I’ve come to realize tonight, understands the situation perfectly, which is that he’s after Mrs. Hartford’s money because his re-election campaign for next year is already in financial trouble. Unfortunately, for Cate and Sarah, they don’t know that the congressman is a monster, and they don’t know that he’s bankrupt, either.
The congressman desperately needs money to save his political career and eventually to live out his dream of running for the Senate. That’s why he’s selling The Gables, and that’s why finding my mother’s diary is so important. The diary may be the smoking gun that brings my father down once and for all. That way, Cate and Sarah are saved from having to endure the misery my father will bring them if he manages to trick Cate into marrying him.
“Do you want to see a picture of Liz?” I ask Sarah.
“Sure.”
I take out my wallet and hand her the high school senior picture of Liz taken two years ago. I switch on the dome light.
Sarah studies the photograph.
Already, I’m beginning to feel close to Sarah, a natural sort of thing. It’s not unlike my experience of Devon, Liz’s sister. I have a gut belief that Sarah is someone with whom I can communicate openly, someone I can trust.
“She’s pretty. Do you love her?” Sarah says.
I meet Sarah’s eyes. Of course I love Liz. I adore her. But like Oedipus in Sophocles’ tragedy, fate seems to trump my will, and I hear myself answer, “I don’t know.”
***
I sit next to Sarah in the red and blue bleachers, as we wait for Liz’s recital to begin. Fletcher College has no proscenium, no theater of any kind. The green and yellow concrete gymnasium on the north side of campus will serve as colossal venue for tonight’s dance performances.
From our elevated seats we’d watched several performances, accompanied by show tunes. We had arrived just in time for the dimming of the lights at the start of the first performance; the program pamphlets were sold out.
The gymnasium’s deck, the basketball court, has been converted into a sort of stage and dance floor. Black wrestling mats are arranged side by side to cover the court. Additional lighting has been installed, including strobes, spotlights and a rotating prism on the ceiling that bathes the audience in yellow, red, blue and green light. Musical accompaniment originates from a stereo system with two mammoth speakers positioned at the back of the gym, near a corner doorway used by the performers for entrances and exits.
The building is filled to capacity. Between numbers the feathery rustling of dresses converges with hundreds of voices that resonate like the distant rushing of water. Earlier, as Sarah and I had searched for two unoccupied seats, I saw Liz’s parents, and her sister Devon. They noticed me as well. Mrs. Santini smiled and Devon waved; Mr. Santini had stared at me coldly.
Sarah turns and looks at me, smiles and jiggles her eyebrows up and down in a parody of Groucho Marx. I laugh. She has begun to display her playful side. Her gentle teasing makes me feel free. I begin to wonder if Sarah knows that she disturbs me physically.
The overhead lights grow dim, and the rustling and the whispering cease. A wedge of pale light emits from the corner doorway. Liz, wearing a black leotard, enters the room under a gliding spotlight and runs at full gallop towards the rectangular floor mat. When she reaches the plastic cushion she springs high into the air, executing a double forward somersault and landing with feet planted. She drops to one knee, arms flared, head lowered, her long black curls flowing earthward—and she is still. Her face and neck and bare arms and feet are coated with ghostly white florescent paint.
“She’s not only a dancer,” Sarah decries, “she’s a gymnast.”
“She’s magnificent,” I whisper to myself.
The wedge of light appears in the doorway again, and Peter Rutledge, also wearing a black leotard and coated with white paint, enters in the same manner and stands, motionless, next to Liz.
With the sound of the first guitar-plucked note, I recognize the haunting tune that will accompany Liz’s performance. It is “The End,” by The Doors, my favorite classic rock song. I’d fallen in love with the mind-blowing expression of Oedipal doom when I heard The Doors’ premier album in J-man’s apartment near Valley High two summers ago. I marvel over the song with the belief that great tunes mirror not just their own times, but also every other epoch since the dawn of humankind.
Liz and Rutledge have begun to move about to the stirring, seductive music. The dancers—as they face one another several feet apart—glide to and fro in a semi-circle, heads thrown back, legs kicking, toes pointing and arms flared, with hips twisting and gyrating rhythmically to the slow beat. They draw together in the center of the circle they’ve outlined, and they begin to move as a couple, stroking and fondling each other, until Rutledge lifts Liz over his head and turns around and around while Liz maintains a steady horizontal pose.
I struggle to contain my jealous rage, my irrational yet irresistible envy of Rutledge, though I can see myself standing and shouting something provocative at the top of my voice.
I glance at Sarah. She’s watching with such a rapt expression on her face that I wonder if perhaps she is herself a competent dancer, able to see things the common observer, like myself, might miss.
In my view, the dance number isn’t erotica, with overt artistic qualities, but rather a base and wanton attempt in that direction, a failed attempt, and the disgusting performance goes on for eleven minutes and thirty-five seconds. Finally, Liz sinks to the mat like a crumpled butt
erfly, as Rutledge falls over her in a mock sexual posture. It is done lasciviously, I conclude, in the manner I would imagine that dances at a strip club are performed.
When the music has stopped, after arriving at its terrifying Oedipal climax, the dancers remain absolutely still in their final poses. It is then I experience the great chasm between my world, Liz’s world as well, and that of the mostly middle-class, uptight conservatives in attendance tonight. The audience remains silent, stunned. There is no applause, unlike the thunderous clapping of hands that was offered to every other dance number tonight. Instead, I hear grumbling and even a few boos.
Sarah begins to clap her hands feverishly, and so does Devon, and although I loathed the performance, what with Rutledge’s hands all over Liz, I join them in applauding. Perhaps a dozen or so others in the audience begin to clap as well. The dancers stand, holding hands, and face the audience from the middle of the floor. Liz curtsies, and Rutledge takes a bow.
“I could kill Rutledge,” I say.
“Oh, I don’t think you could kill anyone,” Sarah replies.
I turn to her and smile. I am awed by her show of infectious courage. Unlike me, she had applauded when no one else did.
“I liked it a lot,” Sarah says, “even the unusual music.”
The lights are turned up for intermission. As we walk nimbly down the bleachers, I tell Sarah, “I’m going backstage to congratulate Liz. Would you like to come with me, or wait? I’m going to ask her out, too.”
Sarah considers my question. “We should’ve brought flowers,” she says, and then adds, “I’ll wait by the front door.”
“I won’t be long.”
Dusk has given way to a starry, moonless night. Behind the gym, Liz stands with a few other dancers, talking, laughing. She’s wearing the yellow print dress I know well. Prince Peter is nowhere to be seen, nor Liz’s family.
