We sat there silently, and then he asked me, sort of formally, as though we’d just met instead of having had all those talks in Tennessee and Colorado, and as though he’d never kissed me the way he did, “How d’you like California?”
“I like it.”
“I’ve got a couple of your aunt’s records. Didn’t know you had celebrities in the family.”
I suppose Aunt Elena is a celebrity if you know a lot about music. “Uncle Douglas says he’d like to paint you,” I said. I didn’t want Uncle Douglas being left out.
Sitting there on the rock Zachary gave a little bow, still all very formal. “I’d be honored.”
We sat there and then we didn’t say anything. It was very uncomfortable. I knew I ought to be able to think of lots of things to say, but I couldn’t. And Zachary, who’d always kept the conversation going before, just wasn’t talking.
Finally I said, “I don’t think the Pacific looks as big as the Atlantic, but John says it’s bigger.”
He just nodded.
I’d started, so I had to go on. “Well, you see, the thing is, it doesn’t look bigger. It looks smaller. The Pacific does. And I’ve figured out why. The reason it looks so small is that it doesn’t go on stretching out and out to the horizon the way the Atlantic does.”
Zachary turned to me as though I were some kind of moron. “What’re you talking about? Sure it does.”
I was stuck with it. “No,” I said. I guess I sounded kind of desperate. “You know how gently the Atlantic goes out to the sky? You can walk and walk and you’re still not even knee deep. But here you take a few steps and you’re practically over your head. The land just drops instead of reaching out. So when you look out to sea there’s less of it to see.”
Zachary laughed loudly. A rude laugh. “Oh, grow up, Victoria. The shape of the earth is the same everywhere.”
“But—”
He didn’t even let me begin. He said, quite violently, “Sooner or later you’re going to have to face facts. The Pacific’s bigger than the Atlantic.”
I said right back, “That’s not the point—”
Zachary cut in. “Give up, Vicky. I’m not interested.”
I suppose you could call it a quarrel. I felt awful. I put my head down on my knees and let my fingers trail in a small puddle in a depression in the rock. I didn’t want to go to the theater with Zachary that night. I didn’t ever want to see him again. He was different in California. I hated him.
Then I felt fingers gentle at the back of my neck. “Vicky. I’m sorry. It’s not you. It doesn’t have anything to do with you. I’ve been in a filthy mood. Get me out of my mood.” His voice was soft, cajoling.
“Why’re you in a filthy mood?”
“Just one of the times I hate everybody. Except you. Don’t let me drive you away, Vicky. I have a way of doing that. Driving away anybody I happen to love. Stick by me, Vicky, will you?”
What do you do when somebody speaks to you like that, particularly if that somebody is Zachary? Sure I’d stick by him. I’d do anything he wanted me to do.
“Let’s go back up to the house,” Zachary said. “I don’t want to get too much sun. And if we sit here much longer your father’ll start bossing me around again. I saw enough of doctors when I was sick. I haven’t seen one since in spite of my parents’ yammering. I refuse ever to see a doctor again. I’ve had enough of their inept mucking about. C’mon.”
We started up the long, steep flight of steps that led from the beach to the street. I saw Daddy looking at Zachary, but Zachary took it very slowly, stopping every once in a while as though just to talk. But I knew it was to catch his breath.
“I guess everything seems pretty crowded here after New England, doesn’t it?” he asked. I nodded. “All these expensive houses sitting on their little plots of ground. Pretty nice gardens, though. Nothing like these flowers in Connecticut. Nothing exotic about Connecticut.” We went up to the top of the steps and he stopped again.
“You don’t want every place to be alike,” I said. “I like Connecticut, too.”
“When I get over my mad at Hotchkiss I’ll probably agree with you. I’m going to Choate next year. We managed to wangle it. All kinds of recommendations from Hotchkiss about how I ought to be given another chance and all. I’m bright enough, they’re quite right about that. If I put my mind to it I can pass any exam they care to fling at me. The point is, most of the time what’s the point?”
“There’s lots of point,” I said. I was glad he didn’t ask me to explain what the point was. Maybe he was too winded.
When we got back to the house I fixed us a couple of Cokes, first picking an enormous lemon off the tree. That was something you couldn’t do in Thornhill. We sat in the kitchen, because I thought I might as well help get the dinner going. Aunt Elena and Mother’d already fixed fried chicken and potato salad, so really all I had to do was make salad dressing and throw in the greens and tomatoes and all. Aunt Elena has quite a kitchen, redwood and stainless steel and a built in oven and the burners sunk into one of the countertops, all terribly modern and tidy and completely unlike our wandery old kitchen in Thornhill. For instance, in Aunt Elena’s kitchen you push a button and out comes a mixer and a blender. I wondered that Maggy hadn’t broken it. She’s always fiddling with things like that.
When I’d finished with the salad I made iced tea, and everything was very silent between Zachary and me again. I just went about my business, and he sat and drank his Coke and looked out the kitchen windows across the banana tree to the Pacific.
“Would you marry somebody if you knew he might die at any time?” Zachary asked me in a casual way.
At that point the others all came tumbling in to the house, and Aunt Elena was thanking me for fixing things, and people were taking showers, and Mother put the Emperor Concerto on the phonograph, and Aunt Elena sat down at the piano and began playing along with it, it was her own recording, anyhow, and everybody was noisy and usual.
After dinner Zachary drove me to the theater. It wasn’t in Laguna, but a couple of towns further south. It was a gorgeous, modern little theater, and everybody in the cast was professional, Zachary said. He was very gay, and whistling that darned melody when he wasn’t talking, but at least he wasn’t the way he was before dinner.
I have to tell about the play, The Diary of Anne Frank, not just because it was a marvelous play, but because it got all tied in with the way Zachary had been that afternoon. I guess everybody knows Anne Frank, but anyhow the play’s about this young girl and her family who were in Holland during the Second World War. They had to go into hiding because of the Nazi persecution of the Jews, and they spent two years up in an attic above the place where her father had been in business. During the day when people were downstairs working in the business offices Anne and her family couldn’t talk or laugh or make any noise at all. They couldn’t even flush the toilet.
You know how it is, in a book or a movie, or a play, when you suddenly are the person it’s about? Well, all during that play I was Anne Frank. I felt that I understood everything about her, the way she kept getting into trouble with her family and the way she was right in the middle of growing up, not a child and not an adult, so she kept doing things all wrong, just like me. And then there was this boy, and the actor who played him looked like Zachary. And there they were, Anne Frank and the boy, hiding from the Nazis and everything, and discovering each other. But nobody really understood how she felt about the boy because they didn’t think she was grown up enough yet.
One evening the family had their Hannukah festival. This is a little bit like our Christmas, because it’s a time of love, and everybody gives presents. Of course there weren’t any presents when they were in hiding, but Anne had managed somehow to make something for everybody. Some of the presents were funny, and everybody was gay, and they were all laughing, and almost able to forget they were unhappy.
Every Christmas Eve in Thornhill we have a special candlelight service, and
Mother always sings the solo part of “Lullay My Liking” and when we get home there are certain carols we always sing and Daddy reads The Night Before Christmas and St. Luke while we hang up our stockings. Well, the Hanukkah festival has traditions like that, candles in an eight-branched candelabra, and as part of the ritual the mother of the family says, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,” and everybody is full of joy and peace. Just the way we always are at Christmastime.
But then, when everybody is relaxed and happy, they hear a terrible crash downstairs. They don’t know what it is, and they’re terrified, because they’re afraid it may be the Nazis come to take them away. The father goes down to investigate, knowing that he may be going to his death, and Anne knows this, too, and it was as though Daddy were going, and I knew he might be shot at any moment. While they’re waiting the mother falls to her knees, and her voice is shaking, and she says, very quickly, and it is a terrible cry for help,
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills
From whence cometh my help.
My help cometh from the Lord
Which made heaven and earth.
He will not suffer thy foot to be moved;
He that keepeth thee will not slumber.
Behold, he that keepth Israel
Shall neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is thy keeper;
The Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.
The sun shall not smite thee by day,
Nor the moon by night.
The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil;
He shall preserve thy soul.
The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in
From this time forth, and even for evermore.
Anne’s mother got down on her knees and she said these words, which Mother has said to us so often, which we’ve said together, which I’ve said to myself because they hold so much security and comfort. But the Lord didn’t preserve the Franks from evil. He must have slumbered and slept. Because the Nazis found them, they were captured, all of them who had hidden there in the attic for two years; they were sent to a concentration camp, and they died there, all except the father. The mother who had said those words died there. Anne Frank died there. She believed in the goodness of human beings, and I think that she must have believed that God would preserve her going out and her coming in. But He didn’t. She died in a concentration camp. Before she had time to live. When she was just beginning.
Usually I cry like anything when a play or a movie is sad. As I said, Suzy doesn’t like to sit next to me, I embarrass her so. At Anne Frank I couldn’t cry. I was shaken too deep.
Zachary had asked permission to take me out for a soda after the show, so nobody expected us home right away. He took the car and drove to the beach. “Come on, Vic. Let’s skip the soda and just sit out on a rock and talk.”
We sat on a rock overlooking the ocean and I started to shiver. “Cold?” he asked.
I nodded. I couldn’t explain that I was cold inside and not outside. He took off his jacket and put it over my shoulders. “What about you?” I asked.
“I wish everybody’d stop worrying about me. I’m fine. How’d you like the play? Pretty good, wasn’t it?” I just nodded, and he said, “Well, didn’t you like it? I thought it was terrific.”
It would be rude if I said I wished he’d never taken me to it. I thought, well, if he doesn’t understand the way I feel there’s no point my ever seeing him again, so I said, “I guess I’ve lived a kind of sheltered life and all. I mean I knew about concentration camps, but it never hit me before.”
“It’s about time you woke up, Victoria,” Zachary said. “Life’s been too darned easy for you. It’s about time you learned it isn’t all peaches and cream.”
“I never thought that.”
“But you’ve never had to worry about people being cooked down, and made into soap, have you? That’s the kind of thing they did to people like Anne Frank. And they made lampshades out of their skins. Don’t they teach you anything at school? Haven’t you ever read any modern history?”
Now I was having a hard time not crying. I just shook my head and stared out at the darkness of ocean so the tears would stay in my eyes and not overflow. I pressed my knuckles against my lips to try to stop them from trembling.
“You’re just like that little dope, Anne Frank,” Zachary said. “All innocent and trusting. Life’s going to be hell for you when you stop being protected, absolute hell.”
I just kept shaking my head.
“You still believe in God, don’t you?” he asked. “Look what he did to your precious Anne Frank. Maybe he’ll do something like that to you, someday. Look what he’s done to me. I’m probably going to die, and what for? Why?”
I spoke in a very trembly voice, but he didn’t even seem to notice. “If you took better care of yourself—”
“Why the hell should I take better care of myself? What for? For the kind of stinking world we’re living in? So I’ll get blown up by a nuclear bomb? Or die of radiation sickness? No, thanks. I’d rather die of a nice, quiet heart attack. And then nice quiet nothing. No pie in the sky, Vicky. No burning in hell fires either. Just nice, quiet nothing.”
“No!” I shouted. I didn’t even try to stop from crying, now. The tears streamed down my cheeks and I hardly noticed.
Zachary shouted back. “What’s the point of believing in God when nothing makes any sense? Nothing makes sense, Vicky! Anne Frank doesn’t make sense and Pop fleecing other people to make his millions doesn’t make sense, but it makes about the best kind of sense there is. You’re so darned good, Vicky, you dope! Don’t you know it doesn’t make any sense to be good?” I gave a kind of sob, and then his arms went around me and he was kissing me. “Ah, Vicky,” he murmured, “why do I do this to you? What makes me do it? You’re such a good kid, why do I want to hurt you?” He held my wet face in his hands. “I only want to hurt people I love, Vicky.” Then he kissed me again.
Fourteen
Right after Zachary kissed me again we went back to the car and he drove me home. We didn’t talk much, but this time it wasn’t a bad silence. You could leave it alone. You didn’t have to fill it.
When we got back to the house he took me in. Just before we opened the door he touched my cheek with the back of his hand, but he didn’t kiss me again. Then he said, “I won’t see you tomorrow, Vicky-O, but we’ll do something in a couple of days. I’ll call you.”
Uncle Douglas was the only one still up, and he was in his pajamas. He said good-night to Zachary, then took me by the arm and led me out to the balcony. “Sit with me and have a glass of ginger ale. I’ll fix it for you.”
How did Uncle Douglas know that I didn’t want to go right to bed, that the one thing in the world I wanted was to stay with him for a few minutes? I didn’t want to talk, to tell him about Zachary or getting all upset or anything. I just wanted to be with him. He gave me the ginger ale and sat down, then opened his arms wide. “Come on, sweetheart. You’re not too big for Uncle Douglas’s lap, are you?”
I wasn’t. How did he know I needed it? The white wooden chair was big enough for both of us, and I sat there, my head against his blue and white striped pajamas, hearing the strong thud-thud of his heart against my ear. It was beautiful sitting with Uncle Douglas looking out over the night Pacific. It wasn’t only that you could see the ocean and all the lights of the towns along the coastline, but you could see all kinds of airplanes going by overhead, and often you couldn’t tell which was a plane and which was a star until you could decide whether or not it was moving.
We just sat there and sat there and the distant rhythmic sound of the ocean and the slow rise and fall of Uncle Douglas’s chest began to untense me. At last he said, “Drink up your ginger ale, puddin’. Everybody else is sound asleep and if we want to drive over the border into Mexico tomorrow you’ve got to get some sleep. Did you have a nice time with your young man?”
I tried to keep my voice as quiet
as Uncle Douglas’s had been. “I’m not sure ‘nice’ is the right adjective.”
“What adjective would you use?” Uncle Douglas wasn’t prying. He never does. He’s just interested in words. I thought. There didn’t seem to be any one word you could use as an adjective for that evening. Terrifying. Horrible. Glorious. Then I more or less got it, though it wasn’t a real adjective. “I guess you might call it a growing-up kind of evening.”
“Aren’t trying to grow up too fast, are you?” Uncle Douglas asked.
“Uncle Douglas, I’m retarded.”
“I’ve never noticed it.”
“You’re just used to me. You’re just used to having me a little kid. The way it’s sort of hard for me to realize we can’t treat Rob like a baby any more. We have to let him grow up. I have to grow up, too.”
“Of course you do, Vicky. But it’s something that takes time. And it’s a process that never ends. It isn’t a point you attain so you can say, Hooray, I’m grown up. Some people never grow up. And nobody ever finishes growing. Or shouldn’t. If you stop you might as well quit. What I have to tell you, Vicky sweet, is that it never gets any easier. It goes right on being rough forever. But nothing that’s easy is worth anything. You ought to have learned that by now. What happens as you keep on growing is that all of a sudden you realize that it’s more exciting and beautiful than scarey and awful.”
I reached up to his chin, forgetting that he’d shaved off his beard a couple of months before he and Aunt Elena got married. His chin felt scratchy and sort of comforting. “Why did you shave off your beard?” I asked. I was beginning to get sleepy.
“Mostly for Elena’s sake. Also when I first had my beard it was all right for an artist to have a beard because nobody else did. But now all kinds of people have beards. It isn’t anything special any more.”
“You mean like beatniks and everything.”
“Yes. People who think things come easy in this life. People who sit around and wait for inspiration to descend upon them from the blue. Who think they can create with genius alone. Instead of with a background of work harder than any laborer’s. Am I philosophizing you to sleep, Vicky? That’s my intention.” I nodded. “Then go on to bed, sweetheart. It’s getting late and you want to have fun tomorrow.”
The Moon by Night Page 14
