by M. E. Kerr
TWENTY-EIGHT
IN THE WEEKS THAT followed, I was as much at home in Roundelay as I was down in the caretaker’s cottage. I no longer needed an invitation to go up there. I tooted around in the Aurora whenever I felt like it. I was integrated into Nevada’s life—a house dog with a pet name.
It seemed as though I spent all my free time up there. Or I drove into East Hampton with Huguette, waited while she phoned Martin, and after listened to her agonize about all the attention from Cog: his nightly calls, his gifts of flowers, candy, and balloons.
If my mother noticed what was happening to me, she didn’t question me about it. I think, like Nevada, who began to believe he had turned Huguette down another path, my mother clung to the hope that Huguette was making me forget Alex, and that Mom had been right all along to tell me it was too soon for me to decide that I was gay.
I was in another world at Roundelay, and Alex was firmly entrenched in his world: the theater. He’d never managed to get that room miles from the boarding-house they all lived in. He said that up there, in season, there weren’t any rooms he could afford. And anyway, he said, he would be back in New York in six weeks.
The reviews had been excellent. He’d been singled out as a new young actor to watch. So had Nora Leary. They were getting along okay. He was afraid to rock the boat, so less and less did we talk about seeing each other in August. I wasn’t pushing it myself anymore. I sometimes wondered if it was because I knew that summer would be all I’d have of Huguette, that I had never known anyone like her and probably never would again.
Boston may have been only “icing on the cake,” as Nevada had put it, but it took precedence over everything. When Nevada wasn’t trying out new material on us, he was studying the performers on MTV as though he was taking a crash course in today’s rock. He would rage against most of what he saw, criticize and complain, but behind it all we knew he was afraid he would not be well received. Sometimes he said as much, calling himself an “old dinosaur,” and the gig “a suicide run.”
One hot day near the end of July, Huguette and I took a picnic down to Main Beach. Roundelay was filled with Nevada’s arranger, his agent, his tailor, and various advisors helping him plan his appearance at The House of Stars. We wanted to get away from all the activity. She’d never hung out at Main Beach, which was crowded with kids our age: swimming, surfing, playing volleyball.
We walked down a little distance from all that, put up an umbrella, and spread a blanket on the sand.
Cog had called that morning. He said he’d written a song called “You Get Nothing.” He was going to try it out in Boston, the same night Nevada would appear with him. Huguette couldn’t stop talking about it.
“I’m a bit dazzled by him, aren’t I, Lang?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever feel that way? Feel so happy just having someone new in your life?”
“Yes.”
“I know it’s hard for you to talk about things.”
It never used to be. But it was hard for me to talk about being “a bit dazzled” when she was the one dazzling me.
I said, “And you feel guilty, too.” I did. Not just because Alex had no idea how close I’d become to her, but also because for the first time I felt in sync with the ones who’d taken the road most traveled by. I was in disguise as a straight, basking in all the warmth of a world welcoming us with open arms. Huguette and I looked like a couple. Not only was I passing, I was having a good time doing it.
Huguette said, “I don’t feel guilty. Martin is still the only one for me. Were there others before Alex?”
“No. I had crushes on guys. I never did anything about them. Alex is my first.”
“Your first what?”
“Love.”
“Finally you say it. Good…I know it’s different for you. You probably can’t talk to everyone about it. But I hope you can talk to me.”
“I can. Do you think Cog has other girlfriends?”
“He says he doesn’t have time.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Why would he lie to me?”
“Does he know about Martin?”
“He’s very jealous of Martin. He says I’m the kind of girl he could fall in love with.”
“I bet Martin doesn’t know about Cog.”
“He does so. But he’s not a jealous type. He tells me that this trip is good for me. This morning he asked me if I’d ever thought of going to school here, and he said that if I did, he’d understand. I told him: Don’t be too understanding or I’ll think you don’t love me enough…. But that’s Martin. I think he worries some that I haven’t seen enough of the world.”
I moved out of the sun under the umbrella. She asked me if I wanted her to put some Bain de Soleil on my back. I nodded and felt her hands cool against my skin, kneading my shoulders.
I finally worked up the courage to ask her what I’d been wanting to ask her for weeks. “How far did this thing go with you and Cog? Did you—” I was fumbling for a delicate way to pose the question.
“Did I what?”
“Sleep with him?”
She laughed. “I wouldn’t get much sleep, I don’t think.”
She put the cap back on the tube of suntan lotion and we sat side by side, watching kids catch the big waves on their surfboards.
“I’ve never even made love with Martin,” she said. “Not the whole thing.”
“Really?”
“Surprised?”
“Yeah, I am.”
“But you have with Alex.”
“Sure.”
“Only Alex?”
“I told you. Yes.”
“Aren’t you afraid of AIDS?”
“Of course. But we’re very careful. And neither of us plays around.”
“I hate that expression!” she said.
“I guess I do too. Or the idea behind it.”
“But what am I doing to poor Cog?”
“I wouldn’t worry about Cog.”
She chuckled. “The Cloud speaks.”
“Cog can take care of himself.”
“You don’t even know him,” she said.
“I don’t have to.”
“Oh, Lang, he’s not what you think. He’s very serious about me. I feel that, even though he doesn’t say he loves me. He keeps asking me to come away with him. It’s very flattering…but what am I doing?”
“Well, you never met anyone that famous…and with his own Porsche, too.”
“Don’t be sarcastic. I never met anyone, famous or not. Aniane is not a hot spot.”
“So coming here was good for you, wasn’t it?”
“I’ll never admit that to my folks. They’re always debating about moving back here one day.”
“Would you, if there wasn’t a Martin?”
“There is a Martin…. I just don’t want anyone to get hurt, Lang.”
“Or get hurt yourself.”
“Or get hurt myself. Yes…I’m a little mixed up, aren’t I?”
“A little?” I grinned at her. “You’re a mess.”
She punched my arm. Hard. Then pushed me backward.
She got up and ran, and I got up and ran after her.
We went down the beach fast, in the sun, laughing.
Finally, I caught her. We wrestled ourselves down to the sand. I held her under me and said, “Say uncle!”
“What?”
“Say uncle!”
She didn’t know the expression. She said, “What’s Uncle Ben got to do with it?”
I began tickling her and she kicked up sand. We were both laughing and tumbling around. Then I knew I had to roll off her—fast.
I lay on my stomach and she stretched out beside me on her back.
We were both sweating, both out of breath.
“Mon dieu!” she said.
I stayed on my stomach. I had to.
She said, “What would I do without you?”
“Same here,” I said.
Someti
mes you don’t know how happy you are until later when you think back. But I knew then.
I had this sweet longing for her.
It was different from any feeling I’d ever had with Alex, because from the beginning with him, I always knew what would happen next.
With her there was no next, and it didn’t matter.
I think we both fell asleep. Maybe she was just being very still while I dropped off for a few minutes.
When I woke up, we were on our sides, turned toward each other. She opened her eyes and smiled. She reached out and drew her fingernail down my cheek. “Do you think the gulls got our lunch, Lang? We’d better go back to the blanket.”
“Let them have our lunch.”
“What are you thinking, Lang? You look so solemn.”
“I think I love you.” I just blurted it out.
“No, you don’t. You know what you love?” She put her finger between my teeth. “You love to tell lies.”
I bit her finger gently. “No. I think it’s true.”
“If it’s true,” she said, “then feed me. I’m hungry.” She poked her finger into my chin. “Come on!”
I got up and reached down to help her to her feet.
A voice said, “I thought it was you.”
I shielded my eyes against the sun and looked up at a girl sitting with a fellow on a blanket behind us.
“Remember me?” Brittany Ball said.
TWENTY-NINE
IN THE CAR, ON the way home, Huguette babbled on about what I must have done to make Brittany throw the sand cast at me.
“Your friend Nick introduced her to me the night of Cog’s party at Sob Story. She was very cool to me.”
“She was mad at me, not you. Nick probably told her we were making out the night before at Roundelay.”
“Did you tell her you loved her, too?”
“Never!”
“No one throws rocks at someone without a good reason!”
“I’d just told her I was gay.”
“Ah! It was the other way around with me. First you say you’re gay, then you tell me you love me.”
“I only dated her a few times.”
“Merde, Lang! She wouldn’t be that angry if you hadn’t led her on, and then dropped the other sock!”
“The other shoe.”
“The sock, the shoe, you should be locked up.” She laughed. “You’re a menace.”
Huguette’s little tirade took the edge off my sudden confession of love. We were both laughing by the time we reached Roundelay.
I drove the Aurora up past the gates and left it and her in the driveway. I never drove the car to work. I always got a ride with one of the other waiters at Sob Story.
After I finished getting the sand off my feet, then going into the cottage to shower and dress, I was headed down toward the gate when I saw Huguette roar off alone in the Aurora.
My mother told me what had happened later that night after I got home. Franklin had filled her in on the contretemps taking place up in the big house.
Nevada had invited a staff member of The Bentley Academy to drop in at any time, to discuss the idea of Huguette enrolling there.
A Ms. Hamilton was waiting at Roundelay when we’d arrived from the beach.
It was the first Huguette had heard anything about a plan to send her to boarding school in Pennsylvania that autumn.
It was the first she’d heard that her folks were packing up and moving back to New York City. Mrs. Rochan was arriving in New York that Monday to apartment hunt.
“Where was Huguette going in the Aurora?”
“Apparently she went into the village and called that French boyfriend of hers,” said my mother. “The Rochans had already told him their plans. And he told Huguette that he wanted her to stay here and go to school here.”
“How did she take it?”
“You know her. She’s a firecracker! She came back to Roundelay and lit into Mr. Nevada.”
“I don’t blame her,” I said.
“I vote with the Rochans,” said my mother.
I said, “You always vote with the majority, Mom.”
“Don’t tell me you’re disappointed—the way you’ve been carrying on with her.”
“I vote with her,” I said. “It’s a lousy trick!”
That night I couldn’t think about anything else. Customers who ordered “Homemade Pot Roast fresh from the oven” were just as liable to get “Our Chef’s delicious Fillet of Boneless Chicken Breasts.” Red-wine drinkers snapped that they’d ordered white, and vice versa. McCaffery threatened to demote me to dishwasher.
When I got back to the cottage, I walked barefoot down to the beach, watching the lights of Roundelay, hoping somehow Huguette would show up there.
I stayed for hours. Mom woke up when I returned.
“Lang?” she called out to me. “Are you all right?”
“I’m all right.”
She knew that I wasn’t, knew why I wasn’t.
“Those people solve their own problems in their own ways, honey. She’ll be okay.”
“Yeah,” I answered, but I wasn’t sure she would be.
THIRTY
“DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME,” she said. “Were you worried?”
I was driving. She was sitting beside me, one hand reaching back to calm Plato, who was on his way to the vet to have a sore paw checked.
“Why do you think I called so early?” I asked her. “Of course I was worried!”
“And Uncle Ben doesn’t think Franklin gossips.” She laughed. “So you know everything,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“No you don’t…. You don’t know my side of the story.”
“What’s your side?”
“Stay, Plato! Here’s my side,” she began.
That was when she told me she wasn’t going to Boston with Nevada. Instead, she was going to the Adirondacks with Cog Wheeler on Sunday, after his gig at The House of Stars.
“When Uncle Ben gets back to Roundelay, I won’t be there.”
I tried to keep my voice calm. Plato was jumping around in the backseat, and she was hollering at him in between telling me all this.
“And then what?” I asked her.
“Uncle Ben will never think of looking for me there. He’ll never think I’m with Cog, either. I told him that if he thought his little plan to fix me up with Cog would work, he was wrong! I said I was never going to see Cog again, and I certainly wasn’t going to Boston!”
“He’ll find you,” I said. “You know him.”
“Not for a while, he won’t. And before he does, let him suffer. I want to hurt him!”
Plato leaped to the front seat.
“I’ve got him,” she said. “He’ll sit here on my lap.”
“Do you want to hurt me, too? Because you will.”
“You’ll have Alex…. He can’t have it both ways, can he, Plato?”
“Get him in the backseat,” I said. “I can’t concentrate.”
“He’s all right.”
“He’s slobbering on my sleeve!”
“The way you thought I would when you called?” She laughed. “You thought I would be all in pieces, but I’m a tough dog too, aren’t I, Plato?”
I said, “You don’t love Cog, Huguette.”
“I want to be with someone who loves me more than I love him.”
“You think Cog loves you that much?”
“He loves me more than I love him, because I don’t love him to death! I just love him a little.”
“Nevada will kill Cog!”
“He won’t kill him. And whatever he does do will only be good publicity for The Failures.”
I didn’t say anything for a while. I didn’t know what to say. It was like watching an accident about to happen, like the night in the parking lot when Alex received the first blow and I stood there watching. For a long time after, I kept going over that scene and thinking that I should have done something, helped Alex some way, not just stood the
re frozen.
She began babbling to Plato, stupid stuff about how they weren’t going to be bossed around by Nevada, making the chow pant and drool all the harder.
As we pulled up at the vet’s, I finally said, “And what’s to stop me from telling Nevada this plan?”
She was attaching the lead to Plato’s collar. “You know I’d only make another plan,” she said, “so you wouldn’t be protecting me, Lang. I don’t need anyone’s protection!” She opened the car door while she said, “And what about your big feeling for me, huh? Would you betray me too?”
I let her go ahead of me, the dog tugging her toward the door. I had to sit there a minute and get control.
She looked over her shoulder at me, that big grin, her hand raised, bracelets jangling down her arm. “C’mon!” she called. “You afraid to visit the doctor?”
A few days later, when I was painting the railings by the gate, Nevada strolled down for a chat. Huguette was up in the pool swimming.
“She’s decided not to go to Boston,” he said. “Did she tell you?”
“She told me.”
“She’s disappointed in me right now, but that’ll pass. And the scene in Boston is going to be chaotic, anyway. It’ll all be videotaped, too. She can watch it someday after she simmers down.”
His control over the rottweilers always amazed me. Not a peep out of them when he was on the scene. Before, they’d barked and snarled at me, and A must have lost three pounds charging the fence.
“Poor Cog is bearing the brunt of it,” Nevada said. “She won’t even speak to him on the telephone.” She spoke to him whenever we drove into the village. Her secret calls were to Cog now, instead of Martin.
“She says she wants nothing to do with any males.” Nevada chuckled. “I guess she doesn’t count gay ones…. Penner, where did you get that paint?”
“Franklin gave it to me.”
“It’s too thin. You’ll need to do two coats.” Then he shrugged. “The thing with Cog wouldn’t have worked, anyway. He’s too pragmatic. He doesn’t have time for a schoolgirl. I think it was Irving Berlin who said the toughest thing about success is that you’ve got to keep on being a success.”
Our “chats” usually went that way, Nevada doing all the chatting. For once I didn’t mind. I couldn’t look him in the eye, either.