After we make out for a while Craig pushes up my T-shirt and touches my breasts with his fingertips. Even though we've done this part before, I'm suddenly nervous. It might feel good if I wasn't so worried about what's going to happen next. I can feel his hard cock against my leg, and it makes me wonder why men have to be built so weird. No wonder some women are lesbians—at least they know what they're getting into, or at the very least, where everything is stored.
I keep repeating to myself, This is supposed to be really fun and exciting, but the mantra doesn't help to ease my anxieties. In fact, it makes them worse, because now on top of everything else I'm worried about not being able to enjoy something I'm supposed to be enjoying. What if all those years spent pretending to be a stoical Leni-Lenape Indian permanently damaged my emotions?
The kissing part really is terrific. But I've been kissing since seventh grade. I recall how back in middle school I'd been so nervous about just plain kissing—saliva regulation, lip pressure, length of kiss, how to breathe properly. And then in ninth grade how I simultaneously dreaded and dreamed about tongue kissing.
I consider calling for a time-out just to buy a few minutes in order to think things through. But what is there to think about? Either I want to be closer to Craig or I don't. It's not as if I have to take Ms. Olivia's advice. However I conclude that I'm just panicky about doing something wrong and embarrassing myself.
Meantime, Craig doesn't seem to be experiencing any apprehensiveness. In fact, it's just the opposite. While he is passionately kissing me, his one hand slides down to caress my stomach. Then he places a knee on each side of my waist and I can feel his heart beating almost on top of mine, like two bombs ticking. In fact, if our heartbeats don't synchronize soon I fear that one may knock the other out.
Craig gently slips his hand down the front of my panties, and I try hard not to notice. But it feels as if some smoke from Mr. Bernard's Cuernavacan chorizo churros—aka fireball donuts—is exiting my brain by way of my ears, and I begin to sweat.
"Have you ever done this before?" I ask.
"Yes." His voice is warm and smooth, like melted chocolate.
"What I meant was have you done more than this?"
"Yes."
"Oh."
Craig's tongue softly circles my left breast, and from all the movies I'd seen I imagine that right about now I should have my back arched, head thrown back, hair arranged in a tussled fashion on the pillow, and be writhing with pleasure. Only I'm thinking so hard about what I'm supposed to do next that he may as well be a nurse administering a sponge bath after a tractor-trailer accident.
"Craig?" I whisper.
"What's the matter?" He comes up for air and pulls a chunk of my hair out of his mouth in the process.
It occurs to me that now is the perfect moment to halt everything. To simply say that third base had been an overstatement, when what I actually meant was rounding second. On the other hand, I don't want to stop. I like Craig. Though I don't know if I love him. Because I don't even know what love is. I make a mental note to ask Ms. Olivia what love is. She'll know.
And besides, I want to have experiences. I don't want to just sit around my whole life and read about other people's experiences. Craig traces the curves of my body with his fingers while we kiss, and for a brief moment I feel the sea rising up in my heart. I place my hand on the front of his shorts, subtly, as if I didn't do it exactly on purpose, that I may have been reaching for a barrette. ,
He rubs against me and says, "Umm."
At this point in Ms. Olivia's amorous tales the interested parties tear off each other's bodice and breeches, or they remove their own clothes in a seductive manner—for instance, by doing a veil dance. For us, though, it's more like rushing to get ready for gym inside a crowded locker room. After Craig slips down his dryer-safe Fruit of the Loom underwear they become tangled around his right ankle, and when he finally kicks them off they act as a slingshot, sending the metal tissue box holder flying off my night table and crashing into the closet door.
He places my hand back where it had been, only now it's against his nakedness. I gasp, mostly from shock, but I think Craig confuses it for a passionate sigh, and he slides my hand slowly up and down his cock. Somehow the top sheet becomes snarled between his elbow and my armpit. We can't get it sorted out because the ends are still anchored firmly underneath the mattress. Craig eventually pulls the entire sheet off the bed and hurls it onto the floor, and we both giggle and my heart finally stops racing. Gently I move my hand up and down and then he places his hand around mine and moves it faster until he suddenly stops, squeezes my wrist, and lets out an enormous groan. I feel his semen running down the inside of my thigh.
"I'd better get some tissues." He says this in an efficient tone of voice, like someone who has had prior experience with preventing body fluids from leaking onto linens.
"They're on the floor next to the closet," I say. "Near your underwear."
We both laugh self-consciously. He retrieves the box and wipes the inside of my thigh and then himself. It's sweet how he attends to me first.
"Do you need to take a shower?" I ask.
"I don't think so," he says. "Can I do stuff to you?"
"What kind of stuff?" For some reason I don't think he's talking about a manicure.
"You know, to make you feel good."
"I'm kind of tired. But thanks anyway."
"You're welcome. And thank you."
We sound as if we're exchanging compliments on each other's casseroles at the church potluck supper. But maybe it's customary to thank a person for a sexual encounter. And if one person doesn't have a climax, does he or she still formally express gratitude? So much to learn ...
Craig curls up behind me so that we're like two teaspoons in a drawer, and by the sound of his steady breathing I can tell that he's fallen asleep. Personally, I don't know if I'll ever be able to sleep again. I keep replaying the movie of everything that has happened. Then I become slightly excited imagining the "stuff" that Craig suggested he could do to make me feel good. Maybe I should have said okay. I decide that next time I will.
His big furry arm hangs over my shoulder, and at first it's cozy and romantic, but then it begins to feel more like a lead weight. I shift underneath him, but after a few minutes I still can't get comfortable. And he's snoring, softly at first, but gathering steam, like a locomotive pulling out of the station. I thought you had to be my father's age to snore. When I attempt to move out from under him he awakens slightly, rolls over, and faces the wall. But he's tall and broad-shouldered, and now our backs press up against each other and my arm dangles off the edge of the bed and starts to go numb.
I turn over to face his back, since this seems to be the best use of space, if you treat the whole business as a geometry problem. But the bed begins heating up like a blast furnace and Craig awakens just long enough to push the blanket off us both. My feet quickly become cold, and I try to rearrange the covers so they're only on my side of the bed. But I still can't fall asleep.
Eventually Craig turns back around and once again we're facing each other. Only now he's fully awake.
"Hallie," he says.
"Yeah."
"Promise you won't be mad?"
Mad? Is he going to break up with me? And here I thought the hand job had gone really well. "Mad about what?"
"I'm not used to sleeping with another person."
"Me neither," I admit.
"Maybe I should go home."
I consider the options. In my heart I don't want Craig to leave just yet. "Maybe you could sleep downstairs in the Florida Room? Olivia and Ottavio always take a drive on Sunday afternoon, and Mr. Bernard will be off to his garage sales by now."
"Okay."
Together we trudge downstairs and make Craig a bed on the pullout couch, draw the curtains in the sunlit room, and kiss good night, or rather good afternoon. When I glance at him from the doorway he appears to have already fallen back to sleep.
Chapter 61
Luck of the Draw ♦
When I next awaken it's dark outside. But the light is on in the hallway and I can smell the rich aroma of lamb chops and rosemary rising from downstairs. It must be around dinnertime. I wonder if Craig is still asleep in the Florida Room. After pulling on my jeans and a sweatshirt, I dig around the dresser for a new ponytail holder. The old one is lost somewhere in my bed.
Descending the staircase, I glance at the grandfather clock in the entrance hall. It's half past seven. Wow. I must have gone into a cayenne pepper coma. From the kitchen I hear the clattering of dishes woven into the agitated voices of Mr. Bernard and Ms. Olivia disagreeing about something, as usual.
In the living room Ottavio and Mr. Gil are sipping cognac and playing chess, as they often do in the evenings while Mr. Bernard reads or plans menus and Ms. Olivia writes.
I slip through the hallway so they don't hear me and quietly pass by the swinging door to the kitchen, which is closed. The Florida Room is dark, and when I switch on the closest table lamp I see that Craig is long gone, the bed has been put back together, and the linens are neatly folded in a pile on the Judge's old armchair.
"If she doesn't want to go, then she shouldn't go," I overhear Ms. Olivia saying. "I didn't force you to attend design school when we both know you should have gone."
"That's exactly my point, Mother. I wish you had made me go! If you'd been a little more like Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate and a little less like Angela Lansbury in Mame, then perhaps I would have—"
"As you well know, I don't believe in pushing people, young or otherwise. And furthermore, we're not her parents and so we have absolutely no say in the matter."
"Well, then what's she going to do? Mow the lawn here forever, like an episode of The Twilight Zone?”
"That's not the point, Bernard. It's her decision."
"There's a whole world out there waiting for her?
"Let me tell you something, Bertie, the world is an oyster, true enough, only sometimes you get the pearl, sometimes you get a handful of sand, and sometimes you get food poisoning."
"Then why did you give her the application to begin with? You're the one who started this whole thing!"
"You don't need to raise your voice, by the way. My hearing happens to be just fine," Ms. Olivia says. "I believe in presenting people with choices, not in making choices for them."
"You know I'm right," Mr. Bernard angrily announces before exiting the kitchen. He runs smack into me as he storms past the pantry, down the hallway, and into the foyer, grabs his jacket out of the closet, and heads out the front door. I follow him out the door, around the side of the house, and to the backyard. It's a cool spring night, with a bright sliver of a moon hanging just above the orchard treetops. The universe is strung with thousands of tiny lights and the shiny white apple blossoms resting in the tree branches look like stars sewn across a bright blue circus tent.
Mr. Bernard pauses in front of the garden. "Can you smell the lilies?" He stops and takes a deep breath. "I suppose you overheard us."
"Yes."
"And?"
"You think I should go?" I ask hesitantly.
"It may be that it's time to throw in the trowel," he says. "But would you mind finally telling me why you wouldn't attend high school?"
"You really want to know?" I say.
"Yes."
"The bells."
"The what?"
"It was like being a rat in a maze. There's a bell for everything—five minutes to homeroom, start of homeroom, end of homeroom, three minutes till next class, one minute until next class, next class, ten minutes until the end of that class, one minute until the end of that class, and on and on all day long. There's even a late bell that rings exactly sixty seconds after the regular class bell—as if you don't know you're late. I couldn't take it anymore."
"Ha!" Bernard starts to chuckle. Then he laughs even harder. Then he bends over and begins to choke. "The bells?" he wheezes, though he can barely breathe now.
"Yeah. What's so funny? How about I put fifty frigging alarm clocks in your store and you see what it's like?"
"No, I'm sorry. It's just that, Jesus—"
"What?"
"Nothing, I guess. I mean, it just goes to show you ..."
But I'm serious. "That's not all. They start it all over again at the end of the day. There's a bell to go to your locker and then one to announce that the buses have arrived and then another to signal that the buses are leaving. Then there are after-school bells for detention and the four-twenty buses and the five o'clock buses and the six-ten buses."
"Bells, bells, bells," Mr. Bernard chants, still gasping through his hearty laughter. "It reminds me of that poem by Edgar Allan Poe. And now that I think of it, it's quite maddening to read."
"By the time you settle down and take out whatever supplies you need or change into gym clothes, you only end up doing something for twenty minutes—sketch four lines of a still life in the art room or read five pages of The Odyssey in English class or jump on a trampoline eight times—and then the bell rings and you go on to twenty minutes of something else. It's like being in a science experiment."
"I see. This bell system would appear to favor the student with the shorter attention span."
"I suppose so," I say. "As a matter of fact, they aren't even bells but electronic buzzers, timed to go off automatically."
"Like having electroshock therapy all day long," suggests Mr. Bernard.
"Yeah, only you don't feel better afterward. So now can I ask you something?"
"My life is an open cookbook," Mr. Bernard states good-naturedly.
"How come you didn't go to design school?"
"Design school, design school..." Mr. Bernard says as if he's rummaging through his long-term memory for exactly why he didn't go to design school, as if he can actually make me believe he's forgotten something like that. But instead of answering right away, he turns his gaze toward the sum-merhouse. Shadows from a nearby elm tree stoop over us like eavesdroppers.
"Didn't you think you had enough talent?" I persist.
Mr. Bernard seems to ponder this question.
"Were you worried about making a living?" I ask. "I mean, what artist isn't?"
"I was ... I didn't attend design school because ... have you ever heard Mother speak of a poet named Rilke?"
"Yeah, only like all the time. Ms. Olivia says that Rilke believed we must rally toward exalted moments and that we must try to love the questions themselves."
"Exactly."
"But I've never understood exactly what all that means," I say, slightly embarrassed. "Unless it's like, you know, live for today."
"He also said that our fears are like dragons guarding our most precious treasures." Mr. Bernard pauses. "You understand that, don't you?"
"You were afraid?" I ask tentatively.
"Hesitant. .. irresolute ... skeptical."
"Uncertain?" I say helpfully.
"Afraid," he says.
"So ... that's normal. A person could be considered a good artist at his or her high school, or right here in town, but art school is the big leagues. Maybe I'm afraid, too."
"I—I don't think that you are," Mr. Bernard replies slowly. "In fact, I'm envious. Perhaps that's why I want you to go. It wasn't my ability I doubted. I don't possess the courage with which you and Mother seem to have been blessed. It enables you to just throw it all on the line. You know, bet the farm. Cast your fate to the wind."
"But that's not true!" I insist. "Look at the way you handled the police and the school Nazis and my parents, and look at the way you can steal... I mean rescue flowers from people's backyards!" I say.
"Hmm." Mr. Bernard seems to contemplate this laundry list of his strengths.
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br /> "Hallie, I'm a behind-the-scenes person. I guess I'm more like Father— well, I suppose most people would never guess that. But I operate close to the boundaries and just nip across the border every once in a while to taste life on the other side, to pluck a stargazer lily, and then quickly sneak back to my place before daybreak."
"But you're so different from anyone else I've ever met," I insist. "I want to be just like you when I grow up."
In the moonlight I watch Mr. Bernard toss his head back and chuckle at this suggestion. "That's awfully sweet," he says affectionately. "I can't imagine that I'm the idol of many girls your age."
"And Ms. Olivia," I add. "I want to be like her, too."
"Aha!" he says accusingly, as if the truth has finally come out.
I smile sheepishly. "Mr. Bernard?"
"Yes?"
"How come Ms. Olivia returned from Europe if all she was going to do once she moved back here is protest the American government the entire time?"
"Three reasons, I suppose. First, she loves this country and that's why she works to improve the bits and pieces she finds unappealing or not well thought out. And then she met Father and he proposed. And his life was here, of course."
"Oh, wow. I can't imagine meeting someone and then having the entire course of my life altered by a single kiss."
"In mother's case it was more like a kiss immediately followed by a glance, though not from the same gentleman. But it was the start of the Kennedy administration .. . Camelot," he says. "Love was in the air."
"You said there were three reasons Ms. Olivia left Paris."
"Mother claims that if you stay in any country too long you'll become a victim of American foreign policy, which she wouldn't wish upon anyone."
Mr. Bernard delivers this line to sound so much like Ms. Olivia that I can picture her saying it, and this makes me laugh.
"I have an idea," Mr. Bernard says.
"What's that?" I ask.
"Why don't you venture out and conquer the world and then come back and tell the three of us ... er, make that the four of us, or rather seven, including the rabbits, all about it?"
I'd always thought that having a place to return to would make it easier to leave. But for some reason it doesn't.
Beginner's Luck Page 35