I hoped my figure was okay, that I wasn’t gaining weight from living up here. Again I felt someone was watching me. I looked behind myself in the dresser mirror. The knotty pine walls were dark and shadowy. I turned and looked all around me. I slowly walked the few steps to the small closet and opened the door. There hung my few pieces of clothes that had been salvaged. My pretty black flowered party dress with the Saks Fifth Avenue label inside. My long layered floral skirt and a silky cream-colored, peasant-style blouse. And thank goodness I had my Frye boots. They were my one “nice” pair of shoes, and with my boots and my tweed jacket I could go anywhere. Except that up here, I wasn’t sure there’d be many opportunities to wear these things. Every once in a while one of the girls in town came to school all dressed up, probably an outfit from going to a wedding I guessed. Maybe one day I’d get to wear my prairie skirt and tweed jacket for school. Also, I liked Dale a lot and I thought he would like it if I wore that outfit if we went out together again.
Okay, I felt better. Thinking about clothes always cheered me up. Thinking about Dale made me feel safe and happy. I shut the closet door. Nothing scary in there. I felt like I was back to normal so I shut off the light on the dresser and climbed into bed.
I didn’t remember my room ever being so dark once the light was off. I closed my eyes and to my dismay the feeling of being watched came back immediately. I told myself it was stupid. Brandy was sound asleep. He’d know if anyone was nearby even outside. He’d never sleep through someone being near the cabin, especially at night. I lay on my side and stared at the gun. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, go to sleep,” I told myself several times. In my head there was only one refrain: Aunt Evie is dead.
I fell asleep for a while, I don’t know how long, when I woke up suddenly and found Aunt Evelyn in the pitch dark, at the foot of my bed, watching me.
I opened my eyes and there she was.
I closed my eyes and opened them again and there she was. I stared back at her and our eyes met.
I closed my eyes and pulled the covers over my head.
I lay for a long time not moving, praying, praying, “Please God, make her go away. Make her leave me alone. Make her be gone.”
I peeked out from under the covers and there she was, still standing, staring, blinking from time to time. I knew why she was there. She blamed me. She blamed me for putting my mother on that first bus and making the decision that lead to the demise of our family, for the end of my parents’ marriage, for my mother having to sleep on the floor, for my dad calling her screaming, for Preston having to take a loan for his final year of college, for my living up here in the cabin alone as the winter was setting in.
She blamed me for all of it.
She blamed me for her death.
In some way it was all true.
What I did by putting my mom on the Greyhound bus that day, killed Aunt Evelyn. What I did that day killed my parents’ chances of getting back together. What I did that day killed our family.
I woke up the next morning to no ghost, just silence, and then the click of Brandy’s nails on the wood flooring as he came into my room to wake me. I got dressed and took him out into the cold morning for a walk.
THANKSGIVING
The days were full and I was enjoying my new life. Dale was becoming my closest friend and sort of boyfriend. He worked in the taconite mine during the week and played with his brother and their band in bars around the Iron Range region on weekends. He lived with his parents so he had plenty of money and was saving money to, as he said, “either take some college courses or do something nice for somebody someday.” He was a whimsical sort of soul, not intellectual at all, but with a deep sense of empathy and morality. I knew that there wasn’t a nicer person on the planet. Dale was unlike anyone I’d ever known. He was unafraid, unfazed by hard work or hardship. He had low expectations of what life was going to give him and he was full of wonder at what he already had. He loved his parents, his brother and sister. He was utterly remarkable to me. His presence in my life was a balm to everything that had been wrong.
By late November, he felt comfortable enough with our relationship to stop in unannounced at the cabin on a weekday evening. I heard his car on the gravel first and smiled as I was sitting at the kitchen table doing homework. Brandy looked at me and wagged his tail, knowing it was Dale just by the sound of the engine, the opening and closing of the door. By this time, Brandy was having trouble getting up and down out of the furniture so he stayed curled up in the chair and just wagged his tail and grinned at me.
I heard Dale’s footsteps at the door. He knocked and I jumped up to answer. There he was at the door, so tall and handsome, with cheeks pink from the cold. He was wearing the army surplus pea coat I suggested he buy. He liked clothes and had taken me into Virginia a couple of times to help him pick things out. He said he was so glad to have met someone who knew how. He would always insist we go to the women’s shop I liked and he bought me something as “payback.”
He came in and gave me a wrapped paper package that held a bouquet of fresh cut roses. He was really into stuff like that.
“Dale, Wow! These are beautiful. Thank you!”
“Beautiful flowers for a beautiful girl. For the best girl I know.”
The thing about Dale was that he could say things like that with no sense of cynicism or irony because he had none of either. Honestly, he probably didn’t know what those words meant.
I put the roses in an old cut-crystal vase that sat on the stone mantel over the fireplace. The mantel held a wooden plaque of a mounted, unusually large small-mouth bass, caught by Preston when he was a young boy. “Beginner’s Luck” was the caption under the photo that had appeared in the small-town newspaper the next day. The heavy cement mantel extended out like a shelf on the big stone chimney. On the mantel’s face, etched red letters, that had become faint with time, read “Life Is Too Short To Be Little.”
Another sign. My family liked signs I guess. Slogans. Manifestos.
I walked over to put the roses on the mantel and said, “Dale, the one thing you have to remember is … ”
“I know. I got it. Don’t tell me. ‘Life Is Too Short To Be Little’.”
“Dale I know you didn’t remember. You’re just saying it now because you’re reading it.”
“Well that can’t be true because you know I don’t know how to read.”
“Dale.”
“Sidney.”
“What are you going to eat for dinner?”
“A sliced apple with peanut butter.”
“No you’re not. We’re going out. Put on your coat. Where do you want to go?”
“Burger King.”
“We can do better than that.”
“You decide.”
“Okay let’s go to the Black Bear Cafe. You can get a bacon cheeseburger there. They’re a lot better than Burger King.”
“Sweet.”
“Yes, you are.”
We drove in his warm car to the Black Bear and I was cheered by the cozy old-time atmosphere. I was surprised to see many of the booths full on a weeknight. We had a fun dinner and Dale paid the bill, not willing to take any cash from me.
We drove back and Dale came down to the cabin again. I had to help Brandy get out of the chair to go outside. He didn’t like to because it was cold and he wasn’t doing well.
I helped him down and herded him to the door. He didn’t need a leash because he certainly was of no mind to run off on his own.
He did what he had to do and shuffled as fast as he could back inside.
Dale asked about him. “He has had a heart problem for a long time and it’s getting worse and he doesn’t really like it up here. It’s not a place for boxers. It’s more for golden retrievers or huskies.”
Dale said his family had never had a dog so he didn’t know much. He patted Brandy’s head while I put food and water in his bowls.
Dale made several trips out to the woodpile to bring in four or f
ive heavy armloads of wood and stacked them in the near empty wood box. We stoked the wood stove and he started playing my guitar.
We sang and talked about doing some songs as duets for his band’s next show. I had never played a public stage or bar show that was not about religion or a talent contest. I was thrilled at the possibility and said I’d surely do it if they asked.
Then the guitar got set aside and we picked up where we left off the last time we were alone together. I was so conveniently alone. He could have stayed all night and no one would have known. My body and my heart wished he would. If I could have, I would have had him stay with me all the time. I wanted to curl up in his warm arms and sleep without bad dreams, without visits from ghosts, without fear of intruders or crazy fathers. But I thought I would regret losing my virginity to the first guy I dated after running away to the Northwoods and living alone out on a lake in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t want to be slutty and so predictable in a trashy way. So we kept our clothes on and made out feverishly as the night wore on, until his hard crotch was pressed up against mine for so long and in such an insistent way that we came to some form of glorious climax that came as a great surprise.
After he left, I rinsed out my moist and sticky jeans in the kitchen sink and hung them up to dry by the fire. On the bookshelf, I found a book that I remembered seeing years before called The Victorian Erotic Reader. I remembered flipping through passages describing sweaty bodies grinding together. I wasn’t interested at the time, but I was now. With no siblings, no close friends from childhood, no parent, and no access to the rest of the world, I had nowhere to turn for information besides my grandfather’s bookshelf. Thank goodness for the Erotic Reader because it described just what was happening to Dale and me, and there was much more detail about what could happen if we decided to take our clothes off. I wasn’t ready for any of that yet, but kept the book next to my bed, alongside the pistol in its felt bag.
When I was at school the next week, I walked by the glass doors of the school office and both the secretary Mrs. Briggs and the principal Mr. Harlan motioned for me to come in. They both looked very concerned. “What? What’s wrong? Did I do something?”
The principal looked at Mrs. Briggs and she frowned and looked back at him and at me. “Sidney, step into my office please.”
I liked Mr. Harlan and I figured that if I’d done something wrong it couldn’t be that bad because I couldn’t think of a single thing I’d done.
“What’s going on?”
“Sidney, a man is calling us saying he’s your father, I believe he’s telling the truth.”
He got out a piece of paper. “What’s your father’s full name?”
I answered.
“And his date of birth?”
I answered.
“Yes, I do believe it’s him. You know I have known since you started here that you were out there alone. I could have reported you to social services, had you put into foster care. I knew you had good intentions. So far, you’ve been a great addition to our school community. You’re a good student and a good person. I think you’re really going to amount to something some day. We all do. I’m sorry to make this unpleasant for you but your father has said some things to the secretary and I have to ask you some very personal questions. But first of all, when will you be eighteen?”
“Not until February.”
“Okay. That’s not that far off. So, the big thing is that your father is calling us saying we are helping you cover up the fact that you are pregnant and trying to seek an abortion.”
My face immediately got hot. I was embarrassed, and angry, “My dad has no right to call you. My mother has custody.”
“Okay, that’s good. That helps. Could I get your mother on the phone and would she say that too?”
“Yes. Of course. The only reason she isn’t here the whole time is because of the divorce and stuff.”
“I see. Of course. But Sidney, is what your father saying about your situation true? I’m sorry but I feel I need to know. I feel responsible to some degree because you are enrolled in my school under the pretense of proper supervision at home when I know that there is none. At least none right now.”
“I’m a virgin.”
Silence. His eyes met mine. I did not look away. He eventually dropped his eyes.
“Good for you. Not many of those in this school, I hate to say.”
“No. Frankly, I’ve noted that myself.”
“All right Sidney. I’m going to make a call to a lawyer I know, but when your father calls, he asks to have us take you out of class to speak to him. He is very irate and irrational. I believe you are under no obligation to speak with him. I believe we are under no obligation to require you to speak with him.”
“I don’t have to talk to him. Number one, he’s not my custodial parent. Number two, he’s an asshole.”
His mouth started in a slight smile, but he remembered himself and frowned.
“Sidney, please refrain from using vulgarities when addressing your superiors.”
“Sorry. It’s not like the other kids never do.”
“Again, Sidney, we think you’ve got a bright future ahead of you.”
“Yeah, okay, sorry.”
He rose from his old wooden desk. He came around and put a hand on my shoulder. “We’ll handle your dad. You keep your mind on your studies so you can get your diploma and move on to bigger things.”
“Not sure what that’ll be, but whatever … ”
“Don’t worry, Sidney, everything’s going to work out.”
“Thank you.”
Thanksgiving’s long holiday weekend was coming and I got a call from my mother saying she and Seymour were coming up and bringing groceries. They arrived the day before Thanksgiving and I helped carry in bags of fresh produce, breads, pastries from my favorite bakery in Chicago, and the turkey. My mother was quiet and seemed irritable. She saw Brandy get slowly down off the chair and shuffle over to greet her and immediately started, “Oh Brandy. Oh you poor thing. Sidney, what have you done to him? What have you been feeding him? Have you given him his pill?”
I fed him just the way she told me to, but the pill was hard for me to remember and hard to get him to swallow so sometimes I skipped it, especially in the mornings when I was in a hurry to get to the bus stop.
“Yes, mother, I’ve been giving him everything.”
“Well, this is it you know. He’s not going to make it. He can’t go on like this. He’s suffering.”
“No, he’s not Mom, he’s fine.”
“Sidney. What is wrong with you? Open your eyes! Look how he’s changed! He’s so bloated and lethargic.”
“No he’s not Mom, stop saying that.”
“Well, after the holiday I can drive in with him to Virginia to the veterinarian we like there. We’ll see what he has to say.”
On Thanksgiving morning, with my mom and Seymour both in the kitchen working on stuffing the turkey, I decided to try something I’d been too scared to do with no one around. I got the white ice skates down from the nail on the wall. I’d hidden the gun back in the pink desk before my mom got there, and the chair was back tucked in at the desk. I put on my red union suit, my jeans, my new white blouse with my red sweater over it.
I got my chopper’s mitts and my new rabbit-fur earmuffs I bought with Dale. I put on my vest and coat, but it was very sunny and there was no wind, so I wasn’t sure if I’d need my coat.
I headed out the door with Seymour explaining that there was thin ice too close to the shore and too far out and that I’d better stay close to the cabin so they could hear me scream if I went through. I knew how deep the lake was and I wouldn’t go out past where I could stand up. I’d heard from the kids at school that people had been venturing out onto the ice so I wanted to try.
There was a dusting of snow, but it wasn’t deep, so I could easily walk out to the edge of our property and look over to see where to try to climb down the rocky bank to the water’s edge
. Our yard up to the edge was grass and scattered trees. Once the bank began to slope it was rocks and brush and trees all growing at an angle in the slope to the water. I picked my way along, using the chair as I went as a steadying tool. I made it down and slid the chair out in front of me.
The ice was clear and I could see small fish swimming in the shallow water. I could see that the ice was fairly thick, I had heard you only needed it to be three inches thick to support a grown man, or even a car. I pushed the chair and it slid a long way. The ice was so smooth! I shuffled out in my hiking boots pushing the chair until I was out of the shade of the shoreline trees and in the full sun. What a glorious view! I could look all up and down the point we lived on, and I could see way out across the widest part of the lake toward town where my school was. I could see all the small and larger cabins on the far side of our bay as well. With no leaves on the trees, everything was exposed. Along our point, it was disconcerting to see all the other cabins with their windows boarded up or covered over in newspaper and only our brave stream of smoke rising and our windows bright with electric lights in the living room and kitchen.
I sat down on the chair and laced up the skates. I stood and got my bearings. I had skated a fair amount as a child in Chicago. There was an outdoor rink near my house that I remembered walking to with my skates over my shoulder along with the kids from across the street. I skated carefully, one foot in front of the other, worrying that if I fell down I might go through the ice.
But the ice was strong and the day was bright. I was surprised by how warm I could get skating along on the clear ice. I felt like I was getting a sunburn on my cheeks but I didn’t care. It was as if the entire lake was a huge private skating rink. I could skate forever! I could skate out to the nearest island and all around it. I could skate to the farthest island and around that. I had heard that there were parts of the lake that were spring-fed or had some kind of difference in the current which didn’t freeze as solidly. I heard stories of people out on snowmobiles going through the ice even in the deepest winter. So I stayed in front of the cabin and skated back and forth. I waved up at the kitchen window from time to time and my mother or Seymour waved back. My mother seemed to be really getting a kick out of seeing me out skating and I felt happy. It was so quiet, not the slightest breeze. No leaves rustling as in summer. Stillness and glorious bright sunlight ruled the day.
A Girl Called Sidney Page 20