by Jill Barnett
He didn’t say anything.
“I thought you should know. I’ll be eighteen soon.” She turned toward him then, and his hands fell away. In the absence of his touch, she felt exposed.
His expression was unreadable. “But you’re seventeen now?”
She nodded, waiting for him to say “Nice knowing you, kid.”
“Like the Beatles,” he said. “‘I’ll never dance with another, wooo . . .’”
She burst out laughing, half in relief and half because he went on to tease her by singing another two verses in a goofy voice. He didn’t stop until the band struck up again.
“Good song,” they both said at the same time, one of those rare moments of clarity when you realize that something might be choreographed by fate.
“Laurel,” he said—just Laurel—and threaded his warm fingers with hers, pulling her around for a dance and setting loose a thousand fireflies in her stomach. So close, their bodies brushed lightly, and he smelled like Ivory soap and aftershave. She rested her hand on his shirtfront, where the cotton was soft and warm, as though it covered a good heart.
He moved his hand slowly across her lower back. It was the kind of touch a girl didn’t forget, a little possessive. “Dance with me.” But he wasn’t really asking, because they were already moving. Behind him, there were so many stars in the sky they should have lit up the whole island, like fireworks, or volcanic ash, or as if all the fireflies inside her had just flown free.
Dancing slowly, he placed her hand on the back of his neck, and over his shoulder hung an enormous platinum moon. “Tonight I want to dance in the sand with you, Laurel-Like-the-Tree Peyton. With everybody here watching us.”
“Why would they be watching us?”
“Because you’re the prettiest girl on the island.” His expression told her he really believed what he’d just said. Funny thing. At that moment she believed it, too.
When Cale was with a girl, time simply disappeared. There were no med school rejection letters, no sound of Victor’s voice or expectations he could never satisfy, no perfect brother’s footsteps to follow in. He didn’t have to win or lose basketball games or play the game Jud’s way. It was like going back in time to a place where he could drink Coca-Cola, eat egg salad sandwiches and Twinkies, and talk with someone who told him he could be anything.
He and Laurel sat on a beach bench and talked, struck by a hunger to learn everything about each other in a single night. A few people lingered around the pier after the band quit, sitting in the sand or on the steps to the pier; they talked near buildings with bars facing the water, and tried to keep the night alive in the same way Cale wanted to, while Laurel dug through a macramé purse slumped at her feet. Her brown hair, the color of polished walnut, hung down and hid her expression from him.
He’d understood quickly that the key to her thoughts showed in the pattern of her features: a hint of humor when she teased him, the laugh lines as he teased her; a look of mutual understanding between them the second he told her his parents were long dead, and the hollowness beneath her facial bones as she talked about leaving Seattle. A strange, bleak emotion like enmity changed the pallor of her skin when she admitted she’d never really known her father.
She felt things as deeply as he did. So much of his life sliced clean through him in deep cuts that took long years to heal, if ever. But when she looked up from her purse, holding a crumpled cellophane bag filled with saltwater taffy, he felt something like joy. Her smile spun of whimsy said Eureka! and Cale wondered which one of them had found gold.
The longer he watched her, the more he wanted to kiss her, to hold her body against his, hips pressed together, to touch her in secret damp places and lose himself inside this wonderful, lovely creature. He started to touch her—just to tuck her hair behind her ear—but pulled back, afraid if he did he might burn up right there. His hands wouldn’t stop. He knew from dancing with her. But there was a newness and fragility to meeting a girl like Laurel, a sense that he could say or do the wrong thing and she would walk away.
“Want some taffy?” she asked.
“Sure. The cheeseburger, fries, beer, and ice cream weren’t enough.”
“I didn’t eat all that. You did. I had a hot dog.”
“You had half a hot dog.”
“Half was enough. They make hot dogs from lips, hooves, and snouts.”
“And intestines,” he added without missing a beat. Their talk had a special rhythm, like two musicians who instinctively pick up on the next note. They had perfect pitch.
She unwrapped a piece of taffy.
“They’re all the same,” he said. “Red striped.”
“Cinnamon.” She held it up under his nose. “There is no other flavor.”
“Where’s the banana, the chocolate, the licorice? There are at least a dozen other flavors.”
“If I’m going to eat it, I only want the best.”
A rare lapse of silence balanced awkwardly between them. He hadn’t been completely honest with her about med school. Not a lie exactly. He walled up that inadequate part of himself with jokes and teasing and didn’t tell her he was failing at the most important thing in his life. She wanted the best, and tonight he needed to be more in her eyes, so he talked about basketball until he ran out of words.
She looked at her watch. “I need to get home.”
“I’ll walk you,” he said, giving her no choice. He had no idea what she was feeling, if he’d bored her senseless talking about sports like some jock. Before she could turn away, he took her hand and caught a small smile on her face as they walked under a streetlight. Okay, he thought. This is good.
Too soon she stopped at the corner of Descanso Street. “That’s my house.” She pointed to a gray island bungalow a few doors down, where a lamp glowed from a table in the front window. The shades were half drawn, a too-bright porch light shone above the door, and he could see the mosquitoes and moths circling blindly in the light.
As they approached, he took a chance. “We’re both free all week. Let’s go to the beach tomorrow.”
“Sure.”
“What’s your phone number?”
She rattled it off and he immediately forgot it. “How do you remember all the bones of the body?” she asked.
“I cheat.”
“Okay.” She wrote her number on his palm, then on each of his fingers. “Cheater’s notes.” She laughed, reminding him what that sound had done to him all night—a first taste of sugar when you’d lived your life on salt.
When she looked up at him, he felt taller, smarter, not the person he really was, but as if she were looking at someone she could love. He saw it in her face, in the stars in her eyes. He could leap tall buildings in a single bound. Maybe, just maybe, this was the girl who could love him for what he wasn’t.
He tilted her chin up and leaned down to kiss her. “The porch light,” she said, annoyed. “My mom still waits up for me.”
“No big deal.”
“It’s embarrassing.”
He reached up and unscrewed the light bulb. “Sometimes being tall is a good thing.” It took a minute for his eyes to adjust to the dark. Standing there like that, their breathing mingled, mouths so close, Cale could taste cinnamon taffy in the air, and they did almost burn up when he kissed her. Incendiary—a tree burning from a lightning strike, a match to dry leaves, a flood of desire so strong he had to break apart and step back, relieved for the darkness that hid his flushed skin but couldn’t disguise a longing heart.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he told her and she went inside without a word. He left, but stood under the corner streetlamp, compelled to look back at the house. Its angles were like the others on the street—ordinary—and nothing like the kind of place where an angel lived. Her silhouette was in the window, bent over the lamp. She looked right at him, stilled for a heartbeat or two, and placed her palm on the glass. He raised his hand, then stayed that way even after she’d turned out the light and he couldn’t s
ee her anymore.
Whistling, he walked home to the tune of a Beatles song, hands in his pockets, the fanciful presence of spring in the air, when nights were deep purple, when cinnamon taffy tasted like new love, and a dim life could suddenly brighten to endless possibilities.
11
Kathryn kept her car on the mainland, stored in a San Pedro garage—you needed a car in LA. So every day she walked the few blocks to her studio and shop along Avalon’s narrow streets, which splayed out from the waterfront like words on a Scrabble board and climbed up the hillsides to Spanish tiled homes scattered among the old-growth ironwoods. The town was touched in quaintness, with red and pink geraniums in planters and window boxes. Restaurants hung hand-painted signs and seldom used chalkboards, because you could smell the daily special a block away. The island’s uniqueness was born in the constant, drifting call of seagulls and the fact that more people walked on the pavement than tires rolled over it.
At 9:30 A.M. it was sixty-five degrees, and sunshine already warmed the walkways and asphalt. Kathryn stopped at a small side-street market to pick up tea and sugar for her studio. Neighborhood stores like this one were mostly nostalgic. Gone were the mainland days of fresh home delivery from the Helms Bakery wagon and Adohr Farms milk truck. Inside, no racks of Wonder Bread decorated with real balloons, no giant pickle jar on the counter, or open boxes of penny candy under it, just the pungent aroma of freshly ground coffee. But the market wasn’t cold and sleek and filled with more choices and brands than anyone ever really needed—the problem with things nowadays. Too many choices. Too many decisions. Life had become a supermarket.
In the checkout line, everyone in front of her talked about children and Easter services, the recent raise in library fines, so Kathryn glanced at the magazine rack next to the counter. Beneath the huge block letters of Look magazine was a headline touting “Growth and Achievement: Americans Talk About Their Work.” The name in stark white on black caught her first, as five full racks of Victor Banning stared back at her. The boxes of tea and sugar slipped from her hands. She reached for the magazine as someone set her groceries on the counter. Banning Oil was BanCo now, and run by the scion and father of the man who killed Jimmy.
“They have a place here, you know.”
Kathryn turned to the woman behind her. “What?”
“The Bannings. They have a house at Hamilton Cove. Don’t come here as often as they used to, but Victor Banning—the man on the cover there—has a hundred-footer called the Catalan. You can’t miss it when it comes in.”
“Is this your tea and sugar?” The girl behind the counter looked at her. “You want the magazine, too?”
“No. That’s all.” Kathryn put the magazine back, quickly paid, and left. When she set the paper bag on the work counter in her studio, the brown paper was crushed from her grip and she couldn’t remember walking there or unlocking the doors.
Banning Oil. Two words that could make her heart beat irregularly and turn her vision red. Banning service stations were part of the mainland, their big round blue-and-white signs hanging on street corners like 76 and Flying A, just blurs in her peripheral vision as she drove a few times a year over thoroughfares cluttered with businesses on both sides of the streets.
Yet with a single phrase—“They have a place here, you know”—her wonderful new world shrunk in size and went way off kilter. Back in the small bathroom attached to her studio she washed her face, as if she could wash away her raw feeling, then looked up into the mirror and braced her hands on the sink. She had been here before.
I have to let go of this, she thought. I’m not Julia. She made herself tea, which she sweetened with sugar, then became frustrated and overly angry when the lemon she kept on the counter was green and rotten. Her anger sent her out for another, so it was a while before she sat at her wheel and escaped the rest of the day. There was safety in the solitude of creation. She could lose herself there, even though it was sunny outside, the kind of clear day that made hiding difficult.
A little after five, when she walked inside the house, the phone was ringing. Stephen Randall wanted a date on Saturday. Kathryn said yes and hung up before she changed her mind. She had a queer feeling, not good, not bad, just a little scared at what lay before her. Evie wasn’t home when she called, and Laurel’s room was empty, so Kathryn went through her closet, looking for something to wear Saturday. When Laurel came home from the beach, Kathryn was sitting on the bed, surrounded by an explosion of out-of-date dresses, dark wool suits with skirts below the knee, and cardigan sweaters, clothes bought with Julia’s approval. She looked at her daughter standing in her doorway. “I have twenty-five pairs of shoes and no clothes.”
“These aren’t shoes, Mother.” Laurel dangled a patent-leather squash-heeled pump with a gold buckle from her finger. “Pilgrims wore these.”
“I guess I’ll have to take the boat over and do some serious shopping. You can help me come into 1970. Let’s go the day after tomorrow.”
Laurel’s face fell.
“What’s wrong?”
“I have plans, Mom. All week. It’s spring break.” She couldn’t miss the panic in Laurel’s voice, as if she thought Kathryn were going to take something away.
“Okay,” she said calmly. “I’ll go alone.”
Her daughter stood there in a lace cover-up over her striped bikini, straw beach bag in one hand, a sunburned nose and tanned legs glossy with cocoa butter. She was pink and glowing with sunshine and something that looked like a wild kind of happiness, nothing like the blue, lonely girl crying into her pillow the other night.
“Are you home for dinner?”
Laurel shook her head. “I’m going out. I need to hop in the shower.” Then she was gone. Kathryn was left in the middle of a Goodwill pile, struck by life again turning on a dime. Where was the White Rabbit? Two nights ago she couldn’t sleep with guilt over moving here in search of her own happiness. Selfish woman. Bad mother. Phrases that became mantras in her sleeplessness. This morning, her past reached right up and slapped her in the face. Now, her achingly lonely daughter was far too busy to go shopping with her, a trip she needed because she actually had a date. Kathryn Peyton on a date. Her new mantra? Change was good. Change was exciting. Change sent you in a new direction. At least that was what Evie kept telling her.
Laurel had always dreamed about love, the same kind of love her parents had: love opened the soul; love filled you, completed you; love made you a woman. Once discovered, love was joyous and wonderful and uncomplicated. So what was this wild thing burning inside of her, something she was afraid to name and turned her into molten lava? She would go out with the resolve to slow things, but her body moved toward Cale’s, inviting him to touch her in places deep and private. They went to the beach, ate burgers and ice cream, and kissed under the stars, telling each other about their lives and dreams, but not their fears. That would have made things too serious.
Still, between them everything moved unbelievably fast. A few kisses became long bouts of necking, and if Cale touched her in some ways she opened to his fingers and mouth and just let him do those things she craved. She told herself it was okay. They could touch and just stop. At home, she crawled into bed still wrapped in the soft damp remnants of what they had been doing, and in the morning the muscles under her arms ached from clinging for long hours to his wide shoulders and chest. Her nipples grew hard whenever she looked at him and when he kissed her, even when she was only thinking about him. Whose body was she living inside?
Four days after she met Cale, four days they had mostly spent together, he picked her up in a golf cart with a green striped awning edged in rope fringe.
“It looks like a candy cart,” she said, climbing in.
“It is.” He tossed a cellophane bag of red-and-white striped taffy in her lap, whipped the cart into a U-turn, and sped off.
Once they were out of town and up in the hills, he drove the golf cart as if they were trying to escape through a minefield,
all jerky turns and fast starts that made her laugh and grab on to him to stay in the seat. They reached an uphill stretch and the cart barely moved forward.
She touched his arm. “You need to whip the mice in the engine.”
“Funny.”
“Should I get out and push?”
“No, just lean back and relax before I have to do something to quiet your smart mouth.”
“Promises, promises,” she said and Cale slipped his arm around her and French-kissed her all the way uphill. At the crest in the rise, the sea breeze swept over the hills, sang through the treetops, and touched her face with the sting and taste of salt. Below, the blue harbor looked like a snow cone with a bite taken out of it and bleached sails cut across rippling water. They sat on a carpet of wildflowers as blue as the cloudless California sky and that spread around them in the seemingly unending fields of a perfume commercial. Truthfully, she had never liked the island—it stood for everything she’d left behind—but it was soft up here and different with Cale. She found it easy to be lazy in this kind of spring.
Cale had been watching her (he did that a lot), then he leaned back on a blanket and stared out at the vista below “Do you like it here?” she asked.
“We came here almost every summer after my parents died. Victor, Jud, and I. It was different.”
“Different from what?”
“My grandfather didn’t pit us against each other as much. He was busy with a woman he eventually married.”
“I didn’t know you had a stepgrandmother.”
“I don’t. Not anymore. She wasn’t the grandmotherly type, too starlet for that.” And he laughed. “But for a while, she kept Victor busy and out from between us.”
“My grandmother took me everywhere, showed me everything,” Laurel told him. “She talked about my dad all the time. She wore this dark, bleak sadness as if it were always part of her; it settled in the back of her eyes. She was afraid everyone would forget about him. It was like the Second Coming when they played one of his songs on the radio, and hard on my mom. Jimmy this. Jimmy that. But I loved the stories. They were all I had of him.”