by K. L. Cook
“Wanna rematch?” John called.
“You bet!” Gloria said.
Laura was already moving toward dry land, however, against their protests. “I’ve had enough,” she said. She sat on the grass underneath the big oak tree. Mrs. Letig brought her a towel. “Thanks,” she said.
“You almost beat them.”
John approached, his hair and mustache and jeans still dripping, the water turning the blond hairs on his chest dark brown. His wife threw him a towel.
“She did good,” Mrs. Letig said. “You’re the one that blew it, buster.”
“Just lost hold,” he said, his eyebrows arched in a what-can-you-say expression. “We’ll get ’em next time.”
Laura stared at him for a second and then dropped her head between her knees so that her hair dangled over her eyes. She draped the towel over her head. She didn’t think she could bear to look at either of them. The blood pumped thickly through her neck and temples. She could hear her breath as it whistled in and out of her nose.
Her father and Gene, Gloria and Jerome, Manny and Joannie, and John and Mrs. Letig were going for a late-afternoon hike while the Cransburgh brothers prepared the fireworks. Laura was supposed to stay behind, which made her angry, even at Gloria, the way they always assumed she would just watch after the kids, like it was her duty. But Mrs. Letig decided at the last minute that she didn’t want to go.
“Come on, Anne,” Laura’s father said. “It’ll be fun.”
“I just don’t feel like hiking right now.”
“Well, then, you just stay here with the kids and Laura can come,” John said, annoyed.
“Well, that’ll be fine,” she said. “I’d rather stay here with the baby anyway. If that’s okay with you, Gloria.”
“You bet,” Gloria said. Mrs. Letig took Carroll, who was napping in Gloria’s arms. “The diaper bag’s under the table. He probably won’t wake for another hour, but just in case, there’s a bottle in the bag. Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“Are you kidding? It’s my pleasure. It’s been too long since I’ve held a baby. You go on. You, too, Laura. I’ll keep an eye on the little ones.”
By the time Laura turned around, John and her father had already started out, ahead of everyone else. They all walked along the trails, down by the creek and the road. And then, as they turned up the trail toward the big cave, Manny and Joannie slipped off under some trees, and John hung back as the others, chattering, disappeared around a bend. Laura motioned for John to follow her, because she wanted to show him a secret cave. The two of them climbed over the back of the ridge, crouched down for about ten feet, crawled for ten feet more, and then wound up in a large cavern with a small, lighted hole at the other end, where you could see Sad Monkey rock. John crawled in behind her, and then when he caught up to her, he pulled his shirt up so she could see his back—a long red scrape, but no blood. She kissed it. They talked quietly.
“You dropped me on purpose, didn’t you?” she asked.
“Nah.”
“You did.”
“It was exciting, wasn’t it?”
“Sort of,” she said.
“What do you mean, ‘sort of ’? It damn sure was. Besides, I was going crazy with you on my shoulders. Did you want me to walk out of the water with my pants bulging?”
“Nope.” She giggled.
“Okay, then.” He dropped his shirt and winced.
“Does it hurt?”
“I know what will make it feel better.”
“Be quiet,” she said, slapping him lightly on the arm. “We can’t do anything here.”
“Sure we can. It’s a cave, for Christ’s sake. No one can even get in here.”
“Manny and Gloria know where this is.”
“Just for a minute. It’ll be okay.”
He leaned against her. His jeans were still wet. They felt cold against her legs. He kissed her, and she let him, and then he tried to slip his tongue into her mouth, but she wouldn’t let him, teasing him. He began tickling her.
“Quit it!” she whispered. “We’re being too loud.”
She wriggled free of him and started crawling back toward the opening where they had come in. He grabbed her foot.
“Let go,” she whispered again. She felt his teeth on the back of her ankle. “Stop! I mean it. We gotta go.”
“Okay, I’ll follow you,” he said and reached up and slid his hand inside the bottom of her shorts.
She slapped his hand away. “No, you wait here for a minute. Then you can come.”
“I’m about to come already.”
“Hush!” she said, laughing.
She crawled through the entry, crouching down lower at one point, aware of the top of the cave that might scratch, and then she got to her feet. Hunched over, she walked out, following the light. She peered back down the mouth of the cave. She heard John, but she couldn’t see him yet.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“I’m going on,” she said.
“Wait for me.”
“No,” she said. “You wait here for a few minutes.”
“You’re a tease.”
She turned, brushed the dirt off her hands, and then climbed the rock to the top of the ridge, looking only at the handholds in front of her. At the top, right there on the other side, she was shocked to find Gloria.
“Hey!” Laura practically shouted.
“There you are,” Gloria said. “I’ve been looking all over for you. I thought maybe you snuck off to our cave. Is that where you were?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s go back.”
“It’s blocked up,” she said. “You can’t go all the way in. Let’s go to the big one.”
Laura hurried past her. She started a miniature rockslide and slid about twenty feet down the hill. She wasn’t hurt. She laughed loudly and nervously.
“Are you okay?” Gloria called down to her.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said and slapped the dirt from her hands. “Come on!”
Gloria climbed more carefully down an alternate path, and when she was almost to the bottom, Laura started off again. She wanted to get her sister away from there as fast as she could. John stood at the top of the ridge. He raised his hand. He obviously didn’t see Gloria yet.
“Hey!” he called. “Wait for me.”
She didn’t answer. She just turned and started down the hill, half running. It was dangerous. If she fell, she might tumble a hundred feet.
“Hey, Laura!” Gloria called. “Be careful. Not so fast. We’re down here, John.”
“I’m going on,” Laura called. She wasn’t sure if Gloria could hear her or not. Jumping recklessly down the rock face, she was gone. She didn’t look back. At the trailhead, she sprinted the rest of the way, her long hair flying behind her.
“Aren’t you in a hurry?” Mrs. Letig said when she arrived at the picnic tables, gasping for air, her hands on her knees. She didn’t have the breath to answer, which was just as well, because Mrs. Letig was the last person she wanted to talk to. “Here, let me get you some lemonade.”
She handed Laura a filled cup. Carroll was still asleep in her arms.
“Thanks,” Laura managed, feeling ashamed, not meeting the woman’s eyes.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I just felt like running.”
About fifteen minutes later, Gloria and John showed up, with Gene, her father, Jerome, Manny, and Joannie behind them. Laura lay on the ground, underneath the cottonwood, watching them as they approached, trying to guess what Gloria and John were saying. They laughed, Gloria’s head thrown back in one of her infectious guffaws. He must have told her a joke. Laura felt relieved. She got up and headed out past the creek, where Rich and the Letig boys and Julie were playing catch with a beach ball next to Jimmy, and then down the trail that led to the big cave.
“Where you going?” Mrs. Letig called.
“I’ll be bac
k soon.”
Her sister’s and John’s voices echoed behind her, but she ignored them.
She went down the trail a little ways and sat on a rock, listening to the party. She watched the sun fall beyond the rim of the canyon, and she tried to clear her mind, to not think at all.
Forty-five minutes later, when she returned, it was dark. Everybody was eating big slices of watermelon. The fireworks had already begun. Gloria, of course, said nothing, but Laura could see her looking around at John and Mrs. Letig, and at her father and Manny, too. Gloria was trying to figure out the situation, who knew what and how much, and Laura knew that her sister was a good detective, that she could intuit things about people that others couldn’t, and it scared Laura, because no one was supposed to know, and she wasn’t sure if Gloria could be trusted anymore—if by virtue of being a parent now, and a wife, a responsible adult in the world, she would forget what it was like to have a secret life, to remember the value of it.
Gloria also had a poker face. She didn’t give away what she knew. She laughed and told jokes and did her impressions. The firecrackers popped. The sparklers streaked the night with silver and red striations. The Roman candles burst green and red and blue and gold over their heads, and the air smelled acrid from the smoke. Bob Cransburgh had to stamp out some sparks that flared by the picnic tables.
During the festivities, Laura tried to convince herself that her sister hadn’t put two and two together. She laughed and pretended not to be bothered when John wrapped his arms around his wife. Mrs. Letig turned her face to her husband and kissed him for a long time, passionately, and it appeared that John was returning the favor. A firecracker popped loudly. Laura felt like that firecracker.
“Look at the lovebirds.” Her father whistled.
Gloria caught her eye, but Laura turned away quickly, smiled like it didn’t bother her. Maybe Gloria would see all that and not be sure of what she’d seen earlier. But then, as they were packing the trucks and cars, Gloria caught Laura alone by the picnic tables for a moment, and in the dark, with the creek gurgling beside them, she whispered, “You and me are going to have a long talk tomorrow, girl.”
Their father called out from his truck, “Okay, ladies, quit your lolly-gagging. It’s time to hit the road.”
21
Careful
The next morning, after breakfast, Gloria told everybody that she and Laura were going out. She ordered Jerome to watch the kids, and when he protested, she gave him a look that made everybody tense and silent, and then Manny laughed, offered to help, and then their father laughed and called Gloria “the admiral,” and then Jerome smiled, too, but he wasn’t happy about it, everybody could tell. Gloria and Laura walked in thoughtful silence to the downtown park, both preparing their arguments.
They sat on the park bench, in the shade of the trees, watching the cars circle the square, kids riding their bikes, playing catch, the county workers returning to the courthouse from their morning breaks.
“He’s more than twice your age,” Gloria began.
“Jerome’s older than you.”
“It’s not the same. I was older.”
“Not much.”
“And he wasn’t married. With kids. This isn’t good, Laura. No matter how you feel about him, it’s hard for me to believe that he cares the same about you. Or that he even can care the same about you. It doesn’t matter how nice and sweet he seems—deep down he’s a bastard.”
She practically spit the word. Laura was taken aback, not quite prepared for Gloria’s hostility. “That’s not true!” she protested.
Gloria was quiet for a minute. Then she asked, “How do you do it?”
Laura looked at her strangely. “Do it?”
“I mean, how do you meet? Where do you go? Does anyone know? How do you keep it a secret?”
It all spilled out, everything, like she’d just been waiting for someone to ask. Laura told her about their schedule, how she met him before noon behind the abandoned warehouse, and about his uncle’s barn, the way he set it up, and how she hid in the truck, scrunched down on the floorboard.
“We’re very safe,” she said.
And she told about the lies, too, for there had been so many lies, and not to tell her sister seemed wrong. Besides, if anyone knew about lying to her family, it would be Gloria. She’d done plenty of it herself. Her marriage was built on it, Laura thought.
Gloria shook her head. Laura couldn’t tell if she was still angry or simply amazed. “I’m sorry,” Gloria said. “Go on.”
Laura told her about the difficulty of being together, how she sometimes wished they could be out in the open, but of course she knew that could never happen, and she said that was okay with her. And she told her sister about how they met, at the New Year’s party, and how it had all started, and about the poker night and spring break and later at Lake Meredith, and in the telling it sounded, even to her, coarse and ugly, slightly sinister. The events themselves couldn’t reach what was underneath the events, the other life that lay like bright metal at the bottom of a stream. She could tell, from the look on Gloria’s face—her eyes squinted shut, her mouth pursed, a dismissive, judgmental look that reminded Laura of her mother—that she had not told it right, and she wondered if that was the way it always was. When you try to explain yourself and your actions—something that seems inevitable and important and yours—then it always comes out a little seedy, as if you were confessing to a crime.
“Why do you do it?” Gloria asked.
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Why are you with him? There are plenty of boys your own age. Why would you want to share him with someone else?”
Laura turned toward the street, shaking her head. This was a mistake, trying to make her sister understand.
“You know this can’t end well,” Gloria continued stridently. “The risks are enormous. Has he made any promises to you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is he going to leave his wife?”
“I don’t know. We don’t talk about her much.”
“No, I don’t imagine you do. Where do you think this is going, then?”
“I don’t know.”
“How’s it going to end?”
“I don’t know!”
“Oh, Laura,” Gloria said, exasperated. “You have to think about these things. I know it seems so exciting now. And you think he loves you, and when you’re with him, there’s nothing else that matters. But there are other people.” She looked Laura straight in the eye. “There are consequences.”
“Don’t preach to me.”
“This scares me. You scare me.”
Laura turned to her sister, angry now. “Are you sorry you ran off with Jerome?”
“Of course not. It’s not the same.”
“Yes it is, when you think about it! If someone had told you not to do it, would you have listened?”
“No. But it was totally different.”
“I just want to enjoy it for what it is. Why does it have to go someplace? It’s…it’s—”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t! It’s different. I feel different. I am different. When it’s just me and him, it’s…well, no one will ever know what that’s like.”
“I hate to break this to you,” Gloria said snidely, “but the whole world knows that secret.”
“I’m not talking about that. You’re as bad as Manny!”
She’d had it. She jumped up from the bench and plopped down angrily under a tree, with her legs tucked to her chest, her forehead against her kneecaps.
After a few minutes, Gloria came over, crouched down by her. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.
Laura tried to collect her thoughts. She lifted her head and stared at her sister, whose eyes seemed so much like their mother’s. “It’s just that…just that when we’re together, it’s not only that no one else is there, but it’s that a different—I don’t know how to say this.”
“
Go on.”
“It’s that a more real me is there. And the rest of what I do doesn’t matter. It’s not important.”
“But it does matter,” Gloria said, leaning toward her. “Don’t you see? It does. There are other people involved.”
“That doesn’t really matter.”
“How can you say that? Of course it matters. Don’t you think what you and he are doing has an effect on other people?”
“Not if they don’t know.”
“But don’t they?” Gloria asked.
Laura was puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t you think they know…on some level?”
“Not if we don’t tell.”
“But it breaks everything. If Jerome was having an affair, then it would break things between us, don’t you see?”
“What if you didn’t know?”
“I would find out sooner or later.”
“But if you didn’t, and he kept on being a good husband to you and loving you? Couldn’t he love you and someone else at the same time? Wouldn’t that be okay, if you didn’t know?”
Gloria shook her head and then sighed as if Laura was a stubborn child unwilling to listen to the obvious. “Our lives would be a huge lie,” she said.
“No, that’s not true,” Laura said more insistently. “I don’t believe that. It’s the not-knowing. Like when Momma left. We didn’t tell you for a long time. And during that time, you were happy. And only when we told you did you become sad.”
Gloria stared cautiously at Laura for a minute, mulled over what she would say next. Laura had the feeling that bringing their mother into this conversation was not right, but she didn’t care anymore.
“You eventually had to tell me,” Gloria said. “I was going to find out at some point.”
“What if we had never told you? What if you stayed overseas the whole time and never returned and never knew she was gone? Or if we said she just died, a painless death. Then you would have been happier, right?”
Gloria, startled at this line of argument, shook her head vigorously. “No!”