“I was just . . . interested in who were to be our new neighbors. Who wouldn’t be?”
“And I’m just curious about you. Who wouldn’t be once he saw how pretty you are?” he asked.
I felt myself blush. Dad always said I didn’t blush red so much as a cross between the translucent golden yellow of a bangle and a touch of a pink coral bead. Mom said he was color-blind for a jeweler and that I had more of a classic deep red ruby tint in my cheeks when I blushed. Both agreed that I normally had a light pink Akoya pearl complexion with a face that was truly a cameo because of my perfect diminutive features, especially my slightly almond-shaped eyes and soft Cupid’s bow lips, all of which I had inherited from Mom.
“Well, you don’t have to spy on me through the hedges,” I said in a less belligerent tone. “You could have just come by to say hello and introduce yourself properly.”
Although my parents and their friends always lavished great compliments on me, I was never sure of myself when it came to responding to one. A simple “Thank you” seemed to be too little. Not saying anything seemed to be arrogant, as if I was thinking my beauty was obvious or I was too stuck-up to respond. And pretending to be surprised and falsely modest always came off as phony, at least when I saw other girls and even boys doing that. I didn’t deny to myself that I was attractive. I just didn’t know whether I should rejoice in my blessings or be concerned about the responsibilities they brought along with them.
I know none of my girlfriends at school would understand how being attractive brought responsibilities, but I always felt obligated to make sure that I didn’t flaunt myself or take anything anyone said for granted. I also felt I had to be careful about whom I showed any interest in, even looked at twice. People, especially older men, were always telling me I would be a heartbreaker. To me, that didn’t sound very nice. I envisioned a trail of men with shattered emotions threatening to commit suicide everywhere I went.
“You’re absolutely right,” the new boy said. He stepped between the hedges and approached. I was right about his height. He was at least five feet ten, if not five feet eleven. With the palms of both hands and his fingers stiffly extended, he brushed back his hair. Uneven strands still fell over his forehead and his eyes. His hair was almost as long as mine and certainly looked as thick and as rich. He had perfectly shaped facial features like those of Greek and Roman statues. I thought he had a remarkable complexion, not a blemish, not a dark spot or anything to spoil the softness and smoothness. For a moment, I wondered if he wore makeup. He wasn’t heavily built, but he looked athletic, like a swimmer or a tennis player.
“I apologize for, as you say, gawking at you. I didn’t intend to make you feel uncomfortable. Although,” he added with an impish smile, “you didn’t quite look uncomfortable. Matter of fact, you looked like you were enjoying it.”
Before I could respond, he performed a dramatic stage bow and added, “I’m Brayden Matthews.” He extended his hand awkwardly, as if he wasn’t sure it was something he should do.
“Amber Taylor. And I wasn’t enjoying it. I was uncomfortable seeing someone staring at me like that. Actually, I tried to ignore you.”
He kept holding his hand out.
“I’m glad you couldn’t,” he said.
I offered my hand. He closed his fingers around it very gently, watching his fingers fold around mine as if he was amazed that his could bend or he was afraid that he might break mine. Then he smiled like someone who had felt something very satisfying, as if shaking someone’s hand was a significant accomplishment. He tightened his grip a little and didn’t let go.
“Can I have my hand back?”
“So soon?” he replied. He let go and then looked up at our house. “Your house is one of the older houses on the street, right? Not that it looks run-down or anything. Matter of fact, it looks quite well cared for.”
“It’s the oldest on the street,” I said as modestly as I could. My father was always bragging about it. “It’s been in our family for a little more than eighty-five years,” I said. “Of course, there have been many renovations, but the first fireplace still stands just the way it was. The floors are the same, as are the window casings. My father treats it more like a historical site.”
“I bet. There was a time when things were built to last,” he said.
“Really? How old are you, ninety, a hundred?”
He softly laughed, flashed me an amused look, and then gazed at my house again, concentrating, I thought, on my bedroom windows. “I bet you can see the lake from your window.” He turned to look at his own roof. “Your house looks to be about ten feet taller than ours.”
“Yes, I can,” I said. “At least the bay. This time of the year, the trees are so full they block out most of it.”
The lake was only a little more than a half-mile from our street, but it was a privately owned lake anyway. Because our homes weren’t lake homes, we weren’t shareholders in the Echo Lake Corporation. Most everyone who didn’t belong thought the people who did were snobby about their property and their rights, but I thought these people were simply jealous. It was true that no one without lake rights could swim, row, or fish there. You had to be invited by a member, but what would be the point of having a private lake and expensive lakeside property otherwise? We had been invited from time to time. Most recently, the Mallens had invited us for a picnic on the lake. George Mallen was president of the Echo Lake bank, and Dad always gave him good deals on the jewelry that he bought for his wife and two older daughters, both married and living in Portland.
“So I guess you’ve lived here all your life,” he said.
“Yes, that’s a safe assumption to make.”
He laughed again. I could see that he really enjoyed talking to me. It was like sparring with words.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“Oh, somewhere out there,” he replied, waving his right hand over his shoulder. “We’ve lived in so many different places that the U.S. Postal Service has declared us undesirables. They’re still trying to deliver mail sent to us ten years ago.”
“Very funny, but you had to be born somewhere, right?”
“I think it was on a jet crossing the Indian Ocean,” he replied. “Luckily, we were in first class. I’m a sea baby, or more of an air baby. Yes, that’s it. I’m from the international air above the Taj Mahal.”
“Sure. Your parents are Americans, aren’t they?” I asked, not so sure.
“Yes.”
“Then you’re an American.”
“Very constitutional of you.”
He looked at my window again. “My bedroom faces yours, you know. Yours is about six inches higher but diametrically opposite.”
“Thanks for the warning, now that I know you’re a Peeping Tom.”
He laughed.
“I wasn’t peeping, really, as much as I was wondering if you would see me.”
“I’d have to have been either blind or terribly oblivious not to.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re not either.”
“Why was it so important to test me about that?”
He looked stymied as to an answer. “I’m sorry. You’re right. It was juvenile and not the best way to make a new friend.” He looked afraid that I would end the conversation or continue to take him to task.
“Apology accepted,” I said.
“Whew.” He wiped his forehead. I couldn’t help but smile at his exaggerated action.
“Okay, we don’t know where you’re from, but what made your parents decide to move here of all places?”
“Why? Is it that bad here? You make it sound like the last stop on the train or the edge of the world.”
“No, it’s far from bad here. I just wondered. We don’t get that many new families these days.”
“I think my father put a map on the wall, blindfolded himself, and threw a dart. It hit Echo Lake, Oregon.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
He nodded and smiled. “It�
��s what he tells people. My father has a dry sense of humor.”
“Brayden,” we heard. It was a woman’s voice, but she sounded very far-off. “Bray . . . den.” In fact, it seemed she was calling from inside a tunnel, and she sounded a little desperate, almost in a panic.
His smile evaporated. “Gotta go,” he said. “It’s been nice talking to you, and I apologize again for being a Gawking Tom.”
“I’ll settle for Peeping Tom. Who’s calling you?”
“My mother. We’re still moving in. Lots to do. Help with unpacking, setting things up, rearranging and cleaning up the furniture that was there, and organizing the kitchen,” he listed quickly. He leaned toward me to whisper, “My dad’s not too handy around the house.” He pointed to his temple. “Intellectual type, you know. Thinks a screwdriver is only a glass of orange juice and vodka.”
“I’m sure he’s not that bad. What does he do?”
“He’s a member of a brain trust. Meets with other geniuses to discuss and solve world economic problems. All quite hush-hush, top-secret stuff, so secret that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“What?”
He laughed again. “I wasn’t kidding about our living in many places. Often we go on family trips to foreign countries and around the country—when he’s going to be away for a prolonged time, that is.”
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“None that I know of,” he replied with a sly smile. “You’re an only child, too, I take it, and your parents own a jewelry store on Main Street, a jewelry store that has been in your family for decades.”
“You did some homework?”
“I’ve scouted the neighborhood. A few interesting people live on this block, especially that elderly lady who hangs her clothes on a line at the side of her house, visible to anyone walking in the street.”
“Mrs. Carden. What about her? What makes her so interesting? Many people like to hang out their clothes in the fresh air. Mrs. Carden’s not unique.”
Mrs. Carden was an eighty-something retired grade-school teacher who had lived for ten years as a widow and never had any children of her own. She would smile and nod at me when I walked by, but I didn’t think I had spoken a dozen words to her in the past five years. I was curious about why someone new would find her interesting.
“Oh, I think she is quite unique,” he insisted.
“Why?”
“She whispers to her clothes as if they were errant children, scolding a blouse for being too wrinkled or a skirt for shrinking. I think she put a pair of stockings in the corner, sort of a time-out for wearing too thin or something. Maybe that’s something a grade-school teacher would do, but I’ve always found people who hold discussions with inanimate objects unique, don’t you?”
“Errant children?”
“Hang around with me. I’ll build your vocabulary,” he said, winking.
“If she was whispering, how did you hear her? Were you spying on her, too?”
“A little, but I have twenty-twenty hearing,” he kidded. “So watch what you whisper about me.”
“Bray . . . den,” I heard again. It sounded the same, a strange, thin call, like a voice riding on the wind.
“Gotta go,” he repeated, backing away as though something very strong was pulling him despite his resistance. He spun around to slip home through the hedges and then paused and turned back to me. “Can you come out for a walk tonight?”
“A walk?” I smiled with a little incredulity. “A walk?”
“Too simple an invitation?” he asked, and looked around. “It’s going to be a very pleasant evening. Haven’t you ever read Thoreau? ‘He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all.’ Are you afraid of walking? I don’t mean a trek of miles or anything. No backpacks required.”
“I’m not afraid of walking,” I shot back. “And I love Thoreau.”
He lifted his arms to say, So? And then he waited for my response.
“Okay, I’ll go for a walk. When?”
“Just come out. I’ll know.”
“Why? Are you going to hover between the hedges watching and waiting?”
He laughed. “Just come out. A walk might not sound like very much to you, but I’ve got to start somewhere,” he said.
“Start? Start what?”
“Our romance. I can’t ask you to marry me right away.”
“What?”
He laughed again and then slipped through the bushes. I stepped up to them to look through and watch him go into his house, but he was gone so quickly I didn’t even hear a door open and close.
How could he be gone so fast? I leaned in farther and looked at his house, a house that had been empty and uninteresting for so long it was as if it wasn’t there. I felt silly doing what he had been doing, gawking in between the hedges, studying his house, checking all the windows, listening for any conversations. It’s the very thing I criticized him for doing, I thought, and I stepped away as if I had been caught just as I had caught him.
He was very good-looking, but there was something quirky about him. Nevertheless, it didn’t put me off. In fact, it made him more appealing, a lot more alluring than the other boys my age that I knew. No matter how hard most of them tried, there was a commonality about them, about the way they dressed and talked. As Dad would say whenever the topic of young romance came up, “I guess no one has yet set the diamonds in your eyes glittering, Amber Light.” That was his nickname for me, Amber Light.
No, none of the boys in my school had set the diamonds in my eyes glittering, I thought, and which one of them even would think to mention Henry David Thoreau as a way of enticing me to do something with him?
Looking around, I agreed that it truly would be a beautiful late June night. I laughed to myself. Almost any other boy I knew would have asked me to go to the movies or go for a burger or pizza or simply hang out at the mall as a first date. But just go for a walk? I didn’t think so.
I started back to my house. I thought I might finish some summer required reading and then help Mom with dinner. It was Friday night, and Dad kept the store open an hour or so later than usual.
I was almost to the porch steps when I stopped and looked around. There was something odd about the day. What was it?
It was too quiet, I realized. And there were no birds flying around or calling, just a strangely silent crow settled on the roof of Brayden’s house.
We lived on a cul-de-sac, so not having any traffic wasn’t unusual, and it wasn’t unusual to see no people outside their homes for long periods of time. Yet the stillness felt different. I didn’t even hear the sounds of far-off traffic or an airplane or anything. It was as if I had stepped out of the world for a few moments and was now working my way back in.
And despite the brilliant sunshine, I felt a chill surge through my body. I embraced myself and hurried up the stairs. I paused on the porch and looked at the house next door. Up in what I now knew was Brayden’s bedroom window, the curtains parted.
But I didn’t see him.
I didn’t see anyone.
And then a large cloud blocked out the sun, dropping a shroud of darkness over the entire property. It happened so quickly it was as if someone had flipped a light switch. Under the shroud of shadows, the neighboring house looked even more tired and worn. The new residents hadn’t done anything yet to turn it from a house into a home. It doesn’t take all that long for a house to take on the personalities and identities of the people living in it, but this house looked just the way it had before I saw the Matthewses move into it.
It was as if the whole thing, including my conversation with Brayden, was another one of my fantasies, another movie Dad thought I lived in. I could hear him laughing about it and then doing his imitation of me walking like someone in a daze, oblivious but content.
All of this from a short conversation with a new neighbor who made me realize how different I was from any of the girls I knew. None would have agreed
to go for a walk with a stranger so quickly, especially at night. Why had I? Where was my sensible fear of new boys, especially one who talked and behaved as he had? I could just hear my friends when and if I told them. You agreed to go for a walk with a stranger who was spying on you like that? Crazy.
Maybe I was.
But when I looked at my reflection in the window, I thought I saw diamonds glittering in my eyes.
1
New Neighbor
“I met one of our new neighbors,” I said when my parents and I sat at the long, dark oak dining-room table for dinner.
The dining room was almost as large as our living room. Grandpa Taylor had had the wall between it and the kitchen removed to accommodate this handmade table. Grandpa had been a lot more political and involved with the local government than Dad. Dad said there had been many important business dinners held there with other important families. It had been my mother’s idea to take out the two small windows and have one big window made. We had a view of the woods and the field on this side of the house. My favorite time was autumn, when the colors of the leaves rivaled those of all the jewelry in our store. My mother once whispered to me that although my grandfather believed I was named after amber jewelry, I was really named after the amber leaves.
Tonight Mom and I had prepared one of Dad’s favorite meals, chicken piccata with Israeli couscous. I did the salad and heated the bread. Dad opened a bottle of Chardonnay and poured each of us a glass. Ever since I was fourteen, my parents had permitted me to have wine with them at dinner. Dad was proud of his knowledge of wines and never lost an opportunity to talk about them, either with us or with customers at the store. Tonight we were having a California Chardonnay from Sonoma. He described it as just a touch dry but with a nice clarity.
Neither of my parents had mentioned the new neighbors since I had told them about someone new coming to the street. There was never a For Rent or For Sale sign in front of the house after the previous occupants had sold it. Someone came periodically to cut the lawn and trim the bushes, but other than that, nothing much was done. The paint was still chipped on the porch railings and the window frames, and the steps on the front stoop looked as if they needed some reinforcement, if not outright replacement.
Into the Darkness Page 2