Into the Darkness

by Andrews, V. C.

  I suppose it wasn’t all that unusual for us not to know that the house was going to have new tenants or owners. We had grown accustomed to seeing it unoccupied. No one on the street bothered to talk much about it anymore. It hadn’t fallen enough into ill repair to warrant the city taking any action. It was easier for everyone simply to ignore it. My parents were very busy at the jewelry store with tourists from Canada and the States pouring into the area. I had been the only one at home when the truck had appeared and the men had begun carrying in things. My parents had been at the store doing an inventory. Dad wanted enough raw materials for him to work up his unique bracelets and pendants.

  “You met one of the new neighbors?” Mom repeated.

  Dad was still standing with the bottle of wine in his hand as if he had forgotten to pour someone a glass and was trying to figure out who that was.

  “I was beginning to think that house would remain vacant forever. What’s it been, four years since the Sloans moved to Dallas?” he asked, then put the bottle on the table and sat.

  “More like five,” Mom said. She tasted the dressing I had prepared for the salad and smiled. “You’re getting very good at this, Amber. We should open a restaurant.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” Dad said. “I see how Von Richards has aged. The man’s only a year older than I am and could be mistaken for my father. He was quite an athlete in high school, too. But that restaurant is a vampire, draining him. He’s always complaining about his help and the price of food, not to mention the picky customers he has to serve. Soon he’ll set the place on fire.”

  “Oh, it’s not that bad,” Mom said. “But I agree that there is a lot more stress with a restaurant than there is with a jewelry store.”

  “Speak for yourself when it comes to measuring the stress,” Dad said, and laughed before she could slam back a retort. Both of us could see it coming. He winked at me. I knew he was just teasing her. I wondered how many girls in my class were as synchronized with their fathers as I was with mine. “So, whom did you meet, Amber Light? I don’t even know their names. Do you know their names, Noreen?” Dad asked.

  Mom shook her head. “Been too busy to get involved with neighbors. I know that’s not nice, but who told them to move in at the start of our busy season?”

  “Right,” Dad said, raising his glass. “Anyway, to the new neighbors, whoever they are, as long as they don’t have an annoying barking dog or something.”

  Mom lifted her wineglass. I lifted mine, too.

  “Their last name is Matthews,” I said after we all had taken a sip.

  “Oh?” Dad began his salad. “This is a good dressing.”

  “I didn’t meet the husband and wife, just their son.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Brayden.”

  “Brayden. That’s an unusual name,” Dad said. “Interesting.”

  “Which fits him,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “He seems unusual.”

  “In a good or bad way?” Dad quickly followed up.

  I thought a moment and shrugged. “Good.”

  “How old is he?” Mom asked, suddenly looking suspicious at the way I had responded to my father’s question.

  “About my age, maybe a little older,” I said.

  “Sooooo,” she said, raising her eyebrows and looking at Dad, who broadened his smile. “Good-looking? On a scale of one to ten,” she added, fixing her gaze on Dad. “If men can do it, rate women all the time the way some people rate diamonds . . .”

  Dad put up his hands. “Who has time to rate women?”

  “Yes, like it takes time,” Mom said. She turned to me. “Well?”

  I shrugged. “Eleven, I guess,” I said, and they both went into stop action. That made me laugh. “We just spoke for a few minutes. Apparently, they travel a great deal. His father is some kind of genius who works in something called a brain trust.”

  “Is that so? What do they study?” Dad asked.

  “Economics . . . world economics, top-secret stuff, he said.”

  “Good. Maybe he’ll help me find a way to lower my insurance costs.”

  “I got the feeling he works mainly in theories and not . . .”

  “Mundane, everyday stuff like me,” Dad said.

  “What do you mean, you? I think that description fits my job description more than yours,” Mom said.

  Dad raised his hands again. “Well rebuked. I admit it. I had trouble with simple multiplication and division. Your mother is an absolute whiz with numbers. If it weren’t for her, we’d be bankrupt.”

  “Flattery will get you everywhere,” Mom said.

  “I’m not looking to go anywhere else,” Dad said. Mom laughed and then began to serve our main dish.

  I suppose I should say I was blessed having parents like mine. For one thing, they seemed continually in love. I knew everyone’s mother and father were supposed to be in love, but when I met any of them or spent time with any of them, I had the feeling that, yes, maybe they had fallen in love once, but somehow life had put a sort of crust around their feelings. I think they had gotten too used to each other and took everything for granted, even smiles and laughter. For my parents, almost everything one of them said still seemed surprising to the other. I could see the delight on their faces.

  Maybe it was corny, but to me, they seemed never to grow tired of looking at each other with what I had come to understand was pure desire. They wanted to be together, to go out together, and to go on trips together. It seemed so important that any discovery either one made be immediately shared, and anything they could discover together was always extra special.

  If any of her female friends asked her why it was so important they always do so much together, Mom loved to quote Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s line, “Beauty without the beloved is like a sword through the heart.”

  Some of her friends nodded and smiled; some looked completely puzzled but were obviously afraid to ask for a further explanation.

  “Tell us more about him,” Mom said. “This eleven, Brayden Matthews.”

  “I don’t know all that much yet. In fact,” I said, “I don’t know anything except that he likes reading Thoreau.”

  “Thoreau?” Dad shook his head. “‘Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.’”

  “Why, Gregory Taylor, the only things I ever hear you quote these days are prices on rings and bracelets,” Mom teased.

  “Is that so? I want you both to know that I won the English award at high school graduation. I used to dream of living the life Thoreau proposed. If we all did, there would be fewer heart attacks, strokes, and nervous breakdowns,” he said, waving his extended right forefinger like some soap-box orator.

  “Big shot,” Mom said, pointing her fork at him. She turned to me. “This is the man who wants us to get a new television set because ours isn’t high-definition. That’s not very Thoreau-like, Mr. Taylor.”

  “Well, if we’re going to work ourselves to the bone . . .” Dad paused and thought a moment. “I said I dreamed of living like Thoreau. I also remember dreaming of being Superman.”

  We both laughed.

  “So, why was this eleven talking about Thoreau?” Mom asked.

  “He asked me to take a walk, and when I hesitated, he quoted Thoreau to emphasize how important it was to get out of the house and into nature.”

  “Now, there’s a new approach,” Dad said. “Quoting famous authors to win over a young maiden’s heart.”

  “Really? As I recall, you quoted poetry when we first met, Gregory Taylor,” Mom said. She sat back and narrowed her eyes in a pose of faux suspicion. “Was it just a slick come-on or did you mean it?”

  Dad tugged his left earlobe as if he was hoping to shake the right response out of his brain. “It happened to be spontaneous. The moment I set eyes on you, I thought, ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate . . .’”

  “That wasn’t the quote,” Mom said.
/>   “It wasn’t?”

  “No. You were a John Denver fan.”

  “Oh, right.” Dad smiled. “‘You’re so beautiful, I can’t believe my eyes each time I see you again.’”

  “I thought he had made it up until he played the song for me,” Mom told me. “Of course, I wondered how many girls he used that line on, but he swore I was the first,” she added, looking at him suspiciously again.

  “You were—the first and only, Noreen, and always will be.”

  Mom’s eyes glittered like the eyes of diamonds that Dad anticipated I would someday have for a certain special man.

  In fact, if someone really wanted to know why I was so hard to please when it came to boyfriends, he or she simply had to spend a few minutes with my parents. The man I fell in love with would have to have eyes full of me the way my father’s eyes were full of my mother, I thought. I’d never be some man’s stopover on his way to finding someone he believed was right for him. Maybe that was my problem. I was adamant about it. I had seen too many of my girlfriends devastated by boys they had thought were special. Of course, the same was very true for boys who thought that of girls. Sometimes, I thought, it was all just too complex. Think less, feel more, I told myself, but I didn’t listen to myself, at least not right then.

  “So, are you going on this walk?” Mom asked.

  “I guess. It’s just a walk.”

  “Nothing is just anything,” Dad said, assuming the role of elder statesman in our house. “Everything leads to something else, young lady. Shall I review history, the causes of the First World War, the . . .”

  “Spare us, Gregory. Besides, did you ever think that’s what she’s hoping for, something leading to something? Don’t throw cold water.”

  I felt myself blush. “No. Really. It’s just a walk. I don’t even know if I like him or anything. I just spoke to him for a few minutes. I mean, I hardly . . .”

  I struggled to find the right words. Both of them laughed.

  I felt as embarrassed as a little girl who had stumbled on something very sophisticated, like the time I asked how women without husbands could still make babies.

  “Oh, we’re just funning you,” Mom said, reaching for my hand. “You just go and enjoy yourself.”

  “I don’t know,” Dad said. “Eleven or not, I should meet this boy first. He might be a young Jack the Ripper. Rumor was that Jack the Ripper was a handsome man who could easily tempt the young women.”

  “Stop it, Gregory,” Mom snapped. “She doesn’t need to be frightened off.” Her eyes could widen and flame with such fury that I was sure anyone she targeted, including Dad, would cower like a frightened puppy. I knew why she was a little upset. They were both worried about my not having much of a social life. Sometimes I thought they worried about it a lot more than I did or should.

  Parents could be so confusing, so filled with contradictions. On one hand, they would be full of great concern and warning, suspicious of everything you did and anyone you knew, but on the other hand, they wanted you to participate, to have a so-called normal youth. Secretly, they dreaded the day the first boy came to take you out, drive you off, because now they would be nervous and concerned, watch the clocks, and fear ringing phones. But then there was the pride in their eyes when you dressed up and looked older.

  “She knows I’m just kidding,” Dad said, winking at me again. “Right, Amber Light? Besides, he’s right next door. I know where to go if you’re not back in four or five days.”

  Mom relaxed with a slight smile. We both had that gentle, almost habitual softening in our lips and eyes. More times than I could count, people had remarked to me how my mother was always so up, so friendly and pleasant to talk to. I think some people stopped in the store to do just that and in passing might pick up a small gift for a relative’s or friend’s birthday.

  She turned to me. “Don’t worry about the dishes tonight, Amber. Go for your walk. Get to know the neighbors, and find out all the dirt on them before Risa Donald does and burns up a few cell phones spreading stories.”

  Dad laughed.

  “What are you laughing about, Gregory Morton Taylor? She was the first to spread that rumor that we were in economic trouble during the recession, and all those people who had orders with us were worried about their deposits.”

  “I go with Katharine Hepburn,” Dad said. “I don’t care what they say about me as long as it isn’t true.”

  “Who’s Katharine Hepburn?” I asked.

  “Who’s . . .” Dad’s smile started to fade until Mom and I laughed. “You be careful, young lady,” he said, waving his right forefinger at me again, “or I’ll force you to watch a Turner Classic Movie marathon.”

  After dinner, I went upstairs and checked my hair and my lipstick and did Mom’s favorite little trick: spraying the air with her cologne and then walking into it. I looked at myself in the mirror and fiddled with some strands and then debated putting on some eyeliner. Some men, like my father, were put off by a woman who wore too much makeup. Dad always compared this one or that one to Mrs. Hassler, an eighty-four-year-old widow who had her face so caked that Dad said she had it done by Michael Tooey, the funeral director, just so she wouldn’t look much different in the coffin.

  “Why are you carrying on so much about your hair and your makeup, Amber Taylor?” I asked my mirror image. “You just spoke to this boy for five minutes, if that. You didn’t get this concerned when you went on dates with boys you’ve known almost all your life. Get hold of yourself.”

  I stared at my image and then suddenly saw a little rage flow into my eyes.

  “I don’t feel like getting hold of myself,” I said with defiance. “I feel like loosening those reins I keep on myself. Tonight I’d like to gallop,” I added, and then smiled at one of my pretend multiple personalities. Moments later, I was bouncing down the stairs as if it was my sixteenth birthday again and I was looking forward to wonderful presents. My parents couldn’t help but hear me.

  “I’ll be back in a little while,” I shouted. “Don’t call Sherlock Holmes if I’m gone more than a half hour.”

  “You know who Sherlock Holmes is?” Dad returned.

  “I saw the remake,” I replied.

  “Oh. Well, watch out for Risa Donald,” Dad continued from the living room. “Word has it she’s hiding in the bushes with binoculars and just waiting for new gossip.”

  I heard Mom’s laugh as I went out the front door. For a few moments, I just stood there, wondering what to do next. How would Brayden know I was coming out of the house unless he had been waiting and watching my front door for the last hour? I didn’t have to wonder long. He was there in the street, just vaguely visible in the glow of the moonlight through some hazy clouds. Our street had no lights. No one in the neighborhood wanted them. They were willing to sacrifice the feeling of security for a more natural northwestern sky, often dazzling with shooting stars.

  He raised his hand, and I walked slowly to our front gate. He didn’t come forward. He waited for me to reach him, with a look of self-satisfaction on his face. I thought, That’s a bit arrogant. I certainly didn’t like being taken for granted, certainly not by someone I had just met. He hadn’t even changed his clothes, whereas I had agonized over what would be attractive to wear on a walk.

  “What were you doing? Waiting out here for a few hours?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  “You weren’t being a Peeping Tom again, were you?” I asked, now suspicious. Had he planted himself at one of our windows and therefore known when we had finished dinner and when I had gone upstairs to get ready? Or maybe he had been watching my bedroom and seen me make all those preparations, fussing about. I couldn’t remember now if my curtains were fully closed, but if he had seen that, I would be almost as embarrassed as I would had he seen me naked.

  “Absolutely not,” he said, raising his hand to imitate someone on the witness stand in a courtroom. “I learned my lesson about gawking and peeping.”

 
I looked at his house. There were barely any lights on. The entire downstairs was dark.

  “Are your parents at home?”

  “My father’s gone on a trip somewhere in the Middle East. My mother is upstairs, painting.” He turned around and started down the street.

  I walked quickly to catch up. It was as if he were going with me or without me. I thought that was rude, too, but I didn’t complain or turn back. It would be a long time before I would decide for sure whether it was good or bad that I had continued. So many things we do in our lives seem right or wrong at the time but take on a different meaning when years pass and wisdom and experience change our views.

  “Painting? What do you mean, painting the house inside?”

  “No, hardly,” he said, continuing what I thought was a rather fast pace for a get-to-know-you walk. Why was he in such a rush to get away from his house? “My mother is an artist. Some of her work has been in MoMA.”

  “MoMA?”

  “The Museum of Modern Art in New York. And other places, especially art magazines. She goes by the name Saraswati.”

  “Sara what?”

  He laughed. “It’s her little joke, I think. Saraswati is the Hindu goddess of all the creative arts. Most people just think it’s her real name.”

  “Is your mother Hindu?”

  He finally slowed down but showed no signs of being out of breath. He looked back at his house. Had he just left without telling his mother? Would she be annoyed or something? Whether he knew it or not, he was making me feel uncomfortable.

  “Well?” I said when he didn’t respond.

  “Not exactly, but she does believe in reincarnation, one of the main Hindu beliefs.”

  “She believes you can have more than one life?”

  “Absolutely. If you’re good, you come back as something or someone better. If you’re bad, just the opposite.”

  “So, were you good or bad in your previous life?”

  “I’m still deciding,” he said. “And so is she,” he added, but he dropped his voice until it was close to a whisper.