Lightning Strikes

by Virginia Andrews

  When I arrived at school, I went to Mr. MacWaine’s office and signed up for the auditions on Saturday. I took the cut sheets for Katherina, too. Randall was lingering outside the doorway of my speech class waiting to speak to me.

  “Did you sign up for the auditions?” was his first question. I held up the cut sheets as a reply. “Good, good. I was wondering if we could spend some time together this afternoon. We could go to the river and maybe even practice your lines.”

  “I can’t today, Randall,” I said. “I have a visitor.”

  “Oh?” He looked very disappointed.

  “It’s Roy,” I told him. His face brightened a bit.

  “Oh, you mean your brother in the army?”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “Well, how about tomorrow then?” he asked.

  “I’ll let you know tomorrow,” I said. “I don’t mean to be vague, but I don’t know how much time Roy has here and I do want to spend as much of it as I can with him,” I explained.

  “Sure, sure. I understand. Well, I’d better get to my vocal class or Professor Wilheim will have my tongue on a platter,” he joked. “See you later.”

  I went to class and tried to concentrate and to listen well, but with thoughts of Roy behind them, my eyes were continually drawn to the clock. I wished I had the power to move the hands forward and rush the day along. I couldn’t wait to see Roy, see how he had changed and see what he thought was different about me.

  Before the school day ended, we had another rainstorm and once again, I had forgotten my umbrella. I stood inside the school’s front entrance, fuming. It was a little after three. Roy would be at the house in under an hour and I would look like a drowned rat.

  “What’s wrong?” I heard Randall ask from behind me.

  “I forgot my umbrella again. I just can’t get used to treating it as if it was a hat.”

  He laughed and handed me his.

  “But now you’ll get wet,” I said.

  “I’ll be fine. I’ll lend it to you if you promise to bring it back to me personally the moment you have the opportunity,” he added. “Yes,” he said before I could utter a response. “It’s a bribe.”

  I laughed and took it.

  “Thanks, Randall.”

  He gave me that boyishly handsome smile. Roy was coming today. I couldn’t harden my heart against anyone. The sky was gray and emptying its showers of tears over the city, but for me, there was the promise of sunshine and rainbows. Randall had his work and his wonderful talent, but I knew he was as alone as I was. I had been disappointed in him, but I had no right to condemn him. People who are left in the sea to be tossed and thrown about shouldn’t look down on others like them swimming for the first available lifeboat. If anyone should understand loneliness, it should be me, I thought.

  I leaned toward him and kissed him on the cheek. It was as if I had lit the small candles behind his eyes. How they glittered.

  “Have a good visit,” he wished me.

  I watched him go, imagining that someday he would be a singing star. I wouldn’t be beside him, but years and years from now, we might meet and smile and only for a brief moment, remember. For now, we were more like two comets passing close enough to linger in each other’s magnetic fields for a few seconds of eternity before moving on toward other worlds, other suns, other destinies.

  I stepped out, opened the umbrella, and hurried off, my heart beating faster and louder with every step I took. Even with the heavy rain, I was able to get home a little before four. Roy had not yet arrived. In an hour I had to begin helping Mrs. Chester with dinner. I changed into my uniform quickly and rushed back to the front of the house, hovering near the door. I had told Leo that I expected my brother. I knew Boggs would question him and I wanted him to understand mat this wasn’t just another visitor to be turned away or left standing outside for hours.

  Finally, close to four-thirty, me doorbell sounded. I held my breath as Leo hobbled to it, far too slowly for me.

  “Good afternoon,” he said.

  “I’m here to see Rain Arnold.” The voice was so deep and commanding, I feared it wasn’t Roy, but when I stepped up to the door, there was no doubt.

  He did look taller, broader, and trimmer. His shoulders were back, his posture firm. A smile began in his lips and rippled through his face until it brightened his eyes.

  “Roy!” I cried and ran into his waiting arms.

  Leo stepped back, amazed, amused and a bit unsettled.

  “You look all grown up,” Roy said when I stepped back. He held me out with his hands on my shoulders. “Not that you didn’t before,” he added. “You just look older.”

  “And you. I wouldn’t have recognized you. You look bigger and older and. . .”

  He laughed.

  “Can we go for a walk?”

  “Don’t stand there with the door open,” I heard from behind and turned to see Boggs in the hallway.

  “It’s my brother,” I said firmly.

  Boggs stared a moment, his eyes locking with mine, then a slight warming slipped into his gaze. He surprised me by nodding and saying, “Then ’ave ’im in or ’ave ’im come back later.”

  “He’ll come in,” I said quickly and took Roy’s hand to lead him into the house. “I’ve still got a little time before I help with dinner,” I explained and led him down the hallway.

  “Is that the owner?” he whispered.

  “No. That’s the owner’s lackey.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’ll explain it all in a moment,” I said.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To my closet of a room,” I said.

  Roy tried to look at everything he could as I dragged him through the house.

  “These people must be even richer than I realized,” he muttered.

  “They’ve got money, Roy, but they’re poor.”

  “Huh?”

  He paused in my doorway when I showed him my room and just gazed for a moment, shaking his head.

  “When I learned you were going to live in England with a rich family, I thought you’d be living a lot better than this, Rain. You were better off in our place in the projects,” he said.

  “I know, but I don’t spend much time here between school and work.”

  He nodded and came in.

  “We’ll have to sit on the bed,” I told him.

  “That’s fine.”

  “How long are you going to be in England?”

  “Just two days,” he said. “I managed to work it out with a buddy and get myself on an army transport.” He continued to gaze about my small room as if there was so much to see. “I was worried you’d be spoiled by now, living with that rich grandma in Virginia and then here. They don’t treat you like a relative here, I guess.”

  “They don’t know who I really am, Roy.”

  “Why?”

  “Grandmother Hudson thought it was best we keep that secret. These people are a lot more stuffy and worried about their family name and such.”

  “Thought so,” he said, looking at the room and its pathetic furniture. ‘Treating you like some servant girl.”

  I laughed.

  “It’s not all so terrible. I’m enjoying the school and I’ve seen some wonderful things since I’ve been here.”

  “Sure,” he said. He looked at me quickly and then down at me floor. It made me feel like it was painful for him to gaze at me too long.

  “How have you been, Roy?”

  “Me? Oh, fine. You know what they say,” he added smiling, “you find a life in the army. I’m getting trained in electronics so when I get out, I’ll be able to find a good job. I’ve got a lot of good buddies, too. Maybe it’s the uniform, but everyone seems to treat everyone me same way most of the time. I mean, officers are still officers, but. . .well, you know what I mean,” he muttered, frustrated with his struggle to express himself.

  “Yes, Roy, I do,” I said, touching his arm.

  He looked at me for a lo
ng moment and smiled.

  “I’ve been dreaming about this so long, I can’t believe I’m actually here with you again. It’s almost like we’re back in D.C.”

  ‘Too much has happened since then, Roy. Neither of us will ever go back.”

  “That’s the truth,” he said, nodding. He looked down again and continued. “I heard more about Ken. He got in trouble in prison and he’s going to serve eight years in total now for sure.”

  “Wow,” I said. “I feel sorry for him.”

  “I don’t,” he said quickly, his eyes filling with that familiar look of rage I had known so well back in what I now thought of as my other life. “He had plenty of chances to be a man. Mama gave him lots of second chances. If she hadn’t suffered so much, I bet she wouldn’t have died like that.”

  “I don’t know, Roy. Lots of rich, happy people get sick like that and die.”

  “That woman never had her head out of the water much on account of him. No sir, I don’t feel a bit sorry for him. He didn’t get enough time in lockup as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Okay, Roy.”

  “There’s other bad news. Aunt Sylvia died.”

  “Oh, no. What happened?”

  “Heart failure.” He looked up. “Soon there’ll only be you and me left in this whole family,” he declared. “Not that it’s much of a family anyhow.”

  “A family’s a family, Roy.”

  “It just means there’s people we can’t deny,” he declared. He looked at me harder. “You and me could do something about it, Rain. We can start this whole thing new and make our own family.”

  I nodded, but looked away.

  “I guess that’s a dumb idea, now that you’re on your way to being a big star, huh?”

  “Oh, I’m far from becoming a big star, Roy. All I’ve done is a couple of things on the stage and I’m still learning. I have a great deal to learn yet.”

  “Yeah, but you will and then you won’t want to know me.”

  “Oh stop that talk, Roy. That day will never come. You’re all I have now, too,” I said.

  His eyes filled with some light again.

  “You mean that?”

  “Of course I mean that, Roy.” I looked at the time. “I’ve got to get to the kitchen to help Mrs. Chester prepare dinner,” I said.

  “Oh. Yeah. Sorry.”

  “But I don’t want you to leave,” I said quickly. “I’ll introduce her to you and you can watch us in the kitchen. She’ll give you something to eat, too,” I said. “Or I will. After I’m finished serving the dinner, we can visit longer if you want to.”

  “If I want to? Sure, I want to. It’s the only reason I made this trip, Rain.”

  “Okay,” I said, smiling.

  On the way to the kitchen, I began to tell him about my life in England. Just before we reached the kitchen, I revealed how I had found my real father and how Grandma Hudson had advised me to let him be.

  “Is that so?” he asked, eyes wide. “Are you going to live with him now?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s too late for that. Grandmother Hudson was right. C’mon,” I said, opening the door to the kitchen. “Meet Mrs. Chester.”

  She looked up from a bowl of lettuce she was chopping.

  “Well, what’s this now?” she asked quickly. “An invasion of Yanks?”

  “This is my brother, Roy,” I said. “Roy, this is Mrs. Chester.”

  “How do you do, ma’am,” he said.

  She looked at me and at him. I could see her measuring the differences in our looks.

  “He’s visiting from Germany,” I explained. “He has a forty-eight-hour pass.”

  “That so?”

  “I thought it would be all right for him to watch us work and maybe give him something to eat while he waits for me to finish,” I continued.

  “Sit yerself down over there,” she said nodding at the small table and chairs in the comer. “We’re ’avin’ a fancy shepherd’s pie.”

  Roy raised his eyebrows and looked at me quizzically.

  “It’s very good, Roy. Mrs. Chester is an excellent cook.”

  “I do what I got to do,” she muttered. “There’s lots better ‘n me.” She glanced at Roy. “How’s the food in the Yank army?” she asked him.

  Roy laughed.

  “We don’t refer to it as food, ma’am,” he said.

  She stared a moment and then she laughed.

  “I know what that means. Yes I do,” she said, wagging her head.

  I smiled at Roy and began to set the table. Roy remained in the kitchen throughout the dinner, but when I served the afters, I announced his presence.

  “Your brother?” Great-aunt Leonora asked, astonished. “In our kitchen?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You should have told us earlier. We would have had him at the table,” she added.

  From the look on Great-uncle Richard’s face, I could see he wouldn’t have approved. I brought Roy out and introduced him. Great-uncle Richard continued to look displeased and uncomfortable, but Great-aunt Leonora rattled on and on about American servicemen in London and how one of her charity groups once held a dance for them.

  “That was so long ago, it doesn’t pay to bring it up, Leonora,” Great-uncle Richard muttered.

  “Where are you staying, Roy?” Great-aunt Leonora asked him, ignoring her husband.

  “I have a room in a B and B.”

  “Bed and breakfast. How nice,” she said. “If we had known, we might have made arrangements for you to stay with us,” she added.

  Great-uncle Richard’s eyes nearly spun in his head. He cleared his throat and turned his back on Roy. I nodded at him and he told them he was pleased to meet them and returned to the kitchen.

  “What a nice looking young man,” Great-aunt Leonora said. “The uniform does so much, doesn’t it? It makes them all so handsome.”

  “Nonsense, Leonora. If a uniform did that, you’d swoon at the sight of a bobby.”

  “Oh a policeman is something different, dear. He’s. . .different,” she insisted.

  Great-uncle Richard raised his eyebrows and glanced at me. I looked away quickly and started to clear the table.

  “Maybe we should give her me day off tomorrow, Richard,” Great-aunt Leonora suggested just as I started out of the dining room.

  “We’re understaffed with Mary Margaret gone, and she’s got school, anyway,” he muttered.

  I lingered in the kitchen until they were finished and then I went out and quickly finished clearing the table.

  “You jist go off and visit with yer brother.” Mrs Chester said. “I can finish ’ere.”

  “But. . .”

  “Don’t work your gob. Just go on before I change me mind,” she ordered.

  I thanked her and left with Roy, returning to my room.

  “We can go for a nice walk,” I said. “Let me just wash up and fix my hair.”

  He waited and then we left and strolled toward Kensington. I told him more about my real father, about the school, my acting classes, the performance at the showcase, life with the Endfields, but not about the incident with Great-uncle Richard. I didn’t want him to get upset and maybe furious about it. There was no telling what Roy would do if he learned about the cottage and what had gone on there. I didn’t even mention Mary Margaret. Instead, I told him about things I found strange and amusing in London. I babbled on and on and he walked with his head down or gazed at me with a soft smile on his face.

  Finally, we stopped at a bench and I gasped.

  “I’ve talked your ear off without letting you get hardly a word in about yourself, I know,” I said, “but it’s so good to have someone who’ll listen to me, someone I can trust.”

  “I’m glad you still feel that way about me, Rain.”

  “Of course I do. Why shouldn’t I?”

  “I was afraid I might have scared you off,” he admitted.

  We were both quiet for a long moment, just sitting there watching peopl
e pass and hearing someone playing a flute way off to our right. It sounded so melancholy my thoughts just naturally went to Mama. I just knew Roy was thinking of Mama, too. It was as if we could read each other’s thoughts. Maybe that came from being so close, from living the lives of a brother and sister despite the different blood in our veins.

  “She’d be surprised if she could see us both now, I bet,” he simply blurted.

  “Yes, she would, and I think happy, too, Roy. I hope so anyway.”

  “Seems a person like Mama should have happiness before she dies and not afterward though.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He turned to me and reached for my hand.

  “We should be happy, Rain. We can be. Time’s gone by and we’ve been far apart, living different lives. Maybe you can think of me as someone different now, huh?”

  I shook my head.

  “Every time I think of you, Roy, I think about us back in D.C., about you holding my hand and taking me for walks and protecting me like an older brother. Maybe it was a sick joke pulled on us, but that’s how we were brought up. It’s not easy to erase those memories, those feelings, and replace them with something so different.”

  He stared, his eyes suddenly suspicious.

  “Do you have a boyfriend here?” he asked.

  “No,” I said quickly.

  “But you did meet someone, didn’t you?” he asked.

  “I thought so, but he’s not what I expected him to be and maybe it’s too soon for me anyway. I don’t want to give my heart away easily, Roy. I don’t want to make a mistake. If people were as extra careful about their love affairs as they are about their money or some of their other possessions, there would be less heartache in this world.”

  “I don’t need to think to know how I feel about you, Rain, and why we’re good together and why we would last forever and ever,” he said.

  I smiled at him and nodded.

  “I know, Roy. I appreciate that.”

  “Think you’ll ever feel the same about me?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’ll feel like tomorrow, much less in the future,” I said.

  He pressed his Ups together and took a deep breath.