The Incident

by Andrew Neiderman

  When she was Victoria’s age, her mother did have her figure, but she kept it more subdued. She had a very good figure for a woman her age now. There just wasn’t an early picture of her in which she didn’t seem to be hiding her sexuality. She was almost without a waist, and V-necks were avoided. Only her father knew she had a cleavage. And she grew up in the roaring twenties! Only she wasn’t one who roared. She was too studious. Sometimes, from the way her mother described her youth and her early social life, it seemed as if finding a husband and having a child was like checking off items on a grocery list. She often began a description with the words, ‘It was time for it, you see.’

  Even so, there was so much about her mother she admired. She wanted to have her mother’s self-confidence and attract the same respect and admiration. But did she have to be a carbon copy? Was it terribly wrong to think you were sexy and good-looking? Somewhere in the back of her mind, buried deep under layers and layers of therapy, was the idea that maybe what had happened was her fault.

  Dr Thornton had told her that wasn’t unusual. ‘It helps us rationalize the “Why me?”’

  Yes, but had she been too proud of her maturing figure, too eager to display it?

  She lunged defiantly for her black dress with mesh shoulders atop a sweetheart neckline and a dipped V-back. She had yet to wear it since she had bought it almost on a dare with herself. Quickly undressing, she slipped it on and admired how the body-hugging sheath of flexible fabric accentuated her hourglass figure. Yes, it was sexy, but elegantly so.

  ‘What are you doing? Where are you going?’ her mother asked from her bedroom doorway.

  Victoria had been so self-absorbed that she hadn’t heard her enter the house.

  ‘Oh. Thinking about what to wear. Bart Stonefield asked me to dinner tonight.’

  She tried to sound casual about it, but she was sure her mother could hear the slight trembling in her voice.

  ‘Bart Stonefield?’

  Victoria held her breath, waiting for the negativity.

  ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘Just today. I brought my car in for that repair.’

  ‘Oh, right. He’s their something-or-other at the dealership,’ she said.

  ‘Service manager. He told me that he had taken a class with you at Sullivan County Community College.’

  ‘And quit midway.’

  ‘He said he had, yes.’

  ‘He was doing well, too. Good insights. He should have gone to a four-year school. He had very decent high school grades.’

  Victoria wasn’t surprised her mother knew that much about him. She was meticulous when it came to scrutinizing her students.

  ‘But I suspect there were family pressures,’ her mother added.

  ‘Pressures?’

  ‘To groom him for the business. John Stonefield is one of those fathers who believes his son should be grateful for what he’s created for him, and, contrary to what every other parent would take pride in, he derides any greater ambitions his son might entertain.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘His son’s greater ambitions diminish his own achievements.’

  Victoria didn’t know whether to laugh or acknowledge another of her mother’s brilliant observations about people. She was like an amateur psychologist who would happily drop the word amateur. She had, after all, a worldly education at Vassar and had graduated with honors with both her B.A. and M.A.

  ‘Doctor Myers, I presume,’ Victoria surprised herself countering.

  Her mother lifted her eyebrows. ‘Teaching is like working in a mental clinic these days. Thank goodness I have a background in psychology.’

  ‘I’m not sure what to do with my hair,’ Victoria said, shifting topics as quickly as she could.

  ‘I think you should brush it and pin it back. You have the face for it. I’ll help you,’ she offered.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Let me change and see what I’m making your father for dinner. That dress, by the way …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Looks stunning on you,’ she said and walked off, leaving Victoria gazing after her with a new sense of hope.

  Later, after her mother had helped her with her hair and her makeup, Victoria made some finishing touches and stepped out of her bedroom, taking a deep breath like someone about to go underwater. She had a thin, soft white silk shawl her grandmother had given her years ago, but it was probably warm enough in early July, even in the Catskills, not to need it. Nevertheless, she felt more comfortable with it.

  As soon as she stepped into the dining room, her father looked up from the dinner table where he had just sat. He was still in his dark gray suit and soft blue tie. His reddish brown hair was stroked with a little more gray along his temples. Their dinner was always special on Friday nights, if they didn’t go out to eat. It gave them the feeling of reaching the end of the week. Both he and her mother called it the TGIF effect. It wasn’t only educational personnel who were thanking God it was Friday. Almost all government workers did, as well as many business people. It was like finishing a marathon. No more need to run.

  The teardrop chandelier above the table glittered like diamonds. Mozart’s Magic Flute streamed in from the stereo in the living room. Victoria’s parents believed music was relaxing and that relaxation enhanced digestion. ‘How you teenagers can eat with that rock and roll playing is beyond me. Every organ in your body must be twitching,’ her mother told her. Victoria didn’t come to her generation’s defense. Maybe that was what her mother wanted her to do – fight for something.

  There was an opened counter between their living room and kitchen, where her mother was preparing dinner. Their house was a step-up from what would be called a modest ranch-style home. It was one of the larger houses in the small community. Their hamlet and six other entities made up the town of Fallsburgh, and the township was one of thirteen other townships in the county. They were still in what would be called the heyday of the Catskill resort world, a world still populated with boarding houses, small and large hotels, and bungalow colonies, some so large they had their own entertainment halls, tennis courts and, of course, swimming pools. Her father told her the population after the Fourth of July went from 7,500 people to close to a half a million. The tourists swept in for most of ten weeks and then, after Labor Day Weekend, were like rats deserting a ship.

  ‘You look very nice, Vick,’ her father said. Her mother closed the refrigerator sharply and grimaced. Despite her constant criticism of it, her father never stopped reducing Victoria to Vick.

  ‘Mom helped me with my hair and makeup,’ she said.

  ‘Oh?’ He didn’t have to say anything more. She hadn’t done that for years. ‘Where ya goin’?’

  ‘Dante’s.’

  ‘Oh, right. We haven’t been there for quite a spell.’

  ‘Whose fault is that?’ her mother snapped, and he laughed.

  They heard the door buzzer. No one moved. The last time a young man came to the house to take her out was the night of the senior prom. That was Jack Martin who had never been able to throw off the tag a few bricks short of a load. He was shy and almost as withdrawn as Victoria was. All night she heard, ‘Birds of a feather stick together,’ followed by laughter. He danced with her as if she could infect him, but he was polite and sweet, apologizing for almost anything he did, regardless of whether it was right or wrong. After the prom, he nodded at her and said hello in school once in a while, but he never asked her out again. Not that she wanted him to ask or would have said yes if he had.

  Bart seemed to glow in the entryway light. His eyes were electric, his smile like the smile of a little boy about to get on to a rollercoaster for the first time. There was that sort of innocence in a face so handsome and manly that he could easily recall a Clark Gable or an Errol Flynn, not that they had his twinkle of innocence. Bart wore a light blue tie with his dark blue sports jacket and light pink shirt. He was wearing cufflinks, too. Somehow, in spite of how much he worked indoors, h
e already had an even summer tan. She hadn’t noticed at the garage. In fact, all that was like a blur now.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. She hadn’t spoken after she opened the door. She was wondering if she wasn’t in some dream.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘You really look beautiful, Victoria. Now I’m glad I brought this,’ he said, bringing his hand out from behind his back to show her a white rose corsage. She stared at it as if she didn’t know what it was or what it was for. ‘It’s OK, right?’

  ‘What? Yes, of course. I was just so surprised.’

  He took it out as her parents stepped up beside her.

  ‘Good evening, Mr and Mrs Myers,’ he said but concentrated on pinning the corsage on correctly.

  ‘You look very handsome, Bart,’ her father said.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Yes, very nice,’ her mother said. ‘You know you still owe me a term paper on Huckleberry Finn,’ she added. She sounded serious, but that was her mother’s sense of humor.

  ‘Oh, I knew there was something. I’ll get right on it, Mrs Myers,’ Bart said. He smiled at Victoria.

  ‘You can always come back,’ her mother said. ‘I promise. It will be like you never left.’

  ‘I might just do that.’

  ‘You guys have a good ole time of it, yer hear?’ her father said.

  Bart looked relieved. He took Victoria’s hand and started them away.

  ‘Night,’ he called back.

  ‘Enjoy,’ her father said. He closed the door.

  Victoria could hear Bart release a trapped breath. She held on to his hand, more tightly than he expected, she was sure. But she couldn’t help it.

  There were no streetlights here and she couldn’t get past that feeling that they were always out there, wearing the shadows, watching her, their lust insatiable.

  There was no doubt in her mind. They knew where she lived.

  They always knew where she lived.

  ONE

  It was an unusually warm summer that year of the Incident. New Yorkers trying to escape the city heat were not happy about the temperatures invading the ordinarily cooler mountains. Usually, everyone dressed a little warmer at night than they did during the daytime, but the high eighties and low nineties hung in until the wee morning hours. It seemed as if the air had amnesia when it came to those characteristic cool breezes.

  Victoria was just fifteen then. She seemed to have matured into a young woman overnight. Her first period had come much later than it had for most of her girlfriends, and for a while her breasts appeared to have frozen in their development. It weighed on her mind so much that many times she was tempted to ask her mother whether or not she needed to see a doctor. Her mother didn’t pick up on any of her hints, though, except to say, ‘Don’t be in a rush to get older. It’s not what it’s cracked up to be.’

  An essential part of innocence was an unawareness of how much and how often you were attracting male interest. It was almost as if she woke up one day, noticed the looks and knew she had crossed a line. At first, it seemed to Victoria that she was drawing the eyes and smiles of men and not the eyes of the boys at school. Perhaps they were too used to seeing her in that in-between state, but that soon began to change. Her mother, despite her apparent disinterest in Victoria’s maturing, practically leaped at her one day and said she wanted take her shopping for a more appropriate bra and new jeans, blouses and skirts. She was growing out of everything.

  As it was for most of her girlfriends, the filling out of her figure felt like an accomplishment. Her self-confidence was racing to catch up. She was still a little unsure of herself, unsure of how far she should go to highlight her new feminine attributes. Millie Brockton, a girl in her class, suffered no such hesitation. She wore blouses and skirts that were obviously too tight. Her excuse was she had to wear hand-me-downs from her older sister, but anyone could see how much she enjoyed toying with the boys by leaning back in her chair and straining the buttons. She had the breasts boys called bumpers.

  On the other hand, Victoria’s mother pounced whenever she caught so much as one button on her blouse undone, especially the one that enabled the revelation of the top of her deepening cleavage.

  ‘Don’t be oblivious, Victoria,’ she would say without elaborating. So much of what her mother told her those days was between the lines. ‘Figure it out yourself,’ she’d reply if Victoria questioned something. ‘Don’t make me say it.’

  Did all mothers hold their daughters to such a high standard?

  There were definite class distinctions in Sandburg and the other small villages in the township and county. Perhaps it was because people in small towns knew so much about each other – knew who had money or who had some black sheep relative, or knew who was cheating on her husband or his wife. People in the late fifties and early sixties who had achieved college diplomas and professional status had an air of superiority about them. Her father wasn’t as obvious about it as her mother, who had the best posture of any woman Victoria knew. She had told her that Grandmother Annie had her parade about with a book on her head for hours when she was barely five.

  She didn’t have Victoria walk about with a book on her head, but she was always reminding her not to slouch. Early on, her mother set down a higher level of achievement for her. It was not uncommon for her to hear her mother say, ‘We don’t do that,’ when remarking about something someone else her age had done or their parents permitted. There was a level of expectation that Victoria resented. Children of teachers and school administrators didn’t break rules or get sent to the principal for discipline. And daughters? Especially daughters could never be promiscuous. The level of expectation was stifling.

  Although she was fifteen and could work, she didn’t have a summer job that year. Her mother wouldn’t let her work in one of the resort hotels. The parties the busboys and waiters and waitresses had in those were notorious. There was little or no supervision of the younger ones. Some even moved into the helps’ quarters and were already like college age kids off on their own, smoking, drinking and having sex. She laughed when she first heard it put that way – having sex – as if it was something you could order in a restaurant. ‘Are you having the shrimp special or are you having sex?’

  Her mother taught a summer semester at the college, and her father’s job was not the same as a school teacher’s. He was working most of the summer, too. When she was invited, Victoria could go over to Mindy Fein’s house to swim. Mindy’s parents had put in a pool two years ago. Her father owned the drugstore in town. Most of the time, Mindy worked there, even before she was of legal age, but occasionally she had weekdays and weekend days off and there was a pool party. They were one of the only families she knew who had a live-in maid, a black woman who, besides having to clean and cook, was left to supervise. She seemed like part of their family.

  Victoria’s main activity during the summer was to care for the house, clean and polish furniture, do laundry and, if she had a mind to, cut the grass now that she was old enough to ride the mower. When she did that, mostly out of boredom, she wore her two-piece and often heard car horns when boys drove by. She pretended to be deaf, but smiled to herself and commanded herself not to slouch.

  Even back then, the question haunted her. Was she beautiful or just sexy now? Could you be one without the other?

  On Friday and Saturday nights, the teenagers in Sandburg gathered unofficially in front of George’s soda fountain store, a small confectionary store where toys and cigarettes, pipe tobacco and cigars were sold as well. The volume on the jukebox was turned up so that the music spilled out of the opened doorway. To older people, it was as if a dam had been breached. They quickened their pace to walk by, shaking their heads with disapproval as if similar memories of their own youth had been stolen. Sometimes kids would literally dance in the street, annoying passing drivers whose horns blared, only encouraging them more. Those teenagers who had their driver’s licenses and cars would go from village to village, looking f
or action, but always returned before the night ended, just in case they missed something.

  Teenagers from New York whose parents had rented bungalows nearby mingled with the locals. Occasionally, the firehouse, where there was a big room for community events, was opened for a Saturday-night dance. It broke reasonably early and the kids would pour out still high on excitement to hang in front of George’s and continue this mating process that generated summer romances, peppered with rides in convertibles, necking and petting under bridges or on lightly traveled side roads, going to the drive-ins, for pizza, or night swimming in the nearby Sandburg Lake – and all of it always with a track of rock and roll to stamp a memory over a kiss or a vow of love.

  Will you still love me tomorrow?

  Virginity was in far more danger during the summer. The boys of summer with soft large dice hanging off their car’s rearview mirrors, swooped in like birds picking off baby turtles that struggled over beaches to reach the safety of the sea. They homed in with their eyes and smiles full of challenges and daring. You started to smoke, if you didn’t already. You started to drink alcohol seriously, and you recognized the sound of a condom being unwrapped. You even knew the scent.

  Victoria intended only to skirt the edges of this world. She thought of herself as an interested observer, not yet ready to become part of anything. After all, she had just gotten her wings. She left for the village that Friday night intending to meet up with Jena and Mindy. There was talk of a party at Sandburg Lake that particular evening. Her parents would never approve of her going, but she was intrigued by the idea of doing something forbidden. Toby Weintraub, a senior, had her driver’s license and her mother’s car. She was closest to Mindy and said she would take the three of them, but only bring them back to the village afterward.