An Exaltation of Larks

by Suanne Laqueur

  Then he got depressed.

  He went about his social business as usual—he co-captained the ski team and had a wide circle of friends, but he was lonely in a way he couldn’t articulate. He got into relationships with girls, then grew bored with them. He wandered around the house constantly looking for something. Restless in his own skin. Itching for some inexplicable action. The only thing that brought satisfaction was working after school at Roland Lark’s vet practice. Animals were the only company he could tolerate.

  Or perhaps the only company that could tolerate him.

  “Is something wrong with that boy?” Roland asked his wife.

  “What in the world is wrong with you?” Meredith asked her foster son.

  Alex had no idea. His mood worsened when Val didn’t come home for Thanksgiving. Or Christmas. The latter left the whole family depressed, and they abandoned Guelisten for the house in Stowe. But even skiing didn’t bring Alex its usual joy.

  “Dude, what crawled up your ass and died?” Roger said.

  “He misses Val,” Trelawney said, which made the entire family burst out laughing. Everyone except Alex, who chewed on a thumbnail and narrowed his eyes.

  Val spent her second semester abroad in Paris. Then did another internship in Milan. When she finally came home, it had been nearly a year since Alex had seen her.

  Oh shit, he thought as she came screaming up the porch steps.

  “Look at you,” she cried. “You’re gorgeous.” She dropped her bag and jumped on him. Arms and legs and perfume and…

  Oh shit, Alex thought.

  “You grew up,” she said, patting his shoulders and arms. “And out.”

  His hands touched her back and her hair and wanted to die.

  “Miss me?” she said.

  He couldn’t answer. Seeing her was a key turned in a rusty lock and now all his gears were churning. She’d been the missing link around here. Hers was the action he craved, the fight his nails wanted to dig into. He couldn’t wait to talk and tell stories, to laugh and tease, to bash the bathroom door down and push every button. Val was home, and it was on, baby.

  It was on, all right. By dinner, when his knee kept bumping Val’s under the table, he knew exactly what was wrong with him.

  Oh shit, he thought.

  He thought it when Val stared at him over pancakes the next morning, the air swirling between them, thicker than butter and sweeter than syrup. He thought it every time he and Val brushed past each other in the hall or walked into the same room. As each teasing remark or joke smoldered at the edges. When their eyes met and couldn’t look away.

  Oh shit…

  Running around getting ready for college kept them busy and separated. But now all ends were tied up, all bags packed and all cars loaded. Val was going back to Rhode Island in the morning, Alex was heading to his freshman year at Columbia. Out of time and excuses, they were cornered in a classmate’s living room, closed up in a fist of music and buzzing voices and cigarette smoke.

  “This is so weird,” Val said, walking her fingers up the placket of Alex’s button-down shirt. Her chin came up slightly, and he saw how the tendons in her neck fluttered around the hollow at the base of her throat. His thumb moved across her skin and settled into that warm, enticing notch. It fit him perfectly, the depression in her flesh adhering to the arc of his fingertip as if one had been created expressly for the other.

  “I want to kiss you,” he said. His thumb moved out of the hollow of her throat, and then back in. “Badly.”

  Her eyes closed and her brows hunched over them a moment. Then her forehead smoothed, as if she had worked out the solution to a problem. “No,” she said. “You want to kiss me well. You just want it badly.”

  She drank the last of her beer and set the cup down on the floor. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Where?”

  Guelisten was kind to children and drunks, but mean to randy teenagers. Cops knew all the good parking places. Roland and Meredith were home. Alex supposed he and Val could pretend to go to bed and sneak down the hallway later.

  Fuck later.

  Val dug in her purse and pulled out a silver fob shaped like a bird. Off it hung a single key, which she shook at Alex. “Who’s her grandmother’s favorite?”

  “Oh my God.” It was the key to Muriel’s dress shop. And in the back of Muriel’s dress shop was a little room with a day bed, where Muriel sometimes took little rests during lunch.

  Val’s eyes were wicked, a triumphant smile wrinkling her nose. “Now how bad do you want me?”

  They skulked through the throng and down the street, turning onto Bemelman and practically running toward town. They slipped through the parking lot behind the Lark Building and into the dress shop.

  “Please don’t be a good kisser,” Val said, backing Alex up against the door, winding her arms up around his neck.

  “I’ll try,” he said. The first touch of his mouth to hers was tentative. She’d probably kissed a bunch of French and Italian boys during her semesters abroad, what the hell did Alex have on them? But as he sank a little more conviction into the kiss, his heated blood rose up, with a nationalistic certainty they didn’t call his people Latin lovers for nothing.

  “Try harder,” Val whispered, her breath trembling against Alex’s mouth as she pulled him in again.

  He’d never known kissing like this. He plunged all ten fingers into her hair, held her head and turned her mouth around his, fitting it into him, melting into it. The buzz of the alcohol was gone and he was high on her taste, drunk on the soft slide of her tongue and the hard edge of her teeth.

  “Where have you been?” she whispered. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t know,” he said, laughing against her face. She tilted her head back, letting him kiss and lick down her neck.

  “Do you have a condom?”

  They both froze up, breathing hard.

  “Shit,” he said with a groan.

  “Oh well,” she said, drawing his shirt over his head. “We have other options.”

  “Right,” he said. “Wait, what?”

  A long, hot kiss. Then she slid down his body, falling to her knees.

  “Oh, Christ,” he said. She was unbuckling him, unbuttoning and unzipping. Sliding one hand into his boxers and pulling his jeans down with the other. His fingers closed in her hair and he cried out her name as she took him in, took him down. Warm and wet, soft and ferocious. With every groan he let loose, she matched it in her chest, sighing around him, licking along the length of him, catching the tiny sweet spot beneath the ridge and then pulling him into her throat again.

  He had both hands in her hair now. He’d never come in a girl’s mouth but she was pushing him along, pulling him along, sucking him hard and not letting up. His toes squeezed tight inside his sneakers, his eyes squeezed to slits, all of him squeezed into a pure hard core of want. Like a coin slipped into a payphone.

  Do you accept the charges?

  “Yes,” Alex whispered. The dime dropped and he exploded on her tongue. His fists hammered the door behind him, his head writhed side to side against the wood. She was laughing around him, her hands moving up and down his body in long, loving strokes. He twitched under her, coming down, shivering. He shook his head hard, blew his breath out and looked down at her. From her knees she gazed up at him in the dim light, licking her lips, her eyes bright with desire.

  “Was that one of your college courses?” he said, gasping.

  She touched the corner of her mouth. “I got an A.”

  “Come here,” he said, pulling her to stand. “Let me show you the new curriculum at Guelisten High.”

  Alex had gone down on a couple of girls, and it hadn’t been the greatest of experiences. Both girls had been so skittish about how they’d look and smell and taste, Alex couldn’t relax and figure out what he was doing. The sole impression left was confusion and Alex came away from oral sex feeling he’d been the victim of false advertising. But now h
is mouth grew damp as his hands moved sure and strong, unzipping Val’s jeans, slowly sliding them down over her hips. He knew exactly what to do this time.

  He kissed her neck as he eased her underwear down. He drew her sweater over her head, unhooked her bra. She arched into him, fevered and gorgeous with the straps hanging off her arms and her panties halfway down.

  “You better not be good at this,” she said.

  “I’m terrible at it,” he said, finding her mouth again. Little sounds sighed in her throat and chest as they kissed. He caught them up and swallowed them down, powerful and sexy and confident. His fingers slid between her legs. She was slick and wet outside while within was hot and pulsing.

  “Alejandro,” she whispered.

  He pulled her kiss into his, sucking on the absurd rightness of it all. This was the girl he fought with about toothpaste caps left off and towels not hung up. The girl who listened in on his phone conversations and blabbed about his crushes. The girl who borrowed his sweaters and didn’t return them. Swiped his good ski gloves and lost them. Broke the spines and dog-eared the pages of his books. Left a hundred IOUs in the mason jar where he kept his money. If she clogged the toilet, she asked Alex to plunge it. If Alex was going to Rite-Aid, she begged him to buy her tampons. She played her crappy music too loud, wouldn’t surrender the TV clicker and used up all the fucking hot water.

  He didn’t know until now he loved it. Loved every fight and argument and annoyance. Every theft and inconvenience and favor. Because on the flip side, she never teased him about his fear of the dark. She knew the difference between his passive sighs for attention and his aggressive sighs from heartache. She understood how hard it was to keep the flame of hope alive for his parents. She knew his eyes remembered dead dogs and his hands remembered the big curve of his mother’s belly. Only Val knew his mind couldn’t free itself from wondering what they’d done to Clementina, because Val was the only person he’d told.

  “Figures you’d turn out to be my best friend,” he said as he backed up her up toward the day bed.

  “We’re ruining everything,” she said. “Aren’t we?”

  “I don’t give a shit.” He eased her down, took her pants off and knelt between her shaking thighs. He was shaking all over as he peeled her open. He couldn’t see a damn thing but he knew she was soft pink within blonde curls, glistening and quivering, waiting for his tongue. And when he got up close to that sweet, anxious heat, he wanted to literally eat her. Drink her, swallow and consume her.

  He learned three valuable lessons that night:

  Val tasted amazing.

  “Alejandro” sounded really good when it was cried in the dark.

  And going down on girls was the fucking greatest thing ever.

  July 1979

  Corona, Queens, New York

  The doorbell rang at three in the afternoon.

  This was an oddity in a building occupied by one extended family. Nobody rang. Doors were rarely even closed. At most you gave a cursory rap of knuckles before barging in.

  In the Dominican enclave of Corona, doorbells were only rung by police and priests. Or, God forbid, immigration.

  Javier Gil deSoto looked up from his composition notebook, wrinkling eyebrows at his cousin, Ernesto. Nesto shrugged and changed the cross of his ankles in Javi’s lap.

  “Which of you boys is in trouble?” Javi’s mother said, wiping her hands on a dish towel.

  Each cousin pointed to the other.

  Rosa threw the towel at them and smoothed her hair. Before she could leave the kitchen, her daughter Naroba came in, followed by Javi’s English teacher.

  “Señor Durante,” Rosa said, smoothing her hair again.

  Javi stood up, knocking Nesto’s feet away and running a quick hand over his own head.

  Even casual and unshaven, dressed in street clothes and sneakers, Ramón Durante exuded authority. Six-five, silver-haired and movie star handsome (Rosa said he looked like Fernando Lamas), he was easily the toughest and most beloved teacher at Newtown High. All the girls crushed on him. Boys respected him, which was the macho way of crushing.

  Javi ran a hand through his hair again. While something about Durante inspired Javi to pour words onto paper, something else made his voice hide shyly at the back of his throat.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Mr. Durante said, regarding the array of glass bottles on the kitchen table. “Are you conducting a chemistry experiment?”

  Rosa laughed. A little flirtatiously, Javi thought, which was unlike her. Then again, she was making mamajuana, the beloved elixir and (it was said) aphrodisiac of the Dominican Republic. The process always threw a cloak of magic happiness over everything.

  He glanced down at his notebook, where he had been jotting this exact observation: The kitchen giggled when Rosa Gil deSoto was making mamajuana.

  He closed the cover, wondering what was behind this visit. Durante had some papers in his hand, rolled in a tube which he tapped against his side. Arms crossed, expression attentive, he listened as Rosa explained what went into mamajuana. She began a new batch every New Year’s, curing sticks, leaves and roots in gin. In July, she poured off the gin and replaced it with rum, adding cinnamon, molasses and Dominican herbs.

  “For you,” Rosa said, tightening the cork in one of the stuffed bottles and handing it to Durante. “But let it alone another three weeks. Put it in a dark place and let it brew.”

  The high humidity threw a fine sheen of sweat across Rosa’s forehead and made the damp tendrils of hair stick to her neck. A slice of sun came through the kitchen window, lighting up her face and making it almost pretty. Her normal scowling expression was dreamy. Javi’s eyes narrowed at this rare, soft version of his prickly mother and his fingers itched to pin the moment to a page.

  “Writing?” Mr. Durante said, tapping Javi’s head with the rolled-up tube. “I hope?”

  “He never stops,” Nesto said.

  “It’s either a pen or a fork in that one’s hand,” Rosa said.

  Javi smiled, putting a knee on the seat of his chair and finally finding his voice. “What’s going on?”

  Durante unrolled the tube. “This came across my desk this morning. I thought of you right away. It’s a fiction contest for a new literary magazine coming out this fall. First prize is five hundred dollars.”

  “Five hundred smacks,” Nesto cried, standing up.

  “And publication in their December issue,” Durante said.

  “Five hundred dollars,” Naroba said. She looked at Javi with wide eyes and Javi tugged her ponytail.

  “What’s five hundred dollars?” Uncle Miguel came into the kitchen and as usual, everything stiffened in his presence. “We don’t have that kind of money.”

  “We might,” Nesto said.

  Miguel’s mustache bristled as he looked the papers over. He was Javi’s father’s eldest brother. He owned the building. And to a degree, he owned all the Gil deSotos.

  He’d been the first to immigrate to New York and never let anyone forget it. Miguel came first. Miguel sweated in a factory in the garment district. Miguel waited tables. Miguel drove a cab. Miguel sent the money home and Miguel made it possible for his younger brothers Enrique and Rafael to come to New York. Because of Miguel, they didn’t have to toil at unskilled labor jobs, but had the dignity of owning a small business. And when Rafael—Javi’s father—wanted to open a restaurant on the ground floor of the building, Miguel lent him the money.

  The Money. It was Miguel’s favorite topic. The Gil deSoto apartments rocked and reeled with constant fights about The Money. Who earned the most, who sacrificed the most, who spent the most. With Money, Miguel dominated and controlled his brothers and sisters-in-law. The adults in Javi’s life were constantly angry about Money, worrying over Money, or frightened they’d end up with no Money.

  “Do you have something to enter?” Mr. Durante asked Javi.

  “He’s got a ton,” Nesto said. “What about the baseball story?”

 
; “No, that’s no good,” Javi said, running fingers down the filing cabinet in his head.

  “I liked the one about the three grandmothers on the stoop,” Durante said.

  Miguel snorted. “Why don’t you write a crime drama or mystery,” he said. “Like a real man. Not this emotional sissy crap about what you see walking down the street.”

  “He has a gift,” Durante said quietly.

  “What about mine?” Naroba said. She had her hands behind her back and her back to the wall. Shy under normal circumstances, she went invisible when Miguel was around.

  Javi studied his sister. She was older than him, but so diminutive and meek, everyone saw her as the baby. The story Javi wrote for her was, he thought, his best work. It was nothing he saw on the street. Rather, he’d taken Naroba’s timidity and turned it inside-out, making an alter-ego called Naria Nyland. A warrior queen who ruled alone, defending ancient lands conquered by her grandmothers.

  “You’ll lose if you submit a stupid fairy tale,” Miguel said.

  Nesto put his chin on Javi’s shoulder. “You’ll win.”

  “Well anyway,” Mr. Durante said, “the deadline is the end of July. Read over the guidelines and submit something. Good luck with your alchemy,” he said to Rosa. He gave a dry nod to Miguel, then looked at Javi. “Walk me out?”

  Nesto followed them. Wherever Javi went, Nesto followed. Without his cousin’s shadowing presence, Javi felt like he was missing a sock.

  “I want you to enter,” Durante said on the street. “Don’t chicken out on this.”

  “He won’t,” Nesto said, an arm around Javi’s shoulders, sounding like a sports manager.

  “You doing your summer reading?” Durante asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It’s a big year coming up, Javier.”

  “I know.” Javi felt his spine straighten. That he could be the first Gil deSoto to go to college wasn’t lost on him. If his writing could get him there, so much the better.

  “Qué lo qué?” The men turned to see Javi’s father coming out the side door of his restaurant, lighting a cigarette. “Señor Durante, it’s July. My boy in trouble at school already?”