Walking Dunes

by Sandra Scofield

  “Do you need college?” she asked.

  He began to think of the future more clearly. “Maybe,” he said, and his voice shook, trying out the idea, “I should study literature, and go on to graduate school. If I want to write, wouldn’t I learn from the masters?”

  “You’d learn old things!” she said. “Things you could learn reading on your own.” She seemed to find the idea disappointing and unimaginative, but he was caught up in the notion. He saw himself at a podium, talking about Keats. He would have a tiny office with a window looking out on green lawns. “Maybe I could be a college professor.” How many times had he said “maybe” in the last five minutes? She made him want things more than ever, but she made him wonder if what he wanted was the right thing. She acted so sure of herself, though her plans were more ghostly than his own. Get out of town: was that a career?

  “In a tweed jacket, with a pipe? You’d look good like that,” she said. He could not tell what the tone meant. Was she making fun of him? Was she seeing his vision?

  He never stayed long. They were exhausted after rehearsal, and often there was schoolwork still to do. He met her father, a congenial man who did not have much to say.

  The night of the first dress rehearsal, the scenes with Patsy were magic. She wore her hair pulled up high and tight on her head, and wisps escaped around her face. The sight of those cranky red hairs made him realize how vulnerable she was—Catherine, the spinster heiress, the object of his suit—and at one moment he lifted his hand to touch her face. He almost touched her, and did not, and he saw that she sensed both his impulse and his withdrawal, and suffered for his failure to follow through. He felt such power over her.

  Between acts, they took a break. He stood at the back of the stage, where the door was propped open a couple of feet. Wearing a stiff collar and jacket, he felt hot and confined, and his chest ached. He leaned against the wall and tried not to think, tried to relax his chest.

  Patsy appeared next to him. “She thinks she will die if she does not have Morris,” she whispered. He thought she was excited. Although she was dressed exactly the same, she looked like Patsy and not Catherine. Catherine was timid and careful in her speech; Patsy was reckless, outspoken.

  He took her hand and pulled her outside the door. It was a blustery cold night. He had never wanted to kiss a girl so much. She leaned against the building. Her chin was high, the faintest trace of a smile on her lips. He did not want to rush. He had always known that there would be tremendous pleasure in this moment, between the intention and the act.

  Her lips were stiff. He kissed her gently, and put his hand on her cheek. “You’re cold,” he said.

  “I’m scared of you,” she answered, and put her face hard into his shoulder.

  She said it was her father’s night off, and she could call for a ride. “Of course you won’t,” he said. The wind had died. He drove around to the other side of the tennis courts and parked beside a giant elm. “Are you cold now?” he asked. His father’s station wagon had a faulty heater. It took ten minutes to warm up, then it roasted you. There hadn’t been time for it to work very well.

  “A little.” She sat rather primly, her legs together, her hands in her lap.

  “Come here.” He took one hand and tugged her toward him. “You’re like a board.” He felt her stiffen more. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I’m surprised.”

  It seemed so natural to be with her, it seemed inevitable. “You haven’t wanted to kiss me?” All those nights, looking at one another across that crummy little room, talking pie in the sky.

  “We were friends.”

  “We are friends! Patsy—” He was surprised. She seemed so bold, yet here she was skittish and silly. “We are friends,” he said again, his voice low. He thought his voice sounded nice. He tried to think of other things to say. He felt her relax a little; he could see her shoulders lower, the tension in her face ease.

  “I feel so stupid,” she said. “Like we’ve gone off-book and I don’t know my lines.”

  “Ad-lib,” he said. When he kissed her, she kissed him back. Her awkwardness, her reticence, thrilled him. Sex wasn’t supposed to be an easy game, it was supposed to mean something. Gently, he touched her face and neck and arms. Her arms were still at her side. She trembled.

  “Oh Patsy,” he gushed, overcome by his desire for her. He drew her onto him and leaned back against the car door. He stuck his legs out on the seat so that he could feel her long body on his own.

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Just feel,” he whispered back. It took a long time to rearrange their bodies, small, gradual moves, until she was beneath him.

  It was as he had imagined, this long act of love. She was passive, but slowly she responded to his touch. He felt her bloom inside his embrace. He reached up inside her shirt to caress her breasts, but it was too cold to undress. They both wore jeans, a terrible awkwardness, but she did whatever his hands told her to do. She brought her knees up when he tapped them with his fingers.

  He took so much time, he was so tender. But when he moved his penis against her, she began to whimper, and when he pressed into her—there was resistance—she cried out and pulled away. “I’m not ready!” she said. “I’m sorry, David, I can’t, I can’t.”

  “Shh,” he soothed. He stroked her, then touched her again, restraining himself from the incredible urge to push into her. It was such a cruelty, to feel himself at her door, and to be shoved away like an interloper. What had she thought they were doing?

  He pressed, murmuring her name; if she would just relax, if he could just get inside her, he knew she would love him, she would be glad. She was the girl who wanted to live life!

  “You have to stop!” she said, pulling her legs, knocking him aside. “I tell you, not now!”

  “What do you mean, not now!” He was up on his knees, his own pants ridiculous around his ankles, his penis swollen, pulsing, pointing right at her.

  She burst into a ridiculous nervous giggle. “It’s looking at me!” she laughed.

  He wanted to slap her. He grabbed at his trousers, yanked the car door, scrambled outside. He dressed, aching horribly, and pounded his fist against the hood of the car. He knew it would frighten her, he wanted her to be frightened. She was a fake, a girl who liked to appear so strong and sure of himself, and she was what you, would expect from—from a freshman! From a girl like Sissy!

  She got out of the car on her side and ran around to him. He flung off her touch. “God, I’m sorry!” she said. “It’s the car, I think. The cold. I wasn’t expecting—” She kept moving, she wouldn’t let him not look at her. She looked like she was dancing on hot rocks. “We weren’t ready, I can’t get pregnant—”

  “I’m not stupid!” he yelled. “I had what we needed, I wanted to feel you first.”

  “Getting pregnant would be the worst thing that could happen to me.”

  “You weren’t afraid of getting pregnant,” he said. “You were afraid of making love.”

  “It hurt. I’m cold, I couldn’t relax.”

  He shook her off.

  “Listen!” she said, her voice stronger. “I didn’t want to make love in your car! I have a right to decide.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have let me start. Don’t you know anything? Don’t you know what that does to a man?”

  She reached inside his car for her jacket. She held it up against her, as if he might take it away. “A man? I don’t think that’s what you are, David,” she said, and marched off across the tennis courts.

  He could not sleep. He had been such a fool, swept along in some romantic fantasy. Why? Because she scribbled foolish poems and talked abut big cities! Because she had a little more experience than he did, acting. Because he was bored with Glee, and Patsy was there, like something you stumbled across in the alley. She was there.

  He ground his teeth and cursed her. She was a smart-aleck, a coward, a cock-tease. She wasn’t even pretty. And he, he w
as a fool with a prick for a brain. He tossed half the night, falling asleep so late it was midmorning when he woke, and nearly noon when he got to school. The attendance counselor hardly looked up; David always went to school, like a sheep with a herd.

  He had nearly made a terrible mistake, one that would have embroiled him with a girl who cleaned motel rooms and built fantasies about being an actress, one that would have brought all hell down on his head from Glee, a perfectly nice girl, and scorn from Leland, who thought being in a play had made David a little crazy. He had been under a spell, the spell of the play. He had nearly come too close to a girl who was not in any way the kind of girl he wanted, a girl with nothing going for her except enough talent to look good on a Basin High stage. He felt enormous relief, reconsidering the night’s disaster. He was glad not to have made such a giant step in the wrong direction.

  It was easier than he had dreaded, there was only the week to get through, and, strangely, what had happened between David and Patsy did not seem to matter at all when they were on stage. If anything, the electricity between them was better. Off-stage, they did not exchange a word. The play was a great success. He took Glee to the cast party at Mr. Turnbow’s house, but it was boring, and they only stayed a little while.

  The following Saturday morning, some of the student council kids gathered on the football field. There was one last task before the game: the goal post needed to be wrapped in crepe paper. They stared up at the post in awe. It was so high.

  Beth Ann Kimbrough said, “Last year Bobby Adams shinnied up the pole.” They all looked at her. You’re kidding, somebody said.

  There were only girls there, and David, and one sophomore boy wearing glasses with a safety cord. Circumstances made David a knight. Adrenalin gushed through him like a cascade. Here was something he could do, something the whole world would see, and all it took was a little nerve. Nothing could have stopped him from ascending that height, though his heart pounded in his chest so hard he thought they must hear it on the ground, where they all stood, mouths gaping, as he worked his way up, trailing green and white paper. He had to do the climb twice. When he came down, his legs were shaking so hard he thought he might fall over. “Our hero!” one of the girls said, laughing in a nice way. He turned and looked for Beth Ann. She was smiling. A trick of the light made her seem to glow.

  When Glee heard what he had done, she was so thrilled she said she would do anything for him, anything at all. She giggled and twittered, in case he didn’t know what she meant. He said he had in mind something girls didn’t like to do, or so he had heard. “You don’t have to if you don’t like it,” he said. He thought it would hurt her feelings if he did not come up with something. They had been together nine months, like a baby in the womb. “I could try,” Glee said. She wore her green dress to the dance, and the white orchid he had bought for her. She only ate a shrimp salad at dinner. She was so pretty, so nice to him. If she was giddy, wasn’t it only that she was young? She was generous and honest; everybody liked her. It was a perfect Homecoming night. Basin High won by one point. Glee tried what he wanted, and did not mind. He liked her a lot, he had been crazy, all that was over now.

  19.

  David could not blame his father for refusing to go to Monahans for Thanksgiving dinner. He did not want to go, either. There was no place to escape in Aunt Cheryl’s house. She, Uncle Billy, and cousin Lenore seemed to divide it up, so that you never were out of sight. They would ask Saul ridiculous questions about his relatives back in New York. Uncle Billy would try to talk “bidness” with him, though there was no meeting ground between a tailor and an oil field worker. Saul would give the food funny looks; he would go outside and take long walks around the neighborhood, so that people would call the house to see if he belonged there, like a lost dog. It had been years since these things had happened, but they were clear as fresh photos, and nothing would make Saul go. Yet Marge could not entirely enjoy her rare holiday from the hospital. To leave Saul behind violated her sense of family, her fantasy of togetherness. It embarrassed her.

  Marge got up at dawn to make a Red Velvet cake to take to her sister’s, and an apple pie to leave for Saul. She made the pie with sour cream, as he liked it, although she had had to go to two grocery stores to find the cream, and the pie came out looking muddy. She made a huge breakfast of scrambled eggs with fried potatoes and onions, biscuits, and stewed prunes, and they managed, the three of them, to eat it all, without arguing, without saying much of anything. They were all dressed at the table; that was unusual, too.

  David and his mother left Saul behind, with a steak in the refrigerator, a green Jello salad, and the odd apple pie. Saul refused to say what he would do all day. He turned his back on them before they were out the door. Next they picked up Joyce Ellen, who was wearing a blue cotton skirt and blouse.

  “You look cold, honey,” Marge said. Joyce Ellen, squirming in the back seat, said she was all right. “You’ve got to come over and get the rest of your sweaters,” Marge insisted. Joyce Ellen turned to the window and leaned into her fist. David drove.

  Marge lasted until they were out of town, then turned to her daughter, her arms over the back of the seat. “I know you’ve got a wool pleated skirt over there, why didn’t you wear that?” Joyce Ellen was sniffling. In a moment Marge turned back, straightened her own old wool skirt, and stared forward stoically.

  They were not in Aunt Cheryl’s house two minutes before she had gone to a back closet and brought Joyce Ellen a white cardigan. Joyce Ellen did not protest. She put the sweater on and sat in the living room, in an armchair where no one could sit beside her, looking at a parade on television with their younger cousin Brian, a boy of eight who never closed his mouth all the way.

  Jiminy Jesus, David thought, wondering how he would get through the day. He carried in the cake, and set it on the counter alongside a mincemeat pie. The house was redolent with delicious smells. It helped to anticipate the food, all of them at the table with the leaf out, cloth napkins, Uncle Billy brandishing his carving knife. Marge and Cheryl were the core the rest of them grew from. New York was very far away; this was the family David had.

  Cheryl and Marge were huddled in the kitchen. Cheryl wasted no time asking after Saul sympathetically, as if her brother-in-law were impaired. It was too early in the day for Marge to crumple; she said something evasive about Saul working too hard, the tonic of a day to sleep and lounge, the cold he had been fighting and did not want to spread. David had to get out of earshot. The only thing he could think of to do was join his sister in the living room.

  Brian had gone out the sliding glass door and was on the patio, bouncing a golf ball. Joyce Ellen had fallen asleep; she was snoring lightly, her legs stretched out and her blue skirt high on her knees, one hand clutching the front of her borrowed cardigan, the other flung over an arm of the chair. Behind her in the corner was their aunt’s deep basin for hairwashing; the vinyl chair with its high curved back had been put away. David sat on the couch nearby and watched his sister sleep. Once, when he was in fourth or fifth grade, he tried to bash her head in with an iron, but it was so unexpectedly heavy that when he lunged, he fell straight over and broke his own nose.

  He heard his uncle banging around in the garage; there was all the time to get through until the women put the food on the table. Cousin Leona appeared out of the back of the house. She was sixteen, but already she had the dumpy backside of a matron. She was always ingenuously friendly, as if she could not tell David thought her moronic, and today she came at him in a particularly confident prance. She sat on the other end of the couch and asked, in a high cheerful voice, “Who do you like better, Debbie Reynolds or Doris Day?” He mumbled that he didn’t really like either one of them. Leona, immune to his discouragement, next asked his preference between Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis. Kindly, he offered an answer this time. Tony Curtis made more interesting movies, he said. Leona was putting off a faintly sulfurous odor. She was fiddling with the skirt of her cordu
roy jumper, her shoulders twitching, as if she had too much going on to sit for long. David took a long breath and said, “What are you doing in school these days, Leona?” He was sure she was one of those girls teachers liked, bright-eyed and quiet, never asking a question, but keeping her eyes on the front of the room.

  “Oh pooh, school,” Leona said. She was wearing a heart locket on a gold chain, and reached up to fondle it. “We might go into Basin Saturday, to the movies,” she said.

  “Your school?”

  She laughed. “Course not! Kids from my church group. My daddy said I could go if there was a bunch of us.”

  “Safety in numbers.” She would not need much protection, he thought, then thought again. Girls like Leona were stupid and eager, a dangerous combination. Sometimes they were the easy ones, he had heard. She took on a sly expression. “I’ll sit in the back seat, don’t you think we can fit in four?”

  “Depends on the car.”

  “Oh yeah.” He realized that the smell came from her hair. Two curls curved on each side of her forehead, like double parentheses, and a tight roll of hair hugged her jawline and wrapped itself around the back of her neck.

  The sisters began bringing in covered dishes. Marge spotted Joyce Ellen, stuporous in the chair, and rushed over to her. She squatted beside the chair and took her daughter’s hand. “Sweetie, it’s time for dinner, wake up now,” she said softly, then repeated the same words, more insistently. Joyce Ellen did not move. Marge looked up to see Cheryl staring at them. Leona said loudly, “Is she sick or something?” and David said, “I’ll get Uncle Billy and Brian.” He came back in time to see his mother leading his sister off down the hall. The rest of them stood around a few minutes, waiting. Billy said heartily, “Basin has had a fine season,” as if they had been talking football all along. David, wanting this to be over, could only bring himself to grunt. He was hungry again, though he could still taste onions from breakfast.