by R. L. Fox
“I feel close enough to you, Daniel, that I can divulge a secret about my mom and your dad.” I sit away on my knees, contemplating him.
“What’s bothering you?” he says.
“I found an old photograph in my mom’s bedroom (accidentally of course) with the date written on the back ... Oh, all right, I was nosing around where I shouldn’t have been, and on the back of the photograph was written August 21, 1998.” I shake my head thoughtfully. “My mom and your dad were in the picture together, like they were in love or something, and that was the day before my mom married my dad.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure, silly. That’s why I’m upset about it.”
“I don’t know what to think,” Daniel says. “Can I see the picture?”
“I’ll bring it next time I see you.” I smile. “Assuming of course there will be a next time.”
“You know, I like you a lot, Sarah.” Daniel stretches out next to me. For a moment our giggles create a muffled echo inside the cave. “And I want to share with you a secret of my own.”
“I’d like that.”
“My mother kept a diary,” he says.
“Did you ever read it?”
“No, but if I can locate the diary it might help me to get what I want more than anything in the world right now.”
“What would that be?” I ask.
“To know what happened on the night my mother ... did what she did.”
“If you want something a lot,” I say, “you have to pray or do something you’re really afraid to do, and God will see you deserve it.”
“That’s awesome. You know, I sure do enjoy hanging out with you.”
“Yes, I love hanging out with you. I think we get along really well.” Did that sound too desperate?
Daniel turns his head and looks at me. “I just want you to know that I’m sort of trying to find myself right now.”
Oh God, is Daniel saying he never wants me as his girlfriend, he wants only to be friends? I figure I should play it cool. I must be coming on too strong. “Oh yes, we’re definitely on the same page. I mean, I’m not looking for a boyfriend right now, either. I’m not the same as other girls. I’m not like, ‘Be my boyfriend,’ unless you were thinking, ‘Yeah!’ Then I’d be like, ‘Maybe.’”
He smiles, dips his head and looks at me as if he wore glasses and was looking over them.
Now I don’t know if I should read my poem, but I am desperate, so I reach into the back pocket of my shorts and pull out the folded sheet of paper. “I composed a poem for you, but there’s not enough light in here.”
Daniel grabs the lantern and takes a book of matches from his pants pocket. He torches a twig and uses it to ignite the lantern, which purrs faintly, shedding a calm, creamy light that casts a shadowy brightness throughout the cave. Daniel’s face in the flickering light seems to reflect the immanence of a nervous smile. We both start when a tiny lizard rustles across the floor between us.
I recite my poem:
“Daniel is courageous and swift
With a heart of gold.
He has the eyes of a hawk
And a body made of stone.
His hands are gentle and true
His lips soft as silk.
In every way Daniel is lovable
And I hope he’ll be my Prince.”
“It’s nice,” says Daniel, blushing, as he turns down the lantern until the cave is nearly dark again.
“I’ll sell it to you.”
“You miser. How much?”
“As it’s for you, just one kiss. I want you to be the first boy to kiss me, and the last as well.”
I lean over to meet Daniel’s lips, praying to God that he’ll kiss me, but before I can even close my eyes there appears in the space between us a tiny yellow-green creature, a strange-looking butterfly with luminescent wings that seem to twinkle in the semi-darkness like an erratic light bulb. The little butterfly flits about annoyingly, first in Daniel’s face and then in mine, almost as if it were purposely intervening to prevent us from kissing. Then it disappears just as quickly as it had appeared.
We both laugh. I don’t know what to do now, so I lie back and close my eyes, holding my breath and hoping that Daniel will kiss me.
In the next moment I feel his lips upon mine, surprisingly warm. I yield to him and he gives me a long kiss, chaste, yet clinging.
When Daniel pulls away, I say, with my eyes still closed, “Kiss me again.” My voice seems to come out of a great void. I know our first kiss will never happen again in exactly the same way no matter how long we live.
Daniel kisses me again, delicately, endlessly, and I feel a glowing excitement that I cannot localize, but I know it feels good. He’s a great kisser, by any stretch of the adjective. I don’t even have to pretend that I’m a lover seized by passion. I’m going to have to explain to my mom right away that I don’t really want a new father, that it’s okay if my mom doesn’t marry Frank because Daniel could never become just my clunky brother.
I open my eyes. My thin arms encircle Daniel’s neck. The liquid shadows of our movements play on the walls of the cave. I kiss his skin through his shirt then bury my forehead against his chest. He holds me tightly.
Our hips touch, and with the contact I feel a sudden rush of desire, a vast, shapeless desire that I can’t get at. There’s a sensation of downward-pulling wetness between my legs that seems odd, mysterious. I feel outdistanced by my own hunger, yet I find myself guiding Daniel’s hand up to fondle the tiny protuberance of my breast. So this is how it is, I’m thinking, like a dreamy dance, with its nuanced movements through mind and body enacted in the midst of wave after wave of exhilarating warmth.
Daniel draws his hand back. “Let’s just kiss,” he says softly, with an apologetic smile.
I make an awkward sound as my face reddens. Just kissing is fine with me, I suppose. After all, I’m only fifteen. “Kiss me, kiss me,” I whisper. My satiny voice seems to make an aural tent only big enough for the two of us.
After a few minutes Daniel suddenly stops kissing me. I open my eyes and look up at him. There’s a strange smile on his face. He eyes my shorts and then looks away as his face blanches. Does he want me to take my shorts off?
I sit up and put a hand on my shorts, to remove them I guess, and I see the bloodstain. Oh my God!
Without a word, I get to my knees. Daniel extinguishes the lantern’s flame. I scoot out of the cave, stand, and run down the path. I trip over a rock, almost fall, and then regain my balance. Daniel is coming along behind me, keeping his distance.
I move quickly down the path beside the canyon, slow my pace a little as I climb the trail back over the hill, and then bound down the mountain as fast as I can travel without stumbling. I see the hawk in the sky, circling, dipping like a slow-falling black dart, and then rising again on its shadowy wings.
At the base of the mountain I break into a run and float my raised voice back to Daniel. “I’m okay, don’t worry.” I see that when he hears me, he slows to a walk.
When I near The Gables, I stop and perform a little jig of jubilation, spinning around and around and pumping my fist into the air, exclaiming, “Yes, he kissed me! He really likes me!” Then I skip merrily on towards the house, where I’ll ask my mother privately to take me to a store where I can buy a package of Kotex pads.
12
Daniel
Monday morning, August 4
El Cajon Valley
I am awakened by sadness. I open my eyes and curse myself for my blunder regarding Devon. I can’t stop thinking about it.
With the late morning sunlight ablaze in my face, I listen for the noise of others in the house. A moment of superficial peace falls over me. I hear the din of birds outside, the old clothesline creaking faintly in the wind. I picture my mother’s purple robe, inhabited by phantom air, swinging gently back and forth on its clothespins.
Earlier this morning I’d heard the hollow clacking o
f my father’s shoes across the living room floor. The congressman was departing for his office in the Superblock of downtown El Cajon Valley, to forge ahead with the political career that has always been his only true wife and family. Then Julie had readied herself in the bathroom for lunch with Mrs. Hartford, before leaving for her mother’s house with Mike, who is working the dayshift.
The Gables is grand in terms of its spaciousness, but oddly enough the wood structure embraces only one bathroom, positioned with an entrance on either side, between the two front bedrooms, my father’s at the front of the house, and mine, on the east side of the bathroom. Adjoined to both of these bedrooms, on the south side of the house is a large living room, and beyond the short passageway at the east end of the parlor stands an enormous kitchen. Next to the pale blue kitchen sits a diminutive dining area. At the back of the house, off the dining room and situated on the north side like the other bedrooms, is a smaller bedroom, where Mike and Julie sleep.
My thoughts turn to Sarah, which causes me to laugh. At the core of my amusement lies admiration and trust of her, and perhaps a pinch of envy, for Sarah is one of those girls who can’t keep from intimating that she, rather than me, feels at home in this world.
When I was younger, and to a lesser extent even now, I’d not been able to free myself from the ambience of the Catholic religion, my mother’s religion, where masturbation and sin are inextricably mingled. Since the beginnings of puberty my entire being has been subjected to a threat of punishment, and I am to this day haunted by visions of thunderbolts raining down from a God with my father’s face, a well-dressed God dancing with his whore (humankind) while down below the church walls decay indifferently and—
I bound out of bed, filled with the hope that soon I will locate my mother’s diary. Each day that I’m alone in the house provides an opportunity to devise a way into my father’s bedroom, without detection.
One day last week I’d retrieved a ladder from the garage and attempted to enter the bedroom from outside, but I was unable to open either window, and I’d lost my footing while climbing the ladder. As I began to fall, a twenty-foot drop, I yelled, “I’m coming down! Heads below!” One of the screens had come down with me and was bent all to hell. I attempted to roll when I hit the ground, as I’d been taught when I played Pop Warner Football, but instead I landed hard and twisted my ankle. I lay in the grass, feeling as if I were the lead character in a bedroom farce.
Now, wearing tee shirt and jockey shorts, after having relieved myself in the bathroom, I gaze at the door into my father’s bedroom. I lean against the door and attempt to turn the doorknob—I’ve been checking it daily—and the doorknob turns freely! The door opens and I stumble, aghast, into my father’s bedroom.
The first thing I notice, as I close the door behind me, is a body-size impression in the bed, in the green bedspread, on my mother’s side. It’s as if she had just risen from her afternoon nap. I survey the other mute monuments of a life no longer lived: my mother’s dresser, the mirror, ashtray, bible and my mother’s clothes in the closet. Somehow I feel myself to be invisible, like her.
Light enters the room opaquely through the two shaded windows. The closed-in coolness chills me, though it is summery warm in the other rooms. I look again at my mother’s bed, where she had lived her last moments, and I am struck with fear so intense I almost run from the room. For a second I feel like I might vomit.
I’ve become aware of a sort of subtle energy in the room. I can feel the gentle movement of air, though the doors and windows are shut tight. I shrug off this eerie feeling, attribute it to having watched too many horror films, such as The Exorcist, one of my favorites. I try to relax. In the past the room had soothed me. It provided an interlude of calm like a gentle anesthetic.
The bedroom appears as it has for years, and I feel a strong sense of nostalgia. The bed is made, because when my father sleeps at home he still uses the couch in the living room.
I sit on the bed, facing the middle drawer that once housed my mother’s diary. I gaze at myself in the dresser mirror, wondering if my mother might have studied her reflection on the night of her death.
I open the drawer with elaborate caution. It is filled with my mother’s silky undergarments. I push the clothes aside, hoping to see the white box I’d discovered years ago. Instead I see a sheet of paper lying flat on the bottom of the drawer. My anxious presentiment seems a good omen. I pull out the white, undersized sheet of lined paper, a page from the diary, I presume, and I read the words written by my mother in blue ink:
13 October 2013, night. — Here are the progress notes I playfully contrived, for Dr. Hartung during today’s session: Patient had a very busy weekend and her presentation was quite scattered. She began by detailing several interactions that were somewhat complex, and I noted to her that they were very hard to follow. She said that she did not know what I wanted, in terms of being specific or general. I noted but did not interpret the transference issues at that point. Patient discussed an event in which her husband tried to triangle her daughter-in-law in an interaction with her, and she resisted this. She had been so angry after the interaction that she had gone to a bar to get drunk. Patient was disturbed by the self-destructiveness of this behavior. Initiated art therapy modality with patient who was quite expressive of inner feelings of emptiness, fright, and loneliness. Patient drew pictures of her husband that were derivative of the chaos and rejection—
My pulse quickens as I sense someone else has entered the room. I turn around expecting to see my father, or Mike, or Julie, or God knows, my mother, standing by the door. But I am quite alone.
I reread the diary entry several times. My mother’s progress notes end in mid-sentence. Had she left this page in the drawer? Why didn’t the police find it, along with her pen and her keys? Where was the diary?
I am perplexed, feeling snake-bitten. The weight of the mystery oppresses me, hangs over me like a curse. I put the diary page back in the drawer, exactly as I’d found it, trying not to dwell on the substance of my mother’s mysterious retrospection.
As I close the drawer, a dreadful revelation hits me like a line drive in the chest: there is a connection, something strange going on, between Julie and my father.
I understand now that I can’t ignore my mother’s message. Written just after Mike and Julie had returned last year from Texas, my mother had clearly stated that my father brought Julie into conflict with her.
I begin to recognize that I’ve misread Julie, or rather, that I’ve read her too narrowly, from within the ridiculously idealistic dimension of my sexual attraction to her. I realize that Julie is playing a game with me, a disturbing game that began at Marechiaro’s a week and a half ago. With reasonable certainty I reckon that Julie has somehow taken possession of my mother’s diary, her blue ink pen, and her keys. Julie had unlocked the door to my father’s bedroom this morning, and Julie had planted the diary page.
Appalled by my blindness up to this point, my failure to have seen the link between my father and Julie, I stand and walk around the room, preparing to leave. Then I behold an envelope, sitting upright on my father’s dresser. I look closer and see that it’s addressed to me, with the return address of Salem, Massachusetts. It’s from my grandma, postmarked three weeks ago. I pick up the envelope—opened by my father—and pull out the letter:
Dear Danny,
I had planned, before your mother passed, to come out west again this summer. However, I decided that it would be far too difficult to come this summer. I know you will understand. I want you to take advantage of the apartment. It’s only a studio but near the beach, and the rent is paid through September. I will be able to do much more soon. See the manager, Mr. Bingham, for the key. He is expecting you. Give a call when you get settled. Don’t know what else to say.
Love & Kisses,
Grandma
Too much information, too many things happening at once. I need time to absorb it all. Wow! I’ve a chance to live in m
y own beach apartment for the remainder of the summer. The studio apartment is located in Pacific Beach, just south of La Jolla. If I act on my grandma’s invitation I’ll be close to Belmont Park, to La Jolla Cove and nearby Shell Beach, a pristine hideaway I’ve visited often, particularly at trying times, to help quell my anxiety.
I put the letter back on my father’s dresser. My father has not only opened my mail, but kept the letter from me as well, which fuels my anger. I begin to wonder just how important is it to him that I live at home? After all, my father had asked me to return. But why? Perhaps it is time to move on, to leave home again.
Soon, it seems, I will have to find the courage to deal with Julie, without bringing Mike down on me. I know one thing: I shouldn’t mention anything yet to my father, or to Julie, for when I do, all hell will break loose, and I need a little time to prepare.
What about Sarah? I have to be careful. I don’t want my locating the diary to somehow ruin things with her. I don’t want Sarah to get hurt.
I exit my father’s bedroom and close the door behind me. I walk slowly into my bedroom. Then I crash, curled up on the end of my bed.
13
Sarah
Monday evening, August 4
Coronado Island
“That movie is so cool, Mom. I like it much better than Frozen. I always think it’s interesting that Nemo gets into trouble because he defies his father, who happens to be a widower, by the way, like Frank.”
“Well, I hope Dan never defies his father like Nemo did. I think there’s a lesson to be learned here, young lady.”
My dad had bought me the Finding Nemo DVD when I was five. I’ve watched it something like twenty times over the years, mostly with my dad, never growing tired of it. And now that Friday nights are movie nights again for Mom and I, we’ll sit on the sofa with plenty of freshly popped corn and watch a feature film together.
But because my mother went out with Frank last Friday and Saturday night, and because we were so tired Sunday night after spending the day at The Gables, and because summer school is over, we changed movie night this week to tonight, Monday. My mother told me I could pick the movie, and then after dinner we would have a serious discussion.