by Jean Stone
“My father met my mother here in America,” Josh went on. “She’s Jewish, too. Together they have built a good life. Their family—and their beliefs—are held together by their faith.” He turned from the house and faced Liz. “I’m only telling you these things so that maybe you’ll understand.”
“Understand … what?”
“Understand if, well, if I can’t be as open about seeing you as maybe I’d like.”
He touched the hair on her forehead again. “I took a risk when I took you out the other night. If my father ever knew I had a date with …”
Suddenly it all became clear. “With a girl who’s not Jewish?”
He nodded. A knot tied itself around her heart. “Does that mean you can’t see me?” she asked.
He shook his head. “But I feel really foolish. I mean, we’ll have to be careful. At least maybe until I can find a way to explain to them … But I do want to see you …” He touched her cheek; he touched her lips. “Would that be all right?”
She smiled and squeezed his hand.
They found ways to be together. They met in crowded places like at the Fourth of July fireworks in Oak Bluffs, where they snuggled under the gazebo and no one paid attention. They found reasons to walk to the Chilmark General Store at the same time and steal an embrace by the fresh produce. And on special nights, Josh came by at midnight. He tossed a handful of sand against Liz’s window; the fine pebbles grazed the screen and signaled her to sneak down to the cove for kisses and soft touches.
Sometimes when she was with Josh, Liz heard Daniel’s words: “You won’t always have me around to watch out for you.” And she felt sad, because she missed him.
At other times she heard BeBe’s warning: “Be careful.” And so she was.
But most times she felt that God—the God of the Second Congregational Church of Boston as well as the one of Beth El Temple of Westchester—had sent Josh to her to help fill the void left by Daniel and BeBe. Because it was such a huge void, he’d had to send someone as magnificent as Josh.
One midnight in late July, everything changed.
The sand pebbles came, later than usual. But Liz was ready. She’d dressed in her ordinary denim cutoffs, but instead of a bikini top under her T-shirt or panties under her shorts, she wore nothing. She wanted to feel his love tonight: completely, fully; rightly or wrongly.
As she clambered out the window and down the tree, she remembered how angry Father had been about BeBe at dinner tonight, complaining that she might at least have the “goddamn decency” to call once in a while. His outburst had upset Roger, who’d quietly left the table. It had upset Liz, too, because she did not understand why Father hated BeBe so much. And it had made her feel even more guilty when Father had winked at her and said, “Thank God for you, Lizzie. Thank God I have one decent daughter.”
So here she was, the one decent daughter, tiptoeing half naked down to the cove. Before she could dwell on the irony too long, Josh was there.
“My father wouldn’t go to bed,” he complained. “He kept talking.”
Talking was one thing Liz was not in the mood for. She touched his hand. She turned his face toward her. She kissed him softly, gently, many times over. He kissed her back with want and with need. When his lips slid down to her throat, Liz gave a soft moan of delight. She fell into his motion and they slid to the sand of the dune, and she forgot about Father and BeBe and the whole Planet Earth.
Over and over, they kissed. He raised her T-shirt, and she saw the spark in his eyes and the warmth of his smile when he saw she was naked beneath. He bent his head to suck at her breast. His hand caressed her thigh, his fingers stroking, ever so slowly stroking, then sliding under her pant leg, probing the soft, moist place. And the soft beating of Liz’s heart, and the soft pulsating between her legs …
She thought about Father. She thought about the many ways BeBe had disappointed him. She stopped Josh’s hand. “No,” she said quietly. “No, I just can’t.”
He pulled away. “I’m sorry, Liz,” he said, turning his face away. “I got carried away.”
The night air was quiet, except for the peepers.
“I think I’m a little too crazy about you,” he continued, still quiet, still gentle. He turned back to her and ran his fingers over her throat, down to her breasts. “You are far too beautiful.”
“Oh,” she replied, with a half moan. Then she touched his arm, and wondered if her heart would ever again beat in a normal manner. She arched her back slowly.
He stood up. “It’s better this way,” he said. “Not to, well, you know …”
Yes, she knew, but she did not know why. She lay there a moment, hoping he would change his mind, hoping she would. Then she stood up. She picked up his hands and set them on her breasts. She moved closer to him and kissed his lips. “No,” she whispered. “It’s not better at all.” With courage she did not know she had, she slipped her hand down the front of his jeans and rested her palm against his hardness. And with his eyes on hers, he took her in his arms.
“We really shouldn’t …” he said.
“I want to,” she said. “I love you, Josh.”
He kissed her, his tongue sliding like velvet against her own.
“Please,” she said, gently pulling him back to the ground.
In an instant, her cutoffs were gone, her breasts, her belly, her thighs were covered by his mouth, his tongue, his eager kisses.
With one swift movement he pushed inside her, her virginity gone, bringing her to such a fever pitch of pleasure she almost didn’t hear the shriek that rent the air—a shriek that could have been hers, but it wasn’t.
Josh stopped moving. He shielded her body against his. “Go away,” he commanded.
She realized he wasn’t talking to her. Her body went rigid with fear, even as her heart still thumped with his love.
“Leave us alone,” he said sharply.
“Jesus Christ.” It was Roger’s voice.
Then another voice, this one shaky, added, “She’s no better than BeBe. She’s no better than her slut of a sister.” It was Evelyn Carter.
Then Liz heard them walk away. Tears sprang to her eyes. “They’re going to tell my father,” Liz cried, rolling onto her side and grabbing her clothes from the small heap on the ground. “Oh, God, Father’s going to find out. Then Evelyn’s going to tell everyone on the Vineyard. Why did the biggest mouth on the island have to find us? And why is she out here so late with … Roger?”
Josh looked at her and kissed the tears from her cheeks. “I love you,” he whispered. “Everything will be all right.”
“No,” she said, standing up, pulling on her clothes, and pushing away tears with the back of her hand. “I can’t see you anymore, Josh. I can’t do this.” She fled down the path.
Chapter 11
Liz stayed away from the cove … for a few days, a week, two weeks. She and Roger avoided each other, and she dodged Evelyn whenever she visited.
Then the rains came.
In what was the wettest season the Vineyard had seen in years, there was little for Liz to do other than wear the letters off Scrabble tiles in games played with Mother, read through the musty paperbacks of summers gone by, and think about Josh and Daniel and BeBe and wonder why she was here and everyone else was out there living, loving, and doing something other than wasting time.
And then, Josh called.
“Liz,” he pleaded. “I haven’t seen you in weeks. Can we meet at the cove after dinner? I can’t wait until midnight …”
She hesitated.
“I have to see you. Please. I have something to tell you.”
But Liz did not dare, for she was not BeBe and she could not take the chance. She began to hang up.
“Liz,” he said, his voice raised. “I love you, dammit.”
She had not heard Josh angry before, but there was a harshness in his words now that let her know if she did not see him tonight, she’d never see him again.
Unfortunate
ly, on her way out to meet him, she ran into Evelyn.
Evelyn stood at the back door, a small wooden box of numbered tiles in her hand. “Care to join Roger and me for a game of Rummikub?” she asked Liz with a glib smile. “It’s a game from Israel.” She held the box out toward Liz, whose face shamed pink.
Liz raised a hand and brought it down on the box. Tiles spewed out across the floor.
“I don’t know what you’re trying to prove,” Liz said in a voice she didn’t know she had, “but stay out of my life.”
Evelyn looked coldly at her. “I’m only trying to help, Liz. I know how disappointed Daniel would be if …”
Liz leaned into Evelyn’s face, her whole body trembling, her voice quaking. “If you care so much about Daniel, why are you hanging around with Roger so much?”
“I’m trying to help Roger, too. I’m trying to help all of you. For Daniel’s sake.”
“We don’t need your help,” Liz seethed. “And another thing, you’re not Daniel’s girlfriend. You’re not part of this family.” She grabbed a slicker, pushed past Evelyn, and went out the door.
“I love you,” Josh said as they sat on the sand looking out at the sluggish gray sea that seemed tired of being rained upon, weary of the fog layered over its waves.
“Is that what you wanted to say?” Liz asked. She had not told him about her run-in with Evelyn; Evelyn, Father, all of them could go to hell. As soon as Josh told her why he wanted to talk to her, Liz would tell him it was time to stop hiding.
He looked up at the stars. “When I was a boy,” Josh said, “my father used to tell me the story of Anastasia. Do you know who that is?”
“Wasn’t she some kind of princess? A Russian princess?”
In the starlight, Josh smiled. “Anastasia was a Romanov princess. When the Bolsheviks took over the Russian Empire after the First World War, they destroyed the Czar Nicholas and his family.”
“But there were rumors that Anastasia did not die with them,” she said.
Josh nodded. “My great-grandparents—and my grandmother—lived in Russia then. They were lucky. They escaped the Bolsheviks. But my father said my grandmother always missed her little friend.”
Liz gazed out to the sea. “Her friend?” she asked. “Anastasia was her friend?”
“Yes. My great-grandmother was the czarina’s personal assistant. They lived at the palace.”
“Wow,” Liz said. “I can’t imagine …”
Josh shook his head. “My grandmother said the paintings and treasures and jewelry and silver and gold were more than anyone could imagine. She and her family left the palace and went to Poland … and later, to the camps.”
Liz shuddered. He slipped his arm around her and looked up toward the sky.
“My grandmother always worried about Anastasia. When word came that the royal family was killed, she didn’t believe it. And when she learned there was doubt over Anastasia’s death, she had great hope. She hoped her friend had somehow survived. Before Auschwitz she would sit on the fire escape of their tenement each night and look up at the stars and believe that Anastasia, no matter where in the world she was, might possibly be looking at the same stars. She prayed that Anastasia would know she was thinking of her, and praying for her, and hoping that, one day, they would meet again.”
Liz had a strange feeling that Josh was telling her more than a fairy tale, more than a story passed down from his youth. “But they never did meet again,” she said.
“No, sometimes there aren’t such happy endings.”
They sat quietly, Liz wishing he would kiss her, wishing he would do more than just stare off toward the sea and up at the sky.
“Do you suppose Anastasia is looking up at the stars right now?” she asked.
Josh chuckled. “Who knows. She might still be alive. But what’s more important is that the stars are still here. And the stars are still there.”
Liz was quiet a moment, then she asked, “Why are you telling me this, Josh?”
His arm tightened around her. “I’m not going back to Harvard in the fall,” he said. “I’m joining the military.”
Her heart sank. “No,” she said. “Not you, too.”
“It’s not the same as Daniel. I won’t be going to Vietnam.”
“Not yet, maybe. But sooner or later, everyone goes …”
“I won’t,” Josh said firmly. “I’ve joined the Israeli military.”
She thought she must have heard him wrong. “What?”
“The Israeli military. I’ve already joined.”
He did not look in her eyes as he spoke, but kept his eyes fixed on the sky.
“Why?”
“Because I am Jewish, Liz. You know that. It is my duty to fight for Israel.”
“You’re an American. You were born here, weren’t you?”
“Yes. But in my blood, I am a Jew. I tried to explain that to you. I must fight for my ancestors. And for generations to come. Can you understand that?”
No, Liz did not understand at all. She could only think of one more question. “When are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow morning,” he replied. “Tomorrow night, I will look up at the stars. And I will think of you looking up at them, too.”
She wondered if this was what it felt like to die.
Liz lay on her bed three days later—the bed she had barely left since Josh had gone—and stared at the ceiling and decided that death must be more peaceful than this, less painful than feeling as if there were only vacant tomorrows ahead, vacant tomorrows and an empty, long, outstretched highway of nothingness, pure nothingness.
She had even refused to look up at the stars because Josh had no right to leave her and she was not going to let him think that she cared. Not that he’d know if she’d looked at them or not.
Damn him.
Besides, it was hard to do much of anything but think about the ache in her stomach and the tears in her eyes.
She wished she were pregnant. If only she had gotten pregnant that one time they’d made love. But her period had started and erased any chance of that. But, damn, she thought, if she had gotten pregnant there would have been no way he’d have left.
Now, of course, it was too late. Because Roger and Evelyn had caught them and they’d not made love again, and now Josh was gone, like Daniel and BeBe and everyone who ever mattered in her whole life.
She told Mother she must have the flu. So Mother made chicken soup as was expected of mothers, and said she would phone the doctor if Liz spent one more day under the covers.
Only Roger seemed to know what was really going on.
“You’ll feel better soon,” he said in that awkward brotherly way that boys used to address cramps or girl things in general. He had come into her room, delivering more soup.
Liz did not reply, but turned her face from the bowl on the wooden bed tray that had carried countless bowls of chicken soup and ice cream and hot toddies to four children over the years.
He sat on the edge of the bed. He smelled of dampness and fresh earth, of things real and honest. She briefly wondered why he was spending so much time with Evelyn, and if, in Daniel’s absence, Evelyn had been allowing Roger, the other brother, to make love to her.
The thought made Liz’s stomach roll. She turned from her brother.
“I know it’s hard right now,” Roger was saying. “But it will get better. Soon, you will have forgotten all about this mess of a summer. You’ll see.”
She didn’t respond. In a little while, Roger gave up and left the room. Liz did not think that anything so bad could ever be forgotten, or that anything could possibly be worse.
She was wrong.
The next morning, as she lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, Liz heard the sounds of too many voices coming from downstairs; too many voices colliding with one another in short choppy sentences she could not make out.
She slid out of bed and went to the top of the stairs.
“It’s bullshit,” Father shouted be
low. “Pure bullshit.” Something slammed against something else. Something broke. “Bull-fucking-shit.” Another crash, this one of glass.
“No!” The scream came from, of all people, Roger. “Father, stop it. Stop it.”
Something else slammed. Something else broke.
Liz’s body went numb with dull fear. Her mouth went dry. She crept down the first few stairs to listen more closely. That’s when she saw her mother, cowered in a corner, her face in her hands, sobbing.
“Mother?” Liz called out, but Mother could not hear above the sounds of Father’s crashing and slamming and shouting “Bullshit” all over the kitchen.
Liz moved down the stairs and into sight of her family, the remnants of her family surrounded by strangers, three men in gray suits.
Gray suits.
Oh, God.
“Mr. Adams,” one of them said as he tried to hold Father back; but Father swung his arm and clipped the man on the shoulder, sending him reeling into the fireplace and down to the floor.
And that’s when Liz knew. She didn’t know in an instant, no, not quite that fast. But a big bowling ball grew in her stomach, as if her stomach knew first and then took its sweet time sending the information along to her brain. And that’s when she knew her world was about to take one last leap around one last corner and leave innocence behind. Forever.
Roger spotted Liz on the stairs. He walked toward her in the slow, heavy motion of a dream. He walked toward her, the look on his face one that Liz wanted to erase, to rub from his eyes, to blot from his mouth.
“Lizzie,” he said in the same slow motion.
He stepped onto the stairs and took her into his arms. Over his shoulder she could see Father’s rage settling into his deep purple face, and see Mother’s whimpers give way to pale immobility. Liz’s own legs grew heavy, her own heart already starting to ache before she heard the words she somehow knew Roger was going to say next:
“It’s Daniel,” he said. “He’s dead.”