Don't I Know You?

by Marni Jackson

  “There you are,” he said. He saw the blanket. “Good girl,” he said with a laugh. I held up my little baton of 6-12. He showed me a flashlight.

  “Let’s go the front way. We don’t want to run into Emilio.”

  In the shadows we crossed the lawn, wet with evening dew, to the road. There were no streetlights, no moon. But if we kept feeling the gravel under our shoes that would mean we were still on the road as it rose toward the top of the hill and the cemetery.

  “I can carry that,” he said softly, taking my blanket. When we were out of sight of the school, he said, “I brought some candles too.”

  Candles! He was so not Larry, who had to have the hockey game on the car radio when we went parking.

  As we made our way into the cemetery, I felt flat bare rock underfoot. John’s light found the inscription:

  ESTELLE CHRISTINA BETZNER BORN 1910, DIED 1959.

  I lay down on the stone and crossed my arms over my chest.

  “Here lies Estelle/she’s not very well,” I said, laughing nervously. John shone his light on my hands and then my face. His face had an odd, bright expression.

  “Up you get,” he finally said, giving me his hand. The night was cool; I thought I could even see my breath. The starry blackness above us seemed curved, like a cupola.

  “Will we see the Northern Lights?” he said.

  “No, of course not. This isn’t the Arctic.” Americans, I thought.

  “What do they look like? I’ve only seen pictures.”

  “Sort of like curtains. Spooky green curtains that billow and move across the sky. I saw them a couple times, up at camp. Usually all we can see from Burlington at night are the lights of Buffalo.”

  “Mary has a great romance about the aurora. She was jealous that I might get to see them up here.”

  “Well, we won’t.”

  I didn’t want to know too much about him, or Mary. That wasn’t part of our story. I was proud of understanding the rules without him having to spell them out. It would be only this time for us, and only here in Doon. When the week was over, we’d never see each other again.

  Looking up at the blackness was making me dizzy. I spread the blanket under the apple tree, our spot.

  “Wait,” he said. He cleared the grass away from a flat tombstone close to the roots of the tree, and lit a candle. He let it drip onto the stone and lit the other candle, rooting them both in the warm wax. The flames wavered but the night was still and they kept on burning. We lay down. John wrapped the edges of the blanket around my back.

  “I’m a virgin,” I said with my face inches from his.

  “Sure, okay,” he said, “I wondered.”

  “It’s not a big deal either way, I just, I want to wait.”

  “In a sense that makes things easier.”

  “But I’m up for anything else,” I said brightly.

  He laughed and slipped his hand inside my rust Shetland sweater. “I can see that, Miss McEwan.”

  John Updike kissed me. Our teeth clicked at first; he seemed to have a lot of them. His mouth was warm and his tongue felt quick and intelligent and questing, just like the rest of him. Blue light blossomed behind my eyelids as the kiss went on, changed, settled.

  “You’ve obviously done this before,” he said.

  I was so happy in the crook of his arm like that, looking into his shiny, candlelit eyes.

  “Yes, I’m an old whore at kissing.” I felt cocky and comfortable. He was married to someone else, anchored in a family, and I would be back home in Burlington soon.

  My hand on the back of his neck came across a rough, scaly patch. He reached up and covered it with his collar.

  “D-Don’t worry, it’s not contagious,” he said, pulling out of the stutter smoothly. “Psoriasis. It tends to flare up when I’m away from home.” For a moment he looked like a fourteen-year-old country boy.

  Then we stopped talking. Under my sweater I had on a padded bra because my breasts weren’t perfectly symmetrical, a secret that mortified me. But he didn’t seem to notice or care. We were lying on our sides, pressed together. I could feel his erection but we ignored it. That happened with Larry too. John Updike seemed happy just to cover my breasts with his hands and to kiss me again and again, like someone reading a book in braille.

  “Could I look at you?” he said. “Just look.” He propped himself on one elbow. I pulled my sweater up in the wavering candlelight.

  What a power I felt then, the power that my body, the mere sight of it, had over him. He was gazing at me as if I were a Dutch painting, something valuable and important.

  “You look like moonlight, a thin sheet of moonlight.”

  “Show’s over,” I said, pulling down my sweater and settling back into his arms.

  We were safe; I was in bliss. The tree above us created a dark, starless scallop in the middle of the sky, a kind of roof. The candle flames shivered but persevered, like a tiny aurora. Even the mosquitos stayed away.

  * * *

  The postman for Doon was a handsome boy my age who drove a cube van and left the mail in a basket on the porch, ignoring the mailboxes. I had already had six letters from Larry, written in ballpoint on his dad’s dealership stationery. Ronnie Craig Autos. He wrote about missing me and how boring Burlington was in the summer. In the last one he had folded the letter around some cartoon stickers because we shared a thing about Yosemite Sam.

  The morning after the cemetery, I got another letter from Larry but didn’t open it right away. There was an envelope in the basket addressed to John. I turned it over to read the return address: Mary Updike, 26 East St., Ipswich, Mass.

  Nice handwriting. A little on the prim side. I left Larry’s letter on the stairs up to the dorm and took the envelope around the back of the house to John’s cottage. I knocked on his door. Normally this was off limits.

  “Well, good morning,” he said. He looked as if he’d just woken up, although I glimpsed paper rolled into his typewriter on the desk. He pulled me into the shadow of the door and kissed me as if it were still the night before.

  “I brought your mail,” I said, pulling away and tossing the letter on the bed. I didn’t mean it to sound the way it came out.

  “Thank you. Did you talk to Roy?”

  “Roy?”

  “The handsome postman, who always rings twice.”

  “No, I did not,” I said, vaguely insulted.

  “Anyway, this is nice of you. Cup of tea? I have a kettle.”

  “No, thanks. I should really work.” I sighed, like a middle-aged hack with a deadline. I turned to leave.

  “Miss McEwan?”

  “What.” I was facing him but not looking at him.

  “Come here.” I moved sullenly into his arms.

  “Have you been down past the stone bridge yet? I know you are famous for standing on the bridge. But I think we should investigate further, maybe take a picnic. We still have three more days.”

  “I have to finish what I’m working on first. The scene.”

  “Of course. I have a session with Axel too. But skip lunch. I’ll meet you down by the Shell station at two p.m. Bring the blanket, and I’ll bring the food.”

  “Okay,” I said, not wanting to leave anymore. “And we’ll need hats too.”

  I ran back across the lawn, waving to Emilio as he stood in the painter studio scowling at the canvas on his easel. How stupid it was to waste your time on art, I thought, when there was so much joy available.

  * * *

  Beyond the bridge the Grand forked and one branch became shallow enough to wade across. Barefoot, we felt our way upriver, over stones, against the current.

  “Emilio said that Horatio Walker’s grave is around here somewhere,” I said to John. “A large crypt in its own field.”

  “Guess he didn’t want to mingle with the locals.”

  I had worn the only dress I’d brought, a white cotton piqué sundress that had a full skirt with a pattern of green leafy vines on it. “Very
fetching,” John had said when he found me waiting at the Shell sign. I hoped he didn’t take it as a sign of slippage on the virgin front. In fact, what made our trysts so exciting were their clear boundaries. I had the impression that his life at home was complicated, and that this restored something in him. It was infidelity of a different order.

  John had rolled his khakis up above his knees. His legs were skinny and white; I felt a wifely pang of embarrassment for him. He wore a backpack with our lunch in it, plus a bottle of Orangina for me and a beer for him. I had my sandals in one hand. The Grand narrowed as it bent away from the road. After wading upstream for a while we saw something, maybe just a shed, at the top of a mowed field. We left the river and still in bare feet made our way toward it.

  “I feel like we’re in that Andrew Wyeth painting,” I said. “The one where the woman is sort of crawling up through a field towards a house.”

  “She was his mistress, the model for that,” he said. “Not that it makes any difference.”

  The shed was indeed Horatio Walker’s grave, a stone crypt with steps leading down to a sunken entrance. The bronze door had a carved border featuring a stag in one corner and a ship on the high seas in the other. No epitaph. Just HORATIO WALKER, PAINTER, 1847–1908.

  John put a small stone on the threshold

  “He’s a good painter, actually. I was surprised.”

  “Why? Because he’s not American?”

  “No, but his work tends to be quite literal.”

  “But so is yours. That A&P story.”

  “Literal? You think so?”

  It was the first time we had talked about his writing.

  “I mean, it’s definitely not experimental, like that movie A Chairy Tale.”

  “True.” He opened his beer and drank from it. I changed tack.

  “What I mean is, the writing isn’t show-offy. It’s more like a real story, with real people.”

  “Right. But I do use the present tense. Which some would consider experimental.”

  “But … it’s just about three girls going into a supermarket in their bathing suits. Which to me is not a big deal.”

  “To a nineteen-year-old boy it is, trust me.”

  “How about here?” I said impatiently. I only wanted to lie down with him and stop talking. We were on the far side of the grassy hill, well out of sight of the road. I spread the blanket. Our home.

  John poured some Orangina into a plastic glass for me. He lay out some slices of cheese, tomatoes, and buttered bread on a tea towel and began to assemble sandwiches while I kept a nervous eye on the top of the hill.

  “I hope there aren’t any bulls around.”

  “I wish I could take a picture of you in that dress.”

  We both knew this wouldn’t happen; photographs were taken with cameras, on film that had to be developed by other people, in drugstores.

  “You could take a picture of my warts too.” I enjoyed being as unseductive as possible around him—it felt connubial and relaxed.

  “Okay, let’s deal with those right now.”

  He took a piece of paper out of the backpack and began to read, holding my hand in his.

  Fleurs du mal

  These seeds of night

  Long to eclipse

  Their field of white

  Soul-scouring spirit

  Wield your powers—

  Maledicta, hence!

  Skate off, dark flowers!

  I was at a loss. I thought he should at least ask permission before casting a spell on me.

  “I like the ‘seeds of night’ part. Should I be feeling something now?”

  “In two or three weeks they’ll be gone, trust me.”

  “But by then…” I stopped. I didn’t want to break our rule.

  “When you go back home,” John said, “look at them every morning, really concentrate on them, and say the word ‘Begone.’ Say it out loud.”

  “I can’t, I’ll just feel silly.”

  “It’s not magic, it’s scientific. Having faith triggers the body’s own power to heal. Witchcraft and voodoo just tap into that.”

  “How romantic.”

  He handed me a sandwich.

  “All I mean is that your hands are beautiful, you shouldn’t hide them. And you must believe in yourself.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I will do it. For you.”

  “Here’s something more romantic.”

  He took a notebook out of the pack. I put my head beside his so I could look at the words while he read the poems, two short ones, out loud. They were rhyming poems with some words I didn’t recognize, like “weir” and “sein.” One was about a silver fish tangled in a silver net. I could sense the logic that held them together and was relieved they weren’t dopey or sentimental. But I couldn’t really grasp their meaning.

  “Wow,” I said. “Can I keep them?”

  “Of course, they’re for you. I have copies.”

  The heat made us listless but I was content to just lie there on the side of the hill with my head on his chest. His hands moved over me undemandingly. I had become one of the women, not too many I hoped, who could recognize the sound of his heart, its eager pacing. It was all new to me, these feelings. But the week was almost over. I felt almost excited about how this would be the end of us; I would then have a secret, an “affair” with an older man, a writer who had written poems for me, about me.

  And nothing would be broken or harmed by this—not me or Mary or anyone. Well, maybe Larry. It would be our story, that’s all. A fiction, almost.

  Then we heard shouts.

  “I found it!”

  Axel appeared on the horizon, followed by L’Orren. They were heading toward the crypt. When they reached it they had a clear view down the grassy hill to our encampment under the young trees. I saw L’Orren shade her eyes. Axel put his hands on his hips, looked our way, then quickly looked down at his feet.

  “Don’t move,” said John, holding my face against his chest. “They’re too far away to really see us.”

  “But my white dress,” I said. “L’Orren will know.”

  “It doesn’t matter anyway,” he said gallantly.

  A breeze came up, as if the air had been stirred by their arrival. A crow in our trees gave a warning caw.

  Axel and L’Orren took a few photographs of the crypt, then turned and disappeared over the hill. The crow flew away. John smoothed my hair and tried to joke about it, but his touch was distracted now. There was no recapturing our moment.

  “If only I hadn’t worn this stupid dress.”

  “What can they do? The week is almost over.”

  John looked solemn. I had the feeling that he was thinking about his children. I imagined my parents reading a stern letter from the director of Doon about my expulsion. The future was swirling around us now.

  We gathered up our things. Instead of making our way down the river we went straight across the field to the road, but slowly, so we wouldn’t overtake the others.

  * * *

  L’Orren didn’t say a word to me when I got back to the dorm, where I changed into my shorts and the plaid side of my reversible halter top. I considered making up a story about Larry visiting, and how we’d gone on a picnic. But I wasn’t sure I could pull it off. Axel blushed when he saw me in the dining room. John poured some water in my glass. Maybe nothing will come of this, I thought.

  Then, after dinner, someone had the bright idea to play a game of Charades. “I’ll start,” said L’Orren, of course. Ever the initiator. We descended to the rec room.

  L’Orren began. She made a twirling gesture beside her head.

  “Movie,” John said.

  She held up her fingers.

  “Four words.”

  She began striding back and forth with her hands clenched in front of her, as if pushing something. She’d push, then back up a bit, then push forward again.

  “Pushing a stroller—And Baby Makes Three!” said the schoolteacher. L’Orren shook
her head no.

  “You’re shoveling snow…” John said. “Rosebud! Citizen Kane … It’s a Wonderful Life…”

  L’Orren made the “rhymes-with” sign, turned around, and slapped her rear end.

  “Ass,” said Axel. “Gas … grass. You’re mowing grass!” L’Orren stabbed her finger yes at him, then lay down on the floor and hugged herself, looking rapturous.

  “Splendor in the Grass,” cried the schoolteacher, leaping up, as the rest clapped. I saw the color leave John’s face. L’Orren got to her feet and brushed off her clothes with a little smile on her face. She shot a look my way as she took her place on the sofa beside Axel. For a long moment no one spoke.

  And that was how the week ended, really, although two more days remained. We still had 180 pages of Axel’s novel to read. The schoolteacher’s memoir had veered away from her husband’s experience in the war to her rage at being abandoned at home with a small baby. She was going gangbusters, she said, and wanted to finish it before we all dispersed. As for me, I was still working on my event-free play, which L’Orren had read. She urged me to read Lorca and said she thought absurdist drama was “a bit masculinist.”

  On my last night, I stayed away from John’s cottage and wrote a long, newsy note to Larry. It was too late to mail it, but I could give it to him when I got back. I called my parents to find out when they were picking me up. Then I put on my yellow rain jacket and walked down to the bridge, alone. The Grand was milky-brown and swollen but subdued, coursing along.

  I crossed the back lawn on my way to the dorm. John’s cottage was dark. I wanted to retrieve my red-stairway painting, which I had left to dry in Emilio’s studio. That too was dark, except for what looked like a throb of candlelight in one corner. I knocked; no answer. As I opened the door I glimpsed L’Orren’s massive hair all but covering Emilio as she lay naked on top of him, on paint-splattered drop sheets. She was making a sound that didn’t seem to belong to her, almost a coo. I closed the door as softly as I could. Was this sort of thing going on everywhere? Was the whole world awash in lust, and I hadn’t noticed?

  On the last day, from my window seat in the dorm, I saw the school director walk across the back lawn to John’s cottage. He knocked on the door, John answered, and he stepped in. Maybe he’s just thanking him, I thought, and saying goodbye. About twenty minutes later the door opened and the director emerged, unsmiling. I wanted to run across the lawn and throw myself in John’s arms. Instead, I wrote a new scene in my play, in which the woman lies down and embraces her bench.