Hale Maree

by Misty Provencher

  “Whoa, hey, we’re here.” Oscar’s voice is still all mellow and soft. I fell asleep, but now I feel more exhausted than refreshed, and more freaked out than not. I rub my eyes and look out the window to see the place he was talking about.

  While I wondered if Oscar’s beach house would be a mansion on stilts in the sand, it isn’t. Instead, it is a cute little bungalow set into a clearing in the woods. There are no streetlights, but a floodlight on the screened-in, front porch illuminates the entrance. When I step out of the truck, I can hear the waves somewhere close, licking the shore.

  “Come on in,” Oscar says, walking past me with most of our bags slung across his shoulders. I follow behind him, through the screened porch that smells a little musty and into the cabin. And I immediately feel like I’m at home in the kind of home I’ve never had, but the one that would make everyone feel at home, no matter who they were or where they came from.

  There is a braided oval rug on the floor, a rocking chair, an easy chair, and a couch. The walls are gray-blue slats; the ceiling and trim are white. A staircase leads upstairs, but there is a turn at a landing, so all I see is the wall. To the right is a bathroom door and, to the left, the kitchen. It is a rectangle space with an old stove and a double washtub instead of a regular sink.

  Running across the ends of both the living room and kitchen, is an entire wall of windows, with a windowed door at the kitchen end. A dining room table is stretched across the middle, overlooking the dark shadows outside. Oscar flips a switch and exterior floodlights illuminate a sandy shore only a few yards away. I can make out the ripple of the waves lapping up onto the sand.

  Oscar puts down our bags and comes to stand beside me.

  “What do you think?” he asks, and I’m suddenly even more aware of him than before. He’s a little taller than me, and his body seems to be sending radioactive waves right through me. I tingle beside him and flex my fingers to make it stop. I try to flex everything to make it stop, but the fizzy tingle slips lower in my stomach.

  “It’s a nice place,” I say. It sounds absolutely stupid. A place like this, where you can walk in and feel like you’ve belonged here all your life, is not a ‘nice’ place. But this place also belongs to Oscar and his father, who both expect me to agree to give up my life in order to bury their mistake. I quiver with the tingles and Oscar blows out a small laugh.

  “Cold?” he asks.

  “No.” I say.

  “There’s probably nothing to eat in here. We’ll have to grab some things tomorrow in town. But if you’re tired, there’s a bed upstairs.”

  I’m exhausted, but I don’t know what he means by ‘a bed’. Does he mean there’s only one? Of course, he has to; he must be. He might still think we’re getting married, but even worse, he knows I’m stuck out here in the woods with him. I force my brain to stay alert. I walk over to the couch and sit down, but it doesn’t help me to stay alert when the cushion is so incredibly soft that it feels like I’m drifting in the soft palm of God. My eyes flutter shut, but I force them back open just as Oscar turns around.

  “I’ll grab everything out of the truck,” he says and I nod, but the minute he steps out the door, I can’t keep my eyes open one moment longer. Not one.

  His arm is sliding beneath me and, for a second, I actually think I am little again and my father is scooping me up for bed. He pulls me to him and then a scent hits me that fires off alert centers in my brain. Sandalwood. Apples. Sandalwood. Apples. My father never smelled like sandalwood or apples. I scramble to place it as my eyes pop open, and my mouth follows right behind. I scream in Oscar’s face, and he dumps me back down on the cushions. I scuttle up the arm.

  “It’s me!” he shouts. “My God, I think you blew my ear drum!”

  “Don’t touch me then!”

  “I was going to put you up in bed, so you wouldn’t wake up with a crick in your neck!”

  “Maybe I want a crick in my neck!” I shriek. Oscar throws up his hands, like he’s trying to show God that he tried. He’s given it his all and I’m impossible.

  “There’s a bed upstairs, if you want it,” he says. He crosses the room to the sunroom door that leads outside and I’m a little surprised when he doesn’t slam the door after letting himself out.

  I get off the couch and stand in center of the little cabin living room, unsure of where to go or what to do next. My bags aren’t on the floor anymore. I bet he took them upstairs. Another squinty stare out the sunroom windows and I can make out Oscar’s shape, moving down to the water’s edge, so I decide to creep my way up the stairs and find my things.

  The staircase is narrow and the steps are steep. I can only put the balls of my feet on them to climb, and I hold tightly to the railing. At the top, there is a wide open door. The landing leads into a huge room. I feel for a light switch inside the doorway, but when I flip it up, the room is only cast with the flicker of fake candles plugged in on each side of the bed, and the light makes the room jump with shadows. I step back, clinging to the rail and ready to run, until I realize the shadows are cast from the swaying trees outside. I creep over to the foot of the bed where my bags and Oscar’s are heaped together on the floor. I peer out of the enormous window that overlooks the inland lake outside. The thick curtains, that should probably be drawn shut, are tied back at either side of the window. I try to see Oscar down below, but it is too dark.

  There are two matching dressers against the opposite walls, and a wicker chair with fluffy cushions pointed toward the sprawling bed that takes up the middle of the room. The bed has huge, wood balls at each corner and, when my eyes travel upward, I see a skylight surrounded by mirror tiles on the ceiling.

  Oh my God. This is obviously not a bed for sleeping. The thought of Oscar, or Mr. Maree, being here, doing those things, makes the shaking tree shadows suddenly look like ghosts of women dancing around the edges of the bed. My stomach turns and I spin on my heel, grabbing two of my bags, to retreat down the stairs, but run flat into Oscar’s chest. The impact knocks me backward, but Oscar grabs my upper arms so I don’t fall right on my rear end.

  “You okay?” he asks. Of course I’m not, and I don’t know when I’ll ever be okay again, but his hands, curled around my arms, send the radioactive waves right through me. As if I need that. The ghost women dance around us like they’re doing voodoo, throwing their thin arms, and swaying their leaves. The glinting candlelight catches in both Oscar’s eyes and the mirrors overhead. Without any warning, the room fills up with a milky glow, as the clouds move away from the moon overhead.

  “Come and lay down with me,” he says. I stand there, like a scarecrow, as he walks away. He sits, kicks up his feet on top of the covers and lies back with his arms folded behind his head.

  “It’s okay,” he says, flicking his eyes to the unwrinkled, emptiness beside him. “I’m not going to lay a finger on you. I promise. Get under the covers if you want. I’ll stay on top. Just come talk to me.”

  I don’t. I’m not that stupid. Instead, I move along the outskirts of the room and take a seat in the catcher’s-mitt-shaped wicker chair. It creaks and snaps as I sit down, and the voodoo ghost women flail their arms before they finally settle down too.

  “What do you want to tell me?” I ask.

  “Nothing,” he says. He keeps his eyes on the ceiling. “I spent the ride up here telling you about me. But now I want to hear about you.”

  “I want to talk about Sophia,” I say.

  The hint of a frown streaks across his profile before he asks, “What about her?”

  “Aren’t you mad? Aren’t you flipped out over what happened?”

  “Of course I am,” he says. “I’m mad as hell. I didn’t even know she was cheating on me until the guy confronted my dad. And now the guy is dead. I’m completely flipped out about the entire thing. That’s why we’re here.”

  “But you talked to her.”

  “I did. Today.” He finally takes his eyes off the ceiling and stares at me from the be
d. It gives me an unsettled feeling, like a moth spotted in a room. “She acted like nothing happened. She might not have heard yet. All she wanted to do was make plans for Landon’s birthday. It made me sick to know that she would act like everything was good between us, when she’d been with someone else.”

  “Why would she send him after you?”

  “No idea. I’ve already told you this. I don’t know anything, except that he showed up at the bar and didn’t recognize that my dad wasn’t me.”

  I want to believe him. The clouds drift over the moon, darkening the room, but his eyes are still on me. The voodoo tree ghosts wave their arms in dramatic bursts, but then grow still, and it’s just Oscar and me in this bedroom, alone again, looking at one another in the flickering, fake candlelight. I want to believe every word, and make this whole crazy mess feel logical, or even just possible, but I can’t. This whole thing is dangerous and stupid.

  “If the cops find out what happened, it won’t make any difference if we’re married. In fact, it’ll look worse. It’ll look exactly like what it is: a cover up.”

  Oscar rolls off the bed and onto his feet. He glides toward me like smoke, and I press my back into the chair, as he moves closer.

  “You’re my alibi, Hale,” he says. He drops down on his knees in front of me, so that we are looking at each other at eye level. “This is a marriage of convenience for both of us. My family has lots of money. Whatever you want, I can probably get it for you. My dad’s already setting your father up with a good business.

  “And you’ve got the ability to be my father’s alibi, Hale. You and your father can clear my father’s name. All you have to do is be the girl I’ve been in love with. Marry me. It would be proof to the world that my father and your father had already gone home together before it all happened. If we said we were hanging out at your house that night. We could be their alibi. They could look forever for the other drunk who did a hit-and-run on Tatum. That stuff happens. It’s not wrong, what I’m asking you to do. I’m just asking you to stop an innocent man from losing everything over something that wasn’t even his fault. No one meant to hurt anyone, but the accident happened and it could end up hurting all of us. Unless we do this the right way, and then no one gets hurt. It’s a good deal, Hale. You should take it.”

  “So, if it’s a marriage of convenience, than we don’t really have to be...technically married to each other,” I say. His eyes are so steady that they make me feel like I’m rippling. “You could have girlfriends, and I wouldn’t have to...we wouldn’t have to, you know, live together, like married people.”

  Oscar reaches out, sliding his fingertips softly over my knee.

  “That wouldn’t work,” he says. “This isn’t how I ever expected to find a wife either, but it is what it is. We need to be able to trust each other completely. I don’t see how either of us could do that, if we were dating other people and just living a lie. I’m for real, Hale. I know you’re nervous, but way back in my family history, there were lots of arranged marriages, and they worked. If both people want to be married to one another, if they really believe in making it work, they can be happy.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” I tell him. I feel the gentle pressure of his fingers on my knee.

  “Say yes,” he says.

  “You’re a stranger.”

  “But I don’t have to be,” he says. His fingers slip up my leg and I tense. He whispers, “Don’t be afraid of me, okay?”

  I’m scared all the way from one end to the other as his fingers move up to my thigh. All my thoughts spin and collide in my head like asteroids. I want my dad to have a chance. I want him to get off welfare. I don’t want to be trapped all my life by poverty either. Maybe this is the way out.

  But I don’t know who this man is, that is kneeling in front of me, sending shock waves through me with his touch. I keep glancing away, but every time I look back, his gaze is still there, intense and rooted and somehow, gentle. I’m starting to feel all Munchausen. How can I just do this in this strange house, in this strange room, with this stranger, even if I do know he likes Steinbeck and the color yellow?

  But what difference does it really make? So what if I get married or have my first time here? I’m eighteen. His eyes are so deep; I want to climb into them and hide from all of this. Why do I need to stay a virgin? Why not just make the jump? His touch slides under the frayed edge of my shorts and the tingling inside me goes into overdrive.

  “Mmm.” His eyes close with the sound he makes.

  “This isn’t right,” I tell him.

  “Sure it is,” he murmurs. “This is what married people do...”

  His fingertip crests the inside of my thigh and as many tingles as there are, the absolute fear of what he means to do with me sends a cold, hard shake all the way into the very middle of my gut. I pull his hand away and am surprised at how easily he lets me do it.

  “I don’t know you, and we’re not married people,” I say. He sits back and gives me a closed-mouth grin. It’s an okay, not this time kind of grin that is even more unsettling than the quiver of ice cold fear I had a moment ago. The grin scares me most because, while it says not this time, it also says, as clear as day, next time.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  OSCAR SAID HE WOULD SLEEP downstairs, but when I wake up and roll over in the morning, my face smashes up against his bare back. I skitter backward, right off the bed and Oscar rolls over, rubbing his eyes. He’s still got his pants on, but no shirt, no shoes and, as I stare at his bare chest, all I can think is that his chest looks like it has been totally serviced. I could probably bounce a quarter off any muscle between his neck and belly button. Oscar smirks at me and stretches as he sits up.

  “That wasn’t so bad, was it? Our first time sleeping together,” he says. Another smirk from over his shoulder. His back is as solid as his front, for God’s sake. It twangs a cord of desire between my legs that vibrates a strong note of panic right into my stomach and makes my heart race. Oscar wouldn’t have any problem holding me down if he wanted to. I wonder if that’s why he’s half naked; he wants me to know who’s really got the upper hand here.

  “Virgin humor,” I say sourly. “That’s really funny.”

  That wipes the smirk off his face. He stands up and goes to one of his bags. The sun shines through the window and his skin is so smooth and tan in the light, it appears nearly edible. I look away.

  “I just meant that you don’t have to worry about sleeping beside me. You need to be fine with it, because there’s only one bed, and I’m not sleeping on the couch.”

  “I can,” I say, but I feel the twinge of regret over not being able to wake up in this gorgeous bed with the sun reaching through the skylight to warm the sheets. Or maybe it was Oscar warming the sheets.

  I shouldn’t feel any regret about not waking up beside him, but a tiny, dirty little part of me does. I’ve always been one of those girls who practiced abstinence, and preached its benefits to my choirgirl, Sher, but we both knew that our virginity wasn’t always intact because we wanted it that way.

  But we knew we should. Sher’s mother beat it into our heads, usually with an arm wave to their overly-child-packed apartment and the advice, “Don’t get knocked up, girls. You see what happens? You get to work three jobs, and you’ll still never have enough. Or you’ll die from a sex disease. Or, at the very least, everyone will think you’re a whore. Do yourselves a favor and keep your legs shut.”

  Sher and I repeatedly told each other how smart we were for never screwing around, but we also talked at great length about how we thought it all worked, how we thought we would do it, who we’d do it with, and how much we wanted it to happen. And, at night, I couldn’t help that, sometimes, I’d think about the way a guy looked at me at school, or I’d read a hot scene in one of the romance books, and my fingers would meet up with my desire in the dark. I’d fantasize that it was someone else’s fingers inside me and it would feel like fireworks when I came, but once I was
done, I’d always feel guilty and ashamed for having done it at all. I knew this was how I was supposed to feel, because my dad, and Sher’s mom, and TV church broadcasts on Sunday mornings, kept saying that girls were never supposed to want to do that kind of thing with themselves, or with anyone else. When I’d admitted it to Sher once, she just laughed her squealy, high-pitched, nervous laugh and said, Oh my God! But she never actually said that she did it too, or that she had that same kind of intense urge like I did.

  Now, looking at Oscar’s half-naked body, that deep urge tugs at me again and I’m ashamed that it’s there at all. Even if I think about marrying Oscar, it doesn’t make the urge feel okay. I just feel like I should never, ever want to do what my body seems to be screaming for me to do. And then, on top of the guilt, I feel like an enormous loser prude.

  “What are you thinking about?” Oscar asks, as he takes fresh clothes from his bag. No way am I telling him any of that.

  “I was thinking I should go home today.”

  He pauses. “Hale, you have to stop with that.” Then he jumps subjects. “We’ve got to get some food for around here and, if there’s anything you need, make a list.”

  “How long are you expecting to stay out here?”

  “Probably a couple of weeks. However long it takes for you to trust me.”

  “What you mean is: until I say ‘yes’ to marriage.”

  “Pretty much.” He smiles at me.

  “How can you act like this is all normal?” I say.

  “Because it has to be,” he says simply. “Arranged marriages work. We just have to get used to each other.”

  “That’s really optimistic,” I say. “So, it wouldn’t matter to you who you had to marry to get your dad out of trouble?”

  Oscar tosses his clothes on the bed and steps in close to me. We’re only standing a foot apart and I can feel the heat radiating off his skin.

  “If my dad was in trouble and I had to get with a toad, well then, it’s a pretty sure bet that I’d get with a toad because, and you’ll see this over time, the Maree family is as loyal to one another as they come. But,” he says, moving in so close that my nose is nearly touching his chest and the smell of apples and sandalwood fill every breath I take, “I got incredibly lucky that I didn’t have to take a toad for the team. In fact, if you are half as much on the inside as you are on the outside, Hale, than I didn’t even have to dodge a bullet. What I did was hit the mother of all jackpots.”