Goldengrove

by Francine Prose

  Dad said, “Don’t go back to the house by yourself. That’s the only thing we ask.”

  “Why would I?” I said. “Don’t worry. Trust me, Mom and Dad. I’ll be okay.”

  Underneath Mom and Dad’s fretfulness was the steely resolve they could show when they thought something was good for me, even if they didn’t like it. A party with other teenagers! How healthy for me to be with kids my own age! Why couldn’t they just have agreed that it was good for me to be with Aaron? Like me, they had learned nothing from Margaret’s death.

  My parents told Elaine not to let me out of her sight and pretended they were joking. My mother kissed Elaine, and I monitored the hasty hug Elaine got from my dad, the heartfelt, grateful squeeze you would expect from one old friend entrusting another with his only Remaining Child. I did my best to keep the two Elaines apart in my mind: Elaine my father’s girlfriend and Elaine my guardian angel.

  I was meeting Aaron at seven. He said he’d call around four. The rest of Saturday slipped into a lazy slo-mo trance. Elaine and I drank iced coffee. Tycho got up late. Elaine went to the supermarket, and he and I stayed home and played video games.

  Maybe Tycho trusted me because I’d known him as a baby, before he became a crazy kid snorting and racing around. Or maybe it was because I’d known the rules for so long, I never screwed up: Don’t look at him, don’t touch him, zone out and be patient when he asks the same question over and over. Margaret used to say that Tycho was really born too late. Centuries ago, pilgrims would have flocked to him for prophecy and guidance. I knew that being with Tycho was sometimes difficult for Elaine, but it was easy for me. He made me laugh, and when I saw the pressure building, I’d ask if he wanted to sit on his exercise ball. He’d bounce on it and growl in his throat until he felt better, and I’d play both sides of the video game until he was ready to return.

  Tycho’s windows had to be closed so the sound of firecrackers didn’t send him diving under his bed. I didn’t mind the heat. A breeze carried the scent of lilies from a vase in the living room and mixed with the oddly agreeable little-kid smells of sneakers and half-eaten peanut butter sandwiches stashed beneath the furniture. We played Doom Invaders, then Myst. I got the hang of playing for real and still letting Tycho win. I loved the slow, unhurried passing of time, every minute delaying the hour when I would see Aaron, and by extension the moment when we would say good-bye.

  Elaine returned. Did I want to watch a DVD? I asked Tycho if he minded playing alone.

  “Alone!” he said. “Grand Theft Auto!”

  “You let him play that?” I asked Elaine.

  “I know,” she said. “I hate it. It’s so disturbing and violent. I don’t know where he saw it, but he screamed for three days till I bought it.”

  Elaine and I watched The Red Shoes, and after that, Pygmalion.

  Elaine said, “Do you realize we’ve just sat through the same damn movie twice? Two stories about the ways that seemingly decent men need to bully and control otherwise intelligent women. Either they want us to work ourselves to death and not have a life, or else change us into some creepo template fetish of what they think women should be.”

  It seemed like an odd little speech to be coming from Dad’s secret love. What made it even odder was that Elaine sounded so much like my mom, saying what my mom would have said if I’d watched those movies with her. I thought, People see everything through the lens of their obsessions. To me, both films were about Aaron’s trying to turn me into Margaret.

  “Why did you pick those movies?” I said. “In general. Generally speaking.”

  “Why?”

  “Just asking.”

  “God only knows,” said Elaine. “I remember liking them. Why?”

  “Just asking,” I said. “I mean, I wondered if you knew they were connected, or if subconsciously maybe you—”

  “Do me a favor,” said Elaine. “Lay off the caffeine.”

  Four o’clock came. Aaron still hadn’t called. I began to think he’d forgotten, that I’d gone through all that drama with my parents for nothing. Now I actually was going to have to spend the holiday with Elaine and Tycho.

  “What time are you meeting your . . . friend?” asked Elaine.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe he had to go somewhere with his parents. Maybe he got the date wrong.”

  “He got the Fourth of July wrong?” Elaine said. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  Aaron didn’t call and didn’t call. I wondered if I’d been fooling myself about this not being a boy-girl situation. The silence devoured the oxygen. It was hard to breathe. I played another round of Doom Invaders with Tycho, then I lay on his bed and pretended to take a nap. I could have been in Boston with Mom and Dad. Every second, I thought, Ring now. Tycho picked up on my mood and starting pounding the computer keys until Elaine came in and gently steered him to the exercise ball.

  I’d almost given up hope when, just before six, the phone rang.

  “Whoever it was hung up,” Elaine said. “Probably it was for you.”

  “Why did you pick up?”

  “Because I live here?” said Elaine.

  “Let me answer next time, okay?” I said.

  Ten minutes later, Aaron called. I said, “I thought you were going to call earlier.” I sounded like a nagging insecure teenager. A nagging insecure teenage girl.

  “Sorry,” Aaron said. “I was busy helping my mom.” He didn’t know he’d stolen hours from my life, time I would never get back. He was just calling, as he always did, to reconfirm, so that neither of us would be waiting alone by the side of the road.

  Even after we’d settled that, he stayed on the phone. I could tell he wanted to ask me something and couldn’t figure out how.

  “Could you do me a favor?” he said at last.

  “Sure. Whatever you want.” Whatever you want, mocked the staircase spirit.

  He said, “You know Margaret’s blue shirt with the glitter comet?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I said sure.”

  “Is it still around?”

  “Yeah, maybe. Probably.” It had to be in her closet. All her things were still there.

  I knew what was coming before Aaron said, “Do you think you could wear it tonight?”

  I said, “I’ll try. I can’t promise.”

  “Please. Please try,” said Aaron. “Wear the shirt, okay?”

  “I will,” I said. “I mean, I’ll try. See you soon.”

  It would have been hard enough if I’d been home and I’d had to force myself to go through my sister’s clothes and put on her favorite shirt. And going to the house was the one thing my dad had specifically forbidden. Why did Aaron want to ruin everything? I told myself to stay calm. We were still going to watch the fireworks. He just wanted one little favor.

  There wasn’t time to bike to the house and back. Elaine would have to drive me.

  “Was that the boyfriend?” Elaine said.

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I said, though technically she was right. It was the boyfriend. Just not my boyfriend.

  I didn’t want to ask her to drive me home right after I hung up. I didn’t want her thinking that it might be “the boyfriend’s” idea. After I’d sighed and flung myself around her living room for a while, Elaine said, “Okay, Nico. You’re killing me. What’s wrong?”

  I said, “I forgot something up at my house. I don’t have time to go get it.”

  “Forgot what? This had better be important.”

  “It isn’t! But it sort of is. Elaine, are you superstitious?”

  Elaine knocked on wood, like Mom. “No.” She laughed.

  I said, “Did you ever have your heart set on wearing some lucky article of clothing, and you knew that nothing would go right unless you did?”

  It wasn’t a feeling I’d ever had. I was borrowing from Margaret, whose wardrobe had been sorted into spheres of magical power. The red math-test sweater, the black ski
rt for musical performances, the blue shirt with the silver comet for special dates with Aaron. I was no longer just looking like her. I was thinking her thoughts. I felt as if I was watching myself recede into the distance until I disappeared. For a moment, I felt so shaky I almost wanted to tell Elaine the whole story of me and Aaron.

  Elaine said, “If this has something to do with a boy . . . Did we, or did we not, just watch two movies about the insane, self-lacerating crap that women will do to please some guy? You shouldn’t care so much about what you wear, especially at your age, when any old rag you put on looks terrific. You should know that the guy likes you even in some ratty, torn sweatshirt. He should make you feel like a princess in disguise. End of sermon.”

  Is that how my father made Elaine feel? He wasn’t like that with my mom. Every so often, when my parents were leaving for dinner with friends—friends they never saw any more—Dad would give Mom a look. Half a look. And she’d go and change clothes. I remembered Margaret getting dressed to go out with Aaron, molting one outfit after another onto her bedroom floor. If she did that, every woman did. Maybe at this very minute Aaron was stressing about his wardrobe. I liked the idea, but I didn’t believe it.

  “Come on, Elaine,” I said. “Don’t tell me you never had some special thing you wanted to wear when you went somewhere with a person you liked? What about Tycho’s dad?”

  Elaine flashed me a dirty leer, as if she was thinking that she and Tycho’s father never went anywhere, or wore clothes.

  “Actually,” said Elaine, “I do know what that’s like. Or at least I used to.” I couldn’t tell if her sigh was about how much time had passed since she’d felt that way, or whether she was regretting some article of clothing she used to like and lost, or if she was sighing simply because she had to drive me home.

  She said, “I guess you want a ride.”

  I said, “I’d owe you forever.”

  “You already owe me. If we’re counting. Which we’re not.”

  Which we weren’t. Otherwise she’d owe me for not ratting out her and Dad. But whom would I tell? I couldn’t tell Aaron about Dad and Elaine, or about Mom and her pills. I didn’t want to make our family seem even more pitiful and damaged. The only person I could have told was Margaret.

  “Look at you,” Elaine said. “Let’s go. I understand.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll bet you do.”

  “What?”

  “I knew you’d understand.”

  “What’s with you?” asked Elaine.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “I’m not your mother,” said Elaine.

  I counted to five, then ten, then fifteen. “Thank you, Elaine,” I said.

  Elaine belted Tycho in the back seat, and I sat up front beside her.

  “Don’t crash!” said Tycho.

  “I’ll try not to, honey,” said Elaine. “He says that every time.”

  It took several tries to start Elaine’s geriatric Saab, which coughed and sputtered all the way from her house to mine. Stopping at the bottom of our driveway, she said, “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll wait down here and keep the engine running. I’d hate to get stuck up there and have to sweet-talk some white-knight mechanic into towing me back to town on the Fourth.”

  My dread of not seeing Aaron trumped my fear of the empty house. Still, the driveway had never seemed so steep, and the house loomed above me like the motel where Norman Bates keeps his dead mom in Psycho.

  I said, “I’ll be out in a flash.”

  I heard Elaine’s car choking as I fought with the swollen back door. Was Margaret jamming the lock? I pushed as hard as I could and stumbled into the silent house. The quiet was peaceful. Neutral. It was as if we had all died ages ago, and I was an archaeologist come to catalog our artifacts. The house was no longer a danger zone but a site where a civilization had disappeared, leaving behind a ruin that was better off without the humans. A piano shawl, a mirror, framed photos of a happy family on the shore of a lake. A father, a mother, two daughters. The females doing yoga.

  The house was so silent I could hear the ticking of a clock I’d never noticed before, the groans of the refrigerator. I moved swiftly, like a burglar. Then the energy drained out of me, and I longed to go to my room and lie down. But I couldn’t afford to be suffocated by the thick melancholy seeping from the dusty, airless rooms. I needed to stay attentive to the health of Elaine’s car and to the price I would pay if I let the house win.

  Margaret’s room was sweltering. I walked over to the closet. The glitter comet winked at me. Margaret wanted me to find it.

  I said, “I know you’re not angry. I know you understand.” Nothing stirred. Not a breeze. I said, “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  I carefully folded Margaret’s blue shirt and slipped it into my backpack. Then I tracked back through the house, searching for telltale signs of my presence. There were none. I hadn’t been there.

  “That’s it?” Elaine nodded at my backpack.

  “A shirt,” I said, “I told you.”

  As soon as we got to Elaine’s, I changed my jeans, put on Margaret’s shirt, dabbed the vanilla oil—Aaron had gotten me a new bottle—behind my ears. No time for indecision, no looking in the mirror.

  I timed my departure precisely. Elaine was cooking dinner. I tried to sneak past the kitchen door with a wave and a promise to come home early.

  “Uh-uh-uh,” said Elaine. “Not so fast. Let’s see how you look.”

  In her new role as my substitute mother, Elaine was paying closer attention than my real mother was. Maybe people always try harder at the beginning. She called me into the kitchen and spun her finger. I twirled like the skater in Margaret’s snow globe. I braced myself for the inquisition. But all she said was, “You look beautiful.” I thanked her and left before she burst into tears, which she seemed on the point of doing.

  I raced to meet Aaron, pedaling just under the speed at which I would get sweaty. The blue light of evening deepened into the satiny July night.

  Aaron was leaning against the van, and when he saw me in the shirt, he couldn’t stop staring. I was glad I hadn’t suggested he drive me home to get it. He’d wanted me to appear like that, approaching from the distance.

  Gradually, he recovered and smiled. Getting the shirt had been worth it.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I said.

  “You look beautiful,” he said. That was what Elaine had said, but when Aaron said it, I almost believed it.

  “Thanks.”

  Aaron loaded my bike in the van, and we got in front. Aaron hit the gas.

  After a while, he said, “You know what, Nico? It scares me how much I still miss Margaret.”

  “Me, too,” I said.

  Aaron said, “I hear her voice, I think of some little gesture she used to make, that goofy salute—”

  I said, “She got that from Ginger Rogers.”

  Aaron said, “I doubt that, Nico. Margaret hated Ginger Rogers.”

  “I know. But that’s still where she got it.” I hated this conversation. Margaret had saluted me before she dove into the water.

  Aaron said, “I can’t believe Margaret isn’t here to settle this. I hear myself say her name out loud even when I don’t think I’m thinking about her. I saw a girl who looked like her filling up at the Quikmart, and I followed her for a couple of miles until she noticed and got scared. I couldn’t believe I’d done that. I’m not the same person I was.”

  “None of us are,” I said.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” he said. “It makes me feel less alone. You’re the only person I can stand to be with.”

  The white line ribboned toward us. Aaron focused on the road. We were speaking so straight from our hearts, we couldn’t look at each other. He couldn’t have known that every word was like a shiny glass bead he was trading me for having worn the shirt. He kept talking about my sister, and after a while I spaced out so that all I heard was her name. I liked hearing him say it. It clarified
things, in a way.

  When we reached the overlook, we tipped the front seats back, and for a long time we just sat there in the dark. Aaron slipped in a CD. A saxophone breathed a melody line as smoky as Margaret’s voice, lazy, syrupy, graceful, oozing from note to note.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “Don’t talk,” Aaron said.

  When it was over, I said, “Can I talk now?”

  “Sorry,” Aaron said. “You could have talked before. I was just kidding. It’s Lester Young.”

  “What’s the song?”

  “ ‘Ghost of a Chance.’ ”

  I said, “Could you play it again?”

  “Play it again, Sam,” Aaron said. I loved it that he and I already spoke a private language. We were rebuilding, word by word, the one we’d spoken with Margaret.

  This time around I heard the song as the kind of conversation you have by yourself when you’re all alone in a room, but you’re speaking to the only person you want to talk to, the one you talk to in your head. You’re explaining a hopeless love, all the stars are lined up wrong, but you have to say it, even if no one hears. And though you know it’s impossible, you can’t make someone love you, you keep thinking that the music might cast the kind of spell that makes fairy-tale characters fall in love with the first person they see.

  When the song ended, Aaron said, “How are you, Nico?”

  “Pretty good. And you?”

  “Better. Better than I’ve been.” He answered so quickly I realized his asking me was a pretext to get me to ask him. The fact he had something to tell me meant he’d been thinking about me, too.

  He said, “Listen. I started a painting. Or anyway, I started thinking about a painting.”

  “That’s awesome.” The staircase spirit echoed awesome awesome awesome. “A painting of what?” I expected him to say a landscape, maybe of a place we’d seen on one of our drives.