by Lois Duncan
“I’m glad my own dad is a television repairman. It’s all out and open. He either fixes sets or he doesn’t.” Frank drew a long breath. “Well, if you’re set on it, I guess that’s that. When do we make our first trek to Mexico?”
“We?” Joan said in surprise. “Why, you don’t have to go, Frank. I’m a good driver, and Daddy will let me use the car anytime I ask him. This is my problem, not yours.”
“You don’t think I’d let you go down alone do you?” Frank asked gruffly. “That’s just empty desert, between here and Mexico. Besides, those border towns are pretty rough places. Women shouldn’t wander around in them by themselves.”
“I’d be all right. I’m sure I would.” Joan paused, and then said more softly, “Why, Frank?”
“Why, what?”
“Why are you being so very nice to me? I thought—I mean, back when Dan was alive—I sometimes thought you didn’t like me very much.”
“That’s crazy,” Frank said, feeling the hot blood rush to his face. He blessed the cool blanket of concealing darkness. “You were Dan’s girl friend, weren’t you? Dan would want me to—to kind of look after you.”
“Thank you,” Joan said softly. She reached across impulsively and laid her hand on his where it rested on the arm of the chaise longue.
“That’s okay,” Frank said.
They sat for a while in comfortable silence, and it was not until his mother came out with the iced tea that he made the effort to draw his hand away.
EIGHT
“EXCUSE ME.” THE GIRL’S voice spoke from close beside him. “Could you tell me the time?”
Dave raised his head from the beach towel, blinking against the blinding glare of the white sand. The girl was standing over him, silhouetted against the high, rich curve of sky.
He dropped his eyes to his watch.
“Two-thirty. At least, close to it. This thing doesn’t keep the most perfect time.”
“Thanks. That gives me a few more minutes before I have to start thinking about getting ready for work.” Her voice was easy and pleasantly low pitched. “I’m sorry if I disturbed you. You seemed to be the only person on the whole beach who was wearing a wristwatch.”
“You didn’t disturb me. I’d better get a shirt on or I’m going to turn into a cooked lobster.”
Dave sat up and reached for the T-shirt that lay beside the towel. All about him the sand shimmered in the afternoon heat, but the sea breeze was cool against his face.
“I’m from New York,” he said. “I’m not used to this California sunshine.”
“You don’t sound like New York,” the girl commented.
“I don’t?” The remark caught him by surprise. He raised his eyes again, taking in the tall slimness of her figure, the straight brown legs beneath the lime green swimsuit. “What do I sound like? Where would you think I was from?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t heard you talk enough.”
“Sit down for a few minutes. Maybe you can make a guess.”
He offered the suggestion lightly, but even as he did so he knew that he was not casual about wanting the girl to stay. There was something about her, about the low voice, the tall, well-proportioned figure, that brought with it a flash of recognition.
“Haven’t I met you before someplace?” he asked, and then flushed at the practiced sound of the question.
“I don’t think so.” She sounded amused, but she did drop down to a kneeling position on the sand beside him. “Did you think that approach up all by yourself?”
“No, I must have read it somewhere.” He smiled at her. “Really, I mean it. I’m sure I’ve seen you. Maybe at the beach last weekend?”
“Possibly. I’m here a lot during the summer. My family has a house just a couple of blocks from the beach.”
The girl smiled back at him. There was a friendly naturalness about her that compensated for her lack of conventional prettiness. Her straight brown hair was pushed back from her face and caught by a white band; her mouth was wide, her gray eyes set far apart, her brows and lashes bleached by the sun until they were almost invisible against the tan of her face.
“Are you here in California on vacation?”
“Well, not exactly.” Before the girl’s wide gaze, Dave found himself loath to admit to having been ill enough to have made the move from one coast to another. “We live here now. We have a room at the Royal Palm Apartments.”
“We?” Her eyes flicked quickly to his left hand, as though seeking the gold of a wedding band.
“My younger brother and I,” Dave said quickly. He gestured out toward the rolling blue waves, their crests dotted with brown-skinned surfers. “Lance seems to have found his place in life. We’ve only been here a couple of months, and he’s already king of the beach boys. I hardly see him from morning till night. One of those specks out there now on top of a wave is him.”
“Why aren’t you out there with him?” the girl asked curiously. “You look as though you’d be good at sports.”
“I’m working my way up to it gradually.”
He did not add that his slowly returning strength had made the thought of taking on a new sport more of a chore than a pleasure. It was only in the past few days that he had begun to look upon the antics of the surfers with any real interest.
Now, before the girl’s question, he said, “It does look like it would be fun. Maybe I will take a try at it one of these days.”
“I can teach you, if you like. I was born here, and I’ve been in and on the water since I was big enough to toddle.”
“That would be great.” He paused and then added formally, “I’m Dave Carter, by the way.”
“I’m Peggy Richards.”
“I’m glad to know you, Peggy. Do you go to school here?”
“I’ll start my second year at U.C.L.A. in September,” Peggy told him. “This summer and on the weekends during the school year I work as a waitress at the Green Cove. That’s a little seafood restaurant a couple of miles from here. One of about a thousand, I guess.”
“You must be an ambitious gal.” Dave paused before volunteering his own status. “I just started a job last week. I work in the sporting goods department of Bartell’s Department Store.”
“Oh?” Peggy looked surprised. “I would never have guessed you to be a salesman. Somehow you look like the college type.”
“We can’t all be waitresses at the Green Cove!”
Actually, he had given little if any thought to his type or what his choice of a profession would be if he had one to make. It had been enough, after a week of combing newspaper ads and applying at one place after another, to find himself with work of any kind.
He had been at Bartell’s for a week now. The first days had been extremely difficult. He had found to his disgust that the mere effort of standing on his feet all day had left him dizzy and exhausted. The act of concentration, simply to handle the register, had made his head ache. When he returned to the apartment in the evenings, he had fallen across the bed, too nauseated to make the effort to go out to eat.
“You’re going to make yourself sick again,” Lance had warned him. “There are bound to be easier ways to make a living if you just look around for them.”
“Well, if you find one, tell me about it,” Dave answered wearily. “I don’t notice you out stampeding the employment offices.”
“I’ve got my eyes open. I’ll latch onto something before too long.”
What Lance did with his time, Dave did not know, for the younger boy volunteered nothing about his activities. He stayed out late in the evenings with the various “friends” who appeared to be nameless, for Dave had yet to meet any of them, and was still in bed in the mornings when Dave left the apartment. During the day he evidently spent a good deal of time at the beach, for his hair was bleached almost white from the salt and sun, and his clear, flawless skin was a dark, smooth brown. His eyes glowed startlingly green against his tan, and his teeth, when he smiled, seemed an incredibl
e white. His build, though still spare and slender, had thickened through the shoulders and back, and surfer’s muscles were beginning to show in his calves and thighs.
In three months time his body seemed to have begun to change from a boy’s build to that of a young man, but the childlike beauty of his face remained the same. It was like a golden mask, beyond which Dave could not seem to reach, no matter how hard he tried.
“Tell me about us,” he would ask in a rush of frustration. “What was our family like? How did we live? What did we do? Tell me some of the things that happened when we were little.”
“We were just an ordinary family. Nothing special. We didn’t do anything every family doesn’t do.”
“What were our parents like?” Dave persisted. “Our father—what did he look like? Where did he work?”
“He worked in a bank,” Lance said. “He was a big man. Tall.” He paused and then added, with a burst of unaccustomed feeling, “He was a tyrant. He ran everybody. He never let anybody do anything.”
Dave regarded him with surprise. “You didn’t like him?”
“I hated him,” Lance said coldly. “So did you. We were both glad when he died.”
“I can’t believe that,” Dave said in horror. “Our own father!” He hesitated before he asked, “What about our mother—what was she like?”
“Little. Pretty. Kind of soft and weak. She’d believe anything you told her. You could put anything over on Mother.” Lance gave his head a shake, as though to clear it of memories. He raised his eyes to Dave’s, flashing him a sudden, bright smile.
“They’re out of our lives, Dave—way behind us. Why try so hard to remember? What does it matter? We’re here now. We have the present, the future. This is God’s own country! Why don’t you get out in it and enjoy it?”
Now, sprawled on the hot beach, feeling the sun’s rays sinking into him, Dave was forced to admit to himself that his brother had been right. Getting outside on weekends was better for him than moping about the apartment, struggling to dredge up memories that refused to come. Slowly his strength and endurance were returning to him; his appetite was coming back. He was able now to go through a workday without crumbling completely in the evening.
Even the headaches, which struck so blindingly, were coming less frequently. Perhaps soon he would really feel up to trying a surfboard!
Across from him, Peggy was gathering herself to rise.
“I guess I’d better get a move on. I’ve got to get showered and dressed and to work. It was nice meeting you, Dave.”
“It was great talking to you, Peggy.”
He turned his gaze to her again. There was something about her that caught at him, a strange feeling that he had known her before, had known her well.
Impulsively, he said, “I’d like to see you again. Would you consider going out with me sometime? To a movie or something?”
“I don’t know. I hardly know you.” Her gaze was open and guileless.
“If I came over to the Green Cove, could you have dinner with me?”
“Not during working hours.” She hesitated. “Maybe if you came late, we could have coffee together. The Cove closes at ten. I’m free after that.”
“That would be great.”
He did know her, he was certain. He had met her somewhere, somehow.
He got to his feet and, standing beside her, he was aware of the fact that she was almost as tall as he. Her gray eyes looked directly into his own.
“The Southwest,” she said.
“What?” He stared at her, uncomprehending.
“You know, I said you didn’t sound like New York, and you asked what you did sound like? I know now—it’s the Southwest. I hear a lot of people when I’m waiting tables, and I’d guess you to be from Arizona or New Mexico or somewhere like that.”
She laughed at the look on his face.
“That’s funny, isn’t it?”
NINE
IT WAS EXACTLY NOON when they drove across the bridge over the Rio Grande into the town of Juarez, Mexico.
The summer heat had reached its midday peak as Frank maneuvered Dan’s old Chevrolet along the narrow streets that separated the rows of storefronts, turning the wheel from side to side and coming, every few yards, to a complete stop to avoid the swarms of dogs and dark-skinned children who wandered aimlessly back and forth from one sidewalk to the other.
They had originally planned to start early during the cooler hours of the morning, but there had been one thing after another to detain them—Mr. Drayfus had left for work later than usual because of a cancellation of his first appointment—Eddie had needed to be driven over to a friend’s house—Mrs. Cotwell had wanted some things from the grocery store. And then, just as they were preparing to leave the house, the Drayfus phone had rung. “It’s”—Joan had turned to him with a shining face—“it’s Mother!”
The conversation had not been a long one, but when she replaced the receiver Joan’s eyes had been glowing.
“She just wanted to know how we were! The doctor told her she could call us! She wanted to be sure that we were keeping the roses watered, and she asked me to go to the library and pick out some books to bring up to her when we visit Sunday. She says they don’t have anything there worth reading, and she’s getting awfully tired of television.
“Oh, Frank!” There had been a lilt in her voice that he had not heard there for many months. “She sounded so normal!”
Now the happiness lingered in her voice, even though she had to wipe the perspiration from her eyes to read the address on the scrap of paper she held before her:
“This is the right street. Now all we have to do is locate the shop number. It’s four twenty-seven—El Mercado.”
“That means ‘The Market,’ ” Frank translated ruefully. “Is that supposed to be the name of the shop or what?”
“I think so,” Joan said. “Are you familiar with the town, Frank?”
“No. I’ve only been down here a couple of times. In fact, the last time was about four years ago.”
The memory of that last time swept back upon him now, startling him with its many details of recollection. They had come down as a family, and it was in the winter—late November, perhaps, or early December, as the purpose of the trip had been Christmas shopping. Dan had not had his driver’s license yet, and Mr. Cotwell had done all the driving. Mrs. Cotwell had carried a list of so many dozens of things she wanted to purchase that they had all laughed at her. And Eddie, who was only eight at the time and inclined to wander, had slipped out of their hands during a stop at one of the stores and turned up an hour later, sitting on the curbing with a group of Mexican children munching a taco.
Dan had had his own shopping to do, and Frank could remember standing beside him, watching as he studied the assortment of turquoise and silver spread out upon the counter of one of the jewelry stores.
“Are you getting Mom’s present?” he had asked him, and Dan had smiled and said, “Among others.”
He had chosen a curved silver pin, shaped like an orchid, and then, after a slight hesitation, three other pins, smaller and less ornate.
“Who are those for?” Frank had asked him.
“Oh, I thought I might give one to Anne Tonjes. And maybe one to Barbara Johnston. Even if I decide not to, they’ll be good to keep on hand. You never know when you might be dating a girl who has a sudden birthday.”
“Girls!” Frank gave a snort of disgust.
“Give yourself time, little brother,” Dan had said in amusement. “Girls are pretty nice when they reach a certain age. Give yourself a year or so. You’ll be buying trinkets too.”
How easy it had been for Dan even then. How confident and self-assured he had been! I’m older now than he was then, Frank thought, and I’ve never had a girl to give anything to. I wonder if Marcie Summers has a bunch of guys who give her things on her birthday.
His mind flew to Marcie, as he had seen her only days ago at the pool. She had been wearing
a pink swimsuit, a one piece, modestly cut, and her arms and legs had been shining with suntan oil. Her long blonde hair framed her face with tight damp ringlets.
“I didn’t realize your hair was so curly,” Frank said.
He had spoken quickly, before his nerve could desert him.
“It is when it’s wet,” she said, smiling. “What have you been doing with yourself, Frank? I haven’t seen you since school let out.”
“Oh, I’ve been around.”
His tongue had frozen then, and he had not been able to move it. What did you say to girls when they just stood there in front of you? What would he say if she were Joan?
Of course, Joan wasn’t exactly a girl, she was a person. With Joan you would act natural, the way you would with another guy.
Drawing a deep breath, he forced his tongue into motion.
“I’ll race you the length of the pool? Winner buys the loser a Coke.”
When he heard his own voice, his heart had stopped beating. Had he actually spoken those words, or had he merely thought them? He could not have spoken them aloud. He simply couldn’t have! This wasn’t Joan Drayfus, it was Marcie Summers!
For a moment the slim blonde girl had just stood there staring at him. Then, to his complete amazement, she said “You’re on!” and leapt into the pool.
I wish that Dan were here now, Frank thought longingly. I wish I could talk to him about Marcie—about the way I feel when I’m around her. How do you make a girl start to like you? How do you know when she does like you? Dan … God, I miss you!
As it did so often, at odd times, without warning, the sharp pain of loss stabbed through him. He was back four years ago on that happy pre-Christmas sojourn, with the smell and feel of the holidays glowing about him. His mother had bought a huge papier mâché angel, and Dan, laughing like Santa Claus, had carried it over his shoulder like a toy sack.