What It Was Like (30 page)

“Not here!” she said, getting into the driver's side. “Save it for the weekend.”

“The weekend,” I repeated.

“It'll be like old times,” she said. “But better. We'll have our freedom and
everything
. Just as we always wanted.”

Her eyes sparkled with confidence. She seemed a little smug, as if she had just won some secret battle.

“You knew I'd take you back, didn't you?” I asked her, not really wanting to know the answer (I already knew that), but feeling that I had to ask it.

She thought for a moment, weighing her words as I've seldom seen her do. “Let's just say I know what we had . . . and I know where I want us to go.”

“OK,” I let her be mysterious. Some things about Rachel were never going to change. But I couldn't help it: I liked that once more she was planning for “us.”

“See you Friday,” I said. “Like old times, but better.” And, after making sure that she was safely inside, I slammed the door closed.

I watched her through the window as she turned the key in the ignition and revved up the sweet roaring engine. Very methodically, she checked her rearview mirrors and put the car into gear. She didn't look at me at all, concentrating on her driving. I was proud of her as she gave me a quick wave, put her hands back on the steering wheel at “ten-o'clock-and-two-o'clock,” yelled “BYE!” and drove smoothly away.

She left me standing there, in the middle of 116th Street, waving goodbye. I stood there, feeling strength and oxygen running through my body. My mind was spinning with pleasure and a sense of satisfaction. I had survived and “won” – Rachel had come back to me.

≁

It felt strange and slightly dangerous to ask for a ticket to Oakhurst at the Long Island Rail Road counter in Penn Station, instead of my hometown. A weekend at the Princes' mansion, a couple of days of illicit love between expensive sheets with my new/old girlfriend, and who knows what kind of games, starting with strip poker with
two
girls: just what I needed after a fairly dark time in my life. It was both slightly scary and every guy's dream about to come true.

I had my small suitcase filled with books to study for finals, but I felt pretty confident, as I was caught up in all my courses, that I could devote plenty of time to play this weekend. I had started to make more direct eye contact with my teachers, and they seemed to be responding better to me, just like old times in, dare I say it, high school. I let them think that it was their superior teaching that was leading to my improvement as a student, and it worked. Getting Rachel back was the icing on the cake.

She was waiting for me in the parking lot of the Oakhurst train station, leaning against the door of the red Mustang, like the All-Time Suburban Wife of Your Dreams. Tight jeans, tight blouse. Sexy smile, sexy pose. She knew she looked great, a fact confirmed by the big grin that I couldn't keep off my face.

“How was your day, honey?” she asked, in a soft, Doris Day voice.

“I'm exhausted,” I said, playing along. “I need a drink.”

I walked up to her, dropped my suitcase on the gravel, and kissed her deeply, picking right up from where we left off on 116th Street.

I released her and said, “You look fairly amazing.”

She knew she did. I had seen it before, how she used her looks as a weapon. On me and others. But she never looked so confident, so serene. Maybe she was genuinely happy to have me back.

“OK,” she said. “Let's go home, lover.”

I liked how she looked behind the wheel of her Candy. She had already girled it up with a string of beads and crystals hanging from the rearview mirror and flower and peace-sign decals on the dashboard.

She gunned the engine and turned on the radio: some noisy acid rock came on. (Great sound, of course, in the Mustang.) She immediately turned it down and said, “Find us a love song.”

I did as I was told.

“This is the beginning of a new era,” she stated with quiet confidence.

I liked how she was sounding: a little vague, but resolved. She had definitely changed some in the time we'd been apart. She seemed a little more reserved than before, a little more self-aware. Maybe it was because of this therapist she'd been seeing. Maybe she had grown up a little.

“I am . . . completely . . . focused,” she murmured, carefully driving out of the railroad station parking lot.

I found the beginning of “Blackbird” on WPLJ, and promptly turned it up. “
– singing in the dead of night, take these velvet wings and fly . . .
”

“There you go!” I said proudly. “One love song, as ordered. Your wish is my command.”

She actually sighed with pleasure and started singing along, off-key, with McCartney. She certainly seemed happy to be back with me. And I certainly liked being back with her. I could even feel the blood in my veins circulate faster. She created energy and excitement all around her, and I was happy to be there again, in The Zone. But this time, I resolved that I wasn't going to be “a sucker,” if indeed that's what I was.

≁

The Princes' house looked bigger and more magnificent than ever at the end of the long green lawn, far back from the street at the end of the cul-de-sac. It never failed to amaze me, how this peaceful-looking fortress could contain such poisonous feelings.

“My father likes his privacy,” she said, driving slowly through the crunching gravel of the driveway on the side of the house. “Or rather,
liked
his privacy. He really liked being far away from people.”

“It's a beautiful house,” I said truthfully. “At least from the outside.”

“I hate this house,” she said, stating a fact. “And I'm gonna get out soon. It's time.”

“Good,” I said, and didn't question her further as she pulled the car around to the garage in the back.

“A
four
-car garage?” I said, impressed. I realized that I had never been around to the back of the house. It had a huge backyard with a big patio and barbecue and what looked like a whole lawn area that I couldn't even see all of.

“Hey. Check
this
out,” she said, pulling a little metal device from the console of the Mustang. She pressed a button on the little box, and one of the garage doors, the one closest to the house, started to rise, all by itself.

“Cool!” I said, and it
was
cool, listening to the slow grinding of gears as the door disappeared upwards.

When the garage door was fully open, Rachel let up on the brake and rolled the Mustang into place.

As we came to a stop, I saw a white Cadillac parked on the other side of the garage.

“Wait a second,” I said in surprise. “Isn't that Eleanor's car?”

“Don't worry, silly,” Rachel said with one of her musical laughs. “Eleanor and Herb are away for the weekend, thank God, and they took
his
car. We are
all
 
alone
.”

And with that, she put on the parking brake and turned off the engine. The silence was a relief.

“Ah,” she said. “A moment of peace. Finally.”

She turned to me with a warm smile, “This is what I've been waiting for.”

Then the dog started to bark.

“MAX!”

≁

We went into the house through a door in the garage, into a laundry room, and finally into the kitchen.

“Max!” Rachel kept yelling at the dog as she scampered around my legs, sniffing me, barking, threatening to, but not actually biting me. I shuffled in, carrying my suitcase, using it as a shield against the dog.

“Max! Don't you remember the most important person in my life? I don't get this; she's really very friendly,” said Rachel as she put her keys and purse on the marble counter by the sink. “Come on, Max . . . Maxine! In here!”

She snapped her fingers down low at Max, who loved her mistress and followed the finger-snaps back into the laundry room, where Rachel immediately shut the door.

“Thank goodness!” she breathed. “I love her, but sometimes I wish there was a button to turn her off!”

“Sometimes I wish
people
were like that,” I said.

“Me too,” she agreed, locking the laundry room door and taking a deep, dramatic breath. “Now we can relax.”

I had never seen her bedroom. In all the time we had been together, she had never taken me up to her room. (It wasn't her fault, really. Eleanor never made me feel welcome in this house.) But now she held my hand and walked me up the stairs to her bedroom, up the fancy staircase with the big balcony overlooking the foyer and the giant, ugly chandelier hanging in the middle of it all. She didn't say a word: she didn't have to.

She opened the door to her room and let it swing wide for me to enter. It was, of course, like a princess's boudoir. White furniture, sheer lavender curtains and bedspread, perfumed air, soft light glowing from the little lamp by the bed.

“I didn't know that you had a
canopy
bed,” I walked in slowly and quietly on the thick, creamy shag rug, “but I might've guessed.”

“It's been waiting for you,” she said behind my back.

When I turned around, she was already unbuttoning her blouse.

≁

The whole weekend began just like that: like a dream – in and out of her bedroom. I admit it, I was grateful to be near her again, to touch her body, smell her smell, everything. As I've said before, I know what's good.

Afterwards, she brought us tea with some fancy cookies from England on a tray, with a flower in a skinny vase balanced on the corner.

“Do you like tea?” she asked as she settled back onto the bed.

I sipped a little bit of the hot liquid, “Not really.”

“Come on!” she said. “Tea is good! Cultured people drink tea!”

“I
do
like cookies.”

She laughed at that. She looked pretty when she laughed, when I could catch her in an untroubled moment. But then – I couldn't help myself – I asked her a question.

“By the way, I meant to ask you,” I said, reaching for a second cookie. “Did you ever talk to that lawyer? . . . About your grandma money.”

“Yes,” she said. “As a matter of fact I did.” And she took a sip of tea.

“And what did he say?”

“He said several things.”

“Such as?” I was instantly wary: she was being so measured in her responses.

“Well,” she said and took another sip of tea. “He said . . .”

I think she was using the tea sips to give herself time to think.

“He said that it turns out . . . that I don't get my grandma money until I'm
twenty-five
.”

“No!”

“That my dear mother somehow had the terms of my grandmother's will changed, so that I don't get anything until I turn twenty-five. And she can still control it even then since she's the exec – exec –”

“Executor?”

“Exactly,” she put her teacup down in its saucer with a clank. “My father doesn't care. He'd give me the money now. Anything to shut me up. It's Eleanor.”

“It's always Eleanor,” I said. I didn't want to add fuel to her fire: it was just the truth.

“I know,” she said, smoothing out the bedspread. “I know, I know, I know.”

“Well that's a disappointment.” I played it safe, understating the matter. I knew that she was counting on that money for her after-high-school, non-college plans.

“So what are you going to do?” I asked sympathetically.

“I'm not exactly sure,” she said slowly. “But I'll tell you one thing.”

“What's that?”

“I'm going to have to do something.”

≁

Later, as it was getting dark, Rachel showed me all around the house, drawing the curtains as we went. I had never seen the den or the office or the guest suite or the kitchen or the butler's pantry or the finished basement before.

I said “This is
huge
” so many times that she finally had to say, “Stop saying that! It's just a house!”

“I know,” I said. “I'm just saying.”

“I don't care about all this!” Her voice echoed through the far reaches of the basement. “Don't you understand? I just want
out
! . . . It's so close I can
taste
it.”

I didn't say anything back, seeing that while some things had changed, some things had not. She was still holding a great deal of anger inside; I had to be careful, if I didn't want to lead her into areas of dangerous thinking.

“Come see this,” she said. “If you want to see something.”

She led me back upstairs and into Eleanor's large bedroom, with its flowery fabrics, heavily carved furniture, and overwhelming odor of expensive perfume.

“Doesn't it smell in here?” said Rachel. “Like dead flowers or something. I keep telling her to air it out, but it doesn't help.”

“Jeez,” I mumbled, looking around, feeling the solidness of the thick, chiseled wooden post on the corner of the bed and smelling the sweet, thick air.

“Look in here,” she said as she vanished into a doorway.

I followed her into a closet, an enormous clothes closet with shelves and drawers and double-hung racks of blindingly colorful dresses all around the walls. And row after row of blouses and Capri pants and scarves and belts in a jumble of patterns and fabrics, enough to make you slightly dizzy.

“This closet is bigger than my bedroom!” I said truthfully, looking all around. “Who needs this many clothes?”

There must have been a hundred pairs of shoes on little shelves, taking up one whole corner of the closet.

“She thinks that she has secrets in here,” Rachel snickered.

I have to say that it felt creepy, being in Eleanor's closet. I didn't want to be this close to anything about that woman, much less her underwear, her brassieres, and her smell.

“Come look at this!” said Rachel, walking out of the closet as suddenly as she walked in. I followed Rachel across the room. I could tell that she really enjoyed trespassing on her mother's territory.

Rachel went into an adjoining bathroom – all pink tile, gold fixtures, and fluffy pink carpet – and slid open the mirrored door on the medicine cabinet above the pink marble sink.

“You want to get high?” she asked, picking up pill bottles from the little shelves and shaking them. “Some uppers? Speed kills . . . time. Maybe some downers in case you can't sleep because of the pills you took before? Maybe something in-between, in case you get a little touch of menopause that turns you into a raving lunatic? . . . I should have put poison in one of them a long time ago.”

“Don't be silly,” I said. “Besides, you'd get caught.”

“No, I wouldn't,” she said. “I would switch out the powders. Eleanor's a candidate for suicide anyway. No one would be surprised.”

“You should stay out of there,” I said, not liking to be in Eleanor's bathroom. The air was moist and heavy, as if the windows in there, too, hadn't been opened in a very long time.

“Why should I?” said Rachel, closing the medicine cabinet. “I'm sure she looks through my stuff all the time.”

She walked back into the bedroom, saying, “I can just hide things better. She's smart, but sometimes she can be so stupid. Fortunately.”

I followed her out, saying, “Come on. Let's get out of here,” but Rachel went straight to another door on the far side of the room.