A Shiver of Wonder (23 page)

Bill and David drank some beers together
late Sunday afternoon, after David helped to trench the garden for
the sprinkler pipes. Unfazed by the carnage, Johnson had
accompanied them, chasing after insects and then furiously lapping
up his water as though he’d been working his tail off alongside the
men.

Neither Bill nor David brought up the
subject of what had happened on Tuesday. Neither one of them
uttered the name, ‘Clair.’

Her presence was felt, though. Apartment 2B
had been vacated, but the former occupants of that unit were still
very much in residence to the two men.

Their friendship was solid. Their
camaraderie was easy. David knew that Bill would remain a part of
his life, no matter where he ended up. He was pleased about this.
And he hoped that Bill would be pleased as well.

Tuesday afternoon, and it had been drizzling
steadily since before seven a.m. The streets of Shady Grove were
slick with wetness, but it wasn’t a dank wetness. It was a jot over
seventy degrees, and the minor storm system whose edges were
brushing over the town was only supposed to drop enough moisture to
freshen the greenery and cleanse the sidewalks.

David Wilcott sat alone on the covered stage
of the amphitheater in the public square. His legs were extended
before him, with his hands propping him up from behind. He had just
finished the sandwich and banana he had picked up after his morning
stint at Culpepper Mills. Johnson had come with him on Monday, but
this afternoon David had a meeting scheduled with yet another Shady
Grove business that desired a more dynamic online presence. David
was happy to oblige, and he was more than happy to leave Johnson at
home for another day. This was his vocation now, and he knew that
handling things correctly from the start was a good way to keep it
his vocation.

Websites, however, were not what was on
David’s mind at the moment. He was thinking about Aishani, the girl
who had once broken his heart. She had been his first crush, and
then his first love. And he was wondering, as he had every so often
over the past couple of years, if the path that his life had
followed might have been different if things had not gone so wrong
in that long-ago, bittersweet semblance of a romance.

Like David, Aishani had been a mid-year
addition to the eighth grade class at Lincoln Heights Middle
School. David’s family had slunk into town in late September;
Aishani’s father had been transferred to the area in August, and
two months later, he had brought his wife and four children to
Lincoln Heights as well.

She was beautiful. Though with glasses, no
makeup, and her lustrous hair always tied back simply, she
attracted no friends or admirers during her first few weeks at
school.

But David had noticed her. At fourteen he
had hit puberty, but while the gears of growth were whirring,
nothing in his physicality was responding yet. And for a small,
lonely boy who was already getting picked on by some of the bullies
at the school, a girl who was smart, different, and outside the
established social sets was an automatic draw.

Their families had ended up living only a
few blocks apart from each other.

“Hi,” David had called out, jogging to catch
up with her as she headed briskly for home after school one day.
“I’m David. I’m new here, too.”

She shot him a shy smile, but clutched the
books she was carrying more tightly to her chest. “Nice to meet
you,” she said in a voice that he had only heard a few times, a
voice that held an undercurrent of mystery, an alluring hint of
foreignness.

“I know how your name is spelled,” he
remarked, “but I’m afraid I’ll turn it into something horrible if I
try to pronounce it. Would you mind saying it for me once?”

His pleasantry had earned him a genuine
smile. “Eye-shah-nee,” she replied softly. “And thank you. Most
people don’t ask at all. They just butcher it.”

David nodded; he’d had little experience
talking to girls his own age, and was glad to find that he hadn’t
fumbled the first pass. “You live off of Waverly, right?” he asked.
And as she glanced over at him with concern, he plowed on: “I do,
too. On Peach. You’re always ahead of me when I walk home. I never
know where you turn, though. I go left there, and we live about six
houses down. On the right.”

His barrage of unrelated facts had at least
relayed to her that he wasn’t a stalker. “We live on Portland,” she
stated. “Second house in, north side. I’ve never seen you behind
me.”

“You never look behind you!” he grinned.

So she turned to look behind her right then.
Several groups of students were bobbing along the sidewalks, and
beyond them were a few solo stragglers. “I guess I’ve never seen
anybody on my way back,” she admitted. “Perhaps I’m in too much of
a hurry to get home.”

“Oh, but the kids here are so nice!” David
returned. “You should stay, hang out with them.”

She made a face. “Maybe not. So you’re new
here, too?”

And thus had begun a friendship, out of
which had sprung a fledgling relationship. Aishani was the oldest
of four girls, and her parents were understandably protective of
their daughters, especially in regards to local boys. David had
eventually been invited to her house for dinner; he had played
Monopoly with Aishani and her sisters, and had charmed their
parents. Gradually, gradually, the two had been allowed to spend
time together without the constant onus of parental
supervision.

By Thanksgiving, Aishani was wearing light
mascara and earrings. She and David had each experienced their
first kiss, and they held hands, though never at school.

By Christmas, Aishani had begun to use
contacts, and was taking more care with her hair. Other boys had
started to notice her, and didn’t appreciate David being constantly
at her side.

By January, Aishani was developing a figure,
as well as receiving invitations to parties. David was pointedly
not invited anywhere, and the bullies had stepped up their
ministrations toward him.

They had their first fight as the date of
the school’s winter dance approached.

“Why do you always have to do everything
with me?” she’d challenged him at lunch, as he yet again set his
tray down next to hers. Several girls, newer friends of hers,
giggled to each other, food forgotten; the opportunity to watch
Aishani strut her stuff had finally arrived.

“I always eat with you!” had been David’s
impulsive, not overly perceptive reply.

“Exactly my point!” she’d flung back. “Let
me eat with my friends today. We’ll talk after school.”

Stung, David had remained inert for a long
minute, unsure of whether he should do as she’d asked, or try to
hold his position.

“Go,
go!
” she’d then impatiently
shrieked, flicking her fingers at him as though he were a mosquito
or a pesky gnat.

He had eaten his lunch alone on the field,
frightened by her casually uttered
let me eat with my
friends
rejoinder, unable to figure out what he had said or
done wrong.

He waited for over twenty minutes after
school ended before she finally strode out of the gates. She barely
acknowledged him. Her head was locked in a forward position, and
her pace was so swift that David found himself having to trot to
keep up with her.

“Aishani,” he pleaded, “what did I do?”

She rolled her eyes. “You just don’t get it,
do you?”

He stumbled over his own feet, and then
scurried to catch up again. “Get what?” he asked. “Did I say
something to make you mad? Is it something I did? Tell me!”

An explosion of exasperation discharged from
between those lips that David loved to explore, loved to kiss,
loved to dream about.

“
Please
, Aishani! This isn’t
fair!”

And at that, she swung around to face him.
Her head pivoted quickly left and right, and he understood with
dismay that she was making sure that they had no audience for what
was about to occur.

“I got asked to the dance by Jack Foley,”
she declared brusquely.

“But… but you’re going to the dance with
me!” David protested, the stern countenance before him blurring as
he unwittingly began to cry.

“Not any more. He asked me at Cassie’s party
on Saturday night.”

“But I wasn’t even there! She didn’t invite
me!”

Another eye roll. “Did you think I wasn’t
aware of that?” And then she caught sight of his tears and
softened, but just a bit. “David, it isn’t working between us. It
hasn’t been, for a while now.”

He couldn’t think of a single way to reply
to that. It was news to him; what had happened at lunch today had
been his first clue that anything was wrong.

“I welcomed you into my life,” she
continued. “I included you, my family included you. But you’ve
never included me in anything. How many times have you been to my
house in the last two months?”

David had a bad feeling that he knew where
this was heading, but he attempted to calculate anyway. “A lot.
Twenty, thirty times. Maybe more.”

“And how many times have I been to your
house? Or been invited for dinner by your parents?”

He knew that the answer was ‘once,’ but he
also knew that it didn’t matter. Aside from the fact that he’d
never wanted to have Aishani over to become better acquainted with
his slutty older sisters or his bitter, inhospitable Mom, his
intuition was telling him that this was a feint. She had
undoubtedly been late in exiting the school because she’d been
consulting with her ‘friends’ regarding the most expedient means of
dumping him.

Which meant that nothing he could say or do
would change her mind. It was over, no matter how many explanations
he could conjure up to thwart her manufactured accusations.

He’d gazed at her bleary image for as long
as he could, soaking in the disdain, and comprehending that the joy
he had taken in nearly every aspect of his life for the previous
two months had been both temporary and false. What was the point of
his happiness, if it could be snuffed out on the most capricious of
whims by this superficial girl for whom he had so wholeheartedly
fallen?

Before Aishani could blink, or turn, or
leave, David did all three of these himself. He walked staidly
home, not looking behind him even once to see if she was following,
or watching him, or perhaps even thinking of saying she was
sorry.

And David had learned. For the rest of that
school year, he avoided all of the girls in his class – not that
after his humiliation with Aishani, any of them would have eagerly
sought his company. When he hit high school a few months later,
still in Lincoln Heights for part of a record-breaking three year
stretch for the Wilcotts in one city, he found himself gravitating
toward the dumber girls, the outcasts, the chubbies. They seemed to
appreciate his humor and mild attentions, they accepted his help on
their homework, they allowed him to fumble and feel his way through
that whole sex thing in which he found temporal, if not emotional,
satisfaction.

Only years later, from a solid perch within
adulthood, could David recognize some of the truths he had
missed.

For one, Aishani hadn’t been superficial.
She’d merely been normal, subject to the same social pressures and
laws of the jungle that all creatures desirous of fitting in are
required to obey.

For another, if David hadn’t taken being
dumped so hard, not to mention the beating that Jack Foley and a
group of his buddies had administered a few days later, he wouldn’t
have aimed so low over the next several years. The girls he had
dated after Aishani hadn’t exactly been bottom feeders, but they
would hardly have been considered the cream of the crop, in any
field. David had chosen his own role as a slacker in the love
department. It hadn’t been anyone else’s doing.

As well, his unconscious decision that
‘good’ girls were beyond his reach had led him over and over again
to become involved with those who didn’t bring out the best in him,
or foster the numerous positive traits in which David had little
confidence himself. His family had been bad enough, ignoring him to
the point where they’d essentially become housemates who just
happened to share a last name. The girls, and later women, with
whom David became romantically entangled added little or nothing to
his value, or to his sense of values.

Would he have chosen more wisely during all
of the subsequent years if Aishani had remained his girlfriend
throughout eighth grade, or perhaps even beyond? Resisting the pull
of friends, of parties, of popularity?

Without a doubt.

Could he have had a better time of it, or
perhaps emerged from the episode more whole if she had cushioned
the blow, or at the very least explained to him
why
she felt
she had to end their relationship, and without plying him with
falsehoods?

Possibly, but no guarantees.

Guarantees, though, were nonexistent in
life, as David well knew. If his interactions with Clair had taught
him anything, they had certainly underlined the fact that whatever
David thought he knew about how things worked on Earth, he was
sorely under-informed.

He stood, collected his trash, and picked up
his umbrella. He had over an hour to pass before his meeting, but
was done with sitting here, sorting through dusty memories.

A walk around the deserted public square
would do him good. David hopped off the stage, and headed uphill
toward the intersection of Willow and Second.

It wasn’t until his second circuit about the
public square that David began to actually notice his surroundings.
The elegantly symmetrical town hall, the dated pile that was the
Moose Lodge, The Restful Nook, its many large windows throwing out
broad shafts of light into the dimness of the day.