A Tangled Web (50 page)

“You mean you'll write a reference for me?”

“Good God, after today? I said perhaps others would. If you go back to China I won't publicize what you've done. But if others ask me, I won't lie.”

“You don't have to tell them. No one would be forcing you.”

“Science would force me, my belief in science and in myself as a scientist. If you understood that, none of this would have happened.” He stood up. “I have to leave now; I promised my family I'd spend the afternoon with them. Here's your paper, there are a number of things in it that you can use again, especially in the first half of the experiment. You did that part well. I admired you. I'm sorry”—he cleared his throat—“I'm sorrier than you will
ever know that you couldn't be the kind of scientist I thought you were.”

Lu gave him a long look of pure hatred. He took the bound pages from Garth's hand and left.

Garth let out his breath and realized he was shaking. Damn him, he thought; damn him for the brutality of his stupidity and arrogance. But stupidity and arrogance were always brutal; Garth knew that. He just had not expected it in a young man of such brilliance.

He returned the blood samples to the refrigerator and locked it, then locked his office door. Outside, the heat rose up like a wall to meet him. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and khaki pants, and before he reached the campus gate they were wet. It was like swimming underwater, and he imagined himself doing a butterfly stroke, pushing the humid air aside so that he could reach his home.

And forget Lu, he thought, at least for a while. Forget the disappointment and my own failures, and how close I came to disaster. He walked down the somnolent streets. The houses and trees seemed to fade away in the heat, and Garth felt like a ghost in an abandoned town. He met no one else on his walk, though he heard shouts and laughter and splashes from backyard swimming pools, and a few blocks ahead he saw the mail truck making its slow way toward him. He turned up the walk to his house and opened the front door. Cool air curled about him, drawing him inside. What a good place to be, he thought as he closed the door. In so many ways.

He passed Mrs. Thirkell, humming in the kitchen, and went to the second floor. Young voices came from Penny's room. He glanced inside and saw Barbara Goodman and Penny facing each other cross-legged on the floor between the twin Jenny Lind beds, so absorbed they did not look up. A few feet away, Sabrina was sitting on the curved window seat in the round turret at the end of the hall, partially hidden behind a folding screen. She put her
finger to her lips and he walked quietly to her and kissed her.

“Was it very hard?” she asked, her voice low.

“Sad and infuriating. Are you eavesdropping on Penny and Barbara?”

“Yes.” She moved over so he could sit beside her. “I couldn't get her to talk about the party last night, and then I heard them—”

“—Tinkertoys,” Penny was saying. “You know, gears and wheels and stuff, but nothing inside.”

Barbara giggled, then her voice came, as earnest as Penny's. “But they're not really like that; they look fantastic, and they wear, you know, these great clothes that my mom won't buy for me, and they do everything! Nobody stops them the way everybody stops us!”

“I know. Except that . . . well, it's like nobody's paying any attention to them.”

“Right! They're so lucky . . . I mean, don't you hate it when people are always telling you what to do and when to be home and whatever
they
want?”

“Well, yes, but . . . well, you know . . . maybe nobody cares about what they do. Or cares about them. Or loves them.”

“Who doesn't?”

“Well, their parents.”

“Oh, sure they do. Parents always love their kids. It's in the genes. Ask your dad.”

“But my mom says they're like Tinkertoys because they're sort of empty inside. And she says they don't know anything.”

“Oh, come on, Penny, they know everything! And they have all the fun, and you know it. I mean, didn't you want to go upstairs with them at the party last night?”

There was a pause. “Sort of.”

“You did! I saw you watching them. And when they asked you, you said you'd be up later.”

“Well, you know, if you say no, they make fun of you. And I didn't tell my mom and dad that they were going to
be at the party. I mean, I just said you were going. So I thought . . . if something happened, I couldn't talk to my mom about it. I mean, if I did, she'd know I lied—”

“You didn't lie, you just didn't tell her everything. You shouldn't tell her everything anyway; it's babyish.”

“It's not! I tell you things!”

“It's different with friends.”

“Well, she's my friend, too. She always says the right thing.”

“Yeh, like Tinkertoys.”

“Well, it made sense when she said it. Why wouldn't you tell me last night what they were doing upstairs?”

“ 'Cause you didn't come up and I wanted you to. I mean,
I
went up there when they asked me and you said you would and then you didn't. It was like you didn't care about me.”

“I kept thinking about it . . . I wanted to but I didn't want to, I mean, I really wanted to, but they scare me, you know, I can't help it. They talk so loud and they tell jokes I don't get and they make me feel stupid. What were they
doing
!”

“Oh, lying around on those leather couches and sort of sliding off them and laughing and telling jokes and drinking beer and stuff, and the TV was on. They were in that little room, you know, with all that leather furniture.”

“I didn't see it.”

“And Arnie and Vera had sex.”

“They did? Right there?”

“No, of course not. I mean, somebody said they should, but they said they weren't into that. They went into one of the bedrooms.”

“I hate Arnie. He was one of the ones who threw me around that day at recess. I hate Vera, too. She laughs at me. What . . . what did
you
do upstairs?”

There was a silence.

“Barbara! You didn't!”

“No. I really wanted to, you know, see what it's like—I mean, it's all they talk about, practically—and they only
like the kids who do it, but Joey started pulling me out, you know, to this bedroom, and then he, uh, put his hand here and he stuck his tongue in my mouth and it was so awful, he tasted like beer and he was
sucking
and I thought he'd pull my tongue out . . . yech! I hated it!”

“He was sucking on your tongue? That's gross.”

“Right. It was.”

“So what did you do?”

“Knocked him down.”

“Knocked him
down
?”

“Well, I pushed him and he fell backwards. There was this hassock behind him, you know, and he fell over it.”

“Was he mad?”

“What do you think?”

“Well, what did he do?”

“He called me things. And everybody laughed.”

“At Joey?”

“No! At me!” Her voice fell away. “They said I was stupid and a tease and a cunt. And they made this circle around me and you know, kind of danced? And I was in the middle, and they were saying cunt, cunt, cunt . . . I hate that word. It was so awful; they were so
mean.
They were never like that before.”

“Not to you. Because you always sort of hang around them, like you like them. I hate it when you do that.”

“I don't like them, not really. I mean, I mostly hate them. And I never went with them after school or anything, when they asked me, but, you know, I couldn't stand it if they laughed at me all the time the way they did last night. The way they laugh at you. And they really are cool, Penny, and I really do wish I was like them and they liked me.”

“They turn lovemaking into fucking.”

“What? That's really weird. What does it mean?”

“They make it not loving. You know, ordinary, like a handshake. Or scratching an itch.”

“An itch!” Barbara giggled. “Who says it's like an itch?”

“My mother.”

“Oh, you're always talking about your mother! I mean, she's really nice, but she doesn't know anything about sex; she's too old.”

“She knows everything. About sex, too, I'll bet; she and my dad are always kissing. And one time he had his hand here, you know, sort of moving his fingers over it, and my mom said, ‘Wonderful hands,' real low, and gave this little laugh like she was so happy, and I wished I could feel that way . . . someday. They thought they were alone, you know, in the kitchen, and lots of times, on Saturday and Sunday mornings, their bedroom door's shut and one time Cliff and I listened and we heard them talking and making all these . . . sounds, you know?”

Garth tightened his arm around Sabrina as she rested against him on the window seat. “Maybe a soundproof door?”

She smiled. “I think as long as it's part of our loving each other, there isn't anything she shouldn't hear.”

“And I knew they were . . . doing it,” Penny finished triumphantly.

Barbara sighed. “I never get to hear anything like that. My parents don't kiss much, at least not that I can see. And they close their door at night, and they get up early, before me. It'd be neat to hear them sometime. I guess they don't do it a lot.” There was a pause. “She said it was an itch?”

“It shouldn't be like scratching one, she said. But when kids do it, that's what it's like. And she said it was like something else, too . . . I forget. Oh, like an after-school sport.”

They giggled. “Soccer and Softball and gymnastics and fucking,” Barbara said, her voice rising. “They could put it on the bulletin board and we could check off which one we—”

“Ssssh!” Penny said.

Barbara's voice dropped only slightly. “But wouldn't you like to try it? I mean, find out what it's really
like?
I
mean, they talk like it's the greatest thing and I don't know what they're talking about and it makes me feel
little,
like they're grown up and I'm still a baby.”

“My mother says we should wait to find somebody we really love and share things with him; then it would be making love instead of, you know, fucking.”

Garth kissed Sabrina's cheek. “What a smart mother Penny has,” he murmured.

“She didn't say that!” Barbara exclaimed. “Did she? Does your mother really say ‘fucking' to you?”

“Sure. Well, not a lot, she says it's not a good word, but you know, one time I said the kids at school were talking about fucking and masturbating and . . . you know. So we talked about it.”

“Well, it's easy for her; she can talk about itches and stuff because she doesn't have to go to school with those kids, so what good is that?”

“She says they're infants,” Penny went on doggedly, “and the reason they laugh at us is probably because they're scared but they can't admit it.”

There was a pause. “She thinks they're scared?”

“That's what she said. That they got in too deep and don't know how to get out and don't know where they're going. Something like that.”

“Well . . . I don't know. They don't look scared to me. They didn't look scared last night.”

“I bet they were, though.”

“They didn't look like it. And when Arnie and Vera went into the bedroom, they didn't, either.”

“Did you watch them?”

“They closed the door.”

“So how do you know they did it?”

“They said so, when they came back.”

“So what did you do then? You didn't come downstairs right away. Did you try anything?”

“Sort of.”

“
You did?
You didn't tell me!”

“I meant to. I was going to today.”

“What did you try?”

“Uh, coke. They were snorting it.”

“You did
coke?
”

“A little.”

“How much?”

“I don't know. It didn't look like very much.”

“Could you feel it? I mean, how did you
feel?
”

“It sort of tickled my nose.”

“But how did you
feel
?”

“Nice. Like everything was fine. They stopped laughing at me and they liked me and I felt grown up and . . . good. It was really nice.”

“Then what did you do?”

“Oh, sort of hung out, but they didn't seem so nice after a while. They got mean, like always, and they were telling jokes that I didn't get, so I came downstairs and that's when, you know, they opened the dining room and everybody started eating, so I did, too.”

“And that was all?”

“Yeh, it wasn't, you know, fabulous or anything. It just felt nice for a little while. You could try it and see for yourself, they'd give you some, they've got lots. Or, you know, if we wanted to do the rest of it, we could ask Vera or somebody and they'd, you know, tell us where they'd be after school or on weekends.”

“And do coke, you mean?”

“Well, sex, too. You know. I mean, I don't know about itches and all that stuff, but they keep saying it's so much fun and we could find out what it's like. They'd let us; they told me they like virgins.”

“Oh.” It came out as a terrified gasp and Sabrina started up, but Garth held her back. “She doesn't need us,” he murmured, and slowly she settled back, but her hands were clenched. “I can't believe they're saying these things.”

“So what do you think?” Barbara asked.

“I guess not,” Penny said, her voice becoming stronger as she spoke. “I mean, I really don't want to. My mother
says those kids are messing up a lot of things because they don't know who they are or how—”