Acts of God (26 page)

33

Outside tires screeched on the
gravel and suddenly Nick was there in my driveway. He closed the car door, then just stood there for a long moment, taking in the view, smelling the coastal air. I opened the door, giving a wave. When he reached me, he held me to him, burying his head in my hair. Taking him by the hand, we walked around the house, stood at the bluff. “It's incredible, Tessie.”

“If I sold this place, I'd be rich. The land alone is probably worth a million. But I'm never going to sell.”

“Promise me you won't.”

I crossed my heart.

Inside a fire blazed in the fireplace. I uncorked a bottle of good California Chardonnay as he wandered through the house. “I love this room,” he said. “I love it here.” He stood gazing at the view as I handed him a glass of wine.

“I knew I would.”

He breathed a deep sigh as if he hadn't relaxed in a long time. Then we clicked our glasses together. “Can we take a walk? I feel like I've been cooped up. I could use the fresh air.”

“Of course we can. We can do whatever you like.” Putting our wineglasses on the coffee table, I took him by the arm and led him down the path of ice plants, through the grove of pines until we stood on the path the poet had carved through his own restless walks at the edge of the sea. Nick took a deep breath. “It's very dramatic, isn't it?”

Holding my hand, Nick followed the path. “I can see why you'd never want to leave.”

I squeezed his hand, glad he could see that and wondering if it was still true. We made our way down the cliffs to the sea and walked the beach for a while, occasionally stopping to pick up a shell or a feather that struck our eye. We spoke very little, but I didn't mind the silence. After we'd walked a ways, Nick paused and gazed up at my house. “Is it safe there?” he asked.

“Not particularly.”

He laughed. “I didn't think so. It looks as if it could come tumbling down.”

“It might,” I said. “It could.”

He put an arm tightly around my shoulder. “Be careful,” he said. “I don't want anything bad to happen to you.”

I took him by the hand, leading him up the path, back toward the house. “Nothing bad will.”

When we got back to the house, I went to check on the bouillabaisse I'd made from whatever the local fishermen had caught that day. The kitchen was filled with the salty steam of fish and jazz was coming from my living room. Nick had put on a CD. Peter Duchin, Art Tatum? The music was dreamy, the way old jazz can be. It had been awhile since my house was filled with the smells of cooking and the sound of soft jazz. I peeked into the living room and saw Nick, sitting, glass of wine in hand, staring at the sea, a magazine open in his lap, as if he too belonged right there.

At dinner Nick ate a hearty bowl of bouillabaisse and drank down two glasses of Chardonnay. With a piece of bread he sopped up the juice on his plate. Then taking my hand, he led me into the living room, where the jazz played. It was Tatum, I decided. His head was tossed back. With one hand he tapped out the rhythm on my thigh.

Soon his fingers were moving up and down my leg. They were lifting my chin to his. His kiss was long and deep. “I've been wanting to do this for a long time,” he said. His hands guided me down the hallway to my bedroom. He peeled off his shirt, his pants. He pulled my sweater over my head. Rising above me, he straddled my hips, hands on my nipples, eyes closed, body swaying. His hands were everywhere, his tongue coursed between my thighs. The hair on his back and shoulders was furry and thick as a beast's and I burrowed in. My fingers circled his nipples, reached down and held him. Everywhere his tongue went, he stayed for a long time. His body was firm yet soft at the same time.

When he entered me it was smooth and easy and he knew how to take his time. I felt as if I had taken a drug and was losing myself because I couldn't tell where his limbs ended and mine began. Suddenly I felt tired and I knew that I would sleep.

When I woke, it was just after midnight and the house smelled of fish and burning wood. The only sound was of waves crashing below. Moonlight shone in, splattering on the floor. Nick lay beside me, his eyes open, listening. When he saw I was awake, he reached up, stroking my face. “It's beautiful here.” I rested my head on his belly. It had never seemed quite so beautiful to me before.

“I'm glad I'm here,” he went on. “I've wanted to be with you for a long time. Maybe you've always been somewhere in my mind.”

“I'm glad I'm with you too,” I told him, rubbing my face on his chest. “You know almost everything about me.”

“I'm with you because I want to be,” he continued, still stroking my face, “but are you sure you know why you want me here? Are you sure you know why you're doing this?”

“Because I've grown fond of you,” I teased, kissing his fingertips, his hands.

Nick turned over, resting his chin in his hands. The body that had seemed so large, almost overpowering to me just months ago now seemed gentle, tender. “I hope that's why. I hope that's so.”

“Why else would it be?” I traced my finger along the line of his shoulder blade, down his spine in the moonlight.

“Because you want to get back at her?”

“Get back at her? Why? Why would I want that?”

“Oh, Tessie,” he said with a sigh, “you know. You know why.”

34

You never saw so many
paper moons, all gold and cut out of cardboard, and roses, tissue-paper roses, perfumed, fluffed, tied with wire. We spent weeks making them, cutting the moons and twisting the roses until our thumbs got blisters. Painting the blue backdrop with the clouds. Boxes and boxes of them.

The gym, of course, would be transformed. It always was for junior prom. Not that I'd seen it before, but I'd heard. I'd heard how one day it smelled of sweat and basketballs, and the next of powder and eau de cologne. It was a vision we'd all conceived. We, the members of the junior prom committee. We'd eliminated Hawaiian theme (too much like the previous year, which was South Pacific). We'd thought about “Downtown,” which was the big Petula Clark song that year, or “She Loves You.”

Then somebody said why not “Moonlight and Roses.” Yes, it was romantic, but then, we were romantic. We liked being romantic. We'd play songs like “Moon River” and “Paper Moon,” silly romantic songs. The gym all decorated with paper roses and moons and the lights turned down low and the girls with their corsages and dresses, pumps and bags dyed to match.

It was, of course, what we dreamed of.

So we could just see it, the gang and me. And
of course,
we volunteered to decorate it. We who had practiced our pompon routines and our cheerleading and baton in this gym, yes, we would transform it into a different place. Another place altogether.

Of course I was going with Patrick. It was a fait accompli—an expression I didn't learn until college, but of course that was what was going to happen. No one doubted it, least of all me.

Still the phone didn't ring. I waited. It's not that it didn't ring, because it did. It rang all the time, off the hook, as Lily said. I had my own line now, not just for me, but for my brothers as well, but they'd make a phone call and it was “Meet me at the Idiot's Circle at five” or “See you at the field.” Not like me, because I liked to talk and chatter and gab with the gang. If one of them didn't call every night or so, I was crushed, devastated.

But Patrick didn't call. I saw him at school and it wasn't like he was avoiding me. We chatted by my locker and walked up the hall and as far as I was concerned we were together. We were a couple, weren't we? Didn't we drive around in his car with his hand resting just below my breast? Didn't that count for something? So we were a couple; that's how I saw it. That's how everyone else saw it too.

Then Jim Richter called and asked me to the prom. Would you like to go with me to Moonlight and Roses? And of course I said no because I was going with Patrick.

“I don't think so” was Jim Richter's reply.

“What do you mean you don't think so?” I stammered.

“I think he's going with someone else.”

Then I lost my cool because that couldn't be and I knew it was just an ugly rumor so I said, “Well, who might that be?” still trying to sound like I had a handle on exactly what was going on here.

And he said, “Well, I don't know … maybe I shouldn't say anything.” And he hung up, just like that.

So I called Lori first and she hemmed and hawed, and then I called Maureen, and finally it was Vicky who told it to me straight because, she said, “Well, we just didn't know if you knew. We couldn't really tell what the story was because it seemed as if you didn't, but we thought maybe you were just trying—”

“Vicky, who is he going with?”

“Margaret.”

“You're kidding. How could he? How could he do that to me?”

Vicky was silent. “I don't know. He just did. And she said yes.”

“When did it happen?”

“Weeks ago.”

I had my pride. I wasn't going to just lose it, not like that, not there on the phone. “Thank you for telling me. I appreciate it.” Then I got off the phone. I shook, I cried, then I got my composure back and called Jim Richter.

“If you'd still like to take me, I'll go with you.”

*   *   *

Jim Richter stood in the entranceway in his powder-blue suit, talking to my father. There was the dance to go to and then there was some late-night supper, and then a boat ride on the Chicago River, which my father hadn't known about, and I saw him blanch. “Oh, I don't know about that boat ride. How many in the boat, son?”

And Jim Richter said he didn't know, but that there were chaperons (which there weren't) and that I'd be home in the morning after a breakfast being held at some hotel, and it all seemed like so much and I wanted my father to say no to it all, but there I was in my rose-colored dress with pumps and bag dyed to match and I felt like a stupid flower and Jim stood there, a corsage in his hand because that was what the boys did, they brought the girls corsages, and I thought to myself, I don't want to do this, I don't want to go, not tonight, not to this prom. I want to put my feet up and read a good book or take a walk because I was sure to run into them and of course everyone knew.

We drove in silence, Jim Richter with his hand draped across the back of my seat, and I thought, Don't touch me, but of course he did. He let his moist hand graze my shoulder and I pulled away. All the cars were arriving as we pulled up. One after the other, cars pulled up with girls in satiny dresses—creamy blue and shiny pink, corsages that would leave elastic marks on their wrists, tied to their arms.

And the gym was transformed. Dark with evening-blue lights, the roses we'd made, the paper moons draped from overhead. On a platform the band played just like we knew it would—“Moon River.” Dream maker, heartbreaker.

Jim Richter took my hand in his fleshy, sweaty palm and led me in and there they were, of course. I saw them. Margaret and Patrick, together, dancing. Close.

Drinks were being passed around. Boys had flasks under their coats and some had whiskey and some had gin and some had things I couldn't recall. Jim pressed me to him, made me dance with him, but every once in a while when a flask went around, I grabbed for it, took a long swig. I could see Patrick, his hand around hers. What happened? I wanted to ask him. Why did you do it?

But I knew why. Because for some reason she had to have what she didn't have. She had to have what was mine.

I drank from silvery flasks—scotch, gin. I didn't care. My mouth and tongue were warm, but my feet were numb, which was good because as we danced Jim Richter stepped on them.

And then we all piled into our cars and drove into town and had supper somewhere and then there was this boat, this boat on the river. By now we had all slipped out of our prom clothes into other things and I kept drinking from whatever flask and I saw the boat and I thought, I can't get on a boat on the river. So this is how it will end for me. Flailing arms, voices calling for help. But the boat moved easily from the dock and I drank from a bottle being passed around and the sky over the Chicago River was turning purplish, a lighter shade of purple, almost lavender and I felt Jim Richter slide his hand under my shirt, into my bra, pulling me to him, pulling me under him. I felt those hot, moist hands against my flesh and suddenly I knew I was going to be sick. I was going to throw up over the side, so I pushed his hands away and I shouted at him, shouted loud enough for everyone on the boat, all my classmates to hear, “How can you take advantage of a girl who's drunk?” I shouted it once, then twice, until Jim Richter shrank away and I turned and there was Patrick, his hand over my mouth to silence me, Patrick, leading me away to the side of the boat where I was sick.

“Tess,” he said, “are you all right?”

“Get away from me,” I told him. “I hate you. I hate all of you.”

It was dawn when I walked in and my father was just getting up. “Squirrel,” he called to me as I slipped in, “Squirrel, is that you?”

“It's me, Dad.”

“Are you okay, sweetie?”

“I'm fine, Daddy. I'm just tired. I'm going to bed.”

*   *   *

It was after the prom, just a couple of days or so later when Mom said, Take the car, Squirrel, take the car, and she handed me one of her lists, those long lists for the store. Sometimes she let me do the shopping for her and I liked to do it midweek when Dad was gone because I could buy a few extra things—things I knew he liked like root beer and popcorn we'd drink and pop the night when he got home. With the extra money she gave me I always picked up something special for my dad.

I liked the Indian Trail market with the giant Indian head on the front—a chief of some sort in full feathers, a tepee behind him (despite that fact that in Winonah there were no Indians who wore full feathers or lived in tepees. For tepees belonged to a nomadic tribe and the Potawatomi lived in lodges right in what is now downtown Winonah).