Amy and Isabelle (21 page)

Amy shook her head.

“
Just
like Maryanne. Spacey, nice. Waved her hand around in front of her face just like Maryanne does.”

“Weird.”

“Was weird. This milk is warm.” Stacy made a face.

Amy smoked, watching Stacy pour the milk onto the ground, a white puddle separating into tiny rivers creeping over the dirt and leaves, darkening as it seeped into the soil. She missed Stacy already. Already Stacy seemed gone.

“I wonder if I’m like my real mother.” Stacy smoked pensively.
“Because if everyone just turns out like their mother, then what’s the rat’s-ass point?”

ONCE AMY WAS in the car with Mr. Robertson, things seemed a little more normal, although it was earlier than usual, since the school day had been shortened. The sun was high and very hot in the white sky. “Am I going to see you this summer?” she blurted out, not long after they left the school parking lot.

Mr. Robertson glanced at her as though mildly surprised. “I certainly hope so,” he said.

“Because on Monday, you know, I start my stupid job at the mill.”

He nodded, pulling up to a stop sign. “We’ll work it out,” he said, touching her arm lightly.

She turned her face away, letting the air from the open window move across her neck; she held her hair in a loose fist, the tips of it tapping lightly against the window frame. For the first time she felt on the verge of a quarrel with him. Such a thing had not seemed possible before.

Nor was it possible now, for she could not find the words, could only feel a dismal petulance as she gazed out the window of the moving car and thought how he, after all these weeks of kissing in the woods, had not told her anything more about his wife, or about himself, for that matter (except for stories about his past, she thought crossly), nothing of how he felt about
things
, his plans or hopes for the future.

Finally she said, “Are you all right?” as he turned off Route 22 and parked the car under some trees partway up the old lumber road.

“I’m fine,” he said, touching her hand as he pulled the key from the ignition.

But in fact he seemed distracted and silent, and things didn’t go the way they usually did. When he kissed her, she felt only flatly and lucidly conscious of the pine needles beneath her bare legs and of the short, deep breathing of this man rhythmically pushing against her. She was very warm and so was he; clutching his back she could feel the moistness of his wrinkled shirt.

Finally he rolled off her and said, staring at the sky, “I guess we both knew this probably wasn’t the day.”

She said nothing. In a while he reached for her hand and helped her
up. They walked back to the car. “You should go to college in Boston,” he suddenly said. She didn’t answer but instead brushed the pine needles off her leg and got into the car.

He examined a scratch on his door and then got into the car too, leaning his back against the open window, one elbow propped against the steering wheel. With his other hand he touched the inside of her arm and smiled when he saw goosebumps springing up. “You’re shivering,” he said, “and it’s so warm.”

She almost didn’t like him. She dropped her eyes, shrugging slightly. The dashboard was dusty in the milky light. Her skin felt oily, not clean.

“Amy,” he said. “You know you’ll always be loved, don’t you?”

She looked at him. For a long time she didn’t say anything, but then because of the expression in his kind, sad eyes, she said, “Oh, God, that sounds like a good-bye.”

He pulled her head toward him, murmuring, “No, no, no,” as he stroked her hair by the side of her face. “We’ll work something out, little Amy Goodrow.”

She straightened up, ready to kiss him, but he seemed content to simply gaze at her, and so she sat shyly looking down at her hands in her lap.

“Amy,” he said quietly, “take off your blouse.”

She glanced up, surprised. He was watching her impassively through half-opened eyes.

Slowly she undid the buttons, flat, shiny buttons; one glinted in the muted sun. “All the way,” he said, because she was hesitating once the buttons were undone.

She leaned forward, tilting first one shoulder, then the other one, removing the wrinkled blouse, two pine needles stuck to it. He took it from her and picked off the pine needles, and then very elaborately folded the blouse before he turned and placed it on the back seat.

She sat there in her bra from Sears, a plain white bra with a tiny appliqué of a daisy between the pointed cups. She was perspiring, and when he looked at her she wiped her hand across her mouth and looked away.

“Take that off, too.” He said it very quietly, in his low, rumbly voice.

She flushed in the heat of the car. It was like her eyelids were sweating;
her eyes felt almost swollen. She hesitated, and then leaned forward and unhooked her bra; her fingertips were cold. He held out his hand and she gave him the bra. With his eyes still on her face, he dropped it onto the back-seat floor.

She looked away, at the gearshift that was there between them with its dark lump of a leathery top. He would have to be looking at her now. She blinked at the gearshift and started to raise a hand to press a finger to her mouth, but she stopped, and pressed her lips together instead. So that her hair would hide her face, she tilted her head down, and saw between the roundness of her breasts, the pale pink tips as excruciatingly exposed as something newborn, a trickle of sweat run down her stomach into the waistband of her lavender skirt.

“You’re so pretty,” Mr. Robertson said conversationally, but softly. “Honestly, Amy, you really are beautiful,” and after that she was all right. A tiny flicker of a smile shot across her face and she looked at him, but he was looking at her there.

“Would you mind doing certain things?” he asked quietly.

She said nothing, not knowing what he meant.

For example, would she mind putting her hand under her breast and holding it toward him? She blushed and gave a small laugh, rolling her eyes quickly, embarrassed, but she did what he asked, and he looked so pleased that she didn’t mind after all. She didn’t mind doing more; like holding both of her breasts together, and then having her hair fall down over them with her nipples peeking through. He asked if she would mind spitting on her fingers and then touching the nipples, and she was surprised, but she did that too.

He asked her to turn one way, then another. He asked her to raise her arm and hold her hair up and tilt her head. The longer he looked at her, the more she liked it. She wished he had asked her to do these things before. With her arm raised she could smell the sweat of herself, the lilac smell of the deodorant mixed with herself. Her nose itched, and rubbing her arm across it she could smell that too, the smell of her arm.

“Touch them again,” he directed, and she did.

He had her put the seat back after that, so that, really, she was lying down. Her breasts flattened out, spreading over toward her arms. It was very hot in the car.

“Close your eyes,” he said.

She felt a tiny, unexpected breeze come through the window, and her eyes flickered open.

“Are you worried?” he asked gently. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

She shook her head.

“I don’t want you to be frightened.”

“I’m not frightened. My eyes won’t stay closed, though.”

“That’s okay. Lift up your skirt, honey. Around your waist.”

She was embarrassed again, and smiled slightly, blushing, and then obediently she tugged at the lavender skirt until it was bunched at her waist, showing her white cotton Carter underpants and the slight rising from her pubic hair.

“I don’t want you taking your panties off,” he said. “Do you understand?”

She nodded, looking at him, her mouth parting with some deep emotion at having heard his husky, soft voice speak the word “panties.” His face seemed slackened; he was staring at her down there.

“Let’s just stay like this awhile,” he said. “Let’s just enjoy the warm summer day.” A bead of sweat ran down the side of his face, disappearing into his beard; another followed. “Lie back,” he said. “Try closing your eyes again. Enjoy the summer day.”

He smiled at her, leaning his head back against the window frame, closing his own eyes. She closed her eyes too.

“A very beautiful girl,” she heard him say quietly, and she smiled a little, her eyes still closed.

And then he had his mouth to her breast and was sucking on it, her eyes opening in amazement to see his furry mouth working, sucking slowly at first but then with greater urgency, so that in a few moments he was not just moving the hardening nipple through his mouth, but was biting it with little bites, pulling on it with his teeth. She let out a small cry, and then it really was like she was crying because the sound she made became continuous, as a series of sobs would be, but it was not a sobbing, it was an odd cry of begging, and the more she cried the more fervently he sucked on the hard nipple, and the funnel-shaped thing in her middle swirled, tugged her down there, every squeeze of his mouth made her ache down there so that her hips began to move, her middle arching up and the sound of begging filling the air.

And then he stopped, sat back. His forehead was red, the cheeks
above his beard flushed with a deep red. He took his glasses off almost sternly, tossing them onto the dashboard. She thought he was angry, but he said, “Christ, you’re amazing,” and she closed her eyes, aching down there, her mouth dry from the quick breathing of her cries.

“Pull your pants down,” he said, almost whispering. “Pull your pants down to your knees.” She hesitated. “Do it,” he said.

And she did, her nipples bruised and rigid in the hot air, her skirt still bunched at her waist. “They’re wet,” she murmured, blushing deeply, almost ready to cry with embarrassment.

“You’re supposed to be wet,” he told her softly, kind now, leaning over to touch not her, but the wetness of her underpants. “Because you’re great. You’re every man’s dream. A horny girl,” he was saying, running his fingers through the gumminess on her underpants and then to her amazement suddenly slipping those same fingers into her mouth, so that she tasted the odd deep saltiness of herself. “You’re so fucking horny,” he repeated, murmuring, and then whispered, “I want you even hornier,” so that once again when a terrible embarrassment might have overtaken her completely she felt instead the thrill of pleasing him, of being encouraged, almost commanded forward—this is what he wanted, for her to be this way. He sucked her breasts again, hard, and with her nakedness exposed there in the middle, that curly pale hair just lying right there out in the open, her naked legs shiny together, the wetness of her underpants touching against her knees, she murmured, her voice halting, “I don’t want to get pregnant.”

Her breast still in his mouth, he said, “You won’t,” and while he kept on sucking her she felt his hand very lightly, so lightly, move across the top of her leg and then touch her there—his whole palm at first covering her hair, so lightly that it seemed like a faint breeze—and then with a gentle, slow, deliberateness his fingertips touched her, slipping just the littlest bit inside her, and oh, the
sweetness
of this, how
sweet
of him, such sweet kindness!

He stopped sucking on her breast and smiled at her. She slipped her fingers into his mouth, ran her moist fingers across his ear. “You’re not to worry,” he whispered, his eyelids half lowered, his fingertips still so gently, slowly moving, and then one a little more than the rest moved into her with a sweet boldness, a knowingness. And then he leaned his head forward to watch himself do this to her down there, and she
caught a glimpse of her undone self: her naked breasts wet from his mouth, still glistening, her naked middle, and right there, his large hand—oh, it was terrible how wonderful he was—this wonderful, wonderful man!

HAVING BEEN TO the dentist, Avery Clark drove home to get some papers he needed for a meeting later that afternoon, and happened to turn his head and see, as he drove down the wooded area of Route 22, the fender of a car glinting in the sun, parked under some trees down the old lumber road. It bothered him; he remembered the burglaries of winter.

Emma was not home, and he expected this. She had told him earlier she would be shopping with a friend. He found the papers he needed and scratched her a note in the kitchen, telling her he needed bridgework—darn—and he would see her at five. (It was a habit to leave her a note whenever he came home at an unaccustomed time.) Again he wondered about the car parked in the woods. It could very well belong to Hiram Crane; there was a rumor he planned on selling some land. Taxes were getting too high. But if the car was still there on his way back to work he would call Hiram just to see.

The car was still there. Avery Clark pulled over a little further up ahead and then got out and walked back. Most likely it was Hiram out with a surveyor. If not, he would get the license plate, at least, and let Hiram know what he had seen. It was decent for neighbors to keep their eyes on things. He took a few cautious steps down the lumber road. There did not appear to be anyone in the car. He mopped his brow with his handkerchief, his large shoes moving forward through the glinting buttercups, stepping on the delicate, tiny bluets that grew in patches among the blades of grass.

ISABELLE, SITTING AT her desk tired and hungry this time of day, had just straightened up her paper clips and let out a deep sigh, when glancing over at the clock she saw Avery Clark stride into the room and thought: Someone important has died.

Chapter

13

DAISIES AND PINK clover grew alongside the back roads of Shirley Falls. There were wild sweet peas too, tangled among the lupine and timothy grass, and the bramble of raspberry and blackberry bushes, as well as the large-leafed carrion twisting over stone walls, and in the fields Queen Anne’s lace. But all of it had a faded, washed-out look this summer, the way weeds and wildflowers do when they grow next to a dirt road and get covered in a layer of dust; although now it was the weather doing this, the awful heat and mugginess, the unrelenting white sky stretching high around that seemed determined, somehow, to block out any of the world’s usual colors.