Rowing in Eden (19 page)

“I love you,” he crooned. He sounded desperate but blissful. “I love you, Franny.” He raised his head and smiled, sweet as a dog paddling in open water. It was shameful that he said he loved her. That he thought her foolish enough to believe him. Still, she wanted him to say it. He had to—or she would sink into the earth. Because she loved him, too, and wished she could be with him without having to watch for someone to come their way. The house, big and white, lit by the mercury lamp to a lavender pallor—it shone in the windy distance: a ship, a dream, breathing. Twigs from the oak trees bit into her scalp. Her parents would tear her limb from limb if they found her in these arms.

How long did she lie there with Ryan Marvell murmuring her name? He was on top of her, he was under her, they rocked in the cool night air. In his thrall, she tried to weigh how awful that hand under her shirt, on the bare skin of her back, might be in the eyes of the world; and, more important, in the eyes of Ryan Marvell himself. Surely he understood that she had never done such a thing before. Still, he complained when she stopped his hand's movement toward her breasts.

He lifted his face and looked down into her eyes. “You love me, too, don't you?”

“Yes,” she said miserably. It was not a glory. It was an admission. What good could come of it, barring a miracle? “I've got to go in, though. My parents will be home soon.”

He protested briefly before standing to help her brush the
grass and twigs from her hair and the back of her shirt.

“Marvell!” From across the lawn, Tim Gleason now wobbled their way, his arms wrapped tight about his body. Teeth rattling with the cold, he cried, “Jesus, you guys! Are you guys nuts?”

Ryan Marvell lay a kiss on top of Franny's head. “Tim,” he said, very grave, “you know Franny.”

When Tim Gleason groaned, Ryan Marvell guided him off across the yard, saying to Franny, “I'll be right back, okay, honey? Stay there, okay?”

She looked out at the choppy lake. A single boat sat in the bay. The lamp at its prow threw a circle of yellow on the dark water. The boat and the lamp suggested some sort of menace, though Franny knew the boat belonged to Mr. Judd. Mr. Judd would be putting down his nightly trail of corn and cat food for the enormous carp that he lured to his dock, caught, and buried because no one could abide all of those bones.

“Old Jughead, now, he likes a struggle,” Brick would say of Mr. Judd, laughing, able, as most men, to find amusement in the wrong-headedness of others so long as it did not intrude on his own turf.

A third person joined Ryan Marvell and Tim Gleason. A boy in a white St. Joseph's letter jacket. Franny recognized him as the person who had helped Tim Gleason drive “Eduardo” to the hospital at the last party. He, too, was shaking his head, telling Ryan Marvell he was nuts, what was he thinking of,
Come on, man!
Franny smiled as if she heard nothing. As if she were quite comfortable standing on the top of the bank, looking out at the dark water and the lights across the lake. Her heart beat wildly, but she stood straight and tall and, just as her mother had taught her, she pictured that star connected to the top of her skull, and hoped this made her appear wise beyond her years, and even lovable.

T
HE NEXT MORNING, WHEN SHE WOKE, THE LIGHT IN HER
bedroom was the color of the clay that she knew how to find, here and there, by digging in pockets along the shores of Pynch Lake. In that cool, clay light, she pressed her fingers and strands of her hair to her nose, and she held them there, sniffing for traces of Ryan Marvell. Who had kissed her. And danced with her. And told her he loved her. All of which felt much grander than anything she had ever expected, and came as more of a shock because it had happened in the world as she knew it, in her own home, where, after sitting with Ryan Marvell on the landing, she could feel the familiar pattern left on the back of her thighs by the sharp metal treads of the steps.

But, then, where else could a miracle occur? A thing happening in real time in a real place: that was what made a miracle a miracle.

Beneath sheet and spread, she knotted her hands together, and squeezed them tight. Tighter. They sang with the fact of flesh and blood compressed against bone. It was necessary to do this, though she did not know why. She would be—please, let her—like Superman, who once saved the day by squeezing a lump of coal so hard that it became the perfect replacement for the diamond eye stolen from the natives' idol.

But what was it that a human being could become under pressure? How did you get to be the princess so beloved by the prince that you could never, ever again be returned to life among the cinders? The stories suggested that the answer to the latter was a foot
small enough to fit into a tiny glass slipper or a backside sensitive to the pressure from a pea, but what about love?

No need to ask, “Am I in love?” or even to think, “Now I am in love.” Love was an eagle, dangling her high in the sky. Look around. The thin air and the beauty of the clouds robbed her of breath. Look down at her life, her house, her town, suddenly so small, the lake's blue fingers calmly invading the land, the land invading the water.

However, when she finally did descend the stairs and stop on the landing, she found—and this was no surprise—the now sunny world continued on as if nothing had occurred. At the stove, Peg was explaining to several girl guests the proportion of Lea & Perrins she used in her scrambled eggs. In the far corner of the kitchen, Rosamund ran the blender that whirred the orange juice for which—pitcher in hand—Turner Haskin stood waiting. Thinking it camouflage, a kind of veiling of herself in the daily, Franny jumped from the landing—slam!—before she hurried to the sink to draw a drink of water from the tap.

“Hey, Franny”—one of the girl guests stepped away from Peg's circle to whisper—“that guy you were with last night was some babe, but how
old
is he?”

Franny shrugged to suggest the girl's question was irrelevant, the guy was irrelevant—

“Franny!” A furious Martie motioned from the dining room—
Come here!

Better not to ask what Martie wanted while within Peg's earshot. Still, Franny hated taking those steps into the dining room, asking, “What is it?”

Martie tugged Franny toward the front door where bars of morning sunshine now crashed into the house like demolition dust. “Tell me what happened last night,” Martie commanded.

“Martie”—Rosamund stepped around the corner of the breakfront—“are you torturing Franny?”

“I want her to tell me what went on with that guy or I'm giving Mom and Dad a full report!”

“Of what?” Rosamund asked. “That she danced a couple of times with some cute guy? Don't be a jerk.”

Franny caught the spirit of Rosamund's defense, and added, “He was nice. He said maybe we could all go skiing sometime.”

Like a cartoon housewife, Martie crossed her arms and tapped her foot against the floor. “And how old is he?”

Franny shrugged. “I don't know. And I've got to go. I'm crewing for Susan.”

A lie, but she did not feel guilty at telling it. She was willing to tell as many lies as necessary to protect the possibility of seeing Ryan Marvell again. She was willing to make the lies true.

“Susan,” she called ahead of herself when she spied Susan Thomas gathering swimsuits and towels from the Thomas family's clothes line. “Hey!”

“Franny!” Grinning, Susan Thomas dropped her work and started across the scrappy yard. “I just heard!”

Franny raised a finger to her lips, and kept it there until she reached the girl. “What'd you hear?”

“Al Castor was out on the dock with Bryce Campbell, and they said you were at your sisters' party with some older guy!”

“Well, yeah”—sick and proud, she smiled, she shook her head—“it's a mess, though.”

Susan Thomas grabbed Franny by the forearms, and jumped up and down, laughing. “Oh, my god, you're in love! I can tell! St. Frances! You're in love!”

“You feeling okay, sweetie?” Brick asked her over that evening's dinner.

She nodded. Ryan Marvell had said he would call at six-thirty. It was now six-thirty.

Brick turned to Peg. “Where's Martie?”

Peg raised her eyes and went on spooning green beans onto her plate. “Oh, she's off with Deedee, all upset about some boy not coming to the party last night.”

“Someone she's interested in,” Rosamund explained to Turner.

“She throws herself at them. That's her problem.” Brick took hold of both sides of his end of the dining room table, and gave the table a shake that made the others reach out to steady their glasses. “Christ.”

When Brick lifted his head again, his face was twisted. He's going to cry, Franny thought, and started from her chair to offer comfort—

“‘But, Dad!'” Brick leaned his torso deep over the table, craned his neck toward each of them in turn as he shrilled, “‘But, Dad, I
love
Billy Bob Joe!'”

Franny did her best not to run into the kitchen to answer the ringing telephone. Rosamund and Peg and Turner Haskin were all laughing at Brick's imitation of Martie—Rosamund so hard that tears stood in her eyes—and Brick, pleased, laughing a little himself, turned to Peg to say, “Did you know I was as funny as all that, toots?”

Rosamund gave a helpless sniffle. Peeped out from over the edge of her big cloth napkin. Burst anew into a series of breathless laughs as Franny exited to the kitchen.

Ryan Marvell seemed to have no idea that his actually calling her at the time that he had said he would call—his calling her at all—constituted one more miracle. He was at Viccio's Pool Hall, he said. Could Franny meet him at the Romero that night? Maybe get Rosamund to take her? The Craft was playing. Eight o'clock.

“Come on, Franny,” he said, as if she were being difficult, or coquettish, but she had never been to the Romero in her life. No one her age went to the Romero. She tried to imagine a way to cover the five miles between her house and town. Running past Karlins' Grocery. Down the hill and over the causeway. Past the miniature golf course. Woolf Beach. Stanford Fanning Fellow.

Was it possible that she could row there and back without being missed? That Rosamund would drive her in, and bring her home again? That she could pretend to go to Christy Strawberry's for the evening?

The click and crack of pool balls—exotic to Franny's ears—sounded behind Ryan Marvell's words, and there was easy male laughter in the background, too, and then a deep voice moved in close to the telephone and began to sing the refrain from an old country hit called “They Say I'm Robbing the Cradle.”

“Go away,” Ryan Marvell told the intruder but he sounded elated, as if nothing in the world could make him gloomy. “Listen,” he said, “let me talk to your folks, Franny! Good old Brick and—what's your mom's name?”

“Peg.”

“Sure, Peggy and Brick. Let me tell them I love you.”

“I love you, Franny,” a strange voice trumpeted above the noise of the pool hall, and someone else, “Is he telling her he loves her, man? Marvell, has this girl got you whipped, or what?” and Ryan Marvell laughed and laughed, as if love's defeat filled him with joy.

A backward zoom out of the old garage and all the way up into the tall grass around the old church slab.

“Hey!” The milk in the bowl of cornflakes in Franny's lap sloshed over the bowl's edge and onto her thigh.

A forward zoom. Sharp left down the long drive. Franny pressed one bare foot against the Wildcat's glove compartment, and not just because she imagined this might save her if some slow-moving truck pulled out from one of the little side roads, but, also, to steady herself against whatever Martie meant to say.

It seemed Martie had worked to make herself look awful that morning: dowdy elastic-waist skirt, dark red lipstick, hair pulled back by one of the plastic headbands they all wore when washing their faces.

“So what's this all about, Martie?”

“It's about your friend Ryan Marvell.” For emphasis, Martie slammed her palm against the steering wheel. “He's going to be a freshman in the fall.”

“A freshman,” Franny said. A soothing balm flooded her brain. “But that's great—”

“In
college
, Franny. A freshman at SFF.”

Of course. College.

“So what do you have to say to that?” Martie demanded.

Franny had nothing to say. She carried the most delicate and precious and vulnerable of potions; the wrong words might jostle it, destroy its ineluctable qualities, or even cause an explosion.

Surely Martie understood that it was a wonder that Ryan Marvell existed and that he cared for Franny. Surely she understood love was not a part that could be turned down. In fact, maybe that was what love was—finding the one who released you into the role of lover.

Couldn't Martie and everyone else just turn away, and allow Ryan Marvell and Franny to pass, as quiet as Mary and Joseph in a Christmas pageant? Just for a while? Until the miracle was over?

“Listen up, toots!” Martie said. “Timmy told Roz this Ryan said he made out with you at the party.”

Franny's disappointment was solid, a good-size pebble, but she found she could swallow it, make it a kind of meal. “So what if he did,” she said. After all, she had told Susan Thomas about kissing Ryan Marvell—though not about the way he tried to put his hand up her shirt; not about the way he said he loved her. Like Franny herself, Susan Thomas would have considered both suspicious.

Past Karlins' Grocery the Wildcat darted; then it rushed out from the stretch of shady trees into the causeway's bright sunshine. Beyond the causeway and the swamp lay Mother Goose Miniature Golf, whose silly name did not detract from its new role as sometimes-center of the universe—that center making gorgeous if unnerving shifts that depended upon where Ryan Marvell could be found at any particular time—and even though she hated Martie, just then, Franny could not stop herself from crying out,
“Look,”
for a heron, bright as a bead of mercury, now stood atop the nest of a muskrat. Absurd bird. Snooty and lonely and ugly and gorgeous, and, to Franny, all of this was absolutely connected to Ryan Marvell, as were the last few soggy cornflakes in the bowl in her lap, the towel she had used to dry her face that morning, the way her signature
had unfurled yesterday when she wrote her name on the birthday card to be sent to her Grandma Ackerman in southern Iowa.

Suppose Ryan Marvell were at Mother Goose right this moment?

“That's where he works, isn't it?” Martie said. “Deedee told me girls go there to flirt with him.”

“Watch out.” Franny pointed to the trailer court setter, now returning to his car-chasing after a dip in the lake. The driver of an oncoming station wagon honked at the dog, and the horn played the first phrase of “When You Wish upon a Star.”

Standford Fanning Fellow appeared on the left. Ryan Marvell meant to go there? She could not think about what that meant except that he was impossibly old and, oh, she shivered as the Wildcat sped past the road that led to Tanglefoot and Bob Prohaski's house.

“I can't believe you!” Martie reached out her hand, and brought it down in an awkward slap that grazed, first, Franny's cheek, then her shoulder. “Can't you behave like a lady?”

“A ‘lady'?” Franny tried to spit out the word but the slap had jarred her and a sob cracked the word into something unrecognizable. “Don't be—disgusting,” she said.

With a lurch, Martie pulled the Wildcat into the drive of a pretty yellow Cape Cod. Ivy on the fireplace. Scotch pine towering above. The front door opened and out stepped Tim Gleason, carrying a large, red book.

For Franny, Tim Gleason's new role as friend of Ryan Marvell had made him gather substance and meaning, and she straightened in her seat as he bent down and peered into the car. “Where's Roz?” he asked.

“Rude,” Martie muttered in Franny's direction, as if they were cohorts; then she informed Tim Gleason that Rosamund and Turner Haskin had driven Mike Zanios to Des Moines that morning so Mike wouldn't have to leave his car at the airport. “Is that the yearbook?”

Tim Gleason drummed his fingers on the car's convertible top.
“I thought Roz was coming,” he said. Reluctantly, he handed the big book through the window to Martie, who handed it on to Franny.

St. Joseph Catholic High School.
A black cross wrapped the front like a ribbon, dividing the cover into four equal parts. How dank and impoverished that linking of school and church had always seemed to Franny in the past—something smelly and moldy about it all—yet now the two aspects connected to Ryan Marvell, and the resulting triangle gave off a potent aura of mystery.

“Page fifty-two,” Tim Gleason said. “Bottom of the page.”

Franny opened the book: attractive young men and women in formal dress sat around a party table. Tim Gleason was one of them. And Ryan Marvell. Oh. With his arm around the bare shoulder of a very pretty girl. Who was not Franny. Which was wrong, of course, yet Franny still appreciated seeing the face of Ryan Marvell. Ryan Marvell before she had known him. The photo struck Franny as far more magical than the one that showed Peg pregnant with Franny—or any family photo that showed her infant self living a life she could not remember. Both Ryan Marvell and the girl grinned, as pleased as punch, supported all around by friends.