Rowing in Eden (32 page)

“Oh, right, right! You couldn't answer! You weren't there!” He
smoothed her hair back from her face. “I missed you,” he said. “Do you know it's been almost seventy hours since I last saw you?”

He prattled on in this way as they drove along. Seventy hours since he had seen her. Seventy-one days since they had met. And only thirteen days until her birthday!
Gonna have to get you something nice for your birthday. If I'm not too broke. The big fourteen. Hey! Only seven years till you can vote and buy beer!

Up ahead, in a vacant lot, a group of boys about Franny's age played touch football. Ryan drove up alongside the boys and parked. “That kid in the gray sweatshirt's my cousin,” he said, and, just like that, he hopped out of the car and began to play with the boys, calling for the ball, running up and down the lot, laughing, his neck turning that perfect red that was a banner of his vitality.

She lifted her purse from its spot on the floor and gave it a shake. The aspirin made a soft rattle as they moved in their bottle. Seventy hours since he had seen her. She was charmed but not deceived by such calculations. That is, she appreciated each effort he made to show that he thought of her, but understood such efforts meant little. That is, she was not taken in by him, but loved him as helplessly as if she were. So what good did it do to not be taken in? Not much good at all. She did not even dare to let him know she was not taken in. If he knew, he might be embarrassed and go away and never come back.

In the evening, Martie finally returned Brick and Peg's calls. It was Franny who answered the telephone. Brick was in the den, reading. Peg worked at something new in the basement: Sumi inks on rice paper.

“So, did you see me in the
Register?”

“Yeah.” Franny glanced at the photo, which now sat propped against Brick's old emergency siren on the cookbook shelf. Martie's face had been circled in pencil.
IS THIS HOW YOU WANT TO BE SEEN BY THE WORLD?
read the note that Peg had written in the newspaper's margin.

“What'd you think?”

Franny lowered her voice to say, “Mom and Dad are pretty upset. They talked about making you leave school.”

“I'm thinking about dropping out,” Martie said gaily. “How would they like that? Their daughter, the dropout?”

While Martie chattered on about the revolution, and her SDS boyfriend—
Milton is so brilliant, Franny, and not just brilliant, but understanding, too
—Franny considered the newspaper photo. It had been evening when the photo was shot and most of the protestors looked as if they were underwater, but Martie was curiously identifiable in that anonymous bunch, as if the photographer saw something in her raised face that he wanted everyone else to see, and so he had arranged to make her the center of attention.

Dedication? Was that what the photographer saw in Martie besides her pretty face? Some sort of shining belief in the future? Franny blew a breath onto the old siren. A fine bloom of condensation rose on its silvery side, then disappeared, and Franny thought how, if she were to put the siren to her lips, its coolness would be a surprise—a predictable surprise, if you could say such a thing. That is, a thing you might have experience with but could never quite get used to.

“But, listen, Franny”—the little squeak on the other end of the line signalled to Franny that Martie was suddenly near tears—“you're sure Mom and Dad aren't on the phone, right?”

“Right.”

“Because there's something they don't know.” Martie paused. “Do you know?”

“Do I know what?”

“You can't tell Mom and Dad, promise?”

Franny shook her head, her features dissolving into bands of color that moved back and forth across the bell of the siren, but when she spoke she said, “I promise,” because she suddenly understood: Martie was pregnant, and needed to tell someone the news.

F
RUIT
P
IES IN THEIR CLOUDY WAX PAPER WRAPS.
C
UPCAKES
. Wonder Bread that built strong bodies twelve ways. Twinkies. Snowballs covered in pink and white coconut. She kept her face turned toward the bakery rack while she sipped at her bottle of pop. Through the rack, it was possible to see the Pynch Lake telephone directory, which dangled like a hanged animal from the black pay telephone above.

All over Pynch—on bedside tables in apartments and motels, in the homes of farmers and on the reception desk of her own junior high school's front office—you could find a telephone listing for the home of Ryan Marvell. Turn to the proper page of the directory and there it was. “Marvell, Ben.” Visible. Accessible. Would it make sense to anyone if she tried to explain that this appeared a miracle to her mind? Something like proof of God?

At four o'clock she put her empty pop bottle in the crate by the counter and went to the telephone, but she did not dial the Marvells' number. As if she had come to Karlins' to make a call rather than receive one, she dialed the number that gave the local temperature and time, and while the recorded voice reported its loop of message, Franny enacted a brief conversation about getting together to do homework with a person she called Donna.

I just wanted to make sure you were home, Donna. I'll see you in a few minutes, then.

It had been a week since she had last talked to Ryan Marvell. Nine days since she had seen him. And told him about Martie. A
sacred thing, telling him that sacred secret that no one else knew. That had also been the afternoon when she first let him slip his hand inside her underpants. They were parked at Woolf Beach, back in the campgrounds, lying side by side. He turned his face away and wet his finger on his tongue and rubbed it down there, which she supposed was the prelude to what her friends called “finger-fucking,” though she could not imagine how that was accomplished, and she felt frightened because he wanted so much to take off her underpants, please, and she could not let him do that, and he was so miserable.

“You don't trust me,” he said. “I know you don't trust me. I don't see how you can love me if you don't trust me.”

She had imagined that telling him about Martie might show him that she trusted him, and so when they were sitting up again, putting their clothes back on, she did tell him. While she talked, she stared at an enormous boulder that sat in the campsite where the Ford was parked. The boulder appeared magical in the late autumn sunlight, gilded, and so did Ryan Marvell, pulling his T-shirt on over his head.

But he had laughed about Martie. “See, I told you. So, who's the father? Or doesn't she know?”

Nine days ago.

Seven days ago, during the last telephone call, she had felt as if she were some lost soul who clung to a limb while the alligators circled below: safe only so long as her strength lasted. “I can't see you this weekend,” she said, trying to keep the conversation as short as possible. “I'm really busy.”

It seemed he waited for her to say more, and when she did not, he said, sounding almost amused, “Shall I call you Wednesday at the library, or will you be too busy then, too?”

She meant to say,
Yes, don't call me anymore at all, if all you can do is laugh when I tell you my sister's pregnant
, but her strength ebbed too fast. Her teeth began to chatter and she said, “No, call Wednesday.”

By Wednesday, she had been unable to eat or sleep. She was
convinced everything was her fault. She should not have told him about Martie. Or she should have done it differently. But he had not called on Wednesday. She left the library in a sort of daze. Narrowly missed being hit by a car as she crossed the street.

Today was her birthday. Fourteen. She was getting a cold or maybe the flu. Her breath felt hot in her nose, her armpits were slippery. Even the wind that blew through her jacket as she began to make her way from Karlins' toward home—even that biting wind could not cool her. Still, she kept her cheeks sucked in, her jaw strong: to make her face feel more like she imagined his perfect face must feel.

After all, any car that came down Lakeside from either direction might be his Ford. Her brain retained a perfect template of the grillework of the Ford, and she inspected every grille. No car mattered but his. Unless some other car held him. Then only that car mattered.

Did Martie feel this way about Darren Rutiger? Franny supposed Darren Rutiger were the father of Martie's baby, but she had not asked Martie for a name, and Martie had not offered one. Martie had said, “I'm not ready to tell Mom and Dad, Fran. I'll tell them at Thanksgiving.” Then she laughed nervously. “Maybe I'll bring Milton along.”

“But Milton's not—”

“No, but he says it's cool. He says all babies will be raised communally pretty soon. Like, it won't matter whose kid is whose, everybody will love everybody's kids just the same. Won't that be great? He and some friends are going to find a farmhouse where we can all live together in the spring.”

Franny had not known how to respond to Martie's enthusiasm, and while she hesitated, Martie said, a little bossy, “But don't tell Roz
any
of this. I want to be the one who tells.”

That had been two weeks ago. Maybe Martie had telephoned Roz since then.

At the top of the rise for the Nearys' farm, Franny stopped. Now, she shivered. She could not imagine she had been hot before.
Yet she regretted that her walk home was almost over. When she reached the mailbox, she lingered, though there was little to see. A
Life
magazine. A birthday card from Rosamund containing a photo in which Rosamund and her roommate were busy “wall-papering” with aluminum foil and Scotch tape the kitchen of their little rental house.

Franny dawdled on her way up the drive. It would be terrible if he drove by just as she reached the door and turned the knob. She would not be able to go back to the road if her mother heard the turning of the knob.

From the hall, she called, “Mom, Roz sent me a picture.”

In the basement, busy transferring wet clothes to the dryer, Peg peered at the photograph in Franny's hand. “That was foolish, her moving out of the dorm,” Peg said. “Did you know she meant to move out of the dorm?”

“No.” This was not a lie, but there were things that Rosamund had told Franny that she felt sure Peg did not know: A new boyfriend had entered Rosamund's life, and he was a poet from New York who smoked marijuana and owned a macaw and lived in a van.

Peg sighed. “I still can't get over that Turner Haskin's turning out to be such a skunk.”

“I always knew he was a creep,” Franny said.

“You?” Peg laughed. “You were as starry-eyed as the rest of us.”

Franny did not feel like arguing the point. She walked up the basement stairs to the kitchen. To her relief, a box containing a birthday cake sat on the counter. She had been afraid her parents had forgotten her birthday altogether, which would have been just—too embarrassing.

Upstairs, in her bedroom, she lay down. She wished she had not agreed to meet Christy Strawberry and Joan Harvett at the high school football game that evening. She would have preferred to stay home. She stared up at the satellites and moons on the underside of the top bunk mattress. It was nice here, out in the country. Martie ought to come home—unless she and this Milton were truly
in love and wanted to get married. The baby could have Franny's room and Franny could sleep in one of Rosamund's twins. Franny could take care of the baby after school and on weekends. She did not care about cheerleading and going downtown after school. The other day, Franny and Christy Strawberry had been in line at the Red Owl behind a lady with a fussy baby, and the baby had calmed right down when Franny talked to it. Even the baby's mother had commented upon this: “You have a way with little ones!”

Aunt Franny. Aunt Rosamund.

Franny wished that Martie would not tell Rosamund about the baby until after it was born. Would that be possible? She did not know how far along Martie's pregnancy was. Rosamund would think Martie a fool for getting pregnant and planning to keep the baby. Maybe Franny should call Martie and say, “Keep it a secret. Don't tell anyone but me.”

Preposterous. Advice from Franny. Who had told Ryan Marvell—who was not even a friend to Martie, let alone a member of the family.

That night, as she and her father approached the high school in the old Mercedes and she saw the white glow in the sky above the stadium, she remembered the excitement she had felt the fall before, when she was first allowed to go to the games with friends: all that looking forward, that habit of expectation. She missed it now.

Of course—she should have known—Lola Damon leaned up against the whitewashed walls of the stadium with Joan Harvett and Christy Strawberry when Franny approached. “God, Wahl, you look terrible!” Lola Damon said, and put the back of her hand to Franny's forehead. “And you're hot!”

“Yeah”—Franny jerked away from Lola's hand—“it's a cold.”

Christy Strawberry had a birthday present for Franny and she wanted Franny to open it right there.

A bottle of cologne. Franny's favorite. She gave Christy Strawberry a hug, and Joan Harvett said she had a present for Franny, too, only she had forgotten it at home, sorry. After that, all four girls
joined the crowds that walked back and forth on the section of cinder track in front of the home bleachers. Franny had not been to a high school game that year, but she remembered walking back and forth on the track with Joan and Christy last year, all of them peeking at the boys who passed, wondering if this one or that one might be the one. Now, she looked only for Ryan Marvell.

Could he possibly be in the crowd? Looking for her?

When the girls finally took seats in the bleachers, Franny made certain to position herself at the end of the group. “Sit by me,” she whispered to Christy Strawberry, but Christy was tugging at Lola Damon's arm and murmuring, “Look.”

Bob Prohaski and his big brothers now strode past on the track below. If they were freezing in their tight T-shirts, they did not show it. Muscles bulging, jaws set, walking almost in step with one another—they looked more like enforcers of the law than lawbreakers.

“Hey, Prohaskis!” Lola Damon called, and—all in unison it seemed, the three heads pivoting as one—the brothers looked up, gave a nod, and kept on walking. Lola Damon sighed. “They won't come up 'cause of Franny.”

“You want me to leave?” Franny asked—not really meaning it—and Christy Strawberry whispered, “Don't be silly.”

The football field was almost neon green beneath the big lights. Franny still failed to understand the game, despite the fact that cheerleading had required her to recognize forward movement; however, she found the high school boys impressive in their shoulder pads and helmets, their white pants so bright they left an afterimage on the eye. She could understand a girl falling in love with a football player if she saw him only in uniform, she told Christy Strawberry; then added in a whisper, “Maybe I shouldn't have broken up with Bob.”

“Franny!” Christy drew back, wide-eyed. “Lola likes Bob now! And he hates you.”

She nodded. What she wanted was not Bob Prohaski, anyway. She wanted to back up. Never to have seen Ryan Marvell. Because
she did not understand how she could go on if she did not have him anymore.

“Christy”—at that moment, some craven loneliness in her dreamed that if the girls knew she were truly depressed, they might draw her to them again, and she blurted—“sometimes, lately, I think I may kill myself.”

“God.” Christy set a hand on Franny's arm, then she closed the wax paper liner of her box of Milk Duds and turned to whisper in Joan Harvett's ear.

Joan Harvett leaned forward in her seat to look at Franny. “Don't be crazy,” she said. “Anyway, I just read this thing that said girls hardly ever kill themselves. I mean, they aren't successful. Like, they cut themselves
across
the veins in their wrists, when people who really want to kill themselves go all the way
down
their arms.”

Christy Strawberry protested Joan Harvett's demonstrating the proper movement on the sleeve of her jacket: “Great, Joan. Like, you're telling her how to do a better job killing herself?”

“It's not like she's going to do it,” Joan said, then turned to whisper in the ear of Lola Damon.

“Don't go telling everyone,” Franny murmured as Lola Damon turned from talking to a boy in the row behind them. Something familiar in that boy's chubby face, the blond hair that clutched his brow like a hand:

Bob Prohaski's friend, Roy Hobart.

“Franny”—Lola Damon shook a finger at the girl—“negative thinking never got a person anywhere.”

Franny smiled at Lola Damon as if she had no idea to what the girl referred; then she smiled at Christy Strawberry and said, “Hey, let's drop it. That's a pretty bracelet. Did Ralph give you that?”

Christy nodded happily, then asked a demure “Want to see something?”

Franny suspected that her answer was no, but that she had to say yes or lose Christy entirely, and so she nodded, and Christy slipped her arm from her jacket and pushed up her sweater to
exhibit three nasty sores on her forearm: two round, the size of thumbtacks; one a worm of sienna that made Franny shudder.

“Is that what I think it is?”

Christy grinned. “Three in one night.”

Joan Harvett leaned forward to drawl, “And we're all so impressed!”

“Ralph beats me out every time,” Christy told Franny.

“Ralph, darling!” Lola Damon clutched at her heart.