Virgin Territory (19 page)

Doug is still up. I can hear him knocking around in his bedroom, trying not to make any noise. How come I always hear him when he’s trying to be quiet? I get out of bed and head off to make myself an early breakfast. But I notice a thin strip of light spilling across the carpet in the hallway. Doug’s bedroom door is slightly ajar. I inch forward, hoping not to creak a floorboard and give myself away. I stand there in the slip of light, peeking through the crack of the door. And what do I see? Doug is sitting at the edge of his unmade bed, his back turned toward me, unaware that anyone is watching. I push the door open just enough to get a better look, and there it is sitting on the bed beside him—the cookie tin of photographs. Even from across the room, I can see that a few pictures have spilled out of the tin, others are arranged in neat piles on the pillows, and he’s holding two of them in his hands. These are the pictures of me, of Kat, of Kat and me together, of Doug alone, of Doug and Kat as a couple, of Doug and me, of all three of us together—our family history.

The photos have a strange effect on me; they act like a magnet, pulling me into the room, closer to the bed. It’s as though my past is calling to a present that will determine my future.

Doug jumps when he sees me, but he doesn’t try to stop me as I pick up a picture of Kat. It is the photograph that was taken on my fourth birthday. I’m sitting on Kat’s lap, staring into the camera, wearing a little jacket, a white shirt, a red bow tie. I look like a ventriloquist’s dummy. Kat is throwing her head
back, and she’s laughing as though someone just said the funniest thing ever.

Doug is waiting for me to say something, anything, but I can’t speak. My mind is racing, and I’m thinking,
I’m asleep, and this is actually a dream
. But what if that picture of my fourth birthday just disappears? I don’t want to wake up. Not yet. No, not until I’ve memorized each and every photograph, recaptured all the history.

“What’re you doing out of bed? You should be asleep.”

I ignore Doug; he’s flipping through the pile of pictures and I find my second and my third birthday parties; that summer vacation we took in Cape May, New Jersey; our family trip to Disney World (2000); Christmas 1997 (at the loft); Christmas 1998 (in Jupiter); Christmas 1999 (the loft again); pictures of Kat before we knew that she was sick, of Doug with his video camera and decked out for yet another wedding, of me posing for school pictures, year after year, always with the same pose and the same frozen stare, different hair; and those around-the-world pictures of Marie and Granddad.

There is a shopping bag on the floor beside the bed. I pick it up and frantically begin stuffing it full of photographs. Doug takes hold of my arm. I can feel his rough fingers digging into the flesh just above my elbow.

“Put them down,” he says. “Let me explain.”

I say nothing. I am stone cold.

I try to make a clean break. I have the shopping bag in my
one hand and a fistful of pictures in the other, but he grabs hold of both my shoulders and forces me back onto the bed.

“Forget it!” I yell at him.

I jump back off the bed as though the mattress is on fire. No way am I going to sit there and listen to him explain something that can’t be explained in a million years, so I gather handfuls of photographs and throw them in his face. When he’s turned away, I run from the room. I take the stairs, two at a time, until I’m in the living room. I give the room the once-over, surveying the chairs and tables to see if there’s anything I need. The little gold god is sitting on the coffee table, and I grab it.

“Get your ass back up these stairs, mister!” Doug bellows from the second-floor landing.

Mister?

He’s not even bothering to come lumbering down the stairs after me. He doesn’t think I have it in me to run out the door in the middle of the night, hop on my bike, and take off down the street. But he’s wrong. I don’t look back to see whether Doug is chasing me. I don’t care. I just pedal like a maniac, pumping distance between that house and myself—one block, two blocks, half a mile, one mile—until I’m gone.

The night has been turned inside out, showing its black-and-silver lining. Trees and bushes look as though they’ve been
waxed and buffed to a high shine. The grass is something else, not green, but not exactly black, either; the feel of it beneath my feet is all that I can trust, the dark equivalent of my familiar daytime world. Without a moon, everything has turned to pitch. Sound and touch are my only guides.

I park my bike against the far end of the fence, my usual spot, and then head around to the back of the clubhouse. I’m treading lightly and feeling my way with hands and feet, inching toward the Black Hole. Fortunately, I’m familiar with the place, so when I finally come upon it, I don’t tumble headfirst into one of the slatted benches or bang my leg against a post. I just step down quietly into the darkness and feel my way along the wall.

The first sign that I’m not alone is the sound of heavy breathing.

“Hello?” I whisper into the blackness.

Nothing.

I hear some quick rustling, a click, and suddenly a light is in my face. I go all deer-in-the-headlights, lose my balance, and fall backward onto a pile of soft luggage.

“Dylan?” a voice asks from out of the darkness.

“Angela?” I ask, astonished. And then she’s scrambling over some bags in an effort to get to me and help me up. “What’re you doing here?”

Even in the spill of light, I can tell that Angela is just as surprised to see me as I am to find her. She looks a little rough around the edges; her hair, usually combed and neatly done, is
going every which way, and her clothes are rumpled and creased from sleep.

“My mother and I had a fight,” she says as she helps me to my feet. “I left the motel. I had no place to go. And you?”

“Same,” I tell her. “Fight with my dad.”

She nods, and then from out of her pile of bags and blankets, she produces a large silver thermos, two Styrofoam cups, and a couple of paper napkins. She sits down on the slatted bench, and, in the beam of her flashlight, she pours each of us a serving of thick hot chocolate. There’s an unzipped suitcase, and several pairs of shoes are neatly arranged against the wall. I recognize some of her clothes spilling out of a plastic bag. And how long is she planning to stay?

“Anyway, it wasn’t safe in the motel,” says Angela.

She hands me the hot chocolate, and I take a sip. It’s delicious—thick and creamy—and I’m reminded of Christmas morning, snow days, sledding in Central Park, and Kat.

“Your mother came to our house looking for you,” I tell her between sips. “She showed us the little gold god.”

Silence.

“Did you steal it from my grandmother?” I ask her.

“I was just borrowing it. I thought maybe I could use it against a loan. Just until my mom got on her feet again. But when I had it appraised, it turns out it’s not worth anything. I was going to bring it back to Marie tomorrow. Honest.”

She goes on to explain that she and her mother recently ran
out of money, and without a green card, her mother wasn’t able to get a job. But they have to leave town anyway. It’s time to move on, she tells me. Apparently, they’ve been invited to crash with a family they met. They’ll stay there at least until they can figure out where to go next.

“So this thing between you and your mom,” I say, trying to sound diplomatic, “it’s just a temporary thing.”

She shrugs and looks away.

I pull out a few folded dollar bills that I have jammed into my back pocket. It’s not much, but I offer them to Angela.

“Go on,” I say. “You’ll need it.”

She hesitates, and for a moment I think that her pride will prevent her from accepting, but then she puts down her hot chocolate, takes the bills, and stashes them in her purse. Then she reaches into one of her bags and pulls out two objects, both of them wrapped in newspaper. She places them on the slatted bench between us. Away from the coziness of Marie’s cabinet and in the glare of the flashlight, the plates of Brazil and Argentina and Peru look like the kind of junk you might find in a box by the curb on trash day. But to me, they are worth more than all the little gold gods in the world, and I’m happy to have them back.

“Thanks,” I say, inspecting the items. “I’ll make sure Marie gets them.”

As I stuff the stolen loot into my shopping bag, I try to think of Angela in the way I used to think of her when I first met
her—as golden, as a goddess. Now, even in the dark of the Black Hole, I want to see her clearly, for who she is.

Angela asks me about the fight I had with Doug, and I tell her the whole unhappy saga. Then I show her some of the pictures from my childhood.

“Look,” I say, holding up an old Polaroid of Kat and me standing against the backdrop of the rolling surf at Jones Beach. I’m about four years old in the picture, looking like a happy drowned rat and hanging on to Kat. She’s wearing a faded, two-piece bathing suit; her feet are spread wide, and her arms are folded tightly across her chest. “That’s my mother. I’d forgotten how pretty she was.” And then, when Angela doesn’t respond right away, I add, “Do you think she’s pretty?”

“Oh, God, yeah,” she says, taking the picture from me and examining it closely. “You look like her. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“Not for a while.”

I show her one picture after another.

“This is us in the Adirondacks. You can see Doug’s reflection in the car window.… Here we are all together at the Jersey shore. Can’t remember who took this one … This is Kat pretending to be crying as I leave for my first day of preschool.…”

“We ought to save the batteries,” Angela says as she clicks off the flashlight. I figure that she’s seen enough, but then in the dark, she sighs heavily and says, “You’re lucky. I never had a childhood like that.”

“Like what?” I ask.

“One that’s worth remembering.”

I hear the rustling as Angela gets comfortable among the bags and blankets. Then she stops suddenly and says, “D’you hear that?”

“What?”

“I thought I heard footsteps in the grass.”

We listen. Nothing. Only the steady whir of cicadas and the buzzing of a neon sign near the entrance of the club can be heard in the distance. I sidle up close to Angela until I can smell her perfume and feel the heat of her. When I reach out to pull her close to me, she lets out a little cry.

“What’s the matter?” I ask her. My heart’s jumping around inside me, but I’m trying to act like I’ve done this a million times and it’s no big deal.

“Nothing,” she says in the dark. “But I’m wondering if we’re going to make love. And I mean, are we ready?”

“You tell me.”

“I asked you first.”

“I hope so,” I tell her.

As soon as our lips meet, I’m sure every single thing that happened this summer has been leading to this moment. It couldn’t have been any other way, because for the first time, Angela and I are in the moment together: (a) we want the same thing, and (b) we are taking a risk.

The next morning when I open my eyes, the whole world and everything in it is like a math problem I can’t figure out. Where am I? Where did the pillow come from? Why am I wrapped in a plaid comforter? When I finally come into my body and my eyes adjust to the light, it all adds up. I feel as though I’ve become someone different overnight. I’m the same old Dylan Flack, but I’m somehow new and improved. I have become my new true self.

But Angela is gone, and so are her belongings. I’m alone here, lying on the slatted bench, and I figure from the way that the sun is hitting the ground that it’s already about seven a.m. By noon, the sky will be a blazing pale blue dome of heaven, and Angela and her mother will be just arriving in Miami.

I briefly consider the possibility of running away—really running away, like to Miami. Maybe I could meet up with Angela there. But where would I even begin to look for her once I arrived? Miami is a big city. And all I have is a bag of photographs.… I quickly go rummaging through the shopping bag to find the little gold god and the plates. They’re still there. At least she left me something.

I stumble out of the Black Hole and make my away across the grass. Running away is not the answer, but I’m not quite ready to go home, either. Not yet. So I head in the direction of the BVM site. It doesn’t make sense that Angela would be kneeling there among the wood chips, saying her good-byes and praying for whatever. But that’s the picture I have in my
head, along with a script I’ve been working on when we are reunited.