Walking Dunes (12 page)

“I'm not telling you learn to lie,” his father was saying. “I'm saying, learn to keep your counsel. Choose what you want to say before you let your mouth run loose.”

“That sounds so—self-conscious, Pop.”

“You think the world wants you honest? You think what you've got is so great you can let it hang out there for the world to get to know? It's like chess, Sonny. You guess what your opponent's got in mind—”

“I'm not going to do debate. Just the class.”

“I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT DEBATE, I'M TALKING ABOUT LIFE.”

“All right, all right, don't get so excited.”

Saul tossed his throwaway carton into the sink, splattering sauce and rice over the porcelain. “Garbage,” he said.

David followed his father into the living room. Saul kicked off his shoes, picked up his copy of
Crime and Punishment
, arranged the fan on its stand and turned it on, and settled down with his feet on the ottoman. He wiggled his toes and they popped.

David stood in front of his father. “It seems really important to me to know how to say what you mean. It sounds like you're saying you need to know how to say what you
don't
mean. How to—”

Saul waved him away and found his place in his book. Without looking up, he said, “You don't get what I tell you, be my guest. Wear your heart on your sleeve. Put your head up your ass. You'll find something to do, it won't matter. Won't matter what you say, if no one's listening.”

“What do you WANT!” David felt like his chest was exploding. He could not understand how they ended up in these utterly pointless arguments. “Here's a good example! You've outscored me and I don't know what to do but yell at you! I don't even know what the game is!”

Saul laughed. “What you're good at is talking to girls, Davy boy. You could be a pimp, maybe.”

David felt dizzy. He was so hot. “You dirty sot,” he muttered. He went out the back, and walked all the way to the hospital, to borrow his mother's car to go see Sarah. It took forty minutes. His breath came hard, but it was good for him. It took a hell of a lot of stamina to play tennis, you could never stop working on it. On the ward he stripped in the staff lavatory and wiped himself down with a dampened paper towel. “I'll come up later and stay till you're done,” he told Marge. She was pleased, as if he were doing something for her. “That's nice,” she murmured. “Like limo service.”

“It's your car, Ma,” he laughed. If they had been alone, he would have kissed her.

He sat on the Cottles' fake Early American couch, clutching a bottle of RC Cola, wondering at his own discomfort. He had gone to a lot of trouble for this! Sarah was perfectly courteous, formal in a way he thought somebody might act after a funeral, or at a job interview. She was wearing a pale blue shirtwaist dress, not what she had been wearing at school earlier. They exchanged information about their plans for the new school year. Yes, he would be playing tennis (what a question!), and yes he would be on student council again if he was re-elected next week. Yes she was in Y-Teen, and was volunteering at the hospital as a candy striper. He could not remember anything else about her.

He took a long swallow of the cold sweet drink. “I thought about you a lot,” he began, and his voice trailed away. It was a lie, except for the past few days, and he could not think how to extend the lie. He wanted her to think she was special. You had to make a girl feel that way, if you wanted her to like you.

“I don't believe that for one minute.” She was not smiling.

“Sarah, lots of kids date and stop dating and still stay friends. We hadn't made any promises, there was nothing like that between us.”

“You might have said something.”

“I felt so awkward. I didn't know why I didn't call, but weeks went by and then it felt too late.” He set the drink down on the coffee table, and saw, too late, that it would make a wet ring. There were coasters on the end tables, but they were too far away. He leaned against the couch back, breathed deeply, and tried to relax. “Sometimes I think that what happens is mostly whatever hits you as you come around the corner. Have you ever thought of that?”

“Of what, David?”

“The element of chance in everything.”

“No, I can't say that I have. I think more of the element of choice.”

Very good, he thought. “I think you may be a more serious person than I am,” he lied. “I didn't know that about you.” He chuckled. “I guess that's because I'm not smart enough to figure out other people, specially girls.” She had no expression whatsoever. She might have been posing for a portrait. “I think I underestimated you.”

“My parents said, ‘Where's that nice David Puckett, honey? Did you all have a fight?'”

“Heavens, I can't imagine fighting with you.”

“You think I don't have enough spirit?” She was sitting up very straight. She had not brought in a drink for herself. His bottle of RC was sweating big droplets onto the table top.

“I think you're not the quarrelsome type.”

“I have opinions. They're not always the same as other people's. The same as boys'. As yours.”

“We never disagreed.”

“No. I said, Oh David, tell me about your game today. I said, what color crepe will they be using for the Sweetheart Dance? I said, what did you think of that movie, that
TV
show?
Tell me what you think
, I said.”

“It doesn't sound like a very good time, the way you tell it.” He felt very deflated. At the same time, he was intrigued. Here was a girl he thought he knew, a girl he thought there wasn't much to know about. And she was a surprise. He liked a surprise, even if it scared him a little.

She had put on records. A Johnny Mathis record had finished, and the machine made a series of noises as the arm lifted and made room for the next record to fall. It was Dean Martin, probably something of her parents'.

“I always wanted to be married some day,” she said. “Not right away, not right out of high school, but some day.”

“Well, sure—”

“I'm not talking about you. Don't look so nervous. I'm talking about me. I have a hope chest, do you know about them? A nice cedar chest, it smells so good when you open it up. At Christmas and on my birthday, my mother and my grandmothers give me things for my hope chest. Linens, a salt and pepper set, matching book ends, towels, stuff like that. For when I get married. Shh, don't talk. It's my turn.

“I've always known I'd be a virgin when the time came. You know, girls dream about these things, about having a white gown and veil, and walking up the aisle. And I think about that first night. I don't really know how it happens. There's a big blank place in there where I can't really imagine what he says, what I say, who does what. But I know I will be able to look at this—man—my husband—and I will be able to say, there's never been anyone but you.”

“What's this about, Sarah Jane?” He was so hot he felt he might ignite any minute. Desperate, he reached for his pop and took a long thick drink.

She was staring off through the picture window that looked out onto the dark street. A nearby street lamp cast a yellow haze over his mother's car in front. She looked back at him. She seemed to have awakened from a nap. She reached up to pat her hair into place, though it was in no way disarrayed. “And you could tell, couldn't you?”

“I never tried anything with you!” He was too embarrassed to say that he had been a virgin, too. What a dumb, dumb thing. Why was she saying all this?

“You knew it would never happen. It's something on my face. My father says that. Sarah, anybody can look at you and see you're a good girl. You're not one of those girls who asks for it. And you could see that, you knew I'd never—do it—with you, so you quit calling. You gave up without trying.” Bitterly, she added, “Good for you.”

He stood up. Then he didn't know what he wanted to do. “That's crazy. I never thought that of you.”

“Oh you did,” she said, staring at her feet.

“You've got me all wrong! I stopped calling you because of your family.”

She looked up sharply. He could see she was insulted, though there was nothing she should mind, if he could just explain.

“You were all so happy, you see. I would come here and the three of you—you'd be smiling. You'd talk to one another so nicely, like families in the movies. You ate at a dining table, with napkins. Your mother treated me so—respectfully. It's not like that in my family, Sarah. It's not the way I live. I was—not exactly jealous—I didn't mind that you were happy. I didn't want you not to be. But all the time I spent in your house, it made me unhappy. It made me feel cheated in my own life.”

She was almost sneering. “That's the stupidest thing I ever heard.”

“I didn't have to have a reason, did I?” he said loudly, cornered. “Kids date, and then they don't date. It's not a big deal. It's what being a teen-ager is for. I didn't have to give you a reason. It's up to me to call!”

She stood up abruptly. “I have to study now.” Such a lie! “I just wanted you to know how much I minded, how cheap it made me feel.”

“But you didn't do anything! I didn't do anything! Didn't you hear one thing I said?”

“If Glee Hewett gets pregnant, are you going to marry her?” She was at the front door. He hurried over to her. “Sarah, look—”

“I go out with somebody else now anyway.” She was suddenly quite calm, almost pleasant. “You wouldn't notice.” More like bored, wanting him to go away. “He's not popular like you.”

“Me!”

“He's just a nice boy who respects me. He
likes
my parents.”

“God
damn
, Sarah Jane. It wasn't your parents! It was ME.”

“Of course it was,” she said. “Don't cuss.”

Glee's mother, Mrs. pregnant Joe Ranger, said, “She won't be too happy, David. She's sitting under the hairdryer looking like a Martian.” He could hear the dryer humming in the background. Mrs. Ranger let him in.

He sat for quite a while. Glee finally came running out, barefooted, in jeans and a man's shirt. She had taken the rollers out of her hair and brushed it. She sat down on the couch next to him and he touched her hair. It was still damp. “Now you'll have to do it all over again,” he said. He was touched. “I wouldn't have minded you in rollers. I know you well enough.” He leaned closer, smelling the sweet shampoo smell of her hair. “Come out to the car a few minutes?”

“Sure.” Glee called out to her mother and they walked through the front door. “Hey, let's go back on the patio, that'd be better,” he said. He didn't like to neck in his mother's car. He would never fuck in it.

Glee took his hand and led him down the side of the house, past rosebushes and a bed of dead irises. The patio was dark, except for a little light from the kitchen window. They stood on the far end, where nobody could see them from inside. She put her arms up around his neck and they kissed. She was bare under the shirt. He pushed his hand through the space where one button was undone, and rested it gently on her breast. “God you're sweet,” he murmured gratefully. An uncomplicated girl was a blessing.

They sat on the edge of the brick barbeque pit. “Don't let's argue,” she whispered. He had moved his hand to come up under the shirt and feel her back. He made himself keep his hand still. “Don't be mad at me, don't be mean,” she said.

“I'm crazy,” he said, meaning it. “I feel crazy.”

“Don't be silly.” She tugged his arm to pull it around so that he would touch her in the front again.

“Is there time for us to take a drive?” he whispered. If they went all the way to the sandhills, they could lie in the soft sand, out of the car.

“Oh Davy, I wish—I wish sometime we could go somewhere—we could go to a motel somewhere away from Basin—we could be together, really—”

“Shh.” He slid his hand down inside her jeans and pressed it against her bony mound. “Touch me, too.” She cupped him with her hand, outside his jeans. He moved his fingers lower.

“Glee-ee!” her mother trilled. “Phone!”

“Not NOW!” Glee called back.

“I'm going—” He pulled away.

“No!” She clasped him around the waist. He pushed against her, throbbing. Suddenly he didn't want the drive anyway. He wanted to ache a while. He would sit in the lot at the hospital and give himself over to it.

She said, “I miss you all the time I don't see you.”

“I'm sorry I was mean. I don't know what gets into me.”

“I don't care about other boys, Davy. Only you.”

He pulled away again. “Give me air,” he said, laughing. “Not now.”

She laughed too. “I've got a class with your friend Leland. English. You know what he did today? While Mrs. Parker was checking names? He tossed this wad of plastic vomit on the floor in front of her desk. She walked around and stepped on it, looked down—God, it was funny. She just about fainted.”

“We'll do something Saturday. Friday Ellis and Leland and I are going to hang out. First Friday of the year, you know—” They thought of it as a tradition.

“Promise?”

“You know we will, and you know why,” he said.

Driving to the hospital he remembered Sarah's cold haughty bitchy face as she ushered him out of her house. His erection subsided. He parked and sat with his fists clenched around the steering wheel. Oh how he had misjudged her! She had misjudged him. Whose fault was it? It was hers. What was wrong with her, that she could not think past fucking and not fucking? How was that any different from what boys are accused of? Why wasn't it as easy to assume a person had pain inside, and longing, and that the complicated, meaningful feelings had nothing to do with lust?