Chapter 2 #4
The girl removes her shirt with the unselfconsciousness that must come with daily costume changes, and he averts his eyes politely, but not before absorbing the perfect white Renaissance breasts in a black bra, the tan lines of her summer clothes, the little hoop around her midriff where her belly button has seen the sun.
She is Liz Taylor, green-eyed shiver beautiful.
The world feels old and new and she feels old and new, like the prehistoric magma underneath the crust of this place has bubbled up and erupted through her.
She is the most alive thing that he has ever seen.
And here she is staring at him like they aren’t both nearly naked. Like this is any ordinary day.
“It’s deep enough?” she asks. The rocky lip of the quarry drops sheer ten feet from where they stand.
“Definitely deep enough,” Al says. The woods are humming with heat.
How do you know what’s you and not you? Can he find some inner bohemian, sweep her off her feet?
He removes his trousers and reveals a pair of white cotton briefs hugging pale, muscular thighs, tender hairs weakened by underexposure to the outside world.
His hand, following an instinct of its own, reaches toward the left bulb of her lower back, urges her forward, fingertips picking up the moisture on her skin.
She turns around and he stands back to paint her in his mind.
“What?”
“You are extraordinary,” he says.
And he leans into her because it is the most natural thing to do, because he can see with perfect clarity a potential that she cannot possibly recognize in herself. For a moment her lips meet his, then he pulls back, a grin full of lightning, and runs and jumps off the overhang.
Hard smack on the bottom of his feet, water plunging up his nostrils and into his open mouth.
When he reemerges, he shouts as though he has only just learned to be wild, and she follows after him.
One of her breasts bubbles out of her bra and she laughs and turns away and shoves it back in, his legs kicking vibrations into hers, a tumble of unseen waves passing between them as they tread through the thin, clinging fabrics, the miracles of life and living and the hazy air.
They kiss again on the dirt bank, his hands finding the back of her neck, her head tilting back reflexively. After a few minutes he laughs at the absurdity of having lost himself in all this. She can’t be older than twenty-one.
“You could be anyone,” he says.
“I am anyone,” she laughs. “You, on the other hand, are someone.”
When he takes her home, she asks him to drop her at the end of the street.
“Come on,” he says. “It’s late.”
Her eyes are shining. All the heat is taken out of the air, and still he’s hot with looking at her. Outside, something slams with a bang, and the air lingers with hot trash bags, with dogs that have gone too long without the rain. Crickets sing high and intense.
“Please. I’ll just take you to your door.”
She points to a house up ahead, a color he can’t make out in the moonlight.
“This is the worst thing,” she says, and smiles miserably, as though she’s transforming back into another girl, as though the whole afternoon were just another part she was playing and this is the real backstage, the curtain rising on the peeling paint and people who are born and die in the same house.
“It doesn’t have to be.”
She studies him as though trying to understand his interest. Then, playfully, she takes an eye pencil out of her bag and writes her number on the back of his dry-cleaning slip.
Only the kitchen light is on. The mess is the usual mess, the paraphernalia of a house of unvisited women: shoes everywhere and coats slumped on the floor and last month’s Marie Claire and a pile of sea glass on the coffee table for which no one has a plan.
Everything is quiet, save for the hum of the oven, her little sister’s socked feet slipping across the linoleum.
The air is full of melting American cheese.
“Thought you weren’t coming home,” Sadie says.
“Just trying to keep you on your toes.”
“Who were you with?”
“No one.”
It’s not that she was embarrassed by the house. Only, if you don’t retain mystery, they won’t call you again, and she does want him to call.
“Do you want one?” Sadie retrieves her sandwich, closing the oven door with the top of her foot. “Oh my God, look at you,” she says, taking Susan in for the first time. “You’re smiling.”
“No, I’m not,” she says, but she is.
“Was that a boy?!”
“Shut up.”
“Oh my God, is he your boyfriend?”
“No.” Something about Al needs protecting from Sadie, her inflexible opinions. Susan’s sister raises her eyebrows, spins the Wonder Bread around in its plastic bag, waits for an answer.
“Did it rain today?” Susan asks. They talk about their mother in code.
“Stop trying to change the subject.”
“I’m just asking.”
Sadie wrinkles her nose. “A light drizzle.”
“She upstairs?”
Sadie nods.
“Did she eat?”
Sadie shrugs. It would be useful if Susan’s sister paid more attention. Their mother is always worse in the morning if she doesn’t eat. A cat that Susan doesn’t recognize pushes through the flap in the door. Sadie tears off a piece of bread to feed it.
“You shouldn’t do that,” Susan says.
“They’re living creatures.”
“I don’t think they are supposed to have bread.”
“It’s a treat.” She lays out two more slices of cheese on two more slices of bread, pops them in the oven. “So who is he? From around here?”
“No.” To this, Sadie gives a knowing hum, as though Susan has said all she needs to know.
“How was dance?” Susan asks.
Sadie scowls. “I didn’t get it.” She shreds off a steaming corner of her sandwich, catching the drip of plastic cheese in her free hand.
“Oh no.” Sadie has been talking about the fall recital for weeks now. A few years ago, a scout for the Boston Ballet had come and the soloist had been chosen as a background dancer in The Nutcracker.
“What happened?”
Sadie scuffs her foot on the floor like it doesn’t matter. Kick-ball-change. “They gave it to that Winchester girl. Snobs. It’s a fucking joke.”
“Sorry, Sayd,” she says. They probably are snobs, but the fact is, Sadie makes excuses for herself.
She needs to work harder, Susan thinks. There’s a woman on the Supreme Court.
There’s a woman in space. You can do just about anything in this country if you try.
When Susan hugs her little sister, she stands on top of Sadie’s toes, like she did when she was little.
Sadie used to try to point them, tumble her off. Now she just stands passive.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “I’m going to quit anyway.”
Anger like a tide, like free fall, pushing her away. “You can’t quit.”
“Why not?”
“I just bought you new shoes!”
Sadie crouches and stares into the oven and Susan wants to scream.
“It’s not going anywhere,” Sadie says. “Once you turn seventeen, that’s it. If no one’s noticed you by then, there’s no point.”
“Seventeen is too young to quit anything. And besides, you’re not seventeen for two more months.”
“I’m being realistic,” she says. But the charge in her voice implies something bigger, as though her failure to hope is somehow Susan’s failure to pave a route to happiness.
Sadie pulls the sandwich out of the oven, saws it in half, plops a triangle on a plate for Susan. They both bite into the orange, empty goo. Sadie can feed herself, Susan thinks. She can take care of their mother. On her half-empty plate, Sadie draws a ketchup frowny-face.
If I leave her, Susan wonders, will we both fall apart? In the reflection of the kitchen window, she catches her own face: another Susan, still out in the darkness.