Sunlight Finds You

Chapter 5

My father assumed there had simply been a breakup, and because of my general despondency, he also assumed Leonard had done the breaking.

Although he’d previously seemed to like Leonard, he now argued that he’d long ago guessed him a spoiled little fool.

He told me this while leaning against the door frame of the room I shared with Janet.

She’d left the door open, and he’d walked by while I was at my desk, doing homework and crying at the same time.

He disappeared for a minute, then returned to offer me an orange, though usually we weren’t allowed to eat in our rooms.

I understood he was trying his best to comfort me, because he loved me, or he thought he did. I was certain that if he knew what the Liftons knew, he’d be just as disgusted with me. I thanked him for the orange and said the Plymouth had belonged to Leonard’s father.

“Well,” he said. “Then his father doesn’t have a brain. That never bodes well for the son. You’re the one with real smarts, Nora.”

My friends rallied around me as well. I couldn’t tell Irene or Roberta about the shower, and they, too, had reason to think Leonard had callously broken my heart: any smile I managed that November was brief and unconvincing, and if I saw him in the hallway, I’d turn and go the other way.

Irene and Roberta soon grew vigilant, and they did their best to warn me of his approach.

I was grateful, for I knew that his mother was friendly with some of his teachers, and I imagined her enlisting them as spies.

This of course sounds paranoid to me now, but at the time, I reasoned she would only need to tell them about the shower, and they would agree I was bad news all around, and volunteer to help keep me away. I felt like a contagion, like a flea.

I even wondered, at times, if Mr. Lifton had been right, if Leonard would be better off without me. It seemed to me that Leonard himself might come to believe this as well. Perhaps he already had.

But the day before Thanksgiving break, I was crossing the junior courtyard when he stepped out from the arch of one of the bell towers, and he looked right at me, making sure I saw him before he ducked back inside.

I waited until the warning bell rang, then went into the bell tower.

He waved me over behind the stairway, where we were almost fully hidden from view.

Still, when he tried to hug me, I stepped back.

“I can’t stand this,” he said. “I won’t.”

I told him he would have to. He asked how hard things had been for me at home, if I’d been yelled at, or worse.

It was only then that I realized: He didn’t know that his mother had taken mercy on me.

When I told him the deal she and I had made, he leaned back against the bell tower’s wall, glaring up at the underside of the stairs.

A tiny lizard emerged from a hole near the steps, looked around, then disappeared back into the hole.

“That’s interesting,” he said. “She’s not always so obedient, is she? I should tell him.”

I looked at him, alarmed. “Do that if you want to hurt me, too.”

He shook his head, and I knew he wouldn’t. But I wanted him to understand.

“She took a risk for me, Leonard. She didn’t have to do that.”

He was unmoved. “She acts as if they’re completely in line on this.

Her spine disappears when he’s around. It makes me sick.

” He scratched at his neck, agitated. “I can’t stand living in that house anymore.

You know what he said to me? He said I would thank them some day.

He said I’d meet a nice Radcliffe girl, a Smith girl, and forget all about you. He’s an idiot.”

I said nothing. At the time, I didn’t know what a Smith girl or a Radcliffe girl was. Even with Leonard before me, his voice shaking with anger, the fact that I didn’t know seemed another mark against me.

“He doesn’t care if I’m happy.” He walked away from the stairway, pivoting near the bell tower’s arch. “He’s not interested in getting to know me. He doesn’t know who or what I care about. He only cares about what school I get into. So he can brag about it.”

I didn’t know if it was true or not. I imagined the three of them at the dinner table, Leonard simmering. Or maybe shouting, and his father shouting back. She must blame me, I thought. She must wish I’d never darkened their door.

I expected Leonard to keep pacing, burning off his frustration, but he suddenly walked toward me.

“There’s a solution, you know. We could get married.

We really could. We both only have to be sixteen.

That’s state law.” He kept his eyes on mine and spoke rapidly, as if he had to make his case all in one breath.

“And I’m seeing ads for construction workers everywhere.

They would train me on the job, and it’s good pay.

You could get something, too. We could get a little place. We’d be fine.”

The bell above us started to chime. I could picture what he was envisioning, the dream of it.

That he wanted this with me—or even that he thought he did—made me heady with joy.

But I was also thinking about his mother saying he could be impulsive.

And here he was, ready to throw away everything he’d worked for, all that studying, to be with me now, because he couldn’t wait.

Or wouldn’t. Part of me was taken by the romance of it, that he would do that for me.

But his mother had also been right in that, between the two of us, I was the one she could count on to think of consequences.

Leonard thought he knew what he wanted, and what he was ready to give up.

But he might come to regret the decision, and that would make a heavy burden for both of us.

I might regret it as well. I’d never heard of a married girl finishing high school.

My father had recently pointed out that I was already the most educated person in the family, probably even going back to grandparents and great-grandparents.

My report cards left him both baffled and pleased.

He said I must have gotten my love of school from my mother, who’d only dropped out because she had to go to work on account of family finances, and that she would be so proud of me, and envious.

I felt fortunate, and beholden to fortune.

And so before the bell stopped chiming, I told Leonard no, not yet. He turned his head and studied me with his mournful eye.

“I’m just saying no for now.” Hidden by the stairs, I grabbed both of his hands and held them. “Go to school, Leonard. Wherever you want. Do it for yourself. If you still love me at the end of it, I’ll be here. I’ll wait.”

He didn’t say anything to that. He wouldn’t even look at me.

No part of me thought that was the end of our conversation, but he pulled his hands out of mine and walked out into the courtyard.

I stayed where I was, skipping class, which I’d never done in my life.

I was too distraught to face anyone, for I interpreted his silence to mean that he hadn’t really meant that proposal.

He was just angry with his parents, wanting to hurt them, and so would not promise to wait for me.

—

The only good thing that happened that winter was that I got a weekend job shelving books at the public library, a Beaux Arts building painted pink with white trim.

From the front lawn, it made me think of a strawberry petit four.

Inside, big windows looked out onto Mirror Lake, and the high-ceilinged rooms were so quiet I could hear the floorboards creak under my feet.

I liked the focus the work required. When I slid a book back into its correct home, I imagined it joyfully recognizing its neighbors (Hey y’all, I’m back!).

I checked out a new book every week. The Sun Also Rises was rarely available, and even when it was, I didn’t so much as touch it.

I didn’t want the public librarians to think poorly of me.

I found plenty of other books to check out, though, and I read while I took my lunch breaks, usually sitting on a bench under the shade of the library’s majestic, wide-limbed oak.

One day, I happened to look up just as Mrs. Lifton’s yellow convertible pulled into the library’s parking lot.

Before she even got out of the car, I’d packed up my uneaten sandwich, closed my book, and hidden myself behind the oak’s trunk, though I kept watch as she crossed the asphalt and approached the library’s steps.

She had her hair pinned under her hat, and she wore dark sunglasses.

But if I hadn’t seen the car, I would have recognized her, so tall and graceful in her beige sandals, which were the same color as her hat.

She held just one book, no purse, and she walked quickly.

If I would have stayed quiet, she wouldn’t have seen me.

But my heart warmed at the sight of her, and before the scared part of me caught up with myself, I called out hello and said her name.

She stopped and turned. An enormous grasshopper landed by her sandal, startling her. “Oh!” she said, and laughed.

“It’s nice to see you, ma’am.” I managed a smile, but my voice came out shaky. “Everybody okay at your house?”

She didn’t answer. But she came toward me, still wearing her sunglasses.

“How are you, Nora?”

“I’m okay,” I said. She looked like him, or he looked like her. I felt tears forming, and I clenched my teeth. I couldn’t expect her to console me. “I got a job here. Shelving. I’m on my lunch break.”

“That’s wonderful.” She really did seem pleased. “You’ll be seeing a lot of me. I’m here at least once a week.”

I was surprised that she seemed fine with this. She pointed to the bench where I’d been sitting.

“Let’s talk for a bit,” she said.

I walked beside her, not knowing what to expect. Once we were sitting in the shade, she took off her glasses. A lone ibis picked its way through the library’s lawn, and she pointed at it.

“They have a disapproving look, don’t they?

Because of their beaks, the way they curve.

Whenever I see one, I always feel a little scolded.

” She paused, still watching the bird. “You asked how things are at our home. Well, I’ll be honest with you, Nora.

They’re terrible. Terrible. It’s Leonard’s last year with us, and this time is so precious.

And he’s angry all the time. Angry with us both. ”

Her voice caught, and I could both hear and feel her unhappiness. I told her, again, that I was sorry.

“I know you are,” she said. “And I appreciate that you’ve been holding up your end of our agreement.”

Here, she turned to look at me. I had to look away, scared she somehow knew I’d talked with Leonard in the bell tower.

“I worry you think that I dislike you, Nora. I don’t.

I was disappointed in you, just as I was disappointed in Leonard.

” She leaned down and picked a blade of grass off her sandal.

“But I was young once, believe it or not. I do understand. So I hope you understand that we’re not keeping you apart as a punishment.

” Her voice faltered. “I hope Leonard understands that one day.”

“We love each other,” I said. I hoped for her to understand as well.

She dabbed at her eyes, still watching the ibis. “These blazes, daughter, giving more light than heat.”

What I heard, first, was the word daughter. Then I realized it must be a quote.

“What’s that from, ma’am?”

“Hamlet,” she said. “It wasn’t my line. Polonius says it to Ophelia.

Fatherly advice about young lust.” She turned back to me.

“I still feel uneasy that your own father doesn’t know about…

” She waved her hand. “What I want to say to you is that…when you start to see other boys, I hope you’ll be more careful with yourself. ”

I shook my head, incredulous. As if she truly believed I might jump naked into a shower with the next boy who took me to the movies. I’d known Mr. Lifton thought little of me. But I saw now that she, too, had no idea what Leonard meant to me, or how I was suffering, still.

“But you’re going to have to keep moving forward, away from Leonard. Because that’s done.” She turned and looked back at the library. “This is such a good place for you to work. To expand your horizons. As much as you can, for now. I hope you’ll travel someday, and see other parts of the world.”

With that, she stood. She looked as if she wanted to lean down and hug me. But she didn’t. She just said goodbye and went up the library’s steps. I took my sandwich back out, watching the ibis, who’d been joined by kin or friends with similar expressions of reproach.

I’d seen Hamlet by then. The movie starring Laurence Olivier had come out, and I’d gone to see it with Irene, in no small part because of Mrs. Lifton. What I remembered of Polonius was that he seemed to care about both of his children, but he loved his son more than his daughter.

I also remembered he liked to give out advice, usually well-intentioned. Though he himself was a bit of a fool.