Until september, p.21
Until September, page 21
“What about you?”
“I’m the love of your life. I’ll always be here.”
They took Dana’s car, leaving the convertible for Jack; the following morning they were seeing Carly off. Dana drove, leaning forward, black-rimmed glasses on her face, hands gripping the wheel so tightly her knuckles were white. Kyle so rarely saw her in glasses, he always thought they looked odd, though she’d had them for years. Despite the seeming urgency, she drove a sure 40 miles per hour over the still-wet roads despite the speed limit being 45. “Driving’s a very serious undertaking” she’d pronounced several times.
When they arrived at Trent’s, they found him in the basement, seated sullenly on the sofa, a cigarette in his hand. On the end table beside him was an ashtray overflowing with butts and ashes. Claudia was seated on the loveseat opposite him, legs curled under her. Trent looked up in disappointed surprise when Kyle and Dana came down the stairs.
“I knew you weren’t just taking Carly home,” he said.
Kyle sat on the arm of the sofa beside him. “What happened?”
“What do you think happened? Veronica had an abortion.”
“You were with her?” He hated not knowing.
Trent took a long drag from his cigarette. “Yes.”
Kyle was impressed that Trent had done Veronica the honor of accompanying her. He’d hoped for but hadn’t expected as much.
His next question was self-serving, and he felt a twinge of guilt thinking about Trey. But to him the friendship of Trent and Trey had reached epic proportions, spanning decades and continents. “Was anyone else with you?”
“One of her friends.” Trent picked flecks of tobacco off his tongue.
Dana sat on the hearth, her legs stretched before her. In the middle of a prolonged yawn, she realized Kyle was looking at her over Trent’s head. He mouthed the words Is he drunk? and she shrugged.
“It just—” Trent began, then stopped. As his cigarette waned, he lit another from it, before stubbing it out in the ashtray. “I know I did the right thing. But it bothers me. I mean—” His shoulders fell. “I forced her into it.”
This was an epiphany to no one but Trent.
“What did you do when you were with her?” Kyle prompted.
“Deal with it. Chain-smoked. Ignored her, because I didn’t care enough.”
“You were with her, weren’t you?”
“I didn’t care enough to use protection. I didn’t care enough to be good to her. I just didn’t care.”
“If it’s any consolation,” Kyle said, stroking the back of Trent’s head. “She doesn’t hate you.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t hate myself.” Trent spoke simply.
Kyle didn’t know what to say to that.
“I just—” He faltered, letting his head sag. Then he reached up and took Kyle’s hand. “I’m glad you’re here.”
They were up a couple of hours later to bid Carly farewell. Kyle tried to rouse Trent, but he was out. Claudia slept in the car on the way there, the morning heat already oppressive. Carly’s parents were carrying last-minute things to the car when they arrived. Inside, Kyle expected to see boxes piled in the living room and Carly running around frantically, but she was lying asleep fully dressed on her already-made bed, hair pulled back in a headband. Dana shook her awake and her eyes fluttered like she was a movie princess. “Wow,” she said, sitting up. “I’m glad you’re not my mother.”
“What time are you leaving?” Claudia asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.
Carly looked at her watch. “Ten minutes ago.”
“We’re a little late,” Kyle said.
Carly’s mother stuck her head in the room. “We’re leaving in two minutes, Carlene.” She continued down the hall.
Carly rolled her eyes, grabbed her duffel bag and they trudged downstairs. All of her other things had been packed. When they stood outside in the colorless morning, she turned to Kyle, her eyes teary.
“Trent’s unconscious,” Kyle explained. “Or nothing could have kept him.”
She gave a bittersweet grin. “Wild horses and all that, right?”
“Something like that.”
She held him tightly. “Wow. I feel like this is the end.”
“Remember what you said last week? Should we lose each other, we’ll find each other when we’re summering with our own families.”
“Yeah. But from where we stand now that seems really far off.”
“It’s too early to be emotional,” Claudia told them. “The rest of us will be affected because we’re still vulnerable from sleep.”
“Or the lack of it,” Dana said.
“Take care of Trent,” Carly softly told Kyle. “And tell Jack I said he’s to take care of you.” She hugged Dana and Claudia at the same time. All three were crying.
Carly’s mother walked by carrying a small box and got into the car. Behind them, Carly’s father was locking the door to the house.
“I wish y’all were coming with me.” Carly swiped at tears that flashed down her cheeks. “I’ll send postcards.” She got into the backseat and poked her head out the window. “Once we get back I’ll only have a couple of days to move into the dorm, so I probably won’t see any of you until after school starts.”
As her father passed, he clapped Kyle on the shoulder and said, “We’ll see you all next summer, if not at Christmas.”
“See you kids,” Mrs. Salenger said from her open window.
As he started to pull away, Mr. Salenger honked the horn two short beeps. Carly called, “I’ll find a Brazilian boy for each of you!”
They all laughed.
“I wonder what her parents are making of that,” Claudia said.
They watched until the car rounded the curve of the coast, Carly still leaning out, waving.
Kyle never saw her again.
Kyle spent the rest of that day at the shore with Trent. The night before had acted as a catalyst to bring them together, though the strain of the argument had taken its toll. They lay in the sun, smoking, swimming, sleeping, talking very little.
It was mid afternoon when Trent said, “I think I’ll visit her tomorrow.”
Kyle watched two sandpipers at the water’s edge. “She’d like that.”
They crossed the hot beach, not rushing, letting it burn the bottoms of their feet, and went to stand at the shoreline, the water pulling sand from beneath them in small pouches. Above them, gulls, sharply white, scavenged, bobbing with the sure buoyancy of kites. Kyle dove into an oncoming wave, the water icy in a second of suspended time, his heart skipping, a gasp in his lungs, and then it was not cold at all.
They swam for so long that when they emerged, their fingers were crinkled, their senses of touch muted. Kyle’s nasal passages hurt and his ears were plugged, obscuring his hearing. He lay on his towel, tilting his head first to the left then to the right to drain the water, but he was unsuccessful.
Trent sat beside him and said, “I’ll soon pray.”
His voice was muffled like underwater thoughts. Kyle didn’t know what he was talking about. “For what?”
“Just to hang out.”
Then he felt a warm, ticklish sensation in his ears, the water abating, restoring clarity. “Wait. You’re praying?”
“No. I’ve seen Trey.”
He decided he liked it better when he couldn’t hear.
“I feel ridiculously guilty,” Trent said.
“He’s only trying to get to me through you.”
“How do you mean?”
“I fucked around with him last summer, Trent.”
Trent was stunned. “You had sex with Trey Shaw?!”
“You’re not the only one who wants to get laid, you know.”
“But I thought you were shy!” Trent found it hysterically funny and fell back on the sand, laughing.
Kyle waited until he was done, before asking, “Do you like him?”
“Trey?” Trent baited, still smiling.
“Who else?”
“He was someone to hang with since you weren’t coming around.”
“You weren’t either.”
“But I wasn’t because you weren’t.” He was kidding.
“Yeah, well…”
There was a pause, then Trent admitted, “Part of me is relieved you’re not as virtuous as I thought.”
Kyle was silent for a moment, then he said, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Everything. Anything. …Nothing.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“It’s not not my fault either.” He fixed his eyes on the horizon. After a minute, he said, “Remember when things were simple?”
Trent turned to him for a moment, observing, then followed his gaze. “Things were never simple, Kyle.”
Kyle got home about five. The house was quiet and cool. The deck curtains billowed in a soundless breeze. Scarlet-colored petunias were vivid in a vase on the kitchen counter.
The birthday party seemed like a hundred years ago.
He was about to ascend the stairs when a sound fractured the lull of the surf.
The door leading to the basement was ajar.
He pushed it open, the silence so complete again it was disconcerting.
He descended a couple of steps and bent down, looking through the rail with a total lack of preparation.
His mother knelt before the sliding glass doors, her green sundress trailing behind her so that, for a flash, he thought of her, ridiculously, as a mermaid. She was weeping with hard, ripping breaths, her head in her hands.
She still grieved.
Kyle stumbled back up the stairs, mouth agape, heart pounding. Her image was branded behind his eyelids. He felt sinful and guilty and ashamed, like he’d caught her masturbating.
He fled to his room where he sat on the edge of his bed, facing the door with fearful eyes, like he was seeking refuge in a horror movie. Blood rushed through his veins, roared in his head. He felt weak and tottering, like someone had pulled out a foundation card. He wanted to scream, he wanted to cry, he wanted to shake his mother and hold her gently.
He sat, wondering what in his life had been real, until long shadows fell across the room and he heard Jack downstairs.
When he emerged from the dark cocoon of his room, he felt like he’d slept a hard, sound sleep, his senses dull, his eyes unfocused. He found Ann cutting celery in the kitchen, Jack seated at the counter. The petunias were immoral in their garishness.
As his mother chattered amiably of amaranths and roses, Kyle, feeling pallid, a little nauseous and, having risen, very tired, surveyed her for proof, terrified he’d find a chink in her armor of day-to-day placidity and would have to take responsibility for the creation of a world he’d never questioned. That he would be to blame for having not cared enough to notice. The parties, the dances, the private schools, the island. It had all been for him. And he’d been so self-absorbed he’d never once wondered what price his parents were paying.
What did that make him?
But he found nothing untrue in her demeanor.
“Hey,” Jack said, giving him a questionable glance.
“Hey.” Kyle hadn’t spoken for so long his voice was garbled.
“You okay, honey?” Ann gave a worried tilt of her head.
As much as he felt something akin to hatred for what he saw as betrayal, looking at her, he felt, in equal parts, almost paternal in his need to assuage her grief. Then he had the sudden urge to confront her, take her off guard, because maybe then he could get the truth. He stopped himself when he realized he wasn’t sure he wanted it.
He finally said, “Yes.”
When Graham came for the weekend, Kyle watched his parents to see if they made any reference to their secret. But there was nothing. They played their stoic parts for him flawlessly. Yet while observing them, he apprehended crow’s feet, a sprinkling of gray in his mother’s hair, the extent to which his father’s hairline had receded. They were things he’d never noticed. His parents were suddenly strangers.
That Saturday, as Kyle passed his parents’ bedroom, he glanced in to see his father struggling with a shirt button. The image struck him as immeasurably poignant. He stepped into the room and said, “Let me.”
Graham held his hands up in surrender. “These damn buttons.”
Kyle’s slender, adept fingers deftly closed the shirt. “Don’t you hate when you can’t get them to close?”
“So it’s not just my old age?” Graham chuckled.
At his father’s words, Kyle suddenly became aware of the startling differences between them: firm, lean flesh compared to pliancy; quick, fluid grace contrasted with a thoughtful pace; youth and energy paralleled with maturity and history. How had Graham changed so much without Kyle seeing?
“No,” he said, averting his eyes. “It’s not about age.”
Kyle obsessed over his parents until, one hot night in the tub, his skin clammy in the tepid water, crickets ringing in the dark, he knew what to do. They had always told him to be truthful; he had not been. Perhaps his admission would prompt their own, and they could deal with their pain, together. He needed to get back the peace he’d known for so many years. The peace he’d based his beliefs on. He needed to know there had been that tranquility once.
But what if it had never been?
With or without Kevin?
What then?
What then?
The dog days of late July were heavy and sticky. They made Kyle and Jack lazy so they killed their time alone at the McAllister place. They kissed and talked and ate and kissed and Kyle swam and Jack splashed, and when they came together, Kyle didn’t know if the salt he tasted on Jack’s lips was his sweat or the sea. They would kiss for hours, until they knew nothing else. The intimacy overwhelmed him, dizzying him, heightening his senses of smell, taste, touch.
Nights, they would lay together, Kyle behind Jack, his head on his shoulder, one leg nudging between Jack’s. It was how they always slept. It felt like home, the contours of their bodies fitting, like ridges and valleys, Jack’s spareness meeting Kyle’s fullness, like they’d broken apart and, separate, were incongruous, but together, were unspoiled.
One day they lay under the mulberry tree on the front lawn, eating berries, picking dandelions, being silly. They’d whiled away the afternoon talking of the future, debating who would change schools, neither willing to let the other sacrifice but not knowing how to compromise.
Eventually their focus drifted to another kind of future.
“I wish we could get married,” Jack reflected.
“We don’t have to do it in a church. We could do it right here on the beach.”
“Yeah? Be hippies about it?”
“You’d look super sexy in tie-dye.”
Jack giggled.
“I don’t wanna say ‘I do,’” Kyle said then, as always serious about their life together. “I wanna say ‘I will.’” He smiled, then reached over and took hold of Jack’s wrist, his heartbeat, like a kitten’s, so tiny it didn’t seem it could be what sustained him.
“We’ll have to plan a big ol’ honeymoon for afterward.” Jack’s fingers and lips were stained with mulberry juice. “My grandparents have a place in Portugal. Can you believe it?”
“We could hitchhike around Europe.”
“Wouldn’t that be awfully dangerous?”
“Not with me there.”
“My hero. I’ll try not to get tied to any railroad tracks so you won’t get your cape dusty.”
Kyle laughed and squeezed Jack’s wrist, nestling closer, the grass dense beneath them.
“We can never leave the island if you like,” Jack said. “Our kids can be islanders.”
Kyle sat up excitedly. “You want kids?”
Jack smiled. “Of course. Don’t you?”
“More than anything.” He reached down and touched Jack’s face. “Except for you, of course.”
Then, abruptly, the air turned icy. Wind whistled around them. They looked up at the silvery undersides of the mulberry leaves flapping in the breeze. Kyle sat upright and, over the heaving sea, saw storm clouds as black and tumid as a bruise rushing from the horizon toward the island. Lightning crackled along the undersides, followed so closely by the guttural growl of thunder that it seemed simultaneous. Two or three seconds later, the clouds were almost overhead. Kyle pulled Jack to his feet, suddenly fearing for their safety, and shouted, “Run!”
And they did, across the lawn, toward the house, past the front porch, the wind tearing at their clothes. By the time they reached the backyard and Kyle was jerking at the doors leading to the cellar, the gale was so strong Jack had to clutch the rail to keep from being blown away.
One of the doors flew open with a soundless crash. As Kyle let Jack precede him into the cellar, he braved a look up into the descending storm, fat raindrops just beginning to descend, remembering the sudden squall that had overtaken him and Kevin on the beach that day so long ago. And how Kevin had brought out the sun.
He turned and followed Jack into the darkness of the cellar, securing the doors behind them. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, the air was stale and chilly, the basement shadowy and ominous. They could hear the heavy pelting of rain above. Kyle rubbed Jack’s arms.
“Where did it come from?” Jack asked.
“I don’t know. Are you warm enough?”
“Yeah.”
Kyle slipped off his T-shirt. “Put this on. You’re cold.”
Jack put it on. They sat on the steps, Kyle’s arms around Jack, hands inside his shirts, fingers against his abdomen, and they listened to the destruction of the land. Jack couldn’t stop shivering, and Kyle didn’t know if it was because of the cool or nerves.
They both jumped to their feet when there was a deafening crack of thunder that seemed to come from within the house itself. “You okay?” Kyle reached for Jack’s hand.
“Yeah. I just—I’m nervous.”
“I know, Puss. It’ll pass.”
Later, after the storm, they stepped out of the cellar into the bright, wet, overcast day, their skin riddled with gooseflesh, Jack’s face drawn, his enormous eyes the turbulent blue-black of a violent sea. The rain was over, but the air was still heavy with damp. Gutters ran noisily. Branches littered the lawn. The pear tree had been split in half, its trunk splintered, its lustrous head in a heap on the ground.
