"Oh Alice," I said and thought a moment. What would I do with her now? How could I bring her along with me to Kenneth's studio? What was happening there had to be kept private for a number of reasons, not least of which was the growing feelings we were developing for each other.
Alice was always the immature one, even though she was one of the brightest students in school. Her family was one of the richest in Sewell, but she had never had a boyfriend. She was much too interested in books and studying to be bothered with clothes and makeup, which seemed to be the only thing that boys our age noticed. Despite our differences, she was a faithful friend. I hated hurting her.
"What's wrong, Melody? I thought you would be happy about it. We're finally going to see each other after all this time apart," she cried.
"I know. It's just that . . ."
"Just that what?"
"Just that I've taken a job and I won't have time to properly entertain you. You'd have to spend hours and hours alone, and I couldn't leave you alone at this house. My uncle Jacob would make you miserable and Aunt Sara would drive you crazy. It wouldn't be much of a holiday for you."
"What about Cary?" she asked timidly. Was that her real motive for wanting to come?
"Oh, he works long hours too, Alice. He's never around."
"I see," she said, her little voice drifting away. It brought tears to my eyes as I imagined her in her room, her bubble of excitement bursting. "What kind of a job do you have?"
"I work with a local artist," I said. "Sometimes, he uses me to model for his pictures."
"Really? A ,model?"
"Just simple things," I said quickly, "like a girl walking on the beach or walking with his dog on the dunes. But I have to do a lot more. I'm there from early morning to dinner and sometimes later, so you see why it wouldn't be a very fun vacation."
"Oh."
"Maybe before the summer's over,I'll have a break and you can come.I'll stay in touch and call you as soon as I know when I can get some time off, okay?"
"Okay," she said, but her disappointment was more than obvious.
After I cradled the receiver, I felt just awful. There wasn't anything Alice wouldn't have done for me if I had asked her, and when I was desperate, she was ready to give me money, have me move into her house, anything. Cary was right, I thought. I was becoming a different person, but perhaps when you became mature, you also left part of yourself behind with the little girl in you. Becoming an adult seemed to mean becoming a little more selfish in different ways.
I promised myself I would put aside a few days for Alice before the summer ended. Once the sculpture was almost finished Kenneth was sure to need me less and then I could call Alice and have her come for a visit, I thought. It eased my troubled conscience and helped me to put her voice and probable tears out of my mind for the time being. I couldn't dwell on it anyway. I was too busy.
Kenneth had me work a half a day on the following Saturday. When Cary heard, he was full of questions. He came to my door, knocked, and started asking.
"Why does Kenneth need you on Saturday? What does he want you to do?"
"Same things I do all week, Cary," I said. I still hadn't mentioned my modeling and now I probably never would.
"Doesn't he take time off?"
"It's only for half of the day and he takes off Sundays. When he gets into a project, he becomes totally involved, absorbed by it."
"Sounds like he has nothing else to do with his life," he muttered. "Did he mention that boat again?"
"No, not yet."
Cary smirked.
"Thought so. Everyone is so full of . . . seaweed," he remarked.
"Kenneth doesn't say something if he doesn't mean it, Cary Logan. He'll bring it up soon. I'm sure." Cary raised his eyebrows.
"How come you're so sure of whatever he says all of a sudden?"
"I just am," I said. He nodded, smirked again, and went up to his workshop.
After breakfast on Saturday morning, Uncle Jacob had the nerve to ask me if my working on the weekend meant Kenneth was paying me time and a half.
"Yes, he is," I said.
"Good. Don't forget to put half of the overtime as well in the pot," he ordered.
"I'm sure if I did forget, you'd be the first to remind me," I said brazenly, knowing I was sure to get a lecture.
"You're old enough to know responsibility and obligations," he replied. "Your mother never had an inkling of what those words meant and that was because everyone spoiled her. Spare the rod and you spoil the child," he recited.
"I am not a child," I fired back, but he didn't retreat an inch.
"Kids today don't grow up as fast as we had to grow up. They're given too much and don't have to give back much in return. It's gettin' harder and harder for me to find anyone under forty who wants to do a day's work. They all-think it's just going to come to them," he declared.
"Yes," I said dryly. "I'm the living proof of a spoiled person."
He blinked, twisted his lips, and then shoved his pipe into his mouth, grumbling to himself.
I recalled how Kenneth had called him a moral horse's ass. It brought a smile to my lips.
"What's so funny?" he demanded.
"What? Oh, nothing," I said as I hurried out, praying harder for the day Kenneth would suddenly turn to me and say, "Come live with me and be my love."
He was already waiting for me. I hadn't heard him drive up, but it cheered my heart to see him there early. He was just as anxious to be with me as I was with him, I thought, and got into the jeep. We sped off and I saw there was something different on Kenneth's mind, some new excitement painting itself on his beautiful face.
"What are we going to do today?"
"We're moving ahead," he said. "I've completed the first stage and now I want to get into the meat of it." He glanced at me. "Neptune's daughter is coming up higher and revealing more of herself as she emerges out of the sea. She's filling out the female form."
I knew what he meant and it filled me with so much excitement I could barely breathe. I sat back, my heart thumping, the wind blowing my hair. Was I ready? Yes, I thought, I was ready. Almost overnight, I had grown up. I was ready to shed my innocence and share myself with Kenneth.
Ulysses barked because I had been ignoring him. I' laughed and gave him a quick hug as we drove onto the dune road and Kenneth's studio.
The studio looked different to me this morning, perhaps because of what I knew was about to occur. It seemed darker, the shades drawn lower on the windows. As soon as we stepped through the door, Kenneth did something he had never done before, he locked the door behind us. His eyes shifted guiltily away when he saw my surprise.
"I'm too far into this to bear even the smallest interruptions," he explained. Since we had never been interrupted before, I didn't think much of his reason, but I smiled and nodded anyway.
He went to the model of the wave and studied it intently, his hands on his hips and his right hand stroking his beard as he continued to think and envision.
"Okay," he finally declared. "Here's what I want. Undress to your waist, take your usual position, and then come up until you're exposed up to here," he said drawing an imaginary line just above his stomach. Got it?"
I nodded. He returned to his easel and waited as I went around the wave and pulled off my sweat shirt. I hesitated a moment, my fingers actually trembling so badly I couldn't get them to undo the fastener on my bra. Finally, it was unfastened and I slipped the bra down my arms.
I had studied myself often in the mirror in my room, anticipating this moment. Mommy used to say I was a late bloomer, but that when I bloomed, I would bloom fast. I imagined it had been that way with her and that was why she knew. When I was fourteen, I barely had the bumps on my chest May now had. I thought I would never develop the curves and figure Mommy had.
And then, suddenly, between the ages of fifteen and sixteen, I began to develop quickly, finding a change in my body each succeeding day. I once went to Mommy and cried, p
leading with her to get me to a doctor, afraid that my breasts would never stop growing. She just laughed and told me not to worry; they would stop growing eventually, and in the meantime I should learn to enjoy all the attention they brought me. I tried to do as Mommy suggested, but it was hard to enjoy yourself when you felt as if an alien had taken over your body.
Soon though, I did gain self-confidence. The boys no longer teased me about being flat as a board and instead took long looks at me and began spending more time trying to win my attention.
But now, I couldn't help thinking of all the beautiful, mature women Kenneth had seen naked. I was terrified that he would gaze at me and think of me as just a teenager and not a young woman. Cary had been in awe of my body, but was I shapely enough for a man like Kenneth? Would he gaze at me naked before him and think he had made a big mistake in asking me to model for him? What if I was not the budding beauty he envisioned?
All the while I was trying to gather up my courage, to calm my trembling limbs, Kenneth was preoccupied with his preparations and never noticed my shyness and fears.
"Ready," he called.
I took a deep breath, crawled through the opening, and started up and out of the wave. As I rose, my heart began to pound, my legs picked up the trembling that had begun in my fingers, and I held my breath.
"Keep your eyes open," he ordered.
I swallowed and moved another inch or two, still not revealing my breasts. He waited, his drawing pencil in his hand.
"Come up," he instructed. "That's it. Good, good."
And there I was before him. He stared a moment. I felt the crimson color in my neck and face. It was as if Kenneth had walked over and run his brush over my skin. After what seemed like an hour, Kenneth nodded. If he noticed, he didn't mention my blushing.
"Just turn a bit to your right and then, if you can, pull your shoulders back a little. Lift your chin and concentrate on the ceiling. Don't be too stiff. Relax."
"I'm trying," I said.
"I know. Easy. That's it. Good. All right. Let's start with this pose first," he said and began;
Whenever I shifted my eyes to glance at him and see what sort of expression he had on his face, I saw only the same intense scrutiny I had seen before. There was no look of appreciation and none of disapproval. The total neutrality of his eyes, his lips, his entire being surprised and then annoyed me. I jerked my shoulders back.
"Getting tired?" he asked without taking his eyes from his paper.
"A little."
"Just a few more minutes and we'll take a short break. I think I have the curve I want and the lift in your head. Yes, this will work. This is it," he said.
"What about the rest of me?" I asked sharply.
He just nodded and kept working. It amazed me that I had been right when I told Cary an artist was like a doctor when he looked at a woman. I had expected more than this--this impersonal artistic eye.
"You're perfect," he finally declared as he stepped back and looked at me. "You're just what I wanted, what I needed."
"Really?"
"There's this innocence about you, this freshness in your body that makes the statement," he said.
"Statement?"
"My statement. Beauty emerging, the birth."
"Oh."
"Okay, let's do some more." I groaned, but he didn't pay attention. After another twenty minutes or so, he put down his pencil.
"You can take a rest. I want to map out some of this on the marble. I'm getting this faster than I thought I might," he declared proudly.
"Then I'm doing well as your model?" I fished. "Outstanding."
I stood there, still undressed, facing him, waiting for him to look at me differently, to smile differently, to step up to me and take me in his arms, to kiss me long and deeply, my naked breasts turned into him, waiting.
Instead he went straight to his cold marble block and left me dangling in my own imagination. I didn't bother putting my bra back on. I slipped into my sweatshirt without it. Then I came up beside him, hoping he might still turn and look at me as a woman instead of a model, an object of love instead of an object of art.
"If you'd like to get some fresh air, take Ulysses for a walk on the beach," he suggested. "I might be a while."
"Fine," I said sharply, sharper than I had intended, but he didn't appear to notice. I don't think he even heard me. I started for the door and Ulysses got up as quickly as he could to follow.
"Come along, Ulysses. I can always count on your wanting to be with me at least," I said loud enough for Kenneth to hear.
"What's that?" he said after a moment.
"Nothing. I'll be right back."
"Take your time," he said and returned his attention to his precious block of marble.
I slammed the door hard behind me and marched toward the beach, Ulysses at my side, trotting, his ears flapping.
"Men," I fumed and planted myself with a hard thump on a hill of sand. Ulysses looked disappointed that I wasn't walking any farther, but I wasn't in the mood.
"Now when he looks at me," I told Ulysses," he looks right through me. He's not seeing me, he's seeing that--that vision of his."
Ulysses panted, his tongue hanging over his mouth, his eyes wide as if he understood my indignation.
"I bet when you see a female you like, you see a female," I told him. He sniffed as if in response and plopped down beside me, convinced I wasn't going to move.
I stared at the ocean. Maybe I'm being too sensitive, I thought. Maybe I'm being too selfish. After all, Kenneth has made art his life and he has decided to include me in it. That's significant. He probably could have chosen any of a number of pretty girls in town, or maybe imported one. He was very successful; he could afford a very expensive model if he wanted. Yet he had chosen me. I was his special vision.
As I looked out over the ocean a lone cloud in the distance seemed to take the shape of a heart. A good omen, I thought. I lay back and Ulysses suddenly put his head on my stomach. It made me laugh. I closed my eyes and felt the sun on my face and the warm sand beneath me. It was all so soothing. In minutes I was asleep. I don't know how long I slept, but I woke to the sound of Ulysses barking. He was up and facing the road that lead to and from Kenneth's house. I sat up and turned to see a small purple car with what looked like astrological signs painted all over it in white come bouncing down the sandy ruts. The driver tapped out long, loud beeps on the horn as the car came to a stop in front of Kenneth's studio.
"Who's that?" I asked Ulysses. He gazed at me and then ran down the sand hill toward the driver as she emerged from the car. She was wearing a long, one-piece green and white dress, the hem actually touching the ground, Even from this distance, I could see long, silver earrings dangling from her lobes. Her dark brown hair was down to her shoulder blades.
"Ulysses!" she cried, kneeling to open her arms to hug him. Ulysses was all over her, licking her face, her neck, her hair. Her laughter was carried back to me in the wind. The woman stood up, shaded her eyes with her hand, and gazed toward me. Without knowing who I was, she waved and then turned as Kenneth came strolling around the house. I watched as she ran to him with the same enthusiasm Ulysses had run to her. He opened his arms in welcome and she was in his embrace an instant later. They kissed on the lips. I felt my heart do flip flops.
When she pulled back, her musical laughter trailed up to me. She was looking my way and he was obviously explaining who I was. She waved again and I got up and started toward them, my heart thumping with anticipation, a small fist of fear growing tighter and tighter in my stomach until I felt as if it would burn right through my skin.
"Melody," Kenneth said as I approached, "I'd like you to meet Holly Brooks."
"Hi, Melody," she exclaimed, her eyes wide with excitement. She wore a purple tinted lipstick that matched the color of the car. When she extended her hand to shake mine, the half dozen silver and copper bracelets on her arm all bunched up at her wrist. On each of her fingers she wore a ring, som
e simply silver embossed with a shape, two looking like some sort of polished stone.
She was a small woman made to look smaller in her oversized broomstick dress. She looked as if she were swimming in it, yet when the material shifted, I could see that she was braless, her breasts pressing up against the thin cotton. She wore a thin leather collar around her neck with tiny multicolored stones embedded in the material.
There was something very bright and airy about her smile, and her eyes were filled with a happy light, making them look more hazel than dark brown. She had a small nose and soft cheeks that dipped just slightly to diminish the roundness in her face and make her mouth small enough too, so that her iridescent lipstick looked pretty, not garish. There were the tiniest freckles on her forehead and down the sides of her temples.
"Hi," I said offering my hand. She seized it and shook firmly.
"When's your birthday?" she asked quickly.
"June twelfth," I said, looking at Kenneth. He wore a deep smile and nodded slightly.
"A Gemini," she declared. "I knew it."
"Holly is an astrologer," Kenneth explained. "As well as an artist."
"Oh. Aunt Sara believes in that."
"Really? Well, your aunt's a smart lady."
"Please," Kenneth said. "Spare us the hoo-doo voo-doo for a while."
"Oh Kenny," she said. "You know I come to see you only when it's the right astrological time and you know we're always good together, right?"
He shot a quick glance at me, his eyes full of embarrassment.
"Right. Melody," he continued, anxious to change the subject, "is my model for the new project."
"Oh yes. I can see why," she said, turning back to me. "She's so pretty. She must make a wonderful model, Kenneth."
"She's doing a terrific job," he said looking at me. I smiled, enjoying my moment in his sunshine.
"Good," Holly said. "It's so beautiful here, so conducive to art, to inner expression. There's a positive energy here. I feel it," she said, closing her eyes and embracing herself. She took deep breaths.
I lookedat Kenneth and he smiled as we both waited. She popped her eyes open and gazed into my face with such intensity, I nearly laughed.