“Wow,” Buddy said. “See that?”
“Yes. Everything living feeds on something living,” I recited.
He looked at me. “Deep,” he said. “Tell me more about yourself. Are you guys originally from California?”
“You’ve told me nothing about yourself,” I countered.
He laughed and sprawled out, leaning on his left elbow to look up at me. “Not true. I told you I was born and raised in Long Beach, and my father’s a dentist. We’re almost even.”
“I was born in New York. We moved a few times. We lived in Nashville for a few years.”
“Can you sing country?”
“Hardly,” I said, smiling. “I play the piano, mostly classical pieces. Daddy loves classical music.”
He just stared up at me.
“What?” I asked.
“You’re so beautiful. I think I’d be content just lying here and looking up at you for the rest of my life.”
“Now you’re embarrassing me,” I said.
“I’d rather cut off my right hand than embarrass you.”
“So, what do you intend to do with your education?” I asked, trying to get him off the topic of me.
He laughed. “You mean, what do I want to be when I grow up?”
“Think you ever will?” I said, and he shrugged.
“Maybe. When I get around to it,” he said. He rolled onto his back. “I’m leaning toward medical research of some sort. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been fascinated by what we can’t see. There are worlds upon worlds swirling around inside us.” He turned back to me. “You weren’t far off when you said everything living feeds on something else living. There are bacteria living inside us, feeding off us. Even the bad guys feed off us.”
“Bad guys?” I held my breath. He couldn’t mean anything close to what I knew.
“Germs, viruses, you know.”
“Oh. Yes, of course. I imagine you’re a good student,” I said.
“Straight A’s. That was my nickname in high school, Straight-A Gilroy. And you?”
“I’ve always made the honor roll.”
“You’d always make mine,” he said. “Now, tell me really, what made you decide to call me? I gave up on the idea when you wouldn’t give me your phone number.”
“It’s not a big mystery, Buddy. We had a good time at Dante’s Inferno. I thought you were different from your friends, so I decided to see if I was right.”
“Any decision yet?”
“Too soon to tell.”
“Great. That means you’ll give me more time, which might mean you’ll give me your home phone number.”
“Let’s leave it the way it is for right now,” I said. I embraced my knees and looked down at the sand.
“Boy, why do I have the feeling there’s a ton you’re not telling me about yourself?”
“Can’t imagine,” I said, smiling.
“Your sister Elsa is, please pardon the expression, a piece of work.”
I was quiet a moment, and then I turned to him and said, “Her name is not Elsa.”
“I know,” he said.
“You know?”
“Yeah. I was just waiting to see how long you would keep up the lie.”
“How did you find out the truth?”
“I checked with someone in one of her classes. Her name is Ava Patio. I pretended to believe her, because I didn’t want to get her angry with me or something. I thought as long as she spoke to me, I had a chance of meeting you again. I searched the Internet to find your phone number. I called more than twenty Patios, but no one named Patio had a daughter named Ava.”
“That’s why you spend time talking to her and being with her at school?”
“That’s it, solely it,” he said. “Why, does she think otherwise?”
I smiled.
“What?”
“Let’s just say Ava has no cracks in her wall of self-confidence.”
He laughed. “Will you go out with me this weekend?”
“I don’t know our schedule yet.”
“Our schedule? What are you, a private jet pilot?”
“I’ll go out with you one night if you promise me one thing.”
“I’m ready to sign my name in blood,” he said, sitting up.
“I don’t want you talking to or having anything at all to do with Ava. If she asks you to go somewhere with her, say no, especially if she wants you to go out with her. Will you promise me that?”
“Sure, but what is this, some kind of sibling rivalry?”
I smiled. “You can call it that. Do I have your solemn promise?”
He raised his right hand. “I, Buddy Gilroy, do hereby swear not to have anything to do with Ava Patio. If she’s walking easterly, I’ll go westerly. If she’s within ten feet of me, I’ll immediately make it twenty feet. If she speaks to me, I’ll be deaf. If she looks at me, I’ll be invisible, and if she touches me, I’ll scream like I was burned and walk or run to the nearest exit.” He lowered his hand. “How’s that?”
“It’s fine if you really follow it,” I said. I looked at him with steely eyes. “And I’ll know almost immediately if you don’t.”
“Okay,” he said, losing his joking smile. He looked down the beach. “You want to walk a little more?”
“Yes,” I said, rising.
He picked up his jacket, and we walked silently on the darker, harder, cooler sand. The wind combed the waves and hit us with some spray, but it felt wonderful. We both laughed and trotted a little farther from the water. He took my hand again, and for a moment, we just looked at each other. Then, very slowly but smoothly, he brought his lips to mine. It wasn’t a quick, friendly peck on the mouth, either. His lips lingered as if he were a bee drawing nectar from mine. Neither of us spoke. We walked along, silent again, but somehow hearing each other’s voice, each other’s heartbeat.
“Are you an only child?” I asked. “You never mentioned any brothers or sisters.”
“I have a younger brother. He’s in tenth grade. He’s a jock’s jock. Ask him about any football player who played during the past ten years, and he’ll give you all his statistics. He’s currently the second-string quarterback for the team, but he’s breathing down the starting quarterback’s neck. Helluva baseball player, too. Hit two-eighty last year, which is pretty good for a high school kid. My father’s convinced he’ll go to college on a sports scholarship.”
“You sound proud of him.”
“I am. We’re so different that there’s no sibling rivalry. That’s why I was somewhat surprised at your request.”
“What’s between Ava and me has nothing to do with sibling rivalry, Buddy.”
“What does it have to do with, then?”
“Let’s forget it for now,” I said. “Maybe it won’t matter.”
“Whatever you say. I’ll play by whatever rules you want. But believe me,” he added quickly, “this isn’t a game with me. No girl I’ve met has ever had the effect on me that you had after just a short time together. You know what that means, don’t you?”
“What?”
“You’re magical. And you don’t fool with magic.”
I laughed. We walked on. I was so content just holding his hand and talking to him that I didn’t think of the time. When I looked at my watch and saw how long we had been together, I felt a small bird of panic flutter its wings under my breast. Ava and Marla could be home by now.
“I have to go,” I said.
He nodded, and we hurried back up the beach to the sidewalk. He decided to walk me to my car.
“I don’t want to lose a possible second of being with you, Lorelei. If you will just…”
I put my finger on his lips. And then I kissed him.
“I’ll call you,” I said.
“Promise?”
“As long as you keep yours.”
“Then you’ll call me,” he replied.
He stood there while I got into the car, started it, and pulled away. I looked at him throug
h the rearview mirror. True to his word, he coveted every moment with me, even his last glimpse of me before I disappeared around a turn.
No one, not even Daddy, had told me how wonderful I would feel.
This is surely love, I thought. Forbidden or not, it’s what I want.
The question hovering was clearly, what would I be willing to do to have it?
I had no idea, but worse, I was terrified that I would soon find out.
13
Destiny
Ava and Marla were not home yet, which both pleased and bothered me. I was happy I didn’t have to explain my late arrival to Ava, but I couldn’t help but wonder where she had taken Marla and why it was so important all of a sudden to be alone with her for so long a time. Until recently, and only after Daddy’s orders, Ava had never taken me anywhere special. We had never spent quality time together away from the house when I was Marla’s age. With Daddy often fanning our sibling rivalry, it was difficult in this house not to think in terms of conspiracies. More and more lately, I found Marla resembled Ava and not me. She had Ava’s temperament, certainly, and not mine.
The house was very quiet when I arrived. Neither Mrs. Fennel nor Daddy was downstairs. We usually didn’t announce ourselves when we returned from school now, so I went directly to my room. I tried to do some homework and get my mind off my afternoon with Buddy, but his face, his smile, our kiss, wouldn’t take a backseat to anything. Would Ava or, more important, Daddy take one look at me and know I was having strong feelings for a boy, and this after the near disaster with Mark Daniels?
When we had first gone to Dante’s Inferno, Ava had told me that it was both a curse and a blessing that we could get whomever we wanted. She had said that someday I would understand how it could be both. As I sat there in my room, enjoying my reminiscing about Buddy and at the same time frightened that Daddy, Mrs. Fennel, or Ava would see that enjoyment in my face, I thought I understood what she had meant.
A real relationship between any of us and some boy was a threat to Daddy and therefore the family. Buddy was very attracted to me. I wanted him to be, but Ava was right. How could I afford to fall in love? What would come of it? How could I, like any other father’s daughter, ever have a serious relationship, ever get engaged, marry, and move away to have a family of my own?
If I had had a close friend, and she had been there with me, she would surely have asked how I could put my love for and loyalty to my father so high above my own wishes and dreams, even my own needs. After all, didn’t everyone need to have someone love him or her, someone other than a father or a mother, a sister or a brother? Or was it just romantic drivel to believe that someone out there was meant to be your life partner, your soul mate?
From reading, from history class, and even from stories Daddy had told me, I knew that there had been a time when young women lived in such a confined and restricted world that it was impossible for them to find soul mates, real lovers. Their parents arranged their whole lives. Those young women became wives and mothers and never experienced the thrill of romance, the excitement of self-discovery. Did they die because of it? Did they suffer and go crazy? Here and there, there were probably some who did, but on the whole, they lived full lives, had and loved their children, and although they didn’t fall in love, at minimum, they developed cordial, respectful, and maybe even deeply devoted relationships with the men they were forced to marry. They lay beside each other in cemeteries just like passionate lovers who married, spent their lives together, and passed away.
So, too, my sisters and I could not have boyfriends, go to proms, press flowers and pictures into albums, write love letters, carry on endless soft and loving phone conversations, get engaged to someone we loved and who loved us, or have a wedding that fulfilled our hearts. Our destinies had been prearranged as well. Would we, like those young women ages ago, put all of those romantic ideas in some closet and forget them, or would they haunt us forever? Was that part of the destiny that awaited me?
I stared at myself hatefully in the mirror. Suddenly, everything that was attractive and beautiful about me annoyed me. If I had been born plain, if I had no more sexual power in me than someone like Ruta Lee or Meg Logan, wouldn’t I be better off? If I hadn’t cried out when Daddy and Mrs. Fennel were walking past my bassinet, would some ordinary childless couple have adopted me and soaked me in their love? I’d have probably fallen in love with some likewise ordinary young man and had a wedding and children. I’d have no other destiny than the destiny most young women had. I would grow old without any illusions about myself. I’d probably not battle against age, either. I’d accept it and be satisfied with an epitaph that read, “She was a good wife, a good mother, a good woman, who made friends easily and never knew the meaning of real unhappiness.”
But would I have really been happier never to have known Daddy, never to have traveled in that first-class world that we lived in, a world of glamour and wealth, music and elegance? Would I have really been happier never to have lived in a world in which I never had a sick day, in which youth, energy, and beauty were forever? Would I really be happier sitting in my comfy little living room watching romantic movies or reading books about love and settling for the vicarious experience?
“When you stand on the cliffs of Capri or feel the wind in your hair as the yacht surges forward toward Mykonos, when you have dinner on the Eiffel Tower looking out over Paris or have lunch in Eze on the Riviera and look out over the bluest sea, when you have your cocktail on the rooftop of the Hassler in Rome and look out over the lights of the Eternal City, when you share hors d’oeuvres with the richest, most powerful people in the world, people who can clap their hands or snap their fingers and change the lives of thousands, you will feel the full glory of who you are and what you are,” Daddy had promised. “It’s out there, waiting for you to claim it, my darling daughter, like some ripe fruit for you to pluck and enjoy. You will have many affairs that are as passionate as any possible. You will miss nothing and have everything.”
His kiss had sealed the promise.
I stared at myself in the mirror. Yes, now I understand what you meant, Ava, I thought. Now I know why Mrs. Fennel called love our poison. I must try to fight back all these thoughts and feelings for Buddy Gilroy. I must try to become more like you. Loyalty, obedience, and sacrifice must replace this craving for love and self-fulfillment. I am, I declared to myself with new resolve, my father’s daughter, too. I can be no one else. Perhaps that was what Daddy and Mrs. Fennel meant by fulfilling our destiny. In the end, we really had no choice, nowhere else to go. Could I convince myself of that? If Daddy or Mrs. Fennel even suspected I had these doubts…
I wrapped my secret thoughts into a neat package and put them away as deeply as I could in the closet of my memory just as my door opened and Ava stepped into my bedroom. She looked about my room and then at me, as if she could literally search the air for traces of my innermost secret thoughts. Then she nodded at the textbooks I had open on my desk.
“Don’t waste too much time on all that,” she said, moving suspiciously about my room, her eyes going everywhere.
“What do you mean? Why not?”
She shrugged. “Your days at that school are numbered. Why bother to worry about your grades?”
“We’re close to the end of the school year. Surely, Daddy wouldn’t move us before I finish.”
“Do you think that matters at all to Daddy?” she asked, and smiled. “Don’t be ridiculous, Lorelei. Others, them,” she said disdainfully, waving at the window to indicate any and all who lived outside our world, “need good grades to be the keys that open doors for them. We don’t. Daddy arranges everything for us forever.”
“I don’t do it to get doors open for me, Ava. I do it because I enjoy it.”
“Oh, please,” she said, and sat at my vanity table. She primped her hair and studied herself in the mirror.
“Where did you take Marla?” I asked. She was so lost in herself that I didn’t think she hea
rd me. Then she stopped looking at herself and turned to me.
“To practice,” she said.
“Practice? Practice what?”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed lately, probably not, because your head is in the wrong places these days, but our little Marla is surging into maturity. Daddy says there is something quite remarkable about her, even more remarkable than you or me. For the first time in, what should I say, centuries, he thinks he might have two daughters mature and skilled enough at the same time.” She laughed. “Imagine being able to take turns every month. What a relief.”
“I don’t understand. How can that be? She’s not quite fourteen. She doesn’t have the mature figure, the—”
“Daddy says he can sense that she will soon look more like eighteen, nineteen. In less than six months, matter of fact, she’ll probably be breathing down your neck.” She widened her smile.
“My neck?”
“Of course, Lorelei. Just think of the competition, the real sibling rivalry then. Each of you trying to outdo the other when it comes to bringing Daddy what he needs as quickly as he needs it. Who will catch the better prize? Which one of you will do it better, easier?”
She turned back to the vanity mirror, took my brush, and swept her bangs back.
“That way, should one of you have to be replaced, there’ll be no problem for Daddy, either,” she said. She stopped brushing. “It’s exciting, isn’t it? I almost wish I could trade places with you, that you’d be the one leaving and not me.”
“How can that be exciting? It sounds horrible to think of two sisters trying to outdo each other.”
She nodded at herself. “I was right about you. Daddy’s beginning to see it, too.”
“Right about what?”
“You’re missing something the rest of us have. It’s a kind of hunger, a driving desire, a need that makes you harder, sharper, and more self-confident. Daddy thinks, hopes, you’ll grow into it, that perhaps I’ll inspire you, but I have grave doubts, and Daddy has grown to trust my instincts. You think he’ll ever feel comfortable trusting yours?” She looked at herself again with pleasure. “I doubt it,” she muttered.