“Do you want to know how it felt to me?”
“Go on.”
“That I was sucking the life out of you and that you were inert while I drank you. That I was in charge, draining you of your strength and swallowing it, to be strong myself.”
Her exactness and her poise made him thoughtful. He was reminded of how much he needed her, and that she was half that life of desire he was reliving, and so half his book had to be hers.
“I’m sorry if I shocked you,” she said. She changed her posture, recrossed her legs, and said, to encourage him to continue, “So time passed.”
“No, wait.” The experience last night had uncovered an earlier memory. That was the paradox. “There was something else.”
“Another woman?”
“Another me. A younger me.”
He was staring blindly at the window, beyond it, at the lifting seafog and slender dripping oaks and grizzled needles of the pitch pines, into the past, remembering.
“I grew up in the age before everyone had an electric clothes dryer,” he said. “You probably had one.”
Ava was listening.
“Let me see,” he said. “This matters. Everywhere I looked I saw clotheslines—women’s underwear on clotheslines, lifting with the breeze and fluttering beautifully, as beautiful to me as the nakedest woman. Those secret clothes were women to me, and the way the wind filled them made me gape.”
He was gaping frankly now and lost in his gaze, consumed by his vision of silken whiteness, like the whiteness of a body. And Ava was writing swiftly as he dictated; she had no memory of her own to match his vision and was somewhat surprised by how remote this seemed from his description of yesterday’s desire, the prom date, kissing and fondling in the back seat, an adolescent episode relived.
“I see clotheslines, and secrets on them—panties and slips and bras. Why so many? Did women need more underwear then? There seemed to have been more of it, or was it more elaborate—women perhaps making up for their outward modesty by covertly wearing seductive underwear.”
“Sometimes it peeked out,” Ava said.
“Yes.”
Underwear was never totally hidden; that was the excitement and the tease. The ghost of a bra seen through a gauzy blouse, the neat curve of panty line under tight slacks, the ambiguous straps and ribbons, the imprint of lace showing through a skirt—always pretty—the notion of the beauty, the idea of tiny pink bows hidden beneath a woman’s clothes.
“And so it seemed that underwear was a distinct and evocative form of nakedness. A woman in a slip or panties was the object of desire that a naked woman is now.” Steadman pressed his temples with his fingertips. “But only the past matters to me. Underwear was an invitation, and a greater temptation than nakedness. I can see it clearly.”
As though peering from overhead, past rooftops and telephone poles, he saw himself as a hurrying boy cutting through back yards to get to Carol Lumley’s house. The boy passed clotheslines and ducked behind them, recognizing the women’s underwear from the Sears catalogue and the Sunday newspapers. The Cronins’ daughter was a nurse, but even a nurse’s white uniform seemed like a version of underwear, and so did a man’s bathing suit.
A great fluttering whiteness on this warm day in early summer. The wind lifting the underwear also lifted the forsythia and the lilacs, the irises and the two-tone leaves of the poplars that went on spinning, the sun-struck laundry, bluish white in the deep green.
Hurrying under the clotheslines, he felt the flimsy silken things fluttering against his face, the warmth of them, their fragile beauty. He was fascinated by the variety, the shapes and sizes, some of them pink or fringed in lace, their softly rubbed seams, the stitches on bras, and the way some pieces were perfectly matched—the pairs of them in silk or satin pegged up together, the revelation of the back yards of his childhood.
Needing courage, though he had nothing else to do—school had ended for the summer—he had waited until late afternoon. Carol had said, “If you want to come over and sit on my porch I’ll probably be around. My parents might have to go out.”
The casual way she had said this was a greater inducement than if she had made a formal invitation. They were tentative exploratory words, but each one suggested a promise. The danger was that the more specific you were, the greater the blame, and the worse the sin. Vagueness was the tone of innocence, and though he was attracted to Carol Lumley he had no idea what lay beyond this attraction. He wanted to kiss her, he wanted to touch her, he wanted her to let him and for her to like it. He was fourteen years old.
He moved, hunched and watchful, like an intruder, from back yard to back yard—the Cronins’, the Halls’, the Fasullos’, the Flahertys’—on this hot bright breezy day, what his mother called a good drying day. In one yard Mrs. Fasullo was clothespinning her voluminous panties, and in another Mrs. Finn was harvesting her slips, and elsewhere the underwear flapped like flags or swelled with the wind, as if with the curves of a woman’s body.
Ducking through the last back yard, he came to the Lumleys’, and what stopped him was not Carol’s underwear—though he saw lots of it on the line amid the whole family’s underwear, from her mother’s bloomers and her father’s boxers down to the tiniest bras, the smallest panties, the half-slips, and the slips—what a small body she had. He caught sight of her blue nightgown, the kind he knew as a baby doll, and he paused and looked closely.
Trimmed with lace and pink bows, wooden clothespins holding its straps, the lovely thing hung and swayed as though Carol had just slipped out of it. He touched it and held it to his face, the blue satin warmed by the summer afternoon. And beside it, just out of reach, the matching blue panties. White satin ribbons were threaded at the shoulders, and the wide strip of lace at the hem was picked out with bows. It seemed to him both a gown and underwear, but it was designed for bed, and what mattered most to him was that it was meant to be admired by someone else.
“What the heck are you supposed to be doing?”
He was too startled to speak, and even when he saw Carol laughing at the window he was not calmed. He looked away. He felt he had revealed himself. Had she seen him clutch the baby doll and press it to his face? If so, he counted on the fact that what he had done was so absurd she would not understand it.
Anyway, she was gone from the window when he looked again, and a moment later, answering the front door, all she said was “What did you bring me?”
“Nothing.”
“And I bet you want some lemonade and all kinds of stuff.”
He shrugged and smiled and Carol made a disapproving face, what he thought of as a woman’s expression. She wore a pink blouse and white shorts, and though she was fourteen, as he was, she seemed much younger. She was thin and slight, with small breasts and fragile wrists and fingers, a body so slender it was like a young boy’s, a compact bum and skinny legs. But she had blue eyes, full lips, light curly hair—an angel’s face.
“You might as well sit over there,” she said, pointing to the porch swing, and she vanished from the doorway. She was gone some minutes, but he knew why when she returned with the glasses of lemonade and redder lips.
“You’ve got lipstick on.”
“Big deal,” she said, and pressed her lips together as if to make her lip color emphatic.
They sat apart, at either end of the porch swing. They held their glasses, and the only sound was the clink of the ice when they raised them to sip the lemonade.
“So, guess what, my parents just went out.”
He was gladdened by her saying that, and sipped again from his glass, and looked off the porch to the house opposite—the Martellos’—to scrutinize the sky above its roof. He wanted dusk to fall, he wanted shadows, he wanted to be insubstantial himself, smaller and less obvious in the dark, his face in shadow, his eyes hidden.
“Did you tell them I was coming over?”
“I forgot to.”
He laughed a little and saw that she noticed and got fi
erce.
“But I’m going to tell them,” she said, “that you came over looking for trouble.”
Horrified by the truth of what she said, he accidentally chinked the glass against his front teeth.
“Where did you tell your parents you were going?”
“Up the park. Softball game.”
The park was not far, two streets over, behind a tall fence, the game in progress and audible—shouts, cheers, the sometime slap of bat and ball meeting in a solid hit. Their revelations were like complicity, like an admission they were doing something wrong, and knew it, and were glad of it. But because he could hear the sounds of the softball game it seemed to make sitting on Carol’s porch with her less of a lie.
“What if they find out where you really are?”
“I don’t care,” he said. “I would have snuck out anyway.”
She seemed to like that. She sat back, shoving herself against the cushion, and said, “So why were you trying to steal my stuff off the clothesline?”
He shifted on the swing and said, “I wasn’t even looking at it.”
Her blue eyes narrowed on him. He could not tell what she was thinking, for the lower part of her face was in shadow. As long as there were shadows he did not care what she was thinking. And anyway, he liked her giggly teasing voice and her pretense of scolding, even her threats—they seemed to show that she liked him and wanted him to stay.
“I bet you want more lemonade.”
“I don’t care,” he said, although he did. But he was choking with desire and confusion and did not know what else to say.
She went for the lemonade and took longer than before, and when she returned he immediately smelled the perfume, stronger in the smoky dark of dusk on the porch. He loved the fragrance; he had never smelled such flowers; the odor pricked his eyes.
He thanked her for the lemonade. She tossed her curly hair. They rocked on the porch swing.
Finally she said, “My father says you’re smart.”
He turned to her. At the far end of the swing she was now mostly in shadow, except for her bright white shorts, so small on her body.
“I think you’re a sneak,” she said.
“No sah.”
“Yes sah. So why are you sneaking over here to sit on my front porch and drink lemonade?” she said. She had hitched forward and was kicking the porch floor, propelling the swing back and forth with each kick and accusation. “You know my parents are out.”
He felt guiltily that because this was so, he was a conspirator. His silence made her sharper.
“Or else you wouldn’t be here,” she said. She kicked again, a skid-squeak of her rubber sole. “And you were sneaking around the clothesline.”
This was also true, and so accurate in its blame he said, “No I wasn’t. What do I care about all that old washing? I was just taking a shortcut.”
Instead of replying, she leaned so that he could see her smiling. She kicked the floor again, hard, and sent the porch swing backward, and he felt all her insistence in the movement.
“Please don’t tell them.”
“I’m going to,” she said, and it sounded like gunnah. “I’m going to blab everything.”
Now he wanted to go, but he could not rise from the moving swing, and when he finally got a grip on the arm of it and tried to hoist himself, she was talking again in that same teasing tone.
“I bet you want to come right into my house.”
“No,” he said, his voice breaking, and turned the small word into a squawk. He just wanted to leave. The day had gone dark, though he hadn’t noticed it until now.
“Then why did you come all the way over here?” And seeing that he was flustered and at a loss for a reply, she laughed softly.
The lights had gone on in the park, illuminating the treetops, and he still heard the sounds of the softball game, the cries of the spectators, the shouts of the players—easy to tell apart. He was thinking of all that passion and noise, just a game being played, so innocent, so blameless, an honest ball game under the lights. And he knew that he was doing something wrong, enacting a secret in the shadows he could never explain or justify.
“So why didn’t you bring me anything?”
He was silent. Another ball was smacked, another cheer: the players were harmless and happy and he was wicked.
“Because I got something for you. Want to see it?” She did not wait for a reply. “Stay here.”
She went inside and closed the doors—the screen door, the solid inner door, and he heard the thunk of the bolt. He remained sitting, wondering whether anyone could see him. He felt conspicuous and impatient and sensed he should go home. After a few minutes he rang the doorbell to tell Carol he was leaving. The bell was loud, but even so, there was no answer, not even footsteps. He waited, feeling trapped by the silence. Like a gasp, an expelled breath, a light inside went off.
And then came the metallic swallowing of the door bolt and a movement of the inner door. He could not see past the screen—only the outline of the doorframe, the darkness within. He plucked open the screen door and saw nothing but the dim hallway.
“Go in there,” she spoke from behind the door. He could see only her bare arm pointing to the living room. “Wait a little while. Then you have to find me.”
As soon as his back was turned she hurried away. He did as he was told, continued into the living room, his heart pounding, excited by the suspense. The living room was shadowy, lit by the street. He sat, and fumbled, then stood and listened, tremulous, his hands damp.
Her muffled voice came from somewhere upstairs in the house. “I’m ready.”
He went to the stairway and listened, and hearing nothing more, he climbed the stairs, looked into one room and then another, all in darkness, but he could make out the shapes of chairs, the lumps of beds, the glint of mirrors.
He entered a room at the front of the house, and though there was more light here from the street lamps, he did not see Carol at first because she was motionless, standing upright, almost posing. But he could see what she was wearing: short blue baby-doll pajamas and a pair of fluffy slippers. Her hair was fixed in two high bobbing brush-like ponytails, her shoulders were bare, her skin so pale as to be almost ghostly. The diaphanous blue cloth shimmered in the scanty, slanted light.
“Do you like it?” she said. “I dressed up just for you. I bet you don’t even care.”
She twirled before him and set the baby doll in motion, and then approached him and took his hand and brought him close to her, so close he could feel her but hardly see her, as if she were embarrassed to be stared at. And liking the darkness he clutched her, the silken cloth in his fingers, the warmth of her body, the odd warm saltiness of her damp flesh in the room that was like the promise of sex, the burnt perfume on her skin. She began to kiss him in a way that was new to him, sucking on his lips.
She moved from his mouth and said, “You better not tell anybody.”
Then, before he could say anything, she kissed him again, her kisses like promises. And as he returned her kisses, answering back, he opened his eyes and saw the room beyond her more clearly—the chair, the small bed, the neat row of costumed dolls on the dresser. He led her a few steps to the bed and pushed a cloth doll out of the way and sat down, hugging her, still kissing her, tasting the saltiness of her moist neck, the lemonade in her saliva.
“Lie down.”
“No,” she said, in a tone of caution that was almost fear.
But she did not stop kissing him, and a moment later, when he took her free hand and pressed it against his lap, she let him guide her fingers. Then all the initiative was hers, as she touched him, rubbed him with her small hand and finally unzipped him and took hold of him, pumping, her whole hand enclosing him. The thought came to him that she knew a great deal and was unafraid.
She certainly knew more than he did—he could tell that from her grip, her confident fingers wrapped around his stiffened cock. And her other hand, too. Her boldness star
tled him, for he had hardly touched her body. He knew with a kind of dread that he was trespassing. He had entered a new country that was strange and dark and sinful and pleasurable, full of shadows and delights, and he was here for good, was possessed, was changed, would never return. Being here with Carol, kissing the lemony taste of her lips, her skinny hands bewitching him, was not a choice—there was no alternative. He loved it and knew he was damned.
She sighed when he touched her, slipping his hand onto her thigh, and fondled the lace of her baby doll, which was like part of her nakedness. She sighed again, and he knew her sigh meant yes. She parted her legs and allowed his hand to rise. Groping there, fumbling in the dark, was for him like uncovering a secret being, another person, a hidden woman, her scalp and cheeks, her lips, her mouth—everything but eyes—and when his fingers traced and hesitated at the tiny mouth of this damp-faced creature, she opened her legs wider.
“Put it inside,” she said, as she kissed him. He slipped one fingertip in, and she said, “More.”
Even unseen he could feel the lip-like folds glisten as his finger dipped into the slick pocket mouth of flesh. Sliding closer to him, crushing her nightgown against him, she kissed him harder, put her tongue into his mouth, showing him how, until he did the same to her.
She was leading him, teaching him. He used his tongue as he stroked her with his hand, in the same motion as she was stroking him. She was rocking, helping his hand, and in this fierce syncopation of desire he could feel her small damp body squirming beneath the satin, like a captive animal, a mewing cat trapped and twisted in silk. The lights from the street made the cloth glow. The bedroom, not so dark now, was fragrant with her perfume and her dolls.
He was looking at one of her Barbie dolls sitting flat on the dresser, its long legs straight out and slightly parted to keep it upright, when, pumping him and taking light skimming breaths, Carol gripped him, seeming to sense his whole body go rigid, as though concentrating. Then a sweet wound within him swelled and burst in a single stroke, and when he convulsed and clutched himself he also clutched her sticky searching hands.