Secrets in the Shadows

  I knew Aunt Zipporah would be excited for me. I wondered how Rachel and my father would react to the news. Would she think or say my new romantic success was all because of her contributions? Helping to decide my new wardrobe? Helping me put on makeup? Maybe that would be good; maybe she wouldn't want me out of their lives so much.

  Craig was there right on time the next morning. Amazingly, his first question for me was, What did my grandparents think of his asking me to the prom? I countered with, What did his parents think of it?

  "I didn't get a chance to talk to them about it all yet," he said diplomatically.

  "Neither did I," I told him, and he looked at me, surprised, and then smiled.

  "What do we care what adults think of it anyway? It's our decision, right?"

  "Right."

  However, in the small community in which we both lived, our seeing each other wasn't going to be unnoticed and unreported long. I was sure he knew that even better than I did. He was more in the thick of it all. We were spending every free moment we had in school together, whether it was moving from class to class or our lunch period. On Thursday, he had an important away game, and I went home on the bus. It was the first time all week we were separated. I could feel the eyes and the attention on me all the time.

  Some of the other girls besides Charlene Lewis began to talk to me as well. It was mostly friendly banter about something I was wearing, some lipstick or some homework. Sprinkled in their conversation were comments about Craig. I could see the envy on the faces of some of the girls and how some still couldn't understand his attraction to me. In every way they could, they tried to learn how I could win the attention of one of the school's most popular boys. I know I frustrated them with my silence or cryptic short replies. However, for the most part, when I wasn't with Craig, I tried to stay to myself. I didn't trust them, didn't even trust Charlene enough to reveal any of my feelings or thoughts about Craig.

  Word got out before the end of the week that he had asked me to be his prom date, and that started a whole new wave of conversations in the girls' room or physical education class. Suddenly, it was important for them to know what I planned on wearing, where we planned to go right afterward and whether or not we were going to go in the limousine. They all wanted very much to know if I would be permitted to be out all night and go to the picnic the next day. I didn't want to tell them that I was actually still thinking about going at all. I had yet to tell my grandmother and grandfather, so I didn't have any answers for them.

  "I'm not sure yet," was my stock reply.

  Craig asked me to go for pizza and a movie with him on Friday. It would be our first formal date. I decided that if all went well, I would tell my grandparents about the prom the following morning. The team had won its away game, which meant our school was in the play-offs for the league title. Everyone was in a mood to celebrate. I didn't know what we would really be doing Friday night until Craig picked me up and told me that our plans had changed.

  "Mickey Lesman's having an open house to celebrate the play-offs," he told me as soon as I got into his car. "Most of the team's going. His parents are off on a holiday, and his little sister's sleeping over at a friend's house. You cool with it?"

  I shrugged. How could I tell him I didn't know what to expect? This would be the first open house party I ever attended.

  "We could still go for pizza and a movie, if you want," he said. "Or we go to the party and if we don't like it, we could always leave," he added.

  I knew it was what he wanted to do, and my own curiosity about it was strong enough not to say no. "It's fine," I said.

  Mickey Lesman's house was a sprawling, modern, ranch-style, rich-looking home outside of the hamlet of Hurleyville, which wasn't much bigger than Sandburg, where I lived. Like most country roads, Mickey's road had no streetlights, and the houses were well spaced apart, some home owners having ten or so acres. Mickey's father was the owner of a major department store. By the time we arrived, there were at least two dozen cars parked in front of the house. The moment we stepped out of Craig's car, we could hear the loud music. I felt the ground rumbling beneath my feet with the vibrations from his big outside speakers. It was lucky the neighbors were far away, I thought.

  Whenever my grandfather and I rode these back roads and saw these homes at nighttime, I often thought about the similarities with the way we lived, especially how I lived. To me people wrapped their homes around themselves and, like the citizens of a fortress town in the Middle Ages, pulled up their drawbridges. Instead of looking out of the windows at the world and imagining all sorts of things going on outside in the darkness, they sat around television sets and looked at what someone else had imagined for them.

  My grandfather told me that when he was young, a few years younger than I was, he and his family listened to the radio and had to create their own pictures in their own minds from the words and sounds they heard.

  "People," he said, "used to sit around campfires before that and tell each other stories. Nothing's changed except the delivery system. What's important, what seems to matter the most, is not being alone in the dark."

  I listened and looked at him and thought, But Grandpa, that's where I've been most of my life, alone in the dark.

  I so wanted not to be alone anymore. Maybe I wanted it so much that finally I was willing to take risks, and maybe, just maybe that was what happened to my mother. She had been alone and she had put her trust in someone, and she had been betrayed. Why else would she have been so creative and dependent on that imagination of hers? It was all she had. It was her personal fortress, and when she pretended, imagined, created, she pulled up her drawbridge and felt safe.

  "You look worried," Craig told me as we stepped into the glow of the house lights. "Don't be. They're just a bunch of stupid kids like us."

  "I'm not worried about them," I said. "And I'm not a stupid kid."

  He laughed and put his arm around my shoulders just before we entered the house.

  The sight of us seemed to stop people in midsentence, or mid-laugh, or even in the middle of a kiss. There was a pause and then some cheers.

  The girls gathered around me when Craig went to talk to his teammates, everyone talking at once. Suddenly, everyone wanted to be my friend, to give me advice about dating, about clothes and about boys in general. I felt like a foreign exchange student who was finally being accepted. With an amused smile painted on my lips, I listened and nodded but said little. One girl, Marlene Ross, either jealous of the attention I was getting or simply frustrated by my noncommittal nods and smiles, burst out with, "So why don't you tell us what finally brought you into the twenty-first century?"

  Everyone was quiet, waiting for my response.

  "Probably the same thing that brought you, Marlene, the union of a sperm and an egg. Don't you know about that stuff yet?"

  There was a pause, as if everyone had and was still holding her breath, and then a roar of laughter that sent Marlene and her red face off to pout. Craig and his friends heard the commotion, and he came hurrying back to me.

  "What's up?"

  "Nothing. Just girl chatter," I said, suddenly full of self-confidence.

  He raised his eyebrows, glanced at the other girls and then put his arm around my waist.

  "Let's get something to eat and drink," he said.

  A few dozen assorted pizzas had been delivered, and everyone flocked to the table. The boys were drinking beer mostly, but some had harder alcohol and the party began to expand out of the house, to the backyard where the Lesmans had their pool, now all lit. It wasn't really warm enough to swim, but I could see that before the night ended, a few would be pushed in or even jump in. There was already some horseplay going on with just that purpose in mind.

  Craig and I stayed off to the side to watch, as if we had been sent by some newspaper to report on the behavior of some primitive tribe. The music was piped out to the backyard, too, so that the partygoers were dancing on the patio, I was nervous aga
in when Craig asked me to dance. By myself, sometimes up in the attic, I played tapes and danced in front of the mirror there, but I wasn't confident about my moves and rhythm. I knew we were still the center of attention, me especially, and it was impossible not to be selfconscious.

  "You need to relax, Alice," he told me. "You're too stiff, uptight."

  He suggested I drink some vodka and orange juice that had been prepared.

  "Just a little can't hurt us," he said. "They're called screwdrivers. There's nothing like a nice buzz."

  Except for the glasses of wine 1 had at dinner with my grandparents from time to time, my experience with alcohol was nonexistent. My grandfather urged my grandmother to let me taste the wine so I would learn my own boundaries in the house, rather than on the streets, as he put it, and she agreed. I enjoyed some of it but far from craved it.

  The vodka was so well disguised in the orange juice that I was actually disappointed. Fooled, I drank more, and, after a while, I did loosen up, laughed more and. got into the music. I remember thinking, I'm having fun. Finally, I'm having fun.

  When the first boy was heaved into the pool, Craig looked at me and whispered, "Maybe we should make a graceful, quiet exit. The natives are getting restless."

  A part of me wanted to stay and see the silly behavior, but I knew he was being responsible and protective. I nodded, and we slowly slipped around the now boisterous crowd of partygoers and through a side door that led us out of the house. He took my hand, and we hurried through the shadows down to his car.

  "Are you all right to drive?" I asked him. I was feeling a little dizzy, and I thought he had drunk the same number of glasses of vodka and orange juice that I had.

  "Sure. I'm fine," he said. "The drinks weren't really that strong. I'm not that crazy about drinking too much anyway. I hate hangovers, don't you?"

  "I never had one," I said. "I hope I don't have one tomorrow either."

  "I doubt it. You didn't drink that much," he assured me.

  We drove off. It wasn't that late yet, but even though my grandfather hadn't set down a specific time for me to be home, I knew he and my grandmother would be waiting up for me.

  "Are you taking me home?"

  "This early? It's not even eleven-thirty," he said. "Besides, I want to show you one of my favorite places," he added, making a turn and then speeding up. A little while after that, he turned into a driveway in the woods and we bounced over a dirt road.

  "Where are we going?" I cried, laughing.

  "Just a little bit farther," he said, and we came out on the edge of a lake. The sliver of moonlight from a quarter moon threaded through some clouds and sliced the top of the still water, drawing a gold line from one side of the lake to the other. He shut off the engine and nodded at the scene. "Well? Am I right or am I right?"

  "It's pretty, Craig. What's out there on the water?" I asked, squinting at some dark blobs gently rising and falling.

  "Ducks, I expect, maybe geese."

  "I-low did you find this spot? Anyone else would not have noticed that driveway."

  "I went fishing here a few times with my father. We have a boat we pull on a trailer hitch."

  "Are you very close with your father?"

  "Yeah, sorta," he said. "He's a workaholic, so whenever he wants to take off some time, I go. He hasn't been but to one baseball game this year, however. My mother never comes," he said. "She doesn't like the dust and sitting on the hard wooden bleachers. Dainty. Are you dainty?" he asked, turning to me.

  "Hardly," I said. "Maybe I should be," I added, and he laughed.

  "You realize that now we're really in a car. No pretending on a sofa in an attic. This is the real thing. Does that make any difference?"

  "Why should it?" I asked. What was he getting at? I wondered.

  "I just want you to be as comfortable with me here as you are up in the attic," he said.

  "I'm absolutely fine," I said. Even though I knew he was just teasing me, I didn't like the implication that I had to live in my imagination to be comfortable. I wasn't even sure he knew what he was implying.

  "Let's see," he challenged and leaned over to kiss me. His lips moved quickly over my cheek and down to my neck. I felt his hands travel up under my blouse, over my back to my bra clip to unfasten it and then he lifted my blouse. I started to turn away.

  "Hey, c'mon," he said. "I hit a real triple this time."

  My head was spinning a little more, and suddenly I felt a churning in my stomach. I was uncomfortable as well because of the way he was twisting and turning over me. I had an acidic burn in my throat and then suddenly gagged.

  "Are you all right?"

  "No," I said and reached quickly for the door handle. I nearly fell out when the door opened, but I got my feet down quickly and put my hand out to rest my palm against the car so I could steady myself. I couldn't help it. I began to throw up. He leaped out of the car and came around to hold me.

  "Oh damn," he said. "We ate and drank too quickly maybe."

  I shook my head and threw up some more. My stomach ached. It wasn't the speed of drinking; it was how much, I thought. Finally, I settled down and he sat me back in the car.

  "How are you doing?"

  "I'm okay. Sorry," I said.

  "That's all right. I hate booze actually. I'll have something better next time," he said.

  I wasn't listening closely. I was trying to get my head from turning like a top. 1 closed my eyes and lay back on the seat.

  "We'll ride around a while until you feel better," he said. "Keep the window down to get fresh air. I don't want to deliver you home like this. Your grandfather will have me strung up or something."

  I didn't say anything. He was right, of course. I couldn't walk into the house looking like a mess. We drove out and cruised very slowly back toward Sandburg. After a while, I felt my stomach settle down and my head clear. I fixed my clothing, and then we stopped and I got out and walked a bit.

  "I'm okay," I announced. "Really, I'm fine."

  "The good thing about vodka," he said, "is you don't reek from it. But that's a no-no from now on," he added. "I have to take care of you. No booze. We have a pretty heavy date coming up."

  I got back into the car and he drove me home, apologizing continually.

  "It wasn't your fault, Craig. I didn't have to keep drinking that stuff."

  "Now, I should have paid more attention to you instead of the idiots around us," he insisted. "Are you sure you're all right now?"

  "Yes. Sorry," I said.

  "Nothing to be sorry about. I enjoyed being with you."

  He kissed me good night when we pulled into the driveway, and then he backed out and I walked slowly to the front door, hoping that my grandparents were at least waiting up in their bedroom so I wouldn't come under close scrutiny. I still had a little headache, and my stomach felt very weak.

  I was lucky. My grandfather called to me from the bedroom as I climbed the stairway.

  "How was the movie?" he asked. I paused at their door and looked in. Both of them had been reading in bed, probably to keep their minds from dwelling on me.

  I saw no reason to lie.

  "We didn't go to a movie. One of Craig's teammates had a party to celebrate the team getting into the play-offs."

  "Who's that?" he asked.

  "Mickey Lesman."

  "Oh yeah. First baseman, right?"

  "How do you know that?" I asked, amazed

  "I follow the team in the papers. Nice party?"

  "It was okay. They started to get a little wild, throwing each other into the pool, so Craig decided it was time for us to go."

  That was all true.

  "Really? Very mature of him. Good," my grandfather said.

  My grandmother was just listening to us, looking at me.

  I decided to give them everything.

  "Craig asked me to be his prom date. I said yes," I told them.

  "Prom date, huh? Well now, that's something, right, Elaine?"

/>   "Yes," she said. "That's very nice, Alice. I'll help you find a nice gown. When is it?" she asked, and I gave her the date.

  "We're all going to stay out all night and then go to a picnic at Bear Mountain."

  "All night?"

  "Now Elaine, kids can do that. We did, remember?"

  She was quiet.

  "I'd just like to know all the details," she said. "I'm sure we will," he told her. "Right, Alice?" "Yes," I said.

  "Prom, huh?" my grandfather said. "I remember I looked like a penguin in my tuxedo. I was so stiff in it that I could have been mistaken for a storefront mannequin. I'm sure Craig will look a lot better," he added.

  I said good night and went to my bedroom. I didn't realize how tired I was until I lowered my head to the pillow. I barely closed my eyes before I fell asleep. I woke once in the night because of a nightmare in which I heard footsteps above me, and then I slept later than usual the following morning. When I did wake up, I had a dull headache and did the best I could to hide it from my grandparents.

  My grandmother was excited about my going to the prom now and talked to me at breakfast about the various dress stores she wanted us to try. Since she had the weekend off, I couldn't very well postpone a shopping safari, even though I felt I could easily sleep away the day. I was more than grateful now to Rachel for showing me how to brighten up my face. It surely needed the makeup, lipstick and eyeliner. My grandfather was going to spend part of his Saturday catching up at his office, so for the first time in a long while, it was going to be only my grandmother and myself.

  She couldn't wait to call Aunt Zipporah and give her the news about the prom, however. Before we left, I spoke to her on the phone.

  "I never heard Mom so excited for you, Alice."

  "I think she's more nervous about it all than excited."

  "She's both. That's her job. Is he a nice boy?"

  "Yes," I said. "I think so, but I'm not exactly the one to ask about dates and dating."

  "Yes, but you have good instincts, Alice!"

  "I don't know why everyone thinks that," I replied.