Secrets in the Shadows

  the ties and waving them off.

  I was truly like the bird falling from the nest.

  Would I fly?

  Aunt Zipporah was confident I would.

  Nevertheless, she did her best to cheer me up the rest

  of the day, insisting that we go shop for those clothes

  we had promised each other. I had a fun time helping

  her find things in style to wear rather than wearing

  what my stepmother Rachel called "Zipporah's rebel

  uniforms." She even contemplated going to the beauty

  parlor and getting a different, more up-to-date

  hairstyle.

  "You should," I said. Then, realizing I sounded

  like I was criticizing her in Rachel's style, I added, "I

  mean, it might make you feel better about yourself!" "Look at who's talking. I tell you what. If you'll

  go, I'll go," she added. "We'll do the whole enchilada--nails, pedicure, facials. What do you say?" I laughed and nodded. The salon had openings immediately, so she made our appointments and we spoiled ourselves for the rest of the day. When we returned to the Cafe, Tyler was amused and even im

  pressed with Aunt Zipporah's and my new looks. "I'm probably going to get new business

  because of you two," he told us. "Those truck drivers

  who think we're too sixties and distrust us will be

  coming in for sure now."

  The three of us laughed. My uncle and aunt

  were truly an antidote for sadness. It was impossible

  to be either unhappy or depressed around them long.

  My grandmother's questions had put a little doubt in

  my mind, but this was a good move for me, I told

  myself.

  We had a very busy Saturday night and I had

  little time to think .about Duncan. I did look for him

  from time to time and thought it strange not to have

  seen him all day and now all night. All of us worked

  until closing, and when we went home, we went right

  to bed.

  "Now, Alice," Tyler said on Sunday, "I want

  you to take Mondays and Tuesdays off completely to

  work on your art. Those are slow days for us in the

  cafe, and it would be a waste of your time to have you

  here standing around."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Absolutely. Missy and Cassie could use the

  extra money, too," he added.

  "Besides," Aunt Zipporah said, "we're

  depending on you coming up with a great picture for

  the cafe." "I'm not that good yet."

  "We'll let the patrons decide. In fact, we'll put a

  price on it and see if anyone buys it," Uncle Tyler

  said.

  I couldn't deny that the prospect of my actually

  selling something I had painted was intriguing. Later

  that day, when things grew slow at the cafe, I agreed

  to take Aunt Zipporah's car and drive home so I could

  get started on setting up the studio.

  "Don't forget to make yourself something for

  dinner. I'll check the kitchen to be sure you did," she

  warned.

  As soon as I got there, I hurried back to the

  studio.

  My grandfather hadn't known how I wanted

  anything set up, so he had placed everything in one

  corner. I wanted to be working as close as I could to

  the two windows on the east side of the building.

  They looked out at the forest and tall, wild grasses. It

  wasn't dissimilar from the view I had looking out of

  the Doral House attic windows.

  I had some cleanup to do before I could get

  myself organized and actually get started. There was

  still some of the granite the sculptor had used and

  chips of stone all about the floor. I first had to sweep

  up all that. I brought over the brooms, mop, pail, rags

  and soaps, including the window cleaner. Since the

  studio hadn't been used for years, there were

  spiderwebs and, in some corners, tiny twigs and hay,

  where field mice and the like had established their

  homes. When I tried the lights, I realized some of the

  bulbs were missing and most were blown out. I'd have

  to tend to all that before it became too dark.

  Although the kitchenette had running water and

  a working gas range, much of it was rusted and grimy. I quickly realized it would take quite a while to

  get the studio livable. Now I appreciated the time off

  Uncle Tyler was giving to me. I got started as soon as

  I could and was so into the work, I didn't hear

  anything.

  Suddenly, as if he'd been a ghost, I turned and

  saw Duncan standing in the doorway. He had his

  hands on his hips. He was wearing jeans, black boots

  and a tight, dark-blue short-sleeve shirt. He appeared

  taller, broader, more like a grown man than a teenage

  boy. He panned the studio and nodded.

  "Nice," he said.

  "How long have you been there?"

  "Little while, not long."

  "Where have you been?"

  "I had work to do on the farm," he replied

  quickly. "I see you've-changed your hair. It's nice." "Thank you."

  "It looks like you have a lot to do here," he said

  and walked over to my art materials. My grandfather

  had stacked some of my finished paintings against the

  wall. Duncan looked at them. "This is all your work?" "Yes."

  "It's very good," he said.

  "Really?"

  He smiled. "Okay. I'm no art expert, but they

  look good to me. Have you shown them to your art

  teacher?" he asked with a wry smile.

  "Not those, but he's seen my work in school."

  "Anyone else seen these?"

  "No."

  "They should be seen by the public. You know,

  like getting poems published?"

  "All right. You've made your point, big shot." He laughed and walked to the table, sorting

  through the cleaning materials.

  "I'll start with the windows, inside and out," he

  said. "Okay?"

  "Yes, thank you."

  "Let's get going," he said and started to work. We were both so into it that we barely spoke.

  Every once in a while, I glanced over at him and saw

  how intently he went at everything and with such

  confidence. After doing the windows, he found my

  uncle Tyler's tools in the toolshed, and he took the

  stove apart and cleaned it carefully. He replaced the

  dead bulbs, checked out all the electricity and opened

  and cleaned a drain in the sink. He had to readjust the

  inside of the toilet, because when the water valve was

  turned to on, it wouldn't stop running. He corrected a

  leak in the sink faucet as well.

  "You're a plumber, an electrician and a

  carpenter built into one person," I said. "Have you

  done this kind of work for someone?"

  "I told you. I take care of our property. I had to

  learn how to do all these things because my father left

  us. Some of it I did learn from plumbers and

  electricians who came around before I could handle

  things myself, and some of it I learned from manuals.

  Our property is one of the older ones in this area, so a

  lot breaks down."

  "I was told it was once a chicken farm?" "Not chickens, eggs," he said. "The coops are

  still standing, but we don't use th
em for anything. It's

  a big property on Dunn Road as soon as you make the

  turn off Stark. We just keep up the house."

  "Well, that shouldn't be so much work." He smiled. "Sometimes I think my mother

  breaks things deliberately so have to stay around to fix

  them:'

  "Really? Why is she like that?"

  "Maybe she's just lonely," he said.

  "She has no friends of her own?"

  "Just people involved with the church, but they

  aren't friends the way you and I would think of

  friends."

  "She never met anyone else? Any other man?" I

  asked. I recalled what Aunt Zipporah had suggested

  about his mother and the pastor.

  He shook his head. If it was true, he didn't want

  to admit to it, I thought.

  "Maybe she will," I suggested.

  "I doubt it. She should have been a nun. She

  lives like one anyway."

  I wanted to say I was sorry, but I didn't know if that was right to say. When he talked about her, he didn't sound angry, just resigned. This was his mother; this was his life. There was nothing more to do about

  it.

  I looked at the time and saw we had been

  working for hours and hours.

  "I have to make something for dinner or my

  aunt will be angry. Can you stay for dinner?" He looked at me with an expression of

  confusion, as if such a possibility not only never

  occurred to him but also didn't exist in the real world.

  He revealed why.

  "I never ate in anyone else's home but my

  own."

  "Never?"

  "Well, no one else's except our pastor's, but

  when and if we're there, Mother does most of the

  cooking anyway. She doesn't like going to the homes

  of the other church people," he said. "My mother isn't

  comfortable eating at someone else's table, and she

  always complains about the way some of the other

  women cook and bake for the church."

  "Well, do you want to have dinner with me?" "Yes," he said. "Yes," he repeated more firmly,

  as if he had been arguing about it with himself. I had

  to laugh. "What?" he asked.

  "You didn't even ask what we'll have to eat."

  "Oh. What will we have to eat?"

  "I don't know. Let's go look in the kitchen," I

  said, and we headed out and to the house.

  We entered through the rear and I took him

  down the hallway, past my bedroom. The door was

  opened, so I paused.

  "That's where I sleep," I said, nodding at the

  doorway.

  He approached it and looked in, but he didn't go

  in. He leaned over to peer into it.

  "It's a nice-size room."

  "We added some things since I came and will

  be spending the next school year here. My aunt wants

  me to think about doing something with the walls,

  paint, wallpaper, making it brighter, happier." He nodded. "Be easy to paint it."

  "Would you help me do that?"

  His eyes widened. "Paint your bedroom?" "You just said it would be easy to do it, didn't

  you?"

  "Yeah, but . . . it's your bedroom."

  "So? I can't have anyone else work on it? That's

  stupid."

  He looked in again, still keeping himself out of

  the room, even leaning more awkwardly to look to the

  right or left.

  "You can go in if you want to and look around."

  "Now, I've seen enough," he said. He looked a little

  frightened.

  "You think going into a girl's bedroom will

  somehow corrupt you?"

  He spun on me as if I had slapped him. "You

  making fun of me?"

  "No, but you're acting so--"

  "Weird?" he said. "Right, I'm weird. I forgot."

  He started back toward the rear door.

  "Duncan, stop it. I didn't say you were weird." "It's all right. It doesn't matter. I just realized I

  can't stay for dinner anyway. My mother made a roast.

  See you," he said, and before I could say another

  word, he was out the door.

  Nevertheless, I charged out after him. He

  practically ran to his scooter parked in front. "Duncan," I called as he turned it around to

  head down and out the driveway. He kept going.

  "Thanks for helping me in the studio," I shouted. He just lifted his hand to acknowledge and sped

  up.

  "Damn you!" I screamed after him. "You took

  me to the river. You kissed me. If I thought you were

  that weird, why would I let you do that? Why are you

  running away now?"

  Of course, he couldn't hear me. He was too far

  away, but I needed to shout it after him. I stood there

  long after he was gone, my head spinning because of

  his radical mood swings. After another moment, I

  went back into the house and paused at my bedroom

  door. What could possibly have frightened him about

  this room so much? I wondered and then saw a pair of

  my panties on the back of a chair and a bra dangling

  beside it. I had forgotten to put them into the laundry

  hamper. Aside from the dainty curtains, there was

  nothing else that really stamped this room a girl's

  room. I couldn't imagine why the sight of a pair of

  panties and a bra would put the shudders into a boy as

  old as Duncan anyway.

  Suddenly, I realized how tired and grimy I felt

  from hours and hours of cleaning the studio. I needed

  a good shower, perhaps not so much because of all the

  work as because of the frustration I was feeling. There

  was something about warm water pounding down

  over my head and shoulders that was reviving.

  Afterward, I wrapped a towel around myself, then scrubbed my hair dry with another towel. I know I was muttering to myself aloud the whole time. Anyone who heard me would surely think I had gone mad. When I stepped out of the bathroom and walked

  back to my bedroom, I nearly jumped out of my skin There he was, sitting at my small desk, leaning

  over and staring down at the floor.

  "Damn!" I screamed. "You frightened me, Duncan.

  "I'm sorry," he said and slowly raised his head.

  The sight of me wrapped only in a big bath towel

  seized his full attention, but I didn't think about it. 1

  was more angry now than anything.

  "Why did you run out of here like a lunatic?" I

  said. He didn't respond. "It wasn't very nice to act like

  that. You're like a firecracker sometimes. I'm afraid to

  walk too fast around you, much less say anything.

  Well? Why did you run off?"

  "I was afraid to stay any longer," he said,

  looking out the window.

  "Why?"

  "I was just afraid."

  "You're not making any sense, Duncan. What

  were you afraid of? Me?"

  "Not you so much as myself."

  I stared at him a moment. What was he telling

  me? Was he capable of harming someone? Had he? I

  didn't recall anything in his poetry that suggested it. "Can you explain that, please?"

  "I told her I kissed you," he said, still looking

  out the window and not at me.

  "What? You told who you kissed me? Your

  mother?"

  He nodded, and I grimaced as if I had just swallowed sour milk.

  "Why w
ould you tell her that?"

  "I've always told her what I do. Ever since . . ."

  He turned back to me, his face different, harder, more

  like the granite in the studio. "Sin doesn't just happen,

  you know. It has to fester inside you, grow, take hold.

  You've got to stop it when it's just starting, when it's a

  seedling inside your heart. The way to do that is to

  reveal it, confess it, expose it," he recited. "Once you

  do that, it loses its power, its hold over you." He sounded like some hell and brimstone

  preacher.

  "What are you saying? You think it was a sin to

  kiss me?"

  "It could lead to a sin," he said.

  "That's ridiculous. Looking at someone, hen

  could lead to a sin."

  "It can," he said, nodding.

  "Duncan, get real. All we did is kiss, and if two

  people feel something for each other, it's not a sin or

  even the start of one."

  He stared at me. I tightened the towel around

  Me. "I wanted to do more than just kiss you," he said.

  "I still do. That's why I ran off."

  "So? Big deal. If you didn't, I'd think you

  weren't interested in me, and if I didn't want you to,

  I'd let you know anyway. And fast," I added. His eyes widened.

  "Where are you getting these wacky ideas?"

  "They're not wacky," he shot back.

  "If you ask me," I continued, "your mother is

  driving you crazy. You already told me she

  deliberately finds ways to keep you at home. Wait a

  minute," I said, realizing something, "is that why I

  hadn't seen you for days? Because you told her you

  kissed me?"

  He looked away quickly.

  "That's sick, Duncan. You're old enough to

  know what you should and shouldn't do, and so am I.

  We're not children anymore. She shouldn't treat you

  like one."

  "She doesn't treat me like a child."

  "Really?"

  "She doesn't mean to be mean to me. She's

  afraid."

  "Why? I just don't understand it. Why is she so

  afraid for you? Have you done something terrible?" I

  asked.

  "No. Not yet."

  "Not yet?" I nearly laughed aloud. "Why do

  you say that? Do you think you definitely will?" "What, Duncan? What are you?"

  "I'm a child of sin," he said.

  He looked down quickly. I stood there a

  moment, and then I walked to my bed and sat. "A child of sin?"

  "Yes. It's why you were drawn to me and why I

  was drawn to you and still am," he continued, as if he

  had made an incredible discovery. "We're the same.