(29 page)

Say it, she willed. Say you love me. You want me.

But all he said was, “So long, kiddo.”

Annie, moving away from him, toward the ramp to the plane, half hated him for that, for kissing her, for letting her go off to Paris, where she knew she would dream about that kiss for weeks and weeks, not knowing exactly what it meant.

Laurel stared at the naked man lying in front of her.

Dark hair down to his shoulders, a bandana knotted about his forehead, his lean muscled torso just a shade lighter than the burnt-sienna pastel crayon she was using to sketch him with. And … down below … his … well, she’d never seen a man who was so … but then, what did she know? How many naked men had she ever examined up close? Male models like this one, sure, but the last one they’d had in Life Drawing had been on the skinny side, and pale, his pinkish-grey penis nestled like a toadstool in the downy moss between his legs.

This guy-he looked about her age-there was something about him … an edge … a humming tautness … like a wirl cable stretched too tight. She sketched furiously, usingibold, sweeping strokes. There. She was getting it now. A little more definition here … and just a suggestion of shadow there …

Laurel found herself thinking of Joe, imagining it was Joe she was drawing, the shadowed curve of his rib cage she was now smudging with her thumb. In less than an hour, as soon as this class was over and she could catch

220

EILEEN GOUDGE

a ride into town, she’d be on a bus heading home. And with Annie in Paris, Laurel, for the first time, would have the apartment … and Joe … all to herself. When she’d called last night to let him know she was coming, he hadn’t answered-probably working late-and now she prayed that tonight, when she got there, he’d be home.

She felt heat gather at the base of her throat.

Would things be different between them now? Could he begin to see her in a new light?

I’ll make him see. I’ll show him how much I love him, how I’d be so right for him.

Thinking of just how that might be accomplished, Laurel felt the heat in her collarbone begin to spread upward, fanning into her cheeks. She forced herself to concentrate on the drawing clipped to her easel, and on the model. Stretched languidly on his side on a sheet-covered bench in the center of the classroom, his head supported on one elbow and one knee hiked up with his foot resting on the bench, he made her think of Tarzan, sunning himself on a rock. Or Tonto …

Hi-ho, Silver!

Laurel, suppressing a giggle, pressed too hard against the paper and felt her crayon break apart with a loud snap. In the intense silence of the classroom, several of her fellow students glanced up from their easels. Laurel felt herself blushing, and when she looked back at the model, she saw that he was staring at her, his tea-colored Apache eyes boring into her.

He looked familiar somehow, but she couldn’t quite place him. Those eyes. Was he a student? He wasn’t in any of her classes, but she might have seen him around campus.

Then she remembered, yes, she had seen him … last week in front of the student center, passing out flyers for an antiwar rally. But if he was a student, what was he doing modelling for Life Drawing? Maybe it was like the twice-a-week tutoring she did at the local high school, something to earn pocket money.

After class, as she was putting away her pencils and pastel crayons in her box, the boy sauntered over.

SUCH DEVOTED SISTERS 221

“Not bad.” Flicking his hair off his shoulders, he stared at the sketch she’d done of him.

“Thanks.” Laurel was relieved to see he’d put on some clothes-patched jeans and a dark blue T-shirt. Even so, having him so close, chatting with her … after she’d been staring for forty-five minutes at his … well, all of him … it made her feel weird somehow. And she still couldn’t shake the feeling that she knew him from somewhere, and not just from having seen him that one time in front of Schine.

“You’re trying to remember where you know me from, but you haven’t figured it out yet, have you?”

Laurel started and looked up. He was staring at her with the same bold expression as before. How had he known?

“I’ll give you two guesses … Beanie.” His full lips flattened in a smile, and he tilted his head back so that all she could see of his slitted black eyes was a teasing glint.

“Beanie” … her old nickname from grade school. It hit her then: The little boy in Miss Rodriguez’ sixthgrade class who’d made her life so miserable. “Jesus!’ she cried. “God, no wonder I didn’t recognize you. Last time I saw you, you were about five feet tall, and … and …”

“And I was wearing clothes.” His smile widened into a grin that seemed to mock her. As if he knew his frank, insouciant nakedness had made her uncomfortable.

Laurel could feel the heat in her face seeping up into her hairline. Was it that obvious? Could guys tell just by looking at her that she was inexperienced … a virgin? Was that why Joe treated her like a kid?

She stared at Jesus, remembering the Christmas play, and how afterwards they’d become friends … sort of. More like a mice, actually. Jesus hardly speaking to her, but not hassling her anymore … and even going out of his way to stop other boys who did. But then his mother had died, and he’d moved away. To a foster home, somebody had said.

“How … ?”

222

EILEEN GOUDGE

“It’s Jess now, not Jesus,” he answered before she could ask. “Jess Gordon.”

“I heard you’d gone to a foster home.”

“You heard right-my foster parents, the Gordons, they wound up adopting me. Beats me how come … I was murder in those days. Pissed off at the whole planet and everybody on it.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“You had it good, Beanie. I liked you.” He laughed, an easy, rich laugh. “Man, what a kick, running into you like this.”

“Well, I’m glad things worked out for you.”

“Me, too. My dad … you’d like him. He’s retired now, but he used to teach English in this little high school in Newburgh where we lived. He really pounded it into me, all that stuff, spelling, too—remember how you used to beat me in every spelling bee?”

“It wasn’t hard,” she recalled. “You’d have been the first one down if you hadn’t told the other kids you’d beat them up if they didn’t purposely spell every word wrong.”

“You weren’t scared of me.”

She shrugged, and waved to a friend, petite frizzyhaired Shari McAuliffe, who was on her way out the door, a huge black portfolio almost as big as she was tucked under one matchstick arm. Laurel glanced at her watch. Ten to four-she’d better get moving if she was going to get down to the Greyhound station in time to catch the next bus to Manhattan. But Jess, with his tea-colored eyes and mocking smile, was holding her somehow.

“I guess I had bigger things to worry about back then,” she told him.

She thought of Uncle Rudy … and of the secret she’d kept from Annie all these years. It had started with Val … but now Uncle Rudy had become a sort of secret himself … her “mystery boyfriend.”

All through that first year, then junior high, and Music and Art, Rudy, the three or four times a year he was in New York, would just show up at her school, and take her for a ride in a chauffeured limousine. He asked about every one of her teachers, who her good friends

SUCH DEVOTED SISTERS

223

were and who she hated, what rock groups she liked and even her favorite TV shows. On a nice day, they’d go to Riverside Park near the boat basin, and sit on a bench tossing bread crumbs to the pigeons and peanuts to the squirrels. Uncle Rudy never talked about himself. He was kind of weird that way … he only wanted to know about her. And sometimes … well, she’d catch him looking at her so hard, the way you’d look at a blackboard if you were trying to memorize a homework assignment on it. Then she’d feel creepy inside. But he never touched her, not a hug, not even to hold her hand. It was always, “Hiya, kid,” and then he’d push the car door open wide enough

for her to climb in.

This year, for her birthday, he’d given her a beautiful Madonna figurine carved out of ivory. It was old, and probably cost a lot. How strange for Uncle Rudy, who seemed so rough, to have picked out something so exquisite. Maybe he was secretly religious, or thought she was. Either way, she’d felt touched. But when she’d given him that peck on the cheek, Rudy had looked at her as if she had given him something priceless.

“You were a tough little thing, I remember that.”

Jess’ words made her drop the heavy drawing paper

she was rolling up. It fell to the scuffed linoleum floor,

unfurling with a little snap. She retrieved it, and looked

up at him, bewildered, thinking he must be talking about

someone else.

“Me? I was absolutely terrified all the time!” “Yeah, well, there’s all kinds of tough,” he said. “I guess so.” He made her think about Annie, how her sister had held things together for them, working so late every night at Aunt Dolly’s shop, budgeting their money so carefully, (what Laurel earned baby-sitting could hardly be counted, but Annie always referred to it as “our” money), always somehow finding enough for her—for the clothes she didn’t sew, for shoes, for art supplies, even for movies with her friends.

Laurel was swept with a sudden tenderness for her sister, who was so good and so tough … tougher than she could ever be.

224

EILEEN GOUDCE

“Listen,” Jess was saying, “me and some others, we’re organizing this antiwar rally for next week-maybe you heard about it?”

“I saw a poster, I think.”

“You interested?”

“Maybe.”

She was against the war, sure, but all she really cared about right now was getting home to Joe. Thank God Joe’s nearsightedness had kept him from getting drafted.

Jess stood with one hip thrust slightly forward, his thumb hooked in a frayed belt loop, his eyes flicking over her, sizing her up. “You got a minute? We could grab a cup of coffee and, you know, talk about it.”

“I’d like to, Jes๛ … uh, Jess. But I’m in kind of a hurry right now.” She saw that the classroom was almost empty, only a couple of stragglers still packing up their supplies and their drawings. Their teacher, Mr. Hanson, was standing by the door in his paint-spattered chinos and wrinkled chambray shirt, talking with Amy Lee, a shy softspoken Chinese girl whose drawings and canvases, with their jarring, vivid splashes of color, always seemed so unlike her.

She supposed she must be like Amy that way-one thing on the outside, and another on the inside. If only Joe could see that, too.

Laurel’s mind darted ahead: She was imagining Joe, the surprised look on his face when she showed up. She’d play it cool, tell him she’d come down for the Pre-Raphaelite exhibit at the Met. Wednesday, she knew, was his day off, so she’d suggest he go to the exhibit with her … and then afterwards maybe dinner, a movie, and …

Laurel saw that Jess was staring at her, his dark eyes hooded. She took in his jutting cheekbones, his oily black hair with that faded red bandana twisted about his forehead. She shuddered, feeling suddenly scared.

Of Jess?

Maybe it wasn’t Jess who scared her; maybe it was Joe, the thought of what he might do or say when she … when she …

SUCH DEVOTED SISTERS

225

God, could she? Could she really make it happen? Could she make Joe love her that way?

Now Jess was shrugging, reaching behind him and pulling a tattered knapsack from behind a chair. “No problem,” he said, tipping her a sly wink, as if he could read her thoughts. “Anytime. You come see me anytime, Beanie. I’ll be around.”

“Laurey! What are you doing here?”

Joe stared at her. She was wearing some kind of Indian smock made of crinkly raspberry-colored cotton. Tiny round mirrors were sewn into the smocked bodice, and they glittered in the harsh light of the bulb over the landing.

“Joe!” She hugged him and kissed his cheek, so lightly, so quickly, his senses barely had time to record it. “Surprised?”

“Let’s just say I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Does that mean you aren’t going to invite me in?”

“Actually, I was just on my way out.” Seeing her look of disappointment, he explained, “My mother. I promised her I’d catch this opening down in SoHo, some artist friend of hers who’s having his first show. You want to come along?”

“I’d love to.” He saw her eyes light up, and felt a short, sharp tug inside his chest.

He knew that look; he had, in fact, been avoiding it for a very long time. For months, years even, he’d pretended it wasn’t what he thought it was, holding back from any kind of real acknowledgment of what it meant… of what he was going to have to do about it. And now she was here, and truthfully, was it such a surprise? She hadn’t told him she was coming down on this Tuesday evening of all times, but hadn’t he known, deep down, that she would come-if not this time, then some other? That he’d have to face this, sooner rather than later?

Coward, he accused himself. You’re ducking this, just the way you ducked Caryn.

Only Laurel wasn’t Caryn, not by a long shot. Soft-

226

EILEEN GOVDGE

spoken, a little dreamy sometimes … but she could hold her own. Not as fiery as Annie, but in her own low-key way Laurel could be just as determined as her sister.

He knew she wouldn’t let go of this … this idea … not until …

… you do something about it.

But what the hell was he supposed to do? What could he say that wouldn’t break her heart, make her hate him?

But he didn’t want that. He couldn’t bear the idea of Laurel hating him.

“I thought you and your parents weren’t getting along,” Laurel said as they were strolling across on Twenty-second toward Seventh Avenue, where they’d be able to catch a cab headed downtown. A light rain was misting his glasses, making everything look soft and unfocused, wreathing the streetlamps in fairy rings. He was acutely aware of Laurel, who had thrown on an old corduroy jacket of his over her dress, tucking her arm into his. “It shows something, your mother wanting you to come to this.”