About a Girl (21 page)

“I don’t understand how she could have left me,” I said. “If her dad dying messed her up so much, how could she do that to me? How could she not know better?” He changed the angle of the sail, and we moved back toward the harbor.

“We don’t always see the mistakes we make as repetitions until long after we’ve made them,” he said. “It’s getting late. Let’s go in. I’ll buy you a hamburger at Kate’s.”

When we walked into the bar together, people turned around to look at us and then sat, staring. He ordered bitters and soda for himself and two hamburgers and raised his eyebrow when Kate passed me a beer but said nothing. Kate’s was crowded; some kind of open mic night. An old lady in a purple skirt was singing a warbly but enthusiastic cover of a Bob Dylan song; after her, a pimple-faced black-clad teen played a few morose acoustic compositions; after him, some bearded guys in suspenders played bluegrass. Jack chewed his hamburger and watched, impassive. “Nobody in this town would last five minutes in New York,” I said when they were done and carrying their instruments off the stage.

“Ssshh,” he said. Three hippie girls were adjusting the microphones—pretty, white, more or less indistinguishable from one another. Long, shiny brown hair and long gauzy skirts in three slightly variant earth colors, embroidered tank tops that made it clear none of them had much use for undergarments. The attention of the bar had shifted to the hippies, evidently the reason so many people were here.

“Thanks for coming,” the middle one said in a breathy, sultry voice that made me giggle. She licked her pink lips in an affectedly sexy manner that had a profound impact on a number of gentlemen sitting near me, who were sitting open-mouthed and rapt. “We’re the Sirens.” The other two stepped up next to her and the three girls linked hands—
Cute,
I thought—and looked as one at some point over the heads of the audience, and then they began to sing.

Whatever language they were singing in, I didn’t know it, but it didn’t matter. Their voices wove in and out of one another, moving like water, like the wind in the sails of Jack’s boat, sweet and sad and longing, carrying us all out of that dim room and into a place I had no words for. As they sang they grew more and more lovely, until I had to shut my eyes lest I leap up and throw myself at their feet; next to me, Jack shifted, and I knew he felt it, too.
Sing my name,
I thought,
sing my name and I will follow you anywhere, follow you into the wheeling spheres of the stars,
and each note wrapped itself around my heart in tighter and tighter coils until I thought I would weep from the exquisite pain of it. How long the music lasted, I could not have said—a moment, an hour, a thousand years—and when the last perfect harmony faded into the still room you could have heard a hummingbird’s heart beating. Around me more than one person was crying. The girls’ unearthly beauty slid away until they were just three chipper hippies standing on a stage again, looking at each other as though they were all in on some private joke, and then they took a bow and left the stage. No one even clapped; we stared, mouths open, speechless and stunned as rabbits.

They were the last act, and it took a long time for the room to go back to ordinary, for chatter to start back up again, people shaking themselves as if out of a dream and getting up to order more drinks. Jack’s eyes were closed, and he held his drink on the table as tightly as if it were a lifeline. “Are you okay?” I asked, and my voice sounded strange in my ears, harsh and ugly after the lilting glory of their song.

“Yes,” he said, opening his eyes but not looking at me. “I’m fine.” I didn’t quite believe him, but I didn’t know him well enough to say anything else. “Let’s go,” he said, standing up and stalking toward the door with his long strides without looking to see if I was following.

“Okay,” I said to his back, scrambling after him and waving goodbye to Kate at the bar, who was busy with customers and didn’t see. Outside, a boy in a baseball cap and a white apron was smoking on the curb; I recognized him as the busboy from Kate’s. He was wearing a faded old T-shirt with my grandfather’s band emblazoned across the front.

“I like your shirt,” I said, and he looked up, a slow shy smile spreading across his face.

“You know this band?”

I almost laughed. “Sure,” I said.

“My favorite album is the first one,” he said eagerly, “the EP, you know, not the full length.
We drive down the coast all night / count the stars in your eyes / baby’s gonna be all right,
” he sang, making drumming motions with his arms.

“That’s a good one,” I said. Jack was watching us, his eyes sad. About what, I wondered. Me? Music? This poor lonely kid? “My friend’s waiting, I should go.”

“You have a good night,” he said, and I smiled.

“You, too,” I said. “See you around.” Jack was silent for the entire drive back to his house, silent once we got in the door, and silent as he walked away from me, down the hall, and shut himself in one of his secret rooms without a backward glance. If I wanted to get anything real out of him, it was going to take a while. Maybe more time than I had.

The next morning, I called my apartment from Jack’s phone and Raoul answered on the second ring. “You’re a week overdue,” he said.

A week?
I thought. How had I only been at Maddy’s for a week? How did I not even know what day it was? I rubbed my eyes with the heel of one hand. “How did you know it was me?”

“The telephone had a guilty ring.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“I hope your negligence of your loving family is due to an overabundance of joyful exertion on your part.”

You could say that,
I thought, grateful Raoul could not see my flaming cheeks.

“It’s nice here,” I said neutrally.

“You promised, Tally.”

“I know. I keep—” It did not seem advisable to tell him I kept forgetting. “I’m having a hard time with, um, time.”

“Your aunt is furious. Furious, Tally. She almost left her retreat—”

“You can’t let her do that!”

“I talked her out of it. But only just.”

“I—okay. Thanks.”

“Jenn and Molly called.”

“Jenn and Molly?”

“Your
employers
?”

Oh shit,
I thought. “Oh. That Jenn and Molly.”

“They offered their condolences about your cousin but were hoping you’d be feeling well enough to come back to work soon.”

“Work,” I said stupidly.

“You never told me you had a cousin.” His tone was arch.

“Distant cousin.”

“Now deceased. Tragically. Cancer, was it? Of the conscience? You still have a job, but I don’t know that you deserve one.”

“Raoul, I’m sorry. I just … I can’t even think out here. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I have to find out something. Anything. I can’t just come all the way out here and then turn around and come back with nothing.”
I can’t leave Maddy,
I thought, but I could hardly tell him that. “Tell them—oh, man.”

“
You
tell them.”

“Fair enough.”

“How is Jack?”

“Mysterious.”

Raoul made a noise somewhere between a snort and a cough. “Nothing new there. Did he take you to the city?”

“Not yet. I mean, I drove through it on the way here from the airport. But not since then. Maddy might—my friend might take me. We were talking about going.”

“Your friend?”

“I met this—girl. Out here.”

“Hmm,” he said, but he didn’t push it. “Tell your friend to take you to the market. Your aunt and I used to work there, once upon a time.”

“Okay,” I said. “Raoul?”

“Yes?”

“When did you know that you were in love with Henri?”

There was a long pause. “Is this an abstract question?” he said. “Or an immediate one?”

“I just—when did you know?”

“The second day we spent together,” he said. “Our first date lasted for a long time; I hope you are not too scandalized.”

I laughed. “Surely you didn’t sleep together before you got married.”

“Oh dear,” Raoul said. “Several times, I’m afraid.”

“I don’t see how I can face you again in person. Seriously, though. How did you know?”

“We went out to breakfast,” he said, “the morning after our first date, and then he took me to Central Park, and we sat on a rock and watched the swans paddling around in the lake, and I looked over at him and thought,
Oh shit, here I go.
That was it. I knew I was going to fall in love with him. And then I did.”

“Did you love other people? Before Henri?”

“Sure.”

“Do you think I could—do you think someone could be in love with more than one person at a time?”

“Yes,” he said. “Do you want to tell me what this conversation is about, Tally?”

“I met someone,” I said. “This girl. She’s—I feel—it’s different.”

“Than how you feel about Shane?”

“Yes,” I said. “No. I mean, yes. He’s so … solid. He’s just Shane. He’s always there. I’ve known him forever. We know everything about each other. This girl, she’s like—she’s like a wild animal. That’s an embarrassing metaphor. Scratch that from the record.”

“Scratched.”

“She’s—I don’t know how to explain it. She’s, like, old in her heart. I mean, she’s not old. Like an old soul.” I had no idea how old Maddy was, but I thought if I told Raoul that I would probably worry him unnecessarily.

“You met her through Jack?”

“I met her in a bar,” I said without thinking.

“I
see
.”

“Not like that. You know me. The squarest square in squaretown. But around her I’m like—I feel—I don’t even know. She’s like this magnet.” Raoul laughed. “What?” I said.

“I would never malign the power of the magnet,” he said, still laughing.

“It’s not funny,” I said, wounded.

“I’m sorry. I’m not laughing at you. Do
you
think you’re falling in love?”

“I don’t know how to tell,” I said. “I just feel crazy all the time.”

“Well,” he said, “that sounds about right. It’s never easy to learn how to love, especially the first few times you try. Take good care of yourself, Tally. You know we’re always here. All of us.”

“I know,” I said. “I love you a lot.” I wanted badly to ask him if anything about the way I felt about Maddy was normal; if it was reasonable to be certain that if someone were to leave you, you might curl up and die; if I was supposed to spend every waking moment of every day thinking about the sound of her voice and the movement of her body; if nightmares were a common symptom of love; if being followed by a pack of crows happened to ordinary people all the time. I wanted to ask him about all of it, but I could not even bring myself to begin, and even as I tried to assemble the words they slipped away from me. It was no use.

“I love you, too,” he said. “
We
love you. Oh, here’s Dorian Gray. Dorian loves you as well.”

“Dorian is dumb as a barrel of rocks, Raoul.”

“Did you hear that?” Raoul said, his voice muffled. “Tally doesn’t understand you, Dorian. But I do.”

I laughed, really laughed, for the first time in what felt like a long time. “You tell Dorian I’ll bring him a West Coast rat. They’re way fatter and healthier than the Brooklyn ones. He can gnaw on it for days.”

“He’ll be so pleased.”

“Even the raccoons here are different from the raccoons in Prospect Park. They seem, I don’t know, more raccoonish. Like they might run you out of your house and take over. I heard them in Jack’s yard one night making all these crazy noises, and I thought it was monsters or something before I went out there and saw them. And there’s a whole family of coyotes that lives in the ravine behind Maddy’s house. They howl at the moon, just like wolves; it’s the coolest thing you ever heard in your life. And the gardens here—you wouldn’t believe all the kinds of flowers that just grow everywhere. And I ate raspberries from the farmer’s market and they were so good. And Jack took me sailing, and I saw otters.”

“You’re making me miss it out there.”

“It’s hard to imagine you living here.”

“It had its disadvantages,” he said. “But there are a lot of beautiful things.”

“And a lot of white people.”

“A
lot
of white people.”

“I love you, Raoul,” I said again. “I should go.”

“I love you, too, Tally. Call anytime, okay?”

“Okay.”

“At least call more often.”

“Okay. Give Henri a kiss for me. Tell Aunt Beast I’m still alive.”

“Done and done,” he said. “Tally?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

No,
I thought. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You’ll tell me. You know I’ll come out there. Any one of us.”

“You can’t send Dorian.”

“I’m not joking right now, Tally.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m fine.”

“You told me you’d put Jack on the phone. You told me you’d call every day. You told me you’d come home in a week. You promised, Tally.”

“I need a little more time. Just a few more days.”

He sighed; I could picture him, one thumb rubbing the worn beads of the wooden rosary he always wore, the phone tucked between his chin and his shoulder, his ink-stained fingers—he wrote poetry in longhand, with a fountain pen, but in him the gesture seemed necessary instead of affected.

“Just a few more days,” I said. “Please.”

“Fine,” he said. “Just a few more days.”

*   *   *

I did not see Jack again; I went back to Maddy’s that night, and forgot again—her hair, her teeth, her eyes—that I had promised Raoul I’d go home. The next morning I left her in bed, sleepy eyed and tousled, and rode Jack’s bike downtown to the bookstore. “I haven’t seen you in a while,” the proprietor said, looking at me over his spectacles.

“I’ve been busy,” I said.

“I see,” he said.

“Look,” I said, pulling the Ovid out of my bag and putting it on the table in front of him, “I want to ask you something. This book you gave me.” He raised an eyebrow, expectant, and I cleared my throat, feeling stupid. “Do you think—can any of this—I mean, none of this is real, right?”