Goldengrove (12 page)

A guy with bulging lizard eyes was begging Rick to help him—

“Peter Lorre’s the greatest genius who ever lived,” Aaron said.

The police swarmed Rick’s place. Just as the uproar died down, a handsome couple swept in, as if someone had opened the door on the dusty desert night and admitted in a blast of clean, pure Nordic air. The couple telegraphed heroism, anxiety, weary sophistication. The blond actress seemed lit by a lamp inside her skull. From within the prison of her goddesslike calm, her hijacked eyes tapped out the SOS of a heart about to explode. It nearly detonated all over Rick’s piano player, Sam, whom she asked to play the one song that could get him in trouble.

Aaron said, “Did you ever hear
her
sing that?”

“Yes,” I lied.

“Wasn’t it something?”

I couldn’t speak for wishing I’d heard it. “Who’s the actress?” I asked.

“Ingrid Bergman.”

I said, “Rick’s going to drink with
them
.”

“Bingo,” Aaron said.

What could Sam do? He played the song. Rick walked in and freaked until a nod from Sam redirected him to the luminous stranger. It took about three seconds for everyone except the husband to figure out the story. Ilse’s eyes spilled over. Her grief had nothing to do with mine. She was weeping over love, a minor problem that could be solved, while I was grieving over death, which could never be fixed.

I gripped the edge of the sofa. Aaron pretended not to notice. Something about our being alone and sneaking under the grownups’ radar made it hard for him to comfort me or to say that he knew how I felt. It was too scary, too intimate. We had to keep our distance.

“You know who they wanted to play Rick?” Aaron asked.

I shook my head. Why was I so tense? Didn’t Aaron’s question prove that we were just a couple of old-movie fans swapping Hollywood trivia gossip?

“Ronald Reagan,” said Aaron.

“The worst president ever,” I said.

“You weren’t born yet,” he said.

“What difference does that make?” I said.

On-screen, the handsome husband asked the waiter for a Cointreau.

“My man orders a girl drink,” said Aaron. “That’s one problem right there.”

Bogart pulled up a chair at the couple’s table and, surprising everyone but us, ordered a drink. Aaron smiled conspiratorially, as if we’d written this scene.

Only the clueless husband believed they were talking about immigration. Arrangements were made, agreements reached. Then the bar went dark, empty but for Sam, playing music for Rick to get hammered by as he waited for Ilse. “If she can stand it, I can,” he said, as he asked Sam to play their song. That was another thing I’d learned since Margaret’s death. Every song may be someone’s personal implement of torture.

I said, “Aaron, are we, like, destroying ourselves?”

“We’re repairing ourselves,” Aaron said.

As Rick killed the bottle, and his hangdog face sagged lower, I remembered a night I’d been at the movies. Just before the film ended, Margaret slipped into the next seat. The plot concerned a cutie-pie veterinary student who rejects her high school sweetheart because he isn’t rich or famous. Ultimately, she realizes he’s the love of her life, and she wins him back by performing a tracheotomy on his ailing puppy. Even though Margaret had left me there so she could be with Aaron, I was embarrassed to be caught watching something so moronic.

She’d whispered, “Do you want to stay?” I did. I knew where the plot was heading, but not all the ridiculous twists it would take on the way. I said no. We went home. On the way back, she explained that they’d been at a party, and Aaron had drunk too much and gotten boring, and she’d asked a friend to drive her to get Mom’s car. I never asked what boring meant. High school boys got drunk all the time. Now, watching Bogart, I recalled that last Sunday on the lake. There had been some question about their going out that night. What had she and Aaron argued about? I thought about it until I got distracted by the love that had Rick and Ilse falling apart, years later, in Casablanca.

Flashback. Car ride, boat trip, champagne toast.

Bogart said, “Here’s looking at you, kid.” I couldn’t look at Aaron. “Kid” was what he called
me
. Maybe he’d tried it on Margaret first, and she hadn’t liked it.

Now Rick and Ilse were gliding in a slow, enraptured dance. Ilse was wearing one of those silky robes that, in old movies, signal the lovers are having sex. Robe or no robe, anyone could tell. Sex was the bright bubble encasing them, and everything else was as flat as the Arc de Triomphe jiggling in the distance on their obvious-fake car trip.

Still, nothing I’d heard or read about sex explained what the two of them felt as Ilse rested her cheek against Rick’s shoulder. I remembered Margaret saying that sex meant not having to think. Maybe that was it. Maybe their minds had shut down, canceling out Ilse’s husband, Rick’s past, the war, the Germans heading for Paris. What was a war compared to the touch of his lips against her forehead?

When Ilse told Rick to kiss her as if for the last time, Aaron flinched. Maybe Margaret used to say that. And he
had
kissed her for the last time, though he hadn’t known it, no more than Rick suspected that Ilse would stand him up at the station in the pounding rain.

Aaron got a roll of toilet paper and plunked it in my lap. I tore ragged scraps and blotted my eyes until soggy wads littered the couch. This wasn’t how I’d imagined our afternoon, but I didn’t care. It didn’t matter if my face looked like a cranberry muffin.

“So much for our experiment,” Aaron said.

“No, really,” I said. “I’m fine.”

I knew how the story would end. Heroic Rick would send Ilse off to live with a man she didn’t love but whose work was more important than running a nightclub. The plane spun its propellers, and the lovers’ one chance at happiness took off into the night sky. It had nothing to do with Aaron and me. Rick and Ilse were heart-broken, but alive. Only my sister was dead. I glanced at Aaron. I could have sworn he was thinking the same thing.

He said, “I won’t even bother telling you to cheer up.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate that.”

The silence that fell seemed restful, as if something had been settled, as if more had happened than the two of us watching a film. If Aaron hadn’t been there, I could have fallen asleep. I wondered if I could trust him to wake me in time to go home.

After a while, Aaron said, “But I do have something that
might
help cheer you up. Something you should try.”

I didn’t like the sound of
something
or
cheer
or, for that matter,
try
. Drugs, I thought. Or alcohol. I wished this weren’t happening. I could say no to Aaron. He wouldn’t try to persuade me, or make fun of me if I refused. He didn’t want to get me drunk or stoned. He truly wanted to help. Aaron had loved Margaret, and I was her grieving sibling. But how babyish it would make me seem. No, thanks, I don’t drink or smoke. I’m not brave and sophisticated like my sister. I would never have cried in front of him if I’d known it would lead to this.

He said, “It’s in my room. In the house. I’ll be back in a second.”

Aaron was gone for long enough for me to have a complicated fantasy about him rolling a joint and getting busted by his parents. What if he’d run into them, and they’d insisted he have lunch or do some household chore, and he couldn’t tell them I was in the cabin? His poor sad mom with her grief book! Her worry would spike when she learned that her son was spending the afternoon with me.

Could Aaron have forgotten me? It seemed possible, if unlikely. How strange that being abandoned made me feel trapped instead of released. I needed to plot my escape route, even though it was clear I could simply walk out the door. The truth was, I was looking for an excuse to go through Aaron’s stuff. I knew it wasn’t right, but it might be my only chance to find out more about him and about Margaret, maybe.

I looked out the window. No Aaron. I drifted into the studio, sidestepping the bright dots of color. All over the spattered walls were the bare, rectangular ghosts of pictures. The floor was littered with scraps of magazine pages and drawings, here a fleshy pink arm torn from a Renaissance painting, there a piece of fruit from a still life.

I picked up two halves of a picture and joined the ragged edges. A nude woman reclined on a rumpled bed, turned away so all you could see was her reddish hair and her long, dimpled, creamy back and ass. Propped up on one elbow, she gazed at her rosy face in a gilded mirror held by a fat, naked baby. I longed to run my finger along her spine, to caress each swell and dip.

A tingling ran from my fingertips to some terminal deep inside me. I was so astonished I squealed and dropped both scraps. The buzz subsided, replaced by shame at the perversion and total gayness of practically jerking off over a naked woman in my sister’s boyfriend’s cabin. Was that what Aaron used to do? Did he think the painting was sexy? The fact that it was torn somehow made it more exciting. Aaron had touched it, and ripped it up, and—

Aaron came up behind me. First I was glad to see him, then nervous, then happy, then frightened. Both halves of the picture had landed faceup on the floor.

“Carracci,” Aaron said. “His women always look like gymbuffed guys in drag.”

Now that he mentioned it, the goddess turned, before my eyes, into a naked linebacker with a woman’s head. I felt a little easier about the feeling I’d gotten from the painting.

“Why did you rip it up?”

“I got tired of it,” said Aaron. “Come on.” As he led me back into the main room, I saw that he was carrying a delicate indigo bottle. A vintage pharmaceutical vial full of . . . what? LSD. Liquid morphine. Nightmares and permanent madness. I felt dizzy, a little sick. I sank into the couch.

Aaron unscrewed the cap, and we stared at the bottle as if a genie might fly out.

“Aromatherapy,” he said. “It helps. Don’t look at me like that. I wouldn’t have believed it, either, Nico, but these days I’ll give
anything
a shot. I don’t know why it works, but it does—”

I must have looked as blank as I felt. Was I supposed to sniff it?

“Put it on,” Aaron said.

How thoughtful of him to bring me perfume with healing powers, and how glad I was that it wasn’t an illegal substance. I sniffed. It smelled familiar. Like baking cookies. Like Margaret.

“Vanilla extract,” Aaron said. “Your sister loved it.”

“It smells like her,” I said.

“I know,” he said.

I said, “She told me she didn’t use perfume.” When had she started smelling like that? Could it have been around the time she started going out with Aaron?

“It’s not perfume,” said Aaron. “It’s a natural oil.”

“Where did you get this?” I said. “The grocery store? I mean, is this like supermarket vanilla extract?”

“I got it on the Internet. It’s the kind your sister used.”

It shocked me that Margaret’s essence was something you could order online, like a fake Rolex or a pill to enlarge your penis. Maybe the bottle
did
hold a drug, some kind of vapor or ether. Maybe crying over the film had shook me loose from my bedrock self. Or maybe I was worn out by my romantic interlude with the ripped-up painting.

“Go ahead. Put it on.”

The easiest thing is to do what you’re told. I tipped the oil onto my finger and dabbed it behind my ears. The cookie smell enveloped me. I sensed Margaret’s presence nearby. Aaron put his head near mine, and kept it there, without moving or speaking, until his breathing synchronized with mine. Part of me thought it was creepy, Aaron sitting too close on the couch and inhaling my dead sister. And part of me truly loved it. Air flowed into and out of my lungs, each breath easier than the last. I’d almost forget that Aaron was there. Then I would remember.

“God,” Aaron said. “That smells so good. It
will
calm you down, I promise.”

I said, “I should probably be getting back.” But I didn’t move. I felt as if the scent of vanilla was only in that room, and not on my skin, which meant that I could have taken it with me. I wanted to stay where it was.

“You can have it,” Aaron said. “Take the bottle home.”

“Thanks so much,” I said. “That’s so nice of you. But I couldn’t. Keep it.”

“Take it.” Aaron pressed the bottle into my hand, and curled my fingers around it.

“All right,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” Aaron said. “Anyway, this was . . .” He stopped. This was
fun
? This was
great
? There were no words for what this was. “We could do this again. Drive around. Come here. Hang out.”

“Sure,” I said. “I’d like that.”

He drove me to the end of my road, and I took my bike out of his van and rode home.

Twilight was approaching. The air was moist and fragrant. From the corner of my eye, I saw dark shapes stir in the woods. I imagined they smelled the vanilla oil, and that it made them back off. I remembered Margaret talking about how the spirits of the dead emerged from the lake at twilight to make their party plans. I wondered if she was among them, if she had a date for the evening.

I pedaled hard up the driveway, dropped my bike on the lawn, and hurried inside.

“I’m home,” I yelled up the stairs. A feather of greeting floated down from my mother’s study. I went to my room. I didn’t want to see my parents, and I didn’t want them to see a red-eyed, puffy-faced Nico who smelled like her older sister.

A
FTER THAT, AARON AND
I
MET ON SUNDAYS, AND SOMETIMES
in the mornings before I went to have lunch with my father. We always met in the same spot. Aaron got there early, parked parallel to the road, and opened the tailgate so he could sit in the back, in the sun.

Mostly, we drove around in the van. He knew so many beautiful places I never knew existed. Once he stopped at a turnoff, and we hiked into the woods, and he showed me a grove of foxgloves, pink, yellow, and purple, six feet tall, standing at attention like a sentinel troupe of space invaders. Another day, we found a patch of wild strawberries so thick we ate until I felt tipsy from the fermented fruit. Anyway, that’s what I pretended. Then we sat at the edge of the field, enjoying front-row seats at a duel between two hummingbirds who fought until one stabbed his beak into the other’s neck, and the loser plunged into the brambles. Even though it was awful, I felt lucky to be there, as if nature had staged the death match expressly for Aaron and me.