Lullaby for the Rain Girl (24 page)

But recreating the decline of a relationship is almost impossible. I can recall behavior, hers and mine, but how it felt—the emotional context—is all but gone from my memory. What did it feel like to live in that apartment then, with Sherry and me drifting slowly away from each other? I can no longer really remember. It may be that at the time the entire situation was not as central in my mind as I imagine it to have been, now: I was so
busy.
Classes, work, writing. Maybe that was part of it, too.

In spring we made a drive up to Stone’s End. I was a bit nervous about leaving the apartment entirely in the hands of Peter and Rachel, who also didn’t seem to be getting along; Rachel’s leaving the band, and the band’s subsequent collapse, had clearly driven a wedge between them. I really had no interest in Stone’s End or in anything there, but Sherry insisted.

“I need to go home,” she said.

We’d been gone less than a year. Still, when we arrived there I had the experience of seeing my old hometown through a different lens: things looked smaller, somehow, differently-proportioned. It surprised me to see that both the O’Shea and Fall houses had gone on standing without us. The O’Sheas were properly overjoyed to see Sherry, and at least respectfully happy to see me, though the disapproval of Sherry’s choice to live with me in Santa Barbara was still obvious in their eyes and voices. Alice was finishing classes at community college and working. Dad was—well,
Dad,
though on his good behavior. It helped that I’d never had to ask him for anything since we’d left.

But Sherry and I spent most of our time with each other, wandering the streets downtown, saying hello to former neighbors we saw and popping our heads into familiar shops. We checked out the middle school, the high school, said hello to a few teachers. It felt like we’d been gone far more than the nine or ten months it had actually been; but then our time in Santa Barbara marked the first time either of us had been away from home at all for any extended period.

On that first afternoon home Sherry led me by the hand, in her typical way, to the fields overlooking the cemetery, the same fields where we’d had our memorable first semi-sexual encounter on the night of our finishing eighth grade. The field, lovely and sun-splashed and filled with wild grasses and daisies and dandelions, was smaller now: new houses were being built that brought civilization much closer than it had been the last time we’d come here.

“I remember this place,” Sherry said, pushing her breeze-blown hair from her eyes.

“Sure. That tree.” I pointed. “Right over there. That’s where you deflowered me.”

She smiled. “You deflowered yourself.”

“Actually that’s right. Well, still. You
helped.”

“I just sat there.”

“Ah, but that was more than enough for an eighth grader. And you let me feel your boobies.”

“One booby.”

“Ah, but
what
a booby.”

She smiled again and wandered down the hill, the big oak tree casting its shadow over us.

“Seems like a long time ago,” she said.

“It
was
a long time ago.”

“Everything was so different then.”

I stopped her, held her by the shoulders. “Not everything.”

She looked down, her expression suddenly glum.

“Everything,” she said. She looked up again, casting her eyes all around. “It’s like...it’s all here, but
we’re
not. I miss this place. Don’t you?”

“No. I don’t.”

Our eyes met. “Well,” she said, “there you go.”

“You really want to come back? To Stone’s End?”

She turned away. “I don’t know. No. I wanted to go home. But this isn’t home anymore. Still, I’d like to be closer. I’d like to...Santa Barbara isn’t my kind of place, Ben. It’s too...” She shook her head. “I don’t know. Surfers. Beach bunnies. I feel lost.”

“We don’t have anything to do with that stuff,” I said, “except to go to the beach now and then.”

“I know. I...” She shook her head. “I can’t explain it. But I want it to work between us, Ben. I never imagined myself with anybody but you.”

“Well, same here. With you.”

“But things are changing. I can feel them changing.”

“All we can do,” I said, “is work at it.”

“We will, right? We’ll keep working at it?”

“Sure we will.”

# # #

But in the final weeks of the semester nothing changed. There was a distance between us now that hadn’t been there before, even though, to look at us, no one would have noticed anything amiss. It was internal, between the two of us. Maybe as a reaction to the inexplicable thing that was happening we partied more, encouraging Peter and Rachel to invite over their friends while we brought in people we knew from school. A great deal of beer was consumed at these get-togethers, and lots of pot. For the first time our landlord, Mr. Bogg, started calling us or knocking on our door and telling us to keep the noise down. Couples made out on the floor in the main room. Things got broken. People we didn’t know—people we assumed Peter and Rachel knew—would show up, drink, get belligerent. Fights broke out a couple of times. For a short while, our apartment was Party Central for Santa Barbara’s wilder kids.

Sherry and I would fall into bed drunk, try to make some sort of sloppy love at three o’clock in the morning, both of us wasted out of our minds. It was better than the silence that otherwise obtained between us, a silence all the more profound because it existed between and under our words. We would sleep late, wake with excruciating headaches, miss class. Both of us barely finished the semester.

But I understood nothing of what was really happening until the party we held at the end of the school year. It was a scene like before: the place crowded with people, the booze flowing, the pot odors permeating the apartment. I’d just been looking out the window to see if any police cars seemed to be headed this way when I turned and stumbled into a girl who spilled beer on my shirt. She laughed and staggered into someone else. I needed air, I knew. I scanned the apartment and saw no one I knew except for a couple of school acquaintances. I moved toward the front door, determined to escape at least for a moment. On my way I took a half-empty Heineken sitting on the floor and swallowed all that was left in it. I turned to the door again, was stopped by some guy I vaguely knew who wanted to talk to me about buying houses, a subject I cared absolutely nothing about. I moved past him. The door seemed very far away. Before I reached it I glanced to the side and saw another door: the one to Peter and Rachel’s room. It stood ajar. Through the haze of marijuana smoke I saw Peter, nothing on but a pair of shorts, at the foot of his bed. A girl’s naked legs enveloped his head. I couldn’t see the girl’s face. I didn’t need to see the girl’s face. I knew the girl’s legs. They were Sherry’s legs.

6

I spent that night on the beach, watching the surf tumble and roll in the moonlight. I smoked a lot of cigarettes, one after another, tossing them into the surf and immediately lighting the next. I only stopped when I ran out. The wind came up after a while, whipped my hair over my face. Whatever buzz I’d had from the beer and pot completely evaporated and I sat there feeling heavy, leaden, dull, useless. I wasn’t angry—I didn’t have the energy to be angry. I felt as if I were sick, physically sick, my vitality drained away to nothingness. I didn’t blame Sherry. I didn’t blame Peter. I don’t know why not, really. But somehow things had fallen into place. Sherry’s behavior over the past couple of months, her insistence that I not leave her, her paranoid suspicions about me and Rachel. It was her own behavior making her paranoid about mine. She’d assumed that I might very well do what she was already doing, or thinking of doing. Of course.

My mind ran around and around on it. I’d seen that Sherry and Peter liked each other, but it had never occurred to me that it would become anything more than a friendly relationship. But then it had never occurred to me that Sherry O’Shea would ever have anything to do with anyone but me—vainglorious man! So many things that had been mysterious were suddenly clear. Her odd moods. Her distance.

It had been apparent since we’d returned from Stone’s End that things hadn’t changed between us. We’d hoped for a new start, but there was nothing new. What I didn’t know was what we might do about it. Sherry O’Shea was the only girl I’d ever had any involvement with in my life. It was literally unimaginable to me what my existence would be like without her. We grew up together, for God’s sake. We were George and Mary from
It’s a Wonderful Life.
Everyone knew that. Now...

And what of Peter Welch? What kind of a person went down on his roommate’s girlfriend? I thought that I couldn’t imagine it, but quickly realized that I
could:
yes, that’s exactly what Peter Welch would do. He was charming but not particularly aware of other people, not especially concerned about them except as they impacted him. I remembered what Rachel had said about the band, how it had all been his idea, how he had pushed her into the singing she really didn’t want to do. His charm is what caused such things to happen. He seemed so pleasant, so helpful and positive, that people wanted to be with him. I felt it myself. I still did. Part of me didn’t want to blame Peter at all for what had happened. But it was impossible for me to blame Sherry.

I felt too rottenly feeble to think it out any further.

Many of the beaches in Santa Barbara, at least in those days, could be very quiet at night, and I don’t believe I saw a single human being during all the hours I sat there staring at the sea. There was the occasional slow-moving light at the edge of the dark horizon. Once a seagull flapped past me. Other than that there were no signs of life at all. Part of me kept hoping that Sherry would suddenly appear behind me, weeping and apologetic (though how she would find me, my fantasy left unexplained). Part of me wanted, as Sherry had desired earlier, to step into a time machine, go back to Stone’s End a year ago or two or five, and return to things as they were. But things would never be that way again. As I sat there I had the sense that perhaps I really just wanted something to
happen:
but nothing did. Hour after hour, nothing happened.

Except that the sky began, very slowly, to lighten. What had been a dull black or deep blue slowly turned purple—the color, I thought, of bruises. The purple eventually gave way to a dark red, then to a blood-red, then brightened to something like pink. A couple of crack-of-dawn joggers trotted along the shoreline in running gear. I wondered how long I’d been there: four or five hours, surely. I was neither hungry nor thirsty. I was nothing.

Finally it was day, early morning in early summer. It looked to be a beautiful one, but then every day was beautiful in Santa Barbara. The cool ocean breezes touched my cheeks and ruffled my shirt. A few people wandered by, not particularly noticing me. At last I stood, my legs creaky and sore, my back tight and uncomfortable. I knew I would have to go back, I knew there would be a scene. I knew Sherry’s and my relationship was over. But what did that mean? Where would I live? Where would she? Would I continue in school? Would she leave the area to return to Stone’s End? Was she going to stay with Peter?

I didn’t want to face any of it. Instead I made my way from the beach into a little shopping area and sat down at a café, ordered coffee and a bagel with cream cheese. To my surprise, they tasted good. I had two cups of the coffee and wolfed down the bagel. I paid—I had little money on me, I barely managed the bill—and then wandered in the oceanfront shops for a while, utterly aimless. There was something of a feeling of power to it. Whatever was going to happen, it couldn’t happen, I thought, without me. Perhaps they were sitting there even now, Sherry and Peter, worried, wondering where I was, fretting that I would come back angry and explosive. Maybe they were calling friends to try to track me down.

And where was Rachel in this? Where would she be? Where had she been when I’d left? I didn’t know. She wasn’t at the party—at least I didn’t think she’d been. Surely Peter wouldn’t have been so reckless as to take Sherry into their bedroom with her there. (Then again,
my
presence hadn’t slowed him down.) Had she returned, then? Discovered what Peter had been up to? Or had they left her in the dark? Did she have no idea, even now?

I hated to return, yet knew I had to. But first—I wasn’t sure why I decided to do this—I stepped to a pay phone and dialed the apartment’s number. It rang and rang—like many people in that era, we didn’t have an answering machine. Finally, just as I was about to hang up, someone picked up.

“Hello?” I said.

I thought I detected the sound of breathing, but I wasn’t sure.

“Hello? Hello? Sherry?”

The line clicked off.

Strange. I considered calling back, but now my curiosity was overwhelming me. Who had picked up the phone? Why hadn’t Sherry, or Peter, or Rachel—it had to have been one of them—spoken? What was going on at the apartment? I was overcome suddenly by a sensation of dread. I didn’t visualize anything in particular; I only had the sense that something was wrong, terribly wrong.

When I got back it was obvious before I even entered that I was correct.

The door dangled half-open. From what I could immediately see, it looked as if a storm had hit the apartment: clothes, books, papers were all over the floor.