The Bay at Midnight (24 page)

Julie
1962

I
loved to ride my bike around Bay Head Shores, but Lucy never felt very steady on hers. She would ride on our end of the dirt road, and that was about it. One day, though, I told her that if she would ride her bike to the corner store with me, I would buy her penny candy. She loved those strips of button candy, and I could tell she was tempted.

“It’s too far, though,” she whined.

We were sitting on the sand in our front yard, our bikes parked in the driveway.

“How about this,” I said, coming up with a way to shorten the trip. “We can
walk
our bikes across the blueberry lot, and that will cut off about a fourth of the distance.” It would probably be an even harder trip doing it that way, since we would have
to carry our bikes over the deepest sand, but my suggestion seemed to work.

“All right,” she said, getting to her feet. She shuffled barefoot toward her bike, afraid of stepping on one of the holly leaves that sometimes blew over from the Chapmans’ yard. I had to admit, the points on those leaves
hurt
, but Lucy looked like a spaz walking that way.

We walked our bikes more easily than I’d anticipated across the blueberry lot, but I was perspiring anyway by the time we got to the street on the other side. We mounted our one-speed, low-to-the-ground bikes and began riding in the direction of the store, dense woods on either side of us. Although there were no cars on the road, Lucy still hugged the shoulder, causing her tires to slip off the pavement and into the sand from time to time, but I didn’t say a word. When we neared the corner of Rue Lido, she held her left hand up in a turn signal even though there were no cars in sight, and I had to stop myself from laughing. I didn’t want to discourage her from making this trip again.

We pulled into the lot next to the little store and parked our bikes. Inside, I bought eggs and milk for our mother, candy buttons and root beer barrels for Lucy, licorice lace and Mary Janes for myself and a pack of teaberry gum for Isabel, because I knew she liked to use it to cover up the fact that she’d been smoking. I put the bag containing our purchases in my bicycle basket and we got back on the road.

We were on the long stretch of Beach Boulevard when I heard the sound of a truck somewhere behind us. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure Lucy was well to the side of the road and saw that she was practically riding in the woods. Then I saw
the vehicle that was making the noise: It was the mosquito truck, coming toward us, just ahead of a dense fog of DDT.

The mosquito truck drove through Bay Head Shores every week or so. I liked the smell and I liked the way you could run through the cloud of insecticide with a friend, unable to see one another until you emerged on the other side. We were naive to the perils of DDT back then. If Lucy had not been with me, I would have welcomed the thrill of finding myself smack in the path of the truck, but I knew she would not.

“Hey, Luce!” I called behind me. “The mosquito truck is coming. Let’s pretend we’re in the sky inside a cloud.”

I had barely finished my sentence when the truck drove past us. The driver either didn’t see us or didn’t care that we were there, and we were instantly engulfed in the chemical fog.

“Help!” Lucy called. “Ack! Help!”

“It’s okay,” I shouted back to her. I didn’t want to stop. It was too exciting. I couldn’t see the road ahead of me. It was like riding my bike with my eyes closed, which I did occasionally when I knew I was someplace safe.

“Julie!” Lucy’s voice had grown fainter, and I figured she must have stopped and gotten off her bike.

I turned my bike around and rode back the way we had come, but even though the fog was lifting, I couldn’t see her on the road.

“Lucy?” I called.

“I’m over
here,
” she said. “I went over the handlebars.”

Then I spotted her in the woods, half sitting, half lying down. I jumped off my own bike, tossing it to the ground, and ran through the fog to reach her.

“Lucy!” I dropped to my knees next to her. “Are you hurt?”

She was flailing at the fog with her hands, her eyes squeezed
shut, and I looked at her legs and arms, afraid I might see bones jutting through the skin. Except for a nasty scrape along the length of her forearm, she looked okay.

“Open your eyes,” I said. “C’mon. The fog’s almost gone.”

She opened her eyes, but she was crying, trying to catch her breath, and I figured she’d been holding it to avoid breathing in the spray. Now she was forced to drink in the odorous air in big gulps. Looking down at her wounded arm, she let out another scream. It
was
ugly, a two-inch-wide band scraped raw along her forearm, dots of blood breaking through here and there.

“It’s okay,” I said, but she held her arm to her as if it were a fragile thing and let out a wail.

I knew I was not going to be able to persuade her to get back on her bike. The fog was thinning, and I tried to find a landmark to tell me how far we were from the house. There were woods on both sides of the road but I could see the opening to the blueberry lot a distance ahead of us.

“Get up, and we’ll walk our bikes home,” I said. “We’re not that far.”

She peered down the street, then shook her head. “I don’t want to touch my dumb bike,” she said.

Where
was
her bike? I looked around, finally spotting it several yards away from where she’d landed. She must have
flown
over those handlebars, and I felt sorry for her. She was lucky a scraped arm was all she’d suffered.

“Okay,” I said, “then we’ll leave the bikes here and walk home.”

Sniffling, she got slowly to her feet.

“You’re an old lady in a girl’s body,” I told her, helping her up. “Grandma has more energy than you.”

“Shut up,” she said.

We heard the sound of another vehicle on the road and Lucy gave me a look of alarm before running a few feet into the woods.

I turned around to see a red car heading toward us. “It’s only a car,” I said. Then I realized
what
car it was: Ned’s red Corvette convertible! “Hey!” I called to Lucy. “It’s Ned!”

Lucy came out of the woods and stood by my side, still cradling her arm. I waved as Ned stopped the car in front of me. Bruno Walker was in the passenger seat, and the radio poured “Cryin’ in the Rain” into the air all around us.

Bruno grinned at me. “Hey, good-lookin’,” he said, and I wasn’t certain if he was being serious or just teasing me, so I kept a half smile on my face which I figured would work either way.

“What’s going on, Jules?” Ned asked. I liked that he used Isabel’s nickname for me.

“Lucy crashed into the woods on her bike,” I said.

Ned turned off the engine and he and Bruno got out of the car. They were both tan and gorgeous, slender Ned with his softlooking blond hair and Bruno with his sexy black ducktail and muscular build. I didn’t think there were two better-looking, non-movie-star guys in the universe and I wished I was with one of my Westfield girlfriends instead of with my little sister.

“Are you okay, Lucy?” Ned asked.

Still sniffling a bit, she stuck her arm out for him to look at. He held it gently in his hands, studying the injury, and for a moment, I wished it had been me who had fallen off her bike.

“It’s not broken, is it?” he asked her, carefully moving her arm this way and that.

Lucy shook her head. “Just bleeding,” she said.

“Not much blood,” Ned stated the obvious. “Your mom just needs to clean it up and put a bandage on it.”

I stood right next to Ned, feigning my own interest in Lucy’s arm but really just reveling in the cigarette-and-Coppertone smell of him.

Bruno had found Lucy’s bike in the tangle of weeds and vines at the side of the road. He lifted it up over his head as if it were made of feathers and set it down on the road, studying the front wheel as he moved it back and forth. A cigarette hung from one corner of his mouth, and I could see why some of the girls thought he looked like Elvis Presley. His eyes had that hooded look to them, and his lips were thick and pouty.

“You fucked up your bike pretty good,” he said to Lucy.

“Hey!” Ned said sharply. “Cool the language.”

I was both shocked and thrilled by his use of the forbidden word. I watched as he carried the bike to the back of the car and opened the tiny trunk. It didn’t look like either of our bikes would fit in there, but he managed to get them both in partway, cushioning the Vette’s shiny red paint with beach towels at Ned’s request. The trunk would have to stay wide-open, but we were only going around the corner. He handed me the bag of things we’d bought at the little store.

“Well,” Ned looked at his car with its two bucket seats. “Lucy, you sit on Bruno’s lap, and Julie, I’ll share my seat with you.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! I couldn’t have dreamed up a better scenario. Ned sat far to the left of the driver’s seat, and I squeezed in next to him. My body was inescapably pressed against his. My legs were crammed into the passenger side along with Bruno’s and Lucy’s, but I was
very
comfortable.

Ned drove slowly so the bikes wouldn’t bounce around, and I wished we’d had farther to go.

“How’s that gorgeous older sister of yours?” Bruno asked me as we turned onto Shore Boulevard.

Why don’t you ask Ned?
I wanted to say, but figured that wouldn’t be appreciated. Every time I saw Bruno at the beach, he said something to me about Izzy. He had a thing for her, that was clear, and I wondered if Ned had figured it out.

“She’s fine,” I said.

“She’s fine, all right.” Bruno laughed, holding his hands in front of his chest—as best he could with Lucy on his lap—and I realized he was alluding to Isabel’s breasts.

“Knock it off,” Ned said to him. Then he spoke to me. “Hey, Jules, I have something for you to give her.”

I wasn’t surprised when he reached down to the floor of the car and came up with the toy giraffe. He handed it to me, and I cradled it on my lap.

“What’s that?” Lucy asked. She reached for the giraffe with her uninjured arm, but I held the toy away from her.

“It’s for Isabel,” I said, and she withdrew her hand.

“Izzy and I appreciate your tight lips, Jules,” Ned said.

I twisted my neck to try to get a look at his face. The sun was a bright star in each lens of his sunglasses. I thought I would treasure that moment forever.

We pulled into the Chapmans’ driveway. I saw our car in our own driveway and knew that my mother and Isabel were home.

“You know,” I said to Ned, putting on the most grown-up voice I could manage. “If Bruno went with you, I think my mother would allow Isabel to go in your boat. Safety in numbers and all of that.” I’d heard my father use that term when he talked about Isabel going out with a crowd.

“Oh, yeah?” Ned exchanged a look with Bruno. Lucy walked
across the yard, sliding her feet through the sand, holding her arm, already working up the tears she would show our mother.

I nodded. “Want me to ask?” I asked him.

“Would you?” he said. “If she can, you can send her over. Otherwise, come tell me yourself, okay?”

I nodded and tried not to look like a jerk as I walked carefully between the holly leaves that littered his yard.

In our living room, I found Isabel folding the clean laundry while my mother and grandmother clucked around Lucy and her arm. They painted it with Mercurochrome, which I knew had to sting like the devil, but to Lucy’s credit, she held her arm still and squeezed her eyes shut.

“Izzy,” I said, handing her the giraffe, which she quickly buried in the pile of clothes in the laundry basket. “Ned wants to know if you could go for a boat ride with him and Bruno.”

Isabel gave me a sharp warning look before turning back to the laundry.

“Bruno’s going, too,” I repeated.

My mother unwound a long piece of gauze from a box in the first-aid kit. She snipped it from the box with scissors, then looked over at us.

“I suppose that would be all right, Isabel,” she said. “Just a short ride, though. After you finish the laundry.”

“I can fold the laundry,” I said.

Isabel looked at me in astonishment. I had somehow, miraculously, won her a ride in the boat with Ned and was offering to take over her task, as well. I knew she wondered what I was up to, but she was so happy at the turn of events that she didn’t bother to ask me.

“Thanks,” she said, either to me or my mother, I was not sure
which. Surreptitiously, she took the giraffe from the laundry basket and walked toward the porch. I knew once she was outside, she would break into a run.

I folded the laundry, burying my face in its clean smell as I tried to imagine what was happening in Ned’s yard. Izzy and Bruno and Ned would climb into his boat, and maybe something would change on that ride. Maybe she would notice Bruno’s handsomeness. He had certainly noticed her beauty. Maybe she’d realize that, compared to Bruno, Ned was a little dull.

I knew it was wrong to pray for small things, but I couldn’t help the prayer that ran through my head.
Let Isabel forget about Ned and fall in love with Bruno.
If that happened, then maybe Ned would realize what a wonderful girl
I
was. I knew he saw me as a kid and that if he were free, he would probably find some other girl his own age to date, but my fantasies ran rampant. I couldn’t bear that Isabel had him when I wanted him. He wasn’t perfect. He smoked cigarettes and I had the feeling he drank a bit too much when he was out with his friends, but maybe the love of a good woman—even if she was only twelve—could change him.

Julie

T
here was not a single solitary sexual thought in my mind as I sat at my kitchen table stuffing giant pasta shells for the dinner I would serve Ethan. What had happened to my lusty yearning from the other day? It was gone. A fleeting hormonal aberration. I not only lacked desire, I didn’t
care
that I lacked it. It was almost a relief. I wouldn’t have to worry how I looked nude. My hips were bigger than they should be from too many days in front of the computer. My breasts seemed to hang a little lower every time I looked in the mirror. I didn’t have to worry about all that if I didn’t care about sex. But I
was
worried that I might have given Ethan the wrong idea during our last, faintly suggestive phone conversation.

An hour later, though, when I opened the front door to find Ethan standing on my porch, a bunch of flowers in his hand, the
blue of his eyes matching the color of the sky behind him and his soft voice telling me how beautiful my neighborhood was, my body suddenly reacted as if it belonged to a twenty-year-old. I wasn’t sure how I would make it through dinner without dragging him upstairs to my bedroom.

I gave him a hug, and the press of his body against mine only intensified my feelings. I let go of him with a smile.

“I am really happy to see you,” I said.

“Me, too.” He leaned over to kiss me gently on the lips. “Do you have a vase I can put these in?” He held the flowers out to me.

I found a vase for the flowers and set them on the table on the porch. It would be cool enough to eat out there this evening.

In the kitchen, he looked at Shannon’s framed senior picture resting on the windowsill.

“This has to be your daughter,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, as I opened the oven door to peek at the pasta shells.

“I see your family in her,” he said. “That exotic beauty.”

I glanced at him as I closed the oven door. “She looks a lot like Isabel,” I said.

“I don’t remember Isabel well enough,” he said, grinning at me. “I only had eyes for her little sister.”

I smiled, handing him a knife and pointing him toward the cutting board. “Would you slice the tomatoes, please?”

We worked together easily in the kitchen. He seemed as comfortable in my house as he had been in his own. His selfconfidence was sexy to me. The way he touched my arm when I walked past him was sexy.
Everything
about him was sexy to me tonight.

We didn’t talk about anything heavy over dinner. I wanted to know about his father’s interview with the police, but that could
wait. I didn’t want anything to break the mood, and he seemed to feel the same way. We sat at the table on the screened porch, eating in the fading light. I talked about what it was like growing up in Westfield, and he talked about learning carpentry as a teenager. Listening to him talk, I felt relaxed for the first time in weeks. I wanted to stand up, lean across the table and kiss him. I wanted to unbutton the buttons on his blue plaid shirt.

I made it through dinner and was carrying plates to the sink when Ethan came up behind me, put his arms around me and kissed my neck. My insides melted and I barely managed to set the dishes on the counter without dropping them.

“I’m so glad you’re back in my life,” he said, his lips against my ear.

I briefly remembered my mother’s words entreating me to disregard his “overtures.”
Sorry, Mom
, I thought, as I leaned back against him. I lifted his hand to my lips, letting his forearm brush against my breast.

“Let’s go upstairs,” I said.

We made love for what seemed like hours. I’d had no lover other than Glen for the past thirty years, and although the newness of being with Ethan was alluring, so was the familiarity I felt with him, the sense of having known him for a very long time. It wasn’t until afterward, when we lay comfortably in each other’s arms, that we finally broached the topics that weighed heavily on each of us.

“So,” I said, smoothing my hand across his chest, “tell me about your father’s talk with the police.”

Ethan pressed his lips to the top of my head, and I pulled closer to him. I loved the feeling of being cradled in his arms.

“He didn’t seem all that upset, actually,” he said. “I was relieved. But you know, he’s an amazing guy. He can still turn this switch and get back in his old judge-and-lawyer mode to handle a situation. He said he’s sure he satisfied their doubts about Ned’s alibi.”

“That’s good,” I said. I would not mar the moment with my own thoughts about Ned’s guilt. What mattered most to me right then was that Ethan no longer seemed worried about his father.

“I think they went easy on him,” he said. “And they would probably go even easier on your—” He stopped talking, lifting his head from the pillow. “Did you hear something?” he asked. I raised my own head to listen. There might have been some movement in the hallway outside my room, but I wasn’t sure.

“Mom?”

I was up in an instant. “Oh, shit!” I whispered, using a word that rarely passed through my lips. “It’s Shannon,” I said, uncertain whether to reach for my jeans or run to my closet for my robe. I opted for the jeans, balancing on one foot as I pulled them on.

“Mom?” Shannon knocked on my door.

“Just a minute, Shannon,” I said. “I’ll be right out.”

Ethan was up and dressing, too.

“Stay here, please,” I whispered to him as I pulled my T-shirt over my head. I opened the door and walked, braless, into the hallway.

I found Shannon in her own room sorting through her bookshelves, putting some of the books into a cardboard box on her bed.

She looked over at me. “Were you asleep?” she asked. “Your hair’s a mess.”

“Yes, I took a little nap.” I combed my fingers through my hair.
I felt winded as I sat down on the corner of her bed. “It’s good to see you,” I said.

“Did you have friends over for dinner?” she asked. “I smell tomato sauce.”

“Yes,” I said. “I made stuffed shells and there’s plenty left if you want to take some with you.”

“Maybe I will, thanks,” she said. She looked at the hardcover book in her hand. “I came over to start packing,” she said.

“Packing?”

“For my move.” She didn’t look at me as she returned her attention to the bookshelf. “It’s still a few weeks away, but I thought I should start going through my stuff.” She pulled out a book, looked at the title and slipped it back onto the shelf again. Her belly seemed to have grown enormously in the past few days.

“Shannon,” I said, “have you really thought this move through?”

“It’s all I’ve been thinking about for the past few months, Mother.” I hated it when she called me
Mother.

“Please don’t go, honey,” I pleaded. “Please. At least stay here until after you’ve had the baby.” I was
not
going to let this happen. I wondered if there was something I could do legally to keep her here.

“I want to be with my baby’s father, Mom,” she said, pulling out a book and dropping it into the box. “That’s the way it should be.”

“When can I meet him?” I asked. Maybe I could reason more easily with
him
than I could with my daughter.

“I was thinking about that,” she said. “It might be better if you didn’t meet him right now, since you’re so—”

There was a slight thud from the direction of my bedroom, as if Ethan had bumped his knee on the dresser in the darkness.

“Daddy?” Shannon looked up, her eyes suddenly those of a hopeful child. She started for the hallway and I quickly grabbed her arm.

“Daddy’s not here,” I said, shocked that she might think that was a possibility.

“Then who’s in your bedroom?”

I thought of lying, of pretending she had imagined the sound, but I knew that was not going to work.

“Mother,”
she said. “Who is in your bedroom?”

“I have company,” I said awkwardly. “Ethan Chapman.”

I thought she was going to hit me. The look she gave me was nothing short of murderous.

“How could you
do
that?” she asked. “I leave and you start screwing around? You and Dad haven’t even been apart that long. You’re not giving getting back together a chance!”

“There is no chance of us getting back together, Shannon,” I said. I felt terrible that she’d been nursing that fantasy for the past two years and I hadn’t known. “Ethan is an old friend, someone I feel very close—”

“Shut up!” She put her hands over her ears. “Just shut up.”

She pushed past me and ran down the hall. I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall as I listened to her race down the stairs and out of the house, and I only jumped a little bit when the front door slammed shut behind her.