The Last Good Night (15 page)

But Astrid still didn't see. How could she not see, never see?

“Only a few more, sweetie. Sixty-six dollars and no cents.”

We were interrupted by three
pings
of the office bell.

Astrid rose and lumbered down the hallway.

I heard Frank Xavier's voice from the other side of the office wall.

“Unfortunately, Mrs. Clark, it's time for me to leave.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

“I've enjoyed my stay very much,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I plan on returning.”

“We'd love to have you,” Astrid replied as she handed him his bill. “And be sure to tell all your friends about us.”

“Oh, I will.” Frank Xavier laughed as the screen door of the office swung shut behind him.

“I wish we had more like him,” Astrid said when she returned. “Now where were we?”

 

I
SAT ON
my bed, rocking back and forth.

The tears, when they finally came, racked through me in torrents, wave crashing upon wave. I bit my lower lip until it was bloody to hold back the sounds but that only trapped them within where they shattered all they touched.

There was a trail of lava inside where he had been, where all of them had been. It burned through my groin, my gut, up through my throat.

I rocked, cried, clawed at myself for hours until I was finally spent, hollowed out, empty.

Sitting completely still, I slowly began to reclaim my body, my numb legs, my wasted lungs.

Eventually, I got up and scrubbed my face, patting it gently with a worn-out towel.

I wanted only to be good now, to be clean, to start again.

I still believed that was possible.

 

T
HE FOLLOWING
M
ONDAY,
I went back to school.

I rose before dawn and put on opalescent Maybelline white eye shadow, black eyeliner, three coats of mascara, and a mocha frosted lipstick. I looked at myself in the mirror, and then I washed it all off. Clean-faced, I lay down on my bed to zip the jeans that were too tight to close any other way. I had showered in them earlier in the week to make them conform to my body, and then tapered the legs from crotch to knee in tiny hand-stitches to make them even snugger.

The newly built Flagerty High School sat in the morning sun unprotected by trees. The lawn that surrounded it was freshly mowed into a crisp green carpet with cement foot paths dissecting it like a web. It was completely empty when I arrived.

I was the first in my homeroom class, but nevertheless, I took a seat in the back row. When the other kids filed into the room twenty minutes later, bunched up, laughing, straightening books and skirts, they glanced over at me quizzically and then continued with their banter.

At lunchtime, I followed the crowd to the cafeteria. I did not sit with the other girls, avoiding anything that could be interpreted as an advance, as want or desire or need. Instead, I sat alone in the rear of the large gray room and ate my strawberry yogurt slowly, letting the pink-streaked goo drip from my spoon back into the container.

I felt someone watching me eat.

I glanced up quickly and then away. The boy eyeing me had stick-straight blond hair and sharp bones, and though he was seated in the center of a crowded table, he seemed separate from his friends. I looked back at him. His eyes, from the distance, were as blue-black as the sea at night.

When the bell rang, I hurried to my next class, English, and then to history and finally math.

The next morning, I saw him walking toward me with a group of his friends. We looked at each other as we passed.

I found myself looking for him in the cafeteria at lunchtime, in the hallway, outside the gym, but he was not there.

On the third day, Wednesday, I was walking down the front steps of the school and onto the cement path at three o'clock when he came up behind me.

“Hi.”

“Hi.” I took a pack of Winstons out of my back pocket and lit one, then offered him the pack. “You want one?”

“I don't smoke. Thanks, though.”

As we walked, I stole a sideways glance. His face seemed to be pulled so tight I could see the shape of his skull through the skin.

“What's your name?” he asked.

“Marta.”

“Marta what?”

“Marta Clark.”

He nodded. “Jack Pierce,” he said.

I
NOTICED, AS
we continued walking, that people were looking at us, girls, following our progress, querying it, their eyes squinted in puzzlement.

“Do they always watch you like that?” I asked.

“Who?”

“The girls. Your roving fan club.”

Jack turned around, glanced at them, and shrugged. “I don't know.”

I smiled. He was one of the boys who took it for granted, the attention, the ardor. It no longer even interested him. He could take it or leave it according to whim, his own damn whim. I knew that I would never be one of them, those girls eyeing him so proprietarily, never could be even if I wanted to. I would never be invited to their parties or their shopping expeditions, would never share giggling crushes on pop stars and movie actors and high school track stars like Jack. I only dimly suspected that was why he was walking with me, talking to me with a slight tremor in his voice.

“So rumor has it you're from Germany,” he said. “How old were you when you came to America?”

“Nine.”

“It must have been hard, leaving everything you knew.”

“It was all right.”

“Why did your parents come?”

I stared at him for a moment. “Do you always ask this many questions?”

“Only if I'm interested.”

I shrugged. “Well, it's the land of opportunity, isn't it?”

I glanced up at him. He was half a foot taller than me, with broad shoulders and muscular arms. The narrow triangle of skin at the top of his white oxford shirt was deeply tanned. There was something overwhelmingly clean about him, despite the blond hair that fell rebelliously an inch longer than all the other boys', the loose shirttails, the buttons on his knapsack. “Pierce, huh? Are you related to the Pierce store?” Pierce's took up a half-block downtown and was mentioned in every guidebook to the area, an unusual hybrid of expensive china and jewelry, gadgets both practical and rare, toiletries and silk scarves and homemade jams, that served tourists and locals alike.

“Yup.”

“Oh.”

He stopped short. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Right.” He paused. “Sorry. It's just that people always figure they know something about me once they find out my family owns Pierce's. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I think I do.”

We walked to the end of the school's property in silence and stopped when we reached the curb, hovering on its edges, uncertain of where to go next.

“Are you busy on Saturday night?” Jack asked.

“I'm always busy.” The motel with its chores, its endless round of dirty laundry and soiled sinks, loomed just to the side of my days, my nights.

“Oh.”

“No,” I added quickly. “I mean, nothing I can't get out of.”

“Will you then?”

“Will I what?”

“Get out of it?”

“Okay.”

We smiled shyly at each other and then shifted our eyes nervously away.

 

M
AYBE IT BEGAN
with loving Jack.

I sat on the weathered wooden railing at the entrance to the Breezeway, waiting for him. I could smell the grill being fired up by one of the weekend's party of fishermen, five fraternity brothers enjoying a twenty-year reunion. I could hear their raucous laughter, just beginning to be loosened up by beer; I knew the way it would hush and then ripple up behind me if I walked slowly past them. I kept my back to them.

When Jack drove up at exactly seven o'clock in a large green Oldsmobile convertible, I jumped off the railing and got into the car before he could get out to greet me.

“Am I late?” he asked.

“No.”

He waited while I settled in beside him on the white vinyl seat and then he drove off.

“Where are we going?”

“I thought we could go to Mangrove Mary's for dinner. Have you ever been there?”

“No.” The truth was I had never been on a date before, never sat in a car beside a boy, the entire evening ahead of us in all of
its languid uncertainty. My left foot was jiggling up and down and I crossed my legs to still it.

“I want to hear all about your life in Germany,” he said.

“Why?”

He laughed. “I've never been anyplace. I need firsthand reports. Come on, tell me one thing.”

“I was just a kid.”

“You must remember some things. What was your town like?”

“Dortmarr? Nothing, just an industrial town.”

“Oh.”

“I did go to Berlin once, though.”

“You did?”

I swam in the excitement of his voice, in the reflection of myself I found there, cosmopolitan, sophisticated.

“Did you see the wall?”

“Sure.” I offered up a brief description.

“God, you're lucky,” Jack exclaimed.

“Why?”

“You've already done so much. I haven't done shit. Not yet, anyway.”

I squinted and lit a cigarette, bending beneath the dashboard to keep the match from going out. The smoke blew back into our faces before streaming out into the wind.

“Didn't anyone ever tell you those things were bad for you?” Jack asked.

“I like a lot of things that are bad for me.”

“Like what?”

“Like you,” I replied with a bravado I did not feel. It was what I knew, that front, and I clutched at it now as if it were the sole familiar dialect in a foreign country. I tipped my head back and let the wind lick through my hair, opening my mouth to the soft night air scented with jasmine and insecticide.

“What makes you think I'll be bad for you?” he asked.

“Maybe you won't. Maybe I'll be bad for you.”

He laughed. “Christ, I hope so.”

We pulled up to a low wooden building nestled on a curve of the intracoastal, parked the car and walked up a planked deck lined with yellow hibiscus to the restaurant's entrance. Inside, potted palms stood in the corners and large ceiling fans whirred softly overhead. The dining room was filled with men and women freshly showered after a day of lounging on the beach. It was January, tourist season was in full swing. The hostess showed us to a table, but before we were seated, Jack asked, “Can't we eat outside?” The small round tables that lined the deck overlooking the water were completely empty, despite the crowd inside. “You sure?” the hostess asked doubtfully.

Jack glanced at me and I nodded in agreement. “Yes,” he answered firmly.

We stepped out onto the deserted deck and took a corner table. The waitress brought us a small candle in a royal blue glass holder and the light shone up in our faces, a nimbus in the dark. We sat quietly for a moment, looking out at the motionless azure river.

In an instant, mosquitoes began to swarm around us, clustering on our legs, our arms, buzzing beneath our noses, tickling our cheeks, nibbling our calves.

“So this is why no one's sitting out here,” Jack muttered as I swatted a mosquito on my thigh, leaving a tiny bulb of brown goo and blood. “I'm sorry. Do you want to go inside?”

“No. I like it here.” The empty deck, quiet and distant from the busyness on the other side of the glass wall, seemed safer somehow, with no one to watch, to judge. Across the water, the state park was a singular wall of pines, black on black. And just beyond, the white lights of the highway curved brightly and then snaked off into the night.

When the waitress returned, clearly miffed at having to venture outside, we ordered grilled mahimahi steaks and Budweis
ers. No one asked for proof of age and we ordered a second round as soon as the waitress showed up with the first.

At first, there was only the cold beer, the darkness, the mosquitoes. In the distance, I could see the docks of the Breezeway, the white boats moored for the night bobbing quietly in the water.

I moistened my lips with the tip of my tongue and tried to think of something to say. It was so much harder here, with Jack, than lying down with the men, where all I had to do was close my eyes, and no one expected anything except silence and malleability.

Jack looked down into his beer bottle as if searching for a topic of conversation there. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” he asked.

“No. What about you?”

“No. It's just me. Maybe my parents wouldn't watch me so closely if there was someone else in the house. They have my whole life mapped out for me. You know what I mean?”

“No,” I answered. “Actually, I don't. My mother doesn't know how to map out
her
life, much less my life. My mother does not know how to map out breakfast.”

“You're lucky.”

“You think so?”

“Sure. My parents have it all planned. I'm going to go to college at St. Delaville in the fall, where my father went. I'll study business. You know, how to increase efficiency, drive up profits, fascinating stuff like that. And then I'm going to come back and take over the store. I'm going to marry and have two kids and I'll probably never leave Florida.”

“Do they have the girl all picked out?”

He laughed grimly. “Probably.”

“Is that what you want?”

“I don't know. I guess I've never really thought about it.” He leaned back in his chair, stretching his legs beneath the table. I
felt his calf brush mine. “They're older. You ever hear of the change-of-life baby? That's me. I'm their only hope. With the store and all. I guess I owe them that much.”

“I don't see why you owe them anything.”

Jack looked at me quizzically, as if the idea was so alien to him that he could think of no response.

“Have you ever been to New York City?” I asked.

“No.”

“That's where I'm going to go. Someplace with more than three streets and five bars.”

“When?”

“As soon as I can.”

There was a long uncomfortable silence.

“You know the only time I ever feel really free?” Jack asked with a sudden intensity. “When I'm running. People think it's all about the meets and the trophies, but I don't give a shit about any of that. When I run, it's like I've discovered a way to suspend time. Everything else just disappears.” He looked up sheepishly. “I guess that sounds crazy.”

“No,” I said. “It doesn't sound crazy at all.”

He looked out at the water. In profile, I could see the deep planes of his cheekbones, the sharp line of his blond hair where it fell below his ears. I reached over and pressed my hand firmly to his neck. He turned, startled.

“Mosquito,” I said. I smiled and took my hand slowly away.

“I lied a minute ago,” Jack said quietly. “I have thought about it. You know what I want? To be a lawyer.” He smiled, embarrassed. “Some big rebellion, huh? Right up there with Jack Kerouac. Right up there with goddamned Mick Jagger. Well, my mother considers anything outside the famous Pierce's the same as running off to join the circus.” He motioned for another beer and then leaned forward. “Did you watch the Watergate proceedings?”

I vaguely remembered the lineup of men on the television. “I
didn't really pay too much attention,” I replied, and saw a tint of disappointment wash across his face.

“See, this is the thing,” he said. “The law works. It brought down the goddamned President, didn't it?”

“And that's what you want to do? Bring down presidents?”

“No. Well, I mean, if they're like Nixon, sure. But the law can change things, that's the point. Look at the Voting Rights Act. Look at the work the A.C.L.U. is doing.” His blue-black eyes were an electric indigo now, backlit and excited.

I nodded silently. Beneath the table, I tapped my forefinger into the opposite palm, as if pressing the names into it. They were an orbit of details, of events, that I had only had the dimmest awareness. No one had ever told me that they mattered before.

Jack rested his beer on the table, looking wounded, mistaking my silence for boredom. “You probably think this is just a stage. That's what all of them think.”

I didn't know if he meant his parents, or the other girls he had dated. “I don't think that,” I said.

Our eyes met, assessing, approving.

“You shouldn't let them do it,” I said.

“Do what?”

“Your parents. You shouldn't let them tell you what to do.”

“It's not that simple. When my grandfather came here from up north, the town had gone bust. He built Pierce's from nothing and turned it into the biggest store between Palm Beach and St. Augustine. He made it through the Depression, the 1935 hurricane, the war, all of it. That's the problem. I understand my parents wanting me to keep it going. There really is no one else. I don't know what to do. What about you? What do you want to be?” he asked.

I had never thought of
being
anything, just of getting out. “I don't care, as long as it's not here,” I said.

“God, I know.”

We both laughed and then it died out, this laughter which met above us, hovered, faded. We heard crickets in the distance, and the sound of dishes inside, and ceiling fans and couples having fun on a Saturday night. Inside, the band had begun to play covers of the Supremes.

“I lied about something, too,” I said.

“What?”

“I never actually went to Berlin or saw the wall. The only big city I've ever been to besides my big ten minutes in New York is Hamburg. We had to go there to get the boat, but all we did was eat in a
Konditerei
and then go back to our hotel room. Not exactly what you'd call the grand tour.”

“Why did you lie about something like that?” Jack asked.

“I thought you'd think I was more interesting.”

He laughed. “You're pretty damn interesting as it is.”

“It must be the beer.”

After dinner, we drove to the public beach.

A cool breeze wafted off the sea and wrapped around us as we strolled on the hard wet sand. The ocean was a lapis-tinged black, the tips of its modest waves washing across our feet and then receding. The empty lifeguard benches cast ominous shadows, and in the distance we saw other teenagers walking on the jetty, holding beers, holding hands. We headed in the opposite direction. He put his arm around me, finding a place in the curve between my waist and my hip. “I've never met anyone like you,” he said.