The Promise of Stardust (15 page)

And for the first time she didn't look like a kid. I ran my fingers along her cheek, wondering why I'd never even considered kissing her before.

Her breathing quickened as her lips held on mine, the pressure increasing hesitantly. I tried to slip my tongue into her mouth, but I guess the dare was too much. She shifted away from me and brought the pads of her fingertips to her mouth, and then, with her eyes locked on mine, she reached out and touched my lips as if she were bringing the kiss back to me.

I didn't have any idea what I should do next. I wanted her, but this was Elle.

She stood, looking equally uncertain of herself. “It must be late. I'd better go home.”

I rose and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, intending to kiss her again, seriously this time, but she backed away.

“Elle.” What was I supposed to say? That I didn't want her to leave? She had to. She was past curfew. “I'll walk you home.”

We didn't talk about the kiss. We didn't talk at all for a few minutes.

The trees, tall oaks, maples, and pines, blocked the night sky from view as we strolled down the street. I tripped in a pothole, and feeling like a klutz, I tried to laugh it off. “I should have brought a flashlight.” My arm brushed against hers, half intentionally, half because I couldn't see. I wanted to take her hand, but she'd broken away from my kiss, and the possibility of changing a relationship so rooted in established roles seemed as dangerous as anything I'd ever dared to do.

After another block, she halted.

I turned to her, needing to touch her again.

“Matt?” Her voice whispered through the inky air. “Does that count as a kiss?”

“What? That? Well, um, I guess. What do you mean?”

“I've never kissed anyone before. Does that count as a kiss? Did you mean to kiss me?”

“Yeah. Not at first, but yeah. I wanted to kiss you. Is that weird?”

Elle slipped her hand in mine. “No, it was nice.”

“What about a second kiss?” I inched closer, leaning over her.

A car pulled out of a driveway, and like guilty schemers, we released each other's hand and strolled awkwardly the last two blocks home.

The TV lit the living room of her house with a blue hue. “It's after eleven,” I said. “You're late. I'll come in with you and explain.”

She opened the front door. Her father was conked out on the sofa.

“No need. I guess he fell asleep,” Elle whispered. “Night, Matt.”

I pecked her mouth and tried to tug her back onto the porch for more, but she pulled away again. “I can't. Good night,” she said. The door slowly closed in my face.

Through the window, I could see Elle rounding up beer bottles from the coffee table in front of her father, flipping on the kitchen light, and disappearing into the back of the house.

In Wales, I'd had sex with a girl I didn't care about—much. I could have—but she was more interested in conquest than even I was. This newborn fascination I had with Elle couldn't be like that. We had to care about each other or it would be disastrous. Even at seventeen, I knew that much. But here's the thing: I did care. That's what made it scary. I already loved her—even if I didn't love her like that. For days, I tried to convince myself it was a stupid crush.

Besides, Elle was just a kid. Then I'd rationalize she would be fifteen in twelve more days, then eleven. Then it didn't matter much; Elle's mother ended up in the hospital with a blood infection, and her grandfather dropped dead from a stroke. If that weren't enough, I was hit by a car.

Actually, Hank ran me down, not on purpose, but he did. He'd been drinking, and I was out jogging after dark. A downpour started, and somehow Hank hit me and broke my leg, my left tibia. He drove off, unaware. My folks figured it out the next day. His car had pulled into the driveway minutes after it happened, and then Dad found fabric from my running shorts embedded in Hank's bumper.

For Mom and Dad, my injuries presented a moral dilemma. Hank needed to stop drinking before he killed someone, especially since that someone could be me. Dad thought a drunk-driving, hit-and-run arrest might make Hank wake up to the reality he'd become an alcoholic. Mom worried about how sick Alice was and what would happen to Elle and Christopher if Hank went to prison. One dying mother, one jailbird father would likely land Elle and Chris in foster care. There were zip relatives—only my parents—and technically they weren't related.

My parents opted to handle the situation themselves. They confronted Hank, and utterly remorseful and relieved my broken leg would heal, he went to his first AA meeting, offered to pay my college tuition, and stayed sober—briefly.

With the adults preoccupied, Elle and I stole plenty of opportunities to make out when no one was looking. No one was ever looking. No one even noticed we were smitten with each other. Why would they? Everyone assumed we had the same old relationship.

Whether love at first sight is a myth or a legitimate phenomenon, I can't say, but falling in love with Elle was as unexpected. I wish I could say it was a pure, chaste kind of love, and that I would have waited forever to make love to her. But I was seventeen. I'd already felt the curve and grind of a girl's pelvis beneath my own. I knew Elle was too young. I did. But I couldn't explain the hunger I had for her. And only in retrospect did I realize how big a mistake I was making by pushing her into sleeping with me.

I was working the graveyard shift at L.L.Bean's mail order, sleeping away the mornings, stealing the afternoons with Elle when she didn't have to watch Christopher, and trying to put my hands places she continued to resist.

Elle had been her grandfather's favorite, and he left his house to her for when she grew up. It remained vacant and available for our meetings. We took advantage. With all the awkward fumbling complicated by the cast on my leg, we rolled around on the sofa, and once I got her into a bedroom and half undressed before she said no. Our parents showed no indication of knowing or outward concern. Hank was still going to AA meetings. Alice, although still hospitalized, had improved, and my folks were busy watching Christopher and working their own jobs.

In mid-August, Elle paid close attention to the weather forecast because the Perseid meteor showers were coming, and a cloudless sky was crucial to see shooting stars. Up on her grandfather's widow's walk, she lugged out the telescope. The hospital had released Alice the day before, and the families were having a quiet afternoon picnic down by the riverfront. Alice, Hank, and my folks gathered down below in the gazebo, and Christopher was running around with his hyperactive arms flailing away. One place Elle and I were always safe from Christopher was up on the widow's walk because the kid might run around flapping his wings, but he would never fly. He was terrified of heights. Her grandfather's house sat on over a hundred acres of land that rose up over the Harraseeket River. Most of it was forested except for the lawn that sloped down to the riverbank. The farmhouse, as we called it, was really an octagonal Victorian, a onetime fad of architecture. It had a wraparound porch and a widow's walk where Elle loved to watch the nighttime sky.

“You don't need the telescope to see shooting stars,” I said, rubbing my shin. With my cast finally off, I felt compelled to scratch at even the slightest itch.

“Shush, don't tell my parents that I don't need Gramps's telescope. They'll make me stay home and watch from the backyard.”

“They can't hear us up here.” I pulled Elle back into the attic, where I could kiss her. I pinned her against the wall, slid my hand up under her shirt, and snapped open her bra.

“Matt, no; don't.”

I ignored her, kissing her neck, her ears, anywhere which had previously elicited a reaction.

“My parents. They might come looking for us.”

I slipped my hand onto her breast.

“Matt, tomorrow night. Not now.”

“Tomorrow?” I stood erect. Well, my posture was not my only anatomically erect feature.

She trembled a little then met my eyes with her own less-than-certain-looking ones. “If you can get protection—I'm staying here tomorrow night for the Perseids. Alone. Can you, you know, sneak down here? You're off, right?”

For a moment my breath left me. “Seriously?”

She nodded. “I want to—sleep with you.”

“God, I love you, Peep.”

“Me, too,” she said. “We just have to be careful.”

And we were. But as it turned out, not nearly careful enough.

   12   

In September of '88, I started my senior year of high school, but Elle had zoomed past me. Bowdoin College had allowed her to audit classes the previous semester since Freeport High School no longer knew what to do with her, and she impressed the hell out of the college. The dean of admissions looked at her age, grades, and perfect SAT scores, and the school admitted her for the fall semester. Since she was too young to drive, I volunteered to pick her up in the afternoons, but it was another excuse to be alone and to sneak more time down at her grandfather's house.

As the weather grew colder, so did Alice's prognosis. Fully aware of the inevitable outcome, Alice decided to stop cancer treatment against the wishes of her husband.

Elle's tears didn't surprise me. She wanted more time with her mother, and she cut classes, stayed up half the night studying, and generally neglected herself to get it. Even so, we found time to be together. Rather than distance developing, we found something else—intimacy, I suppose. I swore I could feel her pain, and I wanted to carry it for her. We were children, but we were a family, the two of us, and I could only foresee one future: we would get married—someday.

On a mid-November afternoon, at her grandfather's house, we started a fire in the woodstove and cuddled up on the sofa. Elle wasn't feeling well. Everyone had noticed that much. Mom kept saying, “The girl's run-down, trying to do all the housework for Alice and carrying a full load at college. Why doesn't Hank hire a housekeeper? He can afford it.”

I stroked Elle's hair. She bolted upright and ran into the bathroom. Through the oak-paneled door, the sound of retching followed. An irrational idea hit me. Although I knew cancer wasn't contagious, the tendency did run through families. But then, feeling like a dolt, I realized it was the chemo that made a person puke, not the cancer itself. “Peep?”

“Go away.”

“Can I come in?”

“No!”

“Elle, you're sick. Do you need to go to the doctor?”

The door creaked open, and pale as the ceiling, she crept back to the sofa and plopped her face in her hands.

“What is it?” I rubbed her back.

Her eyes widened to the size of saucers. “I didn't pay attention at first.” Her chin quivered. “But I think I'm pregnant.”

Elle didn't want me to go in while the doctor examined her. So there I sat, conspicuously killing time in Planned Parenthood's outer office, reading material on STDs. I didn't have one of those. I used a condom every time I had sex. Every single time. I switched to literature on contraceptives. On condoms. On how to use them properly. I knew how. I went through boxes of them. The stupid thing was, I never read the directions. I learned like every other guy—by word of mouth. You waited until you got hard and rolled it on. When you were done, you threw it away and made sure your parents didn't find the wrappers. Except these directions had a tidbit about making sure you were still hard when you pulled out.