Trouble With the Truth (9781476793498) (16 page)

I'd endured one-and-a-half long months of invisibility and discontent when, as the temperature—and I—approached a broiling point, I came to a momentous insight: I knew what was wrong with me. I was almost fifteen, yet I still had not experienced a love affair!

I sat by the hour alone those still, hot days analyzing the problem, and by a form of self-hypnosis—the strongest persuasion there is—I began to envision myself as a vessel of incomparable sexual charm: a not-too-young, not-too-old legatee of Cleopatra's, Hedy Lamarr's, and Jane Russell's blatant sexuality. I was aware that in the myopic eyes of my father, Ben, Fred, and everyone who knew me, I seemed a slim, hardly developed girl, given to sudden childish laughter, whose principal interest lay in her habit of saying exactly what was on her mind, no matter how naïve or foolish it sounded. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to change that impression immediately. To do so, I simply had to find someone, a male, preferably attractive to me, who would accept the identity only I realized was my true self.

If you search diligently enough, you're likely to find a character with a particular necessary flaw. And though my territory was limited—the nearby tennis courts, the old garage that was the stock company's summer theater, the local movie house, coffee shop, and grocery stores—my purpose was obdurate and my intuition good.

The summer theater turned up a likely candidate in the person of
Arthur Frith. I almost dismissed him at first glance; he seemed too attractive to be a likely prospect. He was sixteen—older than Ben—taller and better built. His left eye was wide, innocent; his right smaller, crafty, roguish. But after I'd hung around the garage for a few days, where he was employing himself as prompter-stage manager-all- purpose assistant, for a production of
Harvey
in which Ben and Toby had roles, I knew that both his eyes were lies. He wasn't shrewd enough to be crafty or gentle enough to be guileless.

He was like a strong, slow animal that has just found out that it's strong and an animal. The director and the cast depended on him to do all the chores and ignored him when the chores were done. But he didn't mind when they went off in pairs and groups for a snack without him, nor did he sulk when they didn't include him in their conversations. This was because this summer theatrical was Arthur's first breath of freedom. From the moment he could remember, he had lived with his grandmother and her mother—accompanying, assisting, considering them. He'd never created any noise. The two old ladies, with grave compunctions no doubt, had gone to Minnesota for these summer weeks, and during the hiatus, Arthur had found he could be “Art” and useful to other people. I sensed that he was ready to be more than useful, to make a real impression on someone else. For instance, me.

One day after Ben and Toby and the others had left, and Arthur was methodically striking the improvised set, I approached him and realized almost instantly that it would take a good deal of effort to make him be impetuous; his old-lady background had all but precluded sudden desire.

“I'm Lucresse Briard,” I said with the mysterious smile I'd been practicing. “Aren't you thirsty?”

“I have to get the chairs off,” said Arthur, lugging a flat toward the back wall.

“I'll help you. Then we could go get something to drink.”

“You don't have to.” He put the flat down and looked at me uncomfortably.

I shrugged and sat down languorously on one of the chairs he would be removing in a moment. I stretched my arms above my head. “It's
so
hot for July. Much too hot to rush around the way those kids do. I like to move
slow
; don't you?”

Arthur shuffled over to me with his hands on his hips. “It's always hot in July,” he said matter-of-factly.

“But what I think is most people don't know how to keep themselves cool. For instance, those kids—or maybe it's because they just aren't grown-up enough.”

“I don't exactly understand what you're talking about.”

I closed my eyes. I would be patient as well as alluring. “Lucresse, Arthur. Please address me by my name.”

“Lucresse,” he mumbled and shifted from one foot to the other.

“What I was thinking, Arthur, was, well, probably every one of those kids was dying for a drink about an hour ago, but they just had to go through the first act—practicing it over and over again—so they didn't get a drink when they were really thirsty. I believe in getting what you want
when
you want it.”

“Oh.” He smiled as though he wasn't sure he should smile—that it was the polite thing to do in this situation.

I smiled up at him as though he and I had shared an amusing joke. “Do you think Toby Reiman is attractive, Arthur?”

He studied his shoes. I could tell he had thought about her before. “She's all right.”

“She sure jumps around a lot,” I said, giving an offhand giggle. “Sometimes I wonder if she can hold still long enough for a kiss.”

He shifted his weight and giggled too. “I wouldn't know.”

“Well, certainly I wouldn't either—know, that is. Kissing is usually done in private. Anybody knows that.”

“Yeah,” agreed Arthur, his back straightening. “I have to take that chair you're on.”

I could tell that it had now occurred to him that he and I were alone in the big garage. The first step on my journey to an affair had been accomplished!

The second and third were equally easy. Arthur accepted my suggestion that we go to the counter at the coffee shop, a place the others didn't frequent. And, his wide eyes narrowing with pride, he paid for my Coke.

Afterward, he walked me home. We walked side by side, two feet apart, and the more we walked, the more boyishly talkative he grew. That was when I learned that he lived with elderly women, and I suddenly feared that I was reverting to my false, unsophisticated self and was becoming his “friend.” To recover my new self, I swung my hips a little.

“They say being a senior is tough,” chatted Arthur. “But at least you're a
senior
. But you know what I worry about? After a whole year of being a senior—the tops—then you're nothing but a freshman again when you go to college.”

I swung my hips even more. “I don't see that senior or freshman makes any difference. It's how you
feel
that counts. Why I've known
thirteen
-year-olds that knew more than college girls—about things that matter.”

“How old are you, Lucresse?” he asked suddenly.

“Fifteen, practically,” I answered nonchalantly.

“You sure know a lot for fifteen.”

I felt like jumping up and down, but instead, I made my hips swing more subtly. “Enough. I know enough.”

I put my hand in his. After a few steps, I was sorry. The picture of us that I was watching from somewhere out in space looked too much like youthful sweethearts. This was to be an “affair.” Also, his hand was just a hand—like Ben's or Fred's. Its touch evoked no feeling
other than skin on skin, indeed a rather unpleasant friction, both skins being sticky warm. I tried to withdraw my hand, but he held on. At my driveway, I yanked it away hard, at the same time trying to formulate the next thing to say, and a thought I'd never had before came to me: “Let's go down to the lake tonight for a moonlight swim,” I suggested, resuming my languor.

Arthur's lips hardly moved. “That's a great idea.”

“But you'll have to call me.” Girls who had dates were called; Ben called Toby.

“Why?”

“To ask me,” I said.

“But it was your idea.”

“Even so.” I raised and lowered one shoulder provocatively.

“All right. What time should I call?”

“About six,” I directed. “My father and Ben should be home by then.” This last sentence was a mistake and I knew it coming out of my mouth.

“But I don't want to call
them
!” he protested.

“Of course not, silly,” I recovered. “It's just that I have to tell them I'm going.”

“Oh.” He hesitated a second's beat. “Do you have to tell them
everything?”

“Everything I want them to know is all,” I whispered, and then I smiled back at him sloe-eyed as I strolled into our house.

The phone rang at exactly six o'clock, and Ben got to it before I could. The male voice asking for me made him inquire in surprise: “Who's this?” Then he put the mouthpiece against his chest and glared at me. “It's Arthur Frith—for you. What does
he
want?”

I tore the telephone out of his grip. “I don't know yet.”

I spoke in Toby's low, urgent way. “…Oh sure, Arthur. I'd love to. I'll be ready at seven thirty. Good-bye.”

“You'll be ready for what?” asked my father, inspecting the framed East Indian batique scarf he had borrowed from his friends in the big house.

“To go swimming.”

“Tonight?”

“With Arthur Frith?” Ben added.

“Yes. What's so amazing about that? He asked me for a date.”

“That's amazing,” Ben said.

“He's older than you,” I retorted.

My father only half-listened as he searched the walls for space for his temporary acquisition. “These gods couldn't look more murderous in oil. Who is Arthur Frith?”

“He's the stage manager,” Ben said. “A real slow, quiet kid.”

“And the prompter,” I said.

“Then at least he can read.”

“Not very fast,” Ben said.

“He's very deep. Ben hardly knows him.”

“I know he's always losing the place.”

“You're only picking on him because he asked me for a date.”

Ben scratched his head. “I don't get
that
at all.”

I made a nasty face at him. “I'm going to get undressed.”

“Are you going to let her go, Dad?”

“I'm afraid this will have to hang in the kitchen,” he answered on his way there. “But let's not tell Fred just yet. Lucresse hasn't asked me if she can go.”

“I think she ought to
have
to ask you!” yelled Ben. “A little kid like her going off for a swim, with an older kid like Arthur, at
night!
”

“I'm not a little kid. Arthur doesn't think so, or he wouldn't have asked me. After all, he could have asked Toby Reiman, or anybody.”

“Fat chance he'd have with her!”

“Now, now—that's all theoretical,” my father jumped in, returning
from the kitchen without the framed scarf. “Young Master Frith did not invite Toby, or anybody. He invited Lucresse.”

“I
can
go, can't I? I already told him I would!”

“ ‘May' you go,” corrected my father.

“I may then, can't I? Please?”

“Of course you may, Lucresse,” he said almost too sweetly. “You're an attractive young lady. Ben and I will have to get used to young men asking you for dates.”

Somehow that—his acknowledgment of my dismal lack of experience in this area—made me feel less worldly than all of Ben's uncomplimentary remarks lumped together. “See?” I said to Ben weakly.

“Maybe I should go swimming tonight too,” he said, to have the last say.

“No!” I yelled. “I don't go along when you go places with Toby!”

“Let me see…it must be thirty years since I went bathing at night,” my father reminisced. “It was in Cannes, as I recall…”

“I never went out with you and Felicity either!” I said.

“I recall that very well. Felicity and I didn't go out.”

“Even so,” I begged, “you're not thinking of coming along with Arthur and me, or letting Ben come?”

“Oh, no. Of course not,” he said. “I was only musing.”

As I changed into my swimsuit, I thought of Jen with self-pitying love. Had she lived, this event wouldn't have been so agonizing. She would have been the end authority, would have dictated the attitude Ben and my father should assume. She would have pronounced a straight “Yes, you can go” or “No”—and bearing no resemblance to her sister Catherine, she more likely would have said “yes.” Then the worst I would've had to face would have been the innocent, bothersome advice I'd heard that regular mothers usually gave.

But I had no mother. And more than anything now, I feared how my father and Ben might behave when Arthur came for me. First I
hoped desperately that they would conceal their appraisal of my “new” role as a sought-after female. Then I hoped that, if they didn't conceal it, Arthur was slow enough to miss their insinuations—that I had no experience whatsoever and was “debuting” my new role with him tonight.

My fears and hopes were wasted. My father and Ben—undoubtedly because the former had advised the latter during my absence—were more deceitful than I could have wished. They shook hands with Arthur and mouthed innocuous remarks about how warm the night was and what a bright notion it was to go swimming. With just the right level of dispassionate sincerity, they wished us a good time, and we left.

Whereupon my confidence returned with a vengeance as Arthur and I walked the quarter mile through the dark, quiet streets to a path through someone's private property to the lake. The beachfront was deserted and iridescent under the moon. We could hear our feet slushing through the sand and the soft splash of the water. The sand was still warm from the day's sun, so I sat down on it and scooped great handfuls, letting it pour languorously through my fingers. Arthur stood, watching me.

“I've never come here before, like this,” he said. “It's funny.”

“How?” I dropped my chin so that I could look upward at him even more than was required by my sitting position beneath him on the sand.

“With nobody around—and no sun.”