What I Saw and How I Lied (13 page)

"So you stole it." I thought I wanted to know everything. But I didn't want to hear this.

"It wasn't just us. The officers took rugs and silver for their quarters. Joe saw it going out the door, and if some of it got shipped home, nobody seemed to care. Not then, anyway. We figured an easy way to get it out, just a couple of boxes of stuff, but good stuff, you know? And Joe knew about this suitcase full of gold. Gold dust. And what were we going to do, just let the army take it? By this time, you see, we were thinking about going home, and what we were going back to. The plan was,

Joe would get the gold stateside, and this guy he knew would help him get us cash for it and take his cut. Then, when I got sprung, we'd split the rest. But what happened was, Joe got home and didn't want to sit on the cash, waiting for me to get back. So he takes it all and buys a business. And then another one.”

“He said it was a GI loan."

"After a while I'm writing him, and he's not answering. So as soon as I get stateside, I look him up. He dodged my calls. He didn't have the cash to give me. And then he takes off for Florida ..."

"That was you who called that night."

Peter nodded. "And the next day I went over to your house, and your grandma might be a battle-axe, but if you talk to her right she brags about her son and how he's vacationing in Palm Beach. So off I go."

"Is Joe trying to cheat you?"

"Let me put it this way: I think he'd be a hell of lot happier if I disappeared."

"I don't get it. Your father is rich. Why do you need the money so bad?"

"Yeah, well, I didn't say I got along so well with dear old dad. And a deal's a deal. Now he's telling me that if he swings this deal with Grayson he'll be able to raise some cash and pay me off. He says he took most of the risk, so I can wait. But I get nervous waiting."

"If the Graysons knew what Joe did ..."

"Yeah, they wouldn't be quite so friendly, would they? Going into business with a guy who steals from Jews."

I sat there, thinking about a warehouse full of stuff. Like that missing wall, when you could see into a farmhouse, tables and chairs and an empty cup. And all the stuff belonged to families. I looked down at the thin gold bracelet on my wrist, the one I never took off. I took it off and turned it over in my fingers. I wondered about the girl who'd owned it, who had to put it in a pile and give it to a German officer.

And then suddenly, for some reason, I thought of Margie stepping on the back of Ruthie Kalman's shoe.

"The thing is," Peter said, "over there, it was easy. We didn't think too much about it, we just saw our chance and took it. But lately I'm thinking crazy stuff. I'm thinking, there's a curse on that money. Maybe somebody has to pay."

We sat for a while and didn't say anything. I knew this moment was important. I knew I had to help him somehow. I couldn't make the pieces fit in my mind, about what I thought he was and what he did. But I knew I still loved him. I loved all the parts of him, even the ones I didn't understand.

I spun the bracelet around on the concrete. It made a little pinging noise. It rolled away and hovered on the edge of the empty pool for a minute. Peter and I both watched it fall in. It didn't make a sound.

"You know what the priest says in confession?" I asked him. "At the end, after you unload all your lousy sins? /
absolve you,
he says. I mean, he says it in Latin, and maybe he's bored and maybe he mumbles, but we know what he means and we believe it. You get a whole bunch of grace, and you get to start over. It's a good system if you think about it."

"Could you do that for me?" Peter asked.

"I absolve you," I said. I leaned over and kissed him on the mouth. I felt my breath mingle with his.

Our faces were so close. His eyes were soft, and he shook his head. Not to say no, but in a wondering way.

"Could it really happen like this?" he asked. "That a girl like you can make me feel...”

“Make you feel what?”

“Make me feel," he said.

I felt myself expand, as if the night had filled me up full of stars.

He stood up. "Come on," he said. "I'd better take you back."

I took his hand, and he pulled me up. I used the momentum to lean against him.

For once, he didn't put any distance between us. He took his hand and ran it down my spine. "You know what you have?" he asked. "True north."

"I don't know what that is."

He kept his hand on the base of my spine. "Inside you, right here, along your backbone ...," and he ran his finger down it again, making me shiver, "... you've got something. Like the needle of a compass. You know the right way to go."

He looked down at me, right into my face, and this time I got it. I got how to say
yes
without opening my mouth. He kissed me.

And the kiss turned into something deep and secret.

His mouth opened, and mine opened, too. His tongue went into my mouth and I was so surprised, I didn't know what to do. At first. Then he showed me.

My pulse seemed to have escaped its usual place. It was somewhere else now, beating in a deep secret place I didn't know was there. He placed his hand on the small of my back, as if we were dancing, and held me tight against him.

Then he stumbled against the chaise and landed on it. He went backward, and I was on top of him. He kept his arms around me, and we kissed again, even deeper, with need driving it this time.

I knew this was wrong, and I knew I didn't care, but I was confused. No one had gone through the
steps
of this with me. I only had Margie in my head, nodding knowingly even though she didn't know anything.

He pushed up against me, against my skirt. This was it, this was the knowing.

I didn't want to stop, but I needed a breath. I pulled away, just a little bit.

"Okay," he said. His breath was short. "Okay, baby, we'll stop."

"No, I never want to stop —"

"Evelyn!"
The voice was a shout.

Mom stood just a few feet away. "Evelyn, get up."

I'd seen her mad at me before, of course.
Close the door, cant you feel that draft? Do you expect me to pick up after you all the time? If I say come home at nine o'clock, that means nine o'clock, not twenty minutes after!

This was different. Her face seemed thinner, white, her eyes dark.

I slid off Peter's lap. Bev —

"Don't speak to me." Mom spit out the words. "Either of you."

"How did you find me?" I asked her.

"It's not what you think, Bev," Peter said. "She —"

"I love him!" I said. "I love him! It's not terrible, what I did. I love him and he loves me!"

"Evie, get in the car." Her voice was spooky. So tight, so shaky.

"I love him!"

"Beverly—"

She picked up an ashtray and threw it.

I don't know whether she was aiming at me or him.

It hit the concrete and sprayed glass at me. A piece cut my forehead, near my eye.

"Christ!" Peter took a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at my cut. I could feel the blood running down the side of my face. He looked at me frantically. "Christ, Beverly!"

I didn't care because he was looking at me with such concern.
He loves me. He loves me, he does, he does!

"Get in the car," Mom said again. "Right now. Get the hell out, I mean it!"

I could have fought her. I could have taken what I knew about what he felt and thrown it at her, proved I was an adult now, just like her. But feeling grown up? I discovered something right then: It comes and it goes. I was still afraid of my mom.

I walked past her. I left her there with Peter.

I walked to the car. It was parked snugly next to Peter's, underneath the tree. I started toward the passenger door and stopped as a sudden strong breeze shook the tree and orange petals showered down. They fell softly on the hood like a blanket.

I scooped up some petals and crushed them in my fist. What was I going to do?

Mom had been paying attention all along. She knew how I felt about Peter. She knew exactly where to find me tonight. And now she'd tell Joe. I would never see Peter again if they had anything to say about it. They'd keep me a little girl in my pink dress forever if they could. They'd refuse to see what Peter had seen in me tonight.

But how grown-up could I be if I couldn't defy her? Why couldn't I run back and stand up to her?

I leaned against the car. I could just see my face in the reflection of the windshield. I could see it like a smudge on the window. I wanted to smash the scared little girl I saw there. Who was I more angry at, Mom or myself?

She ran up to the car, wrenched the door open, and I got in. I slid over to the passenger side, all the way up against the window, and she followed. She took off, tires spinning in the shells, reversing back down the driveway, and then heading for the hotel.

She drove fast with all the windows open. My cut stung and I felt blood running down the side of my face. I tasted it.

"Oh, Evie," she said. "Don't be a fool like me."

She pulled into the hotel parking lot and set the brake. She rested her head on the steering wheel. Then she straightened and tilted the mirror toward her. She slowly put on lipstick, making her shaking fingers cooperate.

Then she got out and slammed the car door. She smoothed her hair and her skirt, waiting for me before we went into the hotel.

"I'm not going to tell Joe," she said.

I looked at her, surprised.

"This will have to be our secret. And it can't happen again. It's already gone too far."

I wanted to tell her there was no going back. But what was the use?

"Never again," she said. "Promise me."

There was only the sharp sound of our heels on the pavement, filling up the silence between us. She had asked for my promise, and I hadn't given it. But she didn't ask for it again.

Someone had left a raft floating in the pool. It kept bumping up against the rail near the steps. I thought maybe I could sleep on it. I took off my sandals and bunched up my skirt in one hand and went in and grabbed it, hoisted myself up. Water sloshed over the side and got my skirt wet. I pushed off from the side.

I wanted to stain this place, leave my mark after this night. I hoped my blood would fill up the pool, but it drifted away, a skinny ribbon of pink.

I floated for a long time. I found out that without sun, you don't get sleepy on a raft. You just get wet.

Then over my head I saw Mrs. Grayson looking down at me. She was dressed in a skirt and flat shoes, a handbag over her arm.

"What are you doing out here?" she asked.

"I couldn't sleep."

"So what are you doing in the pool, counting sheep?"

I raised myself up and started to paddle toward her. "Tom's packing the car."

"I thought you were staying until morning." I climbed out, dripping.

"The bed's not as comfortable as I thought." She stubbed out her cigarette and regarded it for a minute. Then she flicked it into the pool.

We were quiet for a minute, just watching the cigarette stub float. She had a sweater around her shoulders and she hugged herself and shivered, even though it was warm. I'd never seen her without lipstick on before. Ladies' mouths look so pale and small without lipstick.

"There's a storm coming. We heard it on the radio." Mrs. Grayson said this absently, looking off toward the ocean we couldn't see, a block away. "A hurricane. Supposed to hit south of us, near Miami."

"We didn't know the hotel was restricted," I said.

"Every Jew knows about Palm Beach. It's on the deeds to the houses, you know. No Negroes, no Jews."

"I don't understand. Why did you come?"

"Well, I guess the best way to say it is, Tom wanted to get away from everything he was, and this is as far as you can get."

I was suddenly so tired. I wanted to sit down, but I didn't want her to think that I didn't want to talk to her. "I thought you might be spies," I said.

She grunted a laugh. "Maybe we were."

"Why does he want to get away?" I asked.

She didn't say anything for a minute. She noticed the cut on my forehead. "What happened to you?"

"I ran into something tonight," I said.

"Do you know what Yom Kippur is?" she asked, and after I shook my head, she said, "It's a holy day for us, the Day of Atonement. Tom was 4-F, but the war left its mark on him, too. On Yom Kippur last year, he just... went to the movies. He wouldn't stay with us. He said it standing in his mother's living room. Atone?' he said. Tor what he did, God should atone to
me!
You should have seen his mother's face. Poor Elsa."

"What did God do to him?"

"Killed his cousins," she said. "Samuel was like a brother to him. Sam's wife, Nadia. And Irene, their daughter. She was just your age. She had your same birthday, October thirty-first."

"What happened to them? To Irene?" I pronounced it like she had —
Ee-wren.
So much prettier that way. And I could see her, this girl I didn't know. Not her face, but her. I could see her lying on a bed on her stomach, her ankles crossed, listening to the radio. Just a girl like me.

"We tried to get them out, all of them. We didn't know what happened to them until after the war. A family friend contacted us, someone who made it through the camps, who knew what happened."

A girl with my birthday died in the camps. A girl I didn't know. I could see her on the bed, swinging her feet to a tune on the radio. I couldn't see her taken away. I couldn't see what happened after that. I knew about the camps, but I hadn't really thought about them. I'd seen the articles, but we'd had so much of war. I hadn't wanted to think about it after it was over, after all the men were coming home. I hadn't wanted to listen to the whispers about Ruthie Kalman's cousins. I didn't want any more of the war. I was sick of the war. I had wanted to listen to Joe saying,
It's over, over there, and here is where it's happening now.