An Unexpected Guest (12 page)

The pressure on her skull stopped. The assistant had removed her fingers from Clare’s head. Clare opened her eyes and looked up.

“Madame?”

“Oui?”

“J’ai dit: la temperature de l’eau?
Ça va?”

“Excusez-moi. Oui, c’est parfait.”

The water returned, bubbling along the perimeter of her hairline, the frontier of her high forehead. Instinctively, she re-shut her eyes. The hands returned. They slid down to the base of her neck and made their way back up again, kneading, pressing, stroking. Droplets dribbled over her temples, wet lapped her cheekbones. All this mess, all relating back to that moment more than two decades ago when she’d stepped out of the shower, water trickling down her back and over her breasts, and found him standing there. And if she’d cried out or grabbed a towel or turned away? If she had blushed, even? She’d said, “You—” And then she’d said nothing. She’d stood there, naked in front of him, water pooling down around her toes. She, the girl who disappeared into the private dressing room to change at the pool, who pulled her sweats and T-shirts on in a toilet stall by the gym lockers. A false breeze, maybe just the movement of his arms, had stirred the wet on her body, lifting away the oppressive heat of that summer, of her own body. He’d raised the towel in his hands and begun to dry her hair, while droplets streamed down her back.

Again and again, in her mind, over the decades, she’d revisited that moment. That delicious lifting of the heat. The delicious lifting of suspense, uncertainty,
attente.
The joy it had given her then. The horrible thrill it still gave her to remember despite
herself
.

“You’re different from other girls in America.” The evening air was viscous around them on her aunt’s back porch in the Boston suburb; Clare felt it hugging her bare arms and legs like a wet bandage. Two weeks had passed since their weekend alone together, and, for the first time since, she and Niall were the only ones in the house. It wasn’t planned. Niall hadn’t shown any deference towards her since that weekend—not a word, not a glance. He hadn’t whispered a suggestion they meet someplace away from the house, nor hesitated when their paths had crossed under the eyes of her aunt and uncle. She understood he was pretending nothing had happened between them to save her from unnecessary trouble, because becoming a couple would cause a lot of talk amongst the family. From what she’d figured out, he was a cousin through her uncle, and it was Aunt Elaine who was her father’s sister. They weren’t blood related, therefore—but whether or not they were would hardly have mattered. She was a Radcliffe girl. Niall was a high-school dropout from a worn-down street in Derry. Worse, he was a “cause,” she’d learned, for her aunt and uncle.
He’s been getting himself into a mess over there,
Uncle Pat had said a few nights after Niall had arrived.
He’ll be ending up under lock and key, just like his father before him,
before turning to flip a steak on the barbecue.
God knows how he even got the fare to come over. But you know how El can never turn them down.
He’d been talking to a friend, who’d nodded without asking for further explanation. She’d overheard, and understood the essential. Niall was never going to be a suitable match for her.

But even as she’d admired his discretion, another part of Clare had begun to worry he’d forgotten about lying in the heat after wrapping her in a towel, after putting his arms around her. He was young and handsome. He was confident. God only knew how many women he’d slept with. Was sleeping with currently, while visiting Boston.

Or was he showing no recognition of their intimacy because it was something he regretted? Could he be angry because of what she’d said about the English in Northern Ireland? Or had she been disappointing without her clothes on?

In front of the others, he acted as though he’d love to have her if only he could. He made an open joke of it. “Why doesn’t Clare have herself a man?” he’d remarked over a family breakfast several mornings after he’d rubbed her naked body down with a towel and spread her wet hair across her pillow beneath him. She was on her way to work, her blond braid spun up in a bun, a clean cotton dress buttoned up her long spine. He’d been missing the last few days—or maybe just a couple days, but every day without any acknowledgment from him since the weekend that they’d spent together seemed like a month—and she hadn’t expected to find him amongst the others in her aunt’s kitchen.

But there he’d been, leaning against one of the counters as though he’d been leaning against it all along, knocking back a mug of thick black coffee. Wearing his same worn-out old corduroys, which she now knew he wore without anything under them, and a sleeveless undershirt. She’d had to look away. He’d kept looking at her.

“Some Harvard bastard wearing a sports coat and driving a Mercedes,” he’d said. “Don’t they know how to ask a girl out there?”

“That’s no way to talk,” Uncle Pat had scolded him, coughing into his fist, a glint of smile appearing over his closed knuckles, checking over his shoulder that Aunt Elaine wasn’t within listening distance.

Clare had poured her own cup of coffee and slipped onto a chair by the kitchen table, across from her cousin Kevin. “Pass me the milk and sugar?”

“Why? You like her yourself?” Kevin had pushed the sugar bowl and a carton of milk in her direction. He’d grinned at her and shoveled a spoonful of cornflakes into his mouth, leaving tiny flakes of cereal on his upper lip. She and Kevin had grown up side by side, just five months separating their birth dates. Until they were fifteen, she’d been taller than he. She could remember the first Thanksgiving they’d spent together when he’d shown signs of whiskers. It hadn’t been that long ago. “Kind of sea level up top, isn’t she?”

“Don’t you think it’s time you got your own place, Kevin?” Uncle Pat had said, whacking her cousin on the head. Her uncle had peered into the cereal box, crumpled it up, and thrown it in the garbage. “Help yourself to toast, Clare. Looks like your aunt made a loaf’s worth this morning.”

Clare had dutifully begun chewing on a piece of toast, dry, without jelly.

“Personally, I don’t fancy the heifers,” Niall had replied, eyeing her up and down as though she were
some
sort of livestock. “But Clare’s too rich for my blood, cousin. I could never have myself a woman like that.”

Kevin had pushed his empty bowl away. “You never know, Niall.” He’d pronounced the name like it was a long Egyptian river. “Those Harvard girls have been known to go slumming. And all American girls are suckers for a foreign accent.”

Clare had finished her toast, the last bits gripping her windpipe, and stood up. “Have a great day, everyone.”

“And a lovely day to you, too, Clare,” Niall had said, as though they’d just run into each other at the drugstore. As though she were a girl he’d been trying to pick up in a coffee shop. As though she could have been any nice-looking girl, anywhere.

But now they were alone together again, and he slithered in next to her where she was sitting on the porch soaking in the evening smells of grass and old-fashioned roses and rhododendron, a cool glass of ice tea at her feet, a copy of Pablo Neruda’s recently published
Para nacer he nacido
idle on one knee, and slid a hand onto her warm thigh. He removed the book from its perch, placing it on the ground next to her drink, and picked up her hand. He turned it over and over again. He separated one finger out and ran it down his cheek and neck, over his chest.

“You’re different from other girls in America,” he said.

“I am?” Was she supposed to run her finger down over his body now? No longer manipulated by him, her finger seemed powerless to move on its own. She left it where he’d left it, on his collarbone, pressing against his white skin.

“You don’t squeal. They’re like baby pigs in the slaughterhouse, some of the girls here, the way they will be squealing all the time.”

The image of a girl, screaming with pleasure beneath the weight of Niall’s dense white body appeared before her eyes. But he was talking about how so many of the girls she knew, especially before she arrived at Radcliffe, responded to any new information. High-pitched. Loudly. She didn’t like it either. She’d never been able to bring herself to follow suit.

“Did you grow up on a farm, Niall?”

“Why are you asking?”

“You seem to think a lot about livestock. Heifers. Piglets.”

He laughed. “Come on. We’ll have something for the thirst.”

“There’s beer in the fridge.” She poked her feet into espadrilles. He was already over the stone wall and waiting by her little Ford Fiesta.

“No, not that.”

She drove in the dusk until they saw a cavernous liquor store, cars tethered around the front of it like nurslings around the teats of a sow. But
she
wasn’t like a squealing piglet any more than she was like a cow. She was
different.
She felt his compliment settle over her shoulders, around her nape, like a silken mantle that elevated her from all the others. He
liked
her impassivity. He liked her reserve and quiet. He liked all the things that were supposed to be stumbling blocks for her.

“Maybe you shouldn’t let her spend all that time alone up in her room, drawing,” Granny Fennelly had remarked to her parents when she was still in high school. “Get her to sign up for the school musical or something.” And her father and mother had guffawed at the very thought of Clare performing in public. But Niall wasn’t laughing at her.

“This will be the one,” Niall said, tipping his head towards the package store before she could pass it. “Have you any money on you?”

Neither the thin cotton tank top nor the Indian wrap skirt she’d been wearing had pockets. She hadn’t thought to fetch her wallet before climbing into the car. That meant she wouldn’t have ID to buy the liquor either. She was legal, but only just; no one would sell alcohol to her without first checking. Niall would have to go in. No one would think to card him.

She shuffled through the hair clips and sunglasses on the dashboard, coming up with a few coins. “I—”

“Keep the engine runnin’.”

There was a song on the radio she recognized from hearing it on the quad, and she tried to sing along as she waited, for distraction. But she didn’t know the words, other than “Celll-e-brate,” and she couldn’t sing well anyway and was scared he’d hear her. Another song followed on its heels, which she also recognized but didn’t know the words to either, other than something about “the border of Mexico.” All memories of another world, the one on campus.

Before the song could end, he had slipped back into the car. She shifted into gear and pulled out of the parking lot. He waited a few blocks before removing the half-pint of Jameson from his shirt front. He took a plug and put the top back on without offering her a sip. Instead, he settled into his seat and studied her profile.

“If you don’t have your wallet on you, you don’t have your driving permit on you, now, do you?” She shook her head, and he clicked his tongue. “Isn’t that illegal in the States, driving without your permit on your person?”

They drove another block in silence.

He screwed up his mouth, made a little popping sound. “That’s how people get caught, Clare. They don’t pay attention to the wee things. They get tripped up on something ejeet.”

“If I’d known what you wanted, I could have told you. Uncle Pat has Irish whiskey back at the house.” Her words came out so soft that she herself could barely hear them.

He heard her, though. He clicked his tongue again. “Can’t stroke my own uncle.”

He studied her a moment longer, then nodded, as though he’d made up his mind about something. She felt his hand take hold of her thigh. Heat spread through her leg, into her groin, through her abdomen, and she had to focus her energies on not pressing down on the accelerator pedal. Or letting it go altogether.

“But you’re all right,” he said. “Why don’t we go to the left up there? To the forest.”

His hand gripped her thigh. The liquor store had been a test. And she had passed it. He’d taken a risk for her because he’d wanted to know whether he could trust her. Heat rushed through her arms down to her fingers, up her neck into her cheeks, burning away the swelter of the evening. She put on her turn signal and rotated the steering wheel.

“Lovely quiet here,” he said.

He snapped off the car radio, even before she cut the engine. The evening was silent in the state park, so silent she imagined she could hear the trees breathing. She dropped her eyes down on his bare forearms. For the first time, she noticed that his pale skin was freckled.

“Voilà,”
the assistant said, as though she’d just finished explaining something to a child.
“J’ai fait un bon conditioning aussi.”
She wrapped a towel around Clare’s shoulders and, with a solicitous gesture, gestured towards Marco’s hairdressing station.

Clare followed the assistant, one hand clasping the two ends of the fresh towel, the other her purse. There was noise, the sounds of pop music and hair dryers and people chatting. She slipped into a chair and set her purse down by her feet. She looked into the mirror.

“Come on.”

The car doors made a click as they opened. They walked single file, he in front, until they reached a gentle clearing, off the forest road but within sight of the car. He settled down amongst the grass and pine needles and drank from the bottle. She sank down beside him. He offered her the bottle, and she shook her head. He put an arm around her and pulled her onto her back. They lay there, under the pines and oaks and maples and dying elms, their uppermost branches scattered with yellow leaves that gleamed in the moonlight, in silence except for the sound made by the bottle when he tipped it backwards.

“You like it here,” he said, more an acknowledgment than a question.

“Yes.”

“You’re always sittin’ in the garden, or puttin’ flowers on the table.”

He placed a hand on her hip, and she felt as though they were carbon copies, side by side, their breath rising and falling together.