'Was
it jealousy?'
I
looked at Father John. Sometimes I was surprised at the directness and detail
of his questions.
Sometimes
I felt he was interrogating me.
'Jealousy?
Hell yes, it was jealousy. I think it had more to do with the fact that she did
not grant any substance to what we had shared before Nathan and I had left,
before she drove away that afternoon. And then she'd come back and I had been
the center of her attention for a week or so, and then that attention faded… it
just grew narrower and narrower until there seemed to be nothing left at all.'
I
paused; I had not considered these events in such detail for a very long time.
I
cleared my throat.
'If
she'd said something… like she knew she'd left suddenly, that she'd not given
any reason for leaving, that she was sorry even, I might have felt different.
Maybe if she'd been completely straight with me, told me that what we had the
summer before was really nothing at all, a bit of fun, a distraction, and now
we were back she was happy to see me, to spend some time with me…'
I
leaned back and sighed. 'I loved her, loved her once, loved her twice, but the
way it happened made me feel like… like…'
'Like
you'd been betrayed by her again?'
I
nodded. 'Yes, like I'd been betrayed again.'
'What
did you want her to say?'
I
shook my head. 'I don't know… perhaps that what I'd thought was love was merely
an infatuation, a crush or something. Maybe that she felt good with me, but it
was just a sex thing, a physical thing… and now she'd had enough of that and
she really wanted to spend some time with Nathan. Maybe if she'd said that I
would have felt differently.'
'Or
maybe not,' Father John said.
'Or
maybe not,' I replied. 'Hard to know how you'd feel about something that
could
have been different.'
'So
tell me how you
did
feel when you realized what had happened between
them.'
'Angry,
confused, hurt… all those things. Betrayed by her, and by Nathan too.'
'In
detail… tell me exactly how it came about.'
I
shook my head. 'Hell, this is some pile of tapes they're gonna have when we're
through.'
Father
John Rousseau smiled but said nothing.
'You
wanna know in detail everything that happened then?'
'Seems
to be the most important point, Danny, don't you think?'
'Maybe,'
I said. 'You're gonna have to be the judge of that.'
'So
let me judge,' Father John said.
'Overstepping
the bounds of your jurisdiction?' I asked, and I glanced upwards as he had
done, up towards the ceiling, to Father John's boss.
Father
John smiled. 'The secret of maintaining authority is the ability to delegate
down.'
'Okay,'
I said. 'You be the judge.'
I
remember waking one day with a headache the size of Mount Rushmore. I had not
smoked weed or drunk so much since Florida. And just as that first night after
Atlanta when Linny took me out and taught me the evils of tequila, and then
arrived the following morning to drive me to the coast, she appeared in my room
that morning with the same enthusiasm and boundless energy that seemed to be
her trademark.
She
told me to
drag my useless carcass out of bed,
and then she laughed and
went back downstairs.
As I
surfaced I could hear Linny and Nathan talking downstairs. They were making
breakfast, the radio was playing, and between the other sounds I could hear
laughter, the sort of laughter that people share when they have
connected.
I
went down quietly and stood there in the hallway listening to those voices.
You
want eggs, Naaa-than?
Sure.
Anything
else you want?
What
you offering?
Anything
you see, baby.
Nathan
laughing.
What
I see is a whole heap of trouble.
Kinda
trouble you like though, ain't it?
You're
a bad girl, Linny Goldbourne.
When
I'm good I'm good… when I'm bad I'm better…
Silence
for a moment.
Danny
awake yet?
Don't
you worry about Danny.
He
knows, you know?
He'd
be blind not to know, Naaa-than.
Don't
seem altogether right.
Ah,
to hell with what's right and what's not. You want something, you take it baby.
And
what do you want, Linny?
I
think you know what I want, Mister Verney.
I
closed my eyes and breathed deeply. I should not have been standing there listening,
but I couldn't help myself. There was something magnetic about the way she
bound everyone into her spirited passion for life. She cast spells, and we of
weak minds and weaker hearts didn't stand a chance.
Had I
not loved her, had I not given her everything of me, I don't believe I would
have felt anything more than a fleeting interest in what was occurring between
them, but it was in that moment that I felt I'd lost her. There was
something
about her that defied description, something that made me feel transparent in
her presence. Her attention was transitory and impermanent; she held your gaze
unflinchingly for a moment, you really felt you were getting through, and then
it was gone. Like a breeze that lifts the leaves of a tree, just for a moment,
and then they are again still.
Nathan
knew little of how she was, he was caught up in the whirlwind of life and light
and laughter, and when I paused there at the bottom of the stairwell and
watched them in the kitchen I could see how easily she enchanted him. She would
smile a little too long. She would laugh and touch his arm, his shoulder, his
hand. I even believed she waited until he reached for something and then she'd
reach in the same moment so their hands connected, and these things would
prompt further eye contact, further smiles and laughter.
I
believe I had the right to be envious. Though there had been no spoken
agreement, no contract, no tacit consent, I still felt that the depth of
emotion I had felt for Linny had been reciprocated. She had known that,
must
have known that, but in that second it appeared that she possessed no memory at
all of such things.
I
crept back up the stairs, walking on eggshells, and then I turned at the top
and came thundering down like a freight train. I announced my arrival in order
to give them a moment to collect themselves.
I
walked into the kitchen as if nothing had happened, and there they were, at
either end of the counter-top, she cracking eggs into a bowl, he frying
mushrooms in a pan at the stove. They had so obviously been standing next to
one another, and in hearing me had moved apart.
They
knew, all too well they knew how such a connection might hurt me.
'Hey,'
Linny greeted me.
I
smiled and nodded.
'Smells
good,' I said.
'You
want eggs, Danny?' she asked.
I
glanced at Nathan. 'Sure thing.'
Anything
else you're offering? I thought.
Linny
busied herself.
'Sleep
good?' Nathan asked.
'Good
enough,' I replied, and took a seat at the table. I did not offer to help. They
were in collusion against me. They could at least make the fucking breakfast.
'And
you?' I asked.
Did
he glance at Linny then? Did she glance back at him? Did a slight knowing smile
flicker across her cherry-red, pouting, selfish-bitch lips?
I
closed down my thoughts. Such thoughts would get me nowhere.
'I
slept fine,' Nathan said.
Linny
carried plates to the table and set them down.
She leaned
closer to me. I could smell her perfume, the natural scent of her body. Smelled
like that day on the beach, and with that thought I could see her stretching
her arms above her head, the way her form so elegantly defined each curve and
swell and dip. I wanted to reach up and touch her face, to run my fingers
through her hair, to kiss her, to taste the salt-sweet tang of her lips…
'Coffee?'
she asked.
I
could feel myself blushing.
'Ye-yes,'
I said.
And
then she touched me, and her fingers on my cheek were like small stabs of soft
electricity, and I could feel that electricity pulsating through my skin, and I
wanted so much to reach back. But I couldn't. Dared not to.
'You're
okay, right?' she asked.
I
feigned a moment of perplexity. 'Okay? Sure I'm okay. Why'd you ask?'
She
smiled, withdrew her hand. 'Just checkin',' she said, and turned once more
towards the counter-top.
Checking
if you've hurt me? I thought. Checking if I'm going to be okay with the fact
that you have cast me aside for someone else? Checking to see if there's
something I might want to say about how effortlessly you seem to flit from one
person to the next?
I
closed my eyes for a moment. I breathed deeply once more. I let it go. I
had
to let it go.
They
finished preparing breakfast and we ate together, almost in silence.
They
sat beside one another facing me.
I
wanted to move, wanted to do something,
anything.
But I said nothing, as
always the one who was led, not the leader. For despite the things that Nathan
had said to the Devereau sisters in Florida, his belief that we had left
because of me, I believed otherwise. I felt that recent events had strengthened
me - the death of my mother, my return to Greenleaf - and emotions I once would
have suppressed were now simmering beneath the surface. I felt like fighting
back, like marking my territory. This was
my
home, these people were
my
guests, they were here by the grace of me. They were owed no right of
possession, no law of jurisdiction over my feelings and thoughts, and yet here
they were, playing with things of far greater substance and significance than
they were granting. Resentment, unexpressed or otherwise, set in. It came
slowly at first, and then those flickering uncertainties about my own
importance in these matters gathered speed, rolling up together like a thunder-
head across the horizon. Lightning would strike I believed, not now, not yet,
but it would, and I wondered what I would do to redress the balance.
For
the time being I was quiet. I watched, I waited, I listened and made mental
notes. Later I would refer to them in trying to reconstruct this chapter of my
past.
And
thus it was not my idea that we go out, but Linny's. That we wait until dark,
leave in her car, with Nathan lying across the back seat covered with a
blanket, and go somewhere, somewhere across the state line, Savannah perhaps,
or Augusta.
'Fucking
crazy,' I remember telling them.
Nathan
was excited - by Linny, by the prospect of leaving the house for the first time
since his arrival, even excited by the risk. Linny possessed sufficient
enthusiasm to make even armed robbery sound like a swell idea.
'It'll
be okay, Danny, it really will be okay. We'll just go out, just for a few
hours.'
Again
it was that same persistence of Nathan's that wore me down.