away from my grandparents and Sandburg because in
my heart I was afraid I would turn out to be my
mother. These thoughts drove us into the same dark
corner, only at the moment he seemed more helpless,
deeper driven. I was at least trying to escape from
myself.
"Oh, Duncan," I moaned.
When he lifted his head this time and looked
into my eyes, I couldn't help but lean toward him and
draw his lips to mine. In a way we were both throwing
each other a lifeline, pulling each other out of the
darkness.
We kissed a soft, but long, kiss. I could feel
him trembling, and it wasn't because I had excited him. He was trembling with fear. It both annoyed and
angered me, and I was sure he saw that in my eyes. "You're not going to go to hell because of how
you feel about me, Duncan. I don't care what your
mother or anyone has told you or how you have been
made to interpret what you read in the Bible." He looked a little ashamed that he was so easily
read. I touched his cheek and smiled.
"Who knows? Maybe you'll find a little heaven
with me," I said, and he smiled.
"You are good," he said with confidence. "I
know you're good for me." "We're good for each
other."
"Yes, yes. You're right."
He kissed me again and I kept my hands around
his shoulders, pulling him toward me until he was on
the bed with me.
"Don't be afraid," I whispered to drive back his
hesitation. "Not of me, not of yourself."
He looked down at me, and then, like a little
boy opening a Christmas Day package, he began to
undo my towel.
At first it seemed that all he would do is gaze upon me, feast with his eyes and then wrap me up again and run out. I anticipated it. I held my breath. Was it wrong for me to study his face while he looked at me? I was fascinated with how he reacted to me, to the power I seem to have over him. I could almost see the struggle inside him to look but not touch.
"I've never been like this with any other girl," he said in a hoarse whisper.
"You could have fooled me," I told him and then quicky smiled.
He lowered himself to kiss me again, to kiss my breasts and then gently lowered the side of his head to my body, just under my breasts.
"I can hear your heart pounding," he said.
"I can, too."
He kissed my stomach and I held my breath, waiting to see where he would bring his lips next, but he closed his eyes and turned over instead to lie beside me and look up at the ceiling. A part of me was disappointed, and a part of me was filled with curiosity. How could he pause, be so controlled?
"We can't go too far," he said. "What if we did exactly what our parents have done? I'm not . . prepared to go any further," he said, sounding a little embarrassed.
I turned to him and reached out to turn his face to mine.
"You're right," 1 said. "You don't have to be ashamed of it either. It's not unmanly or stupid. I don't think any less of you. We're not going to inherit any sin," I added firmly, and he smiled.
He leaned over to kiss me, and we held each other.
"But that doesn't mean we can't want each other, need each other and love each other," I added.
He smiled and kissed me again before lying back to think. His gaze moved over the room slowly, as if he wanted to commit every inch of it and every second of us now to his-memory forever.
"I've never been in any girl's room before," he told me. "I've read that whomever you do the first things in your life with you never forget."
"I couldn't forget you no matter what."
"Does this mean you're going to help me paint it now?"
He laughed. "Okay, okay. I'm a dork."
"No, you're not, Duncan. And don't think I'm so much more advanced than you are when it comes to all this. I had one boyfriend for a split second."
"Split second?"
"That's how it seemed to me."
I brushed back his hair.
"Now I have two."
He laughed. "You're the first girl who constantly surprises me."
"Do you like that?"
"Yes, very much."
"Are you reconsidering having dinner with me?" "She'll be mad at me, but that's okay," he said with a new determination.
"Good. I'm getting hungry. Go see what you can find in the kitchen while I finish getting dressed."
He kissed me again, and then he got up and walked out.
Was I mad to keep trying with him, to still want to be around him after what he had just revealed? I wondered as I dressed and fixed my hair. Was it arrogant of me to think I could help him when I had trouble finding ways to help myself? Really, how far could two emotional and psychological cripples go with each other? Which voice within me should I listen to more, the one that was telling me to run from him or the one that was telling me he and I needed each other?
"I can make the salad," he said when I entered the kitchen. He had a large bowl and ingredients" spread over a counter. "There's some packages of pasta in the pantry, and in the refrigerator I saw what looks like some of the pasta sauce you have at the cafe and sell in jars. I've seen people gobbling it up at the cafe and raving about it."
I went to put that together while he worked on the salad. He was very good, very meticulous at cutting up vegetables and tomatoes and slicing onions. He even prepared a salad dressing out of oil and vinegar and some spices he had found. He caught me looking at him in amazement.
"What?" he asked, smiling.
"How do you know how much of each ingredient to use?"
"It takes years of experience." He paused and thought. "I suppose they'd call me a mama's boy because I work with her in the kitchen so often."
"My uncle's a great chef and no one's going to call him a mama's boy," I told him That brought a smile to his face.
"Let's have the salad while the pasta cooks," he suggested, and we sat and began to eat. Aunt Zipporah had some of the cafe's special garlic rolls in the freezer. I had put them in the oven, so we had them as well.
"This is really looking like a feast," Duncan said.
As it turned out, he knew how long to cook the pasta better than I did, explaining that most people overcook it.lie prepared that as well and mixed in the sauce.
"I should tell my uncle about you. Maybe you could work at the cafe part-time. You really are good at all this. You're the one who's full of surprises, Duncan, not me."
"I wouldn't have time even for a part-time job. I do a lot more than fix broken faucets at our home," he said. "My mother is very occupied with her mailorder work for the church and the like, so I often do all the house cleaning, make the beds, and I do most of our shopping, too, while she's at a church meeting or something. She won't let me take the car at any other time," he added. "She's very unhappy that I fixed up my scooter. She wouldn't give me the money for the insurance and registration. I had to scrounge that up myself."
"How did you get the scooter in the first place?"
"It was something my father had gotten from some job he was on and left in one of the coops."
"Exactly how long has your father been gone?" I asked him.
"Close to ten years."
"Did he just leave one day and not tell anyone?"
"That's what my mother says. I never saw a note, if that's what you mean."
"And he never called or sent a letter, nothing?"
He thought for a moment, ate some more and nodded.
"There were times when I was about eight or nine that I thought he did call to speak with her, but she never came out and said so and asking about him only drove her into a horrible rant. Sometimes, she became so enraged, I was terrified. Almost
immediately after he left us, she changed her name back to her maiden name, Simon."
"How come your name wasn't changed, too?"
"It was, but I wouldn't accept It's the one defiant thing I've done. Up until now, that is," he added, smiling at me to clearly indicate I was the second defiant thing. "Thankfully, she's stopped harping on it, but she doesn't hesitate to correct anyone who calls her Edna Winning, and if someone refers to me as Duncan Winning, she'll correct him or her as well. It was a problem at school for a while, but it's not anymore. She doesn't have much to do with my schooling anyway. She never went to a parentteacher conference, and my grades have been good enough to keep me from being of much concern."
"You've never been in trouble at school, given them a reason to call her?"
"You can't even begin to imagine what that would have done. I've always been conscious of her expectation that I would get into trouble, and I'm probably known as a goody-goody boy or something because of it. I'm the only one who calls his teachers sir and ma'am, if I don't call them Mr., Mrs., Miss. One of my teachers, Donna Balm, insists on being called Miz Balm. She won't let me call her ma'am either. She says, 'Ma'am is short for madam, and I'm no madam,"' he told me, obviously imitating her. I laughed.
He ate some more and then said, "You'll see when you go to our school."
"See what?"
"How the other students don't trust me, especially the other guys, because I won't smoke in the bathroom, do pot with them or take some of those pills they circulate sometimes. They think I'm some sort of spy for the administration or something. If you hang out with me, they'll treat you like a leper, too."
"I'm used to it," I said.
"Yeah, but you came here to get away from all that, didn't you? You think because no one knows you here, they'll accept you and you'll make friends. I can only make that harder for you."
"Let me decide whom I want and don't want for friends, Duncan."
"I'm just warning you."
Maybe he was, and maybe he was right. I shook the thought from my mind. After all, hadn't Craig faced the same problems and stood by me? Somehow, we had to find the strength to prevent other people from dictating our lives to us. He and I had the same challenges in a sense. We were truly alike.
Ironically, it's more often than not that people who are unlike each other end up together but don't find that out until it's too late,
I thought. His parents certainly fit that definition.
"Where did your father and mother meet?" I asked.
"She was going to a nearby all-girls prep school and he was a custodian, a handyman there. From the little she will tell me about that, about him, I understood that he was what she calls persuasive. That's the nicest word she'll use. Sometimes," he said, lowering his voice as if there were people nearby who could overhear us, "I believe she thinks he was the devil himself, seducing her. Anyway, after they did get married, they bought our property, and for a while it was a very successful egg farm. She said he began to drink heavily and that was when things got bad, so bad, she says, that he no longer cared about her or me."
He put his fork down and looked very pensive. "What?"
"Maybe it was just wishful thinking, but there were times, not lately, but times when I had the feeling he was nearby, watching me. I used to dream about him coming by while I was walking to town or school. He would stop to offer me a lift and I would know it was my father immediately. It got so I studied every driver in every car that passed by me. Sometimes, I'd sit by my window and look out in anticipation of seeing him standing off to the side somewhere watching our house, anticipating me stepping out. I'd even go out and walk around aimlessly just in the hope that was true.
"My mother knew it. I could tell, and it made her furious. It got so I was afraid to even think about him in her presence, afraid she might see it in my face. She has a way of looking right through people and seeing their most inner thoughts and feelings."
"Oh, Duncan, I don't think she has such a power."
"No, it's true. Whenever we go to the church or she meets some of the people, she mutters about this one or that one, telling me things I have no idea how she could know."
"Maybe she's just assuming things, guessing."
"Believe me. She can do it," he insisted. "She's very strong in her own way. Other women would probably have folded up and gone running to their parents or family, begging to be taken in or something. She just seems to get stronger, harder with every hardship. She's always telling me that God tests us continually. I'm sure I'm being tested now."
"Because you're with me?"
"Yes, but I won't run from you again," he promised. "At least, I hope I won't."
"You better not. At least until you help me clean up here," I added, and he laughed.
"When she sees you, really gets to know you, she'll realize you're a good person, Alice."
"I hope so. I hope I am," I said.
"What about your parents? Your father?"
"He has another family and lives in California. I saw them recently, and he was the closest to me he's ever been. When he left, I had the feeling he would spend more time with me or care more about me, but that hasn't happened yet. His wife is very protective of their children, twin boys, and they've kept my existence, my relationship with him, a secret from the twins and from their friends."
"And you've really never seen your mother?"
"No. Someday, maybe," I said. "I often do what you said you do, imagine her around."
"Aren't we a pair of pathetic losers," he muttered.
"The jury's still out on that," I said, recalling one of my grandfather's favorite expressions. Duncan smiled.
I rose and began to clear the table, and he quickly joined in. Side by side, we washed and dried the dishes, bowls, silverware and then cleaned the counters and the table, putting everything in its proper place. By the time we were done, even Sherlock Holmes would have trouble proving anyone had eaten dinner here.
"My aunt's going to think I skipped dinner. I'm going to have to prove it to her," I said.
"You going to tell her I was here?"
"Why not?"
"Your uncle might not like it."
"They haven't told me not to have anyone here. They certainly know I'm seeing you. My aunt trusts me and wants me to be happy," I added, but I wondered if she might think I had been sneaky about it, pretended to have lost interest in him and hidden our secret meetings from her. I made up my mind to be sure to explain it all to her.
"They might forbid you to see me again. I can't blame them."
"Stop it, Duncan. My aunt knows who you are. She's never said anything like that to me."
He shrugged.
I recalled one of my uncle Tyler's favorite rhetorical, philosophical questions. "If you don't like yourself, Duncan, why should anyone else like you?"
"I don't know if I like myself or not," he said. He looked at me intently, his eyes narrow, his face tight. "Like you, I'm still trying to find out who I am."
"Okay," I said. Whenever he became this intense, I felt myself tremble. "Let's just keep trying."
He said nothing.
I walked him out to his scooter. It was once again fully overcast. The air had the scent of impending rain. Way off in the distance, there was a flash of lightning.
"You'd better get home before it starts to pour," I said.
He nodded and got on his scooter.
"Any idea about what you're going to do for your first painting yet?"
I started to shake my head and then stopped.
"Yes, I think I do. It has something to do with a doe I once saw back there. I know that much, but not any more until I start."
"Sounds promising," he said and kick-started his scooter. I felt the first drop.
"It's starting, Duncan. How long will it take you to get home?"
"Twenty minutes at the most," he said. "I've ridden in the rain before. Don't worry"
"Not after being with me, though," I told him. It was almost a reflex to say it, and the words came out before I could stop them.
He stared and then nodded. "I thought you believed we both have to quit doing that," he said.
"What?"
He turned the scooter around.
"Thinking we're bad luck to everyone who has anything to do with us."
"You're right. I'm sorry. That was stupid."
"It's all right. Don't beat yourself up. You going to the cafe to work tomorrow?"
"No. I have the day off. My uncle wants me to get started on my art."
"Good."
He leaned forward to kiss me, and then he was off.
Like a curtain being lowered, the rain started to fall, the drops pounding on the leaves and the road as hard as the pounding in my heart. I hurried back into the house. Almost twenty minutes later, the phone rang. I lunged for it, hoping it was Duncan letting me know he was safe. Perhaps he had seen the concern in my face and heard it in my voice after all.
It wasn't Duncan. It was my father.
"Hey," he said. "How are you doing up there?"
"Good," I said. I wanted to ask him if Grandma had called him complaining that he hadn't called me, but thought it wouldn't be nice. Also, he might be doing it on his own.