“Mr. Harris?” It was this graduate student named Bellefontaine who's a big favorite of my dad's. He had a faded red corduroy shirt in his hand. “This was one of Francis's shirts. We thought you might like it for a souvenir. We cleaned out his closets like you said. We brought this to you. I don't know. Maybe you don't want it.” He stood blocking the door to the kitchen with the dead poet's shirt in his hand. My dad reached out and took it. I went under their arms and made my escape. “I have to go,” I said. “They're waiting for me in the car.” I was out of the door. I had just told two lies in a row to a man who never forgets anything and is never fooled. I lit out across the patio and took the short cut to the Levines' house across the backyards of my piano teacher and some people from Indiana that no one ever sees.
Giorgio and his mother were waiting for me. They were making paella for dinner. Mr. Levine was going to be late. We weren't going to have to wait for him.
Everything went along just fine until Mr. Levine came home and he and Mrs. Levine went to bed, leaving Giorgio and me alone. “You want to go for a walk?” he asked. “They won't mind. They don't care what I do.”
“It's ten-thirty at night. Sure. I'd love it. We can walk up to the store.” I was about five feet away from him. He smelled like that perfume. He reached out and took my hand and we just walked on out the door. “We can go to the park,” he said. “Sometimes I go there at night. It's not too far.”
“I can walk a hundred miles. Who cares how far it is.” So we started off down Washington Avenue. It was in between semesters at the college and the town was quiet. We walked down to Highway 71 and crossed at the IGA. There wasn't anyone around but old Donnie Hights, who is a lunatic that walks the streets all the time saying hello to people. He gives me the creeps but Dad says he is proof there is still freedom in the United States and to count my blessings and be polite.
Anyway, he was standing on the corner by the Shell station so I held on tighter to Giorgio's hand and we crossed 71 and started up toward Washington Elementary School.
“That's where I learned to read,” I commented. “Right there in that corner room. Mrs. Nordan taught me. She's the sweetest lady in the world. I adore her.”
“I adore you,” Giorgio says. He said that. Right there by the corner of the school on Maple Street. He got real near me and sort of breathed into my hair.
That's all that happened then. We walked up Maple and cut over at Doctor Wileman's house and went on down to the park. At the wooden bridge we stopped and sat down and started kissing. We just started kissing without saying a thing. I bet there wasn't a person left in the park. If it hadn't been for the lights in the houses on the hill there wouldn't have been any light except for the moon and stars. “This is just like the old shepherds in the Bible,” I said at last. “Or else the Druids. It makes me think of death to be alone in the night. Does it you?”
But all Giorgio did was put his hand on my breast and keep it there. I would have made him move it but I wanted to know what it felt like. It felt good. I can tell you that much. If I hadn't had to think about what it would be like when my dad got me in his office and started screaming at me I might have just let him keep it there all night.
“We better get back,” I said. I was kissing him as hard as I could in between talking but I still have my braces on and it hurts to kiss very hard with them. Besides, last week I got a free certificate to TCBY for not breaking any pieces off of them for a month and I was trying to get another one. “You better stop doing that,” I added, and pushed his hand off of my breast.
He didn't fight me. He just ran it down my shorts and stuck his finger up inside my underpants. Just stuck it right up around the edge of my underpants. I don't know what would have happened but a car full of teenagers pulled up on Wilson Street and got out and started running for the swing sets which are only forty feet from the bridge where we were lying. Something crashed in the creek. It was probably just a beer can but it sounded like a hydrogen bomb.
I stood up and dusted myself off. I already had about five hundred chigger bites but luckily I wouldn't know that until morning.
That's all there is worth telling about that night. We walked back to the house. Giorgio was acting like he was mad at me. He was pouting if you want to know the truth. He was acting like he was about five years old. He's spoiled rotten, to tell the truth.
Besides, in another year he'll be too short for me. We're already the same height and my mom is five foot seven and my dad's six five. It wasn't going to last.
So I don't care if he told my best friend he doesn't like me anymore.
Mr. Seats has twin boys my age who live up in Minnesota. When he comes down next winter to be the Poet in Residence he's going to bring them with him. He thinks they will both fall in love with me. “They always fall in love together,” he told me, while he was packing up his stuff to leave my room. “You can have them both, Aurora.”
So what do you think? Do you think Giorgio quit liking me because I let him put his hand on my breast? Or because I didn't let him put it in my pants? Or because there were police cars outside my house for seven days?
My dad would say that's like trying to figure out why Mr. Alter killed himself. He believes in the theory of random acts. He thinks lightning strikes. He thinks we should just live every day and do the best we can.
Also, this is the last funeral we'll have to have. Before they left, Dad called all the people into the living room and told them this was the last time he was going to a suicide's funeral. If anyone else killed themself they were on their own for getting buried. “This has had a negative effect on my children,” he said. He knew I was listening in the hall. “I am worried that I allowed them to witness it. Aside from that, I love you all and I wish you well.” I noticed as soon as Dad made his announcement that Mr. Seats went into my room and took a shower and put on a shirt and tie and started acting like a grown-up. My dad has the power to do things like that to people but he usually saves it up and only uses it at the end.
My parents are very cool people to tell the truth. They aren't even going to make Annie go to summer school. They're just going to let her run around all summer in her bathing suit and try again next year. This is very advanced behavior for academics and everyone was congratulating them on it when they were getting in their cars and leaving. You're right about Annie, people were saying. Let her be a child. Don't push her, and so forth.
Of course, why should they worry? They've got me. And I have them again. More than I need. The television has a sign on it that says, GOODBYE, SEQUENTIAL THOUGHT, and a schedule of times when Annie and I are allowed to watch it. Although I think the sign is really just to remind my mother that Mr. Seats has whored himself by agreeing to write the dialogue for a soap opera.
Now that I know what it is they do when they go into their room at night I am looking at them with different eyes. I feel sorry for them, to tell the truth. If I had to do that stuff every night I might not be able to stay in Gifted and Talented or even be on the Swim Team. Here's the way I look when I start thinking about it. Very soft around the mouth and chin, like Bambi, sort of big-eyed and stupid, bowing my head to chew a little piece of grass.
Very helpless and half-asleep, while all around me for all I know the forest might be catching fire.
The Stucco House
T
EDDY was asleep in his second-floor bedroom. It was a square, high-ceilinged room with cobalt blue walls and a bright yellow rug. The closet doors were painted red. The private bath had striped wallpaper and a ceiling fan from which hung mobiles from the Museum of Modern Art. In the shuttered window hung a mobile of small silver airplanes. A poet had given it to Teddy when he came to visit. Then the poet had gone home and killed himself. Teddy was not supposed to know about that, but of course he did. Teddy could read really well. Teddy could read like a house afire. The reason he could read so well was that when his mother had married Eric and moved to New Orleans from across the lake in Mandeville, he had been behind and had had to be tutored. He was tutored every afternoon for a whole summer, and when second grade started, he could read really well. He was still the youngest child in the second grade at Newman School, but at least he could read.
He was sleeping with four stuffed toys lined up between him and the wall and four more on the other side. They were there to keep his big brothers from beating him up. They were there to keep ghosts from getting him. They were there to keep vampires out. This night they were working. If Teddy dreamed at all that night, the dreams were like Technicolor clouds. On the floor beside the bed were Coke bottles and potato-chip containers and a half-eaten pizza from the evening before. Teddy's mother had gone off at suppertime and not come back, so Eric had let him do anything he liked before he went to bed. He had played around in Eric's darkroom for a while. Then he had let the springer spaniels in the house, and then he had ordered a pizza and Eric had paid for it. Eric was reading a book about a man who climbed a mountain in the snow. He couldn't put it down. He didn't care what Teddy did as long as he was quiet.
Eric was really nice to Teddy. Teddy was always glad when he and Eric were alone in the house. If his big brothers were gone and his mother was off with her friends, the stucco house was nice. This month was the best month of all. Both his brothers were away at Camp Carolina. They wouldn't be back until August.
Teddy slept happily in his bed, his stuffed animals all around him, his brothers gone, his dreams as soft as dawn.
Outside his house the heat of July pressed down upon New Orleans. It pressed people's souls together until they grated like chalk on brick. It pressed people's brains against their skulls. Only sugar and whiskey made people feel better. Sugar and coffee and whiskey. Beignets and cafe au lait and taffy and Cokes and snowballs made with shaved ice and sugar and colored flavors. Gin and wine and vodka, whiskey and beer. It was too hot, too humid. The blood wouldn't move without sugar.
Teddy had been asleep since eleven-thirty the night before. Eric came into his room just before dawn and woke him up. “I need you to help me,” he said. “We have to find your mother.” Teddy got sleepily out of bed, and Eric helped him put on his shorts and shirt and sandals. Then Eric led him down the hall and out the front door and down the concrete steps, and opened the car door and helped him into the car. “I want a Coke,” Teddy said. “I'm thirsty.”
“Okay,” Eric answered. “I'll get you one.” Eric went back into the house and reappeared carrying a frosty bottle of Coke with the top off. The Coke was so cool it was smoking in the soft humid air.
Light was showing from the direction of the lake. In New Orleans in summer the sun rises from the lake and sets behind the river. It was rising now. Faint pink shadows were beginning to penetrate the mist.
Eric drove down to Nashville Avenue to Chestnut Street and turned and went two blocks and came to a stop before a duplex shrouded by tall green shrubs. “Come on,” he said. “I think she's here.” He led Teddy by the hand around the side of the house to a set of wooden stairs leading to an apartment. Halfway up the stairs Teddy's mother was lying on a landing. She had on a pair of pantyhose and that was all. Over her naked body someone had thrown a seersucker jacket. It was completely still on the stairs, in the yard.
“Come on,” Eric said. “Help me wake her up. She fell down and we have to get her home. Come on, Teddy, help me as much as you can.”
“Why doesn't she have any clothes on? What happened to her clothes?”
“I don't know. She called and told me to come and get her. That's all I know.” Eric was half carrying and half dragging Teddy's mother down the stairs. Teddy watched while Eric managed to get her down the stairs and across the yard. “Open the car door,” he said. “Hold it open.”
Together they got his mother into the car. Then Teddy got in the backseat and they drove to the stucco house and got her out and dragged her around to the side door and took her into the downstairs hall and into Malcolm's room and laid her down on Malcolm's waterbed. “You watch her,” Eric said. “I'm going to call the doctor.”
Teddy sat down on the floor beside the waterbed and began to look at Malcolm's books.
Playing to Win, The Hobbit, The Big Green Book
. Teddy took down The
Big Green Book
and started reading it. It was about a little boy whose parents died and he had to go and live with his aunt and uncle. They weren't very nice to him, but he liked it there. One day he went up to the attic and found a big green book of magic spells. He learned all the spells. Then he could change himself into animals. He could make himself invisible. He could do anything he wanted to do.
Teddy leaned back against the edge of the waterbed. His mother had not moved. Her legs were lying side by side. Her mouth was open. Her breasts fell away to either side of her chest. Her pearl necklace was falling on one breast. Teddy got up and looked down at her. She isn't dead, he decided. She's just sick or something. I guess she fell down those stairs. She shouldn't have been outside at night with no clothes on. She'd kill me if I did that.
He went around to the other side of the waterbed and climbed up on it. Malcolm never let him get on the waterbed. He never even let Teddy come into the room. Well, he was in here now. He opened
The Big Green Book
and found his place and went on reading. Outside in the hall he could hear Eric talking to people on the phone. Eric was nice. He was so good to them. He had already taken Teddy snorkeling and skiing, and next year he was going to take him to New York to see the dinosaurs in the museum. He was a swell guy. He was the best person his mother had ever married. Living with Eric was great. It was better than anyplace Teddy had ever been. Better than living with his real daddy, who wasn't any fun, and lots better than being at his grandfather's house. His grandfather yelled at them and made them make their beds and ride the stupid horses and hitch up the pony cart, and if they didn't do what he said, he hit them with a belt. Teddy hated being there, even if he did have ten cousins near him in Mandeville and they came over all the time. They liked to be there even if their grandfather did make them mind. There was a fort in the woods and secret paths for riding the ponies, and the help cooked for them morning, noon, and night.