The Clairvoyants(54)

“But you believe in all of that,” he said. “Ghosts and messages.”

I wanted to correct him, but I knew I would only give him more reason to make fun of me. He made a low, wailing sound.

“Don’t be so serious,” he said, and I smiled, though my mouth felt stiff.

He stood in front of me with his narrow chest, his green eyes. He placed his hands on my shoulders. I watched him do it with a strange detachment. Then he leaned in to press his mouth to mine. His lips were dry. His skin smelled of chlorine. I wore Sarah’s orange bikini. She had let me borrow it, soft-piled fabric with beads threaded onto the ties. His hand slid to my breast, pushed aside my suit, and I felt a rush of surprise. I knew I should pull away from him, but I liked his hand there, his mouth on mine. He sighed, and moaned, drew ragged breaths. He clung to me, holding me tight to him, his mouth covering mine, his tongue pushing in past my lips. He stepped with me back into one of the unused stalls, the floor covered with moldy hay, and I felt his hands sliding over me, sliding down my bathing suit bottom, his fingers slipping between my legs. I kicked, and pushed him off of me. I stood, unsteadily, covering myself, pulling up my suit. He reached out to grab me again, but I backed away, and he stared at me, his expression hard to read. Then he laughed at me.

“Are you just a little girl?” he said.

Outside the barn, I felt the heat of the sun hit me, felt the places his hands had touched me. My mouth felt sore and bruised. Later, I worried over what had happened. I kept feeling his mouth on mine, his dry lips. The way I’d felt when his hands slid over my breast, between my legs. I worried I should have admitted to wanting it, and not pushed him away. But I knew I would see him again, and I both longed for and feared that moment.

The next day it was Del and David Pinney, taking turns on the diving board, talking in the deep end, and that night she told me he was her boyfriend.

“You don’t want him for your boyfriend,” I said.

“Why not?” she said.

I told her he had kissed me, and she stared at me from her twin bed, her head propped in her hand. I wanted to describe the other things he’d done, but I couldn’t find the words to do it.

“No he didn’t,” she said. “You’re just saying that.”

I knew that if I continued to object to him, Del would insist I was only jealous. All of our arguments lately had been over Del’s desire for everything that was mine—the little ceramic box with its painted dragonfly, my favorite jeans. She’d been taking my things without asking and claiming them as her own. Just the other day we’d fought and our mother had stepped in. As usual, she sided with Del.

“You always want everything I have,” I’d told her then, bitterly.

That night she turned off the lamp. “He is my boyfriend,” she said. “I don’t know why you have to pretend I’ve stolen him.”

We lay quietly in the dark. I thought I could smell my dead grandfather’s tobacco rising from the porch below.

I was filled with an unaccountable desperation. “Stay away from him,” I said, and then because I’d said it I knew she would not, and it was too late to take it back.





23




New Year’s Eve arrived on a Thursday. Since the evening in William’s office, I’d kept my distance from him. I had become preoccupied with the photographs. In the back of my cedar closet I’d noticed a loose wood panel, and I slid it away from the wall. I’d taken the portfolio out of the box while he slept, and slipped it down behind the cedar panels and replaced the loose board. I wanted the chance to look at the photographs again when I had the opportunity. I had to admit they were beautiful, and I knew I should just confess to having seen them. But the locked drawer, the extent of his secrecy troubled me. Why hide them from me when I had already shown him my work? I vowed to keep my new images to myself. When he asked, I would counter with a request to see his sleep studies. It was only fair.

We were expected at Anne’s by two in the afternoon, which I found strange. It would be hours of visiting and drinking before we ushered in the New Year, and I wasn’t looking forward to another long day and night of the Miltons. I knew I couldn’t look at the girls who’d posed for William the same way again. It bothered me that Alice swore to hate him, when her nude body seemed to luxuriate under his lens.

I went downstairs to ask Del what to wear. The Milton girls usually went out with dates on New Year’s Eve, and Mary Rae had worn, in her last known photograph, a fancy dress. But when I showed Del what I was wearing, she asked me if I was going to the prince’s ball.

“Where are your white gloves?” she said.

She was lying on the couch in her old jeans and a sweater.

“What?” I said. “What are you wearing?”

“This,” she said, pushing herself up. “And a warm coat. Maybe I’ll put my hair in a bun.”

“What do you mean?” I said. My dress was a dark blue sheath with narrow straps. I had on black hose and high heels.

“For the hunting party,” Del said.

She left the couch, went into the bedroom, and emerged wearing her faux fur hat with the flaps. “Anne has a traditional New Year’s Eve hunt. For hares.”

“And you’re going to hunt?”

“The men are,” Del said. “And Anne, if she’s not too tired. The rest of us will just be the keepers of the flasks.”