Riggs Park Part 17

"Give me your house key," Wish said. My father was at work and my mother would go right to Penny's. Wish parked at my curb and got out. "Here, hang on to me." Still wearing his gloves, he pulled me from the car, onto my feet. Before my legs could give, he caught me under the knees and was carrying me-into my house, through the living room, and up the stairs to the bathroom, where he sat me on the edge of the tub. I didn't know if anyone had seen us. I didn't care.

He took my shoes off and yanked at my stockings. While he was pulling my stockings down he was running water into the bathtub. "What's going on?" Wish was undressing me right across the street from the funeral where everyone in the neighborhood had gathered, but I didn't really care; maybe I wasn't fully conscious. I wanted to close my eyes and sleep.

Next thing I knew, I was sweating. Wish stuck my bare feet into the water in the bathtub. The water was cool, but against my feet it felt warm.

"You all right?" he said. His words came at me from a long way off.

"Yeah, I guess. What're you doing?"

"I'm thawing out your feet."

"I thought you were undressing me."

"No, not now. Maybe some other time." He knelt on the bathroom floor next to me. "I think we're supposed to rub them until the feeling comes back," he said. "You rub one and I'll do the other."

We bent over, heads together. Any other time I would have felt foolish, but just then I didn't.

"You feel anything?" he asked.

"A little."

We kept rubbing. The unnatural pallor of my feet began to give way to a pinkish color under the water. Then the pink turned bright red. My feet itched something terrible.

"This might be worse than the numbness," I said.

"Don't scratch. Here." Wish handed me a towel. "The itching is normal. Dry off and I'll wait for you downstairs." He went out of the bathroom.

"How do you know the itching is normal?" I asked when I got to the living room. I had put on dark stockings and closed pumps, because my feet looked like I'd stuck them under a sun lamp. I kept rubbing my toes together to control the itch.

"I don't know, I must have read it somewhere." Wish sounded tired, or maybe embarra.s.sed. "Come on, let's get back to Penny's before they miss us."

Everyone from the cemetery had arrived, leaving no parking s.p.a.ces anywhere on the block. We were walking down the hill, when Sandy came up the street toward us from wherever he'd left his little Triumph. He took my arm.

Inside the Weinberg home, the mirror by the entryway was covered by a black cloth for the mourning period. Sandy pulled himself up like someone at attention and led me to a place against the dining-room wall. "How was the funeral?" he asked.

"It was all right." I wanted to tell him about my feet, but people were standing on both sides of us and the subject seemed too private.

We were crushed against the wall by a woman who pushed past us with a platter of whitefish and bagels and lox. There was deli and rye bread on the dining-room table, and people were bringing cakes and strudel.

"Nixon was there," I told him. "I think Eisenhower should have come."

"Traditionally the vice president represents the president at funerals," Sandy said.

People jammed the whole downstairs. Bernie and Marilyn were squashed against the far wall, eating. Helen sat on the living-room couch, receiving whoever came in. I didn't see Penny.

"Let's get something to eat," Sandy said.

"I'm not hungry. You go ahead."

As Sandy disappeared into the crowd, my mother came toward me, holding an old lady's hand. "This is my daughter, Barbara," she said. "Barbara, you remember Mrs. Ades, Francine's grandmother."

"Oh, of course." I didn't.

"All grown up," Mrs. Ades said. "I remember when you were this high."

For just a minute my line of vision cleared and I watched Penny sit down next to her mother. Helen didn't notice. Helen was talking animatedly because so many people were around her, wis.h.i.+ng her well. No one was talking to Penny just then. Her face was vacant, and I knew she really was going to quit school.

My mother and the old woman moved away. I remembered all the nights from third grade on, teaching Steve. I'd miss having the chance to tutor Penny. I'd miss carpooling to school with her and seeing her after cla.s.s. After the cold outside, it was too warm in the house. I scanned the room for Wish. I wanted to tell him how sad I was that Penny was quitting school. How sad I was that Penny was sad. I wanted us to cheer her up. We would tell her my feet had frozen at Arlington National Cemetery, and Wish had thawed them out in a tub of water, though he'd never thought to stoop so low as to rub my feet. "Other parts maybe, but never her feet."

Penny would laugh, and even if she quit school, she would come back next year, or go to American University or the University of Maryland instead, and she would be as well as she could be. This was what we had planned, maybe without ever talking about it. One of the young men at the table caught my eye. It took me a minute to realize it was Sandy, standing among all my dark-haired friends eating bagels and lox. I smiled at him, though there seemed no point to it. He had nothing to do with me, not really, not now.

When I broke up with Sandy a few days later, I was careful not to tell my mother my reasons. Let her think, if she wanted, that I gave him up because he wasn't Jewish. Let her think she'd won. I didn't tell her my decision had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with being in love with Wish. But my mother already knew that, and so did everyone else.

This time, Wish was strong enough to stand up to his father. He was a college student, mature enough for a girlfriend. He'd made dean's list and seemed on track for medical school. For the most part, Murray left us alone.

We made love for the first time a few months later, in a rooming house at Rehoboth Beach. We spent the entire afternoon in the bedroom while Marilyn and Bernie and Penny and Steve were out enjoying the ocean. A breeze blew into the open window as Wish took off my clothes item by item, careful not to hurry. He kissed me everywhere, and did not stop kissing until I moaned and came and sighed. After a while he started kissing me again. He guided my hand to his p.e.n.i.s. By the time he entered me, I was so wet, so stretched, so ready, that it did not hurt. I was surprised, afterward, to see blood on the sheet.

We lay there until the sun dropped behind the trees to the west, dozing and waking and talking. "I've waited for this since forever," Wish told me in a raspy voice.

"Since the day we fell off the sled," I added. I traced the line of his injured shoulder with my finger, amazed that at last he was mine to touch.

When the others returned, everyone knew what must have happened. Wish and I didn't care. We had waited and were not sorry. This, both of us had known, was for the rest of our lives.

CHAPTER 17.

Explanation By the time Interstate 40 ended and dumped us onto College Road in Wilmington, I was finally waking up. The medicine had worn off. A slow ache crept up my spine and fanned out into all my limbs. When Jon looked over and gently asked me how I felt, I avoided his eyes, steeled myself against softness. I let the pain remind me I'd been left bruised before, and not just physically. All I needed now was the resolve to confront him. Traffic mishaps aside, there could be no more diffidence or hesitation.

In our driveway at last, Jon opened my car door and reached in to help me. I pulled away. "I'm not an invalid." Ignoring his puzzled expression, I wriggled out of the car, marched up the steps as fast as my gimpy limbs allowed, and waited in the living room while he carried my bag to the bedroom.

"Now we'll get you tucked in," he said when he came back, humoring me in a voice laced with an exhaustion I tried not to hear.

"I'm not ready to be tucked in yet."

"Barbara, what's wrong?"

I opened the sliding gla.s.s door to the deck, to the sight of a gray and foamy sea. Although the breeze was not balmy as it had been a few days before, I ignored the chill and willed the sound of the ocean to drown out the blood beating in my ears. "Sit down, Jon." In a voice more modulated than I expected, I told him everything. He listened in stunned silence until I got to the part about Penny having his child. Then I saw by his expression that he was not surprised.

"You knew all the time," I accused.

"I didn't know 'all the time.' I didn't know until five years ago. Right before my father died."

"Who told you?"

A solemn stillness dropped across his features. "It's not the way you think it is, Barbara." He took a long breath. "However you imagine it, it's worse."

He told the story almost in a monotone. I had the feeling he'd memorized the exact words, bled all the emotion from them. I had the feeling the task had taken most of his life.

When Penny had shown up in the Camp Chesapeake dining hall on a Wednesday evening in July 1963, Jon said, at first he'd been puzzled. The camp was a far more glamorous place than it had been eleven years before when Penny had endured the fateful camping experience from which she'd finally escaped. There was now an Olympic-size pool; the cabins sported ceiling fans and window air conditioners; a lighted tennis court sat next to a newly paved parking lot. Even so, Jon didn't think Penny would be curious to see the improvements. Her memories of the place, he imagined, were still unpleasant enough to keep her away.

His next thought, as Penny scanned the room and stopped when she spotted him, was that something had happened to me. After graduating from G.W. in June, Marilyn and I had gone to Europe for a long-antic.i.p.ated, long-saved-for fling. Penny would have come with us, but she still had another year at the University of Maryland, where she'd enrolled a year after her father's death, and didn't have the money. Watching the grim, set line of Penny's jaw as she made her way through a dining hall full of campers, Wish knew I must have been hurt. It would be like Penny not to want him to hear by phone. Why else would she drive all the way to southern Maryland to seek him out like this?

Penny said no, she hadn't come because of me. "It's something else. Is there somewhere we can talk?" The dining hall was sweltering, but Penny crossed her arms tight over her chest, and when Wish touched her elbow to lead her out, she was s.h.i.+vering.

They sat atop the bluff overlooking the Chesapeake Bay, on a blanket Wish had grabbed from his bunk. "This is no friendly social visit," Penny said. "I came to tell you what happened in your father's upholstery shop that summer after eighth grade."

Already wary, Wish decided the best thing to do was suggest that, whatever had happened that terrible summer, it could no longer be as important as she thought. "That was a long time ago," he said.

"It could have been yesterday," Penny told him.

The hot, pretty day was dwindling into a long, green twilight. A few perfect white clouds floated over the silty brown water. Penny did not seem to notice.

"I was only fourteen," she said softly.

"I know. That's what I mean. A long time ago. It was bad, but it's past."

Penny shook her head. "When I got to the shop after my dentist appointment, my sister was out on an errand. Just like I told them. There was n.o.body there except for one person. I told them that, too. But the person wasn't the laborer," Penny said. "You know who it was?"

"Who?"

"It was your father," Penny told him.

"I don't believe that." Wish's mouth went dry, and a buzzing started inside his head.

"You do believe it." Penny held him with a steady gaze. He was the one who broke eye contact first.

"He invited me to wait in his office," Penny continued. "I thought he was being nice. It was the only air-conditioned part of the shop. When he closed the door, I thought it was so he wouldn't let out the cool air. I sat down on the-You know that couch he used to have?"

Wish nodded.

"He kept some magazines on the end table. I started reading one. Your father was at his desk doing some work. I could tell he didn't have his mind on it. He kept looking up at me. Studying me. Frowning. Finally I asked him what was wrong.

"He kind of smiled. Not quite." Penny's voice grew clipped and mechanical, as if she'd rehea.r.s.ed. "He said, 'You're an ugly c.u.n.t, aren't you?' I thought maybe I hadn't understood. Mr. Wishner wouldn't talk that way. Yet-I thought, well, it was true: I was ugly. I didn't know the word c.u.n.t."

Penny sat hunched over, hugging her knees to her chest.

"Your father had this way of sneering. Just a kind of-a little lift in the corner of his upper lip. He said to me, 'Yeah, an ugly c.u.n.t, no kidding. Too ugly to stick a d.i.c.k into.' I was-in shock, I guess. I said, 'What?' He kept sneering. 'You heard me,' he said."

Her voice was a tiny thread now, so soft Wish had to strain to hear. "I just sat there. I was too scared to move. By the time I bolted for the door, it was too late. He was right behind me. He caught me by the arm and turned me around to face him. His face seemed-magnified. He smelled like onions. He said, 'Yeah, way too ugly to stick a d.i.c.k into. I guess I'll have to let you blow me.'"

Slowly, Penny turned to look at Wish. "I was just fourteen. I didn't know the term blow me."

Wish looked down at his fingers, the blanket, a clump of gra.s.s growing in the sand.

"So your father showed me," Penny said. "He told me if I bit, or if I told anyone, he would cut off my breast."

"I don't believe it," Wish muttered, though both of them understood that he did.

"That's exactly what happened," Penny told him. "I've never told anybody about it till now." By the time Penny got home that afternoon, she had developed a befuddled but complete amnesia about what had happened. She hadn't remembered any of it until recently, the weekend she went to West Virginia to see Steve.

"Why do you think it came back to you then?" Wish asked.

Penny shrugged. "Who knows? All I know is, now I remember everything." She didn't elaborate, but both of them knew she meant not just Murray Wishner but everything that had happened since, and that it was a heavy burden to bear.

Penny and Wish sat for a long time in silence. "Why did you tell me this?" Wish asked finally. "What do you want me to do?"

Penny said, "Your father did me wrong. I want you to do me right."

That night, the waters of the Chesapeake Bay stretched to the horizon in a white path of moonlight. The main thing Jon remembered afterward was that the air had been hot and so close it had been hard to breathe. The humidity must have been a hundred percent.

Goose b.u.mps rose on my skin as soon as Jon started to speak, but it didn't occur to me to close the door to the deck. Nor later, when the daylight faded and the room grew shadowy, did either of us think to turn on the lamp. As far as I knew, the lights had dimmed everywhere, and it seemed fitting that they should. Even at a remove of all this time, I couldn't bear to see Jon's face.

"I had no idea she was trying to get pregnant," Jon said. "I didn't know about the baby. I just thought it was-"

"You thought it was just a little old roll in the locust leaves." I kept my eyes downcast, stared at my hands.

"I have no excuse, Barbara. I wasn't drunk."

"You knew she was crazy. You used to say she was pathetic."

"She was pathetic. But also...I was angry at her for telling me. Even though I believed her. Especially because I believed her. I wasn't nice. Then she started to cry. She said the only way she could make it right was to do...to do even more with me than she'd done with my father. Only to do it gently. If I was gentle, it would make up for what happened before." Jon ground his hands into fists, opened and closed them. "We were sitting on the blanket. She moved over toward me. And I was so mad. I can't explain it. I thought, 'Okay. Okay, you asked for it.' And I did what she wanted. Only I wasn't gentle. I was like my father." His voice was less than a whisper. "I didn't know I had it in me to be like that."

"And then you came home," I said. "And you didn't tell me."

But Jon seemed not to be listening. "The worst part was...Afterward Penny got up and she-She thanked me, for Christ's sake. Thanked me."

"I knew her pretty well," I told him. "Maybe I would have understood."

"Maybe."

"But you just ran away." Even now the memory filled me with equal parts fury and pain. When Jon had returned from camp in August, and I'd returned from Europe, we'd flown into each other's arms with such pa.s.sion that I'd thought nothing had changed since we'd parted in June. During that first embrace, our future unfurled in my mind like a bright flag over our pending engagement, his first year of medical school, my first job. Then he let go of me, and I knew something was wrong. Within minutes, he picked a fight about something so meaningless, so petty, that I could never remember what. We argued for what seemed like hours.

"Wish-" I finally said. "This makes no sense."

"Don't call me Wis.h.!.+" he shouted then. "Wish is a word that means something you hope for but probably won't get. It isn't my name, it's only the story of my life."

"Wish-" I was as bewildered as I'd ever been in my life.

He leaned close and whispered in a voice bordering on contempt (whether for me or for himself I was never sure), "Not Wish. I was never Wish. My name is Jon." Then he'd slammed out, and except for a brief moment at a funeral when we'd both been too upset to talk to each other, we hadn't seen each other again for more than thirty years.

Now, sitting in the chill, dark echo of the ocean, I said again, in what came out as a tortured rasp, "You didn't even have the decency to tell me."

"No. I acted like a s.h.i.+t." His voice ached with bitterness. He knew exactly what he'd done. Knowing Penny was helpless, he'd taken advantage of her. Loving me, he'd screwed around with my friend. He was his father's son. He did not deserve the happiness he had planned for himself. His nickname, Wish, seemed a special irony. As for Murray, in Jon's view he did not deserve happiness at all. If Jon's going to medical school would please him, Jon would not go.