The Creek - Part Four
After another unsatisfying night of fooling around in Josh's car, Amy and her boyfriend had a terrible fight that resulted in another long, late-night walk back home. This time, when she saw Duane in the window, she had the courage to walk up to his front door then go inside. He'd been watching her, too. They ended up in bed quickly, but with a warning -- the 28-year-old widower made it clear he was unboyfriendable, especially for the college-bound teenager.
"You didn't say goodbye," he said the next night, when she showed up at his door. So there was that, she would say goodbye from now on. She went to his house at least four times a week for the next month, and new rules emerged, how much should be said, how much could be asked. What each wanted to do together or did not, and for how long. Sometimes he let her drink a little whiskey -- she professed to like it, and though it wasn't so, it wasn't quite a lie, because she could envision so clearly a day when she would, when it would remind her of him -- and sometimes he showed her what he was painting. Sometimes she asked him about the music he played on the stereo. She'd never heard of any of it and forgot what it was called the moment he finished telling her. The only thing they always did was have sex.
And throughout this time she continued to see Josh. He apologized for the night he kicked her out of the car, and in exchange she agreed to sleep with him. He was astonished and thrilled. He let out little squeaks while they did it, and thanked her afterward. Later she walked to Duane's house and did it again.
One night, in early August, a couple of weeks before she was to leave for Ohio, she said to Duane Haight, "Do you miss them?"
His head snapped around to face her and he said, "Who?"
They looked at one another for an endless series of moments. She shouldn't have asked, of course, she knew that immediately. But now he was offering her an opportunity to prove her mettle, to follow through on her cruel question, to demand of him what she thought she deserved. An image suddenly sprung into her mind, a seeming non-sequitur: the bland Italian "family" restaurant, Angela's, where she used to go with her parents, in the years when she was old enough to eat out but not yet old enough to dislike doing so en famile. It occurred to her that she wouldn't get to go there anymore, and though she didn't want to, hadn't wanted to for many years, her chest burned with grief.
To Duane, she said, "Your family."
His jaw twitched slightly and he nodded once. He gave his answer not to her, but to the large wooden coffee table that lay before them, heaped with magazines and dirty tumblers. He said, "It's not like that."
"How do you mean?"
"I mean it's not a question of missing. It's a question of being gone." He looked at her, his eyes hard. "Not just them, but me."
She said nothing. She didn't understand.
"People around here thought my wife was a terrible person."
Again she couldn't speak. He let this statement hang in the air, neither confirming nor contradicting it.
He got up, reached for his robe. "I won't stay long," he said, and returned to his painting.
The weekend before she was to leave, Josh dumped her. "When I go to Yale, I want to see other people," he said. Of course he did, she thought -- that's what this was all about, of course, the summer in the back of his car. He wanted to have someone to tell his new girlfriends about, someone he had had to let down. It wasn't a surprise -- she would have dumped him, had he failed to get around to it. But for some reason it still stung. She actually cried into her cupped hands. He put his arm around her, trying to comfort her. She shrugged him off, and he said, "Sorry, you have a right to be mad."
"I'm not mad!" she screamed.
"Okay, okay."
"That's not what this is about!"
"Whatever!"
But she wasn't going to make him understand, and she didn't entirely understand herself. "I guess this is goodbye," he said when he dropped her off, this time right in front of her house.
She looked at his pale, earnest face, slightly aglow with perspiration, and sighed.
"Good luck at Yale," she said.
"Thanks."
And that was that. She got out of the car and he drove off. When the car was out of sight, she looked up at her house and saw her mother, in her nightgown, watching through the window. The two of them looked at one another, her mother smiled. And then Amy turned and walked down the street toward Duane Haight's house. She heard the front door open behind her, but her mother didn't call to her, didn't follow. Amy did not turn to find out if she was still watching when she knocked and entered Duane's house. She didn't care if her mother knew. She didn't care about anything.
"Duane?"
Strange to say it out loud -- they didn't address one another that way when they were together. The house was quiet, though the door had been open, the kitchen light on.
"Are you here?"
She walked through the rooms, searching for him -- the dining room, its large round table, overhung with a crooked candelabra, piled high with papers, boxes, art supplies. The mud room, its door painted shut, the creek visible at the bottom of the hill, lit by the moon. And there was the door to the basement, yellow light leaking out from under it. "Duane?" she said again, then opened it. She walked down the stairs. The shelved stairwell walls were covered with cans of beans, tomatoes, fruit in heavy syrup, all of them covered with dust.
She found him sitting on the floor, his back against the water heater. He looked up at her but didn't speak.
"You were hiding?"
He shook his head no.
"So what are you doing?"
Arrayed along the wall beside him stood a wall of sagging cardboard boxes, the bottom row disfigured by water and darkened by mold. One box sat near him, just out of reach of his feet, as if he'd kicked it away. Inside it she could see some papers and a piece of curved yellow plastic, maybe part of a rattle or ball. She looked away.
She went to him, knelt beside him, and kissed his forehead. It was cold and oily and tasted of salt. She helped him to his feet, brought him upstairs, to the sofa, undressed him and made love to him. All the while he looked at her with a curious kind of pity, as if she were the one needing comfort. If indeed that's what this was, comfort. When they were done, she went and got him a drink and poured one for herself as well. They sat in silence. She said, "I'll be gone next week."
"I'll miss you," he said.
She bit her lip. "I think my mother may know. I think she watched me come here."
Again that pitying smile. "It's all right," he said.
"She might...I don't know."
"It's all right."
After a while she dressed, leaving her whiskey undrunk on a free patch of coffee table. He made no move to rise. She crouched down beside him and took his cold hands in hers. He looked old, he looked more than forty. She said, "You're brave and good and a great artist. I'll write to you."
He shook his head. "Don't."
"I will. And I can come see you on vacations."
Again he shook his head.
When it was clear he had nothing more to say, Amy left. She trudged up the hill, her mind blank. he walked into her parents' house -- this is how she would have to come to think of it now that she was leaving -- and locked the door behind her. The house was dark and silent. She went to her room, where the posters were already down, the winter clothes packed, the desk drawers emptied into ziploc bags. She undressed and got into bed.
Five minutes later she heard her parents' bed creak. Soft footsteps came closer and stopped outside her door. Amy waited. After a minute, the steps went back the way came, and the bed creaked a second time, not to creak again until morning.
