A Jest of God (12 page)

I’m dramatizing. To make all this seem mysterious or significant, instead of what it is, which is embarrassing, myself standing gawkily here with no words, no charms of either kind, neither any depth nor any lightness.

He sits down on the grass, and because I don’t know what else to do, I sit down beside him, arranging my cotton dress with a primness I despise and yet can’t avoid. Then I see he hasn’t noticed anything. His mind is on something else. He laughs, a dismissing laugh, shrugging.

“Pointless to come here,” he says. “I don’t know why I wanted to see it, this particular place. There’s nothing for me here now. I knew it, of course, but that never stops anyone.
These treks back – they make me sick, to tell you the truth. I always swore I’d never do it.”

“Why not? What’s the harm? Isn’t it natural to want to see some place you’ve been fond of?”

“I don’t have a clue what’s natural and what’s unnatural,” he says cheerfully. “I wasn’t fond of it. It was neutral territory, that’s all, and if any of the other kids ever came around, Steve and I used to scare them off. We had slingshots, and we were both pretty good, Steve especially. We never had a twenty-two. That used to burn me up. The old man wouldn’t let us have one. He always had this belief that all weapons were illegal, really, and he visualized one of us being toted off to jail for life for the possession of arms. Know what I mean? He knew this wasn’t so, but he could never believe it. I don’t know what he thought we’d do with a twenty-two – start a revolution, maybe.”

“What did you mean – a neutral place?”

“Oh, just that it wasn’t the town,” Nick says offhandedly, “and it wasn’t the farm, and it wasn’t used for anything, in those days, not even for pasture. Apart from the few kids who made the mistake of encroaching, I never saw anybody here except sometimes hoboes, and we didn’t mind them. They didn’t have much place anywhere, either.”

All this sounds so strange to me that I can hardly believe it. But when I turn to him, and look, he looks away.

“Rachel,” he says, as though trying out my name to see how it will sound. “Rachel Cameron. You must think I’m nuts. We’ll change the subject. I got off on this track the last time I saw you, too. I certainly didn’t mean to. Hardly a soul I used to know is left here now – you know? They’ve moved, and different people have come, and – anyway, that’s no excuse for shooting off my mouth to you. At one time I would’ve
dropped dead rather than talk like this. At least I’ve changed some, thank Christ. Mellowed, as I like to think, although this may be some vast conceit.”

Neutral territory – that was what he needed then. Some place that was neither one side nor the other.

“Nick – I never knew you’d felt like that, in those days. I always thought –”

“Go on. What did you think? This interests me.”

“I envied you, I guess. I don’t mean you, especially. People like you.”

“People like me?” He is grinning now, and I sense that he means to hurt. “There isn’t anybody like me, darling. What you’re trying to say is you envied Ukrainians. What I would like to know is why.”

“Because – I don’t know – in comparison with the kids at my –”

“At your end of town. It’s okay. You can say it. It’s not blasphemy.”

“Yes. All right. Well, you – I mean, they – always seemed more resistant, I guess, and more free.”

He laughs, and for the first time touches me, putting a hand on my shoulder and sliding it lightly down my arm.

“More free? That’s a funny thing to say. How did you think we spent our time? Laying girls and doing gay Slavic dances?”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“How, then?”

“I don’t know how to express it. Not so boxed-in, maybe. More outspoken. More able to speak out. More allowed to – both by your family and by yourself. Something like that. Perhaps I only imagined it. You always think things are easier somewhere else. I used to get rides in winter on your dad’s
sleigh, and I remember the great bellowing voice he had, and how emotional he used to get – cursing at the horses, or else almost crooning to them. In my family, you didn’t get emotional. It was frowned upon.”

Nick lies back in the grass. But his hand still rests on my arm.

“That’s the most talking you’ve done so far, Rachel. Did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t –”

“I’m a tactless bugger, to mention it. I’m sorry. Well, I see what you mean, and in a way you’re right, I suppose, although at one time I wouldn’t have seen it. Argument never seemed much of an advantage to me then. My uncle lived at Galloping Mountain, and whenever he came down here, which luckily wasn’t more than two or three times a year, he and my dad would nearly kill each other. My uncle – my mom’s brother – was never actually a Communist, but he was pretty far left, you know, and the chief tenet of his belief was that it was a good thing for the Ukraine to be part of the U.S.S.R. My dad held the opposite view. He still believes the Ukraine should be a separate country. Incredible, eh? But that is his opinion, and he’ll never change it, not ever. The two of them didn’t just argue – they engaged in vehement verbal battle, storming away at each other like a couple of mastodons. Steve never minded – he was a lot more easygoing than I was. But it used to irk me like anything, because it was so pointless. Once I remember telling my dad I couldn’t care less what the Ukraine did – it didn’t mean a damn thing to me. That was true. But I shouldn’t have said it. Actually I wish now that I hadn’t.”

“Was he angry?”

“Yes. But that didn’t matter. He was angry at me half his time, anyway. No – it was just that it hit him. It was something
he couldn’t accept, in the same way he couldn’t ever accept the fact that I never learned to speak Ukrainian. My mom was born in this country, and she spoke English to us. My dad tried for quite a while, but finally he gave up and spoke English, too, and this put him at a great disadvantage with us, although he never admitted it, maybe not even to himself. By him, not even the Queen speaks better English than he does. He has this gargantuan faith in himself, and I don’t know even yet if it’s real or just some kind of barricade. I hope to God I never find out, either.”

“It’s too bad, though, that you never learned his language.”

“Well, it had its points,” Nick says. “My grandmother came over when Dad came, and she lived with us until she died. She was a female warrior-type and sour as a crabapple. But whatever her disapproval was, it passed right over our heads. How many kids are lucky enough not to be able to exchange a word with their dear old grandmothers?”

He has this streak of flippant bitterness that I can’t reply to. I don’t know how to interpret it.

“We’ve talked enough for now,” he says. “Don’t you think so, Rachel?”

We are kissing as though we really were lovers, as though there were no pretence in it. As though he really wanted me. He lies along me, and through our separate clothes I can feel the weight of his body, and his sex. Oh my God. I want him.

“Let’s get rid of some of these clothes, darling,” he says.

I’m not good about physical pain. I never was. And how it would shame me, to have him know it hurt, at my age, with only one possible reason for it. I can’t. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt. The membrane went years ago – I made sure of that, thinking I won’t have my wedding night ruined. What a joke. It
would hurt, all the same. It would be bound to. I can’t let him know that about me.
A woman’s most precious possession.
My mother’s archaic simper voice, cautioning my sixteen-years’ self, and the way she said it made me want to laugh or throw up. But I was neither one way nor another, not buying her view but unable to act on my own. It would have been better for me if I’d wanted to keep myself withheld, or else could have rid myself easily of that unwanted burden with the first boy who asked. The first boy who asked wasn’t very insistent, though. I wish he had been. I wasn’t more or less afraid then. Just the same. Only then I had more time.

“What’s the matter, darling?” Nick’s voice, puzzled. “You want it, too. You know you do.”

His eyes are smiling in a bewildered way. He can’t fathom my hesitance. I’m not a child, after all, not a young girl. What in hell is the matter with me? I can’t take off my clothes in a field. What if someone saw?

“I can’t – here.”

“I told you – no one ever comes to this place.”

“That was years ago.”

“Oh darling,” he says, quite gently, but smiling some reproach, “it’s as private as the grave. What more do you want?”

That’s why he said that, maybe. My mother said, “One thing about your father, he was never one to make many demands upon me, that’s one thing you could say for him.” And I thought how terrible for him, the years and years.

“Not everything, Nick. Not my slip.”

“All right, darling. Have it your way.”

In the mind, in that deep theatre, no one ever had to stumble through the awkward acts of undressing. The clothes
vanished by themselves. I don’t want to watch him, although God knows he does it neatly, slithering out of his grey flannels like a snake shrugging off its last year’s skin. No, not a snake, of course.

Naked, he’s warm and cool. The smoothness of his skin, and the light roughness of the hair along his thighs and between his legs. His sex, unfamiliar and giant and real. Now nothing matters and I’m not afraid of anything and nothing is around us, only the dark blue of the night, and I will never again be afraid of anything and he does want me after all.

“Put it in, darling.”

His low voice, speaking some words, and then I realize that if I wanted to change my mind now, I couldn’t. It has to be done. But – I hadn’t thought or considered or remembered until this instant –

“Nick – you haven’t – you know, taken any –”

His mouth searches my face, my eyes.

“Haven’t you, Rachel?”

“No. No. I thought –”

I thought the man always would. Not so? Or not any more? Any seventeen-year-old would have known that. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t want –

“Did you think I went around like a Boy Scout, darling,” he says, “always prepared?”

I can’t bear his anger, if that’s what it is. Not now. Not like this. And yet it angers me, too.

“Did you think
I
did?”

“Sh, Sh, darling. It’s all right. Don’t worry. I won’t go off in you.”

A brief searing hurt, and then his sex is in mine and I can feel him piercing warmly, unhurtfully. And – oh, Nick, I can’t help this shuddering that is not desire, that’s something I don’t
understand. I don’t want to be this way. It’s only my muscles, my skin, my nerves severed from myself, nothing to do with what I want to be. Forgive me. Forgive me. Then –

“Oh hell, darling,” he says. “I meant to get out before that happened, but I –”

I don’t care, I don’t care about anything, except this peace, this pride, holding him.

“Never mind.”

“Well, you were so worried, before. You’ll – take care, when you get home?”

“Yes.”

But I wish he wouldn’t talk about it. I’m hardly aware of what he’s saying.

“You didn’t make it, did you, Rachel? You were pretty tense, darling.”

The peace is gone. I turn my head away from him.

“Yes, I know. I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s never much good the first time.”

“Was it so obvious, then?”

“Was what so obvious, Rachel?”

“That it was the first time, for me?”

Now he is the one who turns away.

“Don’t say that, Rachel. You don’t have to. It’s not necessary. Let it be, just as it is. Don’t worry – I don’t think you’re a tramp.”

I can’t see what he means. Then I realize. When he said
the first time
, he meant the first time two people were with each other. He doesn’t know I never was, before, with anyone. The relief of this realization is so great that for a moment I can think of nothing else. Then the other thing strikes me. He believes I was lying to him, out of some false concern for – what?
My reputation – I’ve lost my reputation.
Who said that?
Some nitwit in Shakespeare. Nick doesn’t know – he doesn’t know how I’ve wanted to lose that reputation, to divest myself of it as though it were an oxen yoke, to burn it to ashes and scatter them to the wind. I want to laugh, to rage at him for thinking me a liar, to – Hush. Hush, Rachel. This won’t do. Now now. Not here.

The world spinningly returns, the soft scraping of branches against one another in the darkness. Then I see there is no darkness, really, all around us. It’s a full moon. Anyone could see.

“Hey, what’s the matter, darling?”

But I’ve shoved him from me with all my strength. Getting into my clothes again takes an hour, an aeon.

“What’s the hurry?” he says. He is still lying there in the grass, grinning lazily.

“I’ve got to go home now, Nick.”

“Oh, do you? All right, then.”

As we drive back, the night seems unbearably warm, the air glutinous and sugary with the heat and the smell of grass and weeds that still clings around us. He drives with one arm around me, and I want to draw closer to him to have him hold me so reassuringly that nothing can ever go wrong again. But I must not move closer to him. He’s driving. It would be dangerous. What if we were in an accident, and I were found with my hair all disarranged and my lipstick gone and my dress creased and crumpled?

“Here we are,” Nick says. “I’ll phone you, eh?”

“Yes.” Without thinking, I’ve put my arms around him, held my face to his, asking to be kissed.

“Oh – Rachel, listen.”

“What is it?”

“You’ll – fix yourself, next time, won’t you? It’s better that way.”

“Yes.” But I can’t look at him, can’t speak of it like this. Not yet. Give me a little time. I’ll get used to it, to this practicality, these necessities, this coldness. Why should this hurt? What do I expect? To have him say he loves me? That he’ll never say. He doesn’t like people telling lies.

“Are you all right, Rachel?”

“Of course. Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know. You look a little strained.”