Beautiful Kate (27 page)

“Come on, Greg, you gotta come. Wontcha please, huh? Wontcha, Greg? Come on, wontcha?”

How could one resist such a petition? Shrugging agreement, I gave her little butt a swat and left her jumping up and down on the porch. When I returned, in my trunks, she took a firm grip on my index finger and marched me back past the barn and down the path to the pond, where we found everyone in the water except Cliff. Looking pale and cold, he sat shivering on the edge of the dock. Mother, in her perennial black suit and white bathing cap, was peacefully treading water while Junior squealed happily from his perch on Kate’s shoulders. Seeing us, Kate promptly dove under water and came up separated from her little brother, who appeared to have swallowed some of the pond in the process. While he coughed, Kate swam to shallower water and stood, Venus rising in a bikini, a Venus who baby-talked.

“Well, widdo Sawah got her bit bruvver to come after all, didn’t she? And my, how bwown and hard he wooks.” She turned from us to Cliff, saying that if he too wanted to have a beautiful tan, he was just going to have to get out of the Eskimo more often.

Cliff grinned at me. “No thanks. Not if it means building fences.”

I asked my mother how long she had been treading water.

“Hours,” she said.

“What a lady.”

“Nonsmoking
lady,” she pointed out.

Sarah still had me by the finger. “Come on, you get out in the water and stand with your legs apart. I want to show you something.”

I obediently dove in and took a position, legs spread apart, about ten feet from the dock. The water by then was roiled and dark and I told Sarah to be careful, but she dove in anyway and swam right into my knee. By moving fast, though, I was able to make it appear as if she had indeed swum between my legs. And that naturally was an accomplishment that Junior could not let go unchallenged. He had me back up another five feet, until my head was almost under water, before taking his shot. And when I saw that he was going to miss me altogether, I must confess that I didn’t sidle over to where he was—little Sarah needed all the victories she could get, I figured.

Coming up, Junior at first claimed that he had made it through my legs and when Sarah called him a liar he started to bitch at Mother, claiming that I had cheated for Sarah and that Mother should make me admit it. When he got nowhere with her, he carried his appeal to Cliff, who characteristically gave him a sop of sorts.

“The water’s too muddy, Junior. Try it someday when it’s clear. Then you’ll make it.”

“Well, it was muddy for me too, and
I
made it!” Sarah said.

Junior screamed back at her. “I went twice as long under water as you! And Greg cheated! He moved!”

That was enough for the rest of us, and especially for Mother. Getting out of the water, she put on her robe and told Junior and Sarah that it was getting dark now and was time to go. At their duet of complaint, she said there would be no bedtime cake or milk for anyone who complained. The voracious little buggers fell silent at that and glumly followed her as she left.

“Have fun,” she called back. “And watch out for the dragon.”

It was a family joke, one of Kate’s childhood inventions to keep the Regan kids from using our pond. “I guess it isn’t really a dragon,” she had told them. “But it looks like one and it can bite off your foot. You’ve really got to watch out for it.”

Alone now, the three of us fell into a somewhat uneasy silence, as if we knew each other only casually and could not think of a thing to say. Kate had gotten up onto the dock and was drying her hair with a towel—why, I don’t know, since she soon went back into the water. Perhaps she only wanted to fluff it and make it prettier, or perhaps she was calculating enough to know how she looked standing there above us in her bikini, with her arms arched gracefully over her head. At the time I had no idea how ineradicable from my mind that scene in the dusk would become: Cliff lounging back on the tire tube, looking over his bony knees at Kate on the dock, our armed Venus smiling slightly, as if in contemplation of some delicious act of mischief, while behind her the sky and the great old oaks were slowly darkening. I hear the frogs croaking and the cicadas in their furious song, and I see the water and the dock and of course Kate. Over and over, all this quarter century, I see Kate standing there in the dying light.

“Well, good,” she said. “Just the three of us again, just like old times. Isn’t it too freaking neat for words?”

I could see Cliff’s consternation: Why was she being so sardonic? It
was
neat, he undoubtedly was thinking. It would always be neat.

Kate dropped her towel and came to the edge of the dock. “And to have Greg here too. The Great Haybucker. It’s just too freaking much.”

“Glad you realize that,” I said.

“Oh, I do. I do.” Smiling, she looked over at Cliff, still floating on his tube. “Well, let’s have fun!”

With that, she dove into the water and came up under him, capsizing him and his tiny craft. Breaking the surface, she let out a shrieking laugh and threw her arms around Cliff’s neck, making him work hard to reach shallower water. All the way she kept clinging to him and laughing, as if she thought Cliff too was having the greatest time of his life. And even when they were both able to stand, she still held on to him, indifferently pressing her breasts and legs against him.

“All right, Kate, that’s enough,” he said, prying her arms loose.

She immediately jumped back and threw up her hands in mock horror. “Oh, I am so sorry, Mister Kendall, sir. I simply forgot all about your sweet little Sally and that no one else is even allowed to touch you anymore, not even your sister.”

Cliff looked embarrassed. “Oh, come on, Kate. Knock it off, okay?”

But she already had turned away from him and was moving in my direction. “What do you think, Greg? You think brothers and sisters should be allowed to touch?”

I swam over to the dock and climbed out of the water.

“I asked you a question, twin,” she persisted.

“And I just decided I get enough exercise during the day,” I said. “Swimming is for you softies.”

“You leaving?” Cliff asked.

“Yeah. I’m really bushed.”

“I’ve been up since five myself. Why don’t we all go?” Cliff looked hopefully at Kate, who was still gliding around like an otter, with only her head above water.

“If you have to leave—go ahead,” she said, “I’m staying.”

“Come on, Kate,” Cliff pleaded. “We can’t just leave you here.”

“Why not? I’m a big girl now. And anyway, I know you’re not that tired. If I were Saccharine Sally, you wouldn’t be going anywhere.”

Cliff was standing on the grassy bank now. He looked over at me. “What do you say? A little while longer? I suppose we could handle that, eh?”

I had already tossed my towel over my shoulders. “Not me. I’ll see you two later.”

As I stepped off the dock and started around the pond, Kate emitted a sharp little laugh, like the bark of a terrier. “There he goes,” she said. “The great haybucker and builder of crooked fences.”

“That’s me,” I admitted.

“Have fun in your little basement room, there all by yourself.”

I heard Cliff groan. “Kate, you go too far. You always go too far lately.”

Just before I went out of view I glanced back at the pond and saw him reluctantly wading again into the water, where Kate was still swimming, with only her head visible. I could see her hair radiating out from her, moving like kelp on the water’s surface, and it struck me as almost funny that where a minute before I had seen her as a kind of Venus, now she seemed more like that frightening creature she had conjured up for the Regans. And without thinking, I stupidly repeated my mother’s warning.

“Watch out for the dragon!” I called.

After showering and raiding the kitchen (at that age, I think I ate my weight every few days) I went down to my room and pretended to read, when in fact all I was doing was listening for Kate and Cliff to return. It wasn’t that I thought the same thing might happen with them that had happened between Kate and me, even if it was her wish that it did. I knew that Cliff was probably the last person in the world who could have entered into such a relationship, even without design, as in my case. But I was not sure that Kate knew this, not anymore, not as she was now. So I was worried—no, terrified, sickened—at the thought of what Cliff might be learning about his sister, and possibly about his brother as well. Nevertheless I kept on reading, wandering aimlessly through the forests of Faulkner’s
Bear
, comprehending nothing. And in time I heard them: the back screendoor whining open and slapping shut, followed by the padding of bare feet on the kitchen floor, then their voices, both of them, as well as Mother’s, all unexcited, normal. And I
breathed
. For the first time since leaving the pond, I relaxed sufficiently to empty my lungs and fill them again, long and deep, the breathing of a man reprieved.

Such a development required celebration, I felt, so I closed my Faulkner and lit a cigarette and smoked it down, trying my best to avoid the thought that one could not go on forever living in the expectation of being reprieved. Sooner or later, the way Kate was carrying on, Cliff was going to learn what had happened between her and me—and then what? What would he do? Or, more to the point, what would it do
to him
? The realization that I had no answer to that question frightened me more than anything else. By then, as I’ve already said, I had come to accept that the terrible secret eventually would come out and that Kate and I would have to pay the price for it. And I saw nothing unfair in this, for we after all were the ones who had stepped over the line,
way
over the line, and therefore could not very well expect anything except condemnation and ostracism. But the thought of Cliff and Mother and Jason suffering similar penalties—that hurt me more than I would have dreamed it could. Yet I had no idea what to do about it, other than just to stay on and wait for the inevitable to happen, then leave under my own true colors, such as they were. Perhaps that way the three of them would be so filled with revulsion toward me that they would go easier on themselves, for a while anyway.

The grandfather clock had already chimed one o’clock when I heard someone on the front hall stairway. I heard the screendoor being unhooked and opened and then the squeak of the porch glider, and I assured myself that it had to be Cliff, because Kate would have sat on the swing. So I got out of bed, taking my cigarettes, and went upstairs as silently as I could, carefully peering out onto the porch before opening the door. And I saw that I had been right: Cliff was sitting on the edge of the glider, with his head in his hands.

“Mind a little company?” I asked, going over to the railing.

“Hell no. But what’s keeping you up? I thought you were so bushed.”

“Foreign affairs,” I said. “Ike needs me.”

“You too?”

“Sure. Where would he be without us? Caught in a sandtrap somewhere.”

Cliff got up and came over to the railing too, to stare with me out at the lawn and the road. Banter out of the way, neither of us said anything for a time. In the silence, I lit another cigarette. Finally I spoke:

“You worried about Kate?”

“What do you mean?”

“How different she is.”

“Yeah, I guess so. And the funny thing is the last couple of weeks I was thinking she’d really straightened out. I mean, she stopped being such a loner, you know? Dating Sally’s brother and all. I thought she was on her way.”

“But now you’re not so sure?”

He shook his head, almost angrily. It was not easy for him, I knew, talking about our sister.

“Well, you know—like down at the pond tonight,” he said. “The way she tries to keep a guy guessing all the time. You never know what’s going on inside her head. It’s that way when we double-date too. One minute she can be so damned nice to Sally and Arthur has them eating right out of her hand—and the next she’s giving them a shot. Especially poor Arthur. Just when he thinks everything’s going fine between them, she drops him flat on his face.”

“That’s what’s worrying you?” I asked.

He became defensive. “Well, what else? That’s what the problem is. That’s how she is.”

I dragged on my cigarette and flipped it out into the yard, only half smoked. “You forgetting what she said about me?”

“Of course not. How could I?”

“Well, you don’t act like it. If what she said was true, I’d think you wouldn’t even want to talk to me.”

In the streetlight, I could see his desperation. “But why would she lie? I still can’t see that.”

“Maybe she was covering up.”

“What does that mean?”

At his look, the terrible dread I saw edging into his eyes, I backed away. “I don’t know. I’m just talking through my hat. Everything’s so goddamn confusing, I just talk. I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore.”

But he wouldn’t let me off, not that easily. “Come on, Greg. You started to say something—just like that other night. So say it!”