Obsession: Tales of Irresistible Desire (21 page)

Then I realized it wasn’t sadness on Kathy’s face but rage. The last thing she could have wished for was to have someone like Eddie Gibbs standing in front of her house, looking at her. I thought I saw her make a move to get up, and I don’t know whether she meant to come down the walk to us or go inside to get away from us, because before she could do anything at all, her father came out onto the porch.

He wasn’t a big man, Kathy’s father, neither exceptionally ugly nor handsome nor anything else. My impression was that I could stare at him all day and forget what he looked like as soon as I turned away. He gazed at me and Eddie as if he suspected we’d come to steal the silver. After some unmeasurable span of time, he turned to Kathy.

Pagoda hell. It might as well have been painted on her forehead. This was bad, I thought; this was really, really bad, whatever was going on between them. But even that wasn’t so remarkable. Lots of people our age were at war with one or both parents; it was the way things went. I kept thinking that was all it was, one of those generation gap problems, as, in response to some cue I hadn’t caught, Kathy got up without a word and went into the house.

Eddie and I looked at each other. An airplane droned overhead, and when I looked back to Kathy’s house, the porch was empty. I turned back to Eddie and shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Me, either,” Eddie replied, and we went back the way we had come. I was sort of hoping that Eddie would ask me to be his girlfriend, since Kathy’s rejection had been unmistakable, but Eddie seemed to be lost in thought. Probably needed some time, I decided as our paths diverged at the corner of Hayward and Fifth.

Two days later, I called Kathy, thinking I’d sound her out about Eddie—was she interested or not? His interest in her had lasted longer than the usual crush, and I wasn’t sure whether to be worried by Eddie’s attention span or just impressed.

The line was busy, and still busy when I tried again a half hour later. After three hours, I gave up. Maybe someone had knocked the phone off the hook.

The phone was still beeping busy the following morning, so I figured I’d just walk over and see what the problem was. Without Eddie, this time; considering the expression on Kathy’s father’s face, I didn’t think I should bring anyone with me. No, scratch that—any boy. Some parents got overly nervous. I wouldn’t have thought Kathy’s would he, but there was no telling, really; I just didn’t know them very well.

This time, Kathy’s mother was sitting on the porch, with the newspaper and a big glass of pink lemonade. Not an uncommon sight in July, but there was something weird about it. Kathy’s mother looked like she was posing for a picture. Or just posing—I kept thinking that the lemonade and the paper were props, but that didn’t make any sense.

Maybe some of what I was feeling showed on my face; Kathy’s mother got this defensive look, as if she expected me to challenge her right to do this, sit on her own porch with a cold drink. Or maybe she was just worried that I’d ask her for a sip, or even my own glass. Neither of Kathy’s parents had ever been in danger of winning a medal for hospitality.

I was kind of annoyed, so I just walked right up onto the porch and said, “Hi, Kathy home?”

She stared straight ahead, newspaper in one hand, lemonade in the other. “No.”

“Oh.” I waited for a few moments. “Will she be back soon?”

Now the woman shrugged. Lemonade sloshed over the rim of the glass and spotted her white pants.

“Okay, then, when would be a good time for me to call her?”

She didn’t say anything for the longest time. I’d been going to wait her out, and then decided I was tired of her game, whatever it was. No wonder Kathy was so strange, I thought as I stumped down the porch steps. Next to her parents, she was positively normal.

“Kathy’s in the hospital.”

I turned around to see Barbara standing just inside the screen door. Her mother gave her a really furious look, but Barbara ignored her, hugging herself. Barbara was built much more solidly, not thin like Kathy.

“She’s in the hospital with blood poisoning,” Barbara said. “She’s going to be all right, but she can’t have any visitors. Because of germs.”

That was the last straw for her mother, I guess. She got up in a big hurry, and Barbara fled. Her mother yanked open the screen door with such force that it flew all the way back, banging against the front of the house. I waited, thinking I’d hear some yelling and find out what Kathy’s mother was so upset about, but there wasn’t a sound. Yelling would have been embarrassing, but the silence was downright weird. I went home and phoned Eddie. I figured he should know.

As it turned out, Eddie’s older sister was a nurse in training at the hospital, so he could find out more than I could. I made him promise to tell me when he did, and he kept assuring me that he would, don’t worry.

Guys lie. All guys, young and old, boyfriends, fathers, brothers, all of them. They lie and lie and lie. Either that or they don’t pay any attention to what they’re saying while they say it. He found out. He even sneaked in and saw her. And after that he wouldn’t even speak to me.

Kathy had to be an invalid for the rest of the summer, or so her mother the nurse said. She got hold of a wheelchair—maybe borrowed it from the convalescent home. Kathy sat in it on the porch for the last part of July and all of August, listening to the radio. She couldn’t go anywhere or spend much time with anyone. I only went over when her house would be at its emptiest. And even so, she wouldn’t say much. Not just about how she happened to end up in the hospital, but about anything. Trying to hold a conversation with her was impossible.

I was pretty mad at Kathy’s mother, and also at Eddie Gibbs for being such a fair-weather boyfriend. I didn’t know what his problem was, except he obviously wasn’t interested in Kathy anymore. Maybe some cheerleader with big breasts had given him a tumble, I thought. Guys were a lot more trouble than they were worth.

Toward the end of August, Kathy seemed to be getting a lot better, but she was still in that damned wheelchair. “Why does your mother insist on keeping you in that thing?” I asked her finally. “You can walk, can’t you?”

She shook her head.

“You can’t walk?” I couldn’t believe it.

“No, it’s not my mother. My father makes me stay in the chair.”

“Well, that’s ridiculous,” I said. “How are you supposed to stay healthy—”

“My father doesn’t want me to put any excess strain on my heart before school starts.” She turned up the radio, which was supposed to end the conversation.

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” I said, raising my voice to talk over Elvis. “Your mother’s a nurse, she could tell him—”

“No, she can’t,” Kathy said. “She can’t, and we can’t. Nobody can tell him anything.”

After that, she didn’t want to talk about anything anymore, but I was getting tired of that and all her neurotic shit. Her and her mother and her weirdo father—by far, the only sensible one seemed to be Barbara, and I was starting to wonder about her.

“I think this year you ought to do something with your singing,” I told her abruptly, reaching over to turn Elvis down. “Get involved with the Glee Club and the choir. They’ll probably make you a soloist. Looks good on your transcript when you apply to college.”

“Oh, I plan to do something with my singing,” she said, giving me this sideways look.

“What?” I asked her.

“You’ll see.”

“Come on, Kathy, what.”

“You’ ll see.” Suddenly she smiled. “You will.” She turned up the radio again and was happy for all of fifteen seconds. Her father materialized on the porch like a magic trick. He snapped off the radio, then picked it up, yanked the batteries out of the compartment in the bottom, and put them in his pocket.

“Trash,” he said, glaring at Kathy. “You know what kind of people listen to that trash, don’t you?” His gaze moved to me. ”Don’t you, Katherine? Answer me.”

She ducked her head and I thought I heard her whisper, Yes, Daddy.

“People like her.” He jerked his thumb toward the sidewalk. “Hit the road, trash. I don’t want you near my daughters, any of them. The next time one of those horny young apes you go around with gets a yen for some, you take him to the whores you live with. Do I make myself clear to you?”

It all came out in such a quiet, calm voice, I wasn’t sure that I’d actually heard what I heard. And then Kathy whispered, Go. Please. Get out of here.

I was so shocked, that was just what I did. Maybe her father had blown some kind of gasket in his brain, I thought. I’d have to ask Kathy when I saw her at school, even though she would probably be embarrassed to death over it. Because she lived on Summer Street; in my neighborhood, I’d have just figured him for yet another guy who got mean when he got drunk.

Actually, it was the last time I saw Kathy for years. The week before school started, she ran away. Without the wheelchair.

High school was hell anyway, but without Kathy, it was even more rotten. I was so mad at her for leaving me to face it alone, after we’d stuck together for so long. At the same time. I couldn’t blame her. What wasn’t boring was incomprehensible or embarrassing. I fell into my radio and stayed there.

Not the local stations, which were all easy listening or countrywestern or yak-yak-yak, but the ones from Boston and Worcester, where everything seemed to be faster, happier, better. I loved to sit alone and listen after school. In Worcester, the kids called in requests every afternoon, and it sounded like they all knew each other. I daydreamed about getting out, finding my way to some place like that. Maybe that was what Kathy had done, gone off to find some better place to be, where her parents couldn’t keep her in a wheelchair, and as soon as she was sure it really was a better place, she’d let me know. Somehow, she’d send me a message to come join her without giving it away to her parents or anyone else.

I hung on to that for a while, even though I knew it was a complete fantasy. But as long as it was a complete fantasy, I pulled out all the stops and imagined that her message would come in the music. Like we were spies or secret agents in hostile country, trying to get home.

So fourteen and fifteen is a little old to be playing Spy. It was better than playing with Eddie Gibbs. He’d gone on to become high school aristocracy, and, as near as I could tell, he’d forgotten all about Kathy and me. I gave him a dirty look every time I saw him; he would stare right through me, like he didn’t see me at all.

Yeah, well, like I should have expected more out of a fourteenyear-old guy.

I spent my junior year sleeping with Jasper Townshend. It was the next best thing to getting out.

Every night of the week, I could drift off to sleep at the sound of Jasper’s low, velvety voice urging me to believe in the power of my own dreams. It didn’t bother me that he said this to everyone who slept with him. I didn’t expect a whole lot of Jasper; all I wanted to do was forget this world for seven or eight hours, and Jasper knew exactly how to help me do that.

Being so good at what he did, he became a very popular guy, number one in the overnight time slot. All the other radio stations might as well have been off the air. It wasn’t just that he had the best voice in the business, or a lot of great things to say. It was that he really knew how to program the music, and when to shut up.

You could tell the music meant a lot to him. I think it meant as much to him as it did to me. With Kathy gone, it meant more to me than it ever had. Sometimes I’d even forget that my little fantasy wasn’t real, and I’d listen for Kathy’s voice, the song she would sing to let me know she’d found someplace safe.

I guess if you listen hard enough for something, you’ll finally hear it.

The first time I heard it was in a dream, literally. I was back in Kathy’s room and she was singing for me, but it wasn’t the folk song I remembered but something slow called “In My Room.” I seemed to remember some surfer-types singing it and it had sounded pretty lame. But Kathy had stolen it and made it into some kind of hymn to privacy. And why not a hymn? All us good little Catholic girls sang hymns best.

The song ended and I was captivated all over again. I didn’t want anything to break the silence that fell after that last pure note, I wanted to listen to it echo in my mind, but Kathy’s father suddenly barged in without knocking. I thought he was going to tell me I was trash and throw me out. Instead, he started singing, too.

Shock woke me up. But Kathy’s father was still singing, and I realized I was hearing the radio. I could feel my emotions going up and down, like a flock of seagulls riding on waves. I mean, I was really glad Kathy’s father wasn’t singing or throwing me out, but I was really sorry the Kathy version of “In My Room” wasn’t available.

Then I found out I was wrong, and I didn’t know how I felt. I wish you still knew what happened after that—it would make all of this so simple. But I’ve resigned myself to the fact that no one remembers The Voice except me.

That was what they called her— Billboard, Variety, Hit Parade. Dick-for-chrissakes-Clark. George Martin, too; he’d been trying to get some British group with funny haircuts to smooth out their sound, get respectable. When he heard The Voice, he dropped them and hopped a jet for America. He tracked her down in L.A., and then spent three months wooing her with promises of all kinds.

I could have told him she’d have been a tough nut to crack. I giggled whenever I thought of some high-powered music promoter or manager or whatever they were coming to me for advice on how to reach The Voice. I’d have told them just not to bother. The Voice couldn’t be bought, wasn’t for sale.

I didn’t really expect her to think of me, either. She’d run away from all of it years ago, me included. I didn’t know why it included me; I didn’t want to know, either. I was afraid I’d find out that her father had finally brainwashed her into believing I was the trash he said I was. Instead, I went on pretending that she was sending me messages in the music, messages of encouragement. I hung on to the music and hung on to her.

And what the hell—the miracle came to pass, and I got my ticket out. It was labeled Full Scholarship, State University. One way only, and that was all right with me.