8

Kate and I were in the backyard, both of us curled on a loose nest of blankets. Her sleeping face was next to mine—the fine bones, the milky skin, the fixed music of the features I knew better than my own. And yet, I could not locate us in time—were we years before or beyond? Our friendship seemed a sudden wilderness. There was just this slipping between points.

The cat crossed the lawn and lingered on the corner of the quilt. I stretched to touch its belly, blending my hair into its fur, thinking how grass is a forest when you lie so low. People say the passage of time is the best cure for sorrow. But even when you trudge obediently through the hours, nothing is lessened, nothing is alleviated, not soon enough, not when you need it to be. What good is waiting, if pain is gone only when things no longer hurt? There ought to be a way to get over grief when it is still purple like dahlias and alive.

I wondered if it was death that had eroded the space between us. Had we seen too much, learned too much? Was there nothing left to reveal, no new way to be? Or was the intimacy that had risen up out of childhood meant all along to be only temporary? I knew only that something precious had been deconsecrated and the naturalness that had guided us was gone.

Kate’s eyes opened; she checked her watch. “God. We’ve been out here for hours.”

“I know,” I said with a stretch. “We’re so lazy. Aren’t we lazy?”

Kate yawned. “Yes. But you are especially lazy. Feel like going to Sag Harbor tonight?”

I said, “Sure.” I liked Sag Harbor. It was ghosty there, especially in October. Along the elbowed streets and up around the widows’ walks were ghosts of whalers and the women they’d loved. Babies they’d forsaken.

Shortly after Kate went up to shower there was a knock. A stranger, I knew, since friends never knocked. Through the screen door was a guy, maybe in his twenties, well-built, not tall. He was wearing shorts and a Darkness on the Edge of Town concert jersey.

“This Irene’s house?”

“It is. But she’s not home.”

“Yeah, well, okay,” he said, embarking on an explanation. “I was hitchhiking a couple weeks ago at the college, you know, by the gymnasium, right before the turn onto Route 27.” His voice was slightly croaking. I got the feeling he was smart. Croaking voices like that frequently belong to smart people. “Anyway, Rene picked me up, and we got to talking. She told me to stop by next time I came through East Hampton,” he concluded, throwing his arms to each side, grinning. A faint mustache drew out like taffy to cap his lips.

“So here you are,” I said.

“So here I am,” he replied.

“Okay, well, come on in. She’ll be back soon.” I snapped the latch. The door sprang and he caught it.

“Nice place,” he said as he entered. “The way everything’s blue. Unusual.”

The kitchen was cavelike and cool. I turned on the light and offered him a drink, lobbing a can of club soda from the refrigerator. I lifted myself onto the counter and rested my feet on the edge of the base cabinet door, pushing it open and wedging it closed, going back and forth, playing with it, like wiggling a loose tooth.

“I’m from California,” he informed me after taking a sip.

“Oh,” I said. “California’s far.” Three tomatoes lined the windowsill, bright red and radiant at the edges. My aunt Lowie had grown them in her garden. I reached for one and took a bite.

He nodded. “Is Rene your sister?”

“Mother.”

“Mother?”

“She’s thirty-five,” I said, anticipating his question. It was always the same question.

I heard Kate’s footsteps on the stairs. She came around the hall corner in a curious half-walk, brushing her hair. “Who are you talking to?” she asked with a smile.

“Some guy,” I said, locating a single tomato seed and chewing it. “Mom picked him up hitchhiking.”

Kate peeked around the wall. “Hello, Some Guy.”

He smiled brightly. “Hello there!”

“I’m Kate. Do you have a name?”

“Some Guy is fine,” he said. “Nice to meet you, Kate.”

Kate started to travel around the room as if by conveyer belt. She went first to the refrigerator, where she opened the door smoothly and bent at the knees to ease out a drink, excessively conscious of poise. She looked like one of those old Ziegfeld girls, the kind who shimmies down scenery steps in treacherous heels and sequined breeches, balancing an oafish feather hat. She put the hairbrush down near me and cleaned off the top of the soda can in the sink.

“You two aren’t sisters, are you?” the hitchhiker asked.

“Us? God, no,” Kate said as she took a seat across from him. “Just friends. Since second grade. I’m staying here for a few months to finish school. My parents passed away.”

“Oh,” he said. “Sorry.” Then he said something else, which I missed. I was wondering what Kate found so offensive about the idea of us being sisters.

Birds were visiting the feeder outside. There was one male cardinal. I like cardinals. They’re unimpeachably red. The red bird plus the remaining red tomatoes made a strange pattern. Kate and the hitchhiker were discussing astrology. He was a Leo; she was an Aquarius.

“Aquarius,” he said. “Whoa! I’m surprised you two are such good friends. Aquarians and Scorpios usually don’t get along.”

Kate turned to me. “Evie! Did you tell him your sign?” she asked.

He shrugged. “She didn’t have to. It’s obvious. Scorpios are intense. They’re ruthless and self-contained. No one’s worthy of their trust. But Aquarians, they’re like silver rainbows.” His fingers danced in air. “They’re dreamers. Are you a dreamer?”

“Totally,” she said. “I’m a total dreamer.”

“Well, there you go.”

“It is so weird that you knew that. It is so cool.”

I stood and went to the sink, lowering my head in, spraying my hair.

The hitchhiker apologized to me, calling over, “Hey, no offense or anything.”

“None taken,” I said, waving my left hand up. My voice inside the sink made a hum. Water streamed down my neck when I righted myself, and around my shoulders, and onto my T-shirt. I used Kate’s brush, then pulled my hair into a ponytail on top of my head and held it in place while I hunted for a rubber band. There were no rubber bands where they were supposed to be, which was in the drawer for rubber bands and half-burnt candles and paper clips and other weird stuff such as broken sneaker laces and corroded batteries and lamp wicks, so I used a garbage twist thing instead. Every kitchen has a drawer like that—a chaos drawer, filled with everything except the one thing you need. Chaos, because chaos is pretty much like having everything but the thing you need.

The Scamp pulled into the driveway, and within minutes my mother was coming through the door, singing out, “Gir-rls.” Instantly there was lightness. In other houses, “good” houses, where bills are paid and dinner is made from scratch and you get one of those fancy watermelon basket cutouts filled with fruit balls on your birthday, parents walk in and everyone gets sick to their stomach.

She came over the kitchen threshold, struggling dramatically under the weight of her bags. “Hello!” she said, in a British accent, referring to the visitor. “What have we here?”

“Some Guy,” Kate said. “A hitchhiker friend of yours.”

“Don’t tell me,” she said. She closed her eyes, tapping her forehead. “Riff. Rug. Bop.”

“Biff,” he said with a half-grin and a backward jerk of the head, not knowing whether to be insulted. Biff. No wonder he preferred “Some Guy.”

“Of course,” she said with delight, and she sat. “Biff. From Santa Monica.”

“San Diego,” he replied. “Good memory.”

Beyond the window, daylight languished. The shade moved strategically across the grass, advancing the way an army does. I reminded myself that it was Saturday, though I had the Sunday feeling. I wished Jack would come, but he and Dan and Smokey Cologne had gone into the city for a concert at CBGB’s. He would show up tomorrow, after the noon train whistle, smelling stale like smoke and rum, his bloodshot eyes an extra bright blue.

“Where you going?” Mom asked me.

“To mow the lawn,” I said.

“Don’t be silly. It’s October. Sit down.”

“Yeah,” Biff said. “C’mon, sit.” He pulled out a chair.

It was nice of them, it really was, but Kate said nothing, so I figured it was best to go.

I pushed the sky-blue mower in diagonal lines over the lawn. Powell had spray-painted it blue because he didn’t want me to be outside looking down and seeing nothing of the heavens. Our neighbor Ernie Lever was mowing also. Ernie rode his tractor mower on his postage-stamp yard like a bumper-car cowboy, jerking back and forth, snapping his neck. He’d chopped down every tree on his property to make for easy driving. I waved—I had to, it was a family rule.

“He’s a Republican with a colostomy bag,” Powell explained. “That makes him twice as eligible for Christian kindness.”

The last tree Ernie cut was a giant maple. I cried that day. Everyone gathered around me, patting my knees, rubbing my shoulders, offering icy rags. “It’s not about me,” I told them. Whenever you’re upset, people always think it’s about you. “It’s about the tree.”

No one disputed that what had happened was senseless, yet they defended Ernie’s right to tend to his own house. This was no surprise. I’d heard such logic before. Adults accept unacceptable behavior because they secretly don’t want anyone criticizing their own actions. Then they encourage kids to tell the truth like it’s so easy.

My mother tried to cheer me. “Think of the saplings it sired! The biological work it did!”

“Ernie mowed all the saplings,” I stated bleakly.

Trees corroborate the past. Years are chronicled in the rings. The hurricane of 1938 pummeled Long Island, but that tree survived, only to be sawed to shreds on an innocuous spring day by Ernie, a retired machinist from Astoria, Queens. I wondered how far it might have grown. Maybe it would have broken right through his house, then cut clear across town, making an idle sort of getaway.

“Be reasonable, babe,” Powell said, taking my hand. “We can’t save every one.” His wolf-gray eyes leveled to convey the gravity of his point. His hair was also gray. It swept back around his ears, and his voice was kind. When he came home after months away, he would have a bushy mustache. When he came home, it was always a three-day party with everyone participating, even me.

“But we knew this one,” I said.

The night it was cut, I went outside and found the stump. It was stubbornly attached to the arc of the earth, right where the tree used to be. Of course there was no better or more logical place, but the sight of it surprised me nonetheless. There was something harrowing about the untimely tenacity, about the belated show of force. I thought of the cover of Le Petit Prince, of the boy standing on the rim of his asteroid with nothing to buffer him from the enormity of the universe. There was suddenly so much sky. I looked back at the gigantic shadow of wood dumped alongside Ernie’s shed. It was more than just a ragged mound of wood awaiting the chipper. There was something about it that was undeniably offensive to the eyes, something to do with the disharmony of ravaged perfection.

When I finished the lawn, I sat on the front steps, listening to the voices from the kitchen. They’d been talking a long time. Some people can talk incessantly, though nothing of interest or importance is being said. Biff was listing punk bands he’d seen, Patti Smith, Blondie, the Ramones, the Talking Heads. And Kate kept mentioning Jack and all these clubs in downtown Manhattan she’d never even been to, such as CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City.

I wondered what the value was, in the Darwinian sense, of making fast friends like that. There must be some scientific significance to being a follower, to allowing yourself to be persuaded by fashion, opinion, doctrine, and personality.

Recently, Marcus Payne had found God. He would come by after school on his moped with a crate full of Good News Bibles. If Jack was there, he would lecture Marcus on the dangers of mind control societies. Jack hated cults; he didn’t even like me to do yoga.

“The devil is in the dogma, Payne,” Jack would growl. “Don’t become susceptible. Those assholes in Jonestown drank cyanide in Kool-Aid and squirted it into the mouths of babies because it dawned on them that Communism might not take off globally. I mean, if Marx and Engels couldn’t do it, if Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky couldn’t do it, what chance do nine hundred Moonies from broken military families have? And those Helter Skelter freaks,” he would say. Jack hated Charles Manson. He said Manson gave a bad name to hippies. “Whoring girls to get into Hollywood houses, hacking people up, then blaming blacks in order to jump-start a ‘racial holocaust’ they themselves were predicting. And since it’s your lucky day, Marcus, I won’t even get into Genesis. Let’s just say we’ve got world economies based on a book that preaches preparedness for an apocalypse. I mean, Noah’s Ark—come on.”

According to Jack, the philosophy behind any cult is incidental. “It’s all about people power. You’ve got the vocational masses lining up, waiting to be brainwashed. It’s like, get a message and make it good, or else lose out to some other cult.”

If Jack wasn’t there, Marcus and I would just talk about movies. He was a classic film fan as well as an evangelical, and he did his best to forge connections between the two, just in case someone at Church tried to make him give up the movies.

“What about Harvey, Evie?” he would ask as he reorganized the Bible sales receipts he kept on a clipboard stuffed in his windbreaker. “The script refers to the rabbit as a pagan spirit, a pooka, remember? But I suspect Harvey’s actually a Christ figure. Think about it—an invisible rabbit. That can only mean one thing as far as I’m concerned.”

At last there was the sound of the kitchen chairs pushing back. I heard my mother walking to the sink, saying it was time for her to grade midterm essays, and Biff throwing his empty soda can into the trash, saying he was on his way to rugby practice at Herrick playground in the village. I thought Kate might mention our plan to go out for a ride to Sag Harbor, but she didn’t.

I moved away before they reached the door, going back to the blankets Kate and I had left behind the house. I sat down, figuring that if no one came to find me, I’d just wait for night to fall. Night is like an ocean—in the ocean you cannot be displaced; in darkness it’s the same. Being submerged is like possessing a nationality; it is to be a thing completely. I wondered if I would ever know such saturation, or have an identity that was equivalent inside and out. When I asked myself what I felt above all else, what moved most freely through the net of me, I could think only of loss—of things forgotten though never known, of things sacrificed though never held in hand.