Cloudburst (44 page)

“I bet. There was a time when things were built to last,” he said.

“Really? How old are you, ninety, a hundred?”

He softly laughed, flashed me an amused look, and then
gazed at my house again, concentrating, I thought, on my bedroom windows. “I bet you can see the lake from your window.” He turned to look at his own roof. “Your house looks to be about ten feet taller than ours.”

“Yes, I can,” I said. “At least the bay. This time of the year, the trees are so full they block out most of it.”

The lake was only a little more than a half-mile from our street, but it was a privately owned lake, anyway. Because our homes weren't lake homes, we weren't shareholders in the Echo Lake Corporation. Most everyone who didn't belong thought the people who did were snobby about their property and their rights, but I thought these people were simply jealous. It was true that no one without lake rights could swim, row, or fish there. You had to be invited by a member, but what would be the point of having a private lake and expensive lakeside property otherwise? We had been invited from time to time. Most recently, the Mallens invited us for a picnic on the lake. George Mallen was president of the Echo Lake bank, and Dad always gave him good deals on the jewelry that he bought for his wife and two older daughters, both married and living in Portland.

“So I guess you've lived here all your life,” he said.

“Yes, that's a safe conclusion to make.”

He laughed again. I could see that he really enjoyed talking to me. It was like sparring with words.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“Oh, somewhere out there,” he replied, waving his right hand over his shoulder. “We've lived in so many different places that the U.S. Postal Service has declared us
undesirables. They're still trying to deliver mail sent to us ten years ago.”

“Very funny, but you had to be born somewhere, right?”

“I think it was on a jet crossing the Indian Ocean,” he replied. “Luckily, we were in first class. I'm a sea baby, or more of an air baby. Yes, that's it. I'm from the international air above the Taj Mahal.”

“Sure. Your parents are Americans, aren't they?” I asked, not so sure.

“Yes.”

“Then you're an American.”

“Very constitutional of you.” He looked at my window again. “My bedroom faces yours, you know. Yours is about six inches higher but diametrically opposite.”

“Thanks for the warning, now that I know you're a Peeping Tom.”

He laughed.

“I wasn't peeping, really, as much as I was wondering if you would see me.”

“I'd have to be either blind or terribly oblivious.”

“Well, I'm glad you're not either.”

“Why was it so important to test me about that?”

He looked stymied for an answer. “I'm sorry. You're right. It was juvenile and not the best way to make a new friend.” He looked afraid that I would end the conversation or continue to take him to task.

“Apology accepted,” I said.

“Whew.” He wiped his forehead. I couldn't help but smile at his exaggerated action.

“Okay, we don't know where you're from, but what
made your parents decide to move here of all places?”

“Why? Is it that bad here? You make it sound like the last stop on the train or the edge of the world.”

“No, it's far from bad here. I just wondered. We don't get that many new families these days.”

“I think my father put a map on the wall, blindfolded himself, and threw a dart. It hit Echo Lake, Oregon.”

“You're kidding, right?”

He nodded and smiled. “It's what he tells people. My father has a dry sense of humor.”

“Brayden,” we heard. It was a woman's voice, but she sounded very far-off. “Bray . . . den.” In fact, it seemed she was calling from inside a tunnel, and she sounded a little desperate, almost in a panic.

His smile evaporated. “Gotta go,” he said. “It's been nice talking to you, and I apologize again for being a Gawking Tom.”

“I'll settle for Peeping Tom. Who's calling you?”

“My mother. We're still moving in. Lots to do. Help with unpacking, setting things up, rearranging and cleaning up the furniture that was there, and organizing the kitchen,” he listed quickly. He leaned toward me to whisper, “My dad's not too handy around the house.” He pointed to his temple. “Intellectual type, you know. Thinks a screwdriver is only a glass of orange juice and vodka.”

“I'm sure he's not that bad. What does he do?”

“He's a member of a brain trust. Meets with other geniuses to discuss and solve world economic problems. All quite hush-hush, top-secret stuff, so secret that he doesn't know what he's talking about.”

“What?”

He laughed again. “I wasn't kidding about our living in many places. Often we go on family trips to foreign countries and around the country, when he's going to be away for a prolonged time, that is.”

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“None that I know of,” he replied with a sly smile. “You're an only child, too, I take it, and your parents own a jewelry store on Main Street, a jewelry store that has been in your family for decades.”

“You did some homework?”

“I've scouted the neighborhood. A few interesting people live on this block, especially that elderly lady who hangs her clothes on a line at the side of her house, visible to anyone walking in the street.”

“Mrs. Carden. What about her? What makes her so interesting? Many people like to hang out their clothes in the fresh air. Mrs. Carden's not unique.”

Mrs. Carden was an eighty-something retired grade-school teacher who had lived for ten years as a widow and never had any children of her own. She would smile and nod at me when I walked by, but I didn't think I had spoken a dozen words to her in the past five years. I was curious about why someone new would find her interesting.

“Oh, I think she is quite unique,” he insisted.

“Why?”

“She whispers to her clothes as if they were errant children, scolding a blouse for being too wrinkled or a skirt for shrinking. I think she put a pair of stockings in the corner, sort of a time-out for wearing too thin or something.
Maybe that's something a grade-school teacher would do, but I've always found people who hold discussions with inanimate objects unique, don't you?”

“Errant children?”

“Hang around with me. I'll build your vocabulary,” he said, winking.

“If she was whispering, how did you hear her? Were you spying on her, too?”

“A little, but I have twenty-twenty hearing,” he kidded. “So watch what you whisper about me.”

“Bray . . . den,” I heard again. It sounded the same, a strange, thin call, like a voice riding on the wind.

“Gotta go,” he repeated, backing away as though something very strong was pulling him, despite his resistance. He spun around to slip home through the hedges and then paused and turned back to me. “Can you come out for a walk tonight?”

“A walk?” I smiled with a little incredulity. “A walk?”

“Too simple an invitation?” he asked, and looked around. “It's going to be a very pleasant evening. Haven't you ever read Thoreau? ‘He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all.' Are you afraid of walking? I don't mean a trek of miles or anything. No backpacks required.”

“I'm not afraid of walking,” I shot back. “And I love Thoreau.”

He lifted his arms to say,
So?
And then he waited for my response.

“Okay, I'll go for a walk. When?”

“Just come out. I'll know.”

“Why? Are you going to hover between the hedges watching and waiting?”

He laughed. “Just come out. A walk might not sound like very much to you, but I've got to start somewhere,” he said.

“Start? Start what?”

“Our romance. I can't ask you to marry me right away.”

“What?”

He laughed again and then slipped through the bushes. I stepped up to them to look through and watch him go into his house, but he was gone so quickly I didn't even hear a door open and close.

How could he be gone so fast? I leaned in farther and looked at his house, a house that had been empty and uninteresting for so long it was as if it wasn't there. I felt silly doing what he had been doing, gawking between the hedges, studying his house, checking all the windows, listening for any conversations. It's the very thing I criticized him for doing, I thought, and I stepped away as if I had been caught just as I had caught him.

He was very good-looking, but there was something quirky about him. Nevertheless, it didn't put me off. In fact, it made him more appealing, a lot more alluring than the other boys my age that I knew. No matter how hard most of them tried, there was a commonality about them, about the way they dressed and talked. As Dad would say whenever the topic of young romance came up, “I guess no one has yet set the diamonds in your eyes glittering, Amber Light.” That was his nickname for me, Amber Light.

No, none of the boys in my school had set the
diamonds in my eyes glittering, I thought, and which one of them even would think to mention Henry David Thoreau as a way of enticing me to do something with him?

Looking around, I agreed that it truly would be a beautiful late June night. I laughed to myself. Almost any other boy I knew would have asked me to go to the movies or go for a burger or pizza or simply hang out at the mall as a first date. But just go for a walk? I didn't think so.

I started back to my house. I thought I might finish some summer required reading and then help Mom with dinner. It was Friday night, and Dad kept the store open an hour or so later than usual.

I was almost to the porch steps when I stopped and looked around. There was something odd about the day. What was it?

It was too quiet, I realized. And there were no birds flying around or calling, just a strangely silent crow settled on the roof of Brayden's house.

We lived on a cul-de-sac, so not having any traffic wasn't unusual, and it wasn't unusual to see no people outside their homes for long periods of time. Yet the stillness felt different. I didn't even hear the sounds of far-off traffic or an airplane or anything. It was as if I had stepped out of the world for a few moments and was now working my way back in.

And despite the brilliant sunshine, I felt a chill surge through my body. I embraced myself and hurried up the stairs. I paused on the porch and looked at the house next door. Up in what I now knew was Brayden's bedroom window, the curtains parted.

But I didn't see him.

I didn't see anyone.

And then a large cloud blocked out the sun, dropping a shroud of darkness over the entire property. It happened so quickly it was as if someone had flipped a light switch. Under the shroud of shadows, the neighboring house looked even more tired and worn. The new residents hadn't done anything yet to turn it from a house into a home. It doesn't take all that long for a house to take on the personalities and identities of the people living in it, but this house looked just the way it had before I saw the Matthewses move into it.

It was as if the whole thing, including my conversation with Brayden, was another one of my fantasies, another movie Dad thought I lived in. I could hear him laughing about it and then doing his imitation of me walking like someone in a daze, oblivious but content.

All of this from a short conversation with a new neighbor who made me realize how different I was from any of the girls I knew. None would have agreed to go for a walk with a stranger so quickly, especially at night. Why had I? Where was my sensible fear of new boys, especially one who talked and behaved as he had? I could just hear my friends when and if I told them.
You agreed to go for a walk with a stranger who was spying on you like that? Crazy.

Maybe I was.

But when I looked at my reflection in the window, I thought I saw diamonds glittering in my eyes.

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