Forbidden Sister (13 page)

Papa wanted to know all about that, but Mama was impatient to hear more about the apartment and how the women were dressed.

“You don’t sound as if you like his mother and her friend that much,” she said when I finished my description of Evan’s mother and Mrs. Vincent. I thought my mother could sense everything going on in my body and my mind, no matter how small or insignificant the change was. She was attuned to every little gesture or inflection in my voice. Sometimes I thought she could pick up my thoughts even before I thought them.

“Well, Evan warned me they were snobby,” I said.

“Congress, huh?” Papa said as if he had heard nothing else. “Well, this is the best year to run against an incumbent. He might win.”

“Evan’s father knew about your company, Papa.”

“Oh? Well, why shouldn’t he? We’re pretty big and growing bigger every day,” he said proudly.

I thought this was a good time to mention Evan’s coming around to take me to lunch and a walk in Central Park.

“Now, don’t go neglecting your schoolwork over some school romance,” Papa warned.

“I don’t think you have to warn her about her schoolwork,” Mama said.

He gave his usual grunt. “Let’s go to sleep,” he said, standing.

That was easier said than done, at least for me. I lay there for hours reviewing the night and my feelings for Evan. I don’t think anyone had to be a fortune teller to see that our feelings for each other were going to get intense. A part of me had wanted to give in to his advances in his room, but the rest of me had held back. That resistance was bound to grow weaker as time went by and we spent more and more of it only with each other. Was that a bad thing or just what should naturally happen? It excited me to think about it.

But it was exactly when I thought these thoughts, titillating myself with the sexual possibilities, that Roxy came to mind. She would always loom there beside and above me. Could I end up becoming like her? Could I be fast and loose with myself and maybe more sexually active than other girls my age? I had an older sister whom my father called nothing more than a glorified prostitute.

I had no doubts about many of the girls I knew. For them, virginity was always a burden. It was as if once you got over it, you were free in more ways than one. You broke the ties that chained you to your childhood, the ties that kept you from being taken seriously as a young woman. In their way of thinking, if you didn’t do this, you had no right to speak. You hadn’t
paid your dues, and you weren’t in the club. I could see this in the way the more sexually experienced girls talked and looked at the less experienced.

Would I guard my virginity because I thought that was right to do or because I was afraid of what would come afterward, afraid of what sort of woman I would become? Was it wrong to think of myself as someone special, and was it naive to believe that if Evan thought so, too, he would respect me and not want me to be just another girl in the pack? How long could our relationship last?

Of course, there were high school sweethearts who went on to get married. I didn’t know anything about statistics, but it seemed to me that most of those relationships didn’t last. One or the other was always wondering if he or she had missed out. I imagined one might even come to resent the other for trapping him or her.

I had no illusions about myself and Evan. It was very possible that we could have a high school romance that would last for years, but when he left high school, he would meet other girls, and I would meet other boys. Was it possible in today’s young persons’ world to have a romance that wasn’t completely intimate? Now that I thought about it, would a boy, especially a boy like Evan who was so good-looking and popular, tolerate that? I liked him. I really liked him, but deep inside, I knew that he probably wouldn’t be that tolerant. I knew that if we didn’t become intimate, he would move on, and other girls would look at me as being the dumb one, not him. That was just the way it was.

Whatever I eventually did, however, I wouldn’t do it simply to please others and fit in. I really didn’t care about their opinions of me. Girls who worried about belonging and being accepted were very insecure, I thought. They were girls like Chastity, and in the end, they would be very unhappy no matter what they decided or did. I was sure of that, but all of my brilliant thinking didn’t keep me from falling asleep with confusion. I was almost as afraid of tomorrow as I was excited about it.

I tried to do as much of my schoolwork as I could in the morning, but at around ten, Chastity called to ask me how my dinner was. She sounded different—calmer and more accepting of my relationship with Evan. She even sounded excited for me and very interested in all I described.

“You never explained how to drink wine when I was at your house for dinner,” she whined when I told her about that, however. “As I remember, your father didn’t let your mother serve us.”

“He wasn’t sure your parents would approve.”

“Well, we could do it ourselves, drink wine, and you could show me, okay?” she asked.

“It’s best enjoyed with food, Chas. Tell you what. One of these nights when my parents are going out, you’ll come over to have dinner with me, and we’ll drink a good wine.”

“Just you and me?”

“Probably,” I said. I knew what she was hinting at.

“Probably,” she repeated. Then she told me about some of the gossip she had picked up from Carol Lee.
Nothing passed through the school as quickly as news about a new romance, and with Evan’s popularity, ours went right to the front page. From what she was telling me, it sounded as if most of the girls were just plain jealous.

“I don’t care what they say,” I told her. “You don’t have to bother telling me any more you hear them say, either.”

“Whatever. So what are you doing today? I can come over later, and we can take a walk up to you know where.”

I told her about Evan coming to take me to lunch and going to the park. She was very quiet and then suddenly burst out, “See you someday. ’Bye.”

Less than an hour later, Evan was at the front door. Papa put his newspaper down and got up quickly to greet him.

“Good morning, Mr. Wilcox. How are you?” Evan asked. “I mean,
comment allez-vous?
” He smiled at me.

“Bien,”
Papa said. “So, I understand your father is going to run for Congress.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mama came into the entryway, and Evan greeted her completely in French.

“You’re learning well,” she told him.

“I have the perfect tutor,” he said, nodding at me.

“When is your father going to announce his candidacy formally?” Papa asked him.

“Very soon.”

“You have to be right on everything now, son. Nowadays,
when someone runs for a political office, the whole family runs.”

“Yes, sir,” Evan said. “We already discussed that, sir.”

I didn’t think that Papa could see how Evan was pretending to be military in his posture and his voice, but I knew that if Papa sensed he was being mocked, he would be very, very angry.

“We’re going. I want to get back to finish my homework and study for a math quiz,” I said, more to impress Papa than anything else.

“Have fun,” Mama said, and we left.

“It’s funny,” Evan said as we started walking toward the park, “but I can’t help feeling like I should salute your father.”

“He has that effect on people,” I admitted.

“He doesn’t blow a bugle in the morning, does he?”

“Practically,” I said, and he laughed.

“I like him. I like both your parents, and you know why?” he asked, taking my hand.

“Why?”

“They made you,” he said, and leaned over to kiss my cheek.

Would I ever be happier with someone than I was with Evan at this moment? Maybe all of those risks and dangers I was envisioning last night were foolish after all. Maybe I could be intimate with him and not regret it ever because this was very special. I was so pensive that he asked if I was all right.

“Yes, I’m fine. I’m just enjoying the day.”

“I hope because you’re with me,” he said.

“What do you think?”

He widened his smile. We entered Central Park. The city was still experiencing a bit of Indian summer, so the park was crowded with women pushing carriages and talking, couples like us just walking and enjoying the weather, and younger kids on skateboards. There were many people from foreign countries there, too. Papa had explained that because of the currency-exchange advantage that foreigners had with the American dollar, places like New York were experiencing greater tourism. Evan asked me what the languages were whenever we heard people talking. I was able to recognize Italian, Spanish, and German easily, but some of the Slavic languages were difficult. I wasn’t sure about the Asian languages. I suspected some Vietnamese.

We sat on a bench, and he put his arm around me. For a while, we did what many people do in the park, people watching. The sun felt warm and soothing on my face. I lowered my head to his shoulder, and he kissed my hair and sucked in his breath.

“You smell fresh and sweet,” he said.

“Mama gets our shampoos and perfumes from my aunt in France.”

“Tell me more about your family in France,” he said.

I explained that I didn’t know that much, because I had been so young when we were there, but I told him as much as I could remember. I was very tempted to tell him about Roxy. At one point, it was on the tip of
my tongue, but before I could do it, he decided we should get something to eat.

We did, and then we walked to the zoo and fed some of the animals. On the way back, he told me he had never been as happy or as comfortable with any girl as he was with me. We made all sorts of plans for the week and the next weekend. At my front door, he kissed me as passionately as he had the night before and then stood there looking as though he might burst into tears because he had to be away from me until the morning.

“I’ll call you later,” he said. “Before you go to sleep.”

“You’d better,” I told him. He gave me another quick kiss and walked off. I watched him disappear around the corner.

While I was still standing there, I had the sense that I was being watched, too. I looked around slowly but saw no one in particular looking my way. Even so, the feeling persisted. It even made my heart beat faster.

Roxy,
I thought,
are you out there? Have you always been?

Finally, I gave up searching the block, studying every corner and alleyway, and went in to do my schoolwork, but I couldn’t help peering out my windows occasionally to see if anyone resembling Roxy was out there watching our house. When I told myself that my forbidden sister was haunting me, I guessed I meant it in more ways than one. I was sure Papa would be furious if he knew how much I thought about her.

He was very talkative at dinner. I was pleased to
hear how much he liked Evan. He said he was surprised that there still were young boys who could be as refined and polite. He said it restored his faith in the future. Mama and I exchanged looks, both of us hiding smiles. We were like two teenagers who couldn’t wait to be alone to giggle.

Evan called in the evening as he had promised. He told me he had rarely had a day like the day we had.

“I can’t remember when I spent so much time in Central Park. None of my friends thinks it’s all that cool a thing to do. Their girlfriends want more excitement.”

“I would have gone someplace else if you wanted to,” I said, afraid he was saying these things just to please me.

“Oh, no. They think like that because they don’t have you,” he said.

It made me feel wonderful to hear him say it. I wondered if he could sense it through the phone, hear it in the softness of my voice. It really took a specially trained person to hide his or her feelings completely, I thought. Whether you intended to or not, your voice, your eyes, or little gestures you made betrayed you. Maybe that was why Roxy never cried or spoke when Papa yelled at her or punished her. She kept herself well locked up inside. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how she really felt. How it must have frustrated him to be unable to get her to react. How strong she must have been to resist someone as strong as Papa. Surely, it was that strength that enabled her to survive on her own.

The older I became, the more interested I was in Roxy. Every time I had a new experience, I wondered how she would have reacted to it. But wasn’t that only natural? Surely, everyone who had a brother or a sister measured himself or herself against them at one time or another. Children were always crying something like “She did it, too!” or “You let him do it!” It was easier to defend yourself by implying they favored one of you over the other. An only child didn’t have that same advantage, and like it or not, I was an only child now.

I tried to put these thoughts aside and concentrate on what Evan was saying. He went on to talk about the commotion now in his house because of his father’s decision to run for Congress. He told me how excited his sister was about it. He said it was her secret ambition to run for a political office someday, too, and their father’s success would help her in the future. Finally, he sounded excited about it himself. I told him so, even though I knew he had been trying to be aloof and cool about it.

“It’s impossible not to be,” he admitted. “You heard them. It’s going to take over our lives for months and months. That’s why I’m glad I have you to help me keep my feet on the ground,” he added.

I told him I was happy about that, too, and then he said,
“Bon nuit.”
He added before we hung up, “I’ve been practicing this in the mirror.”

“What?”

“Je t’aime.”

I didn’t speak.

“Why is it,” he asked, “that ‘I love you’ sounds better in French?”

“It sounds wonderful in any language,” I said. I wanted to add many things, but I didn’t. I didn’t tell him I loved him. Maybe I would come to say it. Right now, I liked him a lot, and he made me feel good, but I believed people shouldn’t say
Je t’aime
so easily or quickly. What made things special in this world was how rare and precious they were. Maybe I was like my French grandfather, whom I had never met. Maybe I was a true romantic at heart. Love was too deeply felt and too large an emotion to be tossed about loosely. Save it, hold it in your heart, and cherish the day you really believe it, I thought.