Off Season (31 page)

“Thank you, Mama,” I whispered.

“It’s a perfect kid’s hidey-hole,” Cam said, and I opened my eyes and looked at him. He was grinning. “I can see you here on rainy days, you and—what was it, Wilma? Did you ever invite anybody else up here?”

“Yes,” I said, bracing for the pain, but it did not come. The sweetness in the room deepened, just a bit.

“But only one or two. I had a sign that said ‘Lilly’s Lair. Private. No admittance except by invitation.’ I wonder what happened to it.”

“Messy kid, weren’t you?” he said, touching the spilled books with his toe. “Let’s see:
The Golden Bough
.
At the Back of the North Wind
.
Norse Eddas and Sagas. Beowulf
. Beowulf? Jesus, Lilly, what did you read for fun, the Addams Family?”

“This was for fun. I loved myths and magic and folklore. I still do. I’m trying to see if I can manage to make a major of it at GW. I don’t really know what I’d use it for, unless I taught it or something. But there’s really not anything else I want to study.”

“Does your father know that?”

I dropped my eyes.

“No. He thinks I’m going to major in English literature and minor in how to become a curator of something or other. I thought I’d tell him if I get it worked out. If I can’t, then I guess English lit is as good as anything.”

“I wish I’d known this as a kid,” he said, looking around.

“Maybe you do,” I said.

“Maybe I do. Listen, Lilly. There’s something else you could do that would be better than magic and all that stuff. And you could still go to school and study whatever.”

“What?” I said.

“Marry me,” he said. “Marry me, Lilly. After that you can go back to school or not, or anything in the world you wanted to do, but Lilly, I don’t want to be without you.”

“Well, I thought we were going to, I mean eventually . . .” I stammered. What was he saying?

“No. I mean now. Marry me now.”

“But my father—I’m only eighteen—”

“You’ll be nineteen in just a little while. You’re of age. What’s he going to do, lock you in the house until you’re twenty-one? I thought maybe he was getting sort of used to me.”

“Oh, Cam, he is. Can’t you tell? But who would live with him? And I don’t know how to be a wife—I haven’t even met your family. I have an idea they’d disinherit you if you brought me home. And Tatty, and all Daddy’s associates, and Mama’s friends . . . what would they think?”

“I can’t really bring myself to care very much what anybody thinks,” Cam said, pulling me against him. He kissed my hair. I felt my muscles unclench, and I sagged in his arms. His body warmed me from the top of my head to the bottom of my toes. There was not an inch of me that he did not shelter, did not celebrate.

“I can’t cook,” I whispered into his chest. His oxford-cloth shirt smelled sweetly of starch and soap, and more strongly of Cam. I thought his skin, his body, smelled wonderful. It had a rich scent that I could only think of as a red-gold, like his hair, like his mustache.

He began to laugh.

“I can cook just fine,” he said. “I learned at school, in self-defense. I’ll cook and all you have to do is just lie in bed and wait for me to wash up.”

I lifted my face to his, and said, in a voice that clogged my throat, “I always wanted to marry you. You asked me when we first met. I said yes. But I always thought that it was . . . ahead, somehow; it never felt like a thing we would do now. I thought that later something would change in me and I would know I was old enough to get married, I guess, and then we just would. It scares me, Cam.”

He lifted my chin. I could feel his breath warm on my forehead.

“Are you afraid of me? Afraid that I would change my mind, or not take care of you, or stop loving you? Because that will never happen in my lifetime, Lilly. I know that as surely as I know how to breathe, or walk.”

“How do you know?” It came in a whisper.

“I know. I
know
, Lilly. I know because the idea of living my life with you, every day of it, makes me happy in a way I’ve never been happy before. And I know I want that to start now. I simply cannot wait for one or two more years. It would be like waiting to breathe for that long. Goddamit, I want to make love to you, Lilly. Now—not in a suite at the Greenbrier two years from now.
Now
.”

I began to cry. I did not know why and I could not stop. Neither could I stop laughing. He would think I was insane.
I
thought I was insane.

“Then what’s stopping you?” I hiccupped.

As it turned out, nothing was.

I had imagined the first time we made love in literally hundreds of scenarios. None had included a squeaking, dusty floor in an ill-lit attic with books bumping against my hips and thighs and a lopsided sign at the corner of my sight, before I closed my eyes and gave myself totally to him, that read, crazily:
LILLY’S LAIR. PRIVATE.
I had always thought I would be afraid, or that there would be pain, but it was not like that. Not at all. It was a long slide up, a white explosion, ecstasy, and down again, an exchange of bodies and what felt like souls. I’d had no idea. Simply none.

When he lifted himself away and propped beside me on the rumpled rug, there were tears in his eyes and on his cheeks. He grinned.

“So what do we do now?”

“I sort of like what we just did,” I said, laughing in joy and a kind of sensual fullness that seemed to fill every crevice of my body. “When can we do it again?”

“Not quite yet. I’m good, but I’m not that good. Do you feel you’re old enough now, Lilly? Are you still scared?”

“Oh, God, no. I will marry you now, Cam. I would do it this minute if I could. I don’t know how to go about it, but we can find out. What should we do first, get blood tests or something? And who would marry us, and where?”

“First we go down and tell your father,” he said. Panic flamed for a moment, and then the prospect of simply having him, having him forever, flooded the panic away, and I rolled over on the bunched-up, Wilma-hairy rug, and said, “Okay. Will you talk first?”

“I’ll do all the talking if you want. It might not be a very . . . fun thing, Lilly. I don’t want you to start feeling sorry for him and backtracking. He knows it’s going to happen; he must have always known. There just isn’t any good reason not to do it now.”

I nodded silently, and he reached down and pulled me up, and we both straightened our clothing and took a deep breath, and started down the dark steps of Edgewater to change my father’s life.

The next day, a Saturday, at four o’clock, I stood just inside the front door at Edgewater and waited to marry Cameron McCall III.

He had been right. It had not been a fun thing when we sat in the lamp- and-fire-lit living room and Cam cleared his throat and said, “Sir, I’d like to have your permission to marry Lilly.”

My father stiffened.

“Marry Lilly . . . well, Mr. McCall, I think the time for discussing that is still far in the future. She’s scarcely had time to know you, much less your family. And you really know little about ours. Perhaps in three years, when she’s twenty-one, we might talk again.”

“No sir,” Cam said pleasantly, his white smile just this side of piratical. If you had not known him, you might have thought he was baring his teeth. Perhaps he was.

“I mean now. Very soon. As soon as we can find a place to get our blood tests and someone to marry us. I’ve been looking at the peninsula telephone book, and there are justices of the peace in Ellsworth, and the Blue Hill hospital has a lab. We both hope with all our hearts that it can be here, in this house, with you and Mrs. Glover to bless us. And I—we hope that for a honeymoon we might take the Friendship out and sort of island-hop for a few days. We’d be back in time for you and Lilly to start school, but if that doesn’t work out, I have to tell you that we’re going to do this anyway.”

The silence in the room was total, except for the snicker of the fire. Somehow it didn’t bristle with unspoken anguish, or with anger, though I knew that my father must feel both. His face, as he looked first at Cam and then at me, was gray. But for me, the benevolence of the house still prevailed.

“Lilly,” my father said so softly that his voice was barely audible, “if you do this thing it will break my heart. It would break your mother’s. You are simply too young, you are not ready for commitment such as marriage, your education is the most important thing you have ahead of you—can’t you wait until you have graduated, or at least until you are twenty-one? Where would you live? Who would look after you?”

I felt tears starting in my eyes, and my heart literally wrung.

“Daddy, I—” I began.

Aunt Tatty spoke suddenly, sharply.

“Lilly,” she said, her eyes literally bulging, “is this something you
have
to do? Lilly, are you—” She stopped, simply staring at me.

At my stomach.

Anger thickened my voice.

“I’m not pregnant, Aunt Tatty, if that’s what you mean,” I said coldly. My father made a small, garbled sound. I looked over at Cam, whose face was perfectly still and neutral behind the flaming beard and mustache. Incredibly, he winked.

“We’ll live at the point with my grandmother for a while, Dr. Constable,” he said agreeably. He had not yet lifted his voice, nor had anger furrowed his brow. But I knew he felt the same outrage at my Aunt Tatty’s question as I did. I had, once or twice, seen him really angry. I did not want my father to see that face. It still shocked me.

“I planned a guesthouse for her at the new river house I’m building for her, and the guesthouse has turned into a really great little waterfront cottage. I thought when I was designing it that I would like to live there, and when I met Lilly I added another room or two and a little garden, and I think it will be a fantastic first house. When my grandmother passes away the big house comes to me, and though God knows it needs fixing up, it’s a beautiful old house. We’ll live there, then. Mother and Dad can’t wait to get rid of it so they can move to Georgetown. The new house and cottage should be ready about the time we get home.”

“That’s hours away from GW,” my father said incredulously. “How on earth could she get to school from there?”

“Well, I’ve got new office space in Georgetown, at the end of Wisconsin right over the river. It has a small apartment that we could use in a pinch, but I can make the trip from the river house in record time. I know all the back roads. You’d see Lilly every day at school, anyway, and if she likes we can stay in town sometimes. Or she can come spend a night or two with you. And I assure you I can take care of her. I’ve already got four commissions waiting for me, and a trust fund from Grandma I haven’t touched yet. See, here’s the thing, sir: I do not want to be away from her even a day more. She feels the same way. We’re going to make that happen.”

My father looked at me, tallow faced.

“Lilly?” he whispered.

“Yes, Daddy. I do feel the same way.”

My father stood up suddenly. He moved like an old man.

“We’ll sleep on it. That’s the best thing. Everybody’s had a long, hard day. We’ll all be clearer in the morning.”

I started to protest, but Cam put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Good idea, sir. You’re probably right.”

He and I climbed the stairs silently and parted at the top for our separate bedrooms. He kissed me softly, chastely; even so the aching fire in my stomach sprang up again.

“Good night, Lilly,” he said mildly.

“But Cam, nothing’s decided.”

“It’s all decided, Lil. Just give him time to digest it.”

“But . . .”

“’Night, baby.”

“Good night,” I croaked, near tears. I went to my mother’s bedroom and climbed beneath her flowered duvet in my underpants and T-shirt, deathly tired, and lay waiting for the tears and the guilt, and the long, sleepless night to start.

But they didn’t. I shouldn’t have been able to hear the water from here, but somehow I could, and its breathing was calm and strong and sure. I felt my own fall into its rhythm; I felt sleep tug at my eyelids, and just before I dropped off I thought I heard a soft sound that was not of the sea: “Shhhhh, Lilly. Sleep.”

“All right, Mama,” I said, and did.

The next morning I got up late, dreading the day ahead, dreading my father’s agony, dreading my own mingled threads of anguish and guilt and desire. The first thing I heard when I went out into the upstairs hall was laughter, coming from the kitchen. Laughter? It was. My father’s, Aunt Tatty’s, Cam’s and Clara’s. I ran downstairs in shorts and a tee and bare feet.

They were sitting in the kitchen, drinking coffee and eating the blueberry scones Clara had brought. And they were, indeed, laughing. I simply looked from one to another.

Aunt Tatty was wearing a pretty flowered sundress I had never seen and had her hair pinned up on top of her head. Her cheeks were flushed and she looked . . . young. My father’s color was back, and he smiled at me, chewing scone.

Cam was glowing as if someone had plugged him in.

“We have decided,” Aunt Tatty said, “that if you are going to do this, we are going to do it right. We called Canon Davenport last night and he will be delighted to perform the service this afternoon at four. He says don’t worry now about the blood test; he knows the people to call about that. Mrs. Davenport is bringing armloads of flowers from her garden. Clara is making you a splendid picnic basket to take with you. And Seth has come and gotten the Friendship, and is freshening it up and putting some sleeping bags on deck, and a tarp for cover. All you need now is to look in your mother’s closet for something proper to wear for a bayside wedding. There’s some lovely things; we’ll find just the right ones.”

“But . . .”

I looked helplessly at my father.

“Lilly,” he said formally, “Tatty is going to move into our house with me, and act as my hostess and companion. She will sell her own; it’s much too big for just one person.”

I could do nothing but look from him to her. Was he saying he was going to marry her, or what?

“George should not be alone,” she said serenely. “Elizabeth would not want that. I’m glad to do it. Now come on, Lilly, and let’s get started on your wedding dress.”