Sleeping Beauty (3 page)

She lay on her back, wriggling into the earth like a puppy making a nest in the pine needles. She chewed on a fingernail and gazed upward. The treetops swayed above her in the evening breeze, their narrow trunks tapering to small points far above; Anne had to squint to see them against the brightness of the sky. “Listen to that, Amy. The trees are creaking. Like in a horror movie. Doesn't it sound like a horror movie? Close your eyes and you can believe something really awful is about to happen.”

She shivered and sat up. “Probably the spirit of Aunt Marian, slithering through the forest. Creeping respectability. We have to be on our guard, Amy.” She wrote again in her notebook. “Creeping respectability. Only, with Aunt Marian, it gallops.”

A little distance away, standing among the trees, Vince Chatham chuckled. “Marian in a nutshell,” he said.

Anne sprang to her feet. The notebook fell in the dirt. “Uncle Vince?” she said uncertainly.

He walked forward. “I was walking and I heard your voice.” He looked around. “Your friend must have made a quick getaway.”

“What are you doing here?” she asked furiously. “You weren't out walking. You never take walks. You followed me.”

He bent down to pick up her notebook. “Why won't anybody believe what you write about us?”

She flushed. “I wasn't talking to you.”

“But you were talking
about
me; I'm part of your family.” He walked to a grassy area near the edge of the clearing and sat on a fallen log that had been worn down to a natural seat. “I brought dessert for both of us. I'd be pleased if you'd join me.”

Anne stood still. “Where is it?”

Vince reached behind him and brought a white box to his lap. “Chocolate éclairs. There is nothing in the world as good as chocolate éclairs. They're a perfect blend of pastry, custard, and icing, they slide down the throat with ease no matter how full you are, they're small enough to pack by the dozen for a picnic in the forest, and they're wonderfully messy to eat. Definitely my favorite.”

“If you brought dessert, you weren't just out for a walk. You were following me.”

Vince paused in opening the box. He smiled broadly. “People don't give you credit, Anne; you're the smartest of all of us. You're a remarkable young woman.”

Liar, Anne thought. She knew she wasn't yet a woman; no one knew it more keenly than she, who so wanted to be grown-up. “You changed your shoes, too. You knew you'd be walking in the forest.”

Still smiling, he said, “We'll have to watch our step around you, won't we?”

“Why did you follow me?”

He sighed. “To bring you dessert.” He held out an éclair.
“We have a whole box of these.” He glanced around the clearing. “It's a nice place for a picnic; as good as a private room. I like your choice.”

Anne looked at him, at his brown eyes as bright as marbles, his golden hair waving back from his forehead, the thin lips that could break into such a wide smile, the cleft in his chin that seemed to divide his face, making it somehow more mysterious. He was so handsome and sophisticated—a thirty-year-old world traveler and businessman, a husband, a father—and she had always been in awe of him, but still, she had never liked him. He was so smooth and sure of himself she always felt even more grubby when he was around, and younger, almost a baby, and oddly, because after all he was her uncle, she was afraid of him. She thought that maybe no matter how deep she dug behind Vince's smiles and frowns, she still wouldn't know how he felt about things, and that seemed unnatural and ominous to her.

“I'm relying on you,” Vince said solemnly, “to keep me from surrendering to greed and gluttony and having the entire contents of this box come to a masticated end in my stomach like a pool of slime.”

An uncomfortable giggle broke from Anne. “You want me to eat them as a favor to you.” She hesitated, reluctant to join him, as if that would make his invasion of her private place seem all right. But she had left the dinner table still hungry, and éclairs were her favorite dessert. “I guess I can do that,” she said, her voice low, almost sullen. She sat cross-legged beside the log where he sat, and took the éclair he was holding out.

“What do you think?” he asked in a few minutes. He was taking two more from the box.

She nodded, her mouth full. She wasn't as angry as she had been, but she was still uncomfortable. This was her special, private place; it always had been. She hadn't known anyone else knew just where she went when she left the house. But now Vince was here and he'd somehow made the whole place feel different. It wasn't just hers anymore; it was theirs, and that bothered her.

The sun was low in the sky and the clearing was like a
shadowed cup that still held the warm fragrance of the summer day. Anne sat stiffly a few feet from Vince, staring at the dense bushes surrounding them that darkened in the deepening blue light of evening.

“Do you come here every day?” Vince asked. The éclairs were gone and he began to pick up pebbles and skip them across the pond. Anne watched the small round stones as they struck the surface and jumped two or three or four times, sending ripples to the shore. They were so buoyant, she thought; so light and free. Like Vince. She wished she were like that, instead of heavy and clumsy, the way she felt most of the time. But then, as she listened to the rhythmic
plunk, plunk
of the stones hitting the water, the sound seemed to swell until it was like a cannon, filling the clearing, filling the inside of her head until she thought she would explode.

“Stop
it!” she cried.

He looked at her in surprise. “Stop what?”

“That damned noise! It's supposed to be quiet here! Stop throwing rocks in the water!”

He looked at the small pebble in his hand. A small smile touched his lips. “I'm sorry,” he said softly. “I didn't know it would upset you.” Dropping the pebble, he picked up a twig and drew diagrams in the dust at his feet. “Do you come here every day?” he asked again.

Anne nodded.

“To write your book about us?”

She shrugged.

“Now what does that mean?” he mused. “That the book isn't important? Or that you don't want to talk about it?”

“I don't want to talk about it.”

“Do you want to talk about Amy?”

“She's none of your business!”

“But I'd like to know why you make up friends. Don't you have friends at school?”

She shrugged.

“What does
that
mean? That you don't want friends? Or you have friends but not enough of them? Or you don't want to talk about it.”

“I don't want to—”

“Okay. What do you want to talk about?”

“Why you followed me.”

He shook his head. “So stubborn, my little Anne. I liked the way you stood there, full of fire, and told them all to go to hell.”

“I didn't! I wouldn't say anything like—”

“That was the message. I got it and so did they.”

Anne stared at the ground. Her family would hate her if they thought that's what she meant. It wasn't ladylike and gentle; it wasn't what Marian wanted. But she couldn't stop herself; whenever she felt lonely or frightened or just generally miserable with nobody to talk to, the words burst out before she could stop them. And everybody would hate her; she knew it. She began to chew on her fingernail.

Vince watched her. Thirteen years old, already astonishingly beautiful, and totally ignorant of it. Or uninterested. Maybe she didn't like herself enough even to look in a mirror. He had never paid attention to her before: she was too young, too insignificant, too crude. His brother's daughter, being raised by his sister Marian after her mother died; a child who fit in nowhere. Even Charles seemed uncomfortable with her; he never acted like a doting father. But that evening, at dinner, Vince had seen Anne dominate the room, even if only for a moment, and he had been intrigued. He and Rita were fighting all the time these days; he was feeling bored and hemmed in by marriage, and here was Anne, a lovely distraction.

He leaned forward to see her profile. Her mouth was wide, the lower lip a little heavy, and when she was sullen, it dragged down her thin face. But in that brief moment when she had giggled, her features had been transformed, and even Vince, not often impressed by women, had drawn in his breath at the sudden illumination of her beauty. Her nose was small, slightly turned up at the tip, and she had high cheekbones that were a little too angular. Her eyes, hidden now beneath heavy lids, were a deep blue, flashing almost black when she was angry. She needed a scrub brush on her face and hands, and a comb through her tangled mass
of black curls, and someone should have burned her shapeless sundress long ago and replaced it with cool linen or flared silk. Her elbows were sharp bones; Vince imagined long legs and hard knees beneath the limp folds of her dress. The image excited him. Sharp bones and soft skin, fiery eyes and a childish mouth, gangly limbs that no one had taught to move and cling and clasp . . .

“But it might not have been me at all,” Anne said abruptly. She looked at him angrily. “If you got the message that I was telling them to go to hell, maybe it's because that was what you expected to hear. Or, maybe, the one you wanted to give them yourself.”

There was a brief silence. Vince smiled. “Someday, little one, you're going to be a formidable opponent.”

Anne looked at him gravely. “You think that's a compliment.”

“Yes, and so do you. You like a fight: I saw you all primed for one tonight.”

She shook her head. “I don't. I hate fights.”

“You'll learn,” he said. “Shall I teach you?”

“To like fights?”

“To win them. I'm said to be good at that.”

“Who says so?”

“People who've watched me. People who've lost to me.”

“I don't want to. I guess I'll learn other things.”

“What would you like to learn?”

She shrugged. “It doesn't matter.”

“Goddam it!” he snapped. Anne shrank from him. “I'm sorry,” he said, lowering his voice, masking his annoyance. He expected women to answer him when he took the trouble to ask them about themselves. He leaned forward. “Of course it matters, Anne. I want to know you.”

She sat back on her heels, farther away from him. “Why?”

An animal scurried through the brush somewhere behind Vince, startling him. His annoyance grew. He hated the unexpected. “I told you: I liked the way you were tonight, the fire in you. When I see something unusual, I want to know more about it.”

“You never wanted to know anything about me before.”

“But now I do. Anne, this is ridiculous. Why shouldn't we be friends?”

“You're my uncle,” she said.

His eyebrows rose. “What does that have to do with our being friends?”

“I don't know,” she said confusedly. “It's just . . . I don't know.”

He smiled. “There's nothing to worry about, Anne; I promise you. But if there is—if I've missed something here—why don't you let me do the worrying? You don't have to; I'm sure I can handle it.”

She jumped up and stood beside the pond, staring at its dark surface. “We're relatives,” she said.

Vince nodded. “And relatives ought to be even closer than friends. Or don't you think so?”

Darting insects made little flecks and ripples on the surface of the pond. Anne concentrated on them. “I guess so.”

“Well, I know so.” Vince's voice was warm. “They should try to make each other happy. Aren't you happy to have me here? Isn't it better with someone real to talk to instead of an imaginary friend? Come on, Anne, isn't it better this way?”

Slowly, she nodded. It was better. It was nice having two voices in the clearing instead of just her own, talking to herself. Even a private, special place got lonely after a while. She didn't know why she felt so confused. She knew there was something wrong with this conversation, but somehow Vince made her feel that if she was uncomfortable, it was her fault; that she was being silly and saying the wrong things and messing up a nice time.

She glanced at him. He was smiling. He looked so handsome and so honest that Anne felt like crying, because she didn't understand anything. He stretched out his legs, crossing his ankles. “You said you'd like to learn other things. What things?”

Anne chewed on her fingernail. He really did care about her; he was interested in her. What was there to worry about? It wasn't that she was really worried, she told herself; it was just that she couldn't seem to figure out exactly what
was happening, and that made her feel at a disadvantage. Standing on one foot and then the other, she said slowly, “I want to learn things that are hard and complicated and take lots of work.”

He was surprised. “Why?”

“Because then I wouldn't have time to think about anything else.” She looked past Vince to the forest. “It wouldn't matter where I live or how I feel or whether I have friends or not; I wouldn't care because I'd be too busy. And when I learned everything and got to be somebody, people would congratulate me and tell me how wonderful I am, and then I wouldn't be mad at them anymore.”

“Mad at them,” Vince echoed. “Why are you mad at people?”

She shrugged.

“Anne,” Vince said softly. “Tell me. Tell me why you aren't happy.”

“I am happy,” Anne said defiantly.

“No, you're not. Tell me about it. We're friends, Anne; tell me.”

She shrugged and started biting another fingernail. “I just don't like a lot of people, so I get mad at them. I don't want to be part of their silly groups; they scream and giggle and tell jokes about boys . . . it's all so dumb. Who wants to be part of all that?”