The Town (15 page)

And flanked by his wife and his mother, he walked through the gates, across the rocky ground, past his father’s final resting place, to the open gravesite near the edge of the cliff.

Just as he’d thought, just as he’d known, his parents wanted to take him out for his birthday, and though he’d begged them not to, though he’d specifically requested that they celebrate alone, at home, his mom and dad had made reservations at the Mining Camp restaurant, the most popular eatery in town, and invited Scott to come along.

Adam just hoped to God they hadn’t told anyone at the restaurant about it and that all of the waitresses and busboys weren’t going to come over and sing “Happy Birthday” and embarrass the hell out of him.

He’d never be able to live it down.

At least he had gotten his family to agree to open the presents at home, so he didn’t have to sit at the table with a pile of wrapped boxes in front of him and open them while everyone stared. Two girls from his class were at the restaurant tonight, Liz and Livia Stanson, the blabbermouth sisters, and he knew that anything occurring here this evening would be all over school by Monday. If he had had to unwrap a package of underwear from Babunya in front of them, he would have been humiliated all the way through junior high.

Actually, things weren’t turning out as badly as he’d feared. The Mining Camp’s one banquet table had already been occupied when they’d arrived, so their party had had to spread out over two tables. Since he was the birthday boy, he got to sit alone at one with Scott, while the rest of the family sat together in a booth.

So, all things considered, it wasn’t too embarrassing.

Not as embarrassing as it could have been.

He’d been told by his dad that he could order anything on the menu, but there wasn’t a whole lot to choose from, and both he and Scott decided on bacon double cheeseburgers and Cokes. Over at the other table, his parents were having a difficult time getting Teo to order anything. She was in one of her non-eating moods, and they read off the menu items to her one by one, trying to entice her, but she continued to shake her head.

“I’m not hungry,” Teo said.

“Zdohcly!”
Babunya admonished her.

“What’s that mean?” Scott whispered.

Adam shrugged, embarrassed. “I don’t know. She always says it when we don’t want to eat. I think it means, like, ‘puny’ or something.”

“You can’t speak Russian?”

“No,” he said, and now he was embarrassed about
that.

The waitress came and took everyone’s order, and his stomach sank as he saw his father motion her over and whisper something in her ear. He knew what that meant. The old candle-on-the-dessert-while-everyone-sings-“Happy-Birthday” routine. Great. He had told his parents he didn’t want that, had threatened to walk out if they did it, and he’d thought they understood. They’d acted sympathetic, had promised there would be no singing, but apparently they had no intention of honoring his wishes. He should have known by the smirk on Sasha’s face when he’d talked to his parents that they had something planned.

“Looks like there’s going to be singing,” Scott said. He grinned. “But don’t worry. I won’t participate.”

“Yeah, that makes a big difference.”

He looked toward his family’s table and happened to glance over just as Sasha was shifting position. The booth bench seats were slightly higher than his and Scott’s on the floor, and he saw, between her legs and up her skirt, a flash of white that was her underwear.

His breath caught in his throat.

And he was instantly erect.

It was a completely unexpected reaction. He had never before thought of his sister in that way, had never really seen her as anything other than his older sibling, a bully and a pain in his ass, but that galvanizing look between her legs had stirred him, and he casually glanced that way again, but her knees were together and he could see nothing.

This was wrong. She was his
sister,
for God’s sake. He wasn’t supposed to be aroused or sexually stimulated by her. He never had been before this, and he didn’t know why it was happening now, but today he was a teenager, and maybe that was the cause of it. Maybe some kind of hormone kicked in when you turned thirteen and you just couldn’t help thinking about sex.

He wanted to tell Scott about it, wanted to share what he’d seen, but something held him back. It was not guilt or embarrassment. Not exactly. It wasn’t any respect for his sister or her right to privacy.

It was the fact that he didn’t want his friend to see her.

Jealousy and possessiveness? The waitress brought their drinks, and Adam took his glass and downed a huge swallow of Coke. There was something wrong with him. This wasn’t normal. He wasn’t supposed to be having these . . . Thoughts? Feelings? Urges?

He didn’t know what they were, but he knew they weren’t supposed to be there.

He’d seen Sasha in a bathing suit before, of course, but somehow this was different, and as much as he hated himself for doing it, he kept looking over as they waited for the food to arrive, hoping to catch another glimpse. It was the fact that it was her underwear that made it so exciting. The ugliest, unsexiest panties were more intimate than the tiniest bathing suit—their sole purpose was to shield the most private of areas, to protect a girl’s secret spot. It was something boys weren’t supposed to see, and it was the fact that he
had
seen that was so forbidden and nasty and sexy.

He had a difficult time concentrating on the rest of the evening. They did bring a chocolate sundae with a lit candle and everyone did sing, but he was not that embarrassed. He was too distracted to object, and he went along with everything without too much fuss.

Later, after opening the presents, after going with his dad to drop Scott off at his house, he pretended he was tired and retreated to his room.

He sat on the bed, replaying the scene in his mind. He saw again the way she’d shifted in the booth, moving her legs, and how for a few brief seconds he’d had that perfect view of white cotton-covered crotch. He’d had a boner for half the night, although he’d been able to successfully hide it, and now he was once again hard.

Sasha’s bedroom was right next to his, and he thought about drilling a hole in the wall between the two rooms so he could peek at her, so he could watch her getting dressed and undressed, but he knew that was not realistic. It was also not right. As he kept telling himself, she was his sister, and when he even
started
to think about her in that way, he should immediately try to focus on some other unrelated topic. That was unhealthy, perverted.

Still, he could not stop thinking about it, and the thought that there was only a wall between them, that she took off her clothes in there in order to put on her pajamas, aroused him.

He wondered what she was doing now. He wondered if she was naked. He placed his ear against the wall, listened. He could hear her, moving around, and he quietly pulled down his pants and leaned back on the bed. He began stroking himself, imagining she was walking around her room without any clothes on. He had never seen a naked girl before, not a real one, only pictures in magazines, but he could easily conjure up the picture in his mind.

He thought of her secret spot, covered only by thin, snugly fitted cotton material.

It was getting close, he could feel it reaching the fever pitch, and he began stroking faster, harder. He knew it was wrong, knew it was sick, but he wanted to hear her voice, wanted her to talk to him as he climaxed.

He closed his eyes, thought about that glimpse of white cotton panty.

“Sasha?” he called.

“What?” she said from her bedroom.

“Sasha?”

“What?” she yelled.

And he came.

J
ulia needed the van to buy groceries, and after lunch she offered to drop Gregory back off at the café, but he said he’d rather walk off the calories, and he gave her a quick kiss and started up the drive.

He was looking better since they’d moved to McGuane. The middle-age spread that had been overtaking his midsection for the past few years had receded somewhat, and he looked fitter than he had in quite some time. All the walking on those hilly streets was doing him good. He seemed happier, too, than he had back in California, and he’d made the adjustment to small-town life quite easily.

She was getting used to McGuane herself. After her disastrous attempt at volunteering, she’d retreated back into her home and actually started to write her children’s book. So far it was going surprisingly well. She was pleased with what she’d accomplished.

There’d also been no new “incidents,” as she called them, and her fear and dread seemed to have disappeared as quickly as they had arrived. She could still not truthfully say that she felt comfortable in the house, but she was not afraid of it anymore, and while Gregory’s mother continued to say a quick prayer each and every time she entered the place, a hurried blessing muttered half under her breath, she’d always done that, and it didn’t bother Julia at all.

She walked back inside the kitchen, picked up the grocery list she’d made, and invited her mother-in-law to accompany her to the store, making it clear that she was planning to go to the Molokan market, but the old lady declined, claiming she was tired. She’d been tired ever since the funeral, and both Julia and Gregory were worried about her. She seemed to have lost something after Jim Petrovin’s death, some spark of animation, and she seemed to be just existing these days, exhibiting little or no interest in . . . well, in anything. It was as if she had simply disconnected herself from life and was biding her time, waiting to die.

This could not go on. Julia knew that she and Gregory were going to have to sit her down and talk to her, but Julia did not feel qualified or comfortable enough to do it alone, and she did not press her mother-in-law to go on the trip to the market. She simply nodded, accepting the old woman’s decision, and said that she’d be back in twenty minutes or so.

Julia took the keys out of her purse, walked outside, and got into the van, starting the ignition and immediately turning on the air conditioner. They had discussed buying another vehicle—they could certainly afford it now—but one seemed to be enough at this point. Sasha had been pressuring them for her own car, and while she and Gregory had adopted a “we’ll see” attitude in front of their daughter, they were planning on getting her a jeep for graduation.

She drove down to the market, parking in the dirt lot on the side of the building. She grabbed a shopping cart and looked up at the painted butcher paper in the window that advertised this week’s specials. Bell peppers were on sale, as were whole chicken fryers, and she mentally adjusted her planned menu, deleting ground beef from her list. They would have fajitas tomorrow instead of burgers.

She’d finished most of her shopping and was in the canned-food aisle picking up some diced green chiles, when a woman next to her said, “Excuse me, don’t you work at the library?”

Julia looked up, confused. “Uh, no.”

“Really? I thought I saw you there a couple of weeks ago.”

“And you remembered me?”

The woman smiled. “It’s a small town.”

Julia examined her fellow shopper more carefully. Approximately her own age, with short blond hair and clothes that seemed far too hip for McGuane, she was not someone Julia recognized, yet she did seem vaguely familiar.

“I was thinking of volunteering a few days a week,” Julia explained. “But I changed my mind.”

“The reason I ask is because I used to work at the library myself.” The woman paused. “How . . . did you like the other volunteers there?” she asked carefully.

“They were loony. That’s why I quit. Alma was talking about some comet that was going to hit Earth and they were all into bizarre conspiracy theories.”

The woman wiped her brow in a melodramatically exaggerated expression of relief. “Whew! I was hoping you’d say that. But you can’t be too careful in this town.” She smiled. “My name’s Deanna Matthews.”

Julia blinked. “Are you related to Paul Matthews?” “He’s my husband.”

“This
is
a small town. My husband is Gregory Tomasov.”

Deanna laughed. “Gregory’s wife and a normal person to boot! It’s my lucky day. Are you Molokan, too?”

Julia nodded.

“I’m not, but I grew up here.”

“So you knew Gregory when he was little?”

“Oh, yes.”

“I take it you were all friends—”

Deanna laughed. “Well . . . Not exactly. To tell you the truth, he was kind of a . . .”

“Jerk?”

“Thank you. I was trying to think of a polite way to say it.”

“I think he’s changed since then.”

“I hope so.” Deanna chuckled. “Although, to be honest, Paul was just as bad back then. Maybe even worse. They were both typical teenagers, but in a place like this that means asshole.” She moved her cart aside to let another shopper pass. “Listen, Paul’s really grateful for everything Gregory’s doing. He’s not the kind of guy who’ll express it, but I can tell you that he’s really excited about everything that’s happening down at the café. We were just barely keeping our heads above water, and you guys’ve been a godsend. He seems to think the place actually has potential now.” She smiled. “Your winning the lottery’s having a sort of trickle-down effect on us, and since he probably won’t tell you, I thought I would. We’re really glad you’re here.”

“Thank you,” Julia said, genuinely touched. “Gregory’ll be happy to hear that. He’s pretty excited about the café himself.”

“Paul’s also glad Gregory’s back just for personal reasons. As you can probably tell, this isn’t exactly the hub of cultural activity, and we don’t really have a lot of friends here in town. Paul hangs around with that Odd guy, and I occasionally see some of my old friends from high school, but . . . Well, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I hope
we
can become friends. It’d be nice to have an intelligent conversation once in a while.”