Uncertain Ground (17 page)

After he’d finished his coffee, Tony reached across the table and took my hand. “I guess I should have told you, should have called and told you I was coming.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I couldn’t take the time—”

“But you had to stop now and then.”

“Celia, I can’t explain it. You…you were out there, out in front of me. That’s all I could think about.”

I was flattered, then angry at him all over again. Sitting in the same place where I’d sat letting Luis comfort me, I could feel my contrary impulses rising. I wanted Tony to be there, and I wanted him gone.

“Let’s go back to the room.” He pulled a
Do Not Disturb
sign out of his back pocket and grinned.

I shook my head. I was mad at Tony, mad at myself. Earlier I wished for him, yearned for him. If he’d been there a week before, if he’d gone with us to the Balinese Club, I would have stayed on the dance floor next to him. Now, across the table from him, I chewed hard on a piece of toast and tried to wash it down with tepid coffee. So many miles away from me, he’d been a memory; here he was a lover, one I realized I’d begun to put aside. I’d almost escaped when he turned up to make demands. Anger made me wary. I wouldn’t go back to his room with him. Instead, keeping well away from Luis’s house on West Beach, I showed Tony the Galveston Luis had shown me.

We walked almost to the end of the pier Luis and I had walked, drove to the wharves, took the ferry to Bolivar, ate lunch at Gaido’s. Tony was interested only in the food and drink. He was pleased to be able to stroll into a bar at noon and order Scotch before lunch. Other than that, the pier was boring, the sea, a strange sandy brown, the wharves were nothing more than stink and decay. The ferry, though a relief from the heat, was repetitious. Tony chaffed against everything except the one bar I took him to and Gaido’s which he found civilized. Despite the picnics we’d had in Colorado and the two brief hikes we’d done in Estes Park, Tony didn’t really like the outdoors. He vastly preferred being in any air-conditioned room, preferably a bar or bedroom, and he would not really talk to me about his future. If I brought up cooking schools, he said the Cordon Bleu was in Paris, which was too far away from me. As for those in this
country, he couldn’t think of one in Texas. Law school couldn’t be discussed. Texas was too hot and dry; otherwise he rather liked the state. He had no intention of calling home anytime soon. Perhaps I should call. It was my fault he was there, he teased. Without ever mentioning the motel room again, he cajoled. And I decided, yes, I still yearned for Tony. I understood that he was more worn out and more worried than he cared to show. Even if he didn’t see the city as I did, I still liked watching him move, seeing his eyes crinkle when he laughed, feeling his arm around me.

I told him, of course, I still loved him. At the same time I told myself I couldn’t trust him. He was way too unhappy, too moody. He’d quit school, gotten in a car and driven two days to see me without bothering to call first. He’d pulled off to the side of the road, slept four or five hours in his car, washed his face in filling station men’s rooms, eaten in cafes he could neither remember nor wanted to remember. All this I was supposed to understand, even to admire the hardships he’d gone through to reach me but why, I asked again, couldn’t he have used just one telephone in all three states he passed through?

“What if I weren’t in Texas? I could have gone back to Tennessee to visit?” We were walking back to the car from Gaido’s. The afternoon sun soaked the asphalt in the parking lot, bounced off the cars around us.

He smiled. “You were though. You wrote me from Galveston. I went to Leon first because you didn’t say how long you were staying.”

“That is so crazy! What if you’d gotten here, and I was involved with someone else?”

“I would have turned around and gone back,” he said, laughed and added he didn’t think I was.

I didn’t tell him about Luis. What was there to tell? We’d spent some time together. Tony had been spending time with someone else. Judy? She was just someone he knew, had known for years, an old flame, an old friend, someone to have a beer with now and then. I was the one he had to see. Romantic as it
appeared, I couldn’t believe him. What was he trying to prove to me, to himself? I wouldn’t go back to the Jack Tar with him. I could see him only if he would give up trying to get me to bed.

“We’ve been so near to it, we might as well have slept together. …”

“I can’t stand worrying about pregnancy for weeks.”

“I can use something.”

“Girls get pregnant, even with … with rubbers.”

“You won’t.”

“You don’t know. You can’t make that kind of promise.”

He was furious. So was I. We were caught in a trap we’d made for ourselves. I thought perhaps he’d leave. Instead he took me to the Mcleans’ late that afternoon. I knew I couldn’t sleep, and I didn’t want to have to talk to Aunt Bertha so I got in the tub and stayed as long as possible trying to soak away weariness.

In an hour he was back. We sat in his car next to the big palm. I saw he was as miserable as I was, and I still couldn’t bear the idea of him driving off alone. He wouldn’t go with me to the beach or to a bar. I agreed to go to the motel with him. We would not make love, he promised.

Trying not to grin, he hung the
Do Not Disturb
sign on the doorknob. The room was dark. The long twilight had begun; little glimmers of daylight mixed with neon from the ship sign crept around the edges of the curtains. The bed was neatly made. He’d been there taking a shower, he said.

I laughed thinking how we’d both been under water while we were apart. There was only one chair in the room. I sat down on the edge of it while he mixed a Scotch and soda.

He sat on the bed drinking quickly, watching me, saying little, then quite deliberately, put the glass down on the nightstand.

“Come here.”

I shook my head.

He walked over to me, knelt and began untying the shirt-tail knot I’d made in front. I’d changed into a fresh shirt and shorts, the same sort of clothes I’d worn every day on the island.

No one had totally undressed me since I was a child. We had almost made love, our clothes half on, half off, somewhere in Estes Park one rainy afternoon. I remembered he had the same expertise before. I remembered also that we hadn’t even kissed each other but once since he arrived.

I brushed his hands away when he started unbuttoning my shirt.

“I’m not going to be the only one naked,” I said.

“I want to look at you … just to look.”

“Not with all your clothes on.”

“Why not?” He pulled me up to him by both hands.

“It’s unfair somehow.”

“There’s nothing fair about this.”

“I know.” I twisted away from him. “I can’t get near a bed with you. Come on.”

He left me standing at the foot of the bed, sat down on it, groaned, stood up, walked over to me and said, “I’m going to hate myself for this the rest of my life. This is the most perverse thing I’ve ever—”

Perhaps it was. I didn’t know. I wasn’t even sure what he meant.

We kissed until our mouths were dry, our lips bruised. His hands moved over my back, down my arms lightly, slowly.

Abruptly, using both hands on his chest, I pushed myself away.

He reached toward me, but I was close enough to the door to turn and run out of the room. Hardly seeing, without thinking, I fled across the street to the seawall. I could hear Tony calling my name as I rushed down the cement steps to the beach to face the dark water. Tears ran down my cheeks. I didn’t want him to see me crying, to guess how much I wanted to turn back and run toward him.

Without speaking, he followed me. We must have walked along the beach silently for a quarter of a mile until I recognized a stairway on the seawall, took it, took the street directly across the boulevard and kept walking toward the Mclean house.

Tony turned away when he saw the direction I’d chosen, and started toward the motel. Above his head I watched the ship sailing, the three rippled lines of pink, blue and white neon sea blinking in the night sky.

In the final block before reaching the house, I thought, “At least I still have my clothes on.” I was glad I did even if I would have been glad to have had them off earlier. Then I remembered all the names boys called girls who wouldn’t give in. “Pricktease” came to mind most often. He was right. There was nothing fair about it.

The next day he came by so early he had to talk to Aunt Bertha while I left the breakfast table to run upstairs and dress. I’d thought I would never see him again, that he’d leave without a word. Had he realized, perhaps, that I felt as miserable as he did?

From the bathroom window I could see Emmett outside inspecting the convertible’s motor. Heavier, a little taller, obviously darker, his shaggy hair growing straight over the back of his neck, he gestured toward the engine, touching it here and there, almost patting it. I’d watched Kenyon act the same way when he looked at a friend’s new car.

Tony, his light hair catching the sun, reached beyond him to close the hood with a pleased look on his face.

Emmett laughed.

I had tried to keep them apart. When Tony arrived I got him away from the house before I even had to introduce him to Emmett. Now they turned to lounge against the convertible’s side next to the curb as if they were two old friends. They both liked fast cars. Emmett had already been warned against hot-rodding around Galveston in Bertha’s well-known Chrysler. By the time I joined them Emmett was offering to take Tony to some of the places he knew.

“What do you like, five card stud, draw—?”

“I don’t gamble.” Tony put his arm around me and drew me close.

I almost jumped. His moods changed so quickly I couldn’t gauge them. Was he here because he’d forgiven me, or because he just couldn’t decide what he wanted to do next?

“There’s a game going on around Galveston nearly anytime if you change your mind,” Emmett offered again.

Tony shook his head. “I don’t like losing money on dogs, horses, or cards. The odds are always rigged against you. The house always gets paid.”

Emmett grinned. “I don’t figure to win all the time. Ask Celia.”

Tony pulled me tighter against his side.

“He loses pretty often,” I said.

“Yeah. Well … by the time we go home, I could even be ahead.” Emmett laughed as if he was laughing at himself.

“Or behind,” Tony said quietly but his contempt could be heard.

I wasn’t sure Emmett had noticed.

He shrugged and stepped back a little, so I could see his face more clearly. His expression was amiable, too amiable, too calm. His eyes met mine. He gave me a quick sideways glance indicating I was to move.

I didn’t believe he’d hit him, but I wasn’t altogether certain. Tony was tall but slight, and he was a guest, someone who’d just come to get me at our aunt’s house. Clearly Emmett wanted me to stand aside. Standing as close as I could to Tony, I waited. It was so quiet I could hear a little breeze shuffling through the palm leaves.

Tony started opening the door on my side. “Come on,” he said.

Emmett, his back to us, stalked toward the west porch door.

“Your cousin—” he complained as we drove off. His mood had veered once more. Now he was angry and wanted to be soothed.

I saw the question in his eyes and answered before he asked. “We barely manage to get along.”

“I bet. Women are crazy about cowboys.”

“Oh, God, Tony!” Since he’d gone to school in Colorado, a state so western I thought he’d understand. Surely I didn’t have to tell him there was a cowboy of some sort on every street corner in Leon.

He went on talking about Emmett, my sexy cousin, living in the same house and going everywhere with me. By the time we got to the seawall, he’d convinced himself he was jealous of Emmett. He refused to understand me.

Tony turned right on the boulevard and followed the seawall discovering, as he drove, the road down the west side of the island. Luis lived in one of the few beach houses out there. The rest of that end of the island was taken up by the country club, a skeet club, a few family camps—wooden houses on stilts with screened-in sleeping porches—and farms. The first one we drove by, a dairy farm reeking of manure, was the most noticeable. Another held Laffite’s Grove, a clump of trees on slightly higher ground, one of the sites where Laffite’s treasure was supposedly buried. Luis had told Emmett about it the first day they met in the beer joint on the beach. Emmett announced he would dig there immediately, then got too drunk to do anything. When he’d sobered up the next day Uncle Mowrey, finding him in the garage looking for a shovel, told him Laffite’s Grove had been dug up often enough already. And it was on private land.

I wondered if Tony and I might pass Luis driving in from his house to town. Not likely. And even if we did Tony would never guess I was far more interested in Luis than Emmett. We drove by the little road leading off to Luis’ place so fast no one could have possibly recognized me in sunglasses, a scarf knotted under by chin, wrapped around my neck, and tied behind my head again. I had stuck it in the glove box earlier that summer. When I first saw that piece of white silk again I remembered wearing it nearly every time we went out while I was in Colorado and was foolishly pleased simply because Tony still carried my scarf around.

“Watch this,” he commanded. Flooring the gas pedal, he pointed to the speedometer. When it hit 110, the land merged
into a blur and I began shouting at him to slow down. I knew that road, and we were coming to the end of it. Not so far in front of us was nothing but sand and a sheet of bay water.

“It’ll do 120,” he shouted as if I couldn’t read a speedometer.

I slid down further into the seat and shouted back. “Who cares?”

“I do.”

“I don’t. Stop it, Tony.” I screamed against the wind.

He slowed the car. “I’m going to give the damn car back to my parents. I just wanted to show you what it could do.”

I unwound the white scarf and stuck it back in the glove compartment without saying anything. I hated the avid look on his face.