What Binds Us (7 page)

“But it’s so hot,” I objected.

“The car’s air-conditioned.”

“Awwww, c’mon,” Dondi said. I felt the brothers were conspiring against me.

The air-conditioner failed before we got off the island. “Oh, great! ‘The car’s air-conditioned,’” I mimicked.

“We’ll get it fixed in New York,” Matthew said, unfazed.

We dropped the car off at a garage and walked through Greenwich Village, the gayest of ghettos in 1979, where we promptly lost Dondi. We looked for him for a while then gave up.

“Where would you like to go?” Matthew asked me.

“Anywhere to get out of this heat.”

We went to a movie, which was short and terrible, the air conditioning fitful.

“What do you want to do now?” he asked me as we stood on the burning pavement.

“Take a bath.”

He regarded me quizzically, one black eyebrow raised.

“I’m hot,” I said, trying not to sound petulant.

“A bath,” he mused. Then he shrugged and hailed a cab with typical New York aplomb. “The Saint Regis,” he told the driver when we’d tumbled into the sedan’s coolness.

“I’d like a suite with two baths,” he told the hotel’s clerk.

We waited in the bar while our suite was readied. When we went upstairs, a bottle of champagne stood in a footed silver bucket in each of the two bathrooms.

“I believe you wanted a bath,” Matthew said. He popped the cork on a bottle and we toasted before he retreated to his own bathroom.

Feeling slightly ridiculous, I ran the tub full of water and bubbles and stripped off my clothes. After two glasses of champagne, I stopped feeling silly.

Three quarters of an hour later, he called out, “How’re you doing in there?”

“Fine,” I answered. Then, “Hey, I’m out of champagne.”

“Just a minute.” I heard water splashing and then he was padding into my bathroom, naked except for a towel held discreetly around his waist. He waved a champagne bottle in the air. “Room service!” He filled my glass, brought the bottle to his mouth and upended it. “I’d better order another.” He reached for the elaborate gold-plated phone. Looking around, he said, “Hey, your bathroom is much nicer than mine.”

“Well, why don’t you stay? Hop in.”

His eyes narrowed, darkened and his face got serious for a moment then relaxed. “I just may,” he teased.

I felt myself slipping under water.

“Wake up, sleeping beauty.”

I awoke abruptly and pushed myself up. A wave rose and crashed over the edge of the tub. Matthew stood fully dressed, smiling down at me. “You passed out. Too much champagne, I guess.”

“It was the heat,” I said with affected dignity.

“Yeah. Uh-huh.”

“It was! Haven’t you ever heard of heat prostration?”

“Whatever,” he said with feigned haughtiness. “At any rate, it’s getting late. We should be getting back.”

“What about the car?”

“It’s fixed. So you won’t have to faint from the heat again,” he added, amusement like a wink in his voice. “The garage delivered it. It’s downstairs.”

He left me to dress in privacy.

By the time we got back, it was going on evening though it was still light. As we drove through the gates, I stared in amazement at the scene before me. Aurora had been turned into a fairground. There were striped tents and a merry-go-round. A Ferris wheel cartwheeled through the air. Jugglers and a clown or two strolled around. A man dressed like Uncle Sam on stilts winked at me. There was a fortuneteller and a crowd of people—mostly neighbors from up and down the beach. Flabbergasted, I turned to Matthew.

“Well, you said you’d never been to a carnival,” he told me. “C’mon.” We bought popcorn from an enormously fat woman in pink. “Let’s try the Ferris wheel.”

Mrs. Whyte called to us as she spun past on the merry-go-round, Colin and Mr. Whyte whooping on gigantic stallions behind her.

“Come on,” Matthew said. “You have to meet the three furies.”

“The three furies?”

Matthew explained that they were friends of his parents. Two were godmothers to him and his brothers, the third a former model, a transcendent beauty so delicate she could have been carved from the meat of an almond. Together the three women ran the Fury Modeling Agency—at one time the top modeling agency in New York. Even though only one of them was actually named Fury, they were all referred to collectively as the “three furies” because no prayer, no sacrifice, no tears could move them to take on a model who didn’t have “it,” that indefinable something that only they and the camera could see. Mrs. Whyte had once been a model contracted to their agency; it was Clare Fury who’d introduced her to Geo Whyte and orchestrated their romance.

“Thomas, let me introduce my godmothers, Clare Fury and Amelia Lockhart.”

Clare, heiress to a vast tobacco fortune (“Darling, our family has been polluting the lungs of the young for generations!”), smiled at me. Her handsome horsy face was devoid of makeup. Her hair, the color of mink gone gray, was short and bluntly cut. She was a stern, no-nonsense type with a bloodless smile and a charm-school walk.

Amelia was picturesquely feminine. She was buxom with broad hips and delicate ankles, her heavy hair carefully hennaed. Her eyelids were outlined with what might have been navy blue charcoal. Her blue eyes stretched out of her face as if trying to escape the burden of her mascara. She’d removed her eyebrows and drawn them back on, emphatic black, pointedly arched. To further add to the confusion of her face, her vividly painted mouth hung open. The three elements of her painted face—eyes, eyebrows, lips—conspired to make her look as if she’d borne witness to some profound horror that left her bug-eyed and dumb.

“And this is—”

“Panther,” the former model interrupted, introducing herself and detaching me from the little group. Her voice was low, throaty. “Dondi’s told me so much about you.” Then, tucking her arm in mine, she said, “Tell me about yourself—what Dondi hasn’t.”

There was a shooting gallery and Matthew called out that he was going to try his luck. I turned to watch his retreating back. I turned to face her. She was watching me.

“It’s not easy loving two people,” she said. “Especially if they’re siblings.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Loving two people,” Panther said, “is like walking a tightrope.”

“How do you manage it?” I asked, looking at Clare and Amelia.

“Not the same thing at all,” she said thoughtfully. “First, they’re not siblings. Second, no one here is ‘in love’ with anyone else. If they—either of them had wanted sex, I would have given it to them. But what they wanted was to be needed, to be loved. I wanted only to be a
daughter
.

“I was fifteen when they discovered me. I’d been in and out of foster homes most of my life. Until they took me in and put me on the cover of magazines, I had no idea I was worth anything, that I could be loved. Just having someone care enough to make me eat breakfast and go to bed before midnight meant the world to me. I owe them everything. Being a model never interested me. Being beautiful is boring. I wanted them to be proud of me, so I started to learn the business. I want to carry on the business they built.” She stopped abruptly, shook her head as if to clear it.

“Matthew’s not interested in me,” I protested.

“Isn’t he?”

Matthew appeared at my elbow, a large stuffed turtle in his hands. “Here. I won him for you.”

I accepted the turtle, forced words to form around the lump in my throat. “Thank you. What should we call him?”

“Matthew Junior,” he answered without hesitating. “You can call him MJ for short.”

Panther looked from one of us to the other but said nothing.

“C’mon,” Matthew said, tugging me after him. “Let’s see if you can win one.” I looked back at Panther to wave goodbye. Clare and Amelia had returned to her side and she now stood between the two women, devoted mother and doting aunt, she herself a cherished, pampered woman-child.

***

At midnight there were fireworks. Brilliant plumes of feathery color crisscrossed the sky. Panther sidled over to me. A hailstorm of silver stars broke over us. “Matthew did this. For you. Do you still think he’s not in love with you?”

***

The sky was beginning to pale. Everyone else had left hours before. Matthew and I had the carnival to ourselves.

Mr. Whyte darted out of a tent in his pajamas. “Have you seen Lot’s wife?” he asked us.

“Dad! What are you doing out of bed? Where’s Marquis?”

“Have you seen Lot’s wife?” he repeated.

“She’s in bed, where you should be.”

“Geo?” Marquis called, walking down from the house.

“He’s down here,” Matthew replied.

“Geo. You shouldn’t be wandering around down here by yourself.” Marquis took his arm and led him away.

“Night, Dad.”

“Who’s Lot’s wife?” I asked.

“Mrs. Whyte. He always calls her that.”

“Oh.”

“It’s almost dawn,” he said. “How about one last ride and then calling it quits?”

“Okay. But, Matthew?” I hesitated. I knew what I wanted to say but couldn’t find the words. It was as if I were trying to speak in a language that was unfamiliar to me. I tried again, “Matthew.”

“What?”

“Thank you for all
this
.” I gestured at the carnival around us. “Well, not just this but everything—the whole day, really. I mean, I start whining I’m hot and want to take a bath and you book us a hotel room.”

“Thank you isn’t necessary. That’s not why I did this.”

“I know. Damn it, Matthew.” I started to cry. He pulled me to him so that my face was lying against his chest; I could feel his heart beating. For some reason that made me cry harder. “No one has ever done anything like this for me.”

“That was the point,” he said. “To do something special for you. Now stop crying. Please?”

I nodded, pulled away. “Today—
you
—take my breath away.” He blushed, smiled.

“Wanna try the Ferris wheel again?”

“No. How about the merry-go-round?”

As the ride slowed to a halt, Matthew said, “Let’s get something to eat. We can watch the sun come up from the kitchen.”

“Okay,” I agreed, stepping to the ground, stretching.

We stood together in his parents’ hundred-thousand-dollar kitchen eating strawberries out of a silver bowl and watching the sun rise. He pushed a strawberry into my mouth. I bit his thumb; the salt and grit taste of it contrasted with the lush sweetness of the strawberry. He withdrew his fingers and, bringing his hand to his mouth, ran his tongue over his thumb. He grinned as he popped a strawberry into his own mouth. He picked up a wedge of cheese, offered it to me. I opened my mouth. This time, his thumb drew a line across my mouth. I swallowed hard.

“Sun’s up,” he said brightly. “We’d better go to bed.”

Upstairs, outside my room, I said, “Matthew. Thank you again for tonight. Well, the whole day, really. It was…wonderful. I can’t believe that you did all that. I can’t believe you remembered that I said I’d never been to a carnival. Anyway, thank you.”

“It was my pleasure. Sorry Dondi didn’t show up.”

“It’s okay.”

“Well…g’night.”

“Night.” I couldn’t look at him because my eyes had filled with tears. To look at him would have made them spill over. I’d cried enough in front of him for one day.

“Good night,” he said again as he closed the door to his room.

“Night.” Too tired to undress, I climbed into bed in my clothes. I lay back amid the extravagant linen sheets, surrounded by a dozen silken pillows, and stared up at the ceiling where a score of gilt-winged angels frolicked across an azure heaven amid polychrome stars. I wondered what I was supposed to do now. Surely sleep was out of the question. I ran my tongue around the inside of my mouth, searching for the taste of him.

***

The last day of that first summer dawned bright and altogether too soon. Matthew came into my room as I was closing my last suitcase. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said.

We strolled along the beach for a while in silence. Matthew suddenly stopped and we stood side-by-side staring at the sea. The water tumbling over itself seemed lonely without us dancing in its midst. A mournful breeze blew.

With what sounded like a sob, Matthew pulled me to him. Before I could speak, his lips were against mine. Startled, I opened my mouth and kissed him back hard, with a summer’s worth of pent-up passion. I wrapped my arms around him.

“T!” Dondi yelled impatiently from the terrace. “Come on. We’re gonna be late!” Right then, despite the clarity of his words, he seemed a great distance away.

Matthew pulled away first, breaking our embrace.

I stared into his smoke-filled eyes. “Matthew …”

He turned back to the sea. “You’d better go,” he said.

“I have to go,” I repeated helplessly. I tried to memorize the way he looked right then: terra cotta lips, dark hair still wet from his morning shower, glistening in the sun, his face, the face of a pansexual angel.

The kiss, as much as I’d wanted it all summer, had surprised me. What surprised me more was the sudden knowledge that Matthew had done what I would have supposed impossible: he had supplanted Dondi in my heart. I turned and ran toward the house. As surely as I was leaving Matthew behind, I knew that I was leaving a part of myself as well.

“Mrs. Whyte, thank you for a wonderful summer.”

She tilted her head up and delivered a stillborn smile when my lips brushed her cheek. As my arms folded around her, I felt a tiny shiver pass through her.

Over her shoulder I could see Dondi hovering in the doorway. I realized too late that I’d never seen anyone in that house actually touch her.

All of a sudden the steel went out of her posture and she leaned into my embrace. Her lips touched my cheek. The scent of Opium enveloped me. It was like falling into a soft-scented cloud. I could get lost in that smell. I could close my eyes and no one would ever find me.

“Thank you, Thomas-Edward,” she breathed against my neck, squeezing me tight.

***

When Phipps swung the hump-backed Rolls into the driveway, my mother was standing on the porch. Without waiting for Phipps to get out and open the door, I got out of the car and ran up the steps. “Hi, Mom.”