If You Could See Me Now

July 21, 1955 __________

“Winter has already started,” said Alison.

“Huh?”

“Winter started a month ago.”

“I don’t get you.”

“What day is it?”

“The twenty-first of July. Thursday.”

“God, look at those stars,” she said. “I’d like to take a big step off the planet and just go sailing through them.” He and Alison, cousins from opposite ends of the continent, lay side by side on their grandmother’s lawn in that part of rural Wisconsin nearest the Mississippi River, and looked up past the dark massive heads of the walnut trees to the sky. Oral Roberts’ country voice came drifting to them from the porch of their grandmother’s house. “My spirit is passing into you,” Oral Roberts was shouting, and Alison’s mother, Loretta Greening, softly laughed. The boy turned his head sideways on the coarse, springy grass and looked at his cousin’s profile. It was fox-sharp, ardent, and if will could lift her off the earth she would already be sailing away from him. He caught her smell of cold, bracing water. “God,” she repeated, “I’d just buzz around up there, wouldn’t I? I feel that way sometimes when I listen to Gerry Mulligan. Do you know about him?”

He did not.

“Boy, you should really live in California. In San Francisco. Not just because we could see each other more, but Florida is so damn far away from everything. Gerry Mulligan would just slay you. He’s really cool. Progressive jazz.”

“I do wish we lived near you. That would be neat.”

“I hate all my relatives except for you and my father.” She turned her head toward his face and gave him a smile of brilliant, heart-stopping whiteness. “And I suppose I see him even less than I see you.”

“Lucky me.”

“You could look at it that way.” She turned away from him again. They could hear their mothers’ voices mingling with the noise from the radio. Their grandmother, Jessie, the shrewd center of the family, was doing something in the kitchen, and from time to time through the crossweave of the sisters’ conversation on the porch slid her softer voice. She had been closeted all day with cousin Duane (pronounced Dew-ane), who was about to be married. Their grandmother opposed the marriage, the children knew, for reasons tenuous but forceful.

“You got into trouble again last year,” Alison said.

He grunted assent, embarrassed, not wanting to talk about it. She was not supposed to know about the side of him that got into trouble. Last time it had very nearly been serious, and the entire messy context of the trouble raged in his dreams several nights a week.

“You get into a lot of trouble, don’t you?”

“I guess so.”

“I get into a little trouble, too. Not like you, but enough to make them notice me. I had to change schools. How many times have you changed schools?”

“Four times. But the second time was — the second time was just because one of the teachers hated me.”

“I had an affair with my art teacher.”

He looked at her sharply, but could not tell if she were lying. He thought that she probably was not.

“Is that why they made you leave?”

“No. They kicked me out because they caught me smoking.”

Now he knew that it was true — lies were never as anticlimactic as that. He felt intensely jealous and intensely interested. Both of these feelings were mixed with a large measure of admiration. At fourteen, a year older than he, Alison was part of the passionate adult world of affairs and cigarettes and cocktails. She had previously revealed to him her enthusiasm for martinis “with a twist” whatever a twist was.

“Old Duane would like to have an affair with you,” he said.

She snickered. “Well, I’m afraid old Duane doesn’t have much of a chance.” Then, rushing at him with all of her unexpected, ardent force, she rolled rapidly over onto her side and faced him. “Do you know what he did yesterday? He asked me if I wanted to go out for a ride in his pickup, this was while you and your mother were visiting Auntie Rinn, and I said sure, why not, and he took me for a drive and he put his hand on my knee as soon as we left the driveway He only took it off when we passed the church.” She laughed again, as if this last detail were the conclusive proof of Duane’s unsuitability as a lover.

“You let him?”

“His hand was sweating,” Alison said through her laughter — indeed said it so loudly that the boy wondered if Duane could hear it — “and it felt like he was rubbing tractor grease or something all over my knee. I said, ‘I bet you don’t have much luck with girls, do you, Duane?’ and he pulled over and made me get out.”

“Are there any boys you like up here?” He wanted her to give a flat negative, and her reply at first made him flush with satisfaction.

“Here? Are you kidding? First of all, I don’t like the boys very much, they’re so inexperienced, and I don’t like the aroma of the barnyard that surrounds most farmboys. But I think Polar Bears Hovre is sort of goodlooking.”

Polar Bears, so called because of the whiteness of his hair, was the son of the Arden Township policeman, and he was a tall, rather chunky boy of nearly Duane’s age who had several times driven over to the Updahl farm to ogle Alison. He was a famous tearaway, though as far as the boy knew, he had not yet been made to leave any schools.

“He thinks you’re goodlooking too, but I suppose even a lout like Polar Bears would notice that.”

“Well, you know that I only love you.” But she said it so lightly that the phrase seemed smooth with overuse.

“I’ll accept that,” he said, thinking it sounded sophisticated — the kind of thing her art teacher might say.

Duane had begun to shout in the kitchen, but they, like their mothers on the porch, ignored it.

“Why did you say that about winter? That winter was starting?”

She touched his nose with a finger, and the gesture made his face blaze. “Because on this day last month we had the longest day of the year. Summer’s lease is fading, dear one. Do you like Auntie Rinn? I think there’s something spooky about her. She’s really off the wall.”

“Yeah,” he said vehemently. “She’s eerie. She said something to me about you. When Mom was out looking at her herbs.”

Alison seemed to stiffen, as if she knew that the old woman’s comment would not have been complimentary. “What did she say about me? She listens to my mother too much.”

“It was… she said I should watch out for you. She said you were my snare. She said you’d be my snare even if we weren’t cousins, even if we didn’t know each other, but since we are cousins, that it was much more dangerous. I didn’t want to tell you.”

“Snare,” Alison said. “Well, maybe I am your snare. It sounds like a nice thing to be.”

“Nice for me, you mean.”

She smiled, not agreeing or disagreeing, and rolled back to look again at the shining starry sky. When she spoke, she said, “I’m bored. Let’s do something to celebrate the banning of winter.”

“There’s nothing to do.”

“Polar Bears could think of something,” she said sweetly. “I know. Let’s go swimming. Let’s go up to the quarry. I’d like to go swimming. Hey? Let’s do it.”

It seemed like a dubious proposition to him. “They won’t let us do it.”

“You wait and see. I’ll show you how we swim in California.”

He wondered aloud how they would travel the eight miles to the quarry. It was in the hills just outside Arden.

“Wait and see.” She jumped up from the grass and began to march toward the farmhouse. Oral Roberts had ceased faith healing for another week, and now the sounds of a dance band mingled with the voices of their mothers. He ran to catch up with her and followed her through the screen door of the porch.

Loretta Greening, a softer, taller version of Alison, was sitting on the porch sofa with his mother. The two women looked very much alike. His mother was smiling; Alison’s wore her perpetual look of nervous excitement mixed with discontent. After a moment the boy noticed Duane seated on a wicker chair at the far end of the porch. Slapping a fist noiselessly against his thigh, he appeared to be considerably more discontented than Mrs. Greening. He was staring at Alison as though he hated her, but she blithely ignored him.

“Give me the keys to the car,” Alison said. “We want to go for a drive.”

Mrs. Greening shrugged to her sister.

“Oh, no,” said the boy’s mother. “Alison is too young to drive, isn’t she?”

“It’s for practice,” Alison said. “Just on the back roads. I have to practice or I’ll never pass the test.”

Duane was still staring at her.

“I have this theory,” Mrs. Greening said to the boy’s mother. “You always let them do what they want to do.”

“Because I’ll learn from my mistakes.”

“Well, don’t you think—” his mother began.

“Here,” said Mrs. Greening and tossed her the keys. “For God’s sake watch out for that old fool Hovre.

He’d rather give you a ticket than chew that disgusting tobacco.”

“Oh, we’re not going anywhere near Arden,” Alison said.

Duane had put his hands on the arms of his chair. The boy realized with sickening certainty that Duane was going to invite himself along, and he feared that his mother would insist on their allowing him to drive the Greening Pontiac.

But Alison acted too quickly for either Duane or his mother to speak. “Okay, thanks,” she said and wheeled back through the door of the porch. By the time the boy could react, she was already sliding into the car.

“We pulled that one off all right, didn’t we?” she said minutes later, as they were swinging out of the valley road onto the state highway to Arden. He was looking out the back window, where he thought he had seen the lights of Duane’s pickup truck. But it could have been any truck from one of the farms in the valley.

He was about to agree with her when she spoke again, strangely counterpointing his thoughts. It was a common experience between them, this access to each other’s thoughts and fantasies, and the boy thought that it was what Auntie Rinn had noticed.

“Old Duane was just about to invite himself along, wasn’t he? I wouldn’t mind him if he wasn’t so path-et-ic. He sort of can’t do anything right. Did you see that house he was building for his girlfriend?” She began to giggle. The house had become a subterranean family joke, unmentionable before Duane’s parents.

“I just heard about it,” he said. “It sure sounds funny. He didn’t want me to see it. Duane and I don’t really get along. We had a big fight last year.”

“And you didn’t even sneak out there just to take a peek? Jesus H. Christ, it’s amazing. It’s…” she; broke down into giggles, unable to characterize the house any better. “And,” she said gasping, “you’re not supposed to mention it to Duane, you can’t make just the teeniest tiniest little comment…” She was laughing uncontrollably.

Because the car was weaving in and out of its lane, he said, “How did you learn to drive? My parents won’t even let me touch the car.”

“Oh, from these greasers I sometimes hang around with.”

He merely grunted, having no idea what greasers were, and thinking that they sounded even worse than the art teacher.

“Do you know what we should do?” Alison said. “We should make a pact. A really serious pact. A vow. To make sure that whatever happens, you know, no matter who we marry, since we can’t really marry each other, that we stay in touch — no, stay together.” She looked at him oddly for a moment, and then swung the car to the side of the road. “Let’s make a vow. This is important. If we don’t, we can’t be sure.”

He looked at her dumbly, amazed by this sudden emotion. “You mean, promise to see one another when we’re married?”

“Married, not married, if we’re living in Paris or Africa — anything. Let’s say — let’s say we’ll meet here on some date. On this date in ten years. No, that’s not far away enough. In twenty years. I’ll be thirty-four and you’ll be thirty-three. That’s lots younger than our mothers. July twenty-first, um, 1975. If there’s still a world in 1975. Promise. Make me a vow.” She was looking at him with such intensity that he did not even attempt to turn the absurd promise into a joke.

“I vow.”

“And I vow. At the farm, twenty years from now. And if you forget, I’ll come after you. If you forget, God help you.”

“Okay.”

“Now we have to kiss.”

His body seemed to become lighter in weight. Alison’s face seemed larger than its true size, more challenging and mask-like. Behind the mask her eyes shone at him. With difficulty, he made his body move on the carseat. He bent toward her. His heart began to gong. When her suddenly enormous face drew near his, their lips brushed. His first sensation was of the unexpected cushiony softness of Alison’s lips, then this was supplanted by an awareness of her breathing warmth. Alison pressed her mouth harder against his, and he felt her hands at the back of his head. Her tongue darted through his lips.

“This is what Auntie Rinn is afraid of,” she whispered, her mouth publishing warmth over his. She kissed him again, and he became a pinpoint of sensation.

“You sort of make me feel like a boy,” she said. “I like it.”

When she withdrew, she glanced down at his lap. He looked dazedly into her face. He would have given her anything, he would have died for her on the spot.

“Did you ever go swimming at night?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“We’ll have so much fun,” she said, and started the car again. With a flourish, she pulled out into the road.

He turned his head to look again out of the rear window, and saw the high headlights of another vehicle swing out thirty yards behind them. “I think Duane is following us.”

She hastily looked into the rearview mirror. “I don’t see him.”

He looked back. The headlights had disappeared. “But he was there before.”

“He wouldn’t dare. Don’t worry about old Du-ane. Imagine having a name like that anyhow.”

As he laughed, relieved, he was stopped short by an appalling realization. “We didn’t bring our suits! We’ll have to go back.”

Alison glanced at him oddly. “Don’t you wear underwear?”

Again, relief made him laugh.

When they reached the rutted dirt road leading up the hill to the quarry, the boy quickly checked for the following headlights, but saw nothing except the lights of a farmhouse far down the road. Alison flicked on the radio, and “Yakety Yak” blared out at them. She sang the words as they sped up the hill. “Don’t talk back.”

A thick screen of bushes separated the irregular steps to the quarry from the grassy, rock-strewn flat space where she stopped the car. “Oh, this is going to be good,” she said; on an afterthought, she snapped the radio back on. ” — and for Johnny and Jeep and all the A.H.S. gang at Renter’s Drive In, Les Brown and His Band of Renown playing ‘Lover Come Back To me,’” came the announcer’s low oily voice. “And for Reba and LaVonne in the Arden Epworth League. Les Brown and ‘Lover Come Back To Me.’”

From the flat space where workmen’s sheds had once stood, a beaten trail of dust and grass led through an opening in the screen of bushes to the rocky steps down to the lip of the quarry. When he had followed Alison down the steps, they stood on the slablike platform, two feet above the black water. As with all quarries, it was said that this one was bottomless, and the boy could believe that — the black skin of water seemed inviolate. If you broke through it, you would never cease to fall, you would go down forever.

No such reflections troubled Alison. She was already out of her blouse and shoes, and was now removing her skirt. He realized that he was staring at her body, and that she knew he was staring, but did not mind.

“Get out of those clothes,” she said. “You’re awfully slow, cousin. If you don’t hurry up I’ll have to help you.”

He quickly pulled his shirt over his head. In bra and pants Alison stood and watched him. Shoes, socks, and then his trousers. The night air drifted coolly down onto his shoulders and chest. She was looking at him with approval, grinning.

“Do you want to do what we do in California?”

“Uh, sure.”

“So let’s skinny-dip.”

“What’s skinny-dip?” Though he thought he knew.

“Watch me.” Smiling, she pushed her pants down over her hips and stepped out of them. Then she reached up and unhooked her bra. The car radio sent them Ray Anthony playing a languid torchy song. “You too,” she said, smiling. “You won’t believe how good it feels.”

A sound from above them, from near the rocks, made him jump. “Was that someone coughing?”

“Do birds cough? Come on.”

“Yeah.” He removed his underpants, and when he looked up at her, she was just diving into the water. Her body gleamed whitely beneath the dark surface of the water, gliding for a long time out toward the center of the quarry. Then her head broke the water and she flipped back her hair, a movement full of competent womanly life.

He had to be near her. He went to the lip of rock and made a flat dive into the water: the shock of the cold seemed to flash through his nervous system and burn his skin, but the simple womanly efficiency of her gesture had been a greater shock. More than her talk of greasers and art teachers, it made her a foreign creature.

By the time he got to the surface, his body had adjusted to the temperature of the water. Alison was already knifing away from him, moving smoothly through the water. He realized with chagrin that she was a better swimmer than he, who was proud of his swimming. And she was a stronger swimmer too, for when he set out after her, she effortlessly increased the pulse of her strokes and widened the distance between them. At the far end of the quarry she flipped under the water in a racing turn and came up gracefully and powerfully, her shoulders and arms gleaming in the darkness. The rest of her body gleamed too, mysterious and warped by the water. He began to tread water, waiting for her.

Then he heard, muffled by the drifting snatches of dance music from the car, another sound from above them, and he looked up sharply. Something white ran flitting behind the sparsest of the bushes. For a moment he thought it was a white shirt, and then it stopped and was too motionless for it to have moved at all — moonlight on a rock. From the other side of the quarry’s top, up above and behind him, came a short calling whistling sound. He looked up over his shoulder but saw nothing.

Alison was now near him, making her beautiful strong strokes which barely disturbed the surface of the water. She bent at the waist, her bottom flashed for a moment, and she was gone. He felt her hands braceleting his calves and he managed to hold his breath before he went under.

In dark water, Alison was clasping him now at the waist, grinning. He touched her cold smooth hands. Then, bravely, dared to touch her spreading hair and round skull. She gripped his middle more firmly and, using her shoulder muscles, levered him down and slid her body along his until her arms were clasping his chest. Her mouth nipped at his neck. Their legs lay parallel, twin forks, touching. Trouble started in his mind.

When what she had caused to come to life brushed her stomach, she released him and went smoothly up to the surface. Holding the final seconds of his air, he saw her body dangling headlessly down, an unbelievable bounty of almost mystical perfection. Her small breasts bobbed in the water, her legs bent to a heartbreaking curve of calf. Her hands and feet were white stars, flashing. The trouble spread thickly through his mind, canceling all else. He glided up beside her, bruising all that foreign heartland and wilderness of skin.

For a second he was unable to see, and Alison’s arm clamped about his neck: when his eyes cleared, he was looking into a sleek wet fall of hair. Her hard cheekbones pressed his jaw. Using all his strength, he broke the hold of her arms and turned her into him. His head went under water, forced to the hollow of her neck, and he heard her yell of laughter. His legs kicked around hers. They were back under, thrashing, and the trouble in his mind forced them to roll deeper into the cold water. His ears boomed as she struck them.

Booming was everywhere. The water blanketed him, her slippery perfection fought him. They reached the surface again and gulped air a second before the water exploded with trouble. Her laughter ceased and she gripped his head, crushing his ears forward painfully and then there seemed to be more than two of them, fighting the trouble, fighting the water and fighting for air and fighting for trouble. The water boomed and whenever all their bodies, their one body, broke the surface, geysers of spray were booming too.