The Last Time They Met Part 20

"Yes."

"What do you confess?"

She is unnerved by his questions. No one has ever probed her quite like this. Not even the nuns. Their questions were predictable and rote. A catechism.

"I'm just asking," he says, somewhat apologetic. "What a girl like you would possibly have to confess."

"Oh, there's always something," she says. "Impure thoughts, mostly."

"Impure meaning what?"

"Impure," she says.

Thomas takes her to a diner on the beach and leads her to a booth near the entrance with seats as red as those they've just left. She is embarra.s.sed about her hair, which she tries to finger-comb in the sun visor. Thomas looks away while she does this. Her hair is hopeless, and she gives it up.

"Next time, I'll bring a scarf," he says. "I'll keep it in the glove compartment."

She is elated by his a.s.sumption that there will be a next time.

She might not have eaten in years. She eats her hamburger and fries, his cheeseburger, drinks both milkshakes, and witnesses the first of dozens of meals that Thomas will hardly touch.

"You're not hungry?" she asks.

"Not really," he says. "You eat it."

She does, gratefully. It seems there is never enough food at home.

"I know Michael. We play hockey together," Thomas says.

Varsity Hockey 2, 3.

"You're playing already?" she asks.

"Not yet," he says. "We'll start soon. I see Michael around."

"Do you have cousins?" she asks flippantly.

"Hardly. Only two."

"Let me guess. You're Episcopal."

"Nothing, really. Why don't you live with your parents? Did something happen to them?"

"My mother died," she says, mopping up the ketchup with her bun. "In a bus accident. My father just sort of disappeared after that."

"Broken heart?"

"Not really."

"I'm sorry."

"It was a long time ago."

He asks her if she wants anything else to eat.

"No," she says. "I'm stuffed. Where do you live?"

"Allerton Hill," he says.

"I thought so."

He looks away.

"Did we go by your house?" she asks.

"Yes."

"Why didn't you point it out?"

"I don't know," he says.

Later, he says, "I want to be a writer."

This is the first of a hundred times someone will tell Linda Fallon that he or she wants to be a writer. And because it is the first, she believes him.

"A playwright, I think," he says. "Have you read O'Neill?"

She has, in fact, read Eugene O'Neill. A Jesuit priest at the Catholic girls' school made the cla.s.s read Long Day's Journey into Night Long Day's Journey into Night on the theory that some of the girls might recognize their families. "Sure," she says. on the theory that some of the girls might recognize their families. "Sure," she says.

"Denial and irresponsibility," he says.

She nods.

"The fog. The obliteration of the fog."

"Erasing the past," she says.

"Right," he says, excited now. "Exactly."

He sits sideways in the booth, one long leg extended.

"Did you write your paper yet?"

"G.o.d, no," she says.

"Can I read Keats to you later?"

"Keats?"

From time to time, boys who know Thomas come by the booth and kick Thomas's foot or rap their knuckles on the Formica tabletop. No words are ever exchanged, but the boys study Linda. It is a pantomime of sorts.

In a booth across the room, Linda recognizes Donny T. from the night before. Sipping a c.o.ke, eyeing her carefully. Will he hate her for having proven him wrong? Yes, she thinks, he will.

A table of girls, in the center of the room, also watch her. Then they turn and make comments to their companions that are clearly about Linda. She notes their perfect curls, their skirts, the nylons running into the loafers.

When they leave the diner, Donny T. is sitting in the back of a powder-blue Bonneville counting money.

"That's your friend," Linda says to Thomas.

"Yeah," Thomas says. "I guess."

"Why is he counting money?"

"You don't want to know."

Thomas drives to the beach and parks behind a deserted cottage. He reaches into the backseat for a book that says, simply, Keats. Keats. Linda decides she won't pretend to like the specific poems if in fact she doesn't. Thomas reads to her in a voice oddly rich and gravelly. Linda decides she won't pretend to like the specific poems if in fact she doesn't. Thomas reads to her in a voice oddly rich and gravelly.

"When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain ..."

As he reads, she gazes at the dirt drive that leads through the dune gra.s.s to the back of a s.h.i.+ngled gray-blue cottage. It is small, two stories tall, and has a wraparound porch of white trim. There is a hammock and a screen door, and all the shades are drawn. The cottage has a kind of poverty-stricken charm and makes her think of the Great Depression, about which they are reading in history. Clay pots with withered geraniums stand by the back door, and roses have turned to beach plums beneath a window.

She can see, if she tries, a dark-haired woman in a dress and an ap.r.o.n. A small girl with blond hair playing on the porch. A man in a white s.h.i.+rt with suspenders. A boater on his head. Is she confusing her father with Eugene O'Neill?

"Thou still unravished bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time ..."

To one side of the house, two posts have been hammered into the ground. Between the posts runs a length of clothesline with wooden pins on it that someone has forgotten to put away.

"Now more than ever seems it rich to die To cease upon the midnight with no pain ..."

"She was a wh.o.r.e, a prost.i.tute," Linda is saying.

"She repented her past," Thomas argues. "She's Christ's symbol of penance."

"How do you know all this?"

"I've been reading."

"I hardly know anything about her," Linda says, which isn't strictly true.

"She was present at the Crucifixion," he says. "She was the first to bring word of the Resurrection to the Disciples."

Linda shrugs. "If you say so."

The papers about Keats and Wordsworth have been written. The amus.e.m.e.nt park has closed. A hurricane has blown in and out, was.h.i.+ng cottages on the beach into the sea. Thomas has read Prufrock Prufrock and pa.s.sages from and pa.s.sages from Death of a Salesman Death of a Salesman to Linda in the Skylark. The aunt has relented and bought Linda an outfit on discount at the store where she works. Linda, in response to a vague reference to someone else's hair by Thomas, has stopped teasing her own. They are sitting on a hill overlooking the Atlantic. to Linda in the Skylark. The aunt has relented and bought Linda an outfit on discount at the store where she works. Linda, in response to a vague reference to someone else's hair by Thomas, has stopped teasing her own. They are sitting on a hill overlooking the Atlantic.

"We've known each other exactly a month," Thomas says.

"Really?" she asks, though she has had precisely the same thought earlier in the day.

"I feel like I've known you all my life," he says.

She is silent. The light on the water is extraordinary - - as good as any of the poets Thomas often reads to her: Robert Lowell, Theodore Roethke, John Berryman, Randall Jarrell. as good as any of the poets Thomas often reads to her: Robert Lowell, Theodore Roethke, John Berryman, Randall Jarrell.

"Do you sometimes think that, too?" he asks.

The straining toward the light on the water feels instinctive. It encompa.s.ses the specific moving of the waves, the boy beside her in his parka and loafers, the steep slope of mown gra.s.s down to the rocks, and the expanse, the endless view, Boston crisply to the north, a lone fisherman, late to his pots, to the east.

"Yes," she says.

She wants to be able to paint the light on the water, or to put it into words at the very least. Capture it, hold it in her hands. Bottle it.

"You're crying," Thomas says.

She wants to deny that she is crying, but cannot. She sobs once quickly, like a child. It would be delicious to let go, she thinks, but disastrous: once started, she might not be able to stop.

"What's wrong?"

She can't answer him. How can she explain? No one cries because of the light. It's absurd.

She sniffs, trying to hold back the snot that wants to run out of her nose. She has no handkerchief or tissue. Thomas searches his pockets, producing a stick of gum, a pack of cigarettes, and a ditto sheet from school. None of which will do. "Use your sleeve," he says.

Obediently, she does. She takes a long breath through her nose.

"You're ... ," he begins.

But she shakes her head back and forth, as though to warn him not to say another word. Reluctantly, she has to let the light go. She has to think about what might be on the ditto sheet, about how she'll have to sit on the mattress to do her homework later, about her aunt - - thoughts guaranteed to stop the tears. thoughts guaranteed to stop the tears.

"Linda," Thomas says, taking her hand.

She squeezes his, digging in her fingernails as if she were about to fall. He moves to kiss her, but she turns her head away. His lips graze the side of her mouth.

"I can't," she says.

He lets go of her hand. He moves an inch or two away from her. He shakes a cigarette from the pack and lights it.

"I like you, Thomas," Linda says, sorry to have hurt him.

He twists his mouth and nods, as if to say he doesn't believe a word of it. "You don't seem to want any part of me," he says.

"It's just ..." she begins.

"It's just what?" he asks tonelessly.

"There are things you don't know about me," she says.

"So tell me," he says.

"I can't."