“A scarf!” she said, bursting into wild laughter.
One day Dennis said to me, “So what’s with you and Vicky?” We were sitting on my front steps, watching people on the way to the beach, with their towels and radios.
“Nothing’s with me and Vicky.”
“Okay, okay,” he said. “Jesus.”
Sometimes I had the sense that Isabel was revealing herself to me slowly, like a gradually materializing phantom, according to a plan that eluded me. If I waited patiently, it would all become clear, as if things were moving toward some larger revelation.
“You’re so good for me,” she said, whispering near my ear. I felt her hand squeeze my hand. In the dark I smelled a faint soapy scent and a more tangy, fleshy odor. When I reached out I felt her pillow beside me, still warm from her head.
On the beach one day as I lay thinking of Isabel, I overheard a girl saying, “…August already and he hasn’t even sent me one single solitary…” Something about those words troubled me. As I pressed my chest and stomach against the hard-soft sand under my towel, trying to capture, for Isabel, the precise sensation of hard and soft, it came to me: what troubled me was the knowledge that time was passing, that it was already August — August, the second half of summer, August, the deceitful month. Still the hot days seem to stretch on and on, just as they did in July, but you know that instead of a new summer month shimmering in the distance, there’s no longer any protection from September — and you can almost see, far off in the summery haze, the first breath-clouds forming in the brisk autumn air.
It was about this time that I noticed a little change in Isabel. She was growing restless — or perhaps she was only searching for a new game. Now when I arrived she was almost never in bed, but was somewhere else in the room, standing or moving about. One afternoon when I entered the dark I could hear her in an unfamiliar place. “Where are you?” I said. “Over here. Be done in a sec.” I heard a wooden sliding, a creak, a rustling, a slide and thump, as of a closed drawer. There was a ripply, cloth-y sound, a snap, more rustling. “There!” Isabel said. “You can come over now.” I advanced slowly, holding out an arm. “Sorry!” I said, and snatched my hand away. “Fresh!” said Isabel. “So! How do you like it?” She seized my wrist and placed my hand on her upper arm and then for a moment on her hip. “It’s a new dress,” she said. “Stockings, too. Or scarves, according to some people.” I heard scritch-scratchy sounds, as if she were rubbing her knees together. “So! Can you dance?” A hand grasped my hand and set it on her waist. On the fingers of my other hand I felt the grope of a closing hand. Fingers seized my waist. “One two three one two three!” she chanted, as she began to waltz in the dark — and I, who had taken dance lessons in the eighth grade, led her round and round as she hummed “The Vienna Waltz,” till she smacked into something and cried, “Don’t stop!”—and as I turned round and round in that room, knocking into things that fell over, I felt her hair tickling my face, I smelled a faint perfume that made me think of oboes and bassoons, I pressed my fingers against the hard, rippling small of her back as she hummed louder and louder and something went rolling across the room and burst against a wall.
Because the bed was almost always empty, I no longer hesitated by the chair. Instead I went straight past it and lay down on my back with my head on a pillow and waited for her to present herself. After a while she would greet me and sit down on the chair with her feet on the bed. Then she would talk to me about her plans for the future — she wanted to be a doctor, she wanted to help people, she wanted to travel — while I lay in the dark and tried to imagine Isabel stepping from an airplane, in some bright airport, somewhere.
It was during one of these afternoons in early August, when she sat in the chair with her bare feet resting near my lower leg, that she told me about an idea she’d been turning over in her mind. She’d been thinking about it, actually, for a long time, though she hadn’t been ready to face it, really. But now, thanks to me, she felt she had the courage to do it. Of course, it wasn’t the sort of thing you would just go ahead and do without giving it a whole lot of thought — you had to sort of sneak up on it, in your mind. And that’s just what she’d been doing, over these last weeks, and it felt right, so right, it really did. And so, to make a long story short, or a short story long, she was going to break out of the dark — let in the light — before the month was over.
A moment later she said, “You’re not saying anything.”
I said, “Are you really sure you—”
“Absolutely,” Isabel said.
Now whenever I entered she was full of plans. At first she’d thought to change things gradually — a dim candle at one end of the room, then on my next visit a lamp on the bed table, and finally the opened curtains — but the more she thought about it, the more she liked the idea of announcing the new era dramatically. A complete break — that was the way to go. And once the darkness was gone, why, she could do anything — anything. She felt it in her bones. She’d always wanted to learn how to play tennis, for example, and had foolishly put it off. She wanted to see people, do things. She missed her aunt in Maine. She and I could go rowing together — there must be lakes around here. We could go swimming at that beach of mine. And as I lay back against the pillows, listening to her as she sat on the chair with her legs on the bed, I could feel her kicking her heels in excitement.
One afternoon as I climbed the carpeted stairs, on my way to the wooden stairs that led to the attic, it struck me that I hadn’t seen Wolf for quite some time. I had visited him occasionally, on the way to Isabel’s room, but not for the past few weeks or so, and I felt a sudden desire to see him now. I knocked on his door with a single knuckle — two light raps — and after a pause I heard the word “Enter,” uttered in a tone of mock solemnity.
I pushed open the door and saw in the mildly sunny room a big new desk against one wall. Wolf was sitting at it with his back to me, bent over a notebook. The shades had been replaced by white blinds, and through the open slats I saw sun-struck green leaves and bits of blue sky. The tall narrow bookcase was still there, fastened upright against the wall, but the stray piles of books were gone, in place of the sunken chair stood a red leather armchair with a red leather hassock, the room had an air of studious neatness.
Wolf turned to glance over his shoulder. When he saw me he frowned and then slowly began to smile; as his smile became fixed, his frown gradually lessened without disappearing entirely. With a flourish he indicated the red leather armchair.
As I walked over to it, he jerked his thumb at the desk. “The new dispensation.” He shrugged. “It’s very interesting. They want me to do well in school, but they think I read too much. Books as the enemy. Hence our new friend here. I call him Fred.” He patted the desk as if it were a big, friendly dog. “They think it’s good for my — what was that word they used? Oh yes: character.”
I sat down in the new chair, placing one leg on the hassock, while Wolf half rose and swung around in his wooden chair so that he straddled it, facing me. His crossed forearms rested on the back. On the bed I noticed a new plaid spread.
“And what have you been up to, David Dave?” he asked, looking at me with his air of amusement.
“Oh, you know. The library. Ping-pong. Nothing much. You?”
He shrugged a single shoulder. “The salt mines.” He nodded toward the desk. “Summer school. Punishment for dereliction of duty. Have I mentioned that I flunked three subjects? A family secret.”
I lowered my eyes.
“And look at this neat little number.” He swung an arm back to the desk and held up a booklet. “Driver’s manual. From the Department of Motor Vehicles, with love.” He tossed it back. “My father was very clear. Failure will no longer be tolerated.” He shrugged again. “They think I’m a bad influence on myself.” Wolf smiled. “They want me to be more like — well, like you.”