From the instant she saw his eyes, she knew it would happen that night. The eyes she saw were the eyes of an old friend. She had learned those eyes well. They filled her neither with excitement nor dread. The eyes of an old friend never do.
“You look lovely,” he said, his voice more Southern than usual.
“Thank you,” she said lightly. He was a big man, McQuade, dressed now in a blue tropical suit, the solidity of the color making him appear larger. His blond hair was efficiently, economically combed. There was a smile on his face, and above the smile the gray eyes were ignited with the smoldering inner fire she knew so well.
“Are we ready?” he asked editorially.
“We are,” she said.
“Dancing?”
“Heavens, no. We’d melt.”
“Theater?”
“If you like.”
“Not really. I thought…” He smiled in embarrassment and then shrugged boyishly, contradicting the glow in his eyes. “Well, it’s a silly idea.”
His trick did not fool her. “What?” she asked.
“A drive to Jones Beach,” he said in a rush. “It’s such a hot night, Cara, but wonderful really, more stars than I’ve ever seen in my life. I thought… do you like the beach?”
For a moment, she wanted to shout No, not the beach. Dancing or the theater, someplace crowded, someplace where there are people, people. The rebellion died.
“It sounds good,” she said dully.
“Fine. Then let’s go.”
They said good night to her parents. Dr. Knowles shook hands with McQuade, his liking for the fellow all over his round dentist’s face.
They make a handsome couple together, he was thinking, a mighty handsome couple.
14
They drove out over the Whitestone Bridge. McQuade kept the top of his convertible down, and she could see the stars expanding overhead, a great litter of sparkling gems on black velvet. She rode with her head back on the leather seat, the wind blowing her hair free. She could see the other cars whisking past, cars full of Saturday-night daters, young girls, happy girls and girls like… like herself.
But none so discreet, Cara. You are so discreet.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing,” she said.
Nothing. The sum total of my life. Nothing.
“I should have offered a penny,” he said, smiling. He took one hand from the wheel and found her hand, squeezing it.
They drove onto the Belt Parkway, flushed with amber lights, the tires humming secretly under the weight of the car. McQuade kept the radio going, the music mingling with the rush of the wind, carried away behind on the concrete, dropped onto Grand Central Parkway, and then Southern State. They did not talk much.
She began to think about patterns. The pattern of her life, primarily, and the pattern of good and bad, and then the pattern of the trees bordering the winding road, and then the pattern of the stars and the sky and growing things. She saw the large sign announcing JONES BEACH STATE PARK, and for a moment she was transported back to that sixteen-year-old summer at Taka-Manna, and the glistening white sands on the shore of the quiet lake, and the kisses in the barn, and her first kiss, who, who?
They drove past Jones Beach, and past Tobay, far out to a lonely spot of sand covered with patches of driftwood, the sandgrass tall and wavering. The surf thundered against the beach, receded drunkenly to gather its strength and then rolled forth again in majestic, bursting, bubbling white froth. There was a cool wind, and the wind lifted her skirts as they went out onto the sand, McQuade carrying a blanket he’d taken from the trunk of the convertible. She lifted one foot to remove her shoe, and the wind caught her skirt and swept it up over her thighs, and she could feel his eyes hot on her legs, but she was neither frightened nor apprehensive and she did not move to flatten her skirt. She waited until the sea wind momentarily died, and then she took off the shoes and the peds, and she walked barefooted to where the surf angrily lashed the beach.
McQuade spread the blanket, but she did not go to it immediately. There was time. Unafraid, resigned, she knew there was time.
She stood at the edge of the beach where the sand was wet and cold, where the last rush of the waves caught at her toes and then tried to suck her back into the vastness of the ocean. The wind was strong in her hair and in her skirt. She felt it rushing against her face and her naked legs, rushing with a curious sense of inevitability. She did not want what was coming, but she knew she would not resist it. She felt rather young, and rather alone, and rather innocent, standing there on the edge of the world, the kiss of salt on her mouth. Very, very young all at once, all at once and with a sudden poignancy, as young as the girl who’d once admired the spread wings of a yellow butterfly in a Nature Shack so long ago.
She felt like crying.
McQuade padded up to her softly and-stood beside her. He did not touch her, but she felt his presence as if he had already invaded her. Curiously, a chill ran up her spine.
“Something powerful about it, isn’t there?” he said, looking out over the ocean, his voice a whisper.
“Sad,” she murmured. “Something sad.”
“There’s nothing sad about power,” he said flatly.
They stood silently, watching the ocean. He had still not touched her, but still she felt him there, immense behind her.
“We used to go down to Savannah sometimes,” he said idly, a trace of wistfulness in his voice. “I didn’t get to see the ocean except when we got down to Savannah. Where I lived, there wasn’t any ocean.”
“What was there?” she asked, not really interested, making conversation only because she wanted to hold off the inevitable for a while.
McQuade snorted. “Dirt,” he said. He said the word harshly, and then he stopped, and she assumed he was finished until the next bitter flow of words came from his mouth. “There are places in Georgia,” he said, “that aren’t fit for pigs. I was born in one of those places. I was raised in one of those places. Oh yes, my father was a wonderful man.” He laughed a short sardonic laugh. “A wonderful man who had two weaknesses: expensive liquor and cheap nigra women. He couldn’t afford the liquor, but the nigras were a dime a dozen.” He stopped abruptly, as if to clear away a bad memory, and then said, “Come on, let’s go to the blanket.”
“No,” she answered. “Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to. Yet.”
He stepped out from behind her and his eyes caught hers. A knowing smile flicked across his mouth, as if he too had recognized her resignation to the inevitable and was quietly amused by it. The smile did not amuse her. It sent a new chill rocketing up her back.
“Whatever you say, of course,” he assured her.
“Were you… were you poor?” she asked, attempting to get him back to talking about himself again, stalling for time now, and not knowing why she was stalling.
“Poor?” He seemed to weigh the word carefully. “Do you mean did I have enough to eat?”
“Welt, I don’t know what I exactly…”
“There was always enough to eat,” McQuade said. “My mother saw to that. We lived in a shack, you understand.” He saw the look on her face. “Does that surprise you? Yes, we lived in a shack, and I use the word advisedly. When I say ‘shack,’ I don’t say it the way Texans do, to indicate a forty-room château someplace. When I say ‘shack,’ I mean wood and tarpaper and broken windows and noisy beds, and a stinking outhouse in the back yard. Shack. And shack is synonomous with dirt.”
“I had no idea…”
“But I was never poor, understand that, too. Inside, I was never poor. My mother saw to it that I was well fed, and even though I ran around in torn, outgrown pants with my behind sticking out, I was never poor. Even though I cursed my father for his laziness and for his nigra women and for what he was doing to my mother, I was never poor. Inside I was rich because I knew that some day I was going to be somebody. Some day, I was going to wipe the mud off my face. Poor? No, I was never poor. Only weaklings are poor. Weaklings and cowards.”