"What?" I said when her pause ran too long. I could feel the darkness closing around the images in my mind. I didn't want to hear about it, and yet I couldn't help being drawn to it.
"I wasn't aware of the fact that Gail was
friends with another girl like she was friends with me. Actually, they were not exactly friends like she and I were. It was a younger girl, her neighbor, Rhonda Lindsey, the fourteen-year-old sister of a boy at our school, Oliver Lindsey. She had done the same sort of sexual things with her, only Rhonda Lindsey was so disgusted with herself and so frightened about it, she told someone who told someone until it got to Oliver, who confronted Gail in school in front of a crowd of our classmates. It was a terribly ugly scene, and I remember how Gail looked to me to come to her aid and defend her, but I turned and ran away.
"It was a big scandal. Rhonda's parents found out and confronted Gail's. Everyone was talking about it every day at school, and I was terrified that they would learn about me as well. Fortunately, no one knew how often Gail had come to my house, but some of the girls were beginning to ask questions because they knew how she followed me about and idolized me. However, before any of that could go further. . . Gail overdosed on her mother's sleeping pills. Before anyone discovered what she had done, she died. She took the whole bottle, so there was no question that it wasn't an accident. Everyone's attention was on the horror of that. Oliver Lindsey had no remorse, nor did many of the other kids at school feel sorry for her.
"Another example of how men can be so cruel," she muttered. She wiped an errant tear from her cheek and sucked in her breath. "There was to be no mercy, no understanding, just nasty, mean talk. Everyone seemed to have teeth as sharp as vampire teeth, chomping down on the memory of Gail. The Brownes eventually sold their home and moved away."
"I'm sorry," I said. "It must have been hard for you, but I hope you didn't blame yourself."
"I tried not to. I kept it all locked away, but I was haunted by our encounters and by what I had done. I even began to wonder if I wasn't the one who had caused it all, actually caused Gail's suicide by being so willing a partner and thus setting her off and onto another girl."
"But from what you've described, you didn't initiate it. She did."
"I know, but I didn't reject her as I should have. The shame I felt made it more difficult to get into a good relationship with a boy. I was always afraid anyone I did go out with would immediately know what I had done. All you have to do is resist a boy's advances sometimes, and he immediately accuses you of being a lesbian. Don't let any of them try that on you!" she warned. "You can be sure they will.
"Anyway, after time passed, I did start to date, and eventually I met Wade. Before you ask, he knows all of it," she followed, "but of course Basil knows nothing. If he did, he would make something disgusting out of it. He's actually jokingly proposed I make love to a woman. He said he could arrange it as long as I permitted him to watch. He said it when he was drunk, but I don't doubt he'd like that or has done things like that.
"They're so different," she said, shaking her head, "Wade and his father. Sometimes I think it really is possible for a child to be more like a clone than the offspring of two people. Of course, I sense that Basil suspects Wade might not even be his son, even though he laughs at such an idea. He couldn't face the fact that his wife could have had interest in any other man, but he's as much as made that accusation in drunken rages from time to time. It bothers Wade when he does that, of course, but I told him he should be hoping it's true.
"Well," she said, sitting back, "there you have it: all the skeletons in our closet. The point of all this is, I want you to understand how deep and how lasting mistakes in relationships, sexual mistakes, can be." Before taking another breath, she added, "I'd like you to promise me that you will avoid Trevor Foley now.
"Because," she said, leaning forward quickly, her right forefinger up, "make no mistake about what he's going to do next. He's going to try to get you to feel terrible about what happened to him. He's going to get you to feel guilty about it, and then he's going to play on that guilt and seduce you again."
She nodded after her prediction.
"Don't worry about that, Ami. I won't feel guilty, and I certainly wouldn't permit a boy to make love to me out of some sense of guilt," I said firmly.
She studied my face a moment and then smiled. "Good. Good. Because I want you to be a happy girl, a wholesome happy girl," she said.
She sighed and looked around, but I could tell she wasn't looking at anything. She was locked in her own head, listening to her own thoughts. I saw her tears emerge like prisoners quietly escaping over a wall.
"Ami. . ."
"I suppose you think I'm weird and strange and horrible after learning that story."
"No, I don't. I really don't," I said, and she turned and looked at me.
She smiled at the sincerity in my face.
"Oh, Celeste, you are special," she said, and hugged me. "Thank you. Thank you."
She pulled back as if she thought I would read something salacious in her embrace.
I reached out and took her hand.
"Thanks for trusting me with your secrets," I told her, and she relaxed and then smiled.
"So," she said, standing after another silent moment, "why don't we wash away all this sadness and stupidity by going to the Nest for lunch? It's a popular restaurant on Sundays. I feel like a lobster salad and some wine and maybe a chocolate souffle. Go get dressed. It's too beautiful a day to waste on regrets," she declared firmly. Then she looked at me and asked, "Okay?"
I smiled.
"Okay, Ami. Sure," I said, and we both started for the house.
"I hate to be a complainer this morning," I added as we walked, "but Mrs. Cukor--"
"Now what?"