I got the twins to go up to the attic to play so they wouldn’t see how bad Cathy was. Then I carried her out of the bathroom and began to treat her wounds. When she woke up, I told her I was worried she might have a concussion. She sobbed, and we held each other. We were both still naked, and I couldn’t help it. I had to kiss her. The feel of her body against mine seemed, for the moment, to make me forget the pain. We had ne
ver held each other naked. I could see it was affecting her as much as it was me.
She felt my erection and whispered, “Stop, Christopher. This is what she thinks we do, making love.”
“Making love involves more, Cathy,” I said. I smiled at her, and I described it in as much detail as I could. Her expression went from fascination to fear and then to guilt for even imagining it.
“We can’t. We won’t. We never will, right?” she asked.
I didn’t say anything. I wanted to say no, but at the same time, I didn’t trust fate or my own emotions anymore. So much had happened to us and between us over the years that we were confined, so much of what I would never, even in my wildest dreams, have imagined. All brothers and sisters have a deep love for each other, even if they’re close in age and go through sibling rivalry. I had read so much about this, even before we left our home. As all my teachers knew, I read and understood on a level at least three grade levels above my age.
But that love had a different nature to it. It came from being part of something greater than yourself, your family. An attack on your sister or brother was an attack on your family. Protecting and cherishing your sister or brother was a way to protect and cherish your family, especially your parents. When another sort of feeling even suggested itself, you instantly retreated from it, were ashamed of it, and forced yourself to bury it. You didn’t nourish it.
Could I say I wasn’t doing that now?
I continued to attend to her wounds and then had her attend to mine. Neither of us mentioned again how close we were to doing exactly what our grandmother believed we had been doing.
Later, I kissed her good night after we had put the twins to sleep—kissed her, I hoped, the way my father would have kissed her good night. She held my hand for a moment, as if she wanted another kiss or to kiss me back, and then she let go and turned away.
But it was too late, I thought. We had touched each other in ways I was sure we had both begun to imagine we might.
And now we had to live with whatever dreams might come of it.
When Kane stopped reading and lowered the diary, he saw that I had covered my face with my hands. It was as if the tears in my eyes were so heavy that I couldn’t keep my head up. He rushed over to me, kneeling beside me. I lifted my face away from my hands slowly, the tears still trickling down my cheeks. He rose slowly and started to kiss them away, petting my hair as he did so.
“Cathy, Cathy,” he said. “Don’t cry. I can’t stand it when you cry.”
At first, I thought he wasn’t serious, calling me Cathy, but when I looked into his eyes, I saw he was, and it gave me a chilling feeling for a moment. He was really into it now, and it both frightened and excited me. I realized he was just as into it as I was, and it was natural for him to call me by her name at that moment. I took a deep breath and nodded. Crying for them now wouldn’t do anyone any good.
“Their grandmother was so cruel. I could feel Cathy’s pain with what Christopher described as a seemingly endless whipping,” I said, my teeth clenched with the rage I felt toward that evil old woman who justified her cruelty with biblical quotes. Religion cloaked her sadism, I thought. Someday I’d like to know what turned her into this dreadful person, not that any of that would justify what she was doing to her own grandchildren. Maybe nothing did. Maybe she was simply born that way, and that was what my mother’s distant cousin liked about her.
“And I felt his pain. I really did, but I also felt how it brought them closer,” Kane added, and he kissed me softly, the way a father or mother might kiss away a bruise or a sad moment. “Their pain and suffering drove them to be more to each other,” he said, his voice a whisper now. “We can understand that, can’t we?”
“Yes,” I said.
“They desperately needed to feel each other beside them, to comfort and love each other, especially at that moment, no matter how it might look to us,” he said, his face full of intensity to drive home his conclusion.
“Yes, you’re right.”
I held on to his shoulders. I felt like he was trying to bring me the same comfort Christopher brought to Cathy. Surely, she would have drowned in her sorrow and agony otherwise. I could easily imagine her curling up in a ball in the corner of that attic, refusing to eat or drink, fading away and dying as would any flower without the sun, which in this case was the love of a mother who had apparently deserted them.
Kane brought his hands down to my waist, and we turned together on the sofa bed. His fingers moved up to the buttons on my blouse. After he slipped it off me and undid my bra, he raised himself and took off his shirt. I knew what he was doing, I knew what we were going to reenact, and I didn’t try to stop it. We had been naked together in the shower, but somehow, up here in the attic, turning ourselves into Christopher and Cathy at this precise moment in the diary, it seemed like the first time.
As he moved himself so I could feel his erection where I should, I could tell he was waiting for me to say it, almost as if it was a line I had rehearsed many times in a scene we could finally perform.
“Stop, Christopher. This is what she thinks we do, making love.”
He laughed the way I saw Christopher laughing when Kane was reading. “Should I describe what making love involves, too?” he asked.
“If you can, but the way Christopher did,” I challenged.
He turned to lie on his back. I rested the palm of my left hand on his chest, feeling the quickened beat of his heart, and looked at him. He tried so hard not to be comical about it, to explain it the way Christopher might have. He was doing a very good job of it, too, when I finally had to stop him.
“You read up on this, memorized some textbook or something, didn’t you?”
“Sort of,” he admitted. “I’m pretty good in science, you know. That’s my best subject, just as it was Christopher’s. It’s funny now, but when I read things in the science text, I actually imagine Christopher explaining them and think I should be able to do that, too, sound as confident of my explanations. When I answer questions in class, Mr. Malamud looks more impressed these days. How did I just sound to you?”
“Too good. Too clinical and definitely not romantic,” I replied, at first to tease him.