Love
I sat in my room and stared at Buddy’s phone number. What Ava had said frightened me for a while, but then I comforted myself in the knowledge that Daddy forbade Ava from involving herself with any young men from her college because of the obvious greater possibility of being discovered. Nothing was more important to him than her being careful about this. I recalled how angry he had been when Brianna had brought home the married man. He had almost moved us away from where we lived in New York immediately. No one, not even the best and most intelligent fugitives, could disappear as quickly or as well as Daddy and his family could. As I had nearly very painfully learned, the only ones who had any chance of finding us were the renegades.
Why was I so concerned about Buddy, anyway? I had never thought much about any of the young men either Brianna or Ava had brought home to Daddy. Maybe I just never wanted to think about them. I didn’t want to know their names or anything else about them. As long as they remained vague, I didn’t have to think of them as actual people. Except for the time with the man Brianna had brought home and the time with the stoned man Ava had brought home, I had never witnessed Daddy with anyone else all these years. Those occasions plus the way he had attacked Mark Daniels were the only violent incidents I had witnessed in my life. For someone else, that might sound like enough, but considering what we daughters were responsible for, it wasn’t very much. After all, it went on at least once a month for all our young lives.
But recurring and troubling visions in which I saw Buddy Gilroy on that stairway were beginning to haunt me all times of the day and night. There were other boys in school and young men I had seen who were attractive, Mark Daniels being the most attractive, perhaps, but there was something special about Buddy, something different. He wasn’t simply handsome and sexually interesting. There was something gentle, soft, caring in his eyes. As trite as it certainly would sound to Ava, he struck me as sincere in a very human sort of way. To put it simply, I didn’t feel he was only eager to get into my pants. I thought he really and truly wanted to know me, to spend time with me, and might very well be satisfied spending a day just walking and talking with me.
Oh, we’d want to kiss, to touch, even to go farther and be completely intimate, I was sure, but there wasn’t that frenzy about him, that rush to score and then move on to another female target that I had seen in other young men. Maybe that was why I had singled him out at Dante’s Inferno. Maybe he saw something sincere in me as well, and that was why he was so attracted to me. Surely, Ava wasn’t right. Not every single young man out there was out for one thing only and couldn’t care less about you as a person. I was convinced that she thought that way to justify what she had to do. It helped insulate her conscience, if she had a conscience. I couldn’t recall either Ava or Brianna demonstrating even the slightest regret or guilt.
I put the slip of paper with Buddy’s phone number on it back into my purse and tried to forget about it. I succeeded in keeping all the ugly visions out of my mind and thought maybe I was past it. He would soon drift out of my life as quickly as he had drifted into it. But when I returned from school the following day, Ava was waiting for me in my room. I almost jumped out of my skin when I opened the door and saw her sitting on my bed, wearing one of her angriest looks.
“What are you doing here? What’s wrong?”
“Just close the door and lock it,” she said, speaking through clenched teeth. “Do it quickly, before Marla decides to burst in on us.”
I did as she asked. “What is it?”
“How could you be so stupid? After all the time I’ve spent with you, the things we’ve discussed, the confidences I took you into, and what’s happened here recently, you do this?”
“Do what, Ava?
” I asked, trying to appear undaunted. “Or am I supposed to guess?”
“You don’t have to guess. You know. You went and told that Buddy blue-eyes your real name?”
“Oh,” I said, and put my books on my desk.
“Why, Lorelei? Tell me why you did that.”
I sat at my desk. “I just…”
“Just what? What?” she screamed.
“I just felt like having one normal relationship. A real friendship,” I quickly corrected, avoiding her eyes. “And the only way to do that was to be honest.”
“Honest? What does that mean, Lorelei? Honest about what? Everything?”
“No, not everything. It’s not important to tell someone everything, is it?”
“I’ll tell you what’s important. What’s important is to tell someone outside of this family, someone who is not our kind of people, nothing. How could you not know that? You’ve grown up following the rules, being careful. What is more astounding is that you do this after what almost happened to you, almost happened to all of us here.” She leaped to her feet.
“I know all that, but you told me that you were positive he wasn’t a renegade,” I said.
“So? What does that mean? That gives you permission to get involved with anyone else? You’ll bring him around, maybe? Invite him to dinner, to spend time with your family?” she asked, wagging her head.
“Daddy brings women here who aren’t one of us,” I said.
“That’s Daddy. You’re comparing yourself to Daddy now? You and your seventeen years compare to his decades, centuries, of experience?”
“I’m not saying that, Ava.”
“Then what are you saying, Lorelei?”
“Didn’t you ever just want…” The words were stuck in my throat. It was as if my whole body was rebelling against my tongue.
Ava sighed deeply and shook her head. “Want what, Lorelei? Spit it out or swallow it.”
“Want to have a real relationship with a man, maybe fall in love? I see the way you look at couples on the street or in the mall when they’re holding hands or embracing. I see the look in your eyes. I know that look, because I see it in myself when I look in the mirror.”