The Unwelcomed Child Read online

  “Don’t worry,” he added. “I won’t hang around and look over your shoulder while you draw. I was thinking, Myra, that we should get her some watercolors. We did that for Deborah.”

  “Wasted money.”

  “Won’t be for Elle,” Grandfather Prescott insisted. “She’ll need the brushes and, what do you call that thing for holding the painting while you work on it?”

  “An easel,” I said.

  “Yes, right. She’ll need one of those, too.”

  “Don’t go overboard, Prescott,” Grandmother Myra said. “You were always jumping to buy whatever Deborah fancied for the moment.”

  “Elle isn’t as flippant,” he said.

  She looked at me. “Let’s pray not,” she muttered.

  I cleared the table when we were finished and washed and dried the dishes, while Grandmother Myra put things away. Then I went right to my schoolwork. A little more than an hour later, I looked up to see her standing in my doorway.

  “Your grandfather says you should come out to watch a public television program on some artist named Renoir,” she said.

  “Renoir?”

  “That’s what he says.”

  “Okay. Thank you,” I said, putting my papers and books away. Renoir was the artist Mason Spenser had mentioned. I was eager to see that picture he had mentioned, too.

  I followed her into the living room.

  “It’s just starting,” Grandfather Prescott said, and I sat on the sofa. All I could think was that if I happened to speak to Mason Spenser again, I would at least have something sensible to say and not look like such a fool.

  Later, when I went to bed, I thought about both of them. Mason had attracted me from the moment I had first set eyes on him at the restaurant, but there was something about Claudine that also fascinated me. I really didn’t know the difference between what was a sophisticated person and what wasn’t, but I imagined she would be thought of as sophisticated. She seemed so sure of herself. I envied her confidence and wondered if she laughed about me later, telling Mason I was a country bumpkin.

  He seemed to like me. I could feel that in the way he looked and smiled at me and the way he tried to stop her from hurting my feelings. I was certain he really did want to see me again. Would he row over by himself if she didn’t want to see me? From what he had said, I gathered that they didn’t know anyone their age here. She had no girlfriends, and he had no buddies. When they were here, they spent all their time together. Maybe he was just bored with that. Maybe I was just a curiosity, and once he had spoken to me more, he would realize I was too different from the girls he knew, and that would be that.

  I hadn’t really looked at their summer home when I saw them on the dock, but from what little they had told me about themselves, I was sure they were rich. They went to a private school and had a summer home. She was only wearing a towel, but there was no question in my mind that she had very nice clothes, beautiful and expensive clothes. She probably ridiculed what I was wearing and everything else about me.

  And yet I couldn’t help but want to know her, to talk to her and learn things. I had little, really nothing and no one, to judge them against, but for now, they were the most interesting young people I had ever seen either in stores or on television. I began to fantasize about being with them, and this excited me more than I anticipated. What if I could swim and did go swimming naked with them? Could I be as casual about it as they were? The very thought of it kept me from falling asleep for the longest time. I had to finger my large cross to stop myself from all this forbidden fantasizing.

  When I awoke in the morning and hurried out to the kitchen to have breakfast and start my chores as soon as I could, I felt my heart sink in a pool of disappointment. The sky was heavily overcast, and it looked as if it might start pouring any moment. It depressed my spirit. I didn’t work with any enthusiasm. There was no question my grandmother wouldn’t permit me to go into the woods. Grandfather Prescott was complaining about some aches and pains as soon as he was up, so there was no question that he wouldn’t want to go for a walk in the woods.

  “I can always tell when it’s going to rain,” he said. “My lower back lets me know.”

  Grandmother Myra didn’t say very much. She went over the schoolwork I had done and told me I had done well. She wrote out some other reading assignments and some math assignments.

  “Looks like you’ll have most of the day now to do your schoolwork,” she said.

  It did rain but not anywhere as much as we thought or as heavily. A little after two o’clock, the sun sliced through some thinning clouds, and not twenty minutes later, more clear blue sky appeared. I had been checking on the weather all day before that. Before I had a chance to ask, however, she slammed down my hopes.

  “It’s too wet in the woods. You’ll muddy your shoes and come down with something for sure.”

  “I can be careful,” I said. “If it’s too muddy, I’ll come right back.”

  “They always say the rain clears the air, Myra,” Grandfather Prescott piped up. “She’s not made of paper.”

  “I finished the work you gave me,” I told her.

  “You ruin those shoes, and you’ll have to walk around here barefoot to teach you a lesson, missy,” she said.

  “My goodness, Myra, the girl’s only going out in nature to draw. She’s not running off to meet some of her wild girlfriends or something,” he said.

  “I’m trying to decide whether or not she has good judgment, Prescott. I’m letting her make the decision. Well?”

  She looked at me to see what I would say. Should I say she was right and not go out? I knew what she expected. She expected me to be like my mother when she was my age and whine or be stubborn.

  “I can wait for a nicer day. Grandmother is right,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “You wanted to go get some groceries, Myra,” Grandfather Prescott said, rising. “You want Elle to go along?”

  “I don’t need her. We don’t need that much,” she said.

  “Well, at least let her go onto the back porch,” he told her. “A growing girl needs fresh air.”

  “If she wants,” she said.

  I didn’t see what good that would do me, but I didn’t want to seem ungrateful. The truth was, it would be more painful to step outside and not be able to go through the woods to the lake than it would be to shut myself up in the house. It would be like dangling a piece of bread in front of a starving person who could see it but not reach it.

  Nevertheless, I got my pad and pencils, put on a light sweater, which was a hand-me-down from Grandmother Myra’s wardrobe, and went out to sit on the small porch. It wasn’t much more than six by twelve under a roof. There were two redwood chairs on it. There wasn’t room for anything more. Grandmother Myra went out before me and wiped down one of the chairs. She gazed around the yard for a moment, as if she wanted to be sure there was nothing out there to corrupt me.

  “We’ll be back in about an hour,” she said. “I’m planning on making a pot roast tonight.”

  I nodded and opened my pad. She stood there a few moments and went back inside. Not ten minutes later, I heard Grandfather Prescott start up the car. I gazed at the yard. Stepping off the porch and onto the wet grass seemed as forbidden to me as eating the fruit was to Adam in the Garden of Eden. It was as if Grandmother Myra had drawn a line in the sand and said, “Cross this, and you’ll go straight to hell.”

  Defiance flared up inside me. I rose from the chair, went down the short stairway, and reached out with my right leg from the bottom step just to touch the grass with the tip of my foot.

  “Come on in. The water’s warm,” I heard, and leaped back, nearly falling over the steps.

  There he was at the edge of the woods.

  5

  He wore a light blue sweater and jeans and was alone. He stood so still, with not a strand of his long light brown hair fluttering in the soft breeze. For a moment, I thought he might be an illusion, wishful
thinking that had materialized. Then he started toward the house, and I debated rushing inside and closing the door or stepping off the porch and chasing him away. He paused, perhaps seeing the panic in my face.

  “You all right?”

  “Yes. You just shocked me,” I said.

  “I’m a shocking guy.” He stood there smiling. “I thought the rain kept you from going into the woods and decided to look for you.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Maybe I need an artist. Maybe I just wanted to see you again. Maybe I’m a serial killer. Which one do you think?”

  “Serial killer,” I said, and he laughed.

  “There, you do have a sense of humor. It’s a little hidden but still there.”

  Did I? I wondered. Laughter was an infrequent visitor to my grandparents’ house. Whenever it did occur, I first questioned what I had heard. Had it happened? Was my grandmother actually laughing at something? When I saw her laughing, I saw how it changed her face, softened her eyes, relaxed her lips, and made her look younger. It was as if she could ride on the back of a laugh and return to happier days. There was magic in that, I thought, so yes, I wanted to have a sense of humor very much.

  “It’s not that wet, you know, and the day’s turned out to be very nice,” he said, holding his arms up as though he could catch the sun’s rays in the palms of his hands. “Can you come out to play?”

  “Play?”

  “Ding. Joke,” he said. “Remember that sense of humor.” He shook his head at my dumb expression but kept the soft smile on his face. The sunlight highlighted the soft blue in his eyes. “Claudine said she thought you were too serious. She has all sorts of theories about it and is as interested in you as I am. Well, maybe not as much.”

  “She met me for only a few minutes and concluded I was too serious?” That sounded like a doctor looking at someone and saying, “You have pneumonia.”

  “Don’t worry about it. A few hours with us, and you’ll change completely,” he said.

  Would I? What if I did? Wouldn’t that be dangerous? Wouldn’t Grandmother Myra see that immediately, too, and question why?

  “C’mon. Let’s take a little walk, unless you want to invite me to sit with you on your back porch and watch you draw. Maybe you’ll draw me this time. I can sit very quietly if I have to.”

  “No,” I said a little too quickly.

  “I’m not that bad-looking.”

  “No, I mean I’ll take a walk.”

  I looked back at the house fearfully, as if I thought it would report everything to my grandmother, and then I stepped off the porch and walked to him slowly, taking great care to avoid any puddles.

  “I can stay out only a half hour,” I said. “I have chores.”

  “Chores?”

  “Things to do to help make dinner.”

  “Oh. You’re a cook, too?”

  “I can make things, but my grandmother mainly does the cooking.”

  He looked back at the house. “How long have your grandparents lived here?”

  “Years and years.”

  “It looks like one of the much older houses. Are they still working?”

  “No. He had a mattress factory and sold it to retire.”

  “Did you work there?”

  “No,” I said, laughing. “I wasn’t old enough before he retired.”

  “So they’re no spring chickens,” he said, still looking at the house.

  “No what?”

  “Young. They’re not young grandparents. My grandparents are only in their sixties. My father’s father still works in the law firm part-time.”

  “Oh.”

  “So what happened to your parents?” he asked.

  “I don’t like to talk about it,” I said.

  “Sorry.” He looked down quickly.

  “Where’s Claudine?” I asked.

  That brought a smile back to his face. “She is wrapped up in her karaoke.”

  “Her what?”

  “Karaoke. We have one of those machines. You know,” he said when I didn’t show any recognition, “where you sing along? You have a microphone and act like you’re really the main singer. You never did karaoke?”

  I shook my head. I could just imagine his reaction if I told him I didn’t even have a CD player or a radio.

  “You’ll have to come over to try it,” he said. “Sure you can only stay out a half hour? It’s early.”

  “I have other things to do in the house.”

  “You’re not an indentured servant, are you?”

  “What? Oh. How could I be?”

  “Just kidding.”

  I looked down at my shoes. The wet grass had stained them a little. If I could get to dry ground, I might be all right, I thought. He saw my concern.

  “We could go around front and walk on the road. It’s dry. If you follow the street for another mile or so and turn right, you come to our summer home. I could show you the way.”

  “No, I don’t have time for that,” I said.

  He shrugged and then nodded at my pad, again pressed against my breasts like a book of secrets. “Let’s see some of your drawings.”

  “I only just started one,” I said. “Yesterday.”

  “Of us in the raw? Was Claudine right?”

  “No,” I said quickly.

  He laughed. “What, then?”

  I slowly opened the pad and showed him the doe.

  “This is pretty good. You going to paint it?”

  “I think so. My grandfather wants to buy me watercolors, brushes, and an easel.”

  “You don’t have any of that stuff yet?”

  I shook my head. “They just found out that I like to draw.”

  He stared at me a moment, a small smile on his lips and brightness in his eyes. I had to look away. His gaze was doing all sorts of things inside me that made me blush.

  “Just found out? What, were you doing it in secret or something?”

  “Something.”

  He smiled. “You’re really quite a surprise to me, too,” he said.

  “Isn’t that good?”

  He stared at me a moment and then laughed. “I think Claudine has underestimated you. She thinks that just because you’re being homeschooled, you’re not very smart, but I think she’s wrong. How can you be homeschooled now? Who’s homeschooling you?”

  “My grandmother was a teacher,” I said.

  “Aha. I knew it. It’s like continuous home tutoring, not that I would want that. Don’t you want to go to a school where you’re with other kids your age? Being homeschooled makes it hard for you to have friends, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why do they want you to be homeschooled so long?”

  “They wanted to avoid any trouble,” I said.

  “From what?”

  I stopped walking. Surprised, he stopped and looked at me.

  “From everything,” I said. How could I tell him that my grandmother once believed that if I was permitted to attend public school, I would corrupt other little girls and bring disdain and blame on them?

  “Everything?” He thought a moment. “Something terrible happened to you or your parents, and that’s made them cautious?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, what are they, crazy paranoids?”

  I knew that word from my vocabulary list and had thought that about them myself often, but it wasn’t something I dared even suggest. “I’ve got to get back. Sorry,” I added, and turned around.

  “Hey.”

  I paused to look back at him.

  “It’s supposed to be really nice tomorrow. Come to where you were yesterday by the lake, and I’ll pick you up and give you a rowboat ride, okay? Can you be there?”

  “Maybe.”

  “When?”

  “After lunch.”

  “When’s that?”

  “Two o’clock.” I didn’t want to explain about cleaning up before I could go out.

  “Long lunch. I’ll be there wa
iting for you,” he said.

  I didn’t say anything. Better not promise him, I thought, even though the whole idea excited me. I walked back to the house carefully. My shoes were still stained by the wet grass. After I stepped up onto the back porch, I turned and saw that he was still there, smiling.

  “Be there or be square!” he shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth.

  I hurried inside, afraid that he would stay there too long and my grandparents would return and see him. Luckily, they weren’t here when he came. My grandmother would have heard him for sure.

  Once inside, I caught my breath and then pulled off my shoes quickly. Just wiping them wasn’t going to be enough, so I threw them into the clothes dryer. It worked, and I slipped them on just minutes before I heard my grandfather turn into the driveway. I went out to help them carry in the groceries.

  Grandmother Myra looked me over. I could see she was anticipating some evidence of my disobeying her and walking off the back porch. Finding none, she nodded her approval at me.

  “Turning out to be a nice day,” Grandfather Prescott said. “Looks good for tomorrow.”

  I smiled to myself as I carried in two bags and helped my grandmother put everything away. While we worked, she went on and on about a girl they had seen at the supermarket.

  “Not a day older than you, I imagine, and with a ring in her nose! Where are her parents? Do you see why I’m nervous about you attending a public school? It’s like the end of the world out there.”

  “Did you add anything to your drawing?” my grandfather asked, coming into the kitchen to get her off the subject, I imagine.

  “No. It’s harder not being in the woods, where I saw her.”

  “Tomorrow, then,” he said. “When you find something good to mine in yourself, something beautiful you feel, you go at it fully. Isn’t that right, Myra?” he said, deliberately, to make her comment. She just grunted, but he smiled and nodded at me.

  Whenever I could during dinner preparations, I glanced out the back windows to see if Mason had returned. I feared that he would think he could come knocking on our door to see me again so he could be sure I would show up tomorrow at the lake. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to tell him he should never do that. It would either drive him away, because he would think I didn’t want him to, or cause him to see me as so strange that he’d better stay away.