He groaned, rose, and went into my bathroom. While he was in there, I went to one of my windows and looked out at the driveway and the gate, at the lights and the stars. Every time I was with Aaron, I felt myself moving closer and closer to that moment. I wasn’t totally blinded by the light in his eyes and the passion raging inside me. How do you decide when and with whom to do it? Very likely, there was someone else out there for me when I grew older. Aaron was going off to college next year. Even if we vowed to be faithful to each other and Aaron was as sincere as I was, there was so much out there that would challenge such a promise. I knew that.
What if he found someone else while he was in college? And what if I found someone else when I went to college? Would it matter to whoever fell in love with me that I wasn’t a virgin? Would his view of me change enough to diminish his feelings for me? Would I regret having given myself to someone who would not mean that much to me years from now? Did my mother have these thoughts when she was my age? When did she lose her virginity? Was it with my father?
It wasn’t enough to talk about it with other girls, even Lila. Deep inside, I was skeptical of anything any of them said. We were competing with one another too much for male attention, whether we would admit it or not. Everyone would lie or embellish just to look more sophisticated. My mother was the only other woman I could trust, and she was gone.
Everyone thought that losing your parents was the worst for you when you were young, but that wasn’t true. I had never needed my mother as much as I needed her right now. I took a deep breath and nodded to myself. What decisions you make, Clara Sue Sanders, you really make yourself from now until forever. You have lost the luxury of being able to blame someone else. That was really what becoming an adult meant. Why were we all so eager for that to happen?
I turned when I heard Aaron coming out of the bathroom. He looked like he had washed his face in cold water, even his hair.
He shook his head at the surprise on my face. “I felt like a stick of dynamite with a lit wick,” he said, and laughed.
“Sorry.”
“Okay,” he said, slapping his hands together and rubbing his palms. “I have a plan.”
“Plan? For what?” Did he mean our making love? When and where?
“For the investigation, silly. I want to help you discover who he is, where he’s from, and what happened to him so you can get rid of him,” he replied, as if it was obvious. “That’s why I was doing all that downstairs.”
“Is that what you were doing?”
“Of course. I thought you could see that. I was winning his trust. That’s what we’ll do together. We’ll do a lot better than the psychiatrist and the nurse,” he said. He lay back against one of my oversized pillows. “I’ll be over more often, too, and when we can do it, we’ll take him for some rides or something, so we get as much private time with him as we can, see? We just won’t be obvious about our reasons. We’ll just come off as sincerely concerned about him. He’ll believe it, too, and he’ll open up.”
“Aren’t you the schemer,” I said.
“Who isn’t? Even him, maybe. You thought that was possible, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know about that anymore.”
He smiled. “See? He’s winning you over, too.”
“He’s not winning me over. Dr. Patrick says he can’t be that clever at that age, and I think she knows a little more about it than you do.”
“Don’t believe it. I was that conniving at his age, especially when it came to handling my mother or getting my father to loosen up the rules. I still am. How do you think I got my new car so soon?”
“Don’t you think that’s wrong? They’re your parents, your family.”
“What’s wrong? Getting what you want?” He raised his arms.
“It’s like lying to them, Aaron.”
“It’s the American way,” he said, and laughed. Then he looked at his expensive watch and leaped up.
“What now??
?
“We’d better go down so your grandfather can show me his pictures and plaques. He said he wants me to tell my father all about them. I know why, even though I’m playing innocent.”
I looked up at him as he smiled wryly at me. I wanted to do everything he was suggesting, but I felt guilty about it now. Surely my Count Piro was betrayed by people who should have loved and protected him. If we did something like that to him, too, we might hurt him beyond repair.
And yet even having these feelings of conscience made me feel even guiltier, for after all, I was not thinking of Willie. Wasn’t it my original purpose to get Count Piro out of our lives because it kept us from mourning Willie as we should?
Aaron was probably right. We could make more progress with Count Piro than my grandfather, Dorian, or even Dr. Patrick. It was so much easier to fool children, because the world looked so simple to them. There were good things and bad, ugly and beautiful, bitter and sweet, and never once until they were old enough to understand could they imagine anything being both. Black and white turned to gray. Hesitation and distrust were born with the loss of innocence.
My eyes brightened with a thought.
Maybe all that had already happened to my Count Piro. Maybe he wasn’t terrified by memories as much as he was terrified of what was in the future. Once he felt safe, he would tell everything.