I suppose she was, but as I grew older and felt Cary's shadow over my shoulder more and more, I began to wish he found some other girl to win his attention. I did my best to recommend this one or that, but nothing I said made him act any differently toward them. If anything, when I mentioned a possible girlfriend for him, that girl suddenly became ugly or stupid in his eyes. I realized it might be better if I just let nature take its course.
Only, nature didn't.
I used to think nature just missed Cary. She walked by one day while he was out on the lobster boat or something. Other boys his age were trying to get dates, hanging out in town, showing off to get a girl's attention, asking girls to do things with them; but Cary . . . Cary spent all his free time with me or his model boats upstairs in his attic workshop, a room just above mine.
Finally, one day at lunch I mentioned my growing concern to Theresa. She rolled her dark eyes and looked at me as if I had just been hatched.
"Don't you hear all the talk behind your back? All the whispering and gossip? There isn't a girl in this school who thinks Cary's normal, Laura; and most of the boys have their doubts about you. They don't talk to me about it, but I hear what they say."
"What do you mean? What sort of things are they saying about us?" I asked, trembling in
anticipation.
"They're saying you and your brother are like boyfriend and girlfriend, Laura," she replied hesitantly.
My heart skipped a beat and I remember looking around the cafeteria that day and thinking everyone was looking at us, their eyes full of contempt. I shook my head, the deeper realizations taking shape like some dark, ugly beast who had crawled out of a nightmare into my daytime thoughts.
"Look at you," Theresa continued. "You're fifteen now and one of the prettiest girls in this school, but do you have a boyfriend? No. Anyone asking you to the school dances? No. If you go, you go with Cary."
"But--"
"There are no buts, Laura. It's because of Cary," she said. "Because of the way he dotes on you. I'm sorry," she added. "I really thought you knew and didn't care."
"What am I going to do?" I moaned.
She nudged me with her shoulder like she usually did when she was going to say something nasty about one of the other girls in school.
"Get him a girlfriend who'll stir up his hormones and you'll be fine," she said.
I remember she got up to join her Brava friends and I sat there, suddenly feeling very alone and unhappy. Cary came walking into the cafeteria quickly, spotted me, and marched over.
"Sorry I'm late," he said. "Mr. Corkren kept me after class about my homework again. What's going on?" He looked closely at me when I didn't respond. "Did something happen?"
I just shook my head. I wondered how I could tell him and not hurt him.
I put it off and never really tried to make him understand until the year after, when Robert Royce and his family bought the old Sea Marina Hotel and Robert entered school.
For me and Robert, it was love at first sight and that brought with it a special kind of magic Cary couldn't share.
Somehow I had to make him understand and accept. I had to show him how to separate himself from me.
I only hoped it was possible.
1
Young Love
.
All day my heart had been beating faster than
normal, thumping so hard I was sure Cary heard the echo in my chest. When l walked, it was as if my feet didn't touch the ground. I was floating along on a cloud of air, bouncing with a spring in my step. I was positive I had woken this morning with a smile on my face, and sure enough when I looked at myself in my vanity table mirror, I saw my cheeks were flushed with excitement, the excitement of wonderful dreams that continued into my waking moments, dreams that carried me on a magical carpet like some Arabian princess floating through volumes and volumes of enchantment.
Everything around me took on a new and different glow. Colors I had grown used to were brighter, richer, sharper. Every normal sound became part of a grand symphony, whether it was simply the creak in the stairs as I descended to help Mommy with breakfast, or the clink of dishes and pans, the splash of water running in the sink, the opening and closing of the refrigerator and stove, or the tap of Daddy's, May's, and Cary's footsteps in the hallway, and all their voices. Their voices suddenly became a chorus behind the music.
"You look very nice today, dear," Mommy said at breakfast. Daddy glanced at me and nodded. I held my breath because I was wearing just a touch of lipstick, and Daddy hated makeup on a woman. He said it was the devil's touch and an honest woman never tried to fool a man by using paint on her face.
I had chosen my brightest blue dress with the white collar and I wore my gold charm bracelet, the one Mommy and Daddy had recently given me on my sixteenth birthday. They had given Cary an expensive pocket watch on a gold chain that played "Onward Christian Soldiers" when he flipped open its lid.