Cast a Pale Shadow (22 page)

Everywhere, Nicholas worked the magic of capturing light and shadow, sunshine and smiles so that these luminous times would never fade from her memory. As if they ever could. He let her in the darkroom at the camera shop after school so she could see the magic work. He bought her a camera of her own and taught her to use it, whispering instructions in her ear as he positioned her body in the perfect stance.

"Keep your elbows tucked into your side but not too close. Relax and let the tension melt out of your arms. Keep your knees slightly flexed, legs apart for steadiness, one foot forward but with your weight distributed evenly on both."

"Is this photography or ballet?"

"Art," he whispered in her ear, sending shivers swirling through her.

But she did not have his power. She could see the beauty, but she could not capture it. It seemed she was chasing the rainbow's end. And he held it right on the tip of his fingers.

"Do you see this captivating girl with eyes like smokey skies? Do you see how she smiles for me so that it seems you can look into the corners of her soul?"

The picture he had handed her was of herself, leaning against the pillars of the Jefferson Memorial, wearing a flower-decked bonnet he had bought her at an antique shop. She shook her head, as if to deny the face that glowed with happiness was hers. "Your camera flatters her. She's not so beautiful as you made her look."

"The camera only sees what I let it see."

Her training with the camera preceded more erratically than her other apprenticeship. If it seemed she had no aptitude for photography, she could not say that about kissing. If she never touched a shutter release again-- "Press gently," Nicholas said, "Never poke or jab." --it would not bother her one bit.

But that was not true of Nicholas' kisses.

With each one, she wanted more, deeper, longer, sweeter, until it had to stop before her heart did. Like a wizard, Nicholas sent little charges through the tips of his fingers as they pressed into her hair behind her ears when their lips first touched. The charges tingled down her neck until they reached major arteries then sizzled through her veins, making them live wires. He seemed to know just when the mingling of touch and mouth and tongue were becoming too much for her and amid the chaos, he was the one who could pull back. He was the one who would stop to rest, forehead against forehead, eyes closed, until her spasmodic breathing had achieved normalcy.

Then he was the one to start kissing again, not mouths this time, but ears and cheeks and tip of nose, chin and neck and collarbone. And he was the one who set the rules... no kissing on the bed, no unfastening buttons, no asking for more when the partner said stop. He apparently knew his limits. She wished she knew hers. Never once had she been the one to say stop.

In bed, their blanket wall had been breached the night following her exams when she had snuck her hand underneath to twine her fingers with his. She had thought he was asleep, but he groaned as if he were in pain when her skin touched his skin. Static electricity, she guessed, though she had not felt the shock. Without speaking, he folded his fingers around the back of her hand and his thumb stroked the juncture where her thumb met her palm.

The next night the blanket wall was not built at all. Instead she slept under the sheets and the tartan coverlet, and he on top, wearing his terry robe knotted closed like armor and using their former barrier to keep his ankles and toes warm. With this arrangement, she could snuggle up beside him. And sometimes they would reach morning nestled so close that she could sneak a kiss before he awoke and realized that they were on the bed and she was breaking the rules.

If her new life posed any jeopardy to her school career, it was in the daydreams that Nicholas' restraint forced on her. She supposed he waited for some signal, and daily, she pondered what it was and how to give it. Such thinking could strike her during geometry and she would totally lose the point of some theorem, or during World History and whole decades could drop from the march of time.

Most welcome of all was when the daydreams overcame her in the library, and she could surrender in her struggle to understand the symbolism in Joseph Conrad's
Heart of Darkness
, and absorb herself in the mysteries of how to surrender to a man who seemed determined not to let her. She was deep in this reverie that afternoon when she heard someone call her name from very far away.

"Teresa. Teresa Kirk." the voice was like a dash of cold water in her face. She looked up to see one of the library aids beckoning her from the desk. "Aren't you Teresa Kirk?"

Still muddled by the abrupt end to her imagined seduction, Trissa bolted to her feet, nearly tripping over her purse in the aisle. "Yes."

"Take your books. There's an urgent message for you at the Student Resource Center."

"Yes, okay."

The Student Center was two blocks west of the library. Trissa used the journey to compose herself, to wipe all evidence of her pleasant, if unacceptably carnal, thoughts from her brain. Her mind flicked over the possible reasons she could be called to the student center in the middle of the day and tried to convince herself it was for advisement and nothing else.

She entered the building and turned a corner heading toward the office. A notebook slid off the stack of books she held clutched against her. She reached to rescue it and ran right into a man bent over the water fountain.

"Sorry, I --
Daddy
!" Her heart squeezed and tumbled inside of her, and she didn't know if she should scream or run.

"Teresa, darling, we've been so worried about you, your mother and I."

"I'm fine," was all that squeaked out of her. She had the brief, preposterous notion that that was all he wanted from her, to see she was all right, to know that she still lived, and could go on living without his help. She wished it were that simple.

"I saw your report card. They mailed it to the house. You must be working hard."

"Yes. May I go now?"

"Go? I thought you'd come with me. We could go to lunch. I need to talk to you." He exuded that hypnotic charm that fooled all the women. Like a snake just before it struck.

"I can't. I already ate. I have an assignment to turn in this afternoon."

His teeth showed white, but it wasn't a smile. With deliberate slowness, he drew his thumb down the path of his scar, a trail that ended with his palm flattened over his heart. "Oh, but sweetheart, this is your father. Assignments can be made up."

The cross hatches of his scar burned into her eyes, like the flashing afterimages of the track she'd fled along. She closed her eyes and willed them away. The effort made her voice thin and tremulous. "I'm not your sweetheart. And as far as I am concerned, I have no father."

"See, I knew this would happen if we let this little misunderstanding between us fester into something worse. We have to talk things over, put them behind us, so we can go on." Never once did his cool, measured tone falter. Only the narrowing of his eyes revealed his growing impatience with her resistance. He reached out to take her arm. She ducked away from him.

"It could not get any worse and talking won't make it any better. I won't go with you today or ever. I have a new life now." She should have turned and fled from him then, denied him once and for always.

"Yes, your advisor, Miss Royal, told me all about your Uncle Pete. I didn't tell her I knew of no such relation. You didn't cool those round heels of yours long, did you, girl?" This time when he reached for her, he made sure he had her backed against a wall. There was no escape. He gripped her arm so tightly it brought tears to her eyes.

"Whoever this Romeo of yours is, I'll find him. And when I do, I'll teach him not to kidnap and seduce girls away from their families. And when I'm through with him, the police can have what they can scrape off the sidewalk. Do I make myself clear, Teresa Marie?"

"Yes, sir."

"Now, I'll give you a chance to prove yourself and perhaps save me and your boyfriend from a little unpleasantness. Come home tomorrow after you're finished here, but don't go in the house. Your mother and I are not currently residing together. You have succeeded in tearing apart a marriage of thirty years with your foolishness.

"But if you and I can settle some things, it could all work out fine. I'll meet you in the alley. If you are not there by five, I'm coming after you. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

Trissa watched him leave, wishing him dead. Then she took herself to the nurse's office and threw up. Afterwards, she couldn't relinquish her grip on the cold porcelain. She didn't trust her legs to hold her up without that support. Mrs. Rowan, the health aid on duty, offered to call for a ride. Trissa had to dig in her purse for Augusta's number. She was too rattled to remember it.

*****

Augusta's voice held brittle cheer when she called Nicholas with the message. Trissa had come home sick from school, but not to worry, a little stomach upset was all. She had sent her off to bed with tea and Saltine crackers. Nicholas hung up the phone and repeated the words to himself. They had sounded politely false, like an excuse used to turn down an invitation to a dull party. When Ben came in a few minutes later to work on the books, he asked him if he could leave for the day. It was no problem, Wednesdays were slow, and it was just an hour to closing.

 He smoked three cigarettes on the way home, letting the smoke drift heavily through the car, hoping the soft haze would dull his worry. Over the past two weeks, his constant yearning for Trissa played like a screeching melody on the taut bowstrings of his restraint. It was a tune that was both sweetened and sharpened by her presence.

Every morning, "I love you, Trissa" was his first waking thought, never voiced, while the soft, creamy shell of her ear was cuddled so close to his lips that she would have heard him, however faint the words. She seemed to regard his arms as extra pillows, seeking him out to nestle in them, no matter how far he edged to his side of the bed. If she woke before him, as she often did, she would wake him with a kiss that gave him pain to feel and know that it was all he could allow. He'd have to crash away from her, muttering a grumpy good morning, and shuffling off to the bathroom where he drew his bath as numbingly cold as he could stand it.

In his dreams, he held her and loved her as if the shadows of her past were long forgotten. But in his waking, reasoned thoughts, he knew that they were not, and he feared that he would damage their tenuous hold on the moment if he went too far, too fast. He must count on time to heal her.

Time, his old enemy. And more so now than ever. Augusta's phone call had set the clock ticking loudly, knocking at his brain like a visitor that would not be denied entry. A little stomach upset, she said. Why must he torment himself with the suspicion that she was hiding something more?

Augusta greeted him at the back door, and he knew his suspicions were true. She stepped out of the kitchen where Ruth chopped onions at the sink to talk to him privately.

"Nicholas, I'm so glad you came home. She wouldn't let me tell you anything more than I did. But I'm afraid there is something terribly wrong." Augusta reached out and grasped his hand urgently.

"Did you call a doctor?"

"It's not like that. I mean, I don't think a doctor could help."

"But she was sick?"

"Anxiety, I think. I checked on her a bit ago, and it's clear she's been crying, probably ever since I left her." Her hand fluttered to her forehead to flick at a wiry strand of hair. "Oh, Nicholas, I'm so worried. She looks as if the world might end, and she might welcome it."

Panic welled in him like a seeping wound. An image of Trissa's face as she knelt on the railroad tracks harrowed him. "And you left her alone?" He pushed past her into the kitchen and bolted up the stairs.

"She wouldn't let me stay," Augusta called after him. "I'm sorry."

Trissa had locked the room, as she almost never did. She had told him once that real families had no need of locks. Nicholas fumbled in his pocket for his keys, cursing the delay. From inside, he heard the bath water running.

"Trissa! Trissa, answer me!" But there was no answer. When at last, he got the bent, old key to do its work, he opened the door to find the room a shambles. Every drawer was yanked out. The closet door stood open. Empty hangers littered the floor. Trissa's old record player lay smashed on the floor, her precious 45's dumped out of their case and into the waste can.

"Trissa!" The bathroom door was ajar, but no light was visible. The room was silent, too silent. He pushed the door open. Balanced on the closed toilet seat was her suitcase, filled with all her belongings, her brush and combs, her cosmetics and hair dryer all a jumble on the top layer. Otherwise, the room was empty, or seemed that way.

"Trissa?" The total silence that answered him nearly broke his heart. But just as he turned to leave the room he found her there, in the space below the bottom shelf, curled into that small space, kneeling on the tile floor. When he reached for her hand to pull her out, her face was puffy and red from crying.

"You weren't supposed to find me." Her voice was barely audible, as if she could hide herself inside it.

"Oh, Trissa, what's wrong?" He helped her to her feet and gathered her into his arms.

"Everything. Nothing." She cried and clung to him with a tangible desperation.

Nicholas freed one arm from her tenacious hug and led her out of the bathroom. "What were you doing? Why were you packing?" He sat on the bed and pulled her into his lap. "What is this?" A purplish-red bruise banded her left arm. Half moon gouges broke the skin where fingernails had dug in. "Who hurt you like this, Trissa?"

"He came to school. They called me down, and he was there," she said in a dull monotone, as if all hope had been stolen from her.

"Who? Your father?"

She nodded her head against his chest, and his grip tightened so suddenly, she gasped then relaxed, burrowing deeper. "He says I broke up the family. He wants me to come home. I can't. I won't."