Machine Dreams (30 page)

“It’s not that,” she said slowly. “I can’t say I’ll get married.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I can’t say so. I can’t.” She shook her head.

He held her wrist tightly. “You don’t really love me, do you? Why don’t you tell me?”

“I do love you, I do so.” She turned her hand to grasp his arm, pleading. “Let’s not say it’s an engagement. What if my parents find out?”

“How would they find out?” he asked, sarcastic. “I suppose you’d tell them, so they’d keep me from seeing you.” He took the box from her angrily and put it on the dash in front of them. “Okay. To you it’s not an engagement ring. But to me it is. You just remember, when I’m at school. I’ll be away, but I’ll be thinking you’re mine.”

Miserably, she put her face in her hands.

He shook her gently, pulling her toward him. “You are,” he said, “you are mine. Don’t you know that yet?” He unbuttoned her blouse and put his hands inside, pushing the blouse apart and slipping her straps down over her shoulders. She arched up to move away and he put his arm around her waist, holding her tight against him.

She felt the hard buckle of his belt on her pubic bone and then he moved so it was just against her. He slipped his arm down under her hips. She put her hands at his shoulders, pushing him away, but she’d lost her balance and his weight forced them down
on the seat. They were both wordless, tense with exertion; he held her legs, flinging his thigh over them, and leaned across her upper chest, his entire weight on his arm. Danner heard herself panting. “You’re stronger than me,” she said bitingly. “Is that what you’re trying to prove?”

“You think I’m trying to rape you, Danner? Jesus, you can be stupid and tight-assed.” He tried to quiet his breathing. “Look, I’m not trying to fuck you. I’m not going to lose control and ram it into you—like I don’t know you, like I don’t care about you.”

Danner, so angry she was trembling, didn’t answer.

“Now you’re not going to talk to me.” Her skirt had worked up high around her hips. He pushed it gently higher. “Fine, don’t talk.”

“Don’t hold me down, Riley.” She had started to feel sick and weak inside, and her heart was pounding. “If you do, I won’t feel anything, I swear.”

“No?” He touched her very lightly, with the tips of his fingers, through the thin cotton of her underpants. She stopped struggling. He stroked her and there was silence, as though they’d both begun holding their breath in the same instant. He was watching her face. “Let me,” he whispered, “just with my hand. Let me show you.”

She couldn’t speak. Her eyes had filled with tears.

He shifted his body and pulled her skirt back down to cover her legs, then he lay on top of her as she embraced him. He moved against her and made no sound; tonight it took a long time but he kept pushing and pushing. It seemed to Danner they’d gone on like this for hours. Under him, she was sore from his hardness and she hated herself. She held him and wondered what would ever happen in her life: nothing could be worse than this, than what was happening to him and to her. He stiffened, still silently. When he moved away from her they looked at each other, defeated, then at his pants. He had chafed himself until he bled; the wetness on his white jeans was tinged with pink.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, and hugged her.

D
anner waited for Billy on the stone steps of Women’s Hall. The old dormitory was situated on a hill overlooking the Student Union; she’d see his Camaro approach from the bottom of the street. Even in Labor Day weekend traffic, his car was obvious—a shiny, four-year-old soft-top, white, with an orange racing stripe down the hood. No wonder he got so many speeding tickets. Cops expected a car like his to speed. Danner wouldn’t even smoke a joint in the Camaro; she was scared they’d get stopped. She wished Billy had gotten a room in town, but almost all the freshmen roomed at Towers, a new high-rise complex on South Campus.

She paced, restless. How would thay get through the next three days with their father? He would be moving out and Jean would be gone, to visit relatives in Ohio. She’d filed for divorce in mid-August, as soon as Billy and Danner had left for college. Danner had been urging her to go ahead all summer, and Billy wasn’t surprised.

No sense thinking about it now. She would have to go see Aunt Bess tomorrow, too. Bess wouldn’t even speak to Jean on the street anymore. How could Jean Hampson do such a thing? Put him out when he was nearly sixty, disabled, with nothing but a pension from the Veterans’ Administration. Jean had been over it all with Danner again and again. Nothing in common anymore but children; he’d contributed so little to the household for years; the new house was Jean’s responsibility anyway, since he’d refused to sign the papers. Besides, Jean would say, her voice shaking, she just couldn’t go on.

Guiltily, Danner was glad she didn’t live in Bellington anymore. She looked at rooftops. Across the street, starting at the top of the hill and running all the way to the bottom, was Fraternity Row. The houses were mostly turreted stone mansions; banners printed with rush slogans hung from the windows. Danner was glad she didn’t have a brother who’d join a fraternity. Then again, if he joined a frat he’d live across the street from her and never fail a test, because they all cheated. Billy would never cheat. He was too stubborn to cheat—or do much of anything he didn’t want to do. How would he manage in college? Required courses for freshmen were mostly big survey courses, one or two hundred students to a class. Danner had made a 3.9 her freshman year, but she’d sat in front rows of the big rooms and taken voluminous notes, then memorized them. She was afraid Billy wouldn’t go through all that just for grades, or answer questions in rooms so full of people.

“Danner!” He was standing beside the parked Camaro in the street below her, blond and solid, squinting against the sun. “You ready?” He was back behind the wheel by the time she was down the steps.

Danner got in. “Gee,” she said, pretending to look closely at him, “you’re cute. Are you a college guy?”

“Not me,” Billy said, comically stoic. He smelled faintly of a men’s cologne, and his skin was evenly golden. He’d let his hair grow during the summer and it hung just below his ears, wavy and fine-textured. Already it receded a little over his broad forehead. His hands on the steering wheel were square and capable, and the car itself was very clean. Blue tassels from his high school
cap-and-gown ceremony still hung from the radio knob. He opened and slammed his door, then locked it. “Lock your door, my sister.”

“Why? Are you going to fly all the way to Bellington like a maniac?”

He leaned toward her and placed one hand on her shoulder. “Look, if you ride with the chief, you side with the chief. I don’t like to lose passengers.”

She rolled her eyes in pretended exasperation but locked the door as he started the engine. “How was your first week at Towers, and registration? Wasn’t that a zoo?”

Billy nodded, checking his rearview mirror for a chance to ease into traffic. He found a spot and pulled out, then shifted in his seat, getting ready to thread between lanes and make it to the highway.

“Do you think you’ll like it here all right?” Danner looked down the hill and saw long lines of cars streaming onto High Street, the main thoroughfare that led downtown.

He shrugged. “The University is okay, but I just got out of school. If it weren’t for the draft, I wouldn’t be going to college. Not yet.”

She smiled. “What would you be doing?”

“Oh, bartending maybe. At some beach town where there’s a lot of girls in the summer and the winters are warm.” He grinned.

“Billy, keep your deferment while it lasts. Maybe your number in the lottery will be 365.”

“In December. A little Christmas present from Uncle Sam.” They were in the downtown crush now, and Billy drove slowly. “Did I tell you I got a letter from your old boyfriend? I was surprised. I bet I haven’t seen him since he went over there.”

“Riley? He wrote to you?” Danner wondered if Riley’s friends stayed in touch with him. Surely they did. “What did he say?”

“Nothing much. Hello to everyone and jokes about the rice paddies. He said to punch a peacenik for him.” Billy hit her playfully in the arm. “Maybe he meant you.”

“Probably did. But he couldn’t be mad at me anymore. Someone
told me he’s engaged to a girl from Lynchburg.” She shook her head. “Just think, Riley wasn’t even drafted. He enlisted and thought he was heroic. I don’t think it takes much to sign yourself up as cannon fodder.”

Light glanced off bright cars all around them. Horns honked. “That depends,” Billy said. “Might take about everything.”

Danner was silent a moment. “I know. I didn’t mean that.” She clinched her hands, remembering a box of Riley’s letters she’d put away in her closet at home. Four years ago he’d been a freshman himself, at Lynchburg, and wrote her every day. “I just meant it was easier for Riley, in a way, to join the army than to do well at school. He skipped most of his classes and drank beer with his buddies.”

“He’s not drinking much beer now.”

“That’s what’s awful. If he could have just marched and drunk beer, the whole thing would have been fine.” She glanced at Billy. He had his hand on the stick shift, and she reached to touch his wrist. “Billy, I hope you’re going to keep your grades up. Maybe they won’t do the lottery and the deferments will stay.”

They’d stopped at the last red light on High Street. Billy took his eyes from the road and looked at her. “You sound like Mom, except for the bit about deferments.”

“I am Mom,” Danner said teasingly.

Billy raised one eyebrow. “I wouldn’t tell Mitch if I were you, especially this weekend.”

“No, I won’t.” She crossed her arms and leaned back in the bucket seat. Suddenly she was tired.

“Mom went away this weekend, didn’t she?”

“She and Gladys went up to see Aunt Jewel in Ohio. If Mom were going to be around for this, I wouldn’t even be going home.”

Billy didn’t seem to be listening. “Christ, we’re out of that,” he said, accelerating and pulling onto the highway. “It takes half as long to get out of this traffic as it does to get to Bellington.” He rummaged in a box beside the driver’s seat. “Time to fire up the old tape deck. Now we’re going to cruise with Jimi Hendrix.” He clicked the 8-track into the player. “Hendrix is a vet. He jumped out of airplanes.”

Hendrix’s “Star Spangled Banner” vibrated through the car as they left the emptying town behind. The Camaro moved fast and smoothly in the passing lane. Danner felt totally safe with Billy. She shut her eyes and heard the loud song: a translation into a language deciphered in darkness. How could anyone play an instrument like that? Even the silences between notes were full. The peals of the lone guitar were shaped like words, and each shrilled its own tremolo, a sound coming back and coming back.

She slept dreamlessly, and when she woke they were in Bellington. She sat up slowly, disoriented. “What happened to Hendrix?”

“Gone a long time ago,” Billy said. “I was tempted to drive to Myrtle Beach and surprise you, but instead we’re home.”

They were driving up Quality Hill, and Danner saw red-tipped leaves in the crowns of the overhanging oaks. Lower, greener limbs moved slightly upward as cars passed a few feet under them. The street was pretty and made her sad. “You want to go to the ocean? Maybe we should.”

“It’s not too late. We could drive as far as the car will go, then get out and walk until we see surf.”

“Sounds good.”

He turned onto their street. Mitch’s big Chevrolet was parked in front of the house, the trunk open. Inside were two big cardboard boxes, neatly taped shut, and a set of golf clubs.

“I never knew he had golf clubs,” Danner said softly.

Billy pulled up at the house. A 1950s torch song spilled out of the radio. He put the car in neutral and they sat still, the engine idling.

Danner gazed up at the brick house. Her father must have packed his clothes that morning. How long had it taken? Two hours? Tomorrow Billy would borrow a pickup from a friend and move Mitch’s desk and file cabinet out of the basement to a bedroom in Bess’s house.

“We may as well go in,” Billy said. He turned the ignition off. In front of them the blacktopped street was sunny and well kept. The lawns of the houses were trimmed. Everything was in place.

Danner turned and looked at her brother. “This weekend won’t always matter the way it does now,” she said.

Danner had made supper and done the dishes. They hadn’t talked about the divorce over dinner; Mitch made only a few short, bitter references. Mostly they talked about Billy’s car and his car insurance payments, food at the dorms, University parking fees. Mitch said he wasn’t surprised at the fees—they were out to make money off kids at the University any way they could. Billy and Danner exchanged glances; Jean was paying their tuition and fees. Billy mentioned that home football games were free for freshmen. After they finished eating, he left to meet friends at the Tap Room.

Danner stayed in the kitchen and dried silverware. She wondered what her mother was doing right now—talking to Aunt Jewel? Jean would be rubbing her hands; she got a painful rash on her hands when she was upset. She’d had blisters on her fingers for weeks. Danner wiped the counter clean and hung the damp dish towel over a cabinet door. The house was quiet. The evening had only started. She heard Mitch moving about in the bedroom, putting things in a box, and felt she was sealed into some inviolable space with her father: everyone else was miles away. She heard him behind her then and turned.

“Do you want this, Miss?” Mitch held out a folded newspaper, then opened it to display the top of the front page. The headlines were in caps:
TWO STEP ON MOON, ARMSTRONG PILOTS BEYOND BOULDERS.
“I was saving it in there,” he said, nodding toward the bedroom.

Danner took the paper. “You sure you don’t want to keep this?”

“Well, you keep it.” He turned, walking back to the bedroom.

“Okay, if you want me to.”

She sat down at the kitchen table. July 20. The yellowing edges of the paper were already beginning to curl, and the colors of the photo were altering. Danner had watched the moon launch with her parents. Where had Billy been—hadn’t he and Kato broken up in the spring? Apollo 11 took off and the cameras had zoomed in on the wafting explosion of the Saturn rockets under
it. The smoke was white on color TV, thick and rippling; it filled the screen like a close-up of a furious waterfall. Then a shot from far away: the silent, conical shape ascending, chased by flame. No one in the room had spoken.