The Savage Innocent 2015

He looked at me again while he sized me up.

"23 wide right, slant right, on two." He winked at me while he repeated the play. "You ready, slick?" he said while we clapped and broke the huddle.

"Betcha," I managed to croak before running up to the line.

On the snap. I bolted straight downfield and faked left, then shot for the sideline and the far corner of the end zone. I knew I had their cornerback beat; all I had to worry about was their safety. As I looked over my left shoulder I caught sight of the ball; it was right there, rifling straight at my face. I jumped and turned at the same time; the ball drilled into my chest like a missile -- which was a good thing because the force of the throw knocked me into the end zone and out of the defensive safety's otherwise well-placed sights. I tumbled into the end zone, ball still in hand, and landed on my back. Stars in my eyes, I marveled at the very idea of being alive on such a glorious afternoon; I lay there stunned and happy and listened to the crowd go wild. All in all, it was quite a feeling.

Rand was standing over me moments later looking down, concern clear in his eyes.

"You all right, Moron?"

"Fine, Cheesedick. Help me up."

He smiled at me and everything was right with our little world.

The rest of the game was a little anti-climactic. The kids from Wisconsin put up a pretty good fight, but they had never scouted Rand; in effect they never knew what hit 'em and went down not in flames -- more like cooling embers. It was a lopsided score and there's no need to humiliate them again, so let's just leave it at that.

+++++

The gym was transformed for the dance into a yawning arabesque; vast billowing streamers of crepe paper hung from girders and pulsing waves of light -- amethyst and vermillion clouds, really, or so they seemed -- left frenzied shadows from wall to wall. Music I'd never heard before -- King Crimson's '21st Century Schizoid Man', if memory serves -- washed over a solid writhing mass of crew-cut cadets and hip-chicks in flowing Antebellum gowns. I knew enough about the world to understand the scene had slipped from mere irony to something like a skit from Rowan & Martin's Laugh-in: I was watching our country's future military leaders mingle in a landscape straight out of a painting by Dali -- or Hieronymus Bosch. Everything was just so weird, all of it.

And then there was my fragile sister, hanging on my arm as we walked into those pulsing waves of light. Oh, how excited she was! But I never saw the knife-edge she walked on in her long grey twilight, could not understand she was trying -- once again and as she always had -- to protect me from the monsters that lay waiting just ahead. I couldn't know it then, but she was still trying to keep me me from seeing into the shadows that had always defined life in our parent's house, and to protect me, she had been prepared to sacrifice herself.

But Rand was waiting for her now, and I'd never seen such seriousness of purpose in anyone's eyes before. With news of his parent's divorce still fresh in his mind, just when he'd had his entire world torn out from under his feet, here he was, ready to create new worlds out of the stuff of shadows.

He reached for her hand and she his, yet she remained fixed to my arm -- and in that sundered moment the three of us were fused -- perhaps for all time -- then she turned as if to kiss my cheek but leaned closer still and whispered in my ear: "Be careful, Todd."

"You too, Kiddo," I replied uneasily.

She squeezed my arm and held my eyes a moment, then the circuit was broken and she slipped away from me for the last time and waltzed away to the funeral march of the Black Queen and the summoning of the Fire Witch, then she disappeared gracefully into The Court of the Crimson King.

+++++

Mother was waiting for me, as I imagined she had her entire life, in the parking lot; we drove quietly to the inn and took the very same table. She was older now, and though she wore the cares of her world easily, the pain she had come to share hung in the air between us. Even so, all the radiant beauty that shone so brightly in Madeleine eyes could easily be traced to the soft glowing orbs and fine lips that sat across the table from me now. She had, she seemed to say, great truths to tell that night, yet she had never known how to speak even the easiest truth. She found it less troublesome, in my experience anyway, to run and hide with her bottles, or fall into a deep sleep for days at a time. Truth must have come calling though, and somehow she'd managed to listen. I, of course, had no idea what was coming. No idea what the divergent nature of her truth was, the cosmic truth she had so recently come to terms with.

She ordered tea but I could see the doubt in her eyes, doubt that shook her to the core of her soul. We ordered dinner in silence, the air between us grew charged with dread and she looked away from the table constantly. It was as if looking she was looking for someone or something to carry her away from the truth. Maybe protect her from the truth.

Did she want me to be her protector? After all she'd done?

When at last I couldn't stand it any more, I looked at her, held her in my eyes.

"Is it Dad?" I finally said. She looked down at her hands crossed in her lap, then up at me.

"We're getting a divorce," she said quietly and looked quite startled when I laughed. "What's wrong with you!" she said as she wiped away tears.

"My God! It's contagious!" I gasped between great gut-wrenching roars. I could see Mother's sidelong glances, could feel the questions in her eyes -- and her embarrassment through the candlelight, and I caught myself just as the ragged edge of the blade at my neck drew near.

"Todd!" she whispered angrily. "Get a hold of yourself!"

Her words were like a slap on the face, the bark of a drill sergeant; I sat upright, shoulders square, eyes straight ahead, my mouth a dead line of moral rectitude.

"Stop it!" she hissed. "You're making a fool out of both of us!"

"Is everything alright, Ma'am?" I heard that familiar voice and turned to see Sergeant-Major Shipman standing beside the table. His hand was on my right shoulder, the firm pressure reassuring, not quite painful. He was looking at my mother, and his hand kept me from standing.

"Yes, yes," she said at length. "We, we just have difficult ground to cover this evening." She had turned her eyes with full effect on Shipman -- and was waiting to gauge her success -- but it never came. Then he turned to me, his eyes stern and fair and full of compassion.

"Hold it down, Corporal," Shipman said firmly as he looked into my eyes. "Get control of yourself now, or come with me."

"Yes, Sergeant-Major!" I said quietly.

He walked back to a table across the room, took his seat beside a staggeringly gorgeous Japanese lady.

I groaned: "Oh, no."

Mother laughed easily now; she'd easily won at least a partial victory. "Will you get in much trouble?"

"That's a fair guess, Mom. Yeah, you could say that."

"I'm sorry, Todd. Really. For everything."

"Forget it, Mom. Okay? My fault." We looked at one another, took the measure of our resolve to kill one another yet again.

"What did you mean when you said 'contagious'?" she asked, her eyes almost happy now.

I told her about Rand and his parents and about the death of his brother and soon her eyes drifted far away while she listened to echoes of other sadnesses from other nights.

"He seems like a very sweet boy," she said finally.

"Sweet? Rand?"

"Don't you think he's nice?"

"I don't think either of those words come to mind, Mother. No, not at all, really."

"Oh? What word would you choose?"

"Clarity," I said quietly, my eyes locked on hers. "Or maybe purity."

"Purity?" She looked up at me, the question burning in her eyes. "Why do you say that?"

"I don't think he's ever lied once in his life, Mother."

She nodded, turned away. "That you know of, anyway." She said those words with quiet desperation lingering over her head; they were almost an abdication, if not part of a larger quest for absolution.

"No, I think you're missing the point, Ma'am. I don't think he lies. Ever."

"Ma'am? Todd? You called me...have I lost even that now? Have I lost you, too?"

In the splintered silence that grew between us I wanted to get up and leave, to leave and run far away from her, and I think she sensed the impulse within that fragile moment and she reached out for me one last time. At least I think that was what she tried to do. But you see, I was ready for her...

"Mom, is there really anything we need to talk about now? I'm not sure I'm up to it anymore." That wasn't really true, and I knew it. I wanted to lash out at her, I wanted to hurt her, because she had ruined everything. She always had. In that she had been most consistent.

"I'm sorry, Todd, but we have a lot of ground to cover tonight. And not just about the divorce."

I looked at her; her lips were trembling now, no longer the soft, inviting weapon she had wielded so effectively, for so long. There were no chance diversions in the offing, only the vast plains of truth she had turned her back on all our lives, and now I had just backed her up against the last wall there was between us. And I was ready to tear that down, too. No matter the cost.

+++++

I don't know how long we talked. Well into the night, anyway.

We talked of things I had never known, the terrors down the hall Madeleine had always shielded me from. Of Dad and his unusual tastes, his love of all things Madeleine; of how my mother had denied it all, run from the truth that suffocated our lives, how she'd wrapped it in bright paper and put a Christmas bow on it year after year -- until the lie had become so practiced it came as naturally as breathing.

Then father had gotten my sister pregnant and everything started to unravel -- bit by nasty bit.

Catalogues from military schools started coming in the mail; Madeleine disappeared in the middle of her junior year -- early admission to a very special college my mother told me. Father was soon away on business trips all the time, mother spending long afternoons at a doctor's office every Monday and Friday. Then Jack had come calling, and Mom was ready for him. She soon became a bottle a night gal.

And I had missed it all, never had a clue what was going on with Madeleine and Dad. Now I looked back on those nights and felt like I was falling backwards into a well.

So I listened that night in a little downstairs den while my mother bared her soul. There was a small fireplace glowing, and a big bay window in the room looked out over a vast English garden. The leaded glass window was made of dense, diamond-shaped panes, and just outside, framed by dark pine branches, an early winter's snow had just started falling. Snow fell as her words fell on me; heavy white flakes on sagging branches, just as her black words fell on my soul. In time the trees began sagging under the weight of so much snow, too much too soon, and I wondered when the branches would snap and fall. It was all very nice, I thought, because here I was, listening to the truth of my world, and everything was dissolving under the most beautiful circumstance possible.

So, we were both up against our last wall, as it turned out. Here at a crossroads, here in time for the facts of our lives to bleed away, here in her lying eyes, and now she looked to me for understanding. Perhaps even acceptance. How, Mother? I just don't understand how?

And in the face of her multiple betrayals, I felt nothing. Nothing whatsoever. I had nothing to give her, as it turned out, nothing for her but an almost catatonic abeyance. In this, her moment of need, I turned away and left her to the silence of embers and falling snow.

In time she stood to leave, utterly defeated and at a loss to explain how all this could have come to pass in the withered shadow of dying love, and she disappeared up a small winding staircase. I would not see her again for many years, but I never despised her more than I did that night.

Shipman came in as she left and took her seat. I guess he had been in on it from the beginning. He didn't say a word, didn't even look my way. When I think about that night now, maybe he was ashamed of me, disgusted with my lack of humanity, but I doubt it. Somewhere along the line he must have made his peace with the world; spoiled rich kids probably didn't upset him very much anymore.

Anyway, we talked a little then he dropped me outside my dorm sometime after midnight; Rand was waiting up for me, his eyes all burning and red. I walked listlessly about our room and got ready for bed by the tenuous light of a tiny desk lamp, and I guess Rand must have taken it all in while trying to take the measure of what had come to pass in my long night.

"How did you and Madeleine get along?" I asked him -- finally, tentatively. I had nowhere else to go, you see.

"I think I shall never love another soul but hers," he replied gently, poetically, if a little theatrically.

I nodded my head. "Good."

"She told me."

I heard his voice breaking and I turned to look at him. He was, I think, trying pretty hard not to cry.

"What? What did she tell you?"

"Everything, I guess."

Silence came for us and held us quietly for a while.

"Good."

"Good?"

"Yeah, good. I don't want to live with this shit staining my life for one more goddamn minute, and I'm pretty sure I'll ever be able to talk about it ever again. So, yeah. Good."

"Do you think it would be stupid of me to, well, to want to marry her someday?"

"Stupid? No, Rand, I don't think that's stupid. I think maybe it's the most wonderful thing I've ever heard in my life." He was looking at me now, his eyes clear and bright and full of majestic truth, then he just barely nodded his head and smiled.

"You ready to turn off the light yet?" he said.

I walked over to the desk and flipped the little switch, my mind still burning brightly.

Oh! How I longed to die just then.

+++++

Rand didn't go to Florida for his mother's Christmas wedding, or to Zurich to be with his father; he flew home with me to my grandparent's place on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. The warmth of California in December held us and nurtured our souls while we walked the hills and wharves of North Beach; we made it across to Berkeley to gawk at the freaks and hippies, took the cable car to Haight-Ashbury where we drank coffee and listened to beat poets and Jim Morison and Janis Joplin, and a couple of days before Christmas my grandfather drove us down to Palo Alto, to pick up Madeleine at the hospital. No one mentioned parents of any sort that day; we were too busy walking on eggshells.

Yet it was clear from the moment Rand and Madeleine saw each other this second time that something very powerful had passed between the two of them at that dance. Rand was, of course, then just fifteen; Madeleine was eighteen, I think, but was going to turn nineteen on Christmas Eve, and I guess those numbers were rolling around in my grandparent's heads when we went out to dinner that night. Still, I guess they'd seen everything in their long lives.

We walked to a place just down the hill from their house, to place called The Shadows, an old Bohemian-German hangout known for great German food -- and a bar on the third floor with a view of the Bay that was simply nonpareil. Though only fifteen, I had a dark-rum Collins and was in love with life by the time our salads arrived. Grandmother insisted we order the roast duck with bing cherries, red cabbage and spätzle, and she was spot on.

My grandparents were, I might add in the vernacular of the day, pretty cool cats. Gramps was an architect, a pretty big deal too; I never knew what my grandmother did, other than read and futz around with cameras, but she was an active soul, skiing and hiking all the time, and always taking pictures. The next afternoon they took us down to the marina and out on the bay for a beautiful sail on Gramp's wooden schooner, the Antigone. Rand had never been on the water and was instantly taken with the whole thing; after that he and Madeleine grew closer still and Gramps just let 'em go. Madeline and I had been surrounded by so much deceit, and for so long, that our grandparents seemed like a breath of fresh air, and Madeleine soon seemed to revive under my grandmother's loving openness. And don't get me wrong here, I don't think Rand and Madeleine were fooling around. I did see some furtive hand holding going on, but I really don't think they did much more than kiss once or twice before we were dropped off at SFO for the flight back to Chicago. While I guess there's no point standing in the way of the inevitable, I thought Rand was nurturing Madeleine as much as he was trying to protect her. And I think my grandparents thought all those goo-goo eyes were fun to watch.

Our family had over the years exchanged gifts on Christmas Eve, and Rand was anxious because he didn't have an appropriate gift on hand. He took my grandmother by the arm the day before -- most bright and early, I seem to recall -- and off they went. He came back from Tiffany's with a little robin's-egg-blue sack in hand and a smug look on his face, and that was that. We went out and got The Tree early on Christmas Eve morning, the morning after his trip to Tiffany's, and we spent the afternoon hoisting our Christmas Tree up three flights of stairs and into an ancient cast iron stand. Then it was up to the attic, hauling boxes of ornaments down to The Tree and soon we were hanging lights and ornaments 'til dinner was ready. Granny worked her usual magic in the kitchen, the house grew more festive by the minute, and by the time dinner was over I had the sneaking suspicion Rand was in love with my grandmother too. The woman knew how to cook, but more importantly, how to make a house feel like a home. I guess it felt like we were the only three kids in the world who'd never felt that way before, but those were special moments in my life.

I'd opted for a very original gift for Madeleine and the grandparents; triangular pennants of the most precious Chinese felt -- with my school's name emblazoned in diminishing letters -- and rest assured I felt pretty smarmy when Gramps gave me a new pair of skis, maroon Rossignol Strato 102s. In fact, skis were had by one and all -- with the intent of heading out before sunrise on Christmas morning and making it to Squaw Valley in time to claim first tracks down the Palisades. That was the intent, I believe, before Rand handed his little blue sack to Madeleine.

I guess I had expected an ID bracelet or some such nonsense; in no way -- not even in the wildest flights of my imagination -- would I have considered it possible for my high school roommate to give my sister an engagement ring, but that's exactly what the son-of-a-bitch did. He called it a friendship ring and proclaimed that Granma had been instrumental in his choice; Gramps and I had, in effect, been clubbed over the head like baby seals and now sat quietly on the sidelines looking over the proceedings like a couple of pre-frontally lobotomized orangutans. Simpering in our drool, perhaps, would be a good way to describe Gramps and me. Anyway, to dwell on our bewildered reaction would be to gloss over the most salient feature of the evening.

Notably, my dear sister's reaction.

And again, I think now, looking back on such things from the vantage of forty years on, that I expected Madeleine to laugh in his face or at the very least blush politely while she stood and helped clear away the mounds of wrapping paper that surrounded her like vast peace offerings, but no, no, that's not what happened. No, not at all. Far from it.

No, it was more like Rhett and Scarlett, or maybe Fred and Ginger would take us a little closer to the point of contact. They were like two lovers circling each other on a grand dance floor; they were each lost in the other's eyes, two hearts yearning for union in something more vast than the oneness of becoming. They were refuges fleeing the night, but like a first kiss, all this might have been a foregone conclusion if only I'd been able to see the world as it really was. Madeleine was as much in love as he; the rest of us simply had no clue because we truly had no idea what was really going on. Well, Granma might have, but grandmother's always do, I guess.