The stillness that followed was so deep and so heavy I could hear the slight breeze as it brushed across my ears. Neither Mason nor Claudine changed expression or moved. It was almost as if they were wearing identical masks or were captured in a photograph. I had to look away. I picked up my paintbrush and went back to the picture. A flock of ducks sounded as if they were complaining about us and continued to sail to another, deeper part of the lake.
“I’m sorry,” Claudine said. “I mean, I’m sorry we made you tell it all.”
“Yes,” Mason quickly followed.
“I think it’s terrible that your grandparents are taking it out on you. How can they possibly find any fault in you? Maybe we should say something to our father, tell him what’s going on.”
“No!” I cried, turning back to them. “Please. My grandparents have no idea I’m seeing you two.”
“That would really bother them?” Claudine asked.
“I don’t know. Yes. They would want to know all about you first, and because I didn’t tell them, they would think it was a betrayal or some type of immoral act. Grandmother Myra is always very suspicious of everything I say or do.”
“What exactly have they said to you, done to you?” Mason asked me.
I stopped painting again. “They haven’t done anything to me. I mean, nothing other parents or grandparents who have to be parents do. They don’t hit me anymore.”
“Anymore? They hit you?” Claudine was practically on her feet.
“When I was little, I’d get a paddling sometimes.”
“Paddling? You mean they hit you with a paddle?” Mason asked.
I nodded. “My grandfather’s father’s paddle. Didn’t you ever get spanked?”
“No,” Claudine said. “The worst ever done to us was they took away some privileges or toys. They yelled at us, of course.”
“Still do sometimes,” Mason said.
“But our parents don’t believe in corporal punishment.”
“Grandmother Myra used to say, ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child,’ all the time. She doesn’t say that much anymore.”
“What else have they done to you?” Mason asked. “Don’t think about it. Just tell us,” he added, sounding like a lawyer questioning a witness in court. I imagined he learned that from his father.
“Sent me to my room without dinner sometimes or didn’t let me have breakfast until I did a chore as punishment for something I had said or done.”
“And kept you practically locked up in that house,” Claudine said, nodding. “That’s really why your grandparents homeschooled you, isn’t it? They’re ashamed of you. Mason, they’re ashamed of her. They’ve made her feel terrible about herself. We have to tell Dad. This is so bizarre.”
“Please don’t do that,” I said. “Please.”
“You’re frightening her, Claudine.” He stood up and came to me to take my hand in his. “We won’t do anything to make things worse for you. That’s a promise. Right, Claudine?”
“Well, it makes me mad,” Claudine said.
“Relax, will you? Just think about it. Suppose Dad did get the authorities involved, and they took her out of that house. Where would Elle end up?”
“Someplace better.”
“You don’t know that. It could be some disgusting foster home or even an orphanage. Do you hate your grandparents?” Mason asked.
“Hate them? No.”
“See?”
“She doesn’t know better.”
“It’s still the only family she has.”
Claudine smirked, folded her arms under her breasts, and turned away to think for a few moments.
Mason caressed my arm and smiled. “I don’t think anything’s wrong with you. Don’t worry about that.”
Claudine turned back to us. “When you say they think the evil is in you, what exactly does that mean?”
“We all can do bad things. There’s just more chance I will,” I said, summarizing what Grandmother Myra believed.
“Do you think that’s true about yourself?”
“I don’t know. Maybe,” I said.
“How can you think like that?”
“You know, most people, most women, want to abort the baby that results from a rape,” Mason told her. “Maybe they don’t see it as evil, but they see it as a detestable reminder of a horrible act.”
Claudine looked at me, and in that look, I thought I saw a subtle change. “Your mother wanted that, didn’t she? She wanted to have an abortion.”
“Yes.”
“So why didn’t she have it?”
“She was at college. She covered up her pregnancy for a long time. She said she was in denial and then ashamed. By the time she came home to my grandparents, my grandmother told her it was too late. She told her they would give me away, and they kept her home until I was born. They wouldn’t let her go out and embarrass them.”
“You mean they locked her up?”
“Sorta, I guess. My grandmother tells it one way, and my mother tells it another.”
“What changed their mind about not giving you away?”
“They realized it wasn’t a baby’s fault, Claudine. She was still half their blood,” Mason said. “Right?” he asked me.
I shook my head. “No. My grandmother especially believed and still believes that it’s their responsibility to make sure I don’t turn out evil or get someone else to do evil. The devil works through his own to destroy the holy souls of others.”
“You believe this crap?” Claudine asked.
“That’s all she’s been taught,” Mason told her. “What do you expect?”
“I don’t care. How can you believe that?” she asked. She looked so angry.
“People do all over the country, Claudine. Remember reading Paradise Lost? Remember the fallen angel and how the devil ruined Eden?”
“That’s it, exactly,” I said. “My grandparents believe that, yes.”
Mason looked at Claudine and lifted his arms. “See?”
“I don’t care. They can’t do what they are doing to her.”
“Look at it from their point of view. They’re letting her go to school now. They’re behaving just like most grandparents or parents. So they spanked her or made her go to bed without dinner sometimes. Most parents still do things like that. It’s not enough.”
“Not enough. They kept her locked away, stifled all these years. No wonder she’s still a child.”
“Stop it. You’re not a child, Elle. Don’t listen to her.”
“I don’t know a lot of what I should,” I admitted.
“Now I understand why,” Claudine said. “She reminds me of that girl who lasted half a year in our school, Millie Toby, remember?”
“She does not. Stop it.”
“Who was she?” I asked.
“That was an entirely different situation, Elle. The girl had—”
“Mental problems. She behaved like a four-year-old sometimes, and she was twelve and already built like a twenty-year-old. She had something wrong with her, something they called precocious puberty. She was developed in the third grade. Some high school boys took advantage of her, all at once, when she was in seventh grade. It was a big scandal.”
“That’s not going to happen to you, Elle. You’re not like that. It won’t take you long to get the lay of the land.”
“Wrong choice of words,” Claudine said.
“Shut up.”
“I think I have to speed up your education,” Claudine continued, ignoring him.
“What do you mean, you have to speed it up?” he asked her.
“Okay, we have to speed it up,” she corrected. “But you won’t be any help unless you’re completely honest with her, Mason.”
“I’m always honest with her.”
“No, I mean completely honest,” she insisted. “As honest as we have been with each other.”
He started to shake his head and stopped.
“Honest about what?” I asked.
“Look,” Claudine said, “your grandmother has probably done a very good job with your homeschooling. You won’t have problems with your studies. Chances are you’ll be a better student than most in the public school because you have good study habits, had to have them, but at least fifty percent of going to school is social. I was kind of getting you into that, but I had no idea about this other stuff. No wonder you think ‘sex’ is a dirty word. I was teasing you half the time, but I won’t do that anymore.”
“I never teased you,” Mason said.
“Boys have their own way of teasing you,” Claudine insisted. She paused and looked at me harder. “I’d like to know something else.”
“What?”
“These ideas your grandparents have about you, about you being evil inside and such . . . you don’t really believe them, do you? I mean, about yourself?”
“I don’t know.”
She nodded. “She’s brainwashed,” she told Mason. “Are you sure we shouldn’t tell Dad?”
“She’s not brainwashed. She’s just a little confused.”
“A little?”
“Okay, a lot, but it’s still just confusion. She’ll be fine.”
“How did this happen to your mother? Do you know any of the details?”
“Why is that important?” Mason asked.
“There are rapes, and there are rapes.”
“Huh?”
“Actually, my mother told me something like that. She was drugged,” I said. “She called it the famous rape drug. She was at a party when she was at college.”
“See?” Claudine told him. “That goes on everywhere. If you’re at a party, especially a party with many people you don’t know, you don’t let go of what you’re drinking, and you don’t take any drugs from anyone you don’t know well.”
“Don’t take drugs at all,” Mason said.
“Yes, Mr. Perfect,” Claudine said, and sang, “‘And he’s oh, so good. And he’s oh, so fine’ . . .”
“Stop it, idiot.”
She laughed and sat on the blanket. “Suddenly, I’m feeling a little sick,” she said. “I never imagined anything like this.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. We’re glad you told us the truth,” Mason said. “Right, Claudine?”
“Yes, yes. I have to cool off.” She got up to go into the lake.
We watched her dive in and start swimming.
Mason took my hand again. “What you told us doesn’t make any difference to me,” he said. “I mean about how I think of you.” He leaned forward and kissed me. “Go on, work on your painting. I’ll just sit here and watch you. I love watching you work.”
He returned to sit on the blanket. I looked at Claudine. She was swimming laps hard, swimming like someone who had to beat the anger out of her body. I wished I knew how to swim as well. I’d probably be right beside her, I thought.
I returned to my picture, but it was harder to concentrate on it. Every once in a while, I looked at Mason to see if the expression on his face had changed while he stared at me. Had he told me the truth? Did he still see me the way he had before I had revealed my mother’s story and mine? He looked thoughtful but not disgusted. I smiled at him, and he smiled back.
Gradually, I felt myself get back into my picture. I thought of myself as an artist with magic powers. I would paint scenes in which I wanted to be, and as soon as the picture was completed, I could do just that: disappear into the canvas and enjoy the setting, the warm breeze, the sunlight, and feel I had truly escaped, even for a short time. Maybe I could even paint someone else in the picture with me, someone like Mason, and for as long as the picture lasted, we would be together, perfect, never visited by any disease, never in any danger, and never unhappy.
When Claudine came out of the water, she looked relieved. She took off her bathing cap and stood beside me to look at my picture.
“That’s getting really good. You have a talent, Elle,” she said. “Someone born with evil inside her couldn’t do something as beautiful as that, especially without any formal instruction.”
“Thank you,” I said. That did make me feel better.
She kissed me on the cheek and then went to the blanket to get her towel. Mason got it for her quickly and handed it to her, seizing her hand at the same time to draw her closer to him.
“That was a nice thing to say,” he told her, and he kissed her on the lips.
She shook her hair and playfully pushed him back onto the blanket. He yelled and tackled her, gently lowering her to the blanket before putting a handful of sand on her stomach. She screamed and threw some of it back at him. Then he turned away and came over to me.
“You want to have another swimming lesson?”
“I . . .”
“I have a bathing suit for you,” Claudine said, surprising me. She dipped into her bag and brought out another bikini. “Mason will turn his back while you put it on, won’t you, Mason?”
“Sure, but I’m not saying how many times.”
“Very funny. Elle?” She held it up. “Go for it. One of these days, you might be able to swim out here all by yourself.”
I looked at Mason. He put his hands over his eyes. I didn’t want to refuse her offer and his, not now. I put down my paintbrush, walked over to Claudine, and began to change into the suit. It was going to be my first ever bathing suit. Every new day held out the promise of something new, something for the first time, I thought.
“Looks great on you,” Claudine said. “Maybe even better than it did on me. But can’t you take off that tree log of a cross?”
I looked at it. Did I dare? I nodded, and she helped unfasten it.
“Ten pounds off your chest,” she said, bouncing it in her hand. She set it down. “Okay, Mason, you can turn around now.”
“Wow,” Mason said. “She’s right. That bathing suit does look better on you.”
“Shut up,” Claudine said. “I can say those things, but you can’t.” She turned back to me. “Most of the girls you meet in school will tell you wonderful things about themselves, and when they give you compliments, you had better be a little skeptical. Doubly so about boys. Right, Mason?”
“Yes, yes. Can we go swimming now?” He reached for my hand, and I joined him.
We walked into the lake slowly. Another flock of ducks, this flock braver, landed a few hundred yards from us. When Mason and I were nearly up to our necks, he told me to lie forward again, and again he held me up while I kicked and dog-paddled. He told me to move my arms farther out and showed me how to cup my hands. We were at it for a good ten or fifteen minutes before I realized I was swimming completely on my own. He was still beside me, but he hadn’t been holding me up.
Claudine yelled, “Congratulations!” from shore, and Mason clapped.
When I stopped, he told me to tread water and put his arms around me. We were like that for a while, before he kissed me again, and we moved closer to shore so we could stand and talk.
“What was your mother like when you finally met her? I mean, did you like her?”
“Yes and no,” I said. “She seemed like she cared about me but then almost as quickly made it clear to me that she couldn’t look after me. There was a big blow-up at dinner between her and my grandmother, and she and her new husband just left.”
“So she’s not someone you’d like to go live with if you could?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I think she’s having fun, but . . .”
“But what?”
“I don’t think she’s really that happy. She looked like she was still trying to find herself. With my problems, I don’t think I’d be so welcomed. What I mean is, my grandmother is probably right about her.”
“Wow.” He bounced in the water and looked at me. “Things will get better for you when you go to college and get out on your own. I’m sure.”
“I’ll tell you a secret,” I said.
“Another secret. Uh-oh.”
“No,” I said, smiling. “Nothing to do with my mother.”
“What?”
“I always wanted to go to school, be with people my age, but now that’s it going to happen . . .”
“You’re afraid?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t be. Between Claudine and me, you’ll be just fine.”
He kissed me again. I looked at Claudine. She was staring at us, but she didn’t look very happy. She looked angry again.
“Let’s go back,” I said. “I have to dry off and think about getting home.”
“Right.”
We waded in, and Claudine tossed her towel to me.
“My hair,” I said. “My grandmother saw it was wet last time.”
“We’ll stop at the house before Mason rows you back, and you’ll use my hair dryer if it’s not dry enough when we leave.”
“Thank you.”
“Come sit next to me,” she ordered, suddenly looking older. “Mason, you sit on the other side of her here. Go on.”
“What’s this?”
“Truth lessons,” she said.
“Huh?” He sat.
“Mason, since the seventh grade, have you ever looked at a girl with interest and just wanted to be friends with her like you might be with another boy?”
“What? C’mon, Claudine.”
“Answer truthfully, Mason,” she said. “You saw their little boobs, and you thought about their bodies naked, and those were the girls you really tried to get close to, right? Even back then. Well?”
I looked from her to him.
“You told me stuff, Mason, stuff I didn’t forget.”
“You’re making it sound too black-and-white,” he complained.
“For now, we have to do that for Elle, Mason.”
“She’s right,” he admitted. “The girls I was most interested in were the prettiest and the sexiest, and I wasn’t looking just to do homework with them.”
“Were you different from any other boy who reached your level of maturity, Mason?” she asked. Now she was the one sounding like a lawyer.
“No.”
“So first thing, Elle, as I have tried to tell you, is be suspicious. No boy just wants to borrow your pen or get the answer to number five on your math homework.”
“That’s not always bad, Claudine. You’re making it sound bad.”
“It’s not always bad when the boy you would like to be interested in you is the one. Just anticipate more than he will be, especially how you look,” she added.
“And why don’t you tell her how you get the boys you’re interested in to be interested in you, Claudine.”
“I will. First things first, Mason. Always beware of the boy who wants to give you something alcoholic to drink at a party or something else to, quote, make you feel good. Just tell him you already feel good.”
“Oh, like you do that,” Mason said.
“She has to be more careful, Mason. You know what we should do?”
“I can’t imagine,” he said.
“We should give her something, some X one afternoon, so she can see what it’s like.”
“C’mon, no.”
“It’s how I learned what to stay away from and what was all right,” she told me. “Mason, do you want to tell her about the first girl you had sex with and why you weren’t happy about it afterward?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Not fair. We’re supposed to be honest with her.”
He looked at me. “She’s making it sound like I’m having sex constantly. It’s not true.”
“More than most in your class. You told me.”
“Shut up.”
“Boys like to brag about what they’ve done with you, Elle, and even if they haven’t really done it, they’ll say they have if you give them the opportunity. Whether you like it or not, you’re very vulnerable, especially when other girls and other boys don’t know much about you. Whoever makes up the first story will be believed. Isn’t that right, Mason Spenser? Didn’t you get even with Pamela Thornton that way?”
“She deserved it.”
“Still, dirty pool,” Claudine said. “And you’ve shown her a little about pool.”
“The girl was making stuff up about me,” he told me. “I just got even and got her to shut up, that’s all.”
“Wasn’t that what happened with the other girl?” I asked. “The one who . . .”
“No, it wasn’t that bad. This was just silly stuff,” he said quickly.
I shook my head. “Going to school really sounds like walking through a minefield,” I said. My grandfather liked to use that expression when he talked about doing something particularly difficult.
They both looked at me and then laughed.
“Exactly,” Claudine said. “That’s exactly what it is. Especially for someone who doesn’t know anything about where to step and where not to.”
“Great, you’re frightening her again.”
“Just trying to do what I said, speed up her real education.”
“Yeah, well, why don’t we get into some of your truths, Claudine? What happened when you went out with Seth Gates last May?”
“We’re not ready for that story yet,” she said.
“Oh, sure.”
“I think I had better be getting on the way home,” I said, seeing the time on Mason’s watch and sensing that they might get into an argument.
Claudine felt my hair. “You might need my dryer. Let’s see how it is after we pack up. You know what? Keep the bathing suit on. It’s nearly dry. Put your clothes on over it.”
“Really?”
“Sure. Later, you can look at yourself in the mirror and see why Mason is having heart failure.”
“Will you shut—”
She laughed.
I smiled, but then I thought, how would I ever tell them that I wasn’t permitted to look at myself in a full-length mirror? The only one was upstairs in my grandmother’s closet.
“Please help me put my cross back on,” I asked her.
Mason grabbed it first. “I’ll do it.”
“Talk about having to bear a cross,” Claudine muttered.
She was right, of course. Someday I had to take it off and wear something more like what other people wore. Now that I thought about it and about some of what they had said, I felt a new emotion. It wasn’t fear, either.
It was anger, anger that I had to live the way I was living, that I had to be so careful, and that I had to learn the things that girls much younger than me already knew. It wasn’t fair. I wanted it to end.
Maybe I was feeling more like my mother.