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For days Danny and I don’t see each other. Finally, I call Alex’s. Joey answers.
“Is Danny there?” I ask.
“No,” he says.
“Would you ask him to call me when he gets back?”
“If I remember,” he says.
I hang up.
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At the Humane Society I concentrate on Beauty. Now she stands and wags her tail, full out, when I walk through the infirmary doors. I take her to the big dirt pen and walk her on a leash, then play ball with her. She’s exhausted after fetching the ball twice. Quite a difference from Kitty, but quite a different life Beauty has led, too. I treat her mange. The flea problem is almost under control.
Beauty’s become a favorite here, with Antoinette stopping to see her every day, and Sinclair. I think she’s mostly border collie, because of her size, and because of her black coat with white markings.
“You need to do something about that hair,” Sinclair tells her, primping his own. “Take a lesson from the proud owner of this head of hair,” he says, pointing at me as if Beauty is actually following what he’s saying.
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Early, early one morning, about a week after the night Danny and I visited the cemetery, there’s a tapping at my window. At first the sound seems to be part of a dream in which I’m on a slow moving train, late, in a hurry, why is the train moving so slowly, click . . . click . . . click . . . along the rails, then a little faster, clickety-clickety-clickety.
I awaken from my dream to a real life noise, the tapping on glass. Groggy, I stumble out of bed and peer out the window, then open it a crack.
“Can I come in?” Danny asks.
I open the window wider and he crawls through. He kisses me on the forehead, tentatively, then the lips. I get a taste of stale alcohol.
“I’m sorry, Pups,” he whispers. “Please don’t stop loving me. Everything’s going to be okay. I promise.”
“I don’t understand what’s happening with us,” I whisper.
“It’s me. It’s my fault. Don’t give up on me,” he says.
I hug him, hard, so relieved to again feel him close to me. He
eases his shoes off and pulls me back to the bed.
“I want so much to always be with you. When I’m with you,
everything’s okay, and when I’m not, it’s shit.”
He kisses me again, then goes to my closet and gets the foam and condom, slipping them under the pillow the way we always do.
“Just hold me for awhile,” I say.
Usually Danny’s sort of in a hurry for sex after the first kiss, but tonight he holds me close, not pushing for more. I rest my head on his chest and feel his breathing become deeper, slower, and I know he’s asleep. I drift off, too, comfortable in his warmth.
Neither of us hears anything until Rochelle yells, “Danny!”
I wake in an instant and clap my hand over her mouth.
“Shhh!”
Danny jumps up and closes the door, grabs his shoes, and climbs out the window so fast I hardly know what’s happening.
“Shhh!” I say again, easing my hand from my sister’s mouth.
“Erica?”
I hear Mom shuffling barefoot down the hallway.
“Are you okay?”
“Rocky had a bad dream,” I say.
Mom opens the door and looks in. My heart is beating fast.
Please, please, please, keep your mouth shut, Rocky, I silently beg her.
“Are you okay now, Honey?” Mom says, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“She’s fine,” I say, not giving Rocky a chance to talk. “She can sleep with me. She won’t be scared anymore, will you?”
Rocky just nods, looking at me strangely. Mom gets a funny look on her face, too, when she leans down to tuck Rocky in. She runs her hand across the pillow where Danny’s head was resting just moments ago. Has she noticed something?
When Mom leaves the room I say to Rocky, “Danny wasn’t here, do you understand? You didn’t see him, and he wasn’t here.”
“He was too!”
“Shhhh! What I mean is, I want you to forget it.”
“Why?”
“Because Mom would totally freak out if she knew Danny was here like this. And she’d ground me forever. And you’d have to quit choir because she’d never let me use the car again and there wouldn’t be anyone to pick you up when practice is over.”
She’s giving me this look, like maybe she’ll run down the hall right now and tell Mom, or maybe she won’t. But I can see the thing about choir practice got her, because she loves being in the school choir.
“Listen, Rochelle. I’m serious. Mom would go nuts if you told her.”
“Why? Because Danny’s your husband! Because if you sleep in the same bed it means you’re married?”
“Shhh! She wouldn’t understand, that’s all. Just remember about choir practice,” I tell her. “Now go back to bed.”
“No. I’m sleeping with you. That’s what you told Mom.”
Sometimes she is so frustrating! “Okay, sleep here then, but I’m going to sleep right now, so you’d better, too.”
Rochelle puts her head down on the pillow, then rises up again. “What’s wrong?”
“Your pillow smells like Danny,” she says, turning it over on the other side. “What’s this?”
She’s holding the foil-wrapped condom that was under the pillow. I grab it from her and close my hand around it, at the same time leaning hard on the pillow so she won’t discover the can of foam.
“It’s nothing. A breath mint,” I tell her.
“I want it. I’ve got a bad taste in my mouth.”
“You can’t have it. I’m saving it for Danny.”
“I WANT IT! GIVE IT TO ME OR I’LL TELL MOM DANNY WAS HERE!”
“Shut up! Please, Rocky, just shut up and go to sleep.”
“GIRLS!” Mom yells at us from her bedroom.
“See! You woke Mom up again.”
“I don’t care. I want the candy.”
“You’re not going to get it. And you’d better remember about choir practice, too! Now stop talking stupid and go to sleep,” I whisper.
She turns on her side.
“I hate you,” she says, lying rigid with her back to me. But then, it can’t be more than five minutes, she is sound asleep. I lie wide awake though, worrying about what could happen. Rochelle isn’t that great at keeping a secret, and my mom would go into immediate orbit if she knew Danny was in bed with me, especially since she now thinks he’s the biggest flake in the world.
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In the morning Mom, Rochelle and I stop at Starbuck’s for juice and scones. Well, my mom gets some heavy-duty coffee stuff, but Rocky and I get juice. It’s my one day a week to get the car, the day I pick Rocky up from choir. So I take Mom to work and then the car’s mine for the day.
“What was the problem with you two last night?” Mom asks.
“Nothing, just one of Rocky’s nightmares.” I answer quickly, hoping my sister will keep quiet.
“I thought I heard something outside again last night. Did you hear anything?”
“No,” I say.
Rocky is busy picking raisins out of her scone and doesn’t seem to be paying any attention to what Mom and I are talking about.
“I’m thinking maybe we should get an alarm system,” Mom says.
“Mom, you’re getting all upset over nothing.”
“Maybe,” she says, then gets out of the car at the five-story office building where she works for a property management company. This is the tallest building in Hamilton Heights, and one of the newest. Just as I pull away from the curb Rochelle yells “Stop!”
I slam on the brakes.
“What?”
“My lunch money,” she says, and runs from the car yelling at Mom.
Mom turns at the top of the steps to the building and watches Rochelle, smiling.
“Lunch!” Rochelle yells.
Mom reaches into her purse and pulls out some money, hands it to Rocky and kisses her on the cheek. She smiles and waves at me, then turns and goes into the building. Dressed in a business suit, with hose and medium-high heels, Mom looks very professional. She looks younger than most moms, too, maybe because she’s so active.
I love my mom and I don’t feel very good about keeping secrets from her. Well, I’m sure she has some secrets from me, too. But I’ve really never kept much from her, until Danny.