What You See in the Dark Read online

  All around, some of the younger women rested their heads on the shoulders of their dates. Out of boredom, maybe, especially when Ricky Nelson was not on the screen. Four rows ahead, Dan Watson slipped his arm around that girl, and she tensed, then eased. You tensed, then eased, sensing the heat on the back of your own neck. Some of the younger women drew even closer to their dates, nestling. They didn’t care who watched. The married couples sat stiff and proper, two rigid silhouettes. Was marriage love? A wife’s shoulders rounded, her body almost curled in, as if protecting the purse in her lap. The young women in the audience ignored John Wayne’s gun brandishes and concentrated on the heat near the back of their necks. Dan Watson’s arm. Handsome, but not like Ricky Nelson. Rugged and not soft, not moist lipped, not a transfixing star.

  Not a whistle-clean Everly Brother either.

  If all the women in the audience stared at Ricky Nelson sitting on top of a kitchen table, so did you. Boots resting on a chair, he played guitar for Dean Martin. Your eyes drifted south to his open legs, wanting to study every part of his body, his shape. The theater was dark. This is what people did in the dark. He spoke Spanish, and even that fact—that soft voice saying things you could only dream, candy-sweet and loving—gripped the women in its delicious possibility. That girl knew Spanish. She would know what candy-sweet things he could say. After the first song, Dean Martin ceded the screen to just Ricky, still seated at the table, and all around the theater, women lifted their heads from their dates’ shoulders. Ricky alone meant love was coming. Ricky alone meant being torn between the guitar resting on his thigh and the proximity of his long lashes.

  The cut of his suede jacket, the dance of its fringe, the round shape of his buttocks when he crossed the room, the angle of his boots on the floor, his youthful face a testament against the coarser ways of older men like John Wayne.

  Your boyfriend, your soon-to-be husband, was going to be a John Wayne. You’d already come round to meet the new in-laws, the small, quick-witted mother with the pinched face, the tall father with the gigantic belly, suffering through a forced grapefruit diet. “I have the insides of a steel pipe,” he bragged, but in the bathroom of their home, you glimpsed a faint brown smear at the bottom of the toilet.

  A vulgar fact. The ugly privacy of marriage.

  The two brothers living in suspicious bachelorhood, one going up to San Francisco to live luridly, the other quietly expected to care for their parents once they aged.

  Understood facts, no matter that they were vulgar. People said that was what San Francisco was becoming.

  So it must be true.

  No wonder people applauded the picture when it ended. No wonder they stood up in an excited buzz, the film a respite from their lives, the ugly things they knew. No wonder the crowd took its time to file out of the theater, the house lights brought up, the tiny stars on the ceiling extinguished. Handsome men with mustaches, cowboy hats, shiny belt buckles, all of them walking protectively behind their dates, all of them guarding the women they intended to marry. At the theater, a date was for display. Not like at the drive-in, not like at the grocery store, not like at the café. But eyes everywhere locked on each other in regard, men looking from the safety of where they stood, behind their dates. How many times had men looked at that girl, looked up to see Dan Watson looking back at them, their eyes filled with a different knowing?

  Traffic rumbled, headlights all along Union Avenue, as patient as the lines to exit the theater. Some cars drove off toward the Bluebird, toward El Molino Rojo. Married couples drove on to the side streets to their dark homes, the taillights lonely along the road. Everyone else, it seemed, had headed to the Jolly Kone, all the ones in between, too young to be going to the bars so late, too young to be married quite yet.

  That was the night in question. People went to the bars to drink or to the Jolly Kone for a burger or right on home. Good married couples went right on home.

  None of the ladies who came to the shoe store ever knew about the Jolly Kone. They never knew about the drive-in. The things that went on in both places. You never said a word about the boyfriend taking you there.

  The large neon sign lit bright in yellow and blue, an ice cream cone with a grinning, welcoming face. Large orange heaters glowed overhead at the order windows, all the young men with hands in their pockets to keep themselves warm. Dan Watson and that girl had eased right into one of the choice slots, right under the awning near the door.

  At the window, a large-breasted teenage girl, blue paper hat pinned in place. She grinned slyly at Dan Watson, her mouth suggesting a banter than involved more than the order. He leaned in, looking up at the posted menu as if he’d forgotten what to say. The waitress stared at his Adam’s apple, not minding the wait, but she glanced over at the Ford where that girl sat, as if she’d felt a stern glare coming at her, and the unspoken possession brought her back to jotting in her notepad, closing the window. Dan Watson stood outside under the orange heaters, waiting, and once again it was all there for everyone to see: how steady and strong his back looked, his plaid shirt pressed and tucked in snug at the waist. He was taller than Ricky Nelson, surely, but a survey of the other men milling around, carrying food back to their cars, showed how he stood out. That one was squat and powerful in the legs; another too thin and slender in the chest; yet another had wide, flat buttocks.

  Everyone hungry, everyone eating. Dan Watson walking back to the Ford with a box of burgers and greasy fries. The Jolly Kone ice cream sign looked down at everyone with its neon grin.

  In the car, your whistle-clean boyfriend pointed to the paper cup of soda lodged between his legs, the two straws poking out of it.

  “Thirsty?” he asked.

  The pretty, large-breasted waitress shot a stare over at the Ford.

  “I’m kidding,” he said, but his hand slid over in the shadowy darkness of the car and settled on your knee.

  “Not with all these people around,” you said.

  “Nobody can see,” he said, and this was true. People held greasy napkins, sloshed leftover soda; some actually stood outside their cars, necking out in plain view under the yellow and blue sign of the Jolly Kone. Some cars already pulled themselves out of the lot, heading out to the western part of town, to the emptier side, where they could pull into the darkness.

  “You getting shy now?”

  “Not here.”

  Not there. You watched the Ford retreat from the front of the Jolly Kone. You watched that girl give one last glare to the pretty waitress as the truck pulled away into the dark. You watched the Ford head back in the direction of that rented room above the bowling alley, the roads considerably cleared, and you could see the truck park in front of the green door leading up to that apartment.

  You can see Dan Watson shutting off the engine. You can see the deserted street.

  No, you were not there. But you could see it.

  And that made it a fact, if you told it.

  He stepped out, walking to her side of the truck. He opened her door and held out his hand and she took it. A large, sweaty hand. Strong. Not the hand of someone who could play a guitar softly.

  At the shoe store, that girl had always patted her purse as if it contained something secret. Repeatedly. An assurance. What was in there, of course, was her apartment key.

  That key slid into the lock of that green door and snapped it open, Dan Watson behind her, his arm above her frame.

  The stairwell loomed dark, and what you do with darkness is pitch yourself into it.

  So up the stairs they went, her hand fumbling along the wall for the switch but feeling, instead, Dan’s strength behind her, his hard torso underneath his shirt.

  That night, your boyfriend, your husband-to-be, your clean hairline across the back of the neck, your Everly Brother, walked you to the front door, the light on, the parents sleeping assuredly inside, the porch swing still. At the Jolly Kone, his hand had moved yours to the aching bulge, urging, but marriage was coming. That was not
respectable behavior anymore.

  You behaved one way at the drive-in, but being a wife means something different. If there’s a promise to be a good husband, then the aching bulge can wait until the white fence appears, along with a house with the sparkling kitchen and the shiny teacups.

  Up in that room above the bowling alley, she would have tidied up before she left for the theater. What little she had, she had put in its place, no matter that the room looked meager.

  A single bed with light blue cotton sheets. A table and a chair. Tin cups, the blue-speckled kind. Blue curtains hanging on a rod.

  The blue curtains were a fact. You saw them yourself, fluttering from the window once.

  An electric radio? A rotary fan? An iron? The white blouses she wore to work. Her plain black flats. Her blue denim skirt. What else could she have had?

  A yellow nightgown, lifted from the top drawer of the dresser, unfurling like a ghost. A patch of white fabric starting at the neckline and covering the breasts, a spring of flowers etched in as decoration.

  Like yours.

  On the porch, your boyfriend swallowed hard, full of nerve and frustration. You watched his Adam’s apple pitch up and down. “Sit with me,” he pleaded, pointing to the swing. “I’ll be quiet.”

  What else? Deodorant on top of the dresser and bobby pins and a hairbrush, white cotton panties in the drawer. But toiletries are not possessions, and that girl came from nothing. So she had nothing.

  If you bring down those blue curtains, nothing but the cold white light of winter pours in.

  “Sit with me,” he said.

  The way Ricky Nelson had sat on the kitchen table, boots perched on a chair, legs spread wide. Being able to watch him, take him in.

  On the porch, you relieve him a bit, touch him. He still doesn’t know that he’s enormous and beautiful. He won’t ever really know, if he keeps the promise of his engagement ring, the metal rubbing him as he closes his eyes.

  “You ever think about leaving Bakersfield?”

  “Never.” That girl says it. The word slips from her because it’s true but false at the same time. But it’s you who dream of Dan Watson taking you away in his Ford pickup truck, out somewhere to a big white farmhouse with a clothesline out back and a garden and a room where you could watch TV on a set from Stewart’s. The word comes from inside, a hesitant, nervous bubble that could not have formed itself fully as a word, and it flashes instead as a smile, her hand moving up to contain it, to hide it. That girl looking down at the floor of her rented room, the rough grain of the wood.

  “Closer,” he urged.

  From the record shop, a collection of A sides, purchased by Dan Watson and handed to her in a brown-papered package: “All I Have to Do Is Dream” by the Everly Brothers. “I Only Have Eyes for You” by the Flamingos. “Put Your Head on My Shoulder” by Paul Anka.

  An expensive record player and the needles, too.

  “Closer.”

  The space between is a wide, enormous distance, a destination—there’s so much urgency to get across—the pinpoint of some kind of promise way out beyond seeing. Never close enough.

  She moved toward him. She moved toward it.

  You extended your hand and he reached for it, strong and now clammy with sweat. She raised her hand to his lips very softly, then rested it on his cheek, cupping his face. He kept his hand over yours, moved his fingers across your cheek, your nose, your ears, urging you to touch him. You kissed him and he tasted like cold, like water from a tin cup, the blue-speckled kind.

  “Who’s Sorry Now?” by Connie Francis. “Tears on My Pillow” by Little Anthony and the Imperials.

  He let go of her hands and she could not feel him at all, just her eyes closed to him and his lips wet and cold. She floated, nothing tethering her but Dan Watson’s lips, his lips parting and becoming his mouth, the cold giving way to a warmer feel, the dart of his tongue searching her. This was the feeling she liked, his strong hands on her arms, holding her to him, an anticipation, like walking past a flock of birds feeding on street crumbs, waiting for them to burst into the sky at the slightest threatening motion.

  “Poor Little Fool” by Ricky Nelson.

  Your boyfriend’s thigh pressed against yours as you sat on the porch swing, and you wanted to open your eyes to see Dan Watson, his rugged and beautiful face, to see him the way the pretty waitress at the Jolly Kone saw him.

  They kept kissing, wet and deep. The bed squeaked. Dan Watson inched closer. She could feel the entire plane of his body now—his leg, his torso, his arm—and she reached down and felt the hard length of him. She kept her hand there, not moving, before giving in to his urgency, his fingers pushing her to explore.

  There were men who sat at kitchen tables and sang gentle songs with the round O of their mouths. There were men holding guns, both good and bad. There were men riding sinister horses. There were men hell-bent on terrible missions. There were men who nodded their heads politely at the women. All of them had this need. All of them.

  He unbuckled his belt, the sound of the metal unlatching, his jeans undone into a deep V, his underwear pulled down to give a full view. She gripped him harder, enjoying how it forced him to close his eyes, how she’d seen him do this at the drive-in, how she’d done it before. His hands rustled up her skirt and she closed her eyes, how one day they’d do this in their white farmhouse.

  You closed your eyes, how one day you’d do this in a white farmhouse.

  You could never tell those ladies such a thing.

  “That Mexican boy,” they said, but they could say nothing more about him.

  “I can’t imagine … ,” you said, but you could. That Mexican boy and his gifts in the jar, the way you could feel his hard stare in the darkness of the cantina, the same way you could almost touch the desire of the pretty waitress at the Jolly Kone.

  You can imagine.

  Maybe an observation, like a coin tossed into a pool of water, just to see the ripples when you tell it.

  I heard, you might try, the Mexican boy showed up that night at her apartment. People could finish the story with that, jealousy enough of a fuel to explain what happened.

  The people in the theater could tell you that men come to blows over women all the time, fists landing in savage anger.

  What no longer matters is how Dan Watson killed her. What matters is that she’s dead. What matters is not whether that Mexican boy shouted up from the darkness of the deserted street, but the blood in the stairwell. How it got there, after all, was a fact.

  Many months from now—months—people will file into the Fox Theater to watch the suspense picture, the one with a motel, that one that looks just like the one out on the west of town, and everyone will see a dark silhouette get up and walk away in a pinched, furious manner.

  You will be there and will see only a dark silhouette, but you’ll believe those people when they claim it was Dan Watson’s mother. She saw what was coming up on-screen. Who—who on earth—ever wants to put themselves in someone else’s shoes? To see something so close to them?

  The drive-in. The theater. The stairwell. The lawn just past the porch swing. What you do with darkness is pitch yourself into it.

  How she reached the stairwell was that the Mexican boy had been downstairs somehow. How it ended there was that Dan Watson had bounded down to the sidewalk. That was a fact. People said there had been a fight out there, that Mexican boy who got deported. But however the fight between the men ended didn’t matter. What mattered happened in the stairwell. People said blood had splattered all over the wall. Dan Watson had slammed the green door behind him, shutting away the world. The stairwell had shot into darkness, and that girl had fallen into it, Dan with a fistful of her hair. The two of them pitched backward, her stolen boots slipping, their bodies slamming against the wall. Her back landed with a sharp crack against the edge of a stair. Her head knocked against the wall. She tasted metal in her mouth. She tasted blood.

  Did you? Dan Watson asked.
Because that is the question everyone wanted to know about that girl. Had she, with that Mexican boy?

  Do you take … ? the question will come out.

  What will be the answer?

  That girl bit at his hand, but he only pressed himself harder on top of her. She bit harder and he let go of her hair to slap her once, then a second time, hard enough for her head to hit the wall again. She could not scream because the metallic taste in her mouth had sharpened into a gurgle. Blood had come up from her throat. She sensed it coming, and she would have spit it out in order to cry.

  Yes.

  When she spat out the blood, the cry came out. They had tumbled all the way down the stairwell, near the street with no one on it at that hour. She opened her eyes, but it was only darkness, only the sweat of Dan’s hair, hardly even the light from the top of the stairwell. A pounding came at the green door, closed to the street. Over and over again.

  Why was it like that? Didn’t the songs make a promise? Didn’t the songs say to hold your arms out wide open? Wasn’t love supposed to come through an open door to find you?

  The dark silhouette stalked out of the theater in disgust, in shame at what she had been forced to see. The quick-witted mother with the pinched face held in her knowledge of two sons—two!—and their suspicious bachelorhoods, the unfairness of it. Everyone with something to keep private.

  Her eyes stared up at the darkness of the stairwell, but her heart saw the stars of the theater ceiling, their faint but false twinkle.

  Once the song left the soft, beautiful O of Ricky Nelson’s mouth, there was only a sweet darkness left behind, not this light. Love was arriving through the open door. She heard its knock, over and over, insistent. A light was coming, brilliant and unstoppable.