“I’m not advising that you should. I just thought you might want to know what folks are saying.”
“I know what they say, Pete.”
“Ah, Nathan, it’s so much easier to be married to the Church.”
“But the Church won’t scratch your back when it itches or snuggle up to you on a cold night.”
Both men laughed and Father Peter said, “Time to go. Thanks for dinner.”
Later that evening I told my father I was going to the Heights but I didn’t tell him why. He looked up from his reading and said, “Be home before dark.”
I left the house and walked up Tyler Street and a minute later I heard the slap of sneakers on the pavement behind me and Jake ran to my side.
“Where you going?” he said a little out of breath.
“Uptown,” I said. “Looking for Gus.”
“Can I come?”
“I don’t care.”
Jake fell in step beside me. He said, “Are you going to tell Gus about Morris Engdahl?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ve been thinking, Frank. Maybe you should tell him you’re sorry.”
“Engdahl? Fat chance.”
“If he catches you he might hurt you or something.” Jake was quiet for a moment then he said, “Or me.”
“You don’t have to worry,” I said. “I’m the one who pushed him in the water.”
We crossed the tracks and Jake picked up a rock and threw it at the crossing sign and it hit with a crack like a small gunshot. “I hate it when he calls me Howdy Doody,” he said.
We were both silent after that, thinking our own thoughts. I was thinking that although I’d shrugged off Jake’s concern for his safety it was not an unreasonable fear. Morris Engdahl struck me as exactly the kind of guy who if he had a grudge against you would gladly beat up your brother. We turned off Tyler onto Main Street and headed toward the shops of town. It was a few minutes before eight o’clock and the sun was caught in the branches of the trees and the light across the lawns was yellow-orange and broken. From down the streets that we crossed came the occasional rattle of firecrackers and the pop of bottle rockets but otherwise the evening was calm and quiet. I wasn’t thinking only about Morris Engdahl but also about his accusation and that of his girlfriend, that Ariel was a skag. I didn’t like the word. I didn’t like the sound of it or the feel as it had leaped off my own tongue that afternoon or the place in my head that it had unlocked. As nearly as I could figure, skag referred to a girl who had sex with guys, maybe especially creepy guys like Morris Engdahl. Tying that particular activity to Ariel in that particular way wrenched my gut.
I was not ignorant of sex. I simply associated it with married people and I understood that men and women who indulged in sexual intercourse before marriage were doomed in many ways and I couldn’t imagine Ariel doomed in any way. Yet in the dark corners of the place so newly opened to my thinking there were already items I’d thoughtlessly stored there. Ariel’s late night rendezvous. Her sudden reluctance to leave New Bremen for Juilliard which had been the dream of her life. Her inexplicable tears when I’d caught her alone recently. In the hours since I’d left the quarry I’d come to realize that not only was she in love with Karl Brandt but she’d probably been sleeping with him as well. At thirteen I had no idea what to do with that.
Then as if conjured by the devil of my own thinking Karl Brandt pulled alongside us in his red Triumph with the top down.
“Hey, you two goofballs,” he cried with friendly familiarity, “where you going?”
I stared at him, trying to fix in my understanding the new contours of his existence in my family’s life. What I knew without doubt was that I liked Karl Brandt. I liked him still. I’d seen no arrogance in him, had never felt patronized by him, and in all the times I’d been around him when he was a guest in our home I hadn’t once sensed in his feelings for Ariel anything but genuine affection. But what did I know?
“Looking for Gus,” Jake said.
“Haven’t seen him,” Karl said. “But I’m headed up to the college to pick up Ariel after the rehearsal. You guys up for a spin in my little red demon here?”
“Heck, yes,” Jake said.
Karl leaned over and popped the door.
There was no backseat so Jake and I were forced to squeeze into the passenger’s seat together.
Karl said, “All set?”
He shot away from the curb and almost immediately the wind was a fury all around us.
We didn’t go directly to the college which was on the hill not far from the hospital that overlooked Luther Park. Karl zipped all over New Bremen for a while and then hit a couple of the back roads beyond the town limits where he really leaned on the accelerator. The wind howled and Jake like a madman howled with it and Karl’s gold hair flew around like corn silk in a tornado and he laughed with genuine pleasure but I found myself holding back as I looked at him, marveling at the ease of his life and at the same time feeling the slow invasion of a resentment that had never been there before.
As we pulled back into town and Karl braked to a reasonable speed and the wind died around us I asked, “Are you going to marry Ariel?”
It took a moment for him to swing his gaze toward me and I thought I sensed in his hesitation something that had nothing to do with careful driving but was born of a reluctance to look me in the eye.
“We haven’t talked about marriage, Frankie.”
“You don’t want to marry her?”
“We both have other plans right now.”
“College?”
“Yeah, college.”
“Ariel doesn’t want to go to Juilliard.”
“I know. She’s told me.”
“Do you know why?”
“Look, Frankie, this isn’t a discussion I want to have with you. This is between Ariel and me.”
“Do you love her?”
He looked at the road and I knew it was because he could not look at me.
“She loves you,” I said.
“Frankie, you’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”
“She told me love is complicated. It seems easy enough to me. You love each other and you get married and that’s how it works.”
“Not always, Frankie. Not always.” He said this with such heaviness that he sounded crushed.
• • •
The college was small and its primary purpose was to turn out Lutheran ministers. It had an excellent music program and a fine auditorium which was where we found my mother and Ariel and to my great surprise Emil Brandt. The rehearsal was just ending when we arrived and the singers who were a mix of college students and townspeople were dispersing. My mother and Ariel and Brandt all stood together at a baby grand piano that had been set on the stage. I knew that Brandt had agreed to play for the chorale and that his participation had been a huge part of the publicity for the event but I figured that considering his recent brush with death the idea had been scrapped. Not so, it appeared.