The record player was silent and the little multicolored lamp was off. Candy stood in the middle of the darkened living
room listening to them drive off in my Volkswagen. I sat there, alone on the couch, and I felt
my stomach churning. I wondered if
I really had the guts to face her with the truth.
When the sound of the motor had finally faded into nothingness, she
said, “I’m not worthy of you Brad...
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.
You’re a genius, and I’m just, well, the daughter of a preacher.
I’ve been selfish. I’ll never
forget what you’ve done for me, and....”
“Candy…”
She said, “You’ve won a mathematics
medal. You’re famous. What am I?”
“I told you…”
“I’m a prostitute.”
“You’re not a prostitute.”
“Marlo is for you. It’s
for the best.”
It was dark, and I couldn’t see her face, although she stood no more
than ten feet from me.
I said, “Come here. Sit down next to me.”
She didn’t move. “I loved George. I think about him sometimes.”
“I want to tell you something baby.
Something really important. It
will change everything.”
There was a silence. “Nothing
can change my mind Brad. I’ve...” She
stopped talking, and I knew that she was crying, silently in the darkness. “I’m going to Vacaville. I’m going to see him.”
“You’re not going to visit him.”
“I can’t do this to him, Brad. I
can’t just let him rot there in jail.”
I sat on the edge of the couch. “I
want you to listen to me Candy. First,
it’s you I want to marry and not Marlo. I’ve been confused but now I know that you’re
right for me and not Marlo.”
“You don’t even believe in marriage.”
“I told you, the marriage part is just…”
“You can’t marry me.”
“Why not?”
“Because Marlo told me something.”
“Marlo told you what?” I
got up and went to her and she was crying.
“Brad.”
I looked into her tear stained face and realized that it was possible
that Marlo hadn’t told her about my father after all.
She said, choking back tears, “I’ll
need some money.”
“Tell me exactly what Marlo said.”
“She said it would be impossible for us to get married. That there was something about you that I didn’t
know.”
“Was it about my father?”
She was silent. She was standing
and I went down on one knee and ran my hand across her bare thigh. She moved away.
“Yes.”
I got up and went into the darkened bedroom, not bothering to turn
on the light. I went to the chest of
drawers and took out my father’s .357 magnum.
Dispassionately, I knocked the cylinder out with the palm of my hand
and reached for the box of shells. The
bedroom light went on. She was standing
in the doorway.
“You’ll have to shoot me first,” she said.
Her hands gripped both sides of the door jam.
“I’m not going to let you out of the bedroom.”
I stared down at the pistol and then looked up at her. “I feel like killing both of them.”
She ran to me and knelt down before me. “Oh God.
Please.”
I raised the pistol above my head.
The chamber was empty and the cylinder swung back against the latch.
I said, melodramatically, “Why
shouldn’t I? What do I have to live
for now? You’re going to leave, aren’t you?” She bowed her head and all I could see was thick
blonde hair against shoulders. She
grasped my knees and held them tightly.
“Kill me, not them,” she said, with head bent towards the floor.
I hadn’t any intention of shooting anyone, but I said, “It’s those two perfidious women I’m going to
shoot, not you.” I paused. “And why shouldn’t I shoot them when I know
they are the reason that I’ll never make love to you again?”
She gripped my knees tighter. “All
right then.” Her voice was very high
and soft. “You can make love to me.”
I slammed the cylinder of the .357 magnum back into place, put the
carton of shells on the night table and placed the gun next to them.
After we made love, we lay on opposite sides of the waterbed, in silence. I lay equidistant from the gleaming, death-giving
steel and the warm, softness of her body.
I said, “I don’t care about
a biological accident that neither of us knew anything about.”
“Why did you lie to me?” The
words came quickly, as if she had been waiting to say them.
“This whole goddamned situation is so absurd.”
I sat up and the water moved violently underneath us. “I was going to tell you everything, tonight.”
“You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”
“I
told Jeannette. After dinner.
When you and Marlo went out.
We were watching you through the window riding bareback and that’s
when I told Jeannette I would. It’s the truth.”
She was silent.
I said, softly, “I can’t live
without you. I know that now.”
“I’m your sister.” She turned
her back to me, and curled up in the position of a fetus.
The bedroom window was open and we could hear the horses snorting.
I said, “We’ve got to put them
in the barn.”
“It’s warm. They can stay out.”
“We’ve got to rub them down. It
might get cold in the early morning.”
She was silent.
I said, “I want you to talk
to Jeannette. She’ll tell you that
I’m telling the truth.”
“I don’t want to talk to that woman.”
She was silent for a few moments. “Even
if she is my mother.”
“I don’t want you to spend the rest of your life thinking I was going
to hide it from you. Are you and Marlo still on speaking terms?”
“Of course. She put me on a
bummer that’s all. When she told me
about -- your father, my father. But I said it was
just the grass. It’s funny.” She turned around to look at me, and her breasts
shone in the white starlight. “After
she told me about him, I stopped shaking.” She gave a little laugh.
“I guess I was so shocked, I kinda forgot to shake.”
“I’m going to call Jeannette right now.”
“No.”
“Our happiness is at stake.”
“We don’t have a future.”
She turned back to the open window.
I rolled over and picked up the gun again.
Just as I grabbed the box of cartridges, a moving, blurred form appeared
over my shoulder. An outstretched hand
grasped for the pistol. I caught her
wrist and her head banged against the bedstead.
The gun fell on the floor and I picked it up. She put her hand on her head and began to cry.
I said, “I’m sorry.”
“Please put down the gun.”
I put the pistol back onto the night table and got back on the waterbed. “Don’t worry.
I wasn’t planning on shooting anyone.
Staring down the barrel of a .357 is just a bad habit I’ve gotten into.
Really. Look.” I
got out of the bed and put the pistol back into the drawer. I handed her the box of shells. She threw them out the window. I said, “You
didn’t have to do that.”
I leaned over and began probing her head.
She cried out in pain when I reached the spot where she had bumped
it. A spot of blood had formed underneath
a wave of hair that looked white in the pale light.
She said, “I’m going to call
her.”
It was almost
“I don’t know what to say to her,” she said.
“Let’s think for a minute. Then
I’ll dial the number.”
We sat there thinking and I took her hand.
She squeezed it. She said, “We don’t have to call her Brad. I believe you! I believe you!”
“I don’t want you to believe me, I want you to hear her say it.”
She said, “What if I just tell
her that we’ve been talking about your father and I’m on a bummer, and I want
to talk about it.”
“All right.” I let go of her
hand and dialed the number.
She reached for the receiver. “Let
me have the phone. Jeannette? It’s Candy.”
She turned to me and said, “She
hasn’t picked up the phone yet. “Hi.
Jeannette. It’s Candy.
.... Yes. Well, I’m kinda on a bummer... No,
I don’t want to come over there ... “
She reached for my hand and held it while her mother talked. I moved my ear close to the receiver.
Jeannette said, “We had a terrible
fight. She’s locked herself in her room and won’t come
out. I don’t know how you will ever
forgive us.” There was a long silence.
She continued. “Brad was going to tell you himself tonight. I...” Candy squeezed my hand until her fingernails
dug into the back of my hand. I yelped
and jumped up, and danced around the room in mock pain, shaking my hand.
In the dark, I saw her familiar bright smile.
I came back and placed my ear next to the receiver again. Jeannette
said, “I’ve been sitting here with
a terrible knot in my stomach. In fact, I’ve been in agony. It’s so good to hear your voice.” We heard a click on the other end of the line
and we all knew that Marlo had picked up the extension.
Candy said. “Do you think Marlo
will talk to me?”
“I’ll go knock on her door.”
She placed the phone on the kitchen counter and we heard the sound
of Jeannette knocking on the door. Marlo’s voice came over the phone. It was expressionless. “I’m here.”
Candy said, “I forgive you.”
“I feel so bad,” Marlo said and her little
voice broke. “I promised to love you
forever today and I betrayed you on the first day.”
There was a silence while she regained her composure. Her voice moved
to its lowest register. “I hate myself
and I feel like I should kill myself.”
“I love you.” Candy said. “If you kill yourself you will make me unhappy
for the rest of my life and I will never forgive you.” Her black eyebrows frowned with concern. “You’re my sister.” Our faces were inches apart and our eyes met,
and her mouth opened a little. “We’re
all confused. We have to love each
other. We don’t have any choice. We can’t kill ourselves. It would be a waste.” She continued, still looking into my eyes,
“We can’t kill ourselves, or each other.”
I moved my ear away from the phone and I couldn’t hear Marlo’s
voice anymore. I sat there next to
her while they talked and Candy’s voice got calmer and calmer and finally
she leaned over and rested her head against my shoulder. She listened for a long time and then she said,
“I love you too,” and hung up. She got up from the couch and stretched her
naked body voluptuously and said, “I
feel like riding bareback.” She giggled.
“Without any clothes on.” She looked at my naked body with a malicious
grin. “Let’s do it.”
“No way. I might get hurt.” I covered my genitals in mock horror.
“I feel like riding through Hayward without any clothes on. I want to shoot your father’s pistol into the
air and laugh at everyone when they come out of their houses.” Her voice lowered, and she threw herself back
down against the opposite arm of the leather couch and stared at me silently
in the darkness. A line of caked blood
was on her forehead. She said, “God Brad, what are we going to do?”
“We’re going to love each other like all the other great lovers in
history. Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, Abelard and Heloise....”
She interrupted my litany of famous lovers.
“It would destroy our parents if they found out.”
“We can trust Jeannette and Marlo,” I said.
She studied my face silently, as if she were looking for something
that she hadn’t seen there before.
“We can trust them,” I repeated.
“Do you and I look alike?” She
asked.
“No. You’re very, very beautiful and I’m a big, ridiculous
looking idiot.”
“Don’t say that. You’re beautiful. I’ll never love anyone else. No matter what.”
“We’re going to be like the famous lovers and I’m going to love you
until you’re white-haired.”
“I’m too young to get married Brad.”
“Who said anything about marriage?
Do you want me to go to Vietnam?”
“I’m going to need some money”
“Why?”
“I’m going to need five hundred dollars.”
“What for.”
“I’ve been riding Chief Joseph around like mad, all month, but nothing’s
happened.”
“What?”
“I skipped my period last month.”
Dark shadows played in the corners of her satin skin and a few stray
strands of yellow hair reached her breasts.
“I want to go home Brad.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I want to see my father again. I
don’t care what he is.” Her eyes brimmed
with tears.
“You need the money for an abortion?”
She smiled and then lowered her head.
She looked up and tears were in her eyes again,
“Do you want the baby?”
“Of course I want it. When I’m
about thirty. But not now. Do you want it?”
“Not now.”
She had moved to the chair opposite me.
I got up and knelt down in front of her and kissed her stomach.
“Dr. Orenstein can arrange an abortion.
There’s no need to go to Mexico.”
“I want to go home for awhile. Dad
is the only father or mother I know and I’m not going to let him down.”
“Can I go with you?”
She was silent. “I won’t be
gone for long.”
“I’ll talk to Dr. Orenstein about the abortion.”
“I’ll do it when I get back.”
“Candy.”
“Yes.”
“I’m scared. I’m afraid to let
you go down there. I’m afraid you’ll
never come back.”
“You’re afraid I’m going to disappear like your father and Jeannette,
aren’t you?”
“My father didn’t run away.”
She said, “He’s the only one
then. The rest of us, we’re all running away. I’m running from my father. You’re running from mathematics and from your
mother. Jeannette ran from me and my
father. I don’t want to run. Maybe I’ll make a stand. Here, in this impossible place.”
I ran my fingers across the faint white scars on her breasts and kissed
her shoulder.
“Maybe I’ll go to Cal and get my Ph.D. in mathematics.
And play on the baseball team.”
“I’ll go there too. And we can
buy that ranch somewhere near Berkeley and take Chief Joseph and Little Hawk.”
“Let me go to LA with you.”
She smiled.
“How would you like to be married to a world famous mathematician.”
“No more big words. Just little
ones, like you, me, house, horse...”
“Vietnam.”
She said, “We’ll get divorced
after the war.”
“Candy.”
“What?”
“You don’t feel different do you?”
“Everything’s changed but it’s still the same.
Do you know what I mean?”
I said, “I think so. If Jeannette turned out to be my mother, I wouldn’t feel guilty. I wouldn’t feel different about her.”
“Why should you feel guilty about her?”
“I don’t know.” I colored in
the darkness. “Rhonda Bradford, the
world famous evangelist will always be my mother and I wouldn’t feel like
anything had changed if I found out Jeannette was my mother.”
She put her finger on my nose. “You
know. I think something has changed. I feel sort of like, well, like a revolutionary
or something.”
“Hey. No big words.
You said so yourself.”
The next morning, I drove her to the Oakland Airport and put her on
a