Goldengrove by Francine Prose

Author:Francine Prose [Prose, Francine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Young Adult, Adult, Contemporary
ISBN: 9780060560027
Google: 5VCLRAAACAAJ
Amazon: 8492723130
Barnesnoble: 8492723130
Goodreads: 3329521
Publisher: HarperLuxe
Published: 2008-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

AFTER THAT, AARON AND I MET ON SUNDAYS, AND SOMETIMES in the mornings before I went to have lunch with my father. We always met in the same spot. Aaron got there early, parked parallel to the road, and opened the tailgate so he could sit in the back, in the sun.

Mostly, we drove around in the van. He knew so many beautiful places I never knew existed. Once he stopped at a turnoff, and we hiked into the woods, and he showed me a grove of foxgloves, pink, yellow, and purple, six feet tall, standing at attention like a sentinel troupe of space invaders. Another day, we found a patch of wild strawberries so thick we ate until I felt tipsy from the fermented fruit. Anyway, that’s what I pretended. Then we sat at the edge of the field, enjoying front-row seats at a duel between two hummingbirds who fought until one stabbed his beak into the other’s neck, and the loser plunged into the brambles. Even though it was awful, I felt lucky to be there, as if nature had staged the death match expressly for Aaron and me.

He took me to a part of the forest where someone had piled a mound of stones. He said it was a druid grave, from centuries before Columbus. It was something Margaret would have said. Probably it wasn’t true, but I didn’t correct him. I didn’t want him to think that he and Margaret had been the only poets.

He would never have done something corny, like whipping out a drawing pad and sketching. But every so often, he’d look at a mountain or a tree as if he was framing it in his mind, and I’d wonder if he was figuring out how it might work as a painting.

One Sunday afternoon, we were parked at Miller’s Point, watching two high-flying hawks perform their suicide-courtship air ballet.

Aaron said, “You know, this is the first time I’ve thought about making art since . . .” That was our code-speak for Margaret’s death: the silence that came after since.

I was so happy that being with me might have made Aaron start thinking about painting. He’d promised we’d help each other, but I’d never believed I could help him. I remembered the Senior Show, how he’d crossed in front of the screen and, for a second, Mirror Lake had rippled over his handsome face.

The van smelled of vanilla. Aaron liked me to wear the aroma-therapy oil. We never had to discuss it.

At first, I’d been careful to scrub it off the minute I got home. But after I forgot a few times, and my parents didn’t ask, I started wearing it constantly, dabbing it on to help me sleep and then help me get up in the morning. I was surprised, then annoyed, that my parents didn’t notice. What if the smell was alcohol? They would have registered that. For all the fuss they made about their only Remaining Child, I’d begun to feel dangerously cut loose and out there, on my own.

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