Down the Steep by A.D. Nauman

Author:A.D. Nauman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regal House Publishing
Published: 2023-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

10

Once, when I was much younger, I visited Virginia Beach with my former best friend, Becky Campbell, and she and I went on a hunt for the most beautiful shell. We crept along the strand, searching for edges nudged through the dark sand. We each chose one. On the drive home in her parents’ car, sitting on towels so our legs wouldn’t stick to the vinyl, squinting into the blast of air that roared through the open windows, jiggling our encrusted feet, we pulled our shells from our pockets and examined them, stroked and admired them, then silently slid them back into our shorts. I pulled mine out again and again: it was pearl-pink, delicate and strong, so smooth it was soft. I couldn’t resist this secret treasure, exquisitely personal.

The dream was like that shell. I pulled it from my memory time after time to examine and admire it—Langston’s wide smile, Langston’s fingers threading through mine, his grip tightening, reassuring. Attaching. I was thrilled and embarrassed by it and there was no one to tell, not even Ruth. Being alone with the knowledge of the dream magnified its intensity, and some nights I could barely sleep. On the days when Langston was at the Swansons’, I studied his hands, the backs creased with bone, fingers long, the nails bright pale squares against dark skin. On the days when Daisy came with Langston, I sat at the table for several morose minutes, then took the girls outside to play.

It was ironic, I thought, how my goal had flipped: no longer did I want to be seen publicly with Langston. Instead, I longed to be with him in private, to have secret encounters. I imagined us crossing paths coincidentally: I’d be riding my bike, he’d be driving back from Franklin, and there we’d be, alone together. Langston had no idea all this was going on in my head. He’d been unaware I was pretending to be in love with him, and now he had no idea I truly was. He must have thought I was just a weirdo. My head was so full of him—Langston, I thought, admiring the sounds in his name—there was little space for thoughts of my father. My big plan to humiliate him had evaporated. My fury toward him dispersed to the far edges of my mind. I wish it had stayed there. I suppose it was bound to condense and pour down on me again.

Easter came. Even in church I thought of Langston, mixing my dream with reality, recalling Langston’s listening face, his forward slouch, the smooth brown skin of his neck shiny beneath his ear. I was sitting with Julie and Annette so Ruth could sing in the choir. My own family, across the aisle and one row ahead of me, was an image of piety: starched and straight and serious in dark suits and peach dresses, my mother and Barb in pillbox hats and white gloves. I too wore a peach dress and white gloves—somehow I’d escaped the hat.

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