Free Celestial Navigation by Anne Tyler Page B

then. I was fifteen, a nice quiet girl who didn’t even wear lipstick yet, and I had come with my parents and we were sitting on an oilcloth with a picnic lunch that would feed an old folks’ home and great quantities of insect repellent and sunburn ointment and wet cloths wrapped in cellophane in case of spills. This boy with the long slick hair (I didn’t know his name then) seemed to have brought nothing but himself, barely covered by one of those tight satin bathing suits thatI always thought were so tacky. He stood on the farthest limb that would bear his weight and then flung himself up and out, and he cut through the water like a knife and came up flicking that hair and laughing. I just stared. I thought he was fascinating. Now I am not talking about love at first sight or anything like that—why, he scared me half to death! He and all his friends, with their horseplay and their great splashing butterfly strokes and the wolf howls they gave toward the girls out on the barrel raft. They didn’t howl at
me
. I was just sitting there in the shade with my parents, watching out for sunburn, shrinking when any of them came too close. And when my mother said, “This lake would be right fine if it weren’t for the rougher element,” I said, “Yes, ma’am,” and meant it. But that didn’t stop me from staring at Guy Tell.
    My father was the principal of Partha High School in Partha, Virginia. My mother was an English teacher. They were middle-aged when they had me and I was an only child, which may be why they guarded me so well—that and their being religious. They were Baptists. My father passed the collection plate on Sunday mornings. At one point I was religious too, and had thoughts of growing up to be a missionary and eventually getting martyred, but that all passed away in time. I don’t know why. I just turned out not to be a believer, that’s all. But I continued to go to church with my parents. I sat folding my program into a fan, feeling chafed inside by some irritation that extended even to the starchy smell of my mother’s best dress and the way my father kept tugging his shirt cuffs down when he didn’t need to. Yet I loved them. I was very close to them, especially to my mother. What bothered me was not my parents or even their way of living, but the fact that it seemed to be the only way open to me. I would grow up, of course, and go to college and marry and have children, but those were not changes so much asadditions. I would still be traveling their single narrow life. There was no hope of any other. At least, not till Dewbridge Lake.
    Is Dewbridge Lake still there? Well, it must be. But after that one summer I have never been back. It’s as if the lake had fulfilled its purpose and then vanished from the face of the earth. Its mildewed gray pavilion was erected overnight for me to do the bunnyhop in with my girlfriends, the only dance I was allowed. Its rainbow-colored jukebox was expressly filled with Pat Boone songs so that one day, at the end of a bunnyhop, Guy Tell might step up to me and say, “This here is for me and
you
to dance to, honey,” and fold me up in a long walking clinch because I was too scared to say no. That pine forest with its shiny hot floor was grown for the two of us to hide in, leaning against a spruce trunk, Guy perpetually sliding a swimsuit strap off my shoulder while I perpetually slid it back up. His kisses tasted of tobacco. I had never been kissed before and found it tiring; my neck ached and my mouth felt bruised. Drawing back from me, he would smile with his eyes half-veiled as if he had won some contest. I was the loser, and I didn’t even know I was
in
a contest. Then we would separate and I would return to my parents, leaving the pine trees shimmering behind me. Now I imagine that the entire forest has fallen, giving off no sound, like that tree they always bring up in science classes. All that will remain of it is a little golden dust floating upward