Chapters (62)
- In the City by the Lake
- Taylor Saracen
- Contents
- Untitled
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- March 1932
- 11
- July 1932
- 12
- December 1932
- 13
- April 1933
- 14
- August 1933
- 15
- December 1933
- 16
- February 1934
- 17
- April 1934
- 18
- October 1934
- 19
- December 1934
- 20
- February 1935
- 21
- June 1935
- 22
- October 1935
- 23
- December 1935
- 24
- February 1936
- 25
- April 1936
- 26
- July 1936
- 27
- October 1936
- 28
- December 1936
- 29
- February 1937
- 30
- June 1937
- 31
- September 1937
- 32
- December 1937
We’d considered going to the Squattersville beach but had decided against it, thinking we would have a difficult time finding a stretch of sand to spread out on among the crowds. I was relieved Cal hadn’t wanted to go. While I enjoyed admiring the cuts of his tobacco farm–raised muscles in a swimsuit, I hated that birds and belles did as well. Though Cal wasn’t mine, I always appreciated the moments when I could pretend he was, when I’d beat down my brain and allow myself to believe one day I would let go enough to be his too.
“Have you ever been in love with someone who didn’t love you back?” Cal asked, without a hint of irony on his curious face.
“No,” I answered. I had never been in love at all.
“Lucky you,” he mused, causing me to wonder if he continued to love this person who didn’t love him too.
“It’s lucky not to be in love? You sound like my father.”
Cal lifted his eyebrow at the statement, but didn’t press. By now he knew the best way to draw something out of me was not to ask at all.
“It’s lucky not to be in love when the love is unrequited,” he clarified. “I understand her is all.”
“The scorned woman?”
He nodded. “Some people’s feelings are just …” he sighed, searching for a word, “really big. They feel things so intensely that they’re afraid if they don’t expel their emotions they’ll actually burst.”
“Are you speaking from experience?” I asked, wondering if Cal had ever gone off the deep end. It wouldn’t have shocked me if he had. He was as unpredictable as he was interesting. Maybe they were interchangeable qualities.
“Not personally, just stories I’ve heard,” he replied, just as he always did.
Generously, I let him off the hook as he’d done for me earlier.
Cal was a mystery to me, not in a dark and foreboding way, but as an incongruity. I knew his face, his body, perhaps even his soul, yet so little about what made him who he was. I wondered if I was a puzzle to Cal or if he saw right through me, the way he made me believe he could. I feared it didn’t make a difference either way.