Exposition, Chapter 8 (p. 154-160)

D. spent the remainder of the morning in the open courtyard and hadn't seen anybody but Huck, Martin, and Holden. Martin seemed embarrassed when he walked by on the balcony. It looked as if he made a point of not looking at her. When the sun was almost directly over her head, D. decided to make her way to the kitchen and see what was going on with lunch. There was nobody there, so she made herself a sandwich, which, for no particular reason, she decided to eat in the dining room. The floor creaked as she made her way across the hall.

She put her plate on the table in front of the nearest chair, but looking over her shoulder, picked it up and walked around to the seat in which Holden had been sitting earlier. As she passed one of the southern windows, she noticed him at the edge of the forest stamping what looked like pants into the dirt. She shook her head and sat down.

After taking a bite of her sandwich, D. glanced into a box on the seat to her right. There were at least four dozen notebooks of many colors and varieties. Sticking out a bit was one of those with black and white speckled covers that she had used for all of her classes when she was younger. She took another bite out of the sandwich, put it down on her plate, and wiped her hand on her dress.

The first page of the speckled notebook was filled with the type of drawings that any junior high school boy might draw. There were pictures of eyes, some crying. There were pictures of mouths, some laughing, some frowning, some snarling. In the bottom right-hand corner was the first sketch of a stick figure flip-book that somebody, she assumed Nathaniel, had drawn. After another bite of her sandwich, she took the notebook in both of her hands and flipped through the pages.

The stick figure person began to run around in circles and beat its head. It succeeded in cracking the head open, and another stick figure person began to emerge: hands first, then a head with a halo over it. The pictures stopped just as the angel stick figure had extracted itself down to its waist. D. took another bite out of her sandwich and watched the incomplete metamorphosis of the stick figure person again.

At the top of the page after which the artist had apparently lost his impetus, Nathaniel had written "History." She knew that he had done it because on the next line were the words "by Nathaniel Ariss." She began to read what looked like the beginning of a story written in a boy's sloppy letters:

Chapter 1

The sun beat down on the field in it's cold Winter way. The grass was brown and the trees were bare. The field was a dull, drab ocean of cold wind with a Y on each side and was surounded by a gravel oval. The sun brought a little life to the field by glinting off any shiny object it could find. There were bottles brought by a caravan of cars and discarded when empty. There were cans left by the audience after the show was over. And off to one side there was a star shining more brightly than any of the other assorted litter. The star was shining with a purpose to be discovered. It gleemed so brilliantly that it seemed to break free of the faded metal casing of a necklace charm. Then a hand folded around the star and forced it back into its prison.

D. stopped reading and ate some more of her sandwich. Holden walked through the front door and smiled when he saw what she was doing. "You'll get hooked," he said. The pants that he had been trampling in the dirt were slung over his shoulder, and D. could see the leather label, which said, "Versace." Expensive pants to be dragging around in the mud, she thought.

"I just wanted something to glance through while I ate," she responded.

"Oh. Which one are you reading?"

Taking her time, D. chewed and swallowed the bit of sandwich that she had in her mouth. "I guess it's called 'History.'"

Holden thought for a moment and then informed her, "I don't think I ever read that one. It might be from when he was younger or something. I like to read the stuff that he wrote later. I think it was Jake who told me once that the better educated somebody is the more value is in the thing that they write."

Though attempting to appear as if she weren't initiating a conversation, D. told him that she didn't think that was always true.

"Of course not," said Holden. "Nothing's always true."

They both looked as footsteps on the stairs turned out to be Martin's. Holden waved his hand. "Hey, Martin. How was your goddam winter?"

Without answering, Martin offered an incomplete wave and nodded his way into the kitchen.

"He's the type of guy that never likes to answer you when you ask him a straightforward question," Holden explained, turning back to D. "You know," he began, "I was thinking about you leaving, and I was wondering if I could give you my address or something. Or if we could set up a place where you could write something or like scratch it into a telephone pole or something."

"Why?"

"Well, what I wanted to know. I mean, what I've been thinking about is whether as you're driving away you'll feel like you're disappearing or something every time you turn onto a different street. What I'm trying to say is, I always think that even though you keep taking smaller and smaller roads when you come here and the trees get thicker and all, at least you're coming someplace and not going away, but when you leave a place... well it's kind of spooky, but you feel like you're not going anywhere, just sort of... well... disappearing."

"Sounds like you don't need me to write anything to you."

"I don't. It's just that... that I've never asked anybody here because I always think that they'll think that I'm doing everything backassward and not according to the rules and all. But since I'll never see you again, I'd kind of like to know if you feel the same way. All you'd have to do is write a 'yes' or 'no' in a special place that I'll know to look."

"I don't think so."

"Oh. OK. I was just asking." Holden pulled out a chair and threw the box that was on it under the table. He sat down.

D. started eating her sandwich again. Weirdo, she thought.

After a moment, Holden started talking again. "If you leave, you know, you might get all depressed because you'll keep wondering what's happening to us all."

Looking at him out of the tops of her eyes, D. told him that she'd take the risk.

"If you're into that sort of thing, then I guess you could do that. It's just that, if you don't stay here and meet everybody, and get to like everybody so much that you plan to come back, you'll always be wondering where the hell we all go when it's winter. You'll know that we couldn't just stay here and ignore the rest of our lives and all. I mean, we don't just die or hibernate or anything, and you'll start to wonder if we don't die or hibernate or something, or stay here, then we must be somewhere doing something, and you'll wonder what it is. It won't be like a funeral where you can get in your car and never come back and always know that whoever it was that you left there will always be right there because they're dead."

D. swallowed a chunk of bread. She often had trouble eating when people insisted on talking to her during the meal. As she bit into the sandwich again, Nick strode through the front door and across the hall.

"Hey Nick," called Holden.

Nick waved and started up the stairs but turned and walked to where he could see D. "So, are you leaving us?" he asked her.

"Yes, I'm just waiting for Huck to show up."

Nick nodded. "Well, it was delightful to meet you. I don't suppose I could charm you into staying?" His smile was debonair.

Smiling back, D. told him that she didn't think so.

"Well, then. Have a safe trip home," he said, bowed, and sprung up the stairs.

Holden waited until he could no longer hear Nick's footsteps and then said, "He's always in a big goddam hurry. It's like he's runnin' away from something. He's probably only going to go fix himself up or something, like he wants to be all handsome as he runs away. And for who? For nobody, that's who."

D. ate the last of her sandwich.

"But on the other hand," Holden started up again, "if you were to stay until you thought that you might come back next year, then it's like everything stayed just where it was when you come back. I mean everybody is just the same, that is. It's always like that. You don't even need to put everybody in a glass case like they have at the Museum of Natural History. They're the same because they want to be. It's like that carousel in Central Park that always played the same music until somebody came along and changed it on everybody. Hell, that guy must have thought he was being pretty goddam funny or something. Certain things shouldn't be changed."

"I agree," D. vouchsafed an answer. "Now if you'll excuse me..."

"You can go if you really want to. Who's going to stop you? Not me. It's up to you. Just don't be stupid and tell everybody or write about us."

"Don't worry," she smirked, "your secret's safe with me."

"Oh. I don't give a damn about that. You could draw a goddam map to the house if you wanted to. I'm just saying for you. Because maybe if you do you'll start missing everybody."

D. threw the notebook back into the box and stood up. "Excuse me," she said as she walked past Holden into the entranceway.

"Hold on," he stopped her. "There's something I want to show you."

D. looked toward the kitchen and then at the plate in her hand. "What?" she asked tersely.

Getting down on his hands and knees, Holden crawled under the table, moving a chair out of his way. "It's under here," he said.

A "pfff" slipped between D.'s lips, and she said, "I'm not going to crawl around on the floor with you."

"Why not?"

"I'm just not going to."

Mumbling something about people never wanting to crawl around on the floor with somebody who just wants to show them something interesting, Holden told her, "Alright. You don't have to if you squat down a little."

D. shook her head, an annoyed look on her face, but she did as he had requested. The table was of an old sort, with intricate designs running around its edge and a veritable web of interlocking beams and supports. She remembered playing with dolls under a similar, but smaller, table at her grandfather's house when she was a little girl. She almost had an impulse to slip under the table, if only to better picture the strange look of giant grown-up legs from a child's perspective.

"It's right here," said Holden. He was pointing to something carved into a crossbeam.

Squinting a little, D. could make out what it said. It said, "Fuck You." She stood up, not quite understanding her intense irritation, and stepped out of the room, sorry that she had been so soft as to humor Holden. "Lovely," she said.

Holden scampered out from under the table. "Well I didn't write it! That's for goddam sure."

"I'm not saying that you did," said D. without turning. She was halfway to the kitchen.

Holden stopped at the edge of the entrance hall and shouted, "Glad to've met you."

A few feet away from the kitchen door, D. stopped and turned around. "What did you say?"

Looking slightly flustered, Holden repeated himself and then added, "You know, you have to say that stuff if you want to stay alive."

D. went into the kitchen.

The sun is directly overhead, and the wind has increased to a mild pitch. The trees sway, but in contrary directions, as if there are several breezes all blowing their allotted acres in whichever direction they please.

"I believe so," D. responds.

In one of the southern windows on the ground floor, a curtain flutters even though the window is closed and the breeze cannot reach it to set it into motion.