But the tingling, pulsing sensations still coursed through her virgin body when she thought of lying on the bed with Brian that morning, of his intimate touches. She groaned, rolled onto her belly and hugged a pillow. But it was hours before sleep overcame her.
__________
THEY HAD A LAST BREAKFAST TOGETHER the next morning, then there were goodbye kisses for Margaret and Willard, who went to work with tears in their eyes, waving even as the car moved off up the street.
Theresa was driving to the airport again, but this time Amy was coming along. All the way, the car had a curious, sad feeling of loneliness, as if the plane had already departed. By unspoken agreement, Brian had taken the front seat with Theresa, and she occasionally felt his eyes resting on her. It was a sunny, snowy morning, its brightness revealing every colorful freckle, every strand of carroty hair she possessed. There was no place to hide, and she wished he wouldn’t study her so carefully.
At the airport, they each carried a duffel bag or a guitar case to the baggage check, then entered the green concourse through the security check and walked four abreast down the long, slanting floor that echoed their footsteps. Their gate number loomed ahead, but just before they reached it, Brian grabbed Theresa’s hand, tugged her to a halt and told the others, “You two go on ahead. We’ll be right there.” Without hesitation, he dragged her after him into a deserted gate area where rows of empty blue chairs faced the wall of windows. He took the guitar case from her hand and set it on the floor beside his own duffel bag, then backed her into the only private corner available: wedged beside a tall vending machine. His hands gripped her shoulders and his face looked pained. He studied her eyes as if to memorize every detail.
“I’m going to miss you, Theresa. God, you don’t know how much.”
“I’ll miss you, too. I’ve loved ... I ....” To her chagrin, she began to cry.
The next instant she was bound against his hard chest, Brian’s arms holding her with a fierce, possessive hug. “Say it, Theresa, say it, so I can remember it for six months.” His voice was rough beside her ear.
“I’ve l-loved being w ... with you ....”
She clung to him. Tears were streaming everywhere, and she had started to sob. His mouth found hers. Theresa’s lips were soft, parted and pliant. She lifted her face to be kissed, knowing a willingness and wonder as fresh and billowing as only first love can be—no matter at what age. She tasted salt from her own eyes and smelled again the masculine scent she’d come to recognize so well during the past two weeks. She clung harder. He rocked her, and their mouths could not end the bittersweet goodbye.
When at last he lifted his head, he circled her neck with both hands, rubbing his thumbs along the bone structure of her chin and jaws, searching her eyes. “Will you write to me?”
“Yes.” She grasped one of his hands and held it fast against her face, his fingertips resting upon her closed eyelid before she pulled them down and kissed them, feeling beneath her sensitive lips the tough calluses caused by the music that bound Brian to her, made him someone so very, very right for her.
She raised her eyes at last, to find his etched with as much dread of parting as she herself felt. Oddly she had never thought men to be as affected by sentiment as women, yet Brian looked as if his very soul ached at having to leave her.
“All right. No promises. No commitments. But when June comes ....” He let his eyes say the rest, then scooped her close for one last long kiss, during which their bodies knew a renewed craving such as neither had experienced before.
“Brian, I’m twenty-five years old, and I’ve never felt like this before in my life.”
“You can stop reminding me you’re two years older, because it doesn’t matter in the least. And if I’ve made you happy, I’m happy. Keep thinking it, and don’t change one thing about yourself until June. I want to come back and find you just like you are now.”
She raised up on tiptoe, taking a last heart-sweeping kiss she couldn’t resist. It was the first time in her life she had ever kissed a man instead of the other way around. She laid a hand on his cheek then, backing away to study him and imprint the memory of his beloved face into her mind.
“Send me your picture.”
He nodded. “And you send me yours.”
She nodded. “You have to go. They must be boarding by now.”
They were. As Brian and Theresa rounded the wall toward their gate area, Jeff was nervously waiting by the ramp. He noted Theresa’s tear-stained face and exchanged a knowing glance with Amy, but neither said anything.
Jeff hugged Theresa. And Brian hugged Amy. Then they were gone, swallowed up by the jetway. And Theresa didn’t know whether to cry or rejoice. He was gone. But, oh, she had found him. At last!
__________
AT HOME the house seemed as haunted as an empty theater. He was there in each room. Downstairs she found the hideaway bed converted back to a davenport, and his sheets neatly folded atop a stack of blankets and pillows. She picked up the folded, wrinkled white cotton and stared at it disconsolately. She lifted it to her nose, seeking the remembered scent of him, pressing her face against the sheet while she dropped to the sofa and indulged in another bout of tears. Brian, Brian. You’re so good for me. How will I bear six months without you? She dried her eyes on his sheet, brought his pillow into her arms and hugged it to her belly, burying her face against it, wondering how she would fill 176 days. She experienced the profound feeling that seemed to be the true measure of love—the belief that no one had ever loved so before her, and that no one would ever love in the same way after her.
So this was how it felt.
__________
AND IT FELT THE SAME during the days that followed. School began and she was happy to get out of the house with its memories of him, happy to be back with the children, schedules, the familiar faces of the other faculty members she worked with. It took her mind off Brian.
But never for long. The moment she was idle, he returned. The moment she got into her car or walked into the house, he was there, beckoning. The way in which she missed him was more intense than she’d ever imagined loneliness could be. She cried in her bed that first night he was gone. She found smiling difficult during the first days back at school. Brooding came easily, and dreaminess, once so foreign to her, became constant.
On the first day after he’d left, Theresa returned home from school to find a note pinned to the back door: “Bachman’s Florist delivered something to my house when they couldn’t find anyone here at home. Ruth.”
Ruth Reed, the next-door neighbor, answered Theresa’s knock with a cheery greeting and wide smile. “Somebody loves somebody at your house. It’s a huge package.”
It was encased in orchid-colored paper to which was stapled a small rectangle of paper bearing the terse delivery order: “Brubaker ... 3234 Johnnycake Lane.”
“Thank you, Ruth.”
“No need for thanks. This is the kind of delivery I’m happy to take part in.”
Carrying the flowers home, Theresa’s heart skipped in gay anticipation. It’s from him. It’s from him. She jogged the last ten feet up the driveway and catapulted into the kitchen, not even stopping to take off her coat before ripping aside the crackling lavender paper to find a sumptuous arrangement of multicolored carnations, daisies, baby’s breath and statice, interlaced with fresh ivy, all billowing from a footed green goblet. Theresa’s hand shook as she reached for the tiny envelope attached to a heart-shaped card holder among the greenery.
Her smile grew, along with the giddy impatience to see his name on the gift card.
His name was there all right, but hers wasn’t. The card read, “To Margaret and Willard. With many thanks for your hospitality. Brian.”
Instead of being disappointed, Theresa was more delighted than ever. So he’s thoughtful, too. She studied the handwriting, realizing it was written not by Brian but by some stranger in a florist shop someplace across town. But it didn’t matter; the sentiment
was his.
Brian’s first letter came on the third day after he’d left. She found it in the mailbox herself, for she was always the first one home. When she flipped through the envelopes and found the one with the blue wings in the upper left-hand corner and the red and blue jets on the lower right, her heart skittered and leaped. She took the letter to her room, got the fiddling frog from his perch on the shelf and held him in her hand while she sat cross-legged on the bed, reading Brian’s words.
But his picture was the first thing that fell out of the envelope, and she dropped the pewter frog the moment Brian’s face appeared. He was clothed in his dress blues, his tie crisply knotted, the visor of his garrison cap pulled to the proper horizontal level over his brow. He was unsmiling, but the green eyes looked directly into hers from beneath their familiar, sculptured brows. Dear face. Dear man. She turned the picture over. “Love, Brian,” he’d written on the back. Theresa’s heartbeat accelerated, and warmth stole over her body. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and pressed the picture against her breast, against the crazy upbeat rhythm his image had invoked, then laid the picture face up on her knee and began reading.
Dear Theresa,
I miss you, I miss you, I miss you. Everything has suddenly changed. I used to be pretty happy here, but now it feels like prison. I used to be able to pick up my guitar and unwind at the end of a day, but now when I touch it I think of you and it makes me blue, so I haven’t been playing much. What have you done to me? At night I lie awake, thinking of New Year’s Eve and how you looked when you came out into the kitchen dressed in your new sweater and makeup and hairdo, all for me, and then I wish I could get the picture out of my head because it just makes me miserable. God, this is hell. Theresa, I want to apologize for what happened that morning on my bed. I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t help it, and now I can’t stop thinking about it. Listen, sweets, when I come home I’m not going to put the pressure on for that kind of stuff. After everything we talked about, I shouldn’t have done it that day, okay? But I can’t stop thinking about it, and that’s mostly what makes me miserable. I wish I’d been more patient with you, but on the other hand, I wish I’d gone further. Man, do I sound mixed up. This place is driving me crazy. All I can think about is your house, and you sitting on the piano bench. Last night I put the Chopin record on but I couldn’t stand it, so I shut off the stereo. When I can handle it again I’ll make a tape of “Sweet Memories,” and send it to you, okay, sweets? It says it all. Just how I’m feeling every minute. You, slipping into the darkness of my dreams at night, and wandering from room to room, turnin’ on each light. I don’t think I can make it till June without seeing you. I’ll probably go AWOL and show up at your door. Do you get Easter vacation? Could you come up here then? Listen, sweets, I gotta go. Jeff and I play a gig this Saturday night, but no girls afterward. That’s a promise.
I miss you,
Brian
She read the letter nonstop for half an hour. Though each line thrilled her, Theresa returned time and again to his offhand question about Easter vacation. What would her parents say if she went? The thought rankled and made her chafe against having to tell them at all, at her age. The house seemed restrictive after that, and she felt increasingly hemmed in.
She had put off writing to Brian, feeling that to write too soon would seem ... what? Brazen? Overstimulated? Yet his words were thrillingly emotional. His impatience and glumness were a surprise. She’d never dreamed men wrote such letters, holding back nothing of their feelings.
She didn’t want to send her picture. But now that she knew what heart’s ease there was to be found in having Brian’s picture to bring him near, she realized he’d probably feel the same. She got out one of her annual elementary-school pictures, but for a moment wavered. It was a full-color shot: black and white would have pleased her more. The camera had recorded each copper-colored freckle, each terrible red uncontrollable hair and the breadth of her breasts. Yet this was just how she’d looked when he first met her, and still he’d found something that pleased him. Along with the photograph, Theresa sent the first love letter of her life.
Dear Brian,
The house is so lonely since you’ve been gone. School helps, but as soon as I step into the kitchen, everything sweeps back and I suddenly wish I lived somewhere else so I wouldn’t have to see you in every room. The flowers you sent are just beautiful. I wish you could’ve seen the look on mom’s face when she first saw them (and on mine when I opened the package and found they weren’t for me.) Naturally, mom got on the phone right away and called everyone in the family to tell them what “that thoughtful boy” had sent.
I really wasn’t disappointed to find the flowers weren’t for me, because what I got two days later was dearer to me than any of nature’s beauties.
Thank you for your picture. It’s sitting on the shelf in my room beside The Maestro, who’s guarding it carefully. When your letter came I was really surprised to read how you were feeling, because everything you said was just what’s happened to me. Playing the piano is just awful. My fingers want to find the notes of the Nocturne, but once I start it, I can’t seem to finish. Songs on the radio we listened to together do the same thing to me. I seem to have withdrawn from mom and dad and Amy, even though I’m miserable when I sit in my room alone in the evenings. But if I can’t be with you, somehow I just don’t want to be with anyone.
It’s really hard for me to talk about this subject, but I want to set the record straight. I know I’m really naive and inexperienced, and when I think of how uptight I get about the really quite innocent things we did together, I realized I’m paranoid about ... well, you know. I really want to be different for you, so I’ve decided to talk to the school counselor about my “problem.”
Did you really mean it about Easter? I’ve read that part of your letter a hundred times, and each time my heart goes all sideways and thumpy. If I came I’m afraid you’d expect things I’m not sure I’m prepared for yet. I know I sound mixed up, saying in one breath I’m going to see the counselor and in the next I’m still old-fashioned. I’m sure mother and dad would have a fit if their little Theresa announced she was going up to spend Easter with Brian. Some days mother drives me crazy as it is.
Here’s my awful picture, taken in October with the rest of the Sky Oaks Elementary student body and faculty. You say it’s the color of flowers. I still say vegetables, but here I am anyway. I miss you so much.
Affectionately,
Theresa
P.S. Hi to Jeff.
P.P.S. I like the name “sweets.”
January 10
Dear Sweets,
I can’t believe you didn’t say no, flat out. Now I’m living on dreams of Easter. If you come, I promise you’ll set the rules. Just being with you would be enough to tide me over. You’ll probably think I’m speaking out of turn, but I think somebody twenty-five years old shouldn’t even be living with their parents anymore, much less having to get their okay to go off for a weekend. Maybe you’re still hiding behind your mother’s skirts so you won’t have to face the world. God, you’ll probably think I’m an opinionated sex maniac now, and that all I want is to get you up here so I can act like Greg What’s-His-Name. Don’t be mad, sweets, okay? Ask the counselor about it and see what she says. Your picture is getting curled at the edges from too much handling. I’ve been thinking, I wouldn’t mind getting away from this place for a while. Instead of coming up here, maybe we could meet halfway in Fargo. Let me know what you think. Please decide to come. I miss you.
Love,
Brian
__________
THE COUNSELOR’S NAME was Catherine McDonald. She was in her mid-thirties, always dressed in casual yet extremely up-to-date clothes and always wore a smile. Although they hadn’t had many occasions to work together, Theresa and Catherine had shared many friendly visits in the teachers’ lunch room, and Theresa had come to respect the woman’s inherent poise, objectivity and deep understanding o
f the human psyche. There were school counselors whom Theresa thought more qualified to be truck drivers. But Catherine McDonald suited her role and was immensely respected by those with whom she worked.
Rather than meet in school, Theresa requested that they get together over cups of tea at the Good Earth Restaurant at four o’clock one Thursday afternoon. Potted greenery and bright carpeting gave the place a cheerful atmosphere. Theresa was led past the Danish tables and chairs on the main floor to a raised tier of booths overlooking it. Each booth was situated beside a tall window, and it was in one of these where Catherine was already waiting. The older woman immediately stood and extended a hand with a firm grip. Perhaps the thing Theresa had first admired about Catherine was the way the woman’s eyes met those of the person to whom she spoke, giving an undivided attention that prompted one to confide in her and believe she cared deeply about the problems others unloaded upon her. Catherine’s intelligent, wide-set blue eyes remained unwaveringly on Theresa’s as the two greeted each other, settled down and ordered herbal tea and pita-bread sandwiches, then got down to the crux of the meeting.