“Aw, Jeff, you know I don’t mean it. Not anymore. She’s really okay, I guess. I got to like her a lot last Christmas. But I’ve called her Glue Eyes for so long it kinda falls outa me, ya know?”
“Well, someday it’s gonna fall out when you’re standing right beside her, then what will you do?”
“Apologize and explain and tell her that when I was learning to wear makeup I tried to put it on exactly like she does.”
Jeff gave her a mock punch on the chin, then bounded into the house to make the phone call, and returned a few minutes later, announcing, “I’m going to run over and pick up Patricia and bring her back here. Anybody want to ride along with me?” Theresa was torn, recalling the ardent reunion embraces she and Brian had witnessed last time, yet not wanting to stay behind if Brian said yes. He seemed to be waiting for her to answer, so she had to make a choice.
“I’ll help Amy and mother with the dishes while you’re gone,” she decided.
“I’ll drive you, Jeff,” Brian offered, stretching to his feet, adjusting his glasses and turning to follow Jeff to the van. Theresa watched him walk away, studying the back of his too-short hair, the places where the gauze shirt stuck to his back in a tic-tac-toe design from the webs of the lawn chair, his hands moving to his hips to give an unconscious tug at the waistband of his jeans. His back pockets had worn white patches where he carried his billfold, and his backside was so streamlined the sight of it created a hollow longing in the pit of Theresa’s stomach.
He’s upset. I should have told him.
No, you had no obligation to confide in him. It was your choice.
In the van, the two men rode down the street where evening shadows stretched long tendrils across green lawns. Brian drove deliberately slow. He pondered, wondering how to introduce the subject, and finally attacked it head on.
“Okay, Brubaker, why didn’t you tell me?”
Jeff gave a crooked smile. “She looks great, huh?”
“Damn right she looks great, but my eyeballs nearly dropped onto the goddamn driveway when I saw her standing there with her ... without her ... aw hell, they’re gone.”
“Yup,” Jeff slouched low in the seat and grinned out the windshield. “I always knew there lurked a proud beauty inside my Treat.”
“Quit beatin’ around the bush, Brubaker. You knew, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I knew.”
“Did she write and tell you and ask you not to tell me?”
“No, Amy did. Amy thought I should know, so I could warn you if I thought that was best.”
“Well, why the hell didn’t you?”
“Because I didn’t think it was any of my business. Your relationship with Theresa’s got nothing to do with me, beyond the fact that I’m lucky enough to be her brother. If she’d wanted you to know beforehand, she’d have told you herself. I figured, what business was it of mine to go stickin’ my two cents worth in?”
“But ....” Brian gripped the steering wheel.
“But ... how?”
“Breast-reduction surgery.”
Brian’s shaded brown lenses flashed toward Jeff. “Breast re—” He sounded flabbergasted. “I never heard of such a thing.”
“To tell you the truth, neither had I, but Amy told me all about it in her letter. She had it done three weeks ago, right after school got out for summer vacation. Listen, man—” Jeff turned to watch his friend guide the van onto a broader double-lane avenue “—she’s ... I don’t want to see her get hurt, okay?”
“Hurt?” Brian turned sharply toward Jeff, then back to his driving. “You think I’d hurt her?”
“Well, I don’t know. You’re kind of ... well, you act kind of pissed off or something. I don’t know and I’m not asking what went on between you and Theresa, but go easy on her, huh? If you’re thinking she should have confided in you for some reason, just understand that she’s a pretty timid creature. It’d be pretty damn hard for a girl like Theresa to even have the surgery, much less write and discuss it with a man—I don’t care how close you’d been.”
“All right, I’ll remember that. And I’ll cool it around her. I guess I backed off pretty suddenlike when we said hello, but Christ, it was a shock.”
“Yeah, I imagine it was.” They rode in silence for some minutes, then just as they approached Patricia’s house, Jeff turned to Brian and asked in a concerned voice, “Could I ask just one question, Bry?”
“Yeah, shoot.”
“Just exactly what do you think of Theresa?”
Brian pulled the van up at the curb before Patricia’s house, killed the engine, removed his sunglasses and half turned toward Jeff, draping his left elbow over the steering wheel. “I love her,” he answered point-blank.
Jeff let his smile seep up the muscles of his face, made a fist and socked the air. “Hot damn!” he exclaimed, then opened his door and jumped down to cross the yard on the run.
Brian watched Jeff and Patricia meet in the center of the open stretch of lawn. Jeff flung his arms around the young woman, who lifted her arms around his shoulders, and they kissed, pressed tightly against each other. It was just the way he’d been planning to greet Theresa.
Patricia’s parents stepped out the front door and called, “Hi, Jeff. Welcome home. Are you gonna stay this time?”
“Damn right, I am. And I’m gonna steal your daughter!”
“Somehow, I don’t think she minds one bit,” Mrs. Gluek called back.
Patricia clambered up into the high van, scooted over and gave Brian a peck on the cheek. “Hiya, bud. Long time, no see.”
Jeff was right behind Patricia. “Come here, woman, and put your little butt where it belongs, right on my lap.” There were only two bucket seats up front. Jeff pulled Patricia down on his lap, and she laughed happily, flung her arms around his neck and kissed him while the van started rolling.
__________
THE DISHES WERE DONE when the van lumbered up the street a second time, pulled into the driveway and began disgorging its passengers. They meandered to the patio, where Margaret, Willard and Amy joined them. When Theresa came out of the kitchen onto the back step, she found Brian standing below her, waiting.
Her heart did a flip-flop, and everything inside her went warm and springing. He reached up a hand to take hers, and she felt a wash of relief that he was touching her at last.
“Come here, I want to talk to you.” He pulled her down the steps to his side, and asked softly, “Do you think your folks would mind if we went for a walk?”
“Not at all.”
“Tell them, then. I want to be alone with you, even if it’s in the middle of a city street where people are sitting on their doorsteps watching us pass by.”
Her heart swelled with joy, and she stepped to the edge of the patio, made their excuses and returned to Brian. He captured her hand, and their joined knuckles brushed between their hips as they ambled down the driveway and onto the blacktop street that was still warm beneath Theresa’s sandals after the heat of the summer day. The shadows were falling as evening settled in. The sun rested on the rim of the horizon like a golden, liquid ball. They passed between yards where other sprinklers played the hushed vespers of water droplets spraying greenery.
“Is there someplace we can go?” he asked.
“There’s a park about two blocks away.”
“Good.”
Nothing more was said as they sauntered hand in hand down the center of the street.
“Hi, Theresa,” called a woman who was sitting on her front steps.
“Hi, Mrs. Anderson.” Theresa raised a hand in greeting, then explained quietly, “I used to babysit for the Andersons when I was Amy’s age.”
Brian made no reply, lifting a hand in silent greeting, too, then continuing on at Theresa’s side, stealing glances at her breasts when she dropped her chin and watched the toes of her white sandals. He wondered what secrets her clothing concealed, what she’d been through, if she hurt, if she was healed. But mostly, he
wondered why she hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him.
The eastern sky turned a rich periwinkle blue as the sun slipped and plunged into oblivion, leaving the western horizon a blaze of orange that faded to yellow, then violet as they approached a small neighborhood park where a silent baseball diamond was surrounded by a grove of trees. Deserted playground equipment hovered in the stillness of dusk. Great, aged oaks were scattered across the expanse of open recreation area, creating blots of darker shadows beneath their widespread arms, while picnic tables made smaller dots between the trees. Brian led the way from the street onto a crunchy gravel footpath, taking Theresa beneath the shadow of an oak before he finally stopped, squeezed her fingers almost painfully, then turned her to face him.
She looked up into the twin black dots of his sunglasses. “You’ve still got your glasses on.”
Without a word he removed them, and slipped a bow inside the waist of his blue jeans so the glasses hung on his right hip.
“I guess you’re a little upset with me, aren’t you?” she ventured in a perilously shaky voice.
“Yes, I am,” he admitted, “but could we deal with that later?” His long fingers closed over both of her shoulders, drawing her close to his wide-spraddled feet, close to the length of his faded Levi’s, close to the naked V of skin above his shirt where dark hair sprigged. Her heart was hammering under her newly reshaped breasts. Her body moved willingly against his, then their arms sought to hold, to reaffirm, to answer the question, Is this person all that I remembered?
Brian’s lips opened slightly as he lowered them to hers, which waited with warm, breathless expectancy. Tears bit the back of Theresa’s eyes, and she was swept with a feeling of relief so overwhelming her body seemed to wilt as the apprehension eased away into the twilight. Then the waiting ended. They clung with the newly revived reassurance that what they’d found in each other twice before was still as appealing and had been magnified by their time apart.
His mouth was June-warm. Indeed, he even seemed to taste of summer, of all things she loved—flowers, music, lazy sprinklers and somewhere, the remembered scent of something he put on his hair. But he had ridden nine hours in a warm van, had crossed miles of rolling prairie in the wrinkled clothing he wore now, and from that clothing emanated a scent she had never quite known before—the scent of Brian Scanlon, male, inviting, a little dusty, a little soiled, but all man.
The kiss was as lusty as some of the rock songs she’d heard him sing, a swift succession of strokes, tugs and head movements that seemed to elicit the threads of feelings from the very tips of her toes and send them sizzling up her body. She poured her feelings into the kiss, meeting his mouth with an equal ardor. With his feet widespread, his midsection was flush against hers, and it felt good, hard, sexy. Theresa was vaguely aware of a difference in the feeling of her breasts pressed against his chest—the smallness, the new tightness, the ability to be closer as his forearm slipped down across her spine and reeled her even more securely against his hips.
“Theresa ....” His lips were at her ear, kissing her temple while his beautiful voice lost its mild note and took on a foreign huskiness. “I had to do that first. I just had to.”
“First?”
He released a rather shaky breath and backed away from her, searching her upturned face in the deep shadow of the oaks. “It occurs to me we’ve got some talking to do, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes.” She dropped her eyes, blushing already. “Come on.” Capturing her hand, he led her to the nearby area where the swings hung as still as the silence over the park that in daytime rang with children’s voices. A steel slide angled down, casting its shadow on the grass as the moon slipped up into the eastern sky and the first stars came out. Brian tugged her along to the side of a large steel merry-go-round and sat down, pulling her to sit beside him, then dropping her hand.
“So ...” he began, following the word with a sigh, then leaned his elbows on his thighs. “There’ve been some changes.”
“Yes.”
He pondered silently, made an impatient, breathy sound, then burst out, “God, I don’t know where to begin, what to say.”
“Neither do I.”
“Theresa, why didn’t you tell me?”
She shrugged very childishly for a twenty-six-year-old woman. “I was afraid to. And ... and I didn’t know what ... well, I mean, we’re not ....”
“What you’re trying to say is that you didn’t know my intentions, is that it?”
“Yes, I guess so.”
“After what we shared in Fargo, and our letters, you doubted my intentions?”
“No, not doubted. I just didn’t think we’d had enough time together to get our relationship on its feet.” I wasn’t even sure you would come ....
“With me, Theresa, it’s not the amount of time, but the quality of it, and our weekend in Fargo was quality for me. I thought it was for you, too.”
“It was, but ... but, Brian, we hadn’t done much more than just ... well, you know what I’m saying. What we did together didn’t really mean a commitment or ....” Her voice trailed away. This was the most difficult conversation she’d ever had.
Brian suddenly sprang to his feet, walked three paces away from the merry-go-around and swung to face her. “Couldn’t you trust me enough to tell me, Theresa?” he accused.
“I wanted to, but I was scared.”
“Of what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe you thought I was some lecher who was only after you because you had big knockers, is that it? Did you think if you told me you didn’t have them anymore, I’d brush you off? Is that what you thought?”
She was horrified. It had never entered her mind that he might consider such a thing. Tears blurred her eyes. “No, Brian, I never thought that ... never!”
“Then why the hell couldn’t you have trusted me enough to confide in me and tell me what you were planning, give me time to get accustomed to it before I walked into your yard totally unsuspecting? Christ, do you know what a shock it was?”
“I knew you’d be surprised, but I thought you’d be pleasantly surprised.”
“I am, I was ....” He threw his hands into the air exasperatedly and whirled, presenting his rigid back. “But, God, Theresa, do you know what I’ve been thinking about for six months? Do you know how many nights I’ve lain awake thinking about your ... problem and figuring out ways to finesse you into losing your inhibitions, telling myself I had to be the world’s most patient lover when I took you to bed for the first time, so I didn’t put some irreversible phobia into you or make your hangup worse than it already was?” Again he spun on her. “We may not have had time to share much, but what we did share was a pretty damn intimate baring of souls, and I think it gave me the right to be in on your decision with you, to share it. But you didn’t even give me the chance.”
“Now just a minute!” She leaped to her feet and faced him in the flood of moonlight that was growing brighter by the minute. “You’ve got no claim on me, no right to—”
“The hell I don’t!”
“The hell you do!” Theresa had never fought or sworn in her life and was surprised at herself.
“The hell I don’t! I love you, dammit!” he shouted.
“Well, that’s some way to tell me, shouting at the top of your lungs! How was I supposed to know?”
“I signed all my letters that way, didn’t I?”
“Well yes, but that’s just a ... a formal closing on a letter.”
“Is that all you took it for?”
“No!”
“Well, if you knew I loved you, why couldn’t you trust me? Had you ever stopped to think it might have been something I’d have welcomed sharing? Something that might have brought us even closer? Something I would have felt honored to share? But you didn’t give me a chance, going ahead without a word like you did.”
“I resent your attitude, Brian. It’s ... it’s possessive and uninformed.”
“Uninformed?” He stood now belligerently, his hands on his hips. “Whose fault is that, mine or yours? If you’d bothered to inform me, I wouldn’t be so damn mad right now.”
“I discussed it with people who didn’t lose their tempers, like you’re doing. A counselor at school, a woman who’d had the surgery before and a cosmetic surgeon who eventually performed the operation. I got the emotional support I needed from them.”
He felt shut out and hurt. During the past six months he’d felt a growing affinity with Theresa. He’d felt they were slowly becoming intimates, and he’d returned here thinking she was ready to pursue not only an emotional relationship but a physical one as well. He found himself intimidated by the changes in her body more than he’d been intimidated by her abundant breasts—they’d been only flesh, after all, and that he could approach and touch the same as he had other women’s. The psychological preparations he’d made for approaching her again had been made at no little cost in both sleep and worry. Now that he found it all for naught, he felt cheated. Now that he knew she’d turned to others and implied they’d been more help than he could have been, he felt misunderstood. And now that he wasn’t sure how long he’d have to wait to pursue her sexually, he felt angry—dammit, he’d wanted to make love to her, and soon!
“Brian,” she said softly, sadly, “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. It wasn’t that I didn’t think you’d support my decision. But it seemed ... presumptuous of me to involve you in something so personal without any commitments made between us.” She touched his arm, but he remained stiff and scowling, so she returned to sit on the merry-go-round.
He was very upset. And hurt. And wondering if he had the right to be. He swung back to the merry-go-round, flopped down several feet away from her and fell back, draping his shoulders and outflung arms over the mound-shaped steel heart of the vehicle. As he flopped backward he gave a single nudge with his foot, setting the steel framework into motion. He lay brooding, looking up at the stars that circled slowly above him, getting a grip on his feelings.