“I did.”
She realized it now—how lightly he’d held her when they caressed, as if she were breakable. Even when they’d kissed in the driveway near the back door, he’d pulled her head hard against him, but hadn’t forced her body in any way.
Neither of them said anything for a full forty-five seconds. They were coming to grips with something unspoken. During that silence he told her his intentions as clearly as if he’d illustrated them by renting a highway billboard with a two-foot-high caption. He was ready for a physical relationship. Was she?
When the silence was broken, it was Brian who spoke. His voice was slightly deeper than usual, but quiet. “Theresa, I’d like us to spend next Saturday together ... here. Bring your bathing suit, and I’ll pick up some corned beef at the deli, and we’ll make a day of it. We’ll swim and catch some sun and talk, okay?”
“Yes,” she agreed quietly.
“Okay, what time should I come and get you?”
She had missed him terribly. There was only one answer she could give. “Early.”
“Ten in the morning?”
No, six in the morning, she thought, but answered, “Fine. I’ll be ready.”
“See you then. And, honey?”
Being called honey by Brian was something so precious it made her chest ache.
“Yes?”
“I miss you.”
“I miss you too.”
__________
IT WAS FRIDAY. Theresa had spent a restless night, considering the possibilities that lay ahead for her with Brian. She thought not only of the sexual tension between them, but of the responsibilities it brought. She had thought herself totally opposed to sex beyond the framework of marriage, but her brief experience in Fargo warned that when bodies are aroused, moral attitudes tend to dissolve and disappear in the expanding joy of the moment.
Would I let him? Would I let myself?
The answer to both questions, Theresa found, was an unqualified yes.
__________
THE FOLLOWING DAY she went to the drugstore to buy suntan lotion, knowing she’d suffer if she didn’t apply an effective sunscreen to her pale, freckled skin that seemed to get hot and prickly at the mere mention of the word sun. She chose the one whose label said it had ultraguard, then ambled to a revolving rack of sunglasses and spent an enjoyable twenty minutes trying on every pair at least twice before choosing a rather upbeat pair with graduated shading and large round lenses that seemed to make her mouth appear feminine and vulnerable when the oversize frames rested on her nose.
She wandered along the shelves, picking up odd items she needed: emery boards, deodorant, hair conditioner. Suddenly she came up short and stared at the array of products on an eye-level shelf. Contraceptives.
Brian’s face seemed to emblazon itself across her subconscious as if projected on a movie screen. It seemed inevitable that he would become her lover. Yet why did it seem prurient to consider buying a contraceptive in advance? It somehow took the warm glow of love to a cooler temperature and made her feel cunning and deliberate.
Without realizing she’d done it, she slipped the dark glasses on, hiding behind them, though the price tag still dangled from the bow.
Theresa Brubaker, you’re twenty-six years old! You’re living in twentieth-century America, where most women face this decision in their midteens. What are you so afraid of?
Commitment? Not at all. Not commitment to Brian, only to the undeniable tug of sexuality, for once she surrendered to it, there was no turning back. It was such an irreversible decision.
Don’t be stupid, Theresa. He may keep you out by the pool all afternoon and all this gnashing will have been for nothing.
Fat chance! With my skin? If he keeps me out there all afternoon I’ll look like a brick somebody forgot in the kiln. He’s already hinted he’s going to take me into his bedroom to try out his bed.
So, buy something! At least you’ll have it if you need it.
Buy what? I’ve never paid any attention to the articles about products like these.
So, pick one up and read the label.
But she checked the aisle in both directions first. Even the label instructions made her blush. How on earth could she ever confront the fact that she’d have to use this stuff while she was with a man? She’d die of embarrassment!
It’s either that or end up pregnant, her unwanted-companion voice persecuted.
But I’m not that kind of girl. I’ve always said so.
Everybody’s that kind of girl when the right man comes along.
Yes, things have changed so much since Brian came into my life.
She studied the products and finally decided on one. But on her way to the checkout stand, she bought a Cosmopolitan magazine and dropped it nonchalantly over her other selections when setting them on the counter. Cosmopolitan, she thought, how appropriate. But Helen Gurley Brown would scold me for not placing the contraceptive on top of the magazine instead of vice versa.
On her next stop at the Burnsville Shopping Center, she found it necessary to buy a new purse, one large enough to conceal her new purchase. She chuckled inwardly that it turned out to be her first purchase of a contraceptive that should lead the way to her buying something she’d wanted all her life: a shoulder bag. Her shoulders had carried more than their share of strain in years gone by. She’d never felt willing to hang a purse on them as well, though she’d often wanted to own one. Well, she did now.
But the chief reason she’d come to the clothing store was to shop for a bathing suit, another item that was expanding her clothing horizon, for the suits she’d worn in the past had had to be one-pieces, altered to fit.
Now, however, she tried everything from string bikinis to skirted one-piece jobs in the Hedy Lamarr tradition. She chose a very middle-of-the-road two-piece design that wasn’t exactly tawdry, but fell just short of being totally modest. The fabric was the color of her father’s well-kept lawn and looked like shiny wet leather when the light caught and reflected from it. The bright kelly green was a hue that in days of old she’d have said contrasted with her coloring too sharply—the old stop-and-go-light look. But somehow, since her surgery, Theresa’s confidence had grown. And since the advent of Brian in her sphere, she had felt far less plain than she used to. This gift he’d given her was something Theresa meant to repay in some way someday.
__________
THE FOLLOWING MORNING she awakened shortly after five o’clock. The sun was peeking over the eastern horizon, turning the sky to a lustrous, pearly coral, sending streaks of brighter melon and pink radiating above the rim of the world. Closing her eyes and stretching, Theresa felt as if those shafts of hot pink were penetrating her body. She felt giddy, elated and as if she were on the brink of the most momentous day of her life.
The Maestro grinned down at her from the shelf, and it seemed as if he fiddled a gay, lilting love song to awaken her. She smiled at him, slithered lower in the bed, raised both arms above her head and rolled to her belly, savoring the keen satisfaction a simple act like that now brought into her life. It made her feel diminutive and catlike. Beneath her, the bulk was gone, in its place a body proportioned by a hand that had, in this case, improved upon Nature.
There were times when she still had difficulty realizing the change had happened and was permanent. Sometimes she found herself affecting mannerisms no longer necessary: crossing one arm and resting the opposite elbow on it to give momentary relief by boosting up her breasts, yet at the same time hiding behind her arms. Walking. Ah, but there simply hadn’t been a chance to run yet. But she would, someday soon. Just to feel the ebullience and freedom of the act.
She threw herself onto her back, studied the ceiling and checked the clock. Was it broken? Or had only five minutes passed since she’d awakened? Would the rest of the morning go this slowly until Brian came to her?
It did.
In spite of fact that she performed every grooming ritual with the pomp and time-consuming atte
ntion of a ceremony. She shaved her legs ... all the way up, for the first time in her life. She filed her toenails into delicate rounded peaks and polished them with Chocolate Mocha polish. She gave herself a careful and complete manicure, painting her fingernails with three coats. She washed her hair and arranged it with care that was positively silly, considering she was going to leap into a swimming pool within minutes after she got there. But she spared no less care on her makeup. She ironed the aqua blue collar of a white terry beach coverup with matching lounging pants whose ribbed ankles had a matching aqua stripe that continued up the outsides of the legs, and up the arms of the loose sweat-shirt style jacket. She took a bath and put an astringent after-bath splash up her legs and down her arms, and finally, when only a half hour remained, she put her bedroom in order, then hung up her housecoat and picked up the green bathing suit. She slipped into the brief panties, easing them up her legs and turning to present her derriere to the mirror, checking the reflection to find it firm, shapely and nothing she would change, even if she could. The elasticized brief rode across the crest of each hipbone, and just below her navel, exposing both it and the tender hollow of her spine.
As she turned to face the mirror again, with the strappy suit top in her hand, she assessed her reflected breasts. The crescent-shaped scars beneath each had been the fastest to heal, and the circular ones about the nipples had all but vanished. The only ones that were still highly detectable were those running vertically from the bottom up to each nipple. Dr. Schaum had told her to expect them to take a good six months to fade completely, but had assured her they would, for the newer method of surgery allowed the skin to be draped instead of stretched back into place, thus taking stress off the suturing and allowing the tissue to heal almost invisibly. They did, however, itch. Theresa opened the jar of cocoa butter and gently massaged a dollop of the soothing balm along the length of each scar. But as she finished, her fingertips remained on her left breast. But it was not the scar she saw. She saw a woman changed. A woman whose horizons had expanded in thousands of definable and indefinable ways since her surgery. She saw a woman who no longer cared that her freckles ran down her chest and up her legs, a woman who no longer considered her hair carrot-colored, but merely “bright,” a woman whose medium, orange-sized breasts appeared almost beautiful to her own eyes. The nipples seemed to have shrunk from the surgery, and their perky position, pointed upward instead of down, never ceased to be a source of amazement.
She raised her arms above her head experimentally. When she did this, her breasts lifted with her arms, as they’d never done before. She pirouetted swiftly to the left, watching, to be rewarded by the sight of her breasts coming right along with her instead of swaying pendulously several inches behind the movement of her trunk.
A marvelous, appreciative smile burst across her face.
I am female. l am as beautiful as I feel. And today I feel utterly beautiful.
She hooked the bathing suit top behind her back, then lifted her arms to tie the strings behind her neck, examining the way the concealing triangles of sheeny green covered her breasts. She ran her fingertips along the deep V, down the freckled skin to the spot where the two triangles met. There was scarcely any cleavage! The wonder of it was almost enough to make her high!
She hated to slip the white terry pants and jacket on and cover herself up. Oh, glorious, glorious liberation! How wonderful you feel!
She packed a drawstring bag with sunscreen, towels, hair lifter, makeup, cocoa butter, shampoo, a pair of jeans and a brand new bra made of scalloped blue lace. Her thirty days of wearing the firm support bra were over. This little wisp of femininity was what she’d long craved. While stuffing her belongings in the bag, she realized even this was a new experience to be savored, for she’d never gone skipping off with boys to the beach when she was a girl. There was so much catching up to do!
By the time ten o’clock arrived, Theresa was not only ready, she was a totally self-satisfied ready.
The van turned into the driveway, and she stepped out onto the back step to await him. Through the windshield she saw him smile and raise a palm, then shut off the ignition, open the door and walk toward her.
He was wearing his aviator sunglasses, white, tight swimming trunks beneath an unbuttoned navy blue shirt with three zippered patch pockets, white buttons and epaulettes. The shirt’s long sleeves were rolled up, exposing his arms from the elbow down, and its tails flapped in the light breeze as he approached. He moved around the front of the van in a loose-jointed amble, keeping his eyes on her face until he stood on the apron of the step below her, looking up. Lazily, he reached up to remove the glasses while every cell in I her body became energized by his presence.
“Hello, sweets.”
“Hello, Brian.” She wanted very badly to call him an endearment, but the expressive way she spoke his name actually became an endearment in itself.
Was it she who reached first, or he? All Theresa knew later was that one moment she stood two steps above him, and the next, she was in his arms, sharing a hello kiss beneath the bright June sun at ten o’clock on a Saturday morning. She, the timid introvert who’d often wondered why some women were blessed with lives in which scenes like this were taken for granted, while others could only lie in their lonely beds at night and dream of such bliss.
It wasn’t a passionate kiss. It wasn’t even very intimate. But it swept her off the step and against his partially exposed chest while she circled his neck with both arms, captured in such a fashion that she was looking down at him. He lifted his lips, brushed them caressingly over hers, then dipped his head to bestow another such accolade to the triangle of freckles that showed above the zippered white terry coverup. “Mmm ... you smell good.” He released her enough to allow her breasts and belly to go sliding down his body until she stood before him, smiling up at his admiring, stunning, summer eyes.
“Mmm ... you do too.”
His hands rested on her hipbones. She was piercingly aware of it, even as they gazed, unmoving, into each other’s faces and stood in broad daylight, for any of the neighbors to see.
“Are you ready?”
“I’ve been ready since six A.M.”
He laughed, rode his hands up her ribs and turned her toward the door. “Then get your stuff and let’s not waste a minute.”
Chapter Fifteen
THE VILLAGE GREEN APARTMENTS were tudor-trimmed stucco buildings arranged in a horseshoe shape around a dazzling aqua-and-white swimming pool. The grounds were wooded with old elms whose leafy branches drooped in the still summer morning. Theresa caught a glimpse of the pool as Brian passed it, then pulled around the far side of the second building. Glancing up, she saw small decks flanking the length of the stucco walls, and an occasional splash of crimson from a potted geranium in a redwood tub.
Inside, the halls were carpeted, papered and silent. Padding along with Brian at her shoulder, Theresa found herself unable to keep from watching his bare toes curl into each step as he walked. There was something undeniably intimate about being with a barefoot man. Brian’s feet were medium sized, shaded with hair on his big toes, and it struck her how much more angular a man’s foot was than a woman’s. His legs were muscular and sprinkled with a modicum of hair on all but the fronts and backs of his knees. He stopped before number 122, unlocked the door and stepped back.
“It’s not much yet, but it will be.”
She entered a living room with plush, bone-colored carpeting. Directly across from the door by which they’d entered was an eight-foot-wide sliding glass door decorated with an open-weave drapery that was drawn aside to give a view of the pool and surrounding grassy area. The room held one chocolate brown director’s chair, a cork-based lamp sitting beside it on the floor and nothing else except musical equipment: guitars, amplifiers, speakers as tall as Theresa’s shoulders, microphones, a reel-to-reel recorder, stereo, radio, tapes and records.
Forming an L in juxtaposition to the living room was a tiny galley
kitchen with a Formica-topped peninsula counter dividing it from the rest of the open area. A short hall presumably led to the bathroom and bedroom beyond.
Theresa stopped in the middle of the carpeted expanse. It seemed very lonely and barren, and it made Theresa somehow sad to walk into the quiet emptiness and think about Brian here all alone, with no furniture, none of the comforts of home, nobody to talk to or to share music with. But she turned and smiled brightly.
“Home is where the heart is, they say.”
He, too, smiled. “So I’ve heard. Still, you can see why I invited you over to swim. It’s about all I’m equipped to offer.”
Oh, I wouldn’t say that, came the sudden impulsive thought. She shrugged, one thumb hooking the drawstring of the carryall bag that was slung over her shoulder. She glanced around his living room again. “Swimming is one of the few active pastimes I’ve enjoyed ever since I was little. I love it. Is all this equipment yours?” She ventured across to the impressive array of sound equipment, leaning forward to gaze into the smoked-glass doors of his component cabinet.
“Yup.”
“Wow.”
He watched her move from piece to piece, touching nothing until her eye was caught by a three-ring notebook lying open on the floor beside an old, beat-up-looking flat-top guitar. She knelt, examined the handwritten words, and looked up. “Your songbook?”
He nodded.
She turned the pages, riffling through them slowly, stopping here and there to hum a few bars. “It must have taken you years to collect all these.”
She found herself drawn to the sheets simply because they contained his handwriting, with which she’d grown so familiar during the past half year. The songs were arranged alphabetically, so she couldn’t resist turning to the Ss. S-A, S-E, S-L, S-O ... and there it was: “Sweet Memories.” Without realizing she’d done it, her fingers grazed the sheets feeling the slight indentation made by his ballpoint pen years ago.
Sweet memories of her own came flooding back. And for Brian, standing near, watching her, the same thing happened. He was transported back to New Year’s Eve, dancing with her in his arms, then curling her against his chest before a slow, golden fire. But it was shortly after ten o’clock on a June morning, and he’d invited her here to swim. He brought himself back from his concentrated study of the woman kneeling before him to ask, “Would you like to change into your suit?”