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Subject: {ASSM} ME AND MARTHA JANE '99 (m/F,teen) MJANE20.TXT
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**** WARNING **** WARNING **** WARNING ****
THIS DOCUMENT IS A SEXUALLY GRAPHIC STORY ABOUT AN INTENSE SEXUAL,
EMOTIONAL AND INTELLECTUAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN A TEENAGE GIRL AND
A YOUNG BOY AND THE COURSE OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP OVER A PERIOD OF
10 YEARS. IT IS A DRAMATIZATION ABOUT REAL PEOPLE AND THEIR CON-
FLICT WITH SOCIAL EXPECTATIONS. IF THIS SUBJECTS OFFENDS YOU OR IF
SEXUAL LANGUAGE UPSETS YOU, OR IF YOU DON'T WANT THIS MATERIAL SEEN
BY UNDER-18 OR OTHERWISE UNQUALIFIED PERSONS, DELETE THIS DOCUMENT.
THIS DOCUMENT IS COPYRIGHTED 1994, 1999 BY SJR. SO--HEY, YOU CAN
COPY IT BUT YOU CAN'T CHANGE IT OR SELL IT UNLESS I SAY SO.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE ADVENTURES OF ME AND MARTHA JANE
by S.J.R.
PART 20A:
In Memphis I was, on purpose, the last one off the plane. I
lugged my carry-on at my side and then flung it over my shoulder as I
entered the damp, hot daylight on the tarmac. The wrenching familiar-
ity of everything I saw had me thinking: nearly sixteen years to get
somewhere, and in five hours I was sixteen years behind.
My mother, Aunt Frances, my sister Ann, and my great-aunt Mary met
me at the arrival gate. I braced myself, thinking: All right, let's
start using what Martha taught you. You can do this. You have to.
I strode toward them, a calm smile on me, and I saw my mother's
eyes pop open.
"Well!" she exclaimed. "Look at *you*!"
I smiled and said, "Hi, mom," and I let her hug me, and I gave her
a kiss. From the corner of my eye I saw Aunt Mary grinning at me and
saying to Aunt Frances, "My goodness, look at him! Don't he look
nice, though." And Aunt Francis seemed goggle-eyed, her big orbs
rolling as she tried to figure out how I had changed. And my round-
faced, fourteen-year-old sister who was a younger copy of my mom had
her eyes wide open as well, and she muttered, grinning, "Boy, did New
York change him! That's what happens in New York. People come back
from New York lookin' so sahphisticated 'n everything."
My mother stepped back from me. "My goodness!" She glanced at
the others, blushing as she usually did when her face turned red with
emotion. Dear mother, always holding back, even when it was harmless.
I used to blush exactly that way. Used to.
I went to my Aunt Mary, reaching out for her, smiling. "Aunt
Mary, nice to see you."
I gave her a little kiss and she held her face away from me,
smiling proudly. "Look just like your daddy, sweetheart."
Then to Aunt Francis, whose eyes got even wider with surprise as I
put my arms around her waist. She moved her head back a little,
frowning, not used to having me kiss her. I said, "Aunt Francis..."
I gave her a kiss. "Sure missed you up there. Uncle Johnny okay?"
She looked at me, confused. "Uncle Johnny?"
"Sure. How's Uncle Johnny doin'?"
"Why you askin'? Somethin' wrong with your Uncle Johnny?"
I smiled sweetly. "Just wanted to know if he's okay."
"Sure he's okay!"
"Good." I kissed her nose. "Still love me?"
She blushed.
I said, "Well, I still love you. Just like I did before I left."
She blushed madly. I kissed her nose again.
I moved to my sister, a teenager who was, and would forever be,
practically a complete stranger. She giggled when I hugged and kissed
her. She asked eagerly, her eyes glittering, "Didja see the Empire
State Buildin'?"
"Oh, yeah. Saw that. Saw everything."
I strode back to my mom, pushing my glasses higher on my nose,
feeling them slip down in the humidity that was already gathering on
my face.
She tilted her head with a frowning smile. "You get new glasses?"
"Yes."
"Well! You just got fixed up all over, didn't ya?"
I took her arm. "Let's go get my luggage."
We started toward the baggage area, with Aunt Frances whining
behind us, "What'd he do? What happened to his glasses?" and Aunt
Mary said, "Nothin', Frances. He got new ones, that's all."
We waited a few minutes for the luggage to show up. My mom and
Aunt Mary and Aunt Francis stood by the side, staring at me, pointing,
talking about me, grinning -- except for Aunt Francis, who still
hadn't quite figured it out.
My sister waited beside me. "Didja bring back pitchers of the
Empire State Buildin' and the Staten Island Ferry? And the Statue of
Liberty?"
"I saw them, but I didn't bring pictures."
She said, her voice dropping. "Oh."
After a moment she said, "I wanted a pitcher of mah brother
standin' next to the Empire State Buildin'."
"What do you need a picture for?"
"Ah told mah friends, they don't believe you were there."
"Sure I was. I was everywhere. Why wouldn't they believe you?"
"'Cause I kept tellin' 'em about it, but they don't believe me."
I smiled at her. "Well, I was there. It's just another big,
tall building." I gazed at the luggage pouring out of the bin. "I
saw Rockefeller Center, Radio City, Central Park, the Metropolitan
Museum. Saw Carnegie Hall. I saw West Point, the Brooklyn Bridge.
Times Square. I saw all of it."
She looked ahead blankly. She said, "I wanted a pitcher of you,
standin' in front of the Empire State Buildin'."
I said, "Well, don't you worry. Next time I go, I'll get one."
I didn't understand my sister. I never would.
My luggage appeared and we placed it on a rollaway and a porter
carried it out to our car in the parking lot. In those days, the
Memphis airport was still a small-town facility whose outdoor parking
lot was a stone's throw from the main entrance. We exited through the
front doors and the Memphis weather struck me squarely in the face: it
was blazing hot outside. Sticky. Stifling. The black porter threw
the suitcases into the trunk of the 1956 Ford. My relatives watched
me hand the black man a dollar. He grinned and hustled away. We
piled into the car.
As soon as the doors closed my Aunt Francis asked me incredulous-
ly, "You tipped that niggah a dollah, Speedy?"
"Sure I did."
"You sure getting' to be a big spender."
I grinned at her. "Everybody has to make a living, Aunt Francis."
My mother haltingly steered her way out of the parking lot. Aunt
Francis stared at Aunt Mary in the back seat. "You see him tip that
porter a dollah?"
Aunt Mary smiled at me and asked in her shrieking voice, "Did you
buy anything at Sak's Fifth Avenue? They always have a sale".
"No," I said, "I never made it to Sak's. I bought something at
Bloomingdale's, though."
My sister's mouth fell open. "You went to Bloomin'dale's?"
I nodded yes.
My sister looked at her Aunt Mary. "God, he went to Bloomin'-
dale's."
Aunt Mary shrieked, "What's Bloomin'dale's, sweetheart?"
"Just a store. A big department store."
My sister chided Aunt Mary, "You know what Bloomin'dale's is."
As we drove down Airways Boulevard we passed a newly constructed
Holiday Inn. I remembered the last time Martha and I were together in
Memphis, when we spent a day at a Holiday Inn. Great, I thought:
every building and every street in this town is going to remind me of
Martha. I gazed out the window. The sameness. The boredom. The
torpor. The bleaching sun. The enervating, choking humidity. The
empty sidewalks. The empty stores. The churches, churches, churches,
and the revival camps. Signs directing traffic to Elvis Presley's
house.
"Did you see the Statue of Liberty?" my sister wanted to know.
"Yes," I said.
"Well, what was it like?"
"It's a big, tall statue sitting in the middle of New York Harbor
on a tiny island."
My mother said, "Well, didn't you have a good time?"
"Sure, I did." I opened my window and stuck my elbow outside.
Mom said, driving at twenty-five miles per hour in a forty-five-
mile zone with both hands clutching the steering wheel so tightly that
her knuckles were white, "Well, I guess you did! Look at him. You
can tell he did, 'cause he won't say so. I guess that means you had a
good time. Well, let's see, what happened while you were gone? I had
a corn removed, the thing was killin' me so bad, I went to Doctor
Stabnik's and told him 'cut it off before it drives me crazy.' And it
was hot down here, I mean really really hot! And your daddy's been
working at the store, of course, so nothin' new there. And your aunt
Margaret's gonna have another baby. And, let's see, what else
happened?"
Aunt Frances asked from the back seat, "You were in New York,
Speedy? Is that where you went?"
I sighed, "Yes, Aunt Frances."
My Great Aunt Mary shrieked from the other side of the back seat,
"Speedy, I hear they have a lotta niggers in New York. Is that true?
Did you see a lotta niggers up there?"
I said, "They have a lot of everything in New York, Aunt Mary.
Everything."
I thought: god damn, I've got to get out of here. At least I
would finish the day with a call to Martha to let her know I arrived
home safely.
September, 1957.
I started my sophomore year at Christian Brothers High School.
And I kept the paper route and the Saturday delivery job. Those would
be, I vowed, my future tickets back to New York. I started a diary,
but two months later I had little in Memphis that I considered worth
remembering, so I threw it away.
Within three days of arriving at home I typed fifteen- and twenty-
page letters to Martha and mailed both within a week. I spent a week
searching for a thank-you card for her and for Ronnie, and on the
inside of Martha's card I wrote "Love You. Steven."
She answered both letters with one. As usual, she handwrote only
two or three pages. I had grown to expect as much, especially in
light of her workload. Her letter ended with, "P.S.: Ronnie sends her
love. She wants you to come back. And Marilyn (remember Marilyn?)
thought you were cute. And, honest, we all miss you. Especially
Ronnie. Hon, did you make an impression on her! (wink). Miss your
salads. Miss your coffee. Miss you."
Her letters had never been markedly intimate. I suppose she
thought (and I agreed) that my parents might read them. I saved all
of Martha's letters in a shoe box, along with a few incidental papers
and other scraps to throw my parents off. And I thought little of the
relative brevity of her writing; had she typed them, I supposed, they
might have been longer. After a couple of weeks I received a letter
from Ronnie. It was funny and informative, and she was gushing over
the guy from NYU. The rest of it was so sexually revealing that I
simply had no choice but to get rid of it -- had my folks found that
letter, there would have been a nuclear holocaust.
Between September and Thanksgiving I wrote several long, plaintive
letters asking Martha to suggest some way to get me to New York, or at
least out of Memphis and into the northeast. She answered the letters
with one, again, asking me to be patient and make my grades at Christ-
ian Brothers so that I could get a scholarship to an Eastern school as
she had done. But graduation from high school seemed eons away. I
knew her suggestion was sensible and was, in the long run, probably my
best option. But each day I grew more temperamental, pouring out my
frustration into longer and longer letters. I sent shorter letters to
Ronnie, who occasionally sent me an article from a book or the New
York Times. I received early Christmas cards from both of them.
It was at a big family dinner just before Christmas, with over a
hundred of my step-dad's relatives in my Uncle Vic Lobianco's luxuri-
ous house, that my step-dad and two of my uncles and my mom and
another aunt invited me into a caucus in Uncle Vic's breakfast room.
I had been in the living room talking with several others when my
mom approached me and said in a whisper, "Speedy? You wanna come on
in the breakfast room?"
"What's in there?"
She said secretively, "Your daddy and Uncle Louie want to have a
talk."
"About what? Did I do something?"
"Oh, no. Just a talk."
I entered the little breakfast room and they were all seated
around the glass topped table.
My step-dad looked up at me and asked me to sit down. After I
took a seat he said, "Speedy, you been growin' up fast, and you've
proven you can work hard. You got some brains, and you've been
building yourself up on your own. I was tellin' Uncle Vic about you,
and Uncle Sammy and Uncle Louie, here. And, uh, we think it's
time..." He leaned forward on the table and his voice lowered. "We
think it's time you started learnin' some of the family business.
Uncle Vic here has a offer for you." He leaned back in his chair and
he gestured slightly with his hands. "I don't know if you're inter-
ested in this, but...you can do a lot better than a paper route.
Might wanna hear what Uncle Vic has to say."
Uncle Vic was a younger man, very Italianate in appearance with
dark skin and heavy eyebrows and a thick mop of curly black hair that
was turning prematurely gray. He had long arms and long hands and
long red fingers. And a thin red mouth, and an eager smile.
He extended his hand across the table. "How ya doin', Speedy?"
I kept my mouth shut, for the time being, about being called
Speedy. I shook his hand, and his was warm and rough in mine.
He said, "Hear you been to New York. How you like it up there?"
I shrugged. "It's a little crowded. A lot going on up there."
Uncle Vic nodded, "Yeah, there is. Awful lot. Now, I know you
got school to get through and all that, but...maybe we can come up
with somethin' here, might get you back up to New York quicker than a
paper route will."
That was the prelude to the deal with Uncle Vic. The deal was
that Uncle Vic's youngest daughter, a Lobianco, had recently married
Michael Sansone, one of my cousins on the Ricci side. The marriage
spurred Uncle Vic's interest in some of the Ricci businesses. He was
going to invest in the Tremont Caf where I'd spent most of my younger
years. This would put him into partnership with the Ricci's and my
Aunt Frances and Uncle Johnny, who owned the place. For years the
joint had been a simple diner; Uncle Vic was going to expand it into a
full-fledged restaurant. Uncle Vic needed someone who knew the Tre-
mont and the clientele, knew the Ricci's and the other families
involved, and could work part-time as a kind of floor manager and go-
between.
Uncle Vic said, "I know you have your schoolin' to take care of
first. But you know your Aunt Frances and Uncle Johnny. Especially
your Aunt Frances. Now, you know, she's a good woman, but she's,
uh..."
I offered, "She's a little hard to handle."
Uncle Vic grinned. "Yeah. But you have a way with her." He
tilted his head at me. "Folks tell me that since last summer, you
have a way with a lot of people."
I grinned. "I work at it."
Uncle Vic said enthusiastically, "Well, that's what it takes!" He
licked his lips and put a hand under his chin. "You know, your Aunt
Frances is the biggest owner in the Tremont. That's a good location
down there. Lotta possibilities. There's not another restaurant on
that whole side of downtown Memphis for blocks. And she owns a lot of
territory on that corner at Lauderdale and Linden, with your Aunt
Josephine. I understand that through your great-aunt Josephine you're
good friends with a relative who works in that liquor store. Your
cousin...?"
I nodded. "Yessir. Josephine Louise."
"Mm-hm. You got a way with her, too."
I shrugged. "Yeah. Grew up together."
He said confidentially, "Your cousin Josephine Louise is young,
but she's got a good head. Keeps those folks in line over there.
You know, she'll inherit all that. So far. And if they ever get
the niggers outta that neighborhood, things are gonna happen."
My step-dad muttered, "Those niggers been there for years."
Uncle Vic said, "Well, they got all that integration and civil
rights money, now. They'll build those projects over on Jackson
Avenue, and that niggertown'll be gone. That neighborhood's gonna
really come up."
I said, "Where are all those folks gonna live?"
Uncle Vic said casually, "That project. Won't be a problem." He
shrugged. "Probably still be niggers down the street from the Tre-
mont, over by the Lorraine Motel. But ain't no traffic over there."
Uncle Vic leaned toward me again and looked me in the eye, his long
hands folded on the table between us. "Deal is, Speedy, my new son in
law Michael isn't a big favorite with your great-aunt Frances or her
sister Josephine. He just ain't been around that much, been down at
Ole Miss for four years. Not that they like him or dislike him, see,
or anything. But you know how some families are. Some folks don't
take to change. Not that Michael's gonna take over those businesses,
but he is gonna handle the expansion side. There's a lotta profit in
those businesses, but Frances and Josephine don't have the expertise
or the education Michael has. So I'm havin' a little trouble here --
you know, a little personality conflict? I'm afraid Michael's a
little impatient, and he don't have a way with those folks like you
do. That ain't good for business. It ain't good for the families,
either." He stopped and looked at me.
I said, "Yes, sir?"
He leaned back in his chair and he tapped a finger on the table.
"Thing is, Speedy, I need somebody over there, just to be around, who
the Ricci's feel they can trust better than they trust Michael. You
know, this new style of management ain't like it was when they came
here from the old country. So...Speedy, I can pay you fifty dollars
a week. That ain't bad."
"Yes, sir, that's pretty nice."
"All I want you to do is be around. You know, run errands for
your aunts and for Michael, maybe work the cash registers a little.
A few hours a week, and some weekends." He raised a finger. He said
carefully, "Now, I told your daddy here, your studies at the Christian
Brothers comes first. Your daddy knows that." My step-dad nodded at
me. "We got a little bit of a problem, because the Tremont and your
Aunt Josephine's caf on Linden Street serves beer. But we can get
around that, we got family at the Beverage Commission. Just want you
to be careful about it, though. You look old enough. And you know
what the rules are." He grinned at me. "You don't drink anyway, do
ya?"
I smiled. "No, sir. Just your brother's chianti."
The room filled with light laughter from the gruff men and the two
ladies. Uncle Vic's brother was a big wine importer.
Uncle Vic laughed and said, "Well, that's under the table anyway.
But basically I just want you to be around, you know? We need a, uh,
a 'presence' over there, somebody both sides is fond of." He laid his
palms down on the table. "So what do you say? Think this could
work?"
I took a breath. I paused, and then said, "Two things."
My step-dad grinned. "Uh-oh. Vic, I told you he changed. He's
getting' shrewd on us."
Uncle Vic winked at me. "You ain't gonna pull no niggah jive on
me, are ya, Speedy?"
I gave him a little smile, not liking the word nigger. Why did
they keep using that word for everything?
I said, "Well, Uncle Vic, you're the boss..."
"Right."
"Along with Aunt Frances and everybody who owns those places."
"Right."
This time it was I who leaned forward. I thought about a few of
the things Martha had taught me. I thought about not giving up too
much of myself. I asked Uncle Vic, "My Aunt Frances and her folks,
and my Aunt Josephine...they're not losin' anything on this, are they?
Uncle Vic shook his head no. "Naw, naw, Speedy, it's just an ex-
pansion of the partnership. They'll have everything they used to
have. And you're a good boy to be concerned. But there's no problem
here. The leases, licenses -- all that's still theirs. Just like it
is now.
"Okay. Number two..."
"Yeah?"
"I'd appreciate it if folks over there called me Steven, instead
of Speedy."
Uncle Vic grinned at my step-dad. "Hell, Tony, I thought he was
gonna ask for more money!" They both laughed. "I thought maybe you'd
been coachin' him!"
My step-dad smiled, looking at me. "Naw, I think this, uh, I
think this lady up in New York that he knows, I think she put him
through some kinda, I don't know, some kinda personal tutelage or
somethin'. He come back from New York this summer, and he was just--"
He shook his head. "He was just different. His whole attitude
changed. I don't know what the hell she did."
I looked at my step-dad. "I can work the Liberty Cash grocery on
weekends."
Tony said, "But you'll be with the restaurant on weekends, from
now on."
I said, "I'm thinkin' about college money. Maybe half a day on
weekends, first half of the day?"
My step-dad looked at Uncle Vic and grinned, and he indicated me
with his hand. "Did I tell ya he's a worker, or what?"
My mom spoke up. "But what about your grades, Speedy? You gonna
have time to keep up your grades?"
"I'll have time."
"But, Speedy, the Brothers is a tough school."
I looked at Uncle Vic. I said, "I'll make time."
Uncle Vic beamed at me. "Then it's a deal..." He extended his
hand. "Steven."
I left the dinner early. Not until I arrived home in my bedroom
did I realize what I had done. There would be no time for theater.
But I would have more money, more money faster. The loss of theater
time, though, was hard to swallow. I had little social life as it
was; now it would be family, more and more. Fewer new contacts, less
time to be myself.
That prospect had me feeling miserably hemmed in. I'd have more
money, and I knew what the lure was: not college money, but New York
money. Faster savings for trips to New York. And Martha. I was
getting lonely, I was turning inward again. By that Christmas I was a
sexual wreck. Masturbation had me feeling so frustrated that I simply
gave it up. I didn't date. I didn't like anybody.
I sat down on that weekend before Christmas and typed a forlorn
letter to Martha. I sent it airmail.
On New Year's Day, Martha called me long distance.
"Steven," she said, "you sound so miserable. Please try to cheer
up. You're in a great high school, and you can win scholarships
through them. It's really a feather in your cap, and it's a very
prestigious name."
I breathed into the telephone, "Martha. Martha, I hate this. I
hate all of it."
"Remember what I told you about feeling sorry for yourself. Re-
member what I told you about being yourself. You'd be so much happier
if you were in the theater and doing other things at school."
"But if I don't work, I can't get back to New York."
"Steven..." She took a deep, deep breath at her end of the line.
She said patiently, "It would take you at least a year to save that
much money again."
"Okay, then a year. So I could come up next summer."
"Well, if you want to, but...Hon, that won't get you up here
permanently, though, will it? That only gets you here for a few days.
If you won a scholarship up here, and with your theater work adding to
your academic record, why...if you did it that way, you'd be here
forever. Not just a few days or weeks. Doesn't that make sense?"
I didn't answer.
"Doesn't that make sense?"
"Yes," I said, "it does. You always make sense. I never seem to
make any sense."
"Oh, Steven. There you go again. Good lord, a few months home
and you're right back where you started. Well, hon...I guess you
better save and come up here before they make you a total wreck down
there, and...but stop and think about it. You come up here, you stay
for a little while. Then you go back home, and you're right back
where you were. Isn't that right? Steven?"
"Yeah, I guess."
"Honey. Honey, you're...You worked so hard up here. You did so
well. And you made promises. Steven? You made promises. To me.
And to yourself. Remember?"
"Yes."
"Was I just wasting my time?"
"Okay."
"Steven."
"Okay. A real okay."
"You have to admit, you're doing a lot better down there if you
have your family offering you jobs. How many kids in high school have
a job like that? And you'll be in charge of your own time at times,
you can get into the theater now and then."
"Yeah."
"Maybe we can figure out something else in the meantime."
"Next summer then?"
"Just keep working, and we'll set up something later. Summer's a
long way off, kiddo."
I told her I had received a Christmas card from Ronnie.
"Really? She told me she would send you one. She's getting along
with that boyfriend, you know. They're practically steady. I guess
she must have finally taken our advice, because he's a far cry from
the idiots she used to hang around with. And how about you, Steven?"
I stuttered and paused and told her, "Oh, I get around. A
little."
"Steee-ven?" she said skeptically. "A little?"
"Well, I'm -- y'know, I'm busy doing a, uh, a play at school in a
few weeks. And then I'll get to work for Uncle Vic."
"I thought you were still working on your paper route?"
"Well, just for a few weeks, I'm doing both, but...I'll be off the
paper route soon. It's just until they find someone else to take the
job."
"Oh, hon, that's good! And I'm glad you'll still be able keep in
touch with the theater now and then. I'm so glad for you. Look at
you, you're making your own way, you're getting to be an entrepreneur
or something already. You're getting rich, for gosh sake. And you're
getting along with your folks. Hasn't any of that made you just a
little bit happy?"
"Yeah. Of course it has."
I finished the conversation with such bothersome pangs of guilt
that I wondered if I could ever speak comfortably with her again. I
began keeping copies of the letters I sent to her so that I could
track any white lies I wrote about doing theater work. I didn't say
that I was working even more, more than I'd worked before. I didn't
say that I was on the lookout for even better paying jobs that would
get me to New York earlier.
I tamed the complaining tone of my letters and mailed them less
frequently. Martha's next letter arrived in mid-February. Another
arrived in late March. Then a short one in April. As Ronnie's steady
relationship developed, she gradually stopped writing altogether.
There were times when I would sit for several minutes beside a
telephone and contemplate calling to New York. At first I was calling
Martha once a month or so. But in those days long distance calls were
an exotic expense. Although I paid for the calls myself, their
appearance on the telephone bills had my folks asking about the calls.
And after my pitiful letters to Martha and after our conversation on
New Year's, I was feeling blameworthy for trying to call Martha every
time I was upset, feeling childish for treating her like a crying
towel. I would sit near the telephone, tempted to call, and then I
would hear her voice: "I want you to be strong down there." "I won't
be there to help you. I wish I could, but I can't." I knew I had to
be on my own. I knew the reasons for it. And I knew that it simply
had to be that way.
PART 20B:
I had a few disastrous flirtations. The Brothers held a sophomore
class prom. Those who couldn't find a date could get one through
Brother Lawrence's contacts with the Catholic girls' schools in town.
At first, my sister was going to fix me up with a blind date. After
meeting several of her girlfriends I decided I'd be better off with
pot luck through Brother Lawrence. How bad could it be, I told
myself, after some of my dates in New York?
But trying it was. Being driven to and from the dance by my
mother helped little. I was already eligible for a driver's permit,
but no one would allow me to drive a car without insurance. The girl
had been in plays at Saint Agnes Academy for Girls -- apparently, this
was her sole qualification for being picked by Brother Lawrence.
Other than her drama interests, we had nothing in common. She was,
I discovered, a local glamour girl from a relatively wealthy family.
Her major social interest was hero worship, and all heroes were
varsity football players. I spent the evening introducing her to my
classmates, and she spent the evening traipsing about the dance hall
floor with them.
It actually made little difference to me. Beyond a basic sexual
titillation, I had no interest in her or any other girls. My sole
interest was to save money and, hopefully, leave home -- and, defin-
itely, to make it to New York. At the Liberty Cash Grocery Number
23, Charlie himself couldn't fire my interest in his numerous female
contacts.
On my sixteenth birthday I received a driver's permit. My stepdad
refused to allow me to drive the family car, but to me the permit
meant I was one step closer to independence. I began planning the
next step, which would be to buy my own used car. Of course, that
wouldn't be legally possible until I was eighteen. But for several
nights for weeks I stayed up late, calculating the possibilities: the
time required to save a little more for trips to New York; saving for
a future car of my own; perhaps getting someone else to let me use
their car for a larger, more lucrative paper route; or using someone
else's car to get me to a better job after school. But at my age, I
would find few jobs that paid as well as the one offered by my Uncle
Vic.
For the time being, the driver's permit allowed me to drive my
Aunt Frances' or my Grandpa Joe's car. During my weekend stays with
them I began taking them to work and picking them up at night now and
then, or making short drives to cafe supply houses.
Finally, with all the time and running around I spent at the
Tremont, Aunt Frances decided I should have my own car to drive. She
proposed this one night when I was having dinner with her and Grandma
Nifa and Uncle Johnny.
Sitting across the table from Uncle Johnny, Aunt Frances began the
conversation with him the way she usually did. She said, "Johnny?"
"What, Frances? I'm right here."
"I been thinkin'. Speedy ought to have his own car."
"He ain't old enough to own a car, Frances."
"For the Tremont. He has to go back and forth, and he keeps
driving my car. Or Joe's."
"But he's too young to own his own car, Frances." He sliced his
veal and took another bite.
Aunt Frances sat looking at her glass of water. The she said, "I
could get a used car wholesale from his Uncle Jimmy, and I could own
the tags. Speedy could drive it. That way, he won't wreck my car."
Uncle Johnny shrugged, chewing. "Sounds arright." He looked at
me across the dinner table. "How 'bout you, Little Beaver? Sound
arright to you?"
I nodded. "Okay with me." I wasn't about to pose an argument of
any kind.
Uncle Johnny wheezed a little laugh. "I figured you'd say that."
Aunt Frances said, "That's what we'll do, then. I'll get a car
from Jimmy. Speedy can drive it to the Tremont." She looked at me,
and waved her fork at me. "That way, you won't wreck my car. You can
wreck *your* car!"
Uncle Johnny smiled at her. "Whatever you say, Frances."
The car Aunt Frances bought was a 1953, fire-engine red Ford.
A straight-stick with a great radio. It was in tip-top shape. She
bought it from an uncle in the used car business for eight hundred
bucks. As soon as it was delivered she brought it to another
relation in the auto body business who repainted it a less glaring,
glossy dark blue enamel.
Now I had money from three jobs. I was sixteen with a driver's
permit. I had more time on my hands, unfettered by bus rides and
scurrying all over town for a car to borrow for work or restaurant
errands or social life. Or, on far too few occasions, theater. And
I'd be able to date without a chauffeur.
By the end of May I'd had no mail from Martha for nearly two
months, except for a very short 'Hello' note on her small, white
stationery. It included a photograph of Martha and Ronnie in Central
Park, lounging on towels on a sunny day in their swimsuits. I knew
Martha was working overtime and had time for little else, as usual;
and I was swamped by work as well, not so much by its difficulty as
by the time demanded by school and three part-time jobs. So I was
writing far fewer letters than before. And I had grown accustomed to
expecting infrequent answers.
I was looking at Martha's note and photograph at the dining table
when my step-dad Tony happened to approach the table behind me and
noticed the photo over my shoulder.
He joked as she sat at his chair, "What you got there? Calendar
girls?"
From the kitchen my mother called, "That's a letter from his New
York girlfriend!"
"Is that her picture?" He reached out a hand. "Can I look at
that? You know I talked to her on the phone, and I got to be honest.
I don't remember what she looks like."
I handed him the picture. He moved it back and forth, getting it
into focus with his bifocals. "Ain't that her? The blonde lookin'
one?"
I said, "Yes. That's Martha."
He squinted at the picture. "Damn. You know, she's a really fine
lookin' woman."
My mother added from the kitchen doorway, "Y' oughtta see her
sister Evelyn. Now, she's just beautiful."
Tony cocked an eyebrow. "Well, this one here would do. Who's
that with her?"
"That's her girlfriend Ronnie. Lives downstairs in her building."
"This Ronnie ain't bad, neither." He smiled at me. "You was
runnin' around New York with these two pretty gals?" He handed the
picture back to me.
"Yeah, more or less."
He spread his napkin across his lap. "Hell, I wouldn't a come
home."
My mother carried a piping hot bowl of cauliflower into the room.
"Yeah, you'd a stayed up there, and who'd cook for you?" She set the
bowl on the table.
Tony said, "Your mama has a point there, Speedy. Cain't nobody
cook like your mama."
Mom took her chair opposite me. She joked, "See? Guess I'm good
for somethin', ain't I?"
My step-dad bowed his head, the signal for the grace before meals.
He recited the plain, brief prayer, everyone finishing with a sign of
the cross, me finishing with something that slightly resembled a sign
of the cross, and my step-dad pulled the salad bowl closer to him and
began to shovel green salad into his plate.
He asked, "Does Martha cook, Speedy? Up in New York?"
"No, she doesn't know much about cooking. Eats out most of the
time."
"She must make pretty good money up there, all that eatin' out."
"No, she just keeps two or three teaching jobs going at the same
time. She doesn't make much money at all. She's starting to look for
people she can start a business with. Teaching doesn't pay enough."
He frowned at me, passing me the salad bowl. "Don't make much
money?"
"No."
"How does she afford that buildin' she lives in up there, with
that doorman and all them guest rooms and everything?"
I was stunned at that. I stuttered quickly, "Well, uh, Columbia
University pays for most of it. She's, uh, she's on the staff at the
university, and, uh, they provide part of the housing expense."
Quickly, I put the picture away and changed the subject to an
upcoming wedding. He had almost caught me in the lie Martha had told
them about her building! That settled it for me; I had to avoid the
subject of Martha and stick to other matters, such as work. And
talking about Martha did little to lift my moods.
On a Friday night near the end of May I called Martha's number.
She didn't answer. It would have been eight at night in New York. I
waited until the next day, Saturday, and called at five-thirty. No
answer. Then I spent half an hour in my bedroom going through all the
letters to find Ronnie's telephone number. It was a little after six
when I called.
Ronnie answered, in the same bored voice. "Hello. This is
Veronica."
"Hello, Ronnie."
"Hello? Who's --? Is this --?"
"Steven."
Her voice became warmly happy and affectionate. "Well, my god.
Steeeven. Oh god. Oh, how *are* you? Oh, I'm so sorry, how could I
forget that soft Southern voice? Well, I didn't really, I suspected
it was you, it was just -- Well. How are you, sweetheart?"
"I'm okay. I'm fine. I, uh, I called Martha, but...I thought
she might down there tonight."
"Martha? Nah, she's probably out somewhere playing politics."
"Politics?"
"Yeah. You know, prospecting. Career building. Rubbing elbows
with the powers that be, and all that. She's really been looking hard
lately, trying to set up a partnership with people, you know? She
finally got fed up with Columbia. Oh, but, honey, this is such a
surprise. I miss you! Can you believe that? Tell me how you're
doin', Martha doesn't tell me much lately. Tell me. Give me a-a-all
the dirt, sweetheart. Memphis dirt!"
I told her a little about work and family. My job with Uncle Vic
and the Ricci's and others. I had even kept up a paper route, a small
one in my neighborhood that only took half an hour a day with the car
I was driving, and I worked a few hours on weekends at the super
market.
She asked, "No theater? What happened to the theater?"
"Well, I'm --" I fished for a believable lie. "I'll be taking
time off for a new play in a few weeks. But I'm making money,
mostly."
"Yeah, but do you need so much? God, Steven, what happened to
all things you were gonna do?"
"Oh, I'll do 'em. Eventually."
"Sweetheart, don't let 'em throw money at you like that. You need
to do what you were meant to do. Not what they were meant to do."
"I know."
"You listening to your Aunt Veronica?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"You'll get yourself back on track sooner or later, I guess.
Look, my steady's gonna be here soon, I have to make myself look nice.
You know what a chore *that* is.
"Nah. Five minutes, tops."
She threw me a kiss over the line. "Awww. But, listen, I'll tell
Martha you called. You gonna be home tomorrow?"
"Workin'."
"On Sunday? Oh, that's right, it's the restaurant business."
"Yeah, for a couple of hours. But I will be home in the afternoon
from two o'clock until about six."
"Hey. I'll let her know. Okay?"
On Sunday, Martha called at three thirty. I rushed to get to the
telephone before my mother did. I picked up.
"Hello?"
A very soft voice said, "Hello, Steven."
"Martha."
"Mm-hm. How are you? Ronnie told me you called." Her voice was
very, very calm, restful. As soon as she I heard her speak a few
sentences I was aware of it. It didn't have the tense undertone of
the sound of Martha of New York or Martha Jane of Memphis State.
She said, "I'm sorry I wasn't in."
"That's okay, that's, uh...Well, it's...it's nice to hear you."
"Nice to hear you, too."
"You sound so rested. You just wake up from a nap or something?"
"I wish I had. Maybe I should take one. I'm worn to a frazzle.
But I'm running all over town, trying to get some people together. Or
just find a job. Anything. I've been running myself ragged trying to
make so many changes. And some really big ones are coming up." She
told me about all the interviews she'd taken, the resumes, the meet-
ings, the searching for partners who'd like to start an educational
consulting business, the research she was doing on the legal and
professional and marketing aspects. She ended, "And it just seems to
keep going. So much going on, so much to do."
"Yeah? What else is happening? That already sounds like a lot."
"Oh..." I heard her sigh and move around, as if she were changing
positions on her sofa or a chair. "Oh, lots of things, I guess. Any-
thing would be better except living the way I was. I'm struggling
with so many things right now, so many...very serious things to think
about. Very...And Ronnie says she might be moving out."
"She didn't say anything about that."
"Mmm. Well, she's not sure. She might be moving out to stay with
her friend. You remember? The guy she met from NYU at the party
where you met --? Well. My goodness, that seems like so long ago."
"Yes, it does. Almost a year."
"Well...I do worry about you. I really do. I hope it's better,
Steven."
My mouth fluttered a little. I finally straightened my tongue and
said, "It's been a year, almost. I almost have enough saved up."
"Mmm, Steven, you could get yourself through a year at Penn State
on that."
"I don't wanna go to Penn State."
There was a pause. "You know, making plans for the time being
isn't going to work very well. I have to find a new apartment. I
have no idea where I'll be. I might have to leave Manhattan, it's so
expensive here. I might have to live in Pelham or White Plains or
something."
"Why? What's wrong with your apartment?"
"They're going to tear this place down. This, and the buildings
on both sides. They're putting up high rises. It's happening all
over the East Side. They'll offer us places in the new buildings,
but...there's no place to live while they build, and I still couldn't
afford it when the new place goes up."
"Oh, that's --"
"Steven, I called mainly...mainly to see how you were. When
Ronnie said you called, I just knew something was wrong."
"No. No, it's just been a while, you know."
She said quietly, "Yes. I know." She took a breath. "I wondered
what you'd do. I wondered what you were doing. I thought you said
you were doing theater. Now Ronnie tells me you have three jobs,
morning, noon and night."
"Well, not -- not really. Not exactly."
"Oh. She made it sound like three different jobs."
"No, not really. I was exaggerating."
"You're still at the Tremont, and your Aunt Josephine's place on
Lauderdale?"
"Well, yes, I do that. But I'm --"
"And the grocery store on weekends?"
"That's just a couple of hours on Saturday and Sunday morning."
"And?"
I lied, "And that's all. Really."
Another pause. She said softly, "Steven?"
I moved my mouth. I could tell by her voice, she knew what was
really going on.
She said in the same soft tone, "What about *you*? What about
Steven? You're taking care of everything except Steven."
"Well, I'm -- I'm getting into a play in a couple of weeks. I can
get time off for it."
"...I hope you mean that."
"Sure I do."
"You know, I've never lied to you. I've never."
"I know that."
Her voice became even lower, and softer. "Don't let them do it to
you, hon."
"I won't."
"We had a deal. You said okay."
"Yes. I know."
"And don't let me do it to you, either, hon. Don't make me blame
myself for dragging you to New York every time you have a dollar, or a
minute. I won't let myself do that. I don't want you running away to
something once-in-a-while, and then get stuck forever in Memphis. Or
stuck at Memphis State, wasting yourself, working like a dog for a
second-rate degree that won't get you anywhere. Look where it got me.
I want you getting skills and putting your talent to use and being --"
She sighed. She whispered, "No. No more lecturing. Hon, you're too
old for that now."
I joked, "I don't have anything to take notes with, anyway."
"Do you know that I worry about you?" She stopped. "God, I'm
sounding like your Aunt Frances. I don't even sound like a teacher
any more, I sound like an aunt. Oh, hon, I'm getting too old too
fast."
"You'll never get old."
"I wish I could believe that. But I am getting nearly broke. I
quit one of my jobs. So I can't stay on much longer."
"No, that's okay, now, I wish I'd known that. I can call you next
time, okay? Send me the bill for this one."
She gave a small laugh. "You're still the big spender, aren't
you? And by the way: Steven, that coat is so beautiful. And warm.
I've worn it everywhere. Except to work. Nobody cares at work. But
...I am running low. I have to be careful."
"What happened to your other job?"
"There's no time. Just no time. I'm changing so many things, and
I have to...there are some very serious things that I have to take
care of, and I want to start a business. There's no time."
"I wish...I wish there was something I could do. I wish I could
help."
"Really? Would you like to help me?"
"Sure I would."
"Then give me one less thing to worry about. Can you do that for
me?"
"Yes."
"Oh, let me tell you: Ronnie didn't snitch on you, Steven. I had
to drag the news out of her. Every bit of it."
"I see."
"Maybe she got parts of it wrong."
"Yeah. Sounds like it."
"Well...I guess I'd should get off the line."
"Listen. Let me pay for this call."
"No, Steven, that's not --"
"No, I insist. If you don't send me the bill for this, I'll call
the operator and find out how much a call like this would cost."
"Well, all right. You win on this one."
"I have to win at something."
She laughed. "You're sweet. You are. And I'll write you.
Soon. All right?"
"I'll be expecting it."
"Okay. G'night, Steven."
"Good night, Martha. Thanks for calling."
"Okay." She blew me a little kiss, and she hung up.
I took a deep breath and then walked into the nearby bathroom. I
splashed water in my face. I looked at myself in the mirror. Martha
was right. All that work was getting me out of shape. I'd lost a lot
of color and was getting puffy-faced again. I wasn't eating well. I
wasn't sleeping enough. I wasn't working out.
I said to my reflection, "Crap."
PART 20C:
I spent a month getting myself into shape physically. My routines
were parceled out over the day. To my mother's dismay I filled an
entire shelf of her kitchen cabinets with vitamins and supplements.
At first she complained that I was stocking dangerous and illegal
drugs. My father and younger half-brothers would eye me suspiciously
in the kitchen when they saw me swallowing handfuls of the stuff or
making my super protein drink. But the effects were soon forth-
coming; I slept better, I worked better, I looked better.
And work! I threw myself into it more than ever. School and the
businesses had money coming in steadily. Getting some practice in
diplomacy between my cousin Michael and the Ricci's was also paying
off with better relations at school. Brother Edmund gave me a spot on
the staff of the school paper, which was widely read by their con-
siderably large alumni.
At the end of the school year I was nominated for election as a
junior class officer for the coming year. I turned the nomination
down; there simply was no time for it. And there was a social aspect
to my refusal to get more involved: I got on well, but I still didn't
fit in with my classmates. They were good students, but most were
sons of privileged families in town. Their major concern was schedul-
ing their next weekend party. Most displayed the gentlemanly dress
and manner expected of students at Christian Brothers; under that
facade lay typical 1950's attitudes. They were too young for me.
Girls were generally referred to as bitches or cunts, more studious
kids were admired but were labeled as eggheads. Everyone had a boys'
school camaraderie by day, but otherwise the usual cliquish atti-
tudes prevailed among wealthier students. I was more popular with the
upperclassmen and the Brothers themselves. And I was one of only a
handful of students who actually worked outside of class.
Work wasn't enough to keep my mind off Martha. I wanted enter-
tainment. Love. More immediately, I wanted intimacy. Sex.
In May I started looking for girls to date. In one way or another
I met many of them through my huge family's cousins. There was some
filtering to do; I wanted passion, and I wanted it quickly, and I
didn't have much time for innocent fooling around, teasers, or the
usual tarts. This was 1958, and it was the Bible Belt, and the thing
to do was to make out in a parked car. The favored seduction tech-
nique appeared to be to get a girl drunk. The level of intimacy I was
accustomed to and desired required a partner beyond the usual. And I
had been with Martha, Ronnie, and Anita and Karen. I had no patience
for a case of blue balls.
After several faltering attempts and catastrophic dates, sex came
in the form of JoAnn Delmonico. A cousin introduced her to me as
"another cousin" -- but she was so distantly related to me through the
Lobianco clan that calling her a cousin, as some did, was a consider-
able stretch.
JoAnn and I had an instant if superficial rapport. When I was
introduced to her at a dinner at my Uncle Vic's she stared at me
across the table as if she were ready for me to rip her clothes off
for dessert. After dinner, while everyone socialized, she managed to
keep "finding" me with a bright smile and her mild West Tennessee
twang and a cheery, "Oh, Hi! There you are again! I keep bumpin'
into you. Seems like we just cain't avoid each other, don't it?
Before the gathering broke up, I made a date with her for the
coming weekend. The date was a Sunday afternoon steamboat party on
the Mississippi River sponsored by a high school fraternity that some
of my classmates belonged to. I seldom attended such functions and
wouldn't join a fraternity, but the party was open to anyone at the
Brothers. And I wanted to get a sex life going any way I could.
The steamboat ride lasted three hours. During the course of it
JoAnn and I broke from the party and spent most of our time strolling
around the glass-enclosed second deck. She was flirty, but in an
oblique way. On one hand she had an amiable, poised, tolerant manner
that made others feel she had known them for years. On the one-to-one
level, there was a definite, more adult, experienced way of sending
intimate signals with her eyes and expressions and posture: yes, I'd
prefer to stand closer to you; Yes, it's okay if you come closer,
too. Yes, my shoulder is touching yours, but that's as it should be
among friends; Yes, you're the main object of my attention here; Yes,
there's a lull in the conversation, but all conversations have lulls.
She had a talent for transmitting subliminal messages.
She was impressed that I seemed to be so popular with my class-
mates, especially with the older movers and shakers. She was im-
pressed that I had a hand in the family business. She was impressed
that I had my own car. She herself often worked in her dad's chain of
hardware stores and in her mother's charities. The most amazing thing
was that she seemed to come out of nowhere, and she seemed to be,
somehow, inevitable.
JoAnn was a very attractive young lady who looked a little older
than almost seventeen, and acted it. She was a brown-eyed, wavy-
haired blonde whose wide mouth and slender, delicate lips looked
particularly erotic to me. Some girls had eyes, JoAnn had her allur-
ing mouth. At five-foot-four she had an effortless, breathy laugh and
a sophisticated manner -- sophisticated, anyway, for Memphis. She
handled herself with an easy, outgoing manner and a dry wit that told
me she was no dumb blonde. She had a fit, trim body with small, girl-
ish shoulders, and she knew how to wear clothes that made her look
older. She had a graceful physical manner, a gently sloping bosom
without the overdone, busty look popular in those days, and supple,
well-toned limbs with creamy skin, and a lazy, sexy lilt to her South-
ern accent. She could easily have made herself look like a Sandra Dee
sex doll, for there was something soft and luscious about her. But as
with everything she did, like wearing just enough makeup to appear to
be wearing hardly any, it was all understated.
Near the party's end, as the steamboat headed back toward its
moorings, we were both leaning on the boat railing beside each other on
the lower deck, looking out at the wide river and talking with an
intimate affability. There was nothing about cultural movements, psy-
chology, philosophy, art. It was all family, school, friends. But
there was no awful teenage shyness, no struggle to mince words, no
nervous foot shuffling or finger twiddling. Everything between us
seemed to fall right into place.
It was as if I'd met another Anita. I tried sizing her up as
another version of her. But JoAnn was earthier, more domesticated
(JoAnn's self-description was "housebroken", in her words), but just
wistful enough to make one suspect there was more to her. I was
attracted. I was comfortable. I wanted to fuck her brains out. And,
thank goodness, I was not swept away.
I asked her to go out Friday night, my one weekend night off.
She said amiably, "Fine. Friday's fine with me."
"Where would you like to go?"
She shrugged. "Wherever. You pick." She leaned on her forearms
on the railing and looked slightly up at me, her shoulders slumped a
little, looking fragile, feminine, and utterly available.
I tried for the big one: a date at a drive-in movie. In Memphis,
only a gal with ulterior motives and some "experience" with drive-ins
would go for it on a second date. I said, "How about the Lamar Drive-
in? I haven't been there in a while."
She said, unflinching, her eyes steady, and a little curl at one
corner of her red mouth, "Sure. Fine with me."
Has JoAnn been around, I asked myself, or has she been nowhere?
On Friday night, I found out.
Friday I took her to dinner at an Italian restaurant operated by
another Lobianco uncle of mine, from a part of my stepdad's huge clan
unknown to JoAnn's connections. Being hailed and addressed by name
during dinner by everyone in the place seemed to work some kind of
magic on JoAnn. My Uncle Silvio Vinetti, a big, chesty, older man who
always wore a tuxedo on the job and who still had remnants of his
accent from the old country, made a special trip to our table to say
hello. I introduced him to JoAnn, and he appeared obviously taken
with her. He talked briefly to me about my Uncle Vic and the plans
for expansion of the other restaurants, and offered me some special
training if I were thinking about the restaurant business after
college. While Silvio spoke to me, I glanced at JoAnn from the corner
of my eye. As she lifted her water glass to her lips her eyes shifted
constantly between me and Uncle Silvio, and she seemed to be soaking
in every word, sizing up everything. She set her glass down and sat
with her elbows propped on the table, her hands loosely folded before
her face. And I thought: nice hands; supple neck; graceful movements;
something very shrewd going on with her eyes.
After only a few words to me, Uncle Silvio rose to leave, saying,
"Don't gotta make up your mind now, y'know? Vic says you doin' a nice
job with the folks at the Tremont. You gotta finish the job for Vic
first, know what I mean? But think about it. You got half a dozen
years to look it over, huh?" He stood up, pat me on the back, and had
a special smile for JoAnn. "You two enjoy your meal, uh?"
He left, and for the rest of our short dinner JoAnn sat across
from me doing subtle things with her eyes and facial expressions --
not exactly staring, not exactly focusing on my mouth, not exactly
flirting. She could pull off a sexy lowering of her eyelids which, as
soon as I noticed it, she would immediately modify into something more
casual and aloof. She remained illusive, fleeting, indirect, always
vaguely tempting.
Later, at the drive-in, she displayed no reaction when I parked
near the sparsely populated rear of the lot. We had been sitting in
my car in the drive-in for not more than half an hour, watching the
movie, when I noticed she was sitting close to me, with plenty of
unused room on her side of the car. That led to my leaning against
the door in a big show of nonchalance and putting my arm around the
back of the seat. Which led to her smiling at me and leaning her head
casually near my shoulder. Which, within five minutes, led to her
head resting on my shoulder, her thighs pressing against mine, and
then to loose hand holding. Which, ten minutes later, led to a kiss.
And JoAnn could kiss. She could manage the soft lip-nips very well,
and the gentle lip-writhing even better. Almost immediately, she
looked feverish. This led to my shifting forward in my seat and
holding her in a warm embrace. There was no skittish, adolescent
blushing. She fit perfectly into my arms, limp and clinging. That
led to my straightening up against the steering wheel and holding her
by her shoulders and lowering her to the seat with her head toward the
driver's side, and she pulled me down with her. Which led to my lying
half on top of her, both our heads toward the driver's side. I kissed
her longingly and she was already breathing soft, pleasurable sighs.
That led to my undoing a couple of buttons on her blouse while we
kissed. No resistance. No word. My hand slipped inside the blouse
and cupped a breast over her bra. She calmly reached inside her
blouse and undid her bra, whose clasp was conveniently located in
front instead of at her back. She lay waiting, eyes closed. My hands
and mouth found breasts like yielding, down-filled apples, maddeningly
soft, puffy, with brownish, swollen aureoles, and dark, small, round
nipples. My hand roamed to the hem of her ruffled skirt and slipped
inside. No resistance. No words. My palm moved up her smooth, soft-
skinned thighs. Her legs parted. When my palm advanced above her
knees, she reached down without breaking our embrace and pulled her
panties off; I was amazed that she could do it so quickly. I ran my
hand up her warm thigh, higher, and her legs parted farther. Sticky
heat met my fingers. Her mouth fed on mine. I couldn't believe how
ready she was. I opened my zipper and she pulled up her skirt, our
mouths locked together, and I tasted lipstick, and I smelled face
powder and pussy. I couldn't believe it.
I kissed her neck, struggling with one hand behind my back with a
rubber, finally slipping the damn thing down near my legs, out of
view, and ripping the wrapper off and then slipping it on me. Eyes
closed, she gasped and kissed my face and neck. I still couldn't
believe it. She was like Anita, simmering quickly and moving to a
boil posthaste. I moved onto her, my pants still on, my zipper opened
wide, my cock jutting with the rubber on, and her calves went around
my ankles and her head was thrown back and she was breathing hard and
fast. I pushed forward, and her hand quickly went down to guide me,
hastily, almost frantically, and I pushed ahead. Her cunt was hot,
tight, even through the rubber. And JoAnn was even hotter. She
winced and her mouth fell open and she breathed a quick, "Oh. Ah,"
and her head arched father back as I slid in and she gave a soft,
sweet, pleased moan, her pelvis writhing to settled me all the way
into her. Then her hips began a frenzied churning, and she was so
damn tight and pretty and breathless.
Perhaps it had been such a long time since I'd held passion in my
arms, held a girl as pretty and alluring as JoAnn. I was completely
taken aback; within a dozen strokes I came inside the rubber. It
was a sudden, somewhat anesthetized climax, but I filled the rubber
with hot stuff before I knew it. Perhaps it was just JoAnn; just her.
I relaxed, and as quickly as she had reached the steaming stage she
fell into a restful, closed-eyed, smiling repose. My head was
swimming -- from first kiss to climax, the whole thing had taken less
than five minutes!
Within a few moments we were both sitting up, wiping sweat from
our brows and opening the car windows for ventilation in the mid-June
heat. During the short span of our coupling, which somehow seemed
implicit all along, the car windows were completely fogged.
I straightened my clothes. And casually, wordlessly, with a com-
posed, contented smile, JoAnn took makeup from her purse and used my
rear-view mirror to replace her lipstick, put a little powder on,
straightened her hair, and put her panties back on and straightened
her clothes, and she put her head on my shoulder. She gave me an
intimate little smile when I looked down at her and she pursed her
lips for a kiss.
We watched the first movie. Then I went for refreshments and came
back for the second movie. Halfway through the second movie I was
still horny; cumming inside a rubber was not my idea of ultimate
fulfillment. JoAnn and I got into a slow, affectionate makeout ses-
sion after a while, and I was hard as a rock. I had to pause several
times to adjust my stiffening cock inside my clothes.
She asked, smiling, "Weren't you satisfied?"
I said, "Well...it's been a while. And that one was a little
sudden.""
"Mm. Good, though."
I kissed her. "Yes."
Her hand crept toward my erection over my clothes. "Well?"
"I'm afraid I don't have any more protection."
That didn't phase her either. She gave me the same easy smile,
her eyes on my mouth. "Any other, uh, options? Maybe I could try
Old Reliable."
I smiled, questioning. "Old reliable?"
"Mm-hm."
"What's old reliable.
Her head against my shoulder, she smiled with gentle incredulity.
"You never heard anybody use that expression, old reliable?"
I shook my head no.
"Oh, you know. What they do when they don't have protection."
"They do lots of things when they don't have protection."
"Well..." She looked down at my lap, and her hand crept toward my
zipper. She prompted gently, "You know..."
I started pulling my zipper down, and she took the tab and pulled
farther. It stuck. I reached down and helped her. She gave me a
heavy-lidded look, and she fumbled inside my jocks. With an almost
practiced twist of her hand, she had my hard cock poking into the air.
Her fingers went around it. Her hands were cotton soft. She pulled
up and down with a languid rhythm. She glanced up and smiled, her
eyes on my mouth. "You have quite an appetite. Think this'll be
enough?"
"We can give it a try."
Her hands were slow, at first. She watched my cock with a calm
smile as she worked. I put my hand under her skirt. The inside of
her thigh was moist, soft, hot. She leaned her head on my shoulder
again and casually started jacking me off, but quickly. I told her to
slow down. My finger slipped under her panties. She shook her head
no and said, "Uh-uh. Too sensitive."
I satisfied myself with rubbing her pussy over her panties, and
she was wet, but she seemed to refuse to get excited again. She
jacked me off tighter and faster, looking down at my cock. After a
moment she sat up a little. I anticipated a blowjob. But she
watched my dick and her hand went at it in earnest. It was just as
well; it wasn't Ronnie, but she had a nice touch that was bringing
me off. I whispered, getting close, "Slow down, now. Easy." She
slowed and loosened her hand a bit and said, "How's that?" I nodded
my head yes and she stroked steadily, relaxing her shoulder against
mine and glancing about now and then to make sure no one was near our
car. I shot off onto the steering wheel. In the middle of it she
gave a surprised smile and said, "Ew. Messy." When I finished she
held my cock, thin cum lacing her fingers, and she sat upright, her
other hand straightening her hair. "Feel better?"
My head was against the back of the seat. I panted, "Mm. Yeah.
Much."
"Hey, hand me one of those napkins."
I reached around her shoulder and got her a napkin left-over from
the refreshments. She let my cock go and thoroughly wiped her hand on
the napkin, whispering playfully, "My goodness." I used my hankie to
clean the steering wheel. I hadn't cum much, but it had gone far.
She tittered shyly, watching me clean up. She said, "Boys. I'll have
to be more careful with you."
Then she threw the napkin away and straightened her clothes and we
shared a brief kiss, and she turned to watch the movie.
And so, I had sex. But where the hell had she come from?
We dated every Friday night and every Saturday and Sunday after-
noon. JoAnn had the use of her parents' car and would often drop by
the restaurant. Over the next few weeks we fell into an easy pattern;
though we made no formal statements to each other, we seemed to assume
we were steadies. She had a friendly social manner and managed to
make herself look like one of the family when others were around. She
always seemed utterly sure of herself, sure of acceptance, sure of me.
It was baffling, how quickly it had happened.
We had sex, but we never discussed it. And the sex assumed a
fixed format. In the front seat of my car, or hers, we would fuck
quickly with our clothes on, JoAnn heating up within seconds, fervent
and gasping, writhing her pelvis while I pumped away. I was getting
accustomed to those pesky rubbers, to a degree. But climaxing inside
one wasn't always sufficient, so she would usually jerk me off after-
wards. She never changed her lukewarm but efficient technique, always
with a tissue nearby to hold near my tip to catch the "overflow," as
she called it. Then she'd do a swift, motherly cleaning up, looking
as if she were casually changing a diaper. Once or twice I tried
gently to push her head toward my cock, but she'd resist, playfully,
and seemed to pretend (?) she didn't know what I was getting at. When
I tried to hold back cumming in her hand, she would complain, "Hurry,
Steven, it's late. My folks'll kill us. Am I doin' it right?" There
were a few occasions when the rubber wouldn't let me climax at all,
and she simply used her hand on me.
On one occasion I brought along a tube of hand lotion, but she
didn't seem to think I was serious.
She scoffed mildly and said, "Oh, you! Now, that's not funny, I
don't know why you think that's funny." She gave me her easy,
breathy, forgiving laugh. "You have such a strange sense of humor
sometimes." Her fingers traced a line down my cock. "Don't my hands
feel good?" Against my ear she used her sugary, pouty, cajoling
voice, "C'mon. You know I want you to be satisfied, don't you?
C'mon, now." She started jacking me off slowly. She whispered,
"Let's get rid of some of that tension." She looked down, her hand
gentle with me. She whispered, "Okay?"
Of course, I said it was. And it was. Sort of. But I let my
head float back against the car seat and said, "Slower, though.
Easy."
She watched her hand on me, her soft face against my shoulder, and
she tugged up gently, lovingly. Then her warm, dulcet whisper, "All
right? Hm?"
I nodded yes. She had a marvelously gentle hand. Her other hand
teasingly stroked the back of my neck. Precum oozed, and she knew how
to collect it on her fingers and tweak my tip with it. My dick
throbbed, straight up. The orgasm slowly gathered. It was all right.
For the time being. Just barely.
Meanwhile, JoAnn never climaxed. She refused. Early on, I tried
screwing her quickly and finishing in the rubber -- her effect on me
usually had me so hot, I'd surrender inside her as soon as I could --
then I put a new rubber on and screwed her again, holding back for
what seemed like forever. I felt she were truly getting close but
then stiffening up, withdrawing her cunt and clit, curbing herself.
Finally I stopped moving, out of breath and sweaty in my shirt, and
asked her, "Did you cum?" She looked at me, her eyes and face flushed
anxiously, and she said, genuinely surprised, "You mean climax? Well,
I have to save *something* for when we're married!"
That remark had me mystified. Did she really expect to go through
an entire courtship, fuck two or three times a week, never have an
orgasm, never passionately say I love you, and then marry?
Her inflexibility was such that she wouldn't let me finger her
beyond a certain point of arousal before requesting that I enter her.
She did this despite the fact that I was skilled enough with my
fingers, and sneaky enough, to bring her perilously near an orgasm.
I had no idea how she could get so hot, hold back so evenly, and then
cool off within seconds of my own finish. I suspected her sexual
agitation might be an act; but her habit of fucking with frenzied
gasps and turbulent pelvic and vaginal motions that could wring cum
from a fence post was extremely convincing. I would have asked where
she learned what she knew, but she spoke of sex only in euphemisms,
and once referred vaguely to oral sex with disparaging remarks. At
least, her performance appeared so spontaneous it seemed natural.
As time went on she became an extraordinary kisser; she once
worked me up to such a pitch with her lips on my face and neck that I
had orgasmic intercourse with her twice. It was not a relationship of
mind-boggling erotic depth, but in her limited way, she could be a
real turn-on in the front seat of a car.
And always, she seemed very pleased with her performance after-
ward. And always, I wanted more. And almost always, she'd patiently
provide more -- never enough, just more -- with a look on her face
that seemed to say she considered it sufficient.
So I had sex. Each time I had it I became more and more emotion-
ally distant from her and never tried exotic oral or romantic methods.
She was gorgeous, with a body that had me turned on the moment I saw
her, and after a few weeks we often spent the short Saturday and
Sunday afternoons going directly into a fuck, parked in my car or
hers.
She was driving me crazy; I never saw her completely naked. We
did have sex in her parents' home once, on a Sunday afternoon while
they were away at nearby Colonial Country Club. We were making out on
the living room sofa when her kissing had me so hot that I was beside
myself. I started undressing her, but she demurely held me off and
got to her feet.
"You know," she said, smiling sweetly and straightening her hair
again, "This location's not very comfortable."
I stood up and took her hungrily into my arms and kissed her and
nipped heatedly at her neck, feeling her warm, nubile body along mine.
Her breath caught once or twice, and with a little whimper she put
her head on my shoulder and sighed, "Oh. Oh, wait. Mmm. Wait." She
pulled away and again, but she looked into my eyes, suddenly longing,
but apprehensive. She took my hand and said nervously, "Here. Come
with me." She led me by the hand into and down the hallway, then
stopped, looking toward their sunken family room. But then she
started for her bedroom, whispering furtively, "No, here. Let's go
in here."
We stood by her big, quilt-covered bed and I kissed her fiercely
and she curled her body into me, her mouth working hot sorcery on
mine. I gave her a gentle love bite, and she gasped and whispered,
"Steven..." Then I nipped at her neck and worked my inner lips
everywhere and lifted her skirt and gently, gently, stroked her slit
over her panties. She went limp. She whispered, "Oh. Oh." My mouth
found hers again and she returned my kiss with a growing hunger. The
kiss went on and on, and she held me tighter. I pulled my mouth away
and she swooned, panting, and whispered "Oh" again. Kissing her neck,
I backed her against the bed and she fell onto the edge with me on top
of her. As usual, I was in a feverish hurry to fuck her. Still Kiss-
ing deeply , we opened our clothes. I stood to take off my pants, and
she raised her knees and stripped off her panties, glancing fearfully
toward the hall. She whispered, "Steven. Close the door." I did,
and when I turned to her she had pulled up her skirt and spread her
legs, her feet dangling near the floor. She whispered, "Hurry."
In a fit of horniness I grabbed her legs and held them around my
waist, and I unwrapped the rubber and she put it on me hurriedly,
panting, her jaw clenched and her eyes simmering. Suddenly she gasped
fearfully and was still, looking toward the toward. But she heard
nothing, and she looked back at my cock and aimed me and said with a
trembling whisper, "Hurry! C'mon, hurry!"
I shoved into her and her head fell back and she sighed passionate-
ly, "Oh lord! Steven!" I looked down at her spread thighs and smooth
tummy and her brownish patch and her tidy, deeply furrowed mound, and
her blouse fully open and her bra unclasped and her soft, palm-sized
tits and the light glimmering softly on her swollen, rounded, sepia
tips, and her head thrown back rapturously, and her face to one side,
her eyes tightening with excitement, and her long, pale, arched
throat, a delicate fist held girlishly near her mouth, and her parted
lips whispering a shaken "Oh god" while I dug into her. My hips moved
with abandon. She was beautiful. Simply beautiful. And I was lust,
pure, primordial lust. I grit my teeth and fucked deep and fast. She
was as naked as I'd ever seen her and she was fevered lusciousness. I
came deliciously into the latex, groaning under my breath, "MMMM!
Fuck!" She gasped and stiffened, her hips suddenly still. I was
squirting too hard to pay much notice just then.
I rested on her, panting madly against her shoulder.
She sighed, "Oh. Oh god."
After a brief moment she said, her voice gentle but concerned,
"Darlin', I never saw you so excited."
I smiled against her cheek. I said, "Mmm."
She said uneasily, "Never heard you talk like that, either."
"Mmm."
"Listen, we better be careful about getting' so heated up. Okay?
I kinda count on you to keep us under control a little bit. I mean,
we don't wanna have an accident. You know?"
I nodded against her. What I really had in mind was resting up
and then getting her naked in a real bed and fucking her until she
fainted.
But she stirred, trying to get up. She said fretfully, "C'mon,
now. We better get our clothes on."
I listened to her soft voice. How did Memphis girls do it, with
that overly sweet, Southern twang? C'mon was pronounced "c'mown".
The word 'on' was pronounced "own". They didn't say "a little" or
"some" or "slight", they said "a little bit". They didn't say "Oh
Lord", they said "Oh Loh-werd", turning one syllable in Lord into two.
They could sound so sexy-sweet. Syrupy. Obdurate, but with a thick,
sugary glaze, talking you into anything. Or talking you out of it.
When I rose, she got up quickly and went to the door, peeking out
and listening, then she closed the door again and hastily started
buttoning her clothes. When she caught me watching her slip her
panties on under her skirt, she blushed, one of the few times I'd
seen her do that. She said, with a shy grin, "Steven, we better
watch out. Somebody coulda come home and caught us."
Conversation? A little gossip, not much. Mostly family stuff.
Politician jokes. If I didn't call her, she called me. She and my
Mom traded recipes. She could cook, sort of. Camus? Wasn't he an
atheist? Ginsberg: pornography. Theater: her all-time favorite was
My Fair Lady. She thought George Bernard Shaw was a novelist. She
once saw me flirting with Josephine Louise and became instantly,
fumingly jealous, which led to an argument, which led to fucking in
her car in a dark spot in Overton Park. Her terms for fucking were
intercourse, doin'-it, or you-know-what. No references to specific
sex organs. A monthly period was, at least, a period; but sometimes
she referred to it as "Leroy's in town." My Mom taught her how to
make meat loaf. A little name-dropping, not much, mostly local. Why
would anyone want to read the New York Times Book Review? All parents
were prudes, especially hers. Divorce was a mortal sin and invalid in
the eyes of the Church. It was okay to miss Mass now and then if you
had a good reason. And why doesn't the Pope just go ahead and accept
birth control as inevitable? And why didn't I ever go to Mass with
her? The bride should always cut the cake and hand it to the groom,
not the other way around. Very noisy during you-know-what, but never
any talking; we didn't fuck long enough for much talk anyway.
It was amazing the way she worked her way into everything, even
into concerns about the businesses. She had my Aunt Frances wrapped
around her finger. Uncle Johnny kept forgetting her name; a gal was a
gal, and they all gained five pounds each year after marriage. My
mother was enchanted: JoAnn was cute, she was polite, she was Italian,
she was Catholic. JoAnn could worm her way in with a shrewd polite-
ness, and one by one she could open doors. And she could open her
legs, and take control.
And, strangely, she had me wanting Martha more than anything. She
had some of Martha's facial expressions. Her lips felt like Martha's.
Her hands had the texture of Martha's, her thighs felt like Martha's.
The more I was with JoAnn, the more she became a poorly exposed photo-
graph of the physical Martha.
Soon I was screwing JoAnn and thinking about Martha while I came.
That was the ultimate insult to all three of us.
The world was becoming a very strange place. My emotions were
tied in knots that tightened and tightened. The nutty sexual and
moral conventions of people around me seemed to surround me, moving
into a narrower circle daily. Behind JoAnn's back, I was searching
for other girls. Now and then I'd beg off with her, telling her I had
to work when I dated another girl. But most normal girls, of course,
took their sweet time opening their legs, if at all. I soon grew
impatient with the search.
With many misgivings I seemed to settle into a state of brittle
boredom, always tottering on the edge of driving to the airport and
boarding the first airplane I could find. Life in Memphis became what
Martha said it would.
But I had sex. I didn't have much else, but I had sex. And
money, and nowhere to go with it. And a beautiful young woman whom I
could know only from the navel down, and incompletely at that. Life
was uncontrollable, unstable, a mirage.
Each day I'd wake up asking: Martha, where are you? You warned me
about other Anita's. But when did you warn me about JoAnn's.
It made no damn sense, no sense at all. I kept waiting for it to
just blow up, as it always had. I knew it would, sooner or later.
PART 20D:
On the last Sunday evening in August, 1958, I was overseeing the
early evening cleanup at the Tremont Cafe when I received a telephone
call just after the dinner rush.
I stood behind the service counter talking to one of my Uncle
Johnny's old railroad buddies when Grandma Rose answered the phone.
"Butch, honey?" she called from the front corner of the store,
near the cash register. "You got a phone call, Butch."
"Who is it?" I asked.
"I dunno, Butch, but it's for you."
This could only be JoAnn, I thought, and I walked to the phone.
"Hello?"
"Steven? It's Martha."
"Oh, Martha! Hello. I thought you were dead!"
"Well, not yet, hon."
"Your Southern accent has totally disappeared."
"Has it? Do I sound like one of those enraged New Yorkers?"
"No, no, you sound just fine."
"What's all that noise in the background?"
"That's the juke box in this place. Is it awful, or what? Here,
hold on, I'm moving the telephone into the corner behind the cigar
counter, maybe that'll help. There. Is that better?"
"Yes, a little. It's a little better. Steven, I had to call all
over town to find you. Doesn't anybody know where you hang out? I
called your mother, and she had me call your Aunt Frances, and nobody
answered, and then...well, anyway, I finally got through to you."
"Yeah, well, they don't pay very much attention to me, whether I
tell them where I am or not."
"Yes, I found that out. Well...how's school? How'd your play
turn out? Have you started anything for the fall?"
My play, the play I never got into? The play I told Martha I was
going to take time out for?
I said, "Oh, it was, uh, really great. You know, no big deal,
these things come and go. I'll be in something else soon."
"You never wrote me about it."
"No...I've been really busy with all that. Y'know?"
"Please write me, Steven, and let me know how you're doing. You
have me so worried sometime. I know I don't always answer, but...you
know what would happen with your folks if mail and phone calls started
showing up all over. They might...I'm sorry about that, but we talked
about it. It's just that I didn't hear from you for a few weeks, and
you usually write, even when I can't answer."
"No, I understand that."
"Sometimes..." She cleared her throat. The tension was back in
her voice again. "Sometimes I can't answer. Sometimes, I just don't
know what to say to help you. But you didn't write this time, so I
was just wondering, I was...I'm sorry I never come to Memphis, I'd be
able to keep track if I did, but...you know, I don't feel any better
about Memphis than you do. And I just don't have the money to spare."
"No, no. It's no problem, Martha, really, uh...Listen, I'll write
and let you know everything. I'll write this week."
"Oh, good, I know you'll have lots of juicy news about your plays
and things you're working on. And let me know if you need any infor-
mation on colleges up here. I can get all you need."
"Yeah. Yeah, I will."
"Well? You're not going to tell me how you're doing?"
"Oh, uh, I'm okay. You know, there really wasn't that much to
write about, and I thought you'd be so busy with all you're doing.
You probably couldn't answer anyway."
She paused. Her voice dropped. "That's my fault for you thinking
that way. It is. It's my fault. I'm sorry, hon."
"Couldn't be helped, I guess."
"No, it's my fault. I should -- Well, it's too late for that now,
I guess. I didn't mean to let you down, but something very, very...
important was happening, and I just -- I just couldn't. I didn't know
how it would turn out, so I couldn't say anything."
"Yes, you said that."
"You sound different."
"Different?"
"You sound cross. You sound the way you sound when you're bored
and frustrated, and hiding it."
"Oh. I guess it's because I'm in this damn restaurant tonight.
You know how it is, gotta bring in that paycheck. I'm surprised they
pay me for such boring work. Mostly, I just drive people around, or
I just sit here."
"But you're saving up."
"Oh yes! Millions."
"No, seriously. Are you saving?"
"Yes. I'm saving plenty. Really. I have a pretty good pile in
the bank right now. Enough, actually, to get up there for a while."
"And a car? You told me your Aunt Frances lets you use a car of
your own?"
"Yeah."
"Well, that's great! I mean, now you can do your work and get
around town and to school. And to your rehearsals! You won't be
stuck on those buses any more. Does that Uncle Vic character let
you take the time you need for the theater?"
"Oh, sure. Yeah. He's nice."
"Good, Steven. That's wonderful."
"Yeah, so...what's happening up there?"
"Steven...Listen, I...I had to reach you tonight, this has been on
my mind for a while now, and...Steven...hon, are you there? You still
there?"
"Yes, I'm here. Still here."
"Oh, I heard weird noises."
"I was moving the telephone set, Martha, it's so noisy in here."
"Oh, that's what it was. Well...Steven, I...Well, you remember I
told you, none of us knew what might be happening, and my own jobs
were so irregular and everything, and...Well, I might be moving to
Connecticut. To Riverside, Connecticut. It's about an hour north of
New York on the commuter train. On the New Haven Line."
"Oh, I see. But you can still get to New York?"
"Oh, yes, that's no problem. And I still work in Manhattan for
the time being, but...Steven......"
"Yeah? I'm still here."
"I know you are...Steven...I..." Over the line, I heard her
swallow hard. "Promise me, now, you won't get upset or anything. I
mean, I'm not really sure how you feel about this, I'm not...I..."
She took another breath. "You know, we talked. Before you left. And
I -- Steven, I have so much going on up here. I can't tell if it's
all falling apart at once, or all falling together at once. It seems
it's been so long since I've seen you, and...I wonder if...I wonder
sometimes, if you're still who you were when you were here. If you
changed that much, because I don't see you. And that's just the way
it is, I guess, the way it had to be. I mean, I know you've changed.
You're bound to have changed."
"No, I didn't change *that* much. I improved, I hope."
"Oh, I know. I know you've done better. And I've done better,
too. I had to start moving around and working on my social skills.
Not be so temperamental, I guess."
"Yeah? Were you ever temperamental?"
She chuckled. "You know I was, hon. I was all the time."
"No, you weren't."
"Well...There were lots of reasons for that, Steven. And I was
concerned for you. But you did so well up here. I was so proud of
you. You grew up quite a lot."
"Thanks to you pushing me into it."
"Well, lord, I had to. You're so stubborn. But you're also very
sweet, Steven. I don't know if you realize it, but you taught me,
too. You taught me more than you can imagine. I guess -- I guess I
had some growing up to do, too. Some things I had to accept. Some
things I needed that I -- I didn't think I did. So we all grew up
some. And I want to thank you. I want to thank you for all you did."
"Not me. You were the brains behind everything. I just followed
you around."
"Yes, for a while. But you learned, I think -- I hope -- I hope
you learned that you don't have to any more. I hope you learned
that."
"Yes. Yes, I did."
"And I'm not exactly the perfect leader. I make mistakes."
"You never make mistakes."
"Oh, you're getting so good at buttering me up. You've certainly
learned a few things yourself. On your own. And you went out looking
for change, and new ideas. You're a lot more on your own than you
think you are. And I'm -- I'm a lot less on my own than I thought I
was. But things happened." Her voice dropped. "Lots of things
happened, that I had given up on. I'm not a very good example. I
kept telling you, don't give up. That's something that I -- that's
something I should have been telling myself, too."
"This sounds very mysterious."
"Hm?"
"This all sounds very mysterious."
"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to -- I didn't mean to wander like
that. I'm just so -- uncertain."
"Uncertain about what?"
"Well...
"Uncertain about what? Come on."
"Steven, a very...wonderful thing has happened. It doesn't even
feel real. But a very nice thing happened."
"Okay."
Again, she swallowed hard enough for me to hear it over the phone.
"Steven......I've met someone."
The juke box blared. The restaurant was crowded at the tail end
of the dinner hour. The music and the customers and the clanking pots
receded into nowhere. All I could hear was the telephone in my ear.
"I met him a long time ago, actually, but nothing ever really
happened, you know, and then...several months ago...Steven, promise me
that you won't...Oh......darn it."
"I promise. Why do you want me to promise something? You've met
people before."
"Steven...I want to move in with him. For a while. A little
while. And try...I want...Oh, Steven, I...I think I'm..." Her voice
fell to a tense whisper. "Oh, this is so scary, it's so scary when I
hear myself saying it. It's just --" She took a breath, and another.
"I'm pretty sure we're going to get married. Before the end of
October."
"...Oh...I see, well...that's..."
"That's why I had to reach you. I didn't want you to get this in
the mail or anything like that, and I'm packing now. Can you believe
this, all the packing I've done, and I'm packing again! But I'm...
I'm so nervous! This decision just jumped up on me. I've known him
for so long, but this is so sudden, it's...It just happened, it just
seemed to happen after nothing for so long. He's talked about it for
weeks and weeks, and I kept saying no, wait, it's such a big change,
it changes everything. I couldn't even tell Ronnie. Not at first.
Not all of it, not until yesterday. But I told him --" She breathed
shakily, her voice almost a whisper again. "I don't believe it, I
don't even believe it. I couldn't say yes, I couldn't. All I could
say was I'd try, I'd try for a short time. I'd see." She stopped for
a moment. I kept listening. She spoke normally again. "But I'm
moving in a few days to stay with him in Connecticut, and I thought if
you called I wouldn't have the phone here anymore in Manhattan, and
I...Well, I just decided this weekend to say yes. And I couldn't do
it without telling you, Steven...Steven? Hon?"
"Yeah. I'm here. I'm -- It's okay."
"Steven...Do you understand what I mean? I'm trying to say...Hon,
it was...Well, I didn't expect it. I just didn't expect it."
"Well, sure, you...uh...you really like this guy. Right?"
"Yes, I do, Steven. I do. Not like with you, in so, so many
ways, but...Well, it's just very different. My whole life has changed
so quickly, it just -- I don't know how to explain it, and this isn't
the time to try, but...Steven...sweetheart, I hope this doesn't...You
know how much I care about you. I've been -- hon, I've been so
worried! I sat up late on the phone with Ronnie, to her boyfriend's
place, for hours. Hours. And she sounded so surprised, so worried.
She was -- I mean, she seemed so distraught, she kept saying I was
going away, she kept saying she'd never see me again. And I kept
telling her no, no, it was still me, I'd always be her friend.
Always. I couldn't believe she was so upset. And I kept telling her,
'But Ronnie, you found somebody and it didn't stop us, it didn't cut
us off.' You know, our friendship just went back to where it was
before last summer, back to where it always was. And that hasn't
changed. She had new responsibilities, but it didn't change the way
we felt. But you know how she is, this fear of abandonment, this
thing about everything suddenly falling apart for her. But she did
settle down after a while, she did start to listen, and it was okay.
She realized that I'd have new responsibilities too, certainly, but
that wouldn't change the way we feel." She sighed. "So, after I
spent all that time getting her feeling better again, I just -- I just
sat there, hanging on the phone, going crazy myself! And she ended up
playing Mama to *me*. It was so strange, it was so -- And I kept
telling her and telling myself over the phone, it's not really
happening, not really. Not after all this time, not with someone who
-- I mean, I wasn't even looking for it. I wasn't even looking."
I took a breath. I said Steady, boy. Steady. I asked, "This is
Howard?"
"Who? Howard? Oh, no. Oh, no, not Howard. Howard's sweet, but
no. Not him. And then, Steven, and then I sat up all night by
myself. I didn't know what to do. I tried to write, I started over
and over but...That wouldn't do, and I knew I had to call you. And
now I...I still don't know what to do. I mean, everyone I talk to
gets upset. But no one seems to understand that I'm more upset
than *they* are. I'm so bewildered."
"Oh, but I'm..." I gulped. "I'm glad you found somebody.
Really."
"...You're not just saying that?" She spoke quickly, her voice
hardening. "Steven, I'll make him buy me a ticket down there and I'll
beat your little behind if you're just saying that. You know how I
feel about you. And I know how...I think I know how you feel. I
think. I hope."
My throat was tight. "No, really. Really, I'm glad, and I...
Well, I hope it works. I hope it's better than the treatment Ronnie
had with that George."
"Oh, Ronnie, well...Ronnie's okay, I guess, I haven't heard any-
thing tragic lately, but...Hon, this isn't about Ronnie. This is
about you. I sat by this phone for three hours before I could call
you, and I spent another hour trying to figure out where you were. I
had to find you and tell you, and...I will write. I mean, why does
everyone think I'm going to suddenly disappear? I'm moving this
week, but as soon as I'm settled in Riverside, I'll write you a nice
long letter, and give you my new address and everything."
"Well, uh...when I come to New York I'll be within a train's
ride of you, won't I?"
"When you come to New York?"
"Well, I...I'll be visiting up there, sooner or later. Hopefully
sooner, and...well...I'd be able to visit again. Couldn't I?"
"Well, sure you could! I mean, sooner or later. Certainly."
"Well, when...When would you and I be able to...you know, to
be together again?"
There was a long pause on the line. I knew she was still there.
The low, unchanging hum from her end of the line told me I was still
connected. A few seconds passed. Only a few seconds. At the time,
it seemed like several minutes.
She said, gently, "Never, Steven."
I spoke quickly. "Oh, well, *sure*, I mean...You know what I
mean, I mean if I ever came up there, or...You know, I could visit,
and just stay in New York and take the train up and, you know..."
"Steven...I'm going to marry him."
My effort at displaying happiness for her was weakening. "Of
course! Of course you are, I didn't...I didn't mean the question to
sound the way it did, I meant...you know, if I'm ever in New York, we
could meet for lunch or something, or...You know what I mean."
"Steven, for goodness' sake, lunch? You think I'd just have
lunch? God no, honey, you think I'd treat you that way? Why would
you think that? I mean, it would be different, but -- If we marry,
it'll be a little after the end of September at the earliest, and
we're coming to Memphis. He can sure afford it! And I'd be there to
see you, and your folks, and -- and I'd see *you*, Steven. Oh,
sweetheart, I'd love to see you again! Maybe you'll be doing a play,
and I can see you in it. I'd love to see you doing something you
like, I wouldn't miss that for the world. I'd have the resources for
a change, I could come down during the year, and see you really do
something."
"Well, I'll let you know if I'm gonna be...doing anything."
"Hon, are you all right?"
"Yeah, I'm fine." I let out a long breath as quietly as I could,
so she wouldn't hear. "I'm fine."
"Oh, honey, I...Steven, you're being so quiet, you're scaring me.
Steven. If you want to say something...Please. Hon?"
"...Don't be ridiculous."
"Steven."
"You deserve somebody. You need a home. You can't...you can't
shower in the kitchen forever. Anyway...why should things just stay
the way they are? You know? I know how you feel about me."
"Do you? Do you, sweetheart? Do you really?"
"Sure I do. You know that. And I have a...I have a girlfriend
I've seen a little of, you know. I mean..."
"Steven...you know I love you, hon. You know that, don't you?
Please, don't...Please don't lie to me."
"Well, we...you and I grew up together, and...y'know...but
things change. Things happen." I gave a weak laugh. "Things just
seem to change, without me doing anything, or --"
"Hon, my feelings about you have never changed. I told you how I
feel. I do love you, Steven. And I'm glad you're doing better down
there. And when we come to Memphis, you'll be around, right? In a
while, in October? That's when we plan to come down. Oh, I'd love to
see you, hon, I know you're getting so grown-up and handsome down
there. And a girlfriend! See, I told you. I told you you'd do well.
But is that okay? Could I see you then? You won't go to Hollywood
and end up in the movies, will you?"
"I seriously doubt it."
"Haha, oh, hon. Oh, I do love you. I was so afraid that...
Listen, I'll write to you next week, and you'll get a letter soon.
Okay? A long one, this time. A long, long, long letter.
"Yeah...Good."
"I have to go and call my mom, and Mr. Buchanan, for what it's
worth, and tell her I'm moving, and...Hon, you're still my favorite.
Do you still have my little quote I gave you? The one I gave you
before you went home?"
"Yes. I kept it. Y'know. I look at it now and then."
She said with fervent affection, "Steven, you taught me. We...
hon, we shared so much, we learned so much. No one else will ever,
ever be able to give me what you did. No one can ever, ever take
that away from me. Nothing can replace it. Do you know that? You're
my one and only, Steven, in so many ways. You know that, don't you?"
"Of course I do. And you're...You're my one and -- "
"Hon? What's wrong? Steven?"
For a few seconds I held the phone away from my mouth. I opened
my mouth wide and let the air in and out slowly. I glanced around to
see if anyone watched me. I settled down quickly. From the handset I
dimly heard her call my name. Then I took another deep breath, and I
spoke into the phone again. "It's okay, I, uh...almost dropped the
phone. It's so crowded in this corner."
"Oh, listen, this is your Aunt Frances' business phone, and I know
how she is. We don't want her to throw a fit."
"No, it's okay. I took her home a little while ago. It's tough
for her to hang around here all week like she used to."
"Well, they're all getting old, hon. All of us."
"Yeah. We sure are. Anyway, I get paid for that. For stuff
like that."
"For that? Really? Well, it can't be much, just for that."
"About fifty a week. It's just part-time."
"Fifty a week? That was the deal with your Uncle Vic?"
"Yes."
"My goodness. And that's all you do?"
"Well, I'm a diplomat and general errand boy. Basically, I just
keep all the feuding relatives happy around here. Sweet talk Aunt
Frances into doing things when she gets stubborn."
"Fifty a week? Steven, you fell into a jackpot. In a couple of
years, you could -- Lord, with that and the GI Bill you could afford a
wonderful college. Boston University. Northwestern. Oh, Steven,
that's wonderful! You wouldn't get stuck at Memphis State!"
"Yeah. Yeah, that'll be great."
"Well, it will! Oh, Ronnie'll be so happy to hear that, I can't
wait to tell her. She worries about you too, you know. She asks
about you. Wants to know if you're doing a play, meeting people.
You are meeting people? You said you're dating."
"Yes."
"Well is -- is she nice? Is she good to you? Hon?"
"Yes. She's nice. Very pretty. She's a very pretty girl.
Blonde." I laughed. "She's a knockout, really." I swallowed.
There was a lot of thick stuff in my mouth. "Reminds me of you."
"Good. I told you. Didn't I tell you?"
"Yes."
"I'm so happy for that, Steven. And Ronnie will be happy to hear,
too. Do your folks know her, does she get along with them?"
"She's like you. She's -- she's very sociable. My mom likes
her."
"Aunt Frances likes her?"
"Yeah, they met. I guess so. Aunt Frances thinks she's too
skinny."
"Ha-ha, Aunt Frances thinks anybody who doesn't look like her is
skinny. You know that."
"Yeah."
"Well..." She sighed. "Well, you're still on a business phone."
"Yeah."
"Steven?"
"Yeah?"
"Steven, you know how I feel. You know that I -- Well. You know.
You know how I feel about you. I'll always feel that way, hon. And
Ronnie, too. Ronnie really likes you."
"Yeah. I like Ronnie, too."
"Steven, I -- I don't believe it's happening. I don't know if
I'll ever believe it. I'll have --" Her voice fluttered.
Suddenly, she started crying. She sobbed, "I'll have a home! Oh
god! I'll have a home!"
She cried over the phone. She sniffled and sobbed and whimpered,
on and on. She blew her nose. I was ready to cry with her.
I said, "All right, now. I know, Martha. C'mon, take it easy.
I know what it means to you. Martha? Martha?"
She whined, "Baby, I'm sorry, I just --" She blew her nose
again. I heard her jerk out another kleenex. "It's not much, not
big, not fancy. But I'll have a home! Oh, a home! And a study.
And trees. I'll look out the window and see another home. And more
trees. Not the government's trees, not a skinny stalk sticking up out
of the concrete. My trees. Something to work for, something to care
for. For a change." She sighed, collecting herself. She sighed
again. "For a change." Then a heavier sigh. "God, what a change. I
won't know what to do."
"I think you'll figure something out."
She laughed. "Yes. Yes. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, hon. You're not
the only one who holds back too long."
I said, "Martha, it's okay. Listen to me. I understand."
"Well...Hon, I'll...I'll write. Soon. I promise. And you can
see us in Connecticut. I know you'll love it up there. You might
even want to live up there one day. And I'll send my new phone number
and everything. And will you call me? Will you call me up there in
Connecticut, and call me often? And let me know how you're doing?"
"Sure I will."
"Because if you don't, I'll badger you. I'll run up a phone bill
the size of the Congressional budget."
I laughed. "All right. All right, Martha."
"Steven, please don't..."
"Don't what?"
She said softly, earnestly, "I'm so proud of you. I'm so thankful
for you. Please don't give up. Please don't give up on what you
want."
"Me? You know me. I'm too stubborn to give up."
"Well...Hon, I have to go."
"Yeah."
"Goodbye, hon."
"...Yeah."
"Write to me!"
"Of course I will. Goodbye, Martha."
"Okay, I...Well, goodbye. For now. Just for now, just for a
while. You'll hear from me, don't worry...and I...Oh, there's ...
There's just never enough time, is there?. There's never enough.
Well...Good night, Steven. Goodnight, hon."
A click. Two clicks. A dial tone.
"Goodbye, Martha."
I listened to the dial tone for about half a minute. What was
left of her was out there in that dial tone, somewhere. I kept
listening. I saw her hair and her shoulders and her eyes. I saw her
moving around her living room, packing. I knew where the phone was in
her room. I knew everything about that room. I knew she was still
there, at the other end of the tone.
I hung up the phone and placed it near the cash register where it
belonged. The juke box hammered, "You Ain't Nothin' But A Hound Dog".
People ate and talked and read their newspapers. I put my hands in my
pockets and walked behind the counter and into the kitchen. Grandma
Rose asked me, "Who was that on the phone, Butch?"
"Nobody," I said.
I walked through the back room where a waitress was taking her
coffee break. I headed for the back door.
She asked, "Where you off to, sport?"
"Takin' a walk."
"Don't get lost, hon."
Hon. The word stuck in my ear. I went outside into the rear
parking lot. It was dark. Hot. Humid. Still. I opened the door to
the ten-by-ten foot, firebrick, low-ceilinged, food storage bin that
was built onto the rear of the Tremont Cafe. I shuffled among the
bushels of carrots and the potato sacks and boxes of tomatoes. In the
dark, I sat on a crate of cabbage. I cried for a long time.
PART 20E:
One day in early October when I came home very late from school,
Mom said as I entered the kitchen, "Oh, there you are. You missed
Martha Jane's call. I told her I didn't know where you were.
I said tonelessly, "Okay." I opened the refrigerator, looking for
something to eat.
Mom stood with her hands in the dishwater. "That reminds me, she
called a couple of weeks ago, and you weren't here then, either. I
guess I forgot all about it."
I took a milk carton out of the refrigerator. "Hm. okay."
"Where've you been all day? It's after supper."
I opened an upper door of the kitchen cabinets and fetched a clean
glass. I said dully, "Had to stay late in the library."
"And JoAnn called."
"All right." I squeezed open the top of the milk carton.
Mom got a dish towel and dried her arms and hands. "Oh, well...
Martha Jane's gonna be here the last Sunday in October with her
husband, you know, that guy from Connecticut she married. We're gonna
have a little barbecue out back on the patio. Your daddy's out there
repairin' the barbecue stand. Anyway, you gonna be here that Sunday
afternoon? Last weekend in October?"
"Yeah," I said, pouring a glass of milk. "I guess."
"You gonna bring JoAnn? Martha Jane never met JoAnn. Martha Jane
says she want to meet her."
"Yeah, I guess so." I set the milk bottle down loudly. "Her
name's not Martha Jane. It's Martha."
"I tell ya, that girl's stepdaddy, that Mr. Buchanan, he's a hoot,
ain't he? He won't even let her and her husband come to his house. I
tell ya, some of these rich folks are nuts. I cain't figure him out,
I thought he wanted his daughter married. Anyway, Martha Jane will be
here, and her mother and her sister Evelyn will be here, they're gonna
sneak away from Mr. Buchanan and be here that Sunday. And Evelyn
Graham's husband, too. She's married, too, you know. Some guy at the
First National Bank."
"That's nice," I said as I emptied the unused milk from the glass
into the sink. Nothing had set well in my stomach for days. "I'll be
here, I guess."
"Well, it'll start at four-thirty or so, we figure it'll be nice
outside and not too cool by then..."
As she rambled, I went into my room without a word and closed the
door. Many of my belongings had been packed in boxes standing against
one wall. My family was preparing to start moving in a few days to an
older but better neighborhood in Memphis, near Southwestern College.
Many of the Lobianco family members lived in that area, with several
related clans living next door to each other. Our own neighborhood
had deteriorated rather early and was quickly being overrun by lower-
class residents who displaced the original homeowners.
Because we were moving to a different part of town, I quit my
small paper route. I would have quit the paper route, anyway. It had
worn me out and had grown too large to be serviced in a few minutes.
And I had proven myself as a hard worker to the Lobianco's and the
Ricci's, who were beginning to prefer that I spend more time at
Christian Brothers and keep up my grades for college.
I was about to quit my weekends at the grocery store. I had told
my mother about it, but hadn't mentioned it to Tony. When my mother
asked why I planned to quit the store, I replied morosely, "I'm tired.
And I don't wanna give any more."
She balked at my answer and asked what I meant.
I said, "It means I'm tired. I'm worn out. That's all."
In my room that night in October, I sat at my desk and looked
around for anything that might be left of Martha. I had destroyed her
letters -- burned them in the garbage can out back, along with the
pictures and articles and everything that I'd brought home from New
York. I had stirred the ashes and dumped more paper on them and
burned it all again. The burning included poems, notes, and anything
in my bedroom that would remind me of Martha. I left the typewriter
at my Aunt Frances' house, and bought a smaller one. Of course, there
was still the rest of Memphis to contend with; every car trip into the
Memphis State area brought back another set of memories.
All that remained, in the small top drawer of the desk hutch, was
her last letter. It arrived about two weeks after the phone call. It
had a return address in Riverside, Connecticut. It was a thick
envelope. I could tell that Martha must have had to fold the flap
firmly in order to seal it. I had never opened it. The seal remained
intact. Now and then I would look at the envelope and wonder what was
inside and wonder if I should get mixed up in it by opening the thing
and reading the letter.
Often in my bed at night, as I tried to sleep, I would see in my
mind the flaming, smoking letters in the big metal drum in our back
yard. I remembered the night I gathered them and all the other
remnants, going through my room meticulously to make certain I'd
overlooked nothing. I did it without pause, without thinking. Even
as I was doing it, I didn't know why. I vaguely recall Fiore saying
"You can't go back, only ahead." I knew of no other way to go ahead.
If I felt an emotion welling up, I thought about something else as I
gathered and burned the memories. I allowed only unrelated thoughts
to enter my head. I told myself that if I could ignore pain when I
worked out, I could ignore pain any time.
The unopened envelope had survived by accident. When it arrived I
placed it in a spot apart from the others, intending to open it later.
Each time I brought out the envelope, it remained unopened.
Later that week in October, my family started the move to the new
house. My room was one of the first to be emptied. Anything and
everything that was left in my closet got thrown out.
The next Friday morning at five AM I got into my Ford to drive all
the way out to throw the paper route in the Macon Road area for the
last time. The husky, crew-cut, bull-necked teenager I'd trained for
the last two weeks to take over the route was waiting in front of his
home when I picked him up. The kid's name was Barry. Another kid
waited with him, a thin, mop-headed kid who stood looking half asleep
at the curb when I drove up. The thin kid had a small paper bag in
his hand.
Barry stuck his face in the window when I pulled to a stop. He
said, "Hey, I got my buddy O'Dell with me. He's gonna go out with us,
all right?"
I said, "All right, c'mon. I wanna go back home to sleep."
Barry turned to the other kid. "Hey, O'Dell! Wake up!" He
opened the rear door of the car. "Git in the back seat and don't
fuckin' bother nobody."
The kid named O'Dell looked eighteen or nineteen. He clumsily
crawled into the rear seat and sat slumped and closed-eyed. I smelled
beer. The kid's head swayed drunkenly. His face was red and gaunt,
his eyes unfocussed.
I threw Barry a glare as he got into the front seat. Barry said,
"Go on. He's all right. He'll just sit back there and shut up,
don't worry."
I asked, throwing the car into first gear and starting off,
"What's wrong with 'im?"
"Aww, got himself all fucked up. Showed up at my place a half
hour ago, all fucked up. Cain't leave 'im there, he'll just pass out
in the front yard."
In the back seat, O'Dell spread the paper sack open and rolled the
top down to expose the top of a bottle of beer. He took a sip. He
swallowed, his head rocking and swaying. He mumbled, "Fucked me up."
Barry said, "Shut up, O'Dell."
O'Dell muttered louder, "Bitch fucked me up."
Barry turned halfway around in the front seat. He said angrily,
"O'Dell, I told you. You don't shut up, we're stoppin' this car. And
you can finish that fuckin' beer in the middle of Given Avenue."
O'Dell looked out the window. "Fucked me up good. Bitch."
Barry muttered, "Him and his goddamn girlfriend." He glanced at
me. "See what pussy does to ya?"
O'Dell was quiet for a moment. Then his face scrunched up and he
grimaced and cried for a second, then he swallowed hard. He grit his
teeth and took another swig of beer, and he moaned tearfully, "Bitch!"
Barry turned all the way around in the seat. He yelled, shaking
a fist at O'Dell in back, "Listen, you pussy whipped piss ant, I tole
you, SHUT UP! You gonna be with us, you gonna shut up!"
O'Dell slurred weakly, "Right. All right." He gazed out the
window.
Barry settled into the front seat again. "Damn pussy whipped
piss ant let a pussy fuck him up. Just go find another one, god-
dammit. Find another one. Pussy whipped piss ant."
I glanced at O'Dell in the rear view mirror. A tear ran down his
red, sweaty face. I looked at the road ahead. I thought: I won't let
myself become that. Never.
The following Friday afternoon, I drove after school to visit my
Uncle Johnny in his hospital room at Baptist Hospital. He'd had an
operation on his hip, the hip that made him walk with a stiff limp and
kept him from taking strolls longer than a few dozen yards at a time.
While my deceased father's sister, my Aunt Catherine, took a break
in the hospital coffee shop, I sat in a chair beside Uncle Johnny's
bed. It seemed odd to see this elderly but large, distinguished
looking man with his silver hair and twinkling eyes lying listlessly
in a bed in the bare hospital room. But he smiled, and there was
always that light in his eyes as if nothing had ever gone wrong.
He said, "You ain't been actin' right, Speedy, 'round the Tremont.
Look like you're in a bad mood about somethin'."
I said, "No, not really. Overworked, I guess."
He grinned at me. "You in love or somethin'?"
I blushed.
"You been chasin' a squaw, Little Beaver?"
I looked out the window across the room. "Ah, I dunno. Seems
like the squaw might be taking off to elsewhere."
He chuckled. "Maybe not. You don't never know." He sighed, the
way he always sighed, a weariness built up over years, but he always
recovered with that twinkle in his eye. "You don't never know. You
be careful, now. You might get her and she'd turn out to be like your
Aunt Frances." He laughed, wheezing tiredly. He said, "Aw, she's all
right. Good lady. Loves everybody. Little hard to get along with,
that's all. Cain't do anything about that. Ain't got no control over
it. Only the good lord can change that."
"Well...I think I'll be all right."
"Aw, sure. Yeah, Speedy, you'll be all right. You gonna turn out
all right. You gonna turn out better 'n most of 'em. You'll turn out
fine, you'll find a good woman. You won't be no wife beater like your
Uncle Glenn. Won't be no crook like your Uncle Frank. Won't be no
drunk like your other Uncle Frank." He looked away, musing aloud,
"Lots of bad ways a person could turn out. You won't be like them.
Not like your Uncle Frank, your daddy's brother. Money done somethin'
to that man. Money made him mean. You won't be like that, 'cause you
take after your daddy. Walk like him, talk like him. Look like him.
You gonna be just like your daddy."
He looked at me. "Lemme tell you somethin' about your daddy.
There's a lot you don't know, a lot that don't make any difference,
ain't worth talkin' about. He had a lot to put up with. He made some
mistakes. Mistakes that might have made him go mean. But that ain't
what he did." Uncle Johnny gazed toward the window. "That ain't what
happened. What happened was, he wanted to go one way, but history
went another. Last time I saw your daddy, I went down to Central
Station, when he left. Had that big troop train down there. Three of
'em, three trains, lined up. He was standin' there by that big iron
gate, where you go out. You know that big iron gate? You seen it,
it's still there. He said, 'Uncle Johnny, I volunteered for this.
Nobody wants me to do this. But ain't nothin' much I can do for
Speedy if I stay here. I got business with Hitler.'" As he looked
out the window, a sadness came over him. "That was your daddy.
That's what he was like. That was the last time I saw him."
That Friday night, after JoAnn and I left a movie, I drove to a
Holiday Inn in East Memphis. I had talked an older cousin of mine
into renting the room earlier in the day, and paid him for it. I
picked up the room keys before I picked up JoAnn that night.
JoAnn asked when I pulled into the parking lot, "Where we goin'?"
"Here," I said, pulling up the hand brake.
"What's goin' on in here?"
I looked at her. "We're what's going on. I got a room for us."
She frowned, tilting her head. "For what?"
"What do think for what? So we can take our clothes off for a
change."
She fiddled with her hands in her lap, and looked out at the
motel. She said, "Oh, I -- Listen, I don't know."
"What's wrong?"
"Well, this is so tacky." She looked at me, incredulous. "It's
tacky. You really wanna do this?"
"You don't want to?"
"No!" She looked at the place again. She said anxiously,
"Steven, I don't. I don't. It doesn't feel right. It's -- Nice
people don't do this."
I sighed, getting very angry, counting to three, five, six. "All
right. Whaddya want to do?"
She said, eyeing me fearfully, "Well, we can park. We always do.
We can find a place. There's lots of safe --"
"All right," I said, cutting her off and starting the engine. I
backed up quickly, then took off with the tires squealing.
She watched me while I drove, my eyes straight ahead. "Steven,
what's the matter? I mean, you have me scared, what's wrong with you?"
"Nothin'."
"Well, you...Listen, I'd do it with you, but...you know, let me
think it about it. All right?"
She eyed me warily from across the seat as I drove along, headed
for the heavily forested side roads of the pricey Shady Grove section
of town, where she lived. After a moment she moved closer to me and
put a hand on my leg.
She asked, "Did I do somethin'?"
I shook my head no. "It's all right. I just wanted, you know, to
do it right."
"Well, I -- Well, could you just let me know? I mean, you sprung
it on me. It's -- " She folded her arms across her bosom. She gazed
out the passenger window. She said, "It's the kind of thing cheaters
do. You know? The honky-tonk crowd."
"Okay. It's fine, it's okay."
She gazed at me for a moment. She said softly, "You been like
this for days. What is it?"
I clinched my jaws. I let out a slow breath. "Nothin'."
"Well, can you just settle down a little bit? I don't want to
if you're gonna be like this."
I nodded. I calmed down. "You're right. You're right, don't
worry." I glanced at her and blew her a kiss.
We parked on a dead quiet, dead end street in the far eastern
suburbs near her home in Shady Grove where we knew no traffic flowed.
We'd been there before. We made out for a few minutes and I was
loving and slow. When she lay down and removed her panties I raised
her skirt and looked at her lovely legs and pussy. She was trim and
soft and warm, her pelvis taut, her supple, smoothly muscled thighs
parted, her dark, prominent furrow half covered with a fuzzy veil of
soft, sepia fur, her mild, healthy young woman's aroma lushly
enticing. I wanted to bury my face in her cunt. I wanted to suck
her clit and make her cum eight times and then I wanted to die
fucking her.
I kissed her knee, and she gave a little gasp and smiled, her
eyes closed. I kissed higher, lightly, letting my lips linger in
delicious flesh, letting her flesh soak into my lips. She gasped
again. My lips moved higher. I felt her hand on my head, slightly
resisting. I kissed high on her inner thigh.
She whispered shyly, "Steven, what are you doin'?"
I kissed her pelvis, and inch from her cunt.
She pulled her legs together, blushing, smiling nervously.
"Steven, stop that." She gave a little laugh. "Don't, silly.
She smiled sweetly down at me. "C'mon, don't tease. You know we
don't do that."
I sat up. I took a deep breath. I closed my zipper. I said,
"Get up."
"What's the matter?"
"Get up. We're leavin'."
"Steven...!"
I pulled her skirt down and picked up her panties off the seat
and handed them to her. "Get up. C'mon."
She sat up, folding her legs and pulling herself up against the
driver's window. She looked hurt and confused. "But what'd I do?"
I moved to the passenger side and opened the door. Wordlessly, I
got out of the car. I slammed the door shut angrily, jolting the car,
and through the window I saw her eyes pop open with a start. Then she
glowered at me darkly. I walked around the front to the driver's
side. While she got herself together in the front seat I lit a ciga-
rette. I took a couple of puffs. She sat in the front seat, pouting,
looking beautiful, waiting, glancing at me, looking around. I fumed
silently. I counted to fifty, puffing on the cigarette. I took a
last puff and got into the car. She was silent. I started the
engine, turned around, and started for her house.
I said quietly, "I better take you home."
She muttered, "You better. You better, until you cool off from,
from whatever it is."
I ignored her, thinking.
She sat silently. A couple of blocks later, she put her hand over
her mouth, and stifled a small sob. That did it; that always did it,
damn it. She looked so pretty and so hurt. I slowed the car, nearing
her street.
I took one of her hands on her lap and squeezed. "All right. I'm
sorry. I just -- I'm just mad about somethin'."
She sobbed, "At me?"
I shook my head. "No. No. Just -- everything."
She settled down a little, looking straight ahead. I approached
her house slowly. She said with a low voice, wounded, "First you take
me to one of those motels, then you try to -- to do that with your
mouth...Steven, what do you think I am? You know I don't do those
things."
I said, "Yeah. Yeah, I know you don't."
I stopped in front of her house, at the curb. I left the motor
running.
She said, looking down, "I hope when you go to church, that you
think about this. And think about me. And get yourself straightened
out. I hope you figure this out, 'cause...we cain't be doin' this.
We cain't be actin' like this. You were never like this before,
you're always nice."
I said bluntly, "I don't go to church."
She looked at me. "What?"
I raised my voice. "I don't go to church. I don't go parkin' in
a car and fuck three times a week and then go to church on Sunday and
pretend for Jesus. I'm not nice. I'm not like the nice folks."
Her mouth fell open. Her eyes teared. "Good lord, what --? What
did I *do*?"
I said quickly, "JoAnn, just -- Just go on home, just go on, and
...You know, you're right. We don't do those things. We'll never do
those things. You're right. We're never gonna do that. So go on in.
I just have to think."
"Well, you better. You better think about it." She sniffled for
a moment, and she glanced at me. She said angrily, "I don't want you
walkin' me in."
I nodded and shrugged. "All right."
"I'm almost ashamed to have you walk me to my house."
"All right."
"I was gonna tell my folks we planned on stayin' steady. How
could I do those things with you, and face my folks? What would they
think if they knew you wanted to do things like that?"
I shrugged, looking out the front window. I almost laughed, but I
didn't. I said, "I don't know. What would they think about us
fuckin' in that car they gave you? Or fuckin' in this one, six blocks
from their house?" I pointed at her house. "And we fucked in there,
too. We fucked on every street in this neighborhood! We *fucked* all
over Memphis!"
She seemed limp with anger. I could almost feel the heat from her
fuming eyes. She slid quickly to the passenger door. She huffed with
her jaw set, "That's filthy! That is gross! God, you're evil! Just
evil!" She grabbed her purse and opened the door and stood outside
the car. "I just cain't *believe* you're doin' this!"
She slammed the door closed.
I watched her turn and stomp across the lawn toward her big, East
Memphis house. What a shame; she was lovely. From behind, a figure
like young Martha's. I tried to ascertain JoAnn's formula for what
nice people did or didn't do; it just didn't compute.
I shifted into first gear and stepped on the gas. I didn't look
in the rear view mirror.
I arrived home, at the new house that we had just moved into a few
days before, at about nine thirty. No one was home. I knew my folks
were at a big dinner at the Italian Society Club. I unlocked the
front door and turned on the living room light and slammed the door
shut. I stomped into my room. I slammed my door closed. I looked
around my room, not actually seeing anything. JoAnn was a showpiece.
She was a fraud and I'd fallen for it, and I was a fraud. I reached
under the bed and viciously overturned it. For the next five minutes,
swiftly and violently, I wrecked my room.
It took an hour to straighten things up again. When I was fin-
ished I poured a small glass of red dinner wine in the kitchen. I
lifted the glass, and then I thought about that kid named O'Dell. One
quick sip, then I poured the rest into the drain.
I was lying in bed in my dark bedroom when my folks came home at
about eleven. I waited until it seemed they were asleep. I quietly
walked into the new back yard and climbed up the small ladder that led
to the roof of the wooden carport behind the new house. On the
asphalt roof, I sat with my arms folded around my knees, and I watched
the moon and I watched gray, puffy clouds float in the night.
Somewhere, JoAnn was still pouting, crying. I regretted my en-
raged actions; I didn't regret acting. More, I regretted having been
lured into a position of lashing out, of harming. She was sweet. I
already missed her. She'd make a good wife. For somebody.
So. They'd done it. They had all finally done it to me. How
long, I wondered, would it take for my reputation as a paganish
beast to get around? No matter. I didn't fit where I was. I had
to find a new place on the planet, where I could fit. And just be.
The others didn't matter any more. I'd never see them again. One by
one, job by job, relation by relation, I'd leave everything behind.
On the last Sunday in October, 1958, I drove my Mama Rose to work
at the Tremont Cafe. Then I drove my Grandpa Joe to his liquor store
on Poplar Street. He would be there all day that day, taking inven-
tory. I was supposed to pick them up at ten o'clock Sunday night and
bring them home.
Instead of staying at the Tremont all day as I usually did on
weekends, I drove the car back to Granda Rose's and spent the day
there. I roamed about the house, rummaging through the attic, looking
for my old toys. I found many of my dad's childhood relics: books,
some high school texts from Catholic High; I found some of his letters
in an old trunk. I spent the day rummaging through a past I'd never
known, wondering how the people in that house sounded and acted in the
1920's and 1930's when my father was growing up. Later in the day I
knew I would soon have to make up my mind whether or not I would be at
my parents' home when Martha arrived.
I walked through my Grandma Rose's neighborhood. I walked on the
streets where my father grew up. I had never seen these streets. I
looked at the houses and the people and the stores. I wondered what
he might have been thinking on that last night, when he wrote my
mother and decided that taking a chance on a risky mission was better
than a sure shot at living half-alive.
I decided I wouldn't go to my parents' house that day.
At four-thirty on Sunday I was in Grandma Rose's house, napping in
the bed where my father once slept and where I slept every other week-
end as a toddler. When I awoke at five-fifteen I looked about the
room and listened, searching for remnants of my dad's presence. I
felt I had begun to understand his decision.
At around seven o'clock the telephone rang. I wondered if it
might be Grandma Rose calling, or Grandpa Joe. Or my mother. Or
Martha. I didn't answer the phone. It stopped after seven rings.
At eight o'clock I was in Grandpa Joe's back room, sitting in his
leather easy chair with my feet on the leather footstool. I paged
through his collection of National Geographics. His collection went
as far back as World War One. I knew looking at them might be risky;
when Martha was Martha Jane, she had shown me a picture of a woman in
a National Geographic from the 1920's, a picture that reminded her of
herself. But that night, I never came across that picture.
At eight-forty the phone rang again. I wondered what Martha
looked like at that moment. I wondered if she was the caller. I sat
in the chair and read the magazine. The phone rang ten times before
it stopped.
I thought it might have been someone from the Tremont calling, so
I called the cafe. Grandma Rose answered the phone.
"Hi, Butch! Is that you?"
"Yeah, Mama Rose. Listen, did you just call here?"
"No, I didn't call. And it wasn't your granddaddy. He got tired
of working at the liquor store, so he left early and took a taxi over
here to the Tremont. He was just getting ready to call you and tell
you he'll be here tonight when you pick us up."
"Well," I lied quickly, "I don't feel good."
"What's the matter, sweetheart?"
"I, uh, drank some milk. I think it was going sour. I think it
made me sick, so I took a nap."
"Oh, Butch, be careful. If the milk's bad, just throw it away.
It ain't worth it to drink bad milk."
"I know. Can you and Grandpa Joe get home tonight? I think I'm
too sick to drive. Still dizzy, you know? I don't wanna risk it, if
all I have is a permit instead of a license."
"Sure, Butch. Don't you worry, we'll call Josephine Louise.
She's right down the street on Lauderdale, she can bring us home."
"Do me a favor and see if anyone called for me over there at the
cafe."
"Okay, hold on." I listened to the juke box over the telephone
and the clatter of the restaurant. In a moment Grandma Rose came back
to the phone. "Aunt Frances says your mama called here a little while
ago, looking for you."
"I see. Well...if she calls back, tell her...I'm sick and I'm
asleep. I probably won't hear the phone."
"Okay, honey-boy. I'm sorry you're so sick. Don't worry about
it, Josephine Louise will get us home around eleven."
I hung up. I grabbed another magazine and sat in Grandpa Joe's
chair.
At nine-fifteen the phone rang again, ten times. It rang ten
times again at nine-thirty-five.
At a little after ten I went to bed in my father's and Uncle
Frank's old room. I lay in the big bed and paged through one more
magazine. I wondered what Martha was thinking. I wondered if she
knew what I was doing. I wondered if she knew why I was doing it.
I wondered, even, if I knew. I had read a case in a psychology book
where an orphan had cut all ties with new friends at one point because
the new friends were the only symbols the orphan had for the mother
and father that he was bound to break away from one day. Or was my
inner power now making me do things I should never, never do? Or had
Martha somehow known this would happen all along? Had she indeed
found that a future with me would be impractical later, and then
happened to meet her ideal while trying to resolve the problem?
At ten-thirty-five I put out the light on the table beside the
bed. I lay there, hearing the phone ring. It rang and rang, twelve
more times. A big, rough, strong hand squeezed my heart. Then the
phone stopped.
Had she shared me with Ronnie to whet my young appetite for more
adventure? Or as a gift, a consolation for what she knew would happen
anyway? Or had I, powerful sexpot Steven, managed to somehow keep us
together longer than she thought I would? Had I missed my chance by
being too cautious with Martha and not speaking my feelings complete-
ly?
As I settled into my pillow I said aloud, "Regardless of the
answers, pal, you're flyin' on your own. Pilot, navigator, bombar-
dier. You're on your own now."
I lay on my side. My eyes drifted to the big, curtained window
beside the bed. The air was warm that night, warm for late October.
The Memphis air drifted almost inaudibly through the leaves of the fig
tree outside the window. I saw moonlight spilling onto the window
sill and onto the bed and onto me. My eyes clung to the moonlight.
My ears clung to the faint rustle of little leaves on the fig tree.
My mind clung to a memory of the same sound and the same soft air a
few years earlier, and a warm night and hazel eyes and a song:
Last Saturday night I got married.
Me and my wife settled down.
Now me and my wife are parted.
I'm gonna take another stroll downtown.
Irene goodnight, Irene goodnight.
Goodnight, Irene,
Goodnight, Irene,
I'll see you in my dreams.
By November my family had moved everything into the bigger house
in midtown Memphis. The neighborhood was packed with other members of
the Lobianco family, making my stepdad feel right at home. Everyone
asked about JoAnn. I told them it was over. Period. There were,
thankfully, no questions about Martha. No one knew about her. I was
the only one who knew about Martha.
I had no paper route. I had no delivery job. I spent weekends
doing homework and rehearsing for plays and planning on how my GI Bill
money from the War Orphans Act of World War II would be used to get me
through college a few years hence. I was thinking about joining the
Army after I got out of high school. I wanted to see more New York's,
more sights, more sounds, more people. I wanted to see some of the
places I'd read about in the National Geographic. I wanted to see
anything but Memphis.
Now and then I would falter. I would look for relics of Martha.
For weeks I now and then searched for the unopened envelope in our new
home. I never found it. I wrote a letter to Ronnie, not knowing what
I would do if she replied. I had hoped that by sending a letter to
her old address in Manhattan, a forwarding address might be at the
post office. The letter was returned, marked "addressee unknown."
When 1959 began, the memories were starting to scatter. The
memories became a yearning for the missing pieces. Soon there was
mostly the yearning. At night I stopped the yearning by pulling down
the shades in my bedroom to darken the moonlight on the window sills.
I would not feed the memories. I would starve them to death.
After dinner on New Year's Day I pulled my new portable typewriter
from the top shelf of my closet and opened the case. I was going to
type a formal letter of resignation to my Uncle Vic. The new portable
had not been opened since the moving and packing for our new home be-
gan in the previous October. When I opened the case I found a small
white sheet of stationery-like paper inside. It was Martha's station-
ery; I knew as soon as I lifted the three-by-five sheet into the light
that it was the same paper she used to make notes, the same paper I'd
seen her carry in her purse in New York, the same paper she sometimes
used for short letters. I was confused; I thought I had destroyed
everything, every memory.
The sheet was folded in half. Immediately I started to crumple
it, but I stopped. I unfolded it. In Martha's neat handwriting were
two words:
whatever happens
Only Martha could have left it there. She could have left it
there only on that Sunday night when I listened to the phone ring,
ringing over and over.
What did her message mean? Was she accusing? Forgiving? For
forty-five seconds as I looked at it I felt a wave of despair; I was
weak with the pain of it. I had to be stronger. I had to be. I
could keep no promises to her or to myself as long as the ache con-
trolled me. Quickly, the pain turned despair to anger. Didn't she
understand? Why had she left a reminder? Why? I'd never truly know
the meaning of her message without contacting her. That couldn't
happen. That could never happen. Didn't she know I had to be on my
own, entirely on my own? It had been that way before I was with her,
when I was with her, and after being with her. It had always been
that way.
I put the note into a saucer in the kitchen and burned it. As
soon as the little sheet shrank into a black curl, the rough hand
squeezed my heart again. A terrible thought shot through me: This
is the last of her! Stop it!
But it was ashes. It burned faster than I thought it would.
Ronnie was right. Destroy everything, start from scratch. Raw,
emotional extremes. Prophetic dreams. She was right.
PART 20F:
In April I drove my car one Saturday afternoon to the Liberty Cash
Grocery Number 23 to deliver some papers to my stepdad. I parked in
front of the store, along the curb on Exchange Street. It was a mildly
chilly, pleasant early April day.
1959 was underway. The 60's and graduation and college were
ahead. I didn't know it then, but I was more ready for the 60's than
the 60's were. I was making plans for my eighteenth birthday, not far
ahead. I was talking to the Army and Air Force, and they were talking
about civilian and military schools far beyond Memphis State. Perhaps
there would be no Memphis State for me, no memories of it, no remind-
ers. There might be the Signal Corps. San Francisco. Chicago.
Colorado Springs. It was tempting. I no longer worked for Uncle Vic.
I made a little money running errands at the Tremont and the grocery
store. I was rehearsing a play at Christian Brothers, and another at
Immaculate Conception School. Some kids I knew wanted to start a
theater group. I was writing to colleges all over the country. There
were so many possibilities out there.
Getting out of the car, I looked across the street at the building
where I had grown up. Where Speedy and Martha Jane had grown up. The
project was beginning to wear down. The lawns needed cutting. Much
of the shrubbery had died or withered. The clump of thick shrubs and
saplings that once stood beside the building was replaced by an
extension of the parking area. I thought about the day I had tried,
in a rage, to uproot a shrub with my bare hands. Some of the trees
were gone. Martha had cradled my bleeding head against her breast.
The memories were fewer now, gentler. I was staying away from them.
They slowed me down, so I would stay away when I could.
I delivered my stepdad's papers and said hello to some of the guys
I worked with in the past.
"Hey, Speedy!" one of the guys yelled. "You comin' back to work?
We needja here!"
I grinned, "Nope. I'm working on a project. Big new project."
I grinned at him. "Speedy don't work here any more."
On my way out of the store I saw a girl in her late teens pass in
front of me on the sidewalk. I thought she might have eyed me, too,
but I was moving too quickly to be certain. I pulled out my key ring
and was standing at the driver's side of my car, fishing for the door
key, when I saw that the girl had stopped on the corner and was
looking at me.
She had long, dark, curly hair that looked a little dry but was
neatly combed instead of sprayed down, and an unusual, small but
pretty face, a long neck, and diminutive nipples pushing from small
breasts under her pink blouse. Long-legged and a little wiry, she
wore loose jeans and brown sandals and an open, waist-length boy's
corduroy jacket. A second look at her face and her darkly lashed,
brown eyes evoked a memory of someone I had met before.
"Hey," she said hesitantly, her voice soft, with a thick Southern
accent, "ain't yer name Steven? Or do yew still go by Speedy?"
"It's Steven," I said. I walked onto the sidewalk toward her. I
said, "Well, well. Hi, Karen."
Her eyes lit up. "Yew 'membered my name." she said. She walked
toward me. "I knew I reco'nized yew, I just wasn't quite sher." She
stopped a few yards from me, squinting in the sun. She tucked a large
cardboard-cover tablet under her arm, and she put her hands in her
jacket pockets.
I stood looking her over, fiddling with my car keys. "Yeah, I'm
still me. Just haven't been around here very much."
"I been movin' 'round the neighborhood, myself, a few times. I
don't know if yew recollect Chrissie. I don't hang around with her no
more. That crowd got a little too rough. I had to get away from all
them, 'n..." She glanced down, her voice dropping, and she said
vaguely, "Had t' make some decisions, I guess." She looked up at me.
She was still shy. But she had a certain steadiness. Shy, but not
fearful. "I ain't seen yew around in a while. I don't 'member yew
wearin' glasses."
I ignored her remark about the glasses. Had she changed? More
grown-up. Tidy. Healthier. Her smiles were unforced, often broad
enough to reveal that she'd had her teeth fixed since I saw her last.
Still waif-like, yet there was something older, more worldly. Her
smile drooped slightly at the corners, very slightly, like Martha's.
And her eyes didn't hide; they watched, absorbed, and spoke, like
Ronnie's.
I thought: What is this? She's the same and not the same.
I asked, "You still as shy as you used to be?"
"Maybe." She looked deeper into me. "Depends." She said, with a
with a mild tease, "Yew still not talkin' much?"
I gave a little shrug of my head. "Depends." I looked at her,
stepping closer. "You still live around here?"
"If yew wonna call it that, yeah." She saw me looking at her, and
she paused but didn't shrink away as she had done before. She still
had that heavy Mississippi accent. "So what yew been doin' with yer-
self? Anything constructive?"
I gestured with a raised hand. "Everything I can to get into
trouble and make a mess. How about you?"
"Well, I started out a mess, didn't take me no big effort. Just
ten miles o' bad road, like ever'thing else."
"Yeah? You don't look any the worse for it, though."
"Oh. Well...hope not." She glanced to her left to dodge two
customers exiting the store, then had to step aside to make way for
another couple on heir way inside.
I said, "Hey, we're too close to the front door, let's move over
here by the car," and I stepped closer to the curb. She followed,
glancing at the customers quickly and then looking down and away, and
back at the people again. She seemed suddenly edgy.
I said, "I think we were standing on a bad corner over there."
"Yeah," she said absently. "that ain't nothin' new fer me."
I folded my arms, smiling, looking her over again. "Ten miles of
bad road, huh? Sounds as if you have a harrowing, death-defying tale
to tell."
"Well, I -- " Her easy smile had faded, and she turned away from
me slightly, her eyes dropping. "Not really, no." She tucked her
lower lip under her teeth, and she seemed perplexed. "Well..."
I squinted at her. "I, uh, did I say something wrong?"
"Oh, I -- Nuthin'. Yew know, long story. Same story as ever'-
body, I guess." She gave a small laugh. "I was just so surprised,
seein' yew out here. I don't usu'lly hang 'round this part of the
Courts no more. Didn't think it was yew, at first."
I glanced at the large drawing tablet under her arm. I pointed to
it. "Is that an artist's pad there?"
She glanced at it and blushed. "Yeah, I'm at the Memphis Academy
now." She gave a soft laugh and raised her face and brushed a dark
wave of hair from her forehead. "I took a look at Shelby State Tech.
I didn't fit in there. That's all numbers 'n gadgets out there,
anyway, thought I'd smother me to death. So I got in this Federal
program. Yew know, skills development." She chuckled, "Welfare's
what it is. Like ever'body else in the Courts. But I just started at
th' Academy a little while ago. Part time fer now. Crafts."
I said, "That's wonderful. Some very good teachers at the Art
Academy. That's a charcoal pad, isn't it? You work with charcoals?"
Her eyes brightened. "Yeah, and pastels. Some watercolor. They
fin'lly let me take a fine arts course. Yew know 'bout all this?"
"Yeah, a little." She looked me over again, and I looked at her.
She'd changed. Still offbeat, but more womanly. Or was I reading
that into her? She had dark jewels in her eyes, like Ronnie's but
brown and smaller, and a soft puff to her lips. Martha. What else
might lurk within her that was like them, that with a little patience
might emerge, might flower? She no longer averted her glances skit-
tishly as she used to. But, then, neither did I.
She said, "Somethin' diff'rent 'bout yew. Yew get taller er
bigger er somethin'?"
"Yeah. Some. Not much."
Her eyes scanned my face. "Been more'n a year, right? Almost
two."
"You look different, too."
She glanced down at herself. "Oh, well this...s'nothin'. I wear
school clothes all day. I'm at school most o' the time. I don't
never dress up."
"No, I mean *you're* different. Good different. You changed."
"Oh." She gave a flip of her hand. Her eyes had tiny lights in
them. "Yeah, I did. Some." She shrugged. "'Nuther long story."
"Well, you'll have to show me your work sometime. I'd really like
to see it."
"Guess I'm still a little shy -- with these, anyway. Beginner.
Still learnin'."
I scratched the back of my neck. "Yeah, well, me too. We're all
beginners at something." I leaned against the side of my car, my feet
on the curb. I said, "Maybe we should do something sometime. You
know, something or some place where you won't be so shy."
"Yeah? Well, uh..." She hesitated, but her gaze was steady.
"Like what, fer instance?" I watched her eyes pondering, I saw her
listening.
I took a pack of cigarettes out of my shirt pocket and shook one
out. I glanced down Lauderdale Street. "My folks have a restaurant
farther down on Lauderdale. I can rustle a dinner for us." I lit the
cigarette and replaced the pack and blew smoke. "It'd be nice seeing
you again." I shrugged. "We could talk."
Karen tilted her head. She casually stepped closer to me. Her
eyes warmed, but seemed undecided. "Dinner, huh?" She stood in front
of me. She gestured toward my shirt pocket. "Mind if I have one o'
them?"
"Sure. Sorry." I took out the pack and shook out a butt and gave
it to her. "Didn't know you smoked."
"Just sometime." She took it, and she held it, watching me.
Thinking? Looking?
I struck a match and she lowered her face and pulled on the ciga-
rette. She lifted her head, her eyes looking up, and she blew the
smoke up. Almost straight up. She held the cigarette in the air and
she looked into my eyes again, and there was that coy smile, her eyes
skeptical. She was definitely different.
She said, "Well, yer right. I did change. I did change some
things. 'Bout me."
I said, "Yeah, I saw that. Bet you thought I wasn't paying
attention."
Her smile turned a little dry. Her eyes looked right into mine.
"So. Dinner."
I folded my arms and said, "Yeah. Just a simple place. Nothing
fancy. Quiet. You can wear what you have now. Good Italian food,
though. Not crowded, usually. We can have a little ravioli. They
make real Italian ravioli over there in their kitchen, hand made."
"Yeah? Ravioli, huh?"
I made a small square with my fingers. "Yeah, you know, little
squares of pasta? Fill 'em with meat, or cheese, or other stuff." I
took another drag. I wondered why she hesitated. "And we can talk.
You know...Or you can just listen. Or whatever you want to do. Go to
a movie later."
She blew out smoke. Her dry smile got a little dryer. "Well, I
don't go out much, with school an' work an' whotnot." She said good-
humoredly, "I seem to recall yew sayin' once that yew didn't talk
much. What yew plan on talkin' about fer a whole dinner?"
I looked around. "Oh...the mysteries of the universe."
Her smile curled up on one side. "Myst'ries of the universe?"
I said, raising my eyes skyward, "The ancient heavenly connection
into the starry dynamo."
She grinned. "Yew sher like to take on a lot when yew talk, don't
ya?"
I grinned back. "That ought to keep us busy, anyway."
"Well..." She took a drag, looking at me from the corners of her
eyes and blowing smoke away from us. She tilted her head, and her
eyes talked to mine. She said amiably, "Might be okay."
Ah, I thought, that good old, working-class, Deep South accent.
Where "might" sounds like "matt", and "alright" sounds like "awlratt."
"Now, don't say okay," I said gently, "If you don't mean okay."
She gave me the dry version of her smile again. "I usually say
what I mean." She looked down. "I do now, anyway. Not that I say it
so well. Yew'd prob'ly get bored with me directly."
Smiling, I shook my head no.
She said, "Y'know, I'm still a little surprised, seein' you 'round
here."
"Until a few months ago I was around a few hours on weekends. I
worked inside, though, with my dad and my aunt at the cash register.
But I won't be coming this way much. Won't be working here at all."
I grinned at her. "I was a little surprised, too."
"Yeah?"
"So I thought I'd ask you to dinner before you got away again."
"I see..." She took a drag and blew away from us. She still
smiled, still looked skeptical , "Yew think we could solve any of them
myst'ries of the universe?"
"We could work on it."
"Awful lot of 'em out there."
"We'll just take one at a time."
She tapped her cigarette with her finger. She said wryly, "That's
gonna take a whole lotta them ravioli's."
I laughed. She watched me laugh. Her smile narrowed. "Yer really
serious about this, huh? Yer really gonna do this."
"Sure, why? Care to do something else?"
Her voice dropped, mildly scornful. "Well, then. I guess yew
really ain't been 'round much fer a while. So yew don't know."
"Know what?" I peered at her. "You get married?"
She closed her eyes, shaking her head, "Lord, No." She took a puff
and blew out quickly. She said frankly, "Then, I really oughtta tell ya
somethin'. Serious."
"Oh. All right. Okay, go ahead."
"Y'know, uh..." She glanced back at the grocery store, and she
folded one arm across her chest and propped the other on it, her
cigarette in the air. She looked at me. "That's yer daddy in there,
ain't it, that owns this store?"
"Mm-hm. My step-dad."
"Step-dad."
"Mm-hm."
"What happened t' yer real daddy?"
"He died. World War Two."
"Oh. Mm." She took a drag, looking at me. She flicked her
cigarette again and looked around, slowly blowing smoke, thinking.
"My daddy died in Korea. Then we moved around a couple times. I come
to the Courts from Itta Bena, Mississippi when I was fourteen. We
lived so far in the swamps, the education department didn't know we
existed. I ain't never been to school down there. See, I didn't
never learn to read er spell. Mama taught me out o' the Bible, 'n
some old books. So, uh, I come to the Courts, 'n my mama she just
didn't know what t' do t' get me through Humes High. An', uh, I
didn't know what I was doin' there, either, and didn't get through.
An' my mama just gives up, and' then I give up..." She took a drag.
She said with a ho-hum sigh, "So...Juvenile Court takes over, 'n they
gimme all these tests and whatnot at Shelby Tech, and they said my
readin's so bad, I'd never get in. So they sent me to this program,
this gov'ment money, 'cause my daddy was in Korea, and they fin'lly
got me some kinda schoolin' certificate 'n whotnot." She took a drag
and grumbled sarcastically, "I mean, they tested me like I's somethin'
from outer space. Guess they figgered Itta Bena's another planet."
She flicked her ashes and blew smoke. "So I'm takin' these special
courses at the Art Academy, to --"
She stopped. She took another drag, and then looked at me again,
her face set a little hard.
I leaned toward her. "Yeah?"
"Well..."
I said innocently, leaning back against the car, "Go ahead, I'm
just listening."
"Well, I was just thinkin'."
I scratched my neck, frowning. "Care to let me in on it?"
She gave an ironic, crooked smile. "See, I was just thinkin'
'bout how yer gonna be so entertained, sittin' in a rest'rant, tryin'
to listen to me talk. I didn't think yew was serious."
"You're talking now, aren't you? Sounds okay to me."
"Naw, I -- " She tugged on the cigarette, watching me from the
corners of her eyes again. I waited, and she watched me wait. She
said, "See, I can draw. But I cain't hardly read. It's gonna take
years. Gonna take me two extra years to get through the Art Academy
'cause I got to take special tutorin' so's I can read the textbooks."
She paused again, looking at me, her eyes brooding.
I tilted my head, questioning. "Okay..."
She pulled her lips inward a little, eyeing me nervously. She
took another drag. "Well...yer folks own this grocery store, 'n a
rest'rant, 'n -- So they got some smarts in 'em somewhere. An' yew
can talk, y'know? I mean, yew sound educated, like yew got some
sense. I'm way down here in the eighth grade. An' I'm --" She
sighed and looked off, brushing away the long lock of soft hair that
the wind blew across her face. Another wry smile. "Oh, it don't
matter. Beside the point, anyway."
I said, joking, "You know, asking somebody out for a little
dinner around here can get verrry complicated."
She shrugged. "I ain't complainin'."
Still leaning against my car, I shifted my weight on my feet.
"How 'bout if we try something else? Want to just go to a movie?"
She frowned, pretending to be shocked. "Well, that's the quickest
dinner *I* ever had!"
I shrugged. "Looked as if you were having a problem with that."
She grinned, looking away. "Naw, I'm goin', I'm goin'. I said I
was goin'." She pulled on her cigarette. She lowered her voice. A
middle-aged, lady customer exited the store. Karen glanced at her
from the corner of her eye, then she narrowed her eyes at me. "But,
see, guys 're always askin' me out. But it ain't fer dinner."
"Oh...I see." I took a drag and exhaled. I said, with a gently
resolute smile, "Well, I'm asking you out for dinner."
She looked down uneasily. "See, yew ain't lived in the Courts for
a while, so yew don't know, but...I built up quite a reputation 'round
here. Before things changed. I mean, I give yew one-half guess what
that reputation is. And, uh..." She swallowed, looking away.
I shrugged, "Hey, look, I don't care about -- "
"I been in trouble. Arrested, I mean. A while ago." With an em-
barrassed grin she winced, scratching her forehead absently. "Ridin'
in a stolen car, truancy, six month's probation, and whatnot. People
standin' 'round lookin' righteous and upset. Lord, yew'd a thought I
mailed a rubber to the Pope, er somethin'."
I laughed, but tried to remain composed. "But they let you go to
dinner while you're on probation, don't they?"
"Naw, lord, that's done with, that was a while back. When I hung
around Chrissie. That's when I got away from her. I had to make some
decisions." She sighed again and smoothed her hair back and muttered
contemptuously, "I want more 'n that outta my life. I got tired o'
that crap."
I winked at her. "Looks to me as if you're on your way toward
what you want. You got yourself into the Academy, didn't you?" I
cocked my head at her. "That's an accomplishment. You look good, too.
You look like a Greenwich Village artist."
"Yeah, well..." She took a breath, and she shrugged her head and
said frivolously, "Sooo, I got a reputation. Not that I'm gonna stop
livin' my life because of it, but -- " She smiled ruefully, irony in
her voice. "Well, I always wanted t' make a name fer m'self. But,
uh..." She looked away again, and ran her tongue over her lips.
"This name's been follerin' me around."
I shifted my weight against the car again, and I crossed my ankles.
"I have a reputation, too."
She glanced at me, scoffing. "Yew? What'd *yew* do?"
"I'm an evil, bestial pagan."
She smiled curiously. "A what?"
"A pagan. A pagan is somebody that -- "
"I know what a pagan is, I'm one m'self, but I mean...how'd yew
ever git a reputation like that?" She chuckled and said ironically,
"Trade my reputation for yers, any day. My reputation even snuck up
on me at the Art Academy. I was already a funny fish there, t' start
with. People thought I was a outlaw or somethin', 'cause, I...cain't
keep up, I guess. Don't fit in." She laughed softly. "Feel sometime
like I got a eye in the middle of my head." She grinned at me. "So
folks say yer a -- some kinda pagan beast? That what yew said?"
"Close to it. Folks are calling me an outlaw, too. Or worse.
I've been moving farther away from my parents. I probably won't be
living in their house much longer. And I'm going into the theater,
and that has them horrified -- "
She added with a dull sing-song, "Yeah, they think theater people
're Commies, dope addicts, and whatnot. I know."
"Mm-hm. And I'm going to teach, and they're upset about that,
too, because men in my family are supposed to hustle and get rich.
They're not supposed to be poor teachers. Making money all day makes
sense; making art doesn't. And my parents know I don't go to Mass.
They're too ashamed to tell anyone about it, because besides being an
outlaw, I'm goin' to hell. So...I'm getting quite a reputation of my
own." I looked at her. "That's not as troublesome as what you have to
put up with, I know. The point is, I don't fit into my world any
better than you fit into yours."
She frowned. "Yer fam'ly don't want yew to be a teacher?"
"Not in the theater, anyway."
"Well, lord." She shook her head sadly. "Another one of them
myst'ries of the universe. I try to think what the world would be an'
what I'd do fer m'self if they wasn't any -- I'm sorry..." She
stopped, and she started again, one word at a time, nodding her head
with each word. "If there *weren't* any teachers." She turned to me.
"How's that?"
I gave her the thumb-and-index finger OK. "Perfect."
She said, "Yew know, if yew wanna have a dinner 'n do all that
talkin', yew could git sick to yer stomach by th' time I got through
correctin' myself."
"That's all right with me, you just do what you have to do."
"Well...y'know, uh -- " She glanced behind her, at the big windows
along the front of the store. She said, "Reason I'm tellin' yew this,
yer people inside the store 're gonna see yew with me. They're
prob'ly lookin' right now." She looked directly at me. "Y'know?"
I shrugged. "Let 'em see whatever they want. I haven't noticed
anybody with their nose against the glass. This is a big town, Karen.
Half a million people live here. It's not a dot on the map like Itta
Bena. There's more to it than the Lauderdale Courts and Humes High."
"Well, I mean, I thought yew ought t' know. Before somethin'
happened. Yew know, yer folks, 'n ever'thing."
I said, "My reputation with them went down the tubes years ago."
I pitched my cigarette toward the street. "I just realized it long
before they did, that's all." I leaned against my car and folded my
arms before me. I felt something drawing me to her; it made me un-
willing to throw in the towel. "Let me ask you something. You
mind?"
She chuckled, dropping her cigarette to the ground and stepping on
it. "Yew'd ask me anyways."
"Not if you mind."
"Okay. Ask me first. Then I'll tell y' if I mind." She stood
before me, watching my eyes, adjusting the art tablet under her arm.
I said, "Lemme see if I can guess. Sometime, I don't know how
long ago, did you ever meet somebody you liked a lot? Had your hopes
up? And then your reputation got in the way? And your hopes took a
hike?"
She gazed at me levelly for a moment. She said, "Somethin' like
that."
I looked away. I said, thinking out loud, "I'm glad you told me
this. It says a lot about you. Interesting."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. What do you think that person was looking for, anyway?"
Her eyes rolled and she shook her head. "I don't have no idea
what he was lookin' -- " She glared at me, but gently. "Meanin'
what?"
"I mean, did he walk into your life wearing a chastity belt?"
She lowered her eyes with a smirk. She whispered, "No. He sher
didn't."
"But he wanted one on you, huh?"
Her eyes rolled up a little, and she pursed her lips, holding back
a smile, and she gave me a glance from the corners of her eyes again.
She shook her head and said under her breath. "Yer sumpthin'."
I felt compelled to take a calculated risk with her, without
hiding. I said, "You know what kind of girl I want to take to
dinner?"
She looked at me, waiting.
"I want a girl who can draw."
She lowered her head, smiling, breathing a soft, wry laugh.
"See, Karen...I can read. But I can't draw. Most people can't
even draw a circle. People can read, but they never read anything."
I cocked my head at her. "But you have the guts to learn to do both.
As far as I'm concerned, that's the only reputation you have with me."
With her head down, she grinned. She breathed a shy little laugh.
Slowly wagging her head, she moved toward me and my Ford, scoffing
under her breath, "Well, I done heard ever'thing now..." She laid the
drawing tablet on the hood of my car and she leaned against the
fender, beside me, and she crossed her ankles on the curb, as mine
were crossed. She folded her arms across her chest.
She joked, "Yew done some changin', too. Purty smooth, ain't ya?
Purty slick."
"Think so? Think I've improved my manners since you met me two
years ago?"
She looked down at the curb, smiling. "Yew got 'nother one of
them cigarettes?"
"Sure." I reached for my pack.
As I handed her a smoke she said, "'Scuse me. One of *those*
cigarettes, not *them* cigarettes."
"Very good, verry good." I lit her cigarette, and I lit one for
myself.
We leaned against the car together, side by side. I looked up
at the sun, and I could feel something good radiate from Karen. We
had grown up in the same project. Now we shared a few small jokes
there, lolling across the street from the ruins. As I watched her
I found myself thinking that the world was full of possibilities.
There were risks, but there were surprises. So many possibilities.
And as that thought went through my head, I realized that Martha and
Ronnie had done their work so well.
I said, "Now, don't you learn to speak too well, or the hicks in
this town won't be able to understand you."
She smirked, pulling on her cigarette. "Think so?"
"I know so. I have a hell of a time with 'em, myself."
She looked up at the sky, her eyes closed, and she gave an easy,
pleased laugh. She said, "Hey. I got to tell y' somethin' else."
"Oh, well. Go ahead."
She grinned. "I ain't never ate a ravioli."
I laughed. A girl hadn't made laugh so much in a while.
She grinned wider. "I don't even know what they look like."
"Oh, you'll like 'em. I can get all you want."
She frowned again, knocking the heel of one sandal against the
concrete curb at our feet. "Yer gonna have to show me how to act."
"Nothing wrong with the way you act. You've been in restaurants
before."
"Nice rest'rant like that, 'n the way I talk?"
"Eh, it's nice, but not fancy. And who'll hear? They won't pay
attention to us, just two more customers, that's all. You know, there
are lots of people from Mississippi in this town. And we can always
do something else."
"Naw, naw. Yew cain't get out of it, now, I done said I was
goin'. Yew talked me into it, an' I ain't lettin' yew off. And them
ravioli's better be good. Besides...I have t' learn to talk. I have
t' learn." She glanced down. She said stubbornly, "Gotta get outta
these Lauderdale Courts. Hafta stop soundin' like a ignorant
Mississippi swamp rat."
"C'mon. You see the mayor of Memphis on the news, and he sounds
worse. And there are singers on the Grand Ole Opry that sound even
worse than that."
"Sure, the comedy acts. Don't yew know they talk like that on
purpose, makin' fun o' folks like me?"
"Not really."
"Aw, sher they do." She scowled at me playfully. "Minnie Pearl
don't talk like that in private life, she's got a Ph.D! Where yew
been all yer life?"
"I think it's sexy, sometimes. Down to earth."
"Sexy? Huh! Try findin' a job. Walk in there talkin' like me.
See what kinda job yew git." She gave another dry laugh. "See what
kinda people start flirtin'."
"Well, you might have a point."
She laughed. "Yew oughtta see 'em at the Academy. Minute I open
my mouth they make the same assumptions, like I ain't got a brain in my
head. But that's such a social club out there, ever'body sayin' they're
such non-conformists. They put all their time into lookin' just like
each other, tryna prove how diff'ernt they are." She scoffed, "They
think I don't see that, I guess."
"Okay. In some situations you're at a disadvantage. But that'll
change. You're in school, you're taking courses. If you were a swamp
rat, you would never have tried in the first place. The more you
read, the better you'll talk. You'll see. In time, it'll change all
by itself."
"Yeah, well, maybe. I'd like t' hurry it along." She took a
drag. "Yew c'n teach me, maybe. Yew got a real nice way of talkin',
y'know. Now that yew decided t' talk."
I blushed. "Oh, there are plenty of better teachers than me a-
round. Anyway, just about everyone in Memphis has an accent. I have
one.""
"Ain't like mine, though."
"Tell you what -- at the restaurant, you can meet my favorite
cousin, Josephine Louise. You'll like her. She'll like you, too."
"Well, I don' know...Yew mean somebody in yer fam'ly? Yew seri-
ous? Yer just trynna scare me off, now that y' cain't get rid o' me."
"No, no, won't be much family around. They're getting too old to
be there all the time. Just Josephine Louise. And she'll definitely
like you."
She looked at me, her eyes on my mouth for a moment. She looked
down again. "Yer both from good fam'lies. I grew up imitatin' my
mama's way o' talkin'. Even people in the Courts cain't understand
her half the time. Hmp. Yer cousin 'll have me figgered right off."
"Yeah. She'll have you figgered as unpretentious, and doing the
best you can. And probably doing better than most."
"Yeah, well..."
"You don't have to if you don't want to. But Josephine Louise is
the one to learn from about talking the birds off the trees, and just
being yourself."
She thought. She said, "I want to, then."
"Okay. But you're the guest of honor, remember."
She was quiet for a moment, looking down.
I pulled on my cigarette and said quietly, "Karen, there's nothing
wrong with you. You just come from a different place. You're just
going to a different location, taking a different road to get there.
I look for that difference in people, those things in people that
match up with something inside me. I know two people like that...as
different as anyone I'll ever meet."
"We gonna meet them, too?"
I looked way, way up the hill on Exchange Street, the hill that
ended at the sky. I shook my head no. "I don't even know where they
are any more. I can't go to them anyway, because I'd lean on 'em.
That wouldn't be fair." I took a long drag, blowing it out slowly,
feeling Karen listen beside me. I said, "You're not wrong, you're
just different. That's all. Nothing wrong with you that I can see."
"Yew sher take a lot for granted."
"Well...this is America. I assume Karen to be innocent, until
proven otherwise. Beyond the shadow of a doubt."
She gave a soft, sad laugh. "An' yew got a lot more trust in
folks th'n I do, then."
I shrugged. "You have to trust who you are and what you're doing,
before you can trust anything else." I nudged my head to my left,
toward the west end of the project. "See, you still live in the
Lauderdale Courts. In your mind, you do. Like I did. When you live
in this place, you think the whole world's like it and you don't stand
a chance. But out there, out in that big world, there's a lot to see,
a lot to learn, a lot to do. A lot of sky. I've seen it. I'm gonna
keep heading in that direction."
She looked at me, her face impassive. But within her eyes she
seemed to be going over my words. Then she looked ahead, and she fell
silent for a moment, still thinking. She puffed on the cigarette and
blew out slowly. For a moment we were quiet. It was a comfortable
silence.
She said, "I got up this mornin', I said it's gonna be a strange
day. It was, too."
"Why, what happened?"
She gave a long, soft, tired sigh. She said, "I don' know. I was
on my way all over the place, and all of a sudden I'm here. Leanin'
on this car. It's like all day long, I was headed for this spot. Now
I don't wanna go nowhere." She sighed again, with a little laugh. "I
was just thinkin'. I cain't believe I'm here talkin' like this. Seems
like I known yew a long time."
"Two years."
"That ain't what I mean."
"What do you mean, then?"
"...I ain't sher." She glanced behind her. "This yer car?"
"Mm-hm. Will be, soon, my own '53 Ford. I'm workin' to pay my
godmother back for it."
"Pay her back?"
"She gave it to me. I have to pay her back. I have to pay my own
way now." I looked at her. "Soon as I finish this cigarette, I have
to go out to Memphis State. You need a ride somewhere?"
"Wanna gimme a ride to my place, on yer way out? Got my own
place. Right over there on Poplar, down the street a bit. It's a
attic. Just two rooms. But it's mine. I draw in there." She looked
down at her cigarette. "I got class tonight. But I get home about
nine. Yew can come up."
"I have a rehearsal tonight."
"Oh."
"But I could get there at ten."
"That's okay. That's not too late. But if yer still livin' with
yer folks, won't they be askin' questions?"
"About what?"
"If yer out late. Y'know. If yer out real late, er...somethin'."
I took a drag. "No, my folks don't wait up for me. They never
do. I can get there at about ten, and we can go grab a bite, if you
want. They stopped caring about what I do."
"Hm." She looked up at me, her eyes searching. She smiled. Her
eyes smiled. She said, "Then, we'll have time to talk."
"Sure."
"Y'know, we ain't 'zactly strangers. Yew can visit, whenever. I
got a couple o' friends that come 'round. Yew c'n meet 'em sometime.
Outlaws, like me. Just a little band o' misfits." She looked down
again and said softly, "No, they're nice. Honest. Gentle." She took
a drag. "I ain't around that much in the daytime, but...yew git time,
come over. I'm gone to class mostly, or work. I work in the Academy
print shop and the crafts shop. Settin' up machines, bundlin' stuff
an' boxin' stuff." She gazed ahead, wistfully. "Wish I could read
better. Git a job drawin', maybe. Gonna learn silk-screen printin'
this summer. Git off this welfare, maybe."
"Tell you what." I straightened up, ready to get going, and I
flipped my cigarette away. I said, "For the time being, I'll read.
You draw."
She grinned, blushing. She dropped her used cigarette to the
ground and stepped on it. She said, "Tell me somethin'."
"Yeah?"
"Two years. Where yew been keepin' yerself all this time,
anyways?"
"Oh...I've been around. Been around a little." I looked about.
I was standing on a corner where I grew up. I'd traveled far to get
there.
I reached down and opened the car door for her. "Y'know, I
learned a few things since the last time I saw you."
She touched the door, smiling, her eyes on mine. She whispered,
"Me, too."
Thus a long, impossible journey ended.
And a new one began.
T H E E N D
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