He called on the fourth day. Theresa could tell who it was by Amy’s part of the conversation.
“Hello? ... Oh,
hiiiii ...
I hear you found an apartment ... Must be kind of creepy without any furniture ... Oh, a pool! ... All riiiiight! ... Can I really! ... Can I bring a friend? ... Sure she does ... Sure she can ... Yeah, she’s right here, just a sec.” Amy handed the receiver to Theresa who’d been listening and waiting in agony.
The smile on Theresa’s face put the June sun to shame. Her heart was rapping out an I-missed-you tattoo that made her voice come out rather breathily and unnaturally high.
“Hello?”
“Hiya, sweets,” he greeted, as if they’d never had a cross word between them. How absolutely absurd to blush when he was ten miles away, but the way he could pronounce that word always sent shafts of delight through her.
“Who’s this?” she asked cheekily.
His laugh vibrated along the wires and made her smile all the more broadly and feel exceedingly clever for one of the first times in her life.
“This is your guitar man, you little redheaded tease. I just got my new phone installed and wanted to give you the number here.”
“Oh.” Disappointment deflated Theresa with a heavy
whump.
She’d thought he was calling to ask if he could see her. “Just a minute—let me get a pencil.”
“It’s 555-8732,” he dictated. She wrote it down, then found herself tracing it repeatedly while the conversation went on. “I’ve got a nice apartment, but it’s a little empty yet. I did get a bed though.” Had he gone on, she might not have become so flustered. But he didn’t. He let the silence ooze over her skin suggestively, lifting tiny goose bumps of arousal at the imagery that popped into her mind at the thought of his bed and him in it. Theresa glanced at Amy who stood by listening, and hoped she’d had the receiver plastered hard enough against her ear that Amy hadn’t gotten a drift of what Brian said.
“Oh, that’s nice!” Theresa replied brightly.
“Yes, it’s very nice, but a little cold the first night.”
Again, she came up against a blank wall. “Oh, that’s too bad.”
“I slept on the floor that night, but the water’s all warmed up now.”
Like a dolt, she went on speaking the most idiotic inanities. “Oh, that’s nice.”
“Very nice, indeed. Have you ever tried a water bed?”
“No,” she attempted, but the word was a croak, hardly discernible. She cleared her throat and repeated, “No.”
“I'll let you lie on it sometime and see how you like it.”
Theresa was so red by this time that Amy’s expression had grown puzzled. Theresa covered the mouthpiece, flapped an exasperated hand at her younger sister and hissed, “Will you go find something to do?”
Amy left, throwing a last inquisitive glance over her shoulder.
“I’ve got a pool, too,” Brian was saying.
“Oh, I love to swim.” It was one of the few sports in which she’d ever been able to participate fully. “Can you?”
For a moment she was puzzled. “Can I?”
“Yes, I mean ... are you allowed to ... yet?”
“Oh.” The light dawned. Was she healed enough to swim. “Oh, yes, I’m back to full activities. It’s been four weeks.”
The longest, strangest silence followed while she wondered what prompted it.
“Why didn’t you tell me that the other night?”
His question and the tone of his voice told her the reason for his pause. He’d been waiting for the go-ahead! The idea threw her into a semipanic, yet she was anxious to pursue her relationship with him, though she knew beyond a doubt there would be few days of total innocence once they began seeing each other regularly. Considering her old-fashioned sense of propriety, it naturally put Theresa in a vulnerable position, one in which she would soon be forced to make some very critical decisions.
“I ... I didn’t think about it.”
“I did.”
She realized it now—how lightly he’d held her when they caressed, as if she were breakable. Even when they’d kissed in the driveway near the back door, he’d pulled her head hard against him, but hadn’t forced her body in any way.
Neither of them said anything for a full forty-five seconds. They were coming to grips with something unspoken. During that silence he told her his intentions as clearly as if he’d illustrated them by renting a highway billboard with a two-foot-high caption. He was ready for a physical relationship. Was she?
When the silence was broken, it was Brian who spoke. His voice was slightly deeper than usual, but quiet. “Theresa, I’d like us to spend next Saturday together ... here. Bring your bathing suit, and I’ll pick up some corned beef at the deli, and we’ll make a day of it. We’ll swim and catch some sun and talk, okay?”
“Yes,” she agreed quietly.
“Okay, what time should I come and get you?”
She had missed him terribly. There was only one answer she could give. “Early.”
“Ten in the morning?”
No, six in the morning,
she thought, but answered, “Fine. I’ll be ready.”
“See you then. And, honey?”
Being called
honey
by Brian was something so precious it made her chest ache.
“Yes?”
“I miss you.”
“I miss you too.”
__________
I
T
WAS FRIDAY.
Theresa had spent a restless night, considering the possibilities that lay ahead for her with Brian. She thought not only of the sexual tension between them, but of the responsibilities it brought. She had thought herself totally opposed to sex beyond the framework of marriage, but her brief experience in Fargo warned that when bodies are aroused, moral attitudes tend to dissolve and disappear in the expanding joy of the moment.
Would I let him? Would I let myself?
The answer to both questions, Theresa found, was an unqualified
yes.
__________
THE FOLLOWING DAY
she went to the drugstore to buy suntan lotion, knowing she’d suffer if she didn’t apply an effective sunscreen to her pale, freckled skin that seemed to get hot and prickly at the mere mention of the word
sun.
She chose the one whose label said it had ultraguard, then ambled to a revolving rack of sunglasses and spent an enjoyable twenty minutes trying on every pair at least twice before choosing a rather upbeat pair with graduated shading and large round lenses that seemed to make her mouth appear feminine and vulnerable when the oversize frames rested on her nose.
She wandered along the shelves, picking up odd items she needed: emery boards, deodorant, hair conditioner. Suddenly she came up short and stared at the array of products on an eye-level shelf.
Contraceptives.
Brian’s face seemed to emblazon itself across her subconscious as if projected on a movie screen. It seemed inevitable that he would become her lover. Yet why did it seem prurient to consider buying a contraceptive in advance? It somehow took the warm glow of love to a cooler temperature and made her feel cunning and deliberate.
Without realizing she’d done it, she slipped the dark glasses on, hiding behind them, though the price tag still dangled from the bow.
Theresa Brubaker, you’re twenty-six years old! You’re living in twentieth-century America, where most women face this decision in their midteens. What are you so afraid of?
Commitment? Not at all. Not commitment to Brian, only to the undeniable tug of sexuality, for once she surrendered to it, there was no turning back. It was such an irreversible decision.
Don’t be stupid, Theresa. He may keep you out by the pool all afternoon and all this gnashing will have been for nothing.
Fat chance! With my skin? If he keeps me out there all afternoon I’ll look like a brick somebody forgot in the kiln. He’s already hinted he’s going to take me into his bedroom to try out his bed.
So, buy something! At least you’ll have it if you need it.
Buy what? I’ve never paid any attention to the articles about products like these.
So, pick one up and read the label.
But she checked the aisle in both directions first. Even the label instructions made her blush. How on earth could she ever confront the fact that she’d have to use this stuff while she was with a man? She’d die of embarrassment!
It’s either that or end up pregnant, her unwanted-companion voice persecuted.
But I’m not that kind of girl. I’ve always said so.
Everybody’s that kind of girl when the right man comes along.
Yes, things have changed so much since Brian came into my life.
She studied the products and finally decided on one. But on her way to the checkout stand, she bought a
Cosmopolitan
magazine and dropped it nonchalantly over her other selections when setting them on the counter.
Cosmopolitan,
she thought, how appropriate. But Helen Gurley Brown would scold me for not placing the contraceptive on top of the magazine instead of vice versa.
On her next stop at the Burnsville Shopping Center, she found it necessary to buy a new purse, one large enough to conceal her new purchase. She chuckled inwardly that it turned out to be her first purchase of a contraceptive that should lead the way to her buying something she’d wanted all her life: a shoulder bag. Her shoulders had carried more than their share of strain in years gone by. She’d never felt willing to hang a purse on them as well, though she’d often wanted to own one. Well, she did now.
But the chief reason she’d come to the clothing store was to shop for a bathing suit, another item that was expanding her clothing horizon, for the suits she’d worn in the past had had to be one-pieces, altered to fit.
Now, however, she tried everything from string bikinis to skirted one-piece jobs in the Hedy Lamarr tradition. She chose a very middle-of-the-road two-piece design that wasn’t exactly tawdry, but fell just short of being totally modest. The fabric was the color of her father’s well-kept lawn and looked like shiny wet leather when the light caught and reflected from it. The bright kelly green was a hue that in days of old she’d have said contrasted with her coloring too sharply—the old stop-and-go-light look. But somehow, since her surgery, Theresa’s confidence had grown. And since the advent of Brian in her sphere, she had felt far less plain than she used to. This gift he’d given her was something Theresa meant to repay in some way someday.
__________
THE FOLLOWING MORNING
she awakened shortly after five o’clock. The sun was peeking over the eastern horizon, turning the sky to a lustrous, pearly coral, sending streaks of brighter melon and pink radiating above the rim of the world. Closing her eyes and stretching, Theresa felt as if those shafts of hot pink were penetrating her body. She felt giddy, elated and as if she were on the brink of the most momentous day of her life.
The Maestro grinned down at her from the shelf, and it seemed as if he fiddled a gay, lilting love song to awaken her. She smiled at him, slithered lower in the bed, raised both arms above her head and rolled to her belly, savoring the keen satisfaction a simple act like that now brought into her life. It made her feel diminutive and catlike. Beneath her, the bulk was gone, in its place a body proportioned by a hand that had, in this case, improved upon Nature.
There were times when she still had difficulty realizing the change had happened and was permanent. Sometimes she found herself affecting mannerisms no longer necessary: crossing one arm and resting the opposite elbow on it to give momentary relief by boosting up her breasts, yet at the same time hiding behind her arms. Walking. Ah, but there simply hadn’t been a chance to run yet. But she would, someday soon. Just to feel the ebullience and freedom of the act.
She threw herself onto her back, studied the ceiling and checked the clock. Was it broken? Or had only five minutes passed since she’d awakened? Would the rest of the morning go this slowly until Brian came to her?
It did.
In spite of fact that she performed every grooming ritual with the pomp and time-consuming attention of a ceremony. She shaved her legs ... all the way up, for the first time in her life. She filed her toenails into delicate rounded peaks and polished them with Chocolate Mocha polish. She gave herself a careful and complete manicure, painting her fingernails with three coats. She washed her hair and arranged it with care that was positively silly, considering she was going to leap into a swimming pool within minutes after she got there. But she spared no less care on her makeup. She ironed the aqua blue collar of a white terry beach coverup with matching lounging pants whose ribbed ankles had a matching aqua stripe that continued up the outsides of the legs, and up the arms of the loose sweat-shirt style jacket. She took a bath and put an astringent after-bath splash up her legs and down her arms, and finally, when only a half hour remained, she put her bedroom in order, then hung up her housecoat and picked up the green bathing suit. She slipped into the brief panties, easing them up her legs and turning to present her derriere to the mirror, checking the reflection to find it firm, shapely and nothing she would change, even if she could. The elasticized brief rode across the crest of each hipbone, and just below her navel, exposing both it and the tender hollow of her spine.
As she turned to face the mirror again, with the strappy suit top in her hand, she assessed her reflected breasts. The crescent-shaped scars beneath each had been the fastest to heal, and the circular ones about the nipples had all but vanished. The only ones that were still highly detectable were those running vertically from the bottom up to each nipple. Dr. Schaum had told her to expect them to take a good six months to fade completely, but had assured her they would, for the newer method of surgery allowed the skin to be draped instead of stretched back into place, thus taking stress off the suturing and allowing the tissue to heal almost invisibly. They did, however, itch. Theresa opened the jar of cocoa butter and gently massaged a dollop of the soothing balm along the length of each scar. But as she finished, her fingertips remained on her left breast. But it was not the scar she saw. She saw a woman changed. A woman whose horizons had expanded in thousands of definable and indefinable ways since her surgery. She saw a woman who no longer cared that her freckles ran down her chest and up her legs, a woman who no longer considered her hair carrot-colored, but merely “bright,” a woman whose medium, orange-sized breasts appeared almost beautiful to her own eyes. The nipples seemed to have shrunk from the surgery, and their perky position, pointed upward instead of down, never ceased to be a source of amazement.