Authors: LaVyrle Spencer
“Actually, neither did I. Ever since last Sunday I’ve been picturing your hair the way it looked when we were talking under the birch trees.”
She lifted her eyes. “My hair is very plain.”
“I like the color of it. I wondered a long time what color it would be. Do you mind?” he asked, reaching toward the dish towel.
Her stillness became acquiescence. He had to take one diagonal step spanning the pail and a row of beans in order to reach the towel. When he’d swept it from her hair they stood in place, letting him get his fill of her. She felt her color rising, but made no objection as he studied her openly.
Finally he said, “There are so many questions I want to ask you. Things I wasn’t allowed to ask before.”
“Ask me now. Ask me anything.”
“Not here,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at the house and pulling his foot back beneath him. “Can we walk?”
“For miles and miles,” she replied and turned away from him, leaving the bucket of beans where it was. They walked side by side along two adjacent rows, in the opposite direction from the house. When they reached the end of the garden, she turned left along a fence line and said, “The mosquitoes are coming out. It’ll be better on the road.”
As they reached the road, the sun disappeared behind them. They walked slowly to accommodate her feet in her dad’s oversized boots, whose heels dragged with every step. She untied the knot from the dish towel and slung it around her neck, holding the ends with both hands.
“What was it you wanted to ask me?”
“Last Sunday, remember when we were talking and Liz interrupted? You were about to say that the day you left Browerville you wanted to find me and... and what?”
“I wanted to find you and tell you that my dispensation had come through and I was leaving. I wanted to tell you goodbye. I wanted you to know where you could find me.”
“I found you anyway, but I went through hell before I got your letter and realized that something prevented you from saying goodbye.”
“I believe we’ve both gone through a lot of that since Krystyna died, haven’t we?”
“Yes.”
“How are you doing in that regard?”
“Without Krystyna? Going through some guilt since I started having feelings for you. How are you doing in that regard?”
“About the same. I loved Krystyna.”
“Everybody loved Krystyna.”
“I think both you and I will always love Krystyna, and I think that’s a lovely note on which to start our friendship.”
“Friendship?” he repeated and stopped walking. “Hey, come back here.”
She turned around and went back to him, leaving heel scrapes in the road.
“I asked you this once before, but you refused to answer, so let’s clear it up right now. Do you... do you have feelings for me?”
“Yes, Mr. Eddie Olczak, I do.” She smiled and tilted her head. “I most certainly do. But it would have broken about a dozen holy rules, not to mention my vow of chastity, if I’d answered you then.”
He took her hands off the ends of the dish towel and held them. “Then there’s one other thing I have to know. Am I the reason you quit?”
She considered awhile before replying. “No. You were a part of it, but certainly not what started it.”
He released a breath that relaxed his shoulders. “I’m so relieved. I didn’t want to be responsible for that.”
He rubbed the backs of her hands with his thumbs and they averted their faces to study their joined hands. Hers were fine-boned and stained green on the fingertips. His were wide and coarse, his thumbs callused as they moved over hers.
“Then why did you quit?”
She told him, going clear back to a year before Krystyna had died, including the events surrounding Krystyna’s death that had truly crystallized her decision to seek a dispensation. She spoke of all her misgivings with life in the religious community, and the anguish she’d gone through while making the decision, and the role his children had played in making her realize she wanted children of her own, and her fear of the feelings she felt herself having for him. She told him about coming home at Christmas and the scene at Christmas dinner when Grandma Rosella had burst into tears, and of going to St. Ben’s in spite of her family’s displeasure and being informed that the Catholic Church wouldn’t let her teach in its school anymore once she received her dispensation.
“I was so afraid, Eddie.”
In the midst of Jean’s recital the afterglow of sunset had streaked the western sky like smeared fruit, but already it began to fade as he studied her downturned face.
“So was I. I told you so that day in the flower room. I’m still afraid.”
She looked up in surprise. “Of what?”
“Lots of things. Starting rumors by coming over here too soon. That I still might not be over Krystyna’s death. What my kids might say. Kissing a nun for the first time.”
Jolted by shyness, she immediately dropped her gaze again. His voice fell to a softer note. “Tell me, how do I get over the notion that if I kiss you, I’d be kissing Sister Regina?”
“The last time I was kissed I believe I was something like ten years old, so you’re not the only one who’s scared, Eddie.”
He put his hands on her face and beckoned her to lift it. When she did, he held it like a chalice, his rough fingertips reaching beyond her hairline which had been covered all the years he’d known her by a wimple. “Then let’s get this over with,” he whispered, lowering his head and touching his lips to hers with a pressure so slight they made no demands. Her lips remained closed, her body stiffly angled toward him from one step too far away. For the duration of the kiss, she held her breath, and he realized she didn’t know any better.
He drew back only far enough to whisper, “Want me to teach you a way that’s more fun?”
“Yes,” she whispered, terrified, intrigued, eager and halting all at once.
“Open your mouth.”
He showed her, placing his warm open lips over hers and encouraging her to enjoy it. She flinched when his tongue first touched her. He smiled against her mouth and waited patiently for her to lose her inhibitions.
He finally lifted his mouth and told her, “It’s okay to breathe.” Reaching between them, he captured her hands. “And it’s okay to put your arms around me. There are no holy rules now.”
He placed her arms around his neck and held them there as a new kiss began, and she became a willing student. When her tongue made a shy foray and touched the warmth of his for the first time, the pleasant shock rippled clear through her insides. She crossed her arms on his collar, and drawn by his arms, curved against him like the new moon against the eastern sky.
And at last the kiss flowered.
They stood beneath that rising moon ushering out the tired day with a ceremony as old as time. First kiss, standing between the ditches where the wild evening primroses opened their yellow petals and perfumed the air like vanilla. Second kiss, with his strong arms lifting her free of the road and her big black overshoes dropping off her feet to the gravel. Third kiss, ending when he lowered her down to stand on his shiny black shoes, and some frogs started croaking in a pond they hadn’t noticed was there.
Standing on his shoes, she hid her face against his crisp, striped shirt, which smelled of factory starch.
“Oh, my goodness,” she whispered, breathing hard, “it’s much different when you’re thirty.”
“Is that how old you are? I always wondered.”
“I was thirty in May.” She looked up. “How old are you?”
“I was thirty-five in March.”
They were comparing ages like people with serious intentions. To leaven the seriousness, she said, “Well, you know what they say, a person is never too old to learn.”
He smiled and asked, “So what did you think of it?”
“I liked it very much. You’re a very good teacher, Mr.
Olczak.”
“And you’re a very good pupil, Sister Regina.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“All right then, don’t call me Mr. Olczak.”
“I forgot.” “So did I.”
“No, you didn’t.” She stepped off his shoes, back into the black boots. “You were teasing me because I’m so ignorant of these things.”
“No.” He joggled her up close and made her lift her chin. “I’d never tease you because of that.”
“All right then, you’re forgiven. For everything but catching me in my boots and babushka.”
“I’m sorry,” he said playfully. “What can I do to make it up to you?”
“Let me think,” she said, turning westward and starting slowly for home. “I’ll think of something.” Her heels dragged with every step she took, rolling pebbles along the gravel. He smiled, watching her drop her chin and tie the dish towel on her head the way it had been earlier. If he ever married her and they ever had kids of their own, it would be a great story to tell them, how their daddy had courted their mother and kissed her the first time in the middle of the road in her own daddy’s four-buckle overshoes and her mother’s dish towel.
Full dark had arrived by the time they reached her driveway, and she informed him, “I thought of something.”
“What?”
“You’ll think I’m forward if I say it.”
“No, I won’t. Say it.”
She drew a deep breath and told him, “I’ve never been on a date.”
“You haven’t!”
“Hm-mm.”
“So are you asking me out on one, or do you want me to ask you?”
“Eddie! You promised you wouldn’t tease!”
“Oh, sorry.” He grinned in the dark. “Funny thing you should mention it, because I was trying to work up the courage to ask for one, but I didn’t know what you’d think of me showing up here three weekends in a row. Seriously...” He caught her arm and stopped her from moving on while one of the apple trees shielded them from a view of the house. “I’d love to see you again next Saturday night, but what will your parents think?”
“My mama won’t like it, but I’m thirty years old. I’ll have to get used to disappointing her sometimes, won’t I?” He took her hand and said earnestly, “I don’t want any talk to start, that’s all. Your dispensation was only granted two months ago.”
“The same goes for you. It’s less than a year since Krystyna died. You and I worked in the same school until last May. What will the people in Browerville say?”
“We’ll find out soon. I had to tell Rose where I was coming tonight. And the girls, too. Next Saturday I’ll have to tell whoever baby-sits them. Three weeks in a row I drive clear over to Gilman to see you. They’ll all guess why.” She said a most profound thing. “Our strength, Eddie, is in our truth, and our truth will render gossip impotent.” He did not kiss her goodnight—they were too close to the house—and although he was reluctant to face her parents, he remembered Irene’s story about the jerk who dumped her at the end of the driveway. So he walked Jean clear to the door. Approaching it, he observed that only the front room lights were on. The kitchen, directly off the back porch, was dark.
They stopped at the bottom of two concrete steps, and turned to face each other.
“Seven-thirty, then, next Saturday night?” Eddie asked.
“I’ll be ready. And this time I won’t have my daddy’s boots on.”
A movement inside the kitchen doorway brought Eddie’s head up, and in the shadows he sensed Bertha watching furtively. He could not see her, but he knew she was there, spying.
He took Jean’s hand, a polite enough farewell. “Well, goodnight then.” “Goodnight.”
The brief handclasp ended, and he turned toward his truck, wondering how to win over a mother who didn’t fight fairly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Eddie and Jean each did something that week that made them feel better about themselves.
He marched into Rose’s kitchen on Monday afternoon when no one else was around, spread his hands defiantly at his sides and declared, “All right! Just so you’ll know, I’m dating Jean Potlocki! I’m taking her out again next Saturday night, so you can tell the whole town!”
Rose surprised him by getting tears in her eyes and barreling into his arms. “Oh, Eddie, I’m so sorry. I told Romaine what I said to you, and he got so mad at me that he hasn’t faced me in bed for two nights. He said it was none of my business who you dated, and he made me promise to apologize to you, so if you want to take Sister Regina out next Saturday night, I’ll watch your kids again gladly.” He said stiffly, “Thank you, Rose, I accept. Only her name is Jean now. In the future, call her by it.”
________
For her part, Jean told her mother in her kindest tone, “I’m going out on a date with Eddie next Saturday night, and I want to make myself a new dress. Will you help me with it?”
Expecting plenty of pussyfooting in the dating department, Bertha was flummoxed by her daughter’s directness.
“Me?”
“I’d really appreciate it, Mama. I’ll work extra hard on the canning so we can find time in the evenings to do the sewing.”
The tactic worked with some mysterious kind of reverse psychology. Being asked for help from a daughter who broke her back picking vegetables and canning all day long in the torturous summer heat, how could Bertha say no? And after helping Jean make the dress, how could she object to her wearing it out on a date?
Liz showed Jean how to put on makeup but dissuaded her from trying any elaborate hairstyles.
“They just don’t suit you, Jean. If I had thick, lovely hair like yours I’d leave it plain and just give it a good fluff in the air after you wash it.”
Jean did what Liz suggested, went outside with a wet head and hung it upside down, brushing it from the nape while the breeze blew through it. When it was half dry, she went inside and shaped some natural curls around her face. After it fully dried she was amazed at how flattering it looked in concert with the peach-colored lipstick and the hint of brown mascara with which she’d darkened her eyelashes.
She put the dress on and ran downstairs to find Bertha.
“Zip me, Mama, please.”
Bertha did, wearing a displeased expression all the while Jean pressed her hands to her stomach, flat as a stovelid inside the gored dress with its beltless waistline.