by R.P. Burnham
All day Friday Charlie was nervous in anticipation of meeting Jeremy’s mother. She knew that Jeremy’s love was not going to change because of his mother’s opinion, but just as in her confrontation with her uncle she had imagined all kinds of irrational and frightening scenarios, so too did she fall prey to fears that Mrs. Lawrence would take an instant dislike to her and make her and Jeremy’s life difficult and unpleasant. When Tris got home in the late afternoon, it didn’t take her long to notice Charlie’s state of mind and understand its cause to be the desire to make a good impression on Mrs. Lawrence. She tried to put Charlie at ease by saying that any normal person—just about anyone except her brother, she meant—would find her a sweet and wonderful girl, but when that didn’t have much effect, she suggested that a second course of action was to work at making a good impression.
Doing something as opposed to waiting passively while jangled nerves became more jangly so distinctly appealed to Charlie that she instantly put herself in her mother’s hands. First they went through Charlie’s meager wardrobe looking for appropriate garments. Almost everything they looked at Tris found wanting. This skirt was too long, that one too dark, this blouse was too frumpy, that one too baggy. The inventorying gave rise to much heated railing against her brother and his hatred of women and made Tris wish the dinner invitation had been delayed until Saturday night after they had done their shopping at the Maine Mall on Saturday morning. Here Tris’s anger at her brother was quickly forgotten as she began speaking so eagerly about the shopping trip and was so full of suggestions about new fashions and styles that Charlie had to bring her back to the subject at hand, finding suitable clothes from those available now, which finally led to their choosing a collarless blouse and a charcoal-gray skirt that was the shortest one she owned—it came to two or three inches below the knee. Color was not an option since she had no bright colors in her college wardrobe. That done, Tris examined Charlie’s face and head and suggested make-up, but Charlie nixed the idea. She already had sensed that the progressive women Jeremy knew at Wisconsin wore little or no makeup, and besides she was repelled by the heavily made-up eyes with false lashes and mascara that made celebrity women in magazines and TV look like they were wearing goggles. There was something disgustingly narcissistic about such a look that was alien to her. But Tris had more luck persuading her to do something about her hair. (“It’s time to move beyond the fundamentalist look” was how Tris phrased it.) Charlie had been parting her hair in the middle and trying to de-emphasize her natural curliness. After Tris was done with her, her brownish-red hair was parted on one side with a bang covering half her forehead, and instead of trying to tame the curliness Tris accented it. The results were stunning and made her look even more attractive.
Once she was dressed, Tris had one more suggestion, which was to also leave the second button on the blouse open. It would give just a hint of sexiness that would please Jeremy, she said. Charlie demurred, afraid that while it would please Jeremy it might make Mrs. Lawrence think she was cheap. Her mother smiled at her naiveté. “Have you seen the way young women dress today? They leave nothing to the imagination. All I’m suggesting is a hint of femininity.”
So Charlie conceded the point. Ted when he arrived home was asked his opinion, which was fulsome, and when Jeremy soon after arrived to pick her up, he too was genuinely pleased. Charlie saw him glancing at the hint of cleavage the open blouse afforded and then more closely at her hair. “Wow! I like your hair!” he said with unrestrained enthusiasm.
So did his mother. Her eyes widened as if surprised at how attractive a young woman her son had fallen for, and Charlie’s nervousness instantly melted away as his mother warmly hugged her and told her to call her Cathy. As she patted Tiger, who had not forgotten her and had eagerly bounded up to her carrying his tail straight up like a flag, she watched Jeremy and Cathy get ready the shrimp salad, a simple supper appropriate for the season. She could tell that they were very close and related to each other like friends, not parent and child. The friendly equality her mother was trying to achieve with her came from the same impulse and had the same effect. Where one person ruled arbitrarily and imposed his will, everyone was alienated, but equality created trust and love. Of course she was thinking of the awkward formality and subterranean assertions of power that characterized her uncle’s house. Her freedom was new to her; for a long time, she suspected, she would have moments when she would have to figuratively pinch herself to remember that she was no longer living the pitifully cramped and crabbed life she had escaped.
It was a warm summer evening, and as they sat on the backyard patio serenaded by a mocking bird that flitted from bush to bush to declare his nesting territory, Cathy asked her many questions about the course work she would pursue at USM and her career plans. Jeremy was pleased with her answers. She wasn’t totally sure, she said, but she was thinking of becoming an English major so that she could be a teacher, either of children or maybe as a college professor. Later, some time when they were alone, he wanted to tell her of the plan he had hatched. It was elaborate but in essence was simply that they both would go to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin and be together.
When the topic of teaching was exhausted, Cathy complimented Charlie on her clothes. With a blush Charlie thanked her, then explained that she and her mother were going shopping tomorrow to get new clothes. That led to a long discussion about the latest fashions and the like that Jeremy could only listen to in silence with a bemused yet pleased expression, which his mother finally noticed. “Don’t you want Charlie to look her best?” she asked.
“Sure, but she would look great in sackcloth or a burlap bag.”
His mother exchanged a glance with Charlie. “I had no idea he had such a honeyed tongue,” she said as Charlie laughed.
So the informal dinner was a success. Just as yesterday Jeremy had met Tris on a first-name basis, so today Charlie had done the same with Cathy. And it fit. She knew she had found a new friend.
On the way to the movie in Bedford, Charlie asked him a question he had often wondered about. “Your mom’s pretty and very personable. How come she never remarried?”
While he was still in high school he was sure it was because she did not want to disrupt his life with a stepfather. For the last two years he knew she had dated some men, but nothing had come of it, at least not yet. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Maybe it’s because she measures every man against my father, you know?”
It was her turn to pay him a compliment. “If he was like you, and I know he was, I can understand that.”
When he brought her home from the movie, they kissed for a long time, with the result that both of them got very aroused, and when the same thing happened Saturday night, Jeremy suggested she come to his house Sunday afternoon. His mother was attending a retirement party for a man in her insurance agency and would be gone until early evening. She understood what he was suggesting and eagerly agreed. That’s how on the first Sunday in six years that she had not gone to church she lost her virginity. She was very nervous on Sunday morning and still nervous up until the point they went into his bedroom, but their first kiss inflamed her, and she quickly discovered she had inherited her mother’s sexuality. From the first time and after less pain than she anticipated, she easily achieved ecstatic fulfillment. It was everything she had imagined it would be and more—quite the most wonderful experience of her life to love completely the one she loved and to know what the expression “to become one flesh and one spirit” meant.
After that on most weekdays—in the first week after their last classes and on the Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays after he got out of work at the library—they made love in his bedroom. Both told their mothers what they were doing. Jeremy’s mother was momentarily taken aback, but quickly accepted it. “You’re both really adults now and clearly love each other. Just be careful, you know.” When Charlie told Tris that their lovemaking was the most wonderful experience of her life, Tris was pleased. She eve
n made a joke, asking if Jeremy was pleased with her clean-shaven underarms, which Charlie answered by saying that she thought he was pleased with every part of her. Then Tris got serious. She was so drunk her first time, she said, that she hardly remembered it, but after meeting and falling in love with Ted, she understood that making love, as opposed to screwing—which she had done when she was an alcoholic—was truly the most wonderful thing that life had to offer. A surprise followed. Though she was almost thirty-eight, she and Ted had decided that they wanted a child together now that they had settled into their marriage. “With any luck, you will have a little brother or sister this time next year.”
The thought intrigued Charlie, but with her mind filled with her love for Jeremy, she didn’t think about it too much.
Making love was not the only new experience. In three weeks she passed from the constricted life of an evangelical into the life of a normal young woman. In many ways, everything was new and exciting. When they were naked and alone, they felt like Adam and Eve before the fall, and with the egoism of new love the whole world in microcosm bore only their names. But though happy and ecstatically fulfilled, they only had three weeks before Jeremy had to fly to Madison to make up for the missing years they could have been together. Time gave their love urgency and perspective, reminding them that they were not giddy kids anymore, and the egoism of new love was tempered with the knowledge that sweet Martha was entrapped, that they owed duty and respect to their mothers and others in their lives who were loved in a different way, and that practical things like jobs and course selection and transportation all had to be taken care of.
If alone they were Adam and Eve, in their social life Charlie was more of a Miranda discovering a brave new world. Even Jeremy, who had been living in this world found almost everything new since simple experiences became heightened and more meaningful, more memorable, when shared and seen through fresh eyes.
She did things she hadn’t done for years or had never done. One evening she and Jeremy took a walk on the beach after all the sunbathers had left. Now wearing shorts and sandals, she removed the sandals and walked in the low-tide water. The feel of the cool water and hard sand on her feet was so exhilarating she laughed out loud. Music was almost nonexistent at her uncle’s house, but now she listened to the classic rock station her mother favored and remembered many of the songs. Jeremy played for her CDs of Woodie Guthrie and The Weavers, which she liked but not as much as the Beatles, Pink Floyd and the other groups her mother loved. Then he played Tchaikovsky’s piano concerto and Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, and she loved them. He suggested she could might take a music-appreciation course at USM. By that time they had finished their summer courses in which they both got A’s, and Jeremy had gone with her to the administration office so that she could register for the fall semester. With her grades and tests scores she had no trouble getting in, but three of her courses at the Bible college were not transferable, since they were religious, not scholarly, courses. Driving home to Waska, she made plans to take summer courses to make up for the deficiency, and Jeremy took this occasion to share with her his plan. One of his professors in European history was very impressed with a paper he had written on François Babeuf, the founder of the Society of Equals during the French Revolution and one of the first great martyrs to liberty, and his professor suggested that the points he made in the paper were capable of being expanded into a Ph.D. thesis. He would go to graduate school at Wisconsin and, he suggested, so could Charlie. With her mind and good grades, she too could get accepted into just about any program at U.W., including the English Department, and they could be together. They grew excited thinking of the future and perhaps a little sad since in the immediate future they were going to be separated.
The first shopping trip was followed by several others. While Jeremy worked on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, she and Tris, who took a week of her vacation to spend more time with Charlie, went to various stores to get shoes, casual wear, more school clothes and accessories, all paid for by Tris, who wouldn’t hear of Charlie using the money she saved from her college job. “I owe you years upon years of clothes I should have been buying for you, you know,” she said, “and I’m just doing my duty.” In that way most often Charlie was dressed in shorts and Tee shirts or jeans and tops when cooler.
Getting to and from Portland led both Tris and Jeremy separately to suggest she needed to learn to drive. Several times in early evening she and Jeremy went to the parking lot at Courtney Academy to practice handling a car. Tris took her out a couple of times as well and told her that in the fall she could use her car most days as she could arrange for a coworker to pick her up. They made plans for her to get her driving permit. Another thing she did for the first time in six years was go swimming. On the second Sunday of their allotted three weeks, they went to a family gathering at his Uncle Gardie’s cottage on a lake. Now no longer a virgin, she boldly wore a bikini, though she was a bit self-conscious when she noticed Jeremy’s cousins ogling her. It was another thing to get used to. She would, however, occasionally exchange knowing smiles with Jeremy. They had had great fun when he had helped her remove hair from the bikini area. That was something she was glad to get used to.
One day after they had made love and showered together, they were in his backyard throwing a baseball back and forth while waiting for Cathy to come home from work. Charlie was staying for dinner, which she and Jeremy were going to cook, and was going to be joined by Ted and Tris, who were coming to dinner to meet Cathy. To kill time, Jeremy had found his and his dad’s old gloves and a scuffed-up baseball in the garage and suggested they play pass. He had been curious about Charlie’s athletic ability and was pleased to see Tris’s praise was not exaggerated. The first thing he noticed was that she did not throw like a girl with a motion as if slapping at something in front of her; rather with her arm perpendicular to her body she would snap the ball from behind her ear the proper way. She also threw the ball with good velocity and accuracy and fielded cleanly every ball he threw to her, even showing quick reflexes when a few had to be snagged on the first bounce. When he complimented her on her natural athleticism, she said she’d always loved sports and knew that she was a physical person.
“You don’t have to tell me that,” he said, his wide grin making it clear that he was referring to their lovemaking.
She smiled but quickly became serious. “I mean I’d like to do some regular exercise. For six years I wasn’t allowed to touch a ball or move faster than a walk.”
“You’re obviously naturally strong and in good health.” He threw the ball. “But what do you have in mind?”
She threw the ball back, but not concentrating she threw it over his head. He retrieved it against the fence and fired it across the yard, watching her in admiration as she backhanded it. “I see a lot of people running. I was thinking that would be good exercise. What do you do, Jeremy?”
“You mean for exercise? I walk a lot. In Madison my apartment is over a mile from where my classes are. So really just walking.”
“Wouldn’t running be better?”
“I guess.” He was less enthused than she but knew she was right.
The very next day they started running and ran every day remaining to them before Jeremy would fly away. Because they were in the midst of an August heat wave, they did their runs mostly in the early morning or occasionally in the evening. The first few days they were quite winded even after a few miles, but with each passing day the run was elongated and their breathing easier, and they often carried on conversations as they ran. One day Jeremy hesitantly asked her about her religious beliefs, and she repeated that Ted’s opinion that God would want us to have a good heart seemed the best advice. She had thought of the things Jeremy told her earlier in the summer and had also concluded that all religions had validity and that God would not be so petty and arbitrary as to condemn most of humanity to hell just because they were not Christian. Finally she said she still loved Jesus
, but didn’t think going to church made any difference. It was what was in one’s heart that mattered. Listening to this explanation, Jeremy rather thought that religion was losing its hold on her, but he said nothing. Christian or pagan, he loved her and everything about her.
Then a day or so later she surprised him with a request he hadn’t anticipated. They were about halfway through their run when she said, “Jeremy, I want you to teach me to think like a progressive.”
“You already do. Progressive politics is being for the people—you know, poor and working people, not the well off.”
“I know. I grew up in a working class neighborhood. I saw the desperation. Already jobs were moving overseas.”
They were at the end of Sandstone Street. “Let’s go by the river this time,” he suggested, not because they’d see much of the river, what with all the houses and trees, but the day’s heat was already building and running by the river offered the chance of cool breezes.
“But I mean more than that. For six years I’ve lived among conservative people.”
“That taught you how not to think—is that what you mean?”
“Yeah. I don’t mean I don’t see things. Like I know you don’t like capitalism because it’s so unfair. A few get rich and the many scrape by. And if a boss at some big company is anything like my Uncle Edward—you know, ruling with an iron hand, being arbitrary, things like that— then I see that already. And I’m already grossed out by the Bush people. Just looking at them with their mean eyes and tight, unfeeling mouths tells me they’re awful people. But I’m just reacting instinctively. What I want you to do is teach me how to think like a progressive.”
“For example?”
She stopped to tie her shoe. Jeremy ran in place.
She looked up from where she crouched. “For example? You said the other day that the news media is really just the corporate view. So how do you see behind the news to the real news? You know, some murky international crisis develops. How do you determine the right side?”
They started running.
“Okay, now I see where you’re coming from. It so happens my roommate Drew Jensen asked that very same question one time.”
He was thinking of a day last fall when he, Drew and a couple of other guys were on the union terrace on Lake Mendota after one of their demonstrations and going over what had happened that day when one of Jeremy’s professors walked by and stopped to talk to them. He praised the young men and told them he had done much demonstrating when he was a graduate student at Columbia University in New York City. He was glad to see the struggle for social justice was still ongoing.
“He said in his day it was different places and different issues, but underneath it was the same because the world’s troubles always came from the usual things—selfishness and greed that blind people to other people’s rights and needs. We all agreed with that, but that’s when Drew asked your question. Drew too wanted some analytical tool that could be applied. As I recall he even used the word ‘murky’ like you did. Anyways, that’s when Professor Schultz told us about what he called the empathy-ego scale. He said most leaders, coming as they do from the upper classes, hadn’t the foggiest idea how poor and working people felt or thought. They would be at the right extreme on the empathy scale. That’s where egoists and narcissistic people reside, see?”
“And the other end?”
“First I remember a sarcastic thing he said about the right end. He added that sociopaths, serial killers and U.S. presidents would always be found there. He was referring to the millions of third-world people we’ve killed since the end of World War Two.”
“I’ve heard you say that. I’m guessing the left side of the scale has…?”
“Right. That’s where you find your Gandhis and others like Jesus and Buddha who think of others, who sympathize—or empathize, since that’s Professor Schultz’s term for it—with poor and exploited people. He added groups like Doctors without Borders, people who run soup kitchens, Quakers.”
“Okay, and most people fall somewhere in the middle. I see.”
“Well, he didn’t let off ordinary people that easily. Most people expand their egoistic concerns to family and friends but care not a whit if the TV they watch or clothes they wear were made by wage slaves working for pennies an hour. That describes an awful lot of people. Evil always comes from selfishness and egocentric thinking, he emphasized. The good in this world are always a minority.”
“Was he cynical or realistic?”
“Probably a bit of both.”
They stopped at a corner and waited for two cars to go by. “I get the idea, but we still haven’t got to anything murky.”
“Oh, yeah. Well he had the perfect example. He was a graduate student during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. You’ve heard of the Sandanistas, haven’t you.”
They were rounding the corner of Jeremy’s street by now where it was their practice to race to the finish, so it wasn’t until they were sitting on the picnic table in the backyard and each drinking a bottle of water, that they picked up the conversation.
“The Sandanistas were in Nicaragua, right?”
“Right. They had overthrown a really evil, fascist dictator, and U.S. fruit companies that were exploiting the peasants were feeling the heat. This is where Professor Schultz’s empathy scale comes in. The peasants in Nicaragua were oppressed. They barely kept from starving, they were mostly illiterate, and they had no health care so that huge numbers of them died from diseases easily controlled by modern medicine. What the Sandanistas wanted to do was bring health care, education and decent living wages to the people. But guess whose sides the U.S. was on?
“I’m guessing the old dictator’s side.”
“Yeah, as always. Any decent person would think helping desperate people would be a good thing, but that wasn’t the goal of the U.S. government. They said it was to oppose communism, but think of it. To be on the side that thought it dangerous to help people even in the most basic way and instead side with the big landowners and the old government that oppressed the people tells you who benefits from the U.S. government and its policies.”
“I do see. The government is for the rich people of this country and the world. The rich and the powerful don’t give a hoot about poor people’s suffering.”
“Yeah. Mind you, Professor Schultz was no fool. Just because a man or woman was supposedly on the empathy side where policies are formulated to help the people doesn’t always mean he or she is a compassionate or empathetic person. Plenty of Marxists are egoists driven by ambition. Sometimes you have to look really hard to see that selfishness is operative. I know I guy who thinks Mother Teresa—you know, that Catholic nun that helped lepers and poor people in India—was really selfishly pursuing a course that led people to praise her. But in that case I don’t think it matters much what her motivation was. The lepers and poor were being helped and treated with compassion.” He finished his water with a long swallow. “Okay, now I’m going to be professorial. Apply what you’ve learned to the Iraqi situation.”
Charlie laughed at the exaggerated professorial tone he affected, then showed that she was a good student. “It’s because the U.S. government wants to control the oil, isn’t it?”
“And the Bush administration is filled with neocons. It’s for Israel’s benefit too. So you get the point of Professor Schultz’s empathy scale. In any situation look for who’s being oppressed and that will be the decent side.”
“There are cases where both sides are bad. Like World War One. Right?”
“I see you know your history,” the professor said.
“And that I think like a progressive?”
“Yup. As I said at first, you already have the most important thing—empathy.”
The next time they went for a run they had their first disagreement. It was not quite an argument, and in the end they reached a compromise, but they did find themselves on the verge of anger.
It started when on their r
un Charlie said that she wanted to visit her cousin Martha. Jeremy didn’t think that was a good idea. He sensed danger, though he wasn’t sure if it was an irrational fear that somehow Charlie would be swept back into her uncle’s orbit or, more likely, that he feared such a visit would only upset Charlie and her cousin while making her uncle angry enough to want some kind of revenge. Whatever it was, he felt he should warn her against the dangers. “I don’t think you should do that, Charlie.”
She was surprised at his reaction. She felt deflated, even disappointed. “Martha is oppressed too. She needs to know she’s not alone. How can you think that’s a bad idea?” She spoke sharply and felt herself growing defensive and willful. She was ready to carry the point no matter what.
It was a cool morning, but Jeremy felt himself sweating under his windbreaker. “Well, what good could you do her? I don’t think she’s going to leave that man.”
“I know, but as I just said she’s needs to know she’s not alone.”
“Do you think she thinks of you as an enemy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is that what you want to convey to her—that you’re still her friend?”
They had to wait for cars to pass. As they waited, she had time to think. What she really wanted to do was to liberate her cousin from bondage, but realizing that was an unlikely event, she also wanted to defend herself against any lies told about her and to make sure Martha understood that she had a friend to turn to.
They started running again. “I guess I want to make sure she doesn’t feel alone. When I used to feel that way, I could turn to her. I can’t just desert her.”
“Okay. I see how this is important to you. I think I should go with you just in case.”
“What do mean?”
“You know, in case Tom Johnson showed up.”
“Yeah, good idea,” she said, feeling her love for him flood her mind. He wanted to protect her. His objection was fear for her safety.
“I bet she doesn’t know what happened in the car.”
“Unless my aunt told her.” She ran several yards, considering. “I bet she does know. I bet Aunt Cora told her.”
“It’s a cinch your uncle didn’t.”
After showering and making love, they decided that now, mid-morning, was the best time for the visit. It was Monday, the day Brother Johnson and Tom always went over the books, so they could be certain that Martha would be alone.
They drove since Martha lived in a ranch-style house on the outskirts of town that had been Brother Johnson’s first home before he started a family and before he made enough money to move into a trophy house. Instead of selling it some dozen years ago, he rented it to a family that had lived in it up until six months before Martha and Tom’s wedding when Brother Johnson had given the family notice. He was going to give the happy couple the house for a wedding present. According to what Aunt Cora told her, that led to a squabble that threatened to boil over into a lawsuit. Brother Johnson insisted that a verbal agreement had made them responsible for maintenance, but the family, feeling they were being evicted and betrayed, did not want to pay for a paint job and other repairs and threatened a lawsuit. In the end Brother Johnson backed down and paid for the repairs and painting. Charlie thought there was something fitting about the sordid squabbling over money when the beneficiary was a bride being sold by two old men.
At least the house looked pleasant as they drove up. There were flowers in front, the lawn was immaculate, and the house boldly wore its new coat of bright white with black trim; in the full sun of the hot August day, its gloss paint was almost blinding.
Martha’s eyes betrayed fear instead of welcome when she opened the door. Clearly Charlie was the last person she expected to see, and despite herself she let out a nervous gasp and then became very rigid. Even allowing for her nervousness, she did not look well. Her complexion was sallow and her eyes sunken, suggesting that she wasn’t sleeping well. She wore her usual long dress buttoned at the neck and with long sleeves which at the waist billowed out into a full skirt that went to her ankles. After her many shopping expeditions with her mother, Charlie was uncomfortably reminded that not that long ago she wore the same plain dresses from a fundamentalist mail-order firm. She wondered if part of Martha’s surprise was to see her wearing tight shorts, sandals, and one of Jeremy’s Wisconsin tee-shirts with Bucky Badger that displayed the fullness of her breasts.
“Martha, forgive the unannounced visit. I just had to know if you’re all right.”
Too polite to ask her to leave (which her body language indicated she wanted to do), she spoke hesitantly and almost in a whisper. “Charlene, hello. I don’t think you…” but not able to say anything so cold and unfriendly as ‘you shouldn’t be here,” she nervously wrung her hands and looked down.
Charlie, unsure how to proceed, bought some time by introducing Jeremy. “This is my friend Jeremy Lawrence.”
Martha said hello with her eyes downcast while Jeremy murmured a greeting.
By now Charlie understood that Martha was not going to invite them into the house and got right to the point. “You’re not happy, are you, Martha?”
“We’re not on earth to be happy, Charlene.”
“But many Christians are. God doesn’t want us to suffer just for the sake of suffering.”
Martha started to speak, then stopped. She looked at Jeremy, perhaps because his presence inhibited her. “Why have you come, Charlene?”
“Just to make sure you’re okay.’
She cast her eyes down yet again. She appeared confused.
“They haven’t told you, have they?”
Still looking down and avoiding eye contact, she said, “I don’t know what you mean. They told me you left the church, that’s all.”
Charlie looked at Jeremy, who tilted his head slightly. “What did they say was the reason?”
When Martha continued staring at the floor, Charlie said, “They must have said something.”
Martha looked up, then quickly reverted her yes. “They said you were willful and secular. That you left because…”
“Because of Jeremy?”
She nodded.
“That’s partly true, but it isn’t the whole truth. Jeremy and I are in love, and I suppose ‘willful and secular’ partly describes my disillusionment with the church. But Martha, you’ve got to know the truth about Tom. Ask your mother if you don’t believe me. He vilely and crudely tried to seduce me. I had to jump out of the car to escape. He pawed me and used crude and vile language.”
Martha’s sallow face reddened. “I don’t want to hear that.”
“But it’s the truth, Martha. Again, ask your mother. I’m sure she too was told to say nothing, but I know she knows it’s true. She told me.”
She paused waiting for Martha to respond, but she continued staring at the floor, though now she started teetering on her feet from nervousness.
“Tom is a bad man. He doesn’t deserve such a wonderful and sweet girl as you.”
She started to speak but stopped. A look of panic crossed her eyes when she heard a car driving up the street.
Charlie turned to watch the car drive safely by. “Uncle Edward’s church hates women. It sees us as nothing by baby-making machines.”
She saw Martha involuntarily put her hands on her belly.
“Martha, are you pregnant?”
She looked up and nodded slightly. “I think you should go, Charlene.”
“Okay, we will, but talk to your mother, Martha. Please.”
No promise was made. After muted good-byes, they departed to the sound of the door closing.
Charlie couldn’t fool herself. The visit was a disaster. Jeremy had been right, and she probably did more harm than good. In the car she asked, “Do you think I did any good?”
Actually he didn’t. He thought that perhaps she had made things worse for that poor girl, but he couldn’t hurt Charlie by saying that. “I hope so,” he said.
She und
erstood the meaning behind his words. “She can’t be any more unhappy than she already is, and they do say the truth will make you free.”
“Yeah, but the trouble is, your uncle doesn’t believe in divorce.”
“He believes in an abstraction. Even he will come around, I’m hoping.”
Jeremy was doubtful. “He’s a very arrogant man. He doesn’t like to be wrong.”
Charlie, aware that she was expressing a hope more than a conviction, said, “My aunt is the wild card here. She’s stronger than you’d think.”
Luckily they had too full a day planned for Charlie to have much time to brood. From Martha’s house they drove directly to a cellphone store in Bedford where Jeremy bought a cellphone for Charlie that was similar to his and then upgraded his plan to one that had a buddy-system special deal. It was an early birthday present for her that would enable them to talk to each other just about every day when he was in Wisconsin. They next stopped at a fast-food place for lunch, then home where he taught her how to use her new phone. Then at one o’clock they went to the library to meet Mr. Seavey, the librarian. Jeremy’s summer job ended last week but not before Mr. Seavey told him he still had grant money to continue the program into the fall and winter. That’s when Jeremy suggested Charlie would be a perfect candidate to continue the work, and after an interview with the librarian where he was clearly impressed with her intelligence and competence, he agreed. She would work sixteen to twenty hours a week, the exact hours to be determined after she got her class schedule.
Now in their last week together, time hung as heavy as the August heat haze. The love they had shared intensely and completely for the past weeks was now threatened by separation. It forced them into recognition that life is process, not permanence, the proof of which is everywhere. Virginal, naive Martha was pregnant. The flowers that bloomed yesterday next to Jeremy’s front door were wilted the next. The moon, full on the night of their first date, was moving towards a crescent. Every morning the birds were less and less noisy. Charlie went with Tris to visit their old neighbor Mrs. Fecteau, now in a nursing home, only to find her frail and suffering from Alzheimer’s disease so advanced she barely remembered them. A neighbor’s dog that Jeremy had known for years had to be put to sleep. In the tears Mrs. Scowcroft shed while talking to his mother, he remembered his dog Stringer and by association his dad.
To see that nothing was permanent and eternal while feeling that their love was undying was to introduce a dark fear that love, like everything else on earth, was mutable. Each had a secret fear that separation would lead to their drifting apart, and each dared not utter the thought. Walking on the breakwater at Camp Melton one night, they watched the sun set behind the Waska River. In the hushed silence, broken only by the soft rumble of a late lobsterboat heading to its mooring, a sadness suddenly enveloped them as if they mourned more than the death of the day. It was Charlie who gave voice to the feeling. “Another day is gone,” she said softly, to which Jeremy, feeling tears rimming his eyes, could only murmur “Yeah.” In some inextricable way night had become their coming separation, as scary and bleak as death itself. They revived their spirits the next day, but neither could shake the feeling of uncertainty and vulnerability that was the antithesis of new love which feels total plenitude of action and infinity of time. During their love making all was still wonderful; it was afterwards that time impinged upon joy.
A small but interesting occurrence made them forget the coming separation, if only temporarily. Just as they had rescued Tiger earlier in the summer, they reunited a lost little girl with her mother at the end of the summer. On their next-to-last morning run they saw a freckled-face blond girl with huge blue eyes looking rather waifish. She was wearing a soiled pull-over that was so short it didn’t cover her bellybutton and a pair of baggy shorts, and she was shoeless. Some dark sticky substance was smeared on her chin that looked like jam from her breakfast. She didn’t say anything to them as they approached her, but the forlorn expression on her face as they passed by made them turn back. They asked if something was the matter, and when she started talking disjointedly and unclearly about a doggie, they asked her name. It was Samatha and she was five years old. That and the fact her house was yellow was all the information they could get out of her. When they asked her if she was lost, however, she started crying. Charlie hugged her and told her they would find her mommy. Working on the assumption that in wandering away from home following a dog she couldn’t have gone too far, they circled the block, each of them holding one of her little hands, only to see no yellow house. They asked if she remembered crossing the street, but she said she wasn’t sure. They went up the next street and circled that block without seeing any yellow house, then crossed the street perpendicular to them and followed that street around the block. They were just turning the corner when a woman ran up to them. She was a neighbor, not the mother, who was frantic and had already called the police. She was searching in the opposite direction. It turned out the mother was not, as they suspected, an irresponsible person. While she was drawing the bath water, Samatha had caught sight of the neighbor’s dog and followed him. In less than a minute she had disappeared. Now reunited with her mother, who alternatively chided her and showered her with hugs and kisses, the prodigal was safe. The grateful mother could not thank them enough. She told them she could tell they were good human beings and that it was obvious that they were in love. They modestly hedged on the first compliment but proudly admitted that they were in love.
They were in high spirits after that. “First a kitten and now a little girl,” Jeremy said.
“We should start an agency for finding lost little mites,” Charlie said.
But their high spirits soon passed. Everything became the last time—the last run together, the last lovemaking together, the last meal together, until finally it was the last morning together.
Tris drove with Cathy in the front seat and Charlie and Jeremy in the back holding hands tightly as if afraid to ever let go. They didn’t talk much, mostly communicating their thoughts and feelings through touch and only occasionally becoming aware of things outside of themselves such as when passing a farm they heard Cathy say, “Oh, look at those beautiful horses,” and looking up to see the grazing horses and colts all with chestnut coats gleaming in the sun.
Then they were inside Portland International Jetport where two of the 911 terrorists boarded a plane for Boston. People with tense thin-lipped faces hurrying to their terminal; people in seats checking their watches and looking impatient; others, the veteran flyers betraying nothing beyond sleepiness, boredom or indifference as they read newspapers or went through papers from their brief cases. They passed a tall, thin woman stopping to adjust her high heel and heard her cursing. In the distance a child was loudly crying. A poster advertising flight insurance triggered in Jeremy’s mind the memory of his father’s death. Still their hands tightly grasping each other was the center of their attention.
Then came the routine business of flying as Jeremy checked in his suitcase and got his boarding pass after which Tris and Cathy discreetly went to get a coffee to allow the lovers time alone.
They sat with arms around each other’s shoulder and their free hands joined awkwardly with a right hand in a left. Both felt the heavy feeling of sadness that made it hard to act normal.
“Remember the day after Ms. Jose’s American government class?”
Her eyes lit up in recognition. ‘Yes, I do.”
“I was going to ask you to the prom.”
“Yes, I know.”
He squeezed her hand. “And I knew you knew. Why did you say thank you?”
She thought for a moment. “First because to be asked by you was an honor. Then also because it confirmed that you did care for me in a special way—”
“I think I was in love with you even then,” he said, interrupting. “You were the only girl I thought of that way.”
“I felt the same way. I thought about you all the time.”
“We were meant for each other.”
“Yes! The other reason why I said thank you was because you gave me hope for the future. I was so totally under my uncle’s sway then I didn’t think I would ever have a life of my own. I saw a possibility because you were in the world. You gave me hope. I remember thinking that I could have been a normal girl.”
“It sounds foolish,” Jeremy said, speaking quietly because an old lady sat down at the end of the bench, “but I remember thinking we were mystically connected—though maybe it wasn’t foolish after all since now I know we are. Love knows no distance, Charlie. I’ve been worrying all week about our parting—and I’d rather you were coming with me—but now I know you’re always with me in my heart.”
“So you too think we were made for each other?” Charlie whispered.
“Yes, I do. We’re so obviously compatible. I love everything about you. My dream is that we’ll always be together—now spiritually but after that together under the same roof.”
“I want you to be always in my heart and always to feel your arms around me.”
“When we’re in graduate school at Wisconsin we can get married.”
She smiled at the thought, then voiced a fear. “What if I wasn’t accepted?”
“You will be. I just know it.”
He looked up to see his mother and Tris coming down the corridor. “It’s time,” he said, suddenly feeling his euphoria evaporating.
They stood and embraced, holding each other tightly and repeating over and over, “I love you” and promising each other that the last thought each would have before they fell asleep each night was of the other, though both said they would be thinking of their love all the time.
The old lady smiled at them benignly.
They walked down to his gate where the conversation was forced and conventional. They all wished him a good flight and reminded him to call as soon as he arrived in Madison. He waited until the last possible moment before going through security. Cathy had promised him money to fly home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, so the last greetings were “See you Thanksgiving” as he hugged Tris, his mother and Charlie, in that order, and they whispered “I love you” one final time, then after going through security and retrieving his carry-on bag and shoes, he waved to them. Right before he entered the ramp he turned one more time to see from Charlie’s face that she was trying not to cry and bravely smiling. He mouthed the words “I love you, ” then was gone.
The three of them then walked down the terminal to where they could watch the plane take off. As they waited and watched the plane taxi to the flight runway, Charlie hardly listened to Tris telling Cathy that she had raised a wonderful young man, and Cathy returning the compliment. Her concentration was entirely on the plane that held not just her love but almost literally her life. It made her reach back into her memory. This time six years ago she had been taken from her mother and delivered into the rigid, close-minded world of her uncle’s house and church. Those first few weeks under her uncle’s dominion, the time before she learned the survival techniques that kept his wrath at bay, were the saddest and scariest days of her life. Now again feeling sad and afraid in a different way, she turned her mind to the awakening love between them. Her thoughts went back to high school when Jeremy was one of the few students who saw her as a person instead of a freak Christian dressed in old-fashioned clothes and how kind he was in supporting her against the taunts of Bob Parole and the other bully-boys. She relived again the mystical connection both she and Jeremy felt when he didn’t ask her to the prom with words but instead with his eyes. But as she watched the enormous jet roaring down the runway with a sound so loud she could hear it through the thick plate-glass windows and feel the glass vibrating, her mind settled on the day they had rescued Tiger and were driving back to Waska.
Something happened that day that changed everything between them.
When he talked about his father’s death and how he had tried not to cry until his mother told him that it was okay to cry because his dad had, she remembered her arms tingled with the desire to hug him. He was so openly vulnerable and honest that he inspired her to open up and be honest just like him by telling him about her doubts and early problems with biblical inerrancy, her distress at Martha’s arranged marriage, and her feelings of humiliation at the hands of Rev. Hamlin. She understood now, as the jet became airborne and seemed to shake for a scary few seconds, that what they were doing that day was making love using words instead of their bodies. She had never felt so close to another human being in her entire life. It was at that precise moment they had moved from feeling attraction for one another and having a sort of daydream love to a real relationship based on trust, honesty and mutual respect. Their physical lovemaking was only wonderful and intense and exciting and beautiful and totally fulfilling because they loved one another as human beings. That was the love that was primary; and it was the love that burned in her heart here on earth and in his heart in the sky. You couldn’t put your finger on it. It was an aura, a presence; it resided in their bodies but was independent of their bodies. He was right when he said they could not be separated, not when each carried the other in their hearts. The plane was banking now as she remembered something else he said that day, something that opened her up to a braver and scarier world, and now she understood why she felt afraid here in the airport. After she told him that her uncle believed God’s hand was in every event, he said that he knew his father, who was a good and decent man, had not died at the hand’s of God but rather from an accident unadorned by any manipulation beyond happenstance.
An accident.
“Jeremy,” she whispered “Jeremy, Jeremy.” She needed his presence and the feel of his arms around her; she wanted her love to come back and be with her; she wanted to go with him right now following in another plane, following after him to Madison, to be with him, to not be separated, to love him, to feel his breathe on her cheek, to know him, not to have to cry because already she was lonely and wretched and wanted her love to never go away, to always be with her, to love and to love and to love always.
Always.
If anything happened to him she knew she would destroyed. The plane was climbing now. She watched until it was a tiny speck in the sky. It seemed impossible that that huge, heavy piece of metal was actually flying.
“Keep him safe and watch over him,” she whispered as the plane disappeared from sight. “Keep him safe from all harm,” she said to God, even while knowing that prayers would make no difference.
####
a note about the writer
R. P. Burnham edits The Long Story literary magazine and is a writer. He has published fiction and essays in many literary magazines. He sets most of his fiction in Maine, where he was born and raised and has deep roots. The Least Shadow of Public Thought, a book of his essays that introduce each issue of The Long Story, was published in 1996 by Juniper Press as part of its Voyages Series. Four other novels, Envious Shadows,On a Darkling Plain, The Many Change and Pass, and The Two Paths have also been published by The Wessex Collective. Burnham was educated at the University of Southern Maine (undergraduate) and The University of Wisconsin–Madison (graduate). He is married to Kathleen FitzPatrick, an associate professor of Health Science at Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts