Our First Love

by Anthony Lamarr

  “Karen?”

  “Karen Davis,” Nigel responded. “We met her…”

  Caleb’s eyes gleamed as he recalled meeting Karen at a cemetery on a rainy day last June.

  Nine months later, on a frigid spring morning, Nigel tiptoed on a park bench and tried to catch a glimpse of Caleb holding Karen’s hand as the two of them strutted alongside the Marching 100 in the Springtime Tallahassee Parade.

  CHAPTER 18 NIGEL

  I had survived, albeit barely, a constant barrage of loaded questions from Caleb since that Saturday after the Valentine’s Ball.

  “Yesterday, a woman walked in during the middle of our lecture,” Caleb recalled the afternoon I was forced to bring her into our story. “She was wearing a blue skirt and jacket. Was that her?”

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “I got a good look at her, and she’s a Halle.” A spark ignited in his eyes. “Were you with her last night?”

  I nodded yes.

  “So you’re telling me we spent the night with her? Her?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “Where?”

  “At her house.”

  Then the question that he’d asked daily for the past month arrived. “Have we…?”

  “No,” I snapped. “No we haven’t! And I don’t care if you don’t believe me.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” Caleb asked with a wry grin.

  * * *

  I saw a light—a fiery beacon of possibilities—in Karen’s eyes, and I was gluttonously drawn to it.

  * * *

  “Good love,” Karen replied as we recovered from an impromptu late afternoon tryst in her bedroom. “I wanted to know what good love felt like.”

  “What do you mean, good love?”

  “When we met, I already knew you were a man with high morals. Remember, you quit your job to preserve another person’s dignity. You’re caring and you live by principles, which means you would love a woman like she should be loved.” Karen gently pressed her body against mine. “There’s still a lot that I don’t know about you. But I know that your feelings are sincere. And your love is good.”

  “Is that the only reason you…?”

  I think she sensed my quandary.

  Karen leaned over and propped up on my chest. “Don’t get the big head, but you’re kinda cute, too.”

  “Cute?”

  She whispered in my ear, “Cute in a stallion, you know, stud kind of way.” Her tongue glided across my earlobe and then down my neck. “And you taste good. Really, really good.”

  “Don’t,” I begged. “Ooohh. Don’t do that. I have to go. I can’t. Damn. It’s getting late.”

  “It’s only 7:30.”

  “I know, but…”

  “Don’t,” she stopped me. “You don’t have to.” She rolled over to her side of the bed.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” I said.

  She acknowledged with an insipid smile.

  I sat up on the edge of the bed. I was about to stand, when suddenly, I found the courage to ask Karen another long-simmering question. “How come you never ask about my life away from work and here?”

  Karen didn’t respond, so I turned around and looked at her. She sat up, gazed into my eyes, and said, “I know you’re living two lives, and I know that your other life has nothing to do with loving another woman.”

  “How did you…?”

  “By looking at you,” she answered. “I saw it the day after we met. Remember? You stopped by my office with brunch.”

  I was finally ready to let her know me. Know my life. “Well, aren’t you a little curious…?”

  “I’m extremely curious. I’m talking dying-to-know curious.”

  “Then why do you always stop me whenever I try to talk about my personal life?”

  “Honestly?”

  “Please.”

  “Because I love you, Nigel.”

  I’m alive. I’m alive.

  “I see you,” she revealed, “and I feel the sadness you live with. You do your best to conceal it, but it’s so ingrained in you that you can’t. I see it. I feel it. And sometimes it scares me.”

  “Scares you?” I asked. “Why?”

  “Because I don’t know how to help you,” Karen answered. “But don’t worry. It scares me, but not enough to make me stop loving you. Like I said…” She wrapped her arms around me. “Your love is good.”

  I’m going to live forever.

  I was so blissfully inebriated that Karen had to help me put on my clothes. When she finished dressing me, she kissed me goodbye, then sent me home to my other life.

  * * *

  She loves me. She loves me. She loves me. She loves me. She loves me. She loves me. She loves me. She loves me.

  * * *

  I was a chassis—a man with no heart, no spirit, nothing inside—when I was not with her. But I couldn’t be with her too much; the more time I spent with Karen, the more Caleb expected to participate in and hear about our relationship. Lately, when we discussed our day, he fast forwarded through the majority of it. He was only interested in hearing about the time I spent with Karen. Usually, I told him as much as I could without divulging anything about our intimate moments. As I recapped my day, Caleb joined Karen and me for lunch, dinner, movies, walks across campus, and even a few content-edited quiet moments. After he was done making my day his, he always asked in an obviously suspicious tone if we had sex with Karen. My answer was always no. I couldn’t and I wouldn’t ever tell him that Karen and I make love two, maybe three times a week. I refused to share that part of her.

  * * *

  I missed my secret life with Karen—when I didn’t have to concede part of her to my brother, Caleb. Now, the only time I was alone with her was when we’re having sex.

  * * *

  I admired Dr. Alexander. He had been happily married for nearly twenty years, and he wore this beatitude of marriage, family, and achievement like a royal crest. Even still, his matinee-idol looks and jovial demeanor caused women to be irresistibly drawn to him. Always amiable, he dismissed their flirting in a manner so inconspicuous that most strutted away with a renewed faith in men, kittenish smiles, and attentive nipples.

  Yesterday, while we were having lunch at a sandwich shop near campus, I asked him about his secret. “Why are women so attracted to you?”

  “I didn’t know they were,” he replied with a grin.

  “Sure you didn’t.”

  “Well, if that’s true…and I stress the word, if…then I think it’s because they sense I’m unavailable. And people, men and women, have a tendency to covet things that are out of reach.”

  That’s when I told him about Karen. He wasn’t surprised though. He said he noticed something was different about me right after the semester began, and it took him a few days to deduce what it was. I walked lighter.

  This morning, after I finished giving mid-term exams, Dr. Alexander stopped by my office and invited Karen and me on a crabbing trip. “Gloria and I are going crabbing Saturday morning,” he said. “And, if we catch anything, we’re having a backyard crab boil that afternoon.”

  “I’ve never been crabbing, but it sounds like fun,” I told him. “I’ll talk to Karen and let you know tomorrow.”

  “Good.” Dr. Alexander started toward the door, but stopped and turned around. “I haven’t met Karen, but I can look at you and tell she’s good for you.” He opened the door. “My advice to you is, let yourself be happy. Happiness isn’t a bad thing.”

  I immediately took his advice. “What time are we leaving Saturday?”

  “Six thirty.” Dr. Alexander smiled affably. “Good man.” Then he closed the door behind him.

  * * *

  Caleb wasn’t at the front window when I pulled in the driveway and parked beside the Lumina. I knocked on the front door and yelled, “I’m coming in.” I opened the door wide enough to squeeze inside and slammed it closed. I set my briefcase on the sofa and called Caleb. He yelled for me to come to his bedr
oom. I knocked before opening the door. Caleb was hanging a framed picture of Karen on the wall. He said he printed the photo off the School of Business and Industry’s web site. He stepped back and inspected his work, then he asked me what I thought about the picture. “It’s her,” I answered and walked out the room.

  * * *

  Caleb was in love with Karen. I couldn’t blame him though. What man wouldn’t love her? However, that didn’t mean I was okay with him being in love with a woman he’d never met. I couldn’t tell him how I really felt because he’d swear he saw jealousy rearing its vile head.

  * * *

  Karen, wearing nothing but a lavender blouse, was sitting on the desk when I opened the door and stepped in my office. I reached for the light switch.

  “Don’t,” she purred. “Close the door and lock it.” She uncrossed her legs. “Now, come here.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked as I walked over to the desk. She used my tie to tow me into position between her legs. She kissed me. “Karen…?”

  “You said you couldn’t wait,” she answered. “Neither can I.” Karen unbuckled my belt, then she unbuttoned my pants and shirt. I stood there like a mannequin. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “I’ve seen you naked before.” She stuck her hand inside my boxer briefs and began stroking me. “Damn! A girl can get hooked on all this.”

  “Are you forgetting where we are?”

  “In your office,” she replied and unsnapped the lone button on her blouse. I was fascinated with her breasts, and my hands were cupped around them before I knew it. She wrapped her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist. Then she lay back on the desk, taking me down with her.

  I wasn’t sure which one of us knocked the phone and answering machine off the desk, but I was stupefied when a recorded message began playing. “Nigel,” the caller said, “it’s Karen. Thanks for the flowers. How did you know tulips were my favorite? They’re beautiful. And so you know, I feel like skipping class too, Mr. Greene. Call me.”

  What flowers? I didn’t send any flowers.

  “How did you know?” she asked and motioned for me to roll over on my back. I did. She climbed across me, straddled me, then eased her way down.

  That’s when it hit me. “Caleb!”

  Her sudden pause was nearly undetectable, but my out-of-no-where stammer almost ended the moment for me.

  Karen recognized my blunder and quickly went about rekindling the passion. “Don’t stop,” she begged. “Please don’t stop!”

  I put my hands around her waist and ravished her body. “Who do you belong to?” I asked.

  “You! I belong to you,” she feverishly declared. “I’m yours Nigel! Yours!”

  “All mine?”

  “Ooohh yes!” she erupted. “All yours!”

  * * *

  “You’re home early,” Caleb said as he emerged from his bedroom.

  I dropped my briefcase on the floor. “Caleb, you shouldn’t have done that.” Caleb’s eyes widened. I looked right at him, and without flinching, I let him know, “She’s my girlfriend. Not yours.”

  “The card was signed, Mr. Greene, so she thinks you sent the flowers.”

  “That’s beside the point.” I needed to calm down so I sat on the sofa. Caleb walked over to the recliner and sat. “You shouldn’t be feeling like that about her,” I explained.

  “Why?” Caleb leaned back and pushed the leg rest out. “I already know why, but I’m asking you. I want to hear you say it.” Caleb’s lips drew tight as his fingers tapped a jagged melody on the arm rest. “Why shouldn’t I feel like this about her?”

  I considered what I wanted to tell him and what I was going to tell him. I wanted to say, she’s mine. She doesn’t even know you exist. So leave us alone. What I ended up saying was, “Forget it. I want to know what was written on the card.”

  Caleb relished the moment. He thought he knew why I was so angry.

  “Beautiful. I can’t wait until tonight,” Caleb gladly revealed. “I need you right now. Let’s skip class. Mr. Greene.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it,” he answered. “Short and simple gets them every time.” Caleb’s eyes gloated. “So did you?”

  “No!”

  “Hey, I’m simply asking.”

  Caleb didn’t believe me, so I pressed on. “How did you know tulips were her favorite flower?”

  “Angela Townsend told me.”

  “How do you know Angela?”

  “I don’t. I looked in the faculty directory and called two of Karen’s female colleagues in the marketing department. I said I was you and that I wanted to surprise her by sending a bouquet of her favorite flower. The other lady didn’t know, but Angela told me, well me as you, that Karen really likes tulips.”

  I was angry. Insecure. And, I wasn’t ashamed to say that I was jealous. I had a right to be. I may have reaped the benefits, but it was Caleb’s words that turned her into Mt. St. Helen. He filled her with a heated passion I’d never felt in her. She was ready to erupt. Caleb knew what he had done and sat there smiling victoriously like he had sex with her. I had to get up and go to my room before I put my foot in his behind, so I muzzled my thoughts, stood, then headed for my bedroom.

  “Dinner will be ready in about twenty minutes!” Caleb yelled.

  I slammed my bedroom door so hard that a picture fell off the hallway wall. I heard the frame hit the floor and the glass shatter. A minute later, I heard footsteps in the hallway and the marring sound of glass being swept across the hardwood floor.

  “If Mom was here,” Caleb said loud enough for me to hear, “you’d have a raggedy ass for slamming that door like that.”

  “Mom?” I was floored. Caleb said something about Mom. Fourteen years and he’d never said anything about her. And then, in that instant, he said, “Mom?”

  I willed myself to open the door.

  The cracked frame holding the picture of Mom at her surprise birthday party was on the floor. I was in a daze as I stood in the doorway watching Caleb sweep the broken glass onto a dustpan.

  “Nigel, do you remember when we helped Mom bake my birthday cake?” Caleb asked, walking into the kitchen. He emptied the dustpan in the garbage before returning to the hallway. “Dad took me fishing out back while you finished helping Mom.” Caleb’s expression was illegible. His smile, cloaked. His eyes, hollow, barren. “I can still see Mom lighting the seven blue candles on my chocolate cake. Do you remember, Nigel?”

  Remember? I couldn’t remember. Not while the calamitous hush of utter disbelief rang in my ears. I was straddling time. Standing in three places at once: a hallway inside 207 Circle Drive; the shoal of Flatley Creek on a December night fourteen years ago; and in the kitchen of our childhood home watching our mother put seven blue candles on a chocolate birthday cake. In each place and time, I was shackled by fear as I watched our lives change forever…again.

  “Hey, Uncle Walter.” The last time I called Uncle Water was Christmas Day, but I woke up this morning needing to hear his voice. “It’s me. Nigel.”

  “I know who it is. I’m not so old and senile that I’ve forgotten my nephew’s voice. Believe it or not though, I was telling Girlie right before you called that I was going to call you and Caleb this afternoon. You’ve been on my mind quite a bit here lately. So, tell me what’s going on. Is Caleb all right?”

  “Caleb’s okay. I called to hear your voice.”

  “How much time you got?”

  “All day,” I responded.

  “Then kick back,” Uncle Walter said. “We’ve got some catching up to do.”

  * * *

  I lived with Uncle Walter and Aunt Girlie during the two years Caleb was in a coma because Uncle Walter was vehemently against me living alone in my parents’ house. His stance didn’t change when Caleb was released from the hospital, but he agreed to support our decision on a trial basis. The day before Caleb came from the hospital—the day before we moved in—I locked and sealed the back door. Dur
ing the two and a half years we lived there, I never unlocked the back door or set foot in the back yard or anywhere near Flatley Creek’s hollowed bank.

  * * *

  I knew memories were going to kill me one day. When people ask what dreadful accident or illness took me out, I pray Caleb doesn’t tell them I was slain by the memory of seven blue candles on a chocolate birthday cake.

  CHAPTER 19 CALEB

  Barney died,” Nigel told Barney Aman’s dejected lover, Frances Pelt, whose feet had taken root in the desiccated dirt around Barney’s grave.

  “Not you,” I finished Nigel’s assertion, then reached for her hand. Nigel gripped Frances’ other hand, and we lifted her out of the makeshift crypt inside Barney’s.

  Then suddenly, and I mean out of nowhere, this heavenly vision appeared and covered Frances, Nigel, and me with her umbrella. “Thanks,” Nigel and I turned to her and said. Her subdued smile snagged our hearts and hypnotized us as we led Frances past the curious stares and the muffled whispers, through the wrought iron gates of Springhill Cemetery, to the Bonneville that would transport her back to a life created by retaliation and governed by remorse.

  Nigel and I thanked her again and she replied, “Just doing my part.” That was all she said before vanishing like she appeared.

  I know it sounds bizarre—meeting the woman of our dreams while exhuming Frances from Barney’s grave—but that’s exactly how it happened.

  * * *

  Seven months came and went before we saw the Good Samaritan again. Then one afternoon last month, we happened to bump into her on campus in the faculty parking lot. If memory serves me right, it was the first day of the spring semester.