He turned me around and gazed into my eyes, seemingly searching for the answer to a question he was afraid to ask. He threaded his fingers through my hair and began to massage the muscles at the base of my skull. My head lolled back exposing my neck. How I wanted to feel his mouth on it, hot and wet. That’s when it occurred to me.
“I haven’t been with anyone, Wiley. If that’s what you’re wondering.”
I lifted my head and my next words caught in my throat at the obvious look of shame on his face.
He stepped back, releasing his hold on me and shoving his hands deep into his pockets. He turned away from me, his shoulders hunched, his confidence suddenly gone. “I’m sorry, June. Not for wanting you so badly, I’m not sorry about that. I’m sorry for losing control. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be with a proper lady.”
“You’ve been with other girls.” I said it before even thinking. It sounded stupidly accusing. Of course he had been with other girls, with women. Why on earth would I have ever thought otherwise? Wiley was three years older than me, a man of the world now. And, it was 1969. Make love, not war. He’d probably been with several women, several at the same time even, smoking grass and listening to rock music while they…
“June?”
“Huh?”
“Did you hear what I said?”
“No. I…I was imagining…”
“What?”
“Oh, Wiley! I think I should go. I don’t know what I was thinking. How I could have… You’re so much more older and experienced and I’ve never even let a boy get to third base, never mind smoked grass or participated in wild sex orgies.”
I grabbed my purse and started to look through it frantically for my keys, forgetting for the moment that Wiley had them.
“Who’s been participating in wild sex orgies? Wow, and I thought the fact that a second gas station opened up while I was gone was big news. Does the Pastor know?”
“Not here! Oh, what did I do with my keys?”
I looked up and he was holding them out, dangling them in front of me. I grabbed for them and he pulled them out of reach.
“You’re such a contradiction. Cool linen covering red-hot passion, innocence and wantonness. Have dinner with me.”
“What? You want to have dinner with me?”
“Well, I’m a bit worn out from all the drugs and group sex that I’ve been having as of late. So, thought I’d stick to just dinner for tonight.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
Wiley smiled and my anger immediately melted. It was a real smile, the kind he used to flash all the time.
“I moved into the old Turner place just down the street. It’s small, and there isn’t much there in the way of furniture yet, but it’s mine.”
He handed me a set of keys, not mine, his.
“I’ll be home after closing, around six o’clock. I’d love it if you were there. I’ll stop at the market and pick up some steaks, maybe a bottle of wine.”
“You drink now too?”
“It’s kind of expected at all the orgies.”
I rolled my eyes and turned to walk away, but Wiley was as quick as lightening.
“Will you be there, June?” he asked as he entwined his fingers with mine.
“Will you tell me about the orgies?”
“There haven’t been any orgies, Junebug. There have been girls since I’ve been gone, a few. I won’t lie to you about that. But… They’ve all been you.”
“Really?”
“I think about you while I’m awake and I dream about you while I sleep. I ache inside with want. Wanting to know you’re all right. Wanting to know what you’re thinking. Wanting to know if you ever think of me, if you ever think of me the way that I sometimes think of you. For as far back as I can remember I could look out from my bedroom window into yours. I wonder, now, if you ever looked back. I miss your smile and your laughter. I miss seeing your light shining at night. It was warm and inviting and it called to me, drawing me in. I asked your momma if she wouldn’t mind leaving it on as a favor to me. I told her it helped me remember that you promised to come home. She started crying when I asked her and waved me off the front porch, but she’s obliged ever since. Come home to me, Wiley. I’m waiting for you.
Love,
June.”
Tears welled up in my eyes. “You memorized my letters?”
“Just the really good parts,” he said. “That was February 12, 1967. Will you be there when I get home?”
“I’ve been waiting for you to come home to me for three years, Wiley Patton. I’ll be there.”
I remember walking down the street and turning off at the dirt road that was the driveway to what used to be the Turner place. Sue Ellen, their only daughter now lived in Austin with her family. Old man Turner had died years back of a heart attack while he was mowing the lawn on a day like today. Mrs. Turner passed on about a year ago. Doc Lyons said she died in her sleep. The house had been for sale for a long while. The last time I had been by, the yard was overgrown and the house was sorely in need of a paint job.
As I rounded the bend and it came into view, I stopped dead in my tracks. Although the paint on the house was still weathered and peeling, the front yard had been totally transformed. I remembered how Wiley had earned money all through high school, mowing lawns and weeding flowerbeds for the folks in town too lazy to do it themselves. He’d always had a knack for it. He claimed to love the smell of the dirt, the feel of moist, dark soil.
Wiley had lined the path leading up to the house with rose bushes. The pink and white azaleas that were along the front of the house and had long been neglected were neatly trimmed back. There were now bright yellow hibiscuses behind them. The lawn was neatly manicured, the dried, brown grass cropped short and edged neatly. I stepped carefully onto the lawn, my suspicions confirmed when the heel of my white pump promptly sank into the earth. I knew within weeks Wiley’s yard would be lush and green again.
I proceeded up the walkway to the front porch. I noticed that the hinges on the porch door were a bit rusty and that there were several holes in the screen. I placed the key into the door, unlocked it, and let myself in.
It had been a long time since I’d been in the Turner house. Almost every trace of it seemed gone. All the family photos, the familiar smells, the furniture. It was all gone. The living room was empty except for the black phone that sat on the floor. The old wooden floors were polished to a high sheen and the walls were freshly painted a soft cream. A faint odor of paint hung in the air despite the fact that the windows were open.
Just then the phone rang. I jumped a mile and then stared at it for a few seconds, uncertain as to what to do. On the forth ring I reached out and answered.
“Patton residence,” I answered.
“You’re really there,” he said.
“You thought I wouldn’t be?”
There was a long pause.
“The yard is beautiful.”
“Have you seen the back?”
“Not yet. You’ve done all this in under two weeks?”
“You’d be surprised how much a man can get done when he gives up sleeping,” he said.
“Feel like telling me where those letters are? The one’s that you wrote and didn’t send?”
“Nope.”
I frowned. “Shouldn’t be too hard to find. There’s not much here and I have a few hours.”
“June—”
I hung up the phone. Served him right. It rang again right away, but I didn’t answer. Let him worry for a couple hours, I thought. After all, I had worried for three long years.
I made my way back towards the kitchen first. Obviously Wiley hadn’t spent any of the time in which he wasn’t sleeping doing the dishes. The sink was piled high with them. The kitchen was half-painted a cheery yellow. The table and half of the floor were covered with tarp. The counters were bare. I walked over to the refrigerator and peered inside. There was a pitcher of iced tea, a six-pack of beer and a
bunch of fresh tomatoes and cucumbers that I assumed he had gotten from Mrs. Mason, next door.
I opened the cupboard door next to the sink, pulled down a glass, poured myself some tea, and then went to check out the back yard.
The grass in the back was every bit as brown and dry as the grass in the front. Wiley had begun to lay a brick patio to the right of the door and there was a grill in the corner. The former vegetable garden was overgrown with weeds and several of the pickets of the surrounding fence were missing, or broken. The old magnolia was still there though, as grand as always. Hanging from one of the thick lower branches was a white wicker love seat. I could easily imagine passing a warm summer evening there with Wiley, swinging back and forth, the smell of honeysuckle wafting through the air and the sound of crickets in the distance.
I set down my glass of tea, shook off what I recognized as a dangerous dream, and decided to get to work on the dishes. There wasn’t an apron in sight and despite my earlier teasing I felt reluctant to rummage through Wiley’s things. So I took great care as I first washed and dried the dishes, then prepared a cucumber and tomato salad.
I clipped some flowers from the front yard and placed them in a tall glass. As I removed the tarp from the kitchen table so that I could set it for dinner a hidden paintbrush dropped out of the mass of fabric, marring the skirt of my dress with a streak of yellow. I couldn’t believe it. I had spent so much time selecting just the right dress, and now it was ruined! Well, no sense crying over spilt milk as Momma would say. I swiftly tossed the tarp outside along with the one that cover the floor, then I dropped the brush into the kitchen sink and went in search of the bathroom.
I slipped out of my dress and turned on the cold water. The back of the sink was lined with a tube of toothpaste, a razor, and a can of shaving cream. I resisted the urge to open the medicine cabinet or peek behind the shower curtain. Instead, I used a bit of the hand-soap and a lot of water to attempt to wash away the stain. Momma was going to have a fit, plain and simple. The stain went from a small bright yellow smudge to something paler and the size of a dinner plate.
I left the dress to soak for a bit and went in search of something to wear. There were only two other rooms in the small house. The first one was empty, except for the dust. It was stiflingly hot inside and the space still smelled faintly of must. The second room held a big four-poster bed. It was covered in a quilt that I recognized as having been made by Wiley’s grandmother. I remembered the year that she won a prize for it at the county fair. She was so proud. The windows that looked onto the back yard were open and covered with sheer curtains. There was a nightstand on one side of the bed that held a small lamp and a large stack of books.
Even though I knew beyond any doubt that no one could see in through the curtains I was terribly self conscious of the fact that I was standing in the middle of Wiley’s bedroom wearing only my bra, panties, garters and stockings, and white leather pumps. If I had worn a slip like I’d been raised to do it wouldn’t have been so bad. Nice girls always wear slips, Momma says.
I opened Wiley’s closet and pulled a clean white dress-shirt off of the hanger. Right before closing the door, something on the floor of the closet caught my eye. I stared at it for a solid minute, then I closed the door and slipped on the shirt. The shirt covered just past the tops of the stocking, it wasn’t much shorter than the dresses most girls were wearing these days, really. I buttoned it up, rolled up the sleeves, and then sat on the edge of Wiley’s bed and just looked at the closed closet door. Temptation is an awful thing. It has a way of gnawing at you.
I slowly stood up and walked back over towards the closet, glancing in the direction of the window and then the hallway. Don’t ask me why, but when I reached the closet door I took extra care to open it quietly. Then, once again, I gazed down on what appeared to be a tall stack of magazines. There must have been nearly three-dozen and I’d never even seen one before.
I crouched down and lifted the top one off the stack. The July cover-girl was sitting on a beach blanket glancing back at me over one shoulder. Her dark wavy hair was loose and flowing and her eyes were perhaps the brightest and clearest blue I had ever seen. The top of her two-piece swimsuit was tossed carelessly on the blanket behind her. I never would have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes. Wiley Patton read Playboy.
I picked up the magazine and noticed at once a folded piece of paper, sticking up out of it like a bookmark. I held my breath and opened it up. It was marking a page that contained an article called The Sensual ‘Letting Go’ Movement. My eyes drifted once again to the hallway and my heart began to beat faster and faster. The paper that was marking the page had a handwritten note on it from Jared Montgomery. Jared was the same age as Wiley, they’d gone to school together, had been the best of friends in fact. Jared didn’t go to Vietnam. He’d gone to Baylor instead. He had one more year to go before he finished and was home for the summer. I’d seen him in church the Sunday before we left for the shore. He certainly hadn’t looked like someone who’d been harboring a stack of Playboys.
The note didn’t say much. Just that the magazines were a homecoming present and that his momma wanted Wiley to come to dinner on Sunday after church. I marveled for a moment at the sheer fact that Jared could write a note containing the words “momma” and “church” and then slip it between the pages of a Playboy magazine. Then I wondered where he’d gotten them. Certainly not at Baylor, they wouldn’t abide by that at all. It occurred to me that maybe Wiley just put them in his closet so as not to be tempted by them. He might not even have looked at them at all. Or, he could have been using Jared’s note as a marking place and been methodically going through each one, cover to cover…ending with Miss July 1969.
I stood up and walked over to the bed. I figured that Wiley wouldn’t be home for at least another hour and that was plenty long enough for me to read about ‘Letting Go’. There really wasn’t anyplace to sit in the house except at the kitchen table and I certainly wasn’t going to read a dirty magazine in the kitchen. So, I stretched out across Wiley’s bed face down with the magazine in front of me. I was facing the window, so the light was good. Just as I was about to read the first sentence I heard a long, drawn out whistle.
Quick as a flash I turned around, pulling my legs up underneath me, hiding the magazine behind my back and trying to pull down the shirt all at once. I couldn’t ever remember moving so fast in my life. Wiley was leaning up against the doorjamb with a huge smile on his face.
“You… You’re home early.”
“I would have come even sooner if I’d have known what was waiting for me,” he said as he walked into the room.
“I got paint on my dress. It’s soaking in the bathroom. I hope you don’t mind I had to borrow—”
“Mind? Do I mind coming home to find a beautiful woman stretched out across my bed wearing only stockings and… What else do you have on under there?” he asked stepping closer.
“Nothing,” I said quickly. Then I amended, “I mean the usual. I didn’t wear a slip today. It was so hot. Momma wouldn’t approve. She’s always going on about how nice girls… And, I’m a nice girl, Wiley. I don’t want you thinking—”
He sat down on the edge of the bed and silenced me with a soft kiss.
“I’m having a hard time thinking about anything other than how much I want you right now, June. That’s the plain truth. But, I don’t want to scare you, or rush you. And, I certainly don’t want to offend you. I’m going to go take a shower, a long, cold shower. Then we’ll have dinner. Okay?”
“Okay,” I agreed, still holding the magazine behind my back.
Wiley got up, went to his closet, pulled out some clean clothes, and then headed out the door. Just as he reached the threshold I worked up the courage to ask him.
“What’s the ‘Letting Go Movement’?”
“The what?” He turned around to face me, his expression convincingly confused.
I pulled the magazine out fr
om behind my back and held it out for his inspection. “The ‘Letting Go Movement’. I’m assuming it’s something…sexual.”
Wiley’s eyes flitted over to his closet and than back towards the magazine that I was still holding up.
“Junebug! Are you looking at my Playboys?”
“I was curious. You don’t have to explain it, if it’s too embarrassing. Go take your shower. I’ll read up on it all on my own. Can you check on my dress?”
I turned my attention back towards the article, but didn’t get too far. Wiley walked over, sat down next to me and peered over my shoulder.
“Hmm. The truth is I don’t know, June. I’m not one of those guys that reads Playboy ‘cause of the articles. I mostly look at the naked women.”
Wiley was sitting so close to me I could feel the heat radiating from his body.
“You don’t say.”
“It’s true, I’m afraid.”
“What would you think if I told you that I liked to look at pictures of naked men? What would you think then?”
“Where does a girl like you get pictures of naked men?”
“I don’t have a any pictures of naked men. I was asking what if.”
“You’re disapproving of the Playboys.”
I thought about it long and hard. I could tell that my silence was making Wiley uncomfortable. It wasn’t so much that I thought it was morally wrong. I know plenty of people would have. But the truth of it was I just didn’t like thinking about him looking at other girls in that way, in a sexual way. So I took a deep breath and told him as much.
“I don’t like the idea of you looking at other women that way, women who aren’t me. It’s like they’re getting to share something with you, some level of intimacy that I’m not. And I’ve yearned so much for it, Wiley. Am I crazy? Do we have a chance? Do I have a chance?”
Wiley took the magazine out of my hands and tossed it onto the floor at the foot of the bed. Then he got up and walked over to his closet. I watched him open the door, reach up, pull down an old shoebox and stare inside. He sighed. It was a heavy sigh and it filled me with a sense of foreboding.
June in August Page 2