Every Time I Think of You

by Jim Provenzano

  As he finished changing into a sweatshirt with the name and emblem of Pinecrest Academy, I sat on a chair at his desk, secretively looking for some small memento to pilfer.

  “We should go into Pittsburgh. I want you to meet my sister, Holly,” Everett said with sudden enthusiasm.

  “We could take the train,” I suggested. “I’ve done that a few times. It’s only, like, an hour.”

  Actually, I’d only done that a few times with my mom when I was a kid. We had gone shopping before Christmas while Dad was at work, before she got her own car. I remembered the trips as special adventures as we’d chosen gifts for Dad. I don’t remember ever believing that Santa brought presents, but that they were shipped by rail. Even my own gifts were rarely surprises after the time I was eight. I’d begun making little lists of potential gifts, arranged by price and referring page numbers according to whichever catalogs we had in the house. Clearly, I had inherited my dad’s accountancy skills.

  Everett interrupted my thoughts with, “Don’t you have a car?”

  I resisted the urge to snap, “Don’t you have a chauffeur?”

  “I don’t have a driver’s license, see,” Everett said. “Never got one.” That would prove to be one of many lies Everett told me; inconsequential, all of them, compared to one great lie.

  “Why do you want to visit your sister?” I asked, in an attempt to divert him from my uneasiness in asking to take a family car into Pittsburgh. “Why isn’t she here?”

  “Oh, she stopped by for Christmas, but she works. She was done with the ‘holly jolly’ jokes a long time ago. And well, you know, sitting around with the family gets tiresome after the big day.”

  I did know, but in a different way. My mother’s brother and his wife ended up becoming the most fertile of pairings in our peasant lineage. After their fifth child, they bought a huge home in a suburban development outside of Scranton whose square footage probably matched Everett’s home, but whose design and décor more resembled a Days Inn.

  They became the default holiday host, since their assembled entourage didn’t export well. We endured the four-hour trek across Pennsylvania on usually snowy roads. My father’s parents were annually retrieved from a retirement village outside of Scranton. I disliked a few of my much younger cousins, for reasons that involved their habits of screeching, violent dares with toy weapons usually aimed at me, and their infrequent bouts of projectile mucous.

  Understandably, my parents and I spent the remainder of our holiday recovering by reading books and generally enjoying a rather non-Christmasy Christmas.

  “So, how about Saturday?” Everett pressed.

  “To visit your sister.”

  “That’s not the point, brainiac.” Everett softly punched my shoulder. “We can be alone together; spend the night. Together.”

  “Oh.”

  It was Wednesday. The new year approached on Sunday, and a new semester would begin the next week. I’d just abruptly become a man, of sorts. I hadn’t left the town border in months, aside from a Kansas concert at Three Rivers Stadium with a herd of the guys on the cross country team.

  Everett beguiled me with his sudden anticipation. The fact that he was so quickly adhering me to his family, his life and his plans, was heartening and so unlike the post-coital rejection I’d expected.

  That he employed a sort of bargaining chip only increased his charm. He, the scion of our town father, would owe me.

  “Sure.”

  “Great! She works for the opera company. We can see a rehearsal, maybe.”

  While that opportunity had little appeal to me, the potential trip posed a problem. How was I to explain the request for my mother’s aged Plymouth? I’d borrowed it for countless errands, done more for her with it, and never so much as scratched or dinged a fender. A few times, Dad had cautiously let me drive his newer Pontiac, but the majority of those trips had been local.

  I enthusiastically shared with Everett the scheme that a visit to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History would suffice. I would have to check on their holiday hours, be sure of which exhibit we’d pretend to see, then perhaps actually stop by and purloin a brochure as evidence.

  I would invent, and perhaps even create, an extra credit report needed for what I suddenly foresaw, and hoped for, as compensation for a spring semester full of delinquent exploits with Everett. I’d have to take notes to prove my research was well done. As a part-time stenographer for a small law firm, my mother often perused my homework notes for their efficiency. I wasn’t getting a possible full scholarship without years of mildly persistent parental coaching.

  As all these concocted plans ran through my head, I failed to notice that I was being casually seduced by my host.

  Everett had turned on his stereo, preset with a small stack of LPs. Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors began to play. He flopped down on his bed, bounced up once while scooting to one side, patted the other, coaxing me to join him like some newly trained pet.

  Glancing down at the damp remnants of melted snow at my pants cuffs, I remembered that he did have a housekeeper, after all, and with an attempted gesture of élan, I plopped myself down beside him.

  I didn’t want to force myself on him again. But after a few minutes of the both of us simply staring at the ceiling, our legs and elbows touching, Stevie Nick’s nasal voice warning that ‘players only love you when they’re playing,’ I did.

  Leaning up and over, I brought my lips to his, and with equal abruptness, Everett’s face and mine collided. A chuckle, a lip wipe with tongues, and our mouths slurped together like sea anemones.

  Everett slipped his finger between us to wipe away a liquid that I realized was dripping from his nose. Our bodies were literally melting after being outdoors.

  Our embraces led to some awkward fumbling on my part. I instinctively understood Everett to be the more experienced. I understood sex, having read pretty much anything I could find in books. Two years earlier, I’d gotten a special library card at the local branch of Penn State given to high school honor students. From what I’d read, I knew what I was, and what men did with each other, in theory. In practice, I fumbled.

  Our hands, much warmer now, and not gloved, grasped each other’s erections while under the confines of undershorts, and in Everett’s case, a fresh pair of sweat pants.

  He being the host, and more nimbly fitted for undressing, Everett pried himself from me, rose up to kneeling, shucked down his sweatpants, his erection bouncing free. But as I grasped it like a handle, he scooted awkwardly off the bed, sweatpants at his knees in a comic waddle, softly locked his bedroom door, waddled back, and directed his cock at my face.

  The next few minutes were an unrefined series of positions that failed to make my mouth accommodate his stubby girth and my lack of oral technique.

  Sighing with mild disappointment, Everett pulled out of my mouth and seemed to decide that I could learn by example. He straddled over me and clamped his mouth around my dick. I hadn’t a clue about relaxation or sexual response delaying techniques, nor, I suppose, should I have. His version done to me felt much more enthusiastic.

  Everett shoved his mouth down further upon me, my moans of pleasure silenced by him stuffing himself atop my mouth, his legs shifting to either side of my head. After a few yanks of his sweatpants, finally, we fit together. This gave me an up-close view of his butt, which enticed me to explore that option. But before I could share more than a few playful rubs and finger-pokes, we were busy exploding.

  The act of swallowing his bursts shocked me at first. Despite my attempt to move my hips away from his face, he was determined to do it to me. Besides, I would have otherwise left his bed splattered with evidence. Most important, he tasted pretty good, like glue, salt and sugar.

  His appreciative gesture made me laugh with relief. Everett collapsed opposite me, then used his tongue to wipe his mouth. “Mmm. Cream of Reid.”

  We were partially clothed, arms wrapped around each other, half-sleeping in a tingling bliss
, the stereo already on to another LP (Steely Dan) by the time Helen knocked on the door to announce that she had his laundry. Everett calmed me with a shouted, “Leave it outside, please,” a cozy faux-yawn, and a sleepy smile, followed by a soft kiss.

  I hastily dressed, then found my glasses, looked around for my boots before remembering they were downstairs in the doorway. The thought of facing his housekeeper, wondering if she would know or conjecture what had happened between us, worried me.

  “So, stay for dinner?”

  “Uh, no. Thanks.”

  “So, then. Saturday?” Everett was already preparing to escort me downstairs, as if he’d known that enduring dinner with his family, or whatever there was of his family, would be preposterous. I longed to walk back through those woods and stomp in the snow for joy, to lick my lips with what, or whom, I’d eaten. I wanted to avoid contact with other people, to savor this sacrament, my belated holiday gift.

  As if sensing my apprehension at more introductions or staff encounters, Everett quietly led me down the stairs and through the momentarily empty kitchen.

  “Come to think of it,” he conjectured as I fumbled into my boots.

  And then I stiffened inside, preparing for a rejection.

  “I don’t think I want to wait that long.”

  “Huh? I can’t just take my mom’s car. I have to … I can’t use that B.S. you said about a library sign-up sheet. I have to–”

  “Shh. I was trying to–” Everett looked me up and down like a coach whose rookie player left him slightly disappointed. “I’ll come to visit you tonight. Helen’s cooking leftovers anyway.”

  Perhaps it was the heat of being once again fully dressed in my parka, boots and all, but I melted again.

  Yes, he would charm my parents. They, like me, would do their best, on the surface, to ignore the oddity of their bookish child having suddenly acquired the handsome son of the wealthiest family in our tiresome town as his friend.

  That they were neither religious nor conservative assured a drama-free development as Stage Two of our friendship would be revealed. No, that would be the least of our problems.

  Everett turned to the kitchen table, grabbed a paper plate of cellophane-covered tree cookies, handed them to me as a parting gift, turned his head both ways in a cartoonish sneaky gesture before planting a parting kiss on my cheek and whispered, as he ushered me out the door, “We’re gonna be great together.”

  Chapter 4

  When the phone rang, I was in the garage taking off my boots. Beside them were my muddy running shoes and a few pair of my parents’ winter boots. I’d been chastised a few times to clean mine, but when faced with the logical explanation that they’d only become muddy or wet again, Mom always gave in.

  I sat on a small pile of cardboard boxes, cartons of maple syrup, probably. My father, once a lowly accountant before I was born, had gradually been elevated to district manager of Best Rite, a company that bought regional foods wholesale and resold them to grocery stores and shops throughout the county.

  Despite our ample supply of slightly dented cartons, cans and jars of preserves, cheeses and syrup, we refrained from excess consumption, mostly because of my mother’s frequently stated distaste for what she called, “Germanic cuisine.”

  Mom sometimes served picture-perfect recipes from the old magazines she saved, all with a sense of humor about it. She’d even put up a few of her favorite culinary illustrations under magnets on the refrigerator. I suppose it inspired her. On special nights, hams appeared topped with pineapples and pink cherries, or roasts were adorned with amusingly trimmed potatoes. It wasn’t until I’d dined at boyhood friends’ homes that I realized such meals weren’t a joke to other people.

  I heard my mother pleasantly chatting on the phone for several minutes. I thought she was discussing some bit of gossip with one of our neighbors. Mom engaged in social activities with a few of the nearby wives, but maintained an air of remove. Although she never stated it outright, I felt that she found most of the women she’d met in Greensburg lacking in intellect.

  She finally approached the door of my bedroom, where I’d just sat down. I’d been pretending to get a jump on next semester’s reading, but was half-seriously wondering if I could find out the possible genetic side effects of orally ingesting the DNA of a loved one.

  “Knock, knock,” Mom chirped. Her dusty blond hair was tied in a ponytail. Her slim pants and post-holiday sweater gave her a youthful look.

  “Your friend? Everett? On the phone.” Her upraised emphasis noted a hint of curiosity.

  “Were you … talking with him that whole time?”

  “Yes. He sounds like a very nice boy.”

  My over-reaction may have spurred her suspicion, since I pretty much leapt up, then adjusted to a false calm as I preceded her back to the kitchen phone, which hung on a wall next to a small memo pad.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Look out your window in ten minutes.”

  “Hey, how’s it going,” I practically shouted, my phone voice clanging with insincerity. Everett had hung up. I suddenly pressed a finger down on the receiver and invented a short one-ended conversation filled with a few too many ‘Okay’s and ‘Uh-huh’s, then said goodbye to no one.

  “So, your friend’s coming over?” Mom said in an attempt at casual bemusement.

  “Uh, yes?” Had he asked to be invited? Did she invite him?

  Everett would be my first dinner guest in years, since seventh grade, when a boy named Ricky Chambliss thought wolfing down mashed potatoes and burping were common etiquette. Several of the guys from the cross-country team had visited one fall afternoon for a team party. For the most part, they ate and muttered inside jokes, then left as soon as the food was gone. For a skinny bunch, they could wolf down Mom’s creatively arranged hot dogs almost as quickly as she served them.

  I told myself that my general friendlessness had more to do with my studious nature, denying a mild fear that my slightly sarcastic parents and our contented life were a bit boring.

  It wasn’t that I was embarrassed by my small home and inconsequential life. I was more interested in being elsewhere with the few friends I’d had until then.

  I just wondered how Everett had managed to charm my mom so quickly.

  “I guess. Yeah,” I stated vaguely.

  “Will he be staying for dinner?”

  “If that’s okay?”

  “Of course,” Mom sauntered past me, perhaps inspired to put a little more whimsical pizzazz into whatever meal she would prepare.

  “Who’s coming over?” My father’s voice carried from the living room over the low television tones of the evening news.

  “Reid’s new friend, Everett. Everett Forrester.”

  A pause, then, as expected, Dad asked, “The Forresters?”

  I visibly rolled my eyes, a small performance for my mother, as if we were nonchalant about our guest, when in fact we were both a bit giddy for entirely different reasons.

  “Yes, Dad. The Forresters.”

  “Well,” was all I heard, as if he knew his consent or opinion were superfluous. Amid the confusion of my having to for almost the first time fake my emotional state in the presence of my parents, I’d forgotten our charmer’s instruction. I retreated to my bedroom and realized its purpose.

  From my window, in the middle of that snowy field, darkened from the fading dusk light, he emerged from that now precious strip of forest. I wiped my glasses, put them on, peered out and remained fixed on him as he approached, a lone dark figure whose form grew with each step. Seeing me in the window, he performed a little snow-kicking dance while balancing something in one hand, then headed toward me.

  I remembered my previously unasked question, Where the hell have you been all these years? The answer, at least during holidays and summers, was apparently about three hundred paces due south.

  From outside, my bedroom window was just above chest level. Impulsively, I opened it, shoved up the screen as
well, leaned out like a suburban Juliet, and accepted a frozen welcome kiss from my beau.

  “You have to invite me in through the door,” he smirked, “like a vampire.”

  Chapter 5

  To say that Everett’s presence as our family’s first dinner guest in months was impressive would be an understatement.

  Everett charmed my mother by bringing a freshly baked pie, made by Helen, he explained in a polite manner that dodged the fact that his mother couldn’t boil water. My mother rarely served desserts, not through any dietary restrictions, but mere disinterest. She treated the pie like a rare prize.

  As I took Everett’s parka, his green V-neck sweater with a tie and button-down shirt peeking out appeared more formal than I’d expected. Then I realized his clothes were everyday wear at his school. Still, my own flannel shirt and jeans seemed too casual by comparison.

  My father was gradually bowled over as Everett, who had won trophies for the debate team (extemporaneous category), engaged him in discussions ranging from philosophy to national politics, all with a precocious maturity that I found a bit contrived.

  After re-crafting the story of our initial meeting that he’d told his housekeeper, again minus the snowy woods and any reference to it, my parents seemed less suspicious of him.

  Over a dinner that surprisingly featured fewer olives on toothpicks or side dishes with faces made of cornichons than I’d expected, the conversation revolved around my guest.