“I’m glad to hear it. What was it that you were so scared about, anyway?”
“I just wasn’t sure what was going to happen, I wasn’t sure how to act. You know, I do that a lot.”
“What do you mean?”
“One of the worst things about growing up in the kind of family that I did is that you know your life isn’t normal, but you don’t know for sure what normal is. Stupid little things like table manners, for example. I never learned decent table manners as a child. I knew from watching other people in restaurants and my friends’ houses that my family wasn’t doing things properly, but I could only figure out what proper was by watching other people. This thing today is a big example. My mother never mentioned any of the girl stuff that mothers are supposed to talk to their daughters about—hygiene, sex, none of it. I had to figure out things for myself, and sometimes, I found out later, I got them wrong. I never understood any of the dirty jokes told in the girls locker room in gym class. Anyway the long and the short of it is that new situations scare me because I’m not sure how to act, not sure how to react like a normal person.”
“Being involved with me is a new situation. Do you ever feel as if you don’t know how to act?”
“Yes, sometimes I do. But with you I usually feel free to just do what I want and try not to worry about what is supposed to happen. I know I say and do the wrong things sometimes, but you’re so patient, I don’t think of it as the end of the world. I’m never afraid when I’m with you.”
They went from the doctor’s office to Brian’s house. After a light meal, they sat together on the couch in silence. Brian began kissing her with a greater measure of passion than usual. After a few minutes, Emily began her now familiar squirming away, as he knew she would.
He smiled so that she wouldn’t get the wrong idea, and then said in a firm tone, “We need to talk about this.”
He had expected her to deny that there was anything to talk about and was surprised when she said instead, “You’re right. We do.”
“Let’s be sure that we agree on what it is we need to talk about. I was kissing you and you pulled away, right?” She nodded her assent and he continued, “Why did you do that?”
“I’m not sure, I just was uncomfortable.”
“Were you afraid I would do something you wouldn’t like?”
“No, of course not. I just like to have some idea of what’s going on. I have limits, things I don’t think are right for me. If I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t know if I’m going to break through one of those limits.”
“It might be helpful if I knew where your limits are.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, and looked like she was about to dig her heels in all the way to the foundation. “Would you try to talk me into changing them? I mean, I haven’t dated all that much, but one thing that I kept running into with men was the idea that their limits made more sense than mine.”
Brian spoke thoughtfully, fully aware that this could be an important turning point in this relationship. “I don’t think we’ve ever treated each other like that. I know better than to try to talk you into something that you don’t think is good for you. But how can I respect your limits if I don’t know where they are?” After a pause, he continued, “There I things I want to express to you for which gestures are more effective than words, but if my gestures offend you, they don’t communicate what I want them to at all.”
“It’s just that I don’t think sex outside of marriage is right, but I know if you tried to talk me into it, I’d give in and hate myself afterwards.”
He knew how difficult it had been for her to come right out and say it, and he knew that all of this was an article of faith for her which it would be wrong of him to disturb. But his mind kept going to back to the discussion they had had earlier in the afternoon. Her mother had never told her the facts of life. She acknowledged that there were things that she was ignorant about because at the time of her life when she should have been taught them, she wasn’t. He groped for a way of discussing this subject that she wouldn’t think was coercive.
“I want to be sure that we understand one another here, okay? You don’t think it’s right to engage in sex outside of marriage, but it’s not wrong for me to kiss you, is it?”
“Of course not.”
“It’s not wrong for me to hold your hand, or stroke your hair, or touch your face, is it?”
“No, it’s not wrong. What’s the point you’re making here?”
“You’re not getting mad, are you?” He smiled as he asked the question.
She looked heavenward with that “why am I putting up with this?” look. “No, sweetheart, I’m not getting mad, I just wonder where you’re going with this.”
“Well, the point is that you said you pulled away from me before because you didn’t know what was going to happen next. What if I had told you what I was doing, what if you had known that I wouldn’t break any of your rules. What if I had kissed you, and then said, “Emily, I’m going to touch your shoulder now. I’m not going to do anything else, just touch your shoulder.’ Would you have pulled away then?”
She was obviously concentrating with some intensity on every word he was saying, like the potential customer making sure the salesman is not trying to put something over on her. “No, I don’t think I would have pulled away then.”
“So you would have trusted me to stick to the rules and do only what I said I would do?”
“Yes.”
“If I said, ‘Emily, I love you. I want to show you how much I love you by touching you. I want to touch your breast. I won’t do anything else. I’ll stick to the rules.’ Would you have pulled away then?”
He knew she was getting uncomfortable with this conversation and that he must be very careful not to frighten her on the very day when she had said that she was never afraid when she was with him. He valued that statement too much to ever do anything to make her change it. He knew that if that statement ever changed, the relationship would be over.
“I don’t know. Other considerations would come into it then. I’d wonder if you would like what you were touching. I’d wonder if I would be a disappointment to you. I probably would pull away, I’d be too uncomfortable.”
“That’s an honest answer. I hope that you won’t always be uncomfortable. You see, what I’m getting at is, when you say that sex outside of marriage is wrong for you, you don’t mean that I shouldn’t want to touch you. You don’t mean that we can’t share any physical expression of our feelings, do you?”
“No. I just want to know that I’m not going to be in a position to call upon will power that may fail me. I like to know what’s coming, and be sure that certain things aren’t going to happen.”
Something about the way the conversation had gone led him to believe that there was more to this than she was saying, but he thought it best not to push it. “Sweetheart, I don’t have the same convictions about right and wrong that you do on this particular subject, but I respect your limits and I’ll never ask you to break them. I do love you, and I do want to be able to show you that.”
“I need some time to think about what you’re saying.”
“While you’re at it, I want you to think about something else. You said you’d wonder if you were a disappointment to me. There was a time in my life when I looked in the mirror and hated what I saw. I was convinced that no woman could ever be anything but disappointed in me. I don’t feel that way any more, and it’s because of you. You’re a beautiful, appealing woman, and I could never be disappointed in anything about you.”
Looking at him more directly than she had at any time during the course of this exchange, she said, “You do know that I love you, don’t you? Even if we don’t...uh...”
“Yes, I do.”
Emily fell into a routine on Sundays going to church and then making her way out to Brian’s house. The Sunday feast and debate society was fast becoming one of the highlights of her week If anything of par
ticular interest had come up during the week, or if she had read something she thought might be edifying, she would throw it out and see if it generated any interest.
On one Sunday, the parable of the Good Samaritan had been preached at church. Emily recalled to the gentlemen of the feast, as she sometimes called them, that she had once referred to Brian as her Good Samaritan. She said the more she thought about it, the better the analogy fit. Brian had been a stranger who owed nothing to Emily, but he had stopped in a snowstorm to help. He could have just waited for the ambulance and then left her, but instead, like the Samaritan, accompanied her to her place of recovery. And on top of that, Brian had come to see her every day in the hospital. She said she considered it likely that God had intended Brian and Emily to meet, because God sent the Good Samaritan.
Brian was touched by the thought, but was unpersuaded. “Sweetheart, if you want to believe that God intended us to meet, that’s fine with me. But why doesn’t God send Good Samaritans to every wounded traveler?”
“I’m not so sure that He doesn’t, although I guess it depends on how you look at it. I wasn’t trying to imply that I understand everything God does. Goodness, I don’t even understand everything I do!”
“Paul,” Brian asked, “Where do you come down on this great theological question?”
“Well, I see this whole discussion from the psychiatrist’s point of view. I’ll discuss theology with you all day if you really want, but I’m more interested in why you’re so negative about something that Emily values so much.”
Emily was surprised by the turn the conversation was taking, and not a little uncomfortable. “Why don’t we just talk about something else?”
Brian recognized the signs of “Oh dear, I’ve started something and now people are going to be angry and it’s all my fault” that he had seen Emily display before. He was going to oblige her and change the subject when Paul said, “I’ve noticed this before, and I’ve wondered if what you resent is that there’s something in Emily’s life besides you that’s important to her, or if it’s more simply that you just resent God.”
Emily was literally holding her breath waiting for Brian’s response to a question she had considered at the back of her mind herself, but wouldn’t in a million years have had the nerve to ask. She had to consciously remind herself, “We’re all grown up, reasonable people here, nothing catastrophic is going to happen.” She was trembling just the same. Brian noticed it, and smiled.
“I’m not going to punch him out or anything, you know. He’s the only person I know that I would tolerate this from. Everything’s okay.” Turning to Paul he said, “I don’t think I resent that Emily has something in her life that’s important to her besides me. But do I resent God? I don’t know. He didn’t send a Good Samaritan into the desert for me.”
Emily really didn’t know what possessed her—a year before she would have still been trembling and certainly would not have said a word. But this was now, and she just sort of blurted out, “You don’t resent God because He didn’t send a Samaritan into the desert after you. You resent God because you think He sent you into the desert. You think that God had it in for you for some reason.”
Both Brian and Paul turned to stare at her, and she looked around as if someone else had said it. What little nerve she had borrowed from somewhere was immediately repossessed, and she almost stammered, “I’m sorry. I never should have said that.”
Paul jumped in immediately, “Do you think what you said is true, do you think that’s the way Brian’s mind works?”
“Well, I don’t know, maybe. But I certainly shouldn’t have said it.”
Paul thought that it would be interesting to pursue her comment further, but decided not to. Instead, he pounced on Brian. “What do you think? Is she right?”
A heavy silence fell over the group. Brian walked over to the window, looked out over the city and seemed to fall into a trance. A couple of minutes later, it was Emily to whom he spoke. “Number one, my sweet, you have to stop being afraid that people are going to bite you if you speak your mind. We don’t work that way, especially on Sundays when we’re too stuffed to get mad about anything. Number two, I think I ought to be free to speak my mind too, but that I ought to refrain from being sarcastic about your faith. Number three,” and here he drew in his breath, and began speaking again with a huge exhalation, “maybe I did think that God had it in for me at one time in my life, maybe I even thought that God was some kind of bully for treating me so badly, but I don’t think that any more. And just to show that I don’t have any hard feelings toward Him, I’m going to take you up on your repeated invitations and go to church with you next Sunday. And as for you,” he turned to address the grinning psychiatrist, “I think you’re a bad influence on her thought processes.”
“You know,” Paul responded, “I think her thought processes are pretty respectable without any help from me.
Chapter 3
While it was true that Brian missed his Vermont winters with their abundant snow, he missed summer there even more. “It is never stifling in Vermont,” he thought with true Yankee superiority. The South seems at its most southern in the summer, when everyone moves a little slower, talks a little slower, and accomplishes less. Emily told him that in summer, the church has few meetings and low attendance. The whole energy level of the community seemed to decline.
He suspected that Emily must feel the same way about it. As June got underway, he noticed that she seemed to be tired all the time. They often spent Saturday afternoons doing household jobs in one another’s homes. One Saturday afternoon as they were washing the windows of his house, he counted twelve yawns in fifteen minutes.
“Am I keeping you up?” he asked.
“Huh?”
“You’ve been yawning your head off all afternoon. You okay?”
“I guess I’m just tired. I’ve had trouble sleeping lately,” she said, hiding another yawn behind her hand.
“Is anything bothering you?”
“No, of course not.”
“Why don’t you go inside and take a nap? Remember, we were going to watch that baseball game on T.V. tonight. You don’t want to sleep through it.”
The windows were finished and he was assembling a casserole in the kitchen when he heard Emily tossing and moaning on the couch in the living room. He stood in the doorway and watched, trying to get some idea of what she was dreaming about. Suddenly she sat bolt upright and moaned. He immediately went to her.
“Emily, it’s okay. You were having a bad dream. Everything’s all right.”
She had that dazed, confused look that people wear when their dreams and reality meet head on. Her face reflected the struggle to sort the two out. When she finally was completely awake, she was flustered.
Brian was concerned. Bad dreams are one thing, but that scream sounded like real terror. “Do you remember what you were dreaming about?” he asked.
“No.”
“Have you been having a lot of bad dreams lately?”
“Yes. I believe it must be the heat. It makes me so uncomfortable, I just toss and turn. You know the air conditioning in my apartment doesn’t work very well.”
“Have you had anything particular on your mind? Is there something at work troubling you?”
“No, really, there’s nothing. Let’s just forget about it.”
Brian resolved to do nothing of the sort.
The next day was Sunday, and Brian planned to bring the subject of the bad dreams up with Paul. Psychiatrists are supposed to be experts on dreams, and Brian knew that Paul was clever enough to get her to talk about it.
After a delicious meal, the three were comfortably ensconced on the deck of Brian’s house. It was the kind of lazy, sunny day when a person can be perfectly content as long as he doesn’t have to move. Brian said casually, “So, Paul, what do you know about the correlation between bad dreams and bad air conditioning?”
Emily pounced, “I knew you’d bring that up. Got yo
ur own private psychiatrist here, and you just couldn’t resist, could you?” She wasn’t really angry, as they could tell when she threw the cushion at him.
“Somebody having bad dreams?” Paul asked.
“Emily woke up from a nap moaning yesterday afternoon. She says she’s been having bad dreams lately because the air conditioning in her apartment is so bad.” It was obvious from his tone that he thought the explanation was pretty weak.
“Do you remember what the dreams are about, Emily?”
“No,” she responded, too quickly.
“Is it the same dream, or different dreams?”
“It’s the same dream, but I can never remember it after I wake up.”
“How do you know it’s the same dream if you don’t remember it?”
“When am I going to learn not to get into these conversations with you two?” she asked rhetorically. “I can’t win, you gang up on me and corner me into things. It’s just stupid for a grown woman to be having night terrors, or whatever. My life is going along just swimmingly, so why am I sitting here having my dreams dissected by a head shrinker?”
Paul had that psychiatrist’s habit of examining every utterance as potentially meaningful, and thought this was an instance where that just might be the case. “Is your life going on just swimmingly? Is there nothing bothering you, nothing nagging at some back door of your mind? People think that having a nightmare means they are mentally unwell, but in fact, bad dreams are often a healthy way for the mind to deal with things that it doesn’t want to face head on. Do you remember anything in the dream? Close your eyes and concentrate.”
She looked at him with a faint suspicion. “You’re not going to hypnotize me or anything, are you?”
He laughed. “No, I don’t do hypnotism. It gives me a headache. Just concentrate on remembering.”
“I think it had something to do with the accident I was in this winter. But I don’t remember much.”
“Was it at night or in the day time?”
Blackberry Winter Page 5