He took her deep into the river valley, over the rolling hills outside town where they had gone scavenging together many times, but never ventured far before.
“Where are we going?” Catherine asked.
“Today, we’re searching for crystals and arrowheads,” he said.
They stopped to munch on the apples, then began to poke around, picking up rocks and sticks and looking for Native American artifacts.
The sun was high in the sky when Leo found it, a perfectly preserved arrowhead left by the Abenaki Indians decades ago. Leo ran his fingers across the blade, still sharp. The arrow had been chiseled out of bright-white stone.
“What’d you find?” she asked, coming up behind him.
He opened his fist and presented the arrowhead with pride.
“Beautiful,” she said, reaching out to touch it.
“It’s yours,” he whispered.
At the time, it seemed an odd gift for a girl. She usually wanted hair ribbons or rock candy, but it was different and that was something she could appreciate.
That night, she dug deep in her drawer and found the first sculpture Leo had given her, a brittle lump of clay, barely holding together. She wrapped it lovingly with the arrowhead in a swatch of pink silk. If Cupid struck, Catherine liked to think this was the first of his arrows.
*
Despite their differences, Leo and Catherine grew close, starting eighth grade that September buoyed by the simple, sweet joy of the summer they’d whiled away together. They were thirteen, and for the first time in their acquaintance, they were friends, their differences molded into strengths.
Catherine was a good student—practical, intelligent, and persevering. Leo was an artist and a dreamer, preferring to sculpt with clay or play sports rather than study. Leo brought out the child in Catherine—the opposite of what her parents expected of her. She, in turn, grounded Leo and helped him focus while encouraging his natural talent for sculpting. Thanks to her tutelage, he passed his classes. The more time they spent together, the more temperance Leo showed, reining in his urges for the daring and extreme.
One Sunday afternoon during their tenth-grade year, they shared a picnic at the Bath-Haverhill Bridge. Leo ached to swing from the bottom of the bridge and jump into the river below.
“Absolutely not!” Catherine admonished. “You’re not breaking your neck on my watch.”
“C’mon, Cat—I’m not gonna break my neck. I’m dying for a cheap thrill.”
“And die, you might! Boys,” she said, with an exasperated sigh that made her sound much older than her thirteen years. “Why can’t you be happy just sitting right here?”
“I am happy sitting here with you.”
She blushed. “Well, I’ll never understand why you can’t be satisfied with simple things. Take me, for example. I want to sit here enjoying this picnic without the risk of your breaking a limb. I want a nice house like my parents’ house—maybe just down the street. I want a bunch of kids to squeeze and love on.” She watched him closely, gauging his reaction. “That’s not what you want at all, is it?”
Leo shrugged, tore off a piece of his sandwich crust and tossed it in the river below. “You know what I want. I want to travel to Paris and Rome and Budapest. I want to design incredible sculptures and race cars. Maybe win the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Or the Monaco Grand Prix.”
She beaned him in the head with a grape, breaking him out of his reverie. “The Grand Prix, huh? If it weren’t for me, you would’ve failed French!”
“If it weren’t for you, I’d have gone for a swim by now,” He said with a sly grin, moving toward the side of the bridge as if he were about to leap.
“Don’t!” she cried, jumping to her feet and grabbing his arm. “Please don’t.”
He looked at her long white fingers on his arm: his arms were growing into the tan and lithe arms of a young man who spent his time working outdoors; her hands were growing into the hands of a proper young woman who spent her time studying and attending social galas. In that simple gesture, Catherine had unknowingly magnified the difference between them, but he’d never loved her more.
“Catherine…” he began.
“Shhh,” she said, holding her finger to his lips. Her green eyes shone brightly, and he lost himself in their spell. Leo leaned down, cupped her chin in his hand, and kissed her lightly on the lips, the shiver coursing across their skin was like a current, starting somewhere deep inside and bounding them like an electric charge.
Catherine pulled away first as they stared at each other for a moment, speechless. She touched her lips as if there might be traces of magic there.
“What was that?” she whispered, a little breathless.
“That,” he said, “was our first kiss.”
*
Later that year, Catherine almost lost him forever. It was February of 1941, mere weeks before Leo’s sixteenth birthday. He came home from school one day to find his mother packing a suitcase. By now, Leo was used to her mood swings but hadn’t seen his mother this giddy in a long time.
“Caro mio,” she told him, “my dear” in Italian. She held his face tightly between her hands. “Anton has proposed to me.” Anton, a salesman from Boston, was one of Deborah’s many suitors since her marriage had crumbled.
“You’re getting married?” Leo asked.
She nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, he has invited us both to live with him in Boston. He has a beautiful brownstone on the harbor. Won’t that be lovely?”
Leo didn’t know what to say; Deborah sensed his hesitance.
“Unless you want to stay here with your father. But surely, you don’t want anything to do with that man.”
“I don’t know what I want,” Leo stammered, as he backed out the door.
He ran without looking back, all the way to Catherine’s house, his mind and heart in a tangled frenzy. He threw a flurry of pebbles at her window until she ran outside, alarmed.
“What’s wrong? Are you all right?”
“My mother’s moving to Boston,” he blurted. “She wants me to come.”
Staggering forward a few steps, Catherine felt stricken. “I need to sit down,” she said, and Leo guided her toward an old stump.
They talked well into the evening, Leo admitting that, although he and his father were alike, they did not get along. But Leo did not intend to leave Woodsville; as long as Catherine was there, that was his home.
As she watched Leo trudge back through the woods in the waning light, Catherine could not account for the wild beating of her heart. She had been afraid, afraid that he would choose to move to Boston with his mother, and although Catherine feared the drunken, uncouth ways of Ellis Taylor, she was deliriously happy Leo had chosen to stay. Only then did she realize the intensity of her feelings for Leo as she put a hand on her heart and promised herself that she would not deny her affections again, no matter what the cost. Sadly, it was a promise she would break. Many, many times.
Josiah Woods was sitting at the kitchen table when his daughter crept back inside the house.
“Who were you with?” he asked.
“No one, Papa.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
She tried to walk past him, but he grabbed her arm and pulled her in close.
“Were you with that Taylor boy again?”
Catherine chose her words carefully. “He’s not a bad boy. I know you think so, because of his parentage and his background, but he’s got a good heart.”
“I’ll be the judge of hearts around here,” Josiah growled, his wife standing silently in the kitchen, kneading a piecrust. She said nothing. It worked that way in the Woods household—Josiah judged, and no one dared to cross him.
“I do not permit you to be friends with that boy,” Josiah commanded. “And I absolutely forbid you to be anything more. Do you understand me?”
She looked to her mother for support, but Elaine looked away. Reluctantly, Catherine nodded. “All right. May I go now? I’ve got a school project due tomo
rrow.”
Josiah loosened his grip, and Catherine slipped quietly upstairs. He waited until she was out of earshot, then returned to his wife. “It’s high time we introduce other young men into her social circle.”
“She’s not sixteen yet,” Elaine murmured.
If the judge’s gaze were made of flints, it would have set his wife’s hair on fire. “She’ll be sixteen in July,” he said. “I’ll arrange for some visits.”
“Very well,” Elaine said and dug her fists deeper into the dough.
*
On Catherine’s sixteenth birthday, and not a day later, the visits began. Her father arranged meetings with the sons of merchants, attorneys, physicians, and teachers. Some were from Woodsville, but others came from nearby towns. Josiah made no bones that she was expected to entertain their advances; Catherine pretended to do just that, but in truth, she found most of them indescribably boring. A few were pleasant enough, but none had the charisma and daredevil charm of her Leo.
She continued to see Leo in secret, though their methods grew more complex. Gone were the days when he could risk throwing pebbles at her window. Instead, they concocted a system of colored flags that Leo could rig from the outside and that Catherine could hang in her bedroom window. Only they could detect and decipher the faint splashes of color; the judge would never know.
Their friendship grew deeper as the two continued to get close. Even as she dated “more suitable” young men, she longed to wander the woods with Leo, looking for arrowheads and talking about their lives, knowing that she was in love with him, but never daring speak of it. Indeed, the feelings she felt for him were like that arrowhead, hidden, yet sharp.
As for Leo, he no longer scouted the woods for arrowheads to give her; he had watched Catherine evolve from a spoiled, little girl into a kind, young woman. Arrowheads were for children; she was ready for something else. He began to wander the fields around Woodsville, collecting wild lilies and black-eyed Susans he fashioned into bouquets, which became Catherine’s favorite flowers. She hung some of them in her room and pressed others between the pages of her favorite books.
Despite their feelings for each other, Leo found himself in a rapid downward spiral. Ellis Taylor didn’t see the value in education; now that Leo lived with his father, Ellis constantly berated him for going to class. Eventually, it worked—Leo dropped out of high school. Catherine begged him not to, but he couldn’t be convinced that formal education had a purpose. Instead, he started to work at the mill with Ellis, which netted him enough money to buy a 1934 Chevy Coupe.
In those passionate months of their clandestine affair, Catherine came to know the inside of that Coupe very well. Leo parked it in isolated places around town, and the two spent long hours necking, taking that electric first kiss to new levels, exploring each other’s mouths, and then, tentatively at first, their bodies.
All the while, Catherine maintained a courtship with a local boy as a cover for her relationship with Leo. His name was Waldo Ayers—the son of the elementary school headmaster —and he was the ideal candidate as far as her parents were concerned. Waldo was as awkward and unpleasant as his father, but he was perfect for Catherine and Leo’s needs. If Catherine was seeing Waldo, her parents assumed she had abandoned any hope of a future with Leo.
In truth, Catherine saw Leo as much as possible, stealing away in the early morning and sometimes late at night. But between Leo’s job at the mill and Catherine’s studies—and the agonizing hours she had to log with Waldo, strolling through town and eating unbearably boring meals—they did not see as much of each other as they would have liked.
Ellis drank more and more. Though Leo could easily hold his liquor, he hated the sloppy, harsh manner his father adopted while drunk, so, Leo tried to stay away from home as much as possible. To fill the long lonely hours, Leo took up odd jobs as a welder and stonemason, trying to channel his thwarted artistic ambitions into work that paid. Sometimes, he raced his car on dirt roads in the country, driving for hours and hours, often with a six-pack in the empty seat where Catherine should have been.
What would happen when Catherine was no longer in school? Would she leave Woodsville and go to college? They rarely spoke of it, but it ate at Leo day and night, the drinking helping to dull the nagging question. Still, he could never silence that voice, wondering about their future.
Catherine found herself asking the same thing. Waldo Ayers was a convenient cover, but how long could the situation continue? How long could she lie to her family and herself? As they soon found, the deception could not continue much longer.
*
It was June of 1943, and Catherine was graduating from high school. She had discarded her cap and gown and was sitting on her front porch with Waldo in a pretty in a pale-yellow dress the color of daffodils, drinking ice-cold lemonade. Waldo looked stiff as ever in a suit at least one size too small.
“I’ll be eighteen next month,” Catherine said, speaking her thoughts aloud. “Old enough to live on my own. Old enough to vote.”
“Old enough to marry,” Waldo said. And suddenly, before she could object, he dropped on one knee. “Catherine,” he said, “you are a good woman. I believe you will make a fine wife and mother. I’d like to make you a proposition… to marry me.”
Make me a proposition? Catherine thought. He’s not selling me a car!
She watched with great sympathy as he struggled with something in his back pocket, but the poor chap couldn’t get the damned ring box out because his pants were too tight.
“Hold on just a minute,” Waldo mumbled. “Just one more minute… ”
Catherine wished they could laugh at the humor of the situation, but Waldo was never one for a good laugh. By the time the ring was extracted from the box, he had broken into a sweat.
“I’m touched and honored,” she said, as gently as she could, “and I promise you I’ll think about it.”
Waldo stumbled over himself for several more excruciating minutes before he finally bid her adieu. The minute he was gone, she flew to her bedroom window and placed a red flag against the pane—Leo’s and her sign for distress or emergency. In half an hour, she and Leo were in each other’s arms in the woods.
“I won’t let you do it,” Leo told her.
“I have no intention to.” She shook her head. “I don’t mean to make fun of him—he’s very dear. But never in a million years would I marry him.”
“How about me?”
Leo held her at arm’s length and looked in her eyes. “Elope with me, Catherine. We could leave this place forever. Go and see the world.”
She laughed, but then, she saw that he was serious. “Leo,” she whispered, “you know I can’t do that. My father would disown me.”
“So what if he does?” Leo kicked at the stump.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not ready to burn that bridge.”
“What if I am?” he asked.
She looked at him sternly. “It’s not your bridge to burn.”
He stifled his anger as Catherine picked her way through the trees back to the house.
The next day, she declined Waldo’s offer of marriage, much to her parents’ chagrin, but the knowledge that she had also turned down Leo, the man she loved, chewed at her heart for days.
*
In the wake of Catherine’s rejection of Waldo, Josiah Woods launched a new campaign. If Waldo wasn’t good enough for his daughter, she must find someone who was. Thus, Josiah and Elaine encouraged Catherine to leave for school where she could meet a man from esteemed lineage.
Catherine made excuses. Didn’t her mother need help with Catherine’s three younger siblings? Didn’t her father want her nearby to learn how the judicial system worked in New Hampshire? But, in reality, it was about being with Leo, so, he took a part-time job at the Woodsville Drugstore’s soda fountain and grill and continued to see Leo in secret. But she knew their meetings couldn’t remain secret forever.
In the late summer of 1943, a
few months after she’d refused Waldo, Catherine came home late. She told her parents she’d worked the evening shift at the soda shop, when in truth, she and Leo had gone to see a movie in a neighboring town. What Catherine didn’t know was that Judge Woods had stopped by the drugstore to get a root beer float and to see his daughter a few hours ago when the manager told Josiah that, regrettably, his daughter wasn’t working that night.
When Catherine crept up the porch stairs, Josiah was waiting in a rocking chair. Elaine sat wordlessly beside him knitting a scarf.
“You were with that boy, weren’t you?” Coming from Josiah, it was not a question, but a verdict.
On any other night, she probably would have lied, but Catherine was tired of pretending. She could still feel Leo’s arms around her back, and she missed him terribly. Besides, she was so sick of her romantic life being a perpetual façade.
“Yes,” she said, “I was with ‘that boy.’ And that boy has a name. His name is Leo Taylor, and I’m in love with him.”
Josiah rose from the rocking chair and pulled himself to his full height. Elaine put down her knitting. “Josiah…”
“Silence,” he said, peering down at his daughter’s face. “Listen to me closely when I say this: you are not in love with that boy.”
Catherine laughed aloud. “Actually, Father, I am.”
He stood towering over her as she looked up into his face with a fierceness he didn’t recognize. Elaine watched them tensely from her chair, coiled tighter than a mattress spring.
“I forbade you to have anything to do with that boy,” Josiah said. “You have flagrantly disobeyed me.”
“Not flagrantly,” Catherine said. “I’ve done it all in secret. But you know what? I don’t think I should have to hide my feelings anymore. I’m eighteen, and I can associate with whomever I please.”
With terrifying slowness, Josiah laid a heavy hand on each of her shoulders as she continued to look him directly in the eye. “Catherine Delaney Woods,” he said, his voice like a raw gravel burn. “If you carry on with that boy, you will rue the day you ever met him.”
Four Seasons of Romance Page 3