She nodded and there were tears in her eyes.
"Oh, Yale, I am a virgin -- I am! . . . but . . ." She put her face against his shoulder and whispered . . . "I have no hymen. I won't bleed." And amidst sobs she told him everything. Even as she told him she couldn't justify herself. "I am so ashamed. I must be queer or something."
Gently, Yale lifted her face from his shoulder and held it between his hands. He looked at her tear streaked cheeks and her wide-apart brown eyes. When he kissed her her lips were soft and salty.
"Honey . . . I'm nineteen. I have masturbated. I've got a book I'll lend you. I read it last year. It's written by a woman anthropologist -- somebody named Meade. A study of sex in primitive tribes. The youngsters in those tribes don't masturbate at all or have any neurotic sex ideas. You know why?
"Because, you dumb-bunny, when they are growing up and before the girls menstruate, they just go out in the bushes and have intercourse. In our society we don't let boys and girls, who are vastly ready to make babies, get near each other until they marry . . . which is usually ten years too late. Stop crying . . . tonight I'll tell you how I would know you were a virgin -- even if you didn't bleed," Yale laughed. "The trouble with you is right at this moment you are starving to death." He looked at his watch. "It's six-thirty. I think we have obeyed the letter of the law. Yom Kippur is over. Let's eat."
Sitting opposite him in a Howard Johnson's booth while they ravenously ate hamburgers, Cynthia felt a strange and wonderful sense of joy. The feeling of guilt was gone, replaced by the knowledge of her secret shared and understood. She knew for the first time how deeply committed she was to this tousled haired boy who somehow had a depth of understanding she had only previously experienced with her father. No . . . not even with her father, because with fathers and mothers there was always a pale of experience beyond which you could not go.
"Aren't you scared," Cynthia said as they drove up in front of the Hotel Pennsylvania. "What if they look at us funny? We don't look old enough to be married. What if they start asking questions?"
"Jiminy --" Yale said. "You are going to have me a nervous wreck. Of course, I'm scared. But they'll never know it." I'll act just like Pat, he thought. Very cool. Very certain.
He had picked the Hotel Pennsylvania because he was familiar with the location. Pat had taken him there once to a grocers' convention. The Marratt Corporation had had a suite of rooms to entertain visiting buyers. Yale remembered he had hung around for a while watching the interminable drinking . . . mostly men and an occasional woman buyer topping each other with the dirty jokes, one after another. Bored, he had left the room and spent the evening walking around Times Square, marvelling at the bookstores that stayed open until early morning. He had spent all his money on books, putting together such a collection that it had been necessary to take a taxi back to the hotel. At three in the morning Pat had still not returned to their room. Yale gathered from the conversation at breakfast that there had been a stag show. "You probably should have been there," Pat had said, thoughtfully. "It would have been a good experience for you."
Yale left his car with the doorman. Followed by a bellboy carrying their bags, with Cynthia hanging tightly onto his arm, he made the long trek from the door to the registration desk.
It was surprisingly easy. "We are on our honeymoon," he said, trying to keep his voice level. "We'd like a two-room suite for the night." The room clerk expressed no interest. He fumbled through reservation cards and shoved a registration card in front of Yale.
While Yale signed "Mr. &Mrs. Yale Marratt, Midhaven, Connecticut" the clerk passed the key to the bellboy. "Twelfth floor," he said. "A very nice suite. Twenty-five dollars a day."
When the bellboy closed the door of their room and they were finally alone Cynthia slumped down on a huge sofa. "I can't believe it," she gasped. "I wouldn't go through that again for a million dollars. Wow, the way that bellboy kept looking at us in the elevator. I know he knew! I turned my mother's ring around. See," she said gaily and flung off her coat. "It looks like a wedding ring." She put her arms around Yale. "Oh I love you so very much. Look at this room, isn't it beautiful. I've never stayed in a hotel. Do you know that?"
She flitted around the sitting room, touching the chairs. Yale watched her happily. "Come here," she ordered and poked her head into the bedroom.
"Did you ever see such a big bed?" She ran and dove onto it. Caught up with her high spirits, Yale jumped on the bed beside her. The bed creaked and shook as if it might collapse. Laughing hysterically, Yale hugged her. "I'll bet no two people under fifty ever slept on this bed." He bounced up and down. "I'll bet no two people under twenty ever slept on it for sure. We'll wreck it!"
As they kissed, their breaths mingling in laughter, Yale felt the soft touch of her cheek. Leaning on his elbow, he looked at her. "You are beautiful, do you know it?"
"Yup," she giggled. "And you are handsome. Do you know it?"
"Yup," he said.
She got up and threw a pillow at him. Suddenly she was serious. "Do you feel guilty?"
Yale lay on the bed looking at her. "No, I don't, Cindar. How can I feel guilty when I love you? You know I've read a lot of books on love and marriage in the past year. I think most people have the wrong idea of love. They can't get it out of their minds that it is dirty. The courses I have taken in comparative religion started me trying to dig back. Love of man and woman is all mixed up with religious dictum. I began to wonder how the belief in God came about. What were the beliefs of the ancient people before the Jewish tribes, before Christ came on the scene? You know something? I found a book in the stacks at the Midhaven College library that I'll bet you and Doctor Tangle didn't even know was there. It's called, The Worship of the Generative Powers , by Thomas Wright. It was written in the 1800's. Some minister must have had it in a collection that he donated to the school. I decided to steal it before someone else did. I'll give it to you to read. Do you realize that in practically every country of the world original worship was worship of the phallus and the female organ? When you think about it it was quite a natural idea. Those ancient people depended on fertility -- human fertility, as well as fertility of the crops for their very existence. This worship was fundamental. I think religion has gotten away from the fundamental. We worship at the wrong altars. We should worship the most amazing thing within our comprehension . . . the utter complete beauty and wonder of man and woman, creating and transforming their environment. Wouldn't we really be worshipping God if we did that? Because I love you, I love God. Can God ask for more?"
Cynthia listened to him, fascinated by his words and the dreamy expression on his face. "You know you would make a good minister."
Yale laughed. "Ladies and gentlemen, my sermon for today is, 'Adore Your Wife. How beautiful are her feet, and the joints of her thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman. Her navel is like a round goblet which wanteth not liquor. Her belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies. Her breasts are like two twin roses. Her neck is a tower of ivory. How fair and how pleasant is she, O Love, for delights' . . . there you are right from the Bible." Yale laughed. "I'll betcha I'd get tossed out of church."
"You stay there!" Cynthia said mischievously. "You think because you have read the Bible through that you are the only one who can quote from the Bible. I'll show you." She walked into the sitting room. In a few minutes she returned and stood in the doorway of the bedroom. She had taken off all her clothes. As she walked slowly toward him, Yale felt tears come to his eyes. He tried to grasp and hold the impression of her dainty, spring-like loveliness. "'I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valley,'" she said. "'As the apple tree among the tree of wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste'" . . . Yale put his arms around her. "Don't stop me," she pouted. "I can remember more." He kissed her lips . . . "Later . . ." he said.
He undressed and lay beside her. He could feel her
legs trembling against him. "You'll take care that I don't get pregnant, won't you, Yale?" He nodded. For the first time in his life, in a drugstore near the college he had bought contraceptives. "I have some things. I have never put them on before. When I do, if you laugh, I'll choke you!" He kissed her breasts, and her belly, and gently opened her legs. "I want to look at you."
"Why? . . . no . . . no . . . Yale, you make me embarrassed! Don't look at me!"
Yale bent over and kissed the wiry hairs that formed a triangle below her stomach. "Ouch," she laughed, "you tickle." He pressed his face against her belly and blew. The noise was like a muffled machine gun fire. They tumbled together laughing. She rolled on top of Yale. Her expression suddenly changed. Her eyes opened wide and then she gasped and buried her face in Yale's neck. "Oh . . . oh . . . you are inside me." She sobbed her delight. "I love you so much . . . be with me always." Her fingernails raked his back and she whimpered her apology.
They lay together. Night came gradually to the city. The sunlight that drifted into the room vanished and the soft gray shadows of twilight embraced them. From far below in the streets the noise of traffic and the occasional honking of an automobile horn, distant and in another world, reached their ears. The five o'clock exodus from the city had begun. Alone and in the wonder of each other, they whispered their love, and while they talked of their delight, Yale could feel the rhythmic embrace of her vagina, and she could feel within her the towering strength of the man she loved.
Later when he had awkwardly put on the contraceptive, she hadn't laughed, but drew him down against her, and she liked the weight of him against her breasts, and the climax of their love held within it a sharp ecstasy that kept them sleepily joined for nearly an hour afterwards.
"We've got to eat, don't you think," Yale opened his eyes and the room was dark.
"Mmmm I'll eat you," she said sleepily, ". . . with peanut butter."
"I'm too tough."
"No you're not, you're tender." She bit his arm. He yelled and slapped her on the buttocks. "You have a very pretty behind."
"I like it," she said. "It's so useful for sitting on."
He put on the light beside the bed. "Come on, my lovely princess, I will take you into the motley crowds, and show them what they are missing while you daintily eat a big steak."
She stood up on the bed. "Take me like this."
"Sure, come on. He grabbed her arm, and pulled her through the sitting room. As she screamed her protest he opened the door into the hall. An elderly man and woman were walking by. They looked at them startled. Yale slammed the door. He and Cynthia fell on the floor of the room laughing wildly.
"Oooh, we'll be thrown out," Cynthia said.
Doubled over with laughter, Yale said, "You should have seen their faces. Gosh . . . did you see the old lady? I thought she would scream.
"I have to go to the bathroom," Cynthia announced.
"What for?" Yale said.
"Dummy, I have to go."
"Oh, I'll watch you!"
"No you won't." She ran into the bathroom. He heard the lock being snapped.
Yale walked over to the window. The curtains fluttered in the warm October breeze. Sticking his head out he looked down in the street and then across the roof of the Penn Station toward the river. The city twinkled beneath him in a myriad of lights. For the first time in his life he felt that he belonged. He was a part of this wonderful, ceaseless motion. These millions of people with their millions of lights driving back the darkness were his brothers. The loneliness that always seemed to pervade his thoughts and cling to his very being was gone. He was no longer alone. His island was joined to a mainland of life by Cindar's wonderful, good love.
He heard water running in the bathtub. "Hey," he said, pounding on the door. "I want to take a bath with you." She opened the door, and grinned at him. "Come on!"
Cynthia got in first. "It's hot," she screamed.
Yale tried to climb in alongside of her. Finding that impossible, he got in and sat with his back to the spigot. He tried to lean forward and soap her breasts. She wiggled her toes against his penis. In a second the bathroom was dripping with water as he splashed her and she returned his splash. Water slurped over the side of the tub. Yale, blinded for a moment, couldn't see anything. "Help," he yelled, rubbing his eyes, and then she was kneeling in front of him, solicitously drying his face with a face cloth and carefully wiping the soap from the corner of his eyes.
As she knelt before him in the tub, Yale looked into her face. What is beauty, he thought? What is it that makes Cindar beautiful beyond saying to me? Is it her eyes wide apart -- maybe too wide apart for any perfect standard of beauty? Is it the shape of her face and her high cheekbones? Is it her body so trim and nice to hold? Or is it the warm intensity of her? The racial Jewish feeling that she exuded that this-is-my-man; come sickness his head will be on my breast, come health and I will walk alone proudly with him carrying his children or bearing with him his problems and worries.
"There," she said, kissing him tenderly. "Enough of sex. If you don't feed me soon, I'll be so faint you'll have to carry me to the table."
Walking with Cynthia through the hotel lobby, Yale was on tiptoe with happiness. Cynthia wore a light polo coat. Her black hair fell loosely on her shoulders. Yale held her arm. He returned the smiles of older faces that seemed to light up as he and Cindar passed, reflecting for a moment the glow and vitality of their youth.
They walked from 33rd Street uptown, heading in the general direction of Times Square.
"This is such fun," Cynthia said, skipping with delight. "I've never been in New York City except with my family. I feel so happy. Oh, Yale, is this what love does to you? Does it make you glow with being alive? I feel as if I love all these people bustling by. I love these stores with their lights on, and this lovely evening with the stars twinkling way up there beyond the buildings. The world is a wondrous place, isn't it, Yale?"
Yale tightened his hold on her arm. "Let's make a solemn agreement, Cindar. No matter what! Through the rest of our lives, let's be alive and curious and never lose the feeling of wonder. Let's always be crazily alive, if necessary. No matter what, let's be aware of the mystery and strangeness of living and loving. If I love you a million years, I promise to find you wondrous."
She stopped and kissed him and said solemnly, "I do. And let's be a little practical too. Have you enough money? That room is expensive."
"Oh, I am rich," Yale said. "I saved practically my whole pay all summer. Remember, I am a rich man's son. Thirty bucks a week . . . for doing nothing."
Cynthia remembered. She remembered Pat Marratt sitting in his wing chair, glaring at her and hating her Jewishness. Suddenly the gaiety was gone. The world had intruded. She walked along silently, thinking of how impossible this all was. Yale could never escape his father. The power and dominance that Pat exuded in his every action would swallow Yale up. She remembered last night. Aunt Adar had come into her room. "Yes, yes, he's nice, Cynthy, but don't forget he is a Gentile. And for his family you are an outsider, too. These things don't usually work out. Be careful, my little one, don't get yourself hurt."
Weeks ago when she talked with her father about Yale and asked his permission to drive back to school with him, he had rumpled her hair. "I love you, Cynthy -- you are so much like your mother -- you wear your heart on your sleeve. It's a strange world. I changed my name to Carnell, and our farm grew. The buyers who heard the name Carnetsky could see my nose, perhaps? You have your mother's nose and a pretty name, Carnell. Mr. Patrick Marratt's memory goes back a long way. I met him once when I was Carnetsky. Years ago. Now I see only his buyer. A good steady customer. Surprises me, though, that he buys from Jews. Is it good, do you think, Cynthy, to have a rich man's son for a friend? Like him, but try not to love him." He had looked so sad when he said it that Cynthia hugged him. "But I do love him, Daddy," she had said. "I do love him."
Sitting across the table from Yale in Toffenetti's, Cynthia
toyed with a large baked potato. The trouble was, she thought, she was in love with Yale and he was just a boy. This love of theirs, so precious, so delicate, would never withstand a future directed by Pat Marratt.
Yale watched her, and wondered what had changed her mood. "You know I read that after intercourse a man, or even a woman, may be sad. A man because in creating, supposedly dies a little. I have never been inside any other woman, Cindar. I never will be. And I think 'post coitum triste' is nonsense."
"Maybe the sadness comes much later," Cynthia said. "Maybe it doesn't come until you have loved many times, and wonder is gone and the man you love hates you because you are a Jewess!"
"Cynthia, for God sakes," Yale said. "After all these months, you think I could ever feel that way! I'm not my father. I haven't an ounce of prejudice or hatred in me for anyone -- for Jews, Negroes, anyone. I don't even hate Pat. I'll fight his ideas. I'll fight hatred, but I won't hate those who hate."
Cynthia looked at him, love in her sad smile. "You are the intellectual. The one who sees shades of gray. Never black and white. But your father lives in a world of good guys and bad guys. He defeats the bad guys by hating them. Hitler in Germany is like that. No. You'll never win unless you learn to hate, too."
Yale laughed, enjoying the discussion for its own sake. "The meek shall inherit the earth," he said. And then seriously, "Cynthia, I don't have any religion, particularly a religion that can justify hatred or killing or any act of violence, but I do understand myself enough to know that while I am not my father, some day I will be the stronger of the two of us. Not an Oedipus complex," he grinned, twisting a spoon in his hands, "but a very deep feeling that I am putting together a philosophy of life based on love -- not hate. Some day this philosophy will sweep up Pat and everybody else who hates." Yale said the last words with an intensity that frightened Cynthia. He was his father's son, she thought, but a tree growing from different soil.
The Rebellion of Yale Marratt Page 15