Beyond Nostalgia

by Winton, Tom

  Long shadows trailed us as we approached her front steps. She asked me inside for the second time that day. Again, I had to pass. It was already crowding six o'clock and I was running late for my job at Saint Leo’s rectory. On the front stoop, we shared a long goodbye-kiss, a smile, and then two quick pecks. When I said goodbye, though a brick hunkered down in my gut, I was ecstatic; ecstatic about having found her, ecstatic that my eighteen-year solitary confinement had finally come to an end. I was more alive than I'd ever been. H

  Chapter 4

  The week that followed, felt more like three. Since Theresa and I both worked after school and, as luck would have it, our days off didn't coincide, we couldn't see each other until the following weekend. Every day ground by grudgingly. At school, my attention span was even shorter than usual. I couldn't concentrate on anything other than Theresa Wayman. Classes seemed longer and more boring than ever. Some days I cut a few with Jimmy Curtin, and we'd hang out at the pizza joint across from school where we’d nurse Cokes and listen to the jukebox.

  At long last, Friday rolled around, and I would finally see Theresa again. I had no work after school, so I jumped the Q-12 bus up to Main Street and hung out at Kress' soda fountain for awhile. Kress’ was where kids from a number of local schools gathered around 3:30 every weekday. There was an empty stool next to Eileen Dolan, one of the girls I knew who went to Saint Agnes. She told me all the girls at school had started calling me "Dyno Deano" because all week long they'd heard so much about me from Theresa. How wonderful I was. How sensitive … and handsome. Dean this, Dean that ...

  Sure, I knew she liked me. But I didn't realize just how much. Needless to say, this news was not only a reassuring surprise, but it blew me away also.

  Eileen also told me to expect another surprise when I saw Theresa that night. I prodded the freckly redhead for more, but the most she'd give away was that I'd know what she meant when I saw Theresa that night.

  We'd made plans to meet under the clock on Main Street at seven-thirty. Theresa was to take the bus in from 'The Point' alone, to save me one trip out and back. As it was, I'd be taking her home at the end of our date and then still have to take the bus back to Flushing again. Besides, there were two movie theaters on Main Street and none at all in College Point.

  By quarter to seven, I'd already taken a bath, shaved, slapped on some Jade East, brushed my teeth and swished around a double dose of Listerine. I dressed real sharp and blow-dried my hair with my 'Hot Comb'. After brushing every follicle in its proper place, I topped it off with the last of my mother's Aqua Net. Ma wouldn't mind anyway since she never went out anymore, never even left the apartment. Hell, she never even got out of her pajamas and robe anymore. Anyway, after all the preparations were complete, I had to check myself out at least a half-dozen times in the bedroom mirror, that mirror of my childhood, a Grant's $1.89 special, full-length, circus-fun-house-quality mirror that Ma (in her better days) had bought and nailed to the back of the closet door. Despite the usual waves and bulges in my reflection, I had to admit I looked pretty good. Even that pimple above my eyebrow was gone now.

  Still running early, brimming with excitement and anticipation, I hoofed the six blocks to Main Street and still arrived at the clock fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. Flushing's busiest corner was abuzz with typical Friday evening activity. Work-week-weary over-timers trudged up subway steps onto the street, re-entering their urban world. Up and down Main and Roosevelt, buses - most green, some orange - rushed off in every direction, shuttling fares on the last leg of their commute home. Despite their best efforts, brisk-walking, side-stepping pedestrians brushed by one another on the crowded sidewalks. Across Roosevelt Avenue in front of the subway exit by Woolworth’s, the Hare Krishnas shook their tambourines and chanted like there’d be no tomorrow. In a single whiff, I smelled souvlaki, pizza, carbon monoxide and, on a passing lady, fresh perfume. The store lights grew brighter as dusk gave way to darkness, and the sun, already set behind the Manhattan skyline, painted pink the western sky.

  Under the clock, a pair of dead-eyed junkies leaned against the two most coveted waiting places - the mailboxes. Both of them were dismal sights in tired clothes and drab skin, their drooping backs supported by the local and the out-of-town mailboxes, both of them quick with the dirty looks each time they had to move to let some 'citizen' deposit a letter. On each side of the letter boxes were doors to a tiny cigar store and, as always, the place was hopping, an endless stream of customers filing in an out of both doors. Other folks waiting for friends, lovers, their connections, whoever, leaned idly along the old iron railing that skirted the pit of stone stairs that lead to the subway. When a long-haired college student with granny-glasses abandoned his spot to greet two book-carrying friends, I took over his space. Leaning back, one foot up against the rail, trying to look cool, I fired up a nervous smoke with my Zippo, as I continued to watch the Friday-frantic rush of humanity before me.

  But my expectant eyes kept pulling to the other side of Main, to the empty bus stop in front of a coffee shop over there. Each time I dragged on my cigarette, my anxious eyes clicked from the clock overhead, to the coffee shop, back to the clock. I could have sworn the minute hand was creeping backwards.

  But finally, at seven-thirty-five, an orange bus labored to a stop across the street, and I watched a dozen faceless people climb out before I spotted Theresa. She strode to the corner and joined a small herd of pedestrians already waiting for the light to change. As they cheat off the curb, they're all painted red by the neon light outside the Main Tavern. Theresa doesn't see me yet but I see her, standing out from all the others like a perfect diamond. I'm thinking again just how lucky I'd been to have met her, when it suddenly becomes clear what Eileen Dolan had been hinting about. Theresa had on a new outfit, collegiate clothes, all of it brand new--a burgundy, man-tailored shirt, its button-down collar rising high from the v-neck of a white tennis sweater and a pair of female-tight, beige jeans. She even had on cute little shoes, scaled-down versions of the size eleven chukka boots on my own feet. WOW! She'd actually gone out and bought all these clothes, just to make me happy. Hot-damn!

  When the light turned green, traffic stopped and the cluster of people on the corner scurried, urban-cautiously, across the wide street. The closer the group got, the more conspicuous Theresa became. She looked like a starlet making an entrance on Oscar night. She held her head high, delicate chin uplifted just a bit, not cocky by design, just an innate display of confidence and stand-offishness, mandatory deportment for someone so young, so pretty, so oh-too-sexually alluring for her years.

  Stepping toward the curb in her queenly gait, she saw me through the passing throngs in fractured glimpses. Her natural defenses simply melted away, and she beamed like the school girl she was.

  "Hi handsome," she said, coming up to me, reaching out for both my hands. I gave her a quick peck on the lips.

  Knowing that every man on this crowded intersection had to be watching, envying me, made me more than a little self-conscious, but I loved it. I relished it. Although just a boy, I now had something that grown men ached for but could never have. I could see it in all the passing, straying eyes. Theresa was something to look at alright. A rare beauty who commanded unwanted attention from the opposite sex, and jealousy from her own, everywhere she went. I was enjoying it now, but because of my own jealous nature, I would in the future have problems dealing with all the male attention Theresa attracted.

  Standing on the bustling corner, people darting every which way like so many worker ants, I asked her, "Where do you wanna go, the Keith's or the Prospect?"

  "Gone with the Wind is playing at the Keith's," she said. "Everyone says it's terrific. It starts at 8:05. But, if you want, we can check out the Prospect first and see what's playing there … we have enough time."

  Now, I knew that all the girls were flipping out over 'Gone with the Wind', so I figured it had to be some mushy, frilly love story. Nevertheless, being as crazy about The
resa as I was and thrilled just to be with her, not realizing I was about to take in the greatest film classic ever produced, I was more than willing to make an uncharacteristic sacrifice. Nobly, I offered, "Gone with the Wind sounds good to me, if you want."

  "Oh, Dean, that'd be fantastic," she said, knowing well and good how most boys who hadn't seen the movie felt about it.

  Arm-in-arm we headed up Main Street to where it runs out smack in front of Keith's RKO Theater. The shared excitement of being together propelling our steps, we walked faster than we realized. When we were about halfway there, striding past Hardy's Shoe Store where I always bought my four-dollar penny loafers, I told Theresa I liked her outfit. In the glow of the store's lights I could see her face had flushed a bit. For a few steps she didn't say anything and her confident smile turned bashful. But then it widened and she said, "It's just a little something I bought during the week." It wouldn't be until a couple of weekends later that she'd admit she bought the collegiate outfit, and several others, to impress me, that she had taken almost a hundred hard-earned dollars from the small college fund she'd saved from her part-time earnings at a College Point book store. money she had been putting away for her all important education, for two years now, since she'd been back in New York, this time.

  Unlike me, Theresa was a planner. And as time went on, that would prove to be one of our few differences. She looked to the future, while I only lived for the here and now, a philosophy that, in the not too distant future, I would pay dearly for.

  Once inside the theater, we climbed the carpeted stairs and I led Theresa past a green-lighted loge sign into the darkness of the balcony. But not all the way up. It was common knowledge that to take a girl to the last row on the first date was presumptuous. A guy had to show he respected his date by avoiding the last row of seats. But it was a huge sacrifice since you knew damned well that's exactly where you wanted to be, the most private place in the entire theater. As we tentatively toed our way into the darkness, up the balcony steps beyond the mezzanine, this unspoken rule flashed in my mind. But now it was irrelevant. Theresa was different than all the rest of the girls I'd dated, and just being with her was enough for now. I wasn't going to rush intimacy this time. When the time was right for both of us, I'd know it. But still, I wanted us to have a little privacy so I lead her to two end seats, next to the wall, three rows from the top. By this time, 'Gone with the Wind' had been playing for three straight weeks and attendance at the Keith's was beginning to wane. The flick was no longer attracting sellout crowds, and that was good. It turned out that nobody would sit in our immediate vicinity, nobody next to or behind us. We were so far up there that, when the volume dropped during the romantic scenes, we could hear the rapid-fire clicking from the projection window high on the wall behind us.

  It was during one such romantic scene, well after the intermission that we began to kiss along with Rhett and Scarlet. When Theresa snuggled closer to me, I figured it might be some sort of sign, a signal maybe. So I kissed her, tentatively at first, not knowing how she'd react, just a benign meeting of our lips. But soon, once we'd gotten a good taste of each other, our desires overshadowed any inhibitions we might have had. Arms locked tightly around one another, fingertips in each other's hair, massaging, we eased naturally into that ancient primeval ritual. We kissed away the rest of the theater, the whole rest of the world. Other than our two throbbing hearts and the cells of our bodies, nothing existed. For the moment, we were Adam and Eve. Everything else had gone extinct, or better yet, not yet been created.

  A hundred and nine pounds of solid gold in my arms, my chest firm against her breasts, only the arm rest separating us, our breathing quickened and deepened. Then Theresa surprised me. She slid to the edge of her seat, pivoting sideways, and laid her leg over the top of my thigh. Deep in my stomach a strange wonderful feeling stirred. I felt like I was going to lift-off, right out of that velvet chair, when ever-so-gently she pulled her lips from mine, pecked them twice, then went to work on my neck. Her face brushing inside my high-boy collar, she slid her open mouth along the thin sensitive skin on my neck, occasionally pausing, kissing it, warming it with the heat of her rhythmic breath.

  My response to all this stimulation was purely natural, not contrived or mechanical like it had been with all those nameless girls before Theresa. I slid my hand, slowly, from the long wispy hairs on the nape of her neck down inside the front of her tennis sweater and shirt, intentionally telegraphing the movement, giving her ample opportunity to stop me if she wanted. But she didn't stop me. Unchallenged, slowly, my hand found its way beneath a bra cup coming to rest on her bare breast. Ever so delicately I began to massage her.

  Slowly, but deliberately, she withdrew her face from where it laid nestled in my neck. Raising her half-closed eyes to mine, she brushed aside a tress of hair. Oh no, I thought, here it comes. She's going to stop me and I'm gonna feel like an A-1 jerk. But, she didn't. Again she didn't say a word, but her bedroom eyes cried out to mine. They told me, "It's OK, Dean, but you better be who I hope you are, who I think you are. Please … please be for real."

  Then, as I held her in my palm, feeling the hard swell of her nipple against my fingertips, she kissed my mouth again, lustfully and for a long time. Right then and there, in the Keith's balcony that spring night in 1967, Theresa Wayman sequestered my heart. I knew then I was deeply and irrevocably in love with her.

  Chapter 5

  Two weeks after 'Gone with the Wind', I had the displeasure of meeting Theresa's mother.

  It was late at night, May fifth, my eighteenth birthday. I was wearing Theresa's gift on my left wrist and had been stealing glances at it ever since she'd given it to me earlier that evening. She'd gone out and bought me that ID bracelet I liked, the one I was eyeing in the jewelry store window the night we met. One could only imagine how much it meant to me.

  My arm around Theresa's waist, the ID resting on the heel of my hand, it was just about midnight when we turned up her street. We'd had a super time at a small get-together at her friend’s house and were now cracking up as we relived some of the night's funny events. I remember our laughter echoing loudly in the night-time quiet and Theresa putting a hand over her mouth, and then one over mine, as we traversed the row of sleeping households on her block.

  But a moment later, two doors from her place, all our light-hearted merriment came to an abrupt end. As if someone had thrown a mood-switch, Theresa’s smile vanished and her face slackened.

  "Shhhhh," she said. "Listen."

  For a moment there was only the sound of our slowed steps. But as we got closer to her stoop, we both heard what Theresa had dreaded; that sad bluesy music. The volume was lower this time, but it was the same sad sax that was playing the first night I took Theresa home after the dance.

  I was more than surprised when her voice suddenly became contemptuous. After seeing her for three weekends now, I didn't think she was capable of such ill feelings. "Well Dean, she's home. I guess you're going to meet her this time." Drumming the door with her fingernails, her other hand on the knob, she turned to me then and said, "Thank God, her man of the evening must have left by now. She's turned down the stereo, the fireworks must be over." Then she unlocked the door. "We might as well get it over with Dean. You might as well meet her."

  We stepped into the blackness of the common hallway, and I fired up a nervous smoke. I kept the blue flame of the Zippo alive so Theresa could see the keyhole. The dim light it cast danced eerily on the door.

  Theresa sighed as she unlocked it, and I followed her into the dusky living-room. The only pale light came from a cheap plastic lamp, a sorry Tiffany knock-off standing forlornly on a tiny end table. The walls were bare except for one that cordoned off the kitchen. On it was a tarnished star-burst clock and, to the left by the doorway into the kitchen, an eight-by-eleven black and white photograph. From where we stood, I couldn't quite make out who was in the picture, but I did take in the rest of the room's shabby appointments. The spa
rse furnishings were old, mismatched furniture that my friends and I would call "early depression era." Even the room's focal point, the sofa, was years overdue for the trash heap, a hulking old celery-green monstrosity with a frazzled fringe skirt and permanent ass-impressions on the two end cushions. The coffee table, one of those cheap pecan colonial jobs, was covered with tattered old issues of Silver Screen, Modern Romance, and True Confessions, most with coffee rings on their covers. There was also a Ronson table lighter, a glass ashtray with a cigarette butt mountain rising out of it, and two, near-empty wine glasses, one with cherry-red lipstick on the rim. I figured Theresa's mother and her date had probably abandoned the latter during a soulless romantic moment. Against the opposite wall, a vinyl-covered portable stereo sat uncertainly atop a metal snack tray, still playing that God-awful, depressing music. The rug felt paper-thin beneath my feet. In the swarthy light, I could only tell that it was brown.

  The place looked like it was moved into yesterday after a ten minute, fifty-dollar shopping spree at the Salvation Army. Nevertheless, except for the mess on the coffee table and all the furnishings being so shoddy, the place was actually clean. I knew without being told it had to be Theresa, not her mother, who kept it that way.

  Hearing the muffled growl of a flushing toilet from behind a door somewhere off the kitchen, Theresa and I just looked at each other. She asked me to sit on the sofa. Before I did, I whispered to her that this wasn't going to be any big deal, to relax.