How could I have blown things so badly? Spending that fall floating in a bubble of carnal bliss, as if I were the first man to discover sex and, like Moses, was meant to convey the Word to the uninitiated. What had I been thinking, telling Annie all about Sarah and urging her to find a lover? “God, Annie, sex is exquisite. Go for it.”
Now, in Silverton, less than a year later, those words had come back to haunt me. What if Annie had already taken my advice? Or, like Laura Lee, set a date for the wedding? I didn’t have a minute to spare: I spent that last day of June at my typewriter. By nightfall I had drafted a letter I hoped would put Lieutenant Sigg out of Annie’s mind:
Remember one night, early in our new relationship, when we walked across campus and talked of us and of marriage? You spoke of freedom, of the need to live by and for yourself. You said you wanted marriage, but not yet. And the same applied to me—so much to do, so much to learn, so many places to see. I had to live first before I tied myself down.
Annie, I was wrong, and the month away from you has proved that. Marriage doesn’t fetter a man and render him a slave. Marriage means the loss of freedom only to those who do not know how to live. To you and me, who love life, who have hopes and desires, realizations of possibilities, of goals, marriage can open a wonderful and great life.
Annie, I am announcing formally and officially (since I always manage to do things awkwardly) that I am proposing to you. I want you to marry me. I want you to marry me this year, this summer, before you go to Arizona and in place of my going to Venezuela.
I can’t offer much—no job, little money, a few books, no straight path to follow, no set goal, lots of unanswered questions. But I can offer a hundred different ideas and hopes, a tremendous love of life, a strange sense of humor, and one hell of a lot of confidence that we can not only make a go of it but find in each other and in ourselves a truly great existence in a world that we do not understand.
Wednesday morning, 1 July 1964, Silverton. My God, a letter from Annie! In fact, two: one dated June 23; the second, June 25. Mom had forwarded them from Center. Both letters were postmarked Switzerland, not Germany.
Skimming letter number one, I found what I was looking for: “I love you, Ter!”
Some of her news was old, from three weeks before, when she overnighted in Paris on her way to Munich. Finally, some details. “You are with me in each adventure,” she wrote. I was up for that game. I was beside her— Annie and I took a taxi from the airport, eight lanes, cars weaving in and out like a Formula One race. We went to Notre Dame Cathedral—huge, marble floors, refrigerator-cold. But it was late afternoon, and the cathedral was closing, no time to linger. We got “only a glimpse of the beautiful windows.” En route to the hotel, we gaped at prostitutes straight from Irma la Douce loitering in a side street, flouting the law by flaunting their wares. Oh the irony—pious Christians at prayer within spitting distance of a brazen display of sex for sale. Ah, the French.
She mentioned my letter of June 15, about hiking the fields near Center. She’d gotten only four of my letters. I’d sent seven. Seven! She was in Zurich, but she was thinking about our spring adventures, the two of us at the doughnut shop, the two of us hiking Boulder Creek.
The doughnut shop: Me confessing that I’d fallen for her, Annie laughing like a loon. By mid-May, we were tossing around children’s names like Frisbees, jokingly agreeing to honor both literature and my coming Peace Corps stint by naming our first kid Ricardo Ishmael Marshall. “Let’s hope he’s a boy,” she said. “A girl would be mortified.”
Boulder Creek: Annie naked on that granite rock, as nonchalant as if we were fully clothed in her dorm lobby, and moments later as jittery as a gazelle at a lion-rich watering hole. That was Annie—bursts of daring flirtation with the free-spirited sixties, followed by a quick retreat to the comfort of the Victorian fifties. Me too. We indignantly challenged the conservative moral code we’d been raised by, but it was imprinted in our DNA. We were neither Puritans nor free-love bohemians.
Annie’s second letter was from Lausanne, Switzerland. I looked it up—southwest of Zurich on Lake Geneva.
“You spent the entire day with me, from the time I took the cable car into the exposition until I returned to my room exhausted,” she said. She was brimming with enthusiasm. Around her, everyone spoke French, Italian, or German. She had lived four days as a mute, she said. “Even if there were someone to talk to, I still wouldn’t be able to get along without talking to you.”
She was traveling alone. Without her soldier and his race car. Maybe it didn’t work out with Jack. I’d be so lucky.
The next morning, she was off to the beach—“I’ll be able to relax in the sun for as long as I please. I haven’t done that in two years.”
Oh? Had she forgotten Boulder Creek so quickly? That day was far more than the memory of a nude girl. It was a turning point, an acknowledgment that our friendship had matured into love.
Ann
Wednesday, July 1, 1964, near Strasbourg, France. I woke in the soft morning light. Jack was lying there gazing at me. He traced my eyebrow with his fingertips and stroked my cheek.
“Ready for new adventures, Fräulein? Or should I say, mademoiselle? Ready for Paris, city of love?” He propped up on his elbow.
“Can it top a romantic campout in the French countryside—in a just-the-right-size tent . . . as it turns out?”
“Nothing can top being with you, Miss Garretson. But think about the art! The history! The fine cuisine!” He sat up, waving his arms. Funny, I hadn’t noticed his muscles before. Now I was hypnotized by how they moved under his T-shirt. He really did have a splendid physique.
“But first it’s the famous Sigg fresh-air breakfast. My treat.” He pulled on his lederhosen and bounded out. I dressed, finger-combed my hair, and followed. He was hunkered over the Coleman, the sun highlighting his blond hair in a warm nimbus.
He served scrambled eggs, fire-toasted bread, and tea.
I washed the dishes. After tidying up, he sidled over with a mischievous grin. “Ready for your morning bath, mademoiselle?”
Bathe in an arctic-cold lake? Naked? “So, monsieur, how do you propose we ‘bathe’?”
“Well, I’ll put on my swimsuit, soap up, rinse off, and, bingo, good as new. How else do people bathe? But first I’ll treat myself to a real shave with hot water left from the dishes.”
In the tent, I put on my one-piece bathing suit, not yet brave enough to wear the bikini. At the water’s edge, I steeled myself. Cold had played havoc with me since I got frostbitten my first winter in Colorado. My hands and feet were hypersensitive, even years later. Jack was waist deep in the lake. “Is it freezing?”
“No, it’s great!”
I doubted it. But fast, full immersion is the only way to beat ice water. I raced in at full speed. Surprise. It was refreshingly cool. “Wow, you’re right,” I said. “But what’s this little animal?”
He waded over. I made a hand frog and squirted him in the face.
Our bath deteriorated into a noisy water fight—until we came together in a wet kiss. “This is better than any bath on maneuvers,” he said. “Ready for a back scrub?”
“Sure!” He worked the soap into a lather at my lower back and made his way up to my shoulders. He pushed my swimsuit straps aside and, as if it were business as usual, headed for my breasts.
“Not so fast, sir. That area’s off-limits to officers. Enlisted men too.” I anchored the front safely in place, turned to face him, and smiled sweetly.
“Sorry. Got distracted.” He soaped his chest and arms, chased the bar around inside his trunks, and dunked his body into the lake. With a hint of a lascivious smile, he handed me the soap.
Keeping a warning eye on him, I dropped the bar between my breasts, squished it around, rinsed off, and slowly backstroked to shore. He let out an exaggerated sigh.
We both dried off and dug out clothes to wear into Paris—long pants for Jack, a sundress for me. Five miles down t
he road, my skin still tingled. “That was fun. Thanks for insisting.”
“Yes, it’s great here in July. It’s a bear in winter, especially with a gang of whiny soldiers.”
“Do you always shave and bathe on maneuvers, even in winter?”
“Of course. Builds character. When we conquer little challenges, like shaving in ice water, it sharpens our discipline for the big ones.”
In Paris, Jack wanted to stay on the Left Bank. Map in hand, I guided us down busy avenues, around traffic circles, and across bridges without a hitch. He darted through traffic like a race-car driver, in and out of openings I thought too small even for the sporty two-seater.
Parisians loved the Sting Ray. With the top down and all the narrow streets, we were close enough for them to offer words of praise. One even shook my hand as he made his way across the street. Their delight made the noise, stifling pollution, and chaos more bearable. I studied Europe on Five Dollars a Day and identified inexpensive hotels. Jack double-parked at the first one and ran in to check on it.
We looked no further. Jack lugged our bags up two flights to a small, airy room, the organza curtain floating in the breeze, bright and cheerful as a Renoir painting. Private bath. One bed. I shot him a withering look. He shrugged as if it were beyond his control. “It’s a whole lot cheaper. Think of it as city camping without a tent. I’ll do my best to behave.”
I should have asked him what “do my best to behave” meant. Had I grown up in a family where sex education was in the curriculum, I would have told him straight out that making love—intercourse—was verboten. We didn’t have those talks in my family or say those words. Mom couldn’t even say pregnant. Her term was a breathless “P-G.” Lessons about sex were taught by metaphor, generalities, knowing looks, and moral admonitions: “Be a good girl, Annie.” I assumed everyone’s family was like mine, and I expected Jack not to break “the rules.”
But my own libido was pounding at the door, and Jack seemed the ideal man to usher us in. Intercourse? Maybe not yet, but on the other hand . . . No. I had to convey that I wasn’t going to let us go too far.
“At a minimum, I expect your ‘best,’ Lieutenant.”
He snapped a salute. “Yes, sir—ma’am!”
I wasn’t fooled. It would be a continuing challenge to hold that line. But I didn’t push it. No need to spoil our first hour in Paris. “What do you have lined up this afternoon?”
“First, the Eiffel Tower. See the sights, stroll the Seine, find a hole-inthe-wall café. It’s Paris. We go with the flow, mademoiselle.”
Atop the Eiffel Tower, we choked on the smog shrouding the city. That and fighting the crowd on the platform took away all the fun, so we cut our visit short. Below, we gasped at the menu in the Jules Verne restaurant. Forty bucks a plate!
We scurried away. Farther down the Seine, we found Café la Palette. Comfortable. And reasonable, even with wine. The waiters switched effortlessly among French, German, Spanish, Italian, and English. At home, knowing one other language was a sign of education. Here, speaking several was a way of life.
“French is so sensuous,” I said. “I don’t speak it as well as you speak German, but I could if I immersed myself even for a short time. When I was fourteen and we lived in Italy, I quickly embraced the new sounds and gestures. Italian would have rolled off my tongue if we had stayed a second year.”
“I envy your childhood,” he said. “Before the academy, Johnstown was my America. I want our kids to understand that great nations and wonderful people exist throughout the world.”
Our kids? Whoa! Or did he mean his kids and my kids separately? Didn’t matter. It was a value we shared.
At the hotel, I trudged up the stairs, eyelids heavy. But this was no time to be mentally spent. Again, what to wear to bed? Jack’s T-shirt seemed ridiculous. After all, this was Paris, not a campsite. My nightie would cover more geography, despite the slits. Too sexy? Yep, but I didn’t have anything else. Bra? It had been uncomfortable in the tent. But sleep next to him without one? Too risky.
In the bathroom, I ended up taking off my bra—comfort trumped prudence—and slipped into the nightie, steeled myself, and ventured out.
Jack leaned against the headboard in his T-shirt, sheet up to his hips, fingers locked behind his head. “Wow! You . . . you’re stunning. I . . .” He just stared. No, leered.
Frankly, it’s a real turn-on to have the right guy look at you as if you are the sexiest creature in the world, but at that moment I lost my nerve. “This is all I brought to sleep in.”
“It’s perfect. You’re perfect.” Beneath the sheet, a telltale bulge threatened.
“You know what? I don’t think this is a good idea after all, sleeping in the same bed.”
He dropped his arms. “No, seriously? Last night was the best campout of my life.” He paused. “But I’ll sleep on the floor if you want me to.”
I knew he would. That wasn’t fair, though. Besides, I did want to sleep with him. At least next to him. “To sleep with” held strikingly different images for the two of us, but it wasn’t the time to debate the finer points of semantics. Unbidden, I said, “After last night, I know how delicious it is to sleep—and wake up in the morning—beside you. We still have much to learn about each other before . . . well, I’m not ready to make love yet. I’m sorry.”
He took a deep breath. “I guess our feelings are traveling at different rates. Mine are at Mach speed. I already know enough. What do you need to know?”
“I don’t have a checklist or a speed limit. At Mach speed, however, you miss the nuances.” I sat on the foot of the bed. “We agree on so many big things. It’s the little things that can undermine a relationship. The further we go physically, the easier it is to overlook them. And one important thing about me is I can’t rush into this. Can you accept that?”
“Maybe I’m more willing to ‘overlook’ whatever might come down the pike, but I also respect your need to know more about me. What do you propose?”
Glancing down, I noticed that my legs were exposed up to my panties, distracting from my message. I untucked the sheet and covered myself. “My hope is that we can sleep in this bed and enjoy being together. My expectation is that we won’t make love tonight. Is that feasible?”
“Oh man, I didn’t expect to fall into bed and make passionate love right off the bat. Though to be honest, I hoped we would.” His eyes softened, even twinkled. “I still do. You’re asking a lot. It will be the biggest battle of my life, but I want to honor your wishes. Promise to let me know the second you’re ready to move forward?”
I wanted to leap across the bed and smother him with kisses. Don’t you dare, Ann. That would unravel everything. I slid from under the sheet, turned out the light, and propped myself beside him. The city lights cast our room in a romantic hue. “I promise, soldier.”
We kissed and stroked and drifted off in each other’s arms.
Terry
Wednesday afternoon, 1 July 1964, Silverton. I spent the day rewriting my marriage proposal and then retyped it on high-quality bond, not on the pilfered letterheads or paper scraps I’d sent Annie over the years. I typed it single-spaced on one side of each sheet, using thesis margins instead of my normal front and back from edge to edge and top to bottom. Typed with even strokes. No letters punched into the paper or so faint they faded away. No erasures or scratched-out phrases. No hand-penciled additions. This letter had to be perfect.
I folded it into exact thirds with precision creases and slid it into one of my newly printed envelopes. At the post office, I bought an eight-cent airmail stamp and a thirty-cent special-delivery stamp.
“Mighty fancy envelope you got there, son,” the postmaster said. “Let’s make it extra special.” He applied a red-and-blue “AIR PAR AVION MAIL” label and the yellow and green special delivery. “We missed the truck to Durango, but it’ll go out first thing tomorrow,” he added.
I headed for the Grand Imperial. Tonight, the old gang would be at t
he bar. We’d drink, we’d tell stories, we’d hoot and holler. And best of all, I wouldn’t have to start waiting for a response from Annie until the next morning.
7
Postmark Silverton
Terry
Thursday, 2 July 1964, Silverton. The recurring nightmare woke me again last night—Lieutenant Stud, snazzy in dress blues, on bended knee, asks Annie to marry him. She’s giddy. She accepts him on the spot.
No, I told myself in the dark, she wouldn’t. I was positive she wouldn’t. To make sure, I wrote her again in the morning, matter-of-factly, as if I were merely updating her on my comings and goings—four pages about my overnight hike up Kendall Peak. I also snuck in another plea:
I worry now about the letter I sent yesterday—wondering if I expressed myself well enough, if I offered enough to make you want to marry me. I worry that you will find too many objections or disregard it as a spur-of-the-moment outburst from a lonely friend, or that you are in love with Jack and remember me only as a close friend, or that you’ll reject the offer (or request, or plea, or whatever one calls it).
I know you won’t decide overnight and send a reply by Tuesday, but come Tuesday I’ll be expecting a reply and every day I will expect a reply, and I will be back in the mailbox routine as soon as I get home. How I wish I knew the something to say or do that would without fail assure our marriage. But I must wait, and wonder, and hope, and wait. I love you.
For the next six hours, I devoted myself to the Standard before a gang of us took off midafternoon for Silver Lake. This was my Silverton: work to exhaustion and then run myself ragged in the mountains to keep my mind off Annie—what she was doing and with whom.
Ann
Thursday, July 2, 1964, Paris. Blaring horns, laboring garbage trucks, and maids jabbering in the hallway jolted me awake. I lay there admiring this guy beside me. A man of his word. We had made it through a marvelously loving night with no erosion to our pact of restraint. I leaned in for a whisper-light peck on the cheek.
A Rendezvous to Remember: A Memoir of Joy and Heartache at the Dawn of the Sixties Page 12
