by Gail Hewitt
"You look as if you're going to a costume party in your mother's clothes," he laughed.
Maggie was mortified. "My mother would never . . . "
Tom came over to her and, putting his arms around her waist, looked up at her. "Where on earth did you get this?"
"I bought it, at the Novelties place on Cheshire Bridge."
He shook his head. "Take it off. You don't need this kind of crap."
It was then that he saw the bag from Novelties, lying on the bed. Letting go of her waist, he dumped out its contents, and Maggie's face blazed as, one by one, he noncommittally examined each of the unwrapped items.
"Do you even know what all of this stuff is for?"
"Of course, I do. I read it in a book that Carolyn has."
He shook his head again, picking up a package of clips intended, according to Carolyn's book, to be attached to various female erogenous zones. "These things hurt, you know," he told her. "Some guys get off on that. I don't."
He held up a very businesslike-looking paddle with holes cut into it. "Did you plan on using this on me, or me using it on you? Either way, it doesn't do anything for me," he laughed, dropping it back into the bag.
"I just . . . " she started to say, knowing she was fire-engine red, and then fell silent as he continued to examine what she'd bought.
"As for this," he held up a package holding the biggest dildo that Novelties had had. "This thing would tear you up." He laughed grimly. "And I certainly wouldn't get off on that."
She sank down on the bed and put her head in her hands, feeling like nothing so much as crying.
"I'm sorry," he said, at last realizing her embarrassment. "I'm not making fun of you, honestly. But why did you get this stuff?"
"You've just been with so many girls," she said, "and I want to be as interesting as they were."
He took her by the shoulders, his hands catching a little on the cheap fabric. "That's fucking silly. I won't deny I've known a lot of girls. I've had sex with a lot of girls, but guys have sex for different reasons. With those other girls it was just something to do, a fun something, sure, but that was all. With you, sex is our getting to know each other in the closest possible way. We don't need stuff like this. Don't you know you're more interesting to me than anyone in the world? If you were wearing a barrel, with your hair all messed up and no lipstick and dirt on your nose and your forehead sunburned and, and, anything else unbecoming you can think of, you'd still be more interesting to me than anyone else."
"I'm sorry," she said contritely.
He gathered all the stuff into the Novelties bag. "They'll probably take back these things since you haven't opened them. As for what you're wearing, it does have the advantage of coming off easily."
He grinned and tugged at the straps, and suddenly everything was all right again. She giggled and started unbuttoning his shirt.
On her way home, she stopped by a dumpster next to a restaurant and, when she was sure no one was looking, tossed the Novelties bag into it. She knew Tom would disapprove, for she'd noticed he was very practical — he'd almost certainly consider this money thrown away. Still, there was no way she was going back into Novelties, nor would she show up at the carriage house with a bag of sex toys. Not that she thought Carolyn would care, but so far she'd been remarkably uninterested in what Maggie was doing with her free afternoons and Saturdays, seeming to have accepted without question that her roommate was at school in discussion groups or at the library. There was no point in making her wonder if something else were going on. Her face grew hot as she thought how Tom had laughed at her. Still, in a way, she'd been glad he reacted as he had, for it had led to his saying things he'd never before put into words and she loved knowing he felt that way. She fell asleep that night thinking of how dear he was to her and how precious the world they had made inside the tiny apartment.
The tenor of their lovemaking shifted slightly after that. It was as if her willingness to please him, even in ways that weren't necessarily what he wanted, had made him feel more free in their relations. His lovemaking, always energetic, became even more so. He had been good at sex. He'd made her do things and feel things that she now knew bordered on BDSM. Even then, she'd understood they were unconventional. That had not mattered. At the time, in fact, it was a point of pride with her that — although inexperienced with little to bring to their lovemaking — she made up for it by the fact that she had allowed him to do whatever he wanted to her and had eagerly done whatever he asked of her. It was then, too, that he had begun to take the photographs, all of her in various stages of undress, posing any way he asked, doing whatever he asked her to do, as from first one angle and then another he took picture after picture with the Polaroid camera that he kept in a drawer of the bedside table.
After the breakup, she began to wonder about the pictures, where they were and how carefully he guarded them — if indeed he guarded them at all. It now struck her as odd that, much as she had worried about the photographs in that first year, over time the concern had diminished almost to the vanishing point. As she grew older and more experienced, she realized that his photographs of her were probably few among many. It had almost certainly been his habit to take pictures of all the females with whom he had sex. If he'd even kept any of the old Polaroids they were likely to be faded, perhaps to the point of vanishing. In any event, the light hadn't been good in the bedroom and Tom hadn't been trying for portraiture. Perhaps this realization was why she was no longer alarmed at the possible existence of full evidence of herself as she had been when seventeen, but was, rather, amused at her willingness to allow him to record her nakedness in any way he liked.
Ironically, even as the sex grew more abandoned, the conversations grew more personal. When they lay back, naked, hot and breathless, he began to talk more about things that obviously mattered to him. It was as if – having put his feelings about her into words – he felt close enough to her to want her to know him in ways that were more than physical. He told her about the cruelties his alcoholic father had inflicted on the family and the atmosphere of uncertainty and trepidation in which he had grown up, about the desolation he felt following his brother's death in 'Nam, about his compulsion to go to see the kinds of things his brother had seen, about the wound that had sent him home at eighteen, just before the end, about the experiences he'd had in the two years he'd spent working utility construction and how much he thought of the boss who'd made sure he got into Georgia Tech, about how discovering he was good at computer science had turned his life around, and — especially — about the nightmare that he could not stop having.
"I'm working my way around a rice paddy, carrying my M16. It's all normal, at least as normal as things got in 'Nam. Then, all of a sudden, I realize two things: first, I'm not me, I'm my brother, I'm Jack; second, there is something wrong. I feel that I should see whatever it is, but I don't. I just know that something is off. Then I see the land mine begin to explode. I mean, I actually see it start to happen, and I know I'm seeing what Jack saw the second before he died. And then I wake up, and I'm shaking all over and I'm covered in sweat."
She had instinctively reached out to touch him, her fingertips lightly stroking his shoulder. "Do you have the dream a lot?"
"Yeah, at least I did to begin with. Every few nights. Now, not so much. I haven't had it once since I met you and you started coming here." And he took her fingers, held them to his lips and kissed them. After which they'd made love with an intensity that surprised her.
As he'd trusted her, she trusted him. She told him about her own unhappiness. About the mother who did not really like her very much, who'd resented the closeness that had existed between husband and daughter. About her father's unexpected death and the way her mother seemed to resent the tributes that had been paid him. About her mother's getting rid almost immediately of her father's dog — and just about everything else that had anything to do with him, save for a couple of things that Maggie had managed to salvage without her m
other knowing. About the fact that this was the first time in her life she'd had any freedom from her mother's constant supervision and interference. And especially about her mother's determination that she meet the right kind of boy and settle down quickly, a determination that bordered on the obsessive.
"I can't believe she left me alone for even this long," Maggie told Tom, "and I have this terrible suspicion that when she comes back she's going to start throwing what she considers eligible young men at me."
"And I probably wouldn't fit into that definition," he teased her.
"Probably not," Maggie admitted.
"Why do you suppose she wants to marry you off so badly?"
"Probably to get me out of her hair. I think she feels responsible because there's nobody else, but she doesn't know what to do with me. Marriage is the failsafe solution."
Maggie shuddered involuntarily and nestled closer to Tom.
"Well, that's all on the outside," Tom told her. "It can't hurt us here."
"No," Maggie said, but she wondered. She knew, as Tom did not, the extent of her mother's malevolence when she had been crossed about anything. Maggie was sure that, if she ever came to hear of her daughter's relationship with Tom, she'd find a way to end it, possibly even causing Tom trouble in the process. Maggie didn't think she could stand that, and it was then she decided that, come what may, she'd make sure her mother never had any reason to suspect what was going on.
It was almost Thanksgiving. Carolyn announced that she'd been invited to spend the weekend with friends of her family in Virginia and did Maggie want to come?
Maggie's heart leaped. A whole long weekend with Tom! She expressed suitable regrets. "I'd love to, but I have this monster paper due that Monday and I haven't even half-begun the research. I'd been counting on that weekend to finish up at the library and get the writing done."
Carolyn had been so ready with her understanding that Maggie suspected she was secretly relieved. As for Tom, he'd been gratifyingly pleased. They were sitting on the sofa in his living area, with his arm draped around her shoulder, having just watched a special he wanted to see on TV about personal computers. She told him when he clicked off the set.
"We can have Thanksgiving dinner together. Get dressed up and go out," he said enthusiastically. "I'll look around and see who's doing something nice. Maybe one of the big hotels."
"Don't be silly," she said. "I'd like to do Thanksgiving dinner for you. I mean I know I'm not very good in the kitchen, but . . . " She looked over at the little kitchenette doubtfully.
"It isn't much of a kitchen," he grinned. "Anything you want to do is okay." He leaned over and kissed her, then pulled back as if just realizing something. "If your roommate's going to be away the entire weekend, you can stay here. You won't have to leave."
Maggie shook her head regretfully. "I can't risk my mother calling. I can cover not being there during the day, but night is something else."
Tom sighed. "I wish you'd just tell her about us and we can take whatever happens together."
"You don't understand what she's like," Maggie protested. "Trust me. My way is best."
"If you say so," he shrugged.
She'd enjoyed getting everything together for the holiday, even going to Rich's to buy some special Thanksgiving-patterned china on which to serve the ambitious meal she planned.
Thanksgiving morning she arrived at Tom's bright and early, with everything stashed in boxes neatly stacked in a wheeled grocery cart which she barely got up the stairs unaided. When she let herself in, she found him already at his desk.
"Do you ever stop working?" she asked him, grinning as she wheeled the cart into the kitchenette.
"Just trying to finish this paper for Monday so I won't have to think about it," he said sheepishly.
"Well, you just keep hitting the books," she told him. "I have plenty to do, and it'll keep you out of mischief while I get ready."
For the next two hours, she prepared food, set the table, and arranged the flowers she'd brought for the small centerpiece. Done, she surveyed the result with satisfaction. The baked chicken and dressing looked holiday-like on the large platter that sat on the counter between the kitchenette and the dining area. There were several vegetables and a tasty-looking fruit salad. Cloudt's, she thought, had done a really nice spread. The table itself looked very pretty, with the colorful china and real silver on a cream linen cloth. The bronze mums added a festive touch.
Tom, she could tell, was more than pleased. He was surprised.
"This looks great! I didn't know you could cook, I mean like this."
"It was Cloudt's," she confessed.
"Whatever it was, it looks terrific."
It was during dinner that he made the comment that surprised her, that pointed up the gulf he recognized between their circumstances.
"I'll bet your family had nice dinners like this all the time," he said suddenly, looking at the pretty little table.
"Well, my mother always tells the cook what she wants and . . ."
"We ate off of paper plates with plastic knives and forks. That way, when my dad got drunk and started breaking things, it didn't make as much of a mess."
"I'm sorry," she started to say.
"I looked up your father," Tom continued. "I found some of his columns. He was a good writer."
"He was wonderful," Maggie said fervently. "I felt like I'd lost the world when I lost him."
"I was relieved when my father died," Tom admitted.
"I thought I'd die," Maggie said. "I pretended to be okay to keep my mother off my case, but it was all I could do to make it to my bedroom before I'd start crying."
"So your mother didn't know how upset you were?"
"She walked in on me once. She said I was a weak, silly girl, that she was coping and she was the widow. I was just the daughter, and it was time I pulled myself together."
"That's nasty," Tom sympathized.
"That's what she's like," Maggie told him.
Tom reached over and took her hand. "Let's get married. Now."
Maggie panicked. She knew she'd have to produce a birth certificate and he'd discover how old she was. She wasn't sure how he would react, and she was afraid to find out. She was glad she had a good excuse for delay while she decided what to do.
"I can't get my birth certificate until my mother returns. It's in her safe deposit box at the bank with all the other papers."
"But you'll figure out a way to get it when she's back?"
"I promise," she told him solemnly.
After Thanksgiving, she knew she wanted to be with him always, more than she'd ever wanted anything in her life. She'd just have to figure out the age thing. She knew some of the kids at school got falsified driver's licenses for different reasons. Maybe one of them could give her the name of someone who could doctor her birth certificate. But, first, she'd have to figure out how to get her mother to open the safe deposit box.
her. She couldn't believe it. It was all she could do to keep from smiling constantly.
She began to think about Christmas. Tom had obviously enjoyed her relatively modest Thanksgiving preparations. Now he'd see what a real holiday celebration could be. She made lists. She decided the kind of tree she'd get for his apartment and the decorations she'd put on it. She bought a special tablecloth and napkins with a subtle Christmas theme, got two table settings in a Spode Christmas pattern. She made out the shopping list for the menu, a modified version of the one she remembered her father always requesting for the holiday. All that was left to decide was Tom's gift. What to give the most wonderful person — apart from her father, of course — that she'd ever known? She ordered a few small jokey things from Brookstone and got him a nice cashmere sweater from Muse's. It just didn't seem personal enough. And then, just before Christmas, it came to her; she knew exactly what to give him. She went to her jewelry chest and pulled out the secret compartment underneath where she kept her father's pocket watch, the old-fashioned gold timepiece
that he'd inherited from his own father, the grandfather who'd died decades before Maggie was born. She carefully depressed the latch, and the watch cover opened. Her twelve-year-old visage grinned up at her. At one time, she couldn't bear to look at this photograph, the last taken before her father died, because she looked so happy and she thought she'd never have that smile again. Now, suffused with what seemed a permanent glow, she was able to contemplate herself as she had been five years before and to think that, at last, she had again found love and safety. (Tom wanted to marry her!) Opposite the picture was the ivory-colored watch face with its handsome Roman numerals and elegantly pointed black hands. She was relieved to find that, when she wound the substantial knob, the watch began to tick. She went to a specialty paper shop and bought a handmade Florentine box and matching paper in which to wrap it.
Carolyn went out of town that afternoon, so Maggie no longer had to sneak around to make her preparations. Christmas Eve morning she banished Tom from his apartment, telling him he had to leave by 8 a.m. and couldn't return until mid-afternoon. She was waiting in her car as she watched him go, a stack of books in his arm, obviously heading for school.
Certain that he was gone, she hauled everything upstairs and worked her list like a dervish. Done, she stood back to survey the effect. The heavily decorated tree was surrounded by a respectable stack of gifts and, though tiny, glowed warmly from its place on Tom's desk. The table was set, only the candles waiting to be lit. Heatproof dishes of food rested in the oven, the aromas of Virginia ham and candied potatoes vaguely discernible. All that remained was to change clothes, and she'd just finished when she heard Tom opening the door. She crammed her discarded garments into the closet and hurried from the bedroom. He was standing inside the door, astonished.
