The Story of Us

by Susan Wiggs

  Chapter Five

  I was always the good girl in my sorority house. I was the designated driver, the one who made excellent grades and didn’t get caught up in all the passions and dramas of college life. At the end of junior year, RaeLynn had jokingly made a sign for my door that designated me the “Oldest Living Virgin of Delta Delta Delta.”

  My friends thought I had been born well-behaved. I’m sure my parents like to believe it was their training.

  But what nobody knew was that I never was a good girl. I was just waiting for my chance to be bad.

  Steve Bennett was that chance, even though he didn’t know it the first day we met, and even though being bad with him was the best thing that ever happened to me.

  When he said he needed directions to Bud Plawski’s house, I made it sound overly complicated on purpose: take the lake road past the broken rock at the entrance to the Ryder fishing cabins, and head into town on the old farm-to-market road…. As I spoke, I could see him taking it all in, and he probably could have navigated his way through town to Alamo Drive just fine.

  But I was feeling bold and maybe just a little bit bad, so I said, “I could show you right where your friend lives, but I don’t have my car.” I gestured vaguely in the direction of RaeLynn’s convertible.

  I knew what he’d ask. Lord help me, I was hoping he’d ask it.

  “Ma’am, I’d be obliged if you’d show me.”

  “Ma’am” to a twenty-year-old. He was definitely a Texan. “Show you. You mean, ride with you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  He probably expected me to say no. Even though I was more than ready to be bad, I still looked well-behaved on the outside. And he had to know how he looked—big and muscular, clad in all black, riding a Harley Softail. I smiled at him and said that would be fine, and then I went to tell my friends.

  You would have thought I’d told them I was going to start selling my eggs or move to Detroit. They were mortified.

  “You can’t just hop on the back of some guy’s motorcycle, Grace,” RaeLynn said. “It’s not safe.”

  “What if he abducts you?” Trudy demanded.

  Oh, please, I thought. Please let him abduct me.

  “I’ll be fine,” I assured them. “He’s going to see Buddy straight-arrow Plawski, of all people.”

  Not good enough for my girlfriends. They approached Steve Bennett and peppered him with questions, thus learning more from him than I’d managed to extract in my tongue-tied state. He was on a rare two-week leave from the Navy and had ridden all the way from Pensacola just because he felt like it, and because a friend had invited him. I felt foolish for not concluding he was in the Navy as soon as he said he was a friend of Buddy.

  He told my girlfriends he’d ridden all day from Pensacola, Florida to see him. It was a shock to hear that he’d driven straight through, stopping only for a nap at a rest area outside Lafayette, Louisiana. He must be dead tired, I thought.

  “Let’s go,” I said to him boldly.

  With my friends’ protests growing fainter in my ears, I put on a blue denim shirt and my grubby Adidas sneakers. I always used to wear Adidas because, unofficially, the name is an acronym for All Day I Dream About Sex. Which, as the oldest living virgin in my sorority house, I pretty much did.

  Steve Bennett probably realized I’d never been on the back of a motorcycle before. He was kind enough not to ask, but my inexperience was pretty obvious. I mean, I fumbled with the spare helmet, unsure as to how to put it on. I couldn’t figure out the footrests until he showed me, and I wasn’t even sure which part of the seat to straddle.

  Riding with someone, anyone, on a motorcycle is a strange situation of forced intimacy. Our pelvises fit together like spoons, and my bare legs were snuggled next to his muscular thighs. At first, I put my hands demurely on either side of his waist.

  “You’re going to need to hold on a lot tighter than that,” he said and pulled my hands all the way around his thick, hard torso.

  Finally, he turned on the motor. I felt the jolt of power course through me, and I clasped him even tighter.

  “Ready?” he yelled over the sound of the motor.

  “Ready.”

  The bike rolled off its kickstand as my sorority sisters stood in the roadway, calling warnings I couldn’t hear and wouldn’t have heeded even if I could.

  Chapter Six

  When I rode into Edenville on the back of Steve Bennett’s Harley, I felt like a different person. The ride from Eagle Lake into town was short, but it took me on what was to be the first step of the longest journey of my life.

  With my arms around his tree-trunk middle, I dared to press myself against his back, and then he wasn’t the only one who was lost. I was, too. I grew dizzy with his smell and with the feel of the wind in my face and the roar of the motor in my ears.

  At that point, I didn’t know anything but his name, and that he rode a Harley, was in the Navy and had ocean-blue eyes. It’s funny that I could see a blue ocean in my mind’s eye, because the only saltwater I’d ever actually seen was the gray-brown Gulf of Mexico from the seawall of Galveston during wild-girl weekends from college.

  Yet though I knew little about him, I understood something deep inside—this chance meeting was changing the course of my life.

  I pointed the way to Alamo Drive and wondered if he was amused by the quirky names of things—the Halfway Baptist Church, Adam’s Ribs B-B-Q and the Celestial Café, the filling station with its hand-lettered sign, “We sell gas to anyone in a glass container.” Until I went away to college, this had been my whole world. It was imminently, almost oppressively safe, as small and tightly knit as a Catholic school uniform.

  Back then, the sight of a Harley roaring across the courthouse square brought on glares of righteous disapproval. People in those parts still talked about hippies and beatniks as though the countercultures were still a threat. Maybelle King came out to stand under the awning of Eve’s Garden Shoppe, planting her hands on her hips in consternation. I laughed aloud. No one knew it was me on the back of the bike, but I wouldn’t have cared if they did.

  Buddy Plawski’s house came up far too quickly, in the neighborhood where I grew up. When I got off the Harley, I still felt the buzz of the motor deep in my bones. Alamo Drive hadn’t changed in decades, and for all I know, it’s still the same: a quiet lane shaded by live oaks and lined with genteel Victorian-style houses and white picket fences.

  After Steve parked the bike and took off his helmet, he looked around with a puzzled expression.

  “Not what you expected?” I asked, handing over my helmet.

  “It’s fine. I can’t imagine growing up here.”

  “Where did you grow up?”

  He had such a fine, gentle smile. “Honey, you don’t want to know.”

  “What, is it a secret?”

  “Nope. Just depressing.”

  “I’m a very cheerful person. Bet I can handle it.”

  He also had a long, slow way of eyeing me that made my spine tingle, I swear it did. “I bet you can, too.”

  But he didn’t say anymore. Instead he said, “Let’s talk about you, Grace.” And with almost embarrassing eagerness, I told him the sum total of who I was—born and raised in Edenville, the only child of parents who expected much of me, the only grandchild of a widow who expected nothing but love and honesty from me. Twenty years old, a business major at Trinity.

  In turn, he told me virtually nothing. This was surprising to me. Most men would be quick to whip out their most impressive credentials and most women, myself included, would be quick to be impressed.

  However, at that moment, I had nothing from him, nothing but that brand-new incessant tingling inside telling me to step through the door he held open.

  “Thanks for the help,” he said.

  “You’re welcome.” I racked my brain, trying to figure out a reason to linger.

  “Didn’t you say you lived near Bud?”

  “Right down the
street.” I pointed out my house.

  “What are you doing tonight?” he asked.

  The girls and I planned to see the brand-new movie Back to the Future at the Lone Star Drive-In and stuff ourselves with popcorn and syrupy Dr Pepper.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Let’s go out,” he said.

  “I thought you were here to see Buddy.”

  That unforgettable grin flashed. “Not anymore.”

  Chapter Seven

  As I got ready for our first date, my parents bombarded me with questions. They were convinced that I had ruined any chance I had at a decent future by dumping Travis Hunt, and they were determined to dislike anyone else I might bring home. I had no answers to the questions they fired at me, so I dodged them, saying simply that tonight’s date was someone I’d met recently and that they’d meet him when he came to pick me up.

  I worked for a good two hours getting ready. Shampoo, hot rollers, makeup, the works. After much internal debate, I settled on jeans, cowboy boots and a pink T-shirt from a Willie Nelson concert up in Luckenbach. I wanted to look casual, as though going on a date on the spur of the moment was nothing new to me.

  Steve looked wonderful when he showed up, freshly showered, wearing clean jeans and a cowboy shirt and boots. In fact, he looked so good I almost wished I’d dressed a little better myself. Like in a white organdy gown with a twelve-foot train, I thought fancifully.

  I was slightly disappointed to see he’d borrowed the Plawski’s Plymouth instead of bringing the Harley.

  During the overly long conversation in the parlor, where my mother served iced tea and the frosted lemon bars my grandmother had made that afternoon, I squirmed in my chair. My father opened fire with the questions at Steve Bennett.

  “Where’d you grow up, son?”

  “Houston, sir.”

  Everyone waited for him to elaborate, but he simply sat patiently while I squirmed.

  “And who are your people?” asked Gran.

  Oh, lord. My grandmother still lived in a different era.

  Steve gave a quick, enigmatic smile, though he looked Gran in the eye. “Ma’am, I have no family to speak of. I was a ward of the state and lived in a series of foster homes until I was old enough to enlist in the Navy.”

  A shifting, uncomfortable silence greeted this disclosure. Kids grew up in foster homes for a variety of reasons, none of them good. I felt an odd ache in the pit of my stomach as I tried to read between the lines of what he’d said. A person’s childhood defined him, didn’t it? I wondered how deeply those early years had shaped this man’s character. What was etched on his soul?

  Gran said, “How sad for you, having no family.”

  My mother was silent, but I could feel her disapproval growing and swelling like an invisible tumor.

  My father cleared his throat. “So you’re in the service.” He jumped right on that. I could tell he was toying with liking Steve Bennett.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And what do you do in the Navy?” my father inquired.

  “I’m a second lieutenant, sir. I’m finishing up pilot training.”

  Well, well, well. I sat up a little taller on Aunt Mamie’s Duncan Phyfe divan, which she’d given to my mother before going to live at a retirement home. An officer and a pilot. My instincts about this man were even better than I thought.

  Chapter Eight

  People toss around the term “whirlwind courtship,” but I don’t think anyone really understands what it means unless they’ve experienced it. Surely that’s what happened to me, right at a moment in my life when I didn’t think anything interesting would ever come along.

  Whirlwind. It’s one of those words you take for granted, assuming you know what it is. Well, I certainly found out first hand the weekend I met Steve Bennett. I had the sensation of stepping out into a storm during hurricane season, swept up into a dizzying rush of tingling emotions.

  Falling in love with him was easy. Too easy, perhaps. I was incautious, willfully so. I wanted everything he was and all that he stood for and never paused to consider if a headlong rush was the best way to shape my future.

  That night, we went to Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin. Townes Van Zandt was playing. His mournful, thin-voiced rendition of “Pancho and Lefty” brought tears to my eyes, and when I looked over at Steve, I saw a faraway expression on his face and wondered what he was thinking. Then, as if he felt my stare, he reached over and squeezed my hand.

  That was it. That was the moment I started to love him. It felt so real to me. I’ll always keep that moment folded away in my heart, like the pressed flowers of a homecoming corsage. I remember perfectly the twang of the guitar and the notes of the sad song, and gazing into a face that was new to me, yet that I felt I’d always known.

  My hormones raged. There was such a sense of wanting in me that I could hardly catch my breath. I wondered if it was as magical for him as it was for me. I suppose men think differently. Maybe they don’t count the moments the way a woman does.

  We held hands for a time and then went to the beer garden annex to share a pitcher of Lone Star, clinking our frosty mugs together. Then he asked me to dance, and that was a surprise. The men I’d met at college didn’t dance. He did, though. He gave me that spectacular grin and said, “I learned in officer training school.”

  Social graces were only one of the many small ways the Navy shaped him. As we got to know each other, I learned more about all the things that came his way through the Navy—a life, a home, a purpose, a sense of belonging. Lacking all of that in his early life, he found it in the service of his country.

  I admired his ambition so much. It was one of the first things I loved about him. I never stopped to consider that one person’s ambition might create tensions when there were two people to consider.

  But on our first night together, all of that was far from my mind. I was lost in him, and in the dreams that were igniting fireworks in my heart.

  Chapter Nine

  At the end of our date, Steve drove me home and walked me to the door. We stood together on the front porch, holding hands and facing each other, making small talk in order to put off saying goodbye. I was grateful that my parents no longer waited up for me, and had no fear that they’d be hovering on the other side of the door when I walked inside. That, thank goodness, ended with high school.

  I wanted him to kiss me but was too shy to say so. Four years older than me and more experienced than I could possibly know, he wasn’t shy at all. With exquisite delicacy, his hands cupped my face, and a soft darkness fell between us as he leaned down and touched his lips to mine, lightly, with a restrained passion that turned to fire. I forgot to breathe, and grew light-headed with the heat that surged through me.

  “I’d better go,” I said, never wanting to leave his arms.

  “I’ll call you.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  When I went inside, there was a light on in the parlor. I was surprised to see that my grandmother was still up, sitting in her chintz-covered chair and watching Johnny Carson on TV.

  Gran came to live with us when I was in high school, after Granddaddy died. She had a suite of rooms at the back of the house, and they were cluttered with mementos of her sixty-year marriage. There was a shelf of sepia-toned photographs of her as a young bride, and a series of pictures of my mother and Uncle Kyle, growing up in Edenville. Gran had a collection of thimbles from all the places she’d been—New York City, Hollywood, Miami, Mexico City, Niagara Falls. She had a passion for knitting and the soap opera As the World Turns, and it was no secret that the money in our family came from her. She was the daughter of an oil field roughneck who struck it rich, married a genteel Daughter of the Republic of Texas and became genteel himself. It wasn’t a huge fortune, but enough to allow the next generation to live well in the slow-paced small town world of Edenville.

  Despite her old-fashioned ways, my grandmother possessed a deep and subtle wisdom about life. She rare
ly gave advice or even offered her opinion, but when she did, she was always right.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her. “Couldn’t you sleep?”

  “I’m fine, Grace,” she said, turning down the TV. “How was your date?”

  “Perfect,” I said. “I think I’m already falling for him.”

  “Then,” she said with a sparkle in her eye, “what are you waiting for?”

  I took my grandmother’s advice to heart and flung myself headlong into this relationship. Was I naively premature to call it a relationship?

  Steve and I spent nearly every waking moment together for the rest of the weekend. We went swimming in Eagle Lake and then lay together in the shade of a cypress tree, looking up at the sky through the branches. Later we sat on the wicker divan on my parents’ front porch with Asleep At The Wheel playing on the radio. On Sunday, we went to a pancake breakfast at the firehouse, and my sorority sisters gave him the third degree. Trudy Long, even before she entered law school, had a way of prying information from people.

  Thanks to her, I learned that the Navy paid for him to attend Texas A&M, the best school in the state. I learned that he was in training to fly carrier-based aircraft.

  At the time, I didn’t know how dangerous it was to launch a jet from the deck of a moving ship, and, even more dangerous, to land on the four-hundred-foot runway, praying the tailhook would catch a wire and stop the plane. It all sounded terrifically romantic to me, and I loved his dream so much that it seemed like my own.

  Everything about that weekend was precious to me, every moment sharp-edged and distinct.

  He asked me what I planned to do after college.

  “Interview for a job, I suppose,” I said. “What I’d really like to do is go into business for myself.”

  “What sort of business?”

  “I’m still trying to figure that out.” I leaned my head on his shoulder—I was comfortable with him already, my body learning how to fit into the space of his. “I just want a life that I love, but I’m not really sure what that means.”