by Janet Tanner
He arranged to meet her on Main Street, outside the bank. It was a good central place, midway between the mill-hands’ cottages and the neighbourhood where Lisa-Marie lived in a pretty white house with green gabling, Cape Cod style. She was a little late and he waited for her under the elm trees where the old men sat on wooden benches, watching the world go by. He was just beginning to wonder if she was going to stand him up when he saw her coming along the street towards him swinging a brightly coloured tote bag. She was wearing a scarlet cutaway singlet and a brief pair of shorts and looked unbelievably pretty.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi.’
They started the trek out to the lake, up the hill to the outskirts of town, down again, through the cool woods where last year’s pine needles made a thick, soft carpet on the path. When they emerged into the sunshine again he turned towards a bay that was almost hidden from the rest of the lake. Although they could not see the others in the usual gathering place they could hear them, shouts and laughter carrying across the spit of thickly wooded land that separated them, blown on the breeze that whispered across the water.
It was a wonderful day – magical, almost, the sort of day that remains in the memory until the end of time and can be triggered and relived by a sound, a smell, a tune. For Steve that tune was the Beach Boys singing ‘And we’ll have fun, fun, fun, Till her daddy takes the T-Bird away!’ But there was an edge of gall mixed with the sense of freedom it evoked. Lisa-Marie’s daddy might have a Thunderbird (he hadn’t – he drove a Buick convertible); his own certainly never would. The last six months had been worse than ever financially, for his oldest brother, Dean, whose wage packet from the mill where he now worked had eked out the family income, had got a girl into trouble and had had to marry her. At the same time his father, perhaps finally growing tired of the unequal struggle to exist, had begun to drink more heavily. There was also talk of laying off some of the mill-hands and Steve knew his mother was very much afraid that, taking age and present behaviour into account, his father might be one of them.
That day, however, the threat of worsening poverty was only a shadow on the horizon. He and Lisa-Marie swam, sunbathed and talked. Some of the talking centred on the future. Lisa-Marie was going to carry on with further education; Steve knew that although he was quite capable of doing the same he would be expected to leave school as soon as he could and find work to contribute to the family’s income. Briefly the shadow threatened, then receded as he looked further into the future, concentrating on the success he was determined to be when he left the grinding poverty of Mill Street behind him for ever.
Later, much later, he kissed her for the first time, and her firm rounded little body, clad only in her polka-dot bikini, felt so good against his that he forgot his social inadequacy, forgot his embarrassment at his sun-faded swimming shorts, even forgot the doubts he had had about his ability to make love the way a real man should. For all his popularity with the girls, for all his locker-room boasting, Steve was inexperienced beyond the quick kiss-and-grope behind the gymnasium, and though he had read plenty of sex magazines of the sort that were stacked on the top shelf of the store, he had sometimes wondered how he would manage when it actually came to the point, whether he would be rambling and ineffectual, disappointing the girl of his choice and blasting his macho image into a million humiliating fragments. With Lisa-Marie in his arms, however, the doubts melted. For today he did nothing more than kiss her – a little more deeply than any of those quick clinches behind the gymnasium, but still just a kiss – but his body was responding, all the same, in a way that told him that when the time came he would after all know instinctively what to do.
He lay on his side, face to face with her, his hands moving slowly and sensuously across her sun-warmed back, and felt the natural urges motivating his body so that it was more a question of restraining them than wondering how to proceed. He kissed her with his lips and his teeth and his tongue, holding her close, close, from the waist up but never allowing their hips or legs to touch because he thought that if they did he would be unable to control himself. That would come later, a little more, a little further each time, the next day and the next. The waiting and the wanting was a fever and Steve forgot about everything but being with Lisa-Marie and the way she made him feel.
After a week in which they went to the lake every day he made love to her because he could wait no longer. He had spent some of his precious earnings from the garage on a packet of French letters, which he had bought with some embarrassment and carried in the pocket of his shorts with enormous pride. Feeling the packet there against his hip filled him with such excitement he could scarcely breathe, but he was a little apprehensive about how Lisa-Marie would react when she knew he had been so presumptuous as to make such a purchase and nervous about the right moment to produce them. In the event it was all so much easier than he had imagined. Lisa-Marie was almost as eager as he, clinging and pressing herself close, but when he slid down her bikini pants and she felt his flesh for the first time she pulled back, whispering: ‘No – we mustn’t!’ and he heard himself whispering back hoarsely: ‘It’s OK – I’ve got something.’
‘You have?’ Her voice was breathless, half admiring, half awed.
‘Yes. You want me to put one on?’
‘I don’t know …’
He pressed closer to her and she moaned: ‘Yes … oh, yes …’
He rolled away from her, reaching for the packet and extracting the French letter with his back towards her. He was afraid he would fumble getting it on, afraid if he took too long she might change her mind. But he managed it quickly and easily and when he rolled back her arms went around him, pulling him on top of her. She was moist with desire, so that slipping into her was easy and though she gasped deep in her throat he was almost too excited to notice.
The worst part came afterwards, when it was over for him and he knew he had to dispose of the thing but Lisa-Marie still wanted to go on. But he did what he had to do and after a little while she stopped wriggling and lay very still, holding him close and smiling contentedly. He buried his face in her neck, enjoying the faintly salty smell of her moist skin, and she whispered something too soft for him to catch.
He raised his head. ‘ What d’you say?’
She opened her eyes, looking at him lazily. Her mouth seemed fuller than before, the lines of her cheek rounder.
‘Do you love me?’
The words shocked him a little. Love? It wasn’t a word in his vocabulary. Love? He’d never thought about it, much less talked about it. But if wanting someone as much as he wanted Lisa-Marie was love, then yes, he supposed he must love her.
‘Do you?’ she pressed him.
‘Yeah – I guess.’
‘Say it. Please say it!’
He couldn’t. No matter how he tried the words refused to come.
‘Steve – say it. Please!’
‘Hell, Lisa, if I didn’t … I wouldn’t have … would I?’
Her mouth curved. For the moment the answer, incomplete as it was, seemed to satisfy her. She lay back, playing with his hair, idly running a lock of it between her fingers. He felt himself beginning to want her again.
Feeling him stir, she giggled.
‘Steve! You are awful! You don’t want to … you can’t! Not again!’
I’ve got two more johnnies and I can! he wanted to say, but he didn’t think she’d appreciate it and he did not want to push his luck.
‘You see what you do to me, Lisa?’ he said, levering himself up and reaching for his shorts. ‘Come on, let’s swim.’
Her hand grasped his thigh. ‘ You still didn’t say it properly.’
‘What?’
‘That you love me.’
‘I did.’
‘You did not. You said you wouldn’t have done it to me if you didn’t love me, but I’m not sure about that. All boys want to do it. It doesn’t mean … that.’
‘Lisa, come on. Let’s have that swim.’
‘No, I don’t think that.’
‘And you do love me?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you always will?’
This was getting tiresome. If she didn’t look so delectable lying there, if he didn’t want her so much again already, if she had been one of the girls who lived in the mill-hands’ houses as he did instead of Lisa-Marie Ford, he’d have told her to put a sock in it. But he didn’t want to ruin things. Not yet.
‘Yes. Now – are you going to let me put my shorts on? Because if you don’t, I am going to do you again.’
And her fingers only curled more tightly around his leg. ‘Oh yes please, Steve!’ was all she said.
It was good – better than good – this time. It was wonderful. He felt like a king. Afterwards they swam and dried off on the shingle and the shouts and laughs echoing from the other side of the spit where the rest of the gang were fooling around seemed to come from another world. And Steve had no premonition that the moment was coming very close when he was going to be reminded with cruel suddenness who he was and where he came from.
That night, because Lisa-Marie wanted him to, he walked all the way home with her, to the leafy neighbourhood where she lived with her father, who was the chief teller in the town bank, her mother, who did not have to work at all, unless you counted looking after a home and family in such comfortable circumstances as work, and her younger sister, Jodie, who would soon be as pretty and delectable as Lisa-Marie herself.
When they reached the pleasant tree-lined street where all the houses were much like Lisa-Marie’s, white, with green gables, he began to feel a little uncomfortable, a little self-conscious, without really knowing why.
At the gate he stopped. He could see Jodie sitting on the front porch with one of her friends. They were sharing a tall jug of lemonade. His feeling of discomfort increased. It was like looking in on another world, so different from his own squalid existence it made him feel like an alien. But why should he feel this way? He was as good as they were – better! One day he’d have a house and a car that would put this modest luxury to shame.
‘Do you fancy going to a movie tonight?’ he asked defiantly. It would take all the rest of his spare cash to pay for her as well as himself but for the moment that was unimportant.
‘OK,’ she said.
He wanted to kiss her again but he was all too aware of two pairs of eyes watching them from the front porch.
‘I’ll pick you up,’ he said. ‘About seven?’
‘Make it half past. Mom won’t be pleased if I rush dinner.’
Dinner! Christ!
‘OK,’ he said.
He went home. His small cramped house, with its peeling paint and the battered old chair set outside where his mother sat to peel the potatoes for supper, had never looked more squalid. He changed, and only when he removed the two-thirds empty packet of French letters from the pocket of his shorts, transferring them to his jeans, did he feel more cheerful.
There was no sign of Lisa-Marie outside her house. He slowed down. He did not want to have to go up the drive and knock on the door. He reached the gate and she still had not appeared. He stood on the sidewalk, trying to look nonchalant. The door, which was ajar, opened fully. He straightened expectantly. But it was not Lisa-Marie who came out but her father, a small portly man, balding, with a bushy moustache. He was wearing cream trousers and a cream shirt but he did not look cool. Far from it. He was red-faced and flustered and dark patches of sweat showed at the armpits of his shirt.
‘Hey – you!’ he called to Steve.
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you!’ He came towards Steve. His manner was vaguely threatening. ‘There’s no sense you hanging round here.’
Steve swallowed. ‘ I’m waiting for Lisa-Marie.’
‘That’s what I said. No sense you waiting. She won’t be out.’
‘But – we’re going to a movie …’
‘Not with Lisa-Marie you’re not. She’s staying home tonight. And don’t you come round here bothering her again.’ His already highly-coloured face had turned an even deeper red.
Steve felt his own colour rising. ‘I didn’t bother her. She likes being with me.’
‘Well I don’t like it, son.’ He made the familiarity sound like an insult. ‘I don’t like it and her mama don’t like it. She’s too young to be dating, especially your sort.’
‘What do you mean – my sort?’
‘I know where you come from, boy – Mill Street. And I don’t want the likes of you hanging around my daughter. Understand?’
‘No, sir, I don’t understand,’ Steve said. ‘ I come from Mill Street, sure, but I don’t see …’
‘Do I have to spell it out for you? This is a decent neighbourhood. We’re decent folk. Lisa-Marie has been brought up right. I won’t see her waste herself on the likes of you.’
Steve’s blood was boiling now. He was so angry, so insulted, he wanted to sock the bank teller on the jaw.
‘You always choose your daughter’s friends?’ he asked. ‘ What about Lisa? Don’t she get no say?’
The bank teller’s face worked furiously.
‘Don’t you talk back at me, son. If I tell you to keep away from Lisa, you’ll damned well do it. And she’ll keep away from you. I won’t have my daughter mixing with poor white trash. So, there won’t be any more sneaking off to the lake – understand? She’ll spend the rest of the vacation with friends her own class.’
Steve stood his ground. ‘I want to see Lisa.’
‘No way. And I tell you something else, boy. I know what your sort are. One-track minds – and not in your head, either. If you’ve laid one finger on my Lisa-Marie, or even tried to, I’ll have the law on you. Now – get!’
Steve went. The bank teller’s last remark had been too close to home for comfort. He could feel the hot flush of anger turning to guilt, feel it colouring up into the roots of his hair. As he turned away he saw the curtains at the front window of the house move. He did not know if it was Lisa-Marie or her mother and he did not want to know. The packet of French letters with two missing seemed to be burning a hole in his pocket. He was fifteen years old and he felt about five, the way he’d used to feel when he’d been caught stealing apples. Except that then it had only been fear, fear of authority, fear of punishment, fear of a beating from his father’s belt, and now it was also guilt – and shame.
He knew why Lisa-Marie’s father had come down so hard on him and it had nothing to do with the fact that he had been alone with her for most of the week. The man might not have thought twice about that if he had considered Steve more suitable as a boyfriend for his daughter; he might have been concerned about what they had been up to, but not nearly as concerned as he was now. He might have insisted they stay with the group, not go off on their own, but he would not have banned him from seeing her altogether.
Steve burned with indignation and impotent anger. The sense of humiliation was unbelievable. Suppose Lisa-Marie should tell her father what they had done? He couldn’t imagine her confessing voluntarily but perhaps the man would beat it out of her. Just because he thought he was better than the folk who lived in Mill Street didn’t mean he couldn’t wield a belt with the best of them. The thought of Lisa-Marie cringing and crying under the cruel bite of a strip of leather made him angry too – angry and helpless.
The day after that he went to the lake. He went alone because he was by nature a loner, though he could integrate when he had to. He had no wish to confide in any of his friends. His humiliation hurt too much and too deeply.
The crowd were at the lake and Lisa-Marie was with them. His heart began to beat very hard, a drum pounding in his throat. He went over and sat down beside her.
‘Hi, Lisa-Marie.’
She turned away, not looking at him.
�
��Lisa … you all right?’
She nodded, still with her head turned away. He felt awkward, at a loss for words.
‘The other night …’
‘I’m sorry about that,’ she said. Her voice was choked, her shoulders a rigid line. ‘My father can be … pretty tight when he wants to be.’
‘Yeah. He sure can.’
She turned then and her eyes were suspiciously bright.
‘Was he … real nasty?’
‘Real nasty.’ He couldn’t stop the indignation rising again. ‘He thinks I’m not good enough for you.’
‘Yeah.’ A pause. ‘I’m not supposed to be talking to you, even.’
‘But you are. He’s not going to stop us, is he, Lisa?’
‘I don’t know.’ She let shingle drift through her fingers. ‘He’d kill me if he knew we were together. And if he knew about …’
‘But he doesn’t know?’ A sharp edge of apprehension.
‘Shit, no! If he knew about that …’
‘I love you, Lisa,’ he said desperately. He hadn’t wanted to say it when she’d asked him to, now it came out without even thinking about it. ‘And you love me. Don’t you?’
‘I guess I have to … now.’
‘And you’ll still see me?’
‘I guess so, as long as we’re careful.’
‘Oh sure, we’ll be careful. He’ll never know.’
‘OK.’ But she sounded nervous, uncertain.
‘Coming for a walk?’
‘No. Not just now. I’m OK here.’
She stretched out on the shingle. He looked at her, desire mixed in with all the other emotions.
‘Tomorrow then?’
‘Maybe.’
He knew then that it was over. He did not know what the bank teller had said to Lisa but he could guess – the same sort of damning things he had said to Steve himself. Now Lisa-Marie was seeing him through her father’s eyes, however hard she tried not to.
Although they were alone a few more times it was never the same. Steve didn’t know which hurt most, his heart or his pride. For a while he felt as if he was hurting all over. But as the weeks became months, when the trees around the town turned from green to shades of red and gold so brightly hued and so beautiful the sight of them brought an ache to the throat, his heart began to mend and by the time they had shed their leaves altogether, stretching bare bony fingers to the slate-grey winter sky, he had begun to hate Lisa-Marie for rejecting him for what he was.
