She kept her desk tidy—every pencil, notepad, and eraser was in its place, so, when she came back from recess, reached for her writing tablet and pulled out a dead mouse instead, it was a shock she had never experienced. Her scream could have curdled the milk left in that pitcher; it was so shrill.
“What? What is it?” The teacher rushed over. “Catherine, are you all right?”
Tears streamed down Catherine’s face. “No! I’m not all right.” She pointed at the dead mouse, now lying on the floor. “That was in my desk!”
The horrified teacher clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, my dear sweet Lord,” she exclaimed, and for a moment, the students thought she might faint. Instead, she took Catherine by the arm (careful not to touch the tainted area) and handed her a bar of soap and a water pail.
“Miss Woods, I want you to march straight to the pump and fill the pail. Then, you wash your hands for a good four minutes!”
A sobbing Catherine nodded.
“Teacher?” Leo’s hand shot up. “I’ll carry the pail.”
The teacher was too overwhelmed by the crisis to argue. “Very well.”
When they were outside, Leo dropped the pail and looked at Catherine, trying like hell to make the words come out but he didn’t say, “I’m sorry.” Instead, he said, “I thought it would be funny.”
She glared at him through her tears. “You did this?”
They were the first three words she had spoken to him in weeks, and they were full of anger, hurt, and betrayal.
Leo looked as awful as he felt; from the moment Catherine had started to cry, he’d felt like the sorriest boy on Earth.
“I did,” he said. “I thought it would be a good joke. I didn’t mean to... I just wanted you to...” He trailed off, unable to express his affection.
Furiously, she picked up the pail he had dropped. “Go back inside,” she said through gritted teeth. “I don’t need your help, and I certainly don’t want it.” She whirled around and left him standing there.
Leo felt rotten for the rest of the day; he did get her attention but it wasn’t the kind he wanted and embarrassed her in front of the class in the process. So, he did the only thing he knew how to do—make a clay sculpture.
After school let out and all evidence of the mouse had been cleared away and after Leo’d fessed up to his crime and volunteered to clean the teacher’s chalkboard erasers for the rest of the month as punishment, he ran after Catherine as she headed for the door and handed her a clay sculpture he’d been working on.
“I want you to have it.”
She stared at him, then at the sculpture, then back at him, not attempting to take it.
“Please,” he said. “At least look at it.”
Catherine was more stubborn than she was curious. She turned around to leave.
Desperate, Leo tossed the sculpture, and it fell with a soft thump on the green grass at her feet when, to Leo’s surprise, she bent and picked it up. For a moment, she stared at it in silence.
“It’s ugly.” She finally said, her voice devoid of emotion.
Of course, it wasn’t ugly. But Catherine recognized herself immediately in the dark clay, despite Leo’s avant-garde style—the long, brown hair, the wide eyes, the pronounced nape. She meant that she felt the sculpture made her look ugly. Leo’s art was impressionistic, even at that young age, but she was unimpressed.
“I don’t want it,” she said, and those words crushed Leo worse than her judgment of his art. Yet, instead of throwing the sculpture, she set it gently down on the ground, and he retrieved it moments later.
In a last-ditch attempt, he leaped forward and tucked it in her satchel in one swift movement. She bristled, her shoulders tensing but didn’t stop to remove it, walking toward her home on the bluff instead.
Leo stayed to bang erasers into each other, so angry with himself for what he’d done that the violent banging suited him just fine.
Once she was safe in her lavish bedroom, Catherine pulled out the sculpture and examined it more closely. Even if she didn’t like the style, she couldn’t deny that the likeness was remarkable. He had captured her lips, eyes, and cheekbones startlingly well—a remarkable feat, considering he was working with a fist-sized lump of hard clay from the creek bed. But the sculpture’s resemblance to Catherine only made her hate it more. Is this how she looked? She felt like an ugly dark blob.
Still, something inside her wouldn’t let her throw it away, so, she stuffed it in the back of the drawer and heaped piles of clothes on top of it. The sting of the mouse prank was still sharp, the sculpture did little to diminish it, and Catherine swore to herself she would never look at it again.
*
By the end of the fourth-grade school year, Catherine’s dislike of Leo had grown into contempt. She was not one to hate people; her mother had taught her never to use that word and Catherine was a sensible girl. She had known Leo Taylor for only two months, and most of that time, she hadn’t said a word to him, yet, she had an inkling that this was what it felt like to loathe someone.
On the last day of school in June of 1935, Leo made one last attempt to win Catherine’s affections. This time, he would do nothing that might scare her; he would commit a gesture that could only be interpreted as a token of his true feelings, at least, this is what he hoped.
He rose early and took the long path to school, stopping to pick a bouquet of black-eyed Susans along the way. He arrived at the schoolhouse before his other classmates, giving him enough time to work on his invention. He pulled the ball of twine from his back pocket and the ruler from his school desk and began to fashion a kind of bouquet. He tied the stems to the ruler so the flowers extended a good few inches beyond it, giving him the extra length he needed to reach his love.
By the time Catherine arrived a few minutes later and flashed him her usual cool stare, he had completed his project. The other students trickled in, and both Catherine and Leo waited in silence for the school day to begin.
The teacher embarked on a lesson in geography, and when she got to the part about the Seven Wonders of the World, Leo took it as his cue. He pulled the bouquet from his desk and slid it slowly forward until the wood edge of the ruler was resting on Catherine’s shoulder and the flowers were nestled against her ear.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. The unexpected feeling of petals on her cheek took her by surprise, and she jumped, knocking the flowers and the ruler to the ground with a clatter. The teacher looked up abruptly from the old globe and focused on Catherine, who looked flustered. Her eyes followed the students’ gaze to the clump of yellow flowers on the floor.
“Picking posies are we, Miss Woods?” the teacher asked. “And when you ought to be focused on your studies. Not what I would expect from one of our best students. What would your father say?”
A flush rose instantly to Catherine’s cheeks. She nodded meekly.
“Teacher,” Leo said, raising his hand. He was determined to take responsibility for his action, even if it meant an afternoon in the dunce cap.
“Not a word, Mr. Taylor,” the teacher said, and something in her tone made Leo fall silent.
The damage was done. Leo’s playful gesture had made Catherine look a fool.
That day at recess, there were whispers on the playground that something was about to happen. Catherine played with her usual flock of girls, and the other children milled about, each hoping for something exciting, and they were not disappointed. Leo approached Catherine, his head hung in shame.
“Hey,” he said. “I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”
Catherine, who had been laughing and smiling a moment before, became cold, then turned to face him as a hush fell over the playground.
“You,” she said, her voice dripping with poison. “You have been nothing but a nuisance since you moved here. You’ve done nothing but make me miserable.” Her voice was building in volume and intensity as the other fourth graders watched, mesmerized. “I want nothing to do with you. Leave me a
lone, Leo Taylor. I wish you were dead!”
Those words plowed deep into Leo’s heart like a revolver bullet.
*
To Leo’s disappointment, Catherine and he were in separate classrooms during fifth and sixth grades, at opposite ends of the hall in the little red schoolhouse. Sometimes, Leo wondered whether Catherine had asked her father to pull a few strings with the school board and arrange it that way intentionally. At the same time, they were still in the same school and hardly strangers to each other.
During those years, Leo cultivated a taste for adventure, earning a reputation as a daredevil, taking about any dare other students threw his way. He started it to get Catherine’s attention, but before long, he was doing it purely for the thrill, the adrenaline pumping through his body, the taste of his mouth gone dry with danger.
Leo’s newfound hobby didn’t come without a cost. In fifth grade, he jumped off the school roof, breaking an ankle, which didn’t keep him down for long. The bone had barely mended when he pedaled a bicycle over a makeshift ramp, jumping over two barrels. When he came home with scrapes and cuts, his mother was rarely there, and even when she was, Deborah usually had other things to do.
Leo hadn’t seen his parents happy together in ages; they hardly talked anymore. Rumors spread that Deborah Taylor had been seen with various other men around town, but Leo refused to believe them, and when the other kids tried to spread this malicious gossip, he shut them up with a fist to the face.
Meanwhile, Catherine devoted herself to her studies. Ever the model student, she earned top grades and showed skill at both mathematics and writing. Josiah was proud of his daughter; whom he wanted to get the best education money could buy, yet he wanted Catherine to make a good wife for a proper man. Elaine displayed every report card on the dining-room table and, as far as Catherine was concerned, made far too much fuss.
During those years, Leo kept an eye on Catherine even though her words that day on the schoolyard stayed with him. Because he cared for her, Leo honored the request to keep his distance, but he was never far away. He knew the time wasn’t right to kindle a friendship but also knew he’d never forgive himself if something happened to her.
Then, one afternoon in 1937, it nearly did. On their walks home from school, Leo often followed several yards behind Catherine, splitting their ways eventually—she’d turn right to climb the hill to the Woods estate; he’d turn left to cross the railroad tracks. But by keeping in step behind her most of the way, he knew he had her back should anything go wrong.
It was a warm spring day toward the end of their sixth-grade year, the kind of day when the air smells like clover honey, and the wind bends the newborn grass. Leo saw Catherine through the clearing, her brown hair tied in two long braids (the way she’d been wearing it lately). She was about to turn right when Leo saw a flash of color as someone else had appeared from behind the trees.
“Hey there, Heidi. Nice braids.”
Leo knew the voice instantly: Thomas McCaffrey. Unfortunately, for the students of Woodsville Elementary, Tom hadn’t become less a bully in the two years since he’d humiliated Arthur Yarger.
“I said, nice braids,” Tom sneered.
“I heard you,” Catherine said. “Why don’t you go pick on someone your size?”
Thomas had put on a bit of weight, so this was easier said than done.
“Is little Catherine Woods a goat herder now?” Tom teased. “Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?”
“Can it, Thomas,” Catherine said. “If you want to sing nursery rhymes, go find some first graders to play with.”
He blocked her path. “You calling me stupid?”
She stared him straight in the eye. “Boys who pick on others are usually the most stupid kind.”
Leo marveled at her tenacity: just as she’d done two years before, she had no problem telling off Tom. But Tom did have a problem; angrily, he pushed Catherine to the ground.
Leo rushed forward. In one swift motion, he pounced on Thomas and pummeled him with all his strength.
“Leo!” Catherine shouted. “Stop!”
But Leo didn’t stop, emotions pumping through him, the pent-up frustrations of his unrequited love unwinding through violence.
Using all her might, Catherine succeeded in pulling Leo off a whimpering Thomas, McCaffrey’s left eye already swelled, his nose smeared in blood. He wiped his lip on his sleeve and staggered off as Catherine stared at Leo and shook her head.
“I don’t know what to say to you,” she said.
Leo’s hand was stung “How about ‘thank you,’ for starters?”
“Look, I appreciate your looking out for me, but there was no need for violence. I could have handled it.”
They watched as Thomas retreated, limping and wiping the blood off his nose. One punch or even a threat might have done the job—then, Leo was not one for moderation.
“Poor kid,” Catherine said, her voice full of sympathy for the boy who had pushed her down only moments before. “You really went to town on him. It’ll take weeks for his face to heal.” She turned and started to walk up the hill to her house.
“May I walk with you?” Leo asked.
Catherine appraised him for a moment. “If I say no, are you going to beat me up too?”
“I don’t hit girls,” he said.
She sighed. “Fine then. Come along.”
Leo walked Catherine home for the first time that afternoon. For a long while, they trudged in silence. Leo was the first to speak. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I went overboard with Tom, but I was just trying to help you.”
She was silent. High on the hill, she could see the peak of her house. “I’ll go the rest of the way alone,” she said, turning to face him and pointed at his bruised knuckles. “You’ll want to put some ice on that, I imagine. So it doesn’t swell.”
Without another word, she continued up the hill as Leo watched her go. At that moment, his heart was swelling far more than his knuckles. It was still too soon for a friendship and far too soon for anything more, but in that single statement, Leo glimpsed something he’d barely dared to dream: Catherine cared.
*
By the spring of 1938, Leo’s parents were no longer together, a small-town scandal, seeing as it was the first recorded divorce in Woodsville since 1929. Ellis moved out, and Leo stayed with his mother, who left him to his devices. She was lenient and neglectful, though Leo never saw it that way. It was everything Catherine had predicted when she first laid eyes on him that day in fourth grade—that his family wasn’t “respectable,” that he came from a broken home.
But things were changing in the way Catherine viewed the world and Leo in particular. She was finishing the seventh grade, and the next year, she and Leo would matriculate to the brown-brick high school down the road.
Their bodies were changing rapidly as Leo became a tall, lanky youth with broad shoulders and muscular arms. As for Catherine, she often startled herself when she passed a mirror. A little girl no more, she bloomed with charm and elegance. Her clothes fit her differently, and her mother had even bought her a cotton bra with the newly introduced “cup size.” It was foreign to Catherine who felt nostalgic for the days when she could simply throw on a blouse.
Bodily changes brought emotional ones. Like all teenagers, Catherine started to see the opposite sex differently, and that’s when she began to desire Leo’s attention. He noticed that she was looking his way much more often than she used to. Soon, she called a truce to her longstanding dislike of Leo. Not sure of the reasons for the internal change, Catherine began to seek his company.
Leo was delighted with Catherine’s transformation. The summer before their eighth-grade year, they spent hours together playing in the rivers and hiking the hills on the north side of town, Leo digging pounds of clay from the riverbanks and fashioning her different trinkets, paperweights, dolls, and figurines. During those long, lazy afternoons, they noticed that both of them were good at making each other laug
h.
Catherine was a spoiled and demanding princess, but Leo loved her enough to let her get away with it. Once, he even made her a laurel of flowers twisted together with strips of clay.
“What’s this?” she asked.
He set it gently on her head. “If you’re going to act like a queen, you need a crown.”
She gave him a playful shove but wore it for the rest of the day.
Leo showed her how fun it was to do things only boys were supposed to do, like skipping rocks and climbing trees. In the warm summer rains, they scampered through the forest together, playing in the mud. After the storms passed, Catherine always showed up on her back porch, breathless and covered in sludge from head to toe. Her mother chastised her thoroughly, but Catherine had never felt better.
No one ever waited at home for Leo. Though he was only thirteen, he never had to be back at a specific time, and he certainly didn’t need to keep his clothes clean. Leo enjoyed his independence, though, and that summer, for the first time, he made Catherine long for the same thing.
Nothing like Catherine’s parents or their cloistered friends, Leo was like a character in the novels she adored: brave, if a little reckless, adventurous, and unpretentious. In short, Catherine found him irresistible.
One early morning in the summer, Leo was tossing pebbles up at Catherine’s window. They had agreed on a system—he threw pebbles from a safe distance to get her attention, so she could slip outside without her parents knowing.
Catherine woke to the familiar sound of rocks against the windowpane and dressed quickly, grabbing two apples on the way out the door.
“I got us breakfast.”
“Perfect.” Leo pocketed the apples. “We’ll need it. Ready for an adventure?”
She nodded, her cheeks pink with promise.
Four Seasons of Romance Page 2
