In silence, James Holden sat there sinking deeper and deeper into his own misery.
The more he thought about it, the farther he found himself from his desire. Later in the process, he knew, came a big barrier called “stealing a kiss,” and James with his literal mind provided this game with an aggressor, a defender, and the final extraction by coercion or violence of the first osculatory contact. If the objective could be carried off without the defense repulsing the advance, the rest was supposed to come with less trouble. But here he was floundering before he began, let alone approaching the barrier that must be an even bigger problem.
Briefly he wished that it were Christmas, because at Christmas people hung up mistletoe. Mistletoe would not only provide an opening by custom and tradition, it also cut through this verbal morass of trying to lead up to the subject by the quick process of supplying the subject itself. But it was a long time before Christmas. James abandoned that ill-conceived idea and went on sinking deep and feeling miserable.
Then Martha’s mother took James out of his misery by coming in to announce dinner. Regretfully, James sighed for his lost moments and helplessness, then got to his feet and held out a hand for Martha.
She put her hand in his and allowed him to lift her to her feet by pulling. The first contact did not stir him at all, though it was warm and pleasant. Once the pulling pressure was off, he continued to hold Martha’s hand, tentatively and experimentally.
Then Janet Fisher showered shards of ice with a light laugh. “You two can stand there holding hands,” she said. “But I’m going to eat it while it’s on the table.”
James Holden’s hand opened with the swiftness of a reflex action, almost as fast as the wink of an eye at the flash of light or the body’s jump at the crack of sound. Martha’s hand did not drop because she, too, was holding his and did not let go abruptly. She giggled, gave his hand a little squeeze and said, “Let’s go. I’m hungry too.”
None of which solved James Holden’s problem. But during dinner his personal problem slipped aside because he discovered another slight change in Janet Fisher’s attitude. He puzzled over it quietly, but managed to eat without any apparent preoccupation. Dinner took about a half hour, after which they spent another fifteen minutes over coffee, with Janet refusing her second cup. She disappeared at the first shuffle of a foot under the table, while James and Martha resumed their years-old chore of clearing the table and tackling the dishwashing problem.
Alone in the kitchen, James asked Martha, “What’s with your mother?”
“What do you mean, what’s with her?”
“She’s changed, somehow.”
“In what way?”
“She seems sort of inner-thoughtful. Cheerful enough but as if something’s bothering her that she can’t stop.”
“That all?”
“No,” he went on. “She hiked upstairs like a shot right after dinner was over. Tim raced after her. And she said no to coffee.”
“Oh, that. She’s just a little upset in the middle.”
“But why?”
“She’s pregnant.”
“Pregnant?”
“Sure. Can’t you see?”
“Never occurred to me to look.”
“Well, it’s so,” said Martha, scouring a coffee cup with an exaggerated flourish. “And I’m going to have a half-sibling.”
“But look—”
“Don’t you go getting upset,” said Martha. “It’s a natural process that’s been going on for hundreds of thousands of years, you know.”
“When?”
“Not for months,” said Martha. “It just happened.”
“Too bad she’s unhappy.”
“She’s very happy. Both of them wanted it.”
James considered this. He had never come across Voltaire’s observation that marriage is responsible for the population because it provides the maximum opportunity with the maximum temptation. But it was beginning to filter slowly into his brain that the ways and means were always available and there was neither custom, tradition, nor biology that dictated a waiting period or a time limit. It was a matter of choice, and when two people want their baby, and have no reason for not having their baby, it is silly to wait.
“Why did they wait so long if they both want it?”
“Oh,” replied Martha in a matter-of-fact voice, “they’ve been working at it right along.”
James thought some more. He’d come to see if he could detect any difference between the behavior of Judge and Mrs. Carter, and the behavior of Tim and Janet Fisher. He saw little, other than the standard differences that could be accounted for by age and temperament. Tim and Janet did not really act as if they’d Discovered Something New. Tim, he knew, was a bit more sweet and tender to Janet than he’d been before, but there was nothing startling in his behavior. If there were any difference as compared to their original antics, James knew that it was undoubtedly due to the fact that they didn’t have to stand lollygagging in the hallway for two hours while Janet half-heartedly insisted that Tim go home. He went on to consider his original theory that the Carters were childless because they occupied separate bedrooms; by some sort of deduction he came to the conclusion that he was right, because Tim and Janet Fisher were making a baby and they slept in the same bedroom.
He went on in a whirl; maybe the Carters didn’t want children, but it was more likely that they too had tried but it hadn’t happened.
And then it came to him suddenly that here he was in the kitchen alone with Martha Bagley, discussing the very delicate subject. But he was actually no closer to his problem of becoming a participant than he’d been an hour ago in the living room. It was one thing to daydream the suggestion when you can also daydream the affirmative response, but it was another matter when the response was completely out of your control. James was not old enough in the ways of the world to even consider outright asking; even if he had considered it, he did not know how to ask.
* * *
The evening went slowly. Janet and Tim returned about the time the dishwashing process was complete. Janet proposed a hand of bridge; Tim suggested poker, James voted for pinochle, and Martha wanted to toss a coin between canasta or gin rummy. They settled it by dealing a shuffled deck face upward until the ace of hearts landed in front of Janet, whereupon they played bridge until about eleven o’clock. It was interesting bridge; James and Martha had studied bridge columns and books for recreation; against them were aligned Tim and Janet, who played with the card sense developed over years of practice. The youngsters knew the theories, their bidding was as precise as bridge bidding could be made with value-numbering, honor-counting, response-value addition, and all of the other systems. They understood all of the coups and end plays complete with classic examples. But having all of the theory engraved on their brains did not temporarily imprint the location of every card already played, whereas Tim and Janet counted their played cards automatically and made up in play what they missed in stratagem.
At eleven, Janet announced that she was tired, Tim joined her; James turned on the television set and he and Martha watched a ten-year-old movie for an hour. Finally Martha yawned.
And James, still floundering, mentally meandered back to his wish that it were Christmas so that mistletoe would provide a traditional gesture of affection, and came up with a new and novel idea that he expressed in a voice that almost trembled:
“Tired, Martha?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, why don’t I kiss you good night and send you off to bed.”
“All right, if you want to.”
“Why?”
“Oh—just—well, everybody does it.”
She sat near him on the low divan, looking him full in the face but making no move, no gesture, no change in her expression. He looked at her and realized that he was not sure of how to take hold of her, how to reach for her, how to proceed.
She said, “Well, go ahead.”
“I’m going to.”
<
br /> “When?”
“As soon as I get good and ready.”
“Are we going to sit here all night?”
In its own way, it reminded James of the equally un-brilliant conversation between Janet and Tim on the homecoming after their first date. He chuckled.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” he said in a slightly strained voice. “I’m thinking that here we sit like a couple of kids that don’t know what it’s all about.”
“Well,” said Martha, “aren’t we?”
“Yes,” he said reluctantly, “I guess we are. But darn it, Martha, how does a guy grow up? How does a guy learn these things?” His voice was plaintive, it galled him to admit that for all of his knowledge and his competence, he was still just a bit more than a child emotionally.
“I don’t know,” she said in a voice as plaintive as his. “I wouldn’t know where to look to find it. I’ve tried. All I know,” she said with a quickening voice, “is that somewhere between now and then I’ll learn how to toss talk back and forth the way they do.”
“Yes,” he said glumly.
“James,” said Martha brightly, “we should be somewhat better than a pair of kids who don’t know what it’s all about, shouldn’t we?”
“That’s what bothers me,” he admitted. “We’re neither of us stupid. Lord knows we’ve plenty of education between us, but—”
“James, how did we get that education?”
“Through my father’s machine.”
“No, you don’t understand. What I mean is that no matter how we got our education, we had to learn, didn’t we?”
“Why, yes. In a—”
“Now, let’s not get involved in another philosophical argument. Let’s run this one right on through to the end. Why are we sitting here fumbling? Because we haven’t yet learned how to behave like adults.”
“I suppose so. But it strikes me that anything should be—”
“James, for goodness’ sake. Here we are, the two people in the whole world who have studied everything we know together, and when we hit something we can’t study—you want to go home and kiss your old machine,” she finished with a remarkable lack of serial logic. She laughed nervously.
“What’s so darned funny?” he demanded sourly.
“Oh,” she said, “you’re afraid to kiss me because you don’t know how, and I’m afraid to let you because I don’t know how, and so we’re talking away a golden opportunity to find out. James,” she said seriously, “if you fumble a bit, I won’t know the difference because I’m no smarter than you are.”
She leaned forward holding her face up, her lips puckered forward in a tight little rosebud. She closed her eyes and waited. Gingerly and hesitantly he leaned forward and met her lips with a pucker of his own. It was a light contact, warm, and ended quickly with a characteristic smack that seemed to echo through the silent house. It had all of the emotional charge of a motherin-law’s peck, but it served its purpose admirably. They both opened their eyes and looked at one another from four inches of distance. Then they tried it again and their second was a little longer and a little warmer and a little closer, and it ended with less of the noise of opening a fruit jar.
Martha moved over close beside him and put her head on his shoulder; James responded by putting an arm around her, and together they tried to assemble themselves in the comfortably affectionate position seen in movies and on television. It didn’t quite work that way. There seemed to be too many arms and legs and sharp corners for comfort, or when they found a contortion that did not create interferences with limb or corner, it was a strain on the spine or a twist in the neck. After a few minutes of this coeducational wrestling they decided almost without effort to return to the original routine of kissing. By more luck than good management they succeeded in an embrace that placed no strain and which met them almost face to face. They puckered again and made contact, then pressure came and spread out the pair of tightly pursed rosebuds. Martha moved once to get her nose free of his cheek for a breath of air.
At the rate they were going, they might have hit paydirt this time, but just at the point where James should have relaxed to enjoy the long kiss he began to worry: There is something planned and final about the quick smacking kiss, but how does one gracefully terminate the long-term, high-pressure jobs? So instead of enjoying himself, James planned and discarded plans until he decided that the way he’d do it would be to exert a short, heavy pressure and then cease with the same action as in the quick-smack variety.
It worked fine, but as he opened his eyes to look at her, she was there with her eyes still closed and her lips still ready. He took a deep breath and plunged in again. Having determined how to start, James was now going to experiment with endings.
They came up for air successfully again, and then spent some time wriggling around into another position. The figure-fitting went easier this time, after threshing around through three or four near-comforts they came to rest in a pleasantly natural position and James Holden became nervously aware of the fact that his right hand was cupped over a soft roundness that filled his palm almost perfectly. He wondered whether to remove it quickly to let her know that this intimacy wasn’t intentional; slowly so that (maybe, he hoped) she wouldn’t realize that it had been there; or to leave it there because it felt pleasant. While he was wondering, Martha moved around because she could not twist her neck all the way around like an owl, and she wanted to see him. The move solved his problem but presented the equally great problem of how he would try it again.
James allowed a small portion of his brain to think about this, and put the rest of his mind at ease by kissing her again. Halfway through, he felt warm moistness as her lips parted slightly, then the tip of her tongue darted forward between his lips to quest against his tongue in a caress so fleeting that it was withdrawn before he could react—and James reacted by jerking his head back faster than if he had been clubbed in the face. He was still tingling with the shock, a pleasant shock but none the less a shock, when Martha giggled lightly.
He bubbled and blurted, “Wha—whu—?”
She told him nervously, “I’ve been wanting to try that ever since I read it in a book.”
He shivered. “What book?” he demanded in almost a quaver.
“A paperback of Tim’s. Mother calls them, Tim’s sex and slay stories.” Martha giggled again. “You jumped.”
“Sure did. I was surprised. Do it again.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Didn’t you like it?”
“Did you?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t have time to find out.”
“Oh.”
He kissed her again and waited. And waited. And waited. Finally he moved back an inch and said, “What’s the matter?”
“I don’t think we should. Maybe we ought to wait until we’re older.”
“Not fair,” he complained. “You had all the warning.”
“But—”
“Didn’t you like it?” he asked.
“Well, it gave me the most tickly tingle.”
“And all I got was a sort of mild electric shock. Come on.”
“No.”
“Well, then, I’ll do it to you.”
“All right. Just once.”
Leaping to the end of this midnight research, there are three primary ways of concluding, namely: 1, physical satisfaction; 2, physical exhaustion; and 3, interruption. We need not go into sub-classifications or argue the point. James and Martha were not emotionally ready to conclude with mutual defloration. Ultimately they fell asleep on the divan with their arms around each other. They weren’t interrupted; they awoke as the first flush of daylight brightened the sky, and with one more rather chaste kiss, they parted to fall into the deep slumber of complete physical and emotional exhaustion.
* * *
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
James Holden’s ride home on the train gave him a chance to think, alone and isolated from all
but superficial interruptions. He felt that he was quite the bright young man.
He noticed with surreptitious pride that folks no longer eyed him with sly, amused, knowing smiles whenever he opened a newspaper. Perhaps some of their amusement had been the sight of a youngster struggling with a full-spread page, employing arms that did not quite make the span. But most of all he hated the condescending tolerance; their everlasting attitude that everything he did was “cute” like the little girl who decked herself out in mother’s clothing from high heels and brassiere to evening gown, costume jewelry, and a fumbled smear of makeup.
That was over. He’d made it to a couple of months over fourteen, he’d finally reached a stature large enough so that he did not have to prove his right to buy a railroad ticket, nor climb on the suitcase bar so that he could peer over the counter. Newsdealers let him alone to pick his own fare instead of trying to “save his money” by shoving Mickey Mouse at him and putting his own choice back on its pile.
He had not succeeded in gaining his legal freedom, but as Ward of the State under Judge Carter he had other interesting expectations that he might not have stumbled upon. Carter had connections; there was talk of James’ entering a comprehensive examination at some university, where the examining board, forearmed with the truth about his education, would test James to ascertain his true level of comprehension. He could of course collect his bachelor’s degree once he complied with the required work of term papers written to demonstrate that his information could be interwoven into the formation of an opinion, or reflection, or view of some topic. Master’s degrees and doctor’s degrees required the presentation of some original area of study, competence in his chosen field, and the development of some facet of the field that had not been touched before. These would require more work, but could be handled in time.
The Fourth 'R' (1959) Page 18
