Page 4 of The River Is Waiting

She nodded. “I signed up for that class just to get my last gen-ed requirementout of the way, but it’s been really interesting. This past week, we’ve been looking at Hinduism: karma, dharma, reincarnation.” As she talked about the theory that we’ve all been here before in other forms, I pretended to be interested, but what I was really focused on was how good she smelled and how much I wanted to kiss those plump talking lips of hers and what it would be like to fuck her. “Don’t you think?” she asked.

Busted. I had no idea how to answer her. “Possibly,” I said.

At the Andrea, we danced a couple of times (she danced cooler than I did) and drank a few Heinekens, but the band was too loud for conversation. When they let rip with an eardrum-shattering cover of “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” I pointed to the beach out back and she nodded. The just-past-full moon illuminated the shore that night. We dropped our shoes and her purse in the sand, threw my hoodie over them so they’d be concealed, and started walking. “So,” she said. “You’re closer to your mother than your dad. What’s she like?”

“My mom? Well… she’s got red hair like me except hers is starting to go gray. Good sense of humor, likes to garden.” I edited out the more exotic stuff: that Mom grew her own weed and was into Tarot; that the summer between my high school graduation and my first year of college, she’d gotten a tattoo, turned Wiccan, and told me she might be bisexual. “She’s a bit of a free spirit,” I added.

“Does she work?”

“Yeah. Waitresses at Newport Creamery. She’s been there for years. Has a bunch of regulars she jokes with. What’s your mom like?”

She said, “Well, she reads a lot and writes poetry that she never lets anyone see. Vacuums her apartment twice a week and hates that I’m such a slob. She belongs to this women’s church group where they get together and sew patchwork quilts.”

“Girls Gone Wild, huh? So if you wanted to be a nun, you guys must be Catholic. Right?”

“Nope. I’d been over at my friend Erin Houlihan’s house when her aunt was visiting. Sister Julia: she was young and pretty and had just takenher final vows. When I got home, I told my mother that Erin and I had decided to enter the convent when we were old enough. She reminded me that we were Methodists, not Catholics, and did I know that nuns had to shave their heads and kneel on hard surfaces when they prayed, sometimes for hours at a time? I decided Erin would have to go it alone.”

She laughed at the memory. “My grandfather was a brigadier general in the army, and both Mom’s brothers were commissioned officers. My uncle Frank worked at the Pentagon until he retired. The whole family votes Republican, including Mom.”

“Like mother, like daughter?” I asked.

“Politically? Oh God, no. I can’t even go there with her about politics. What about you? Were you Bush or Gore?” When I said I hadn’t bothered to vote because all politicians were the same, she punched my arm. Hard! “That attitude is part of the problem, you chooch. I can tell I have a lot of work to do if I’m going to straightenyouout.” As in, maybe you and I might have a future? That this night might go somewhere?

“Maybe you should have been a nun after all,” I said. “You’ve already got the scolding thing down and you can land a pretty decent punch. Plus you’re pretty enough to rock a shaved head.”

She said she bet I used that line with all the girls. “Allwhatgirls,” I said.

“Oh, come off it. Those broad shoulders and the lanky frame? Those long lashes that any girl would kill to have?”

Her compliments made me feel embarrassed but pleased. “Lanky?” I said. “Gawky, you mean.”

She scoffed. “Cute butt, too. Not that I noticed.” When she reached over and slipped her small hand in mine, I folded my fingers around it. Had it happened as early as that? Was that the moment—the gesture—that made me fall in love with her?

By the time we got back to the place where we’d left our stuff, the tide had crept further in and soaked everything. “No biggie,” she said. “Most of my stuff’s in my other purse and folding money dries.”

Up at the Andrea, the band must have been taking a break. The jukeboxwas playing an old tune that I recognized.You are here and warm / But I could look away and you’d be gone… We decided not to go back inside. Holding our wet shoes, we walked barefoot to the parking lot. Made out in my car, touching each other until the windows fogged up and I was getting close to launching. She whispered that we’d better stop. “Is that what you want?” I whispered back.

“No,” she said. “But yes.”

When I dropped her back at her mom’s, I asked her, on a scale of one to five, how good a time she’d had. “Five,” she said. “You?” I told her ten.

The following morning, I was still asleep when my phone rang. I squinted at the time: seven fifteen. Who the fuck…?

“Yeah?”

“Good morning,” she said. “Thanks again for last night. Hey, would you like to go out for breakfast? I was thinking the Aero Diner on Route Two in half an hour?”

I said yes, swung my legs out of bed, and headed for the shower. After toweling off, I looked at my naked self in the mirror. Long eyelashes? Check. Broad shoulders? Nah. Average, maybe. Nothing special. But because the work I was doing that summer was physical, my stomach looked cut and my biceps were bigger. Still, I had a T-shirt tan—not cool. And an overbite, as the hygienist always reminded me when I got my teeth cleaned. And in my opinion, my frame was still on the scrawny side. It was a draw, I figured, and slipped on some clean boxers. What counted was that Emily liked what she saw. I glanced again at the clock. I had fifteen minutes to get to that diner on Route Two and there’d probably be beach traffic. There was no time to shave, so I hoped she liked the scruffy look.

Apparently, she did. We got together almost every night for the rest of that dwindling summer. Went to the beach half a dozen times. Made love whenever the opportunity let us, given that we were both staying with our moms.

Emily’s mom was iffy about me from the beginning, and she wasn’texactly reassured when she found a couple of the nude sketches I’d done of Emily. “He could post these on the internet,” she warned her daughter. “How many schools would hire you to teach if these went public?”

Emily’s theory was that Betsy would come around once she got to know me better, so I went over there for dinner one rainy Sunday in the middle of August. Emily made a lasagna and Betsy contributed a green salad with nothing in it besides arugula, oil, and lemon juice. Hope she hasn’t tired herself out making it, I thought. To impress her, I had splurged on a thirty-dollar bottle of red wine and purposely left the price tag on, but I could have saved my money. Betsy barely touched her lips to her glass. After I’d finished a second helping of lasagna, Emily said she’d made a blueberry pie for dessert. When she stood and started clearing the plates, I got up to help her. Betsy insisted I sit back down because I was their guest.

With Em in the kitchen, that left the two of us. After an awkward several seconds, I said, “So your daughter says you write poetry.”

“Oh, here and there,” she said. “I’m much more of a reader than a writer.”

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