Seven Mile Bridge. Michael M. Biehl

I wouldn’t be awkward with it.

      “Me, too,” she said. She opened her purse and pulled out a little can with a pink top and a plastic tube about the size of a small panetella. A bit of white fabric edged with elastic emerged from the purse. I realized a moment later that Lori had already removed her panties and stuffed them in her purse. When did she manage that? I observed the deftness with which she filled the plastic tube with foam, its plunger rising like a meat thermometer, and the agility with which she laid back and tilted her pelvis, her dainty hands and the foam-filled tube disappearing under her pleated skirt. I knew then that Lori had not merely practiced the night before, as I had. She had done this many times before.

      What a load off my mind that was.

      Plenty of other worries still plagued me, though. Self-consciousness about my inexperience, furtiveness about being seen, fear of getting Lori pregnant in spite of our precautions, concern about one of us getting injured on the jagged outcroppings of limestone poking through the gravel around us, insecurity about what was happening to my family, just to name a few. It had been six months since the Bank of Wisconsin letter had come and an undercurrent of anguish had become chronic for me.

      Having completed the injection, Lori pulled her top off over her head, slipped off her pleated skirt and looked at me with impatience. I stripped down to my white T-shirt and unfurled the condom onto myself with minimal dither. We lay down on our sides, facing each other. I remember she had on her “special occasion” Jean Naté perfume, a pink bra, and startling dark blue fingernail polish, but many of the subtler traits I usually found so intoxicating about Lori — the silkiness of her hair, the sweetness of her voice, the softness and sheen of her skin — were obscured by the smog of my own anxiety until Lori took matters into her own hands. Literally. She put her little hand on my chest, rolled me gently onto my back, got on top and guided me into her.

      Her eyes closed and her head rolled back. She wasn’t nervous at all. She was . . . intent. Whether this was from desire for me, or just desire to get the clumsy first time with me out of the way, I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. Once penetration had been accomplished, I caught a wave that lifted me up and carried me away from everything that had been bothering me that day, and for days and weeks and months before, and suddenly, for the first time in memory, the whole world felt good. The weight of Lori’s body on mine, her hands, her skin, the still, hazy air around us, the blood moving in my veins, even the hunk of limestone poking me between the shoulder blades felt good, and it all just kept feeling better and better until the wave broke. Then a low moan that sounded nothing like Lori came from this golden-haloed angel hovering over me, the same sound coming from me, then a delicious flash in my face and from the base of my spine, and an absolute conviction that this was without a doubt the single finest moment of my life, accompanied by the bubble-gum sweet taste of Lori’s mouth and the exotic squawks and squeals of seagulls on the lagoon.

      In the aftermath I thought about the Keats poem we had studied in English that day, and had new appreciation for it, especially the part that goes, “Then I felt like some watcher of the skies when a new planet swims into his ken.” We remained motionless, I don’t know for how long, until Lori said, “I’m cold,” and I realized it was getting dark. It took a long time to brush the limestone dust off our clothes.

      As we were leaving the cove, Lori said, “Isn’t that your brother?” I looked in the direction she was pointing. About two hundred yards away an athletically built male was scrambling down the collapsed wall of the quarry, kicking up a cloud of dust behind him. Even in the dim light I could tell Lori was right, it was Jamie. He was moving swiftly down the steep slope with the power and grace of an NFL halfback. Jamie had teased me many times, claiming to have seen me with Lori in the quarry, and I wondered, how long had he been up there? What had he seen? What had freaked him out so badly he was sprinting through the dusky quarry like he had a pack of hounds at his heels?

      Lori and I waited until Jamie was out of sight around a corner on the far side of the lagoon, then we crawled out of the quarry and through the hole in the fence. Halfway across the field, Lori stopped and gave me a kiss. We were hip deep in prairie grass.

      “You better not walk me home,” she said. “I told my mom and dad I was going to Denise Janacek’s house to study after school. They might see you.”

      Smart girl. Her cover story was better than mine. I was supposedly at cross country practice, which would have had me home before dark, and I had more than a mile walk back to the house ahead of me. Over an hour late. But I wasn’t worried about it. I wasn’t worried about anything. No matter what repercussions I had to face at home, it was worth it.

      “Want to do this again sometime?” said Lori. She batted her eyelashes facetiously.

      “How about tomorrow?” I said, although I was thinking, How about right now?

      “My, my.” She put her hand on my face. “How am I going to handle you?”

      That was a laugh. Lori could handle me with both hands tied behind her back, and we both knew it.

      “All right, sure,” she said. “Weather permitting. Call me after dinner, okay?”

      I was in mid-season condition and could easily have run all the way home, but I didn’t. I strolled, and savored the rare, sweet evening air and a feeling of satisfaction that was rarer and sweeter still. Oak leaves descended in seeming slow motion from the night sky, and Venus beamed like a signal fire above the dark horizon. The only thought I gave my parents was to wonder how they could have done for twenty years what Lori and I just did and end up hating each other over money. It seemed the most foolish and pathetic thing I could imagine, and I swore it would never happen to me and Lori.

      I was surprised to find the house dark when I got home.

      “Mom? Dad?”

      My mother had been working as a checker at Piggly Wiggly for three months. She was always there by the time I got home from school on days when I took the late bus. My dad was out of work and was usually puttering at his desk in the basement before dinner. I knew where Jamie was.

      The kitchen showed no sign that anyone had even started preparing dinner. I decided to check if my mother’s car was in the garage and went out the side door. The garage was closed, but from twenty feet away, I could hear a car engine rumbling and could see exhaust billowing out from under the door.

6

      A tear plops onto the glossy yearbook page. I quickly brush it off with the back of my hand, but it leaves a stain. Luckily, it landed not on Lori’s picture, but on that of some kid I barely knew in high school, Jim Hecht. I knew him better in grade school, but the only thing I remember about him is that he liked to eat library paste.

      I set the yearbook aside and head downstairs. Didn’t think I’d need a drink this early in the day. When I step on the fifth stair tread it brays mockingly. Hee-haw.

      I use the wall-mounted telephone in the kitchen to call Photo-Phast, having neglected to ask when my prints of the Lake Audrey negatives would be ready while I was in the store. A polite, efficient female explains that the “ ‘Prints in 1 hour’ not apply to special aw-duh.” Tomorrow before noon. Photo not so phast after all.

      Jim Beam and a ceramic coffee mug with bunny rabbits on it accompany me back upstairs to my room. Good bourbon is wonderfully versatile. On the rocks, it’s perfect in hot weather; straight, it warms you in the winter. It is sweet enough to drink as a digestif but is not too sweet to enjoy before dinner. Or, as in this case, before lunch.

      The next thing I pull out of the L.L. Bean box is my mother’s college yearbook from the University of Wisconsin, where she and my father met. The yearbook is from her senior year, so my father would have graduated two years earlier. I flip to my mother’s picture and am surprised at how dramatic her pose is. Body turned, chin lifted high. No smile at all, but instead a theatrically intense stare and slightly parted lips, like you’d see in a publicity still for a ’40s film actress. Her extracurricular activities are listed under her maiden name, Louise Warchefsky. Drama Club every year, president of the club senior year. A list of titles of plays and musicals, some