Kathleen's first encounter with the outdoor shower was over three decades in the anticipation. But it was worth the wait.
When her contractor had suggested getting rid of it, Kathleen had feigned ignorance of why it was there in the first place. "It was there when my parents bought the place," she'd lied, "And I have no idea what whoever put it there was thinking. But...let's keep it, and maybe re-tile it. I'm thinking of adding a swimming pool and it'll be handy then."
"As you wish," the man had said with a chuckle. "Can't say as I see the need for a shower out here until then, but whatever you like."
Had he really had a knowing twinkle in his eye as she'd given him the order? Had he imagined Kathleen herself showering there, with the fence hiding her from the neighbors but only the vines and bushes for cover in her own house and yard?
She could hardly blame him if he had been, Kathleen reflected now. It was not as though she hadn't imagined plenty of her crushes doing the same back in the day. She'd been back in town for weeks, living in her fully refurbished childhood home with no one to stop her from using the shower for a change, before she'd worked up the courage to do it. Now, with the Southwestern sunshine filtering through the trees and dancing on her bare wet skin, she felt a fool for denying herself the pleasure for so long.
She was far too wrapped up in the joy of the moment to take any notice of her elderly neighbor, Mrs. Ward, gaping at her in shock from the corner of the house. On the hunt for a cup of sugar while making cookies for her grandchildren, Mrs. Ward drew back around the corner out of sight, and flattened herself against Kathleen's house. "Well, I never! That little harlot! And here I thought Patricia raised her to be a lady!" Then she was off to seek out another neighbor for the sugar.
If Kathleen had known at that moment that she'd been spotted, she'd have been tickled rather than offended, for the moment had her feeling as beautiful and sexy as she had ever felt in her life. Recalling all too well that her father and brothers' use of the outdoor shower had been common knowledge in the neighborhood way back when, she was hardly so naïve as to think her own showers would remain secret. But she didn't mind. Having wasted far too much of her life trying to live up to her mother's puritanical dictates of what it meant to be a woman, she now had every intention of enjoying the intimate hunger that she had once tried so hard to suppress.
She still recalled all too well just how she'd been pushed to suppress it, and the outdoor shower had everything to do with that accursed memory. The now-gentrified neighborhood had been a lot more working-class back then, with many of the men - including her father and, in the summer, her two older brothers - working in the refinery and the mines just out of town. It was well-paid work, enough for Kathleen's parents to pay off their mortgage before she'd finished high school. But it was also filthy work, and Mom had an ironclad rule against letting Dad and her brothers in the house without a shower. There had once been a bathroom in the basement for that very use, but it was only big enough for one person at a time to use and you could only get so clean in the dusty cellar. So Dad had cordoned off the far corner of the property and laid water pipes out to it, and laid out enough tiles for three or more people to rinse off.
Nearly a decade younger than her brothers, Kathleen didn't recall a time when the shower wasn't there. She had more than willingly learned the rules about not looking out the window when Dad and her brothers got home from work, and she remembered all too well how her brothers had hated showering together, though it beat waiting for one another.
She also recalled the first time she'd worked up the courage to ask her mother if she could shower outside when the boys were off at work. And she recalled Mom's unequivocal no. "We're women, Katie, we need more privacy."
"I don't see why!" Kathleen had protested. "It'd be as private for me as it would be for the boys!"
"Do I need to explain biology to you, Katie? I could see your brothers not getting it, but I can't believe you don't! Women are different, we have different needs, and also different rights. We're entitled to more privacy. And I'd better never hear of you failing to recognize that again, understood?"
Kathleen had not understood, and even now she wasn't sure if she did. But through high school and her first two boyfriends, she had kept her distance from the shower. After making her escape overseas after college to teach English and marrying a British colleague who was just as straight-laced as her parents had been, there was no need to worry about the shower, for she'd hardly ever come home in those years.
Once Dad had retired, the shower had fallen into disuse while the rest of the neighborhood slowly grew more spruced-up and affluent as their small town had been taken over by suburban sprawl. On her rare visits home, Kathleen had always been acutely aware of the eyesore her childhood home was becoming as nearly all their neighbors moved away. The only other house on the block that wasn't sold and renovated was Mrs. Ward's, next door, and Mrs. Ward had always done her part to keep her house and yard beautiful regardless of the surroundings (and regardless of her own rather ugly personality - Kathleen had never liked her at all). But Mom and Dad had always been proud of their modest tastes, and they'd been bound and determined to enjoy Dad's pension for themselves rather than their house.
So when Mom had passed last year, Kathleen had little doubt the whole block had sighed with relief that now something could finally be done about the house. Newly divorced and returned from Europe with a new job in the city, Kathleen had talked both her brothers into selling her their share of the old house, and had used the money to renovate it and move back in herself. There was minimal sense of going home again, as the block looked nothing like the way she remembered it except for Mrs. Ward's scowl from next door, and didn't every neighborhood have one of those?
The outdoor shower didn't look like she'd remembered it either, having never been used in twenty years or more. But the contractors had done a beautiful job of refurbishing it. And those long ago forbidden fantasies of the bright sun on her bare freckled shoulders, the delicious vulnerability of being hidden only by the tentative cover of the leaves, the joy of being at one with nature in her tiny not-quite-private corner of the world...it wasn't just as good as she had always imagined, it was far better!
If the grimy neighborhood just beyond the bushes was gone, so was the awkward gangling weed of a girl Kathleen had been. Having grown a bit chubby with middle age, she had come to embrace it - she wasn't fat, she was robust, thank you very much. If her once pert breasts were now big and heavy, that only made the sunshine on them feel even better, not to mention the joyful taboo of their being bare outdoors. Her red hair had a few stray wisps of silver here and there, but she found it dignified in its own way. The reddish brown tangle of curls between her thighs was as dark and thick as ever, and if that was out of style, Kathleen didn't care. She found it elegant and feminine, two adjectives she wouldn't have thought to apply to herself for years back in Europe. As she soaped it up now, she was tempted to rub just a bit harder...but that was still a bridge too far for the moment.
It had probably been the longest shower of her life, Kathleen reflected when she finally put her robe back on and strolled across the backyard to her kitchen door. But she had enjoyed every moment of it, and resolved to never let herself hesitate to do it again.
Her sense of joy and peace lasted just until she reached the master bedroom at the end of the downstairs hall, where she intended to get dressed. Just as she pushed the bedroom door open, the doorbell rang. Tightening the sash of her robe, Kathleen turned around and walked back up the hallway, trying to recall if she had ordered anything due today.
Evidently not, for it was Mrs. Ward at the door. The old fool was facing off to the side towards her own house, resolutely avoiding eye contact with Kathleen as she opened the door. Immediately she wondered who had offended her neighbor this time. "Hi, Mrs. Ward," she said, forcing a smile.
"Katie," the older woman uttered icily, still not turning to look at her.
"No one's called me that in twenty years at least, Mrs. Ward. It's Kathleen now."
"You will always be bratty little Katie to me, although you just made it a lot more difficult for me to think you that way," Mrs. Ward seethed. "Katie, this is not the rough-around-the-edges neighborhood it was when your parents bought this house. We're a respectable suburb now."
"I agree, Mrs. Ward. That's why I decided to keep the house. I wouldn't want to move back to what it was."
"Then I am going to have to ask you to remain decent when you are outside!"
Kathleen's heart flipped. But her resolve did not slip, and she was not embarrassed or ashamed. "Is there a hole in the fence somewhere, Mrs. Ward? I'll be glad to get it fixed! I was ever so sure you couldn't see back there from anywhere but my own house and yard."
"Well, you cannot, it is true," Mrs. Ward conceded. "But I came 'round to ask for a cup of sugar and, when you didn't answer the door, I peeked in your backyard to see if you were there."
"In other words, you had no idea what I was up to until you came onto my property, uninvited." All at once Kathleen remembered the numerous battles her mother had endured with Mrs. Ward and her late husband over matters that were none of their business.
"Be that as it may, Katie, if I saw you stark naked back there, anyone could. How would you like it if the neighborhood boys got word of what you get up to back there?"
"I'm sure a word to their parents would put a stop to that." Kathleen kept to herself that she found the idea more titillating than offensive - it would do young men a world of good to see what a real woman looked like underneath, if it came to that.
"Not the point and you know it, Katie," Mrs. Ward said. "I am asking you once and once only, do not let me see again what I saw today."
"If you stay out of my yard, I can guarantee you won't!" With that Kathleen shut the door and locked it. She then took a deep breath and listened for some sign that Mrs. Ward had taken her leave, and set back off down the hall.
By the time she got back to her bedroom, the anger had dissipated as Kathleen thought of what Mrs. Ward had said about the neighborhood boys. Right or wrong, the thought of a clutch of horny eighteen year olds on ten speeds clustering around the edge of her house to spy on her in the shower was utterly arousing. Kathleen gave no thought at all to getting dressed just yet. She hung her robe on the door and got her vibrator out of the bedside table, and spent the next twenty minutes imagining herself giving the young men an anatomy lesson.
The altercation did scare Kathleen off from showering outside again for a few weeks. But once she braved it again and wasn't spotted this time, any fears of her neighbor were forgotten and she set about enjoying the risky ritual a few times a week. She was not, however, enjoying being alone in the big house, with the upstairs now going mostly unused. Besides, even without a mortgage, the property taxes were a big burden with her new and still uncertain job. So she put an ad in the local alternative newsmagazine, calling for open-minded singles or couples.
After several who were a little too alternative even for her high tolerance, Kathleen greeted Rob and Lisa, fresh out of grad school with new jobs in the city like her, to an interview one Saturday afternoon. Rob was clean cut and friendly to a fault, while Lisa had clothes and hair that made Kathleen feel surprised to see her with a man. Lisa proved to have a disposition as dark as her all-black clothes, but Kathleen hit it off immediately with Rob.
"I confess, we were hoping to get a place in the city," Rob said. "But it's just too expensive and there is something pleasant about coming home to a place like this. I'm impressed you were willing to move back into your childhood home, by the way. I don't think I could ever go home!"
"It's a reminder of how far I've come," Kathleen said. "I was trapped in an unhappy marriage for quite a while, and the neighborhood changed a lot while I was gone. So it feels like a fresh start, really, like I've won the battle in a way."
"I get that, Kathleen, but don't expect him to," Lisa said. "Men never understand how women are happier on their own than in marriage."
