Summer arrived, and Washington was in a ferment. Civil rights protests in the South were in the news and Lyndon Johnson was taking on the Ku Klux Klan, while antiwar professors were taking on the President over his escalation of the Vietnam conflict. And dog lovers were still up in arms over the photo of him the year before, lifting his beagle Him by the ears.
I finished packing for my six weeks as a mother's helper in Vermont, and dreamed of Danny.
Mom was gently angling to have me make up with Pierre, with whom I'd had a terrible fight days after our trip to the beach in Delaware, but I wasn't biting. I knew she adored him, and even my gruff, sardonic dad had warmed to him. The same dad whose rules and rough manner had driven off any number of my older sister's would-be boyfriends (she was now engaged, after three years away at college) and who had terrified most of the high school boys who'd ever even considered dating me. My grumpy dad liked Pierre so much that he lent him the '54 Ford for a couple of weeks while he got settled into his summer job, at a lab in Bethesda, Maryland.
I sulked in my room when Pierre came over, talking excitedly about his job. I could hear my parents laughing out loud when he talked about how he got to wear a white lab coat — with a pocket protector, for crying out loud. He thanked my dad profusely for the loan of the car. The station wagon in which Pierre and I had surrendered our virginity to each other. That seemed so long ago to me, pouting in the attic.
A couple of days later I was on the Greyhound, grinding its way through the Appalachian Mountains on the twenty-hour trip to Burlington, where I'd be picked up by the family I was working for.
Danny! Just the thought that he was close by fired my imagination, and my wanting him burned in my belly and moistened my panties.
I was crazy about that boy.
I was so distracted that after a few days the mother I was working for sat me down for a "serious talk." My work was sloppy, the floors barely mopped, the dishes were piling up in the sink, the toilets weren't cleaned and the beds weren't made. What was the matter with me? The children were unkempt, their laundry piling up in the hampers. Was I feeling alright?
Frankly, no. I was lovesick.
I had cold sweats. I had hot sweats. I could literally taste how badly I wanted Danny — the salt of his skin after he'd worked up a sweat hauling logs to build corduroy roads through swampy stretches of the trail, the metallic taste of the heavy-duty mosquito repellent he used, the smokiness of the palm of his hand I kissed after he'd built a campfire ... Every moment of every day my nerves were jangling. Gone were any thoughts of Pierre. Who? Gone was my lust for Ken. What? Gone was any memory of George. What old guy?
My period came and I was doubled over with cramps. My employer got so worried by my lackadaisical manner that she called my mom. Long distance! (That was a big, big deal in those days. Such calls were usually reserved for deaths in the family, emergency hospitalizations, that sort of stuff.) They chatted for a while, and I heard a lot of, "Yes. I see ... Really? Ahhhh."
Then I was beckoned to the phone. Mom's orders: Shape up, Taralee. But she was understanding. She'd figured out pretty quickly that I was nineteen so it must be a boy problem. But she misdiagnosed it as regret over my break-up with Pierre — she did her best to console me over the phone with minor news about how well his job was going and that he was helping my dad restore an old canoe that had sat for years in our yard. Jeesh; like I wanted to know all that. But I promised her I'd buckle down to work, and I did.
I became the household drudge I was hired to be. I washed and cleaned and minded the kids and did the laundry ... and finally, I had a whole day off, the same day Danny did.
I hiked up to last summer's hut, to the clearing where he'd stood in that photo that had teased me from the frame of my mirror in my wonderful old house with squirrels in the attic, the picture with lush greenery surrounding him that thawed the bitter winds of the Washington winter whistling in the eaves outside my room, while my heart yearned for summer, and Vermont, and him.
I broke into the clearing and whistled, low and sweet ...
And there he was, in the flesh! Just as I'd pictured him all winter: dark curly hair, shaggier than last summer, big white smile, shadow of a beard, tan a bit deeper than I remembered, shoulders a bit broader in a sweat-stained army shirt, sleeves rolled up his forearms, wide leather belt holding up khaki shorts (very short, ooooh!) that were a size too large, strong thighs, a bit of black hair on his calves disappearing into gray woolen work socks, scuffed tan work boots. He'd just turned twenty, a year older than me.
I dashed across the clearing and threw myself, literally, into his arms. He caught me, laughing, and swept me off my feet, twirling round and round. My heart was racing.
This was the moment! Together. At last.
I nestled against him and he kissed me softly, slowly. His manly smell mingled with the pine spice floating in the air, with the wildflowers blooming in the glade, with the faint whiff of last weekend's campfire. My breasts, crushed against his chest, could feel his heartbeat. My belly thrummed against his, and my shorts were stretched tight between my hypersensitive labia. Revelling in the strength of his arms holding me, I slipped off a shoe and rubbed my foot up and down the flesh of his leg, marveling at how erotic the hair and skin and sinews and muscles were, warmed by the sun, and how they made me love him more with every touch.
He put me down and held me away, his big hands on my shoulders, and gazed into my eyes.
"I love you," I croaked, my voice hoarse with desire. "I want to make love to you."
"Yes! But first, Taralee ...
"I want you to be my wife."
My heart missed a beat. So much had happened since last summer's awkward puppy love.
His words hung between us, like glittering icicles stubbornly refusing to melt in the summer heat. I shivered involuntarily.
My mouth was dry.
"No, Danny. There's no reason to wait.
"You won't be my first ..."
There. I'd said it.
The hand that had been squeezing my heart for months loosened its grip. For a moment.
Then my heart sank. It was as if Danny's glow faded before my eyes. He was still smiling, but the little crinkles at the corners of his eyes, those tiny creases that I'd dreamed of on lonely nights and in boring trigonometry classes, the happiness lines that told me he loved me ... vanished.
Stunned, I realized those five little words, my self-serving honesty, had crushed the hopes and plans that had lived inside him, kept him warm during the long winter nights. They'd somehow erased from his mental blackboard a year's calculations of a life of happiness together.
"I'm sorry, Danny. So sorry ..."
His eyes glittered and he turned away. His shoulders tight, his fists clenched. Then slowly he rubbed his face with his palms.
Silence.
Clouds crossed the sun and the glade seemed suddenly cool. A summer shower spattered on the leaves and dripped through the verdant canopy overhead. He shrugged and led the way to the hut.
