“What do you like most about me?”
He told her.
“Oh,” she said. “I mean next to that. I’m not counting that.”
“Why not? It’s the best part of you, April.”
She giggled. “But you’re the only person who knows about it. What do you like next best?”
“Your hands.”
She had been expecting him to say that he liked her breasts next. His answer was a surprise. She looked at her hands. As far as she could see, they were just hands.
“My hands?”
“They’re neat and dainty and very pretty.”
A boy like Bill Piersall would never have noticed her hands. He would have noticed only those parts of her body intimately connected with sex. Craig was different, she thought. Vastly different.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Don’t thank me. You were fishing for a compliment, weren’t you?”
“I suppose so.”
“A compliment for these.” He let go of the steering wheel with his right and hand and tapped each breast in turn. “These were what you had in mind, weren’t they?”
She giggled.
“Well, they pass muster, little girl. In case you didn’t know already.”
Craig pulled the car to a stop in front of her house. He told her it was only midnight and she could not believe him at first. She felt as though she had spent at least ten hours in bed with him. He opened the door for her and walked her to her front door. She took a key from her purse and fitted it in the lock.
“I’ll see you soon,” he said.
He did not kiss her. She smiled and he turned and walked back to his car. She pushed the door open, stepped inside, and closed the door after herself.
Her mother was knitting in the living room.
“You’re home early,” she said.
“Not so early.”
“Well, early enough. Sometimes older boys don’t respect a young girl’s curfew. They don’t understand, being accustomed to keeping late hours themselves. But this Craig seems like a very thoughtful young man, April.”
“He is, Mom.”
“Your father likes him,” Mrs. North went on. “Says he has a good head riding on his shoulders. And I must say he gave me the same impression, April.”
She kept her smile back. So her father liked Craig. God, maybe he’d offer him a job in the drugstore. That would be just the place for Craig Jeffers. She could see him now, filling prescriptions carefully and methodically. Well, she thought, there was something else he had filled, and he had done a magnificent job of it.
“Did he buy you dinner, April?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Where?”
“The Coachman,” she said, naming a popular middle-class restaurant in Xenia. If she told her mother about Kardaman’s, Mom would never believe her.
“That’s a fine place, April. Did you enjoy your dinner?”
“Yes, Mom. It was nice.”
“Well, it’s a nice place. I hope it didn’t cost him too much money?”
“Not too much.” She smiled inwardly. Craig had placed two twenties and a ten on the table to cover the bill plus the tip. But there was no point in telling her mother about that.
“Although he seems to have quite a bit of money. That car he drives must have cost a pretty penny.”
“Well, his parents left him some money.”
“Of course,” Mrs. North said. “Well, money never hurt a good man. Your father used to say that it was as easy to fall in love with a rich girl as a poor one. Of course, he married a poor one in the end. But just the same—”
“Yes, Mom.”
It was getting good, she thought. Now the old lady was hearing wedding bells in the distance. She could hardly wait to tell Craig.
“April? You didn’t kiss him goodnight, did you?”
“Why? Did you watch, Mom?”
The woman blushed. “Of course not,” she said crisply. “I wouldn’t spy on you, April.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I just noticed that your lipstick wasn’t smeared. My, you used to come home from dates with other boys with your lipstick smeared all over your face.”
“Oh, I see.”
“But you didn’t kiss Craig?”
“No, Mom.”
“Did he try to kiss you?”
It was very hard to keep from laughing. The whole idea of a long discussion about a goodnight kiss with a man who had just taken her to bed for several hours was ridiculous in the extreme. But she managed to keep a straight face.
“Not on the first date,” she said.
“My,” her mother said. “Your Craig really is a gentleman, isn’t he?”
“Yes, Mom. He is. I’m pretty tired, Mom.”
“Well, you just run along to bed, April.”
She started for the stairs. She was tired — that was true enough. And she did want to get to bed. But more than anything else she wanted to end what was becoming the conversation of a lifetime with her mother. If this bit went on much longer she was simply going to crack up laughing and that was all there was to it.
“April—”
She sighed. “Yes, Mom?”
“I was concerned about your going out with an older man, you know.”
“I thought so, Mom.”
“I’m not concerned now. Older men are more settled, April. They don’t feel compelled to prove themselves. I think you’re probably — well, safer with an older man, April.”
This time, as she ran headlong up the stairs, she laughed hysterically. It was just too much, just too funny.
6
April focused her eyes upon the small leather-bound hymnal and sang the words to the song in a small clear voice. She did not really have to study the words, since the congregation sang God Bless America each Sunday in an effort to prove that a theory holding Protestant churches to be a hotbed of communism was markedly untrue as far as Antrim, Ohio, was concerned. Still, by looking at the hymnal she could avoid looking elsewhere. Elsewhere took in a lot of ground. Elsewhere included the minister, and April North was young enough to have trouble looking steadily and soberly upon the steady and sober countenance of a minister of God just a few hours after a night of scintillating sin. That the minister would have approved of April’s conduct was highly doubtful. And, although she hardly suspected that he could guess her conduct from the expression on her face, she preferred not to look at him.
Elsewhere also included Bill Piersall a few pews forward, Danny Duncan a little to her left, and Jim Bregger across the aisle on her right. She seemed to be surrounded by boys who either had gotten into her or who had tried. Bill, for one, qualified on both counts-he had taken his pleasure with her in the woods and he was ready for more.
She did not want to look at them.
God bless everything, she thought. She closed her hymnal and returned it to the rack where it belonged. She turned to kiss her mother and her father in turn, then followed them all out of the church. Sunday, she thought, should be abolished. What a God-awful way to spend a morning.
She had never objected to church before. Previously she had even looked forward to it. It was uplifting, in a way, and after a morning spent sitting primly in a clean dress between her parents in the small church she had generally felt a great deal better. But the time she had spent with Craig had changed her feelings on the subject. Craig was almost violently anti-religious, and after being with him she felt the same way.
She remembered an incident from the night before at his house. They were in bed together at the conclusion of their second bout of lovemaking — her “lesson” — and he looked at her suddenly and said, “You can go to hell now.”