“I knew kids made out there. I suppose I wanted to.”
“You suppose?”
“I wasn’t really sure what making out involved. I was fifteen. Nobody had talked to me about it. I thought it would be like Wuthering Heights. I never thought about sex. I still don’t.”
Joan coughed. Meadoe knew she did that to cover a snicker. “So, you thought one of you would die and the other would pine forever? That’s ambitious for a third date.”
It had been in early November, a few days before her birthday, which is why she remembered—the first cold night of the fall. Windows were fogged in the other cars. Chris had taken her to a movie, then headed to the park without asking.
“No, what I like about Wuthering Heights is the second part anyway, after Catherine dies and Heathcliff keeps searching for her. Wuthering Heights is a bad example. Maybe I thought we’d hold hands. You know, and then kiss on the porch when he dropped me off.”
Joan wrote in the notebook. “Sheesh, were we ever that young? Hadn’t you ever had a sexual fantasy with Christopher in it before? You knew you were going on the date; you’d been out with him twice already; didn’t you think about anything more extensive than holding hands?”
They had held hands. He turned the engine off and moved next to her. Her hands clasped in her lap, like they were now, and he gently pried one free. She remembered she’d almost giggled at that, partly from nervousness, and partly because it all seemed so awkward. His fingers slid between hers; she couldn’t tell if it was her sweat or his.
“I played with dolls still when I was fifteen. I read The Girl Scout’s Guide to the Stars,” said Meadoe. “I know it sounds silly, but I thought of myself as a little girl. Holding hands was the extent of it. Maybe carving our names in a tree.”
She’d thought she should sigh when he squeezed her hand, but she didn’t. Her neck muscles bunched; blood pounded behind her eyes. Now that they were there, she longed to leave. Her lips snapped as they parted. “I want to go now,” she tried to say. Nothing came out. Chris slid closer. Her left hand was trapped in his; her shoulder pressed against the door, and he leaned to kiss her. There was no place to go, so she let his cheek push her head back to kiss her. It seemed bizarre. No passion within her. If he’d stop, she could ask him if it felt weird to him too. Kissing her hand would be as romantic as this. Rubbing a washcloth over her lips would feel no different. His breath heated her neck, and her shoulder ached where the door pushed into it.
Chris leaned against her harder, turned toward her and wrapped his left leg over hers, forcing her knees apart, pinning her to the seat. He kept kissing her mouth, then the side of her face, breathing hard. “Meadoe,” he gasped. His hand worked its way into her blouse. Meadoe tried to twist away from the door, but she had no strength; it was as if her spinal cord had been cut—total paralysis. In her head she chanted “I want to go home now,” in a Dorthyesque way, as if tapping her ruby slippers together would take her from the car.
Joan said, “So when do you think your emotional self caught up with your physical self?”
Meadoe shook her head, her eyes still closed. Chris pulled his hand from her blouse, popping a button. He tugged her belt with one hand and pushed her hand against him. “Meadoe,” he said again, his breath full of after-dinner mint. Finally, she found her voice. “I want to go home now,” she said. “I want to go home!”
“This is home,” said Joan.
Meadoe opened her eyes, fingers digging into the chair. “Did I say that out loud?”
Joan looked at her thoughtfully. “I think we’ve covered enough ground for today. But I’ll tell you what, when we meet again I’ll want to know what you are really afraid of.” Joan closed the notebook and put it in her briefcase. She put on her jacket. As Meadoe opened the front door for her, Joan said, “Meadoe, there’s two kinds of people who say they don’t think about sex—the ones who do and lie about it, and the ones who do but repress it.”
August 1, Saturday Afternoon: The Wallpaper
Standing on the porch, her arms filled with contact paper to line the kitchen drawers, Medoe fumbled with the lock. The new deadbolt resisted turning at first, then suddenly released. Meadoe imagined for a second someone on the other side had twisted it for her. The radio played the oldies station where the announcer said, “And now Glenn Miller and his band playing ‘Boulder Buff,’ featuring Billy May on trumpet.” Uneasy, she looked around the room. It wasn’t like her to leave the radio on. Nothing in the living room was out of place, the back door was securely locked, and the windows were latched.
She sat on the edge of her bed to kick off her shoes. For fourteen years she’d lived in the apartment two blocks from the library. In this new setting, her own furniture looked changed, as if someone had stolen her belongings and replaced them with clever counterfeits. Even the air felt alien and smelled strange.
The bed felt good though, so she flopped back. A dozen chores waited. More unpacking, setting up the telescope, but her motivation was shot. Is it true, she thought, that I’m thinking about sex all the time and don’t know it?
Through the uncurtained window, the afternoon sun cast a square of warm light on her legs. She was trying to make patterns from the swirls and texture in the ceiling plaster when she noticed the wallpaper in one corner had peeled away from the wall. Changing the wallpaper topped her project’s list, so she levered herself out of bed, slid a stool under the corner and pulled off the first layer. Several sheets stuck to it. The room’s history unpeeled in wallpaper. Under a pale yellow, a horrible brown and white geometric; under that, a green marble pattern; under that, a solid pink. The base wasn’t wallpaper however. After clearing several feet—the paper fell away easily—she stood back. A movie poster: The Outlaw, starring Jane Russell and Jack Beutel. No date, but old, and the paper was laminated to the wall. Licking her finger, she rubbed at a spot, cleaning it. A varnish, she guessed.
A half hour later, all the wallpaper lay crumpled on the floor, and an entire collage was visible: from ceiling to floor and wall to wall, posters, magazine covers, newspapers and pin-ups, carefully arranged, varnish protected, in beautiful condition. Hand drawn scenes: girls in bathing suits and war planes: whoever assembled the display was an artist. Life magazine pictures of models on beaches: July 9, 1945, a dark-haired woman wearing a striped two-piece suit, her hand to her brow as if looking into the ocean; April 17, 1944, Esther Williams standing in front of a giant sea shell; Rita Hayworth sitting on a towel, August 11, 1941. The magazines cost a dime. Other Rita Hayworth images, mostly from movie magazines including a Time Magazine painting of her, one hand over her head, her other behind her as if the artist had caught her in a twirl, her dress billowing, showing a lot of leg. Ingrid Bergman looked doey-eyed on a Casablanca poster, but most of the women she didn’t recognize: Martha Raye, Betty Grable, and Maureen O’Hara. Unfamiliar movies: Four Jills in a Jeep, Destination Tokyo and Haunted Honeymoon. In the background, the radio announcer talked about “our boys in the Pacific.” Meadoe cocked her head to listen, but a song started, “The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B.” She rubbed her arms, suddenly chilled.