But my point of view? The last thing I’d expected: a dormant part of myself that Charlie had awakened, a secret he had called forth.
I was wanton. The great discovery of that time was how ferociously I desired. Charlie’s quiet gave me confidence. I could trust him, and entrust myself to him. He fed my imagination, he enabled my abandon. I became reckless and obsessed. I would picture being with him in all sorts of forbidden ways. The best ones I would keep in mind for the next visit. No matter what I asked, he said yes.
“I had no idea about you,” he murmured in my ear one afternoon.
“I didn’t know either,” I answered, and it was true.
Oh we were babies, and virgins, and I’d had no idea of my body’s capacity for joy.
On Monday my mother would send some money. “Buy yourself a dress.” On Tuesday I would shop instead for underthings—the more scandalous, the better. On Wednesday I would display them on the bed for Lizzie, who clapped her hands and laughed, or called me naughty, or grumbled that she could not wait for her husband to come home. My excitement was so great, I had no sense that I might be torturing her.
On Saturday morning I would dawdle as I dressed, assessing myself in the mirror, my breasts lifted by a new brassiere, my backside complimented by stockings that stopped at the top of my thighs, secured by garters of lurid red, and then one thin layer of respectability draped over the whole outfit, some demure sky-blue dress, innocent as a robin’s egg, while I sashayed to East Palace Avenue to wait for him, my heart full of filthy secrets, an animal in heat.
Of course I was not entirely an innocent. I’d danced with quarterbacks and necked with captains, and there was the whole misguided dalliance with Chris. But Charlie was the first man I genuinely desired. And with incredible specificity. I thought about his strong hands, his hips surprisingly powerful and steady as an oil derrick, the high arches of his feet and what I might do to curl his toes. I lingered on memories of his kisses, and how they made me bold. I imagined pulling him to me as my lover, his face in my breasts, both of us thrilled by lust.
Sometimes I’d say no to myself, and push those thoughts away, they were occupying too much room in my mind. I’d jump out of bed to start the day, or go dust the organ keys in the church, or switch the shower to cold and then towel myself roughly to smooth the goose bumps away. Yet bit by bit the love notions would return, like a spell, a reverie all my own. Damn that wonderful Charlie Fish.
There were two problems. First, we still had not declared our love. I discounted that, though, because our bodies were saying it so zealously. But it nagged at me.
The second one was harder: We had nowhere to go. He’d applied for family housing on The Hill, but the waiting list was six months long. We could not live at the boardinghouse. Mrs. Morris reminded me with a wagging finger that men were still not allowed inside. I might be wed, but the virtue of the other girls must be protected.
The result was a perverse kind of sightseeing. Charlie and I would stroll the streets of Santa Fe, respectable as old folks on a constitutional, while both of our heads periscoped right and left in the hunt for a place to mate.
An empty house. The deep doorway of an out-of-business restaurant. On the seat of an abandoned truck. Once, against the retaining wall of a religious high school, after class hours but with me biting my lip to keep quiet just in case. The search made our hunger keen, hours spent seeking a safe spot made things urgent, and the chance of being caught made us aggressive. We had to move quickly, we had to finish fast.
That meant no time for coyness, no luxury of negotiation. It was right here, right now. We caressed each other’s every inch with our fingers. We lavished the sensitive places with our tongues. We tried positions, ideas, attitudes. He stood before me proud, in broad daylight. I presented myself to him naked, inviting complete examination. I held his manhood and studied it like a marvel. He weighed my breasts in his palms.
“All I have been doing,” I confessed one day, “is remembering when I pulled you into me harder, and how perfectly your cheek fit my hand.”
Charlie nodded. “I can still feel it.”
“And what have you been doing?” I asked him, a creature at play.
“Giving thanks for how you distract me from dread.”
“Dread?” I said, grabbing him roughly to me. “None of that now.”
And on we went. We were kneeling, straddling a chair, gripping a tree. We were lavish and base. For all my bossy ways, Charlie dominated me, and I was pleased to be his mistress, his release. Where did this surrender come from? How could I make it never go away? And then the next time again there was no place, every time we had to find a place. What a way to intensify desire. What a way to become expert in each other.
On those rare times when the hideaway we’d found allowed it, we would stay, holding each other in sweet silence.
I knew what pleasure I gave Charlie, and how already I was developing a mastery of certain deeds that he craved. He learned my wants as well, generously. He clung to me, he kissed my throat, and I thought: yes, I will give you anything.
Now, with the perspective of time, I know that this happy interval marked the end of a phase of young Brenda’s life. In my secret heart, I continued to believe in my sophistication, my intelligence, my allure. Even as I indulged Charlie’s least whim, I continued to hold myself in lofty regard. I had not yet told my mother that we were married, which I believe was a last vestige of that girl who considered herself superior. Some part of me—despite all the intimate connection with Charlie, despite the wild ecstasy he provoked in me—still believed that I was rescuing him. In a very few weeks, I would learn that it was entirely the other way around.
If I could reach back through time, from now to then, old woman to new wife, I would admire that girl, the sheen on her skin from the love she has just finished making in some basement or grove or parking lot. As she collects her garments one by one, I would tell her, enjoy it, savor it, because your days of self-lauding are almost at an end.
I’ve gone back and checked the records, and I remember correctly: the summer of 1945 was extremely hot in the Southwest. I disliked it for walking, for making the organ go out of tune, but especially for lovemaking. We dripped on each other. We grew sticky and fragrant. Sometimes I delivered Charlie to the bus, confident that our afternoon athletics would help him sleep for most of the ride, and in the heat I ambled back to the boardinghouse, also knowing that my clothes were disarrayed and I smelled of dried sweat and sour skin. But I was married, so no apologies were necessary. For all I cared, the world could take two steps backward off a cliff.
Besides, as I navigated a town stunned by summer, I was already on patrol, searching for the next place we could tryst, hoping it was in the shade. After one of those walks, as I lazily reached my room, Lizzie was about to leave for work.
Assessing me in her savvy way, taking it all in, she hesitated at the top of the stairs. “Tell me, kid. What are you doing to prevent a baby?”
I shrugged. “Not a thing.”
“Want some help with that? Anything you’d like me to pick up at the hospital?”
“I’m fine,” I said, not entirely understanding. “We’ll be fine.”
“Really?” Lizzie made a surprised face, tried to hide it by looking down the stairs, then spoke in that direction too. “Okay then. Off to the races with you.”