Beyond Nostalgia (35 page)

On the way up in the elevator, we were alone. We talked about what had become of our parents. I could see she was affected deeply when I told her my father had passed on just a few months after our break up, right about the time she had the miscarriage. The grimace that immediately took over her face told me she felt some guilt about the untimeliness of both those events. She gave her heartfelt condolences and, at the same time, tightened her grip on my waist. She knew all too well what I meant when I told her my mother was still alive but still dying of the same delusional disease. When Theresa told me her mom was still around but convalescing from a stroke she had suffered nine months earlier, I couldn't help feeling sorry for the woman, despite her evil ways.

When we got up to my room, I unlocked the door and stepped aside. Theresa flipped on the light and entered the room, looking around, accessing it while I followed wondering,
How does this work? Where do we sit - at the table, in those little chairs, or on one of the beds?
Theresa would answer that question for me. Still scoping out the room, she slipped out of her jacket, folded it neatly and laid it on a chair nonchalantly, as if she was home. As she stepped out of her patent leather black heels, she said, "I must have spent a thousand nights in rooms like this, you know, with business trips, conventions and all that." Then, as she prepared to sit on the edge of the one bed that was still made, she asked, "Do you mind, Dean?" 

All dummied up for a second, I shook my head, a semi-urgent "no", before managing to say, "Nooo! Sure! I don't mind. Go 'head, Theresa, relax!" 

Damn, I felt awkward. It had been twenty years since I'd last been alone like this with any woman other than Maddy Frances. I was beginning to feel guilty too. But the guilt, that most noble of emotions, quickly faded to the outer fringes of my psyche when I noticed that, from sitting, Theresa's skirt had risen halfway up her thighs. That was distracting enough, but when she crossed her legs and I heard the small sound of her sheer nylons rubbing together, it really did something to me, turned me on like a four-stack power plant running at full capacity. Being alone with her like this, watching her, delighting in her every feminine gesture and movement, had suddenly given this previously benign reunion an entirely different feel. 

"Little warm in here, isn't it?" I said, stepping toward the window to turn on the AC.

"Yes, it is," she said, pivoting on the mattress, gracefully lifting her legs onto it, tucking her small stockinged feet beneath her bottom. Again the rustling of nylons, again my stomach flushed with this strange enchanting heat. Then she leaned back against the headboard, tossed her head back and, elbows to the ceiling, began lazily massaging the back of her head.           

Good God, she's still so tantalizing, and, without even trying!

I sat on the other bed facing her, the messed up one I'd laid down on during the afternoon. I fished my smokes from my breast pocket and held the pack toward Theresa.

"Sure...why not?"

I lit two, leaned across the nightstand-wide gap between the beds, handed her one, then sat stiffly against my own headboard. I could see her in the dresser mirror which meant she could see me also.

Theresa took a long hit off the Carlton. She dropped her eyes for a moment to scrutinize the cigarette as she slowly exhaled the smoke and said, "Ya know … I'm enjoying these way too much tonight. If I didn't watch myself, I could easily go back to smoking.” Shaking her head at her cigarette, she said, "Sorry, I don't care what they say, once you give it up you always miss it, maybe a little less as time goes by, but you still always miss it. At least I do. I've never gotten over them completely, Dee Cee, just like I've never gotten over …" She paused there, mid-sentence, raised her eyes from the cigarette and looked back at my reflection in the mirror, " … just like I've never gotten over other things in my life."  

Did she mean what I thought she meant? You know how women are, you just don't know. I couldn't be a hundred percent sure. But I was sure of one thing; that I was actually blushing. Forty-three years old and I blushed. I know I did. I felt the heat in my face when it flushed. I hoped like hell she hadn't noticed. If she had, she spared me the realization. I smiled stupidly at the mirror. What she'd insinuated made me feel damn awkward but, at the same time, damn good. She had to be hinting about me, didn't she? Whether she was or not, I hoped her words would dissipate in the air along with the cigarette smoke when I said "Well, cigarettes aren't the best for you, but I smoke the lowest tars on the market and I enjoy the hell of them. I suppose you could call me a judicious smoker, been keeping it under half a pack a day for more than fifteen years now. The way I figure it, if eight or nine a day are going to kill me, then bring it on. This life thing hasn't been all it’s cracked up to be anyway, at least not for me, for the most part."                   

Letting my innuendo pass now, she said, "The way you look, Dean, you'll probably make it another forty years!" Then she turned her head my way, a little quarter roll against the headboard and she looked behind the nightstand lamp. I did the same. Seeing me first hand now rather than my reflection, she said, "I'm serious, you look great. You're a sight for sore eyes, Dean Cassidy." 

All four of our sore eyes locked. They forged together for a quiet moment. There was no more skirting the issue now, it had risen to the surface. I didn't know quite what to say. Theresa bailed me out. She broke the silence, but all the forced gaiety left her voice when she said, "Happy birthday Dean."

"Jeez, how did you ever remember that?"

She didn't answer right away. Instead she began digging for something inside her handbag. When she found it, she held it behind her back and stood up.  Then she came over, sat alongside me on the bed, and handed me a small, rectangular gift-wrapped box. 

"Noooo! Theresaaa, why'd you do this?"

"Because I wanted to, now open it up," she ordered.

Obediently, I peeled away the wrapping paper and, as I did, like background music in the heaviest scene of a most dramatic movie, Theresa Wayman reopened her heart to me. 

"I've always remembered your birthday, Dean, every year on the fifth of May. No matter where I was, or how busy, whether I was married at the time or not, I would take a walk … a long walk … always alone, and I'd think of us. Yeah, sure, I thought of you many times over the years, Dean … God … if you only knew how many times. But during my walks for some reason, the memories always came back clearest. It was weird. Every time it was as if my mind had somehow connected with yours, telepathy or something. Almost as if we were talking on the phone, reminiscing together, sharing the memories. I'd think back to the first time I ever saw you at that dance at my school, when you were fighting. I'd also bring back the first time you came to my house, the night you gave me the ankle bracelet, Regina's New Year's Eve party, prom night, shopping for clothes together on Main Street … on Saturday afternoons. All that and more came back to me during those walks, but what came back the clearest was the first time we ever made love. No, every time we made love! It always had such meaning. Dean … I know that because of our circumstances this kind of talk is probably way out of line, but I want you to know, I have to tell you, those times, they were the only times I've ever really made love."

When she said that, I felt the goose bumps flush beneath my sleeves. I wanted to cry, bawl like a baby. But I didn't. I held back the flood of emotions inside me. I opened the gift box and, when I saw what was inside, my heart stopped, my pulse suspended and I gasped. 

Lying inside that tiny box on a bed of white cotton was another ID bracelet. 

It was quiet then, just the hum of the air conditioner. I picked up my gift, looked it over real good. Silver, just like the first one she'd given me. Finely-incised lines dulled the face. This one was Florentine finished too. Both of us still speechless, I turned it over and read the inscription; “To Dean, all my love still and always, Theresa”.

"Jesus, Theresa! Goddam! This is … I don't know what to say." I lifted my eyes from the gift, looked back at her warm ironic smile, her loving face, those deep dark tilted eyes, and then it came to me. I DID know what to say, right, wrong, proper or improper, that emotional dam within me burst. The words surged out. Nothing on earth could stop them now. "Dammit, Theresa, you've been with me too! All these years! If you only knew … " I paused there. My voice was breaking up and a vision flashed inside my head, a pitiful vision. A glossy black and white crime-scene snapshot of my suicide attempt in the garage. As I watched it, I thought, y
ou bet I missed you Theresa.
Then the tears found their way from my heart to my eyes, and I sobbed, "You've been with me every day, Theresa, at every dawn and every dusk. Up and down so many highways … and back roads too. I thought about you every night when I went to bed, each morning when I woke up, and thousands of the hours in between."  Then, with tears streaming both my cheeks, I said, "Theresa … I thought … for sure … I'd never see you again!"          

Struggling to hold onto what was left of her smile, she slid closer now, right up against me. She put her hands lightly on my wet cheeks, held me like that, and her small smile disappeared. The corners of her mouth dropped and quivered, and a tear fell to her cheek. Then she eased my face to her bosom. She wrapped her arms around my head and began rocking me gently. Reflexively, as if they had their own mind, my arms found their way around her also. Finally, at long last, I was once again embracing my Theresa. With my face buried so deep inside the refuge of her breasts, feeling the heat and the lovely softness against my cheek as if they were naked, I knew she still wore those sheer silky bras. This was the ultimate homecoming. The faint scent of lilac emanated from her cleavage, mingling subtly with the long lost, yet so familiar, smell of her flesh. We held this most intimate pose for a long time. And we cried together, our bodies twitching and convulsing as one as the sound of her sobs fed mine, and mine hers. And the whole time I could hear Theresa's heart beat a most lovely serenade.   

When I finally drew my head away and looked up, we held each other's mournful teary eyes for a most tender moment. Then Theresa brought her face down to mine and, ever so gently, she fitted her delicious mouth onto mine. They opened together. And like it used to when we were teenagers, the tip of her searching tongue brushed along my gums, slowly, tantalizingly, then along my teeth before it finally joined my own tongue. When it did, we slid together down onto the bed. The air in the room suddenly seemed thinner. Our chests began heaving and rubbing together frantically, desperately, lustfully. Theresa slid her hand up between us and I felt the tremor in her fingers as they worked on her buttons. I peered for only a second through the two slits in my eyes and watched. Both of us on fire now, the buttons undone, Theresa jerked her mouth away, slid a little higher on the bed and pulled my head down to her breasts. Her blouse was wide open. I nuzzled my face in there, kissing, loving her cleavage, loving, kissing the soft white bulges that swelled above her bra's cups. Ohhh Lord, that lilac, the now intensified smell of her naked flesh, those dark nipples rising, hardening, about to explode from her sheer, powder-blue bra. Theresa purred, and she whispering things, things I couldn't discern, things muffled deeply beneath her passionate moans. Bliss! Rapture! Elation! Euphoria! Ecstasy! This was all of that rolled into one indescribable, titanic emotion. 

Blindly, my face still buried in her fleshy pillows, I stripped the blouse from her shoulders, all the way down her arms in one blind, reckless motion. I lifted my face from her and, shakily but gently, slid the delicate straps off her bare shoulders. Easing my fingertips inside her bra cups, I lowered them, slowly. The paler flesh coming into view now, bulging even more, I stopped. I needed to be sure Theresa wanted this. I looked up at her. What I saw only verified what I had already known, that she was as intoxicated with passion as I. Her lips all puffy, their coating worn away now, she looked three times more sensual than I had ever remembered. She was smiling and, through a disheveled shock of black hair laid over her forehead obscuring one of her bedroom eyes, the other spoke for them both. It was full of lust. And love. It urged me on. I lowered her bra. This was it! After waiting half my life, I had returned to the gateway to nirvana!

But then, something happened! I heard a voice, from somewhere deep within me, a resonant, commanding voice that spoke irrefutable words, words that somehow found their way to my lips, words that, even as they spilled from my mouth, I could not believe I was actually saying.  "Theresa … I'm sorry … so sorry, but I can't do this."

Filled with carnal desire, she shoved that lock of hair from her eye and rose to her elbows. Full of hurt and questions, her eyes strained to read my face and eyes for a clue to why I had put an end to this. Both us, just beginning to catch our breath, froze like that, trying to see into each other's mind. She looked for the cause of what I had just said and I looked for the effect. Neither of us said anything. We held that pose for a long painful moment until finally, totally exhausted, Theresa let her head fall to the pillow.