Four Seasons of Romance (4 page)

One Sunday afternoon during their tenth-grade year, they shared
a picnic at the Bath-Haverhill Bridge. Leo ached to swing from the bottom of
the bridge and jump into the river below.

“Absolutely not!”
Catherine
admonished. “You’re not breaking your neck on my watch.”

“C’mon, Cat—I’m not
gonna
break my
neck. I’m dying for a cheap thrill.”

“And die, you might! Boys,” she said, with an exasperated
sigh that made her sound much older than her thirteen years.
“Why
can’t you be happy just sitting right here?”

“I
am
happy sitting here with you.”

She blushed. “Well, I’ll never understand why you can’t be
satisfied with simple things. Take me, for example. I want to sit here enjoying
this picnic without the risk of your breaking a limb. I want a nice house like
my parents’ house—maybe just down the street. I want a bunch of kids to squeeze
and love on.” She watched him closely, gauging his reaction. “That’s not what
you want at all, is it?”

Leo shrugged, tore off a piece of his sandwich crust and
tossed it in the river below. “You know what I want. I want to travel to Paris
and Rome and Budapest. I want to design incredible sculptures and race cars.
Maybe win the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Or the Monaco Grand Prix.”

She
beaned
him in the head with a
grape, breaking him out of his reverie.
“The Grand Prix, huh?
If it weren’t for me, you would’ve failed French!”

“If it weren’t for you, I’d have gone for a swim by now,” He
said with a sly grin, moving toward the side of the bridge as if he were about
to leap.

“Don’t!” she cried, jumping to her feet and grabbing his
arm. “Please don’t.”

He looked at her long white fingers on his arm: his arms
were growing into the tan and lithe arms of a young man who spent his time
working outdoors; her hands were growing into the hands of a proper young woman
who spent her time studying and attending social galas. In that simple gesture,
Catherine had unknowingly magnified the difference between them, but he’d never
loved her more.

“Catherine…” he began.

“
Shhh
,” she said, holding her
finger to his lips. Her green eyes shone brightly, and he lost himself in their
spell. Leo leaned down, cupped her chin in his hand, and kissed her lightly on
the lips, the shiver coursing across their skin was like a current, starting
somewhere deep inside and bounding them like an electric charge.

Catherine pulled away first as they stared at each other for
a moment, speechless. She touched her lips as if there might be traces of magic
there.

“What was that?” she whispered, a little breathless.

“That,” he said, “was our first kiss.”

*

Later that year, Catherine almost lost him forever. It was
February of 1941, mere weeks before Leo’s sixteenth birthday. He came home from
school one day to find his mother packing a suitcase. By now, Leo was used to
her mood swings but hadn’t seen his mother this giddy in a long time.

“
Caro
mio
,” she told him,
“my dear” in Italian. She held his face tightly between her hands. “Anton has
proposed to me.” Anton, a salesman from Boston, was one of Deborah’s many
suitors since her marriage had crumbled.

“You’re getting married?” Leo asked.

She nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, he has invited us both to
live with him in Boston. He has a beautiful brownstone on the harbor. Won’t
that be lovely?”

Leo didn’t know what to say; Deborah sensed his hesitance.

“Unless you want to stay here with your
father.
But surely, you don’t want anything to do with that man.”

“I don’t know what I want,” Leo stammered, as he backed out
the door.

He ran without looking back, all the way to Catherine’s
house, his mind and heart in a tangled frenzy. He threw a flurry of pebbles at
her window until she ran outside, alarmed.

“What’s wrong? Are you all right?”

“My mother’s moving to Boston,” he blurted. “She wants me to
come.”

Staggering forward a few steps, Catherine felt stricken. “I
need to sit down,” she said, and Leo guided her toward an old stump.

They talked well into the evening, Leo admitting that,
although he and his father were alike, they did not get along. But Leo did not
intend to leave Woodsville; as long as Catherine was there, that was his home.

As she watched Leo trudge back through the woods in the
waning light, Catherine could not account for the wild beating of her heart.
She had been afraid, afraid that he would choose to move to Boston with his
mother, and although Catherine feared the drunken, uncouth ways of Ellis
Taylor, she was deliriously happy Leo had chosen to stay. Only then did she
realize the intensity of her feelings for Leo as she put a hand on her heart
and promised herself that she would not deny her affections again, no matter
what the cost. Sadly, it was a promise she would break.
Many,
many times.

Josiah Woods was sitting at the kitchen table when his
daughter crept back inside the house.

“Who were you with?” he asked.

“No one, Papa.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

She tried to walk past him, but he grabbed her arm and
pulled her in close.

“Were you with that Taylor boy again?”

Catherine chose her words carefully. “He’s not a bad boy. I
know you think so, because of his parentage and his background, but he’s got a
good heart.”

“I’ll be the judge of hearts around here,” Josiah growled,
his wife standing silently in the kitchen, kneading a piecrust. She said
nothing. It worked that way in the Woods household—Josiah judged, and no one
dared to cross him.

“I do not permit you to be friends with that boy,” Josiah
commanded. “And I absolutely forbid you to be anything more. Do you understand
me?”

She looked to her mother for support, but Elaine looked
away. Reluctantly, Catherine nodded.
“All right.
May I
go now? I’ve got a school project due tomorrow.”

Josiah loosened his grip, and Catherine slipped quietly
upstairs. He waited until she was out of earshot,
then
returned to his wife. “It’s high time we introduce other young men into her
social circle.”

“She’s not sixteen yet,” Elaine murmured.

If the judge’s gaze were made of flints, it would have set
his wife’s hair on fire. “She’ll be sixteen in July,” he said. “I’ll arrange
for some visits.”

“Very well,” Elaine said and dug her fists deeper into the
dough.

*

On Catherine’s sixteenth birthday, and not a day later, the
visits began. Her father arranged meetings with the sons of merchants,
attorneys, physicians, and teachers. Some were from Woodsville, but others came
from nearby towns. Josiah made no bones that she was expected to entertain
their advances; Catherine pretended to do just that, but in truth, she found
most of them indescribably boring. A few were pleasant enough, but none had the
charisma and daredevil charm of her Leo.

She continued to see Leo in secret, though their methods
grew more complex. Gone were the days when he could risk throwing pebbles at
her window. Instead, they concocted a system of colored flags that Leo could
rig from the outside and that Catherine could hang in her bedroom window. Only
they could detect and decipher the faint splashes of color; the judge would
never know.

Their friendship grew deeper as the two continued to get
close. Even as she dated “more suitable” young men, she longed to wander the
woods with Leo, looking for arrowheads and talking about their lives, knowing
that she was in love with him, but never daring speak of it. Indeed, the
feelings she felt for him were like that arrowhead, hidden, yet sharp.

As for Leo, he no longer scouted the woods for arrowheads to
give her; he had watched Catherine evolve from a spoiled, little girl into a
kind, young woman. Arrowheads were for children; she was ready for something
else. He began to wander the fields around Woodsville, collecting wild lilies
and black-eyed
Susans
he fashioned into bouquets,
which became Catherine’s favorite flowers. She hung some of them in her room
and pressed others between the pages of her favorite books.

Despite their feelings for each other, Leo found himself in
a rapid downward spiral. Ellis Taylor didn’t see the value in education; now
that Leo lived with his father, Ellis constantly berated him for going to
class. Eventually, it worked—Leo dropped out of high school. Catherine begged
him not to, but he couldn’t be convinced that formal education had a purpose.
Instead, he started to work at the mill with Ellis, which netted him enough
money to buy a 1934 Chevy Coupe.

In those passionate months of their clandestine affair,
Catherine came to know the inside of that Coupe very well. Leo parked it in
isolated places around town, and the two spent long hours necking, taking that
electric first kiss to new levels, exploring each other’s mouths, and then,
tentatively at first, their bodies. 

All the while, Catherine maintained a courtship with a local
boy as a cover for her relationship with Leo. His name was Waldo Ayers—the son
of the elementary school headmaster —and he was the ideal candidate as far as
her parents were concerned. Waldo was as awkward and unpleasant as his father,
but he was perfect for Catherine and Leo’s needs. If Catherine was seeing
Waldo, her parents assumed she had abandoned any hope of a future with Leo.

In truth, Catherine saw Leo as much as possible, stealing
away in the early morning and sometimes late at night. But between Leo’s job at
the mill and Catherine’s studies—and the agonizing hours she had to log with
Waldo, strolling through town and eating unbearably boring meals—they did not
see as much of each other as they would have liked.

Ellis drank more and more. Though Leo could easily hold his
liquor, he hated the sloppy, harsh manner his father adopted while drunk, so,
Leo tried to stay away from home as much as possible. To fill the long lonely
hours, Leo took up odd jobs as a welder and stonemason, trying to channel his
thwarted artistic ambitions into work that paid. Sometimes, he raced his car on
dirt roads in the country, driving for hours and hours, often with a six-pack
in the empty seat where Catherine should have been.

What would happen when Catherine was no longer in school?
Would she leave Woodsville and go to college? They rarely spoke of it, but it
ate at Leo day and night, the drinking helping to dull the nagging question.
Still, he could never silence that voice, wondering about their future.

Catherine found herself asking the same thing. Waldo Ayers
was a convenient cover, but how long could the situation continue? How long
could she lie to her family and herself? As they soon found, the deception
could not continue much longer.

*

It was June of 1943, and Catherine was graduating from high
school. She had discarded her cap and gown and was sitting on her front porch
with Waldo in a pretty in a pale-yellow dress the color of daffodils, drinking
ice-cold lemonade. Waldo looked stiff as ever in a suit at least one size too
small.

“I’ll be eighteen next month,” Catherine said, speaking her
thoughts aloud.
“Old enough to live on my own.
Old enough to vote.”

“Old enough to marry,” Waldo said. And suddenly, before she
could object, he dropped on one knee. “Catherine,” he said, “you are a good
woman. I believe you will make a fine wife and mother. I’d like to make you a
proposition… to marry me.”

Make me a proposition?
Catherine thought.
He’s not
selling me a car!

She watched with great sympathy as he struggled with
something in his back pocket, but the poor chap couldn’t get the damned ring
box out because his pants were too tight.

“Hold on just a minute,” Waldo mumbled. “Just one more
minute… ”

Catherine wished they could laugh at the humor of the
situation, but Waldo was never one for a good laugh. By the time the ring was
extracted from the box, he had broken into a sweat.

“I’m touched and honored,” she said, as gently as she could,
“and I promise you I’ll think about it.”

Waldo stumbled over himself for several more excruciating
minutes before he finally bid her adieu. The minute he was gone, she flew to
her bedroom window and placed a red flag against the pane—Leo’s and her sign
for distress or emergency. In half an hour, she and Leo were in each other’s
arms in the woods.

“I won’t let you do it,” Leo told her.

“I have no intention to.” She shook her head. “I don’t mean
to make fun of him—he’s very dear. But never in a million years would I marry
him.”

“How about me?”

Leo held her at arm’s length and looked in her eyes. “Elope
with me, Catherine. We could leave this place forever. Go and see the world.”

She laughed, but then, she saw that he was serious. “Leo,”
she whispered, “you know I can’t do that. My father would disown me.”

“So what if he does?” Leo kicked at the stump.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not ready to burn that bridge.”

“What if I am?” he asked.

She looked at him sternly. “It’s not your bridge to burn.”

He stifled his anger as Catherine picked her way through the
trees back to the house.

The next day, she declined Waldo’s offer of marriage, much
to her parents’ chagrin, but the knowledge that she had also turned down Leo,
the man she loved, chewed at her heart for days.

*

In the wake of Catherine’s rejection of Waldo, Josiah Woods
launched a new campaign. If Waldo wasn’t good enough for his daughter, she must
find someone who was. Thus, Josiah and Elaine encouraged Catherine to leave for
school where she could meet a man from esteemed lineage.