Into the Woods (29 page)

"I don't think there's all that much difference between eighteen, nineteen, and twenty, do you, Charlie?" I asked.
He shrugged. Then without any warning he leaned forward and kissed me on the lips, quickly moving his lips down over my chin to my neck, while his hands began to grope my breasts. He moved so fast I thought he had developed a second set of arms and hands. It was like feeling a hundred spiders crawling all over you.
I
tried to pull back, but he held me firmly and used his nose and his mouth to pull at my blouse buttons, getting the top two undone with remarkable dexterity and burrowing his mouth and his tongue into my cleavage so fast I gasped.
"You know, you're one of the few girls
I
know who wear a bra," he said. He said it with a tone of annoyance. "I'm sure you don't need it."
He had most of the remaining buttons of my blouse undone and slipped his hands in and under the bra, lifting it off my breasts with one swift motion. His thumbs stroked my nipples, and he kissed me hard on the lips, forcing me back on the bed.
"I
knew you didn't need that bra." he quipped. I heard him unzip his pants.
"Wait," I said.
"It's all right. I practice safe sex." he said, and, like a magician, snapped his fingers to show me a contraceptive. He held it up as if it were some sort of a ticket admitting him to my body.
"I
can't," I said.
"Why not?" he asked. grimacing.
"I'm sold out."
"What? What's that, some sort of joke?"
"No. What I mean is making love has something to do with love. All we have done so far is share some food. Charlie. We've barely gotten to know each other, much less fall in love."
I sat up, pulled my bra back over my breasts, and began to button my blouse,
"What is this? I thought you wanted to be with

He shook his head. "Why is it all you smart girls are so..."
"Smart?"
"No, frigid," he countered. "Don't say it," he added with his hand up before
I
could respond. "I know. We don't have the same definition of frigid, "
I smiled. "And I thought you were just another jock."
"Very funny." he said. He stood up. "Let's go downstairs unless you want to go home."
"I think I'd rather go home,"
I
said. He nodded.
"Figured." he said.
The ride home was mostly in silence, but before we reached the gate he looked at me and said, "I suppose you're saving it for a guy with a fat bank book. huh?"
"I
don't judge people on the basis of their net worth. Charlie. You shouldn't. either,"
I
told him.
How ironic. I thought as we drove up to the main house. Our new great wealth was not always an advantage after all.
Mommy was actually waiting up to see how my date had gone. I anticipated it.
"Did you have fun?" she asked immediately. Winston was already in bed upstairs.
I shook my head. "No. Mommy. We just weren't right far each other."
"Why not?" she snapped, her face filling with impatience and intolerance.
"Well,"
I
said, fixing my eyes on hers, "when he didn't order any dessert at dinner I thought that was his athletic self-control, watching his diet and such."
"So?"
"But what he expected was that I would be his dessert,"
I
said, and she blinked her eyes quickly and pulled her head back.
After a moment she said. "He seemed like a very nice, polite young man. Grace. You can't be afraid of a little intimacy. honey."
"We don't have the same definition of intimacy, "I told her, and started away.
"What?" she called. I didn't look back. but I heard her mutter. "Damn."
.
Rejecting a popular boy at school can do a girl lots of damage. I discovered. Charlie Packard's ego wouldn't permit him to accept any sort of rebuke. It had to be the fault of the girl, and unfortunately for me I was that girl.
Invitations to go out on dates never
materialized much after that. I had made applications to four-year colleges almost on entering the junior college anyway and didn't care if other students there, especially the boys, liked me or not. At the end of the school year what was important was that I had achieved a full semester's worth of credits and would have that advantage when I began my full college education.
We returned to France for the summer. only Mommy was interested in doing more traveling. I decided to take up the study of the French language and enrolled in a language school in
Villefranche
while Mommy and Winston did a series of trips, including a week's cruise to Venice. At the language school I became friends with an English girl. Kaye Underwood. She was interested in working in the hotel and travel industry and felt she had to learn French. She did better than I because she took room and board with a French family, which was the best she could afford, but she soon lived by the rule that no English could be spoken in the house. only French.
Kaye wasn't a very attractive girl. She had a round face that looked as if it had never shed its baby fat, and she was at least twenty-five pounds overweight. She wore her hair too short and was not very sophisticated about makeup and clothes, practically wearing the same things every day: a Grateful Dead T-shirt. brown Bermuda shorts, and a pair of well-worn walking shoes. When Mommy finally met her she was. I thought, a little too snobby and cold. She actually wondered aloud what drew me to be friends with such a person.
"You have so little in common with her. Grace. Winston has introduced you to so many girls from substantial families over here, and you haven't so much as exchanged phone numbers with most of them."
"I'd rather be with a substantial person than a substantial family," I replied.
I
suppose it wasn't so much that Kaye was substantial as she was safe. She never demanded much of me, never talked about boys or our lack of romantic adventures, and was in no way competitive.
Mommy grimaced in pain at my response and shook her head, "I don't know why we even bother anymore," she said.
She didn't need to worry. When the summer session at the language school ended. Kaye and
I
rarely saw each other. She took a job in a small hotel in Beaulieusur-Mer, a beautiful coastal village. Mommy and Winston had too many places for us to
_g
a and things for us to do for me to find time to visit Kaye, and then we returned to Palm Beach.
Kaye and
I
had exchanged addresses and had promised we would stay in touch, but after she wrote two letters and
I
didn't respond she never wrote again. I was occupied with starting college and used that as a rationalization for why I didn't continue our friendship. Mommy was right, I also told myself. Kaye and I came from worlds so different we might as well be from different planets.
I was accepted to every college I applied to but decided to attend the University of South Florida in Saint Petersburg. I suppose when it came right down to it, despite my bravado. I wanted to be somewhat close to Mommy and Winston. The day I was to go to the school and settle into the dormitory just happened to be the day of a major off-season charity event, an excursion to the Bahamas. Mommy had her heart set on going. I think she believed if she attended every possible social function right from the start she would somehow reclaim the place she had temporarily held in the social scene after she and Winston had married. The compromise was that she would go. but Winston would accompany me. I told them
I
didn't need either of them, but he was persistent. and Mommy agreed.
When I look back at all the things Winston did for me and with me.
I
have to put this at the top of the list. I recalled how Daddy used to fantasize about taking me to college.
"Leaving home for the first time is one of the most dramatic and emotional things you'll do, Sailor Girl," he told me, and then described what it had been like for him.
Winston had the private jet he leased fly us over to St Petersburg, He had planned to have a car and driver waiting for us. but I thought the sight of me being brought to the school in a chauffeur-driven limousine might be too much. He laughed but agreed, and instead we had a rental car and arrived just like most of the other students, their parents visiting the campus with them and delivering them to their dormitory rooms.
My roommate was a Cuban girl from Miami. Celia Caballero, a diminutive five-foot-one-inch zirl with ebony eyes like beautiful black stones. She was bubbly and outgoing and probably the sort of personality I needed. I know Winston was delighted with her.
"Well," he said when it was time for him to leave. "I know you will make us proud. arace. You've already done it in so many ways."
"Not according to Mommy," I muttered.
"Oh, she's just too intense, too worried. Shell come around and learn how to relax. I'm dedicating myself to it," he promised. He gazed around, "You know what. Grace.
I
would trade everything I have to be your age and starting over like this. Now I know why Shaw said 'Youth is wasted on the young.'"
I laughed, and he hugged me and started for the car. I had been on my own much more than most girls my age, and in foreign counties, too. We were an independent bunch when I was one of the naval brats. Yet somehow seeing Winston drive off, thinking about Mommy involved with socialites instead of being involved with me at this moment, I had never felt as alone.
"Come on," Celia cried, seizing my hand before I could refuse. She practically tugged me off my feet.
"Let's go to the student activity center and join the other freshmen."
I wanted to remain and unpack, but I went along. I was happy I did because
I
discovered I could sign up for the sailing team. I also joined the student educational association. After all, my goal was still to go into teaching. Celia, who was already in the college band, having qualified in an audition with her clarinet, also joined the glee club. Our interests were quite different. but I didn't think that would present any obstacles to our rooming together.
Mommy was happy to hear I was doing something else beside studying and going to classes. I knew again what she expected would came of it. Celia gat into the dating game much faster than I did, practically the next day, in fact, and soon was dragging me along to meet the friends of friends. I dated three different boys during the first half of the year. but I didn't get seriously involved with any of them. Maybe I was being too picky. I knew
I
had developed a reputation
of
being too
Some of the boys nicknamed me Grace the 'Virgin Queen, referring to Queen Elizabeth who had kept a variety of suitors at bay for political reasons.
In time Celia stopped trying to fix me up with one of her current boyfriend's friends, and
I
was left to my own resources. I did begin to develop a
relationship with one of the boys on the sailing team, Walker Thomas. He was one of the most, if not the most, dedicated team members. In the beginning almost all of our conversation centered around sailing. He came from Marco Island on the west coast of Florida and had a boat like Winston's. A number of times we went sailing together and had a wonderful time.
I liked him a lot because he didn't seem driven to be as intimate as possible as quickly as possible. He wasn't shy, but he was easygoing, moving in small ways toward a more intense relationship. Maybe I was old-fashioned or something, but I actually set a date in my mind when he and I would make love. I had slowly permitted myself to feel more affectionately toward him than any other boy in my life, and I believed
I
was ready.
He was coming over to the dorm. Celia was going on a date that she made clear would keep her out all night. Walker and I were going to have a light dinner. go to a movie, and then return to the dorm. About five-thirty, however, he called to tell me he wasn't coming. In fact, he was on his way home. His mother had suffered what looked like a stroke.
He called a few days later to tell me she had indeed suffered a stroke. It was massive, and she was in a coma. I was in the middle of finals, but I offered to go to him. He refused to hear of it. Two days later his mother passed away. I had taken my last exam and was packing to return to Joya del Mar.
Walker and I had planned to spend a good deal of our summer together. I had already informed Mommy and Winston that I wasn't going to Europe with them. I was, after all, nearly twenty now. There was no reason I couldn't spend my summers as I saw fit. I called Walker with the intention of flying to Naples and then driving to Marco Island. When he was hesitant about it I took a deep breath and finally asked him why.
Sometimes you can hear everything in a small silence. Your heart has already heard it before the other person begins to speak. It was that way for me. I kept my eyes closed and listened.
"There's someone here. someone I was kind of serious with before
I
started college, Grace. She's been at my side the whole time, and we've sort of gotten back together. I'm sorry," he said.
"That's okay. As long as you're doing fine." I said quickly. "See you on deck." I added.
"Grace..." he called, but I was already hanging up the phone.
"Jonah,"
I
spat at my image in the mirror and crawled under my blanket, wishing
I
could sink into the mattress and disappear altogether.
In the morning I informed Winston and Mommy that
I
had changed my plans and would be going with them to Europe after all. Winston was delighted, but. ironically. Mommy, who at first was worried about my staying home alone most of the summer, looked disappointed.
"What happened with that boy?" she asked. "Walker?"
"Nothing," I said. "Nothing was supposed to happen." I refused to talk about it anymore.
Winston bought a sailboat for me in Cannes. and I was back at it again-- the wind, the water, the sea gulls, and me. I did a great deal of reading, went with them on most of their excursions, and took tennis lessons. Before the summer ended Winston and
I
were playing doubles against other couples or just playing with each other. Mommy wasn't into it and after one or two lessons gave up trying. She said she preferred golf, and soon it became a strange competition for Winston's time. He would have to play golf with her or tennis with me. Sometimes he tried to do both.
"Keeping two vigorous women happy is proving to be challenging," he confessed. He also confessed sotto voce that he preferred tennis. Golf, especially with Mommy, was like watching paint dry, he said, but never once showed it in front of her. He was a jewel of a man.
I
thought.
Once I had believed I shouldn't settle down until
I
found a man exactly like Daddy. Now I was looking for one exactly like Winston Montgomery.
.
Walker did not return to college in the fall. When
I
inquired about him I learned he had
transferred to the University of West Florida in Pensacola. I found out from one of our sailing teammates that he was going there because his girlfriend from Marco Island was going there. Somehow it all took the spirit out of my sailing activity, too, and eventually I left the team, using the pressure of my studies as an excuse. The truth was, my interest in school itself was dwindling, shrinking and diminishing like some star fading into the night. Solitude became my best friend again, and before the semester ended Celia asked to be transferred from our room in the dormitory, claiming I was too dark and depressing a roommate, never talking, never listening to music, never wanting to do anything socially with her. I didn't blame her or argue about it. After she moved out I anticipated someone new, but word about me seemed to spread like a virus, and no one asked to be transferred into my room, even any of the girls who were tripled.
When I returned home for the holidays I seriously debated continuing with caller. Maybe
I
needed a year off. I didn't bring it up with Mommy, but I did with Winston. and I could see he was very troubled by the suggestion. He was silent for a long moment and then nodded slowly.
'Perhaps I have really been the one with my head in the sand when it comes to you. Grace," he said. "Maybe I have been ignoring your difficulties or trying too hard to distract you. Wrapping Jaya del Mar around you and withdrawing from the world isn't going to solve anything," he said. "Give it all a second and a third thought. Please," he pleaded.