“It’s out there. You could trip and fall over an old log and break your leg and nobody would ever find you. Or you could be caught in a blizzard with the wind blowing every which way until you can’t find your own front door, and then they’d find you the next morning, frozen like a Popsicle, not ten feet from home.”
“Enough!” They shouted in unison and went off to watch Howdy Doody or Romper Room. I knew, however, that while I was at school or rehearsing with the band, they would ignore my cautions. They’d come home with grass stains on their knees and bottoms, ticks on their bare skin, twigs in their curls, frogs in their overalls, and the smell of danger on their breath.
But that night they were sleeping lambs, and two doors down my parents snored. My father called out my name in his sleep, but I dared not answer at such a late hour. The house grew preternaturally still. I had told my darkest secret with no consequences, so I went to bed, safe as ever.
They say that one never forgets one’s first love, but I am chagrined to admit that I do not remember her name or much else about her—other than the fact that she was the first girl I saw naked. For the sake of the story, I’ll call her Sally. Maybe that actually was her name. After the summer of my confession to Oscar, I resumed my lessons with Mr. Martin, and there she was. She had departed at the end of the school year and returned a different creature—someone to be desired, a fetish, an obsession. I am as guilty of anonymous lust as anyone, but it was she who chose me. Her affections I gratefully accepted without pause. I had been noticing her curves for months, before she gathered the courage to speak to me at the winter recital. We stood together backstage in our formal wear, enduring the wait for our individual turns at the piano. The youngest kids went first, for agony is best served as an appetizer.
“Where did you learn to play?” Sally whispered over an achingly slow minuet.
“Right here. I mean with Mr. Martin.”
“You play out of this world.” She smiled, and, buoyed by her remarks, I gave my most inspired recital. In the weeks and months that followed, we slowly got to know each other. She would hang around the studio listening to me play the same piece over and over, Mr. Martin whispering gruffly, “Adagio, adagio.” We arranged to have lunch together on Saturdays. Over sandwiches spread out on waxed paper, we’d chat about that day’s lessons. I usually had a few dollars in my pocket from performances, so we could go to a show or stop for an ice cream or a soda. Our conversations centered around the kinds of subjects fifteen-year-olds talk about: school, friends, unbelievable parents, and, in our case, the piano. Or rather, I talked about music: composers, Mr. Martin, records, the affinities of jazz with the classics, and all sorts of nattering theories of mine. It was not a conversation, more like a monologue. I did not know how to listen, how to draw her out, or how to be quiet and enjoy her company. She may well have been a lovely person.
When the sun began to heat up the spring air, we took a stroll to the park, a place I normally avoided because of its resemblance to the forest. But the daffodils were in flower, and it seemed perfectly romantic. The city had turned on the fountain, another sign of spring, and we sat by the water’s edge, watching the cascade for a long time. I did not know how to do what I wanted to do, how to ask, what to say, in what manner even to broach the subject. Sally saved me.
“Henry?” she asked, her voice rising an octave. “Henry, we’ve been taking walks and having lunch together and going to the movies for over three months, and in all that time, I’ve wondered: Do you like me?”
“Of course I do.”
“If you like me, like you say, how come you never try to hold my hand?”
I took her hand in mine, surprised by the heat in her fingers, the perspiration in her palm.
“And how come you’ve never tried to kiss me?”