“Did your tongues touch when you kissed? Was it French kissing?”
“No,” he said, shifting uncomfortably on the sofa. Just hearing Mrs. Codd say the word tongue had caused an instant reaction in his jeans, and he moved so she wouldn’t see what was happening to him.
“It’s not real kissing, you know, if you don’t use the tongue. I can show you if you like? That way you won’t be embarrassed when you next kiss a girl.”
“Okay,” Jake said, his mouth instantly drying up.
As though she could tell, Mrs. Codd passed him her tall Tom Collins. “Have a sip of this. It will help.”
He drank the sweet, icy drink, and it did help, at least with the dryness of his mouth. Mrs. Codd slid down the sofa next to him. He was worried, more than anything, that if they got close enough to kiss, she might notice the hardness in his pants. Would she be disgusted, kick him out of the house, tell him to never come back? Would she tell his parents?
“Now just relax,” she said, taking the drink from his hand, sipping some herself, then placing the glass on the coffee table. They began to kiss, and just like she’d said, there was a lot of tongue. She tasted of gin and tobacco, and they kissed so long that Jake began to worry he would suffocate. When she pulled away, she said, “Not bad for your first time.” Her lipstick was smudged around her lips, and Jake thought of Margie Robinson in the cold, damp woods.
“Now let’s try it again, but a little bit closer this time.” She turned toward him, sliding a leg across his lap, and Jake shied away.
“Sorry, sorry,” he said.
“What for? This?” She put a hand on his crotch, and Jake nodded, feeling so ashamed that he was worried he might start to cry.
She laughed again, a deep, raspy laugh, and said, “That’s what it’s supposed to do, sweetheart. As soon as we’ve mastered kissing, I’ll give you lesson number two, okay? Trust me, you’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” Jake said, but his voice sounded shaky and pinched.
“Leave it up to me, Jake,” she said. “I’ll teach you everything you need to know to be a man. Would you like that?”
He nodded.
“Okay. There’s only one rule, though, and it’s a big rule. You can’t tell anyone about us. Anyone at all. That includes your friends at school, even if they’re bragging about girls. It’s not that I’m ashamed, or that you should be ashamed, it’s just that some people would think it’s wrong. Do you promise, Jake?”
She was fully straddling him now, her stiff, satiny skirt bunched up around her waist, and Jake, heart tripping in his chest, promised her he would never tell another living soul.
Jake kept his promise, all the while visiting Emma Codd two or three times a week. They would still occasionally watch television, but only after they were both exhausted by the “lessons.” Then they would watch together, each in a postsex daze, crumpled on the sofa, naked and sweaty, each drinking their own Tom Collins, and Jake smoking one of Emma’s Chesterfield Kings. She taught him everything a boy and a girl could do together, including things he had never even imagined in his dirtiest thoughts. He was particularly astounded, and baffled, by Emma’s physical reactions. Sometimes she would shake so hard that he thought she must be having some kind of medical seizure.
A week before Christmas, Emma told Jake that he needed to stay away for the next month and a half, since her boys were coming home from college, and her husband was taking two weeks away from the office.
“I’ll miss you,” Jake said.
“I know what you’ll miss,” she said back. “You’ll have to find some innocent girl your own age to corrupt. Shouldn’t be too hard.”
“I would never do that,” Jake said.
“Why ever not?”
“Because of . . .”
“Because of what we have? Jake, sweetheart, what we have together is perfect, as you know, but you are a young man and I am an old, married woman. Don’t ever forget that.”
Jake did as he was told, and stayed away for the remainder of December and all of January. But after a February nor’easter, Jake took a shovel and walked to the Codd house. Emma was alone again, and after Jake dug out her driveway, she greeted him at her front door with a mug of hot chocolate, then led him to the bedroom.
Afterward, she asked him what he’d done over Christmas.
“Nothing,” he said.
“No nice young girls?” she asked.
“No. I thought about you.”
“You’re very sweet, Jake, and you’re a smart boy, and I’m going to fill you in on a secret. The worst thing in the world—the absolute worst thing—is growing old. There’s not too much you can do about it, but having a lot of money does help some. Have you met Mr. Codd? I can’t remember.”
“I saw him once, I think, at the Fourth of July parade.”
“He’s much older than I am, as I’m sure you noticed. He’s turning sixty-five this year. He’s made more money than he’ll be able to spend in his remaining years, of course, but let me ask you: Would you trade places with him? Would you agree to be sixty-five in return for all his money?”
“I guess not,” Jake said, thinking that was the answer she wanted to hear.
“Exactly my point. Your youth is worth more than all his money. So cherish it, Jake. Use it. And when you’re my age I recommend that you find a way to make enough money so that you can find someone young to be with yourself. When I’m with you, I’m a young girl again. It’s not forever, I know that, but it’s much better than tennis with the girls, or going into the city to have dinner with Richard and his insurance friends.”
“Does he know about us? Does your husband know?”
Emma Codd leaned away from Jake to get to her pack of cigarettes on the bedside table. Jake studied her body, always a little less attractive to him after they’d done it. Her heavy breasts sagged a little, and there was puckered skin on her thighs and buttocks. After lighting two cigarettes and passing one to Jake, she said, “He doesn’t not know, I guess. He knows I’m not entirely alone out here week after week while he’s in Hartford tallying numbers, but he doesn’t know about you, specifically.
“He’s no saint, himself, you know. He used to have a few regular girls, but I doubt he still does. He can’t perform, you know, in the bedroom, anymore.”
“Oh,” Jake said.
“You’re my replacement. That’s a good thing, not a bad thing, for everyone involved.” Emma Codd blew out a plume of blue smoke, then leaned over and kissed Jake on his hairless chest. “Don’t grow old, Jake. That’s my advice to you. And if it happens anyway, then find someone younger than you. I know of what I speak.”
Two and a half years later, at the beginning of Jake’s senior year, Mrs. Codd told him that she was having some health problems, and they wouldn’t be able to see each other anymore. He objected but was secretly okay with it. He’d found a new girlfriend by then, a plump blond sophomore whose single mother worked afternoons at the town library. Jake taught her everything he’d learned from Mrs. Codd, and decided he liked being the teacher as much as he’d liked being the student. Maybe more.
After his senior year, Jake went to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst on a partial scholarship to study economics. He came home that first Christmas, and during a silent midday meal with his mother and father, neither of whom had asked him how he liked school, he asked about Mrs. Codd, and if his mother was still doing housework there.
“You didn’t hear?” she said.
“Hear what?”
“She died months ago. She had cancer.”
“Oh,” Jake said, taking a bite of the dried-out turkey.
“The house was sold and everything.”