in front of the fireplace and gorged on crackers, cheese, and conversation. When the fire faded, Terry hauled logs from the woodpile beside the kitchen door and carefully arranged them on top of the embers. Our eyes danced in the shadows of flickering flames. He sprinkled a fistful of chestnuts in a metal pie plate to roast in the fire. Once they had roasted and cooled, he peeled one and placed it carefully in my mouth. As I tasted the warm, grainy inside of the nut, Terry’s fingers brushed against my cheek. Then he circled the outline of my lips with his index finger and stroked my chin. He leaned forward to kiss me. Sweet, gentle, innocent.
Slightly embarrassed, we chuckled like kids caught in their own delight. Not sure of what to do next, I headed to the kitchen to replenish cheese and crackers. Terry followed and gathered more logs. We repositioned ourselves in front of the fire. Surely soft music played in the background, but I can’t recall a song or melody. Perhaps Johnny Mathis or Nat King Cole.
“Oh, my God. It’s so late; it’s almost 4:00 a.m.,” I said.
“Guess it’s time for me to be leaving. You won’t mind if I take this last beer with me? One for the road.”
As we stood face-to-face in the dim light of the entry hall, he whispered, “Can I kiss you again?” He lifted my chin, leaned down and kissed my lips. Again, sweet and tender. Then he grabbed his lumber jacket and opened the front door. As he turned to leave, he saluted me like Bogart.
“Here’s to you, kid.” He cocked his head and grinned. “Let’s do this again, sweetheart.”
I lingered in the hall, watching as he walked up the front path toward the road. Then he climbed into his ancient Plymouth Fury and revved the engine. Gravel rattled. My heart raced.
I tossed the empty beer cans into the garbage and thought, boy, that guy drinks a lot of beer. Then I glanced at Matt’s calendar. October 3—a gold-star day.
It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; It is less difficult to know that it has begun.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A month later on a brisk, cloud-free day, Terry and I walked hand-in-hand through downtown Charleston, heading for his apartment. Our conversation turned to his junior year abroad in Copenhagen in 1970.
“I loved it,” he said. “My first time away from Texas, except for that trip to Oregon with my mother I told you about. I explored the breweries and drank huge amounts of free beer. My research project, so to speak. I chased after young women, without much success. Austin College had some connection with an international school there. Mainly we’d sit around and shoot the breeze in so-called seminars. We had plenty of time to travel. I bought a scooter and ran around with a classmate. Guy named Aubrey. We went to France, Italy, Sweden. Stayed in youth hostels and cheap hotels. I had very little money.”
“Wow! Europe. I’ve never been,” I pushed a strand of hair behind my ear. “One of my college friends was born in Italy. She used to visit relatives. My grandparents emigrated from Sicily.” The words were pouring out of me, from nervousness, or embarrassment, or some combination of both. “Don’t think anyone from the family still lives there. I’d love to go to Italy. Heck, I’d like to go almost anywhere, but especially Europe.” If my nervous rush of talk bothered him, he didn’t show it.
“I didn’t get to stay in Denmark for a full year like I planned,” he went on. “Everything ended when my scooter crashed. I broke my left leg.”
“Oh, how awful!”
He grimaced ruefully.
“When I tell you how, you have to promise you won’t laugh.”
“Why would I laugh?”
“’Cause I was hit by a sausage truck.”
I cackled. He smiled and gently punched my shoulder.
“I asked you not to laugh.” But he was smiling. “Anyway, the doctor didn’t set my leg right. I stayed in Dallas for a while and then I hobbled around campus in a weird metal contraption.”
During the year that Terry had been scooting around Europe, I’d been immersed in motherhood: breastfeeding Matt at 2:00 a.m., changing diapers, and delighting in my baby boy’s milestones, his first smile, coo, babble, word, and step.
But Europe! Images danced through my mind. Elsa and Rick riding in a convertible through the French countryside in Casablanca. Princess Grace in her Monaco palace. Scott and Zelda cavorting with wealthy expatriates and artists on the Riviera. Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney hitching rides in Two for the Road.
Me? Hitching rides? Out of the question.
“Here I am thirty-four-years-old and I’ve never been to Europe.”
“Oh, you’ll get there someday.”
Terry told me that a friend from college, Diane, had spent a year in France, where she met her future husband, Jacques, while hitchhiking. After graduation she moved to Paris to marry. Back then most of us married right after graduation.
Instead of hitching rides through Europe, I’d married my high school sweetheart, Anthony, in 1964. High Mass at my parish church, St. Kevin’s, and a lavish reception at Leonard’s of Great Neck. We’d headed south to Gainesville, Florida, where he worked on a PhD in sociology and I returned to school for a master’s degree. Our son, Matt was born in 1970.
“So was Paris as romantic as in the movies?”
“Yeah, like An American in Paris. You remember that one?”
“Gene Kelly, dancing with Leslie Caron . . . in the fountain spray, from the Place de la Concorde . . . how could I forget?” Terry grinned at my enthusiasm, whether for Paris or for the film, I’ll never know. Encouraged, I went on, now in full spate.
“I’ve got an idea. Maybe we could go to Paris this summer and stay with your friends. It wouldn’t cost that much if they’d put us up. Anthony has Matt for six weeks this summer. And I’m teaching only one class the first semester. So I’m free for a whole month.” Terry’s brow furrowed comically, but I was barely getting started, and my ideas were flowing out in a torrent.
Back then, I free-floated in a mist of mania, a “go-for-it” mindset of magnificent possibilities—including a trip to Europe with my friend and lover. My wanderlust wasn’t new, but I hadn’t previously had the courage or opportunity to act on it. When I was seventeen, I’d begged my parents to send me away to college, but they wouldn’t hear of it. “Frances, where do you get these ideas?” they asked, genuinely puzzled by my desire to leave home. Back then young women in traditional Italian families didn’t leave home until they married. Period. No exceptions. So I lived at home and matriculated at City College. My father placated me by offering to pay half the cost of a car if I earned the other half. I worked part time at Lord & Taylor’s department store and saved my money. During my sophomore year, I saved enough to purchase half of a shiny, new, bright blue Mercury Comet. Not long after graduation, I married and headed south, eventually landing in Chapel Hill, a pleasant enough town. It had been nice. But it
