our apartment. But he falls asleep on the floor in about ten minutes. I carry him to his bed and undress him. I imagine he hasn’t slept much the night before with all the excitement. I’d had a hard time getting to sleep myself. I whisper in his ear that I need to go to school for a while but I’ll be back when he wakes up.
I’m supposed to go to an end-of-the-school-year party. Stan asked me to come, even though it’s the day Wills arrives.
There are six new teachers for the next semester. Stan introduces me and I stand up. People clap. I meet most of the other teachers. One is a huge, bearded guy who doesn’t have much hair. I can’t get over how much he looks like Dad and my brother Matt. He’s flirting with the new librarian. When introduced, he says he comes from Oregon, although he’s just been teaching in Southeast Asia. I don’t see a wife around. The married teachers seem to have their spouses with them.
I work like mad getting my classroom in order. Wills comes with me every day and plays: on the soccer field, kicking a ball, or at the gym, trying to shoot baskets. They have a great playground here, too. Sometimes he’ll come in and give me a hand, pushing desks around.
A couple times the big, bearded guy from Oregon comes in. He’s going to be teaching computing and is getting his room fixed up, too. He speaks very slowly, but the more we talk, the more I like him. He doesn’t waste time with anything that isn’t worth talking about. Chatter is about ninety percent of all conversations anyway, but when he says something it’s usually interesting. He can’t believe I can really speak German and I’m not German. I try explaining, but I’m not sure I come across.
I find a refrigerator being sold by an elderly German couple, at a price I can pay. They’re willing to hold on to it till I get my check, but I need to find someone to move it.
The next time Bert, that’s the name of the bearded Oregonian, stops in my classroom, I ask if he could help me move a refrigerator. I promise him a home-cooked meal, American-style, in return. He stares at me a minute, then lifts an eyebrow and says, ‘Spare-ribs?’
I have no idea where I can find spare-ribs in Germany, although I do know how to cook them. That’s one advantage of those years cooking at home instead of washing dishes. So we make the deal. He wrestles that machine out of the cellar of these old people, across town, and up my stairs, single-handedly, as if it were a portable radio or something. He’s bushed when he’s finished and flops down on my couch.
‘You don’t perhaps have some of this great German beer around, do you, Kate?’
By luck, I have one bottle. I don’t drink beer myself. It isn’t cold because we haven’t plugged in the refrigerator yet, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He has a bottle-opener on the knife with his keys, and drinks it out of the bottle before I can find a glass. Just then, Wills comes running in. Bert lolls back and smiles.
‘Hi there, buster, what’s your name?’
Wills, his mouth open, is taking in this hunk of a man. Bert has to be six-three and 200 pounds.
‘Wills, sir.’
‘Well, Wilzer, I’ve seen you shooting baskets down there in the gym. You like basketball?
‘Yeah, but I can’t get the ball up high enough to go through the basket. It’s too high.’
‘Sure you can. Next time I see you down there, I’ll show you how. You’ll be dropping in baskets like Magic Johnson.’
I’ve prepared most of the dinner. I’ve borrowed some dishes and cutlery – so much for my bachelor life. I’ve let the spare-ribs simmer for three hours, basting them with my ersatz barbecue sauce. I’ve set the little table. Wills is as excited about having spare-ribs as Bert is. I haven’t done any real cooking in quite a while.
Both Wills and Bert eat with such gusto that my hokey barbecue sauce is spread all over the kitchen. No cook can ever complain when people dig in like that, and I don’t.
For me, Bert looks part grizzly bear, yet, strangely enough, it’s attractive. He’s physical, is deeply into sports; likes beer, chasing women, horsing around with the boys. He’s exactly the kind of man I’ve spent most of my life trying to avoid. I also recognize in him some of the things in my dad which drove me up a wall. I wonder what Mom would think of him: dismiss him probably as one of the unwashed peasants. But I admit his very simplicity gets to me. I know I’ll need to watch myself.
For Wills, Bert is just some other kid to play with. Bert actually listens to him ramble on, and shows him about ten different silly things you can do with a knife, fork, and spoon, including drumming. They start drumming on the table, the glasses, the dishes, anything they can touch, while Bert sings or hums, ‘When the Saints Come Marching In.’ That’s how a lot of the sauce is spread all over the place.
In self-defense, I move over to the kitchen and begin taking things off the table. But all the time my eyes are glued on Bert and he knows it. He’s acting up. He knows when I look at his massive forearms or the hair squeezing up over his T-shirt. That’s right, he’s wearing a T-shirt at the table, a dirty, sweaty T-shirt. After all, he’s just moved a refrigerator. I’m giggling, thinking to myself: what would it be like, making love to a grizzly bear?
I have the answer that night. After Wills is in bed, we begin chatting. He tells me about his home town in Oregon, a place called Falls City. His best friends are still his high-school buddies, especially the ones he played basketball with. He’s thirty-two, a year older than I am and has never been married, says he has no intention of getting married, at least not for a long time yet.
He makes simple moves, the kind adolescent boys make, and I don’t resist. It’s been months since I’ve had a chance to be with a man.
He doesn’t so much make love, as cuddle, and hold, wrap himself around me, all in slow motion, like one of those underwater love scenes. His hands are strong and gentle. He never hurries, doesn’t seem nervous at all. It’s as if making love is the most natural thing in the world, and all men and women who aren’t making love just then, at that moment, are really missing something. It’s a bit like making love with a real animal, maybe not a grizzly bear or a gorilla, but a powerful male. I don’t think I’ve felt so safe and comfortable with any man in my life.
He giggles a lot. He hardly talks when we’re loving, but makes all kinds of quiet purring, growling, contented noises. We fall asleep after about two hours of fore-, center-, and after-play.
In the morning, he’s up before I am, sitting in the little alcove-kitchen with Wills, playing cards; actually he’s performing card tricks while they both eat cornflakes raw – I mean dry. He’s made some coffee. Soon as he realizes I’m awake, he calls out to me.
‘Cuppa Java?’
I nod. I’m still in bed. I wonder what Wills is thinking. I’ve always tried to keep the men in my life away from Wills because he still loves Danny so, and I don’t want to make him feel things are as bad between us as they really are.
Bert ambles over to the kitchen stove and pours me a cup. He’s wearing a pair of boxer shorts. He doesn’t even have shoes on. He has wide feet that won’t sink in any mud, and a tattoo on his left ankle. He smiles down at me.
‘Hope you don’t mind my staying over. Little Wilzer was up and moving about before either of us, so I just slithered out of bed and joined him. I don’t think he’s noticed much.’
This he says in what passes as a whisper for him. As I
