him, understood him, even though there was a petition circulating at church to have him transferred out of the school district. You knew that Lloyd had signed it. Shoot, he’d probably started it.
When you returned for your curtain call, his seat was empty. Your heart sank.
The following day he asked you to stay after school. He paced back and forth in the empty classroom, ranting about historical accuracy. “It’s revisionist bullshit! It was genocide—we stole their land, and then we exterminated them. And now we call it Thanksgiving?”
He seemed very angry, like he was yelling at you. “Don’t you know anything about the Shoshone and the Bannock who’ve lived on this land for thousands of years, before there even was an Idaho?” Staring at him, your eyes burned, and you wanted to cry. Then he stopped and stood in front of you, and before you knew it, he had pinned you in his arms against the desk, and he was kissing you, hard. It was not at all what you’d imagined, involving a lot more bristle, more teeth and tongue than romance, but he whispered, “So lovely . . .” and ran his fingers through your long hair, and that was enough. It was plenty. This is it, you thought, shivering uncontrollably. It’s happening, and you tried to pay attention so that you could remember how his hands felt against the skin of your heart and tell it all to Cass.
He had a baby blue Volkswagen Beetle in a town of Fords and Chevys. On Saturday you skipped 4-H and he picked you up behind the school. He was wearing jeans and an old fisherman’s sweater. He took you to a tiny clapboard house on the outskirts of town, which he was renting for the school year. He made a big pot of split-pea soup on top of a woodstove. You helped him peel the carrots, and afterward you ate the soup with big hunks torn from a loaf of French bread. The crust was burned. He had no chairs, so you sat on a mattress in the corner of the living room. You put the empty bowls on the floor when you were done. The room filled with steam from the simmering soup, clouding the windows. The sheets were speckled with grit, and the flattened pillow smelled like the scalp of his head. It was the best smell in the world, and you buried your face in it, hugging it, wanting to take it home with you. There was no toilet paper in the bathroom, only a stack of dusty newspapers, and afterward you found yourself wiping his semen from your aching adolescent pussy with the headlines of an old New York Times: NIXON RESIGNS.
You phoned Cass right after dinner.
“I did it!” you whispered, and she cried, “No way!” and you could almost hear the screen door slam as she came rocketing out of her house, down the road, and up your driveway. You grabbed her wrist, hauled her panting through the kitchen and up the stairs, slipping past Lloyd, who was headed toward the bathroom. Barricading your bedroom door, the two of you sat, legs crossed Indian style, head touching head.
“I can’t believe it!” squealed Cass, “You really—!”
You reached over to clamp your hand across her mouth. Lloyd gargled in the bathroom on the other side of the wall. When you could trust her to be quiet, you let your hand drop.
“All the way?” she whispered.
You nodded.
“What was it like?” Her eyes were glistening.
You savored her awe, lay back on the pillows.
“It was . . . unbelievably romantic,” you said. “He made split-pea soup.” You smiled dreamily, staring up past a constellation of phosphorescent stars. When you were little, Lloyd had pasted them onto the ceiling for you, following the diagram from a book that he had bought—Orion, Andromeda, and the Dippers. It had been years since you’d really noticed them.
“Split-pea soup?” Cass sounded unimpressed.
“Mmm. I peeled potatoes while he washed peas. He chopped up carrots and—”
“Yummy, I know what’s in split-pea soup!” she cried, bouncing up and down on the bed. “What happened after?”
“I’m getting to that. The room was hot, so we took off our sweaters.”
“And he was driven wild with desire?”
“No. He played his guitar.”
“Ooooh, how romantic! What did he play?”
“Jefferson Airplane. Some Dylan. ‘Lay Lady Lay.’ ”
“I love that! And then did you do it?”
“No. Afterward. First we ate the soup.”
“Did it hurt?” she asked.
“Just a little. The first time.”
“The first time! Oh, my goodness, Yummy! How many . . . ?” Her face was bright pink now as she pressed her fingers to her mouth. Sweet Cassie, you thought, feeling so mature all of a sudden—and that was when time did a weird, elasticky thing, like a cartoon slingshot, sending you zinging way out ahead of her in years.
“I don’t know,” you answered, from far away. “Three? Maybe four?”
“Did you, you know . . . ?”
“What?”
“You know . . .” She hesitated again. She sounded lonely, left behind like that. “Did it feel good?”
“Mmmm,” you said, smug and inscrutable, adding to the distance between you. “It felt great. Totally far out. No . . . it was soulful. ...I can’t explain.”
It wasn’t really soulful, but you were already rewriting the experience. The real story, as you dimly recall it, twenty-five years later, was that it didn’t feel great at all, and it just went on and on. What you identified as pleasure started in the silence after the sex part was done and the winter afternoon was growing dark. You lay there, staring at the ceiling in dim light, and held a naked man for the first time in your life. For a little while, maybe fifteen minutes or so, you honestly felt that this was what it was like to be all grown up and happy. Then he rolled out of bed and put on his jeans and started looking for his car keys.
Lloyd left the bathroom and stopped outside your closed door. He cleared his throat.
“Aren’t you girls supposed to be studying?”
“We are.” Your tone ripe and condescending. “We’re doing our homework.”
Cass looked alarmed.
Lloyd hesitated. “Sounds like just a lot of chatter to me,” he said. “Finish up and go on home, Cass. It’s getting late.”
You listened as he descended the creaking stairs.
“Lady,” Elliot crooned, strumming at the strings of his guitar, “you keep askin’ why he likes you? How come?”
You knew not to ask questions like that. Still, he teased you:
“Wonder
