Chapter 3
Leonard drove a black Plymouth that had belonged to his father, but it didn’t look like any hand-me-down car I’d ever seen.
It was beautiful, no dents, all shine, with a dark red interior and a wide front seat.
If we stopped to eat at Triplett’s Drive-In, we’d get out and sit at one of the tables.
I didn’t mind. If I’d had a car like that, I would have wanted to keep it nice, too.
Leonard would go up and order for us, always remembering that I hated pickles, though I just said it once.
He didn’t know how to dance when I met him. When I told him how much I loved dancing, he looked a little queasy. I offered to teach him, and he said he would learn, for me.
We went to his house to practice, as there was more space, less chaos.
His mother let us push back the furniture in their living room, where they had both a record player and a radio.
Sometimes she’d watch from the doorway and tell us we were looking good.
This was in early October, after school, so even with fans going, we would get overheated.
It was Mrs. Lifton who told me that if I ever wanted to bring a suit, I could stay for a swim and cool off.
I brought my suit over the next time, and she said I should rinse off first, and that I could use the bathroom attached to the master bedroom while Leonard rinsed off in the shower in the hall.
I thought, my God, three of them living there, and two different bathrooms. I’d never known people like this.
I’d never even taken a shower—every place we’d ever lived only had a tub.
Mr. and Mrs. Lifton’s bedroom led to a second, smaller patio, which also had a view of the pool and the bayou beyond.
I marveled at this, that they could open a sliding glass door and step directly from their bedroom to outside.
Leonard had told me this smaller patio was where his mother liked to sit and read, and once, when I was in his parents’ room changing, I rolled back the glass door and went out there by myself.
I felt like Goldilocks, letting myself sit on the love seat and look out at the water.
There was a bottle of nail polish on the table.
The label said Lucky Rose, and it was the same shade I’d noticed on his mother’s toenails.
A book was wedged between the love seat cushion and the wicker, and I slipped it out to peek at the title: The Sun Also Rises.
I’d heard of Ernest Hemingway, and knew he was considered a serious writer.
I was impressed that this was the kind of book she would read on her little sunporch with no one watching, waiting for her toenails to dry.
I didn’t feel I could ask her about the book, or even mention it to Leonard, as I didn’t want either of them to know I’d been snooping.
The next day, I tried to find The Sun Also Rises at the school library, and when I couldn’t, I asked the librarian, who gave me a scolding look and said it was an inappropriate book for a girl in high school.
“It’s full of vulgarity,” she added. “Absolutely full of it. Nora, I have to say, I’m surprised.”
I assured her I was surprised as well. I couldn’t tell if she believed me.
“I saw someone reading it, that’s all.”
She frowned. “I hope not another student?”
“No, ma’am.” I feared she would ask who, specifically.
“Well,” she said. “To each their own. But I hope you’ll find something more suitable.”
I couldn’t bring myself to try to check it out at the city library, as I worried I’d be chastised again, perhaps more firmly, and with other people behind me in line.
I couldn’t even ask Leonard if he’d read it, for he might guess that I knew his mother was reading it, and if he knew it was full of vulgarity, we’d both want to die of humiliation.
Someone else might have been able to play innocent in that conversation, but that person was not me.
Still, I hated that I couldn’t get my hands on a copy. I had a hard time believing that Mrs. Lifton would read smut, even smut by a serious writer. But if that were the case, I, too, wanted to read it, and be like her in this small way.
—
Leonard and I made our dancing debut at that year’s Harvest Bash, which was really a Halloween dance, but they couldn’t call it that because some parents thought anything having to do with Halloween was demonic.
Still, the dance was held on the last Saturday in October, and there was a prize for the couple with the best costumes.
Leonard and I went as Prince Philip and Princess Elizabeth.
I got a little fake tiara from Webb’s, and Leonard found a hat that more or less looked like a Royal Navy hat.
The real Princess Elizabeth was about to give birth, but we left that part out of the costume.
By then, Leonard could jitterbug as well as anyone.
I’d taught him the tabletop and the octopus, and what he and I called the big unfurl and furl-back.
It was his idea to practice a move where he’d push me up over his shoulders and swing me around.
We had to practice this outside, by the pool, and when his mother saw us through the window she ran out and yelled, “Oh be careful, Leonard! Don’t drop her! ”
I wasn’t worried. The muscles in his back were firm as a tree trunk. Decades later, when I was helping my friend study for an exam in massage therapy, I learned this muscle was the latissimus dorsi, the swimmer’s muscle, and I thought, oh, yes, I know that.
He never dropped me. Not at their house, and not at the dance.
But an hour in, I lost my tiara, and Leonard had lost his hat.
No one knew who we were supposed to be. We laughed when people made wrong guesses, and kept having fun.
But when the band played “Blue Moon,” we danced slow and close, and I knew I didn’t want to spend the whole evening surrounded by other people.
He felt the same. Long before they announced the winners of the costume contest, we’d already left for the beach.
Before Leonard, when I’d gone out with other boys, I easily played the part of the Guardian of Virtue—moving a hand out from under my skirt or blouse, or verbally reminding my date of the kind of girl I wasn’t.
With Leonard, I lost all such power, and didn’t miss it.
In his car, when we were alone, I wanted to devour him.
I loved his voice, and the way he said my name.
And looking at him, of course. But if I had to pin my weakness with him on just one thing, I’d say it was the way he made it clear, when he was holding me, or kissing me, that he didn’t want to be anywhere else, or doing anything but what he was doing.
He’d sometimes pull back and look at me, really look at me, like there’d be a test about my face the next morning, and he’d have to draw every shadow and curve from memory.
Also, it’s interesting that every boy I knew used the word necking, but Leonard was the first to truly focus his attention on my neck.
At least without leaving a hickey. He wasn’t interested in that.
He’d move his lips down one side of my neck while two of his fingertips slid down the other side, then back up to my ear, again and again until it felt like my very teeth were ringing.
When I was alone with him, I felt a humming current between us, a thing in itself, as alive and real as either one of us.
But I could think of nothing more terrifying, or personally calamitous, than getting pregnant. If given a choice, I would have preferred being hit by a car, killed by polio, or eaten alive by a shark. Really. I’d thought about it. At least I’d be remembered fondly.
Night after night, we pulled away from each other, worn out. The misery was new and bewildering. My friends talked of managing lust in their boyfriends, not of being driven mad by it themselves. Leonard didn’t judge me for it, not at all. But I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to know.
The night of the dance, we’d been parked at the beach for maybe fifteen minutes when I lost all sense of propriety. I’ll just say that if any other boy tried doing to me what I started to do to Leonard, that boy would have gotten slapped.
Leonard took hold of both my hands and whispered, “What are you doing, Nora? What are you wanting?” I understood that all I had to do was say the truth, and it would happen.
Terror rushed in. I told him I was sorry, and retreated to my side of the car.
I said sorry again. I meant it, for I could tell by his voice, and by the look on his face, that I’d put him in physical pain.
“I’m going for a swim,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
“Okay,” I said. I wanted to cry. He didn’t want me to come with him.
He got out of the car and ran barefoot across the sand, right into the water.
The moon was out, and because of the white pants, I could keep sight of him until the cresting waves reached his waist. I got out and walked around to the front of the car, leaning on the hood as I watched for him, worried, though I knew he was an excellent swimmer.
This worry, I knew, was connected to my longing for him, which I understood wasn’t, at the heart of it, caused by his physical beauty or the muscles of his back.
What I felt was bigger than that. Encompassing.
—
He emerged from the water and walked back toward the car, rubbing his eyes, the white pants soaked and clinging. He stood next to me without saying anything, but he reached over and took my hand. His fingers were still wet and cool from the sea.
“I won’t do that to you again,” I said.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m not mad, Nora.” After a while, he made an L with his left hand, raising it to the moon. “It’s waning.”
I asked him how he could tell, and he said if the moon sits in your left hand, it’s waning, and if it sits in your right, it’s working its way to full. I’d never heard this. I let go of his hand and made my own L for the moon to sit in.