The young woman and the even younger man walked unsteadily down the tree-lined street at dusk after burgundy-and-brandy beef stew at her parent’s house. They were his sort of aunt and uncle. So the woman and man were cousins or told so, but no one ever knew or explained how they were related. They had met during summer family gatherings at the mountain lake a time or two or three over the years. He was thirteen then, dorky and callow, a Catholic altar boy with a rosary in his swim trunks, pimply skin and sharp elbows. She was 19, pale, and in full pink bikini bloom with the benign beauty-mark mole on her left breast, catching everyone’s ogling eye. Spitz Nevi, the touchy-feely doctor called it. She called it a third nipple and almost the cops on him. But she hardly noticed the young man back then, almost invoking Katherine Hepburn in the The Lion In Winter: “I gave up the church out of boredom. I can do the same for you.” But she held her tongue yet couldn’t say no seven years later when her mother and father begged her to come to dinner and see her little cousin who was coming to visit his favorite country folk along his pilgrimage.
“Pilgrimage?” she asked.
“Yes,” they said. “Pilgrimage.”
Already she’d had reservations. Then she said she already had dinner reservations.
“Bullshit.” her father said in a country drawl like her mother. “Yur booked here.”
After dinner and the dishes warshed by hand, her mother had said, “Why don’t you two kids go on a long walk and get some fresh air.” She was sipping more wine, her hand trembled a little.
“But not too fresh,” her father said with a wink from a marled eye. He had an old small scar on his cheek.
The young woman rolled her eyes.
“So watch yourself, son, nephew, whomever.”
“Why’s that?”
“She can be a tiger.”
“Enough, Dad,” she said curtly.
It was warm out. She wore a newly washed pink cardigan anyway, arms folded, sort of covering up attributes and secrets. But then she talked openly of life, banal expectations of work, love, family, and ridiculous flirty dreams of travel to faraway places like Tahiti, but also real failures.
“Mom and Dad put on a pretty good show in front of family and friends,” she said. “No one ever sees the real them. I only came to dinner to see what my little cousin was up to. Otherwise, I’d have avoided it because Dad hates me,” she confessed. “Or is at least embarrassed because I didn’t go to a prominent college or one at all and I only work for the phone company at the switchboard. And I’m not married with children. So, I’ve disappointed Mom too even though she, like me, is a drunk. Must run in the family.”
The young man said, “Well, in the third person, your little cousin is honored to make your re-acquaintance.” He playfully bowed.
Before he could continue she said, “Truth is, they begged me to come to dinner.”
“Shit. Really? Third-person cousin will still have to thank them for their convincing effort.” He continued, “But in the first person, I don’t think any of the rest. Your parents don’t think that. That wasn’t an act. That was a lovely meal and they love you. Besides, you may be a little drunk from dinner, who isn’t? But you’re not a drunk. As for the phone company, you’ve got the perfect sultry voice for it. I may put in a call myself just to hear you. And if the switchboard doesn’t work out for you, there’s always the Miss America pageant.” Then he said again, “Really, they begged you?”
She asked, “I’m too old for any pageant. Do you plead and flirt with all your cousins this way?”
“Are we really cousins?”
She playfully shrugged but was comforted by and comfortable near him. Near and dear, her mother would say and drag out in her practiced country drawl. The young woman found him calming, the slush of his authoritative voice, and very attractive. My, how he changed, blooming from a boy in trunks to a man in trousers and dress shirt. He was basketball-tall with moral yet non-accusatory or ivory-tower rectitude. Also, he had heavenly blue eyes, cowlick hair fashionably moussed, and most importantly, was safe because he was off limits and entering the seminary and a life of celibacy.
“So,” she paused, “a pilgrimage. You are to become a Catholic priest?” She realized she sounded like Katherine Hepburn in The Lion In Winter.
“Yes. You said that in such an elegant, magisterial way.”
“I am a professional switchboard operator, after all.” Then she joked, “How may I direct your call?”
“Call, that’s funny.”
“Why?” she said suspiciously.
“In our faith, a call is God calling. An invitation to serve. A vocation He directs.”
“Is it? I’d rather vacation in Tahiti directly.”
“You are so quick and funny.”
“So no letting yourself go? Are you sure?” She hiked her sleeves as if to argue or arm wrestle. There was a sliver of sunlight left on the horizon like a sliver of hope that she might make him see a different light and not plunge into self-sacrifice and deprivation. She imagined him flagellating himself with a branch or that damned rosary in a monk’s cell. But she couldn’t see a chink in his armor or a character flaw. He seemed so genuine.
“No letting go? What’s that?”
“No sex? she asked at a 4-way stop sign and crosswalk. In the diminishing light, the roads still stretched as long as a fairway. Or pasture. Freeway? Rubbing her forearms, she couldn’t decide.
“Correct.”
“Ever?”
“Ever.”
“But our old preacher is married with kids,” she somewhat pleaded. He was the first to have her in grade school. Her father was the second – that was when she scratched him like a lioness after copulation. Who knew the third or after that. It was like booking a reservation.
“Different religious sects,” the young man said, “different rules.”
She became preoccupied by the much older man who ruled her life and worked at a gas station. She was hooking up with him later. He called her sugar mole and sometimes kinky because of her hair and other bodily attributes. There’d be lines of cocaine and whiskey shots in the office, followed by rough kinky sex that sometimes was good but always wrecked an orifice or two. And then there was always the shot of a backhand and gradual beating. Or it was a left hook that knocked her out for the night.
Drunk or hi, she couldn’t tell which, she walked near the young man wanting to hook his arm and rub her mole and more on him. But she kept a small distance, a distance shorter than Spitz Nevi to either nipple, wondering if he was ever tempted to have her. Or even noticed her that way. But she wanted to hear him talk. It didn’t matter what he said.
But she couldn’t wait. “I have a man,” she blurted.
“Yeah?”
“But my parents, your supposed aunt and uncle, don’t like him.”
“Why?”
“They don’t trust him.”
“Do you?”
“I don’t know. But I trust you.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Too much to explain.”
“I have time,” she said, thinking again of the gas station later.
“We should head back. I told your dad I’d watch the ball game with him, then talk Tiger.”
She interrupted. “Tiger? Oh, no. Not you too! It wasn’t funny when Dad said it.”
“What? No, not you. Heavens no. Not you. I mean Tiger Woods.”
“Who? What?”
“A golfer.”
“You golf?”
“No. Just a conversation piece. I met him once. He’s one of the greatest golfers ever. Your dad wanted to hear about it.”
“Oh,” she said. Then she said. “You didn’t just pull that out of your ass and save yourself? Did you?”
“I swear. No. I did not. Ask your dad.”
“I believe you.”
They turned around and headed back to the house under the street lamps and stars. There was no wind, the warm air hung like a pall. Also, there was no traffic. Maybe occasional headlights, a possum or fox in wait, a random fence post of something greater that used to stand there.
She moved closer as they walked, head down, counting pretend sheep or isolation joints in the cement, arms crossed again, wanting to tap her foot and say, Listen, Mister, no one is that perfect or polite or impregnable. And then she did it. She unlatched herself and put an arm under the crook of his and gently posted herself and mole like a mail stamp.
He didn’t back away, as though guarding the low post in basketball but not pushing back either or saying a word while walking. She wondered how he could be so diligent about celibacy and indifferent to her in the moment. Was he bored? Gay? It nettled her, then drove her crazy. She wanted to scratch and hit him. Then kiss him all over.
Back at the house, the screaming began. First, her mother, ready to throw a full glass of rose across the room. “Listen to your father. you hussy.” Then her father in a wife beater and trousers, belt loosened. He needed a shave and reminded the young woman of where she was going and seeing and why.
Her father roared like a lion in any season or weather. “Don’t you go see that abusive no-good grease monkey when you’ve got your fine gentle cousin right here.”
“Abusive?” She rubbed the nose she did blow with and that the no-good grease monkey had broken. Twice. “Why are you so accusatory? I haven’t filed a single police report. Ever. Right, Daddy? Besides, I am my own woman. I can see whomever I want.” She pulled her sleeves down like lowering a shade to a peep show. “F.u.c.k y.o.u b.o.t.h,” she said slowly and clearly with her switchboard voice. She looked at the young man with contempt and then drove off to the gas station, already missing him.
Later, doing lines, she wondered where he might be sleeping. Maybe she could drive back, sneak in a window, lie beside him. If only for an hour or two before sneaking back out, like she’d done a million times before. But then there was a right cross and she was laid out.
At bedtime, after things calmed down and after a double brandy nightcap, the young man insisted on the recliner in the TV room. But Aunt and Uncle wouldn’t have it. Waggling snifters, they joked, “We might have another and watch the late show.”
They put him in the young woman’s ornate bedroom with the queen-sized bed, fat downing pillows, frilly curtains, voiles, and all things pink, because she didn’t sleep there anymore.
Nor did he or could he. After the third hour of tossing and turning and making the sign of the cross and speeding through the Rosary and counting sheep and getting touchy-feely with the pillows, he fell apart and let himself go. All over her satin sheets, sham, and duvet that almost no one would ever see or know about. Especially after the second warshing. Or maybe a third, her mother was saying in her country-folk sort of way.