An April Love Story: A Cooney Classic Romance

  “You remember yesterday?”

  I almost said, “Certainly I remember yesterday, you think I’m senile?” But I caught it in time and merely answered, “Yes.”

  He took my arm to stop me from walking farther. “Are you glad about it or sorry?”

  “I’m glad it happened yesterday, Lucas. I’m sorry it’s not happening today.”

  There, I’d done it. Said what I really felt, at the right time, with the right person. No flip nastiness about it. It made it possible for me to look at Lucas without the fear that I’d burst into tears, which neither of us needed.

  Lucas looked awkward and upset. I could identify with that. He flushed when our eyes met and whatever it was he’d meant to say didn’t come out. He muttered something about my flowers. Then he heaved a big sigh, turning me by the shoulders so he could look at me without having to squint into the sun behind my back. “I rehearsed for this,” he said. “Now I can’t remember my lines.”

  “Sounds familiar,” I said wryly. “Give me a hint and I’ll give you a cue.”

  “Sometimes I hate speech, Marnie. I read somewhere that deaf and dumb married people never get divorced. Experts think it’s because they never exchange words. I always sort of hope I’ll get things across with ESP, or something, but I never do, and I’m stuck with words.”

  “I know what you mean. Lots of times I want to say something, but I don’t know how, and then I think, how crazy, I’ve been speaking for seventeen years, of course I know how.”

  Lucas grinned. “It’s so odd, Marnie. Every time you say something I think, that’s just it, that’s just how I feel. And then I think, Marnie and I feel the same way about something? Impossible.”

  “I guess … I guess we’ve both changed a lot in the last year, Lucas.”

  “You certainly have. You’re incredibly different. I … I know I wasn’t nice on the bus. I did that on purpose. I just don’t know what to think about… about liking you so much. It feels so strange. Yesterday … it was … well, it was terrific, and in the morning, I thought, with Marnie, who thinks the only thing I can do is walk on the bottoms of my feet, I had this terrific time?”

  “Lucas, I’ve been wanting to do something with you for so long! You were always feeding the goats or something. Yesterday was terrific for me, too. And I retract a million times over the bit about the bottoms of your feet. Okay?”

  We looked at each other. There were an awful lot of flowers and books between us. After a while we set them all down and stood in the middle of the lane and kissed.

  “Say,” said Mr. Shields, “I like that. Decorates the old lane a lot better than the scarecrow my wife usually puts up.”

  We jumped apart and Mr. Shields laughed. “Going to be any repeat performances?” he wanted to know.

  “I apologize,” I said, “we didn’t mean to annoy you or anything. We just—”

  “Marnie, m’dear, the only thing annoying me is that I’ve smoked so many cigarettes for so long I couldn’t possibly sustain a kiss as long as you two did. I felt like applauding.”

  Very slowly, Lucas and I walked the rest of the way home. Lucas felt it was only neighborly to give Mr. Shields a few repeat performances.

  Chapter XIV

  “MARNIE! LUCAS! STOP WASTING time. We need you.”

  We were separated: me to the kitchen garden to set out strawberry plants, Lucas to the far field to finish the cultivating.

  We waved at each other a few times, but we didn’t have a moment together until dinner, which came very late, since we worked outdoors until dusk.

  For the first time I noticed that at dinner we seemed to have assigned seats. Aunt Ellen, Uncle Bob, and Lucas always sat on the window side of the trestle table. We MacDonalds invariably sat on the opposite side, starting with me across from Aunt Ellen, Mother across from Uncle Bob, and Dad across from Lucas. We need a new arrangement here, I thought, but by the time I knew I wanted to sit next to Lucas for a change, or at least across from him, everybody else had sagged to a seat and the only empty chair left was my usual one.

  There was no chance to talk during dinner. Our parents monopolized the conversation, comparing notes over what had been accomplished.

  As for after dinner, Lucas had a book report to write, and I had an English exam, and both of us would have been tempted to skip them in favor of a good night’s sleep, so we found our mothers monitoring us.

  The following morning I managed to get myself awake earlier than usual, so I could have a leisurely breakfast with Lucas. It was warm, and dressing, I thought, maybe we can eat on the porch. Just us.

  But it turned out Lucas had been up since three A.M. with a sick goat and the vet had finally arrived so Lucas could get out of the barn. He was awake, but staggered silently down the lane to get the school bus and slept all the way to school.

  Actually, I didn’t mind. I had never watched Lucas sleep before, and it was a surprisingly satisfactory thing to observe. Connie kept up a steady chatter next to me and didn’t appear to notice that I never looked her way. Getting off the bus, though, Connie said, “By the way, Marnie …”

  “Mmmmm?”

  “Julie and I wanted to know if the handholding situation between you and Lucas is still at the reaching for chicken eggs level.”

  I giggled. “No. I think we’ve progressed beyond that.”

  “Julie will be disappointed. But I’m not. I think it’s neat.”

  I thought it was rather neat myself.

  Connie carefully located Eloise for the bus ride home, which Lucas barely managed to notice, his eyes were so close to sleep again. “I’d ask you for a date, Marnie,” he yawned, “if I weren’t sleepy, busy, broke, and all that sort of thing.”

  “It’s the thought that counts.”

  “My mother likes to say that. I disagree. Thinking about a date doesn’t make it a date, and a real-life date is a lot better than counting up your thoughts about dating.”

  “Right on.”

  He slept the rest of the way home. We’d have dawdled in the lane (for Mr. Shields’ sake, of course), but Uncle Bob happened to be plowing a field near the bus stop and gave us our marching orders. Or, in our case, planting orders.

  It seemed the weather forecast had changed. Rain was expected with slightly lower temperatures and we had to finish getting the seeds in today.

  And when I’d finished my share of five, solid, backbreaking hours of raking, marking, sowing, and tamping the garden, the only thing I was good for was a cup of soup and bed.

  It came to me that in order to be a success at dating, the money, the car, the movie tickets and all that weren’t nearly so important as time. Everybody I knew had time to lounge around, to joke, get a soda, dawdle, sit around.

  Everybody except Lucas and me.

  It seemed the final blow in a year that included an awful lot of blows. I had survived the transplant to the country, fallen in love, gotten to the point where Lucas actually admitted to liking me back, only to find there wasn’t time for love.

  It wasn’t love yet, except on my part. Lucas was still getting used to the mere idea of liking me. We’d exchanged—what?—a dozen kisses. We had a long way to go!

  We need time! I’d think desperately.

  But I never found much.

  I actually ached for Lucas. I’d always thought that was a book-type exaggeration, but it’s true. You can want to hug somebody so much your arms ache.

  Sometimes in the evening when we slumped around listening to the radio news before bedtime, I’d see Lucas looking at me. Now and then we’d go for short walks, looking for a little seclusion, a little time.

  A little was just what we got, too. Five minutes here, two minutes there.

  Lucas and I developed a hand signal. We’d rotate our thumbs at each other whenever our parents’ enthusiasm became more than we could stand. It meant that for two cents we’d hitchhike to New York and leave them to their farm. Like the time Lucas’ father decided to get a horse and buggy and
sell the VW bus. Fortunately Mother and Aunt Ellen scotched that one, pointing out we had to be able to get our baked things to the resort. “You could do it with a horse and buggy,” grumbled Uncle Bob.

  “Yes, we could,” said Mother, “but the resort likes its pies fresh.”

  Everybody laughed.

  Lucas said, “I thought I’d run into town with Marnie today. I have to get a few things.”

  “Just give me your list,” said Aunt Ellen. “I have to go anyway, and we certainly don’t want to waste the gasoline on two separate trips.”

  “You know,” said my father, “I ought to teach Marnie how to drive. She’s sixteen now and—”

  “Seventeen,” I said.

  “You’re seventeen?” said my father. “Time flies when you’re having fun, doesn’t it?”

  “I’ll teach her how to drive,” said Lucas.

  “No, Lucas, the mower attachment for the tractor is acting up and you’re the most mechanical. You need to be working on that.”

  “It’ll only take me a few hours,” said Lucas. “Then I can teach Marnie.”

  “A parent,” my father informed us, “should not be continually foisting his parental duties off on others.”

  “Foist, foist,” I said, but my father turned out to be my driving teacher.

  I tried to take a long time learning how to drive, so that Lucas would have to take me out at least once. I had visions of finding a country lane so narrow with such deep ditches that once I drove in there would be no getting out, and Lucas and I would just have to sit in the car for ages and ages.

  Unfortunately I proved to be a very quick driving student. I had had to drive the VW quite a lot in first gear or reverse, what with hauling stuff between house and barn, or getting the van out of somebody’s way, and, of course, I could drive the tractor. What with that (and probably, said my father with immense satisfaction, lots of innate ability), I was driving like a pro at the end of two afternoons of trying. Dad wanted me to take the drivers’ test the very next day. I insisted on more practice. My father insisted on practicing with me. “Lucas could,” I said.

  “Marnie, I’ve been driving for twenty-five years. Lucas has been driving for two. Now, who would make the better teacher?”

  Lucas, definitely Lucas.

  But it was always my father. I got my license and immediately I became errand-runner-in-chief. Taking pies, bread, and cakes to the resort. Getting feed at FCX, and yeast and salt at the grocery, and tools at the Sears pick-up. Taking rhubarb to the Farmers’ Market, goats’ milk to the natural foods store, paying bills, asking the county agent for a pamphlet on yet another project my parents wanted to investigate.

  Lucas graduated from Valley High, but missed the ceremony.

  The apple trees developed blight and the agricultural agent told us if we intended to save our crop we’d have to spray on a regular systematic basis. The thought of using chemicals tore our parents up, but in the end there was no choice. It was spray or lose everything.

  The day of graduation, Lucas was spraying apple trees. “Somehow,” he said to me, strapping on his mask and gear, “this isn’t what I had in mind to celebrate my diploma.”

  Lucas kept his chin up, considering how depressed he was. His best friends both at Valley and back home were getting ready for college. Planning wardrobes, earning spending money, memorizing catalog offerings, writing to future roommates, wondering about majors and minors. And he, Lucas Peterson, of the debate team, literary magazine, and honor roll—he wasn’t going.

  That summer, incredibly, was even more exhausting than the first. So many things had been started and now it seemed imperative to our parents not only to finish each project, but also to succeed in them.

  “I believe in hitching your wagon to a star,” said Lucas, “but just one star at a time, not the whole damn galaxy.”

  The amount of work was overwhelming.

  The amount of time Lucas and I could spend together was underwhelming. Like zero.

  Still, there were good moments.

  Lucas collapsed with exhaustion after unloading fifty hundred-pound bags of lime from the delivery truck and sat folded over on a stack of three lime bags. “Do sit with me,” he said, his voice coming up from between his knees where his head was hanging. “I have this lovely seat at the opera here. They’re doing Madame Butterfly. Won’t you join me?”

  “Partying again?” I said. “Really, Lucas. You playboys.”

  “Too much high living,” he said. “Going to my head.”

  And there was the lady from Boston who had heard we kept geese, and wanted a supply of empty goose eggs to decorate for her Christmas tree. She was obviously a little leery of associating with such filthy hicks as Lucas and me. I guess we looked like a cartoon strip to her, complete with overalls, scarves on my hair, cap on Lucas’, and Lucas had recently taken up chewing long grasses, which perpetually hung out of his mouth. We had eleven goose eggs we could give her, but I tripped coming down the porch steps and she only got two goose eggs for all her trouble.

  “Let’s go to California,” I said to Lucas, as he washed the scrapes on my knees.

  “I hear they hire a lot of migrant labor out there,” he said. “We could set up house in the VW van and follow the crops all over the West.”

  I would have scraped my knees open daily for the privilege of Lucas kneeling beside me and worrying about my skin.

  “Actually,” he said, “I’ve chartered a yacht for the week. Shall we sail to Bermuda?”

  “No. Let’s just sit here and watch the traffic go by.”

  The lady from Boston was trying to back out of our driveway. It really was rather entertaining, until the lives of our animals were in danger. Lucas drove it out for her, but she lined the seat with newspaper first so he wouldn’t ruin it.

  “Six P.M.,” said Lucas. “Bedtime.”

  “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

  “The health I can see. The wealth is proving a bit elusive. And as for wisdom I’m really not sure. We may be featuring it and we may not.”

  “The lady from Boston definitely feels we’re not.”

  One rainy day my mother was sewing, Aunt Ellen was weaving, Uncle Bob was at the vets’ conferring about something or other, and my father was trying to build a goat stanchion. Lucas and I had been assigned the task of caulking the windows so that next winter the wind’s roar would be down to a whistle as it passed through our walls.

  The stuff was a quick-drying foam insulation that came in a rather small tube, but upon emerging became puffy and bloated thus filling up your cracks quite well. By now, of course, Lucas and I were quite sure we knew how to do everything, so we didn’t bother to read the directions. We moved from window to window, making quips about possible dates, kissing whenever we were out of the view of a parent, and generally enjoying ourselves. It took about two hours.

  “Whew!” said Lucas, throwing away the empty tubes of foam. “Now let’s wash this muck off. It’s all over my hands.”

  It was all over mine, too. Thick, scabby-looking white stuff, faintly resembling cement. We went outdoors to the pump and pumped water over each others’ hands.

  The stuff didn’t come off.

  We tried soap. We tried cleansers. We tried sand. We even tried steel wool and tweezers and a knife blade.

  It didn’t come off.

  We looked at each other in horror mixed with hysterical laughter. I retrieved the foam tubes from the trash. “Apply only when wearing gloves,” I read. “Do not get on skin. Forms immediate permanent bond.”

  I stared down at my hands. They looked infested.

  It was not possible to hide the hands from our parents. We got all the usual, “Why didn’t you follow the directions? Why don’t you ever listen? What’s the matter with you?” stuff. But none of it cleaned our hands.

  It took five days for the stuff to wear off. My hands were sore and tender for weeks afterward. But it had its good poi
nts. Lucas and I had a very good reason to sit quietly in the dark, rubbing lotion into each other’s hands, and although I wouldn’t do the same thing the next time I caulk a window, it was sort of—almost—worthwhile.

  “You’ll never guess what I found growing over in the damp place by the woods,” said Aunt Ellen. “Where that underground spring is.”

  “No, what?” I said. If it was more work, I hoped it would just fade back into the woods from whence it came.

  “Blueberries. About a dozen high bush blueberries. Somebody must have planted them there years ago. They’ve become so thick and bushy and tall, and what’s more, full of perfect, ripe berries. The birds have pecked a lot off the tops of the bushes, but we couldn’t reach up there anyway. There’s a tremendous amount just waiting for us.”

  My mother smiled at me. We hadn’t talked much about Lucas and me partly because we were all so busy, but she knew how I felt, and had seen the change in Lucas. “I think Lucas and Marnie should spend the day picking blueberries,” she said. “We’ve got plenty of pails. Let them take sandwiches and a thermos of lemonade and get us enough blueberries for the entire winter.”

  Nobody argued. Nobody mentioned eleven urgent chores requiring Lucas’ expertise. Nobody listed essential errands for me to run.

  Lucas hitched the small wagon to the tractor. My father filled it with pails, Mother put in the picnic basket, Lucas tossed in a blanket, and yelled for me to come on.

  “A blanket?” said his father. “You’re supposed to pick berries, not take naps.”

  “Marnie,” said my mother.

  “Yes, Mother?”

  “That blanket.”

  “We aren’t going to do anything, Mother.”

  “A boy, a girl, and a blanket? Don’t be ridiculous, Marnie, of course you’re going to do something. Just don’t do very much, okay?”

  I giggled. “This is supposed to be the free life, remember?”