An April Love Story: A Cooney Classic Romance

  I found myself in my little loft, wrapped in the quilt that was my only reliable friend, crying because I’d finally found the nicest boy anywhere, and he not only wasn’t interested in me—he was gone.

  Lucas walked in about seven o’clock, with two young goslings in his arms. He’d gotten them free from a farmer miles away and had hitchhiked back to our farm. Hitchhiking isn’t easy at any time and apparently even fewer drivers are eager to pick up a kid in old jeans carrying baby geese. That, explained Lucas, to those of us who were interested, was what took so long.

  Because baby anythings have to be kept very warm (we’d learned that the hard way), Lucas got a big cardboard box which he filled with wood shavings and all our hot water bottles. “Electric light bulb would be better,” he said meaningfully to our parents. But they didn’t rush out to get the house wired. “This way,” said Lucas, “I’ll have to get up at least twice during the night and refill these bottles.” I thought of interrupting our much-needed sleep to heat water on the woodstove and refill hot water bottles for two little geese.

  “These,” said Lucas, looking each of us very carefully in the eye, “are going to be my pets. They are not for Easter dinner, right?”

  “Right,” we chorused. I wanted to volunteer myself as a pet for Lucas, but from the way he looked at his goslings he had better things available.

  Every night Lucas got up and refilled his hot water bottles and clucked to his goslings. It was quite depressing. You can hover over me, I thought. But he didn’t. “I’ll heat the water for you tonight,” I said. “You get some sleep.”

  “Oh, would you?” he said eagerly. “That’s terrific, Marnie, thanks.”

  I actually loved getting up twice that night to keep his old goslings toasty. I did it for three weeks, until Lucas decided the geese were tough enough to last without the extra heat. Every morning Lucas would say “thank you” and my heart would fall out of my rib cage during his smile, and every morning my father would say, “What are you doing, Lucas? Blackmailing the girl? You couldn’t get me up twice a night for a pair of geese we don’t even get to eat.” I would blush, Lucas would shrug, laughing, and we’d go off to school.

  Unfortunately, Lucas’ legs were much longer than mine and we didn’t walk to the bus stop together. It seemed to me that when a girl kept your geese warm, you should at least walk her to the bus stop.

  Lucas needs a book of etiquette, I thought. I shall write him one. When warming geese …

  Lucas’ birthday came in March.

  I taught myself how to knit, using a book Connie’s mother loaned me, and made a sweater for Lucas. I used a natural-colored wool from Scotland that took so much money from my baking income the sweater had to be perfect. I’d knit on the bus, during study hall, and in my loft.

  It was a pullover with a thick turtleneck. Most of it was plain stockinette stitch, but there were three cable columns. I was scared of the cables at first, but Connie’s mother was right: Cables are fun and you feel so competent when they actually cross over and loop.

  I had it done two days before his birthday.

  “What a shame you got the gauge wrong and it won’t fit you after all,” said my mother, hugging me to comfort me. “You’re so nice to give it to Lucas, after all that work. Or you could give it to your father. His birthday is next month, he’s the same size, and he needs one, too.”

  “Oh, I might as well give it to Lucas,” I said. “Get it out of the way.”

  My father gave Lucas a Swiss Army knife with lots of little blades and things. Mother had made him a leather vest. Aunt Ellen got him thick, strong workboots. Uncle Bob had bought about twenty books at a church yard sale and also a new flashlight with lots of batteries. And then Lucas took up the last package. It didn’t say it was from me. It was just a fat, soft present wrapped in plain brown paper with a sagging yarn bow. He opened it eagerly. “Mother, it’s beautiful!” he exclaimed. “I love it.”

  “I didn’t make it,” said Aunt Ellen.

  “You didn’t make it?” he repeated. He looked totally bewildered.

  “Marnie made it.”

  “Marnie made it?” He stared at me as if he’d never seen me before. I tried to look appealing. Lucas looked back at the sweater, stuck a finger through a cable loop, and stared at me again. “I—I didn’t know you could knit,” he said at last.

  I nodded mutely.

  “Well, try it on, Lucas,” said his mother.

  Lucas put it on. I held my breath. It fit beautiful. He couldn’t, I said to myself, have bought a nicer sweater anywhere. You can’t even see where I got the cables reversed and Connie’s mother ripped out fifty-two rows and got me started up again the right way. “Gee, thanks, Marnie,” said Lucas. He had a rather worried look on his face. Maybe the sweater was itchy.

  “You’re welcome,” I said.

  “Must have been a lot of work.”

  “Yes. It was.”

  There was an awkward silence. And then Uncle Bob, whom I had hitherto considered merely a driver of tractors or a cutter of trees, said, “Hey. She keeps your geese for you. She knits sweaters for you. Is something afoot I don’t know about?”

  Everybody, including Lucas, even including me, laughed. “Nonsense,” said my mother. “The sweater started out to be for Marnie herself, but it turned out too large, so she ended up giving it to Lucas.”

  “Oh,” said everybody. “Isn’t that just like farming? Always turns out harder or different than you thought.”

  I thought of all those hours of knitting—and nothing was different. Lucas didn’t know it was a labor of love, he thought it was a mistake.

  I wanted to pull him aside and tell him, hug him, kiss him, do anything that would show him how I felt.

  But I was afraid to. He’d be polite about it. What could be worse than spilling out your heartbreak and having all that emotion met with courtesy?

  Lucas tugged his jacket over my sweater, grinned at all of us equally, and went out to check on the animals.

  Chapter IX

  I TRIED TO STOP myself from being in love with Lucas.

  It was obviously a lost cause and they say you shouldn’t bat your head on brick walls for fear of permanent damage to said skull.

  So I dedicated time to remembering Joel, but he hadn’t written since last July, and I’d spent a lot more time with Lucas than I ever had with Joel. My picture of Joel would blur like a movie changing scenes and Lucas would be superimposed on it. I’d find myself smiling dreamily to myself until somebody would say, “Marnie, stop your giggling and get on with your work.”

  Susannah wrote a very long letter I read constantly to keep my mind on things other than Lucas. She had gone to a terrific party where they danced to a live band, and she dated the drummer who was really cute, who introduced her to a college fraternity man who invited her to Yale for a weekend, and life was perfect and how was I?

  I, I’d think, am in love with Lucas Peterson. How’s that for laughs, Susannah? Lucas doesn’t even know I’m alive. If he thinks of me at all, it’s because he needs a human sawhorse for his lumber cutting or he wants a hunk of homemade bread.

  Susannah, pity me.

  Lucas probably thinks I’m his sister.

  Susannah, we pump buckets of water together and I’m thinking how strong and lithe he is and he’s looking off at the horizon dreaming of college, probably, and other girls. We feed the goats together and I’m thinking how nice and funny he is and he’s rubbing the goat under the chin. Not once has he ever stopped to think that maybe I wouldn’t mind having my chin rubbed. Or kissed. We clean the kerosene lamps together and I’m thinking how handsome he is and he’s repeating math formulas to himself because he has a test the next day.

  I’m thinking of knitting another sweater for him, Susannah. I’ll include a letter saying, I am not your sister. Take another good, long look. Love, Marnie. I’ll draw arrows toward the word love. Include some candy kisses.

  Or maybe I’ll just give the sweater
to my father. Lucas would think it was pretty weird that a crabby old girl he happened to live with would knit him two sweaters.

  Connie had a Welcome Spring Slumber Party.

  It was the first time in precisely one year that I’d spent a night in a house with a real bathroom. Two real bathrooms, in fact: one brown and beige tiled, and the other pale blue and white tiled. Featuring paired taps, one of which said, HOT. Connie’s mother was really quite understanding when I said I’d rather take a hot, soaking bath in the blue tub than pull taffy with the other girls.

  I watched television for the first time in months, but I couldn’t even follow the plot of this show that everybody had been talking about and I had never seen, because daydreaming about dumb old Lucas was so much more absorbing. “Marnie,” said Connie, “what is your problem?”

  I knew she would understand (she was deep in the throes of a crush on her cousin’s college roommate), but somehow it was too private to share.

  Evenings when Lucas and I sat together at the cleared and cleaned kitchen table to do our homework, I’d try to think of a way to get Lucas to talk to me.

  It was so ironic. Lucas had always been the one boy I’d had no trouble talking to. An endless stream of wisecracks had come out of me. But back then, I hadn’t cared about Lucas. It was quite unfair that I could babble with someone who didn’t count, and be tonguetied with him when he did count.

  “How’s your homework, Lucas?”

  “Well, you know. Homework.” He’d go on scribbling.

  “Isn’t it nice that spring seems finally to be coming?”

  “Marnie, I really have to study. D’you mind?”

  It was getting to be boring being in love with Lucas. I’d ache and he’d ignore.

  One night Lucas was bent over his calculus worksheets, muttering to himself, writing, erasing, sighing, and running his fingers through his hair. He kept making faces at the answers he got. His fingers were thicker and longer than mine, his arms and hands covered with fine blond hair that looked like frosting against his deep tan. Even in winter he had kept his tan, because he still worked outdoors so much, and the work was so demanding that even in chilly weather he’d often strip off his shirt. Winter in North Carolina, unlike winter back home, often had breaks: sunny warm days like spring, piercing the doldrums of February and March with welcome frequency.

  There was no doubt in my mind that Michelangelo would have been honored to sculpt Lucas without his shirt. I thought it very nice of winter to have warm spells.

  I ceased to do my own homework and admired Lucas across the table. He’d started shaving. The faint, raspy patches on his cheeks would be different from any texture I’d ever felt. I was sitting there half gasping, sighing to myself, when Lucas looked up and said, “You getting a cold, Marnie?”

  “No.” My teeth began to chatter.

  “It’s pretty warm in here,” said Lucas, looking at me doubtfully. “I mean, April outside and the stove in here still hot from supper.”

  I gave him what was meant to be a reassuring smile which came out an absolutely stupid, empty-headed grin wrapped around teeth that kept right on chattering.

  Lucas looked at me the way he might look at a dripping faucet he couldn’t shut off. If we had faucets, that is. “If you’re cold,” he said finally, “wear my sweater.” It was the one I’d knit for him. He’d just taken it off and draped it over the back of his chair. Lucas handed it to me across the table and I pulled it on over my head. While my face was hidden underneath the sweater, I sniffed the wool. Sure enough, it smelled faintly of Lucas.

  I pulled the sweater down all the way and kind of snuggled inside it. The next thing I knew I was laughing, doubled over laughing. I had really hit rock bottom when I had to get my fun sniffing old wool!

  How simple it would be if I could just say, “Lucas, old man, I’m crazy about you.”

  Immediately I was afraid I would actually say that, and Lucas would cringe, or run away, or call a parent to rescue him. I chewed the insides of my lips to keep myself from telling Lucas I loved him and all the time I was still giggling away.

  Lucas regarded me irritably. Finally, he said that he thought he would just do his homework in the living room and I could giggle peacefully to myself here alone in the kitchen, okay?

  And then it wasn’t funny anymore. It was awful. I really did love Lucas. But I was nothing but a nuisance to him. A younger sister sort of pain who was in the way except when she was caring for his geese.

  I sat at my table and the history book blurred in front of me. Be calm, I told myself. Be adult and rational about this. Your whole crush is silly and pointless. You can handle your feelings better than this.

  Spring came in jerks. A week of mild, balmy weather and a week of icy rain. Two days of sun and heat and an evening of wet snow that didn’t stick. Like my heart. Every time I looked at Lucas, it jerked.

  I had classes, homework, baking, weaving, kindling to gather, water to carry, laundry to hang out, chickens to feed.

  With all that work it should have been easy to put Lucas out of my mind.

  It wasn’t.

  I began looking very carefully at my mother. We had not talked—really talked—since I could remember. For years I was too small, and then, abruptly, too busy. Empty whirlwind, they’d accused me when we left the city.

  They were right, I thought.

  But I was afraid to start talking to Mother. What if I told her about Lucas and she laughed? What if she called to everybody else to come and hear the funniest thing in eighty-five years? What if she said, “I told you so, Marnie”? What if she said something useless like, “These things work out, dear”?

  Besides, I didn’t really want to talk. I wanted to look at Lucas and find him looking right back at me and know from the stars in his eyes that he wasn’t just searching for someone to take over the hoeing.

  “The geese,” said Lucas, “like you better than they like me.”

  It was true. When we got home from school, the geese would honk and flap their wings and come skittering over the barnyard to stand by the fence corner to greet us. Lucas got there first, because he walked so fast, but they’d pay only token attention to him. They’d wait for me to get there. Then they’d honk some more and stick their beaks through the wire, and I’d pat them, and talk baby talk, and usually go through the gate and let them walk around me, and we’d have a sort of geesy conversation. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

  Lucas laughed. “I’m not complaining. I’m just commenting.”

  “You’re not changing your mind, are you?” I said anxiously.

  “About what?”

  “About these geese.”

  “What about the geese, Marnie?” He was obviously forcing himself to be patient.

  “You’re not going to want to eat them, are you?”

  “Of course not. I’m crazy about these geese. The books said geese would be fun and they are. I was just mentioning that they like you best, which they do.”

  And he went on into the house.

  We had a lot of conversations like that. Friendly. Even nice. But not romantic. And Lucas didn’t keep them up for very long. And they certainly didn’t lead to a date.

  But then, why would Lucas want to date me? If he started feeling romantic toward a girl, he’d want someone he didn’t associate with farm chores. Someone, I thought gloomily, like that Julie. Her father’s a banker. The only animal she’s ever had is a manicured toy poodle. The only kind of water she uses comes out of a tap. The only bread she eats comes from the grocery shelf.

  Sounds great! I thought. When do we start?

  “Marnie, come into the kitchen! The resort sent a message that they’re catering a special pre-wedding party and they need six hundred sweet rolls. We’ve got work to do!”

  I saved a sweet roll for Lucas and took it to him with a cup of hot tea, which we’d all learned to like once coffee went beyond our budget. He was fastening the glass panels on
his greenhouse. “I’ll have it ready just in time for summer heat,” he said. “Oh, well. This fall I’ll be glad to have it.”

  I handed him the treat.

  “Thanks, Marnie,” he said, not even looking up. “Set it down, I’ll have it later.”

  It’s called being dismissed.

  I trudged wearily back to the kitchen to knead another huge mound of dough.

  There was a senior prom, of course. I guess every high school has a senior dance. “Are you going, Lucas?” I said.

  “And wear what? My barn boots? My blue jeans with the hole in the knee? My flannel shirt with the patches on the elbows?”

  It was the very first time I’d heard any bitterness in Lucas’ voice. None of our parents picked up on it, which made me feel slightly closer to Lucas. At least I understood, even if he wouldn’t let me share.

  “Lucas doesn’t like dancing,” said Aunt Ellen. “Every Friday when he was ten and eleven I forced him to go to ballroom dancing lessons. One Friday he ground to a halt outside the dance floor and said, ‘Mother, if I have to go in here once more, I will walk out the other side and you will never see me again,’ and he sounded so certain that I said, ‘Then we’d better go home,’ and as far as I know Lucas has never danced since.”

  “Have you?” I asked him.

  “Nope. Always seemed like a stupid exercise.”

  “That’s what you thought about basketball and now you love gym.”

  “True. I suppose there’s a remote possibility I might come to love dancing if it were forced on me three times a week. However, I doubt if the problem will come up.” He bent over to tie up his high boots, pulling the laces tight, aware of his ankles instead of mine. He went on out to the barn, and that was that for my chance at a senior prom with Lucas Peterson.

  Chapter X

  “MARNIE?” SAID MY MOTHER.

  I grinned at her. We were making soap. There is nothing less fun to me than making soap. It’s a terrible, smelly, dangerous job, and all I can ever think of is how red my hands are getting and how for fifty-nine cents I could just buy two bars of the stuff.