“I liked it very much. You’re a very good teacher, Mr.
Olczak.”
“And you’re a very good pupil, Sister Regina.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“All right then, don’t call me Mr. Olczak.”
“I forgot.” “So did I.”
“No, you didn’t.” She stepped off his shoes, back into the black boots. “You were teasing me because I’m so ignorant of these things.”
“No.” He joggled her up close and made her lift her chin. “I’d never tease you because of that.”
“All right then, you’re forgiven. For everything but catching me in my boots and babushka.”
“I’m sorry,” he said playfully. “What can I do to make it up to you?”
“Let me think,” she said, turning westward and starting slowly for home. “I’ll think of something.” Her heels dragged with every step she took, rolling pebbles along the gravel. He smiled, watching her drop her chin and tie the dish towel on her head the way it had been earlier. If he ever married her and they ever had kids of their own, it would be a great story to tell them, how their daddy had courted their mother and kissed her the first time in the middle of the road in her own daddy’s four-buckle overshoes and her mother’s dish towel.
Full dark had arrived by the time they reached her driveway, and she informed him, “I thought of something.”
“What?”
“You’ll think I’m forward if I say it.”
“No, I won’t. Say it.”
She drew a deep breath and told him, “I’ve never been on a date.”
“You haven’t!”
“Hm-mm.”
“So are you asking me out on one, or do you want me to ask you?”
“Eddie! You promised you wouldn’t tease!”
“Oh, sorry.” He grinned in the dark. “Funny thing you should mention it, because I was trying to work up the courage to ask for one, but I didn’t know what you’d think of me showing up here three weekends in a row. Seriously...” He caught her arm and stopped her from moving on while one of the apple trees shielded them from a view of the house. “I’d love to see you again next Saturday night, but what will your parents think?”
“My mama won’t like it, but I’m thirty years old. I’ll have to get used to disappointing her sometimes, won’t I?” He took her hand and said earnestly, “I don’t want any talk to start, that’s all. Your dispensation was only granted two months ago.”
“The same goes for you. It’s less than a year since Krystyna died. You and I worked in the same school until last May. What will the people in Browerville say?”
“We’ll find out soon. I had to tell Rose where I was coming tonight. And the girls, too. Next Saturday I’ll have to tell whoever baby-sits them. Three weeks in a row I drive clear over to Gilman to see you. They’ll all guess why.” She said a most profound thing. “Our strength, Eddie, is in our truth, and our truth will render gossip impotent.” He did not kiss her goodnight—they were too close to the house—and although he was reluctant to face her parents, he remembered Irene’s story about the jerk who dumped her at the end of the driveway. So he walked Jean clear to the door. Approaching it, he observed that only the front room lights were on. The kitchen, directly off the back porch, was dark.
They stopped at the bottom of two concrete steps, and turned to face each other.
“Seven-thirty, then, next Saturday night?” Eddie asked.
“I’ll be ready. And this time I won’t have my daddy’s boots on.”
A movement inside the kitchen doorway brought Eddie’s head up, and in the shadows he sensed Bertha watching furtively. He could not see her, but he knew she was there, spying.
He took Jean’s hand, a polite enough farewell. “Well, goodnight then.” “Goodnight.”
The brief handclasp ended, and he turned toward his truck, wondering how to win over a mother who didn’t fight fairly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Eddie and Jean each did something that week that made them feel better about themselves.
He marched into Rose’s kitchen on Monday afternoon when no one else was around, spread his hands defiantly at his sides and declared, “All right! Just so you’ll know, I’m dating Jean Potlocki! I’m taking her out again next Saturday night, so you can tell the whole town!”
Rose surprised him by getting tears in her eyes and barreling into his arms. “Oh, Eddie, I’m so sorry. I told Romaine what I said to you, and he got so mad at me that he hasn’t faced me in bed for two nights. He said it was none of my business who you dated, and he made me promise to apologize to you, so if you want to take Sister Regina out next Saturday night, I’ll watch your kids again gladly.” He said stiffly, “Thank you, Rose, I accept. Only her name is Jean now. In the future, call her by it.”
________
For her part, Jean told her mother in her kindest tone, “I’m going out on a date with Eddie next Saturday night, and I want to make myself a new dress. Will you help me with it?”
Expecting plenty of pussyfooting in the dating department, Bertha was flummoxed by her daughter’s directness.
“Me?”
“I’d really appreciate it, Mama. I’ll work extra hard on the canning so we can find time in the evenings to do the sewing.”
The tactic worked with some mysterious kind of reverse psychology. Being asked for help from a daughter who broke her back picking vegetables and canning all day long in the torturous summer heat, how could Bertha say no? And after helping Jean make the dress, how could she object to her wearing it out on a date?
Liz showed Jean how to put on makeup but dissuaded her from trying any elaborate hairstyles.
“They just don’t suit you, Jean. If I had thick, lovely hair like yours I’d leave it plain and just give it a good fluff in the air after you wash it.”
Jean did what Liz suggested, went outside with a wet head and hung it upside down, brushing it from the nape while the breeze blew through it. When it was half dry, she went inside and shaped some natural curls around her face. After it fully dried she was amazed at how flattering it looked in concert with the peach-colored lipstick and the hint of brown mascara with which she’d darkened her eyelashes.
She put the dress on and ran downstairs to find Bertha.
“Zip me, Mama, please.”
Bertha did, wearing a displeased expression all the while Jean pressed her hands to her stomach, flat as a stovelid inside the gored dress with its beltless waistline.
“I’ve got butterflies,” Jean said.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Jean.”
Frank lowered his newspaper and shot a warning glance at his wife.
“Bertha,” was all he said, low, menacing.
“Well, she’s thirty years old, for heaven’s sake, and she’s acting like a teenager!”
“Bertha!” More forceful.
“Oh, all right, all right, I know. She’s never done this before.”
“So slacken up!” he ordered, snapping his paper back in place, and Bertha finally shut her mouth.
________
Eddie got there ten minutes early and Jean was waiting on the back step.
When he slammed the truck door and spotted her rising with a full smile on her face, his eyes refused to waver anywhere else.
Though he offered perfunctory greetings to Frank and Bertha, they could see they were only a pair of gray-haired obstacles in the way of a budding romance.
As Eddie and Jean got in the truck and drove away, Frank said, “Better get used to him, Bertha.”
She grumbled, “Well, he’s got brass, I’ll say that for him.”
________
In the truck Eddie said, “Well, where do you want to go?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never done this before.” She was still smiling, sitting up straight as a striped gopher with her skirt spread over a petticoat that crackled.
“Well... do you want to go to a dance?”
??
?Oh, no,” she said with a fleeting frown. “I don’t know the first thing about dancing.”
“Well, then, do you want to go somewhere and eat dinner?”
“But I already ate at home.”
“Then how about a movie?”
“Yes! A movie! Oh, I’d love to see a movie. But it has to be a clean one. One that the legion of Decency approves of.”
“Absolutely. There’s a theater in little Falls. We could drive that way and see what’s playing.”
“Little Falls, great! Take me anywhere! I’m having the time of my life just riding in my new dress!”
He couldn’t help chuckling at her and eyeing her askance. The dress had a V-neck, cap sleeves, and made her look thin as a buggy whip. “I thought it looked new.”
“I made it,” she said, pressing the fitted skirt flat against her stomach. “Especially for tonight. Blue, because that’s your favorite color.”
“How did you know that?”
“You wear blue suits a lot, and blue ties. Last Saturday night you wore a blue-and-white striped shirt. I forgot to tell you I liked it.”
He was falling in love so hard it felt like a dogfight in his gut.
“Come over here,” he said, catching her hand and tugging. “I’ll bet you never rode in a truck with a guy’s arm around you.”
“No, I haven’t.” He could tell the minute his teasing flustered her, because she trained her eyes straight ahead and acted more prim.
“Well, now you have.” He dropped an arm around her shoulders and let it lie lightly, rubbing her bare right arm. They turned westward and the sun got in his eyes. She lowered his visor and he said, “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” she replied, then sat very still. He could tell she was absorbing the newness of having her arm very lightly stroked. It gave her goose bumps he could see on her bare skin.
When they were halfway to little Falls he had the idea, but decided he’d better quit stroking her while he suggested it, otherwise she might think he was after more than either of them intended.
He removed his arm and told her, “There’s a drive-in theater at little Falls, too.”
She wasn’t that sheltered! She read the St. Cloud Visitor! She knew what happened at drive-in theaters and why the Catholic Church spoke out against them!
“A drive-in theater?” she repeated, sitting up more erectly and darting him a deprecating glance.
He squinted below the visor. A bright orange ray struck him in the eye. “Not long till sundown.”
She didn’t say a word, but he could tell she was tempted.
“Up to you,” he said.
By the time they’d reached the edge of little Falls, she still hadn’t said a word, so he pulled over to a curb, put the truck in neutral and turned to her, resting his arm on the steering wheel. “Look,” he said, “you know me. If you think I’d take you to a drive-in theater just to get you in some compromising position, you’re wrong. It just... well, it just tickles me pink to see you excited, trying new things. I just thought you maybe never went to a drive-in before and you’d like to try it.”
He watched her struggle with some remaining misgivings, but she conceded, “All right, then, I’ll try the drive-in movie.”
“If you’d like we can drive through town first and see what’s playing there, and then you can decide.”
“No, the drive-in is fine.”
Nevertheless, they drove through town, but the marquee said Humphrey Bogart in The Enforcer, which put an end to that, since it was a story about killers for hire, which was sure to have a bad decency rating. So they went to the Falls Drive-in and watched Doris Day and Gordon MacRae fall in love and sing their way through a musical courtship in On Moonlight Bay. Jean’s eyes glowed with delight all through the movie, especially when the two stars were harmonizing together. And when they sang “Cuddle Up a little Closer” and kissed on-screen, Eddie watched Jean’s profile and wished he could kiss her, too. Her lips dropped open slightly and she stared at the scene, transfixed, as if she wished she were the one being kissed.
But he was as good as his word, keeping himself squarely behind the wheel, glancing at Jean only during that one kiss, or when she’d laugh or whisper a remark about Doris Day’s pretty clothes and hair.
When the movie ended and the beams from a hundred car lights blanched the big screen, they stayed, discussing the story, and how much she’d loved it, especially the singing and the pretty dresses. Then she told him about how she’d asked her mother to help her make the dress she was wearing tonight, and he told her about his altercation with Rose, and pretty soon the second feature was starting. It was On Moonlight Bay again, so he turned down the sound and they kept talking.
She spoke about the worldly things she’d given up to become a nun, and how she was anxious to experience them now.
He asked if she regretted anything about her past.
They talked about Krystyna and wondered if she knew they were together on their first date.
It seemed there was no end of subjects they had to talk about.
“Do you want to go home?” he asked her once.
“Not yet,” she replied.
Eventually, they grew tired and began watching the screen without sound. Then somehow they found themselves lounging with their napes caught on the top of the seat and her hand in his, and their eyes on each other instead of the screen, and they began to understand what the Catholic Church had against drive-ins. His thumb was rubbing hers hard enough to bruise it, but thumb-rubbing wasn’t enough after the long week of waiting.
“Jean?” he whispered, and that single word tore them loose from their moorings. They met in the middle of the seat, kissing hungrily enough to scatter good intentions to the four winds.
“Oh, mercy, how I missed you,” he breathed as the kiss ended in a powerful embrace. “I thought this week would never end.”
“Oh, me too.” She squeezed him hard. “Me too.”
“When I saw you sitting on that step in your blue dress this is all I could think about, having you in my arms again.”
“I never cut so many beans in my life, or filled so many fruit jars with tomatoes, and with every one I filled I just kept thinking, that’s one more minute closer to Saturday night. One more minute closer to him.”
They kissed again, running their hands over each other’s backs, feeling the awesome power of temptation. It was a renewal for him, and a discovery for her who had been so afraid she was incapable of carnality.
When the kiss ended she said breathlessly at his ear, “Oh, Eddie, is this what I gave up when I went into the convent? I never felt like this before. Never.”
“I want you.”
“Shh, Eddie, don’t say it.” Her arms were doubled hard around his neck.
“But I do. I want more than just holding you and kissing you.”
“Shh. No.”
He kissed her jaw, then bit the cloth on her shoulder and kept it clamped in his teeth, crushing her so hard against him that he’d flattened her prettiest curves.
“If I say it, you’ll know what you’re up against. I wanted you when you were still a nun. Since that day I put the sauerkraut in your basement. I went to Confession and confessed it, but it didn’t stop. And it’s not just because I’ve been without a woman for a long time, and it’s not because I’m missing Krystyna. It’s you. I love you, Jean, and I’m afraid it’s too soon to say it, but what else can I do? Wait until the rest of the world says it’s okay for me to say it?” She had dropped her head back to see his eyes, and he was pressing the hair from her face, speaking with fury and frustration. She calmed him with five words.
“I love you, too, Eddie.”
“You do?”
“I’ve loved you since right after Krystyna died. Since that very day you talked about, the day you carried the sauerkraut into our basement. I went to Confession, too, but it didn’t stop. And that day you nearly kissed me in the flower room, I thought I would surely die from wan
t of you. After that I prayed and meditated and made Novenas, thinking maybe it would strike all unchaste thoughts of you from my head, but they persisted. And every day that went by I only thought of you more.”
“Oh, Jean, I wish I had known. I was so miserable then.”
“So was I.”
“But not anymore.”
“No, not anymore.” Practicality interrupted, and he realized how late it was getting. “Okay,” he said, “we’re talking around in circles and it’s after midnight, and by the time I get you home and drive back to Browerville, it’ll be three-thirty in the morning, and I’ll get about three hours’ sleep before I have to ring the bells for early Mass. I can’t go through this every Saturday night. It’ll wear me right out. I love you, you love me, my kids are nuts about you and, if I’m not mistaken, you’re nuts about them. Will you marry me, Jean?”
She let their embrace wilt. “And live where?” She waited a beat, then added, “In Browerville?”
He knew how preposterous it sounded, but what else could he offer? “I live there. My house is there. My work is there.”
“I was a nun there. How can you expect people to accept me as your wife?”
He spoke with barely suppressed anger. “They’re supposed to be Christians! Good Catholic ones! And what was it you said to me last week—our strength is in our truth, and our truth will render gossip impotent. Maybe it’ll do the same to any of their... their blame opinions!”
“Let’s think about it for a while. We’ve only been seeing each other for three weeks.”
“But I’ve known you for four years—five, come September. I’m not going to change my mind.”
“Nevertheless, let’s think about it for a week. Now I think I’d better get home.”
It was a difficult goodbye at her door. He didn’t give a rip if her mother was watching through a telescope, he drew her to him, full-length, and kissed her with his throat already constricted from the thought of driving away and not seeing her for seven interminable days.
“Maybe I can get over here once in the middle of this week.”
“No, Eddie. You need to be with the girls on week-nights. You can’t start running over here and staying till midnight on a work night. Please... just come next Saturday. Same time. I’ll be ready.”