understudy went on and nobody missed me. You were absolutely right, so after a while I started going to parties and things and I even had a good time. Well, some of the time I did; do you have any idea how young high school boys are? They only have three or four things to talk about and then they start using their hands. You wouldnât believe it: one minute theyâre talking about the school football team or something else I couldnât care less about, and then all of a sudden their hands are all over the place, poking, rubbing, pawing . . . unbelievably crude! And sloppy! They have absolutely no finesse . . . theyâre like puppies, all panting and nuzzling. The problem is, once in a while lately Iâve started respondingâwell, my body has, anyway, and I think, oh, well, why not?âwhich I find totally embarrassing because thereâs nothing romantic happening, and then it all seems so dumb, and I tell whoever it is to take me home. But what happened about the prom was that a really handsome guy who just moved here, very smoothâlots of finesse!âasked me to go, and I thought, what a change, so Iâm going with him. . . . He just called and asked me what Iâm wearing so he could choose an orchid to match! I told him black. It has lace barely covering my front, very sophisticatedâand canât you imagine how the cameo will look against black silk? More later, all of it in great detail.
Crude and sloppy, Luke thought. Puppies. He remembered himself in high school, all arms and legs, awkward and uncoordinated the minute a girl approached; his voice unreliable, his penis willfully springing to attention, obeying no master but itself. She doesnât know a damn thing about it, he grumbled. But then he chuckled, remembering that the letter had been written some twenty-three years earlier. Past history, he thought; sheâs learned a lot since then, and so have I. He opened the next letter and ran a casual eye over it, not interested in descriptions of a high school prom, but suddenly a sentence stopped him.
Iâm so ashamed of the letters Iâve been sending you, so incredibly childish.
Something happened, he thought; sheâs changed. And it looks like itâs been a long time since the last letter. He went back to the beginning.
Dearest Constance, your letter was forwarded to me here, at Yale, where Iâm finishing up my first year. Iâm sorry I havenât written, I think of you all the time but I just couldnât write. Iâm so ashamed of the letters Iâve been sending you, so incredibly childish. I canât believe I ever was that person, so young and uncaring, never wondering if you had time in your life for a twittering teenager who kept throwing herself at you, demanding that you love her. I did want you to love me, for lots of reasons, but partly because I thought my parents didnât. Well, now theyâre dead and all I know for sure is that I never really knew them and that makes me so despairing that I think Iâll explode with it because thereâs nothing I can do about it. Iâm not sure I ever really looked at them, you know; it seems to me I was always looking somewhere else when they were in the room. So I never saw who they really were. They told me they loved me and wanted to protect me, but that meant keeping me in our little town, safely married, doing something with my drawing and paintingâlike interior design, or somethingâbut Iâd told them over and over that that was just a hobby. They never understood that New York means the theater and you and life to me, and all I wanted was to be there, and we quarreled about that and now I think of things I should have said, or things I should have said differently, or not said at all. I know they loved me and they werenât bad people . . . oh, itâs crazy and scary to think that Iâll never see them again or
Crude and sloppy, Luke thought. Puppies. He remembered himself in high school, all arms and legs, awkward and uncoordinated the minute a girl approached; his voice unreliable, his penis willfully springing to attention, obeying no master but itself. She doesnât know a damn thing about it, he grumbled. But then he chuckled, remembering that the letter had been written some twenty-three years earlier. Past history, he thought; sheâs learned a lot since then, and so have I. He opened the next letter and ran a casual eye over it, not interested in descriptions of a high school prom, but suddenly a sentence stopped him.
Iâm so ashamed of the letters Iâve been sending you, so incredibly childish.
Something happened, he thought; sheâs changed. And it looks like itâs been a long time since the last letter. He went back to the beginning.
Dearest Constance, your letter was forwarded to me here, at Yale, where Iâm finishing up my first year. Iâm sorry I havenât written, I think of you all the time but I just couldnât write. Iâm so ashamed of the letters Iâve been sending you, so incredibly childish. I canât believe I ever was that person, so young and uncaring, never wondering if you had time in your life for a twittering teenager who kept throwing herself at you, demanding that you love her. I did want you to love me, for lots of reasons, but partly because I thought my parents didnât. Well, now theyâre dead and all I know for sure is that I never really knew them and that makes me so despairing that I think Iâll explode with it because thereâs nothing I can do about it. Iâm not sure I ever really looked at them, you know; it seems to me I was always looking somewhere else when they were in the room. So I never saw who they really were. They told me they loved me and wanted to protect me, but that meant keeping me in our little town, safely married, doing something with my drawing and paintingâlike interior design, or somethingâbut Iâd told them over and over that that was just a hobby. They never understood that New York means the theater and you and life to me, and all I wanted was to be there, and we quarreled about that and now I think of things I should have said, or things I should have said differently, or not said at all. I know they loved me and they werenât bad people . . . oh, itâs crazy and scary to think that Iâll never see them again or
Similar Books
