Chapter 10

When Phoebe asked me why I didn’t have a girlfriend, I’d punted by saying that my last relationship had ended badly and I didn’t have the strength to jump in the fray again for a while. I let her think two years was ‘a while’.

By then we’d arrived in Joplin and I was looking at street signs, making my way to our destination.

“Look. Let’s just have some pizza and maybe get to know each other a little better and have a nice time. That’s all that has to happen. I don’t want you to be afraid of me.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” she said.

“You’re just worried I’m after your body.”

“Well? Isn’t that really what men want?”

I looked over at her.

“Well, you’re good looking, and intelligent. That’s attractive, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to try to jump your bones.”

There wasn’t much more conversation before I pulled into the parking lot. It was crowded. The inside was even more crowded, and noisy to boot. The mixture of machine sounds, bells, whistles, dings, and all the chatter made it difficult to have any meaningful verbal discourse. Instead we followed Chris around, watching while he played games and won tickets. We ate pizza and then went to the prize booth to transform the fistful of tickets I had into toys of various types.

Chris played with his new treasure on the way home. Phoebe and I basically chit-chatted about inconsequential things. The seriousness of our discussion on the way up wasn’t there on the way back.

I walked them up to her door and Chris ran inside to secure his booty in his room. Phoebe turned and looked up at me.

“Thanks. I had a good time.”

I could tell she meant it. A good night kiss, of course, was out of the question, so I didn’t even think about that.

“I did, too. How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Keep up with him.”

She smiled for the first time since I’d asked her out.

“You get used to it.”

“I’m exhausted,” I said.

“Maybe you can sleep late, tomorrow,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. I took the plunge. “So ... shall we do this again sometime?”

“Go to Chuck E. Cheese’s?”

“Or something,” I said.

She hesitated, but only long enough for me to recognize it as hesitation.

“Yes,” she said.

“Okay.”

I returned to my car feeling uncharacteristically happy.

What happened with Phoebe is part of that second book I mentioned, which I’m trying not to write at this time, but there are things you have to know about her for the rest of this book to make sense.

She was like a frightened fawn, practically unable to eat because of all the interruptions of raising her head, twitching her ears, and looking everywhere for danger.

Patience won her over, though. Chris was completely different. He was just a little boy and, because he knew his mother loved him more than anything else in the world, felt invulnerable. To him I was just one of Mommy’s rare friends. Over the years that would change as he realized I loved him, too, and that others might some day choose to do the same. When you go looking for love, that’s when life gets scary.

The patience I mentioned required a full year to bear fruit. The “fruit” in this case, to put it indelicately, were Phoebe’s succulent, small, but unbelievably sensitive breasts, with their delightful strawberry nipples. The very first orgasm I ever gave her was by simply spending half an hour on those nipples.

I’m sorry. I’m getting way ahead of the story. When I remember that first bit of physical intimacy we shared that was beyond a kiss, I still get fired up. I’ll slow back down and continue in a more chronological manner.

I said our relationship wasn’t normal or uncomplicated. An example of this was that it wasn’t until our fourth or fifth date that we kissed. It was a very simple, very quick good night peck. On the next date, when I took her home, she put her hands on my arms and the kiss was longer. The date after that I got two kisses, the first a little lingering and the second our first real, romantic kiss. After that one she stood back and just looked at me for a good ten seconds.

“I like you,” she said, as if she were surprised.

“I like you, too,” I said, smiling.

A month later, even though we had been out on a dozen dates and had spent hours trading gentle kisses, we didn’t refer to each other as “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” in any verbal way. Our co-workers at school knew we were going out, but we didn’t display the kind of public affection that most couples display in that situation.

We never talked about what was going to happen next. We talked about pretty much everything else, from philosophy to politics, but not about what either of us wanted physically.

Just before the kissing started that year, Hannah’s monthly visits to me finally began to be stressful. The problem was that she wasn’t getting pregnant. She still loved being with me, but wanted that child. That was complicated, too, because it was impossible that Hannah and Phoebe would never meet. It wasn’t unusual for Phoebe to bring a pile of papers to grade, and Chris, to my house to spend the evening. I had a PS4 and Chris was just like other kids his age, so he was entertained while she graded her papers and I graded mine. On other nights I went to her house and did the same. On yet other nights we just spent time together.

It was on such a night (at my house) that Hannah showed up and walked in holding her bag like she lived there and was just back from a trip somewhere. She knew who Phoebe was, of course and, as already stated, Phoebe had seen me out with Hannah before we started dating. Phoebe and I were sitting on opposite sides of the table with stacks of paper between us. Chris happened to be taking a nap at that moment. That’s what we called it when he had to go to bed at my house, and then go home later. It was late, around ten in the evening.

“Oh!” said my sister, standing there wide-eyed.

Phoebe just stared at her.

“Hi,” I said, jovially. “I wasn’t expecting you.” I looked at my watch for some reason and said, “It’s Wednesday.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I had some vacation and Austin couldn’t go anywhere, so I thought I’d come see my little brother.”

What she was talking all around was that the calendar said she was ovulating and she was frustrated that that condition hadn’t arrived on a weekend for over a year. If you can’t get Mohammed to the mountain, then bring the mountain to Mohammed.

“You’re welcome anytime,” I said.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt your ... date?” She looked at Phoebe. I did, too, just to see what her face looked like. What I saw wasn’t what I expected.

My sister is really quite beautiful. She’s active and after she had her daughter she got back in shape. What I usually see on other women’s faces when they look at Hannah is either jealousy or concern (that the woman’s man is also looking at Hannah), or sometimes even hate. Well, hate might be a little strong, but a lot of women have disliked Hannah from the first time they saw her.

I was fully aware that such responses usually came from someplace in the woman that had self-image issues, or something like that. I didn’t think Phoebe had that issue. I felt like she was pretty satisfied with her looks. Of course she wasn’t “looking” for a man, either, so whether she was attractive or not might not have meant as much to her as it did to other women.

What I saw there was frank admiration, expressed by a half-formed smile and eyes below a brow that didn’t have a single furrow in it. Her eyes looked curious.

“You must be Phoebe,” said Hannah. “I’ve heard so much about you. I’m Hannah.” Her face went blank and then her lips made an “O”. She looked at me with raised eyebrows and said, “Please don’t tell me I just screwed up.” She looked at Phoebe’s face again.

Phoebe got it before I did and she astonished me by laughing! It wasn’t that she’d never laughed. She did that more and more often these days. But I’d never seen her let loose with a guffaw. She looked away from Hannah at me, with my confused face.

“She’s afraid I’m somebody besides Phoebe. She thinks she might have ruined a date with some other woman.”

“Oh,” I said.

“I am Phoebe,” said my maybe-could be-sort of girlfriend. “We’re grading papers.”

“Thank goodness,” said my sister. “It’s taken him decades to get a girl to go out with him more than twice and I didn’t want to ruin anything.”

“I’m not tired of him yet,” said Phoebe in an offhand manner. “You want something to eat? Drink?”

“Don’t bother,” said Hannah. “I know where everything is. You go on with what you were doing.”

Hannah headed for the kitchen and I looked at Phoebe.

“She seems nice,” said Phoebe. “Why haven’t you ever introduced us before this?”

“I don’t know,” I said. Actually I did know. The first time Phoebe mentioned Hannah, it was as “that blond girl I was obviously in love with.” That got changed to “love so much” when she found out about our familial relationship, but I had always remembered that. Phoebe liked studying people and she had great intuitions, honed after having had such bad ones with Chris’ father. I was pretty sure if Hannah and I were around Phoebe together, that intuition might cause me trouble.

And now, as it were, trouble had come a-knockin’.

I was right about Phoebe’s intuitions, but not for the reasons I would have thought. “Trouble” wasn’t Hannah in a direct sense. All other things being considered equal, Phoebe wouldn’t have thought a visit from my sister was out of the ordinary. Siblings visit each other all the time. The problem was ... well ... perhaps that should wait. I’ll let Phoebe tell you about that a little later. Let’s just say I didn’t think about “trouble” in any particular sense when Hannah showed up that night.

Hannah puttered in the kitchen making hot chocolate. Ten minutes later Phoebe got up and said it was late, and gathered up her papers in preparation for leaving. Phoebe went to my bedroom and got her little boy up from his nap in my bed. When they came out, Hannah was sitting where Phoebe had been sitting, sipping from her mug. Chris was one of those kids who didn’t mind naps at all and, after taking one, got up cheerfully to go on with life, even if that meant going home and back to bed. He came and asked who Hannah was and then hugged me as they left.