Chapter 11: Karen Reminisces, Or, Summer On The Farm With Cucumbers

Bliss. Summer vacation, nowhere to be, nothing I have to do. I could lie in bed, half asleep and just enjoy the laziness. I would not hear pounding on my door and the yell “Hey, stupid-face” until September. I should remember to give Mindy some booster shots of respect when I got the chance. But not now.

When I did crawl out of bed, it was nearly eleven. I took a quick shower and stumbled downstairs.

“Look who’s up. We are honored that you have graced us with your presence,” said my mother. “Make your own breakfast if you’re going to get up this late.

So I did. Coffee and cereal and some toast. Breakfast of champions.

I looked forward to a whole summer just like this. I wandered over to Jeffy’s, where I found Frankie Binkowski and him playing video games. I found a third controller and joined them for a couple of mindless hours.

Binkowski said once, during the afternoon, “Hey, Carter, how’d that party turn out, where you had me cover for you?” Then Jeffy, who hadn’t known about it, wanted details, too. But I just looked serene and said, “A gentleman never tells.” That could be interpreted as “Yes! Third base followed by a home run!”, or “Nothing, she turned me down.” It was the ambiguity that was important in the world of high school social status, you have to leave them thinking that you might have scored, and let them speculate. I left them hanging, and later we went to a movie.

The next day, I was up a little earlier, but still later than on a school day. Jeffy was off doing something with his mother, shopping I think, and Frankie, bright bulb, had to go to summer school because he failed math. So it was me till later. I didn’t know what to do, so I got my bike and headed out to the mall, where I wandered aimlessly for a while.

As I passed a bookstore, I happened to turn my head and saw, Wow! Karen Sunderland stocking shelves looking impossibly hot. I went in and stepped up behind her and said, “Excuse me, miss, I’m looking for a copy of The Monastic Life by Saint Hubert of Toledo.”

She looked up and smiled at me. “I’m not sure you’d be able to relate.” She stood up and said, “What are you doing here?”

“I was just wandering around looking for something to do, and I happened to see you working. I didn’t know you were working here, I thought it was some smaller place.” Couldn’t hurt, so I linkcast some mild arousal her way.

“It’s my uncle’s place, which is how I got the job, of course. He needed somebody to do menial tasks requiring no brain, and immediately thought of me.”

“You are way overqualified for this job, but at least it gets you up in the morning. I slept till eleven yesterday.”

“Lucky you. Listen, I’m due for a break, you want to get some coffee?”

“Yep, lead the way.”

She informed her supervisor that she was going on break and we found a coffee place just a few doors down, with some tables out front. We each got coffee, and I got a Danish (had to keep my strength up). We found an out-of-the-way table and sat down.

“It’s nice to see you,” I said. “How was your trip to your cousin’s?”

“Oh, okay. They’re my cousins, but we really don’t have a lot in common other than being about the same age and female. But it was nice to see my aunt and uncle. They have a farm.”

“Ah. Dairy farm?” Damn, she was hot. It was hard to focus on what she was saying. I channeled a tiny pinch of the nipples.

“No, some cattle but mostly vegetable and soybean farming. It’s a hard life but they really like it.”

“I wanted to thank you for inviting me to that cookout at your place, it was fun.”

“I’m glad you came over. I would have been alone after my friends abandoned me. You know, I haven’t heard from one of them since the party?”

“I suppose I’m not surprised. They didn’t seem to be very ... engaged with the world around them, just with themselves. Anyway, it gave me a chance to spend some time with you.”

I debated whether to continue down this conversational road, then thought, what the hell, why not. I linkcast “trustworthy, caring guy” at her.

“Karen, I was surprised and pleased that you are so ... comfortable with who you are, and what you look like. Most kids our age, girls and boys, feel a little, I dunno, awkward, awkward about how their bodies are developing, awkward about their own self-image, awkward about their beliefs, awkward about almost everything.

“You, you have a strong sense of who you are and what you want to become, and confidence in the abilities of your own mind. And I was surprised -- pleasantly so -- by how comfortable you are with your own body and your own sexuality. Is this too personal a conversation for eleven o’clock on a Tuesday morning in the mall?”

She smiled at that. “No, please go on. Tell me more about me,” she joked. I really liked her smile. And I channeled her just the touch of a feather on her clit. Because stacking books is better done when you’re turned on. You’re welcome.

“Well, I don’t have a lot more to say. I like who you are and the way you think. I’m trying to avoid saying I really like how you look, because I don’t want to appear shallow or sexist. What I mean is, you strike me as being much older, intellectually and emotionally, than you, we, are.”

“Are you referring, Mr. Carter, to our encounter in the wood shop?” She smiled sweetly.

Now I blushed. I’m pretty sure I did, anyway, it felt that way.

“Well, sorta, I mean, I was pleasantly surprised by your confidence. Most of us, fifteen year-olds, I mean, are almost afraid to touch a person of the opposite sex because we’re not sure of the boundaries, not sure what will be accepted or tolerated or liked. You seemed to read me pretty well. How did you get so confident, so emotionally mature?”

“Well, that’s actually a good question, Carter.” She looked quickly at her watch, then decided she had enough time. “This’ll require some back story, so get comfortable. You met my mother, right? So she and her college roommate were very close. They both got married right after college, but her roommate, her roommate got religion.

“I mean serious fundamentalist religion, Bible-pounding, fire-and-brimstone, testifying, wrestle-the-Devil-to-the-ground religion. She was a smart woman, too, so it was a puzzle to my mother how she threw herself so deeply into it. And her husband, too.”

She paused and took a sip of coffee, then went on. “So the roommate got pregnant and they were thrilled, a gift from God, a little angel, a servant of the Lord. I wasn’t born till a couple of years later, so my mother got to experience the pregnancy vicariously. My mother adored the baby girl Mary -- that’s her name, Mary -- and everything was fine until she got to be about ten or eleven. That’s when some girls start becoming women.

“But in the mother’s head she was still a baby girl, who should be protected from the evils of the flesh, until she was married and her husband would “teach” her. So that meant no sex-ed, no discussion of where babies come from, no unapproved books, newspapers or magazines, no TV, no movies. And certainly no birth control because that would imply the possibility of sex outside marriage.”