Chapter 33: Mary

I really enjoy being with Tom. He's just as funny and warm as Saul, without the self-assurance. Taking him to bed Sunday night really made us both feel wonderful. On Monday, though, at lunch, when Sigrid walked up to me in the Union, I had a kind of uneasy feeling. Certainly just misplaced guilt.

"Are you Mary Travis?"

'Why beat around the bush?' I thought. "Right. You're Sigrid, but I don't have your last name."

"Sigrid Sorenson. I wanted to ask if you and Anne will be home tonight. I'd like to come by and talk to you alone. Can we do that?"

"Far as I know. I'll probably see Anne this afternoon; I'll check with her. If there's a problem, can I call you?"

She gave me her number and her e-mail address and said goodbye.

When she knocked, Anne opened the door. "Hi, Sigrid. I'm Anne Stilwell."

"Yes. Thanks for letting me come."

She's Anne's height, quite slim, really short black hair that curls, doesn't kink, and blue eyes. Small breasts and waist, long torso. Cute buns. Very pretty oval face, white skin, strong arched eyebrows.

Naturally, the first thing that caught her eye was the group of pictures on the wall. She looked at them carefully, missed nothing.

"Tom told me these were good. I don't know Will Spector, but I can see they are better than good, at least as far as I can tell. I really like them."

"Have a seat," I said. "How about a beer? You want to talk, it's dry work."

"Thanks, I would. I'm a little nervous about this, but I want to get to know you two. You mean a lot to Tom and I like him a lot, and well..." She ground to a halt.

"Tom's told us a little about you," I said. "He seems to like you a lot. We like that. At the same time, he seems to be a little confused about the whole thing, and that's a little bothering."

"I met Saul, too, at Thanksgiving."

Anne said, "He told us he liked you, that you are smart as well as good-looking. That's all we know."

"Tom tell you I intend to be a virgin when I get married?"

"Yeah. That's between the two of you, none of our business."

"Mary, that's just what I believe, that I should be a virgin for my husband. My religion says it's right and I accept it."

"So, why are you here? Please don't think either of us is hostile, we just really don't know."

"Anne, something happened to me last summer that I want to tell you about because it has to do with me and Tom and why I don't care that he sleeps with both of you."

"Did he tell you that?"

"Shit, Mary, I'd have to be blind. But it's okay. In fact, if I wanted to be cynical about it, it makes learning to love each other easier, because he's not quite as anxious to get in my pants."

"Does that mean we're providing a stud service here?" I asked.

"Please, don't be touchy. Tom genuinely loves you both, I can tell that. He thinks the world of you. In fact, if he and I go much further, it's going to be because he has enough room in his love for me, as well as for you. Right now, for him, you two come first, and that's the way it should be. He doesn't know me well yet, maybe never will. I like him a lot, but it's too soon to say how far it'll go."

"I guess we ought to shut up and let you tell your story. No more questions, okay?" I said.

Sigrid sipped her beer and began. "Until last summer, I was a good girl from Michigan, out of Wisconsin, not a doubt in the world about what the preacher told me. Then, my Sorenson aunt in Sweden invited me to spend the summer with her family outside of Stockholm. Of course, I said I'd go. My folks encouraged me, and nowadays I wonder if they didn't have a reason for it.

"When I got there, I met my two girl cousins; they're about my age. I liked them right away, and I still do. Well, as soon as I recovered from the trip, we went off for an afternoon with two of their boyfriends. There was a lake nearby and they took off their clothes and went swimming in the nude. I was terrified."

"I'll bet," I said.

"Well, there were a lot of other people there, too, and they were all naked, so I finally took off my clothes and went in. It was fantastic, but I was sure there was something about it that was wrong.

"Later, when we got home, I told my Aunt Karin about it, and how worried I was. She sat me down and gave me a lecture about how the body is a good thing and being naked is natural and doesn't have anything to do with sex, really."

"Except in the good ol' USA," Anne said.

Sigrid took a swig and smiled. "Then she said something else that simply floored me. She told me that my cousins' boyfriends were going to stay for supper and spend the night with them, and did I want her to find a boy for me."

"I'll bet you were ready to fly home by flapping your arms," I said.

"Exactly. I panicked. I started yelling and screaming and carrying on about God and Jesus, and this and that. She just let me go on until I ran down. Fortunately the girls were outside somewhere with their boys. They didn't hear all this.

"Anyway, eventually I became rational again, and Aunt Karin and I started to talk seriously. We went over the whole business, and she made me see that my decision for virginity is my own decision. She never criticized it; she urged me to stick to my guns if I continued to believe as I do. But not require other people to think that way."

"I like your Aunt Karin. She's like my own Aunt Bessie."

"Well, I spent the whole summer there, until it was time to come here. We went swimming naked with the boys every nice day. We were naked in the house a lot. The boys slept over as often as not, and other times the girls went to their houses for the night. A couple of times guys wanted to sleep with me, but when I said no, that was it. There certainly were plenty of girls who would.