Chapter 38: Anne

Sigrid came back to North with us and hung up her heavy coat. The room was hot. She looked great in her slacks and red flannel shirt. I made coffee.

"Tom says nude cappuccino is great," Sigrid said.

"It is. Maybe later. What's up?"

"Couple of things. First. I want to tell you and Mary about some stuff that happened over Christmas." She set her coffee cup on the shelf.

"I don't know, but I guess you think I'm in some religious group that takes the Bible literally. I'm not. I'm just a vanilla Christian, but pretty observant, I guess. I want you to know about what happened these last few days.

"Hold on, Sigrid. This sounds like beer talk. And I'm going to get more comfortable," Mary said. She got beer for all of us and peeled off her sweater, leaving her in slacks and a lacy camisole. I took off my heavy wool skirt and folded it over the back of a chair. That left me in my body suit. Sigrid was bare under her shirt, hung it over her shoulders. She took a pull at her beer.

"Well, when I got home, I showed Will's drawing to mother and dad. They loved it. Next day when I got up it was hung in the living room. I said, 'Hey, what's this?' Dad said, 'It's you, just as you said last night. Your mother and I like it a lot, and we want to look at it while we can.' I asked about visitors and stuff, and they told me, 'You posed nude for it, you live with it. We like it because it's you and it's beautiful. '"

"Really put it to you, didn't they?" I said.

"Uh-huh. I'll say. But they were right... Well the next few days, we'd sit in the living room in front of my picture — you couldn't not see it. And we'd talk.

"Guys, the virginity business isn't my religion so much. They reminded me that I decided to be a virgin when I was 12 and had just started Junior High. The guys were all over me. That's when I made the promise."

"I did something like that. Kids in my school called me The Virgin till my junior year."

"Were you?"

"Not since I can remember."

"Well... Anyway, that was how I got through Junior High, and by then I'd folded it into my whole life. Mother and Dad made me see that I had made the whole thing a lot bigger than I needed to. It was a good decision for me, and I plan to stick to it, but it's not a requirement of my religion, it's my own idea.

"Glad to hear you say it," Mary said.

"They also told me they'd set me up last summer with that trip to Sweden. They knew Aunt Karin would teach me some reality, talk some sense to me where they couldn't. I had a long talk with her by telephone after that. It was great. We went over a whole lot of other stuff, and I really came out of it a lot smarter, got a really good look at myself. Being with you guys and posing for Will has been a real big event for me.

"You remember I asked if I could join the group? Well, now you're getting a bigger place, I want to do that even more. I want to make a proposal. I want to help with the work and planning for the new place. Tom says there'll be a hell of a lot of work, and I'm one more pair of hands. And, for the business, when it gets going, I can do the bookkeeping."

"Sounds good to me," I said.

"I want to study with you, too. Starting right away. I won't hang around when things get heavy; I'll just leave. I won't be around Saturday nights; Tom's told me about movie nights. But I want to be with you, I want to study with you, I want to be a part of what you have."

"What about when we move?" Mary asked.

"Tom and I talked a real long time this afternoon. We're going to get married. When you move in, more or less. We'll get married here, just the bunch of us. You are all invited and I hope you two will hold me up when the time comes. Later on, Tom and I'll go home and have a wedding for the rest of the world."