Twice Loved (copy2) (12 page)

***

They’d been swimming along the sandy beach at the head of the harbor near Wauwinet, ending, as always, by trudging along the place called the Haulover—a narrow stretch of sand separating the calm waters of the harbor from the pounding Atlantic, where fishermen often hauled over their dories from one side to the other.

She followed Rye through the reedy yellow-green beach grass that swept the strand and barred the intrusion of the mighty ocean from the quiet bay. To their left swept Great Point, crooking its narrow finger as if beckoning the ocean waves against it. But Rye gave it only a cursory glance before squatting in his customary way on the sand, hunching forward with his arms wrapped around his knees, searching the Atlantic for sails.

Grains of sand clung to his back, so Laura reached out and did as she’d done a hundred times before, whisking them off.

Only, this time he flinched and whirled around and shouted, “Don’t!” Then he stared at her as if she’d committed some horrendous crime, while Laura gawked at him in owl-eyed amazement.

“All I did was brush the sand off.”

He glowered at her silently for several seconds, then abruptly jumped to his feet and ran as hard as he could across the beach toward the Coskata cedars while she watched him disappear and hugged her stomach, where a queer light feeling had settled.

It had never been the same after that. They were no longer three—Rye and Laura and Dan—but two plus one.

As children they’d played whaler the way mainland children play house. Laura was always the wife, Rye the husband, and Dan the child. Rye would plop a dry peck on her sunburned lips and stride off across the strand to his “whaleship”—a beached skeleton of a rowboat that would never again split the brine—while she’d take Dan’s hand and the two of them would wave goodbye, pretending that five minutes were five years, before Rye came striding back, some driftwood over his shoulder, the sailor home from the sea.

But those kisses didn’t count.

The first time Rye really kissed Laura was long after those garnish pecks. Kissless years had gone by between then and the afternoon she’d brushed the sand from his back, but since that day, neither had thought of anything else.

Dan was with them, as usual, the next time they met to go clamming over at the creeks in the salt marsh at the harbor. They divided their catch, but Laura and Rye made excuses to linger together after Dan trudged off up the road past Consue Spring. Rye said he was going to help Laura carry her clams home, but when Dan was gone, he just stood there with his rake in his hand, nudging a buried shell up from the sand with his toe.

After a long silence, Laura asked, “Wanna walk home along the road or on the commons?”

He looked up. The wind blew skeins of nutmeg-colored hair across her mouth, and he seemed to stare at it a long time before swallowing hard and answering in a falsetto, “The commons.”

They headed west, across the sweep of land between Orange and Copper streets, toward the undulating terrain beside First Mile Stone, through the low hills toward the shearing pens at Miacomet. Fall had swept the island with her paintbrush, and they walked through gay patches of sweet fern, huckleberry, and trailing arbutus that covered the moorlands like a blazing carpet. Rutted footpaths led them through fragrant thickets of bayberry whose scent was heady when crushed beneath their soles. As if by mutual consent, they veered off the trail into a thick patch of the berries, to lend excuse for that which really needed no excuse.

Neither of them had a container for carrying berries, anyway.

Once off the path, Laura wondered how to get Rye to make the first move, for though they were in the concealing underbrush, he seemed to have lost his nerve. So she spilled her basket of clams, and when he knelt down to help her scoop them up, she managed to nudge his arm, and the touch of her autumn-warmed skin on his was all it took.

Their eyes met, wide and wondering and uncertain, fingers still trailing in the clams before finally touching, and clinging. They held their breaths while each leaned forward haltingly. Their noses bumped, then their heads tipped just enough, and it happened! Childish, dry, tongueless first kiss. But expertise lacking, emotion was not.

And that kiss led the way to others, kisses for the sake of which they filled that colorful autumn with countless walks through the bayberries, each kissing session growing more bold, until the touch of tongue upon tongue no longer sufficed.

But winter came, stripping the heath of color and cover. They lost their camouflage and found fewer times together. Miserably, they waited out the icy months until, in March, the mackerel started running and they at last found a place, an excuse.

That first time Rye touched Laura’s breast she had not been wearing whalebones, for she yet had some growing to do. And neither had his hand grown to its full man’s-width, nor had the blond hair sprouted on the back of it.

They’d been sitting in the dory facing each other, with their knees almost touching, pretending they were enjoying fishing when actually it was only keeping them from doing what they’d both thought about all winter.

Laura pulled her line in and dried her hands on her skirt, looking up to find Rye staring at her, his Adam’s apple bobbing convulsively, as if he had a popcorn husk stuck on his tongue.

“I don’t feel much like fishing,” she admitted.

“Neither do I.”

He licked his lips and swallowed once more, and without a word, she edged over and made room for him on her seat.

The boat rocked while he moved toward her and sat down without taking his eyes from her face. Her hands were freezing, clenched tightly between her knees.

When at last he kissed her, his nose and cheeks were cold, but his lips were as warm as that autumn day they’d first bumped noses on the blazing heath amid its scented colors. While his lips lingered on hers, Laura clamped her knees tighter upon the backs of her hands, wondering if Rye felt as grown-up as she did since the passing of winter. A moment later the touch of his tongue confirmed it, for it sought hers with a new insistence that made her turn on the seat and put both arms around him while she told him with her kiss how long the wait had been for her, too.

She felt Rye shiver, though he wore a bulky wool jacket to ward off the stiff March breeze. The dory rocked, swaying their bodies while their lips remained locked, bumping them first against each other, then tugging them apart.

At first she wasn’t sure what Rye was doing, for her jacket was as bulky and cumbersome as his. But a moment later she realized his fingers were loosening the buttons. She jerked back, staring into his eyes.

“M ... my hand is cold,” he choked, voicing the first excuse he could think of.

“Oh.” She gulped and let the rocking of the boat sway her against him, waiting, waiting for that first adult touch with the breathless eagerness of untutored youth. Then his hand slipped inside, where it was warm and secret and forbidden, and she knew they were doing wrong.

“Rye, we shouldn’t,” she protested.

“No, we shouldn’t,” he agreed hoarsely. But that didn’t stop his hand from knowing its first of her, from learning the shape of her budding breasts through her dress, from discovering the way a woman’s nipples grow rigid as they plead for more. As with all first times, it was more exploration than caress, a search for the differences that were making her woman, him man.

Laura’s breath came jerky and fast. Her heart thumped madly beneath Rye’s hand.

“Put your hand inside my jacket, Laura,” he ordered, and she did his bidding for the first of many times to follow. She slipped her hand between jacket and sweater, and felt his ribs rising like sea swells, he was breathing so hard.

“Ouch! Not so hard!” she exclaimed when his exploration of her nipple grew a little too insistent.

From that moment on they remained open and vocal about their sexuality.

When the weave of her linen chemise abraded her tender breast, she reached and pushed his exploring hand to her other breast, saying against his lips, “That one’s sore.”

Laura and Rye used the excuse of going mackerel fishing again two days later, but not until just before they made for shore did their lines get wet. They sat in the vast privacy of the open water, surrounded by Nantucket Bay, while the boat bobbed up and down and the sun came skipping up at them from the rippling sea. Only the inquisitive gulls observed the first time Laura followed Rye’s instructions and slid her hands beneath his sweater to feel his warm, bare skin underneath.

There followed an excruciating week during which Josiah commanded all of Rye’s time, for Rye was already a four-year apprentice and was nearly as adept at coopering as his father.

By the time Sunday came and Rye was free to be with Laura again, they both felt tense and desperate. Rye had planned all week where they would go to be alone. Old man Hardesty had a boathouse on the waterfront near Easy Street where he kept old lobster traps and seines. He’d given Rye free use of any of the abandoned equipment anytime Rye wanted it.

“Ma wants me to get her a couple lobsters for tomorrow,” Rye said when he came to fetch Laura. “Wanna come along with me over to old man Hardesty’s and pick up a trap?”

“I suppose.”

They didn’t look at each other along the way. Rye stalked with his hands in his pockets, whistling, while Laura watched her toes and tried to match her stride to his—impossible to do anymore since his legs had grown so long.

They climbed the steps of the silvery old boathouse, and at the top Rye stood back, holding the door open for her. She stopped with her hand on the rail, staring up at him: Rye had never bothered with courtesies in all his sixteen years! He looked up and nervously scanned the waterfront, then he shifted his feet, and she hurried up the steps.

Inside it was dry and dusty, cobwebs lacing the corners and junk everywhere. Coils of old rope lay on the floor, along with buckets of rusty clews, battered oars, and lanterns with missing side glass; trennels and tar pots, piggins and barrel rings. While Laura stood taking it all in, a calico cat jumped out of nowhere, startling her into a shriek.

Rye laughed and picked his way across the littered floor to pluck the cat from an old nail keg and bring her back to Laura. Standing close together, they scratched the cat, who purred contentedly between them as if happy that company had come to call. Both Laura and Rye studied the creature as she stretched her neck and squinted her eyes closed in ecstasy while their fingers moved on her fur but itched to move over each other.

Laced over the cat’s back, their fingers touched, warm fur and warm flesh blending as they raised their eyes. For a long moment they stood still, the only movement the hammering of their hearts and the drifting of dust motes in the dry old loft. Rye leaned forward and Laura raised her lips, the kiss a gentle thing at first, until they lunged together and the cat squawked, making them leap apart and laugh self-consciously.

The cat took up her post on a barrel. She began to give herself a bath while Rye scanned the floor. He found an old mainsail rolled up and abandoned years earlier to mice and dust, and he tugged Laura’s hand, leading her to it.

They knelt down, one on either side of the brittle, gray canvas, and together began smoothing it out. Sunlight slanted in through a single window, falling across their sail bed in an oblique slash of gold, while from below the lap and swash of waves continued lazily nudging the pilings of the building.

Rye looked down at the waiting canvas, then up at Laura. They were both on their knees, facing each other, afraid now, and hesitant. From outside came the cry of gulls, wheeling lazily above the wharf. On his knees, Rye moved to the center of the canvas, and after a moment Laura followed suit. She watched the sunlight play across his beautiful arched eyebrows and light the tips of his eyelashes to gold as they slid closed and he leaned forward to kiss her. He found her fingers and clasped them tightly, as if for courage. When the kiss ended, he sat back on his haunches, searching her eyes while he squeezed her fingers till she thought the bones would crack.

He swallowed, lowered his gaze to the center of her chest, rose again to kneeling height, and slowly began unbuttoning her jacket. She shuddered as he pushed it from her shoulders, and Rye looked up, startled.

“Are you cold, Laura?”

She hunched her shoulders and gripped the skirts in her lap. “No.”

“Laura, I ... But he gulped to a stop, and she could see it was her turn to make a move.

“Kiss me, Rye,” she said in a voice she’d never heard before, “the way I like it best.” For by this time they had practiced it many ways.

He picked up her hands from her lap, gripping them tightly, and they met halfway, his tongue touching the seam of her lips even before they opened beneath his, her girl’s ignorance clashing with her woman’s intuition.

His hand found her breast across the vast distance that seemed to separate their bodies except for knees and lips. And for the first time ever, her hand nudged his toward the buttons at her throat, verifying that it was time. He hesitated, then shakily, inexpertly, opened the polished whalebone buttons all the way to her waist.

As if suddenly realizing what he’d done, he sat back on his haunches, staring into her eyes now with a frightened look in his own.

“It’s okay, Rye. I want you to.”

“Laura, it’s different than just ... just kissing, you know.”

“How do I know?” she asked, experiencing her first heady recognition of the power of her feminine mystique, wielding it as surely as if she were an experienced woman of the world.

“You sure?” He gulped, still scared of all the unknowns.

“Rye, I didn’t come up here to get any lobster trap. Did you?”

His lips were open, blue eyes wide and not a little frightened as he touched one shoulder inside her open dress, then the other, then carefully pushed the garment back to stare at her chemise.

The dark circles of her nipples showed against the linen cloth, and she followed the movement of his eyes from one to the other, then dropped her gaze to watch his hand reach for the streamer of the satin bow between her breasts. A moment later the cool air touched her bare skin as Rye pushed the chemise to her waist.