Dan Wakefield - Starting Over - A Novel

God damn it, there his mind went again , irrationally, tormentingly, foolishly. He shamed himself again , not only for his doubting Amelia, but for falling into such an old-fashioned hangup about a woman’s relative virginity for christsake, when he had never in fact been turned on by the notion of making it with virgins, when he knew things would be a lot easier all around if Amelia had had some experience with her former fiancé. But he couldn’t help hoping that the experience hadn’t been all that great. A woman friend once told Potter that if she were a man she would not ideally look for a virgin, but would prefer to find a girl who had already been fucked a few times, but badly. The logic of that seemed indisputable, and he secretly hoped it was the case with Amelia.

Finally making his mind focus back on the real problem of where the hell to go for the romantic weekend, Potter hit upon what he considered the brilliant notion of the Bertelsens’ farm in New Hampshire. They had bought the place about a year ago, and it was just a little less than two hours from Boston. It would provide seclusion and privacy, a quiet pastoral atmosphere, and eliminate all the hassles of room registration, motel illicitness, and Country Inn bad luck.

Marva said she and Max had been up the weekend before and Potter would actually be doing them a favor to go up the coming weekend and use the place, see that the furnace was working all right, make sure everything was in order.

“Are you taking that marvelous Southern girl?” Marva asked.

“Yes, Marva.”

“It sounds like things are getting serious.”

“Yes, I guess you could say that.”

“Oh, Phil, this is so exciting. How serious?”

Potter held his breath for a moment in an effort to hold his temper.

“Medium serious,” Marva persisted, “or very serious?”

“More serious,” Potter said, “than I expected.”

“Oh, Phil, this is marvelous. Will you tell me all about how the weekend was when you get back to town?”

“Sure,” he said, not meaning he’d really tell everything, but enough to repay Marva for the use of the place. That would be the fee for the weekend, instead of a regular motel bill.

The day they drove up was wet and blowy, perfumed with spring. A perfect day for sitting inside, by a fire. A perfect day for coziness.

On the way they stopped at a shopping center grocery store and bought supplies—much more than they needed. Shopping with someone else, with someone you loved, was altogether different from shopping alone. It had a design, a purpose; it brought two people together, as in a conspiracy. Potter kept popping things into the cart, whatever caught his eye, much more than was needed. Amelia was going to make an old-fashioned beef stew for dinner, but besides the ingredients for that, Potter grabbed the biggest porterhouse steak he could find.

“What’s that for, Phil?”

“Well, you never know. Maybe we’ll have it for breakfast.”

“But we got bacon and eggs.”

“You never know. We might wake up and wish we had steak. Besides, having a steak around gives me a sense of security.”

“Mah heavens, we have enough to live for a week!”

“Well, we might get snowed in. Or rained in. If we’re lucky.”

She smiled, moistly, her eyes wide and adoring. “Oh darlin’, you’re such a fool. Such a sweet fool.”

The farmhouse was old and small, with floors tilting, foundation sinking. It was furnished with plain, rickety, unmatched chairs and couches and tables, not antique, just aged and tattered and teetering, yet it seemed like a magic place, a palace in disguise. It was on a winding road off the main highways and interstates, and from its windows you could see no other houses or buildings or stores or lights. It came with twenty acres, once cultivated, now dormant, and a leaning, unusable barn that looked as if one good wind could knock it down. The Bertelsens had paid a pretty penny for it, but they knew its value could only go up, land was one sure thing of real worth. Prices for places like this had skyrocketed all over New England, not only because of the obvious investment value, but also because such former farms were now the new vacation and weekend havens of the well-off middle class. Only the relatively wealthy could afford now the luxury of keeping warm by wood fires and planting their own vegetables, of hoeing their own gardens. The price of simplicity and privacy was high. Owning such a place was like having your own time machine, in which you could be transported back on weekends and vacations to the fantasy of living fifty years ago, the pretended peace of the pre-atomic age.

Potter indeed felt happily farther than two hours away from the world in which a jury had just voted the gas chamber for Charles Manson and a military tribunal had found Lt. Calley guilty, a world of senseless massacres at home and abroad, of a war that kept “winding down” but wouldn’t stop, of brand new Pinto automobiles being recalled by the Ford company because even though they looked colorful and cute they were also defective and unsafe; a world of bright imagery and crummy insides, of plastic and smog and tear gas and lies. All that seemed years instead of hours away.

They ate in the kitchen, by the warmth of a big potbellied stove. Potter had chopped wood, and built fires in the living room fireplace as well as the kitchen stove, feeding them fondly, tending them with ritual care, while Amelia concocted the fragrant stew.

The intimacy of the farmhouse fed the intimacy between Potter and Amelia, and helped them feel relaxed. At dinner they talked and laughed a lot, not from nervousness but a sense of rapport and pleasure. After a couple of brandies they went to bed, and Potter’s apprehensions proved pleasantly ungrounded. It started out tender and sweet and slow, grew into passion, and finally ended in fulfillment for both of them.

They lay there for a while, hands touching, and then they got up and went down to sit in front of the fireplace. The living-room lights were off and the flames threw shadows, mysterious but friendly; the oldest light show of all.

This is what there is , Potter thought.

Man, woman, house, fire.

Nothing else seemed necessary, or even important.

“Amelia,” he said, “let’s not wait a long time.”

“For what, darlin’?”

“Getting married.”

She nestled against him. “Whatever you say, darlin’.”

“Spring vacation’s coming up. I’ll have a week, and we can take a nice honeymoon.”

“When does spring vacation start?”

“A week from Wednesday.”

“ A week from Wednesday! Darlin’, wha—ah hardly—there’s so much to do, so many things, arrangements, plans—”

“I don’t want a big lavish ceremony, I couldn’t do that anyway.”

“Ah know, darlin’, but even so—”

“Even so, I want to marry you a week from Wednesday. All the rest can be worked out. All you have to say is yes.”

She looked at him for quite a while, her face intent and serious, her eyes looking straight at him and into him, as she balanced all the factors, the pros and cons, the rightness of the moment, the pitch that might not be reached again, and finally, calmly and quietly, she spoke.

“Yes,” she said.

They had the porterhouse steak for breakfast.

“You’re kidding,” said Marilyn.

“Is that your idea of congratulations?”

“OK. Congratulations.”

“Wow. This is really something. I rush over here to tell you so you’ll be the first one to know and you act like—like I’ve told you I lost my job.”

“Well, it’s awfully—sudden, isn’t it?”

“What’s sudden about it? I’ve known her over a month.”