Tethering Angels

Chapter Eight: Summer Nights

     Many of my days were full of dance classes and rehearsals during the summers. One afternoon my favorite teacher taught us my favorite variation to date: Kitri's famous variation from Act 1 of Don Quixote. It was fast, explosive, and required the dancer to put on a large amount of playful sass. Kitri was a feisty young lady who made up her mind to marry her boyfriend Basilio. She let no one stop her. I loved playing fiery and beautiful characters. I imagined Jimmy as my Basilio. My father, unlike Kitri's, approved of Jimmy, but it seemed like the rest of the world wanted to tear us apart. However, I was not going to let it happen. I stayed a few minutes after rehearsal to practice a little more. The room was steaming from all the sweat in the summer heat and humidity, but it felt good. My body was looser and more flexible. The teacher had left the record on the player, and I adjusted it to play the song. Once it was set I hurried to the corner to start the dance once more.
I ran in, my head held high and my imaginary skirt swishing as the castanets clicked. I took a huge jeté and landed in a sassy lunge. I launched into the aerobic dance with pas de chats and grande sissone attitudes. I tossed my legs as high as they could go on my grande battements and made sure my feet were turned out and perfectly pointed. I was careful not to roll over my ankles as I ran on the very tips of my toes. After all that jumping and fast footwork, the dance finished off with 16 pirouettes from fifth position. By the time for the turns came around, I was exhausted, but I had to push through them until the end. This was the hardest part because they required so much strength, control, and precision to do that many, and to do them well was a whole other challenge. I felt my ankle wobble strangely on the fifth pirouette and I fell out of it. After a moment of frustration, I started up again and finished out the music. When I finished I heard an eruption of applause from a single set of hands. I whirled around to see who it was.
"That was outta sight, Caroline!" Jimmy laughed in wonder.
"Thank you! How did you get in here?"
"I just thought I would stop by...and the door was wide open. It's streamy in here!" He observed, stepping inside the studio.
"Take off your shoes!" I burst out. We were very protective of our dance floor at my studio. The wrong shoes would make it slippery and doom a dancer to a life of struggle.
His eyes widened and he smirked, "Ok..." he slipped his shoes off and left them at the door. "My goodness, Caroline. How did you ever learn to do that?"
"Miss Midge taught us in variations class just now," I told him.
He nodded, his mouth still hanging open, "But before that. You couldn't have learned everything you did this afternoon!"
"Well, the sequence and the dance this afternoon, but I've been taking dance lessons for years," I explained.
"Holy cow," he mumbled to himself. "What are those shoes you have on? Were you actually on the tops of your toes?"
"Yep!" I stood on my pointes and walked around, "See, I can be almost as tall as you!"
He took a step very close to me and pulled me to him from the small of my back, "Not quite," he smiled and said under his breath.
"Caroline, are you still...oh hello..." I heard Miss Midge's voice from the doorway.
"Oh! Miss Midge! This is my boyfriend..." I jumped quickly out of his hold and I saw my face turning redder than it already was in the mirror, "This is Jimmy. He came by to see me."
She smiled awkwardly and nodded, "I see. Have you ever danced, Jimmy?"
He laughed and ran a hand through his hair nervously, "At dances...I can foxtrot and swing ok. I'm a football and baseball player."
She nodded, "I can tell."
"Really?" He blushed and squirmed a little.
"You just look like a ball player," she clarified, "Well, it is a pleasure to meet you, Jimmy. Though I ought to inform you, we do have specific days reserved for observation."
"Class was over anyway when he came in," I said quickly. "I didn't even know he was there, I was so focused on those pirouettes. I still can't do all 16, or at least do them well.
"That's alright. Today is only the first day you learned the variation," Miss Midge said kindly. "Now, I would like to head home soon, so I ought to send you on your way."
"Of course. Thank you, Miss Midge," I said with a curtsy.
Jimmy followed me out of the room.
"You're amazing," He said as we reached the doorway of the dressing room. "I cannot believe anyone can do something like that."
"It's hard work," I laughed. "You're going to need to stop there. This is the girls' dressing room."
"Ah, ok. I'll wait."
  I sat on the bench and untied my pointe shoe ribbons. Only my friend Kathy remained in the dressing room, eyeing my slyly.
"Boy?" She whispered.
"Boy." I smiled.
  She stood up and took a look at Jimmy from the doorway, "He's cute!"
"Shh! I know!"
  "Are you two..."
  I nodded enthusiastically.
   She took another look, "Well done."
  "Thanks," I laughed.
   Kathy pulled her dress over her leotard and tights and stepped into her flip flops. "Hi! I'm Kathy!" She said, hurrying to the door.
  "I'm Jimmy," he smiled, shaking her hand. "You're also a ballerina?"
"No, ballerina is a title reserved for principal dancers in professional companies," she informed him sassily. "I'm a junior in high school. I'm a dancer."
  "Ah, I see. I'm a soon to be US Army soldier."
  Kathy looked back at me sympathetically, "Oh Caroline!"
"What? I love a man in uniform!" I shrugged.
"Are you going to Vietnam?" She asked him.
"Yeah, most likely."
"When do you leave?"
"For California on August 25."
"That's soon! And when did you meet this guy, Caroline?"
"About a month ago. And we're going to have a swell time until he leaves."
"Well, best of luck to you," Kathy said with a shaky smile.
"Thank you," Jimmy said.
Kathy picked up her bag awkwardly and turned to leave, "Bye, Caroline! Bye, Jimmy! It was nice to meet you."
"Nice to meet you too!" He called.
  I got my stuff together, turned off the lights in the dressing room, and took his hand, "Ready to go?"
He hesitated and stared straight ahead for a moment, "Yeah. We're we gonna go to dinner at your friend Deborah's?"
"Yep, but first I need to shower and freshen up a little. I'm so sweaty..."
"Alright. So you wanna stop by your house first?"
"Sure. I need to drop my car off anyway if you're driving."
"Ok. Let's go to your place."
  We drove to my house and Jimmy played around in the yard with the boys while I took a shower and put on my favorite yellow shift dress with white buttons. Someone knocked on the bathroom door as I was finishing up blowdrying my hair.
"What do you need, Josie?" I yelled.
"It's Jimmy," he called.
"Oh! I'm sorry," I felt horrible for yelling, "But you know how I feel about being seen without makeup...do you need something?"
"I just wanted to ask you if what I'm wearing is ok for dinner."
  I took a deep breath and cautiously opened the door a crack. He pushed it open the rest of the way and kissed my forehead.
  "Jimmy..."
  "I love your freckles. Please don't cover them up."
   "I need to wear makeup there. I have pimples and dark circles under my eyes."
   "I hardly notice."
   "Well, I do."
    He sighed and pulled me in, my back to his front. We looked at ourselves in the mirror.
   "I don't ever want to leave you, Caroline," Jimmy whispered.
   "Don't worry about that, Jimmy," I touched his hands." We have time."
   "It's not enough," he mumbled as he buried his nose in my soft, clean hair.
   "We'll have more once your term is up."
   "You can't promise that," he squeezed me tighter.
   "Can't we hope?"
    He let out a long sigh, "I love you."
   "And I love you, Jimmy."
   We held each other for a moment more before I picked up my eye shadow brush, "I need to get ready now."
"Can I watch?"
"If you really want to," I laughed.
He took a step back and watched as I did my face and hair.
"What's that?" He asked as I picked up my eyeliner.
"It brings out my eyes. It makes them look bigger."
He nodded, confused.
I finished my thick line and wing, "See the difference?"
He nodded again, "I think I liked it better before you put that on."
"Why?" I asked nervously.
"I don't know. I know big eyes are pretty and all, but yours are already big. Why do you need all that dark stuff to be pretty? You're pretty enough without it."
"That's sweet, Jimmy, but it's not true."
He crossed his arms, "Who else are you trying to impress?"
"Nobody!" I insisted.
"I just wish you didn't have to go to all this trouble to feel pretty."
I sighed, "It'd be a huge mess if I took all this off."
"Alright, I won't make you do it," he surrendered.
I finished doing my makeup and picked up my curling iron to flip the ends of my hair.
"What're you doing with that?" Jimmy asked, alarmed.
"Doing my hair."
He sighed and smiled a little, "You must think I don't know anything."
"Why would you know about these kind of things? Your only sister is a little young for makeup. Usually we wait for a dance or Confirmation in 8th grade."
"There's a lot about women I don't know."
"There's a lot about men I don't know."
He laughed, "Good."
"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked playfully.
He shook his head and ran a hand through his silky hair, smiling dazzlingly in the mirror. "You're young and naïve, Caroline. I hate to spoil your innocence."
"I'm not so young and naïve, Jimmy," I protested as I clasped my hair in the iron and rolled it. "I know enough to know that you shouldn't toss around the words 'I love you'. They mean a lot more than people give them credit for."
He nodded and touched the small of my back. It felt strained at first but good when I relaxed a little, "You're not the first boy to tell me you love me. You better be the first one to mean it."
His eyes widened.
"You do mean it, don't you?" I asked eagerly. I hoped and prayed he would say yes.
"Of course I do," He said seriously. "I would never throw your heart around. You've had enough of that. I just want to make things easy."
"I don't need easy, Jimmy," I smiled, setting down my curling iron and unplugging it from the wall. "I just need honesty and loyalty."
  "Well, you got that," he smiled a little.
       Once I was all dolled up, we got in old Myrtle and drove to Deborah's house. Deborah opened the door and gave me a big hug. She looked at Jimmy and hugged him too. He seemed a little surprised to be at a woman's eye level.
   "You must be the boyfriend!" Deborah shouted in her excitement.
    Jimmy flinched at her volume but smiled brightly, "Yes, yes that's me: the boyfriend."
"Come on in! Let me get you something to drink! We have lemonade and whiskey and coke..." she turned around, "Aw, you look so surprised! Is this because you're underage? I'll watch you and not tell a soul!"
"Lemonade sounds great, ma'am, thank you," Jimmy said politely, but suppressing a laugh.
Deborah stopped abruptly, "Oh silly me! We were never formally introduced." She spun around and faced him, holding out her hand, not as if to shake his, but to have hers kissed like in the olden days, "Mrs. Deborah Hansen. Please just call me Deborah. And you're...Jack?"
"Jimmy," he blushed, flustered. He took her hand and kissed it gallantly, "Ma'am."
She guffawed explosively and he looked startled.
"Why, aren't you a sweetie! Come along, Jimmy! We have cheese fondue before dinner..." there suddenly came a loud screeching of a smoke detector and her eyes widened, "Oh shit! Pardon my language...the casserole!" She ran in her clunky yellow heels into her kitchen, which was beginning to fill with smoke, "Shit!"
"Do you need help, Deborah?" I called.
"No, you just stay right there! Charity! Come here and wave a towel!"
Her 5'9 ten year old daughter came running and picked up a dish towel, "Oh my goodness, Mama..."
"Just wave the towel!" Her mother insisted as she pulled on her green oven mitts and attempted to take the tuna noodle casserole out of the oven.
"How did it get so full of smoke?" Charity asked and she whipped the towel around, smacking the walls and counter tops.
Jimmy looked at me in alarm and confusion.
I laughed and shrugged, "That's just Deborah."
He nodded and smiled, "She's fantastic, an absolute riot."
"And she's the strongest and funniest lady ever," I assured him, "Everything alright, Deborah?"
"Yes, the casserole is actually fine! Just a little crispy. It'll have some crunch!"
"Outta sight!" Jimmy called to her.
I could here her chuckling to herself a few paces away in the kitchen, "Outta sight."
We had our cheese fondue and our drinks before we took our seats in the dining room. Mr. Hansen and his son Wendell, another very tall child, took their seats at the dining room table and Deborah brought out her slightly crunchy tuna noodle casserole. The crumbs on top were a little blackened and the noddles were a little harder than they ought to have been, but we ate it politely.
     "Did you play baseball for Thomas More?" Wendell asked Jimmy.
     "I did. Third base," Jimmy said brightly.
     "Neat."
     "I love ball players!" Deborah exclaimed.
     Her husband raised an eyebrow.
     "He was very good," I put in.
     "Thomas More beat Harrison high in the game I saw," Wendell recalled, "Harrison would have won but some guy hit a home run with the bases loaded."
    Jimmy grinned, "Finest moment of my career."
   "Really? That was you?" Deborah asked, "Wow! Are you going to college? You should play in college!"
    "I have a little service to take care of, then college, I hope," Jimmy explained.
   "Service?" She gasped, "You don't mean..."
    "Yes, I've been drafted," Jimmy sighed with a wavering smile, "I may have volunteered anyway, but the draft best me to it."
    "Do you...do you want to go?" Mr. Hansen asked.
    "Well," Jimmy bit his lip, "I mean, obviously I want to serve my country, and I want to get the job done so we can get out of there. I'm not sure it's our war to fight...I wish the south Vietnamese would take care of their problems themselves, but if they need us, I suppose we answer freedom's call from wherever it sounds, even if it's all the way across the world."
   "What a well spoken young man! You are just too darn cute! Where did you find this boy again, Carrie?" Deborah asked.
   "The malt shop," I laughed.
   "I should have spent a little more time in the malt shop than down by the railroad tracks in my younger days," she muttered, "but clearly things worked out alright. How long have you two been together?"
   Jimmy and I looked at each other.
   "A little over a month?" I guessed, "It feels like much longer...in a good way of course."
   "And you are leaving for the army when?"
   "Late August," Jimmy said.
   Deborah nodded, "That's pretty soon."
    "It is, but we'll make the most of it."
    "I've heard plenty of stories of American boys going over there and not behaving themselves," Deborah warned, "I don't want to hear anything about this Jimmy fellow here doing anything...naughty, if you know what I mean."
   "Oh no, never. I would never," Jimmy promised gravely, "I just want to go in there, do whatever job they want to give me, serve my time, and get out so I can come back home to be with Caroline and get an education. I hope to go to Notre Dame and study business and political science. I'll probably have to keep helping out on the family farm, but once they don't need me, I'll get a degree and a good job and do the best I can for Caroline."
   Deborah smiled, "Well, Caroline Kildare, it seems like you picked a good one."
   "I did, didn't I?" I laughed, squeezing Jimmy's hand under the table.
   Once dinner was over, Deborah served a cherry pie a la mode and we played Go Fish in the living room as the evening news played on TV in the background.
   "Got any 7's, Jimmy?" I asked.
   He didn't answer. His eyes were set on the TV as it showed soldiers lying wounded in jungles, their faces contorted into horrid grimaces, and little Vietnamese children, dirty and crying. It turned to an interview with several young men, hardly older than me, looking handsome and pleasant enough. They smiled for the camera and talked about what they did, digging trenches, driving tanks. Their officers looked far less pleasant and more severe, but their interviews was not nearly as long as the cute young boys' interviews.
    "Got any 7's Jimmy?" I asked again.
    "Oh," he said suddenly, "Go Fish."
    We played cards until about 9:30 and then it was time for them to put the kids to bed and us to go home. We thanked Deborah for dinner and got in the truck. Jimmy put on the country station but he did not sing along.
   "Everything alright, Jim?" I asked.
   "Yep. Everything is just fine, don't you worry," He said quietly, reaching over and rubbing my knee.
   The sun was near the end of its setting. Most of the sky was a darkening purple with a ring of pink that warmed into orange as it got closer to the fiery yellow blaze that was the sun, melting into the clear, Indiana horizon.
   "The sky is pretty," I observed, trying to get him to talk.
   "Yeah, it is," he muttered.
    We were driving past a sprawling field of tall green and light brown grasses that shimmered like gold in the fading sunlight. There were patches of white, purple, and yellow wildflowers sprinkled in.
   "Jimmy, look at that field. Isn't that stunning?"
   "That field? You mean...the grass?"
    "Yeah, the grass and the flowers and the way the sun is hitting it. I wonder if that is what heaven looks like."
    He chuckled, "I don't know why, but I always thought it was a little more urban, or at least not exactly like the American Midwest. I don't know why though. It is beautiful."
   "Those plants that are soft and fluffy like feathers, like down inside a down pillow..." I couldn't explain why or how the feeling came over me in that moment, but I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to hold him and have him hold me on a bed of those fluffy grasses. We could disappear under the tall flowers and just exist for a while, away from the news and the threat of him going away. I took a deep breath and warm embarrassment flushed into my cheeks before I even got the words out. Nevertheless I said them, "Jimmy, what if we pulled over and made out in that field?"
    Jimmy's eyebrows seemed to move up three inches, "What?"
   "I think it would be beautiful...to kiss and lay down in that grass, in those flowers, in that brush that feels like a kitten when you pet it. I'm feeling dangerous."
   "Dangerous?" He burst into nervous laughter, "You don't want to...you know...?"
   "No, probably not that. I'm not feeling that dangerous, but I do think it would be so wonderful to lay in that field with you, away from everything, just us and the grass."
     He eyed a flat bit of gravel with a pay phone up ahead and pulled over past it, "This is rather...spontaneous of you, Caroline."
   "What's wrong with being spontaneous? Just trying to have a little fun in the moment?" I was growing more nervous my the second. Had I gone to far? Had I made him uncomfortable? Was this not what he wanted or needed right now? I was only trying to help, but maybe he didn't like me enough. I suppose this would be the test, but I was terrified. In the moment, I felt destined to fail.
     He got out of the truck and opened my door for me, lifting my down. He shut the door and led me by the hand through the field.
    "I'm so restless, Caroline. I need to run," he declared.
    I looked down at my high heeled shoes, "I'm not sure I could do that..." I slipped them off and he squatted down in front of me.
   "Get on my back."
    "Are you sure? I may have gained a pound at dinner..."
    He grabbed my legs and forced himself under me, so it was a little late to protest. He ran as fast as he could and I held on for dear life. His face broke into a smile and he whooped with delight at his sudden feeling of freedom. He ran around in a few circles and whatever patterns he felt like making. I couldn't help but laugh and whoop myself as he took me on the ride. When he seemed to get tired, he swung me around to his front and laid me down in a patch of the fluffy rushes. He picked a purple flower and stuck it in my hair. He touched my cheek and kissed me gently at first, then more aggressively. I pulled him closer to me and let my leg bend and move over his. He moved on to kissing my neck. It was a strange sensation I had never had the luxury of experiencing. It was a little strange and uncomfortable , but I relaxed and enjoyed the meaning behind it.
      As we kept kissing, all the evils, the sadnesses,  and the annoyances of the word seemed to fade from my mind. I had never been truly able to empty my mind before, but Jimmy was hypnotic. I only hoped I was just as hypnotic for him. When I opened my eyes there was just green and golden grass, yellow, white, purple wildflowers, and the smell of Old Spice cologne. I could have lived with just those colors and just that smell for my whole life. I gave Jimmy one more kiss on the lips before we fell on our backs on the grass and looked up at the dark blue sky and the twinkling stars. Jimmy plucked some more flowers and arrayed them in my now quite messy hair. I tucked a flower behind his ear and surrendered to the quiet and the occasional roar of a car driving by on the road.
    "You know, Caroline, I think there are fields like this in heaven. I think this whole experience is heaven," he whispered.
    "It does seem almost spiritual, doesn't it?"
    "It does."
    "I must be perfectly honest though, Jimmy. I feel a little lustful."
     "I'm feeling super lustful," he admitted casually, "but I'd never do you that wrong. I love you to much to get you in trouble like that."
   "But you'd do it someday, wouldn't you?"
   "If we got married, yes, of course."
   "Jimmy, you're the best man I could have ever imagined."
   "Really?" He laughed.
    "Really. I can't imagine anyone else who would make out with me like this with no plans of going further, but still make it mesmerizing."
    "That was all you."
    "Jimmy," I scoffed, "You are also good with the internal. You love your family, your country, you love me. You are duty bound, you have integrity. You are charming, and polite, and so pure hearted. You listen to me, you tell me I'm beautiful even when I'm not."
   "Don't start with that," he said seriously.
   "It's nights like these that I'll remember forever. I want to have so many more."
   "I can give you about thirty more."
   "I'll take that many."
   "After that I just don't know."
   "That's alright," I whispered, planting another kiss on his lips, "If I only had tonight, that would be enough."
   He wrapped his strong arms around me.
   "Just don't let me go, Jimmy. No matter what. Even if you can't physically touch me, at least do this in your head."
   "Don't worry, Caroline. I won't even let you go."