up.
“Last month my mother took me to the doctor. She said she didn’t want to know how serious we were about each other, that it wasn’t her business, but she needed to know I was taking care of myself. That was how she put it. ‘All you have to say is that you want it because your periods are painful and irregular,’ she said. ‘When he sees that I brought you myself, that will do.’”
I was a little slow, I guess, so she punched me in the chest.
“Birth control pills, dummy. Ovral. It’s safe now, because I had a period since I started taking them. I’ve been waiting for the right time, and if this isn’t it, there won’t ever be one.”
Those luminous eyes on mine. Then she dropped them, and began biting her lip.
“Just don’t . . . don’t get carried away, all right? Think of me and be gentle. Because I’m scared. Carol said her first time hurt like hell.”
We undressed each other—all the way, at last—while the clouds unraveled overhead and the sun shone through and the whisper of running water began to die away. Her arms and legs were already tanned. The rest of her was as white as snow. Her pubic hair was fine gold, accentuating her sex rather than obscuring it. There was an old mattress in the corner, where the roof was still whole—we weren’t the first to use that cabin for what it was used for that day.
She guided me in, then made me stop. I asked her if it was all right. She said it was, but that she wanted to do it herself. “Hold still, honey. Just hold still.”
I held still. It was agony to hold still, but it was also wonderful to hold still. She raised her hips. I slid in a little deeper. She did it again and I slipped in a little more. I remember looking at the mattress and seeing its old faded pattern, and smudges of dirt, and a single trundling ant. That she raised her hips again. I slid in all the way and she gasped.
“Oh my God!”
“Does it hurt? Astrid, does it—”
“No, it’s wonderful. I think . . . you can do it now.”
I did. We did.
• • •
That was our summer of love. We made it in several places—once in Norm’s bedroom in Cicero Irving’s trailer, where we broke his bed and had to put it back together—but mostly we used the cabin at Skytop. It was our place, and we wrote our names on one of the walls, among half a hundred others. There was never another storm, though. Not that summer.
In the fall, I went to the University of Maine and Astrid went to Suffolk University in Boston. I assumed this would be a temporary separation—we’d see each other on vacations, and at some hazy point in the future, when we both had our degrees, we’d marry. One of the few things I’ve learned since then about the fundamental differences between the sexes is this: men make assumptions, but women rarely do.
On the day of the thunderstorm, as we were driving home, Astrid said, “I’m glad you were my first.” I told her I was glad, too, not even thinking about what that implied.
There was no big breakup scene. We just drifted apart, and if there was an architect for that gradual withering, it was Delia Soderberg, Astrid’s pretty, quiet mother, who was unfailingly pleasant but always looked at me the way a storekeeper studies a suspicious twenty-dollar bill. Maybe it’s all right, the storekeeper thinks, but there’s just a little something . . . off about it. If Astrid had gotten pregnant, my assumptions about our future might have proved correct. And hey, we might have been very happy: three kids, two-car garage, backyard swimming pool, all the rest. But I don’t think so. I think the constant gigging—and the girls who always hang around rock bands—would have broken us up. Looking back, I have to think that Delia Soderberg’s suspicions were justified. I was a counterfeit twenty. Good enough to pass in most places, maybe, but not in her store.
There was no big breakup scene with Chrome Roses, either. On my first weekend home from school in Orono, I played with the band at the Amvets on Friday night and at Scooter’s Pub in North Conway on Saturday. We sounded as good as ever, and we were now hauling down a hundred and fifty a gig. I remember