Becca's Book, Page 2
Jeffrey Anderson
Three Kisses
Zach sat in his usual seat by the window in the lecture room on South Campus. He tried hard to keep his attention directed toward the world-renowned scholar as he guided the class of some fifty students through the economic forces and political intrigues that shaped the Italian city-states of the late fourteenth century. Zach cared about his education, wanted to learn. He tried hard to pay attention to the famous lecturer; he truly tried.
But his attention kept getting pulled toward the tall, divided-lite, arch-topped window to his left, and the beautiful, warm, sunny mid-fall afternoon stretched out beyond that window. From the second-floor classroom, Zach could see across the near lawn, so lush and green despite the season, to the tennis courts beyond, and the recreation fields beyond that. Students populated the scene—lying on blankets and towels on the lawn, playing tennis, tossing Frisbees and footballs on the rec fields. The scene beyond the divided panes defined an idyll of late-twentieth century coed campus life in America.
Yet Zach, ever one to seek the symbolism and meaning—any symbolism or meaning—in a scene or event, barely took note of the scene unfolding beneath him. His attention focused on the parking lot between the lawn and the tennis courts, off to the left and bordered by a row of tall willow oaks. About two-thirds of the way through the fifty-minute class, his watch was rewarded when Becca’s blue BMW turned into that parking lot and parked in one of the spaces in the shade of those oak trees.
Zach had spotted the arrival of Becca in that parking lot on the first day of this history class and in almost every class since. She had no idea he was watching her arrive these three days each week. At first, when they were just acquaintances—besides being his Humanities Guide, they shared a class, French Novels of the Nineteenth Century— it seemed an insignificant tidbit of information; and now, as their friendship was growing, he felt embarrassed by his watch. How could he explain that the sight of her arriving in the parking lot, getting out of her car, and walking off to the South Campus library and its study carrels consistently lifted his spirits out of the dustbin of this dry lecture course to something like a shining perch atop the world? Just how corny would such an honest confession sound to her?
But on this particular afternoon, he was even more excited, and nervous, at observing her arrival. On this particular afternoon, she’d not be heading off to the library to study but would instead wait near the parking lot for him to get out of class and come down to join her for some as yet undetermined excursion—a date, on this beautiful fall afternoon. He watched her get out of her car, wave to one of the couples lounging on the lawn, then stroll over to that couple and sit beside them on their blanket. He turned to face the lecturer and focused on him for the balance of the hour but saw only Becca before his eyes.
He walked across the lawn to where she was still sitting on the blanket talking to the couple. She was wearing khaki shorts and a pink Oxford-cloth shirt with its long sleeves neatly rolled above the elbow and the top two buttons open at the neck. She stood to greet him, reached her hand out to brush his free hand when he got close enough. “Class interesting?”
Zach laughed. “Let’s just say his reputation exceeds him.”
“That bad, huh? Well, it’s over; and now we have the rest of this beautiful afternoon.” She threw her arms out and spun in a pirouette of praise to the day.
Zach could only nod agreement.
Becca introduced him to the couple on the blanket—her roommate Caroline, in navy blue jogging shorts and a lemon-colored tank-top, and her boyfriend Mike, who had his shirt and sandals off and was wearing only a pair of shorts labeled as the property of Avery Basketball (he was one of the student managers for the team). They exchanged a few pleasantries, then excused themselves and headed to Becca’s car.
Once inside the car, Becca turned to him. “So where to, Zachary Taylor Sandstrom?” Zach’s middle name wasn’t really Taylor (it was Carl), but Becca had given him the middle name of the twelfth President first time she met him and kept it as a pet name ever since.
“You say. You’re my advisor, remember?”
“Yeah, right. Like anybody could advise you, Mr. Ivy-league.”
“Who’s a long way from the Ivy League now, and on the home turf of Miss Rebecca Coles.”
Becca nodded. “O.K. Let’s go to the Gardens—they’re bound to be beautiful today.” She started the car and they drove the mile or so to the Gardens’ parking lot.
The Gardens comprised about fifty acres of green space in the middle of campus, a natural park that included flowerbeds and paths, ornamental bushes and imported trees, fountains and ponds, a large gazebo used for outdoor weddings and ceremonies, an amphitheater-shaped grassy hillside for concerts, as well as several open fields for recreation and lounging.
As Becca’d predicted, the Gardens were beautiful on this lovely afternoon. Trouble was, everyone else on campus must’ve had the same thought. The paths were crowded, the benches full, the gazebo overflowing. Even the amphitheater and adjacent fields were full of students sunning themselves and tossing Frisbees. After weaving their way through the crowds around the fountains and gazebo, Becca finally found a few square yards of grass on the hillside overlooking an open field. She sat and gestured for Zach to sit beside her. They sat a few minutes in silence, observing the vibrant, chaotic scene unfolding in front of them. The field was densely packed with people lying on blankets in the sun. Many of the women were in bikinis, and some—including an attractive pair of sorority sisters just a few feet away—were lying on their stomachs with their bikini-top straps undone to let their backs tan evenly. Some of the guys were trying to toss a Frisbee in the dense crowd. Still others had music blaring from boom-boxes.
Becca laughed and shook her head. “I think they must’ve cancelled classes.”
“And the beach trip,” Zach added. He reached out to grab a Frisbee that was sailing toward Becca’s head. He tossed it to the apologetic boy jogging past in bare feet.
“All we need now is a beach ball.”
As if on cue, a large, multi-colored beach ball came bouncing down the hill. It landed squarely on the scantily clad buttocks of one of the sorority sisters lying on the blanket. She yelled something, but didn’t roll over or move. Zach had to laugh.
Becca shook her head as she followed the beach ball’s bouncing path down the hill. “This is ridiculous.”
Zach nodded. “Wild scene.”
“Do you know any place a little less popular?”
Zach thought a minute. “I know just the place,” he said. “Let’s swap your car for my truck and I’ll take you there.”
“Good,” Becca said, standing carefully so as not to step on the nearby girls.
Becca pulled alongside Zach’s beat-up carryall truck in the parking lot beside his apartment building. They got out of the car and swapped roles as they climbed into the truck’s front seat, with Becca sliding over to the passenger’s side, past the shift knob, and Zach getting behind the wheel. Zach said, “Hope you’re not embarrassed to be seen in this beater.”
Becca said, “Embarrassed? I love it. It’s got so much style.”
“Is that what you call rusty fenders and a mismatched driver’s side door?” The original door had been side-swiped on a street in Boston and replaced by a salvaged door off a police paddy-wagon. The replacement door had never been repainted and was still a dingy white with the police logo painted over with rust-colored primer. The rest of the truck was a faded forest green.
“It’s so you Zach—your own person, your own world.”
He looked at her. “Sometime you’ll have to tell me what that means.”
“Sometime I will.”
Zach started the truck and backed out of the parking space.
“Now tell me where we’re going.”
Zach grinned mischievously. “My secret lair.”
“That sounds like fun.” Her smile never faded.
“You’re not scared?”
“No.”
“Darn. Not much of a mystery man, I guess.”
“That’s a good thing. I’m not much for surprises.”
Zach said, “I thought we’d go by Barton’s place. He’s got some woods behind his house and a beautiful field.”
“Sounds nice. He won’t mind?”
“He’s out of town at a conference. He tells me to feel free to walk in his woods anytime I want.”
Becca nodded. “Lead on.”
Zach parked his truck in a narrow turnaround where Barton’s drive started to curve up toward his house. Zach opened the door and slid out of the truck; Becca slid across the vinyl seat and climbed out on his side. As soon as he shut the door to the truck, a potent autumn stillness embraced them. After three hard frosts last week, the insects were all dead or dormant, the leaves were mostly off the trees, and the large pond to their left was utterly stagnant. Zach took Becca’s hand and led her into the bright woods along a rutted logging track.
At the top of the hill, the woods thinned and opened onto a three-acre triangular broom-straw field. The thin brown grass came up to their knees and released white, feather-like tassels as they moved past. The sky was a silver-tinged cloudless blue, the sun a warm golden disk just now touching the bare tips of the highest branches of the tallest poplars on the far side of the field. The silence that had overwhelmed them on exiting the truck persisted even in this open and inviting field. No breeze stirred, no branch shivered, no blade of grass moved if they didn’t move it, and even that movement was silent.
Zach led Becca, her hand still in his, straight into the heart of the field, to where it leveled off and then began to slope gradually downhill to the woods at the far side. This was Zach’s favorite spot in all of Barton’s forty acres—the road invisible behind the hill, no house or sign of human habitation in any direction, the open field merging into the tall deciduous woods beyond. Somewhere back in those woods was a ravine with a spring at its head and a trickle of water running into the creek that formed the western boundary of Barton’s land.
Zach released Becca’s hand and held his arms out toward the sloping field and the woods beyond.
Becca nodded but still didn’t speak. She sat on the grass at the highest point of the hill, just where it began to slope away. Zach sat beside her, leaving about a foot between them. The bare tree trunks cast long parallel shadows up the slope and across the field to where they sat. Even in the first few minutes after they sat, the earth rotated just enough in relation to the sun to cast one long shadow first across Becca, then into the space between them, then across Zach, then off to the field east, leaving them both in the sun’s warm late-day glow.
“This is beautiful, Zach. Thank you for sharing it.”
He nodded, first to the woods and their eternal creator, then turned and nodded to Becca, her golden hair in golden radiant fire in the golden sun. He wanted to speak but couldn’t. The air had left his lungs at the beauty of the girl beside him. He faced the woods again, tried to catch his breath.
“I bet you spend a lot of time out here,” she said.
“Every chance I get, but not as much as I’d like.” He spoke these words to the woods.
“Surprised anyone could pry you away from this.” She gestured toward the woods, then turned to him and smiled.
He nodded to the woods. “One of my favorite places on earth.” Then he added in his head but not aloud—that just became sacred the moment you sat down here and the sun kissed your face. He wanted to turn toward her but couldn’t. Every muscle in his body was locked in place. But his voice still worked. “Somewhere along the way, I realized it wasn’t enough.”
“What?”
“Nature. And I’ve looked pretty thoroughly. Even a spot beautiful and peaceful as this isn’t enough by itself.”
“You mean isn’t enough if you’re alone.”
“Isn’t enough if you’re alone,” he repeated. “I’ve looked.”
She turned back to the woods. “That’s what I’ve always figured, though I never really looked very hard or long. I love the outdoors—the beach, the woods, the mountains. But I’ve always known I had to be with people.”
“It took me awhile to learn that.”
They sat in a new silence that was somehow different from the previous one. Where the earlier silence had been imposed by the overwhelming scope and stillness of the setting and extended far out as they could see or imagine, this silence had been chosen by and just for them, extended just to the outer edge of their two bodies. It was the silence of sudden unexpected intimacy.
Zach’s muscles relaxed and he turned to brave another look at Becca. The sun had fallen behind a grove of pine trees deeper in the woods, and the whole hillside was now wrapped in pale gray twilight. Becca’s hair was still golden but not on fire, her face in profile still lovely but not debilitating. She seemed deep in thought, or was maybe focused on some movement down along the edge of the woods. Zach slowly closed the space between her face and his and kissed her dry cheek with dry lips. He froze in that gray twilight moment, his lips touching her skin, for several seconds that seemed an eternity to him—long enough to know that he’d just discovered something that changed his universe forever. Then he just as slowly and silently retreated to his former position. Becca never moved or spoke; her intent gaze into the woods never altered.
They sat for a few more minutes in their silence, the silence of new intimacy. Then Zach stood, helped Becca up, and walked her back to the truck through the deepening twilight.
Back at the apartment building’s parking lot, Becca didn’t wait for Zach to open his door, but instead opened her passenger side door. Just as she started to slide out that side, she stopped suddenly, turned and quickly leaned her body across the length of the front seat, and kissed Zach on his right cheek. Then she slid out her side of the truck.
She leaned back into the truck’s dome light from the darkness beyond. “Thank you, Zach.” Then she added, almost as an afterthought, “I’ll see you tomorrow in class.” She disappeared into the night.
Zach stared toward her fading presence.
Zach sat in his usual seat by the window in the lecture room on South Campus. He tried hard to keep his attention directed toward the world-renowned scholar as he guided the class of some fifty students through the economic forces and political intrigues that shaped the Italian city-states of the late fourteenth century. Zach cared about his education, wanted to learn. He tried hard to pay attention to the famous lecturer; he truly tried.
But his attention kept getting pulled toward the tall, divided-lite, arch-topped window to his left, and the beautiful, warm, sunny mid-fall afternoon stretched out beyond that window. From the second-floor classroom, Zach could see across the near lawn, so lush and green despite the season, to the tennis courts beyond, and the recreation fields beyond that. Students populated the scene—lying on blankets and towels on the lawn, playing tennis, tossing Frisbees and footballs on the rec fields. The scene beyond the divided panes defined an idyll of late-twentieth century coed campus life in America.
Yet Zach, ever one to seek the symbolism and meaning—any symbolism or meaning—in a scene or event, barely took note of the scene unfolding beneath him. His attention focused on the parking lot between the lawn and the tennis courts, off to the left and bordered by a row of tall willow oaks. About two-thirds of the way through the fifty-minute class, his watch was rewarded when Becca’s blue BMW turned into that parking lot and parked in one of the spaces in the shade of those oak trees.
Zach had spotted the arrival of Becca in that parking lot on the first day of this history class and in almost every class since. She had no idea he was watching her arrive these three days each week. At first, when they were just acquaintances—besides being his Humanities Guide, they shared a class, French Novels of the Nineteenth Century— it seemed an insignificant tidbit of information; and now, as their friendship was growing, he felt embarrassed by his watch. How could he explain that the sight of her arriving in the parking lot, getting out of her car, and walking off to the South Campus library and its study carrels consistently lifted his spirits out of the dustbin of this dry lecture course to something like a shining perch atop the world? Just how corny would such an honest confession sound to her?
But on this particular afternoon, he was even more excited, and nervous, at observing her arrival. On this particular afternoon, she’d not be heading off to the library to study but would instead wait near the parking lot for him to get out of class and come down to join her for some as yet undetermined excursion—a date, on this beautiful fall afternoon. He watched her get out of her car, wave to one of the couples lounging on the lawn, then stroll over to that couple and sit beside them on their blanket. He turned to face the lecturer and focused on him for the balance of the hour but saw only Becca before his eyes.
He walked across the lawn to where she was still sitting on the blanket talking to the couple. She was wearing khaki shorts and a pink Oxford-cloth shirt with its long sleeves neatly rolled above the elbow and the top two buttons open at the neck. She stood to greet him, reached her hand out to brush his free hand when he got close enough. “Class interesting?”
Zach laughed. “Let’s just say his reputation exceeds him.”
“That bad, huh? Well, it’s over; and now we have the rest of this beautiful afternoon.” She threw her arms out and spun in a pirouette of praise to the day.
Zach could only nod agreement.
Becca introduced him to the couple on the blanket—her roommate Caroline, in navy blue jogging shorts and a lemon-colored tank-top, and her boyfriend Mike, who had his shirt and sandals off and was wearing only a pair of shorts labeled as the property of Avery Basketball (he was one of the student managers for the team). They exchanged a few pleasantries, then excused themselves and headed to Becca’s car.
Once inside the car, Becca turned to him. “So where to, Zachary Taylor Sandstrom?” Zach’s middle name wasn’t really Taylor (it was Carl), but Becca had given him the middle name of the twelfth President first time she met him and kept it as a pet name ever since.
“You say. You’re my advisor, remember?”
“Yeah, right. Like anybody could advise you, Mr. Ivy-league.”
“Who’s a long way from the Ivy League now, and on the home turf of Miss Rebecca Coles.”
Becca nodded. “O.K. Let’s go to the Gardens—they’re bound to be beautiful today.” She started the car and they drove the mile or so to the Gardens’ parking lot.
The Gardens comprised about fifty acres of green space in the middle of campus, a natural park that included flowerbeds and paths, ornamental bushes and imported trees, fountains and ponds, a large gazebo used for outdoor weddings and ceremonies, an amphitheater-shaped grassy hillside for concerts, as well as several open fields for recreation and lounging.
As Becca’d predicted, the Gardens were beautiful on this lovely afternoon. Trouble was, everyone else on campus must’ve had the same thought. The paths were crowded, the benches full, the gazebo overflowing. Even the amphitheater and adjacent fields were full of students sunning themselves and tossing Frisbees. After weaving their way through the crowds around the fountains and gazebo, Becca finally found a few square yards of grass on the hillside overlooking an open field. She sat and gestured for Zach to sit beside her. They sat a few minutes in silence, observing the vibrant, chaotic scene unfolding in front of them. The field was densely packed with people lying on blankets in the sun. Many of the women were in bikinis, and some—including an attractive pair of sorority sisters just a few feet away—were lying on their stomachs with their bikini-top straps undone to let their backs tan evenly. Some of the guys were trying to toss a Frisbee in the dense crowd. Still others had music blaring from boom-boxes.
Becca laughed and shook her head. “I think they must’ve cancelled classes.”
“And the beach trip,” Zach added. He reached out to grab a Frisbee that was sailing toward Becca’s head. He tossed it to the apologetic boy jogging past in bare feet.
“All we need now is a beach ball.”
As if on cue, a large, multi-colored beach ball came bouncing down the hill. It landed squarely on the scantily clad buttocks of one of the sorority sisters lying on the blanket. She yelled something, but didn’t roll over or move. Zach had to laugh.
Becca shook her head as she followed the beach ball’s bouncing path down the hill. “This is ridiculous.”
Zach nodded. “Wild scene.”
“Do you know any place a little less popular?”
Zach thought a minute. “I know just the place,” he said. “Let’s swap your car for my truck and I’ll take you there.”
“Good,” Becca said, standing carefully so as not to step on the nearby girls.
Becca pulled alongside Zach’s beat-up carryall truck in the parking lot beside his apartment building. They got out of the car and swapped roles as they climbed into the truck’s front seat, with Becca sliding over to the passenger’s side, past the shift knob, and Zach getting behind the wheel. Zach said, “Hope you’re not embarrassed to be seen in this beater.”
Becca said, “Embarrassed? I love it. It’s got so much style.”
“Is that what you call rusty fenders and a mismatched driver’s side door?” The original door had been side-swiped on a street in Boston and replaced by a salvaged door off a police paddy-wagon. The replacement door had never been repainted and was still a dingy white with the police logo painted over with rust-colored primer. The rest of the truck was a faded forest green.
“It’s so you Zach—your own person, your own world.”
He looked at her. “Sometime you’ll have to tell me what that means.”
“Sometime I will.”
Zach started the truck and backed out of the parking space.
“Now tell me where we’re going.”
Zach grinned mischievously. “My secret lair.”
“That sounds like fun.” Her smile never faded.
“You’re not scared?”
“No.”
“Darn. Not much of a mystery man, I guess.”
“That’s a good thing. I’m not much for surprises.”
Zach said, “I thought we’d go by Barton’s place. He’s got some woods behind his house and a beautiful field.”
“Sounds nice. He won’t mind?”
“He’s out of town at a conference. He tells me to feel free to walk in his woods anytime I want.”
Becca nodded. “Lead on.”
Zach parked his truck in a narrow turnaround where Barton’s drive started to curve up toward his house. Zach opened the door and slid out of the truck; Becca slid across the vinyl seat and climbed out on his side. As soon as he shut the door to the truck, a potent autumn stillness embraced them. After three hard frosts last week, the insects were all dead or dormant, the leaves were mostly off the trees, and the large pond to their left was utterly stagnant. Zach took Becca’s hand and led her into the bright woods along a rutted logging track.
At the top of the hill, the woods thinned and opened onto a three-acre triangular broom-straw field. The thin brown grass came up to their knees and released white, feather-like tassels as they moved past. The sky was a silver-tinged cloudless blue, the sun a warm golden disk just now touching the bare tips of the highest branches of the tallest poplars on the far side of the field. The silence that had overwhelmed them on exiting the truck persisted even in this open and inviting field. No breeze stirred, no branch shivered, no blade of grass moved if they didn’t move it, and even that movement was silent.
Zach led Becca, her hand still in his, straight into the heart of the field, to where it leveled off and then began to slope gradually downhill to the woods at the far side. This was Zach’s favorite spot in all of Barton’s forty acres—the road invisible behind the hill, no house or sign of human habitation in any direction, the open field merging into the tall deciduous woods beyond. Somewhere back in those woods was a ravine with a spring at its head and a trickle of water running into the creek that formed the western boundary of Barton’s land.
Zach released Becca’s hand and held his arms out toward the sloping field and the woods beyond.
Becca nodded but still didn’t speak. She sat on the grass at the highest point of the hill, just where it began to slope away. Zach sat beside her, leaving about a foot between them. The bare tree trunks cast long parallel shadows up the slope and across the field to where they sat. Even in the first few minutes after they sat, the earth rotated just enough in relation to the sun to cast one long shadow first across Becca, then into the space between them, then across Zach, then off to the field east, leaving them both in the sun’s warm late-day glow.
“This is beautiful, Zach. Thank you for sharing it.”
He nodded, first to the woods and their eternal creator, then turned and nodded to Becca, her golden hair in golden radiant fire in the golden sun. He wanted to speak but couldn’t. The air had left his lungs at the beauty of the girl beside him. He faced the woods again, tried to catch his breath.
“I bet you spend a lot of time out here,” she said.
“Every chance I get, but not as much as I’d like.” He spoke these words to the woods.
“Surprised anyone could pry you away from this.” She gestured toward the woods, then turned to him and smiled.
He nodded to the woods. “One of my favorite places on earth.” Then he added in his head but not aloud—that just became sacred the moment you sat down here and the sun kissed your face. He wanted to turn toward her but couldn’t. Every muscle in his body was locked in place. But his voice still worked. “Somewhere along the way, I realized it wasn’t enough.”
“What?”
“Nature. And I’ve looked pretty thoroughly. Even a spot beautiful and peaceful as this isn’t enough by itself.”
“You mean isn’t enough if you’re alone.”
“Isn’t enough if you’re alone,” he repeated. “I’ve looked.”
She turned back to the woods. “That’s what I’ve always figured, though I never really looked very hard or long. I love the outdoors—the beach, the woods, the mountains. But I’ve always known I had to be with people.”
“It took me awhile to learn that.”
They sat in a new silence that was somehow different from the previous one. Where the earlier silence had been imposed by the overwhelming scope and stillness of the setting and extended far out as they could see or imagine, this silence had been chosen by and just for them, extended just to the outer edge of their two bodies. It was the silence of sudden unexpected intimacy.
Zach’s muscles relaxed and he turned to brave another look at Becca. The sun had fallen behind a grove of pine trees deeper in the woods, and the whole hillside was now wrapped in pale gray twilight. Becca’s hair was still golden but not on fire, her face in profile still lovely but not debilitating. She seemed deep in thought, or was maybe focused on some movement down along the edge of the woods. Zach slowly closed the space between her face and his and kissed her dry cheek with dry lips. He froze in that gray twilight moment, his lips touching her skin, for several seconds that seemed an eternity to him—long enough to know that he’d just discovered something that changed his universe forever. Then he just as slowly and silently retreated to his former position. Becca never moved or spoke; her intent gaze into the woods never altered.
They sat for a few more minutes in their silence, the silence of new intimacy. Then Zach stood, helped Becca up, and walked her back to the truck through the deepening twilight.
Back at the apartment building’s parking lot, Becca didn’t wait for Zach to open his door, but instead opened her passenger side door. Just as she started to slide out that side, she stopped suddenly, turned and quickly leaned her body across the length of the front seat, and kissed Zach on his right cheek. Then she slid out her side of the truck.
She leaned back into the truck’s dome light from the darkness beyond. “Thank you, Zach.” Then she added, almost as an afterthought, “I’ll see you tomorrow in class.” She disappeared into the night.
Zach stared toward her fading presence.
