A Rendezvous to Remember: A Memoir of Joy and Heartache at the Dawn of the Sixties by Terry Marshall & Ann Garretson Marshall

Author:Terry Marshall & Ann Garretson Marshall [Marshall, Terry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sandra Jonas Publishing
Published: 2021-02-08T22:00:00+00:00

Finally, it was quiet, and everyone was asleep except Paula and me. We had spent the evening with our two families, visiting and watching TV. No wonder Annie had written so few letters. She was on the go. So was I.

I had shown Paula a photo of Annie I kept in my wallet—her graduation picture, a studio pose, half-profile, eyes gazing into the future, bouffant do, every hair in place. Paula had borrowed it after dinner, disappeared into her room, and emerged three hours later with a pen-and-ink rendition on heavy art paper, remarkably lifelike. “You can put her on the wall above the bed and dream sweet dreams,” she said. “I’ll touch her up tomorrow and add the freckles. She’ll be perfect.”

We propped the drawing on the coffee table and sat side by side on the sofa. She had been drawing “forever,” she said, and wanted to major in art. Vermeer, Caravaggio, Monet, and a dozen other artists rolled off her tongue as if they were classmates.

We fell silent and soon Paula nodded off. Her hair brushed my cheek, and her head slumped onto my chest. Before us, on the coffee table, Annie was looking discreetly off to the left, chin up, lips parted, but she didn’t say a word. I knew that look. It’s okay, she’s my cousin, I told Annie silently. We were talking is all, just talking. She fell asleep. Annie stared back.

I squeezed lightly at Paula’s shoulder. “Time for bed, Rembrandt. We’ve got a big day tomorrow.” Her eyes blinked open. I pushed myself to my feet, took her by both hands, and tugged. “Come on, kiddo. Your carriage turns into a pumpkin at midnight.”

“I fell asleep, didn’t I? Did I snore? Or say anything dumb?”

“Nope. You were as well behaved as you are attractive.”

“Disgusting, isn’t it? But I get older every day. Good night, dear cuz.”

I kissed the back of her hand. “Thanks for the portrait. Thanks for everything.”

She headed down the hallway, then stopped and turned back. “Thanks for coming, Terry. I meant it about getting older every day. We both are. Think about that.”

Nearly midnight. Alone again. Paula’s drawing was a tailor-made antidote to the flammable mix of loneliness and desire: Annie—regal, determined, a portrait of promise. I cradled her in my hands and carried her to my bedroom, set her on the nightstand, and returned to the letter I had started after dinner. “You’ve seen the Riviera, so there’s nothing I can tell you about beaches,” I wrote. I didn’t mention Paula but confessed I’d been “bothered” by the “fine young bods” trotting past me at the beach. “All I could think of was making love to you.”

I hesitated. Annie and I had talked about making love, but in marriage, not in the throes of passion. She would wait, she told me. No ifs, ands, or buts. We had come perilously close, or should I say gloriously close. We had rounded third base and flirted precipitously with home. But we had never talked about our physical intimacies or written about them.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.