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Show 2 close and held on with all my gumless appetite for life and love. For a time we were inseparable. For some reason I never did get much involved with my sisters; they were too old, I suppose, and one incestuous affair was all I could handle. So the second love of my life was Lois Weber. She lived on a neighboring farm and was pretty enough, was only a year older than me, was sweet and agile and fleet. I was four. But though on neighboring farms, we were a quarter of a mile apart and I saw her seldom, when my mother visited her mother. Only one time I remember, and I remember the mud pies because she put a sprig of parsley on each one, a gesture which touched my heart. There in the muddy mess I believe I kissed her. Yet I knew I didn't love her very much, nor she me, for between us the old chemistry wasn't there, that primal zing. It was mainly that she was the only girl I knew. But then I started school and there were girls, girls, girls-almost a dozen in my room alone. The school was brick and square, with a center hall and a room in each corner, two grades to each room. So when I started first grade there was Lois in the second grade, which sat in the two rows nearest the windows. The first grade sat in the two rows nearest the stove, including Kate. Katie Cannon. I cannot once remember her inside that classroom but I remember her vividly outside it, red maple leaves and her smile which so turned me on. Her smile turned her eyes so merry that my heart danced; her smile caught her eyes up into a beauty which so dazzled me that I fell deeply into the chemistry of the thing, the ancient formula. That old zing was there all right, and since I was already practiced at falling, at letting go-not having to be told the third time's a charm-I didn't hold back a second. I knew nothing would ever be the same again. I suppose I was in that room too short a time to remember now where |
