That Summer
by Helen Sheehy
Everyone says I went crazy that summer.
The summer before my sophomore year at college. I didn’t even look like myself. I was fat with long brown hair, and I wore glasses with black frames. I worked at Kohl’s in the lingerie department, hanging bras on plastic hangers and folding polyester panties into neat piles.
He was skinny. A tall, pale man with a thin face. He had narrow, gray eyes.
Did we have conversations? I don’t remember speaking a word. He talked. About what I don’t recall. He had a scratchy sort of voice, and he cleared his throat a lot.
My roommate didn’t like him. I think she was jealous that I had someone when she didn’t. The three of us ate dinner together once. They argued about something, even raised their voices at one point. It’s so strange that I don’t remember saying anything. Now I talk all the time.
I must have said something when he handed me the ring box. We were in a café. Flags were everywhere, so it was probably around the 4th of July. I was eating a grilled cheese sandwich with a pickle and chips on the side. The diamond was huge. An emerald cut solitaire on a white gold band. I took it. I must have put it on. I know that I finished my sandwich and ordered a hot fudge sundae with extra fudge and whipped cream.
A week later, I took him to the farm to meet my family. My mother fixed fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and biscuits. All afternoon he played nickel-dime-quarter poker with my brothers. It was hot. My brothers took off their shirts and sat naked from the waist up, now and again wiping their sweaty, soft bellies and hairy underarms with paper napkins. I stood behind his chair. He sat erect over his cards. His shoulder blades curved like wings beneath his t-shirt. He didn’t sweat. He just took their money, winning hand after hand. We ate cherry pie with vanilla ice cream and then drove back to the city.
He introduced me to his parents at a Sunday dinner late in August. He was their only child. His father and mother were unexpectedly old, with faded gray eyes and thinning gray hair. I held out my left hand to show them the diamond. We shook hands and theirs felt fragile and hollow. There was a white cloth on their dining room table, white bone china, and heavy silverware. A maid served prime rib, a thick slab of bright red meat surrounded by a warm pool of blood. It was delicious. In the air conditioned room, I had to eat fast before the beef cooled. Little drops of juice splashed off my plate, staining the white tablecloth. The wine dribbled down my glass and onto my fingers. I dabbed at the spots with my white linen napkin, already blotched with pinky-red stains from the drips on my chin and hands.
I wore red lipstick that summer because I knew he liked it. I wonder now what he saw in me, the person that I was. Did we have fun? I don’t recall. We never talked of love. But we made love, of a kind.
Was it sex then? Just that? Was it my lips leaving red smears on his pale stomach while his penis waved slowly from side to side in a continuous salute? He wouldn’t let me actually touch it. And I didn’t want to. It looked blade-sharp and dangerous. Even he, when it was time, used his handkerchief as a shield.
One day summer was over. He left for an army base in Kentucky. He said he would write but he never did. He was killed, the newspaper said, by “live ammo.” His parents never notified me about a funeral.
I don’t remember what I did that winter. But when spring came, I sold the ring. I got my hair cut and highlighted. I bought contact lenses. I found that I had lost weight so I shopped for new clothes. I quit my job at Kohl’s.
Everyone at college couldn’t believe how I’d changed. My roommate told me to forget about it, about him. She introduced me to a great guy from her hometown. I married him and lived happily ever after.
I’m old now. Lately I’ve been wondering about that summer. I wish I could ask him, Who were you then? Were you someone else too?
Helen Sheehy is the author of a theater textbook, and biographies of theater legends Margo Jones, Eva Le Gallienne, and Eleonora Duse. She has contributed numerous articles and essays to American Theatre, Connecticut Magazine, Opera News, The New York Times, and other publications. Her latest essay "Sentences" (about getting old, riding horses, and going to prison) was published in Under the Gum Tree in Fall, 2022. After years of writing non-fiction, she has abandoned facts and footnotes and returned to her first love, telling stories and making stuff up. Her first short story, "The Gift That Keeps on Giving" was recently published in Bodies: An Anthology. "That Summer" is her second short story. Her website is helensheehy.org