The Sweetheart

It was a winding, meandering path. A slippery slope. Go or no go. It was the on switch. It was a runaway train. But it was also a faucet I could have turned off at any time, and I didn't. I didn't want to. I dithered in cliche after cliche, but when it was all said and done, I was not taking the high road.

We had been sweethearts. I gave him mine, and he gave me his. He also gave his heart to Donna, and apparently, he also gave her his penis because now she was giving him a baby. His mother was one of the lunch ladies when we were in high school, and she always gave me a little extra Jell-o on the days we had those jewel-toned, jiggly cubes. She moved on to the hospital cafeteria after several years of working in the local education system.

She's the one who taught me how to make the yeast rolls (Parker House Rolls, to be sure) that won me a blue ribbon at the county fair. It was a warm day in April when I went to her house, the windows were open, and a warm breeze whipped the muslin curtains in and out of the windows in a random rhythm that only came from nature itself. Houseflies had started waking up from the winter, and they were buzzing every which way through the house. Every now and again, I saw one struggling against the sticky fly paper attached to a window. "It's useless, you silly bug," Bernie's mother said. "Fight all you want, but you'll never be strong enough to wrench yourself out of that glue."

We stood side by side in Althea's kitchen, and we watched the yeast and sugar bubble up in the lukewarm water. "It's ready, don't you think?" I asked. She nodded.

We began mixing, stirring, kneading, and waiting for the dough to rise. When it was ready, we punched it down and waited for it to rise again. The house began to take on the sweet smell of yeast, the smell of some new living thing taking on a life that would be snuffed out soon by the oven, leaving only the ghost of its soothing, comforting aroma.

"Ginny, why don't we sit on the back porch and have some lemonade while we wait on that dough, hmm?" Althea suggested. Bernie and I had been sweethearts for around six months, and we were like-minded. He would go to college, and I would go to secretarial training. He would go on to be a lawyer. We would live somewhere, have some children, and we would be happy. Althea poured tall glasses of lemonade for the two of us, and we sat on rockers. The rocking motion seemed to move the air around us, providing maybe just the tiniest iota of relief in the mid-Spring heat.

"Mmm. My goodness, Althea, this is some tart lemonade," I said, smacking my lips.

"That's how Bernie likes it. If I'm going to turn my boy over to you, I need to teach you how to make the things he likes," she said. "And that boy likes lemonade that will turn your insides, well, inside out." She laughed. I laughed. "It's terrible, isn't it?"

I nodded in agreement. "Would you like some sweet tea, Ginny?"

"No tricks, just plain old sweet tea?" I asked

"No tricks," Althea responded.

"You know," Althea said in a conspiratorial tone, "I was cleaning the house the other day, and in comes Bernie. He's so excited. I didn't think I'd see him more excited than the day he received his law school acceptance letter. But he's so excited. He says, 'Ma, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna ask Ginny to marry me,' and then he takes a little jewelry box out of his pocket, and when he opens it, why…there's the daintiest little diamond nestled on a bed of sapphires." She paused a moment and fanned herself. "Oh, Ginny, it's so pretty."

"Really?" I asked, not believing what I was hearing. "You think he's going to propose? To me?" I pointed to myself.

"You two are like-minded, a good match. He's planning to ask your daddy for your hand, too," Althea said, then dropped her voice low. "I don't know when he's going to ask, and I don't know when he's planning to propose, but it's going to be soon. You have to be surprised." Her face reddened. "I shouldn't have said anything, but I just couldn't keep it inside any longer."

Later in the week, Bernie came to see me. We sat on my front porch swing, holding hands. "Ginny, I need you to know I love you like I will never love any other woman, but I was weak."

"Oh?" I asked. He was quiet, and I felt a tremor in his hand. When I looked into his face, I saw his eyes turning red, water collecting in his lower lids, then overflowing down the planes of his face. "What are you talking about, Bernie? What have you done?"

"I had sexual congress with Donna. I've been having sexual congress with Donna for a while. I knew you were saving yourself for marriage, and I didn't want to spoil that for you, but I've been weak, and now Donna has fallen pregnant."

I sat there stunned, taking my hand away from him, and drawing into myself. How small could I become? Could I somehow disappear from this scene, go back in time, and re-write the chain of events leading to this outcome? And then I was angry. Who was Bernie to decide if I was withholding sex until our wedding night? We had never discussed it. He just assumed. "Bernie, I cannot talk to you anymore. You belong to another woman. You're marrying her, I presume?"

He nodded, and his heaving sobs were a testament to what a fool and a coward he was. "When is the big day?" I asked.

"This weekend," he said miserably between hiccups.

"I see," I said. "And you know everyone in town knows we're sweethearts, and you know how pathetic everyone in town is going to think I am when we're no longer together and Donna is having your baby." It was a rhetorical question, but his head was bobbing.

"I'm leaving town," I said. "It kills me to leave your sweet mama, but I cannot be the woman everyone points at and laughs at or feels sorry for. Your selfishness has ruined our beautiful story."

We sat on the porch swing in silence, and I mourned the loss of my dream life with Bernie. In my head, I was handing it over to that greedy Donna, who spread her legs for my Bernie, and my Bernie who would never be my Bernie again.

Donna's mother worked in the town grocery, and before I moved from my parents' house to find a different dream, I had the pleasure of making a trip to the grocer's, and who should I see? Donna's mama. "Ginny, fancy seeing you here," she said. "You know my Donna and Bernie got married the other weekend. You should see the ring he gave her." She fanned herself in an exaggerated way. "It has a little diamond in the center, and it's surrounded by sapphires."

I tried not to look surprised, but I was burning up on the inside. Bernie had given Donna my ring. He had given her my dream. Did I want my dream back? Not with Bernie. He couldn't be trusted. Nope.

When I first moved, I found magazines with the latest, trendiest hairstyles, and my hair had never been cut. It wasn't a difficult decision, but while I sat in the beauty operator's chair, I was overwhelmed by how much hair had been on my head, as it now found a temporary home on the beauty shop floor. I said goodbye to my mane of jet black hair, curling up on itself like a dying snake. When the beauty operator finished styling my hair, she turned me around in the chair to see myself for the first time, and joy lit my face as I saw who had been hiding under all that hair my whole life.

After I'd been gone from home around ten months, I found myself fluffing the throw pillows in my new apartment. My life looked much different than in the small hometown I had fled, because, make no mistake, I had fled.

I thought I heard some kind of noise at my apartment door. Did I hear knocking? The sound came again. It was timid, unsure, light like I imagine a bird would tap on a door. When I opened the door, there stood Bernie. His hands in his pockets, looking sheepish.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

He looked at me, really looked at me, seeing my new hair, my pedal pushers, ballet flats, and tight fitting sweater. His eyes widened. He stammered, "Ginny. I-I just wanted to see you. Your folks gave me your address."

"Well, here I am, and you've seen me," I answered wryly. "Oh, I notice you're wearing a wedding band. How's the baby? I haven't really kept up with anyone, since I had to flee our hometown to avoid all the pitying looks I was receiving everywhere I went."

"Donna lost the baby," he said. "We can get the marriage annulled or divorce or something, and then the two of us can be together."

I thought about it. The engagement ring Stewart had given me was in my jewelry box. I didn't wear it around the apartment when I had cooking or cleaning to do. Stewart was loyal, loving, and everything Bernie couldn't be for me, but I wanted to see how things played out.

"Tell you what, Bernie. Go ahead and end everything with Donna. After that's all done, come back and see me."

His face brightened, and he smiled. "You won't be disappointed, Ginny. I'll end things tonight."

He left my apartment, and I watched him get into his car, calling to me, "You'll see, Ginny. We can still have a life together. You'll see."

His marriage came to an end one week after my wedding to Stewart, and I may have felt a little bit bad for lying and game playing, but only for the briefest of moments.