Everything was quiet back at the apartment. The security guy on duty
reported that traffic had been down considerably over the holiday weekend.
Sandy came home later that afternoon and Brenda around dinner time. After
dinner and a full debriefing on everyone's holiday and my parent's response
to my mystery date, Sandy asked if they needed to go out for the evening.
“I suppose after being at your folks all weekend, you two want to be
alone?”
Being alone again with Paul was always appealing, but it was getting bad
outside. The temperature was dropping and the wind was blowing hard. We
didn't need wind chill calculations to tell us it was a miserable night to
be out and about. I assured her we would just settle in for an evening in
front of the TV.
Paul got up after a while and went into the bedroom. A few minutes later
there was a series of protesting screeches from the bedsprings followed by
a muffled thud. Sleepily engrossed in the TV, I wondered what he was up to.
Then we heard Paul whistling a little tune. Not unusual. He often hummed or
whistled when he was busy with something and I figured he was emptying the
suitcase he had taken over the weekend. Another minute or two passed and
there was a metallic, rattling clang. We all looked at each other and
headed for the bedroom.
The mattress was standing against the far wall and Paul was kneeling at the
foot of the bed diligently dismantling it, whistling as if this were
something he did regularly, just another bedtime chore! He had one side
rail free from the footboard and was working on the other.
“Geez! You guys broke the bed!” Sandy burst out laughing.
Paul looked up, grinned and said “No. It is breaking me.” He gave a whack
and jerk on the side rail and it came free. “The springs are shot and the
mattress is too soft. Very bad for my back.” He lowered the foot end of the
spring to the floor, got to his feet and leaned the footboard against the
dresser.
“You have a bad back?” Brenda asked.
“Oh, aye. Terrible bad.”
Now that was news to me. I had seen no evidence of it and he had never
mentioned it. I was suspicious even before he looked at me with a
mischievous gleam in his eyes.
“It can be a right bothersome thing to deal with. Flares up quite
regularly, it does,” he went on. “There are times when I am up all night.”
I stifled a laugh.
“How did you hurt it?” Brenda asked. She sounded a little suspicious too.
“Hamburg. Fell off the stage. Could have been hurt, but I landed on a
waitress. Big Brunhilda of a woman, but a lot of fun.” He was now removing
the headboard. “The only thing for it is to sleep on a soft, but firm
surface. Tess's Mum suggested that very thing this weekend. She said if the
fold-up bed was uncomfortable to just put the mattress on the floor.”
My dear mother would have a heart attack if she knew Paul was taking her
advice for his own purposes, but it was a great idea. I lent him a hand as
he jiggled the headboard free. “I'd hate to see you up all night,” I said,
working hard to keep a straight face.
Brenda made a choking sound and burst out laughing. Sandy looked puzzled.
We stashed the bed parts out on the back porch. Sandy didn't catch on until
later as we were getting ready for bed. Paul was watching the Tonight show
and Brenda was in the bathroom. Sandy was standing in the hall talking to
me while she waited for her turn in the bathroom. I was hanging up some
clothes, then went to straighten out the blankets on the mattress, now in
its place on the floor. Sandy commented, “Well, at least now it won't
squeak.”
The truth dawned and she started to laugh. “Bad back, my ass!” she
whispered conspiratorially to me, unaware Paul had just walked up behind
her.
He leaned back to do an exaggerated survey of her anatomy and waggled his
eyebrows lecherously. “And a loverly one it is!” he said.
She squawked in surprise and embarrassment and Paul laughed, slipped past
her into the bedroom, and shut the door.
With that inconvenience taken care of, we settled into communal living.
Paul fit comfortably into our lives. He delighted in having three girls to
wait on him hand and foot, and in our unenlightened, unliberated '60s girl
ways, we enjoyed doing it. In return, he fixed a leaky faucet (“Dad was
always fixin' these things. Wouldn't pay a plumber. Still won't!”),
shoveled snow (which the fans outside loved, I'm sure they prayed for snow
every night), and remembered to put the seat down on the toilet.
There was the obvious awkwardness of having a man underfoot; closing
bedrooms doors for a quick change of clothes, not zipping to the bathroom
in our underwear. Of course, I had more leeway on those things than Sandy
and Brenda, but knowing they wouldn’t be comfortable with me parading
around like that in front of Paul, I followed suit. At first, our habit of
drying underthings over the shower rod came to an abrupt halt, but the
nylons and pantyhose crept back quickly, they weren’t something you machine
washed and the shower rod was just too handy.
Simply having one more person in our little apartment made it feel a little
crowded, especially since we were all there most evenings and the living
room was small. Getting a turn at the bathroom in the morning was no worse
than usual though. Paul always waited until we were ready for work before
getting up. Mealtime was fun, a man to cook for and lots of interesting
dinner conversation.
While we had anticipated Paul’s maleness, we hadn’t been prepared for his
energy level. Unlike John who could easily spend a whole week on a couch in
a trance, Paul was always busy, at least once he rolled out of bed in the
morning. He wasn’t an early bird! He liked helping out in the kitchen, but
his idea of helping was pretty much limited to tasting while we cooked, and
fixing tea and toast. Unlike someone used to a nine to five job and used to
having his hours filled for him, he didn't get bored easily. Time spent on
planes and trains and hotel rooms taught him how to keep busy. He always
had a book along, red newspapers with a diligence that almost matched
John's. He enjoyed watching TV, not because he thought the shows were so
great, but because of the variety of shows and channels on American
television. He loved evening network TV and spent afternoons watching old
movies on Channel 11. Musicals were his favorites and it was always funny
to hear a Beatle do a rendition of some old song from an old Bing Crosby
movie. He was always listening to music, jotting down ideas for songs on
scraps of paper, even doing some drawing. When he picked up his guitar or
got near a piano, he got lost. If he had an audience, he could just ding
around on it for a long time, playing old favorites, working out something
he had just heard on the radio, or just improvising. When he was left
uninterrupted, he would spend hours working on songs. He was interested in
anything we suggested and didn’t seem to mind the steady stream of friends
who dropped in. The apartment suddenly seemed small for all the activity,
chatter, and laughter that filled it.
Brenda and Sandy gave us time alone and it never seemed to be enough, but
just having him there, lying with his head on my lap while we watched TV,
interrupting household chores with a quick hug and not-so-quick kiss was in
a way as satisfying as our time alone. The week flew by. With school out
and Sandy off work for the week, we were free to take Paul sightseeing
around the city, sledding, ice skating, whatever we could manage without
drawing a crowd.
Word went out quickly that we were back, and mobs of kids out for Christmas
vacation bundled up against the cold and waited for Paul to come out. He
greeted them, talked to them, signed autographs if it wasn't too cold to
hold a pen and even built a snowman with them. It disappeared overnight. We
speculated that somewhere in Minneapolis a mother and daughter were at odds
over what could reasonably be kept in the family freezer!
The reporters finally found us. They were a heck of a lot harder to satisfy
than the fans. Light bulbs flashed every time we went out, and Paul was
asked repeatedly why he was here and replied he was “visiting a friend.”
They wanted him to pose for pictures, but he just smiled, waved, and we
kept on going. They wanted interviews and he just smiled and said, “Sorry,
I'm on holiday.” Dave Moore had to make do with that kind of footage when
he did his follow up report on confirmed Beatle sightings in Minneapolis.
I watched the news that night, feeling like I was watching someone else on
the screen, someone else coming out the door, down the steps, holding
Paul's hand, smiling at the fans, looking up at Paul as he told the
reporter for the fifth time why he was in town and he wasn't giving
interviews. That couldn't be me! Paul's new girl! (Who needed to buy a new
winter coat, I looked like a roly-poly fur-trimmed ball.)
I expected a call from Mom, but she didn't call on Tuesday night. I had to
work Wednesday evening and when I got home at midnight there was a note on
the pillow. “Needed a piano. Carol said I could go down to the dance
school. Don't wait up, I have a key. Love, Paul.”
I thought about going down to join him, but I knew if he was in the middle
of working on something I would just interrupt him, so I went to bed. Just
as I was drifting off to sleep, he came home. He undressed silently in the
dark and slipped into bed with me. He felt cold and I wrapped myself around
him. “So warm, so sweet,” he whispered with a gentle kiss and we made love
quietly and gently and I fell asleep thinking that this was a scene that
would be repeated many times in the years to come.
The phone rang on Thursday evening while we were fixing supper. Brenda
answered and after a moment of exchanging holiday greetings with the
caller, she turned to me. “It's your Mom,” she said. Supper was forgotten.
Sandy and Brenda knew how worried Paul was about my parent's reaction.
Sandy turned to Paul and gave him a quick hug while Brenda handed me the
phone.
“Hi, Mom,” I said, trying to sound relaxed. Mom made small talk for a
while, talking about the weather, asking if the clothes she had gotten me
for Christmas fit, reporting that she had just talked to Steve and Jenny
had a fever. She finally got down to business. She wanted to know if we
planned to come down for the New Year's weekend.
Paul and I had talked about it. He felt we should, and, even though he
sounded like he would rather do just about anything else, it needed doing,
like a trip to the dentist. I hated the idea of possibly subjecting Paul to
another inquisition but agreed that it was something we had to do.
“We thought we would come down Friday evening. We don't have any plans for
New Year's Eve so we thought we would stay until Sunday.” Even if we had
wanted to go out, there weren't too many places to go on New Year's Eve
that would be safe. I didn't want a repeat of the Halloween party.
“Oh. That would be... nice. We want to spend more time with Paul and get to
know him.”
“You do?” That sounded promising.
“I think we’d better.”
I didn't know how to take that. Did it mean they were resigned to the idea?
That didn't seem likely. Or did they want to have more ammo to build a case
against him? There was a long silence while I thought it over. I finally
simply asked, “What did you think of him, Mom?” Paul had been pacing the
floor and at this, he stopped. Brenda slipped an arm around him.
“That's the problem, Terry. We don't know what to think. He seemed so nice
and normal, but all that stuff with drugs and girls... "
I ignored the last part and concentrated on the fact that they had liked
him. Paul was right, we needed to spend time with them. “OK, Mom,” I said,
turning to give a big smile to Paul. We'll come down on Friday. You'll see
you were right. He is nice and he is normal!”
Paul grinned and shook his head at the “normal” while the girls stifled
laughter.
“Oh, Terry,” Mom said, with dismay. “He might be perfectly nice, but we
just can't let you just take off with him. You just can't do that. He
admits he takes drugs. Once he got you over there, there is no telling what
he might get you involved in. I know it looks glamorous, and he certainly
is good looking in spite of that hair, but... "
My heart sank and I turned away so Paul couldn't see my face. “Mom,” I
interrupted, trying not to sound like I was giving an ultimatum. “this
isn't about deciding whether I go to England with him. You just need to
decide what kind of relationship you want to have with us and before you do
that, you need to get to know him to give him a chance. But whether or not
I should be with him in the first place is my decision.”
Long, long silence. “You've already decided.”
“I love him.”
Another long silence was followed by words that conveyed exasperation,
worry, and regret. “I don't know about this weekend. I'll have to discuss
this with your Dad. I'll call you later.”
“OK, Mom.”
I hung up the phone and turned to Paul. He looked at me, a question in his
eyes. “She's going to talk to Dad. She'll call back when they decide if
they want to see us.”
I hadn't expected the possibility of being uninvited. Tears stung my eyes
and Paul's arms were around me. I was shocked and hurt, but I was worried
about Paul. I could feel his heart pounding. This was what he had feared. I
pulled myself together, bolstered by the knowledge that this changed things
between me and my parents, not between Paul and me. I hugged him, kissed
him, looked him squarely in the eyes and said firmly, "Looks like I'll be
doing all my own packing this summer.”
He hugged me so hard it hurt. “I'll make it up to you somehow, Tess,” he
said quietly, and his kiss was so sweet nothing else mattered.
“Ahem,” said Brenda.
We pulled apart to look at her.
“Are we going to eat, or should Sandy and I go to a movie?”
We all laughed and went on about the business of getting supper on the
table.
Dad called back an hour later. “So are you coming down this weekend?” he
asked without any preliminaries.
“We would like to.”
Dad said. “You can always come home no matter what you decide to do, and he
is welcome here, at least for now.”
That last bit didn't sound promising, but I would take what I could get.
The only thing that could change their attitude was getting to know Paul.
“We'll be down Friday evening. Tell Mom we'll eat before we come so she
won't have to worry about dinner.” She would be tired after work and if she
had to feed company (friend or foe, Paul would still be company) she would
be all in a dither.
Thursday and Friday flew by, and our time together was slipping away fast.
We didn't talk about it much, but Friday afternoon as I was working through
a basket of ironing, I promised I would try to write at least once a week.
“No need to do that,” he said. “I'll be talking to you before we could get
letters across.”
I must have looked disappointed.
“What?”
“I was hoping you would write to me.”
“I'll call more often if you like.”
“No, that's not it. I've never gotten a love letter and I would like to.”
“Ah, get off. You've a dresser drawer full of them! All tied with a pink
ribbon.”
“No, I've never gotten one. I wrote to Gary a few times while he was in the
service and he wrote to me, but they weren't love letters. We broke up when
I moved up here. That was before he went in, but we were still friends and
so I wrote to him.”
“So you weren't in love with him?”
That was kind of off the topic and it startled me. I turned from the
ironing board to look at him. “No,” I said.
His expression was thoughtful as he absent-absentmindedly fiddled with his
teabag. I waited, but he said nothing more so I went back to ironing. He
got up to make another cup of tea. Without looking at me he asked softly,
“You have never been in love before?”
“No,” I reported. “I thought you knew that. I told you about my skimpy love
life.”
That got a little grin. “You told me about your sex life, darlin' girl. I
asked if you've ever been in love.”
I had to laugh a little at the memory that evoked. “When Gary said he loved
me I was appalled, horrified, scared, embarrassed. Everything but in love
with him.”
“He said he loved you?” I don't think Paul heard anything I had said except
that Gary had said he loved me.
“Not exactly,” I said, wondering what Paul was trying to figure out. “We
were making out in the back seat. Maybe he just wanted to see how far he
could get and thought saying that might get him a little more. What he said
was 'I think I love you.' I was not expecting that at all. I didn't even
have to think about whether I was falling in love with him. I wasn't. He
was nice and I liked having someone to go out with, but I knew this wasn't
it. I even felt bad sometimes about keeping on dating him when I knew it
would never get serious.”
“So how did you handle it then?”
I grimaced, embarrassed by the memory. “I was so surprised I just blurted
out the first thing that came into my head. I said, ‘Don't say that!'”
Paul groaned theatrically, put his hands over his heart and staggered back
to a chair as if mortally wounded. “Oh, God. That poor lout. Took all the
nerve he had to tell you that and you just blew him away. Clobbered him,
you did!”
“I know,” I said, laughing at his ongoing act of suffering. “I told him I
just wasn't ready to hear that. I wanted to be free to have fun.”
“So then you went off to school where you lived like a cloistered nun.”
“Right!”
Sandy came into the kitchen to check on the spaghetti sauce she had
simmering. We tasted, debating on whether it needed more garlic. “Paul,
taste this and see what you think,” Sandy said. Paul didn't answer and when
we turned around he was staring distractedly into space.
“Hey, dreamer, taste this,” Sandy said taking a spoonful of sauce to him.
“Sorry,” he said and obediently sampled the sauce and rendered an opinion.
Sandy went back to “As the World Turns,” I went back to ironing, and Paul
drifted off into his thoughts again.
Of course, wild, paranoid thoughts were flitting through my mind. I had
said something, done something wrong. Everything that had happened,
everything Paul had said and done in the last two weeks told me he loved
me, so the paranoia couldn't find a strong foothold. Maybe I didn't feel
one hundred percent trusting when it came to his being physically faithful,
but I trusted in his love.
I finished ironing the last piece, switched off the iron and looked up to
find Paul looking at me very soberly. He looked away quickly and got up to
put his cup in the sink. I went to him and, as always, found myself drawn
against him. It was impossible for us to simply stand next to each other.
As soon as we got within a certain distance, we were pulled together.
Brenda said we were like beads of mercury from a broken thermometer.
“What's wrong?” I asked.
Paul hesitated, started to say something and then stopped and laughed in
embarrassment. “I think we are about to have one of those bloody-awful
‘what's wrong', 'nothing' conversations,” he said.
“I know what you mean. One person isn't ready to discuss it and the other
feels shut out.”
“Or the first person is an idiot and it isn't deserving of discussion
anyway.”
“Ah, but you know the rules,” I reminded him. “Once started the game has to
be played out to the finish. Spill it.”
He sighed. “Sorry, honey. I just... You make me feel so old. Not in age,
just... I've been around.”
I couldn't help laughing. “I have thought the same thing so many times. You
make me feel so young and naive, but I am still willing to take you on even
though you are jaded and decadent,” I teased.
He smiled at me, but when he went on, he was dead serious. “Tess, one of
the things I like best about you is that you are so innocent, but not at
all a child. You are so sure of yourself, what you want, so sensible. You
don't just go with whatever feels good and hope it will be OK, you actually
make decisions. I guess I forget how young you are.”
I didn't like the sound of this. “I'm twenty-one, you won't get in trouble
for being with me,” I said, more pleading than objecting.
Paul pulled me tight. “No, it's not that. God, I'm making a mess of this.”
He hugged me for a moment, then held me back so he could see my face. “When
I was seventeen I thought I was in love, and again when I was nineteen.” He
shook his head at the boy he'd been.
“When I met Jane, it was so different. It was the first time I was really
in love. Well, I was sitting here listening to you say you've never been in
love before, and all of a sudden your being so young, so inexperienced
didn't seem so wonderful. Not at all. What if you are making the same
mistake I did? What if this isn't really it for you? I mean, I can see how
you could get carried away. I've got girls outside my door thinking they
are in love with me without any encouragement from me.”
The relief I felt was pure gold. I knew this wasn't a problem. I'd looked
at my feelings for him from every possible side. “Falling in love with
love,” I said softly to myself, remembering sleepless nights wondering what
love is.
Paul looked puzzled.
“I've been through all of this,” I explained. “I thought I was in love with
the idea of being in love. Or mistaking sex for love. Or infatuated with a
Beatle.”
His relief that I seemed to understand his concern was visible. “And?” he
asked.
“I didn't want to fall in love with you! It was crazy, ridiculous to think
that you would love me. I didn't want to love someone who lived eight
thousand miles away, and when I left England I sure as hell didn't want to
go on loving you, it hurt so bad, but I did. So much for the idea of
falling in love with love.”
He listened the way he always did, giving me time to get the words
together, letting me finish before he spoke.
“And sex?,” I went on, “If I didn't already know, John proved that what I
felt for you was more than the thrill of great sex.”
Paul flinched. I should have left out the “great”, but it had seemed
important to make my point. I took a breath and plunged on. “As far as
being infatuated with a big star, do you have any idea how many times I
wished you were Neil or Terry or anybody, but one of the Beatles? How much
easier it would be? I don't love you because of who you are. I love you in
spite of it.”
That made him flinch again and all I could do is hug him tightly. “I can't
change who I am, Tess,” he said miserably.
“I don't want you to. I was just trying to explain that I'm more certain of
how much I love you, of how real it is, than I've ever been of anything in
my whole life.”
“Grown-up love?” I could hear a note of teasing in his voice.
“Yes.”
“Forever love?”
“Yes.”
“Forgive-me-for-being-an-idiot love?”
“Yes,” I laughed and kissed him. “Through thick and thin, happy ever after,
true blue, endless love.”
“I think it is time to change the subject before I get in any more
trouble,” Paul murmured and escalated the kiss.
“What are you talking about?” I interrupted him to ask.
“Shut up and kiss me,” he said and I did and promptly forgot my question.
We hadn't been at my parents for more than two minutes that evening before
I suspected that it had been a mistake to come. My sisters were busy doing
supper dishes when we arrived. There was no music on the radio, no
laughing, no bickering over who was supposed to take out the trash. Good
behavior among siblings is a bad sign. The smiles they had for Paul showed
they were thrilled he was there, but greetings and laughter died abruptly
as Dad came into the kitchen, Mom following.
Dad greeted us with the usual questions about how the roads were, was it
snowing in Minneapolis. He was neither warm nor cool. Forced neutrality.
Mom said little, but one look told me how the week had gone at the Martin
household. She looked awful. Today we would say stressed out, but stress
was not the term used in the '60s. People didn't discover that they were
stressed until the '80s. Back then we said someone was worried sick, and
that was exactly the right way to describe Mom. She was pale, had dark
circles under her eyes, and every smile was an effort. She looked as
fragile as I had ever seen her. I think that moment gave me my first
insight into how hard it is to be a parent.
Mom was trying though. She double checked to make sure we had eaten,
offered us coffee, amended it quickly to tea, and dessert.
It was an awkward evening. My younger sisters followed their animal
instincts and disappeared as soon as the dishes were done. Anne hung in
there, but the conversation was full of awkward silences. It was another
hour before Steve and Jan showed up with Jenny, a little mood lightener in
bunny jammies. Her presence gave Mom something to think about besides the
self-destructive plans of her eldest daughter, and Steve and Jan got the
conversation going.
Rose and Kay came out of hiding to join us, and the evening ended much
better than it began. Mom went to bed at nine, exhausted, and Dad followed
an hour later.
“Mom looks like hell,” Steve said to me. I wished he hadn't said it in
front of Paul, but there wasn't much point in pretending everything was
fine.
I nodded. “She is upset.” I tried to smile at Paul. “Mom gets worked up
over stuff. She was an absolute wreck when I moved into the apartment. She
thought for sure I was going to run amok if I was on my own.”
With a little smile, he responded, “And here you are, proving her right!”
“Oh no,” Steve said. “Running amok would be staying up late and going out
on weeknights. This situation falls into the going to hell in a handbasket
category!”
We all laughed, and then I said to my sisters, “I am sorry about all this.
You guys are the ones who have to live with Mom and Dad and I bet it hasn't
been pleasant around here.”
“We are all just keeping a low profile,” Anne said.
“I think I would shoot for invisible!” Steve said.
When I woke up the next morning, I looked at the clock and saw it was a
little before seven. I turned over and planned to catch another hour of
sleep, but something was nagging at me, telling me there was some reason I
should get up. It took a minute, but then I remembered the last morning we
were here and how I had found Paul in the kitchen with Mom and Dad. I
wasn't about to leave him to deal with them alone again, especially now
that they'd had to time to get over the shock of him and settle on the side
of “Over my dead body!”
I scrambled out of bed and hurried downstairs. Only Mom and Jenny were up,
and Mom was getting Jenny's breakfast. Paul was still sleeping on the
roll-away bed in the living room so I went back upstairs for a quick shower
and got dressed. When I got back downstairs, Dad was up and Mom was fixing
his breakfast.
I joined them and we talked quietly about school, Uncle Joe's heart
trouble, the weather forecast. The closest we got to talking about Paul was
a discussion of why we weren't going out on New Year's Eve. I explained
that Brenda and Sandy were both going to a big party one of Mark's college
friends was throwing. A party involving U. of M. students got wild enough
ordinarily and it didn't sound like a safe place to try to take Paul.
Instead, we had brought a supply of party food, including champagne and
caviar, two things that had never been on any grocery list in our family.
We would toast the New Year here with Mom, Dad, and my sisters.
About then we noticed that Jenny had disappeared. She had been sitting on
the floor feeding the dog Cheerios. Amazing how long a dog will sit still
just to get one Cheerio at a time. Mitzi was a little poodle-mutt mix with
a cute little face that included bristly, stand-up eyebrows that gave her a
look of perpetual surprise. She was well trained enough not to actively beg
for food at the table, but that didn't stop her from sitting at your feet
salivating and staring at every morsel you put in your mouth. She loved
Jenny because Jenny shared whenever someone wasn't looking. Now both Jenny
and her dedicated little follower were gone.
Mom got up to go check on her, knowing only too well what an unsupervised
two-year-old can get into. Jenny wasn't in the downstairs bathroom or the
utility room so Mom started upstairs. She glanced into the living room as
she headed upstairs, stopped, and stood to watch for a minute, then put a
finger to her lips and beckoned us over to look.
Paul was still in bed, but he was getting breakfast. Jenny was sitting on
Paul's chest, solemnly feeding him Cheerios one by one from her little blue
cup while Mitzi stood, paws on the edge of the bed, watching the coveted
snack disappear, circle by circle.
“Eat!” Jenny instructed Paul as she fished out another Cheerio and held it
to his mouth. He obediently did so, biting her fingers and making her
giggle.
“No biting!” she told him with the next one.
“But I am so hungry and I really like fingers for breakfast,” he said.
More giggles. “No fingers!” Another Cheerio into Paul's mouth.
“Are you saving them for lunch then? I like fingers for lunch, too!”
“No!”
“Toes. I'll eat toes if you like.”
Jenny giggled, took a moment to feed a Cheerio to Mitzi, then with her
little dog-slurped fingers, fed an unresisting Paul another.
We tiptoed away, leaving the precious grandchild at the mercy of the wicked
rock'n'roll drug fiend and friend of the anti-Christ.
The rest of the day went fine with Paul watching the Beatles cartoon with
Rose and Kay, playing an endless game of fetch with Mitzi, shoveling snow
with Dad, playing the piano for Jenny, and, much to his enjoyment, taking
the horses out for a ride with Anne. Steve and Jan went out for the evening
and invited us to go along, but Paul quickly declined the offer. I knew he
didn't want to spend the evening meeting a lot of new people and being a
celebrity on display.
We brought in the New Year sitting in front of the TV with my family. Jenny
fell asleep before ten and we put her to bed and got out the party food. We
tasted the caviar and decided we preferred potato chips and dip. Mom didn't
think she could stay awake until midnight and wanted her annual glass of
Mogan David wine early, so Paul popped the cork on the champagne so we
could all toast the New Year. My sisters talked Mom and Dad into letting
them have a taste and quickly got the giggles on the one small glass of
champagne they were allowed. Soon we were all laughing at every silly thing
they said.
A psychic was a guest on the New Year's Eve program and we were arguing
over the feasibility of her predictions for the New Year when she surprised
us by saying “By the end of the year, the Beatles will be off the charts
and will break up, even though no announcement will be made.”
My sisters all went silent and sneaked glances at Paul as Joey Bishop, host
of the event, said, “That doesn't take a psychic to predict!”
“I've a prediction,” Paul announced. “She won't be back on next year's
show! Not only are we not breaking up, but this next album is going to be
better than ever.” It wasn't said with bravado, just quiet confidence.
The countdown at Times square went on, the ball dropped, the crowd roared,
and Paul kissed me. “Happy New Year, Tess.”
“The happiest,” I said and he smiled in agreement.
Dad followed Mom to bed, turning in before the New Year was more than a few
minutes old, and after an hour or so, my sisters left us alone to begin
1967 curled up on the sofa together, finishing off the champagne and, when
the house was silent and we were both tipsy enough not to worry about
getting caught, we finished each other off on the narrow roll-away bed.
Thankfully, I wasn't drunk enough to fall asleep there, and morning found
me waking up a little wuzzy-headed, but in my own bed.
Church that morning was a bit of an effort, but I was in a lot better shape
than Steve and Jan who didn't even try to get up in time and neither did
Paul.
New Year's not being the inviolate Family Holiday that Christmas is, the
afternoon brought the first carload of Beatle fans out to the farm. It was
funny to watch as they passed the neighboring farm and realized that our
farm was the last on the road. They stopped. It would have been pretty bold
to just drive right up to the house uninvited, but two football fields
distance away was too far to get a look at him should he appear outside.
They ended up compromising, inching their way to a curve in the road
halfway to the house. Within the hour they were joined by two more cars,
all observing the invisible distance barrier.
Paul was eager to go riding again that afternoon and wanted me to go along.
Two years of being only too aware that a broken arm would put me a full
year behind in school made me re-fuse. He went out with my sisters, no
doubt making the fans go nuts even if they couldn't be certain that that
guy in the winter parka (borrowed from Dad) was who they hoped it was. Paul
came back later talking enthusiastically about buying a place outside of
London so he could keep some horses. He was enjoying this visit!
As it started to get dark around five, the fans at “The Outpost” as my
brother had dubbed the spot, left. Only one managed to get stuck trying to
back up the drive to the neighbors to turn around. An impossible number of
kids piled out of the car, pushed it out and piled back in.
In spite of the miserable start, the weekend went better than I expected.
By the time we left at six, Dad was explaining the finer points of American
football to Paul, and Mom looked 100% better than she had when we arrived.
I could understand fully. My plans for being with Paul seemed crazy,
impossible, unthinkable, a disaster in the making when he wasn't around,
but when he was, his easy-going manner, sense of humor, and down to earth
practicality made me forget all the problems of Beatlemania. I went back to
Minneapolis feeling as I had at the beginning. All they needed was time to
get to know him.
The morning Paul was to leave, he woke me by pulling me up tight against
him and saying unhappily, “God, I hate sleeping alone.”
“So sleep with Marth ah,” I suggested.
“She snores, chases rabbits and whines in her sleep,” he answered. “You
snuggle.”
“Because you hog the blankets and its the only way I can keep warm.”
“So you won't miss me?” he teased, but all of a sudden I didn't feel like
kidding around.
“I haven't gotten over missing you all fall. I can't bear to think about
missing you again.”
“Then come with me!” he said with sudden heat. It was a discussion that had
simmered on the back burner for the last two weeks. He hadn’t asked me
again since meeting my parents. It was pretty obvious that my plan to
finish school was one of the few things that kept them from thinking I had
totally lost my mind. That hadn’t stopped him from whispering “I want us to
be together” and “I don’t want to leave you here” when he made love to me
though. He hadn’t given up. I was almost angry with him now for bringing it
up again. He knew how I felt, he knew how my parents were reacting. He was
just being stubborn and... well... selfish.
“This is crazy!” he said now. “We don’t need to be apart! I want you with
me. I want to come home to you at night and wake up with you in the
morning. I want to know you are there whenever I need you. God, my life
gets so unreal sometimes. I just want someone with me who is sane and quiet
and sweet and easy. Someone who loves me and doesn’t want anything from me.
Someone who won’t treat me different, expect more from me. Or less from
me." He broke off with a groan. “Christ, Tess, I just need someone I can
count on. I want you with me.”
The note of petulant anger in his voice had long since given way to
desperation, and my anger with him melted just as quickly. I felt awful. I
knew what he meant. I had seen the way people fawned on the Beatles, used
them. I had seen how hard it could be for them to walk out the door in the
morning and face the madness and how hard it was to have a normal life even
behind closed doors. Even so, I couldn't do what he wanted. My parents...
no, that wasn't the reason, at least not the whole reason.
“Don't,” I said, putting my finger on his lips. “Please don't. I love you,
I'd do anything you ask, but I want to finish school. So please, please
don't ask again because I will give in.”
Paul was silent for a long time weighing that, then said, "I don’t want you
to come until your parents get used to the idea. I don’t want you to have
to choose between them and me. You would be miserable if you had to do
that.”
I could only nod sadly. He pulled me closer, my head tucked under his chin,
his arms wrapped around me, legs tangled in mine as if trying to wrap me
into him, into something that couldn’t be separated from him, even as he
said the words of surrender. Softly, with aching sweetness, he admitted,
“That's enough, just knowing you would come to me if I asked it.”
We held each other and told each other it would only be a month or so until
we could spend a few days together. It felt like it might as well be a
year, but, having watched several of my friends send boyfriends off to Viet
Nam and having attended the funerals of two who came home early, I knew I
had no right to get all upset.
The worst part of saying goodbye was the drive to the airport. He held my
hand and we looked at each saying nothing, saying everything. In no time we
were parking the car. We kissed and I held on to him tightly, feeling
sudden panic at the thought of his leaving. “Promise you are coming back!”
I demanded.
He looked surprised and even offended at that. “How can you even think I
wouldn't?”
“Because nobody gets to be this happy in real life. The last time I felt
this way, it all fell apart. You took me to the train station and... "
“No! Stop that!” he said fiercely, then after a pause went on more softly.
“Believe me. Believe in us. This is real and nothing like that will ever
happen again. I won't let you go that easily.”
There was time for one more sweet kiss before Brenda and Sandy were back
with the security people who had been called to accompany Paul back to
England and were meeting us here. Introductions were made and we went
inside. We walked down the concourse to his gate, he checked in and the
airline agent informed him he could board immediately.
He held me just long enough to say “I love you,” and kiss me.