Feels Like the First Time (14 page)

My step-brother, Russell, and my step-sister, Tylene, came to stay with us for a few weeks. We had the run of the place for most of the time they were visiting. Mom was working as a waitress again and my step-dad was at work all day. We listened to music, played yard darts, badminton, Hearts and Crazy Eights.

I hoped I could be friends with Colleen again. I missed the camaraderie of stopping by unannounced and talking with her. Mom believed that Colleen had orchestrated the beginning of my relationship with Dawn because she thought I would be a nice, safe boy that would look out for her during her freshman year. I could still be controlled pretty easily, especially in high school. My mom also thought that I was no longer useful to Colleen, so she would do whatever she could to get rid of me.

If that was what Colleen had in mind, she was probably right. I was very innocent and naïve. I’m sure I was easier to control than a normal teenaged boy would have been. When I left for Alaska, I’m sure Colleen hoped Dawn’s mind–and maybe her heart–would be elsewhere when I returned.

Late one morning just before the 4th of July, Walt, Colleen, Dawn, and I started the vicious dance we would repeat the rest of the year. Russell, Tylene, and I were out in our side yard throwing the Frisbee. We saw Dawn through her open bedroom window. The three of us wandered across the yard and stood outside, talking to Dawn. I’m sure we were talking louder than we needed to, cutting up and laughing. We were teenagers and that’s what we did.

However, we didn’t know that Colleen was asleep in her room, right next to Dawn’s. Or at least she had been sleeping until we woke her up. She came into Dawn’s room and yelled at us to leave. She immediately grounded Dawn from seeing me for three days.

She wasn’t grounded from going places, or hanging out with her friends, or seeing Russell and Tylene. She was simply not allowed to see me for three days. I think Colleen and Walt knew this would bother us more than anything else, and they were right. I also think they had been planning to do this since the day I returned from Alaska. They were just waiting for a pretext to keep us from seeing each other.

Three days seems like nothing now, but at the time it seemed like an eternity to be without her. Russell, Tylene, and I hung out for most of the three days, but they occasionally hung out with Dawn while I went inside. It felt arbitrary and cruel to be shunned. On one of those days, Russell and I were hitting a badminton birdie back and forth in the side yard, just killing time and talking back and forth. Dawn was in her room with the window open, watching us play. I looked up to see her motionless silhouette. She turned her record player up loud, blasting
Love Hurts
by Nazareth across the yard. I didn’t know if she was sending the song’s message to her Mom, to me, or both of us.

Meanwhile, I had to find employment. The Vega was running on fumes, and I had no money to take Dawn anywhere. One evening, Walt walked around to the backyard where I was washing the Vega. He told me the DeGoede bulb farm, where he worked, was hiring.

“I could get you on if you want,” he said. I looked around for Colleen, who was nowhere in sight.

“Really?”

“Yeah. I could give you a ride to work and back. That is, if you want to come with.” He looked tired from a long day at work. I wiped the sweat off my forehead and shot a blast of water at the Vega.

I paused for a moment, but there was really nothing to think about.

“Yeah, that’d be great. Thanks.”

“Okay, I’ll tell them.”

“Sure, I can start whenever.”

“And look. Whatever’s happening between us away from the job, it won’t affect what we’re doing when we’re at work. Sound good?”

“Sure.”

I was eternally grateful to Walt for getting me that job.
Unfortunately, my career at DeGoede bulb farm was destined to be short. My job was to stand on top of a box at the end of a conveyor belt and sort good bulbs from bad ones as they rolled past me. This did not require a lot of brainpower. It merely required the ability to stand for long stretches without falling asleep. I constantly attempted to engage my fellow line-workers in conversation. I thought the day would pass a lot quicker if we played
20 Questions
or
Name That Tune,
or at least talked about something other than tulip bulbs. Mostly, I ended up talking to myself, which wasn’t too rewarding.

Toward the end of a shift in the middle of July, I turned to walk away from the assembly line and wrenched my knee. I had been standing there without moving for so long I had forgotten I was standing on a box. That was enough to pull me off the assembly line. My promising bulb evaluation career was over before it ever took off.

I was not heartbroken. However, I was unemployed again, and slightly hobbled. Two lonely days after I hurt my knee, I was sitting in our backyard under my favorite cherry tree reading Robert Heinlein’s
Stranger in a Strange Land
when Dawn came out her back door. She came and sat beside me, both of us leaning our backs against the trunk of the cherry tree and talked. It was like it was so often when we were together. Time grew slippery, and soon we were the only two people in the world. I felt something else too, something I wasn’t accustomed to feeling at all. A feeling of trust spread over me, and I realized I could tell her anything in the world and she would keep safe both the secret and the secret-giver.

I found myself lying with my head in Dawn’s lap, talking about my real father. He had died when I was five years old, and I never talked about him with anyone–not Mom, not my sisters or brother, and not my best friends.

Once I started talking to Dawn about him, I couldn’t stop. Words poured out of me in an endless stream. When I finished, I realized Dawn hadn’t said a word the whole time. She had just sat with my head in her lap, stroking my hair and listening. When she saw that I was done, she turned my head toward her, captured my wavering gaze and said “I’m sorry.” I don’t know why I chose that moment to talk about Dad, but I do know whatever peace I have about losing him springs from that day, sitting under the cherry tree with Dawn Adele.

My knee healed over the next few weeks, and I was able to find temporary work as a hay hand on a couple of farms. This job consisted of standing in a hayfield, picking up a hay bale, and pitching it onto a slowly moving truck as it rolled by you. This began as a simple task and grew much harder as the hay piled up on the truck’s bed. Eventually, I was tossing 40-60 lb. bales up and over four or five other layers of hay. Then I had to run and get to the next bale ahead of the truck as soon as I tossed one, and be ready to toss it. There was no need to spend time at the gym when I was haying.

Haying put money in my pocket again, which meant Dawn and I could go out.

Eventually, we missed a curfew and we were not allowed to see each other again for a few days. It happened again a couple weeks later. It was an odd way to spend the summer, alternating between happiness and frustration, able to see Dawn but not talk to her.

It was like the sensation of walking on ocean sand as the tide went out. One moment it felt like we were standing on solid ground, but the retreating water sucked the sand right out from under our feet. It was a dizzying feeling and we felt like we could lose our balance and tumble into the sea at any moment. That meant whenever we could see each other, we clung to each other more tightly than ever.

Colleen eventually tired of giving us these paper-cut punishments and called us on the carpet.

“We’ve given you both too many chances already, and you’ve let us down over and over. That’s over now.”

I turned my head a little quizzically. I knew we’d been home a few minutes late a couple of times, but we were really innocent, as far as teenagers went. We didn’t drink or smoke or do drugs, and even though we tended to jump out of our clothes when we were alone, we weren’t having sex.

I glanced at Dawn to see what she was thinking, but she gave me an almost imperceptible shrug. Her eyes were serious and a little scared.

“If you don’t follow the rules from now on, you won’t see each other at all, ever.” Colleen’s eyes bored into mine until I had to look away.

“If you two aren’t where you’re supposed to be when you’re supposed to be, or if you break any of our other rules, we are going to ban you from seeing each other. Permanently.”

Her anger was so severe that it didn’t seem to be real. I had a tough time wrapping my head around this whole idea.

A few days later we made another trip south to Longview to go to Hollywood Hollywood. We stayed there longer than usual, because time got away from us a little bit. But when we left the disco, we still had plenty of time to get Dawn home before her curfew.

Once in the Vega, Dawn laid her head gently against me. She closed her eyes, as she often did, placing her trust in me to get us safely home. I took the familiar road back through Longview to I-5 and got back on the freeway to head for home. Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to do the simplest part of the night, which was getting on the freeway heading north. Instead, I got on I-5 South, heading for Portland.

We had driven for twenty minutes when I looked up to see a sign that said “Portland - 15 miles.” I couldn’t believe what I saw. I gave Dawn a little shake and told her the bad news. Instead of being half an hour closer to home, we were that much further away. I took the next exit and booked it for home.

By the time we pulled into the driveway between our houses, Dawn was forty minutes past her curfew. I walked Dawn to her door, hoping to face the music right away. But it was dark inside her house, so I gave her a mournful goodnight kiss and trudged across the yard to my room.

The next day, I went to see Dawn and was met by grim faces. Dawn told me when she’d gone in the house the night before, everyone was asleep. But in the middle of the night, Walt and Colleen awakened her with angry yells. Dawn told me she thought the house had been on fire.

We got the usual rebukes. They were disappointed in us, and they felt they couldn’t trust us. Only this time they looked pleased. They said that, since they couldn’t trust us to follow the rules, we wouldn’t be allowed to see each other at all.

I walked out of Dawn’s house shell-shocked. I couldn’t believe they would stop us from seeing each other forever. It didn’t seem possible. In fact, I was sure they would change their minds any day. But as time passed, Walt and Colleen seemed completely happy with their decision.

Then, Russell and Tylene left to go back to Portland, my temporary jobs dried up, and Dawn was nowhere to be found. It appeared to be two long months until the fall quarter started at the University of Washington. I couldn’t stand to spend the rest of the summer hanging out a hundred feet from Dawn, unable to talk to her.

Instead, I ran to Auburn to spend a few weeks with Terri and Tommy. When that didn’t seem far enough, I drove south to California to see my sisters. I drove there slowly, using back roads and scenic routes. I drove Highway 101, which ran alongside the Pacific Ocean, all the way down Oregon. It wasn’t the quickest route, but I craved motion, rather than actually arriving anywhere.

I kept my notebook open on the seat beside me throughout my trip, recording random thoughts and every song I heard on the drive. I was sure someday it would be very useful to know I heard The Electric Light Orchestra’s
Sweet Talkin’ Woman
six times during that trip.

My youngest sister Kristy was twelve years older than me, and she lived in San Jose. I drove there to see her, my brother-in-law Richard, and my two nieces, Kirsten and Andrea. San Jose was nice, but I was restless and needed to be in motion. So I drove to Los Angeles, to see my middle sister, Lana, and her husband, Curlee.

Unlike Randy Newman, I can’t say I loved LA. It was too big for a kid from the farmlands of Washington. While I was there, I went to Disneyland. Rather, I went
by
Disneyland. I didn’t have enough money to go in and ride a roller coaster, but at least I could tell everyone back home I had seen The Magic Kingdom.

Although it was great getting to know my sisters as a quasi-adult, I felt a strong need to get home. The start of fall quarter at the UW was less than a month away. I needed to get to Seattle to find housing and register for classes. First, I had to find a way to see Dawn. I hadn’t spoken with her in the weeks since I was banished by Walt and Colleen.