I don't know why it is—I guess it's because people have compassion—but if you suddenly become a widower at a fairly young age—and I would consider 51 to be young—relatives, friends and neighbors feel a compulsion to try and set you up with dates and invite you out to places. I guess they feel sorry for you.
At any rate, I was one of those. At the age of 51, I worked as a teacher in the local high school, and my wife, only 47 years old, had died about a year ago of breast cancer. Thus, people went out of their way to "set me up" and to make plans for me.
One of those was my neighbor, Jim Morrison. Morrison and his wife Nancy had three daughters: Natalie, 18, who was in her first year of college at Boston U; Noreen, 15, who was in 9th grade, and Nicole, 13, who was in 7th grade. All of the family were sports enthusiasts and liked to go skiing in the White Mountains of New Hampshire at least once during the winter. Morrison usually would rent a cabin up there for a week, and the whole family would go. This time, he had planned to do it during Natalie's Christmas break from school.
"Why don't you come with us for the weekend?" Morrison asked one morning when he was getting ready to leave for work. "The cabin we rent every year is beautiful, and there's plenty of room in it. If you drive up in your own car, you can just come back when you feel like it."
"I don't ski," I replied.
"Who cares? You can enjoy the scenery. It's beautiful up there. You can snowshoe if you want. That doesn't require any special skill."
I thought about it. "It would be nice to get away for awhile."
"Sure it would. I'll tell you what: I have to work on Friday, so I won't be able to leave until Saturday morning. But I know you're off for Christmas vacation. And Natalie's home from school with nothing to do, so why don't you and she drive up in your car on Friday afternoon and get the place ready. She knows where it is."
"All right."
"She's a very bright girl, as you know. But I'll tell her not to annoy you and leave you alone, since you'll probably want to just sit by the fire and read."
"Right." Little did he or I know just how "annoying" Natalie was to become. So I have to tell you about Natalie at this point. As her father pointed out, she was very smart. She also was very pretty: about five-eight, 105 pounds, long dark brown hair that hung nearly to her waist and a petite lithe figure that any movie star would have envied.
When we left that Friday afternoon, she was wearing the usual form-fitting jeans, some kind of furry mukluks and a tan jacket that seemed to be made of the same material. In the car, she pushed off the boots and doffed the jacket. Beneath it, she was wearing a loose gray sweater. Typical college garb, in other words.
Because of her brightness, I found the three-hour drive up to the cabin in the White Mountains to be quite entertaining, and I heard all about her life at Boston U.
"I have a serious boyfriend for the first time in my life," she said with a smile. "But he's from Chicago and is back with his family for Christmas, so I really miss him."
"I can imagine you do."
There was a long period of silence, then she turned to me. "And you know what I miss the most?"
"What?"
"Sex. I was pretty inexperienced when I went to school, but I'm not now. We used to do it ALL the time and EVERYWHERE, a couple of times a week, sometimes every day. So I really miss it." She quickly turned to me. "But don't tell my dad."
I laughed. "I won't, and I'm flattered that you would confide in me."
"I always felt that I could trust you," she said. "You were always really nice to me when I was growing up."
"Was I? I never noticed."
"Yes. You were."
We fell into silence and listened to the radio for the rest of the journey. We also stopped at the small grocery store in the town before the climb up into the mountains and bought some food supplies plus a couple of bottles of wine and a bottle of brandy. I had to buy the booze since Natalie was not old enough to purchase liquor.
"Daddy also will be picking up stuff tomorrow," she assured.
"Okay, then I guess we have enough—in case we get snowbound."
She laughed.
The dirt road to the cabin was a little slippery with all the snow, but I finally managed to swing into the front.
"If you want to get the bags and the groceries, I'll start a fire," Natalie said. "They always supply you with plenty of wood—which is a good thing, since it gets below freezing up here during the night."
"Sounds cozy."
"It is, but the cabin is cold as a tomb when you first get here."
I didn't realize at the time just how "cozy" it was going to get—and I don't think she did either.
The cabin was relatively spare but furnished with the necessities, such as a wood-burning stove in the center of the living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, one small bedroom downstairs, and three bedrooms, including the master bedroom, and another bathroom upstairs. By the time I had finished hauling in the two suitcases and the three boxes of groceries and looking around a bit, Natalie had a nice fire started, and the cabin was warming up rapidly. I sat in the couch facing the fire.
"You can take the downstairs bedroom," she said. "It's small with a single bed, but it's warmer at night because you're closer to the fire. I'll take one of the rooms upstairs."
"Okay." I took my suitcase into the bedroom and put it on the dresser. The bedroom was sparsely furnished but comfortable looking.
When I returned and sat back down in the couch to face the fire, Natalie was just descending the steps. "It's great when the fire's going," she said, "But I have to warn you that when the fire goes out around three a.m., it gets freezing cold in here. You can either pull more covers around you or get up and make another fire."
"More covers sounds better."
"I agree—and easier." She walked over to the table where I had placed the boxes. "Can I offer you a glass of your wine?"
"Good idea. Have one for yourself. I not sure what the drinking age is in this state, but you're not going to be driving, so I don't think either one of us will be arrested."
"Right." She poured both of us a glass and brought them over. She handed one to me and sat down beside me. "Cheers," I said, and we clinked glasses. I began to think how luxurious this was: a 51-year-old man drinking wine with a beautiful 18-year-old before a warm mountain fire.
"There isn't much to do up here at night," she said apologetically. "We could turn on the radio if you want, or play cards. There's no TV."
"All of which sounds boring. Why don't you tell me about college—and your new sex life," I said with a smile.
I had meant the last part facetiously, but she in fact took it seriously and with the utter candor symptomatic of the young today told me all about her new sex life—how much it had hurt the first time but how much she had enjoyed it after that, how she actually liked the taste of semen once she got used to it, how she liked to do it in places where they ran the risk of getting caught.
"The only thing we haven't done is anal," she said, "I'm saving that."
"For what?"
"For the end!" she said with a laugh.
Lucky I was wearing loose trousers, since her Sherazade tales were giving me an erection, the first I had had in a long time. But finally, after three glasses of wine, I also was feeling sleepy.
