It began in the quiet backyard of our farmhouse on Mulberry Street in our little New England town. Well, usually quiet. I had been shoving the rotary lawnmower across almost an acre of grass, row after row--one of those rotaries with a whirling blade but not self-propelled. Propelled by me.
A hot day in a hot August, my back home for summer after my freshman year at Bucknell University. Kind of boring, but also reassuring: Touching home plate, a man back from the big world.
Our white farmhouse had maybe 14 rooms, not counting the laundry room or the upstairs halls, rooms accreted ever since the Colonial Period after the Revolutionary War. Plus a four-room apartment tacked on long to ago to accommodate my mom's parents.
Now, Loren Eicholtz lived there. Both Eicholtz's, in fact, but he was off fighting the war in Vietnam. Mrs. Eicholtz was a temporary war widow.
I had about had it, pushing that mower. Sweating. Shorts and T-shirt plastered to my skin. Also, getting a little hard. Mrs. Eicholtz lay on a chaise lounge under a pear tree. Complicated, pear trees. Our place had at least four types, all with different shaped fruits. They all looked sort of like breasts, though--round and fat at the base, tapering off to the stem. But everything looked like breasts to me, back then.
I stopped, killed the engine, gazed at her. She lay on her side, her long, bare legs together, her green short shorts gripping hard at her ass. Above her full hips, her long torso was bare except for a bra holding her breasts--barely. And then, a face so pretty that I never could stop from staring at the chestnut hair full and fluffed around her face, wide brown eyes, perfect jawline, a wide mouth. But her expression too often spoke of patience, enduring, waiting.
She was in the early stages of myasthenia gravis. Everyone knew it. "I'm just a little weak," she would say, with just a hint of her delicious smile. In her perfect legs and long sensuous torso, I saw no "weakness." I guessed it was coming.
Now, as the rotary conked out, she lifted her head, turned her body, the breasts protesting constraint, and called, "Hi, Buddy!" My nickname, those days, was "Bud."
She seemed to study me. I hoped the boner in my sweaty shorts wasn't obvious. What can you do? Then, she called, "Can you help for a minute?"
At Bucknell, I had not given up my virginity. I was sure that I was the only freshman guy who not given it up back in high school and then held onto it through freshman year at Bucknell. I walked toward her. I was staring at the perfect legs, the abrupt hips, the long, bare torso, and the over-loaded bra. And that wonderful face. Did nothing to tame my hard-on
"Sure, Mrs. Eicholtz." I came under the pear tree, momentarily shaded from the brutal sun. My hands kept wanting to slide down to cover my bulge. It felt in there as though I could dive on top of her and tear off her shorts and bra.
"Can you just help me inside?" Even as she spoke, she struggled, thrusting apart her long legs to set her feet on either side of the chaise. Her belly rippled with the effort to sit up. She grimaced. She said: "Getting hard to do this."
The arms she lifted to me were perfect, revealing no fateful weakness.
I took her hands and drew her up. Her feet on either side of the chaise heaved, so she came up fast and almost crashed into my arms, laughing. I felt the big cushions crushed against me. Her face was inches from mine. I could see the texture of her lips, the shine of her pink lipstick.
Was she a companion on my arm or a package? I compromised. My arm went around her waist; I held her to me, slightly lifting her. We headed for the apartment door. I felt my face burn. She was looking down as though watching her step, but I knew she could see the ridge beneath my shorts. For a second, the duration of a grin, her eyes caught mine. To say the least, I was an obvious guy.
We crossed the kitchen toward the bathroom. At the heavy yellow door, Loren said: "Okay, I'm good, now--I think." She turned, "Oh, thank you, Buddy!"
"So that's it?" She could interpret that any way she wanted. I didn't know myself what I meant.
"You want to help me?" Her tone was neutral.
"You mean a bath?"
"Well, you do have an erection, right?"
"Oh! Oh, I mean..."
"You do?"
"Can't help it!"
"Maybe I can." Now, she turned and smiled at me. "I want to see it, Buddy!"
"No! I didn't mean it. Don't be mad, Mrs. Eicholtz. Yes, I admit, I do, I do have one."
"Okay." She crooked her arms behind her back, unhooked her bra, hung it on a hook. Released, her breasts swayed for a second. They were full, big as melons side by side on her slender torso, with two pink nipples, now stiff. She look down at them, then at me.
"Hold me up, my arm." She was bending, shoving her shorts over her hips and down her legs till they dropped to the floor. She had nothing underneath and in a second I saw the same chestnut hair, full and fluffy, on her belly.