Memories & Moonlight

He knelt by me. The diaphragm had completely escaped my attention. But he retrieved it from somewhere in the folds of the blanket. I watched him as he opened the case and unscrewed the cap of the jelly. He had mastered the ritual of the diaphragm. I watched still as he spread the jelly on the rim and skillfully folded it. I half closed my eyes as he carefully inserted it and let it find its proper place. He let his fingers linger inside me and did a gentle massage in the places I had showed him. With eyes half open, I saw the moon shining over his shoulder. I inhaled the scent of apple blossoms and the musty odor of damp earth and decaying leaves.

He entered me and obscured the moon with his shoulder. Then as he began to move slowly in and out the moon began to reappear then disappear again. The music of the frogs merged with my soul through my ears. My arms reached beyond the bounds of the blanket and my hands joined the earth, grasping the wet soil and last year's musty leaves.

He relentlessly came in and then out. The moon came and went. I invited the moon to enter me and it came and retreated with his rhythm. I arched my back and dug my fingers into the earth as I shouted my ecstasy to the sky. The moon entered me and stayed.

I heard his shout, too. Then we were still, tangled in one another, him and me and the moon. I felt filled with the moon as if my belly were rounded. A pale yellow glow seemed to light me from inside. I can't say how long we lay there.

Eventually the breeze grew stronger and cooler and we stirred. "Carry my things to my bedroom, please, and then come back for me," I asked him. He donned a minimum amount of his own clothing and his shoes and left without a word. I watched as he gathered up my clothes with his own and grasped braces and crutches to make an unlikely, even comic, burden. Then he disappeared into the house as the screen door closed itself behind him.

Then I lay naked under the moon. My old panic about being helpless and abandoned began to build in me. What if he didn't return, I wondered. He could fall and break his leg on the stairs and be unable to come for me. My mind was washed with a torrent of awful possibilities. But as abruptly as my panic came, it ebbed away. I laughed aloud. Even if I could never move again, I could lie here for all eternity and be the mistress of the moon.

Of course, he was back in short order. He wrapped the blanket around me and I was in his arms. He carried me to the porch and then inside and up the stairs. Finally he laid me gently on my bed.

We were together for the whole night. I worried about his duties in the morning but he seemed unperturbed. I also worried about the debris we had brought in with the blanked. There were little clods of dirt, old leaves and apple blossom petals. They all fell out when I unwrapped myself and littered the bed and the floor. I resolved to do a thorough cleaning in the morning. Gradually the moon inside me lulled me to sleep.

He was gone when I awakened in the morning. I set myself to clean up all the mess we had carried in the night before. I thought I had done a fairly thorough job but it later turned out that I hadn't. I also had to invest an unusual amount of time on my hands and my nails to undo the effects of groveling in the earth. In consequence, Gran and I were almost late to church.

He seemed unusually youthful and relaxed in the pulpit. His sermon was short and coherent and quite out of the ordinary. It did not seem to be particularly biblically based. His theme was that the universe and all creation is a priceless gift to us to be enjoyed and appreciated. Old Deacon Grimsby seemed to be perplexed by it. I laughed inside at the look of him before I returned my eyes to the pulpit.

I blushed when he began to recite examples of the great gift we had been granted. He talked about apple blossoms and the new smell of the earth in the Spring. Of course he referred to the singing of the frogs. When he came to the gift of the full moon, he turned his eyes directly at me.

Our gazes locked. With a great effort, I tore my eyes away when I felt my panties dampen. I shut my ears and applied myself to multiplying the page numbers of the open hymnal in my lap. Thus, distracted, I survived the rest of the service. He stayed the night that Sunday.

Mrs. Fogg discovered the detritus of our adventure. We had left a little trail of soil, blossom and leaf through the whole house. She complained bitterly and blamed him. She couldn't understand, she kept telling us, why the silly minister had to prepare his sermons out under the tree and in the mud and then track it all in the house. I bit my tongue. Gran didn't seem to notice.

Mrs. Fogg's objections came to a head a few days later when she decided to refold the blanket in my closet. I watched in horror as more of the telltale dirt, blossom and leaf fell to the floor. She turned to me and stared I met her gaze. I tried to look calm and collected with a touch of defiance. She was expressionless. Then she abruptly took her eyes away and busied herself with cleaning.

She never mentioned the subject again. Dear Mrs. Fogg; she and I were kindred souls, I think. We had both tasted life. I wondered what she thought and felt when the moon was full. Of course, she never said and I never asked.

VI. Life Goes On

His internship ended a few weeks later and we never met again. We corresponded once in a while and exchanged cards on holidays. Gradually our contact tapered off to nothing. I heard from friends that he had married. I was not jealous - I was even glad for her. She was with a good man.

Later I heard that he had left the ministry and was teaching in a private school. I worried a bit that I had destroyed his faith. No, I finally decided, perhaps I had moved him to a deeper and more sustaining faith.

Gran died peacefully in her sleep a few years later. Our church was without a pastor so it fell to Deacon Grimsby to do the eulogy. Of course he assured us of life everlasting and all that. But he also told stories about Gran in her youth and his that I had never her heard before. I had never imagined that the old Deacon had ever been ever young. I certainly never thought that there was any humor in him. We cried and we laughed. Even Mrs. Fogg smiled a bit and seemed to have tears in her eyes.

At first, I missed Gran terribly. In ways I still do after all these years. But over the next few months I plotted the course of the rest of my life. I surprised everyone in town when I sold the house. They were even more surprised when they learned the price that the buyers from out of town had paid. The city was expanding and our town was in the first stages of becoming a desirable suburb.

I moved to the city and found an apartment that was easy to care for in a building with an elevator and very few steps to cope with. I found part time work in a nearby bookstore and applied some of my high school accounting skills to doing the books for a few small businesses. I volunteered at the local branch library. I invested most of the house money and my portfolio prospered.

I have never been promiscuous but I have never been long without a lover. My jobs and my volunteer efforts brought me into contact with many men. I have never been shy about practicing the arts of seduction. Lovers are fairly easy to find. Some of mine have been very good at it and have taught me. Some of the others I have taught myself. I do not regret even one of them.

VII. Back to the Present

My reverie was interrupted by a soft knock on my door. I came back to the present and quickly put the photo album back on the shelf with my writing pad beside it. It was dark outside and the full moon had risen.

I looked down to arrange myself for him. My robe was open. I wore a scanty bra. At least it was as scanty as I could find with an underwire. The bra was a concession to the passage of time and to the effects of gravity. I wore panties that matched. They were a concession to the simple fact that an old woman in a bra without panties would appear to any thinking person as a pathetic figure of jest.

I closed my robe and tied the sash with the trick that I discovered all those years ago. The knot was firm but the sash was loose. I turned out the light.

As I wheeled my chair to the door, the knock came again. It was more insistent this time. A little shudder of anticipation moved through my body as I rolled through a patch of moonlight and reached for the latch.