There Was Just Something About Mary

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So long as there isn't lightning, wearing my rain hat and sneakers, I love walking the beach in the rain with my hands tucked deep in my jacket pockets and my shoulders braced against the wet chill of the wind. Feeling the cool rainwater spraying my face, the salty mist makes me feel something at a time when I feel nothing but heartache. I was numb with grief and for the sake of saving myself from the pain, I stopped feeling anything at all. It was then that I imagined I could see Ray's face in the grey clouds and every time it rained, I looked forward to going outside to walk the beach, so that I could see him and be with him again. My big, strong man protecting me before, he's my Heavenly Angel watching over me now. I know he's waiting for me to join him and one day, soon, I will."

With a ray of insight, Anthony read her journal with a pang of jealousy. He wished she felt the love for him that she obviously still felt for Ray. Now the one grieving his loss, the only comfort he found was reading all that she had written in how she felt about someone else. A way for him to still hear her voice, he continued reading and read the same pages nearly every night.

"Living here year round, I more enjoy the fall, winter, and spring, than I do the summer," she wrote. "The ocean is angrier then and that anger dwarfs mine and somehow makes me feel better and calmer. Making me feel small and my problems miniscule, watching a raging ocean thrashing against the rocks, before racing on the shore to hiss at the beach, gives me peace. With the realization that the ocean is angrier than me, by the manifestation of a tidal wave, is when I'm able to transfer my anger to the ocean. I feel more relaxed watching the white capped waves, when they crash on shore and withdraw. The receding water removes all of my angst away with it to make me feel part of something bigger and more powerful than me."

Still in shock, before she met Anthony, she walked the beach every day alone reading her last letter from her dead husband. She clung to that one piece of paper in the way she clung to her hope that it was all just a tragic mistake and an error of paperwork, while hoping he'd walk through her cottage door, one day. She cherished his last words written, as if that was the only thing she had left of him. Actually, other than the memory of him, as far as she was concerned, which is what she wrote in her diary, a journal that Anthony found too late to save her, the letter was the last physical thing she had that was his and that was touched by him. Now, Anthony reads her journal, in the way she read her husband's letter, as if her writings are the only thing he has left of her and, other than the memory of her and her ashes, they are. Tragically, in the way that her dead husband haunted her, forty years later, she still haunts him.

"By reading his words received in his last letter over and again, it makes me believe that this is all just a bad nightmare," she wrote. "Hearing his voice in my head, I feel as if he's still with me. I feel as if he'll walk through that door and return to me and return my life the way it was, before he left and before he died. Killed in action. What action was worth the death of him?"

Worried about his safety, after having a dream that was more a premonition, she had written to him to be careful. He wrote back promising to come home. He lied.

A few weeks later, before his letter even reached her, he was already dead. Receiving the letter, after the fact, was a jolting reminder, an unforgivable insensitivity paid upon her by the uncaring United States military that was indirectly or directly responsible for the death of her husband. Making her live through the pain of his death again, by receiving his letter, after he was already dead and buried, nonetheless, no doubt, she was glad she had his words written on that tear stained paper to read over and again in the course of her grief stricken days. It gave her comfort to know that he touched the same paper that she was now holding.

Nearly a year after the death of her husband, she met Anthony on Earth Day, the first Earth Day, March 21, 1970, an easy date for her to remember, since she was always sensitive to the ecology and to the preservation of the planet before. Only unable to find real joy in anything anymore, even in the beauty of nature, she celebrated the anniversary of their first meeting with feigned passion and Earth's holiday with an empty joy.

Despite her inability to move beyond her grief, Anthony remembered their first meeting, as if it was yesterday. He watched her approaching with her head down, while reading a paper. Nearly ten years, after Dobie Gillis with Tuesday Weld as, Thalia Menninger, and Inger Stevens played The Farmer's Daughter, and nearly ten years, before the movie 10, Mary was the original ten.

She was his movie star and he saw himself as her leading man. Paling in comparison to her, Mary was so much better in every way than Tuesday Weld, Inger Stevens, or Bo Derek. If they were all here now and if he was told he could pick just one, he'd still chose Mary. He didn't know what it was about her, but there was just something about Mary.

Where Bo Derek was just a child in the movie 10, an actress portraying a character in the movie, Mary was a real woman. Every time he said her name, he couldn't help but think of Donna Reed, when she played Mary Hatch, before she became Mary Bailey, Jimmy Stewart's wife, as Mrs. George Bailey, in It's A Wonderful Life. Every moment that he was with her, the parallel he drew from that movie was, indeed, that this was his wonderful life with her. Just as he couldn't imagine his life without her, he couldn't imagine his life being any better than it was with her by his side.

In the beginning, before he fell in love with her, every time they walked the beach holding hands, every time he kissed her, and every time he made love to her, he imagined he was making love to Donna Reed. Only, masked by lighting, makeup, and a celebrity status that is never as real as the person in life, his Mary was so much better looking than Donna Reed and than that make believe Mary character in that movie. Truth be told, too good to be true, if he had questioned it, he'd never imagined that someone like Mary would want someone like him.

A year later, when they watched the movie, Summer of '42, he told her that they should have cast her in that role, as Dorothy, instead of Jennifer O'Neill. They laughed about it, after they saw the movie. She told him that she loved how he thought she was so beautiful, the most beautiful woman in the world, even more beautiful than Katherine Ross in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and even more beautiful than how Katherine Ross looked in The Graduate. For sure, Mary had it all over Ali McGraw in Love Story. With Mary in his life, this was his love story.

Only, an emotional wreck then, she needed that kind constant reassurance that he gave her and the attention that he paid her to temporarily soothe her pain and forget her sadness. With her sanity gone and the reality of her emotions severed, her beauty was all that she had left. When he thought about it later, something that took him too long to realize, she always needed his reassurance, his love, his attentiveness, and his affection, as well as his hard body. In hindsight, he realized that he was just there to help her heal, but he willingly accepted that role to be there and to do that for her. With her wings broken, no longer able to fly and soar as high as she did, she was a beautiful butterfly, before her husband died. Now, grounded in a world of sand, seaweed, saltwater, and crabs, she was numb to the joy that he felt for her.

"Able to look at all of those things together before, sand, seaweed, saltwater, and crabs, and see the beauty in them, now, missing the natural occurrence, I can't help but look at them individually and individually they are all ugly. Now, none of them hold the beauty that I saw in them before. The sand appears darker and courser, the seaweed is a disgusting nuisance, the saltwater acridly bitter, and the crabs are always angry and biting," is what she wrote in her journal. "Even though there is now an Earth Day, a day to pay homage to the planet, the beauty of it all is gone from me, forever."

Not knowing her before, unable to see through her sadness and grief, unable to see herself for who she truly was, a beautiful woman inside and out, Anthony read what she wrote in her journal.

"I never considered myself beautiful before, but Ray made me feel that way. He made me feel special. Now with Ray gone, surrounded by ugliness, I only perceive myself as being ugly, too. All that I saw as beautiful before is not so pretty now."

From reading her journal, Anthony surmised that unable to see a future without Ray, she was too mired down by her angst and depression to see beyond her past and beyond her grief to enjoy today with renewed hope for tomorrow and for a future with him.

Remembering back to when he first saw her, mesmerized by her beauty, he couldn't move. Even seeing her from a distance, walking with the glow of the rising sun to her back, a light that highlighted her form with a Heavenly glow, as if her image was an aura, he was awestruck. Looking in the sun, as she walked closer, as if she had just descended from Heaven and was wearing wings and a halo, she was not only his real life mirage but also his real life Angel. As if she magically appeared, as she walked closer, he was already spellbound by the vision of her.

He rubbed his eyes to see if she was real or imagined. Bedazzled by her beauty, he was a non-functioning idiot and he no longer had control of his senses. His body, his mind, and his soul instantly belonged to her, if only she'd have him. Yet, instantly, summing her up, as if she just was another fleeting wave, he knew someone like her would never be attracted to someone like him.

He needed to delay her. He needed to stop her. He needed to say something, anything to get her attention, before she passed him by and was gone from him forever.

"What are you reading?"

Her reply would prove to him if she was imagined or real and interested. Unable to think quickly enough of anything else to say to delay her enough for her to notice him, fearing that she'd pass him by and be gone as quickly as she had arrived, had he not spoken, said something, said anything to interrupt her deep thought and intercept her, they never would have met otherwise. He felt compelled to ask her what she was reading, when she nearly walked into him. An empty beach with no one on it but them and they nearly collided, as if they were two cars driving in opposite directions through a wide expanse of desolate desert. As if this was their destiny, they were fated to meet and become lovers. When she looked up, looked right through him and didn't respond, he asked her another question.

"Why are you crying?"

When he asked her that, as if awakening her, she crumpled the paper she held in her hand with purpose, as if destroying whoever or whatever was written upon it with anger. As if squeezing the life out of her heart with her pain, crumpling it, she squeezed the paper in a tightfisted ball, before tossing it in the ocean and allowing the receding tide to carry it away. At first, floating atop of the water, before a wave overwhelmed it, saturated with salt water, as if that were her tears, and sank it, forever to be gone, she stopped to watch the wad of paper disappear with the tide and with her sadness. Once the paper was gone from her, as if the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders, she was a different person. An unexplained transformation, no longer Mrs. Raymond Anderson, she was now just Mary.

Preoccupied with her thoughts and looking through him before, as if he didn't exist, she looked at him now and smiled. Taking him all in, as if he was the medicine she needed, her look of joy and her smile made him feel special and he returned her happiness with his smile. When they met three years ago, a surfer there for the summer waiting to catch the next wave, he was tall, lean, and had the sinewy muscularity of an Olympic swimmer. He had curly, blonde hair that competed with the shine of the sun and the brightest blue eyes that she needed to forget the haunting image of her husband's dark, brown eyes. As if he were David and she were an Angel sculpted by Michelangelo's hand, he was just as beautiful as she was and they made for a beautiful couple.

"Crying? I'm not crying," she said wiping the tears from her eyes, sniffing back her misery, and pushing back her fallen golden hair, before forcing another smile and laughing. She was even more beautiful, when she smiled and laughed. "Those are just tears of joy. I'm just so damn happy that my life has begun anew and with you in it," she said giving him a big smile that made him smile, too.

It was an unusually hot March day, weather more reserved for mid-June, only, the warmth he felt came more from her than the sun. This weather, a prelude of what they could expect this summer, the crowds would be here soon, along with the noise that made her want to kill herself. Out of the blue, as if they had been intimate forever, she took a step forward and draped her arms around his neck. With her body so close to his that he couldn't slide a piece of paper between them, he rested his hands on her shapely bikini clad hips, while imagining that he was inside of her and making love to her.

The loving sensation of her soft fingers on the back of his neck was better than any massage he's ever had. Then, when she removed her arms from his neck to cup his face in her hands, he had goose bumps by her touch and by his anticipation of what was to happen next. She looked deeply in his blue eyes with a look that melted his heart. Then, she closed her eyes and kissed him.

She parted his lips with her tongue and kissed him so deeply that he forgot about the hot sun, the warm sand, the cool surf, and surfing that perfect wave. It was a magical kiss, a mystical kiss, and a miraculous kiss that turned him from a boy to a man. He returned her kiss with as much passion, but his passion was no match for hers. She was possessed. As if she was Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, and he was Neptune, the God of the Sea, he was powerless against her ardor.

Wide-eyed agog, he looked at her dazed, and as senseless as he was, when he first saw her approaching him. Her passion for him heated him more than the hot sun that warmed his body and heated the sand that burned his feet. Then, as if hypnotized by her kiss, he closed his eyes, returned her kiss, and reveled in her passion, while quickly building his.

Moving him with her kiss, she turned the tables on him. As if he was Lana Turner being kissed by John Garfield in the car, in the Postman Always Rings Twice, as if he was Deborah Kerr being kissed by Burt Lancaster on the beach, in From Here To Eternity, as if he was Audrey Hepburn being kissed by George Peppard in the rain, in Breakfast at Tiffany's, and as if he was Lauren Bacall or Ingrid Bergman being kissed by Humphrey Bogart, in The Big Sleep or Casablanca, never had he been kissed like that before or since. Never had he known such passion and such pleasure from just a kiss. It was just a kiss, but what a kiss it was. Never had he felt such desire for anyone, as he felt for her now.

If it was described on paper, it was just a kiss. Yet, when her lips touched his for that first kiss, it was no ordinary kiss. A surge of current, as if being plugged into a wall outlet, a spark, then fire, as if striking a match to burn kindling before erupting into a blaze, by the mere touch of their lips, the kiss made him feel something even greater than his love of surfing. As if they were one person connected by the mere touch of their lips, the kiss transgressed their ten year difference in age to one of no consequence.

It was a kiss that closed the gap from death to life and that returned her from the brink of suicide, until she later decided that she was better off dead. It was a kiss that a widow would give a man that had awakened her from mourning and had given her hope for a second chance at love. Yet, what widow would taint the memory of her dead and beloved husband with the likes of him? It was a kiss that a virgin would give a man she had selected to marry. Only, few virgins would pick him to marry, a penniless beach bum riding the waves and living his life in the ocean, because he was unable to make anything of himself on dry land.

Since the beginning of time, it was a kiss that those in love write poems and songs about, when describing such a kiss. This was no ordinary kiss. As if she was an Angel, it was a Heavenly kiss and he was the one so chosen to be the recipient of her kiss.

Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't he be the one that so moved her with his kiss? Never did he think that a woman could kiss him in such a way. Until she kissed him, never would he believe that he could be so moved by just one kiss. In all the women that kissed him, he's never been kissed by a woman, until she kissed him. He had always thought it was the woman and not the man who'd be weak kneed, but he swooned with her kiss. She blanked his mind. Heating his desire more than the sun heated his body, her kiss made him dizzy with lust for her and he thought he'd faint straightaway.

After experiencing her kiss, after savoring her lips and feeling her tongue probe his mouth, if he died now, he'd be happy. Yet, now that he felt her passion, now that he kissed her lips, he didn't want to die. Not now, not yet, he wanted to experience so much more of her. If he died now, he'd be cheated out of knowing all of her.

How could she kiss him like that? Why did she kiss him like that? It was more than just a kiss. Her kiss not just excited him, it electrified him. For the first time in his life he was alive and living life large. Her kiss made him want to be a better man, her man. Only and unfortunately, she was still sleep walking around in a daze. High on valium, alcohol, and a selection of colorful pills, she wasn't in her right mind, when she met him and kissed him. He was sincere, but she wasn't. Nonetheless, with her needing for comfort and him needing for love, they were both needy.

Before her kiss, the vast ocean loomed large to him. Now, after her kiss, the ocean was inconsequential and meaningless compared to the anticipated love of her. All consuming, surfing loomed so big in his life before, but now she blossomed larger. No longer a surfer boy free to roam a beach, he was now a man eager to accept the responsibility of caring for and loving her, a woman that he didn't even know her name. In all the fantasies he's had alone in his bedroom with his hand firmly around his cock, while stroking to the beat, the sight, and the star studded pageantry of every pop singer, movie star, and celebrity, he now knew what it felt like to really be kissed and to truly feel the love of a beautiful, albeit older woman.

Not shy in telling him what she wanted and so needed, when she reached down and felt his cock through his bathing suit, he quivered, as if she was a man and he was a woman being groped for the first time. Leaving her hand there, while waiting for him to catch up, she waited for his lust to swell with her passion, while kissing him. Then, when he pulsated his passion against her palm and she reached her hand inside and took hold of his cock, she took control of him.

Never has any woman been so aggressive in her desire for him. Never has any woman touched him in such a way. Lost in her kisses, he melted, when she fondled his cock. The way to a man's heart is not through his stomach. His penis was his direct connection to his heart and brain. The lust he felt before, immediately turned to love now.