Mandy and Me Ch. 01

It wasn't until I finally broke down and began asking Miss Elizabeth some questions about him, late in my junior year of high school, that she dug out a photo album and showed me his most recent school picture. I recognized him, and then watched him throughout the remainder of my junior year and senior years in high school.

I found him to be a quiet, studious, and very attractive young man, but I quickly noticed two things about him: he never made any effort to talk to girls, and he was always missing from school in the afternoons. I also noticed that, when a girl did approach him, he always left quickly. Asking my friends about him produced little new information, since it seemed no one knew much about him.

Like all high schoolers, I had more than a passing interest in sex, and I'd engaged in the usual whispered conversations with my girlfriends, but I wanted to follow my mother's wishes that I save myself for marriage.

I did try dating, on a rare few occasions, early on, but – for Texas country boys – the ones whose invitations I accepted all seemed to have 'Russian hands and Roman fingers' the minute we were out of my folks' sight, and I didn't like that one bit. I'd always tried to respect my fellow students, and expected the same in return. After the fourth such experience, I gave up on the whole social scene, outside of class, concentrating on my studies instead. Perhaps the boys in college would be a bit better behaved...

As a result, I got the reputation of being a 'one date wonder', and wound up being the butt of some pretty crappy jokes. One of the boys I'd dated pinned me with the nickname, 'Sister Amanda', because any boy who went out with me got 'nun.' When Mama expressed her concerns, I just brushed them aside.

"It's just a bunch of boys bein' immature jerks, Mama," I told her. "They're just tryin' to get back at me 'cause I wouldn't put out, for 'em. They ain't worth botherin' about."

"As long as it don't get to botherin' you, honey," Mama agreed.

Overall, I had a pretty good relationship with my folks, and I could usually go to them with any problem I had. The one real exception was questions about sex. Mama was kind of embarrassed, when it came time to giving me 'the talk' about the birds and bees. As a result, most of my knowledge of sex – beyond what little they taught in our health classes at school – came from conversations I had with some of my girlfriends at school.

Mama and Miss Elizabeth visited fairly often and, as time passed, Miss Elizabeth's grandson and I became frequent subjects of their conversations. Mike (Miss Elizabeth's grandson) wasn't dating anyone, and neither was I. Both Mama and Miss Elizabeth were at a loss for what to do, but for much different reasons.

There was one thing, about Miss Elizabeth, though. She was an unusual woman, having what some folks called a 'second sight'. Many times she knew a person would be successful in business, or knew the sex of an unborn child. She usually tried to downplay this, knowing folks would behave differently if they were aware of it.

I can say this, now, but only because Miss Elizabeth eventually broke down and told me. Ever since the day she'd first met me – and touched my hand to shake it, as we were introduced – she had been having dreams in which she saw her grandson and me living rich, full lives together, along with a handful of children. All she had to do was figure out a way to get the two of us together in the same place at the same time, so that we could meet.

***

Mike

The previous year had been a good one, for both of us. Mom had made the final payment on her car, about six months earlier, and I'd found a small house, the owner of which had agreed to let me tear it down for salvage so that he could build a newer home on the lot. This all happened before I turned eighteen, which was about two weeks before the end of my junior year in high school.

I'd used some of the lumber from the tear-down to build a laundry room addition onto our house, with room for a table for folding laundry, a rack for hanging clothing, and enough room left over to set up the ironing board when we needed it for pressing a piece of clothing. I also took some of the lumber and, on the adjoining lot – which Mom owned – I built a 24-foot by 36-foot wood-shop to give myself some working space.

Over the last couple years, whenever a friend or neighbor had mentioned looking for a table, or a bookcase, or something that I knew how to build, I would try to get the job of building it. I was a pretty fair carpenter and cabinet-maker, even back then (and if I do say so, myself) and I could turn out a pretty nice looking piece of furniture, but I was getting tired of having to put up a make-shift awning over our small patio, using a tarp, just to have a place to work that was out from under the elements.

Having the new shop gave me just such a place, where I knew I could turn out top-quality hand-crafted items, gave me the ability to accept a lot more of those little jobs. In a small town like Gilmer, word gets around pretty quickly, and word of mouth is doggone good advertising. The attorney that Raymond uses wanted a set of 'barrister bookcases' for his study, at home, and Raymond suggested that the attorney call me. It seemed like I'd no sooner delivered the finished cabinets, than I was getting calls from two of his partners to build some similar bookcases for them. And that wasn't the only such opportunity I got.

Several people had approached me about doing small jobs, building cabinets and bookshelves. Having the shop gave me a place to work out of the weather, and the additional income from these projects allowed us to add some insulation to our home, in addition to installing a shower and tile tub surround in the bathroom. We also had enough money to afford a couple window-unit air conditioners, which sure made the summers more bearable. We always said the humidity at least equaled the temperature during the summers in East Texas.

Mom often worked with me in the shop, on weekends, usually applying stains and finishes to otherwise-completed projects. She said that, since we were using the money that I was making from these projects for home improvements that benefited both of us, she needed to do her part. Her patience and attention to detail meant she was quite good at finishing.

A lot of the tasks we worked at, in the shop, were the sort that didn't require an immense amount of concentration; so there was always idle chatter going on between Mom and me, when we were out in the shop together. We'd talk about a wide variety of subjects, but I noticed – over time – that she had one favorite topic: girls. Were there any pretty girls, at school, that I was at all interested in, and was I planning on asking any of them out on a date?

I wasn't at all sure – back then – that Mom truly understood just how shy I really was, around other people. Apart from our extended family – my Uncle Junior, Aunt Kathy, and their daughters, and Grandma – and a very few neighbors on our street, there weren't many people I felt comfortable spending time with, or talking to. Her questions embarrassed me, due to my shyness, and often made me very tense and nervous.

As if her 'interrogations' weren't bad enough (I sometimes got these little 'flash' visions of Mom, dressed in a World War II Nazi uniform, taking the cigarette from between her lips and breathing a cloud of smoke at me as she informed me, "Ve haff vays of findink zese sings out, you know..."), my grandmother had also been asking questions about my social life and the girls at school. Worse, still, it seemed that she always got around to talking about this one particular girl that she knew! As shy as I was, I kept my responses noncommittal, despite the fact that – to hear the way Grandma described this girl – she came within a hair's breadth of being Mom's equal

Over time – thankfully! – Mom finally began to realize how uncomfortable her questions made me feel, and she began to joke around a bit, with me, to try and lighten the tension that always developed whenever she asked me about any girls I knew at school, or why I hadn't begun dating.

4 June 1966

On one particular Saturday, about three weeks after my eighteenth birthday, she and I were out in my shop, putting the finishing touches on a set of bookshelves that I was scheduled to deliver to a customer the following week. We had our usual idle chatter and banter going on, while I worked at cleaning up the shop while Mom rubbed out the final coat of finish on one of the bookshelf units with oil and rottenstone, which is a powdered porous limestone used as a polishing material in woodworking, and is rather messy.

"You about done, Mom?" I asked her, at one point, as I dumped a dustpan full of sawdust into an old barrel I kept for that purpose.

"Soon, Baby," she called out in a cheery voice. "Probably another fifteen or twenty minutes, I'm thinkin'. Won't be soon enough to suit me, though. I'm dyin' for a smoke, but I'd hafta pull these consarned rubber gloves off, to light up, an' – if I do that – they'll turn inside out, sure as shootin', an' be impossible to get back on."

"You can take a break, if you want, Mom," I told her. "I ain't no slave driver. And, if it's the gloves that bother you, I've got fresh pairs in the supplies cabinet."

"Nah," she shook her head and waved a hand. "I wanna get finished with this, so we have the rest o' the day to relax. Tell you what – why don't you light me one, and then bring it over here and put it twixt my lips?"

"All right, Mom," I agreed, nodding.

I found her cigarettes and lighter over by our coffee mugs. Mom had smoked for as long as I can remember – Dad, too, until the traffic accident took him from us, back when I was about ten. Over the years, I'd seen her light up countless time, and so I thought nothing of her request – apart from a bit of nervousness because I'd never done what she was asking me to do, before.

Taking a cigarette from the pack, I put it between my lips and copied what I'd always seen her do. I flicked her battered old Zippo into life, dipped the end of the cigarette into it and drew once, puffing the smoke out of the corner of my mouth. Then, just as Mom always did: I puffed on the cigarette again, making sure it was fully lit, and then closed the lighter with one hand and pulled the cigarette from my lips with the other, as I inhaled the puff of smoke that remained in my mouth.

That, of course, turned out to be the wrong thing to do, at least for somebody who'd never smoked, before. The thick puff of smoke slammed down into my lungs and started me coughing my head off, while Mom just stood there, cracking up with laughter at my predicament.

"What's so darn funny?" I asked her, gasping for breath as she finally took the few steps to stand next to me.

"I can't help it, Baby," she said, still chuckling. "You just looked so funny, standing there and coughing."

"It didn't FEEL very funny, to me!" I told her, glaring a bit at her as I held the cigarette so she could take it with her lips. As soon as she had it, I took a couple big gulps of coffee from my mug, to ease the irritated feeling in my throat.

"My mistake, Baby," she sympathized, giving me a soft smile. "I should've talked you through how to light it. You took a big second puff, and inhaled when you pulled the cigarette from your lips, didn't you?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said, somewhat breathlessly. "What'd I do wrong? I see you inhale all the time, and you never cough."

"Well, I've been smokin' since I was a tad younger'n you," she said. "I'm used to the smoke, and to mixin' a big puff with air as I inhale. You aren't. That's where the problem was."

"Well, why didn't you tell me about that?" I asked her.

"I don't know, really, Honey," she shrugged. "I guess part of it was the way you acted. You looked like you were used to lightin' up, so I figured you'd done it before and knew what you were doin'."

"And when would I have done that kind of thing, before?" I asked her.

"Baby, I know for a fact that you and Larry Kelly tried smokin' corn silk in one o' his daddy's old pipes, a couple o' years ago."

Larry Kelly was my best friend, and lived almost directly across the street from us. His mother, Connie, and my mom were also good friends.

"Mrs. Kelly told you, didn't she?" I asked.

"It was a couple days later, but, yes," Mom smiled. "It turns out that the pipe you two scoundrels borrowed wasn't an old one that Larry's dad had stopped usin'. In fact, he went to smoke it that same night, and it still tasted like corn silk. He said somethin' to his wife, an' she told me the next day. You try to sneak around an' do things, but you always get found out."

"Like when we skipped school a couple o' years ago to go fishin'," I commented.

"Right again," she said. "Youngsters never figure out that everything they try to do and hide from their parents, their parents have already done and know all about."

She beamed a smile across the shop at me, and returned to her task of polishing the finish on the bookcase. I continued with my clean up of the shop, stealing an occasional glance at her when I thought she wasn't looking. I had admired her beauty – both the inner and outer sorts – for most of my life, at that point, and I considered her to be the model for the type of woman I would want, if I could ever conquer my fears and force myself to talk to a stranger. I watched her movements, noting how graceful she truly was, and entranced by the slow, gentle sway and roll of certain body parts beneath her thin tee shirt and the shape of her derriere as it moved beneath her cutoff denim shorts – the sort that would wind up being called 'Daisy Dukes' about fifteen years later.

I finished my cleaning – except for one last little task – before she completed her finishing work, and took our empty coffee mugs up to the house to fetch refills. As I returned to the shop, she was just tossing the oil-soaked felt pad into the covered can that I kept for such rags – and stripping off her gloves. I glanced at the bookcase, noting the beautiful, even luster that she'd achieved, and gave her a smile and a thumb's up. She walked over to the worktable where I'd set our mugs, pulled out a battered old stool, and took a seat. Leaning back against the worktable, she picked up her pack and lit another cigarette.

"So, Mom," I began as I pulled out another stool and sat next to her, "if you knew I'd tried smokin' – corn silk or not - why didn't you say anything to me, about it, when Connie Kelly came and told you?"

"Why should I have?" Mom asked, laughing. "Baby, when a boy or girl grows up in a house where the parents smoke, it's a pretty sure bet that he or she is gonna try it, long about the time they turn sixteen or so, maybe even sooner. I was one o' them kids, so why should I jump on you for doin' the very same thing I did, when I was about your age?"

"But I was sneakin' behind your back, to do it, and that's one thing you've always said you hated – folks sneakin' behind your back." I protested.

"Under normal circumstances, yes," Mom smiled. "Smokin's a bit different, because it seems like every kid that ever lived is afraid to just come out and ask to try it. I'll bet you that, out of every hundred kids that ever try it, only one or two ever come to one of their parents an' ask, 'Mama, can I try a few puffs on a cigarette?'"

She took another long drag and studied me carefully for a moment, while she inhaled and exhaled.

"You know, you're old enough to smoke, now, if you want to, and I don't mind if you do. In fact, I'm kinda surprised you haven't started, already," she said at length.

"What makes you say that, Mom?"

"Baby, you spend five afternoons a week, workin' at Raymond's job sites with a bunch o' carpenters an' the like who're all older'n you. I figured that, sure as shootin', one o' them had offered you a cigarette on a smoke break, by now, and you'd've taken him up on it."

"Several of 'em have, but I turned 'em all down," I admitted, shrugging my shoulders.

"Baby, why?" she gasped, surprised by my answer.

"I felt guilty enough, about that corn-silk thing, and sneakin' behind your back to do that," I explained. "Every time one o' the guys offered me one, it felt like I'd be sneakin' behind your back to go ahead an' try it, an' I didn't want to be doin' that, again. It probably worked out for the best, though, in the long run."

"Well, I'm proud of you for not wantin' to go sneakin' around on me," she smiled, reaching out a hand and gently ruffling my hair, "but what makes you say it all worked out for the best?"

"Well, just look at what happened when I tried to light that cigarette for you, a few minutes ago. I coughed my head off and made a damn fool of myself, in front of you! If that'd happened in front of the crews I work with, I'd've never lived it down! A year from now, I'd be walkin' past one of 'em, an' he'd start pretendin' to cough, just to yank my chain about it!"

Mom burst out laughing, then, and all I could do was sit there and glare at her, unhappy and upset.

"Very funny, miss smarty pants," I told her.

"Oh, Baby," she said, toning her laugh down to the barest of giggles, "I wasn't laughin' at you. I was laughin' at the picture you painted, with your words. Hell, I could see somethin' like that happenin' to anybody, given the crew you work with. Don't forget, I've dropped you off at some of your job sites, and seen some of those old coots! Heard 'em whistlin' at me, too."

"I can't fault 'em, for the whistles, Mom," I admitted, shrugging my shoulders and blushing slightly. "You're a beautiful woman. Heck, if I wasn't your son – and hadn't been raised to have better manners than that – I'd probably have been one of the ones that were whistlin' at you, too!"

Mom accepted my attempt at a compliment without a word, gazing at me with slightly narrowed eyes as she took a long drag. As she pulled the cigarette from her lips, her mouth opened into a rough 'O' shape, and I saw the ball of smoke behind them as it started trying to escape before she drew it downward into her lungs.

I had always thought that Mom was beautiful. Since I'd started working on some of Raymond's construction sites, with his carpentry crews, my opinion had changed somewhat. A couple of the guys routinely brought along some issues of those "men's magazines" – the sort with the full-color photos of naked women inside – to browse through while they ate lunch, and I'd had a couple tossed at me, so I'd looked at them. While it had been a very long time since I'd caught sight of Mom with no clothes on, there wasn't a thing I saw on those photo models that Mom didn't have, in spades. Thus, I'd come to accept her as being not only beautiful, but quite a few men's ideal of 'sexy', as well.

And, for some reason that I'd never managed to figure out, I thought she looked even more entrancing when she smoked. For the first little while after the realization hit me, I thought I was some sort of nut case, but then I began to notice that those magazines seemed to always include a couple women who smoked in the photos that were printed. Eventually, I came to accept that – if thinking a woman looked 'sexy' when she smoked was a bit on the 'perverted' side of things – I apparently was not alone, or those men's magazines wouldn't have those particular photo layouts in them.

The end result of this was that I had long since added those concepts of 'sexy' to my overall view of Mom. Now, she was not only the model of the sort of woman I'd want for a lifetime companion because of her mind and her heart, but also because of her face and her body.