Gwen, in Green

She lay in total darkness, limply submitting to his touch, his obscene kiss, his fast, labored breathing. And her clitoris swelled. A tendril of something went shooting down, down, centered there. She jerked her eyes open, shocked. Darkness, the sheet over him. A stiffening in her legs, an almost imperceptible lifting of her loins. She recognized her feeling. She’d known it in her dreams. A wild hope sprang up in her. He, feeling his love-­making bear fruit, redoubled his efforts. His tongue was a living entity. With a gasp, she pulled the sheet up, up, covered her head, hid herself from herself and from the world, tucked the sheet under her head and lowered her hands to pull on his shoulders, his head. He came to her, filled her, and there, in darkness, hidden by the covering sheet, air getting stale with their joint gasps, she found that certain body movements are instinctive.

She giggled wildly, happily. George kissed her, smeared his musky smell over her cheeks.

“See?” he asked.

She did not tell him that her first ecstasy had been a brief moment followed by sickening remorse, self-­hate, shame. She had hope and she loved him.

In all her life she had never had anyone to love her and her alone. In all her life, till George, she had never had anyone.

In order for her to keep her scholarship, they were married in secret. She was just twenty. He was almost twenty-­two. She lived in the girl’s dorm, he in a fraternity house. On weekends, when he had the money, they would drive to the Raleigh area motels. There they would hide beneath the sheets in darkness until her shame and dis­gust was overcome by her body.

Ten months after they were married, George had sex in the back seat of his car with vivacious, blond Grace Dowling. Had he been content with having Grace only once, Gwen would never have known. But he was greedy. Greedy George. On an ensuing occasion George and Grace parked behind the stadium and were surprised by the campus patrolman, a talkative fellow. The policeman let it be known that he had caught Grace Dowling, the blond cheerleader, the one with the great legs, with her flimsies down. The name of the boy was almost incidental to the story, but it was mentioned and the story got around to Gwen. Confronted, George confessed.

Ten months after they were married.

She would not see him. She withdrew into herself and accepted as a fact a suspicion she’d had all along. She was not enough woman for George. Her hang-­ups were just too much. She could never make him happy. In all of her life, till George, she had had no one. Now she had no one again.

The reconciliation was brought about by George’s parents. Confused, hurt, guilty, George talked to his father, who then talked to his mother. Mrs. Ferrier, a handsome, kindly woman, talked with Gwen in Gwen’s room.

“If only you had not kept the marriage secret, darling,” Mrs. Ferrier said. “If only we’d known.”

Woman to woman, Mrs. Ferrier said, how foolish to live apart. Naturally a man would fall victim to the first loose girl who came along. Men, she explained, are weak creatures in some ways, lacking in resistance to the wiles of predatory women. It had happened, she insisted, simply because those two foolish children would not announce their marriage and live together as man and wife should. That, she announced, was the way it would be. There would be an immediate change. Gwen was not to worry about a foolish scholarship. The Ferriers would pay her expenses, would rent them a cottage. They were not wealthy people, but they had enough to help their son’s happiness.

“But I’m inadequate,” she said.

“Nonsense,” said her mother-­in-­law. “You just need counseling, that’s all.”

“Gwen, you need help.”

Under the sheets in the summer. Under the blankets in the winter. Cringing when she had to undress in front of him, hating it, loathing her body, feeling dirty. But, helpless hypocrite that she was, enjoying it once it was done.

3

Possum Creek had a tidal variation of some four feet. When the tide was full, it lost some of its muddy, black look and showed a tinge of the green ocean water which fed it. Falling, the tide carried debris from the vast marshes on the inland side of the island. The creek abounded in blue crabs in season, was dimpled with the jumps of popping mullet, had once, before upstream pol­lution, been a prime speckled-­trout fishing ground. The creek meandered up from the Cape Fear alongside the northern end of Pine Tree Island, sweeping out in a U to eat into the marsh, coming back to lick the land and leave bare, black mud banks under the spreading branches of huge pines.