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Excerpt From CUTE

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For some reason, the installation of our pool turned out to be bad luck all-around, and the next bit of it came shortly after our cousins arrived.

***

It was about two weeks later when Eunice and Terrie pulled up in front of the house after their long trip. Terrie stepped out of the car and I was stunned. I hadn’t seen her since the summer of 1957, and boy had she changed. She was twenty by then, a lovely, mature young lady with a body like a movie star. Her face had also changed. Whereas before she was a skinny, awkward teenager, she had now filled out, which smoothed the sharpness of her previously pointed chin. Her hair was longer with a little flip at the bottom and had darkened into a beautiful shade of auburn. Even her deep blue eyes seemed larger.

As we stood there staring at each other, I felt my heart begin to pound. Finally, Eunice came over and gave me a hug, and when I failed to respond, she looked back at Terrie. “Uh, oh,” she said, as she released me and hugged Mom. “Looks like there might be some trouble brewing here.” Terrie and I hadn’t taken our eyes off each other, and it wasn’t until Janet went to hug her that the spell was momentarily broken. I finally regained my wits and started helping with the luggage.

Once we had them settled in one of the upstairs bedrooms, I told Terrie to follow me out to the side yard. We hadn’t said anything about the pool, hoping to surprise them, and when I ushered her out through the porch and onto the new patio, her eyes grew even bigger. “Wow!” she exclaimed. “Hey Mom, come look at this.” Eunice had followed with Mom, and when she saw the pool her surprise was evident. I took them on a tour of the complex, starting with the cabanas, which were made of some wavy plastic stuff and had two curtained sections separated by a common area with an open shower we were supposed to use before and after we swam. Next came the barbecue pit Dad and I built from used brick in a sunken area at the back of the lot. In front of the grills there was a large cement slab with two big picnic tables.

Heading around to the chlorinator, I related in detail the explosion and Dad’s subsequent hospitalization. Eunice and Terrie both seemed a little scared as I explained how the thing worked and how they should never touch the bottom switch inside the porch door. Finally, there was the pool itself, which was what they called “kidney shaped,” and was much larger than most home pools of the day. I pointed out the drop-off, then explained what happened to Dad and warned them about diving.

A day earlier, our contractor finished what was to be the crowning touch to the whole complex: a new patio slab under an open roof next to the music room. We had broken out the wall of the music room and installed four huge sliding glass doors that led to the new patio. Unfortunately, however, there had once again been a serious design miscalculation. Because it was the latest fad in construction, Dad decided we would have the patio made out of a new material called terrazzo. It was an expensive and time-consuming project, and when it was finished, it looked spectacular, with little sparkling stone chips imbedded in the surface, polished to a gleaming, almost glasslike shine. Unfortunately, that perfectly flat, polished surface presented a problem, which, again, no one anticipated.

Dad was swimming while we went on our little tour, and when we got around to the new patio, he emerged from the pool and started to run over so he could be the one to explain all about the terrazzo and how it was such an innovative thing in the world of home decorating. He reached the newly polished surface at a trot about the same time we did, and without slowing down, he stepped onto it with his wet feet. As we would soon come to understand, having a smooth, polished patio next to a swimming pool is not the best thing.

When his first foot hit the surface, it immediately flew our from under him, and the second one provided no more traction than the first. The roof over the patio was held up by six iron poles around the edges, each about three inches in diameter, and as Dad landed hard on his butt, his momentum propelled him like a cartoon character across the patio right toward one of the poles. He would later say it was like being on an icy downhill road in Indiana when the tires broke loose; basically, there was no way to stop or change directions.

With his legs spread out in a V before him, he slid across the entire length of the patio, never slowing down a bit, except when his balls hit the pole. His subsequent exclamation sounded like something out of a gangster movie, when one character is shot in the stomach by another—a garbled sound that would have been funny were it not for the circumstances. Even though we knew how serious the results might be, it was all we could do to stifle a few laughs before Mom came to her senses and rushed to his side.

For the next few days, Dad, who still had the remnants of what looked like a severe sunburn on his face from the chlorine explosion, hobbled around the house like a hunchback, cursing under his breath and swearing he was going to kill the contractor who suggested terrazzo. He also tacked up some new signs, warning swimmers of the danger, but the signs never quite did the trick, as I would learn a few days later.

***

It was a Saturday, and the family planned to take in an operetta making its annual stop in St. Pete. At the last minute, however, Terrie decided she didn’t want to go, so I said I would stay home and keep her company. The two of us were swimming, with only the underwater pool light for illumination, when our splashing and kidding around led to a game of water tag. She took off underwater and I chased her toward the shallow end where a set of cement steps in the corner led toward the new patio. She reached the stairs and quickly climbed out with me right behind her in a dead run, but when she got to the edge of the patio, she jumped sideways to avoid my tag and I flew right past her.

My wet feet hit the terrazzo, and it was an almost identical repeat of Dad’s little adventure. I landing on my still-soaked bathing suit and was propelled with great speed right toward the same pole he’d hit. When my nuts came in contact with it, I thought I was going to die. To add insult to injury, my head slammed into the pole, then flopped back against the hard surface a couple of times, adding to the whole-body pain I was already in.

As I lay there looking up at the stars (which were not real stars, but the twinkling in my brain from being banged repeatedly inside my skull), I heard Terrie scream. When I felt her hit the back of my neck, my nuts once again slammed into the iron pole, and I knew I really was going to die. We sat there, me with my smashed nuts against the pole and her with her legs straddling me as if we were on a snow sled too small for the two of us, until I started whimpering like a baby. Finally, she realized what was going on and scooted back to take the pressure off.

The terrazzo incident led to our again becoming comfortable with each other. For some reason, up until then we’d been reserved, even nervous. This was probably because we could both sense the electricity sparking between us and were afraid where it might lead. As close as we had been in the past, we didn’t seem able to resume the old intimate friendship we always enjoyed. But the nut-smashing episode, though incredibly traumatic for me, provided the needed catalyst.

“Oh my God,” Terrie said in a hoarse whisper as she slid around beside me and looked down at my crotch, which was still plastered to the iron pole. She first reached out a hand, but then she drew it back, in fear I guess of hurting me even more. Finally, she stood and grabbed my shoulders, carefully pulling me back until I was no longer in contact with the pole. She gently raised my head and moved her legs underneath, and for the longest time she sat with me, stroking my wet hair and cheek and whispering encouraging things in my ear.

The pain began to recede minutely, and I opened my eyes to find her crying. She smiled through her tears, and once she seemed to decide I was feeling a bit better, that old practical look came over her face. “Okay,” she said. “I know you’re probably not feeling too good yet, but we’re going to have to do something about that.” She nodded toward my crotch. Then she carefully removed her legs from under my head and reached over to grab a pillow from one of the lounge chairs nearby. She placed it under my head and slowly let me down. “I’ll be right back, Timmy,” she said as she stood up beside me. “Don’t you move a muscle.”

Of course, there wasn’t much chance of my moving, because even the thought of it caused me anticipatory pain, so I closed my eyes and waited. When she returned she carried a large bowl, some towels and washrags, and the ice bucket from our bar. She sat down beside me and I looked up into those beautiful blue eyes, which seemed to apologize for what she was about to do.

“Now listen,” she said in a firm authoritative tone. “I’m sorry about this, but there’s a lot of swelling going on about now, and I have to do something.” I grimaced at the thought, but she held her ground. “Look, Honey,” she said when she saw my face, “you may hate me for this, but believe me I know what I’ doing. I’m a nurse in training now, in case you hadn’t heard, and you’re going to have to trust me.”

She moved down toward my legs and carefully began to remove my bathing suit. I squirmed a little, but that made things hurt even more, so I finally gave up and lay back down on the pillow. Once my suit was completely off, I felt her hand gently touch me and start moving things around. “Holy shit,” she said softly, then I heard the swishing of water and the next thing I felt was both a warm, moist sensation and pain.

“I’m going to start with warm water, so it doesn’t shock you,” she said as she slowly continued to work. “But eventually, we’re going to have to get some ice on these to slow down the swelling. They’re about the size of baseballs already, so you have to put up with this. I’ll be as gentle as I can, I promise, and go slow, okay?” I managed to make a slight nod, and as she continued to apply soft pressure, I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth.

It was fifteen minutes before she finally applied the ice. In the meantime, I heard her plopping ice cubes into the water one-by-one, to gradually bring the temperature down. The pain had not subsided much, but it hadn’t increased either, so I figured she must know what she was doing. When I first felt the cold icepack, instead of hurting, it actually made things feel a little better. Eventually, she positioned it underneath me, then took her hands away and laid a towel over my lower body to cover me up.

“Let’s leave that there for a while,” she said as she again began to run her fingers through my hair and brush my cheeks with her hand. Once she decided I wasn’t suffering too much, she filled me in on the last year of her life. We hadn’t written or called in a while, so there were lots of things to talk about. She told me how she’d finally gotten over the trauma of the abortion, and that she had entered nursing school because she felt like she needed to do something to help people. Eventually, she said, she wanted to become a doctor, maybe a gynecologist, so she could help young girls learn about sex and help the ones who got in trouble.

As for her own sex life, she said she hadn’t been with a boy since the pregnancy and abortion. “I don’t know, Timmy,” she said glancing up at the roof. “I guess it scared me into not wanting sex anymore. I mean, I still take care of myself, but I haven’t wanted to be with a boy. I think about it, but the urge has never been strong enough to overcome my reluctance.”

She asked me about my sex life, and I related my two “older women” episodes, after which she scolded me like a child. “I knew that thing was going to get you in trouble if you didn’t watch out,” she said, glancing down at my lower body. “And I’ll bet it’s grown since you first asked me about how to handle Maggie. I couldn’t possibly tell by looking, because things are so, well, banged up down there, but I know its got to be a lot bigger by now. You need to be careful from here on out, Timmy, especially with younger girls or even someone your own age. And, when it comes to those older ones, well, that can get you and them into a whole lot of trouble, too. I guess you know that already.”

I nodded, but then began to plead my case. I told her those incidents weren’t all my fault. In fact, I had felt nearly raped by the last one, but I couldn’t seem to say no. I said I hadn’t done anything at all since Arlene and my little talk with Mom, and was trying my best to stay out of situations where something might happen again, at least for awhile.

“That’s good,” she said, as she raised the towel to check her handiwork. “Tell you what, why don’t you see if you can stand up now, and we’ll get you upstairs into your bed where you’ll be more comfortable.”

Terrie helped me stand shakily, and we slowly made our way inside and up the stairs, with me stooped over and whimpering all the way. When she finally got me in bed and retrieved all her paraphernalia, she looked around the house and found a rubber water bottle, which she filled with water and ice and gently situated around and under my aching nuts. Then she pulled the sheet over me and sat there massaging my chest and arms for a while. We soon realized the family would be getting back, so she said she’d better get out of there.

“I hate to leave you alone,” she whispered. “But things are looking a little better down there, and we don’t want them to catch us here in the bedroom like this.” Then she leaned over to kiss me on the forehead and when she drew back, I reached out for her. She let me pull her toward me and we kissed, a long, soft kiss that eventually led to open mouths and exploring tongues. When we finally parted, she smiled down at me. “I think we might have a problem here,” she said with sadness in her voice. “I mean, I love you, Timmy, you know I do, and it would be fun to see how things could be if we…but there’s still the age difference to think about, and after all, we are cousins, you know. The parents would go nuts if we got together for real. Besides, if we ever had kids, there could be real problems.”

I nodded reluctantly, then pulled her back down for one last kiss, after which she raised up and looked at me with tears in her eyes. “Damn!” she said as she stood and started for the door. “Damn, damn, damn.” She stopped to look back for a second, then she was gone.

***