The sky seemed more blue, the sun brighter and the air fresher than it had felt in a long time, or at least it seemed that way that early morning, as I stood alone outside the entrance to my quarters.
I'd hit the sheets early that night, or at least earlier than usual,
still bottling in that sense of futility that comes with tragedy, the tragedy
of an Armageddon for which there was no cure, no fix, no future and no
understanding. Where had this all come
from? We were alone and so few of us
that it didn’t take a clairvoyant to prophecy the final outcome. Within a couple of generations at best,
assuming we weren’t discovered and destroyed ourselves, the world would be
inhabited by morons, the products of severe inbreeding, or at its worst the
inability to reproduce resulting in a dead planet, humanly speaking at least.
But, something had been different last night, something like that
phone you hear ringing, just before you wake up to an alarm clock. It hadn't been a sound
however, it was more a feeling of an ominous presence, as if something were
about to reach out and grab me. Yet the
moment that I actually awoke, was not sudden, but a slow transition, so much so
that I began to reach out to touch that something that I was now sure inhabited
my bed. It dawned on me that we did have solid doors at our entrances and that an animal could very easily have crawled onto my bed only
if I had for some stupid reason left that door open. It was possible. It had happened before. I'd awoken in the morning to see the door wide
open. Anything could've crawled in
during the night and I wouldn’t have known a thing.
In my half sleeping mode, my imagination held sway. Would it have fur? What if it was rabid? Perhaps it was a skunk. We'd seen those around. If it perfumed the cave, I'd lose
everything. We'd even seen wild
dogs. It occurred to me that whatever
this creature was, it was giving off a lot of heat, more than I had felt under
the covers in months. Under the covers? What animal would crawl under the
covers? At any rate, it was no small
animal. I reached out a tentative hand,
then a single finger and touched...flesh, warm, soft flesh, flesh that
responded to my touch by moving closer.
The skin was bare from head to toe, although I didn’t actually check for
socks.
Although a relief to know I was not about to become dinner, this was
more than I could handle. There was only
one real possibility. But surely it was
not Lise. We had gone through this
discussion before. She was far too young
for me. Hadn’t she just turned 18 yesterday?
She spoke, removing any remaining doubt. Since the invasion and discovery of the loss
of her family and friends, Lise had begun to cling to me as...I thought, as a
father. After all, I was certainly old
enough to be her father or maybe her grandfather. I had been her teacher, she my student. There were no such relationships between
teachers and students, especially with students so young. I had to maintain my separateness, my
principles. I had to do what was
right. What would the others think of
me? At least that was what my brain was
telling me, most of the time anyway.
All the while, my heart was arguing another story. The situation in which we found ourselves was
not at all ordinary or customary.
Sometimes, my thoughts drifted to my own losses, my wife, whom I assumed
had been reduced to a small sphere and my children who lived out of the country
and had no way to contact me, and that was assuming they too, were survivors.
Perhaps the rules had changed. “No,” I
thought, “Rules in a civilized world never change. They are based on sound principles.”
Finally, I broke the silence.
“Lise, I told you two years ago that this wouldn't work. We can’t be together. I’m much too old for you, and besides, I’m
your teacher,” I had argued.
“Why are you talking like the world is the same as it was ten years
ago? You can see that we’re all there
is. There IS no society. Who’s going to care? I certainly don’t. And for that matter, you’re not my
teacher. In case you haven’t noticed, school’s
out! For good!”
“Do you think it just matters what a few people think?” I
responded. “This is about doing what is
right, no matter who’s watching.”
“You mean like stealing something when no one is watching? Mr. W, I love you. I have liked you for a long time, and I don’t
think inappropriately, but my feelings for you have changed in the last little
while. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but we
have no one else. Please don’t write me
off. Do you care for me at all?”
Until that moment, I'd felt some semblance of control of my
feelings. However, when I thought about
what Lise was telling me, how she felt, I too began to take stock of the way I
really felt. I had to admit, I was drawn
to her. She was right. I had no one and neither did she. I was concerned about what the others in our
camp would think, but heh.
“I want to know how you feel about me. I'm pretty sure you like me, because you've always
treated me kindly and never turned me away, other than like this. I want to know if your feelings for me go
beyond that. I need to know. If you care for me, I don’t care what others
do, or say, or think. I’ll be with you.”
“Lise, what's this about? What are you
asking of me? This is your
birthday. Am I just a birthday present,
one you'll throw away tomorrow after you sneak away?
“You are a birthday present all right. But you have the wrong idea. I’ve never heard of a birthday present that
you use one day and then throw away the next.
You’re like getting a house. It’s
forever. But you haven’t answered my
question. Do you care for me?”
I hesitated, so Lise began to put things together and started to
slip out from under the sheets. I could
feel her at the edge, trying to find what I assumed were her slippers, then,
there was that springing of the mattress that revealed that she had indeed left
me.
“Is it because I'm not beautiful enough?” she questioned. It was true that she was not stunningly
beautiful, but this attribute was hardly noticeable due to her wonderful
character and personality. She could light up a room with her presence.
I couldn’t lie to her. When
it came to what men usually thought of as beauty, Lise didn't have a
lot of. Were her eyes the exact distance
apart or her nose set just right? Were
her ears the right size? And her cheek
bones were they high enough? But who
cared, for perhaps God, if there was one, had given me a little of his insight,
for I saw in Lise a truly beautiful person.
“Lise! Beauty, as man sees it, is
only skin deep. You truly are beautiful,
but God chose to put more of your beauty inside you. If he had put it on your outside, it would
have made the rest of the world look ugly by comparison. You’re probably the most beautiful person
that I’ve ever known.” Lest I give the
impression that Lise was ugly, misshapen, or plain, that was hardly the
truth. It was just that according to
scientific experiments with what men worldwide considered beautiful, she did
not quite match up. But what others had
ignored, now became a blessing to me.
My comment hadn't stopped
her retreat from the room. The
realization that the greatest gift anyone had ever offered me, other than my
own first wife, was about to simply walk away, brought my senses to high
alert. I sat up with a start. There'd been times of regret
in my life that I'd remained silent when I should've spoken up, had
failed to take an action and later regretted it.
Heart and mind were in a combat to the death, a struggle for control
of my life or what was left of it. How
did an older man, her former teacher, tell an eighteen year old that he loved
her? Even as I rehearsed the words over
in my mind, they didn't resonate as sensible. Yet, I
suddenly realized that Lise was right.
What society thinks of something isn't necessarily about
right or wrong. Other societies on the
planet, both present and past, had marriages such as this and thought nothing
of it. Many mores of society were simply
constructs of that society. Had earth’s people set up a committee to
decide who could marry whom and when? To
some extent that'd been true. Court cases had
taken place where prosecutors had convinced judges that certain older men
should be punished for having the gall to have consensual sex with a
minor. While I certainly don't think
that minors should be having sex, upon what sound basis did the judge make his
ruling other than that he thought that the majority of the country frowned upon
what the couple had decided to do. Now,
there was no country. Now, there were no
judges. Now, there were no
prosecutors. All the body of law created
by the decisions of judges over several hundred years, right or wrong, was now null
and void. We were starting from scratch.
I made my resolve, a resolve based upon a losing battle between
those two competing organs, the one of conscious, rational thought and decision
making and the other of feelings, and emotions, emotions that I had unsuccessfully
tried to bury since the loss of my wife and family. I could hear her at the entryway. “Lise, don’t go,” came the words from deep within
me. She was still in the room. “I do care...very much.” I had nothing to lose. “Please stay.” Could I repeat the words that would compel her
to stay? “Lise, I love you.” The struggle was over. As I was speaking, I hadn't heard her
soft feet run swiftly to my bed. “I
don’t know how I could live without you,” I went on speaking to no one at the
entrance, as she jumped in beside me once again and wrapped herself around me. “Lise,
although I want to be with you, and I agree with most of what you've said,
there's a little issue I'd like to clear up before we take this
relationship any further tonight.”
“What’s that?” she asked, sitting up beside me. I could hear disappointment in her voice as
if she sensed that I was about to send her away again.
“If I ask you some questions, will you answer honestly?”
“I’m always honest.”
“Of course you are. I needn’t
have asked. Just a minute.” I got up and lit a few candles, for I wanted
us to be able to see one another, then again took my place on my bed. “There are no priests, ministers, judges or
anything like that that we know of, so the legal system as we know it is
defunct. We are in uncharted waters
here. Do you understand that?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to have a lasting relationship with me?”
“Yes, I do.”
“That’s the same relationship I want with you. I could never agree to anything else.” I was quiet for a few moments. “Lise, sit here in front of me.” She squirmed her way to my feet and sat
crossed legged, facing me. Her beautiful
ebony flesh gleamed in the candle light.
She was completely naked, having discarded her top and the sight of her
bare skin and the parts of her that I had never seen before, coupled with the
knowledge that she wanted to spend the night with me was playing havoc with my own
formerly inert hormones. My eyes
followed the curves of her body as her flesh flowed gently over her shoulders and
down her arms to her elbows. The candle
light created strange shadows on her torso.
Her breasts were not huge, but enough to fill my hands and the nipples appeared
hard and erect. The area behind her
crossed legs was immersed in darkness.
Needless to say, I was beginning to feel like a sixteen year old sitting
in a classroom full of mixed students and my own body parts were beginning to
respond to this vision. If she’d
noticed, she didn’t let on. I stared at
her face, her ivory teeth and the whites of her eyes aglow. My heart was pounding in my chest. I was concerned I might have a heart attack,
if not now, before the night was through.
Yet, I pressed on.
“Lise, I don’t have a lot to offer you. I
am not rich, handsome, or young. I don`t
have a pretty house for you or fine clothes or jewels. I can`t promise you a lot of tomorrows for I
don’t even know what today will bring.
All I have is this heart of mine that skips beats whenever I hear your
voice. A heart that has known for a long time that I loved you. No more denial! Lise,
sweetheart, will you marry me and end the suffering of
this lonely man?”
“When?”
That was not what I was expecting to hear. “When?
Lise, the question has a yes or no answer. And depending on how you answer, I’ll either
become a most miserable, depressed old man, or the happiest I’ve been for a
long time. But to answer your question,
I mean right now.”
“O Warren, of course I’ll marry you. But what do you mean by now? Do you mean to wake up everyone?”
“No Lise, we’ll let them sleep for now. Remember what I said about uncharted
waters? I don’t think it really matters
exactly how we marry. But what does
matter, if we are honest with one another, is that when we make promises to
each other we intend to keep those promises.
So, in the quietness of this room, with no one to distract us, are you
willing to commit your life to me, to marry me, here and now?”
“Yes.
This will be our official marriage?”
“That’s the idea.” I took Lise’s hands
in mine and spoke, “Lise, I love you. I
am so glad that you've come into my life. You’ve
given me a reason to live. And I
couldn’t be more blessed that I am at this moment. I promise you that as long as I live, I will
provide for you, protect you, be faithful to you, love and respect you, to the
best of my ability. I will never put
anyone else before you; I will always be your best friend.”
Lise realizing that I had just made a vow to her had some words of
her own. “Mr. W, err I mean,
Warren.” At this, Lise burst into a
brief fit of laughter. “I too love you
with all my heart. There is no one that
I could want more than you, even if there were hundreds of men to pick
from. I promise to be faithful to you,
love and respect you, stick by you and support you for as long as I live. I will never let anyone come between us. And for the record, Warren, you are
handsome. At least to me.”
I got up and picked up something that I'd found with my wife’s clothing at her school, a
small round piece of gold. This, I
slipped on Lise’s finger. I had also retrieved my own wedding
band that I hadn't worn for nearly a year.
This I gave to Lise, who placed it on my finger. We had set a new
protocol and considered ourselves married, if not in the sight of God, (for
after the decimation of the human race, we both wondered whether there truly
was a god), at least in ours. We would share our relationship with the
others tomorrow. Now, we were together.
I encouraged Lise to move closer, as near as two bodies sitting
cross legged could manage. I drew the
back of my right hand gently down her left cheek until my hand came to a rest
under her chin, then lightly stroked her lips with my thumb. I felt her shudder. I was fairly certain that Lise had never been
with a man before, though it seemed so common in our world for everyone to be
sleeping around without benefit of clergy.
I on the other hand had been married before and was quite
experienced. This I saw as an advantage,
for though I had not been with a woman for quite some time and knew that this could
often lead to a lack of control, my experience offered a degree of self-control
that most young men lacked. I determined
therefore, that this night was going to be a time that Lise would remember
fondly for the rest of her life. I would
be as patient as humanly possible, for I knew that my own anticipation would
eventually be rewarded.
