In the evenings, as I frantically composed on my old black Royal, Mrs. Kooshof would sit with me in the den, sometimes with a book in her lap, other times just scowling and watching the pages accumulate. Her displeasure was palpable.* On one late-night occasion she issued a huffy, exasperated sigh. "You never talk to me," she said, completely out of the blue. "You never ask questions or anything."

I glanced up from my typewriter. "Questions? About what?"

"Just me, Thomas. Who I am."

"Ah, yes," said I. "In that case, you pique my curiosity. Who are you?"

The woman assaulted me with a stare. "Don't condescend. At least you could show a little interest in my life. Everything I've gone through." She was thoughtful for a time, surveying her own history. "I mean, you could ask about Doc."

"Doc?"

"Doc. My husband."

"Thought the man's name was Robert."

Mrs. Kooshof snorted. "Right there, that's condescension. You don't give a hoot about anything except your egotistical, self-centered self. Come on, ask me something. Anything. I dare you."

I rolled a fresh sheet of paper into my Royal. The distraction was irritating, but I made a demonstration of putting my mind to the matter.

"All right," I said, and struck back with my own rigid, ravaging stare. "Where, exactly, did you first have sex?"

"Where?"

"The venue. Where?"

"That's juvenile," said Mrs. Kooshof. "Ask something important. Ask why I don't have children."

"Well, I'm sorry," I told her, "but take it or leave it. And I wouldn't call the question 'juvenile' by any means. Where matters. Profoundly."

I removed a flask from my pocket, treated myself to a droplet of schnapps. It could not hurt, I reckoned, to take a brief break.

"In my own case," I informed her, "it was a cornfield. Just off Highway 16. Very memorable."

"Well," said Mrs. Kooshof, "I don't know if I should tell you the whole-"

"A cornfield in autumn. Chilly night. Windy. A light frost, actually."

"But I'm the one who-"

"One moment," I said. "I'm not finished."

Autumn, I told her.

October of 1961.

Lorna Sue and I were juniors in high school, inexperienced but very much in love,* and for months we had been debating the pros and cons of testing our romance against the high standards of sexuality. I took the affirmative, Lorna Sue the negative. Parked in her dark driveway, she sometimes allowed me access to her thighs and breasts, which I gratefully accepted, but the results were less than satisfying. In large part the problem was mechanical. To wit: Lorna Sue's hair. Throughout high school and for a good part of our marriage, she wore her black tresses long-very, very long. Not only that, but this river of sinuous, gorgeous, Spanish-noir hair was most often arranged in two loosely flowing braids, each of which she decorated with whatever odds and ends struck her fancy: bells, bows, poinsettia leaves, Hershey's Kisses. One can imagine, therefore, my troubles in the driveway. The gropings of an apprentice Don Juan are always clumsy enough, but my own difficulties were compounded by episodes of bondage and rope burn and entanglements of the most unlikely variety. (To this day, I confess, the word hair spooks me.) Beyond all that, and more tellingly, Lorna Sue used her hair as a transparent excuse to avoid the climactic moment. "You're mussing me!" she'd yell. Or she'd yell: "I can't move!" In point of fact, however, I am almost certain that Lorna Sue's reluctance had to do with her brother, his ferocious jealousy, the eerie sensation that Herbie was always there with us. It was Herbie, in fact, who finally pushed us into that windy cornfield. We had tried the traditional make-out spots in Owago-Perkins Park, the Rock Cornish Drive-in Theater-but neither of us could shed that constant watched-over feeling. Headlights appeared at critical moments. Odd noises, too, and suspicious movements in the dark.

Near the end of September, after some point-blank begging on my part, Lorna Sue more or less agreed to consummate things. Even then, however, she stipulated a number of conditions. Absolute privacy. A new wristwatch. No bragging.

"Wristwatch?" I said.

"A good one. No crummy Timex."

(Timex: still another word that signifies one thing to the world at large, something entirely different to me.) "Right," I said judiciously. "A good one."

"With a gold band," she said. "Real gold. Not fake. And it better be brand-new."

Lorna Sue's requirements brought about a short postponement in our plans. I scouted out sites, did my bargain hunting, took a job bagging groceries after school. It was not until late October that I was able to present her with a new Lady Whitman. Lorna Sue examined it skeptically. She tried it on, held it to her ear, then sighed and said, "So where do we do it?"

I had come up with four or five options-splendid ones, I thought-and we spent the afternoon cruising from venue to venue in my father's green Pontiac. Nothing struck Lorna Sue as appropriate. She found the Owago municipal dump (my own first choice) far too dismal. The church pews too irreverent. The courthouse garage too public. The whole while she kept peering down at her new Lady Whitman, impatient and distracted, as if late for a much more pressing engagement-a habit that would drive me loony during our years of marriage-and I finally braked in the middle of Main Street and asked her to hand over the timepiece.

"It's mine," Lorna Sue said.

"Not for long. Make up your mind."

She frowned. "I need nature."

"You need nature?"

"Stuff like ... alive. Stuff that grows."

"Let's have it," I said. "The Whitman."

"Someplace green," said Lorna Sue. Swiftly, and rather defensively, she tied one of her braids to the armrest. "I mean, Tommy, that shouldn't be so hard. I thought you loved me."

I growled and drove straight north out of town.

That part of southern Minnesota was farm country, flat and monotonous, almost entirely without trees. There was no nature.

After seven miles, I pulled onto a gravel road and stopped the car. It was a cold, sullen afternoon, a brisk wind rattling up against the windows.

We sat listening for a time.

"Pretty natural," I finally said. "Good enough?"

"I don't know," said Lorna Sue. "It's sort of ... What if somebody drives by?"

"They'll think we're part of nature."

"Don't be a smart-aleck, Tommy. I can still say no."

"Well, sorry," I said, "but it's a farm road, no traffic at all."

Lorna Sue scanned the bleak horizon.

Plainly, a moral tug-of-war was in progress. She glanced wistfully at her new wristwatch, at the endless prairie, then closed her eyes. "Okay, I suppose," she said, "but it's sure not what I wanted."

"Very healthful," I said brightly.

I turned up the heater and began taking off my shirt. Lorna Sue watched for a second with puzzled eyes.

"What's going on?" she said.

"Sex."

"It's daylight."

"Daylight's natural. Pure as all get-out."

Lorna Sue folded her arms stiffly. "No chance. Not that natural. I want bubbling brooks and stuff."

"Bubbling brooks?"

"Right."

"Well, fine," I told her. "Pass over the wristwatch. I'll trade it in for a bubbling brook."

"You're being nasty."

Something tightened inside me. I reached out and seized her by the braids, one of which remained knotted to the armrest. "Listen, there aren't any goddamn bubbling brooks. You've got corn. You've got soybeans. Take your pick."

Lorna Sue shook her head. "I need the dark. And a movie first. Next Saturday night, I promise."

"That's almost a week."

"Six days," she said. "And count your blessings. You aren't getting the watch back."

Mrs. Robert Kooshof gazed at a spot in the vicinity of my coiled manhood. Her expression was menacing.

"Problem?" I said.

She tossed her shoulders. "Not at all, Thomas. I mean, honestly, it's a relief to talk things out. Thanks for listening."

My companion pushed to her feet, left the den, and returned after five minutes with a glass of my best malt liquor. She had changed into a midnight-blue negligee that nicely set off her Dutch ancestry, all those nourishing cheeses. (I could not disguise my interest in her expansive, very bouncy decolletage. One evening back in Owago I had taken her to the tape: just over thirty-nine standard inches.) There were numerous occasions, not excluding this one, when she seemed positively ripe with estrogen, part starlet, part mother figure.

She caught me looking.

"Don't even think it," she said coldly. "I'm just curious. Where do you get the-I don't know-the incredible stinking nerve? We were supposed to be talking about me."

I forced my eyes to the typewriter. "Well, of course, and we were almost there. You didn't let me finish."

"You didn't let me start."

"Just helping out," I replied. "A pertinent example sometimes makes it easier."

"In bed," she muttered.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I did it in bed, Thomas! The first time. I don't need an example."

I nodded. "In bed. Unique."

"You bet it is," said Mrs. Kooshof, "and I don't see why you can't just shut up and listen. The world doesn't revolve around Abe Chippering."

"That is not my name. And I must request that you-"

"My own bed. Twice. With my third boyfriend."

"I see."

"It was fun! He had brown hair!"

Mrs. Kooshof's voice had skittered up to a pitch that endangered my fragile hearing. She trembled, sat down, and quickly consumed her drink.

"Brown hair," I said. "Is there more?"

Mrs. Kooshof did not respond.

More than a full minute passed by-I gave her ample opportunity.

"In that case," I said, "perhaps you'd be interested in how things turned out with Lorna Sue? As I mentioned, the where matters."

The wait for Saturday night still ranks among the major tribulations of my eventful sojourn on this planet. Exciting, yes, but so much tension I could barely function. I skipped two days of school; homework was out of the question. Each evening, I practiced in my room, imagining how Lorna Sue and I would comport ourselves in the backseat of my father's Pontiac. Details consumed me. I borrowed a blanket from my mother's linen closet, dosed it with Old Spice, and stashed it the trunk.

By Saturday evening I had reached a state of premature exhaustion. If not for all the labor, I would have canceled, and it required the last of my willpower to shave* and get dressed.

At seven o'clock sharp I rang the Zylstra doorbell.

Ned and Velva stood waiting in the hallway, flanked by Earleen and a half-dozen aunts and uncles. The family had arranged itself in two rows along the hallway, like an honor guard, and as Lorna Sue approached they stood grinning and gaping at me. Ned flicked his eyebrows. Earleen shot me a sly, flirtatious wink from her wheelchair.

Lorna Sue, I must say, looked delightful that evening, though perhaps a speck sacrificial: white skirt, white blouse, white stockings, white shoes. Her hair had been freshly braided, each long plait decorated with such items as tie tacks, feathers, and what appeared to be Cracker Jack prizes.

Altogether, in any event, I had the impression that our appointment with destiny was no secret.

Outside, I glared at her.

"You blabbed," I said. "You told everything."

"Not exactly. They sort of guessed."

"Guessed? It's not something you guess." Instantly, a sequence of hard truths struck me. "What about Herbie? I suppose he guessed too?"

"Maybe. He didn't look happy."

I slid into the Pontiac, started the engine, glanced up at the yellow house. "How could they just guess?"

"I'm a girl," she said briskly. "I needed advice."