The Night We Met

Nate reached for my hand and gently tugged me onto the other side. “You aren’t what you do, Eliza,” he said while I was busy experiencing something like butterflies at the very first touch of his warm skin against mine. “You’re already who you are. Whether you add the role of sister or wife or even mother to that, you are still the sweet, gentle spirit you were when you came to this earth.”

Mother. My heart raced. I’d been so consumed by what I was leaving behind, and contemplating with nervous excitement the idea of lying in Nate’s arms, I hadn’t considered the possible outcome of that act. This was all happening so fast….

“Do you want to have children?” I asked.

“I’d like to, yes. But if you don’t—”

“I do.” I cut him off, suddenly so embarrassed I could hardly stay there with him. A week ago I was planning to go to my grave chaste and here I was standing on the sidewalk talking about having sex with a man. And while I knew the physical basics, that was all I knew on that particular subject. Not much point in teaching intricate details—or having “the talk”—with a girl who’s going to be a nun.

I looked down, afraid he’d seen the sudden redness on my cheeks.

“Hey.” With one finger beneath my chin, he lifted my gaze to his. “Your plans to enter the convent rushed our courtship, but the rest of it we’ll take as slowly as you need to,” he said, embarrassing me further. “Do you understand?”

I tried to act nonchalant. “You’re a grown man, Nate. You’ve been married before. You’re used to—” I couldn’t do it. “You know…”

The convent was looming on my left, filling my peripheral vision.

“I’m a man, not an animal.” His words were soft with an understanding of something I didn’t understand at all. I wondered if he guessed just how little experience I had.

And worried that, once he found out, he’d regret this rash impulse.

“You’re a beautiful woman, Eliza,” he continued, and I was relieved when he started to walk. “But that’s not why I wrote to you. I want to spend the rest of my life with the person I met last weekend. I want to feel the way I felt when I was with you. And while I’m looking forward to our physical relationship, I intend to give you all the time you need to adjust to that aspect of our life together. Okay?”

“Yes,” I whispered, wondering how long that would be. A year? Maybe two?

He was walking beside me as he had the weekend before, not touching me at all. I kind of wanted to feel my hand inside his again—and thought maybe I’d like him to keep it there.

“I’ve only got a few hours before I have to go back—can’t be gone two weekends in a row during the busy season—but I came as soon as I got your letter. To make plans. Have you told your parents yet?”

“No.”

“Have you told anyone?”

I hadn’t known what to do. I’d answered a letter, but I had no idea what Nate’s intentions were. Or if he would’ve changed his mind by the time he got my reply.

“I spoke to the Mistress of Postulants. I didn’t tell her about…us…only that I didn’t feel I could enter the convent anymore.”

Even if I’d never heard from Nate again, that much had become clear.

We walked to the park and then inside, passing a woman dressed in jeans and a purple sweater holding the hand of a curly-haired blond toddler dressed the same. A young black woman pushed a baby carriage past us. An elderly man wearing an unzipped beige windbreaker sat on the bench just inside the entrance. I noticed them all. And the vividness of the green grass, the trees that were still bare now, the velvety magnolia blossoms.

“How long do you have before you need to be out of your room?”

“I’m at college on full scholarship, so I’m free to stay in the dorm until I graduate in June. You don’t have to be committed to the convent to live there, you just have to be willing to follow the rules.”

The sky was bluer today than it had been in a while. The sun brighter. Yet nothing seemed familiar. Because I’d changed?

“That gives us a few months.”

“I have to graduate.” I clung to that goal as though it was all that was left of me. Certainly it was the only part of myself I recognized at the moment.

“Of course you do,” Nate said, and I think that’s when I fell completely, irrevocably in love with him. Until then, my heart had ached to be with him, to bless his life in any way I could, but it had felt like a big risk to take. A perilous thing to do.

Now it felt safe.

Contrary to what my head might have been telling me, the words I’d written to Nate Grady the week before were not retractable.

On January 22 of that year, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In premiered on NBC. And I had a letter from Nate. He wanted to know if July 20th would be an acceptable date for the wedding. Camp would be between sessions the following week and would be closed, giving us time for a brief honeymoon and to get me settled in.

I visited my parents that evening. Nate had offered to go with me when he was in town, but I hadn’t wanted to share my brief time with him.

Late that night, I wrote him and said that July 20th would be fine. And that I’d like to get married in Colorado.

I didn’t tell him then that my parents had just disowned me.

On February 8th state police officers killed three black students engaged in an antiwar demonstration at South Carolina State. Nate called me three times that week. We talked about the Orangeburg massacre, as the attack was being called. About his brother. And he had some good news. He’d found a house he wanted to buy for us. I told him that if he liked it, it was fine with me. In truth, anywhere with Nate was going to be heaven as far as I was concerned.

Once I got past the initial wifely duty, that is. Nate and I still had not kissed. But I’d been doing some reading about the mating process and while I was trying to keep an open mind, I was pretty well scared out of my wits.

Charlotte Brontë had skipped the intimate details with Jane and Mr. Rochester.

March 1st was the day Johnny Cash married June Carter. I wanted the marriage to work, but I didn’t think it would. He was such a rebel, probably even did drugs, and everyone knew June was just a darling.

Nate called the next day. I wasn’t in a good frame of mind, missing him, and feeling so alone, since I no longer had either my family or the sisters to turn to.

I tried to explain my feelings but knew I’d failed miserably when he asked, “Are you having second thoughts?”

“No. Not at all.” Surprisingly, I wasn’t. “The one thing that seems to be a constant in my life these days is my certainty about marrying you.”

“You’re sure of that?”

I couldn’t tell if he was feeling insecure, or just trying to make certain I was all right.

“Absolutely.”

“Because if you’re having second thoughts, we need to talk about them, Eliza.”

“I’m not!” I was beginning to get irritated with his unwillingness to believe me. Which was testament to how out of sorts I felt. Generally I was a very patient person.

“It’s to be expected,” he said. “You’re young and I rushed you.”

I got cold then. “Nate, are you trying to tell me you’ve changed your mind?”

“No.” It was a good thing his response was so unequivocal, otherwise I might’ve become completely unraveled. “But I’ve had a few more years to find out exactly what I want, which enables me to recognize it when I find it.”

“And you think I don’t know my own mind?” Did he have as little faith in me as my parents?

“Oh, Eliza, I’m sorry.” His sigh was long and deep.