Wreathed by Curtis Edmonds Read Free Book Online Page B

Thanksgiving, I told Sheldon that I wanted to go out for pizza. I talked him into driving over into Philly to a dive on Broad Street. We had a couple of slices and a Coke, and it was all very innocent and boring. We walked out of the pizza place, and I kissed him, and he kissed me back, which is what I wanted, of course, because that let me steal his car keys right out of his pocket. I told you, the girls I went to school with were not a good lot, and that’s a skill I’d picked up. I got in the driver’s seat. Sheldon’s car was a lot like he was—not particularly attractive, but very powerful under the hood, if you know what I mean. Anyway, he got in the car. He didn’t ask any questions, not even when I didn’t head back to New Jersey right away. We had a nice, quiet drive, all the way to Lower Merion.
    I didn’t say anything when we got there. I just got out of the car and tossed him his keys back. Then I unlocked the front door and checked to make sure that the house was empty—no maids or anything, I mean. I didn’t one time think about what would happen if he drove away, because I knew he wouldn’t. I was never a swimsuit model or anything like that, but I had a tight skirt and a good figure and there wasn’t any way that Sheldon Berkman wasn’t following me into that house.
    He didn’t keep me waiting long. I heard him slam the passenger door shut, and then I saw him walk up the steps and shut the front door behind him.
    “Nice house,” he said.
    “It’s my friend’s. She says nice things about the couch in the rec room.” In fact, the couch in the rec room had been a big factor in Sandra’s parents sending her to an all-girls’ school, but I didn’t feel the need to explain that at the moment. I wasn’t feeling anything but a weightless anticipation.
    “Is that a fact,” he said.
    “It folds out into a bed. Come on, let me show you.”
     
    “Stop it,” I said. “Just stop it. Now. Please. I am begging you.”
    “Please don’t tell me you’re going to get all prudish on me, Wendy. That’s not like you.”
    “This is making me extremely uncomfortable,” I said. “I mean, for God’s sake, Mother, I don’t need the play-by-play, that’s all. I get it. You let Sheldon Berkman get in your pants over Thanksgiving weekend in 1962. Stipulated. That doesn’t explain why you’re dragging me down to Cape May for his funeral fifty years later.”
    “If you want an explanation, then let me finish the story.”
    “Finish the story, by all means,” I said. “I just don’t want to hear the sordid details.”
    “The sordid details make the story interesting.”
    I knew my mother had a sexual past, obviously. I knew Sheldon had been in love with her. On an intellectual level, I could understand that they’d had a physical relationship. But all I could hear in my head was squick squick squick squick squick. “Mother. Please. Just give it a rest. For the love of God.”
    She sighed one of those signature Emily Thornhill sighs, this one signaling exasperation with a thin overlay of parental affection. “All right then. Where was I?”
     
    That should have been the end of it, as far as I was concerned. I didn’t think that the relationship would go anywhere. Sheldon wasn’t my idea of long-term boyfriend material, never mind husband material. And the worst part of it was that he wasn’t discreet. He bragged to his friends about it, and of course that got back to my brother, and he popped Sheldon in the eye. I hoped it was worth it for him.
    My parents were out of their minds over the whole thing, of course. It wasn’t anything personal towards Sheldon, you understand. They were just being horrible old-money snobs about the whole thing, just because Sheldon’s father owned a janitorial services company. They thought Grandfather Borden would disapprove. Of course, he disapproved of everything, so I don’t know why they bothered. Anyway, it didn’t matter. My parents told me I