Page 60 of The Lost Heiress
Salvador pursed his lips and made a contemplative sound, which is how Saoirse knew she had gotten the answer wrong.
“Apprendreis an irregular verb, remember?” Salvador said gently, standing over her, pointing to the place on her paper where she had incorrectly conjugated it. “You can’t just drop the infinitive ending to find the stem and add the past participle ending. It follows its own rules.Apprisis what you’re looking for.”
“Ah, right,” Saoirse said.
She turned her pencil eraser end to paper and removed her mistake.
It wasn’t like her to make such a careless error, but after her conversation with Ana at breakfast, she was having trouble concentrating. Why wouldn’t Ana just answer her question? Did that mean she had something to hide? Or was Ana just trying to irritate her? Get under her skin by refusing to give her what she wanted?
Salvador returned to the other side of the table, where he was preparing the next part of their lesson. He had Ovid’sMetamorphosesopen in front of him, several pieces of text underlined, notes scribbled in the margins. Saoirse watched him as he bent over his book, deep in concentration. She hadn’t really meant what she’d said at the breakfast table. Ana was pretty, though in a quiet, unassuming way, which wasperhaps more dangerous than being overtly beautiful. People could be intimidated, awestruck, by beauty. It kept them at arm’s length. But Ana’s kind of beauty lured you in. It wasn’t something otherworldly or unattainable. You could get close to it.
Of course, sometimes sex wasn’t about attraction, or love. Saoirse’s first time certainly hadn’t been. Sex could be about so many different things, and that’s what made it so complicated, so tricky to navigate.
At Choate, Saoirse had thought about Teddy. They had written to one another, long letters about the things that filled their days. Teddy never wrote about his girlfriend, and Saoirse didn’t know if that meant that they were still together or if they had broken up. She couldn’t bring herself to ask, to put the words down on paper.
One day in the fall, there was a party in the woods off campus with some of the students from the neighboring schools of Westover and Hotchkiss. It was October, and there was already frost on the ground. Saoirse and Tessa went together and shared a bottle of brandy, slipping it back and forth between them in their gloved hands until their bellies were warm and their bodies loose. Two Hotchkiss boys edged over to them and commended them on their choice of liquor. They asked if they could have a sip, and Tessa handed them the bottle.
One of the Hotchkiss boys told Saoirse his name. It started with anM, she thought—Miles or Martin, something bland and generic. He was cute, in his winter hat and thick wool coat, but unmemorable, which made him perfect. This boy had a name she could forget and a face she probably wouldn’t remember in the morning. He didn’t go to her school or share mutual acquaintances, so the possibility of running into him again was slim. They talked for a bit about benign things—the classes they were taking, the shows they watched. He kissed her, and his tongue tasted like candied oranges and dark chocolate—like Tessa’s bottle of brandy. Saoirse took his hand and led him deeper into the woods, away from the crowd of people.
They found a picnic table in a small clearing not far away. Miles/Martin smoothed Saoirse’s hair out behind her as she lay down, and she thought how kind boys could be when they really wanted to be.
He kissed her, and his lips were cold. Saoirse wanted to tell him they could skip the prelude and go straight to the main event, but she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Boys could be very sensitive, she’d found, when it came to their sexual prowess. She’d once told a boy that it felt like he was trying to tune a radio when he was fondling her breasts, and he immediately became moody and withdrawn. The male ego was so delicate. It was best to just gently lead this boy in the direction she wanted to go, so she unbuttoned the top of his pants, unzipped his fly. That seemed to accelerate things.
He lifted up her skirt, pulled down her tights, but other than that, they kept their clothes on because it was cold and there were people nearby. They could still hear the voices and music from the party through the trees.
To Saoirse, sex seemed like a very intimate thing to do with someone she really liked. Especially the first time, when she knew it would be painful, and she’d probably be bad at it, and she might make some noises or expressions that she wouldn’t want anyone who really knew her to see or hear. Besides, she was sure that Teddy had more experience than her. She needed to even the playing field, get her own experience, before wading into those waters with Teddy.
Saoirse felt the weight of the boy’s body on top of hers, and then he pressed into her. There was a pinprick of pain between her legs. She expected it, so she pressed her lips together hard so she wouldn’t gasp out loud. Then there was the fog of his hot, wet breath against her neck, and she stared up at the dark open sky above her.
The pain melded into something else as he thrust into her, not quite pleasure but something not unpleasant. He paused, and Saoirse felt his body shudder against hers. She knew that it was over.
She waited to see if she felt any different than she had before. Tessa said after her first time, she felt more like a woman after, more grown up, somehow. But all Saoirse felt was a dull ache between her legs.
When they rejoined Tessa at the party, Tessa nudged Saoirse hard with her elbow.
“So?” she whispered expectantly. “How was it?”
Saoirse shrugged. “It was fine, I guess,” she said.
Tessa looked disappointed. “It’s not a handshake,” Tessa said. “You’re supposed to feel something.”
Saoirse shrugged and reached for the bottle of brandy. As she pressed the nearly empty bottle to her lips, she tried to push away Tessa’s words, keep them from seeping into her skin, her bones, her soul.
It wasn’t the first time that the thought had occurred to Saoirse or been voiced by someone else that something might be wrong with her, that something inside her might be inexplicably off. To Saoirse, it seemed so reasonable, it made so much sense, that her first time would be about the physical experience of it without any messy feelings or attachments thrown in. Practice, so she could know exactly what to expect when she did it for real. But maybe her ability to look at something so intimate with so much detachment pointed to some inherent defect within her. Maybe a part of her that was supposed to be there was missing.
It made Saoirse panicky whenever she thought of it, like a cold fist was squeezing her esophagus and she couldn’t breathe. Maybe people could see it when they got close to her—that something about her was off, that she didn’t feel what she was supposed to feel. Maybe that’s what her mother had sensed in her, what had kept her at arm’s length all her life: she’d recognized a void and couldn’t bring herself to get too close.
Chapter Twenty-One
August 1982
The first Sunday of every month when the weather was nice and both men were in town, Ransom Towers and William Bass had a standing engagement to play tennis at the Columbia Country Club. Today, when they took their places on the court, Bass went first, giving a gentle serve to warm up. Ransom returned the ball with a light volley.
“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing, my boy,” Bass said, hitting the ball short across the net. “Though, I was a bit shocked when I heard. Truth be told, I didn’t think you had it in you.”
Ransom missed the return volley and ambled across the court to collect the ball. “What’s that?” he asked, tossing the ball back to Bass over the net.
“Don’t be sly,” Bass said. “I know. I know about the girl. The ... oh, what’s her name? Saoirse’s companion?”
