Door County Fiction: Some Other Time

Jim’s ardent declaration of love came as a complete surprise to Betty. Love was the farthest thing from her mind and the last thing she wanted to hear. It’s not that she didn’t hold Jim in her affections. She did. But love? That was an entirely different matter. As far as she was concerned, meeting someone and going out with him regularly for a few months might lead to a fine friendship, but not necessarily to love.

It’s true that by the time spring came to Chicago, Jim and Betty had walked to Lincoln Park several times on Sunday afternoons. On their last stroll, the grass had finally turned a rich green, a hint of leaves was visible in the trees along the walks, and maple seeds were poised to be snatched and scattered by brisk winds. Jim and Betty began to hold hands as they walked. His was warm; hers was cold. She thought their hands felt comfortable together. He thought they complemented each other.

The first time they’d gone on a date, they went to Shinnick’s drug store for cherry cokes. They were a nickel each. Jim remembered how eagerly Betty accepted his invitation to go out. She remembered how the stool she sat on at the fountain shook every time an Armitage streetcar went by.

On the next three dates, they went to see movies on Saturdays at the Biograph or Crest theaters over on Lincoln Avenue. The first time they saw The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer with Cary Grant and Myrna Loy. The second time they saw Boomerang with Dana Andrews and Jane Wyatt. The third movie was Song of Scheherazade with Yvonne De Carlo and Jean Pierre Aumont. Jim liked actors and actresses in the movies they saw. Betty didn’t care for any of them. She would have preferred to see Katherine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers or Lucille Ball. Betty didn’t know Jim was trying to take her to movies he thought she’d like. If he had chosen for himself, he would have gone to see a good solid Western with John Wayne or Randolph Scott.

When summer arrived, Jim and Betty sat on her front steps almost every evening, waiting for the cool air that swept across the city as the sun went down. A single sound, assembled from a variety of sources, dominated the air. It was a sound that never ceased no matter how late into the night one stayed up and listened.

But Jim and Betty also heard the muffled voices of neighbors sitting on porches nearby. They were speaking about the joys of the past, the disappointments of the present, and the prospects of days to come. Unlike the omnipresent city sound, the soft human voices seemed to enhance the tranquility of the night.

One evening, Betty talked at length about her girlfriends. Another time, she spoke about the boys they were dating. People she knew seemed as important to her as the clothes she bought and the shoes she wore. While Jim listened, he tried to grasp Betty’s deep interest in her acquaintances and why they appeared to matter so much. He wanted to understand because he thought it might enable him to know her better.

Jim, in turn, often talked about baseball and speculated on the Cubs’ chances of winning another pennant. He told Betty he’d been disappointed two years ago when the Cubs lost the ‘45 World Series to the Tigers. He didn’t think the team tried hard enough to win. Betty listened without comments or questions. In her mind, baseball was a man’s thing. Her silences made Jim wonder if she would ever agree to go with him to Wrigley Field and see the Cubs play.

After awhile, Jim usually reached for Betty’s hand and squeezed it gently. The ease of their friendship made him feel good about himself. It pleased Betty too, because it meant she had someone to go out with during the summer. She also liked the fact that when Jim came over, she had an excuse to escape from the house and the endless probing questions her mother asked about Jim and their relationship.

Most evenings, as Jim and Betty talked on her front steps, she turned her head slightly from time to time and quickly glanced at the bay window that overlooked the porch and stairs. Every time she did, she saw her mother, watching them from behind the curtains. She never told Jim because she was afraid he’d get angry and stop seeing her. He was thoughtful and polite, but Batty knew he was also private about his feelings.

The thing Betty liked most about Jim was the way he listened to her when she talked. It made her feel he cared about what she thought. For this reason, more than any other, Betty wanted their relationship to continue.

The following Saturday, Jim rode his bike over to Betty’s house and asked her to go riding with him. Betty had a blue and ivory Schwinn. Jim owned a maroon and ivory Monarch. Both had padded seats, thick tires and coaster brakes…features that assisted them to confront the perils of city streets.

When they started, Jim told Betty he had discovered an unusual place behind Alexian Brother’s Hospital over on Racine. He said it was a grotto built of rugged gray stone, surrounded by grass and a variety of flowers. Jim said it wouldn’t take them 10 minutes of cycling, and there was a small bench facing the grotto where they could sit and rest when they got there.

After they arrived and leaned their bikes against the back of the bench, Betty walked up to the grotto and, smiling, said it was one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen in the city. Strange that so few people knew it was there. The two sat together silently for a long time, holding hands. The sun warmed their faces and bathed the world in white light.

It was then that Jim told Betty he loved her.

She was surprised…stunned might have been a better word. Although Betty liked Jim, she wasn’t in love. For her, love was an emotion without dimensions; something so enormous it engulfed everything else – even time. Betty and Jim were friends, and Betty wanted them to remain friends. But an ecstatic element was missing. She sensed it whenever she looked into Jim’s eyes because she saw stars, not desire. Besides, he was only seventeen and she, a year younger.