The Progress of Love

through the thin cotton. “You’re an impulsive girl, Jessie. You shouldn’t go inside places like this with men just because they ask you. You shouldn’t be so ready to letthem kiss you. I think you’re hot-blooded. Aren’t you? You’re hot-blooded. You’ve got some lessons to learn.”
    And this is how things continue—the stroking and the lecturing, coming at me together. He is telling me I’m to blame, while his fingers start up these flutters under my skin, rousing a tender, distant ache. His dry voice reproaches me. His hand rouses and his words shame me, and something in his voice mocks, mocks endlessly, at both these responses. I don’t understand that this isn’t fair. At least, I don’t think of protesting that it isn’t fair. I feel shame all right, and confusion, and longing. But I am not ashamed of what he’s telling me I should be ashamed of. I’m ashamed of being caught out, made foolish, of being so enticed and scolded. And I can’t stop it.
    “One thing you will have to learn, Jessie. To consider other people. The reality of other people. It sounds simple but it can be difficult. For you it will be difficult.”
    He may be referring to his wife, whom I am not considering. But I understand this differently. Isn’t it true that all the people I know in the world so far are hardly more than puppets for me, serving the glossy contrivings of my imagination? It’s true. He has hit the nail on the head, as Aunt Ena is fond of saying. But hitting the nail on the head in a matter like this, in a matter of intimate failure, isn’t apt to make people abashed and grateful and eager to change their ways. Pride hardens, instead, over the nakedly perceived fault. So mine does now. Pride hardens, pride deals with all those craven licks of sweetness, douses the hope of pleasure, the deep-seated glow of invitation. What do I want with anybody who can know so much about me? In fact, if I could wipe him off the face of the earth now, I would.
    He feels the change. He takes his hand away and gets up. He tells me to go out ahead of him, to go home. He may have said a couple of cautionary words, in addition, but I was not listening anymore.
    On top of this, MaryBeth announced that she did not believe me. “I did at first. I did. But then I started to wonder.”
    “We broke off,” I said. “It’s all over.”
    “I don’t believe you,” said MaryBeth, in a trembling voice, grieving and shaking her head. “I don’t believe there was anything going on between you and him at all. I had to tell you. Don’t be mad. I had to.”
    I didn’t answer her. I walked along quickly. We were on the way to school. We had met as usual at the Dominion Bank corner and she had waited three blocks before blurting out what she had to say. She had to trot to keep up with me. Just before we caught up with some other girls—just before I called out their names with a great show of friendliness and good humor—I gave her a bitter look. I gave her the look deserved by a traitor. And I thought she did deserve it. She was wrong—plenty had gone on between me and Mr. Cryderman. She was right, too, of course. But I suppressed all thought of that with ferocious ease. You can feel the same rush of justified anger, whether you are rightfully or wrongfully accused.
    Without quite planning to, I took up a policy of not speaking to MaryBeth. When she came up to me in the cloakroom and said softly, “Are we walking home together, Jessie,” I didn’t answer. When she walked along beside me, I pretended she wasn’t there. Examinations had begun, our schedules were disrupted; it was easy to avoid her.
    A letter appeared, folded into my French book. I didn’t read it all the way through. She said that I was hurting her, that she couldn’t eat, she cried in bed at night, she got such blinding headaches from crying that she couldn’t see the questions on the examinations and would fail. She apologized, she wished that she had kept her mouth shut; how could she tell me she was sorry when I wouldn’t even speak to her? She knew one thing—she would never have the heart to treat me as I was treating her.
    I looked ahead to the end of the letter and saw two intertwined hearts made up of little x’s, with our two names inside. Jesse and Meribeth. I didn’t read any more.
    I wanted to get rid of her. I was tired of her complaints and confidences, her pretty face and gentle nature. I had got beyond her, beyond needing anything