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Subject: {SJR}JDR"The Adventures of Me and Martha Jane 14B"( bf mF mF+ )[52/52]
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The following story is posted for the entertainment of adults. If you are
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This particular series is by Santo J. Romeo. That might even be his
real name. The version that I have copied used his initials, and I have
followed suit. It is more a tragic story of coming of age than simply a
sex story, and individual segments might not contain any sex. The entire
story, however, is a hot one.
========
**** WARNING **** WARNING **** WARNING ****
THIS DOCUMENT IS A SEXUALLY GRAPHIC STORY ABOUT AN INTENSE SEXUAL,
EMOTIONAL AND INTELLECTUAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN A TEENAGE GIRL AND
A YOUNG BOY AND THE COURSE OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP OVER A PERIOD OF
10 YEARS. IT IS A DRAMATIZATION ABOUT REAL PEOPLE AND THEIR CON-
FLICT WITH SOCIAL EXPECTATIONS. IF THIS SUBJECTS OFFENDS YOU OR IF
SEXUAL LANGUAGE UPSETS YOU, OR IF YOU DON'T WANT THIS MATERIAL SEEN
BY UNDER-18 OR OTHERWISE UNQUALIFIED PERSONS, DELETE THIS DOCUMENT.
THIS DOCUMENT IS COPYRIGHTED 1994, 1996 BY SJR. SO--HEY, YOU CAN
COPY IT BUT YOU CAN'T CHANGE IT OR SELL IT UNLESS I SAY SO.
====================================
THE ADVENTURES OF ME AND MARTHA JANE
by S.J.R.
sjr <73233.1411@CompuServe.COM>
============
PART 14B:
One day in late September when I came home very late from school, Mom
said, "Speedy, You missed Martha Jane's call. I told her I didn't know
where you were. By the way, that reminds me, she called a couple of
weeks ago, and you weren't here then, either. I guess I forgot all about
it. Where've you been all day? It's after supper."
I opened an upper door of the kitchen cabinets and fetched a clean
glass. I said dully, "I had to stay late in the library at school."
"Oh, well...Martha Jane's gonna be here next Sunday with her new
husband, you know, that guy from Connecticut that she married. We're
gonna have a little barbecue out back on the patio. Your daddy's out
there repairin' the barbecue stand. Anyway, you gonna be here next
Sunday afternoon?"
"Yeah," I said, pouring a glass of ice water. "I guess so."
"I tell ya, that girl's stepdaddy, that Mr. Buchanan, he's a hoot,
Ain't he? He won't even let her and her husband come to his house. I
tell ya, some of these rich folks are nuts. I cain't figure him out, I
thought he wanted his daughter married. Anyway, Martha Jane will be
here, and her mother and her sister Evelyn will be here, they're gonna
sneak away from Mr. Buchanan and be here Sunday. And Evelyn Graham's
husband, too. She's married, too, you know. Some guy at the First
National Bank."
"That's nice," I said as I emptied the unused water into the sink.
"I'll be here, I guess."
"Well, it'll start at four-thirty or so, we figure it'll be nice out-
side and cooled off by then..."
As she rambled, I went into my room without a word and closed the
door. Many of my belongings had been packed in boxes standing against
one wall. My family was preparing to move in a few weeks to an older but
better neighborhood in Memphis, near Southwestern College. Many of the
Lobianco family members lived in that area, with several related clans
living next door to each other. Our own neighborhood had deteriorated
rather early and was quickly being overrun by lower-class residents who
displaced the original homeowners.
Because we were moving to a different part of town, I quit my paper
route. I would have quit the paper route, anyway. It had worn me out
and grown too large for servicing on my Schwinn. And I had proven myself
as a hard worker to Tony Lobianco, who preferred that I spend more time
at Christian Brothers and keep up my grades for college prospects.
I was about to quit my Saturdays at the grocery store. I had told my
mother about it, but hadn't mentioned it to Tony. When my mother asked
why I planned to quit the store, I replied morosely, "I'm tired. And I
don't wanna give any more." She balked at my answer and asked what I
meant, but I said, "It means I'm tired. I'm worn out. That's all."
In my room that night in September, I sat at my desk and looked
around for anything that might be left of Martha. I had destroyed her
letters -- burned them in the garbage can out back, along with the
pictures I'd taken in New York, and then stirred the ashes and dumped
more paper on them and burned it all again. The burning included poems,
notes, and anything in my bedroom that would remind me of Martha. I left
the typewriter at my Aunt Frances' house, and bought a smaller one. Of
course, there was still the rest of Memphis to contend with; every car
trip into the Memphis State area brought back another set of memories.
All that was left, in the small top drawer of the desk hutch, was her
last letter. It arrived about two weeks after the phone call. It had a
return address in Riverside, Connecticut. It was a thick envelope. I
could tell that Martha must have had to fold the flap firmly in order to
seal it. I had never opened it. The seal remained intact. Now and then
I would look at the envelope and wonder what was inside and wonder if I
should get mixed up in it by opening the thing and reading the letter.
Often in my bed at night, as I tried to sleep, I would see in my mind
the flaming, smoking letters in the big metal drum in our back yard. I
remembered the night I gathered them and all the other remnants, going
through my room meticulously to make certain I'd forgotten nothing. I
did it without pause, without thinking. Even as I was doing it, I didn't
know why. I vaguely recall Fiore saying "You can't go back, only
ahead." I knew of no other way to go ahead. If I felt an emotion
welling up, I thought about something else as I gathered and burned the
memories. I allowed only unrelated thoughts to enter my head. I told
myself that if I could ignore pain when I worked out, I could ignore pain
any time.
The unopened envelope had survived by accident. When it arrived I
placed it in a spot apart from the others, intending to open it later.
Each time I brought out the envelope, it remained unopened.
On the last Sunday in September, 1958, I drove my Mama Rose to work
at the Tremont Cafe. I drove Daddy Joe's car and then drove Daddy Joe to
his liquor store on Poplar Street. He would be there all day that day
taking inventory. I was supposed to pick them up at eleven o'clock
Sunday night and bring them home.
Instead of staying at the Tremont all day as I usually did on week-
ends, I drove the car back to Mama Rose's and spent the day there. I
roamed about the house, rummaging through the attic, looking for my old
toys. I found many of my dad's childhood relics: books, some high school
texts from Catholic High; I found some of his letters in an old trunk. I
spent the day rummaging through a past I'd never known, wondering how
the people in that house sounded and acted in the 1920's and 1930's when
my father was growing up. Later in the day I knew I would soon have to
make up my mind whether or not I would be at my parents' home on Macon
Road when Martha arrived.
I walked through my Mama Rose's neighborhood. I walked on the
streets where my father grew up. I had never seen these streets. I
looked at the houses and the people and the stores. I wondered what he
might have been thinking on that last night, when he wrote my mother and
decided that taking a chance on a risky mission was better than a sure
shot at living half-alive.
I decided I wouldn't go to my parents' house that day.
At four-thirty on Sunday I was in Mama Rose's house, napping in the
bed where my father once slept and where I slept every other weekend as a
toddler. When I awoke at five-fifteen I looked about the room and
listened, searching for remnants of my dad's presence in the room. I
felt I had begun to understand his decision.
At around seven o'clock the telephone rang. I wondered if it might
be Mama Rose calling, or Daddy Joe. Or my mother. Or Martha. I didn't
answer the phone. It stopped after seven rings.
At eight o'clock I was in Daddy Joe's back room, sitting in his
leather easy chair with my feet on the footstool. I paged through his
collection of National Geographics. His collection went as far back as
the early 1920's. I knew looking at them might be risky; when Martha was
Martha Jane, she had shown me a picture of a woman in a National Geo-
graphic from the 1920's, a picture that reminded her of herself. But
that night, I never came across that picture.
At eight-forty the phone rang again. I wondered what Martha looked
like at that moment. I wondered if she was the caller. I sat in the
chair and read the magazine. The phone rang ten times before it stopped.
I thought it might have been someone from the Tremont calling, so I
called the cafe. Mama Rose answered the phone.
"Hi, Butch! Is that you?"
"Yeah, Mama Rose. Listen, did you just call here?"
"No, I didn't call. And it wasn't Daddy Joe. He got tired of work-
ing at the liquor store, so he left early and took a taxi over here to
the Tremont. He was just getting ready to call you and tell you he'll be
here tonight when you pick us up."
"Well," I lied quickly, "I don't feel good."
"What's the matter, sweetheart?"
"I, uh, drank some milk. I think it was going sour. I think it made
me sick, so I took a nap."
"Oh, Butch, be careful. If the milk's bad, just throw it away. It
ain't worth it to drink bad milk."
"I know. Can you and Daddy Joe get home tonight? I think I'm too
sick to drive. I don't wanna risk it, if all I have is a permit instead
of a license."
"Sure, Butch. Don't you worry, your Aunt Francis can bring us home."
"Do me a favor and see if anyone called for me over there at the
cafe."
"Okay, hold on." I listened to the juke box over the telephone and
the clatter of the restaurant. In a moment Mama Rose came back to the
phone. "Aunt Frances says your mama called here a little while ago,
looking for you."
"I see. Well...if she calls back, tell her...I'm sick and I'm asleep
over here. I probably won't hear the phone."
"Okay, honey-boy. I'm sorry you're so sick. Don't worry about it,
Aunt Frances will get us home around eleven-thirty."
I hung up. I grabbed another magazine and sat in Daddy Joe's chair.
At nine-fifteen the phone rang again, ten times. It rang ten times
again at nine-thirty-five. It didn't ring again that night.
At a little after ten I went to bed in my father's and Uncle Frank's
old room. I lay in the big bed and paged through one more magazine. I
wondered what Martha was thinking. I wondered if she knew what I was
doing. I wondered if she knew why I was doing it. I wondered, even, if
I knew. I had read a case in a psychology book where an orphan had cut
all ties with new friends at one point because the new friends were the
only symbols the orphan had for the mother and father that he was bound
to break away from one day. Or was my inner power now making me do
things I should never, never do? Or had Martha somehow known this would
happen all along? Had she indeed found that a future with me would be
impractical later, and then happened to meet her ideal while trying to
resolve the problem? Had she shared me with Ronnie to whet my young
appetite for more adventure, or as a gift, a consolation for what she
knew would happen anyway? Or had I, powerful sexpot Steven, managed to
somehow keep us together longer than she thought I would? Had I missed
my chance by being too cautious with Martha and not speaking my feelings
completely?
At ten-thirty I put out the light on the table beside the bed. As I
settled into my pillow I said aloud, "Regardless of the answers, pal,
you're flying on your own."
I lay on my side. My eyes drifted to the big, curtained window
beside the bed. The warm, late-September Memphis air drifted almost
inaudibly through the leaves of the fig tree outside the window. I saw
moonlight spilling onto the window sill and onto the bed and onto me. My
eyes clung to the moonlight. My ears clung to the faint rustling of
little leaves on the fig tree. My mind clung to a memory of the same
sound and the same soft air a few years earlier, and a warm night and
hazel eyes and a song:
Last Saturday night I got married.
Me and my wife settled down.
Now me and my wife are parted.
I'm gonna take another stroll downtown.
Irene goodnight, Irene goodnight.
Goodnight, Irene,
Goodnight, Irene,
I'll see you in my dreams.
By December my family had moved to a bigger house in midtown
Memphis. The neighborhood was packed with other members of the Lobianco
family, making my stepdad feel right at home. I had no paper route. I
had no delivery job. I spent weekends doing homework and rehearsing for
plays and planning on how my GI Bill money from the War Orphans Act of
World War II would be used to get me through college a few years hence. I
was thinking about joining the Army after I got out of high school. I
wanted to see more New York's, more sights, more sounds, more people. I
wanted to see some of the places I'd read about in the National Geograph-
ic. I wanted to see anything but Memphis.
Now and then I would falter and start looking for remnants of Martha.
For weeks I searched for the unopened envelope in our new home. I never
found it. I wrote a letter to Ronnie, not knowing what I would do if she
replied. The letter was returned, marked "addressee unknown."
By then the memories were starting to fade and scatter. The memories
became a yearning for the missing pieces. Soon there was mostly the
yearning. At night I stopped the yearning by pulling down the shades in
my bedroom to darken the moonlight on the window sills.
Just after Christmas I drove my Daddy Joe's car one Saturday after-
noon to the Liberty Cash Grocery Number 23 to deliver some papers to my
stepdad. I parked in front of the store. It was a chilly, but not
unpleasant, late December day. 1959 would arrive soon. And then the
60's and graduation and college. Getting out of the car, I looked across
the street at the building where I had grown up. Where Speedy and Martha
Jane had grown up. The project was beginning to wear down. The lawns
needed cutting. Much of the shrubbery had died or was uprooted. The
clump of thick shrubbery and saplings that once stood beside the building
was replaced by an extension of the parking area. I thought about the
day I had tried, in a rage, to uproot a shrub with my bare hands. Some
of the trees were gone.
I delivered my stepdad's papers and said hello to some of the guys I
worked with in the past.
"Hey, Speedy!" one of the guys yelled. "You comin' back to
work? We needja here!"
I grinned, "Nope. I'm working on a project. Big new project."
On my way out of the store I saw an attractive girl pass in front of
me on the sidewalk. I thought she might have eyed me, too, but I was
moving too quickly to be certain. I pulled out my key ring and was
standing at the driver's side of my car, fishing for the door key, when I
saw that the girl had stopped on the corner and was looking at me.
She had long dark hair and a strangely pretty, thin face, a long
neck, and soft nipples pushing from small breasts under her pink silk
blouse. Long-legged and slim, she wore loose jeans and brown sandals and
an open corduroy jacket. A second look at her face and her darkly
lashed, brown eyes evoked a memory of someone I had met before.
"Hey," she said hesitantly, her voice soft and thick with a Southern
accent, "Ain't your name Stevie? Or Speedy? Or somethin' like that?"
"It's Steven," I said. I walked toward her with a smirk. "Hi,
Karen."
Her eyes lit up. "You 'membered my name!" she said. She walked
toward me. "I thought you might 'a had trouble findin' me in the neigh-
borhood, 'cause I don't hang around with Chrissie no more. And I ain't
seen you around in a while. I don't remember you wearin' glasses."
I ignored her remark about the glasses. Had she changed? More
grown-up. Brighter, healthier. At least, now, she smiled more easily.
There was something in the sweetness of her smile that reminded me of
Martha and of Martha Jane, and something dark and sad in her yes that was
Ronnie.
I thought: What the hell, you have to start somewhere. You have to
work with your limits. I asked, "You still as shy as you used to be?"
"Maybe." She winked, and flashed a grin. She added, looking deeply
into me, "It depends."
I said, "Maybe we should do something sometime, and see what makes
you more comfortable."
She shrugged. "Okay."
I pretended a bantering, casual laugh. I pretended real hard.
"Don't say okay," I said, "if you don't mean okay."
Thus a long and impossible journey ended.
And a new, unfinished one began.
T H E E N D
====================================
THE ADVENTURES OF ME AND MARTHA JANE
by S.J.R.
============
-30-
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