Another Springtime Ch. 06

Beauty is, truly, more than skin deep; and, for my money, friend, Christine was a breathtaking example of exactly that!

She glanced up at me, the slender fingers of one hand sweeping lightly across her forehead and smoothing her hair out of her face in a very dainty gesture. "Thank you…." She paused a moment.

"Thank you, Dad."

I had to leave her then to decide for herself. That was part of allowing her to be herself. More than being accountable to me, and as an adult she would not be, it was important she be accountable to herself. It sort of went without saying that there would be another encounter in her Friday Lit class. She had not said so, but my conclusion was that she had somehow deflected her final response until then, which led to the intensity of our evening on Thursday.

Now it was Friday.

We walked together to her class and well short of her classroom I turned away. We had an after class rendezvous set up at the fountain on the plaza, just a few yards out in front of her classroom, and she knew I would at any rate be close at hand. She had not told me of her decision and I had not asked. I hoped she would take that as a sign of my confidence in her.

Just minutes before her class broke I parked myself on the bench amid the flowers to read a book and observe the classroom exits across the little plaza and the fountain. Staged so, I wanted to allow her the latitude to carry on a conversation with the fellow as long as she chose, knowing that she could count on me being close and that by simply walking up to me she could conclude things if he got rowdy. That was at least my intention; perhaps she saw it entirely otherwise.

When the class was over the two of them were nearly the last to leave the room. They sat for a few minutes, deep in conversation, on the brickwork on the far side of the fountain. I had no doubt that she had seen and recognized me. They sat, their backs to me, for several minutes, alternately laughing and then serious again. He was a husky fellow, almost Viking-like in stature, long hair unkempt, requiring his hand through it repeatedly to attempt some control. Then the scene turned a bit ominous; their conversation was just out of earshot for me, but body language speaks silent volumes. She stiffened and pulled away as he tried to put his arm around her shoulders, and then when he persevered she stood abruptly to avoid him. Then I realized that he was holding her textbook and her outstretched hand produced no response from him. A little confrontation ensued, and when she would not relent he held her book out over the fountain. The threat was clear… a date on his terms or the book took a bath.

She paused only a moment, then turned, ignoring his threat, and walked away calmly, crossing the plaza and past me up another pathway towards the library. I knew what that meant. He bluffed, she called it, and the fellow failed to score. The new sixty dollar textbook surveying American literature went into the water with a splash. The fellow was seething in defeat; the girl was a calm as a summer's morning and regal as a princess, ignoring the splash if she even heard it. I watched him over the rim of my book, recording his features for the record, and saw him turn away sulking in the opposite direction.

What is it with men? Few, regardless of character, manage to withdraw with any dignity when vanquished by a woman.

She was waiting for me around the corner of the next building, nervous and shaking like a leaf, and at the same time just beaming at having managed the entire crisis. When I found her I made a slight motion with my hands as if to ask what had happened. She slipped her arm through mine, and only then seemed to stop trembling. I motioned us down a divergent path through some trees in another direction, towards the car, and as we walked on she lightened up and relaxed. I was waiting for her to tell me.

"Well?" Was she not going to say anything?

"There was blood at the corner of his mouth, and…" her voice was rather blasé and remarkably confident, "and his paws were all muddy." She waved her one hand as if to shake off the residue of muck, and held her nose up in the air mimicking one of the girls in a story we had read and discussed together. "I told him," she continued with an easy flippancy, "that I did not accept dates with predatory beasts."

That caught me a little off guard and I stopped suddenly, halting our forward motion.

Meekly, and in her daintiest voice, she asked immediately, "Was I too blunt, do you imagine?" Her saucy little smile told me that she had handled the situation even better than I had hoped.

Girls? Women? Will we men ever really understand them?