First Love?
Recalling the special people we meet at those crucial times while we figure “love” out — and before our paths diverge forever
The first of her relations I met was her mother, and Nicole and her mother were close. “Best friends,” Nicole told me. Funny, I couldn’t recall ever being best friends with my mother.
Nicole had stayed home from school the first day back after February vacation and the Catholic Youth Organization ski trip to Bridgton, Maine. It was during that three-day trip we met and I fell hard for her, literally. We and a friend each wound up together one morning in the cross-country rental shed, and then later Nicole and I wound up crossing the frozen lake alone. Both novices, we laughed and pushed each other down a lot. She was small and I made sure to fall easily, even if it might hurt. Then she took a couple snapshots of me negotiating a sloping, difficult trail in the woods.
Having since returned to our everyday high-school lives in New Hampshire, I was told by another friend that I needed to show I meant business. “Nic stayed home sick today, you have to visit her!” Mia said in the corridor of our Catholic school, Trinity. Weird she would know that since Nicole attended West, the public high-school. Mia wanted to come along, as did friends Patrick and Lori, so after classes we all piled into my mother’s Corolla and I drove toward Nic’s house. Spring was more or less in the air; along the way we opened all four doors like the car could fly.
“Nicole is sleeping,” her mother informed us at the front door of the modest one-story house. She was short like Nicole and rail-thin, a lit cigarette between her fingers. She invited us in anyway and then Patrick (a future advertising wiz) did most of the talking: making the introductions, and saving me for last. Still, I was glad he was there, along with the others.
Her mother had us sit in the living room, then went down the hallway to wake her. After a minute Nicole came out in her jammies with frumpy hair, smiling weakly. She sat down on the armrest of the couch and said “All I have is a stomach ache.”
I couldn’t get over how cute she was.
Nicole had been one of the stars of the ski trip. Not on the slopes (like me, she didn’t really like skiing), but in the chalets, at night on the walks between chalets, amusing all with quick and at times outrageous banter. She was only a freshman and hung out mostly with them, but she was sharp, and clearly able to hold her own with the cool kids. “Cool” meaning the juniors and seniors already established within the social hierarchy of CYO. I was one of those (a junior), despite never having had a girlfriend. I never thought much about having a girlfriend until Nicole.
I noticed her once before during a regular Wednesday night meeting in the church basement. The priest and chaperones were keeping us up to date on fundraising dollars and the upcoming trip. Toward the front some of the newbies were fooling around, including a dark-haired feminine figure who seemed unable to stay seated for long.
I was looking forward to the trip because I went halves on some pot with a buddy of mine. He was a stoner, but this would basically be my first time. The first night he and I took a walk to the store then smoked a joint on the way back. I didn’t feel anything. He claimed I did, I just didn’t realize it. Apparently much later that night, Nicole led a group of girls in a rendition of “God Bless America” while banging on pots and pans out in front of our chalet. I must have slept through it.
Late the second night, snow was falling in large wet flakes which dissolved upon touchdown. I was standing on the landing while the others were still inside before we walked the girls home to their chalet. Across in the doorway stood a girl with short dark hair; she was pulling a white woolen cap onto her head before stepping outside. Just then a tall, awkward freshman came up beside her and said, “Hey, you’re funny. What’s your name?”
“Nicole Lafleur,” she replied, glancing up at him like he should have known. Then two of my friends came along and chased the freshman down the steps and into a snowbank for a full facial whitewash.
Nicole chastised those two during the walk. “What you guys just did wasn’t very nice.…” They gave her some guff, but she had a comeback every time. She was cracking everyone up. I said something wise, and she told me to go and pee in a puddle. She called me by name. After we dropped the girls off and were heading back, some of the guys started talking about the winter prom and whom they were taking.
“I like Nicole, she’s cool.” one said. “If I wasn’t taking Mia, I’d ask her.” He looked over at me. “Why don’t you ask Nicole to the prom, Ross?”
That was it; I liked her. She was suddenly inside me. I hardly slept that night, and couldn’t eat anything for the rest of the trip. That night someone said she and a friend were going cross-country skiing in the morning, and in the morning I wrangled my buddy into going with me.
She and I never did get to the prom; we weren’t prom-types.
I met her father (also short and a smoker) and her younger brother, an amusing guy who’d eventually pass me a note claiming he was a hitman for the Mafia and that I was his next job. Her little sister seemed to take a liking to me too. Only later did I meet her older sister, who didn’t live at home anymore. Nicole told me she had mental problems, and had once threatened her with a pair of scissors. She seemed fine when I met her, although appearances could be deceiving.
Our first date was out to a movie with Patrick and Lori. They were strictly friends, and as far as I could tell so were Nicole and I. We talked on the phone a lot, whatever that was worth, and I had no trouble now imagining her soft, sweet voice rising in song in the middle of a winter’s night. I’d be upstairs on my parents’ bed with the TV on; Nic with her unusually long phone cord traveled between the kitchen, the living room, or down the hallway to the bathroom when she wanted privacy. The cord wouldn’t reach her bedroom.
I was kind of thick and under-confident, and she was nervous. We finally kissed on our third date. We both liked it, and started double-dating with Denny and Michelle, sophomores from CYO. We’d go parking on top of nearby Mount Uncanoonuc, above all the twinkling lights of Manchester. “The big lie,” Patrick called it once.
The Corolla had a bench seat in front, which served us well. But she was saving the ultimate for her wedding night, and I didn’t mind. “I hope it’s with you,” she said. So did I. We couldn’t think of any reason why it wouldn’t be, and decided, one day, we’d be married.
She was the first to bring up the subject of love. It was early summer; that day she had a family obligation. We talked on the phone that night, and from the background her mother informed me Nicole had been pining for me all day.
“It’s true,” she admitted, adding in a whisper she had something to tell me but couldn’t right now. She wanted me to guess what it was. “It’s something good.…”
“You love me?” I chanced.
“Yes.”
“I love you too,” I said. She had me repeat it, countless times, as she was falling asleep on the couch. I love you… Then I had to shout her name, as usual, to wake her, and wait until she returned the phone to its kitchen cradle before saying goodnight. I didn’t mind.
She liked to sit close on the bench seat while we were driving around talking and waiting for it to get dark. In a moment of devotion she’d wrap her arms around my midsection, call me her “hubby.” I never felt anything as wonderful. She was “the troll” (though hardly ever from my lips), a nickname bestowed upon her in CYO. Whenever she was feeling sad or forlorn, she’d crouch neatly on the floor below the dash in what we called the troll hideaway.
She was nervous about coming over to meet my parents. I couldn’t fathom why. “You’re rich,” she clued me in along the way. I didn’t think so. For support we brought along Denny and Michelle, and they sat together like good little Catholics in the big green chair at one end of the living room. I sat with my parents on the couch. Nic gravitated to the green ottoman in front of the fireplace; perched there on the edge clutching her purse, chatting and laughing nervously. She mistakenly stood up when my brother, a bit of a legend in CYO, entered the room. She thought the whole visit was a disaster, but they liked her.
Most of that summer revolved around each other, the phone, the above-ground swimming pool in her backyard, Dairy Queen, parking, and Denny and Michelle. When Denny and Michelle broke up in August, I figured the rest would pretty much stay the same. And for a while it did. Parking for one improved a little since we were now truly alone.
“I can’t go out with you anymore,” she informed me one night. Seems her mother, after waiving her rule that Nicole couldn’t date until she turned sixteen because I was so polite and a good find, had decided to implement it again. We said goodbye over the phone.
I scraped by the rest of junior year; realizing I did in fact like getting high a lot. Senior year was more of the same except early in the year me and a few buddies were busted by the cops smoking in the Corolla. That put the kibosh on borrowing Mom’s car for a while. I didn’t mind much; my dealer lived within walking distance of our house.
Near the end of senior year (I made it after all, I was going to graduate), while bowling at Lakeside Lanes with Patrick and Lori and other “straight” friends, I ran into Nic’s father and brother. Her brother said she missed me, and I should call her.
“She’s been crying over you,” her father added, somewhat perplexed.
The next day after classes I walked down the long hill from Trinity and across the river to West. It was a warm, sunny day with the big yellow buses lined up in front of the building, a sea of kids spilling outside. I didn’t see Nicole but found her friend Robin, who said Nicole was still inside. I asked Robin to go in and get her.
Later on Nic told me when she heard I was outside she ran so fast she fell down in the corridor. I never would have guessed it as she stepped out into the bright sunshine cradling her books, and came over. She looked so beautiful: dark hair falling in tight natural curls to the tops of her shoulders, a pink low-neck top revealing a generous amount of milky skin. Her face had filled out a bit and so had the rest of her. Voluptuous is the word that comes to mind. We talked for a while, smiling, and I asked if I could call her. She asked if I remembered the number. I recited it easily.
Turns out she broke it off herself because she was afraid we might go too far sexually. Her mother had nothing to do with it. In fact, she said, her mother kept saying she knew we would eventually get back together.
Upon my return to the one-story house, Nic sat at the table with her mother (bless her heart), the short snazzy haircut again, and a shiny mouthful of new braces. “What do you think?” Nic asked, fairly blushing. I thought she was a fucking knockout. The shorter hair freed up her neck, which I was well acquainted with. I wondered though: would the braces affect her kissing?
They didn’t.
It was a great summer. Somehow I’d been accepted to Keene State in the fall, and Nicole started calling me her “college boy.” Most of our days were spent on towels in her backyard. She’d pull an extra towel over our heads whenever she wanted to kiss with tongues. Both her parents worked at night, and then if no one else was around we’d take quiet dips alone, she’d untie the neck string of her suit, and I’d kiss her breasts.
Come fall I headed off to Keene, and hardly cracked a book. Toward the end of my first and only semester I wrote to Nicole telling her I was failing miserably and didn’t even care. She wrote back saying she felt sick after reading it, and couldn’t eat.
I hitchhiked home most weekends to be with her. One weekend near the end her parents offered to drive me back to get a look at the campus. Nic declined to come along: meeting my dorm mates would make her too nervous. I wanted to show her off to them--and did not want to ride the whole way with just her parents. On Sunday afternoon she showed up with them at my house; Nic wearing jeans and a red turtleneck, her white fur-lined coat open. In the back seat of the car she told me she came along because she knew it was important to me. We watched the scenery go by and picked out certain country homes we liked.
At the dorm, none of my friends were around. I realized it was dinner time and they were all at the dining commons. She didn’t mind and neither did I really. I brought her up to my room, kissed and held her, told her I loved her.
“Oh yeah?” she replied politely, having come to her senses by now about that. I didn’t care. I wanted her to take off her coat and stay a while. I wanted to get her onto my bed. She left much too soon.
I dropped out and returned home, got a job and then a different one. For our anniversary in late February, I bought Nicole a ring. About a week later she caught me in a lie. We were supposed to do something together that Saturday, but during the week I ran into one of my buddies from Trinity who asked if I wanted to play tackle-football in the snow on Saturday. I broke the date with Nicole, telling her my father wanted me to help him clean out the garage. When she learned the truth after we ran into my buddy the night before at McDonald’s, she cried out in the car. I felt bad and apologized, then she got mad. “Next time Ross, just tell me the truth.”
It was over the phone she mentioned, not for the first time, this guy Kenny who was a friend of the family. He was always pestering her to go out with him, and had asked again recently. “Next time, I might say yes...” Kenny was my age, and straight out of high school had started his own house-painting business. He was a small dude, but to me seemed ten feet tall.
I had to find another job. Then over the phone it was: “I can’t go out with you anymore,” and blah blah blah. It seemed more final this time.
One of the last things she said was that I needed something. I knew she was right but had no idea what it was. It took a couple more years and a steady job before I finally admitted to my parents that I still liked smoking pot. Mom didn’t want it in the house at all, and so I got my own place. It was surprisingly easy. I had my own car too, and one day in traffic Nic’s brother pulled up beside me at a light. Her brother, the mafia hitman, driving.
“She misses you, man!” he called over. “After Kenny she dated a bodybuilder, but he turned out to be a dork! She misses you. Call her!”
So we started seeing each other again, mainly as friends. Our first night out to get reacquainted we just drove around and drank some beer. She dumped Kenny. “I couldn’t trust him...” Then she dated the bodybuilder guy. “He’s not freaky or anything — just very well-toned.” She broke it off with him after they started doing too much sexually. He sent her a letter saying he hated her, and then another saying he loved her. She said to me: “Men are crazy, all of them. All they care about is sex.”
I said I was different, but couldn’t tell if she believed me. She just smiled. I asked if she wanted to see my new place, but she declined.
Then it was out to dinner at nice restaurants, movies, a couple fine plays at the Palace Theatre. We saw The Elephant Man around the time David Bowie was doing it on Broadway. We got a more local elephant man, and he was fine. Nic especially liked the tasteful way in which the high-society lady exposes herself to him--with her back to the audience.
She seemed to be more into religion than she used to be; and over dinner one night said she and a friend liked to visit services at denominations other than Catholic. One minister mentioned something about the devil she believed to be true. He said the devil was like a vicious dog on a chain: bound, but if you got too close he’d bite. She asked if I’d changed at all over the past couple of years. I said I had, and she wanted me to be more specific.
“Well, for one thing I don’t believe in your devil,” I said. “Man is the only devil I know, and hell might be right here on earth. I believe in God, just not the religious kind.”
Driving around, I was always trying to explain myself; like I was just this sexist neanderthal and she knew it. She was on some terrible, and for all I knew justified, Women’s Lib kick, and I was taking the brunt of it. Kenny and that bodybuilder must have really screwed with her head.
For instance: “Why did you invite me over to your new place on our first date to get reacquainted?”
“Just to see it!” (I should have explained what a big deal it was for me and my parents to finally get out of the house and strike out on my own.)
She claimed I remembered only “the bad things” about our relationship. The cute, funny things she used to say like a car had just peeped its horn; or being unable to pronounce the word “tastes” correctly (she always said taste-es.) I mentioned those now as compliments, and she thought I was making fun of her.
Most of my friends had significant others or were at least getting laid, so they said. I had flirtations, and so far that was about it other than Nicole. But we were just friends now, which was better than nothing.
When I arrived at her house for a Sunday evening drive to the beach, she was in the bathroom brushing her teeth. I chatted with her mother at the table, a light music with the vocals in French coming down the hall from Nic’s room. She came out and invited me down while she finished getting ready. She said it was a French pop group; she liked listening to records with vocals other than English. I thought that was pretty cool.
It was the first time I’d been in her room, and noticed on her bureau, toward the back but still standing, a framed photo of me flailing about that cross-country trail. She saw me looking and said, “Those are the times I remember.”
It was early November and getting cold, so we shared a bottle of wine along the way. She’d giggle, lower her bucket seat into the prone position, and I’d tickle her. As soon as we arrived she went running out onto the dark empty beach, and I had to catch up. Then we walked beside the cold, black ocean, and soon the conversation turned to sex.
One day she found a condom tucked away in Kenny’s wallet, “Like he was expecting it.”
What she was doing in there she didn’t say.
“You’ll never find a condom in my wallet,” I assured her. Then I said the sex — or whatever it was — we used to have was the best I’d ever experienced.
“I feel the same way,” she said. “It’s been so long though, I can’t be sure.…”
Then she said we could fool around right there on the beach if I wanted to, and we wound up down on the sand doing pretty much what we used to do. Except her eyes remained closed the whole time, and I couldn’t get at her neck because she wore a turtleneck.
Afterward, as we brushed the sand off ourselves, she said maybe we could stop on the way home and do some more, but she fell asleep on the drive.
Still, I was so happy the next day at work. On the beach! The following weekend we went out again, got some beer, and I asked if she wanted to visit one of our old parking spots. She said why not? Once there I tried to get her into the mood by nibbling on her earlobe, which she seemed to like, but she just wanted to talk.
“Did you have many girlfriends while we were apart?” she asked, settling back.
“A few.”
“Sex?”
“Oh sure, a little.”
“I enjoy being a virgin,” she said. “So few people are nowadays. I don’t understand how some can juggle more than one relationship at a time, like you do.”
I asked what the hell she was talking about, and she said the day before while shopping downtown she saw me drive by with a girl with long dark hair in the passenger seat.
“That was a small guy with long dark hair,” I said (which it was.) “I was giving him a ride” — to score some weed, a substance she never approved of — “Who do you think I am, Don Juan? I’m not. I date you only.”
Again, I couldn’t tell if she believed me or not. And for a very long time afterward I regretted not admitting to her, which might have sealed the deal between us, that I was a virgin too.
Following a semester at community college she went off to Keene on her way to becoming a fourth-grade teacher in Connecticut.
Naturally she stayed on my mind, though bittersweet. I’d visit her at Keene, desperate, her brother always tagging along. Then the bodybuilder asked to see her again, and over the phone it was: “You know me, I don’t like seeing more than one person at a time.”
In summer she worked as a bank teller on the ground floor of the New Hampshire Plaza building, and one day as I was wheeling in a delivery on my dolly toward the elevators, she stepped out of the bank with a friend on their way to lunch. Nicole was brown-bagging it, her purse low on a strap, and she came right over, all smiles. “We should get together,” she said, but I never called her again.
Eventually she became the principal of a small Catholic school here in Manchester. I heard she got married in Connecticut before moving back here, and that both her mother and father died of smoking-related illnesses. My mother as well, although she’d quit years before. I quit cigarettes, too, and finally managed to get a new girlfriend who later became my wife.
My wife got sick of hearing about her so much, and I turned to the page. I always enjoyed writing. It was the one thing I was decent at in high school. I kept refining Weirdo, a piece the length of a short novel, about my life up until meeting my future wife. Nic was the most amazing character in it. I still regretted she didn’t or wouldn’t ever know how, in my book, the good times outnumbered the bad.
Years passed, as they do. I looked her up on the Internet. She had a Facebook page. She looked slightly heavier and not perfectly content behind her principal’s desk. Her avatar was her and hubby on top of Mount Kearsarge. I wasn’t even sure it was her.