Audrey discovered her father and brother expected her to take over her mother’s role. She’d been cooking most of the family meals since she was fourteen anyway, having quickly tired of her mother’s ever-more-often frozen packaged meals and her father’s go-get-chicken-and-chips-Audie when it was his turn to cook.
Neither of the men expected to do any washing, or dishes, or cleaning, or shopping. She didn’t even know whether they had those skills. But Audrey was resourceful. She realised her father and brother didn’t know that their clothes hadn’t been washed if she folded them neatly and put them back in their closets. She made gigantic casseroles and masses of veggies and put them into small packages, and convinced them that together they could barbecue the week’s meat in one go over a beer or two while she cleaned the house. She encouraged whatever lover was hanging around the men that the quickest way to their hearts was obviously through their stomachs. She made herself dinner before anyone got home from work, keeping the healthiest, tastiest food for herself. She made a special desert on weekends to distract them. After the loveless meals of Audrey’s mother, the men thought they were living in paradise.
In this way, Audrey managed to keep up with her schoolwork, enjoy her friendship with Yolanda, and keep her household duties to a minimum.
And all the while she waited for Dance Night.
His name was Howie. He was slightly pudgy and not overly tall but his hair was thick and his face handsome, and whenever Audrey was assigned him for a song she felt something twinge inside her. He’d stare into her eyes, holding her expertly, his whole focus on her, and she became obsessed, day-dreaming of him during school and writing romances about them which, in the absence of any sexual experience, and her fetish for historical romance books, ended simply in kissing.
Howie noticed the quiet, shy girl had changed with him, and he saw an opportunity. She was quite pretty in an odd way, and he began to touch her softly when the teacher was not around, in places not called for during their dance routine, pleased when she didn’t withdraw. He tentatively asked her along to a movie with a group of his friends; she eagerly agreed. Afterwards he took her home in his car, veering off into a car park and finding an all-too-willing Audrey ready for anything.
Audrey’s mother had taught her how to be around men; she hadn’t taught her how men were with women. She hadn’t really been told much about sex and although she was sure by her mother’s continuous rounds of pretty dresses, make-up and men friends that she’d had a series of boyfriends, she was innocent of anything except the issues she’d learnt at school around contraception and protection.
In the dark of the car park she forgot everything except the adventure in front of her. She was surprised how much it hurt and how quickly it passed, with Howie squirting something sticky onto her stomach within minutes and only then did she remember about condoms.
But Howie was full of praise and Audrey felt she’d stepped over the threshold into something even more fantastic than she could’ve imagined in any of her virginal novels. She asked Howie shyly to buy condoms for next time. He rapidly agreed, realising next time meant more of the same.
And so they began dating, he pleased to have regular sex and she asking little else. The sex was perfunctory but, as Audrey had no idea that it should be anything but her accommodating his advances, they settled into an easy relationship.
Audrey believed herself to be in love; she didn’t bother to ask Howie how he felt. At different times he would say she was A real treat or Just the best or Incredibly sexy and, having never heard either her mother or her father say the I-love-you words to each other, believed this was the way men showed affection. She and Yolanda were welcomed into his circle and for the first time she felt truly happy with a boyfriend and a best friend to call her own.
She didn’t think to wonder what Yolanda thought of all this, whether she felt jealous or left out. The two girls joined Howie’s bigger crowd of friends for outings, and Yolanda never seemed to be without admirers. She hadn’t told Yolanda she’d begun having sex with Howie, and Yolanda had never told her whether she was a virgin herself.
Audrey, happy to have people who wanted her around, began to gain her confidence with the world.
Joni Page 