Grave Concern by Judith Millar Page A

together.
    â€œThey think I’m at Kathleen’s. I had to make up a bit of a story, about stopping for a Coke with my ‘ride’ and running into Kath at the drugstore.”
    J.P. said nothing, but pushed her gently from sitting to lying down. The cabin was chilly but warmer than outside.
    â€œYou’re shaking like a leaf,” he said, and spread himself like a blanket on top of her. Even his legs mirrored hers, the only difference being his boots extended out further. Something hit a wall, his boot or knee. Propping his chin in his hands, J.P. started up on the nuns again, making her laugh until Kate told him to stop, she was going to pee herself.
    Until now, the vaguely unnerving fact of his actual presence had kept a growing physical urgency in check. But lying blind under J.P.’s weight, her body became hollowed-out — like a bead strung on wire. Moreover, Kate sensed a more specific pressure, against her pubic bone. Kate’s grasp on male anatomy, let alone its workings, was basic. Statues she’d seen here and there in the city taught only the fundamentals. (On the whole, she’d thought, relative to body mass, the male organ seemed comically outsized.)
    But this new pressure could not be ignored. Kate felt herself respond. Should she be embarrassed? Or worried? Which of them should do something about it? And how, exactly? To forestall the avalanche of feeling — an occurrence that by all indications in health class led only to a girl’s doom — Kate ignored what her body was clearly demanding, scraped up her last scraps of self-restraint, and determinedly refocused her attention.

    â€œHe was a virgin!” crowed Mary, when Kate paused. They were drinking hot mochaccinos at the Beanery, trying to thaw out after a second unsuccessful attempt to find the grave.
    â€œAs was I,” Kate shot back. Surely that wasn’t the point.
    â€œHe didn’t know how to proceed!” Mary enthused, as if this proved some universal truth.
    â€œThat’s not what I’m saying,” said Kate. “I think we were both just shit-scared.”
    â€œSame thing,” said Mary.
    â€œNo. No, it isn’t. Remember back then? We maybe knew the basics, but taking precautions wasn’t easy. You had to get past a pharmacist. The pharmacist knew your parents. You had to communicate with the partner. Think of it, Mary. Who talked in those days? Girls and guys were on different planets. Completely. And the consequences if you screwed up! You, of all people, Doctor Know-It-All, should be keenly aware of that.”
    â€œOkay, okay, I concede. Where I come from, dear, sixteen-year-olds never had such heroic self-restraint. I can think of numerous examples of Juliets and Romeos married with kids well before they’d cleared teenage-hood. I myself was barely twenty when I tied the fateful knot.”
    Kate looked down at the decorative cream-swirls in her cup. How could she be so stupid, going on about this? Forgetting Mary, who’d lost everything — husband and fourteen-year-old son. A terrible business. It was the spring of 2004. Matt and Joss had been part of an impromptu flotilla trying to rescue some sealers on an icepan drifting out to sea. Somehow, father and son got separated from the group, not much, but enough that when their boat was swamped by a rogue wave and they froze in the icy water where they sat, the rest failed to get there in time. Mary had been in a neighbouring village at the time, delivering a baby. She was whooping it up, joking around with the local midwife after a difficult but successful delivery, when the news came in.
    Not long after that, Mary answered the ad in a medical journal and moved halfway across the country — as it happened, to Pine Rapids — in an effort to get away from the sympathy-wracked faces and sorrow-fringed memories. Pity Point’s loss was Pine Rapids’ — and Kate’s — gain.