My First Boyfriend

My First Boyfriend

Milton Cosgrove was cute if you could get past his tail. Least I thought so as a seventh grader in 1978. He wasn’t funny, or flashy; still, he thrilled me.

Milton was in my homeroom and Language-Arts class, where he burned a lot of time shifting in his desk, trying to keep his tail from being detected inside his baggy corduroys. But everyone knew about it. It was junior-high, tabloid gossip.

The meanest boys at Andrew Jackson Junior High found it amusing to shadow Milton between bells and point and spout cruel wisecracks.

“Hey, we’re tailing a tail,” they’d roar, delighted with their ingenuity of phrase. Or, “Cosgrove, if you moved to Minneapolis-St. Paul, you could become a Tail of Two Cities!” The cowardly tribe would then collapse against the green metal lockers, slapping one another on the back, mopping their witty tears.

Every time I witnessed this spite, my heart broke.

Milton Cosgrove remained steadfast amidst the constant hectoring. He was above adolescent shenanigans.

I had just moved that autumn to Boise, Idaho, from a small town in Washington called Twisp, and from what I could ferret, Milton Cosgrove was a loner.

Though I wasn’t Miss Popularity I was determined to acquire a boyfriend. From my earliest girlhood recollections I had been a romantic, fantasizing about kissing a boy. I whiled away many rain-soaked, northwest afternoons intricately role-playing my dolls, plotting that first kiss. It possessed me. And for the last two years I practiced a half an hour each night on my pillow before falling asleep.

I watched shows like The Love Boat, The Dating Game, Love American Style, and old black-and-white movies, such as, An Affair to Remember. But my favorite was The Way We Were with Barbra Streisand as Katie Morosky, and Robert Redford as Hubbell Gardner. I was such a sucker for it, often randomly reciting Katie’s anguished plea, “Oh, Hubbell, will you be my best friend?”

My mom called me ‘incurable.’ I suppose she was correct. I didn’t have many friends in Twisp. And after my dad ran off with a hair-salon manicurist when I was six years old, it was just Mom and I and my hopes for a boyfriend as we settled into our rambler in suburban Boise.

I was a born snoop, and spent all of September gathering information on Milton Cosgrove. But most of it was sketchy and snide supposition.

One day, however, I got rumor of an article the Boise Sun ran in 1969 on the Cosgrove clan. So I ditched my final period, rushed to the public library, and began searching through countless spools of microfilm.

“Holy moly!” I hit pay dirt forty-minutes later, deposited a dime into the copier coin slot, printed out the article, and walked home in the twilight rereading every word a dozen times.

And that’s when Milton Cosgrove rode past me backwards on his unicycle, strumming a ukulele. “Bon journo,” he said.

I blushed nine shades of red. I wasn’t the world’s cutest girl, and talking to a boy always triggered a clammy shiver. I wanted to speak but as he pedaled past me his tail unfurled--I estimated three-feet, though its coiling made measurement impossible. And as he continued down the road, the tail’s coarse brown hairs trapped the last hint of evening light.

I kicked myself for not replying as he turned into a speck down Oakville Boulevard. Finally, I summoned the courage to shout, “HIYA!” but it was muffled. And then Milton Cosgrove took the corner, vanishing.

My womanly part tingled as the following words tumbled out, “We touched in spirit/and every angel in Heaven/had to hear it.”

When I got home I took a long, hot bath and touched myself in places the nuns warned me about in CCD. I didn’t care though, and worked up the nerve to call Milton Cosgrove after I dried off.

“What are you doing, honey?” Mom interrupted her crocheting at the kitchen table.

“Oh nothing,” I said, removing the White Pages from a drawer. “Just looking up something.”

“Something like what?” My mom smelled con.

“Oh, just something. Nothing.” My face became a gin-rummy flush of hearts, but my mom just smiled and shook her head and then resumed her needlework.

I’m sure she knew what I was up to, but I didn’t care about anything other than getting that phone book into my room and closing the door while I still had moxie to dial.

The musty phone book flew open to my desperate touch, and I ran my finger down the Cs, remembering from the article Mr. Cosgrove’s odd name: Pembrook. My heart clattered as I sped down the tissue-sheer page. “Voila! Pembrook Cosgrove!”

Dialing was the hard part, my forefinger refusing to obey. Finally, it succumbed.

Evidently, one’s memory zaps out in moments of hyperventilation, because the next thing I knew I was greeted with, “Pembrook Cosgrove here.”

Panic stole my breath and I slammed down the receiver.

RING!!

I stared at my Princess phone, too spooked to answer. We rarely got calls and I knew its ringing was too coincidental to the Pembrook incident.

After two rings it stopped and I breathed easier.

“That’s it,” I said. “Enough of that experiment. If he’s meant to be my boyfriend, then I’ll leave it to the Fates.”

I shut the phone book, walked back to the kitchen, and returned it to its drawer.

“Yes, that’s our number but--” My mother speared me with an accusing look. “Hold on,” she said politely into the phone. Then she cupped it and stared at me. “Did you just call the Cosgrove home?”

My tummy flip-flopped. “Who?! What?! No! Never heard of ‘em!”

Mother knew I was lying and didn’t have time to play twenty questions. She un-cupped the phone and turned her voice friendly. “Just one more moment, please.” Mom cupped the phone again and glared at me. “This man right here has some type of electronic contraption that traces calls and swears it was us. Now I know it wasn’t me. So, fess up, young lady.”

I had never heard of such things outside of 007 movies, but I knew it had to be true if Mr. Cosgrove called back that fast. My head was bombarded with jungle heat. I tried shifting weight but saw no escape. ‘What will Milton think when he finds out?’ was my prime concern. ‘Some plain girl with railroad-track braces stalking him?’
My romance was kaput before I got to seal my first homemade Valentine card.

“Well, Inga, what is it?” My mother tapped her left foot, an executioner counting time.

“Okay! Okay! I called over to their house to talk to Milton. But then I panicked! Are you happy now?!” My head drooped.

Interrogation done, my mom nodded and then un-cupped the phone. “Mr. Cosgrove? Are you still there?” Mom paused and then laughed a frivolity reserved for lazy summer afternoons along a riverbank. “Okay, well then, I’ll have her right over. Bye-bye.” Mom hung up and turned to me, her grin impossibly wide.

I nearly passed out standing up. “‘Have her right over!’ Holy moly, what in the world did that mean?” I thought.

Mother showed me what it meant by whisking me over in our powder-blue Toyota and making me climb some rickety stairs toward their fire-hazard mausoleum, which was a jumble of exposed wires and cracked planks. She knew Milton was in my homeroom and Language-Arts class; I had rambled on about him a hundred times. I hadn’t, though, informed her about his tail. Had I done so, she might never have let me step foot inside their menagerie. I wanted to explain his mutant protuberance and his remarkable family, but I also wanted him to be my first boyfriend. So when she parked I told her she didn’t have to come up. Hence, I was sent toward something no girl my age would ever forget nor be able to describe.

* * *

“Honey, wake up! Wake up! Are you alright?” My mom propped my head in her lap and hung up my Princess phone, the dial tone chirping angrily.

“What happened?” My eyes started to focus.

“Appears you had another attack.” Mom swept my brittle auburn bangs from eyes, corralled my nest back under my turquoise barrette, and smiled at the opened White Pages. “A boy?”

My face reflected its usual prism of embarrassment and I nodded. “Pathetic, huh?”

That was one of the true bonding moments we ever shared. We laughed and kidded while she held me like I was the most precious thing in the universe. I hoped then I would be as half as good a mom someday.

* * *

The next morning I walked to school thinking how adorable Robert Redford was on the sailboat in The Way We Were (it was my second-favorite part of the movie). Redford was sailing with his college buddy, the sun shimmering off the Pacific, when his pal quizzed, ‘Best year?’ Redford cast his eyes longingly into the horizon before replying, “1944.” He paused for a bittersweet moment before softly adding, “‘45, ‘46...” until his voice faded over the serene waters and the camera withdrew, leaving the audience with aching hearts for his star-crossed love.

Cocooned in that melancholy, I took the final corner to Andrew Jackson Junior High.

“Monkey boy!! Monkey boy!! Wanna banana?!!” Jack Mulnik, a huge seventh grader with a Saturn-shaped hairlip, twirled a banana in his hand, taunting Milton Cosgrove.

Bully Jack was orchestrating a cluster of flunkies, who clapped and hooted, tightening their sinful ring around Milton with each mincing step he took toward the school entrance.

Milton tried to remain brave through it all, and increased his pace, seeking a gap in their suffocating circle.

“Oh, what’s wrong, monkey boy? Are you gonna tattle Tail?” Jack snatched a gnarled stick off the ground and poked Milton’s ribs.

Jack’s posse went gut gelatin with laughter, whooping and exchanging their trademark backslaps.

Milton made a run for it, aiming for a breach in their chain. But Hank Sidley, a squat eighth grader with two jailbird older brothers, tripped Milton after he seemingly broke free. Milton ended up catawampus on the pavement, skinning his palms raw.

“Monkey boy, safe at third!” boomed Jack, his hairlip crooked above his bared teeth. Then he hustled forward, slicing the stick through the wind, creating a sinister percussion for his delighted minions.

Finally, he set down his stick, groped inside Milton’s corduroys, and produced the tail.

I’ll never forget those teenage boys’ collective gasp: astonishment mixed with fear and misguided hate. It was a murmur I speculated would lead to something more evil down the line in each of their lives.

“Well, lookey here!” crowed Jack, waving the furry extension like a lariat, “I’m friggin’ Wild Bill Hickcock.”

En masse, the flunkies collapsed on the ground, convulsing. Jack just grinned like a rotten-toothed pumpkin and continued swinging the tail in rapid circles overhead.

CRACK!

I planted the gnarled stick flush against Jack Mulnik’s loathsome skull. It made a dull thwack!--identical to the time in Camp Fire Girls when I unleashed a piñata with a broomstick.

Jack’s leg bones went Slinky and he crumpled.

Possessed by the Furies, I charged his stooges, maniacally swinging the stick. I hit Hank Sidley solid in the shoulder, dislocating it, and he began bawling as the rest scattered.

“Run, you mother fuckers!” Primal words I’d never uttered flew out. “I’ll kill all of you goddamn bastards!” I kept swinging the stick, rudderless, my rage incendiary.

“It’s okay,” whispered Milton. “They’re gone.”

I turned to his voice. I had never heard it before. It was so sweet and kind. I fell in love with him instantly.

“Here, let me help you up.” I hurried over and wedged my hands under his shoulders to boost him up, making sure not to touch his badly skinned hands.

“Thanks,” said Milton, tucking his tail back inside his pants. “You are a hero.”

As my heart swelled like yeast, I suddenly realized I was talking to a boy. I had to glance away from Milton’s steamy eyes or risk hyperventilating. They were the richest brown I’d ever know, chocolaty and so innocent.

“I umm ... I-I-uh, w-wasn’t any hero,” I stammered. The region marking me a woman pulsed heat.

“Sure you were,” said Milton, his smile prettier than a meadow of snap dragons. “That’s exactly what you were.”

Before I fainted I remember thinking, “I would’ve run through a wall of fire for this boy.”

When I got home from school that afternoon I entered the bathroom and locked the door. I wanted to study my face.

As I said, I wasn’t a beauty queen, and coming from backward Twisp shoveled more doom. I was so square I was divisible by four. But I also secretly prayed that a boy might be attracted to me someday. And I was willing to resort to voodoo or love potions if that’s what it took to capture Milton Cosgrove. However, as I stared at my frying pan face, inner-tube lips, and pug nose--while brushing my mangy mop fifty times with a wire brush--my self-esteem tumbled off the fringe of the galaxy.

“I’m ugly.” Sighing, I spiked the brush into the sink. “No boy will ever want me. I’ll die alone in some old folks’ home.” Blurry-eyed, I tugged off my sweater and ran my tub. As I began removing the rest of my clothes, I was drawn to the mirror and my developing breasts. Initially, they frightened me, but now I was getting used to them. My mom had large boobs and I always wished for the same. I knew boys liked them and I needed any possible edge. Just last week I caught a couple boys staring at my chest in the cafeteria and I nearly fainted from the attention. I promptly rushed off, pretending I hadn’t noticed, as they snickered in my wake.

Now, in the bathroom, I removed my bra and examined them with a renewed curiosity, gently running my hands underneath their subtle weight.

“Not bad, I guess,” I mumbled.

Truth was: I was just trying to pep talk myself into something positive, a vague glimmer of self-worth. And in the midst of exploration, the phone rang.

Topless, I raced to the phone. “Hello?”

“What are you doing?”

My head felt hollow, and I instinctively grabbed the tablecloth to cover my nakedness. “Milton?!”

“Yeah, it’s me.” His voice poured forth like a torn bag of C&H Sugar. “I was wondering if you wanna come over?”

I would’ve fainted again, but I saved myself by jamming my entire right hand into my mouth and biting so hard it almost broke skin.

“Inga? Inga?! Are you there?!”

I withdrew my hand, waving it in the air. “Yeah, yeah! I’m here! Don’t hang up!”

“Well, whatya think? Do you wanna? I could meet you at the library and show you the way?”

I nervously removed my barrette and reset my hair, my mind porridge.

“It’s okay if you don’t wanna. I understand.” He sounded like Gabriel and Michael, all those archangels the nuns had taught.

“NO! NO! I wanna! I’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes!” I panicked and hung up without saying good-bye. “Dork!” I shouted, slapping my forehead with my open hand.

I hate to say, Milton looked carny folk on his unicycle, but I wasn’t about to mention it when he pedaled up outside the library playing a harmonica. He still had those brown, loyal cow peepers, and when I gazed into them I was a goner.

“Hiya, Inga!” Milton coasted to stop next me.

I took two, deep steadying breaths, closed my eyes, and tried to form some type of intelligent rejoinder without fainting. “Hi, Milton. How are you doing?”

“You okay?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Well, you got your eyes closed for some reason.”

I immediately popped them open. “Oh, sorry. I just get super nervous around boys and didn’t want to faint.”

“Oh, good.”

“Good?”

“Yeah, I thought it was because of my tail.”

I reached over and put my hand on his shoulder. “Oh, no! I’d never be that way! I don’t care about your tail.”

Milton beamed, staring at my hand that I still hadn’t removed. “You don’t?!”

I shyly removed my hand. He fancied me stationing it there. “Hey, you got a tail. I got a face like a dang skillet!”

Milton guffawed, spinning a nifty 360° on his unicycle. “You’re a riot, Inga! And, for the archives, I like your face.”

My body overheated like a $99 Impala. “YOU DO?!” I blurted.

“Yeah ...” He smiled handsomely. “It’s pleasant and radiates spirit.”

Had I possessed a Cracker Jack ring I would’ve proposed on the spot.

“So, ready to come to my house? I have a buncha games. You like Clue?”

“Sure, who doesn’t like Colonel Ketchup?” This was going better than I dreamed. The conversation flowed easier than a downhill creek.

“Mustard.”

I reached over and patted his shoulder. “It was a joke, silly.”

Milton chortled and did twin 360°s. “Well, c’mon then. I’ll introduce you to my eccentric family.”

“I know all about your weird family,” I thought, flashing back to the microfilm article I copied. “But a girl from Twisp can’t be too choosey.”
And then we took off.

As we approached his home, déjà vu spanked me. It was exactly how I had imagined it the night I passed out phoning him: ghoulish, blistering gray paint and splintered planks, snarled wires, and a white hand-railing riddled with loose, rusty nails.

“Everything okay?” asked Milton, carrying his unicycle up the porch steps.

I hesitated before taking my first step up the stairs. “Umm, yeah, sure.” But what waited on the other side of the door produced forehead vapors.

“Ready?” Milton gripped the doorknob like an oracle. “It’s not bad once you get used to it.” He shared a disarming smile that remedied everything.

I took a steadying breath and nodded.

“Holy moly,” I gushed when the door opened.

“What?” Milton turned around after closing the door to see where I was gawking. “Oh, yeah. Diadora got a thing for murals.”

“A THING?!” I moved forward to admire it. “She’s a genius!”

Milton smiled and joined me as we studied his sister’s latest creation: an opus depicting man’s early attempts at space flight, the Mercury program to Apollo. It was breathtaking, the fiery rockets billowing into the sky, the titan missiles, the crowds’ expressions, and the dizzying, Cape Canaveral computer beds.

The mural covered all four walls, not an inch untouched.

“This is remarkable! How long did it take her?”

“This one? Hmmm... A couple days.”

“No way! This would take months!”

“Not for Diadora,” began Milton. “She’s always been a whiz with spray paint.”

“How old is she?”

“Nine.”

“What?!” I shouted, staring at Gus Grissom stuffed inside his enormous white helmet just moments before he died in the Apollo One fire of ’67. “I remember seeing this as a little girl.”

“Yeah, it was—”

“Da-da-da-da! Captain Marvel at your command!”

I spun around to find the youngest Cosgrove, Marvel, wearing a flaming red cape clothes-pinned around his neck, and puckered, violet leotards. “Any archenemy villains you need exterminated?” Marvel flexed his puny muscles and grinned, displaying two vacant, upper-front teeth.

“Inga, this is Marvel, my little brother. He’s learning how to fly.”

“Hiya, Marvel. Nice to meet you.”

Marvel never glanced at me. Instead, he jutted his cute lower lip and snapped his hands to his hips, defying his big brother. “Learning?! I can do it, Milty!”

Then, as sure as rain comes from clouds, Marvel thrust his hands straight out just like all superheroes do, and flew out of the living room, into the kitchen, and out of sight.

I about swallowed my tongue. The microfilm story never mentioned that sprite. “Holy moly! How did he do that?!”

Milton was stoic. “Pops works with all of us. It’s no big deal.”

“Works with you, how?” My mind couldn’t absorb anymore.

“Oh, he recognizes hidden talents and gets them out of us.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh?” Milton moved into the kitchen. “Hey, want a Hires Root Beer?”

“Sure,” I said, tagging behind him, the outline of his tail as thick as climbing rope and packed inside his beige corduroys.

“Wanna see it?”

“Huh?” I was startled by his stealth. “See what?”

“I saw you staring at me in the toaster’s reflection.”

My cheeks went peacock. I begin to hyperventilate.

“It’s okay.” His tone was so kind-hearted it soothed my spasm. “I don’t mind. I mean, it’s not like every kid has a three-foot tail. I’ll show it to you if you are curious.”

A violent explosion abruptly shook the house, rattling dust off the sink windowsill and capsizing cabinet glassware and containers inside the fridge.

Milton wasn’t fazed.

“What the heck was that?!” I put my hand to my chest as my eyes bugged.

“Oh, nothing to fret. Just Pops doing his thing in his laboratory.”

Too scared to speak, I accepted the root beer Milton just uncapped and took a healthy gulp.

“You decided on seeing my tail?” Milton grinned before swigging his root beer. “It’s not like I show it to everyone.”

“W-w-well,” I stuttered. “It’s up to you.”

“Doesn’t matter to me. I just don’t want to freak you out or anything.”

I looked into those brown, leading-man bands of jelly and wanted to clamp my lips on his for about eight months, but I doused my raging desires with another sip of root beer. “You could never freak me out, Milton. Go ahead and pull it out. I have to admit, I am kinda curious.”

“Okay, cool.” Milton set down his bottle and unbuttoned his corduroys’ top button. “Don’t worry, it’s above my butt. You won’t see anything bad.”

I wanted to tell him that would be fine by me, seeing his buns, but I didn’t want him thinking I was a perv. “I trust you,” was my cover-up.

Milton Cosgrove reached deep inside the base of his pants and wrestled with the bulk of what separated him from everyone else on the planet. Gradually, he dragged forth its length, a slumbering snake from the sheath of his pants.

“Presto!” he said, masking any embarrassment with bravado.

Speechless, I was equally attracted and repulsed. I mean, how often does a girl get to see an authentic tail attached to her potential boyfriend? I wanted to touch it, but was too afraid to ask.

“Wanna touch it?” asked Milton. “It’s okay either way. I understand if you don’t.”

I swallowed a large dose of courage and nodded: yes.

Milton smiled blinding igloo cubes, and hoisted his tail closer to my reach. “You will be the first girl to ever feel it.”

I smiled, overcome with the idea of being his first anything, and I carefully brought both hands forward and delicately pressed them together over the tail’s mid-section. My body immediately quivered. I had no idea what my reaction would be, but it was overwhelming, and my hands slid off the sides of the furry cartilage, letting it drop noisily to the linoleum.

“It grossed you out.” Milton frowned. “It’s okay. You don’t have to like it.”

“No! No! It’s fine. It just slipped. I want to feel it. Really I do!” I bent down, scooped up the extremity, and gently ran my hands toward the tip, where it feathered out into a bulkhead of long, fine hairs about ten-inches long. The tail’s flourish felt magnificent, and I couldn’t stop petting it, even brushing it under my chin. “Ooooh, it’s ever so soft,” I cooed.

Milton beamed. “I’m glad you like it.”

“Oh, I do, I do. I think it’s spectacular. I mean, you are unique, you know that, don’t you? And I don’t just mean because you have a tail.”

Milton looked at me, and I swam into his cocoa eyes while we both tingled a stolen moment.

For an instant I thought Milton might kiss me, but then the twins burst in.

“Bird is the word,” said Darius to his twin sister, Aquarius.

“Eagle fuck a beagle,” replied Aquarius, who had Amazon beauty and a venom-dripping cobra tattooed on her neck.

Darius nodded affirmative. “Buzzard in a blizzard?” he replied, grabbing a box of trail mix from the cupboard.

“Geese wearing fleece,” said Aquarius, high-fiving her spidery built twin, who wore gold glitter in his spiked coal hair.

Milton didn’t pay their idiosyncrasies a second thought. “Darius, Aquarius, this is my friend, Inga.”

The twins double-took one another and laughed. “Quail petting tail.”

My face became the top of a Las Vegas thermometer.

And the twins exited in a tizzy fit.

“Don’t mind those dopes. They got their own language.”

I took a deep breath, hoping my flush would settle. “So I noticed.”

“Come on,” said Milton, making everything seem okay with those two words. “Let’s go up to my room. I wanna show you something.”

“Okay.” I nodded, wondering what could possibly top what I’d just seen. So I grabbed my root beer and on my first step the house shook like Nagasaki.

“Just Pops,” chuckled Milton, bounding up the staircase like a jaguar. “Don’t sweat it. He hasn’t blown up the house--yet.”

A moment later we reached his room. There wasn’t a door to it, just a winding shale funnel that ultimately led inside.

“Wow! This is so cool!” I stood in the middle of his room, soaking it in. “Can you play all these things?!”

Milton shyly bobbed his head.

My hand did a showcase sweep of a clarinet, violin, trumpet, saxophone, flute, piano, timpani, and a dozen more instruments I couldn’t identify. “All of them?”

“Yeah.” Milton was floor-scrubber humble.

Finally, it dawned. “So, that’s your talent!” I exclaimed, my admiration soaring.

“I guess so.” He smiled, rubbing the marble bust of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart that rested on a stone pedestal.

“But who taught you?”

“My mom. Until she died, that is.” Milton’s head tilted forward, more vulnerable than yesterday when the bullies got him.

I wanted to come over and give him an infinite hug, but I was too awkward. “What was she like? Your mom.”

“Like no one else you will ever meet,” said Milton, his eyes reverently settling on a framed picture atop his nightstand.

My heart sank to my waist. I only wanted to nurture him. “Is that a picture of her?”

“Yeah,” he whispered.

From my angle I couldn’t see the photo, so I inched closer. That’s when my knees wobbled and Milton caught me.

“Whoa!” I said, falling into his arms, my eyes glued to his mother’s image.

“Amazing, huh?” he said.

“I can’t believe it. She’s beautiful.”

“Ya think?” Milton gently sat me down on his bed.

“Yes, I do.”

The picture was from Coney Island. I recognized the famous roller coaster, The Cyclone, in the background.

“She was twenty-two when this picture was taken. My dad was in Manhattan working on this hush-hush government project, something about cold war anti-missiles. Anyhow, he saw my mom in a Broadway show and they fell in love. They married right away. My mom said Dad was the only man she ever loved.”

I looked at her elegant cheekbones, supermodel eyebrows, sensuous lips, and exquisite skin tone. She was perfect, sleek ... until one’s vision got to her equine waist, where it plumped, unshorn, her stubby tail poking out from her one-piece bathing suit.

“She used to read me fairy tales every night. Her favorites were about princesses kissing frogs into knights and living happily ever after.” Milton walked over to the violin and tucked it under his chin. “Kochel 454, written in Vienna, 1784. Sonata for Violin and Piano in ‘B’.”

When Milton Cosgrove bowed his first note, I knew I’d marry him. The chords siphoned all worries through my skin and I collapsed on his bed, numbed by a sound so pure of dazzling texture it bridged Mozart to a chaste boy with a tail.

Milton continued the concert, picking up different instruments, playing Mozart’s Clarinet quintet, and then his piano concerto #5, before concluding with the most hypnotic: Ave Maria on violin, during which I fell asleep on his bed dreaming of his dashing smile and tender heart.


When I arrived home later that evening I told my mom about the unbelievable events at the Cosgrove home. She listened like all good moms do, but when I was done she stood up, and patted me on the head, saying, “My goodness, Inga, you sure have some imagination.”

I started to tell her, ‘It was really the truth and I didn’t exaggerate a smidge,’ but at that point I really didn’t care. I had found Milton and nothing else mattered.

I hardly slept that night, anxious to get to homeroom the next morning and see Milton’s irresistible eyes. But he was absent that day, turning my morning classes bleak and empty without him.

Forlorn, I cut school during lunch, walked to the dime store to purchase a bag of Hershey Kisses, and continued to the Cosgrove home.

I was a block away when I saw the black, curling smoke while fire engines wailed in the distance. Praying I was wrong, I sprinted around the corner toward the cacophony of jackknifing boards, devilish heat, and panicky neighbors.

By the time I arrived, three fire engines were a coordinated beehive pumping untold gallons of water into the orange conflagration.

“The house is the proverbial tinderbox,” cursed the captain to his men as they unrolled more hose.

“Anyone inside?!” hollered a firefighter.

“Guy had five kids,” another unidentified voice called back. “Three been found at school.”

Suddenly, two firemen created their own exit from the home, swinging axes, coughing for air.

The captain rushed forward.

One of the men shook his head, ‘No.’

The captain’s shoulders drooped.

That’s when I raced up the rickety front steps, swatting my way into the living room, watching Buzz Aldrin sweat rainbows down the smoldering plasterboard.

“Milton?!” I screamed, smoke constricting my throat. “Milton?!! Where are you?!!”

A couple steps later I stumbled into the kitchen and sprinted up the staircase, my brittle hair catching sparks.

“Milton?!!! MILLLLLLTONNNNN!” My foot crashed through one of the stairs, plunging me to my hip, and I broke my nose. But I didn’t even feel it, my head growing lighter by the moment, the flames licking inside my pant cuffs and searing my calves.

Somehow I scrambled to my feet for one final push, and continued upstairs as my hair burst into flames. At the landing I pulled my shirt overhead and extinguished the blaze, leaving my scalp a pulpy amalgam of charred slickness. Despite my burns I snaked through Milton’s corkscrew bedroom entrance.

“Milton!! Milton!! Where are you?!!”

With the violin now embers, and the clarinet metal goop, I watched the piano disappear through the floor.

His bed was the last thing I remember seeing, a refuge my asphyxiated brain held important to reach. I recalled how just the night before it was my Shangri-la as my Milton serenaded me with Mozart.

The mattress was hardly more than a lump of burning coal, but mind-tricks didn’t care. I was exhausted and just wanted to be with part of him.

And there I collapsed into eternal bliss.

I would learn through Providence that Marvel whisked Milton out in the nick of time right during the monstrous explosion.

*****

Fifteen years later I was floating above the stage the night Milton debuted at Carnegie Hall.

Before he began I thrilled to my first boyfriend’s opening words to the audience. “I would like to share some news,” began Milton, a devastating looker lavished inside that tux. “My wife, Adriana, just gave birth to our first baby. We named her Inga.”

A moment later he drew back his haunting bow and played Ave Maria.

And then I thought of my favorite part of The Way We Were--Hubbell and Katie meeting in Manhattan years after their divorce--and my heart broke for an untold time.

THE END

Katie Morosky: Hubbell, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we were old? Then we could say we survived all this. Everything would be uncomplicated, the way it was when we were young.