Tommy flatly refused to move into his parent’s master bedroom on the ground floor, no matter how much or long I insisted, even though he was master of the house. He was going to take Teddy’s room, but I said no, that I’d move out of his and back into Teddy's.

        I explained, babbled really, how I’d moved out of Teddy’s room, after my Teddy’d was "lost in action" and I could no longer bear to lie in our cold, lonely marriage bed without him anymore. Clarissa and little Charlie were still in Kitty’s room then, so I couldn’t move back in there—I was boarding ladies with children and/or those who had other problems finding places to stay. We were wonderfully overflowing at that time, Magda with her darling Carmelita, Elisabetta, Christiano, and Eduardo had the living room and Daddy J’s — Mr. Jonathan’s home office library by the front door.

       Dianna and Jackson had just left Tommy’s room back then. They’d stayed while Jackson was recuperating and taking his stringent therapy, because our house was closer to the also overflowing VA Hospital than her home four hundred miles away. When they said he was well enough, he shipped back out, she went back home, and I moved in a week later, after Mama J said I should, since I couldn’t sleep any longer.

       Not in Teddy’s bed. Without Teddy. Not in our empty matrimonial bed, where loneliness was the most acute, and would be more so.

       Mama J had suggested it before, and I had always refused; yet, Tommy’s room, at that time, seemed to become irresistibly seductive; to seize my attention, drawing me to it, after losing Kitty less than a year before, and in what, in less than two months, became my widow’s solitude in the midst of Tommy’s shrinking family.

       Until then, I’d often avoided his bedroom. Mama was right about moving in, though, despite my serious qualms, because it was only in Tommy’s room that I felt strangely at peace and protected. And not alone.

       Which kind of, as little Charlie would’ve quipped and as I’ve always joked — because Kitty would’ve loved it — made Tommy’s room “my blankie”; especially after everyone was gone. Anyway . . . .

       The majority of my belongings were yet in our cubby storage or Teddy’s room; so, Tommy’s bedroom really hadn’t changed all that much in his entire absence, despite other occupants. Not that it was a shrine or anything; it just worked out that way.

       “Wow, hasn’t changed much, has it, Temptation?”

       “Don’t call me that,” I regrettably snapped.

       “Hm.”

       He frowned a little at my outburst of annoyance, which I really hadn’t intended to be so intense. Or childish. Let’s just chalk it up to “the curse,” shall we? Then again, he’d teased me by nicknaming me “Temptation” and “Tempting” almost from the moment Kitty’d dragged me home with her and introduced me to her family. Teddy had picked up the habit, too, but stopped — most of the time — when we were courting.

       Good Lord, when Kitty’d first brought me here, I was a mere ten, she and Teddy eleven, and Tommy’d been fourteen.

       A manly fourteen, of course. To my young eyes.

       Oh, yes, his “Hms.” I’d entirely forgotten how annoying his little “Hms” could be, plus he was at the moment half chuckling to himself about something in his handsome head. “Temptation” my as—.

       “Sorry, Temp, really. Just teasing. Why don’t we move all your stuff down into Mama and Daddy’s room? They’d want you to take it. You’re mistress of the house, y’know.”

       It’s strange, but the way he’d said it and was looking at me . . . . It was silly, but it made me nervous, so I flippantly half said aloud to myself, “Wouldn’t Lynnie’s red head spin clear ’round, if she heard that.”

       He either didn’t hear my aside or, more likely, didn’t want to think of Lynette, who was, as nearly everyone always seemed to point out, the “most perfect” Homecoming Queen picked for the most favored and perfect Homecoming King and favorite town son, who’d always said he’d never really had a taste for “cardboard perfect” Homecoming Queen’s. Right.

       “It’s yours, Tommy. Your parents’ room is yours. Everything here is.”

       “Then, I get the final word. You take it.” I wasn’t used to him. My body tensed, not knowing what to do with my hands or where to focus my eyes. He grabbed up a box of my things, shoved it under his arm, and was presently leaning against the opposite doorjamb, facing me. The man could look relaxed in the middle of a vicious Kansas to Ohio tornado; I’m glad one of us could.

       “That’s very big of you, but I can’t, Tommy. I’ll just have to move out again, when you bring home your wife.”

       “Don’t have a wife. Yet.”

       Oh, simply bloody grand, it sounded like he’d been thinking about a wife, and ole Lynnie was rumored to be dangerously tottering near divorce. Then again, so many lads, like Tommy’s father had, had brought home a bride. Wonderful. He was probably warming me to the idea of a London, Parisian, or China bride he had stashed somewhere at a hotel.

       “Maybe you’ll want to bring home a new husband, Temple.”

       “‘Pish-posh,’ as your ole Gran kept saying that time she finally visited from England. I seriously doubt that that’s even possible.”

       “Really? You’re going to tell me there’s not one 4-F Jody with flat feet or ex-GI slinking around here for you? There’s no way I could possibly believe that. Someone, many someones have to be interested.”

       “N-No. Really, there’s no one. Well. Well, yes, b-but I’m not interes—. No. No one.” I was so flustered and flushed, for no reason, and felt a trickle of sweat course down between my breasts.

       “I really don’t need Mama and Daddy’s room, Temple. I have a double bed and a large enough room up here. Besides, if she, whoever she could possibly be, has a problem with you; then, I don’t need her. You’re family. You’re my family. Always.”

       Can you both love and detest what someone says to you, simultaneously? He was moving past me and towards the steps before I finally swallowed, without ingesting my tongue and grumbled to myself.

       “Like a little sister. A damn little sister-in-law.” He stopped, and looked back.

       “No. Like you. I’m moving all your things out of Ted’s, too. That double bed he got you takes up most the room. Their room will be better. You deserve it, besides you should have more space, especially, with just, well, the three of us here. Eh, big Wuffer?”

       My fickle little Wuffer affirmed with an eager, soft woof; hence his name. If I didn’t already explain that already. It’s a good thing Tommy’s a good guy, Wuffer is just a total slut for him already and would be absolutely useless as a defense against the man.

       “Hey, Temp, why didn’t you two just move into my room, when you . . . when you got married? It was still empty then, wasn’t it? I think Kitty’d mentioned it.”

       I thought, at the light speed of an Einstein theorem; that the simplest, least adorned answer would be the best.

       “We considered it. But, it didn’t feel right, not to either of us. It was . . . is yours.” A mischievous, nearly malevolent glint, I felt, briefly shown in his bright, dark eye, before he vaguely changed his expression, veiling it; then changed his mind again evidently, and pierced me though with his gaze and his soft, barbed words.

       “You’ve been sleeping in my big bed, Temptress. Feels ‘right’ to you now, then?”

       It was so stupid of me, I was abruptly wet in the most obscene place, and blushed so terribly—looking down and away, shifting restlessly foot to foot, like some damn stage ingénue before her first opening night, Broadway full house. Absurd. A grown woman of twenty. Just. A widow blushing. Body reacting out of control. My mouth wouldn’t function for some dumb reason, so I merely looked up and nodded.

       He seemed satisfied, a little too damnably satisfied, but at least he didn’t continue to ruthlessly tease me, as he’d done more and more in the years before leaving. Before unexpectedly stopping his merciless harassment of me several months before his even more abrupt and painful exit.

       Now, his disquietingly penetrating gaze left me in hot, damp, breathless confusion, while he carried the box of my few most personal items down to his parents’, to my master bedroom.

                    * * * *

        My dreams were restless, in our, in his, in Mama and Daddy J’s bed. My body felt cramped, as if I’d been too long in a tight box, and I awoke; twisted in bed covers, so twisted I had to sit up to straighten them — and, there he was. Tommy. My Tommy. Standing just inside his parents’ bedroom door. He gently pushed an inquisitive, little Wuffer back out with his bare foot and shut the door, which he stared at or seemed to until eventual and apparent decision made; that this was right, and now was the time.

       He turned and walked toward me. I sat frozen in place, still entangled in white, ironed sheets. He reached down, to quickly extricate me.

       He was so close, and warm, and man smelling. Tommy smelling. I smelled his want, too, saw his want nudging to a rise in his pants, as he freed me.

       He was so close.

       Tommy was so close. And touched me, on the leg, below my knee; and, shamelessly, my knees, in their betraying eagerness, opened to his approaching, upward-moving, large yet elegant, gentle hand. My senses were on overload. My attention hyper-focused.

       I was nothing but his hand and the skin of mine that he touched, and made his, by his touch. Nothing else.

       He leaned kissed me; I kissed back, and held him securely to me, to keep him there, with me, taking his hand and guiding it higher and higher between my thighs, until it touched me, felt me, knew more intimate humid things about me than any other hand, save my own and Teddy’s.

       “Temple.”

       Tommy said my name with so much urgency as he moved over me, snatching off my gown, slipping out of his pajama bottoms — he only wears tops when he must, in the coldest of winter. Slipping inside me.

       I awoke. Again. Fully and really awoke this time. Bed covers kicked off me, gown wildly discarded. Alone. Naked. In heat, like an animal, a bitch in season.

       Tommy wasn’t there, in my new room, in my new bed, inside of me; only my own earnest fingers, which I could not sensibly pull away from my desperate, relentless inner need, not until I—.

       Forgive me. I shouldn’t have told you tha—.

       I heard him shift heavily several times in his bed upstairs, as if he were “wresting with a bear,” Daddy J’d say, reminding me now how Tommy'd do that so long ago, whenever he had something weighing hard upon him, disturbing his ease.

      I know the feeling.

[more in short story ebook TEMPLE AND SILENT TOMMY: BEDROOMS...; see below]

—full Novella is work in progress

Five and Dime [a post REAL WWII romance]