At Last

After the breakthrough they'd made, Eric and Sam waited for Saturday and the opportunity to see each other again without any of the fear or trepidation with which they had anticipated the previous two Saturdays. Sam felt that she could ask Eric the questions that she had been holding back out of fear that she would make him uncomfortable and provoke another flight, and Eric, who wished to know the full beauty of Sam's brilliance, decided that he would go along with whatever Sam proposed they do without hesitation. And of course there was the issue of the kiss. It was the last remaining source of awkwardness between them and when he arrived at her house on Saturday it was the first thing they thought of when they saw each other. They had hoped that this Saturday would go perfectly smoothly but it was feeling like a repeat of the previous week. Being a Woody Allen fan, Sam considered the idea of doing what Alvy did in Annie Hall: confront it head on and just get it out of the way, but with the feelings that she had developed for Eric the thought of their first kiss happening in such a way felt wrong. She put the idea out of her mind, and to move them past the tension they were feeling from thinking about their first kiss she asked Eric if he'd like to watch a movie.

Sam had a policy of not watching movies that were based on books until she had read the book. She had started reading House of Sand and Fog on Tuesday and had gone to sleep on Friday night having just finished reading it. She hadn't planned on asking Eric to watch the film with her because of the serious subject matter but she was desperate to watch it and they could use the time they spent watching it to work out what to do about the kiss. Eric wasn't thinking about the kiss during the film. He gave the film his undivided attention because it was important to Sam and he had resolved to develop the capacity to engage with her on the things that were important to her, and, with that in mind, when they were having coffee after the movie had finished, he asked Sam if they could have their piano lesson. They'd had a lesson the previous week that had lasted over an hour, after which Sam had granted Eric's request and played her favorite pieces for him: Faure's Nocturne in E flat major, Debussy's Clair de Lune and Reverie, Liszt's Consolation no. 3, Satie's Gymnopedie no. 1, and Beethoven's Sonata Pathetique, 2nd movement. Eric stood in the doorway and watched her playing and, unlike the last time when all he had felt when watching her was amazement, this time he also felt an unmistakable stab of envy. He wanted to be able to do what Sam could do and spent every night of the week trying to remember as much as he could of what he'd seen thinking that he could put it to use somehow.

Sam went into the piano room with Eric without any of the tension in her body having dissipated. She opened up one of the beginner's books to Mary Had a Little Lamb and asked Eric if he would play it while she got herself some tea, an offer she extended to him which he declined. She needed a moment, she needed a few seconds alone to catch her breath and collect her thoughts. She needed to figure out how to be near Eric without being overwhelmed by thoughts of the kiss. She was busy thinking about what she could do to get her nerves under control when she heard music coming from the piano room that was not Mary Had a Little Lamb. The piece of music that he was playing was similar in style to the pieces that she had played for him but he wasn't trying to play any of those pieces, he was playing something original. Sam stood frozen in the kitchen and listened, unable to believe what she was hearing. What Eric was doing was simply extraordinary, the scale of his intellect was well beyond what she had imagined and, having waited patiently for him to reveal his intellect, the opportunity that it presented her to find out from him why he was so intellectually apathetic was one that she wasn't prepared to let pass her by. She forgot about the tea and walked to the piano room where Eric was still playing his piece. She stood in the doorway like he did when he watched her and, to her even greater amazement, he was playing with his eyes closed.

"What was that?" She asked him when he finished playing and opened his eyes.

"Just something I've been thinking about this week," Eric answered bashfully, concerned that he had revealed more of himself than he should have.

"There's a reason why you don't bother with your schoolwork or pursue anything intellectual despite being so brilliant, what is it?" Sam sat next to him and asked.

"It's nothing," he said evasively.

"Eric, please tell me."

Not for the first time, Eric was rendered defenseless by Sam's entreating eyes. The question that she was asking him concerned an incident that had taken place at his house that was the worst that he had lived through. He thought the time for telling Sam about it would be much later after he had given her the full story about his family. But he trusted Sam, and she wanted to know now so he told her.

He told her about the night that his sister had gotten into trouble for something and had managed to direct their father's wrath away from her and toward their mother by saying that her drinking was the reason why she had done what she had done. Michael had been quick to agree with her that Jo-Ann was to blame, and Jo-Ann, drunk and angry, decided that she wasn't going to stay and be the recipient of unwarranted abuse from her husband and daughter. Eric came out of his room as Jo-Ann was packing a bag and, seeing that she was in no condition to drive, waited to see what she did. She had threatened before to get in the car and drive off when she was drunk and it always proved to be an empty threat. This time it wasn't an empty threat, her daughter's mendacity and duplicity and her husband's stupidity had pushed her past the point of rational thought. When he saw that she was intent on going through with it, Eric followed his mother and tried to talk her out of it. Jo-Ann heard none of what her son had to say, she was too drunk and too angry. Eric followed her all the way to the car and tried to stop her by grabbing her and pulling her away, but she was too drunk and too angry and easily pushed him off of her. She got into the car and, in a final effort to stop her, Eric stood in the driveway behind the car. Jo-Ann didn't see her son standing there, she was too drunk and too angry. She started the car and put it in reverse and backed it out with her foot planted, forcing Eric to jump out of the way to avoid getting run over. Jo-Ann got onto the road and sped off, and Eric, having still failed to grasp that there was nothing he could do, ran after the car and only stopped when it was out of sight. He started crying when he stopped running and the tears wouldn't stop. Michael and Stephanie didn't come for him, and the time that he spent standing in the road and crying was the moment when he realized that he was all alone in the world.

His story over, Eric told Sam about the pornography that he sold at school to make the money he needed to leave home when he graduated from high school, work that kept him occupied until as late as two in the morning every day, leaving him with no time for anything else.

Sam struggled to find a response for what Eric had just told her. There were problems that existed between she and her mother but never had her mother made her feel the way that Eric's family had made him feel. Hearing his story, she realized what these Saturdays meant to him, what it meant for him to give up so much of his time to be here with her and how much it took for him to trust her as much as he did. Eric was visibly shaken from recounting for her the story of that night, and looking at him, Sam felt what she believed could only be love. She placed her hands tentatively on his face and lifted it so that he was looking at her. The kiss, arriving at last, possessed none of the apprehension they feared would ruin it. Sam pressed her lips against Eric's and felt him reciprocate the feelings that had convinced her that it was time. He loved her as much as she loved him, knowing that, Sam could let go of her anxiety and embrace the relief of no longer needing to worry about waiting for him to open up to her.

They spent the rest of the day enjoying the intimacy that they had been denying themselves by being so fearful. When she was in his arms and felt his hand on the back of her head Sam experienced the feeling of being cherished as something precious and didn't want the feeling to ever end, and with Sam in his arms pressed up against him, Eric could feel her fragility and vulnerability and felt an overpowering obligation to protect her against anything that had designs on hurting her.