Toni Blake - You Send Me

August 1957

This is Beboppin Bernard on KMOO, and get ready to swoon, girls, cause heres the fella everybodys talkin aboutElvis Presley!

As the Anderson family station wagon rambled past the small sign that read, WELCOME TO MOOSE FALLS, MONTANA , the low, jaunty bass rhythm of Dont Be Cruel filled the car. Millie glanced across the backseat to her younger sister, Betsy, and they exchanged private smiles.

Of course, thats when her father reached to turn it down. He hated Elvis. Millie rolled her eyes, and Bet scowled her agreement.

Were finally here, their dads voice boomed from the front. And look at that gorgeous lake!

Both girls and their mother peered out the windows, and much as Millie might have liked to deny it, the view was breathtaking.

Can we swim in it? Betsy asked.

I think itll be too cold this far north, he replied doubtfully, but therell still be plenty to do.

Millie shifted her weight in the backseat and crossed her arms. Well see about that. Her fathers business trip to Montana was supposed to be doubling as a family trip to celebrate Millies graduation from Rockford College two months ago, but driving all the way across the country from Chicago hadnt felt like much fun so far. And even if the place was lovely, it also promised what she already had far too much of in her life: isolation.

She was twenty-two, after alltwenty-two going on twelve.

Harold Anderson was a loving father, but he had a stifling way of keeping his daughters sheltered, letting them experience only the parts of the world he deemed fit. Catholic school, followed by the womens college hed selected for Millie, had carried her to adulthood without ever even having a boyfriend. And sure, shed had dates for the prom, and for her college homecoming, but the kisses shed received so far had left her nearly as bored as the rest of her existence did. Starch-collared know-it-alls; those were the only guys to ever cross her narrow path. Shed never met a boy likewell, a boy like Elvis, whose mere voice made her heart beat harder and her thighs quiver.

The station wagon pulled into a gravel lot before a long, bright white building sporting a row of red doors. The neon signnot lit now since it was just past noonmarked the spot as the Grizzly Bear Motel and featured a clawed bears paw painted next to the words. Looks brand-new, her dad happily announced. Stay here and Ill get us checked in.

Millie watched her father walk briskly around the corner of the building toward the office, then said to her mother over the seat, Can Bet and I get out? Ridiculous, she realized as she posed the question, that a girlno, a womanher age should have to ask such a silly question. But sadly, that was her life.

Her mother glanced around, appearing hesitant, then finally said, I suppose.

Both girls hurried out into the bright sunlight beneath a cloudless blue sky. Ah, Millie breathed as the sun hit her face. Too much car travel. Too much time cooped up with her family. She loved them, but she needed a life of her own, badly, and she simply had no idea how to get it.

Her older sister, Annette, had married a neighbor boy her father had always liked, and they lived in a house only a block from home. But Millie had no neighbor boy. And no desire to live on the next block. What Millie had was a teaching degree, and a yearning to get far away from the house shed grown up in.

Shed applied for a program through her college that placed teachers in the poor Appalachian regionshe wanted to teach, she wanted to help people, and she wanted to see a different way of life beyond her tidy Chicago suburb. But her father had pressured her not to go, claiming he needed her to take over for his departing secretary and adding that he couldnt bear the idea of her being so far away. Plus he was friends with Herb Stansel, who ran the program, and she suspected hed asked Mr. Stansel to hold up her application.

She let out a sigh as she rounded the car to Betsys sidepoor Bet, only fifteen, and by the time she was grown up, Father would be even worse .

Look, Betsy said then, sounding wary.

Millie followed her sisters eyestoward the pristine mountain lake, and to the quaint boathouse elevated over the water in the distance. But she barely saw the buildings crisp red roof or the row of canoes lining the dock. No, she saw exactly what Betsy did. A dark-haired boyno, man in a snug white T-shirt. Even from that distance, she noticed the pack of cigarettes rolled into his sleeve and the tattoo on his arm underneath.

When he saw them staring, he looked back.

And a strange ache crept up her inner thighs.

Oh my. Maybe Moose Falls wouldnt be so boring, after all.

A fter lunch at the shiny new Moose Falls Restaurant next door, they unpacked. Millie and Betsy took turns in the bathroom shedding their skirts for pedal pushers and saddle oxfords, and their mother donned a straw hat to keep the sun off her face while their father assembled fishing gear. Carl Allen is taking me fly-fishing while we talk business, he said, packing a fishing vest with a variety of lures and bobs.

Millie knew Mr. Allen owned land south of here in Whitefish, where he wanted to build a resort. Her father was a successful real estate developer, and though most of his projects were in the Midwest, this opportunity had interested him enough to make the driveand to pretend it was a graduation trip for Millie. Although Whitefish was at least an hour away by car, they were staying in Moose Falls since Mr. Allen lived nearby.

I saw some chairs over by the water, her father said. Lets go outside and enjoy the view. And like the family of troupers they were, the females all followed after him, one by one.

They settled near the lakes edge in metal chairs painted white, then looked out on the beauty of it all. And that quickly, Millie couldnt deny that there was something special herea tranquility shed never quite experienced.

Yet at the same time, her eyes kept strayingtoward the boathouse. Toward the boy. She watched as he helped a young couple into a long, green canoe and sent them sailing peacefully over the waters glassy surface.

Charlene is quitting to get married in just three weeks, Millie, her father said. So youll come into the office for a week of training after we get home.

Okay, she replied. Now her fellow in the tight T-shirt lit a cigarette and blew a plume of smoke up into the air, looking dangerously handsome.

If you still want to be a teacher in a few years, I can help you find a position near home. But by that time, youll likely be ready to get married yourself.

Mmm hmm, she answered absently. Then watched the guy haul a crate from the dock into the building. The muscles on his arms bulged and she wished she could see his tattoo.