Wouldn’t It Be Nice (The Beachboys)
It must have been June, when local berries tasted like summer sun. The
Strawberry Social was in a church basement, just over the hill from our
house, at the edge of the village. Brown brick. White wooden sign, engraved
black lettering. ‘Evangelical United Brethren’. We called them E.U.B.’s. I sat
with my parents and sisters in a pew in the dim church waiting for someone
to take our tickets and call us downstairs. The nuns had warned us about
Protestant churches. We were allowed for a special occasion as long as we
didn’t participate, pray with the E.U.B.s. I looked around…no statues, no
stained glass, no lingering scent of incense or candle wax. I thought about the
boy I loved, a bad-assed Mennonite with a happy heart. I thought about taut
summer-tanned skin, blue eyes beneath blond eyebrows. He was careless
with all he loved, except his cows. He never failed those girls, loved them
without reserve. My cautious Catholic heart knew that he was not good
husband material. But we danced that summer away, sang along to The
Beachboys –– wouldn’t it be nice ––He was a reckless boy, eventually stole his
best friend’s wife, and died young –– drowned, doing daredevil stunts in the
sea off southern Australia. Our numbers were called, we descended the stairs,
sat on cool steel chairs at a long narrow table, ate strawberries and ice cream
with the Protestants.
Wouldn’t it be Nice
