School entered its annual climax in late April into May. Theater kids struggled to complete rehearsals for the annual play. The Avon Follies (featuring Lizzie in the dance line, of course) competed with them for practice time on the auditorium stage. Elections were held for next year’s Student Council. I lost my nerve to run for President; no girl had ever won, and I was so afraid of failure. I opted for Secretary instead, getting that spot with ease. Miss Mkrtchian asked the current Five Fingers to nominate the next year’s Senior Girls’ Council, and I got on as promised, Lizzie too. There was never a stated hierarchy, no anointed leader, we were all supposed to be a team. That was fine with me, not being asked to be in charge. Spring final exams were coming up. Finals counted as much in our cumulative grade tallies as a “marking period”, of which there were six in a year. I could not afford, if I wanted to get that top spot, to let up now, I had to ace them all. So most nights and weekends, I was reading, and writing, and making note cards, and thinking, and worrying.
But I was also dreaming. Michael Harrison had my ring, he had kissed me, and he wanted me to come over to his house. He said he had some poems he’d been writing that he wanted to show me.
“Bring your swim suit. My father has hooked up a heating system to the pool, it’s warm enough to go in now.”
I drove over. My 17th birthday was coming up, and my father finally decided I was stable enough to be trusted with mom’s car. Mike’s house was in a little neighborhood, just outside the city limits. They lived a mile from a street lined with one story buildings like a dime store, a drug store, a little clothing shop, not very cosmopolitan at all. His house was half way down a hill, the trees bursting with new green leaves. Two stories, brick, and kind of small compared to Clifton, it almost looked like a doll house someone had designed to be a southern colonial mansion.
Mike took me up to his room, which had a view out back not only to their pool, but across a valley wild with brush. “I can see all the over to Section Road,” he said proudly.
“Why aren’t there any houses down there?” I asked, pointing to the little five acre-wood just behind the diving board.
“That’s where we’d go to play as kids. Hide-’n-seek, war, tag, just run around.” Then, “There’s something I want to read to you…” He grabbed a pile of paper off his desk. The entire room appeared to be all hand made. The bed – actually a bunk bed – had kind of a prow on front, like a little ship and a little wooden ladder to the top. A small bookcase filled the narrow wall beneath a window which looked out on to the garage roof. The entire wall opposite the bed was taken up by a desk and dresser combination.
“All the furniture looks…not like from a store?”
“Yeah, my father made all this. He’s got a workshop downstairs, in the basement. Saw, drill, sanders, paint, everything. He loves to tinker. That’s why we can go swimming now, if we want.” Pointing out the window, he went on, “There, see that patch in the sidewalk down there? He had to dig that up to put a pipe from the heater in the basement, so he could run the pool water through to heat it up.”
The pool itself looked sort of funny. I couldn’t put my finger on it. “Did he make the pool, too?”
“No, but he got it done as cheap as he could. First, they dug up a hole, put the dirt on top of the yard. Then, they mashed sand down onto the bottom, shaped it like the bottom of a pool, with a deep end under the diving board and all. Put in concrete walls for the sides, and then dropped in a giant plastic thing instead of paint or dement. Filled it with water, that keeps the sand in place, I guess.”
All that was fascinating, I guess, for some people. I only cared about the promised poetry, and looked hard at the sheets in his hand, covered with words I hoped were meant for me. I pointed, “Um…those the poems you wanted…?”
He looked at the sheaf of papers covered with hand-written scribbles, as if seeing them for the first time. His face flushed, but he went on. “I don’t know; last December, I just started writing this stuff, I don’t know where it came from. In February, it started coming out more and more.”
“Can I see?”
“Well, I don’t know if you can read them, I can barely make it out myself. Last year, when I was in AP American history” – Mike had been one of the few juniors allowed to take Advanced Placement classes, and had taken two of them – “taking a lot of notes from Mr. Melman, I found I couldn’t read my own handwriting., That’s when I started to print all my notes. But looking at this stuff, I see when I’ve got something that has to come out quick, I forget about the printing, and just do that terrible scribbling. I got a “D” in hand-writing when I was in third grade.”
“And yet they skipped you ahead! Well, at least you’ll make a good doctor. Aren’t they supposed to have indecipherable writing?” We both smiled.
“It’s almost like someone else is putting the words together, I’m just the one holding the pen. I feel something, and then I see it on the paper. When I read it, it’s like I’m hearing it for the first time.”
“You’re just stalling. Come on,” I urged, pulling at the motley collection in his hands, “let me have them.”
I sat down on the bed, hunching a little so I didn’t hit the upper bunk. There were white pages, green pages, lined and unlined pages, some three-hole punched, like from a school notebook, others with little ripped edges like they’d been pulled from a spiral notebook. Blue ink, black ink, pencil.
“I don’t know if I’m ready to yet.”
Exasperated, I almost shouted, “You bring me all the way out here, show me all that stuff, and now you’re not sure?”
He bit his lower lip, looking away towards the garage window. He seemed to decide. “Um, maybe I can show you one or two now, and then I want to type them up, clean them up, make them readable, make sure all the words are right. Then I could send then to you, you can look at them without me hovering around?”
“OK, one or two now, then, but you better let me see them by my birthday.”
“When’s that? I know it’s this month but I forgot.”
“The twenty-fifth.”
He rifled through the stack, and pulled out a couple from near the top. The first was headed “#2 Middle February, 1966 (From ‘Yesterday’, Lennon-McCartney)” I did a quick mental calculation: that would have been just about when Lizzie and I showed up with our time cards at Miss Foley’s. Instead of the sad lament of someone who’s lost his love, this one started, “Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so near at hand/But now I’ve found someone who understands./I don’t need a yesterday.”
The other was “#22 May 6, 1966. 11:00 A.M.”, reading like a failed attempt at haiku: “No words escape the lips I long to own, Only Smiles, meaning what I do not know.”
Reluctantly, I handed them back. “OK, buster, I expect the rest as my birthday present.” Then, remembering, I asked, “What about my ring? You never gave that back to me.”
Smiling shyly, he raised his right hand, my slender silver band almost hidden at the base of the little finger.
“So you didn’t lose it.” I offered softly.
Just as quietly, he said, “No, never.” His lips, pursed together, seemed to stammer a bit; his neck was flushed and pulsing. “You know, I really like you, like being with you, like talking with you. This ring, your ring, it makes that real, it keeps you close to me. I don’t know, I feel…”
We both stood up, entwined our fingers down below our hips, and pulled each other close. Just standing there, feeling somehow empty and full at the same time.