“I think I saw something about Alfie in The New Yorker,” I began. “They’ve got this little section in the front where all the movies playing in Manhattan are listed, ‘Goings on About Town.’ I think it’s about some English guy who has a messed up life.”
“Well, that sounds promising, doesn’t it,” he responded sarcastically. “I’ve only ever seen the cartoons in that. My orthodontist has it in his waiting room. It seemed like all too much.”
“That magazine taught me how to read,” I said firmly. Early on, my sister and I would look at the cartoons together. She’d read them, and we’d both laugh, me not really understanding the joke, but Linda always had a sharp sense of humor. The big thing, though, was I began to link the squiggles below the pictures with the words she was saying. I don’t know exactly how, but one week, I started to read the captions to her. Or at least tried. She was in first grade by then, and brought out one of her readers, to see what I could do with that. I breezed through it in five minutes. I don’t know, I always loved to read – what happens in my head, it’s like I’m a sponge and everything stays there, and I go wherever it is the words are telling me.
“I love it that they don’t have any table of contents, or that you don’t know the author until the end of an article. You can be reading something, maybe it’s a three part thing, and then at the end, you find out it was by someone like J.D. Salinger, or Pearl Buck, or John Hersey. I read a lot of things that later become books.”
“Huh…Yeah, I was like that, too. Except, it was in church. See, they’d post the hymns they’d sing, the number of the song, beside the pulpit. I’d pick up the hymnal – it said, ‘Hymnal 1940’ on the cover, blue, and I could hear what everyone was singing. They’d be looking at the book, I guess that was my clue that the little marks were telling them what to sing. I asked my mother, and she told me, ‘Those circles are the notes people sing, and here, down between these lines, those are the words’.”
Words. So very important to me, and to Michael Harrison as well. I felt a rising in my chest. Reading had been how I grew up, what taught me about the world, and people, and what to expect in life. Books, magazines, newspapers (we took the Sunday New York Times as well as the morning and afternoon Cincinnati ones), anything at all. I always had to have something handy to look at, to keep my attention. It made me feel kind of awkward sometimes, because I didn’t watch much TV, so I couldn’t really talk about the shows everyone else liked.
“I bet,” I ventured, “you were one of those kids who read under the covers with a flashlight, after your parents told you to go to sleep”
“Yeah! That was me…”
He hesitated, so I pressed on. “It made me feel a little illicit, like I was breaking some sort of rule, defying my parents. Like a little rebel.”
“Hmm – yeah, I guess I never got scolded about that – maybe they wanted us to do that.”
“Uh-huh. But lately, there’s so much in school I’ve got to do, I don’t have time anymore for books I want to read, outside of English class.” I paused a moment, as a new thought came to me. “Why didn’t you want to stay in there?”
“I don’t feel good in a big crowd like that. Three people, maybe six or seven, that doesn’t seem to bother me. But a lot, with music playing so I have to talk loud, I don’t know, that makes me nervous.”
I wasn’t a big fan of parties either. I always seemed to find a way to make fun of them and how people acted. I was much better in a group of kids who were working at something, like the rules of Student Court, the layout of the school paper, or in class where I seemed to always know the answers, and wasn’t afraid to speak up at all. “I feel good, though, talking here with you. Let’s keep going out there, OK?” I said, pointing to the T-intersection where the cul-de-sac joined the larger neighborhood. “What do you think we’ll see?”
“Probably just more houses?”
We walked, and talked, for at least two hours. The chill grew sharper, I shivered now and then, but that was maybe from excitement as much as cold. Michael took everything I said so seriously, but often turned it into a little joke or wry observation about the larger world. I felt his mind opening up to me, and me letting him in more and more. I got a little dizzy, it was all so new and different.
By the time we found our way back, it was nearly one in the morning. Beto and Bev were gone, Lizzie and Leon too. About the only ones left were Kit and Marc, and Kit’s girlfriend. I needed a ride home. I sure wasn’t going to call my mom or dad at this hour, not after I’d told them I’d be home before midnight. I was a little scared, but I had to ask, “Uh, Mike, I don’t have any way home. Can you take me?”
“Yeah, no problem.”
It was maybe a thirty minute drive back. I knew he hadn’t had anything to drink – he didn’t seem like someone who ever drank – still, I hoped he wouldn’t get drowsy. “You OK? still awake enough?” I said.
“Sure. I don’t have any trouble staying up. Seems to be a special talent of mine, think I got it from my mother. She always stays up, reading the Saturday Evening Post past midnight. My father, he goes to bed around ten, has to get up for work and leave by 7. He watches the Today show then drives away. Except morning’s in the summer, when he swims first thing….” Mike seemed ready to go on and on all night. I was content to listen to whatever he had to say, so reassuring and stable, so domestic were his thoughts.
“…and so, after they dug out the dirt for the swimming pool, that raised our back yard about a foot all over. My dad hauled in a lot of rocks, and created a barrier between us and the next door neighbors, ‘cause we had to have a wall protecting the pool from little kids, I guess…”
“There should always be a wall,” I interrupted. “‘You must always leave the wall’” I sang.
“Huh…wha…” Mike had clearly never heard this before.
“The Fantasticks? It’s been running for years, six I think.”
“ ‘The Fantasticks?’ What’s that?”
“It’s a play,” I almost whined. “A musical.”
“Where did you see it?”
“My family goes to Martha’s Vineyard every summer. When we drive out, we stop off in New York on the way. There’s always a show there somebody wants to see.”
“What’s it about?”
“ I saw it when I was twelve or thirteen. It’s about two families, they live next to each other with a wall in between. There’s a boy and girl, they fall in love. But things get in the way, the boy goes out in the world, and only when the wall between their house is built back up can they have a happy ending. It’s hard to tell if their fathers are trying to get them together or keep them apart. At least that’s what I remember.”
“What’s Martha’s Vineyard?”
“An island near Cape Cod. It’s like going back in time. We go to the same house every year for a month, a house they only use in the summer. We just go down to the beach, collect shells, wander in the town, Menemsha. My father sits around and reads the paper all morning, my mother looks in the little shops and buys shawls and stuff. My older brother, Eddie, he lives out there now, so he visits us. George, he just reads his textbooks for school. And Linda looks for trouble, trying to find a boy with a car.” Why was I telling him all this about my family? It felt like I wanted him to know everything about me, and there would never be enough time.
We left the expressway, heading up the hill towards my house. I’d have to leave him soon. I didn’t know what to do. Once again, he came around to my door, but I forget about that, and was already opening it when he came around the corner, leaving it between us as I started up the walk.
“Wait!” he whispered. “I’ve got to make sure you get there OK.”
I scoffed. “Clifton is very safe…”
But up the walk he came, arriving at my side just as I pulled my key out. Leaning over the handle, I said simply, “Thanks for the ride,” and hurried inside.
Up in my room, I flopped on the bed, lying down, then sitting up. I looked in the mirror. My hair was a little messy, after I’d taken my headband off while we walked outside. My face was flushed, and I felt like crying for some reason. I’d never been so confused in my life. Before tonight, things were pretty simple and straightforward. Lizzie was my best friend. I always had something to do after school, something to keep busy with. I studied every evening, aiming for all Advanced Placement classes as a senior. But now…now, I’d started day dreaming about something – someone, really – at the most inconvenient times. I wanted this boy to like me, I didn’t know if he did, I didn’t know how to find out if he did, and I didn’t know how to get him to like me if he didn’t. Before, I’d always known what to do, or at least who to ask – Lizzie, my mother, Linda. With Michael Harrison, though, it all seemed so personal, so secret, almost like I didn’t want to share that part of myself with anyone else.
“ARGHH!” I thought. Boys! I always knew they were trouble, but I’d thought I could avoid all that, I was above all that. I cried myself to sleep for the first time I could remember.