!!!!!!!********WORKING DRAFT********!!!!!!!
Let’s not demand so much of every single moment.
Lizzie and I met on the steps under the dome, first day of senior year. My notebook was crammed with paper already, most of it blank, ready for note-taking in class. All she carried was a purse, slung over her right shoulder. I never used one, just putting everything I needed in a slender 3-holed pouch, zippered shut inside the binder I carried everywhere. She eyed the buses as they rolled around the circle, waiting for Leon’s. My stomach grumbled, not from hunger, more from anger at knowing she’d have his company all year. I’d tucked a small envelope into Mike’s shirt pocket as we separated after our last hug. Inside, a tiny note read, “You’ll have a great time. Don’t be scared, make new friends. Write me. Love, Sarah Jane.” Then, serving maybe an unnecessary reminder, I wrote my address.
Sensing my distance, Lizzie asked, “When did Mike leave? When does he get to Wesleyan?”
“They drove there over the weekend. I went to his house the day before.”
“He’s not going to get a car last school? I thought he said they’d let him take that red Lancer.”
“His father decided, No, he had to show he was doing OK before he got it. I think he said he’d drive it back Thanksgiving.”
“So that’s the next time you’ll see him? But I guess you’ve been separated already, when you went to the Vineyard…”
“And when they drove out West, to pick up his sister, a couple of weeks in August.”
“What’s that like? I get to see Leon all the time, I can’t imagine not making plans for the next weekend and the next. Maybe you should just let him go?”
As Leon’s bus pulled up and Lizzie flew down the steps to greet him, I checked my feelings, and started analyzing them one by one. All right, I said to myself, you can’t stop thinking about him. And whose fault is that? Or is that even a bad thing? It feels good to have a boyfriend away at college; that makes me more mature, I guess. And more protected. I don’t have to worry about getting a date, going out. I have more time to study. I remembered overhearing my sister’s friends a couple of years before talking about boys one night. One girl had a boyfriend who was a freshman at Yale. She seemed older, more assured and worldly wise than the others. Linda told her, “You’re so lucky. It’s like you’ve got a magic ring around you. The boys at school won’t touch you, they’re afraid they won’t measure up to a college man.” But all that couldn’t completely quell the anxious feeling I got everyday, coming home expecting mail.
My life quickly overflowed. Advanced classes in English, History, and French, along with regular math and choir kept me busy all day and half the night. Every week, I had to write a piece for the Chatterbox. Lizzie, the Features editor, made sure of that.
“But you hardly ever use anything you assign to me.” I complained.
“Oh, it’s good for you, a little rejection now and then. Nobody should have such an easy life.”
“Can’t I just have as regular column or something? Going to all these teachers and kids, and trying to do a 500 word biography, I just don’t have time for that.”
“OK. Well. You are the Secretary of the Student Council. And the Student Court. And the Thumb of the Five Fingers. I got it…every other week, you can do an update on that student government stuff, keep people apprised of what’s up there. All right?”
I felt relieved. I’ve always liked structure, I like to know what the rules are. Improvisation, making things up on the fly, that’s not me.
That wasn’t working with my college boyfriend, though. His letters came unbidden, at random. I’d write back, telling him about my life, at school, my family, my thoughts, whatever wanted to come out. He’d respond to all that, but mostly, he told me about the newness all around him. I tried to imagine Rush Week, when he made the rounds of 12 fraternities, getting emotionally prodded and in the end, deciding not to join at all. He felt too young, too different, not connected to any social life at all. He whined about his English 101 class, “they don’t care about how you write, what it sounds or feels like. I guess I’m not going to major in English after all.” But Humanities: Plato, Greek plays, St. Augustine! A whole new world unfolding, and I was not there to share it with him.
But with letters, and maybe a fleeting long-distance call once a month, we kept our bond, trying to keep the bridge between us intact. His third Saturday night away, he called at 9 PM.
I wanted to sound cheerful, upbeat, even though hearing his voice tore into my chest with longing. It’s hard to hug a telephone. I went for the familiar. “You’re going to join the swimming team?”
“Yeah, there’s a freshman team. The coach sent us a list of exercises he wants us to do, weight lifting and all that. Practice starts November 1st. I miss the pool, the smell of chlorine on my arms as I fall asleep, the burn in my eyes when I get out of the water”
“What about your classes,. are you learning what you thought you would?”
“Some of the professors are so strong, so smart. But the English guy – everybody has to take it, and he acts like it’s a chore, a burden. He says we write in “New York Times Gothic” style. I don’t know what that means, but I think he doesn’t like it. My first paper, I got a C. We were supposed to do 500 words on a maxim from Francois La Rouschfaucauld, explain what we think it means. ‘We are so accustomed to adopting a mask before others that we end up being unable to recognize ourselves.’ I thought I had some good ideas, but apparently I can’t write proper sentences.”
“Prose hasn’t really been your thing, You’re more of a talker and a poet, right?”
“Ummm…” He seemed to be grumbling. “How about you? Are you going to the football games?”
“What? Are you kidding?”
“I’m worried you’re going to change, you’re going to start doing all that high school stuff. Somebody will find out how cool you really are, and you’ll stop thinking about me…” He trailed off wistfully. I loved the compliment, that he thought I was cool. And I loved his fear of losing me.
But I didn’t feel a need to build him up, to ease his mind. Breezily, I went on, “Lizzie goes with Leon, and wanted me to go, said it would be good for me. She thinks I’m moping too much.”
“So…?”
“It’s Yom Kippur. We had to eat early last night, then fast all day. I even went to synagogue. We just finished dinner tonight. I’m sure I ate too much.”
“Yom Kippur?” he repeated, befuddled. “I mean, I know it’s a holiday or something. I thought it was a celebration.”
“No, it’s the day we ask forgiveness for our sins. Day of Atonement, it means.”
“You sins?”
I didn’t have to be a part of Yom Kippur until I was 12 or 13, and my family was more culturally than religiously Jewish. But my father always made us fast on Yom Kippur, something about remembering what made us strong.
“The only sin I asked forgiveness for was falling in love with a goyim.”
He may not have known much about Yom Kippur, but he sure knew that word. “Really? I’m someone bad for you?”
“I don’t think so. I mean, my father doesn’t care, as long as his daughter marries rich, My mother feels a little sad you’re not Jewish, but she likes you, and she sees I like you, that’s most important to her. Don’t worry, I’m mostly kidding.” I immediately regretted the “mostly”.
“Well, I don’t know…Look, this is call is starting to cost. I’ll write to you, OK? Tell you more?”
I almost stifled a laugh, which came out a giggle, followed by “I love you. Good-bye”
“Bye.”
That night, at midnight, he wrote another poem, titled WE, YOU AND ME. It was his longest yet, two full pages typed double-spaced on that onion skin paper. It ended saying that our plans for the future “…matter little. It’s we we’re concerned with, We, you and me – Together.”
“Together”, I thought, when I read that. How can we be together when we’re apart?