- !!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!
Two weeks later, I joined Mom in the kitchen where she’d begun initial preparations for Seder. She interrupted work on her shopping list, looking up at me over her reading glasses. “Honey, your school ends on May 20, right? Linda will be home by then, and George is having his graduation in Rhode Island that weekend. Dad thinks maybe we should go out to the Vineyard a little early, attend the ceremony in Providence, then go down and all off us open up the house. What do you think?”
I froze, then panicked. I’d been counting on Mike coming home a week later than that, after his finals, and at least spending the weekend with him before I left for the summer. “Uh, I don’t know. Let me think about it, OK?” She went back to her list, and I raced upstairs, hoping to get in a quick phone call to CT before the Sunday night rates went up.
“Hi, Janie,” he answered, “Everything OK?”
I explained the looming predicament, receiving a full five seconds of silence from him on other end. Finally, “OK, here’s what I think. I come down there to the Vineyard Friday after my last exam. Should be done by noon, it’s, what, maybe three hours to the ferry? You could meet me there, we could hang out in Falmouth, then go over to island for the evening. I don’t have to start work until June 5th, so I could stay with you guys for a few days?”
“Work? You got a job?”
“Yeah, I’m going to work in the hospital, Cincinnati General. The psych ward, as an intern. I think it’ll look good when I apply to medical school, right?”
So at least he’d be in town all summer, we’d have six weeks together before we left for school. “Um, let me ask my mom, she’s downstairs working on the Seder. Can I call you right back?”
“Make it quick, the rates go up after 6 you know.”
Back in the kitchen, I explained Mike’s idea. “That sounds wonderful, Janie. I’m sure we can find a bed for him.” I waited while she put down her glasses. I knew that meant she had more to say. “I really like Mike, and I know how you must feel about him, believe me, I do. We have had four children, you know. All I really want is for you to be happy. You’re going to the best school in the country, and I don’t want to see you waste that opportunity. So I worry sometimes, is he going to get in the way of that?”
“He’s a good person, mom, I know he is. And he…he…we like being together.” I thought, funny how I can’t tell my mother, the first person who ever loved me, who loves me still, how I really feel about someone who might love me even more, certainly in a new and different way.
“I know, sweetie. It’s just…boys, and girls. Well, sometimes the feelings they have can seem so overpowering, that you forget everything else. I don’t want you to miss your chance, going to Radcliffe, I mean. Go on, go up and call him back, tell him it’s OK.”
A few weeks later, Mike sent a bulging packet, so big it carried several stamps. The letter spoke of eager anticipation to see me, to walk on the beach together. Two poems fell out, each folded over three times to fit in the little envelope. The first was titled ON A VERNAL AFTERNOON:
There’s a distinctive smell
of a storm approaching –
Thunder in summer;
You can always tell,
even if it’s only spring –
the air seems to shimmer,
heavy-laden new formed clouds
come to cleanse.
The other, titled LYING HERE BESIDE ME was three pages, his longest yet. A little note attached read, “What I imagine being at the Vineyard with you will be like.” It started off, “How soft it is to lie here, quiet/backs against the wind-grit sand, grains of time…” Images of waves, seagulls, warm sand and dune grass “engulf us in a fortress …of dreams” asking the sun to “stay the pace, hold back the earth from turning” and ended with that title, Lying here beside me. Even though he’d never been with me on that island, on that beach, I must have described it to him so many times that he could faithfully conjure up not only how it looked, how it sounded, how it felt and smelt, but what it might be like to walk and talk, and lie there together. And he’d be there on my birthday, too!
Friday, May 26th, Eddie drove me to catch the 3 o’clock Woods’ Hole ferry. I cradled Denise, now a toddler, in my lap the whole way. She squirmed and whined, wanting to climb over into the back seat, where she was used to riding. I tried playing “Pat-a-Cake” with her, tried to count the other cars we passed, anything to distract her.
“Is she always like this?” I wondered aloud.
Eddie shook with laughter. “Janie, kids are, as you can see, a literal handful. All you can do sometimes, I think, is just let them explore what they want, and help them learn along the way.”
“What’s she learning, being cooped up in this little Volkswagen?”
“She’s not learning, you are, little sister. I think she’s showing you what it’s like to be a mother.”
Eddie pulled into the ferry line, which was just starting to crawl towards the white steamer. We eased under the passenger deck, came to a stop. Reaching over he said, “Here, let me take her.”
“Can I have her a little while longer? You’re going back to Providence, I won’t get to see her all weekend.” He was going to help George move out of Brown, then pick up Arlene and come back on Monday. He shrugged, dropped his hands, and said, “Knock yourself out.” Then, “Oh, just remembered. Did you know the Beatles’ new album is coming out today? Gotta be sure I pick that up while I’m over there, we can listen to it when I get back, OK?”
The last two years, the insatiable demand for Beatles’ records meant a new album every three or four months. But it had been since last August’s Revolver that anything new had come out, and they’d announced they’d be no more tours, either. So people wondered, is that the end? And now, finally, we’d get more music to swoon over.
The afternoon was sunny, almost enough to overcome the chilly Atlantic breeze during the 45 minute trip to the mainland. I looked behind me, at the low-slung island, my summer home for the past five years. The weathered clapboard buildings next to the ferry dock receded quickly, and I put Denise down, holding her hand as she tipsied along the metal walkway. I stared ahead at the Cape Cod coastline, imagining I would come down here, along the Massachusetts coast, in the fall, and winter, and spring to see the Vineyard without the summer tourists. This cradle of our country could become my home.
Denise broke my reverie. “Wanna see! Wanna see!” she whined as she pulled me forward, towards the railing at the front. I picked her up, holding tight, as we stood at the railing over the cars crammed in below Looking up towards the on-rushing shore, I strained to find a small red car there, with Michael leaning against the driver door.
“I wanna see too, honey,” I softly answered. “Wave”, I said. “Wave, there’s Michael.”
“Micha?” she wondered.
Uncle Michael? I wondered to myself.
Back at Eddie’s car (his Beetle), I handed Denise over to him, saying, “I think I want to walk off. I can see his car over there, is that OK?”
“Sure thing. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
I’m not much of a runner, and my shoes had those slick leather soles, but run I did up the metal ramp, then over the his car. From behind his back, he pulled out a handful of yellow roses, thorns removed, and stuck one in my hair. The others I gave a quick sniff to, then threw them in the car, while we tried an exploratory hug. Too soon, he gently pushed me back, still holding on at my waist, smiling widely as he looked me over.
“Everything there?” I asked.
“Still the same. I like looking at you.” Somehow that seemed better than “I love you.” I guess the flowers helped a bit.
In the car, we drove for half an hour up 28, then across the Canal, finally over to Scusset Beach, stopping at a sandy parking. Grabbing a bag from the trunk, he said, “Come on, I’ve been wanting to do this with you for, I don’t know, since last summer, I guess.” Hand-in-hand, we walked (it felt like skipping to me) down to the sand, where he spread out a blanket and laid down the bag.
“I’ve got some surprises for you here. A couple of birthday presents, I guess.” First was a poem, which he read aloud to me from a green-lined spiral notebook page. I noticed the tiny holes had not been ripped; he must have taken the wire spiral out, leaving them intact. He recited:
To Janie, On Her Eighteenth Birthday
[He gave me a typed copy, on onion skin, to follow along]
What?
Again?
You don’t mean to tell me
That you’re really that much older,
That you deserve a recognition,
Cognition of the flow of time,
Segmented just for you.
I could write
the trite,
unknowing phrases,
Wishing you much joy
and other
mindless babblings.
You deserve much more
Beyond that imposition.
So here’s a proposition:
I remember another
Marking-day
(A day outside of past or future).
Is there a way I could make yours as you made mine?
So: pick a day (any day)
And for you a genie I will play –
Three free wishes
(And three soft kisses)
Are yours from me
With Love.
“Anything you want, it’s your birthday. Was, I guess, yesterday.”
“I thought you were going to be here by then?”
“Oh, yeah. The inorganic chem exam was changed. Sorry. I’m here now, and I really do want to give you three wishes…”
Seagulls arced overhead, as if guarding the depths below. Sharp-eyed, one dove seaward, tucking silver wings tight to its body, aiming for supper just below the surface. Snagging a struggling fish, it rose with with wings furiously flapping, orange feet pedaling madly underneath, then tucked against its breast. Swells crashed against hidden shoals, and small, even waves rolled towards our plot of sand, silky and warm. Overhead, the half-domed sky glowed blue and light, while motionless clouds sent lacy tendrils towards the birds below. The gulls winged on, some in full cry, hugging the shoreline.
The dunes rose high behind us, a shield fortressing our little drama from the world beyond. I looked over at Mike, and back in time, wondering how we could just lie here, staring at the sun. I felt lost in a dream, afraid to wake up, yet wanting more.
“Does it have to be now? Can’t we just lie here a bit? Let’s enjoy the sun.” On the water, rainbow colors filtered through the spray, orange, red, green, now yellow on the blue below.
“You said you had another present for me,” I murmured.
********