!!!!!*****WORKING COPY DRAFT*****!!!!!
Chanukah came late that year, after Christmas.The whole first week at home, I tried to keep busy, buying and wrapping presents for my parents, brothers, and sisters, cooking with mom, and spending some time with Lizzie. Over at her house one evening, we started talking about the differences between high school and college.
I noticed she had a mess of literature books spread over her desktop. Poetry, classics, even some foreign works like Gunter Grass and Dostoyevsky. “That’s a lot to read!” I observed. All for class, or are you just bored?”
“When you’re an English major, you can never read too much, whether it’s assigned or not. The only problem is, I don’t have any time to write, which is what I really want to do.”
“What about outside of class? Are you on the paper? Is there a literary magazine?”
“Well, yeah, but there are so many girls there who want to do it, unless you’re already a published writer, or a senior, there’s really no chance.”
“So, are you doing anything outside of class, anything formal, like we used to do at Avondale?”
“No. No time. Oh, I talk with people a lot, I go to dances, I even have a boyfriend, Clark, at Amherst. But nothing like school, no extracurriculars. You?”
“It’s more like the whole world is our extracurriculars now, right?” I wanted to know more about her boyfriend. “What’s he like, Clark.”
“I hate to say this, I know we always used to make fun of girls who went by looks alone, but he’s …dreamy. Thick blond hair, like straw. He’s kinda tall, five inches more than me. He plays guitar, and he’s on the crew.”
“Not like Leon, huh?”
“He’’s a WASP through and through, went to prep school in New Jersey, doesn’t ever say a word in Yiddish.”
“He sounds, uh, perfect? Is there any edge to him at all?”
“He does wear a bead necklace. And he has started saying ‘Peace’ whenever he gets anxious. What about Mike? He still a Boy Scout?”
“I don’t think he’ll ever stop being Mike.” I didn’t want to go into any details about us, so I tried to keep things simple. “I saw him at a swim meet finally. All they do is just go up and back a few times, it looks pretty simple, but they get so tired out!”
“Where is he now?”
“He’s in Idaho, Sun Valley again, with his family, not learning how to ski.”
“Not learning?”
“No, he says he doesn’t want to get sucked into a social, jet set scene. You know Mike, always trying to be above, outside of, whatever might be popular.”
“You guys have been together, what, almost two years now?” Eyes widened, brows arched, head tilted, she mimed the question, “Have you finally done it, Janie Stein?”
Sighing, I felt myself flush from the neck up to my cheeks and ears. I dodged her unasked query. “I’ve been thinking, about us, Mike and me. I really am lucky we are together.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I’m with him, I feel alive, in a different way. He doesn’t tell me what to do, he listens to me about things.”
“Like?”
“Like, he started subscribing to the New Yorker. He goes to plays and movies I suggest. He thinks Martha’s Vineyard is a special place. But he’s not a schlump. He’s got his own mind. Boy, does he have his own mind. When he thinks he’s right, there is no arguing with him. When he decides he has to do something, nothing, nothing can stop him. He’s this strange mixture of fear and hesitation on the one hand, and headstrong ambition on the other.”
“Hmm. That does sound like Mike, now that I think about it. Someone you can hold your own with, who doesn’t put you down, and who you can lead around a little, when he’s not leading himself.”
A couple of days later, Linda was getting ready to go to a party with some kids from Avondale, home from college. While she sat at her mirror, plucking a few stray hairs from her eyebrows, I asked her, “Linda, what do you know about birth control pills?”
She put/laid down her tweezers, turned three quarters (a)round on the stool, pointed to the nearby desk chair, and said, “Sit.” Putting her hands on my knees, she brought her face uncomfortably close to mine. “Are you thinking about starting them, or are you already…”
“We’re/ve already,” I answered, hoping I wasn’t being too cryptic.
She patted my knee and went back to her eyebrow excavations. “Good. Good. Finally. Pills. Yeah, they’re bad. Good, but bad. Good, of course, ‘cause you don’t get pregnant, but bad, cause they’ve got all those hormones. Your breasts swell and hurt.” She turned again and looked at my chest. “Well, maybe that wouldn’t hurt you. Sorry. And you gain weight. Not fat really, but you kinda swell, retain water I think. Throw up, maybe? But overall, on balance, I’d say it’s a good thing.”
“Why?”
“Why!? Haven’t you started having fun yet?” Apparently satisfied with the arch of each brow, she slammed down the tweezers with finality and turned fully around. “Come on, sister. Do you need an anatomy lesson?” Thus ensued one of the very few times I actually got some value out of having crazy Linda as my big sister.
Christmas eve, Mom was making us a special “spiritually uplifting” dinner, with as little help from me as I could get away with. It seemed to be be the same old steak, peas and potatoes, maybe the matzo ball soup was the secret sauce?
“Mom, do you love Daddy?”
She turned off the mixer, satisfied with the fluff of the mashed potatoes. Checking the oven temperature, she set a pan of water to boil. I was putting bread into a basket, hiding it with a damask cover. “Well, of course I do. You know that.”
“But why? You guys…you’ve been together forever, I see you kiss every night when he comes home. But what is it, really? Love.”
Her eyes clouded over, then cleared. “I think, Janie, it might be, we’re different, George and I. He’s so rough and ready, always finding fun in everything. He doesn’t really care about books and reading, or going to shows or anything like that.” A pause for reflection, then, “I’ve thought about this many times, over the years, 30 or so, we’ve been together. Have you ever seen that drawing where you look at it one way, it’s a vase, and another, it’s two people looking at each other in silhouette?”
“Right, we saw those in psych class this year. There’re others where, one way it’s a young woman, look at it another, you see an old lady.”
“Exactly. Well, that’s your father and I. We…complement each other, fill in the gaps, the missing parts. You look at us, you think you see one thing, but there are two of us there, hiding in plain site. You wouldn’t see either of us, without the other. Does that make sense?”
It did make sense, and it got me to thinking. What if Mike and I were too much like each other? What if, instead of complementing, we clashed? That evening, I just picked at my meal, barely touching the steak, mostly stirring the potatoes, and tried reading the peas as if they were tea leaves.
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