!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!
Saturday evening, my studies finally done, we walked for several hours along the river. A single sculler, done with his evening row, hoisted his shell into the boathouse. Looking up, he waved at us. Walking silently hand in hand in the still, warm air, to him I’m sure we seemed lost in love. Mike waved back. Then, closing his eyes, he breathed in deeply.
“This feels so right…we’re supposed to be together,” he vowed. He looked over at me, frowning slightly. “Aren’t we? Shouldn’t we…?”
Tentatively, I agreed. “Let’s just take what we have now, Mike. Let’s not put so much on the future. I don’t know, you don’t know where you’re going after next year. And I’ll be here, I want to stay here, for grad school, working here.” I left that hanging.
“How can we do that? I don’t want us to be over,” he answered plaintively.
“We’ve been doing this long-distance thing for … years now. I’m meeting people here, feeling like this is my home, and you drop in for a weekend or a week, you’re not part of that.” His hand tried to pull away; I held on tight. “I love you now. Can’t that be good enough?”
Back in my room, the night before I turned twenty, we made love for the first time in several months. Tucked tight together in that single bed, I woke at dawn with his hand cradling my head, fingers entwined in my hair. I made my own vow, that however long we had, how ever much or little we might be together, I would remember – would celebrate – his warm skin holding fast against me.
We started our drive back. Away from Cambridge, not yet in Ohio, we re-explored past adventures, secure in our private world. Martha’s Vineyard helped a lot, with scraggly trees growing up against the dunes, a constant sea breeze blowing fresh across our faces. Everything was for us, could be about us, once again. In Pennsylvania, along the Turnpike where the car broke down that night a year ago in March, Mike’s little red Lancer started to sputter. He found a garage, pulled in, and asked for help.
“Let me take a look. You two just go into the coffee shop there, I’ll let you know what I find.” The mechanic was young, under thirty, with long greasy hair, and a friendly smile. He wiped his hands on a stained red rag, and leaned under the hood to look.
When we came back, he smiled broadly. “Easy! See,” he said, pointing at the unfathomable tangle surrounding the engine, “you’ve got a fan belt here that’s starting to shred.” He lifted up a thick rubber band, frayed and cracked, running between two solid discs. “It’s slipping, so you don’t get a consistent spark. You need that spark to come precisely at the right time, to keep the engine running smoothly. You know, from the spark plugs?” He shoved his hand vaguely into the dark depths.
“Is that it?” Mike asked. “What do we need to do?”
The mechanic pulled a wrench from a loop on his overalls, loosened something, pulled off the belt, and threw a new one on. As he worked he announced, “Should be just a minute. Fifteen bucks is all. Plus the belt, another seven – ninety nine. There!” A final hard pull on the wrench. “You’re good to go!”
Back on the road, Mike fiddled with the radio, finding nothing but static in the endless Appalachian hollows. He asked, “How far do you want to go? Maybe get out of these hills, stay in Pittsburgh at a cheap motel?”
I nodded, sounding assent. I thought about the worn belt, and how just a little preventive maintenance saved our trip this year from ending up like the last one. Out loud, I continued, “It’s funny, isn’t it, how a little work like that can keep things going? There ought to be mechanics for people, shouldn’t there, to diagnose and treat us…”
Mike interrupted, “But isn’t that what a doctor, what a psychologist or psychiatrist is? Somebody who keeps you running, somebody who can help…”
My turn to interrupt. “You and me, us, we need a regular spark to keep us going. Maybe our belt’s gotten frayed, not running smooth?”
“That’s something we can fix ourselves, I think. Should fix ourselves. If we need somebody outside of us, to make us better, to make us whole, then what’s the good of…us?”
By the time we reached Cincinnati, we were whole again, wholly present with each other. For a week or two, we had that cocoon back around us, as we took advantage while his parents were at work, to lounge by the pool, or hid away in his bed. We didn’t talk about our summers, his at the swim club, mine back in the Harvard psych lab. I wondered, could a chrysalis stay in suspended animation, would anything at all emerge come fall?
Saturday night before I left, June 7th, Mike and I ate dinner at home with my parents. Afterwards, we headed to the den for that premiere of Johnny Cash on TV. Of course, it was Dylan we really wanted to see.
George followed us in. I tried explaining to him why this was special, that Bob Dylan never appeared on TV, that somehow he and Cash had become musical buddies, were going to sing together. My father thought it odd, off-putting, that a country singer from the Ozarks should cozy up with a radical ex-folkie from northern Minnesota by way of Greenwich Village.
“Hmm. It might be that musicians, singers, have more in common, more mutual respect over their songs, their authenticity, than they have differences in attitude, accent, where’re they from?” Mike offered.
My dad just grunted.
While we waited for Dylan, a tall blonde appeared with a guitar, singing, “I’ve looked at life from both sides now…I really don’t know life at all.” I almost started crying, her voice was so clean and pure, her words so sincere.
My dad said, “She sounds Canadian, hear how she said ‘about’ like it’s ‘a boot’?”
Mike asked, “Who’s that?”
I sighed. My older siblings had long ago introduced me to folk music. “Joni Mitchell. She’s really good.”
“Yeah,” was all Mike said.
After they sang “Girl From Saskatoon” together, a lean, disjointed fiddle player in a velour suit, ruffled shirt, with a chin sticking out almost as far as his nose came on, singing “Diggy diggy do.” As he played, singing with a continual catch in his voice, the audience clapped along with his yodels, smiles, and wild eyes.
Finally, after the second commercial, Dylan appeared, starting with, “If you find some one who gives you all of her love, take it to your heart, don’t let it stray. One thing’s for certain, you will surely be a-hurtin’ if you throw it all away.” Inwardly, I started to cry, and hoped I could hide it from everyone.
Mom wondered, “He’s not much of a performer, sweetie? What do you see in him? He can’t even look at the audience.”
I walked Mike out to his car. Silently, we hugged as he sat on the hood, pulling me closer, squeezing as if he never wanted to let me go. Finally, we eased apart, and locked eyes. He looked down, sighed, shook his head, and clasped his hands together in front of his face, pressing the tips of his nose with his index finger. He dropped his fingers to his lips, then reached forward to touch mine. Sighing once more, he said simply, “I hate to say good-bye.”