!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!
Back in Cambridge, I found myself pulled back to Hillel. In the year since I’d attended the worship and study congregation with Les, Rabbi Gold had added two or three meetings every day, where reading from the Torah was not on the agenda. Women’s participation in weekly services, book discussions on works by Bellow and Roth, study groups on Harvard’s role in the community, and anti-war advocacy were analyzed and discussed in fevered fine detail. In late September, at a meeting discussing the impending vote by Harvard’s Faculty to condemn the war, Howard Lehrman plopped down next to me.
“I thought you were afraid of admitting to your roots, Janie.”
“Howard! Hi!” I wondered why he’d changed his tune about my name. His insistence on it in the spring had started me thinking, maybe a switch to Sarah would be be the right signifier when I turned 21. “You know how I like to argue and discuss. I feel comfortable here. Maybe these are my people, after all. Anything that’s lasted so long must have something going for it, no? I’d like to learn what that is, since it’s a part of me. Find out what that power is, I mean.”
Walking through the Divinity School on the way to Oxford Street, Howard fell in step with me. His hair seemed neater, his clothes less flamboyant. “How’s the second year in law school?” I asked.
“A lot of work. Reading, writing, arguing in my study group.”
“What about the SDS – they still fired up?”
“Not so much here anymore. It looks like being against the war is now the norm on campus, and everyone, after the strike, is on the workers’ side. But I am going to Washington next month.”
“Washington? What’s that?”
“Another march, to show Nixon he’s got to end it. We may not like the man, but he’s in charge, so he is the key to finally getting us out. And then there’s the draft lottery. Law school won’t protect me, not like college did the last four years. I’m worried about that.”
“Draft lottery?” I felt like a grind, studying so much I didn’t know the simplest things about what was going on in the world.
“Oh, yeah, you’re not a guy. December 1st, they’re going to pull ping-pong balls out of a machine or something, like a Bingo game. 366 numbers, assign each one to a date, then draft people based on that. I’m trying not to think about it.”
“Bummer”
“Yeah, bummer.”
We arrived at the steps up to 119. The vacant lot next door had gone to seed, patchy clumps of dying grass and weeds reminding me I was not in Clifton, or the manicured Radcliffe quad anymore. Howard asked, “Say, you want to go see a movie this weekend?”
Mike was coming up for the first time that fall on Saturday, for an overnight weekend at Martha’s Vineyard. Without thinking, I replied, “Friday night OK?”
Trudging up three flights to our apartment, I walked in on what appeared to be a witches’ coven. Jeanne and Bev, both dressed in black, hovered over a steaming pot on the stained and weary stove.
“What’s cooking?” I asked.
“Toil and trouble,” came the reply from Bev. “How was Hillel?”
“Fine. The Faculty’s going to vote in a couple of weeks, whether to formally object to government policy on the war, asking them to end it. We’re supposed to ‘engage’ with our professors, get a feel for where they stand.”
“Mmm,” Bev hummed, nodding her head once while sniffing the simmering brew.
Jeanne looked up, smiling, and said, “I saw Howard Lehrman with you down there.”
I felt myself flush a little, below my collar bones. Before it could reach my neck, I turned away, dropped my bag, and said quickly, “Yeah he was there.”
“Anything new?”
“We decided to go see a movie tomorrow night.”
Bev and Jeanne both froze, then turned towards me as I sat on the threadbare couch installed underneath the bay window.
“So what’s up? I thought Mike was coming up this weekend, you were going to the Vineyard?” Bev queried.
I frowned and sighed, saying, “Yeah, I’m not sure what I’m thinking.” I stopped, trying to put my feelings into words. “It’s like, with Mike, the newness of us has gotten old. I feel like I haven’t lived, like I don’t know how to handle life and other people.” I remembered talking with my mother, with Mike’s mom G, about their relationships. I decided I trusted Bev and Jeanne enough by now, so I plowed on. “What is love, anyway? I get so confused, thinking about it with Mike.”
“Oh, ‘love’. That’s a tough one, isn’t it? What do you see, when he’s on your mind? How did it all start, and grow?” Bev tried.
I went back to the start, with them telling how I first thought he had the hands of a doer, not just a thinker. And now I saw him hiking, skiing, swimming, and wondered If I could do all that with him. “And then it gets all jumbled with his body, not just his mind.We write these letters, he woos me with his words. But also his body. I see him, I feel him, and those words go out the window, it’s just about touch and warmth and…”
“And sleeping together,” said Bev.
“Yes, and that. Call it what you want, it feels right and good, but I don’t know if that is love. What is love?” I repeated.
Bev tried again. “It’s like art, isn’t it? I know it when I see it. It’s so obvious to me that you two are in love. He idolizes you, and you fawn over him like you’ve lost your mind.”
Now I felt even more embarrassed. The last thing I wanted, the last thing I needed, was to lose my mind, my ability to think clearly, to read and write and learn. I knew Bev was right. I knew I loved Mike, that was the start of our relationship. “I guess you’re right, yes, I do love him, I’ve always loved him and that’s what confuses me.”
“Do you ever say no to him? You’ve got to say no to him, if you want to get him to act like you want towards you.”
I thought about this during an uncomfortable silence. I saw Jeanne slightly frowning, as if her analytic mind were whirring like a slot machine. “I can’t when we’re together.” Another scary hesitation. “The attraction when we’re together is so strong, we have so much fun together.”
Bev sighed. “Then it sounds like the only way to say no to him is to not have him around at all.” That made me almost shiver with fear.
Jeanne was ready to speak. “Here’s what I think, Janie. You started out feeling love for him, when you were, what, sixteen? Then you two became friends, all those walks and talks, those letters you’re always writing. At some point, your two created a new component, went from kissing to hugging to sleeping together, the whole sex thing. And now, last summer, you tried out being companions, on that long trip after you saw me in St. Louis. I think maybe that’s the next step, you have to learn how to be, see if you can be, companions. Companionable. Maybe that’s the next step in your relationship.”