!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!
“What did you think?” Howard asked as we walked out of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
He had been so eager to see the film, even though I’d seen it before, I couldn’t deny him, not on our first official date. All I could think about was the scene with Butch, Paul Newman, riding Etta Place around on a bicycle while her real boyfriend, the Sundance Kid, lay sleeping in her cabin, recovering from their relentless pursuers. “The bicycle was kind of fun,” I offered.
“Bicycle?”
“Sure, when he rides around to that song, Raindrops Falling On My Head, then pushes it away and says, what is it, ‘You can have the future’.”
He seemed puzzled. It hit me: that perky schoolteacher, arms around another man, seeing the past, the faithful horse give way to a new-fangled machine. Howard was friendly, smiling, but I vaguely wondered if he might lead me to dead end somewhere like La Paz. I had to re-direct our attention.
“After law school, you have plans?”
Howard hesitated, then revealed, “I’ve been going to a few meetings at Hillel, where they talk about Israel. First, I think, after I pass the boards, I’ll go there, see what a kibbutz is like for a few months,. Then come back, go back to the Free Clinic.”
Seeing my own puzzled look, he explained, “I’ve been been volunteering there last spring and summer. They need so much help fighting landlords, employers. No one will help them, no real lawyers, I mean. All anybody wants to know is how much money is in it for them. We could get a whole network going, provide them with a fighting chance.”
As he walked me back to Oxford Street, I scrunched up against the evening chill. He tentatively tried an arm around my shoulder, gave a squeeze, asking, “Maybe I can warm you up?” My silence and tense reaction stopped him short as he pulled away, saying, “Here you are,” Questioning with his eyes, he asked “Plans for this weekend?”
With Michael Harrison arriving the next morning, a strong surge of honesty made me say, “Mike’s coming up. We’re going down to Martha’s Vineyard for the weekend.”
Howard’s face lost all animation. He didn’t frown, simply went blank. “Oh,” was all he said. I walked inside, feeling defeated.
I heard Mike’s Lancer a block away, now in need of a new muffler. I hurried downstairs with my bag to meet him outside. I didn’t want to risk Jeanne or Bev [mentioning/saying] anything about my evening with Howard. Seeing me, Mike’s grin grew even broader as he waved an envelope overhead. “First one!” he shouted.
“First what?”
“Cincinnati. I got into UC med school!”
“You don’t really want to go there, do you?” I asked, genuinely worried he might say yes.
“Of course not! Why would I want to go back there? But now I don’t have to worry I won’t get in anywhere. It really is a relief, to know they want me. I mean, I only sent in the application two weeks ago. That’s a good sign, isn’t it?”
That simple acceptance, the reassurance his future was assured, gave Mike a boost the whole way down the coast. “For the first time – I guess I haven’t told you this, but I’ve been worried I wouldn’t get in anywhere – for the first time, I can think about the future. I don’t know where I’m going next fall, not yet. But it’ll be somewhere good, I’m sure.”
As we drove along, passing hardwood trees with the first hint of color change in their leaves, the placid bay gently shimmering in the mid-day sun, I reflected on Jeanne’s idea of companionship.
“Mike? What do you think it means, to be a companion?”
“What, like somebody who helps out an old person in a retirement home?”
“No, as a stage in a relationship. You know, two people can be lovers, they can be friends. But they can do that without being…together. Without living together.”
“Hmm…you mean, sleeping together is easier than living together?”
I hadn’t thought of it that way, that making love is not permanent. The act never lasts very long, although the memory might. Out loud, I said, “Making a home, a life; that lasts a lot longer than just a night in bed.”
I could see him smiling a bit sheepishly as he stared dutifully at the road ahead. Sucking air through his lips and teeth, he struggled to say, “Kids, though. Sleeping together, in the end, that’s all about kids, that’s where it all comes from. And kids, that’s about as permanent as it gets, I think.” He sighed again, this time through his nose.
“What?” I demanded.
“I’m just thinking about the little kids, the ones I coach, the eight-and-unders. I mean, I don’t want to spend my life doing that, but I do know I want a family, want to have little kids, who grow into bigger ones, then people. That feels so right, so true, what I’m supposed to do, what I want to do.”
“Kids? How many, like a lot?”
“What’s ‘a lot’?”
I had never thought of my family as too big. For no reason, I said, “Six or seven. That would be too many.”
“Three of four, no more. But more than two. Fifty percent more fun, with just one more…”
Next morning, in a little Edgartown hotel room, we awoke to the familiar clanging of cables against masts on the boats in the marina below our window. After breakfast, we rented bikes and moseyed along the northern coast road, headed for our favorite spots near Menemsha. It was late on a sunny Sunday morning, and a gaggle of youngsters in their church clothes pedaled madly by us, free for at least a half a day. As they whizzed by, Mike stopped, got off and leaned against his bike. Bending down, he pulled a long, drying blade of grass, pale as straw, from a patch near a wooden fence post. He stuck it in his mouth, wiggling it up and down, staring north at the glassy waters of the sound.
He pulled it out, pointing at the bikers disappearing quickly up ahead. He cleared his throat for one of his poetic pronouncements. “Kids. They’re ultimate expression of the permanence and value of the universe. An unmeltable glue between the two folks who make one.”