!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!
Chanukah started the following Friday. Jeanne brought out her menorah, and for the first time, I had a family in Cambridge to share the holiday with. Howard showed up with Rachel, Marcia invited her boyfriend, even Bev joined in, giggling at the unfamiliar ritual candle lighting. I sheepishly brought out my childhood dreidel, still occupying place of pride on my desk, and everyone give it a few spins. Best of all, Eddie and his family came up from Providence, and Mike arrived mid-party, carrying a gift-wrapped record album.
“Last time I was here, I noticed you guys didn’t have this one yet,” he said as I unwrapped the Beatles’ Abbey Road.
Bev grabbed it, saying, “Great! We’ve needed this,” as she tore off the cellophane and slipped out the disc. We now had an upgrade to my suitcase player, a small turntable with built-in radio and separate speakers. Not much power, but enough that we all could hear the opening “Shoop…shoop” as Paul sang, “Here come old flat-top, he come groovin’ up slowly…” Within minutes, Mike’s eyes were closed, as he swayed back and forth, softly singing along with his hero, John Lennon: “Something in the way she moves, attracts me like no other lover…I don’t want to leave her now, you know I believe and how…You’re asking me will my love grow, I don’t know, I don’t know…” As the final chord faded, he opened his eyes, looking straight at me with a faint, almost questioning smile.
When Paul started the next song’s bouncy beat, Mike said, “Funny, when I first heard this, I kind of identified with it.” Seeing my raised eyebrows, he went on, “You know, ‘Maxwell Edison, studying in medicine…’ But then, he turns out to be a little sociopath, so, no.”
As the last song on the first side began, Eddie produced another album wrapped up for gifting, and presented it to me. “That song, it’s about him and the artist he took up with, Yoko Ono. Maybe we should put this on next, before we hear the other side?”
“Is this the one they wore no clothes for the cover photos, but the record company wouldn’t sell it that way?” I asked.
“Right,” Eddie responded. “Two Virgins. Supposed to represent how we’re all naked and innocent in this world, or something, according to her.”
“She’s kind of weird,” Mike observed, as Yoko warbled, screeching really, while John tape looped all sorts of instruments atonically together.
Eddie leaned conspiratorially over to Mike and asked, while jerking his head first towards Arlene, then towards me, “Would you let your wife do something like that, and try to sell it?” Then, with a full body laugh, he went on, “OK, you guys aren’t ready for this I guess,” as he whisked the record off, replacing it with the second side of Abbey Road.
The upbeat acoustic guitar opened into Paul’s homage to sun worship. “Little darlin’, it’s been a long cold lonely winter…it feels years since it’s been here – here comes the sun…it’s all right…the smiles returning to the faces…it’s all right.” I remembered Mike would soon be leaving school for good, first over Christmas to Snowmass with his family, then after a return for reading period, heading back to the mountains, for his ski bum winter.
While George droned on about all the reasons he loved the world, I pulled Mike away, offering him the “Arthur Miller” chair as I sat in my O’Neal. He looked at his, saying, “This is Bev’s? How come she get the Jewish director’s one, and your is the WASP lead?” Over in the corner, Denise picked up one of the little speakers, holding it by her ear as she bobbed with Paul singing, “Out of college, money spent, see no future, pay no rent…”
Earnestly, I took his hands, and asked, “You’re sure that’s what you’re doing, going to Aspen next month?” As I spoke, I noticed a sense of relief, a hope he’d say, “Yes”, so I could finally say, “No” to him. I was a bit shocked to realize I relished prospect of him not being around, not showing up every week or two, enticing me with his alluring sense of fun and warm, soothing skin.
Head nodding up and down, he flipped Eddie’s present over and over, finally saying with a little grin, “Two Virgins? That was us, right?”
“Mike, that’s one thing we will always have, will never go away.” He looked confused, so I went on. “We lost our virginity together, buddy. That will always be special to me, that it was you, and you for me.” As I spoke, my stomach tightened, as if trying to grab my heart, keep it close inside.
Ringo began intensely drumming as Paul and John harmonized over George’s driving chords, “Oh yeah, all right, oh, you gonna be in my dreams tonight…love you, love you” the last repeated over and over until, finally, “And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make.”
The room hushed for half a minute, then Paul well and truly finished the record with a little ditty about “Her Majesty”, “Some day I’m gonna make her mine.”
Mike turned to Eddie and asked, “I heard that’s their last album, they’re breaking up.”
“No!” Bev shrieked. “There’s supposed to be another one, right?”
“Well, yes…and no. We will hear from them again, supposedly, but it’s stuff they’ve already done, they did before this one. Nope, Yoko took him away, I think. No more Beatles.”
Mike looked back at me, saying, “It’s time, Janie, it’s time. I know I have to do this, to have this empty time. Two months, three months, six months, maybe even nine months in front of me, I see them totally unfilled. I’m not apprehensive, though, or expectant about it. For the first time, I’m not worried what new school it will be in the fall, it’ll be somewhere good, I’m sure. I’m really not worried about anything.”
The next day, Saturday, the day before he was supposed to leave for home, I went over to William James Hall to study. Overhead, the regular rotary sound of fan blades brought a calm and quieting force into the fluorescent-lit lightly filled study room. One would think, at the end of the semester, this place would be much more crowded, but less than half the chairs were occupied, most of the students looking at books, taking notes, preparing for exams or papers. I found a nook in the balcony, looking down on one side at the stacks and tables below, on the other at the dark, chilly, windy night outside. The quiet lack of intensity reassured me. For the first time in quite a while, I was without that constant, gnawing sense of urgency which drove me every day. In here, we had much to do, and lots of time to do it in.
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