!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!
Helen and Sylvia met me at the airport. As the freeway came to an end in downtown San Francisco, Helen chortled, “No Los Angeles for us, Janie. The people said, ‘No, we don’t want our waterfront, our city, scarred and hidden by one of those monstrosities.’ So they won’t be building that double-decker highway, not here, not now at least.” She pointed up Mission as we drove by. “There, that’s where we go to school, Syl and I.”
“How does that work? You drive in together? What does Uncle Carl think?”
Helen filled me in. “Oh, he can’t wait to have another lawyer or two helping him out. He takes so many cases pro bono, we need more money coming in. He even let us use the car – he rides his bike to work now, it’s only a few miles, the next town over, to the office.”
“Mom’s number one in our class you know,” Sylvia chimed in.
“Well, you’re right behind me, dear. Though if my hip doesn’t get any better, who knows how I’ll do this coming year?” Nearing 60, Helen was by far the oldest student there, determined not to let her age keep her from this goal, to practice law with her family.
Riding over the stunning Golden Gate, I realised that spending a few days in their rustic house, the surrounding hills still green even this late in summer, was exactly the tonic I needed. Each morning while watching birds dancing on their over-grown lawn, I read the Chronicle cover-to-cover, grateful to ignore whatever current traumas perplexed the Times and Globe opinion writers. The biggest headlines were reserved for the chagrin felt by the California baseball teams in LA and San Francisco, during their futile attempts to catch my hometown Reds. Of course, I never had been a baseball fan, but it seemed right somehow that, this year, they would meet up with their erstwhile star, Frank Robinson, now playing for Baltimore, in the world series.
“So, what do you think about them, the Reds?” Carl asked when he saw me reading the sports section one morning.
Non-plussed, “Oh, a little bit of nostalgic pride,” was all I could come up with.
Back in Cincinnati, tanner from the fog-shrouded northern California sun, and plumper from the fresh fruit they’d fed me in Marin, I found a message taped to my door. “Lizzie called,” my mother had written, followed by several question marks.
At dinner that night, dad asked, “How did it go in California? Did you see him off?” He left unsaid, but very evident in his intonation, “At last?”
Mom added, “Carl and Toby, Sylvia. How is everyone. Helen?”
I ignored my father. I knew if I said anything, I’d feel like crying, and I had determined to be strong and in control. Turning to my mother, I answered. “Oh, Helen, she’s such a powerhouse – going back to school, to law school – at her age, I want to have that resolve, that determination and ambition when I’m sixty, when my kids are grown.”
Mom looked a little hurt, so I quickly added, “I think she’s doing it mostly out of love for Sylvia, to make sure she follows through…”
Dad observed, “Kids? I thought you wanted to go on in school, Janie. When are you going to have time for kids?”
Again my father’s question left me churning. He expected plans, and I had none, apart from finishing my senior year at Radcliffe. I found nothing in my heart, no strong vision, no one like Helen to pull me forward, guide me to the track I only vaguely saw before me.
I drove over to Lizzie’s the next afternoon. As I got off the expressway at Seymour, I realised with a start that if I turned left, I’d drive right past Mike’s house. The other way would be a half mile farther. Either way, I knew, the hole in my heart, so recently repaired, had opened up again. Not wanting to make it any larger, I turned right.
Our meeting might have started awkwardly. We had, of course, been best friends for years. Then, though only 90 miles apart at school, we had fallen out of touch. In fact, within fifteen minutes, we were once again laughing and talking in that short hand code only true intimates can share.
She laughed, “You’re ‘Sarah’ now? Why, what turned you?”
“You, know. That boy.”
“Mike?”
“Uh-huh. He’s in California now, LA.”
“Med school?”
“USC.”
“Maybe I need a new name.”
“What about more formal – Elizabeth?”
She beamed. “A queen!”
“For a day?”
“For a year. My whole life!”
We shared our plans for after college. She had stuck with English, writing as her dream.
“I want to try somewhere new. The midwest, New England. I’ve done those.”
“Where?”
“I’m thinking – west coast?”
“Any place special?”
“No, not yet. I want to go out this fall, look at schools like Oregon, Seattle, maybe even California. Doubt I could get into Stanford, but you never know…”
We fell silent for a bit, leafing through old copies of the New Yorker. She was another convert to that journal.
She brightened, “Hey, do you have an address for Mike? Maybe a phone number? I could see him if I go there, say ‘hi’ again. Has he changed any?”
I ignored her last question as I rooted in my purse for my date book. I scribbled the numbers on a perfume ad, tore it out, saying, “Here.”
“Thanks. Any messages?”
Again I stayed silent.
“Oh, that bad, huh?” was her reply.
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