v
Christmas day was always a bit depressing at the Stein house. If it were on a Saturday, we could hide out at the synagogue; otherwise the lack of traffic and sounds of merriment from the gentiles all around us reminded me that, at certain times like this, we very clearly did not fit in. So I jumped at the chance when Mike invited me to go to the Krohn Conservatory for his family’s annual venture into Eden Park. Snow was in the forecast, so he suggested I could spend the night at his place, in Shelly’s room, instead of risking the drive back at night. The Harrisons picked me up in their blue Buick La Sabre station wagon.
“Where is Shelly?” I asked after we settled into the back seat.
Mr. Harrison – Jack – answered, “She’s in Idaho.” That seemed to be all he was going to say on the subject, so Grace added, “She’s spending winter break at Sun Valley, working in the cafeteria and skating in the ice show. We’ve gone out in August several times since 1962, for the ice skating. The last two years, she’s spent the summer there, and met some people who convinced her to come in the winter and learn to ski. She’s growing up so fast.”
“How’s she doing at school – in St. Louis, right?” I asked
“Oh, she’s well-settled in. She joined a sorority. They have an annual competition, putting on variety shows. She’s so talented. She helped write the songs, and choreographed the dance team.” Mike’s mother was very proud of her daughter. I hadn’t yet heard her praise her son.
“She’s a cheerleader there. They do all the St. Louis Cardinals’ games. We went to see one last month,” his father chimed in.
“Cardinals?” I wondered. “They have cheerleaders at baseball games?”
“No, football. It’s the St. Louis football Cardinals,” Mike added with a touch of disdain.
We drove under the new Expressway, then past Avondale High School. This prompted Mike’s mother to ask, “Mike says you’re having another good year at school? Are you finding yourself?”
I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but then I remembered: She’s a psychologist. One who’s interested in child development. She’s probably wondering how my development is going.. With that in mind, I said, “I’m ready to move on. It’s lots of fun, being a senior, and in charge of everything. But high school is starting to seem small. And Cincinnati, my mother has always said, ‘It’s a great place to grow up, but I don’t think you want to live here, do you?’ I’m looking forward to going back east, to school near Boston and New York, being able to see museums and plays more often, things like that.”
She turned around to face me, smiled, and said, “Good for you, Janie.”
We arrived the conservatory, a giant greenhouse. Through the glass panels covering the walls and roof, Christmas lights sparkled, refracting through the steam condensing there. I remembered, plants breathe, they emit oxygen and water from photosynthesis. One of the many many little facts I’d crammed into my head at school, I mused. How does my brain do that, I wondered, why do I remember stuff and recall it so much more easily than most people?
We wandered around, reading all the little signs in front of each plant, finally ending up at a giant Christmas tree reaching to the top of the central dome. Paper cut-outs of angels, donkeys, Virgin Marys with shawls over their heads, covered the fir, all made, so a sign in front proclaimed, by children of various elementary schools. I felt like folding a blue six-pointed star and hiding it in the branches.
Outside, Mike’s parents took a little stroll around the park while Mike and I gravitated towards the giant swing set. He shouted, “Watch!” as he rose higher and higher, pumping his legs with each oscillation, almost reaching the horizontal until, finally, at the very apex of a swing, he flew off, leaning slightly forward, and landed far in front on the dirt, feet first, knees bent then standing bolt upright. “Come on, go ahead, JUMP!” he hollered.
I was swinging much more gently, afraid of heights, or anything physically taxing. I tried a dainty little leap from four feet high. He ran to catch me before I fell. “That’s so much fun,” he exhilarated. “Didn’t you ever do that when you were a kid?” I watched as he flew off a few more times, trying to beat his previous height and distance each time. I was sure he’d break his leg, but he landed perfectly, with ease. He seemed to revel in his body, in the fun it could produce. I didn’t know if I could match that with him, ever enter that sanctuary.
We sat down on a bench overlooking the Ohio River, the low, late afternoon winter solstice sun sparkling weakly on the muddy water below.
“Isn’t this where people come to watch the submarine races?” I asked sarcastically.
“Subm…wait, they don’t have submarines in the river. Do they?”
I couldn’t tell if he were kidding. He often had a dry sense of humor, and gave no clue in his expression when using it. “I don’t believe you. What d’ya mean?” he challenged.
“This is where people go to make out in their cars. You didn’t know that? Somebody’ll say, ‘What did you do last night.’ Then, “Oh, we went to watch the submarine races in Eden Park’.”
He pondered this, saying nothing. Finally, scratching his cheek, he mused, “I don’t think we’re that kind of people.”
“What kind of people are we, then?”
Again, a long pause. Then, “I don’t think you – we – live moment to moment. You always act like you know where you’re going, what you want. You wanted to help run the Student Council, ran for office, and you won. You wanted to be on Five Fingers, and you are. You wanted to be debate team cheerleaders, you made time cards, you showed up, and you never made fun of us. You want to go to school back east, to the best place, and you will. You can find fun in so many little things, like watching a play, or walking on the beach. You don’t need submarine races to enjoy life.”
“What do you want, Mike?”
“Um…wait, I talked about you, you tell me what I want, OK?”
Now it was my turn to think. “Well, here’s what I see. You are the most self-directed person I know. You might be oblivious to this, but lots of people find you scary, unapproachable because of that. Girls talk, and they ask me, they wonder, what I see in you. I tell them, that man has a heart, he has a soul, he knows where he’s going, and nobody’s going to stop him. He may act like he doesn’t want anybody to touch him, like he has no personality, but he sees the world so clearly, and he can tell me about it so well, I don’t mind following.
“Sometimes, though…sometimes…” I hesitated, afraid I was about to say something he might not like. Then I remembered that first rule he’d told Marc, the night of the party when we walked forever, when I first used the word “love” as I thought about Michael Harrison: “Always be honest.”
I went on. “I think you get so wrapped up in yourself, you can’t see anyone…can’t see me…anymore. It hurts, because I want you to see me, see all of me, the whole me. The scared little girl I used to be. The one who thinks she has to be better than all the boys around her, has to do twice as much just to get half of what she wants. School is easy for us, for you and me, but life…life, it’s not something you can learn from a book or a lecture. Life has to be lived, and I want to live it for me, not someone else. Right now, I want to live it with you, but I also want to live it with me, from me, from what I see.” It sounded so confusing, but that’s what I felt, sitting there with him on the bench that evening, wondering who we were, where each of us would go. I remembered my sister’s advice, when she told me about boys: “When in doubt, Janie, ask him a question.”
“Do you ever get lonely there at Calvin?” I tried.
“No, I don’t think so. See, all the freshmen are in the same dorms, we have our own dining room, and take a lot of the same classes, like Humanities, and for the guys going to med school, Cell Biology. You see the same people over and over, share the same experiences, it’s easy to be a part of that. Then in November, there was swimming, and another group to feel a part of. It’s so small there, you know, 350 in a class, there’s always someone you know you can talk to wherever you go. It’s why I wanted to go to a small school, not even one the size of Harvard or Yale. I thought I’d get lost in a place like that. And a giant school like UC or Ohio State, I can’t imagine what that would be like.”
“Same here. I’m starting on my applications. It’s gonna be Barnard, Smith, Wellesley, and Radcliffe.”
“Which one is your safe school?” he said playfully.
“My sister tells me ‘You don’t need no stinking safe school.’ I hope she’s right. Now, I’m the big fish in a backwater pond…”
“But AHS has a reputation, we’re not some podunk place, we’re as good as Shaker Heights, New Trier, Bronx High School of Science, Boston Latin, aren’t we?”
“But we’re not a prep school. You know what that’s like, it’s all buddy-buddy, I don’t have an in like that.”
“My mother went to Radcliffe, she could write you a recommendation, couldn’t she?”
“You think she’d do that?”
“You can ask her, you know, tonight at dinner.”
vi
Twinkling, colored lights broke through the evening mist as we pulled up to Mike’s house in Woodland Park. On a little rise above the street, homemade Christmas decorations cut from sheet aluminum and painted with glossy enamel lined the narrow walk leading to the front door. A pair of four-foot high children in choir robes, holding hymnals, raised their eyes in song. Several candles, static flames on top lit by inner bulbs, highlighted fir branches across the lintel. Mike, his mother Grace, and I all got out before his father pulled the Buick into the garage, squeezing in next to the compact Lancer.
Inside, Grace pulled some covered ceramic bowls from, as she called it, the icebox, admitting, “I don’t like to cook.” Turning towards me, she asked, “Janie, would you like to help me here? Mike and Jack can get the table ready in the other room.”
There didn’t seem much to do as she put a few things in the oven for re-heating, and started a pan of water on the stove, to defrost a bag of vegetables. I looked around, wondering how I could seem busy. While I pulled glasses from a shelf by the sink, intending to fill them with ice, she wondered, “I suppose you’ve got all your applications finished and mailed in by now?”
“Well, actually, I’ve just started. I’m going to get them done over the holidays,” I asserted.
“Vassar, Radcliffe, Barnard, and what else?”
“Yes, and Wellesley, too.”
“What do they ask on the applications? I remember Shelly and Mike both had to write an essay about something personal. And they needed letters, recommendations from teachers, and someone outside of school, a personal friend. Oh, and of course, all the school grades and test scores.”
My mind froze and raced at the same time. I didn’t know if I could count Mrs. … Dr., I guess I should say… Harrison as a “personal acquaintance.” To me, she was Mike’s mother; we hadn’t talked more than two or three times. I knew, though, that she loved her son, and would do anything for him. A letter of recommendation for his girlfriend seemed to flow naturally from that. So I stammered my way through, “Yes. I’ve been thinking…It’s OK if you don’t want to, but, uh, could you…would you think about writing a letter for me? For Radcliffe?”
She pulled an oven mitt from her right hand, paused a beat, then said, “I wondered if you could use some help there, but I didn’t want to ask. Of course, I will, Janie, of course I will.” Another pause, punctuated by a warm smile. “I want to make sure I put the right things in there. I know I won’t have to talk about all your fabulous accomplishments at school, your grades and test scores and activities. Your teachers and Miss M. are already doing that. I do think I know you a bit, so I can truthfully say what a good, warm, and caring girl you are. But I would like to know more about your plans, your aspirations – why you would benefit from and contribute to that university environment. Mike says you’re interested in psychology, in children?”
This was only a feeling I had, more than a plan. “Well, that’s what I’m thinking now, but I don’t really know that much about it.” Denise’s chubby face swirled around my thoughts. “Kids…children are special, they need the right direction at the start of life. And I like thinking about how people act, what makes them do what they do, how they fit in with other people, that sort of thing. That isn’t something you get in high school, and I haven’t really done any looking or reading…”
“I want to give you a couple of books to look at, Janie. Wait here. Oh, and can you watch that pot, so it doesn’t boil over?”
She came back with a foot-high pile of books. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to give them all to you,” she laughed. She placed one next to the glasses I’d filled with ice and water. “Here, you should start with this. He was at Yale, Gesell. He wrote books about the developmental stages of maturation. This one” – titled Child Development – “is a good summary, but if you want more from him, I’ve got all these.” I could see titles such as The Child From Five to Ten and Youth: The Years from Ten to Sixteen. “And of course, you should read Piaget.” She placed another book on top of the Gesell, The Origin of Intelligence in the Child. “If you read these two, you’ll get a good idea of how to start thinking about all this. Or even if that’s what you want to do. But whatever you do, I know you’ll be great at it. You are so lucky, you have the mind and perseverance to do anything you want. I’m sure you’ll make good choices.”
ApparentlyMike’s mother saw something in me I didn’t even know was there. “Oh, this is great, I can’t wait to read them.Thank you.” Then I remembered the recommendation. “I’ll make sure you get the form for Radcliffe. Mike’s coming over tomorrow, he can bring it back, I guess.”
After dinner, we watched a Perry Como Christmas special for an hour. Upstairs, I got to use Shelly’s room for the night. It was larger than Mike’s and had an old four-poster bed with antique furniture to match. “This is all from my parent’s room at the farm where I grew up,” Grace explained as she fluffed the pillows and fussed with the sheets. “I hope you’ll be comfortable. The bathroom’s right around the corner. There’s only one, so we have to take turns.” Mike’s room was across the small central hall at the top of the stairs; his parents slept in a larger room next to his.
I put my bag down on the cedar chest at the foot of the bed, and walked across the hall to sit with Mike at his desk. “Your mom said she’d write me a recommendation for Radcliffe. I don’t know, I feel a little funny about that. She doesn’t really know me. Does she count as a “personal or family friend’?”
“She’s always asking me about you.”
“What do you say? What does she say?”
“Oh, I don’t think I’ve told her much, just what you do at school, where you live, your parents and sister, how you like the New Yorker, movies, plays. Nothing about us.”
“I know. Mothers love to pry, don’t they?”
We chatted a bit more that Christmas night. He opened up his window over the garage, the one with a little flat space on the roof outside, where he would sit sometimes to be alone. We both crawled over the bookcase built onto the wall below, squeezing together into the nook which wasn’t big enough for both of us. Knees drawn up, cuddling close, he wrapped his arms around me while I squeezed him tight around his waist. He buried his face in my hair. I was glad I’d washed it that morning.
Even our combined body heat wasn’t enough to keep us out there more than five minutes. We struggled back inside, and I returned to Shelly’s room. Once in my Villager floor length flannel nightgown – white with small red flowers – I crawled into the double four-poster bed. I felt myself drifting away to the state of mind when you’re still awake, just before falling asleep, and your mind seems about to dream. I sensed him lying next to me, stroking the soft flannel over my back. I jerked fully awake, and found myself alone.
vii
The next three months breezed by, punctuated several times a week by letters from Mike. Reading them and writing back, I could take a break from the stress of school, both classwork and extracurriculars. Enveloped in his words, I tried to imagine the unfolding of spring in Connecticut. I shared my fears, anxieties that kept bubbling up, that I was never good enough, never would be. Things I would never say even to Lizzie, much less my mother or sister. His letters were seldom as dark; he had a perpetual rosy attitude about life and everything that happened to him. I began to think he used that optimism to avoid dealing with anything that didn’t go his way. Few poems accompanied the letters; most of those he sent were truly forgettable. He claimed that writing to me was replacing the urge, the need to discover his thoughts in verse.
He drove that Lancer, equipped with studded snow tires, back at the end of January, and again in March, for a week each time. That was enough to keep us connected, but not enough, it seemed, to move us forward. We were suspended, satisfied with what we had, not lusting for anything more.
Mid-April, he sent another poem, shorter this time, that seemed a harbinger of better times:
Cheeks aquiver,
Flaming rose
anoints their beauty.
Rushing joys
Deny the body
to control its own.
Cascading tresses,
Now unfurled
caress a fleeting passion.
Black yet shining
A world of
Ingenuous striving
is hidden there.
My father started watching the evening news, which every night showed frightening film from jungles on the other side of the world, in “East Southeast Asia”, as our history teacher Mr. Knab called it. Indochina, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos – it was a slow rumble which had escalated into a quickening roar. My brother Charlie, home with Arlene and little Denise, spoke only of the “resistance”, and the “mobilization against the war” by the Students for a Democratic Society.
At school, that war also punctured into our conversations, along with fascination over hippies and strange new music. Songs not about simple love, but rather complexities of the world, competed with the Beatles and Beach Boys for airtime on AM radio. Names like Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Jimi Hendrix (why did they all seem to start with “J”?) burrowed past my filters, replacing the show tunes and Streisand songs which used to live in my head. Always a little off to one side, I saw the world rushing past me faster than I could watch it go.
In the Chatterbox room one day, Lizzie, Kit and Will were heatedly discussing how to process all this in our school paper. As I walked in, Will intently pointed at Lizzie. “No, not another fluff piece on the school review! I know the Pony Chorus is your little baby and all, but there are more important things happening. We should lead with something about the rally they’re having at Fountain Square next weekend, try and get as many kids out as possible. It’s important! We’ll all be gone next year, and we have to make sure the younger guys, the sophomores and juniors, carry on the struggle.” He turned to me. “Janie. What about it? Can you get through to your friend here?”
I stared at Will, at his imploring moon-shaped face. I wondered if he and Mike would become friends at JCU, if there was anything at all which connected the two of them. Mike was cool, quiet, often with a blank exterior. Underneath, I knew, he boiled with passion, a hidden romantic who saw the world, and his life in it, as a continually evolving story. Will’s interior was open, always there for everyone to see.
“I know!” he said. “Why don’t we go down to that rally this Saturday afternoon? Take some pictures, nose around a bit, get a read on kids at other schools, how they feel about the war and all.”
Lizzie moaned, “Our final dress rehearsal is Friday night, and then we open on Saturday. I’m gonna be exhausted. I don’t have time to do that, Will.”
He turned to me. “What about it?” He looked exactly like a shaggy sheep dog, eyebrows raised expectantly.
I was torn three ways. Charlie had been drumming into me the importance of this moment, the need for action. On the other hand, our It’s Academic team had the semi-final round against two other schools that morning. The half-hour show was live, airing at 11AM, which meant, win or lose, we’d do a post-mortem at the Big Boy drive-in afterwards.
And then there was Will himself. He seemed awfully eager to get me out there. I was suspicious of his motives, but he was so insistent, and I was so curious that I surprised myself by saying, “What time would we have to get there? I’ve got It’s Academic that morning, you know.”
“Oh yeah. Miss Brainiac. I forgot. It doesn’t start until around three. I can pick you up at 2 o’clock?” I looked at Lizzie, hoping I’d find an ally there. But I knew she had to be back at school by 4, to get ready for the premiere of the Follies. I’d have to deal with Will all by myself if I wanted to be a part of the anti-war brigade.
That Saturday, Mr. Gleason drove us to the WLW studio. I was part of our three person team, along with Phil Schwartz and Larry Schnieder, competing in the high school version of a popular TV show, College Bowl. Sort of a proto-Jeopardy, or an off-shoot of Whiz Kids. We were the acknowledged brains of the class, ready to answer any question about math, science, history, literature, culture, or trivia. Each of us had a specialty: Phil was the math/science guy, Larry, history and literature, which left me with culture and trivia. That was Janie Stein, filled with a bunch of useless facts, easily and quickly recalled. Phil and Larry sat silent, nervous in the back while I fidgeted up front with my necklace. There was nothing we could do to prepare at this point, not knowing what any of the questions would be. The anticipatory anxiety isolated each of us, apart together in that old Dodge sedan. I mentally reviewed the process. Each of us would have a button, able to buzz in at any point if we felt we knew an answer. Points were taken away for wrong answers, so guessing was not advised. But gut feelings were the way to go, Mr. Gleason had said. “You’ll know you know the answer before you think you do,” he’d said. Whatever that meant.
The studio lights glared down on us as we sat behind our desk, little name cards in front. Mine read “Sarah”. I hoped I’d remember to answer to that when called, instead of the “Janie” I’d used ever since third grade, when I’d thought my first given name too old and frumpy. Beads of sweat started to glisten on my forehead under the hot flood lights. A lady came over and patted our faces with powder. “Dearie, don’t worry, you’re gonna show these boys.” I looked across at the other two desks, and saw I was the only girl on stage. I thought of Lizzie, high-kicking before a different audience that night in her fishnet tights, chest held high, long hair flung from side-to-side while the chorus line counted out its final kicks, “…65, 66, 67.” I wondered what the poor kids in the class of ’99 would be doing? And how the kids in the year 2000 would get to be so lucky.
In the end, we slaughtered the other two schools, going on to the finals where we would be up against the Catholic league champs from St. Xavier and the county league winners from Princeton. Princeton, the same team Mike and Beto had to beat to get to the state debate tournament. At least this would be the end of the line for us, only one more round to go.
A bunch of kids from school were there, all bouncing and happy. Everyone was grabbing hands, shouting at our success. Phil and Larry stood off to one side, looking a little pleased with themselves. Being more accessible, I found myself smiling in a group of girls, relieved my time in the spotlight was over. Through that mob came Will, who grabbed me suddenly in a giant bear hug, nearly lifting me off the ground. “You’re the best, Janie. So quick. I loved it when you knew all those Rodgers and Hammerstein songs.” He finally let me down, but kept a hand on each of my shoulders. I was wearing a sleeveless jumper, on the advice of my mother, who knew how hot the studio would be. I didn’t want him fawning all over me, but didn’t know how to stop it in the aftermath of our victory. I backed away as best I could without actually throwing his hands off me.
“We’re going to the Big Boy now. A ‘de-brief’, Gleason calls it. I’ll see you at 2? You know how to get to my house?”
“Of course, right off Clifton? I’ll be there, don’t worry. Here’s hoping we don’t get arrested.”
“You serious?”
Quickly, Will said, “No, no, don’t worry. It’s just, they’re so much more conservative here in Cincinnati, and you know what happened out in California, when they started having these kinds of rallies there.” I thought I saw a slight bit of menace in those hooded, wolfish eyes above his smile.
In the end, the rally was peaceful, benign. Local politicians and religious leaders spoke for over an hour. A representative from each of the colleges, UC and Xavier, politely asked the mayor and the governor to consider – not “pass”, merely “consider” – resolutions against the war. A kid from Western Hills High School talked for five minutes about how it was “Our time to stand up for what’s right. I’m seventeen, and I don’t think I should have to fight in a war that’s wrong, that takes a country away from its people.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,’ I whispered to Will. “I thought we were fighting the Communists there.”
He looked down a bit disparagingly at me, saying, “You’ve got a lot to learn, Janie.”
viii
Alongside the nightly scenes of war in Southeast Asia, the evening news began to feature footage from San Francisco of hippies, long-haired dropouts. They flaunted all convention, urged everyone to go with the flow, do their own thing, and leave others alone. “Peace” and “love” were their bywords. Although the Beatles appeared to have been under their influence for the past year, that style and tone had yet to penetrate my high school friends. Oh, we fell under the spell of the music, and some even tried marijuana. The lure of Free Love enticed a few; there were always rumors of abortions when girls talked in the locker room after gym class. But we still wore khakis and skirts to school; only the bravest boys were willing to try white Levis, skirting our unofficial dress code of no blue jeans. Not going to college, not pressing on, never seemed an option.
The New York Times featured an article, back on page 40, headlined “Organized Hippies Emerge on Coast.” No need to say which coast apparently. After describing a dissolute life-style of total societal abnegation, it offered a grudging admiration for the Diggers, who scrounged food from dumpsters, and distributed it free among the 15,000 or so young people encamped in San Francisco’s Haight-Asbury district. The article ended with: “The city fears a mass migration of 100,000 would-be hippies to the area this summer from all over the country.”
One evening on the phone with Charlie, I asked him, “Are you guys hippies? I keep hearing about them in San Francisco.”
He responded laughing, “No, we’re too busy to be lazy. We may look like them, with our clothes and our food and all, But when you have a kid, it all gets real. Dropping out and turning on doesn’t get the diapers changed or the bills paid.” He paused a beat. “Those guys in the Haight, they’re so close to Berkeley across the bay. You know, University of California, where they had the Free Speech protests a couple of years ago? And now the Governor, Reagan, he wants to clamp down on anyone who speaks out about how things could be better.”
“Things?”
“Like, get out of Vietnam, teach what the world is really like, how people are oppressed. Blacks. And women, too. Arlene gets mad that her professors didn’t teach how women have been treated all through history. She thinks we need women’s studies, and black studies, or all that will remain hidden.” Arlene was a Berkeley drop-out, who countered the counter-culture by heading east, to Nantucket, to find her thing.
Mike appeared again during his short spring break at the end of March. I felt, despite our letters, we weren’t even treading water, that we needed to take a few steps forward if we wanted to stay together the coming summer, into fall. His birthday would be a week after he got back to school, and I wanted to give him a card in person, not mail it. I spent an entire afternoon decorating it with spring flowers and tiny, floating hearts. Even a rabbit poking its ears above a clump of grass. Along the bottom, then up the edge and across the top, a declaration of love, admiration and thanks. I ended with “Radcliffe Boston Weekends” repeated three times.
After a particularly tight hug and kisses on my neck, he pulled back and asked, “When do you hear about college?”
“It should be the week of April 10. I’ll hear from them all at once.”
“Right after my birthday,” he mused. “What a present if you got in.”
“Miss M says she gets notice of acceptances a day or two before the letters come to our house. She’s not supposed to tell us, but she said, if I get into Radcliffe, she’ll run down the hall…”
“She can’t run! Not in those clunky shoes she wears.”
“…and tell me first thing.”
I laughed in agreement, imagining that gray haired, straight-laced woman panting as she scooted over the linoleum floored halls of our school seeking out each of her Five Fingers to tell them the good (or not-so-good) news. In the end, she told us to come by her office at the start of lunch period on the 11th. She was all smiles, and couldn’t hold back. As each of us came in, she started nodding, saying, “You got it, you got it.” For Lizzie, that meant Mt. Holyoke, and for me…for me, I stood stock still when I heard, then started jumping up and down, face in my hands, smiling and crying all at once. Radcliffe! I got in.
I floated through the rest of the day, feeling at last I could relax. For once, there was no future, no past, no pressure, no fear, only an endless, perfect present. I knew it wouldn’t last. The only way to flow through to the other side was to grab Lizzie, and talk myself back down to earth.
I rode home from school with her, to Woodland Park. In the car, we played with our new status as College Girls. “So you and Emily Dickinson, right? You’ll be there with all those kids from Amherst, Smith, U Mass…”
“Don’t forget Hampshire. It is the Five College Area, after all,” Liz chimed in. “And look at you. Harvard. Boston College. BU. Tufts. Emerson. Northeastern. And Boston! Boston…it’s where you’ve always wanted to be.” Shifting gears, she asked, “Have you told Mike yet?”
“How? He’s in class, and daytime phone calls, the prices. I’ve got to wait until I get home, I guess. I hadn’t thought about that yet, telling him.”
Lizzie challenged, “You guys write each other, what every week or even twice? And now you get to be only two hours away, you can see each other every weekend?” Pausing, then, “Wait a minute. You went to that thing at Fountain Square with Will. Is that giving you second thoughts about Mike, you’ve found somebody else? Janie, I never knew you’d be going after one boy, much less two.”
“What? It wasn’t like that. Besides, he’s a little creepy. Like he expected me to melt over his manliness.”
“You didn’t fall for that? Or maybe you didn’t want to make Mike jealous?”
I gave that some thought. Still learning what love can be, how to give it, what it meant to me, that seemed another level entirely. I asked, “Jealousy? I thought that was something for older people who’ve been together longer, who have an affair or something.”
Lizzie nodded in agreement. “I know, it seems a little odd to feel so possessive of someone that you can’t let them have fun.”
“What, like flirting?”
“No. It’s like, if you have a total connection with someone, you have both their mind and body as yours, you don’t…you can’t share them with anyone else.”
I wondered if that’s how I felt about Mike. “Hmm…I really like that Mike writes me letters all the time. If he’s doing that, I know I’m in his thoughts, in his mind all the time. That’s what I wouldn’t want to share with anyone, that emotional space, that feeling in his head.”
“You wouldn’t mind if he made out with, or even if he slept with, another girl, as long as he wasn’t thinking about her?”
Instantly, I blushed. I looked down at my lap, where I squeezed my fingers so tightly they turned white. ‘Was Lizzie having sex with Leon?’ was my first thought. But I couldn’t ask her. She was so proper, so clean and innocent. Then I thought of myself. Did I have feelings that way, towards Mike? It had been so scary, simply starting to kiss and hug each other last year. Then all that time apart, seeing each other only for a week or so, a few times the past year. If it entered my mind at all, it had been in a purely analytic way, almost a scientific curiosity. What would it be like? Would it hurt? Would I even want to? Would I enjoy it? There was so much I didn’t know, and needed to think about.
Lizzie heard my silence. “Wait? You guys still haven’t…?”
No, I thought, we hadn’t, and probably wouldn’t any time soon. I shook my head.
“You mean, he doesn’t bring it up, even obliquely?” Lizzie asked the next morning. I’d spent the night at her place, where we’d fantasized about our upcoming lives in New England’s academic dreamlands. Her mother drove us to school, so we couldn’t continue the conversation until we spilled out onto the circle drive. We had about 15 minutes before the home room bell, so we sat on the steps, our backs to the brick wall, staring down at Victory Parkway. The rising April sun warmed our faces; dogwood trees blossomed on the hill below.
“He’s in college, he’s been writing to you for a year, seeing you every vacation, and all last summer. What’s been going on with you two?”
“Honestly, it’s never come up. And, to think about it, there’s the question of where, and when, isn’t there. It’s been too cold for his car, which is pretty small to begin with. Otherwise, it’s either his house or mine, and our parents are always there it seems. But like I said, we don’t talk about it.”
“Sounds like a Boy Scout. You’re sure he likes girls? Could be he thinks of you as just a friend.”
I glared at her. “He doesn’t kiss me like I’m just a friend. I’m happy to leave it at that, really.” Forcefully, I concluded, “We’re doing pretty good being who we are.”