CHAPTER THREE
I Place My Trust Apart From Me
August, 1967
“Hey look! See what’s at the Playhouse in the Park?”
Mike rustled through the morning paper after we’d eaten lunch at my house, while I organized what I’d be taking to Cambridge in a couple of weeks. He threw the entertainment section of the Enquirer onto the bed where my suitcases splayed open. Picking it up, I saw a small ad for The Fantasticks, opening that evening at the Eden Park theatre for a two week run.
“Would be nice to see it, but I bet it’s sold out,” he observed.
“You have your Calvin ID, don’t you? We could do a student rush…”
“Student…what’s that?”
I wondered how he managed to remain so insulated amidst all those New Yorkers he went to school with. “Student rush…they open up the box office about 45 minutes before each show, and sell any unused tickets at a cut rate to impoverished students like us. All you have to do is wait in line. No guarantee we’d get seats together, or even any seats at all, but it’s worth a try sometimes. Wanna go?”
“That play was all you ever talked about last year. You made it sound so dreamy. Sure, what else are we going to do?”
As we drove by the swing sets in the park, I thought of our trip to the conservatory at Christmas. I felt a wave of nostalgia, remembered feeling like a little girl, slowly swinging there while Mike soared like a ski jumper high above me. Throughout the play that night, more memories flooded back, of seeing the show as a fourteen year old, and identifying with the girl, only two years older, who dreamed of becoming worldly-wise, all while being swept away by love for a boy who might someday kiss her upon the eyes. Since then, I’d found a boy, and was about to live my dreams within the world, seeing it through older eyes.
“What did you think, second time around?” Mike asked as we drove back to Clifton.
“Not the same. Not like Dylan says, though.”
Mike thought a moment. “Oh. ‘I was so much younger then, I’m older than that now’?” he said, transposing that line from My Back Pages.
“Right. I’m feeling ready for Radcliffe, can’t wait to leave. I’m tired of fantasy, of expectation. I want my feet on the ground, ready to be an adult.”
“What’s that mean, ‘be an adult’? Like getting married, having children?”
“No,” I came back, a touch of anger in my voice. “I love kids, I loved being a kid. I know you do too, those swim classes you taught, your little cousins you told me about. But that’s not all you want, is it? You are heading straight towards medical school, being a doctor. You are not going to let anything get in the way of that, ever, are you? You think trying to have a family, right after college, might be a problem?”
He didn’t respond, so I went on. “I’m not going to college to find a man, a husband. I’m going on to graduate school after.”
“In what?”
“Psychology, probably. At least I want to learn a lot more about it there, see if that’s what I really want. But no matter what, I want something more than getting married, having children. That’s wrong.”
“Uh-huh. I get it. Radcliffe’s the place for that.”
I wasn’t sure he did get it. Everything had been – would be – so easy for him. Smart, a WASP from the Mayflower, not bad-looking, self-confident behind his shy exterior, I could see him gliding ever forward, friction-less, towards his goals, already staked out for him. It would be easy to get dragged along in his wake, let him break the path for me. I felt instead a strange and powerful ambition, that I had to find out and become the me I did not yet know myself to be. Those last few weeks before I left for school, I sensed a sudden, final break. Even though I would come back, holidays and summers, I’d never truly live here again. My dreams led me east, towards a denser, richer world.
Mike and I would walk forever most afternoons, as he stopped by our house on his way home from the hospital. He didn’t talk much about the psych ward, except to say, “It’s depressing, to be around such sullen, sad and lonely people all the time. They’re locked in there, like prison, and have to wear a uniform, white hospital clothes, with drugs that keep them sleepy, or jittery. The doctors play at treating them, following a book or some rules. But everyone knows no one’s getting better.”
“Do you still think that’s what you want to do?”
“I’m still interested in why people do what they do, what makes us tick. Maybe I want to be one of those psychiatrists who sits and talks with people who aren’t crazy enough to be locked away. That might be better.”
Late one afternoon, we walked down to Lafayette, a few blocks south, where the largest yards and houses sat at the edge of the hill, looking north to the Mill Creek Valley below, humming with the milling machine factory and Kroger store. The Rosen’s lived there, in two homes on lots which filled the entire block. Cousins Phil and Jerry, former classmates of Mike, were home from college. Seeing them out front, we waved, walked over, while Phil weakly smiled, waving back. He asked, “What are you two doing here? Shouldn’t you be saying your last goodbyes?”
The grass felt dry beneath my shorts, prickly against my calves’ bare skin as I sat down on the expansive Rosen compound lawn. Crickets hummed in the bushes nearby; fireflies began to spark around us. The day had been hot and muggy, that moist enveloping midwest blanket which has no cooling evening breeze. The air smelled of straw and flowers.
“My father still refuses to get an air conditioner, so we decided to take a walk down here, see if there’d be a breeze,” I observed.
“We got ours a couple of years ago, for the upstairs bedrooms,” said Jerry.
Mike reflected, “My dad put in this whole house thing, the size of a car almost, in the basement, pumping air through the heating ducts. I dunno, it almost makes things too cold. I miss it when my mother would come in on hot nights like this one, and sprinkle water on my sheets, make them all cold and damp. I like falling asleep that way…”
He lay down, his head resting on my feet. Craning back toward Phil and Jerry, he said, “Any of you ever been to Aspen?” Without waiting for an answer, he went on, “My dad took us out there this summer, on the way to California. The air feels so different. At night, it doesn’t stay hot, like this, it cools off right away, chilly even, ‘cause the air’s so thin, it can’t hold any heat. And the trees – not like here, no oaks or chestnuts. Dry pines in the mountains, and aspen trees lower down. Their bark so white, and the leaves make little whistling sounds, even with the slightest breeze.”
Jerry spoke up, “I like it here, the wilderness scares me.” He was the only one of us staying at home for school, at UC.
Phil “What about you, Janie, where would you rather be right now?”
“It makes me nervous, but I can’t wait to get to Cambridge, find out who’s in my class, what the professors are like, what a real, old city is.”
“Do you have to live on campus? Turns out, we don’t have to at Antioch, not anymore. They changed the rule this year. I’ve already got an apartment and some roommates. Next week, I’ll be driving up there, to Yellow Springs, to get all set.”
“No; yeah…we all live in dorms on the quad. There’s three houses, each one is like a house at Harvard, except this is all women. I’ll be in a single room, Cabot house. It’s run kind of like a boarding house. You have to sign in and out and all that.”
“Visitors?”
“Um, they seem real strict. Up until this year, they had a rule, ‘If you’ve got a man in your room, the door must be open, and both of you must have at least one foot on the floor at all times’.”
“Really?”
“Really. But they had a strike or something, a hunger strike, last spring, so they did away with that one.”
Mike chimed in, “Yeah, same thing, kind of, at Calvin.All the freshmen ate in one dining hall. Last year, everyone had to wear ties at dinner. That’s gone now, you can come in flip-flops and sweatpants if you want, I guess. And they’re talking about admitting women in a year or two. They all are, all those colleges in New England.”
“Lizzie says that’s not going to happen at Smith or Mt. Holyoke, because they have Amherst and U Mass right there. But Radcliffe and Harvard, they take classes together already, so I don’t know if anything’s going to change there,” I noted.
No one talked for a time, the humid air a narcotic.
Mike broke the silence. “Hey…Clifton Meadows is down there, right? At the bottom of the hill?” He pointed north, towards the unseen but seething expressway.
“Yeah. Why?” Phil answered flatly.
“That’s one of the places we’d go to have swim meets. The private pool swim club league. They weren’t very good, we always beat them pretty easily.”
The three of us, Phil, Jerry, and I, stayed silent. That was another place we weren’t allowed; we had our own country club, Losantiville. The fault lines between Jews and gentiles may have been melting elsewhere, but not in summer-time leisure. Mike seemed oblivious to how this made us feel, as he went on, “I miss swimming this summer. Early morning, the fog over the pool, water warmer than the air. Then afternoon practice, blazing sun on my skin. Working hard, feeling tired. I miss that.”
Getting no response, Mike shut up at last.
We walked back home, where I had to help mom get dinner ready. Mike wanted to get back to his house, but he asked, “Can I go upstairs for a minute? Something I want to write.” He didn’t stay long. Popping into the kitchen, he left with no kiss, no smile, only one of those deep-dish thinking expressions on his face as he waved at my mom and mumbled, “Good-bye.”
After dinner, upstairs in my room, I noticed my Avondale HS math pad open, his distinctive scribble covering most of one page. I read:
SUMMER…
…is a time to reconnoiter, redirect
one’s self;
Lazy, mindless days,
drifting like the sun, unhindered,
across the widest skies of August.
Horizons stretching, reaching, grabbing for the orb
of gold –
It slowly makes its journey, heedless to the passions
it engenders.
8-11-67
ii
Two weeks after Labor Day, we headed off to New England, me with my parents, Mike in his red Lancer. We’d agreed to meet a few weeks later after school started, Columbus Day weekend, for a day together in Cambridge. I needed some time to settle in, get oriented to my dorm, classes, the whole adventure of coming to Radcliffe, of watching summer turn to fall in Boston.
Tuesday afternoon, the day before registration for the semester, we arrived at Cabot house, one of nine freshman dorms. On the east side of the quad, it rose five stories above the somewhat ratty green lawn, topped by a cupola, above which a weather vane drifted with the changing autumn breeze. Built of red brick with white stone trim, it resembled my early grade school in Cleveland, but much larger, and without an asphalt playground in front. We walked up five wide stone steps, through a small portico flanked by two columns supporting a second floor balcony protected by iron railing. Inside, confused and eager incoming freshman, most shepherded by one or two parents, milled around a large reception cubicle built into the far wall. There, a calm and studious grey-haired woman, whom I would come to call “Mother”, methodically checked each girl against a list on the desk in front of her. To most, she proffered keys and a paper, pointing them to the stairs. A few were in the wrong house, and those she directed back out to the quad, sending them to the proper dorm.
Off to one side, I saw a slightly chubby girl with short dark hair sitting in one of the over-stuffed leather armchairs, surrounded by a professorial-looking man on one side, and an East Asian woman on the other. I eased over to her, drawing my own parents in my wake. I stared down at the instruction card I’d been mailed, looked up, and asked her, “Is there any order to all this?”
She looked up, shook her head, and said, “Not that I can see.” She smiled as she spoke, but I noticed her eyes retained a downward tilt which, without the upturned lips, might be interpreted as sad, or resigned. She stood up, offered her hand, and said, “I’m Jeanne. Jeanne Heldman.”
In the weeks before I left home, I’d thought about adopting my first name, Sarah, here at college, but never came to a conclusion. Instinctively, I said, “Jane. Janie, really.” Looking back at my card, I asked, “Um…what room are you in?”
“212”
“I think we might be neighbors! I’m in 221.”
“That’s right across the hall. How did you know?”
“I didn’t. I was just looking around for a friendly face, you were the first person I saw.” We both laughed, a hint of childish giggle underneath. My mother, ever forward and friendly, turned to the couple and said, “We’re Henry and Miriam. Stein. Janie’s parents.”
The ice broken, we quickly learned he was a physician, she a housewife who had been a nurse, they were from St. Louis where he was on the Internal Medicine faculty of Washington University Medical School, and that Jeanne was an only child. We all approached the desk together, receiving a smile when Mother learned she could check two boxes off at once, and give only one set of directions.
Eagerly, Jeanne and I trooped up one flight to the second floor, our parents left behind to organize the transport of our belongings without the aid of an elevator. 212 and 221 were indeed across the hall from each other, hers right next to the bathroom, mine opposite. That was our first stop, to discover the intricacies of communal living. Two bathrooms on each floor, 3 sinks, 3 toilets, 3 showers in each, for 24 freshman girls.
“My mom bought me a new bathroom kit. I’m glad she did. Looks like there’s no room anyway to keep anything. Not even towel shelves.” Jeanne observed. I nodded, sniffing the air, which smelled of disinfectant.
Back in her room, which faced the quad – mine had a window looking out on Walker Street – we sat down, she on her bed, me on the straight-backed wooden chair tucked under a spartan desk. Next to that was a fading dresser, two small drawers on the top, three more below. That, plus the bed, desk and chair, constituted the entirety of the furniture in our rooms. A small closet opened next to the entry door, sporting a single bar with no hangers or hooks and a shelf I could barely reach. Jeanne, three inches shorter than I, might need a foot stool. Simultaneously we sighed, looked around, and laughed. I remembered visiting the school in the summer over a year ago, peeking into the unadorned rooms, and fantasizing about how I might decorate one. I had brought a cover for my bed, a few books, my favorite pen, and a cloth wall hanging. Besides my clothes, the only other connection to my life before Radcliffe were two small framed photographs, one of my family at the Vineyard, the other of Michael.
Suddenly, three boys stomped in, carrying Jeanne’s luggage. A similar troop dropped my stuff off across the hall. The dads gave each of them a few bills, and the gaggle raced back downstairs to find another load. Apparently, every fall townies took advantage of the lack of mechanical lifts here to collect some extra cash. I said to Jeanne, “See you in a bit, OK?” and walked over to join my parents. My mother had laid the suitcases out on the bed and begun opening the dresser drawers. She’d already noticed the lack of hangers. “I’ll send dad out to get some. Anything else you want?”
In less than thirty minutes, everything I’d brought had found a place, and my parents were looking adrift. My mom ventured, “Honey, we were talking with Jeanne’s parents and think we’ll go out for lunch, before we start back home. Do you two want to come along?”
It seemed awkward, saying goodbye in a restaurant. I shook my head, no, and tears began to well. I grabbed her, squeezed hard, and pulled back, wiping my eyes, sniffing a little. “Mom, I think I want to get used to things a bit. Let’s say good-bye here, OK?” She and dad didn’t seem nearly as distraught as I felt, but they had been through this three times before.
Jeanne, seeing that I was sending my own parents off, raised to her full height, and smartly announced, “Right, Janie and I are going to take a walk outside, look at the campus, go to the Coop and get a few things. We’ll be all right.” Her mother smiled, relieved, while her father checked his watch. With that, we sent them off to their empty nests, heedless of how they might be feeling. We had our own portal to pass through, into the next four years.
iii
Conversation was easy with Jeanne. I started with that college staple, “Know what you’re majoring in?”
With what I would come to know as her characteristic self-assurance, she said, “I’m going to be a doctor, so I guess it’s got to be biology, right?”
“A doctor? What kind?”
“Probably a pediatrician. I like working with kids, watching them grow, helping them. But I’m also thinking about psychiatry.”
“Medical school? Aren’t you anxious it’s hard to get into? And what about being a women there?”
“My father knows a little bit about admissions, he says things are changing. Like at his school in St. Louis, there were only five women admitted two years ago, they’re over ten now, and it keeps rising. He says, “I’d rather you become a doctor, than marry one.’ It’s funny, I know, turning the cliche around. It does feel like we’ve got more of a chance now, don’t you think? What about you?”
Inwardly, I was jealous she was aiming so high, and a little in awe she did not seem perturbed that almost everyone in medical school would be male.
“I like psychology, that’ll probably be my major,” I said
“Well, why aren’t you thinking about medical school, too, about psychiatry?”
That was a tough question. Despite my valedictory status at high school, my stellar test scores, all the support I’d received from teachers for academic success, no one had ever suggested, “Sarah Jane, you should be a doctor.” When I joined the “Health Careers Club” at Avondale, sophomore year, all I heard about were the opportunities in nursing. Then I met Michael. Somehow, when I learned of his ambition to be a psychiatrist, I didn’t want to be competing with him, or people as smart as him, in college or medical school. I saw “Psychologist” as a more holistic path to follow, one which opened up the breadth of the human mind and spirit. Medicine required a narrow science track, limited to only what could be observed and counted, measured and treated with drugs. But I didn’t know how to tell her all that, so I said, “Funny, that’s what my boyfriend wants to do, be a psychiatrist.”
Massachusetts Avenue loomed ahead, our route to Harvard Square and the Coop. Under one of the elm trees, Jeanne pulled up short and demanded, “What? What do you mean, ‘boyfriend’?”
It might have been the warmth of the afternoon sun, but I could feel my forehead start to sweat. I thought, “That’s what an aristocrat would say, ‘sweat’. ‘Perspiration’, that’s a peasant talking.” I gave a nervous giggle, and stepped into the shade. “Uh, yeah, he’s a sophomore at John Calvin University now. He’s coming up here on Columbus day weekend.”
“Why? Why do you want to be tied down with someone, now, when you’re starting college? Do you think you’ll have time for that?” When I didn’t answer right away, she went on, “What’s he like?”
Words started tumbling out. “He swims. He’s always moving around, can’t sit still. Doesn’t like people, but get him out of his shell, and he turns on the charm switch. Then, when he starts talking, he won’t shut up. He knows everything, or at least thinks he does. He’s like me in that way, but we’re really not the same at all…”
She interrupted, “What’s the best part of being with him?”
“He’s funny. He writes poems. He doesn’t push me. Mostly, he calms me down, like I don’t have to be somebody I’m not. I feel like the real me with him.”
No-nonsense, she asserted, “Well, don’t let him walk over you. Don’t let him get in the way of where you want to go, who you want to be. There was a boy last year, in high school, I guess he was my boyfriend for a while. We went to the prom. We were both a little out of it, socially, it was our one chance to feel normal, going to that dance. I never felt close to him, though, didn’t feel anything magic or sparkly going on, like other girls seem to talk about. And then he started acting like he owned me, telling me what to wear, how to do my hair, I didn’t know how to drive, stuff like that.” She looked at me expectantly.
“Mike’s not like that, I don’t think. He knows exactly where he’s going, what he wants to do most of the time. But he listens to me, like I’m the one in charge, sometimes.”
“Like?”
“Well, like, I showed him about the New Yorker. He thought it was all about the cartoons, but after reading it a few times at my house, he went out and got a subscription, to go along with the Sports Illustrated he gets every week. I take him to plays. And movies. His family is so midwest, his mother came from Iowa, his dad Montana. Not big city people at all. So I get to teach him all these things he hasn’t really been exposed to. I get to be the smart one, the sophisticated girl.”
“Sounds like you might be too good for him.”
“I don’t think so. He’s the first guy – the first person – I’ve ever known who could hold his own with me. He was on the debate team, it’s impossible to win an argument with him. Best you can hope for is a grudging draw. And, he writes. He’s so good with words, talking and writing.”
By this time, we’d been walking down a crowded Mass. Ave. a while, almost to the Common. Hundreds of people, many of them young, were heading in all directions, disgorged every few minutes from the underground “T” station a few blocks ahead. Across the street we saw the Coop, and headed over. We both had our lists for the classes we planned on taking, and gravitated towards the psych section. We’d be in Psych 101 together. As we pawed through the stacks, a taller raven-haired girl joined us. Seeing the lists in our hands, she asked, “You two in psych as well?”
I nodded, so she went on, “Hi! I’m Marcia, Levine. I guess we’re all freshman?”
She seemed as nervous as I felt. In what sounded like my mother’s voice, I introduced myself. “Janie. Janie Stein. I – we” – indicating Jeanne – “ we’re both in Cabot, and taking psych 101.”
“Me too!” Her smile drained all the fear and awkwardness from our encounter. She had a little bit of Boston in her words, not like the flat mid-western speech I knew from back home. “I’m up on the fifth floor. It’s a long climb, but I like the exercise.” Lean and graceful, Marcia moved easily between us and grabbed a thick textbook, holding it up triumphantly. “Found it! Here, one for each of you.”
Leaving the Coop together, our little band aimed south, past the law school, curved east with the Ave, and found ourselves at the edge of Harvard proper, at Brooks House. Walking past the red-brick walls, I asked jokingly, “Where’s all the ivy, then?”
Jeanne took me literally, explaining they had to tear much of it off, so it wouldn’t eat the stone, making it crumble. Marcia laughed, and pointed ahead.
“There’s the Yard. Come on, I want to see Widener Library.”
We spent the next 30 minutes exploring our academic home for the next four years, pointing out the various classroom buildings, the Houses where the Harvard men lived, the massive library where so much knowledge in the world was stored.
Exiting to the south, we found ourselves back on Massachusetts Avenue, near the Square. Spying a small theatre, I raced across the street to examine the posters for upcoming movies.
Once Marcia and Jeanne arrived, I pointed at it, and asked, “‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers.’ What’s that?”
“I think it’s one of those sci-fi things from the ‘50s. When’s it going to be here?” Marcia said.
“Looks like the week of October 12-18. Columbus Day is a holiday, isn’t it. Want to go see it? We could probably use a break, some laughs, by then, I bet,” Jeanne said.
iv
It drizzled the evening of Columbus Day as we headed to the musty theatre. I wore a shiny yellow vinyl raincoat my mother insisted I bring to Radcliffe, a matching hat covering my hair. Jeanne sported an umbrella, while Marcia clomped along, bare-headed, rain dripping down her nose onto her tennis shoes. In her jeans, she seemed in tune with the crowds around us.
We’d misjudged the time it took to walk the few blocks to the Square. Marcia saw the line waiting to get in, observed, “I don’t want to stand out here getting wet. Let’s go buy our tickets, then wait in the coffee shop there next door?” Maybe you should have worn a hat, I thought to myself.
Inside the little cafe, Marcia seemed at ease ordering a “cup, black,” while Jeanne had no trouble with “cream and some sugar, please.” I’d never been a coffee drinker, never even tried it before, but I didn’t want them to know that. I rummaged in my brain for the safest way to try the stuff for the first time, and said, “Same,” while pointing to Jeanne. The waitress was back in no time, carrying three mugs covered with the Harvard Ve-ri-tas shield, steaming and smelling…well it was enticing. I demurely tried a sip. A little harsh, mellowed by the cream. I added another dollop of sugar to staunch the taste.
“Anything special this weekend?” I asked
“I’m going home. It’s Yom Kippur, my parents want me back. Besides, I’ve got a bunch of laundry piling up, it’s starting to smell.” Marcia lived an hour away in Rhode Island and could get there on the train to Providence.
“I’m going to hole up and finally learn about DNA and RNA and ribosomes and proteins. They’re just starting to figure it all out, and they expect us to understand it? You?”
Mike was driving up Saturday morning. We’d have all day and evening, then he’d go back when the dorm closed. I explained all this to Marcia’s intense interest. Jeanne seemed a little distracted. I went on. “Have you heard anything about changing the dorm rules?”
Marcia seemed up on the rumors. “After that strike last year, about living off-campus, they put together a group, faculty, staff, and some students, to look at housing. A girl I went to high school with knows one of the student reps. She says they’re talking about doing away with sign out, with rules about guests, everything. The idea is, they want to encourage us to stay on-campus, to not go off-off.”
Jeanne perked up and repeated, “‘Off-off’? What’s that?”
“We already have the ‘off-campus’ living option. When you get to be a junior, you can pick a room in one of the apartments right next to campus, which the school owns. It’s not much different than being in Cabot, but it’s more like home than a dorm. ‘Off-off’ means you pay rent for an apartment not owned by the school. You still have to pay student activity fees, though. That’s already happening, and they don’t want everybody to do it, so making dorms less cloistered is supposed to …”
I interrupted. “When? When are they going to change those rules. Not that I mind, really, I like the quiet after ten, like knowing that I won’t run into a stranger in the bathroom, that I can walk around in whatever.”
“I don’t know. Next semester? Anyway, I heard that with all this being planned, the RAs and the house mothers are already starting to kind of look the other way on all that.”
It was time to get in line for the movie. I’d drunk the full cup, and noticed I was starting to feel a little funny, more alive, almost like I had an electric charge buzzing around me. I hoped it wouldn’t keep me up half the night.
Mike arrived two days later, a little after ten. I was waiting for him in the downstairs lounge, reading a book our RA had told me about, The Feminine Mystique, by a woman named Betty Friedan. I slammed it shut and tucked it tight against my side when Mike strode in.
“What’s that?”, he asked, pointing at the book. No “Hi”, no “How are you?”, no “I missed you.” I’d gotten used to his direct, to-the-point greetings. I knew he’d eventually smile, listen, and maybe even melt in front of me. Still, it was jarring.
“Nothing. Something for class. Let’s go upstairs, show you my room, OK? How was the drive, any trouble?”
“It’s freeway all the way. On Saturday morning not too many trucks on the Turnpike. Even driving here over the bridge, no problem. I parked right outside on Walker Street.” Then, he remembered Yom Kippur a year ago. “Any sins you’re going to atone for this year? Yahweh still OK with you seeing a goy?”
I should have known, he never forgets anything. “He’s got his eye on us, I’m sure. But I think we’re doing OK.”
We spent the day in Boston, walking through the theatre district and by the Old North Church downtown off the Commons. The old cemeteries salted amongst the buildings fascinated him.
“Look at those gravestones! The oldest ones, they have that devil face. Then later, mid 1700s, it starts to soften a bit, like a Jolly Roger with wings. Maybe death was getting less frightening?”
Boston, especially on a weekend, is filled with college and university students, 50-60,000 of us. Mike and I felt at home in some ways. The wave of dressing down, outfitting yourself at the surplus store, had started. Our clothes, though, stood out a bit. We still sported slacks and skirts, button down cotton shirts, clean overcoats.
After dinner at Durgin Park, slabs of roast beef all around, we took the T back to Cambridge, for my second viewing of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Mike was quickly drawn in to the fast-paced black and white sci-fi fantasy in which a middle-aged man in small-town California finds everyone around him acting strange, numb, slow. He discovers that giant pea pods are being laid next to his sleeping neighbors, replacing them with perfect replicas who act like unfeeling robots. Near the end, as he goes a little crazy, he tries to stop a truck load of pods from heading out of town, towards Los Angeles. A policeman, actually one of the pod people, hauls him off the truck and begins to beat him with a night stick. With that, the crowd in the theatre starts booing, hissing, even throwing wadded up paper at the screen.
Befuddled, Mike asked, “What are they doing? What’s that all about?”
I was beginning to learn it was my job to bring Mike out of the ‘50s into the ‘60s. He seemed stuck in a backwater, oblivious to changes happening around him. “The police – pigs,” I whispered. “We had a demonstration here last week at the Square, against the war. Cops started beating some kids, making them all bloody, arresting them. Didn’t you hear about that? Isn’t anything like happening in Connecticut?” The movie had ended, credits rolled, and I went on, normal voice now. “Nobody likes the cops here. They’re the bad guys.” Mike looked puzzled. “Didn’t you hear about the Mobe?” Mike’s befuddled expression grew wider. “That’s the National Mobilization Committee. To end the war. All the anti-war groups, all over the country, set it up this spring. Don’t you remember, in April, the march in New York to the UN? Dr. Spock, Martin Luther King, the SDS set it up, and now they’re going to Washington, to keep it all going.. A bunch of people are going to march on the Pentagon, from the Lincoln Memorial. Phil Ochs is going to sing. Dr. Spock, that pediatrician, he’s going to speak. I’d like to go, but I’ve got so much stuff I have to study for.”
Mike was pensive the whole way back to Cabot, saying nothing. I walked beside him. As we left the Ave, he laid his arm around my waist, squeezed me a little, and finally said, “Yeah. I guess the war’s not right. But what can we do? We can’t vote, not yet. We – I – want to stay in school, need to get good grades to get into med school.”
“But people are dying. Not just us, all those people who live there, too. And the ones from here, the ones who have to go, they don’t have a chance like you do, no college deferral. The poorest people, the ones who live in the ghettos, the blacks – they’re the ones who are dying, and for what? For what, Mike?”
“I know, I know. I always thought the police were the good guys, though. Every little kid wants to be a fireman, or a policeman, right? Why did they have to sound so hateful, those people at the movie? Are you turning into one of them, one of the protesters?”
“I don’t like the war. Like you say, it’s not right. But at some point, we have to act on what we think, what we feel, don’t we?”
Mike stayed quiet, as if he were mulling two sides of an argument over and over in his mind, as he would for a debate, trying to find the answers, the right things to say, on both sides. It was nearly ten, and he had to leave. I patted his cheek, he rubbed my nose, and off he went, down the stairs and back out on the road.