xi
That languid week after Labor Day, Mike and I spent most afternoons at his house or mine. Walking around my neighborhood, sitting on the edge of his pool, packing for school, we caught each other up on our summers.
One day, lying in the sun on lounge chairs in his back yard, we listened to a small radio playing softly, something about “I fought the law, and the law won”. I showed him the hair they’d taken off in the ER, a swirling mass of black lying at the bottom of a paper bag. I imagined a robin swooping down to grab the mess for its nest.
“Can I have that?”
“Why, what would you do with it?”
“I’m always reading how people keep a strand of hair in a locket, a necklace, a reminder.”
I countered, “No, I think people did that when someone close died. That’s a little morbid, Mike.”
“Well, didn’t you almost die?”
“No, not even close. I just got shoved down when the fence fell over. Somebody kicked me there,” I said, pointing at the bandage on my temple. Anger flared inside. “You could have been there, you know. We stayed at this family’s apartment, a big place, people were lying everywhere on couches, on the floor. I got to listen to them planning, I got to see how dedicated they were.”
He got up, sat at the edge of the pool, and rhythmically kicked his feet in the water.
“Who’s place was it again?” he innocently asked.
“Howard Lehrman. His parents had left town. He knows Charlie from the SDS before. He went Williams, going to Harvard Law this fall.”
Mike looked back at me, raising his left eyebrow inquisitively.
I couldn’t seem to stop myself from saying more. “He’s so intense. Says he wants to be a lawyer, not so he can join some big Wall Street firm. He wants to form a group to help inner city people, tenants against landlords, fight back against companies who don’t treat their workers right. You’d like him – we could meet up when we can get back to Cambridge.”
Mike nodded, still kicking, soft semi-circular waves radiating from his calves. Unlike before, when he’d write about, say, Martin Luther King’s killing, or how the mind might work, his letters to me that summer had been filled with stories of the swim club where he’d worked. He wrote all about the little kids and the young teen-agers who raced on the team, names I couldn’t connect with faces, but which had been his world that summer. Even the music he mentioned was, I thought, frivolous, childish, what they were calling bubble-gum pop. Blond streaks ran through his hair, shiny like his nut-brown skin from days sitting in a lifeguard chair.
“You really liked being at that pool, didn’t you?”
He patted the concrete walk with his right hand. “Here, sit with me.” As I dropped down, he lifted up my hair, pulled back the dark band covering the small cotton bandage, touching gently, then kissing it lightly. “I wish I could make it better.” Silently, I thought, if you’d been there…Anger at his absence that day still boiled inside, fighting with the power of his presence now, the warmth radiating from his skin, the sweetness of his comforting gestures. “Well, you can’t, so let’s forget about it, OK?” Quietly, that little radio now aired what I called the Paranoia Song – “there’s battle lines being drawn, nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong.”
He looked down at the pool, and reflected, “I heard Dick Gregory was there, the comedian, leading the marchers one afternoon.” I nodded. He went on, “You know, he came to Calvin last winter, doing a college tour. Talked about his hunger strikes – he did look frail. Anyway, I’ll never forget one bit he did.” Mike hunched over a little, a fire flared in his face, as he imitated Gregory’s punch line. “He said, ‘Here’s what I want y’all to do, next summer when you’re sitting with your parents, watching the people marching, rioting, the cities burning. I want you to grab a copy of the Declaration of Independence, stand up on top of that TV, and shout down at your folks, I want you to shout as loud as you can, drown out that TV, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” That’s why those folks be flooding the streets, they want delivery on that promise.’ Funny…true…powerful.”
I took his hand from my head, squeezed his fingers while placing them firmly on his thigh, and drew my own hand away. I thought, You felt that way, and you didn’t go with us to Chicago? Out loud I said, “I want to hear about those kids, which ones did you say you like so much?”
He sighed, then brightened as he launched into one of his non-stop stories. “You mean Molly? She’s such a good swimmer, so fast. She and the other kids, they’d all take their bikes to the club, stay there for the day, then they’d go back home to get ready for their evening swim practice with the big team. Anyway, they kind of adopted me as a mascot or something. I was the youngest lifeguard there, so they saw me almost as one of them. I let them sit in my car, it was always a treat to get into the bucket seats. I’d ride my bike with them sometimes, on the gravel roads in the woods around the club. Evenings when they didn’t practice, and I got off early, we’d all sit around, looking at fireflies, making fun of people. Not like school at all, where everything’s so serious. People always talking about the war, or whether women should be allowed in, or what grad school they’re trying to get into.
“And then the littler kids, under ten, I got to coach them. The coach gave me the “eight-and-unders” to work with. Everybody else sees them as impossible, they don’t want to listen, just play around in practice. For some reason, they paid attention to me, actually did the work in practice. Of all the age groups, they were the best on the team this year.”
That evening at the Harrison house, we we ate our dinners in front of TV. They were getting ready for the Miss America Pageant, apparently a family tradition. Shelly and Mike talked eagerly about Bert Parks, his smile, and the nuances of the talent competition. First, though, the local newsman tut-tutted about some protesters in Atlantic City. On the screen we watched flickering images of women of all ages throwing undergarments into a metal barrel, then setting them afire.
Jack snickered through his nose, Shelly laughed, and Grace quietly said, “Good for them.”
Mike asked, “Why would they want to do that, burn their bras? Wouldn’t it be uncomfortable?”
“It’s symbolic, Mike,” I tried. “Throw off the trappings of societal oppression, and all that.”
His eyes lit up. “Oh, like burning draft cards, huh?”
xii
That semester, Bev and Leslie moved into an off-off campus apartment. Once a single family home, each of the three stories had been carved into a separate unit with tiny bedrooms, kitchen, bath, and a dining/living area flowing out to a bay window overlooking Oxford Street. They started holding Friday evening dinner parties, experimenting with macrobiotic recipes featuring chickpeas, rice and lentils.
“But no sugar, milk, or butter?” Jeanne asked, the first time she and Marcia and I went over. “Isn’t it a little bland?”
Bev smiled, “I’m learning a lot about spices now. Besides, I’ve lost 15 pounds since June. You might consider it, Jeanne. It’s one of the best reasons to go off-campus, cooking for ourselves. None of that heavy dorm food any more.”
They looked so adult, so grown-up, Bev and Leslie, managing an entire sit-down meal for themselves and the three of us. White linen covered the scarred wooden desk they’d converted into a dining table. Mismatched plates, stemware, and utensils from a thrift store proudly sat arrayed in front of wobbly straight-backed chairs. Marcia, Jeanne, and I caught up on our summers while Bev and Les made several trips bringing all the platters in.
With a slight giggle, Marcia confided, “Well, I decided that ‘everything but…’ vow isn’t worth it.”
Jeanne looked puzzled, then seemed to remember, “Oh…oh! Who?”
“Some guy from high school, we met each other one night by accident on line for a movie. We were both there alone, ended up sitting together. It was The Thomas Crowne Affair. After Bonnie & Clyde, I wanted to see Faye Dunaway again. She was so elegant! Anyway, in the dark, he looked a little like Steve McQueen, so one thing led to another, I guess.”
Jeanne looked worried. “It was…OK? Fun?”
“We kept it up all summer, so I guess I’d have to say, ‘Yes’. But he goes to Stanford, so that’s over now.” Marcia turned to me. “You still with Mike?”
A simple enough question, I thought. I scratched my forehead where the new hair bristled and itched. Even with these friends, I wasn’t ready to verbalize the nagging little worries forming like the first fluff of cloud on the horizon of a glorious, sunny summer afternoon. “We didn’t spend all that much time together, me going to the Vineyard and Chicago, him to Colorado. We both had jobs, too. We did manage to get together some, so I have to say, yeah, I’m still with Mike.”
Leslie entered with a bowl of hummus and a plate of floppy pita bread. “You still love him, Janie?” she sneered sarcastically. My scar under that itchy hair throbbed. Why did I always feel like I was defending something evil when I talked about Mike with Leslie? My consternation must have shown, as she went on, “I’m just kidding. He’s a good guy. A little young, maybe, but a good guy.”
I realised Leslie’s chest jiggled as she turned back to the kitchen. I leaned over and whispered, “Is she not wearing a bra?”
Jeanne said, “Walking around school this past week, I noticed, everybody came back dressed…differently.”
It was true. I may have been one of the few girls still wearing John Meyer skirts. Almost everyone else had a different uniform. Some wore Army surplus chic, baggy pants and wrinkled khaki jackets, the urban revolutionary look. Others, the ones who’d been in California that summer, had on shimmery flowing floor length dresses and tinkling jewelry. Some would take a silky Indian bedspread with paisley patterns, wrap it around their waist, and call it good. Incense wafted down the dorm halls that fall, with sitar or gamelan music replacing raspy Dylan or warbling folk tunes.
I wasn’t ready for any of that. The jeans I’d worn in Chicago lay at the bottom of a dresser drawer. Mike and I were planning on seeing Funny Girl the next evening when he came up from Calvin. Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice still seemed to me the epitome of every Jewish girl’s dreams.
On the way back from the movie, I asked him, “What did you think?”
He hesitated. “I like the way she sings. She’s so…strong, emotional. Passionate, puts everything she has into the music, the way she builds to the end of a song.” He paused, looked away. “But then, Janis Joplin’s like that, too. And she screeches howls, lets it all come out.”
Intellectually, I couldn’t deny that. I could see why people liked her. But emotionally, she was too raw, all id and anger. No hope, no dreams, just the agony of the blues. Afraid to argue over music, I switched to, “What classes did you finally sign up for?”
Relieved, he announced, “Philosophy, Religion, and Psych, that stuff. I also liked the German Literature in Translation class I took last year.”
“Because…”
“I like Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, so much.”
“Why”
“He combined that rational, analytic, structured German thing with passion and emotion. Then there’s Gunter Grass, Herman Hesse. That’s the kind of stuff I like in books, I think. I’m done with most of the med school requirements now. So I’m switching to stuff that’s fun.”
“Like?”
“The Divine Comedy.”
Puzzled, I raised my eyebrows.
He laughed, “After last year’s first semester fiasco – I got ‘C’s’ in Organic Chem and English Lit, remember? – I want to take it easier this year. This one’s a gut. Everybody gets an ‘A’, I heard, it’s mostly for the football players. All we have to do is read, not the whole thing, even the first part, about Hell. Then, I’m taking Contemporary Theology of India, as a Pass/Fail. Physics, that’s the last thing I need for med school. And, another Pass/Fail, Analysis of Interpersonal Behavior.”
“What’s that?”
“Have you ever heard of a ’T-Group’? Training Group? It’s what they do out on the west coast, where people sit in a circle and talk to each other, then analyze the group dynamics.”
“Still headed for psychiatry,” I mused.
“Yeah. And I’m realising that if I take five classes each semester, not four, I could finish in three years.”
“Then you’d go right to med school?”
“Probably not. Some of them, like Harvard, have an age requirement, you have to be 21 to enroll. I’d only be 20. So I’m only taking four courses this semester, then five the next two. I’ll get the last semester senior year free”
“What would you do?”
“I don’t know. Go somewhere? Work somewhere? I don’t have to figure that out yet. What about you?”
“Oh, the usual. English, and Contemporary Cinema. Then there’s this new class they started this year, part of the Women’s Studies program. Leslie told me about it, it’s with a new professor they hired, Dr. Shulmeister. The first books are ones I’ve already read, Freidan and de Beauvoir. After that, it’s supposed to get more into literature and philosophy. I think I’m really going to like it. Finally, I liked Jerome Kagan so much, that professor in my Psych Intro class, I’m going to take his Child Development this year.”
“It’s still kids and psych, right?”
“Still kids and psych.”
xiii
A few weeks later, on a Friday afternoon, Leslie found me in Hilles Library, indiscriminately underlining Kagan’s Birth to Maturity. With her usual abruptness, she asked, “Janie, know where Jeanne and Marcia are?”
I pointed my head behind me, where they sat at an imposing blonde-wood table surrounded by stacks of Genetics periodicals. She gathered us up, demanding, “Come on, ladies, we’re going to crash the party.”
Jeanne tried putting up a fight, but Marcia and I knew better. We left our books behind, and followed her out to Shepard Street. She led us east, explaining as we went.
“You guys ever heard of Hillel?”
“Sure, aren’t they Jewish student groups?” I offered.
“Yeah, but do you know about the one here? There’s a guy there, Rabbi Gold, I saw in the Crimson he’s having these services, calls them ‘Worship and Study Congregations’. Says they’re ‘open to all’, men and women. I don’t know anybody from Radcliffe who goes there. We ought to call his bluff.”
Marcia countered, “Come on, Les, that’s not a place to pick a fight, not at a service.”
Leslie ignored her. Turning to me, she asked, “Jane, you have a couple of brothers, did they get a bar mitzvah?”
I hesitated, wondering how to show my family’s version of Jewish ritual in the best light. For my father, those coming-of-age parties were mostly about how much money could be collected for their college funds. “Sure,” was all I said.
“And did you get anything like that?”
“No.” I found my voice. “But I didn’t want to. I don’t really think too much about being Jewish, or even about God. Where we grew up, we were more concerned about trying to fit in, to not stand out, than about going to temple or following any rules. That was my mother, mostly.”
Jeanne chimed in, “I’ve heard about this Rabbi. He’s from Poland, was even at Auschwitz, somehow escaped, and got to Philadelphia.”
“Escaped from Auschwitz, huh? Wow…” Leslie mused.
We passed the Divinity School, and found the Hillel at the corner of Francis and Bryant. Entering, I saw Howard Lehrman talking to a short, smiling older man with thinning hair and scholarly glasses. Howard glanced over, and, seeing me, smiled and broadly waved us in. He introduced us to Rabbi Ben-Zion Gold, then pulled me aside, “Sarah, I didn’t know you were interested in Shabbat?”
“Not really, Leslie dragged us over. She’s on a feminist mission or something.”
“Hmm…Rabbi Gold’s past worrying about whether women and men should do this together. Even if there’s more than ten guys here, you’ll still get a chance to read and talk, don’t worry.”
Despite his assurances, I still felt awkward, uncomfortable. Leslie was full-throated in her participation, determined to prove herself as knowledgeable as anyone there. I remained silent, like someone tone-deaf at a party, afraid to sing ‘Happy Birthday.’ I didn’t go back for a long time.
xiv
In December, Mike unexpectedly came up to Cambridge on a snowy Friday evening. I got the call from our house mother as I sat studying for Child Development, cozy in my flannel nightgown and crocheted quilt, a hand-me down from my sister.
“There’s someone here to see you, a Michael Harrison. Shall I send him up?” Mother sounded bemused, as if an orphan had arrived, lost and looking for his family. “He looks pretty cold.”
“No, I’ll come down.”
He did look a bit bedraggled, snow still melting in his hair. He wore a massive navy blue wool coat, suffering from too-many dry cleanings, wrinkled and flattened as if stored too long at the bottom of a chest.
“Can we s-s-s-sit over there?” he asked, indicating the dormant fireplace centered in the lounge.
I glanced at Mother, asking, “OK if we …?” She waddled around her desk, leaned down and fiddled with a switch. The gas flame burst up with that familiar odor.
“It was snowing all the way from Sturbridge on the turnpike,” Mike complained. “Every time I tried to pass a truck the slush spattered and smeared the windshield. I almost got blown off the road a couple of times.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked, a little irritated. I wanted to finish the chapter tonight, and doubted that would happen once we got up to my room.
“The Coach told me I wasn’t going to swim in the meet tomorrow, against Coast Guard,” he started.
“That’s at home, or in New London?”
“Home, so I don’t have to be back until noon.” Meaning he didn’t have to leave until the next morning. I inwardly groaned, then felt a familiar thrill flowing down the inside of my legs.
Sighing, I smiled and said, “I’ve really got to finish got to finish this chapter tonight, but I am glad you’re here. Let’s get warm and talk a bit, then can we study down here?” He only had a slim volume of the Divine Comedy with him, along with one of those composition books, the one with abstract black and white splotches on the cover. “It’s Kagan. I’ve got to learn more about newborns, and the first year.”
“How’s that going? There’s a lab with that class, right?”
“Uh-huh. Three hours, every other week. We watch through a one-way mirror, then talk about what we’re seeing in small groups.” I looked over at the fire, and shifted my sister’s blanket so it covered his legs as well. I went on. “It’s so amazing, to watch what they’re doing, mothers and their babies. He’s studying the smallest interactions, has us looking at where the moms’ eyes go and what the babies are doing, every little movement. He gives the mom a task, telling her, ‘Help your baby build something with these blocks. Don’t worry about us, you won’t even know we’re here.’ Then we’re supposed to fill in these charts, tables with lists of behaviors, trying to see which things the moms do are most successful in getting the babies to cooperate.”
“How old are they?”
“The babies? They’re about a year old. It’s fascinating, watching them with their moms.”
“What do you see? What are you learning?”
“Well, we’re supposed to be very analytical about it all, and I try and fill the charts in like he said. But all the time, I’m feeling, this is what love is, how it starts. It always starts with ‘mother-baby pair bonding.’ Trying to analyze, codify what love is, that takes all the mystery out, no?”
“Sometimes, I feel cursed,” Mike mused. I waited, wondering what he meant. “I …feel things, they come from somewhere inside my head. Instead of letting them flow on out, I have to analyze them, make sense of what I’m feeling, turn emotion into logical thought. I can’t stop thinking, sometimes I wish I could turn it off.” I mussed his hair, getting a thin smile and nose-laugh in return. He added, “She’s having us read Freud now, Introduction To Psychoanalysis.” “She” was the professor we called “Katy Winters” after the star of a long-running series of commercials for Secret Deodorant. She and her husband had gone from Harvard grad school to teach at Calvin, after a two year hiatus in India. There they’d studied micro-finance, he from the perspective of an economist, she as a psychologist interested in how impoverished women became empowered when given small loans to start a home-based business. We became fascinated with her for two other reasons. A short story appeared about them in the New Yorker, billed as fiction, with different names, but everything else from physical descriptions to their Harvard and India connections, matched them perfectly. When Mike pointed this out to her, she shyly admitted a friend had used them a springboard to get his writing career launched. And, probably more important, she was pregnant, almost full term, yet leading his Training-Group class.
“She’s still teaching, hasn’t delivered yet?”
“No…funny story. Amazing, really. You know, we have the group Monday and Wednesday, three hours each afternoon. Couple of days ago, she seemed a little antsy, kept going out to the bathroom, Turns out she was going into labor. Apparently, she went to the hospital right after class, had the baby in two hours, and left the next morning. I bet she comes back to the group next week.”
“Her first baby, right? That sounds quick.”
“Well, she is tall, you know, taller than me. That’s supposed to make it easier.”
“It’d be really cool, if she brought the baby to class.”
“We’ve already talked about that. She’s planning to, even told us to expect her to breast-feed.”
I tried opening my book again, pretending to read. But the thought of Katy and her new baby, along with Mike’s immediate presence, short-circuited my attention. I rubbed his sleeve of his pea-coat, finding the fabric scratchy and thick.
“Where’d you get this? I haven’t seen it before. It looks warm.”
“It was my dad’s. He got it at the Naval Academy. He only wore it one year, when he went on his first cruise. Remember, that was also his last. He left there, always told us they let him go because his eyes turned bad, he got near-sighted or something. But I’ve always thought it was because he gets sea-sick. Real bad, can hardly fly in an airplane, one of those people who can’t sit in the back seat of a car. My sister’s the same way. Anyway, he was opening his old Navy footlocker, pulling out stuff to throw away or give away. He and Grace, now that they have a place to retire, they’re deciding what to take and leave behind. So it’s mine. A real Navy pea-coat. Not one of those fake surplus store ones, that only comes down part-way, This one keeps you warm and dry in the North Atlantic in the winter, ought to work great for days like this, right?”
I nodded, tried to seem impressed.
He went on, “My father wants to get started on building their house in Snowmass. He’s going back there over the break, to find an architect and builder. He’s rented one of the condos in the village, wants us all to go and ski. Maybe do it again in spring?” One of the girls had put the Beatles’ White Album on the dorm record player. “Rocky Raccoon” was playing, Paul warbling about the “Black Hills of Dakota”. Images of foreboding mountains simmered in my head.
“Are you going to go?”
“Shelly is, I will, too. I want to try skiing again, see how good I can get at it.”
“But won’t you miss swimming, won’t have a chance to practice?” I found myself asking. What I really meant was, Won’t you miss me, miss our special talks? How can we remain together, apart?
“OK if we go upstairs now?” I asked. Nodding assent, he got up, shaking the coat off. A small rectangle on onion skin paper fell from a pocket. Already headed for the stairs, he didn’t notice. I picked it up. A few typed lines read:
Molly, I
Molly turns her eyes toward mine
and sinks a gaze in me that shatters
every fibre that I live by.
I do not know her, scarcely love her, yet she
owns me,
With her eyes, so blue, and hair, so
brown and golden from the sun
I am stunned by her quiet face and smile.
And so she holds me.
And then she speaks, her unformed mind
asserts itself on mine, taunts my openness;
apprehensive, where no incisive, perceptive glance
would care to go –
She lives as still a child, though
I treat her as full-grown.
Sometime in July, 1968
Back in my room, I managed to slip the re-folded onion skin back into his pea-coat, draped over my desk chair, without him knowing.