CHAPTER SIX
If I Could Only Stop My Mind
August, 1969
Mike’s parents went out to Snowmass the last two weeks of August to inspect their newly-built retirement cabin, which meant he and I had his house to ourselves when we returned from the fair. Squeezed onto his narrow twin bed one night, we discussed our plans for the next two weeks. Jeanne had invited me to St. Louis.
“I’ve never been to St. Louis, so she wants to show me all the sights.”
“Sights? In St. Louis?”
I laughed sardonically. “She’s my best friend at school, I want to see where she comes from. And she wrote me, she’s got a boyfriend now, I want to meet him, too.”
“How long would you stay there?”
“Probably the last week of August, then come back here. You said you wanted to go to that swim meet in Louisville, so I thought…”
Mike was excited because the swimming national championships would be just a two hour drive away, had even suggested I go with him to see all the “big races, those famous people I’ve been reading about.”
“When you wrote about that last month, you only described what was going to happen. Not getting into what you feel about it, what it all means, like you usually do.” I decided to push him more, get him talking about the significance to him of all this swimming, all those people. “You are so wrapped up in this sport, as a participant, as a spectator. I never imagined you having friends like that.”
Mike’s face grew serious, a sign he was giving my question some thought. “I suppose going to Louisville does mean something to me. It’s the … apex of my association with swimming. For years, since I was eleven, I’ve been on swim teams. I’ve never been very good, but I’m getting to know more and more about it. This meet, it’s about as high as you can go, except for the Olympics, I guess, and they come along only every four years.” He talked about the “big names” and the races they’d be doing. He included Molly O’Donohue in that group; she had qualified for the long-distance events.
“She’s in the 1500?” I repeated. I remembered that long race when I’d gone to see him swim at Brandeis. “Is that the one where they use timing cards to tell the swimmer how far they’ve gone.” I didn’t add my thought, like when I first met you, timing your debates.
“Lap counters, not timing cards,” he retorted. “Swimming’s a small-time sport, insular, and over the years now, I’ve been at all levels. Little high school team, teaching beginners at the Y, then going to Jock U where we had guys who went to the big NCAA meet. Two of them even won there. I was on the team with them, and now I’m seeing swimmers who could be the best in the country. I’ve been a part of it all, traveled the complete circuit of something for the first time.”
“So this is a culmination for you, a valedictory?”
“Well, I could go on and get more and more immersed, become an expert in one aspect, like coaching, make it my life. But, no.”
“And the people? You said it was about people, too.”
Again he paused, then, “Probably hundreds of them, over the years. It’s not like being with people in school, talking about stuff, bull sessions, or serious discussions with profs. It comes down, simply, to having fun. Simple rules, go as fast as you can to the other end, maybe get a ribbon, goof off while you’re waiting for your next race. No anxiety about knowing stuff, being right or wrong. Simply using your body, watching other people do it too.”
“Not much stress on your brain, though…”
“I wish people could understand that our brain, our mind, is not all there is to us. We are, each of us is, one complete being, a body that moves through space and deals with the physical world. The mind, the brain is part of that body, doesn’t exist separate from it. Intellectuals are always disparaging athletes, calling them ‘jocks’, when they don’t understand how much the brain controls what the body does, and how much it learns from physical effort.”
Feeling hurt, I said, “Intellectuals? Like Radcliffe girls?”
Quickly, he came back, “I don’t mean you; you understand this, understand me and what it’s all about.”
But I didn’t, not really. I knew I never would. I thought he was wasting his time, wasting his mind, his more important talents. I couldn’t tell him that, not if I wanted to keep the good parts of him close to me.
Luckily, he sat up suddenly, saying, “Hey, I know! After Louisville, I’m going to Colorado, to Snowmass.” He pulled me up beside him, looking imploringly into my eyes. “I could pick you up in St. Louis, we could go on out there together, take a real road trip. Listen to the radio, stay in a motel on the way. Then you could see the mountains, see the view from our house, walk in the forest, a real forest with creeks and beaver and elk.”
“What about your parents? Are they still going to be there?”
“My father wants to show me how things work in the house, and help him a bit with the furniture they’re setting up. So we’d see them that Sunday night, and Monday before they leave. OK?”
He was doing it again, that enthusiasm thing, making life with him seem an adventure. An exploration of someplace novel and different, with my best friend and lover, might well be the best way to re-build our lives together.
I flew into St. Louis’ Lambert Field, and was surprised to see the terminal as I walked down the stairs out of the plane. Crossing the short distance to the entrance, I stopped to gape at three soaring arches, soft yellow light streaming from the windows extending all the way across their face. Inside, the ceiling mirrored the exterior, rising overhead, our footsteps echoing off the high curved inverted concrete bowl above.
I needled Jeanne as she helped put my suitcases in the trunk. “OK, your airport is more modern than I expected.”
“Oh, you spend one summer in Cambridge, and all of a sudden you’re an east-coast sophisticate. Forgetting all your Ohio roots?” She shook her head with mock sadness.
“This guy you wrote me about – what’s his name? – what’s he like?”
“Ben. Benjamin. My aunt’s happy, at least. He’s a good Jewish boy, going to Columbia.”
“What’s he like?” I repeated.
“Of course, he wants to be a doctor. I met him when he was working at my father’s clinic, at Barnes. Or more precisely, my father set me up with him. He had a bunch of them over one night, had me sit next to this guy. But it’s OK, I like him, he’s…fun, when he’s not worrying about what residency we’re going to when we get out of…”
“You’re not even in medical school yet, so that’s like six years he’s looking ahead? Is it that serious?”
“No, not at all. We’ve gone out to see a few movies, taken a trip on the river boat one night, that sort of stuff. It’s kind of sad, he’s so clingy.”
Three days at her home on a flat, tree-lined street a few blocks from the park, and I quickly fell into the oppressive practiced conviviality of the Heldman household. Lunch was always outside by the gazebo, on a slate terrace next to a bird bath continually gurgling water into a small fish pond below. I dutifully made the rounds in Forest Park, gaining mostly a mild sunburn on my cheeks, which I hoped would turn to tan by the time Mike showed up on Friday.
Jeanne helped me prepare for his arrival. “You ought to do something different with you hair. It’s so gorgeous, I’ve always been jealous. But you hide it under a head band, put it in a loose pony tail or let it flop any which way.” She studied me with the intensity of a painter evaluating a half-finished canvas. Her eyes brightened as she chirped, “I know! Braids!”
I moaned. “I’ve tried that. I look like a Shetland pony or something. You know that line you get between them, my scalp’s so white, I’m afraid to have people see that.”
“OK, no pigtails, then, or two pony tails either – you’d look like a Girl Scout, or a Brownie.”
A new voice asserted, “One braid.”
Jeanne said, “Oh this is my aunt, Ruth. She’s back from Israel. How was that kibbutz you visited.”
Ruth waved her hand dismissively. “Later, Bubala. Let’s get this one ready for her mensch, no?” With that, she abruptly turned me around, separated my hair into three clumps, and swiftly wove them into a loose plait, flowing from the nape of my neck.
“Yours is so thick, you don’t need anything to keep it in place. It stays there all by itself! Lucky. Oh, you should lose that shapeless dress. A woman in pants, she’s looks more independent than this smock you wear. You want this boy to know you’re every bit as capable as he is. On the farm, the women work as hard as the men, that makes us more attractive to them. It also keeps them in their place a bit as well.”
ii
Mike and I left St. Louis after lunch, traveling through rolling hills, farms, and open woodland, a wider vista then crowded New England and Ohio. He fiddled with the radio, trying to find the clearest AM radio stations, which featured Paul Harvey news, stock reports, and twangy country music. He grumbled, “It’s better at night when the big ones, like KOMA and KOA, come in. They play songs I…we…want to hear, not this stuff.” He lifted his right foot off the accelerator, and started driving with his left.
“Why are you doing that?” I asked, pointing at his foot resting near mine on the transmission hump between our seats.
“It feels better. I don’t get as tired. Maybe I’m left footed?”
“I can drive, you know.”
“Uh, great! OK, there’s a Stucky’s before we get to Columbia. You can take over there.” He glanced over, eyeing my Marimekko shift, and asked, “What was it like there at Jeanne’s? What did you do?”
“I met Ruth, her aunt. She’s living part-time in Israel, spends her spring and summer on a kibbutz there. Told me any time I want to go, I should get in touch.”
“Are you thinking about it?”
“Well, not now, of course. But after I graduate, I want to travel, I want to see other parts of the world. It’s so cliché, everyone goes to Europe. I’d like to do something different.”
“Why Israel?”
I looked over at him, trying to decide if he were serious. No hint of a smile on his face or sarcasm in his voice, so I went on, “I feel a pull there. It’s where Jews go now. We’ve even got dual citizenship if we want it.” I wasn’t sure myself why the idea intrigued me. Was it tribal, or religious?
He ventured, “That hasn’t been a thing for you, I thought, being Jewish.”
“Ruth said it feels different, being Jewish there. She says she’s not always wondering how, or if she fits in, that it feels good being more like everybody else.”
“I thought there was a war, or bombs all the time.”
“Apparently everybody’s in the army, even the women, when they’re young. The country may be surrounded, but the people don’t think about that all the time, they know they can protect themselves, not like when they lived in Europe.”
Mike nodded, saying, “Yeah, I get it. A home in the homeland.”
Stucky’s specialized in pecan log rolls and kitsch. While the attendant filled our gas tank, we strolled the aisles, looking at small plaques with home-spun sayings and heavily sugared confections.
“They should have a dentist’s office next door,” I whispered. “Make a fortune.”
Mike took over driving again just outside of Independence. “You know there’s a tabernacle here, like the one in Salt Lake City.”
“A Mormon one?”
“Well, kind of, but, no.” He explained, “After Joseph Smith was killed, back in Nauvoo, and Brigham Young took them out to Utah, some others stayed behind, following Joseph Smith’s son. They continued using the Book of Mormon, and the Doctrine of Covenants…”
“What’s that?”
“They believe God speaks through modern day prophets, gives them divine knowledge about how to live. ‘Don’t use tobacco, it’s for sick cows’, stuff like that.”
“And blacks aren’t allowed to be priests?”
“Yeah, that’s in there.”
“How do you know so much about this?”
Mike launched into a short dissertation. “My grandmother, Grace’s mother, was in that church. Grace’s sister kept it up, always sent me stuff about it for Christmas, even took me to a church camp on an island near Seattle, the year I went there for the Worlds’s Fair. ‘Stories From the Book of Mormon, Stories From the Bible,’ things like that.”
“I thought your mom is an atheist. So your aunt you got you interested in religion?”
“I guess so. But not from a practicing perspective. I like seeing how people explain the world. Philosophy, good novels, religions, they’re all trying to answer the same questions.”
The interstate turned into a turnpike once we got to Kansas, and Mike sped up to 80 miles an hour. The car started to wobble a bit, as if the tires were loose. “What’s that, that shaking?” I asked.
“My dad said something about getting the wheels aligned? This car’s getting old, over 90,000 miles it says on the thing here,” he said, pointing at the odometer. We hit the outskirts of Topeka. “There’s supposed to be a motel here that doesn’t cost too much, I remember from when we’ve driven out here before. Motel 6, costs $6 a night…Oh, damn!” He shouted and pounded the steering wheel, then pointed out the window. “We missed it, hope we don’t end up in Wichita!”
“It’s OK, Mike, don’t get so upset. Just get off at the next exit, turn around, we have plenty of time.” He did that, grumbling all way.
Next morning, we left the gentle hills of eastern Kansas behind, entering the totally foreign terrain of what Mike called, “The West.”
“It starts right about here, where it rains less, there aren’t any trees, you can see forever. Look, must be twenty miles, hasn’t been one curve in the road!”
“I thought the West was mountains, not this.”
He shook his head. “It’s more a feeling of wide spaces, room enough for everyone.”
“Too much room…” I observed.
He replied, “Yeah, not much here, is there? No music. Boring scenery. What do you want to talk about?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I know, let’s try a little pop philosophy.’ He paused, then pulled out a topic. “What does it mean, friendship? What’s a friend, why do we have them?”
“Huh?”
“You. You and me, for example. We’re friends, aren’t we? What’s that mean?” he repeated.
We had an all day drive ahead, nothing to look at until Denver, so I let the question hang while I reached back, trying to name all my friends, why I felt good with them. Finally, “Hmm…I feel like I get to live lives through friends that I wouldn’t be able to otherwise. We reciprocate the wish fulfillment of each other. The closer we are to someone, the more we can grow through…and with…them. Like Leslie. I wouldn’t want to be Leslie, but I’m glad I know her, she helps me think about things I might otherwise avoid. But you have to give, as well as get. Having a friend helps me be a better me. I want to have them see me as my best possible self, even serve as a role model for them sometimes. That means I have to be a strong enough person, with enough of my own life, before I can have a friendship like that. Like I said, friends help each grow, they support each other that way.”
“What about us?” he persisted. “I look around at who I know, who I spend time with. And I’d rather be with you than anybody. So I wonder, does that make you my best friend?”
The bristly sere wheat stubble, a monochrome yellow fading to dark brown near the fallow loam, spread in all directions. I wondered how anyone could live here, nothing changing in the landscape save for occasional summer storms rolling down from the still hidden mountains. I looked over at Mike, intent on the road, empty to the horizon. The vastness filled me with anxiety, tempered by Mike’s presence. I’d always felt safe with him, psychically and physically. I’d never told him that; I wondered how to put it.
“Last night, in that motel? We got to sleep in a double bed,” I started.
“Yeah, that was different, wasn’t it?” The road still held his gaze.
I went on, trying, “When I was little, I always felt nudgy if I had to sleep in the same bed with someone else. Didn’t matter the size of bed or who it was, even my sister. With you, last night, I fell right asleep. With you, I’m comfortable, can forget I’m with another person.”
He glanced over, enough time for a quick smile. “Me, too. I remember, it was like no time had passed, we could fall right back together.”
Stroking his thigh, I concurred, “That’s it. Safe and snuggly.” I struggled as my thoughts fought with my feelings. I closed my eyes, sighed, and plowed on. “It makes me scared, too.”
“Scared?”
“I don’t want to feel like anybody else… like you…has that control, can make me feel that way.” This wasn’t sounding right, I knew. “Anais Nin – remember her? – says a woman should be as independent as a man, able to chose who she’s with, and how she’s with him. That a woman’s life should not be tied to a man’s success.” I paused, awaiting a reaction. “And it’s all tied up in love. And sex. The pill has made it different for us now. We really can choose who, and when, and be the independent woman earlier feminists dreamed about.” Still silence from Mike, behind the wheel. A final thought bubbled out. “I’ve got to learn how to be with a man, without being dependent on a man. Can you understand that?” I wished he’d stop the car, so I could shake him by the shoulders, make him understand.
He pursed his lips, seemed to shrink forward towards the wheel, then suddenly sat bolt upright. “There they are!” He pointed at what appeared to be a dark cloud low on the flat horizon.
Bewildered, I said, “What? Who’s there?”
“The mountains! The Rockies!”
iii
The sudden change from flat to vertical had become routine by the time we passed through Denver. Fir trees, precipitous drop-offs, and thin air replaced the endless wheat fields. I’d driven through the city, but Mike took over once the Interstate ended.
“Why’d they stop here?” I wondered.
Mike answered with a sweep of his arm. “It must take more than one run with a Caterpillar to bulldoze a road through all this.”
We kept going up, and up, and up. Sixty, then fifty, then forty-five was all the little car could do as the two-lane highway wound sinuously into the treeless rocks and hidden snow near the Continental Divide. At every turn, a new vista opened, shocking in its depth, inspiring in its breadth. For once, we both we quiet.
Finally we creeped around a curve, with nothing but sky above, the road finally swooping down. “Loveland Pass,” Mike announced. “We came here in the winter, could only go fifteen-twenty miles an hour, it was snowing so hard. My father grew up in eastern Montana, hard winters there, and he says, ‘You can go as fast as you want on snow or ice, as long as you don’t have to turn or stop.’ Getting stuck going up is no joke; once you stop, you can’t get going again.”
On this sunny afternoon we saw only a few small white clouds, sailboats floating above the peaks, playing with the sun. In their shadow, the wind brought a biting chill, raising goose bumps on my calves and shoulders; without their shade, the sun nearly singed my skin.
“Can we stop? Get out, get some of those?” I asked, pointing at the dull red flowers lining the ditch between the road and rocky cliff.
“They don’t last long – people pick them, then put them out to dry, press them in a book or picture frame. Besides, they’re better up at Independence Pass, it’s higher there.”
There’s another pass? How long could this go on?
We stopped at a gas station near a lake with boats motoring towards the town. Mike asked the mechanic there to “adjust the carburetor for the altitude”, explaining to me how thin air meant the engine didn’t fire right, it needed more oxygen for each spark to make the pistons work. “This way we won’t be so sluggish up the pass,” he speculated.
“My pistons aren’t working so well either,’ I gasped. Just walking from the car to the restroom left me tired, light-headed. “Is this normal?” I asked.
He grinned. “You get used to it. Go a little slower, breathe deeper, you won’t notice after a couple of days.”
Back in the car, I wondered, “Isn’t skiing hard work? How can you do it if you can’t get any air?”
He smiled, threw back his head, and laughed. “Gravity does all the work. If you try and fight it then,yeah, it’s hard. When you do it right, skiing is mostly standing up, letting the mountain carry you down.”
“But they go so fast, how can they stop?”
“That’s the secret, I guess. Your use your strength to keep you stable. I don’t know how to do it right yet, so I don’t know how to describe it. But I’m going to learn.”
“Learn? I thought you already were an expert.”
Mike snorted. “No way. I’ve got to spend a winter here to get any better.”
“Sounds like a pipe dream.”
He paused, pulled his lips to one side. “You remember, I had those three AP credits for history and math. I skated out of the language requirement somehow in that French interview. And I’ve been taking five classes each semester, instead of four, except for this last one. So I’ll have more than enough credits to graduate after this semester. I’ve been thinking, as we’re driving up here, I should come back in January, find a job, be a ski bum, stay at my parents’ house, get some money for med school, and ski a lot.”
He paused, biting his finger as he looked over at me. I thought about the fall, at Radcliffe. I’d be moving in with Bev at Walker Street, settling in to what I hoped would be my home for the next two years. After that, I knew I didn’t want to leave, couldn’t ever leave the place that had quickly become more like home to me than Cleveland or Cincinnati ever had. Two more years there, then graduate school for who knows how long, and after that, a life, a real life. Mike and I had a life now, in his car, headed to Aspen. I wondered if it were real, if we were headed anywhere, if our ideas of home would ever mesh. Looking at his bronze face, his sun-tanned arm hanging out the window, hearing his visions, dreams for the future, the immediate future, I decided, better not to look too far ahead, enjoy this while I can. Pay attention to the present, let the future take care of itself.
“…could come up here in March at spring break, learn how to ski with me, what do you think?” Mike had been talking all the time I’d been lost in thought. What was he saying?
“Janie? What do you think? Come out here and see me during spring break?”
“I don’t know, Mike. We aren’t even in Aspen yet, can’t I just be here now? Do we have to talk about the future? Let’s have fun while we’re here, this time.”
“This time” seemed to satisfy him.
We drove through a town, one street wide, all the buildings holdovers from an earlier, richer era.
“This is Leadville,” Mike explained. “It’s the highest incorporated place in the country. Twice as high as Denver, two miles high. Big mining center, before we went off the silver standard, about 75 years ago.”
“Looks like time passed it by,” I observed. “What do they do here, besides gasp for breath?” I hoped he wouldn’t stop. I doubted I could stand up without feeling dizzy or keeling over.
“No mountains to ski here. It’s high, but mostly flat. And the mountains they do have, they’re putting all of them into wilderness areas, where you can’t do anything except walk around. No machines. And, there isn’t much of a summer, so I don’t know if they can get any tourists to stay here.”
We turned right at a sign which read “SR 82 – Aspen”, where we passed two more lakes. He went on, “That’s where Denver gets its water, they take it through those mountains up ahead from the other side, store it here.”
No houses, nothing but sagebrush and pine trees greeted us on the way up to Independence Pass. The puffy white clouds had morphed into massing grey brigantines, arming for battle with cold rain, hail, and thunder. At the top, Mike stopped, headed for the trunk, and pulled something out of his suitcase. I braved an exit, pulling on a red and white wool beanie, wondering if I’d brought anything warm enough.
“Here,” he said, offering his puffy blue down jacket.
“What about you?”
He wriggled into a sweater, my blue and white ski sweater, saying, “I love this thing. It’s the nicest – the best – present I ever got. The smell…” He closed his eyes, inhaling deeply through his nose. Opening his eyes, sighing, he went on. “Your smell is in it. Every time I put it on, it’s like I’m back with you.”
Outside, a broad expanse of patchy yellow grass greeted me, tempering the biting wind following us up the narrow road. A few dirty snow patches still resisted summer’s sun in shaded gullies. To each side, gentle granite slopes, devoid of all life, rose towards the ominous clouds, so close I could smell the lightning intermittently illuminating their undersides. Muted thunder grumbled down the other side, towards Aspen. I shivered, in awe as much as from the chill.
I turned to Mike, wondering, “Is it always like this here?”
“Cold, yeah. But the thunderstorms usually don’t show up until after noon. Come on, we’d better get going before it starts to hail.”
Back in the car, a ravenous clatter pelted the roof as small white pellets bounced off the pavement. I stuck my hand out the window, closed my fist, and brought back a slushy mess, cold as any sno-cone. Mike glanced over, smiling as I shrieked with childish glee.
Half way down, the two-lane road narrowed and lost its pavement. A sheer white wall of rock rose on one side, an endless drop careened down the other. Shrubs gave way to fir trees, which led to white aspen groves, their small flat leaves shimmering in the late afternoon sun. Finally, we arrived in town.
“Well, here it is…Aspen,” Mike announced. A ragged mountain spilled directly into town, its face scarred with ski runs and mine detritus. Across the street, a three story red stone building ruled the surrounding ramshackle houses, some painted bright blue, others faded red, one or two a cheery yellow. Turrets, dormers, and wrap-around porches signified them as left-overs from the 1890’s, when luckier miners spent their new-found fortune on Victorian houses.
Leaving town, Mike asked, “Notice anything different here?”
Looking around, all I saw was a flat valley floor, filled with sagebrush, the jutting snow-capped peaks snuggling close by. “No, what am I supposed to see?”
“In town, no neon signs. On the highway, no billboards. They outlawed ‘em a few years ago, wanted this place to be a fantasy-land for tourists. In summer, they have a music school, concerts every night. Lectures, seminars, a place for body, mind and spirit was the vision.”