viii
During October, 1969, I felt calmer, more sedate. The campus had settled down, everyone back to work it seemed. The Faculty finally voted to condemn the war. Bev, Jeanne, and I found a domestic rhythm at 119 Oxford Street. Mike came to Cambridge nearly every weekend, while I went down to Connecticut once, to his plush four-man suite complete with individual rooms, spacious living room, and kitchen. We kept our talk focused on the present, nothing about where, or when our individual futures might diverge. Our biggest worry was whether to cut our hair. Swim season started November 1, so Mike was planning on getting shorn.
“More hydrodynamic,” he insisted. “You should try it.”
“Have you forgotten how big my head is, buddy? I’d look like that mascot on the baseball team back home, what’s his name?”
“Mr. Red. Besides, wouldn’t it be easier to take care of?”
“Right, him. I complain about it, but I’m secretly proud of my hair. And I know you like it, too.”
“The first thing I noticed about you.”
“Your hands, my hair. If nothing else, we’ve always got that.”
Early in November, at another Hillel meeting, I ran into Howard.
“Janie!” He didn’t seem the least bit anxious about how we’d parted. In fact, he had a girl on his arm. “This is Rachel.” They seemed attached, almost affectionate. I knew Rachel, another Radcliffe junior. We each said, “Hi” demurely.
Then, remembering she ostensibly had a boyfriend, James, I said, somewhat obliquely, “Oh, I saw James had a poem published in the New Yorker. Pretty amazing for him, right?”
Not rattled at all, she admitted, “Big deal, for sure. We’re all so proud of him.”
Howard, oblivious to all this, piped up, “Look, we’re going down to DC next week, the Moratorium. Do you want to come? You and Mike?”
I frowned, remembering Chicago the summer before, and Uni Hall that spring. Howard said reassuringly, “This is going to be big. Half a million people, they’re saying. Big names, too – Gene McCarthy, McGovern, Peter, Paul, and Mary. Pete Seeger. They can’t put us all in jail, can they?”
“How are you getting there?”
“My old Volvo station wagon. We’ve got room. There’s five of us so far, you and Mike can have the back all to your selves.”
“The back” meant that, while Howard drove all night, we spent six hours cuddling, in a space meant for a couple of suit cases.
We piled out somewhere in the middle of the city. Howard, as usual, knew somebody who would let us all sleep that night on their floor. In anticipation of the chaos, I had first covered my hair with a stylish blue bandana, a thick knit watch cap over that. Mike wore blue jeans, a work shirt, wire rim glasses, and a fit-for-the-occasion vintage leather jacket sporting authentic signs of wear and tear.
“That is some jacket, Mike,” Howard observed.
“My father bought it at a fire sale in Omaha 1938, when he started going out with my mom. Gave it to me last year.” Switching gears, he said, “Are we going to do anything before the march?”
“Like what?” Howard came back.
“Well, I’d like to see Kennedy’s grave, the Eternal Flame.”
“That’s kind of far away, across the river. We’ve got to head over to the Monument now, all these people, it’ll take forever to get anywhere. How about we do that tomorrow, on our way home?”
We’d landed on the edge of consular district. All around us, a sea of people moved forward, aiming towards the Washington Monument. The streets were free of traffic, the entire downtown cordoned off to accommodate the throng.
Howard swept his arms around. “Look, everybody’s here!” Men in suits, women with prim handbags, permed hair and hats held down with pins, children in strollers, even young men in wheel chairs. Many carried signs, not of protest, but of expectation. To the left, passing a muted Tudor house, I saw inside a group of grey-haired men and women gathered around a poster, as if discussing how best to emphasize the message. It read “The silent majority speaks!” Laughing, I pointed at them, asking Mike, “Are they going to crash this party? What are they thinking?”
“I bet they’re opposed to the war, too, and want to let Nixon, Agnew, Mitchell, all of them, know that even Republicans, even the establishment, wants out now.”
The crowd moved as one down Constitution Avenue, slower and slower the closer we got to the Washington Monument. A few exhausted marchers sat at the curb. Police lined the route, officiously resplendent in their long, double-breasted blue coats. No guns, no shields, no horses or armored wagons in sight. Instead of helmets, they wore peaked caps with narrow plastic brims. Whenever I looked at them, they smiled and waved back.
I felt hopeful that a peaceful march was possible, that it was no longer us against them, but simply, finally, everyone. A sense of unity, of positive change coursed through my mind.
Mike asked Howard, “What happened to the Young Turks, man? Looks like no more turmoil, just a peaceful protest today.”
Howard shot back, “All these people, like they suddenly woke up. ‘Oh! We’re aware now! Let’s change things!’ Well, I don’t buy it. All this energy, these people, it’ll fade away, like it always has before.”
At some point near the towering obelisk, we came to a stop, along with everyone else. Although we were more than a mile from the podiums at the Lincoln Memorial, the massive speakers were powerful enough to reach us up on our little hill. We cheered lustily for Eugene McCarthy, as he thanked us for what we’d done the year before, ending the Johnson reign. He told us we could do the same with Nixon, when it came to the war. Peter, Paul, and Mary led us in a sing-along of “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Mike had brought along his 35 mm Pentax camera, hoping for candid pictures of the scene. I offered to hold it while he cheered the trio, quickly snapping one of him.
Somewhere far in front, the mass started swaying. A wave of raised arms flowed towards us, not fists today, but first and second fingers in a “V”, the peace sign. The crowd around us caught the movement, and finally I heard a mumble, then a distinct melodic chant. “All we are saying, is give peace a chance.” Over and over, not to be denied. I snapped Mike’s picture, head back, his face beatific, his hair, still long at my insistence, golden against that ragged jacket.
ix
Howard insisted on driving back to Boston. “This car is on its last legs, it’s got all these little quirks, I’m the only one who can keep it going.” After he’d drifted across the freeway again, almost hitting a delivery truck this time, Rachel, sitting next to him, said, “Enough! You haven’t slept more than two hours the past two nights. Time to let someone else take over. Come on, let’s trade places with Jane and Mike, you can fall asleep in the back.”
Howard, eyes drooping, reluctantly pulled over, took out the keys, and started to hand them to Mike. I looked down at the three pedals up front, and asked, “Uh, Mike, do you know how to drive a stick?” He said nothing, so I went on, “You’re always telling me how to drive, and you don’t even know how to shift gears manually?” I glared at him. “All those summers with Charlie’s VW, on the island? Give me the keys.” He made a big show of dropping them into my outstretched hand, looking ready to loose a smart aleck remark. “Don’t even think about it, buddy. Watch and learn for once, OK?”
He must have thought being in the shotgun seat gave him free license to pontificate. “Remember I told you, when I was eight, I decided that scientists’ technological advances were spiraling out of control?”
“Uh-huh,” I nodded.
“…doubling at an exponential rate, and the end of 1969 was the tipping point? Well, here we are. The apocalypse has arrived.”
“Isn’t that a little melodramatic? It was almost like a giant picnic.”
“No, listen, it’s not just the march. It’s everything. Hippies, do your own thing. Landing on the moon. Johnson passing all those civil rights laws, women getting more and more respect. I read even the earth is getting its own day next year, people are starting to care about how we’re messing things up with dams and cars and nuclear plants and stuff.”
“OK, but an apocalypse?” I laughed, “Like Hair? ‘The dawning of the Age of Aquarius’? This better be good…”
He cleared his throat. “An apocalypse is an outside event which forces us to re-orient our lives in relation to its sheer existence. Sure, there can be minor apocalypses, natural disasters like a flood, a tornado, hurricanes, an earthquake, which have an effect for a limited time on the limited few to whom it occurs. President Kennedy’s death had an apocalyptic tinge, as did, in a juvenile sort of way, the advent of the Beatles, Bob Dylan. World War Two was a more galvanizing, more complete apocalypse, though time-limited. And of course, there is the archetypal one in western civilization, which all of the last two millennia stems from, the Jesus story.”
“So how do you know this is the time for something like Jesus, or the war. I still think you’re making too big a deal out of all this.” I worried about concentrating on the road, while I absorbed this sudden epiphany he shared. I wished he’d take a nap, even if it meant he started snoring in unison with Howard in the back. Poor Rachel.
“Well, I’ve been looking for the signs, and in this decade we’ve had many. JFK heralding our generation as the one which will face a great assault on freedom – it’s ironic that assault is coming from within the very structure he was trying to reform. Nixon resurrected, a creep like Agnew elected – all this reflects a dissatisfaction with life in general. Everyone feels it. The middle class has an undefined awareness that the course of the country is not consistent with what they were told it should be. The radicals and drop-outs express a more conscious dissatisfaction with a life they see themselves being thrust into. This march, this weekend, showed me that this idealism, the dissatisfaction with establishment repression is coalescing into a clash which will be played out in our adult lifetimes. By 1980, I bet, all the strategic timetables for corporations and government will be out the window. It’s the dawn of a new age, and we saw the first recruits here in DC. For every ten of us going back to our colleges, there are a hundred in the high schools, a thousand in the nursery schools, to whom resistance will become a matter of course.”
He sounded so earnest, so idealistic, I couldn’t help getting into the spirit. “I get it. In 30, or 40 years, we’ll have a complete, sudden – at least in historical terms – turn-about to some new, as yet unknown society? And we have to act, to live with this in mind, that we can’t know, much less control, what the major forces in our future will be.”
“But you can shape the course your responses will take…”
Totally caught up in it now, I sped on. “I’m going to be a psychologist. If what you say is true, the future will be more and more uncertain, more people will feel unmoored. They’ll need help in setting their own directions. I can help them do that.”
“How?”
“I don’t know that yet. Personal therapy, encounter groups, psychodrama, love – it’s all possible, all useful.” The freedom of the unknown seemed a guiding beacon now. “I can accept it, going through the looking glass, not knowing what’s on the other side. It gives me hope my life will have some meaning.”
Back home at Oxford Street, Bev met me with a surprise as I walked up the porch steps. She pointed to the second floor bay window. “Some guys came here yesterday, said they were movie scouts. Wanted to look inside, asked if the rooms below were still for rent. The landlord wasn’t around, so I showed them in.”
“So?”
“So-ooo, they want to film a movie here.”
“A movie? A real movie, like Hollywood and everything?”
“Yeah, it’s about a couple of kids who meet at Harvard, and they need a ‘starving student’ apartment for a few scenes. Both outside and inside. Said this place was perfect.”
“That’s us, starving students…Jeanne and Marcia both here?”
“Upstairs. How did it go in DC, with Howard and Mike? Was that weird?”
“Not at all. Rachel was distracting him. And Mike was so much more…Mike, this weekend. First, he really got into the march, the idea of resistance, of change. He wanted to see and do everything, he even looked the part for once.”
“And…?”
“And, he reminded me how much, exactly why I love and need him.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, he’s my friend and lover, Bev, and I just have to admit it, have to accept it. Even if it all ends, I love being with him, talking with him, cuddling with him, looking at him, and I’m going to enjoy that, take advantage of it while I can.”
x
Mike arrived in Cambridge the Friday after the Moratorium march, looking completely drained. “My father called this morning, I’m going back to Cincinnati tomorrow evening.”
“Wait, What? You have to go back now? Can’t you wait until Thanksgiving?”
He slouched down in the director’s chair Bev had appropriated from the movie shoot on the second floor, the one with “Ryan O’Neal” boldly silk screened on the back rest. “It’s my mother. She found a lump under her tongue, got it biopsied on Monday. It’s cancer, some kind of skin cancer.”
“Oh my God! What’s going to happen? Not Grace! That’s…that’s…I don’t know, it’s scary.” I plopped down on my bed, wondering if I should reach out and stroke his leg. He looked numb.
“Surgery. She’s having surgery first thing Monday. My father wants me there, he thinks I should be there.”
“Shelly?”
“She drove out to Idaho with her friend. She’s going to live in Sun Valley, at least this winter. There’s a guy there…”
I interrupted, “What kind of surgery, where? Oh, Mike, I hope she’s going to be all right!”
“Christ Hospital. He said they have to cut off part of her tongue, make a skin flap from her neck to rebuild the floor of her mouth, dissect the lymph nodes. She’ll have to learn how to talk again, he says.”
My mind whirred with anxiety. Grace had been a calming, encouraging force for me the past three years, a beacon showing what I could become. The thought of her brought low like this at the start of her career as a clinical psychologist unmoored me. I shunted that worry aside, knowing Mike needed support, not fear, from me.
“My mother’s strong, she’s the strongest person I know. She says this will not stop her, she has grandchildren to harass.” He sniffed, shook his head with a half-hearted smile.
Two weeks later, Mike drove back up. I met him on the porch, saying, “We have to be quiet, they came back for some re-takes up there. Take your shoes off going up the stairs.”
“Are they here, now?”
“The crew, they’re working on the lighting now. We’ll be gone when they start filming.”
I showed him the book review Rachel’s erstwhile boyfriend James had written about Anais Nin’s latest diary installment, Volume III, 1939-1944. “She’s speaking tonight, after they show a Henry Miller documentary. We’ve got to go, I have to see her, to hear her.” I bubbled with excitement, forgetting to ask about his mother. “Listen to what he wrote, ‘After a terse notation of atrocities (“Bali invaded. Java invaded. Paris bombarded by the English, India rebelling against the English”) Nin wrote: “And what can one do but preserve some semblance of human life, to seek the not-savage, not-barbaric forms of life.” I’ve been reading her stuff ever since that class with Shulmeister last year. She’s so smart, so willful, doing what she wants, holds her own with men.”
Mike, distracted, nodded, “Sure.” Then, “What about after? I need to get some sleep tonight.”
I’d forgotten about the MIT swim meet tomorrow. Somehow he had cajoled the coach into letting him drive up by himself, not on the team bus. “I told him I was a senior, wasn’t coming back after January, what difference did it make. And that I had to see my girlfriend, could stay with her. I guess he thinks I’m a lost cause anyway, so why not?” He looked a bit sheepish as he said this.
Suddenly, I remembered his mother, her surgery. “Anything new about your mom? How’s she doing.”
“She looked pretty weak when I left, that neck tube thing is…weird. She gets it taken out in two weeks. Then my father wants to take her out to Snowmass for Christmas. Doctor said she had to wait six weeks before she could ‘resume’ her normal activities. It’ll only be four or five when we drive out. Jack insisted she had to go, said he would carry her everywhere if he had to.”
“Sounds like he needs her as much as she needs him,” I mused.
On the way to Lowell Hall to see the film, I said to Mike, “I saw the lottery the other night. You did well, right?”
“Yeah, it was surreal. Everybody crammed into the lounge, watching the TV, all those guys in suits, so solemn about sending us off to get killed. I was 219, so I’m safe until I get into med school. Other guys, the ones with the low numbers, they were talking about Canada”
I sighed. One reason, at least, to be glad I’m a girl.
Nin looked smaller than I’d imagined. With her braided hair coiled high in back, she exuded an intriguing air of prim, elegant sensuality. We arrived just as The Henry Miller Odyssey began screening, and had to stand in the back of the overflowing crowd. Afterwards, asked about publishing her private diaries now, she replied, “ I felt there was an affinity , a connection between the thirties and the sixties, and that the past can often inform the present.” She sounded suspicious of dogma as a solution for one’s problems, saying “Self-knowledge and self discipline result in freedom.”
In response to a question about her role as a woman in the salons of the thirties, surrounded by Henry Miller, Lawrence Durrell, and Otto Rank, she asserted, “Women must be every bit as independent as men. In their art, in their life. You know, we do have sexual feelings apart from love. I like the Dionysian movement, it’s a recognition of expression through the senses and the joyfulness of relationships.”
Energized by seeing her, hearing her speak of women’s freedom to choose and direct our lives, our loves, our futures, I took control of Mike that night in bed. At first reluctant, perhaps remembering his swim meet the next day, he soon caught the spirit, coming back for a second, slower coupling. Finally we slept, huddled close in my narrow bed, but I soon found him on top of me, waking me once more with undiminished fervor. Exhausted, we both slept until the winter sun weakly sparkled through the naked branches outside my window. We shared a smile, wordlessly shaking our heads in satisfaction, which led to one final effort, in which we both succeeded.
“I hope you can still swim today. Don’t you have to get at least a third place for your letter this year?”
“Haven’t you read about what opera singers do before a performance?”
“I haven’t, but I can imagine.” I felt fulfilled and free, knowing I was in control of me, at last.
xi
Chanukah started the following Friday. Jeanne brought out her menorah, and for the first time, I had a family in Cambridge to share the holiday with. Howard showed up with Rachel, Marcia invited her boyfriend, even Bev joined in, giggling at the unfamiliar rituals. I retreived my childhood dreidel, still occupying place of pride on my desk, and everyone gave it a few spins. Best of all, Charlie and his family came up from Providence, and Mike arrived mid-party, carrying a gift-wrapped record album.
“Last time I was here, I noticed you guys didn’t have this yet,” he said as I unwrapped his present, the Beatles’ Abbey Road.
Bev grabbed it, saying, “Great! We’ve needed this,” as she tore off the cellophane and slipped out the disc. We now had an upgrade to my suitcase player, a small turntable with built-in radio and separate speakers. Not much power, but enough that we all could hear the opening “Shoop…shoop” as Paul sang, “Here come old flat-top, he come groovin’ up slowly…” Within minutes, Mike had closed his eyes, swaying back and forth, softly singing along with his hero, John Lennon: “Something in the way she moves, attracts me like no other lover…I don’t want to leave her now, you know I believe and how…You’re asking me will my love grow, I don’t know, I don’t know…” As the final chord faded, he opened his eyes, looking straight at me with a faint, almost questioning smile.
When Paul started the next song’s bouncy beat, Mike said, “Funny, when I first heard this, I kind of identified with it.” Seeing my raised eyebrows, he went on, “You know, ‘Maxwell Edison, studying in medicine…’ But then, he turns out to be a little sociopath, so, no.”
The last song on the first side began with George dirging his guitar through minor chords. Charlie produced another album wrapped up for gifting, and presented it to me. “That song, it’s about him and the artist he took up with, Yoko Ono. We should put this on next, before we hear the other side?”
“Is this the one they wore no clothes for the cover photos, but the record company wouldn’t sell it that way?” I asked.
“Right,” Charlie responded. “Two Virgins. Supposed to represent how we’re all naked and innocent in this world, or something, according to her.”
“She’s kind of weird,” Mike observed, as Yoko warbled, almost screeching while John tape looped all sorts of instruments together atonally.
Charlie leaned conspiratorially over to Mike and asked, while jerking his head first towards Arlene, then towards me, “Would you let your wife do something like that, and try to sell it?” Then, with a full body laugh, he went on, “OK, you guys aren’t ready for this I guess.” He whisked the record off, replacing it with the second side of Abbey Road.
An upbeat acoustic guitar opened into Paul’s homage to sun worship. “Little darlin’, it’s been a long cold lonely winter…it feels like years since it’s been here – here comes the sun…it’s all right…the smiles returning to the faces…it’s all right.” I remembered Mike would soon be leaving school for good, first over Christmas to Snowmass with his family, then after a return for reading period, heading back to the mountains, for his ski bum winter.
While George droned on about all the reasons he loved the world, I pulled Mike away, offering him the “Arthur Miller” chair as I sat in my O’Neal. He looked at his, saying, “This is Bev’s? How come she got the Jewish director’s one, and yours is the WASP lead?” Over in the corner, Denise picked up one of the little speakers, holding it by her ear as she bobbed to Paul singing, “Out of college, money spent, see no future, pay no rent…”
Earnestly, I took his hands, and asked, “You’re sure that’s what you’re doing, going to Aspen next month?” As I spoke, I felt a sense of relief, a hope he’d say, “Yes”, so I could finally say, “No” to him. I was a bit shocked to realize I relished the prospect of him not showing up every week or two, enticing me with his alluring sense of fun and warm, soothing skin.
Head nodding up and down, he flipped Charlie’s present over and over, finally saying with a little grin, “Two Virgins? That was us, right?”
I hesitated. Damn, I thought, He’s doing it again. Sighing, I reassured him, “Mike, that’s one thing we will always have, will never go away.” He looked confused, so I went on. “We lost our virginity together, buddy. That will always be special to me, that it was you.” As I spoke, my stomach tightened, as if trying to grab my heart, keep it close inside.
Ringo staccato’d his drums as Paul and John harmonized over George’s driving chords, “Oh yeah, all right, oh, you gonna be in my dreams tonight…love you, love you” the last repeated over and over until, finally, “And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make.”
The room hushed for half a minute, then Paul finished the record with a little ditty about “Her Majesty”, “Some day I’m gonna make her mine.”
Mike turned to Charlie and asked, “I heard that’s their last album, they’re breaking up.”
“No!” Bev shrieked. “There’s supposed to be another one, right?”
“Well, yes…and no,” Charlie said. “We will hear from them again, supposedly, but it’s stuff they’ve already done, they did before this one. Nope, Yoko took him away. No more Beatles.”
Mike looked back at me, saying, “It’s time, Janie, it’s time. I know I have to do this, to have this empty time. Two months, three months, who knows, nine months in front of me, I see them totally unfilled. I’m not apprehensive, though, or expectant about it. For the first time, I’m not worried what new school it will be in the fall, it’ll be somewhere good, I’m sure. I’m really not worried about anything.”
The next day, Saturday, the day before his departure, I went to William James Hall to study. Overhead, the regular rotary sound of fan blades brought a calm and quieting force into the fluorescent-lit study room. One would think, at the end of the semester, this place would be much more crowded, but less than half the chairs were occupied by students looking at books, taking notes, preparing for exams or papers. I found a nook in the balcony, looking down on one side at the stacks and tables below, on the other at the dark, chilly, windy night outside. The quiet lack of intensity reassured me. For the first time in quite a while, I was without that constant, gnawing sense of urgency which drove me every day. In here, we had much to do, and lots of time in which to do it.
xii
Next morning, an hour or so after he had left to drive back home, Mike called. “It’s the car. It just stopped.”
“Where are you?”
“At a gas station, near the Pru.” He sounded resigned, confused.
“What are you going to do? Come back here? How would you get home? Can you get the car fixed?”
“I called my dad. When I told him the mechanic said it would cost a couple thousand to fix, and they offered me $500 for it as is, he said, ‘Leave it there. Fly home.’ He sounded distracted, like my mother’s thing has taken all his energy, his ability to make plans about anything else. So I’m taking the train to Logan now.”
“You’re going to leave the car here, abandon it? You love that car, Mike. How can you let it go like that?”
I heard a deep sigh, and could almost see him, his eyes closed, mouth screwed up. Finally, “No, I’m sad. Mad. Angry. I don’t know what. I don’t want to leave it behind…but I’ve got to get back, go to Aspen. What am I supposed to do?”
“Are you still planning on coming in January?”
“For a week or ten days, to hand in papers and take a couple of exams. Hopefully, I’ll get another car, so I can still go out to Snowmass, find a job there, live in the house, figure out how to ski.”
Apparently, nothing was going to deter him from this path he’d charted. A goulash of anger, fear, sadness, and, finally, hope, swept through me. I wondered, would I ever get my heart back? Instead of sharing this, I laughed and said, “Well, see you next year!”
Three weeks later, he returned, all excited about the paper he’d written for his Film Studies class.
“It’s about using the documentary form in otherwise fictional movies. Like Easy Rider, where they show Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper wandering through the actual Mardi Gras, interacting with strangers.”
I remembered a darker example. “Medium Cool. I hope you used that. I was there, remember. I saw Haskell Wexler on the other side of the fence where they’d trapped us. You may have seen one thing when we saw that movie last month, but I kept looking for me and Charlie in the background.”
“Yes, I put that in there. Not about you, but the technique, I mean.”
“What about Aspen? Did you find a job there?”
“I’m gonna be a dishwasher! I think I got the job a little bit ‘cause of swimming,” he exclaimed.
“Swimming? What’s that got to do with skiing?” I asked, although in my mind, they were one and the same thing – silly sports which had entrapped an otherwise ambitious man.
“It’s at ‘Guido’s Swiss Inn.’ See, he came over after the war. He has these Old World attitudes, got a sign in his window, ‘Hippies and longhairs not allowed.’ I walk in with my head nearly shaved for swimming, so I guess I’m OK.”
“But you’re not, are you? I mean, we don’t like the war, we want to think for ourselves, not be told how to act, right?”
“Never do anything for the sole reason it’s expected of you, that’s me. But dishwashing’s great. Start work after 3 PM, so I can ski most days. I bought a season pass, at the student rate.”
February and March, I gave in to several Harvard boys who wanted the cachet, or maybe the ease, of a date with a ‘Cliffie. I found it was easy to spot someone in class who might have his eye on me, then turn a brief conversation about homework into an offer of a movie, or even dinner. As with Howard, though, I didn’t feel a spark from any of them, no hidden electricity as I had with Michael Harrison.
After another depressing night out I returned to 119 Walker, and found Bev, Jeanne, and Marcia still up, sharing a bottle of wine and stories of their own romantic woes.
Marcia was saying, “…is he the man I want to have a family with? He’s got some growing up to do.”
“They all do,” I found myself saying acerbically.
Bev’s raised eyebrows urged me on. I said, “This guy tonight, he must have thought getting me into bed was the way to a lasting friendship.”
“Did you?” questioned Jeanne, offering, then withdrawing her glass. “Oh, wait, that’s right, you still don’t drink.”
“Sometimes I wish I could, or should, or…I don’t know!” Exasperated, I reached for the Chardonnay. One sip, and I remembered why I didn’t like it. I put it down, disgustedly. “Yuck. No, I must be a serial monogamist.”
“Meaning?” Bev questioned.
“Meaning, I still love that boy…”
“Mike,” Jeanne added.
“Mike,” I went on. “I’ll always love him, I just don’t know if I’ll love the man he’s becoming. Like you said, ‘He’s got some growing up to do’.”
“What, his quitting school?” Marcia chimed in.
“That’s actually a sign of maturity to me, wanting to get out into the real world. No, there’s this girl he met last summer, they’ve been writing letters every month or so.”
“So it’s OK for him, but not for you?” Jeanne asked incredulously.
“It’s not like that, really. She’s still in high school. The way he talks about it, she’s got a crush on him, and he enjoys that. Nothing more.”
“And you believe him?” Bev put in.
“One thing I’ve learned about Michael, he’s such a Boy Scout, he can’t help but tell the truth. Yes, I believe him. He’s so juvenile about the whole thing, though.”
Marcia wondered, “What is it about him that keeps you coming back?”
I tried to explain. “His mind. We have such an…affinity with each other. I love our talks, he makes everything we do an exploration, an entrancing story. I don’t know why, but I want to… I’m always doing little things for him. Like making that sweater, cooking a Boston Cream pie, his favorite. And the birthday cards I make by hand. I know that seems submissive, but it works both ways, he’s always doing stuff for me, writing poems, giving presents, keeping me safe. He makes me feel…lovable, I’m somebody who can be loved. I’ve never felt that from anybody else, outside my family. It’s hard, so hard to let that go.” I paused, feeling a warm flush start up my neck.
“And…?” Marcia prodded.
“And…OK, there’s our time in bed. Sex. It’s a mystery to me, so simple, so strong. I want to be a free and independent woman, not depend on any man. But, damn, that feels so good sometimes. To trust somebody that completely, to be loved in return.”
Silence enveloped us.
Mike called the next morning. “I’ve finally got it, I’m finally getting somewhere.”
He meant skiing, of course. He gushed over the smell, the feel, the chill, the softness of the snow. How he could now turn with his feet together, down the steepest slopes. I understood his excitement, but had no clue how that actually might feel, inside his body. Maybe that’s why I agreed when he said, “You’ve got to come out here, spring break, see what it’s like in the winter, try skiing. I know you’ll love it!”
I pictured myself in shiny, skin tight ski clothes, feeling a biting chill on my cheeks beneath a crystalline sun. Mike’s enthusiasm wormed through my head, worked its way further down, and brought out a gushing, “You’re right – I want to get away from here, the drippy weather, the drab days and endless evenings.”
I could almost hear him smile as he bubbled, “That’s great. I’m having fun, but it would be so much better with you.” A brief silence then, “Oh, I almost forgot, I got into another med school!”
“Where?” I asked in a monotone. I almost didn’t want to know. What if it were Boston, or New York?
“LA. USC. California.” He sounded so chipper. “If I end up there, I’ll try and get a job in their psych clinic this summer, no more kids’ swim teams.”
xiii
Mike was waiting for me as I walked off the plane into Stapleton airport. Once again the mile-high air in Denver had me breathless, almost panting, my cheeks flushed. He stood hesitantly, gauging my mood. Then, a soft hint of a smile from him, one raised eyebrow, and I remembered my vow after agreeing on the phone to come. Enjoy ourselves, together. Now is all that matters for this next week or so. I smiled back, he hugged me from the side with an extra little squeeze, and we walked down towards baggage claim.
“I almost didn’t get here,” Mike said as he grabbed my suitcase.
“Oh?” was all I could manage, thinking, That’s not much of a start.
“In Glenwood, an hour down the road from Aspen, it was, what, 6 this morning? The speed limit’s 25, no one’s around at all, it’s Saturday, so I’m going 40. Cop pulls me over. He said, ‘You’d better have a good excuse for this, when you see the judge,’ as he pulled out his little ticket book.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“I told him the truth, said I was going to pick up my girlfriend in Denver at the airport, I hadn’t seen her in over two months. He smiled, put the book away, then looked stern and shook his finger at me.”
“Well, at least I’m good for something,” I murmured, almost too soft for him to hear.
Mike gave a little laugh, then added, “He said he’s going to be watching for us when I come back through, I’d better be going under the speed limit.”
Jack had been busy over Christmas, as the main room upstairs and our downstairs bedroom were now wood-paneled, hiding that friendly sparkling insulation as we lay in the wide old rosewood bed. No curtains on the windows, which meant a massive light show twinkled right outside, more brilliant than any planetarium.
“Is that…the Milky Way?” I marveled.
Mike leaned over, looked out and up, and said, “Yup. It’s unreal here right now. See, no moon, it’s already set behind us. So few houses, lights, in this valley, the air so thin, the stars are much brighter here.” He eased back down, resting on his elbow as he brushed my hair back across the pillow. “Your face…your hair…” He smiled and shook his head, nuzzling down into my neck, then my face, my lips, finally drawing back to say, “And your smell, I’ve missed that smell.” With that, we fell together, enacting once again the dance we’d rehearsed so many times before.
By the time he crawled upstairs, I’d been awake two hours. “East coast time, you know,” I said, answering his puzzled look. He’d always been the early riser in our couple, me the night owl. I felt a step ahead of him for once. Finding the coffee, making pancakes for him, I saw how easy falling into domesticity might be. My anxiety increased when I remembered, today we were going skiing.
He’d already dressed in blue jeans and that sweater I’d given him the year before. We found some of Grace’s long underwear which fit me, covered that with one of her fluffy sweaters and those jeans Charlie bought me in Chicago. A long down parka and dark green wool cap completed my alpine ensemble. Rental skis and boots were next, then out to try my luck.
“OK, watch these people getting on,” Mike instructed as we waited by the chair lift. It seemed to whip around the bull wheel impossibly fast, but an attendant grabbed and held it for the next pair to ease down on the wooden seat. “You stand there, put your poles in one hand, turn back and grab that pole in the middle. Then, sit down. Watch a couple more.”
I tried to reassure myself by thinking, even if I don’t spend my life with Mike, if I never ski with him again, knowing how to get up and down a mountain will be a good skill to learn. Broaden my horizons, and all that. When it was our turn, Mike went first, then I quickly followed. As we each looked toward the center, he let me grab the pole first, then reached above my hand while we both sat down. He threw his right arm out to hold me back, and off we went. Three minutes to the top of this baby lift – “Fanny Hill”, they called it – during which he repeated over and over, “At the top, lean forward a little, stand up, and let yourself slide forward. Do not walk, keep your feet and legs together.”
I did all that, and safely made it off. But he’d neglected the little part about stopping. When I found myself still sliding, not knowing what to do, I simply fell down. He walked over, reaching down to pull me up.
I shook him away. Irritated, I said, “I’ll do it myself, all right?” But of course I couldn’t, not with those six-foot long planks on my feet getting in the way. I let him help me up, then dutifully followed his instructions about “making a ‘V’, a snowplow, then put your weight on that uphill ski as you let yourself slide down and around.”
Amazed when it worked, I zig-zagged all the way down that bunny slope, not falling once and turned back into the line of waiting skiers, ready to go again.
Mike hockey-stopped right above me, spraying snow nearly to my face, shook his head in disbelief, then said, “See, I told you you’d like it.”
Each day, we came back out, in the sun, in the snow, and kept that yo-yo rhythm, first ride up, then slide down. On the second day, I graduated to a longer lift, half way up the lower part of the mountain, the part we couldn’t see from his house, and discovered “Wipe-out Hill”, which certainly deserved its nickname. After our third time down, I began to shiver, my blue jeans caked with freezing snow, rapidly growing stiff and crackly. Mike noticed, and suggested we go inside, to thaw out and rest a bit.
“But first, let me stop in at the post office, see if there’s any mail.” He deposited me by a cozy fire in the slope-sideTimber Mill Bar, where I could warm up and look out at the other beginning skiers trying to stay upright.
He returned, frowning, waving several envelopes across his face.
“I heard that each week, the medical schools send out a list of everyone they’ve accepted to all the other schools. That way, supposedly, they know who’s in and who’s not, and unless they really, really want someone, they can feel better rejecting an applicant who’s good enough, knowing they’ll have a place somewhere else.”
I had my doubts. This story sounded apocryphal, designed to make the applicants feel better about being rejected over and over. After all, hadn’t Mike already gotten into two schools?
The letters that day, in their thin envelopes, told us he wasn’t going to Harvard or Colorado. Columbia, Michigan, St. Louis and Yale soon followed. By the time San Francisco, Stanford, and Washington came through, we’d gotten used to the idea Mike would be headed to Los Angeles next fall. “About as far as you can get from Boston,” I noted.
Mike had always been the most upbeat person I knew, able to find a silver lining in the darkest news. He speculated, “If I’ve got to be inside 8, 10 hours a day in class, and then study, it’s good to know that when I do get out, it’ll be sunny, the weather will be nice.” Then, “And I should write to the admissions director, see if he can help me get a summer job there.” He never mentioned the yawning continental chasm opening up between us. He knew, he finally knew, our days on Martha’s Vineyard, his weekend drives to Cambridge in the little red Lancer, cozy walks along the Charles, all that was gone forever. I stayed silent, too.