BOOK TWO
My school girl diary ends there, so now I rely on what letters and papers I saved, and my increasingly faulty memory
A Very Private Poem
One summer’s time away she lay with me,
and some day hence, we may again,
Her hair once more across my face,
her
drifting shoulders will find their place
along my side and by my side
She’ll be.
We’ll rest, and favor nature with our laughing,
singing
as we bring
The future to each other.
But she was called as I was called as we were called
Together,
And as she’s gone, as she puts her fingers to my lips
and tells me,
“Wait,”
As she quiets all my sobbing, telling of her loving
And her haunting,
she draws away
And dresses soundlessly,
Leaving in the morning’s sunburst.
It must be I who goes away
as she seeks strength,
a power of her own making,
Janie needs her life, as I need hers, as she needs mine.
I watch her go, she needs must go, I let her go
And give her leave
to answer growing yearnings.
She wanted life apart from mine
To give me mine
and hers together
Some future time.
3-29-69
CHAPTER SEVEN
Show A Little Faith
September, 1970
Seven AM, the traffic flowing out of downtown LA was light, not at all the gridlock I’d seen heading in the day before. The sheer breadth of the freeway overwhelmed me, compared to the narrow streets and cobbled alleys of Boston. An interchange loomed, four levels deep, its southward arc carrying us several hundred feet high, the endless basin spread out below.
“You don’t need hills here to get your views?” I queried the cabbie.
He gestured vaguely to the left, “No, we have mountains here, miss. It snows there in the winter.”
All I saw was muddy brown air, hiding any hint of nature. Soon, we pulled off the highway, aiming towards what appeared to be a UFO, suspended within two narrow arches, as if in the clutches of a giant daddy long-legs. Outside the Pacific Southwest Airways terminal, I gulped as I paid the cabbie $35, shouldered my knapsack, and headed towards the gate. Once airborne in my window seat, I stared down as we circled over the vast human-built environment below, abutting a curving shoreline on the west and – finally! – mountains to the east and north, falling abruptly to the water.
“That’s Malibu, there,” came a voice from the woman on the aisle, as she leaned across the vacant middle seat. “First time flying?” she asked sweetly. She appeared to be in her mid-thirties, dark hair neatly pulled back in a side-hanging ponytail, highlighting the gentle tan glow in her smiling face.
I laughed, “No, but first time in California. It’s not like this where I grew up, not even in New England, where I am now.”
“College?” she asked pleasantly.
“In Boston,” I nodded. I turned to face her. “I’m going back next week. First, I want to visit my Aunt and Uncle up in Marin County. And my cousins. I haven’t seen them in years. I thought since I was out here anyway, I should take advantage of it.”
“What were you doing in Los Angeles? Thinking of coming out here after school?” she wondered.
I hesitated. A strong urge swept through me, to spill my story to this stranger, safely knowing we’d never meet again. I looked down at my hands, folded neatly in my lap over the New Yorker I’d hoped to read, then back up into her friendly, expectant eyes. With half a smile and a nostalgic, wistful shake of my head, I admitted, “I just said good-by – forever, I think – to my boyfriend.”
She returned the smile, and said, “Do tell…”
I briefly filled her on my four years with Michael, leaving out all the false starts (or were they false endings?) of the past 18 months. I told her how we’d driven around LA for several hours the day before, talking about, but never stopping to see any of iconic sights: the Brown Derby, the Griffith Planetarium, the Coliseum. “I was reluctant to do anything more with him, to make memories we could never share. I told him he should be the one to discover his new life here.”
She pointed to the middle seat, asking, “May I?” Lifting the armrest, she inched her way over. “I know what you mean. Yesterday, in that stuffy lawyers’ office, I signed the papers, finally. Divorce. Ten years I gave that man, no kids, thank God. All I got was this plane ticket, the clothes on my back, and a chance to start again, redeem myself, I hope.” She frowned a bit, then brightened, holding out her hand, “Oh, I’m Justine.”
Without thinking, I said, “Sarah.” Shaking hands, I went on bravely, “Why did you split up?”
This time, a bitter smile. “He was a louse, plain and simple. He never really wanted to be married, couldn’t settle down, if you know what I mean. Good riddance, I said. And you?”
“It wasn’t like that with us. We still love – loved – each other. But it was as if we were sailing over different seas, in the same boat.”
“Different seas, same boat,” she murmured, trying out the idea.
“Yes, I knew he’d never give me all I needed. He talked about wanting to support my dreams, what I want, where I’m going. But he had his own agenda, you know?”
“Oh, don’t I know it, Sarah.”
“He’s going to be a doctor, a psychiatrist, and I want to go into psychology, clinical psychology. We like the same music, loved to talk endlessly about the world, were best friends, really. But…”
“There’s always a ‘but’, isn’t there,” Justine said, as if to herself.
“But I wanted to change the world, the war, women’s rights, things like that. He…he resisted the resistance, what he valued most was having fun, taking life as it came to him, not trying to make it better, you know.”
Justine nodded encouragingly. She was proving to be a very good listener, exactly what I needed.
“I felt he’d never give me all I needed, at least not now. He talked a lot about kids, and families, and I like that too. But, you know how it is, women, we don’t have that luxury, a family before a career.” Justine looked blank; maybe I’d overestimated the universal nature of sisterhood. Nonetheless, I plowed on, as much to myself as her.
“It was like we’d carved out our own separate island in life, one of dreams and love. But it wasn’t real, it was…”
“Like Disneyland,” she interrupted.
“I don’t know, I’ve never been there, but, yes, a fantasyland, maybe that’s what we had.” I pictured Mike and I seated in a Dumbo car, flying endlessly in circles, up and down, up and down. “I knew he’d never give me all I needed, would never give up his dreams to help me find my own.”
“You must have gotten something out of it, all that time together,” she prompted.
That surge of honesty I’d always felt with Mike erupted once again. “Yes. Yes I did. Now I know how to love, how to be loved in return. I know it’s possible, what it looks like, what it feels like. I learned what I needed, what we didn’t have – I needed a companion, not simply a lover. Someone to share the journey with.” Justine said nothing, her face again a blank, so I went on. “It wasn’t really sad, the way we said good-by. I mean, I didn’t, haven’t, cried or anything.” That didn’t feel quite right, so I added, “Or, maybe it hurt so bad, I couldn’t cry.”
“Sounds like you still don’t know what’s right, what’s wrong. I hope you don’t have to wait too long to find that out.”
“Oh, he’s still got some growing up to do, that’s for sure, so I guess I do, too. It’s not really fair, though. He gets to start his life now. I haven’t gotten on with mine, not yet.”
“You’re so very lucky Sarah, you truly are.”
Puzzled, I asked, “What do you mean?”
“Your four years with him, it wasn’t wasted time. Don’t think twice about it. It’s going to be all right. Everything will be all right for you, you started out with a good man, someone to remember fondly. Not everyone gets that, you know.”
Overhead, a tinny speaker carried instructions from the stewardess: “Please return your seat backs to their upright position, in preparation for landing. Check and make sure you have all your belongings…”
ii
Helen and Sylvia met me at the airport. As the freeway came to an end in downtown San Francisco, Helen chortled, “No Los Angeles for us, Janie. The people said, ‘No, we don’t want our waterfront, our city, scarred and hidden by one of those monstrosities.’ So they won’t be building that double-decker highway, not here, not now at least.” She pointed up Mission as we drove by. “There, that’s where we go to school, Syl and I.”
“How does that work? You drive in together? What does Uncle Carl think?”
Helen filled me in. “Oh, he can’t wait to have another lawyer or two helping him out. He takes so many cases pro bono, we need more money coming in. He even let us use the car – he rides his bike to work now, it’s only a few miles, the next town over, to the office.”
“Mom’s number one in our class,” Sylvia chimed in.
“Well, you’re right behind me, dear. Though if my hip doesn’t get any better, who knows how I’ll do this coming year?” Nearing 60, Helen was by far the oldest student there, determined not to let her age keep her from this goal, to practice law with her family.
Riding over the stunning Golden Gate, I realised that spending a few days in their rustic house, the surrounding hills still green even this late in summer, was exactly the tonic I needed. Each morning while watching birds dance on their overgrown lawn, I read the Chronicle cover-to-cover, grateful to ignore whatever current traumas perplexed the Times and Globe opinion writers back East. The biggest headlines were reserved for the chagrin felt by the California baseball teams in LA and San Francisco, during their futile attempts to catch my hometown Reds. Of course, I never had been a baseball fan, but it seemed right somehow that, this year, they would meet up with their erstwhile star, Frank Robinson, now playing for Baltimore, in the world series.
“So, what do you think about them, the Reds?” Carl asked when he saw me reading the sports section one morning.
Non-plussed, “Oh, a little bit of nostalgic pride,” was all I could come up with.
Back in Cincinnati, tanner from the fog-softened northern California sun, and plumper from the fresh fruit they’d fed me in Marin, I found a message taped to my door. “Lizzie called,” my mother had written, followed by several question marks.
At dinner that night, dad asked, “How did it go in California? Did you see him off?” He left unsaid, but very evident in his intonation, “At last?”
Mom added, “Carl and Toby, Sylvia. How is everyone? How’s Helen?”
I ignored my father. I knew if I said anything, I’d feel like crying, and I had determined to be strong and in control. Turning to my mother, I answered. “Oh, Helen, she’s such a powerhouse – going back to school, to law school – at her age, I want to have that resolve, that determination and ambition when I’m sixty, when my kids are grown.”
Mom looked a little hurt, so I quickly added, “I think she’s doing it mostly out of love for Sylvia, to make sure she follows through…”
Dad observed, “Kids? I thought you wanted to go on in school, Janie. When are you going to have time for kids?”
Again my father’s question left me churning. He expected plans, and I had none, apart from finishing my senior year at Radcliffe. I found nothing in my heart, no strong vision, no one like Helen to pull me forward, guide me to the track I only vaguely saw before me.
I drove over to Lizzie’s the next afternoon. As I got off the expressway at Seymour, I realised with a start that if I turned left, I’d drive past Mike’s house. Going right would be a half mile farther. Either way, I knew, the hole in my heart, so recently repaired, had opened up again. Not wanting to make it any larger, I turned right.
Our meeting might have started awkwardly. We had, of course, been best friends for years. Then, though only 90 miles apart at college, we had fallen out of touch. In fact, within fifteen minutes, we were once again laughing and talking in that short hand code only true intimates can share.
She laughed, “You’re ‘Sarah’ now? Why, what turned you?”
“You know. That boy.”
“Mike?”
“Uh-huh. He’s in California now, LA.”
“Med school?”
“USC.”
“Maybe I need a new name.”
“Something more formal – Elizabeth?”
She beamed. “A queen!”
“For a day?”
“For a year. My whole life!”
We shared our plans for after college. She had stuck with English, writing as her dream.
“I want to try somewhere new. The midwest, New England. I’ve done those.”
“Where?”
“West coast?”
“Any place special?”
“No, not yet. I want to go out this fall, look at schools like Oregon, Washington, UCLA. Doubt I could get into Stanford, but you never know…”
We fell silent for a bit, leafing through old copies of the New Yorker. She was another convert to that journal.
She brightened, “Hey, do you have an address for Mike? His phone number? I could see him if I go there, say ‘hi’ again. Has he changed any?”
I ignored her last question as I rooted in my purse for my date book. I scribbled the numbers on a perfume ad and tore it out, saying, “Here.”
“Thanks. Any messages?”
Again I stayed silent.
“Oh, that bad, huh?” was her reply.
iii
Adrift in Cambridge, I relied more and more on my remaining friends. Jeanne and Marcia stayed with me at 119 Oxford, giving us one spare bedroom for guests and parties. A month into the semester, on the first cold evening of Fall, Jeanne observed, “Janie – Sarah – you’ve got to come out of your shell. There are other people in the world. Has he even written to you yet?”
“I don’t care and I don’t want him to,” I softly said.
Marcia added, “Studying is fine, that’s good you have that, but you’ve got to pull yourself out of this.”
Jeanne said gently, “Maybe – don’t take this the wrong way, Sarah – but maybe, you should see someone?”
Marcia seemed to disagree. “No, Jeanne, it’s still too soon. Rebounds aren’t a good idea…”
“That’s not what I meant.” Jeanne looked directly at me. “I checked at the health center. They have a whole list of therapists who’ll see you.”
“What, you think I’m losing it?” I demanded.
“No, not at all. You are the most together girl I know. Maybe too together is the point.” My quizzical look egged her on. “You’re holding everything in, trying so hard to be stable, to hide your feelings from yourself.”
Marcia added, “Jeanne’s right. You don’t want to get stuck there, Sarah. Talking to someone who’s a stranger, but trained to help you help yourself, that might be what you need.”
I remembered Justine, on that plane trip from LA, how good it had felt to pour my feelings out. But she hadn’t known what to do with them, except nod and listen. I made an appointment to see a psychologist, making sure they referred me to a woman.
It took a month of weekly sessions simply to tell my story, before she began to tease the feelings out of me. Then another month to dust them off, set them aside, and aim me towards the future. By Christmas, she suggested I let myself “go out”.
“What does that mean?” I asked, defying her rule that “I ask the questions.”
She smiled and said, “I’ll let that one slide. It doesn’t have to be a date, with one person, per se. You said you’d been to Hillel a bit last year. Give that another try?”
Once again, I found myself in one of Rabbi Gold’s Thursday evening study sessions, sitting next to Howard Lehrman. The topic was, “The Kibbutz Movement.”
“The first Kibbutz, Deganya, was founded in what was then Palestine, in 1909, near the Sea of Galilee, by an idealistic group of eastern European Jews. Eleven of them, including two women, built a farm on land purchased by contributions from Jews all over the world,” Rabbi Gold began.
Afterwards, Howard walked me home. He eagerly began, “After I pass my boards, I’m thinking of going over there.”
“To Israel?” I asked
“To work on a Kibbutz. See if I want to stay there.”
“How does that work?”
“The ‘Law of Return’? It’s a little complicated…basically, if you can show you are a Jew by birth or marriage, you can travel there without a visa, stay and work for as long as you want, even become a citizen.”
“Would you do that? Become a citizen, I mean?”
“I don’t know, it doesn’t matter that much, because they allow dual citizenship. I wouldn’t have to give up my passport here. I want to see what it’s like there, if they do have a better society, a more inclusive sense of justice, like the rabbi said.”
Next session with my therapist, she observed, “Didn’t you say you’d already gone out with Howard before?”
“Well, this wasn’t really a date. We met at Hillel, and talked a little afterwards.”
“How did that feel, seeing him again like that?”
I hesitated, then admitted, “Howard’s just a friend. I don’t feel anything special for him. But I do like being with him.”
“How so?”
“He’s a good friend, someone I could live with.”
“Like a roommate, not a lover?”
“I guess that’s right. Makes me wonder, how do I know when the spark is there?”
She simply nodded, then said, “Time’s up for today.”
Feeling a little clearer, about both Mike and Howard, I let myself drift back towards men. I discovered, in those therapy sessions, how I needed to keep my feelings and expectations in check. “A little low-key fun,” was how she put it.
Mike finally wrote several times that year, terse letters describing the oddness of the weather there, the new friends he’d made, a ski trip he’d taken to see his sister in Sun Valley. Around my birthday, near the end of school, I received a package from him. Inside were a small toy Jeep, a poem, and…well, first, the poem:
The land-locked seagull, trembling as it dives
even as its eyes scan helplessly,
Searching for an ocean in the trees below.
Like a pontoon plane in Kansas, the white-beaked bird
feels lost and homeless, landless in the never-ending land.
An old man waddles, his grey-haired wife shuffling on behind,
a tiny little boxer prancing tightly at her calves,
Away from the waves, turning back from the sand,
Toward the bluffs and the trees and the grass.
Overhead –
of course, where else?
Flies the grey-flecked gull to the sea.
The man, leaning on his cane pivots slowly to his wife and dog,
and as if it were all he ever had to do,
Reflects and, addressing both, asks,
“Why should that gull be alone, flying home to the sea?”
Mike ended his letter with the news that Lizzie – Elizabeth, now – had indeed contacted him, and through a convoluted comedy of errors (something about a landlord not allowing a mixed group to rent his three bedroom duplex) would be sharing an apartment with him in Hollywood for the summer. He did not make it clear whether this was platonic or otherwise, but he did note they could only afford one bedroom.
iv
It took me several weeks of crumpled paper, but finally, I was able to send this off to Mike:
Dear Mike,
And so my roommate just asked me who I was writing to & I said “my old boyfriend in California.” Now does that make sense. Anyway, I realised that I don’t totally want to lose touch with you – though for a while that seemed a possibility. Thank you for the Jeep – what can I say – all debts are paid. Oh fuck, I don’t mean to be maudlin. I sat there packing up and looked at 2 yrs. of your letters, threw them out once, then retrieved them & started going through them, decided to send them to you to keep & started writing you a letter & then just threw them all away again. And it doesn’t mean anything. That, I suppose, is the problem.
Factually, I am living in Cambridge this summer. Marcia & I were going to go to Europe, neither of us very decided. In early June, her father said, “no”, I got a job, later he said “Yes” but somehow by that time I no longer felt up for the adventure & really wanted to stay here. I still feel torn about it — mainly guilt to Marcia for finking out. My job is, for the summer – and I still say that I’ll leave in Fall to travel, esp. Israel, for as while. The job isn’t overwhelmingly wonderful – a research assistant at a Sleep & Dream lab. The last 2 wks & next week I have been the secretary of the lab as well – which in a strange way I like. For years I had a feeling of how awful being a secretary is – but now I know & appreciate its degradation; in a way I feel as if I understand women better too – the fact of how many women do this all their lives & what it does to one. Also, I’m living with lots of people, something I feel is important – a “skill” – to learn. Living at 119 Oxford St, Apt 3, as a matter of fact with 5 people you don’t know, they are not close friends, but it has been working out & I’m learning.
Somehow I guess this year was my first real year in Cambridge & I’ve conquered a lot of bug-a-boos. for me & feel a part of it. I don’t want to get sucked in, but feel I can live here if I want. Leslie is back, she married Paul, they are wonderful together & I hope to see more of Bev and Jeanne (Jeanne graduated Phi Beta Kappa, I graduated magna).
Mike – I like me now. Not that I’m all straightened out or a good person. This year was a process of finding parts – large parts – of myself through negative self-definition, always a hard and depressing enterprise – finding out all the me’s I wasn’t & was not going to be. And so now I am somehow stronger – I cry a lot & still daydream too much – but somehow I feel more control over me & what I want to do. Slowly, I’m even learning to relinquish some of that control – to feel a little more. I think that with you I could feel – physically & emotionally – but not always & now it’s something I have to fight to win back & probably go back to my shrink. I’m slow, but I learn. Things about feeling — telling people that Lizzie is with you in Los Angeles makes a great story but I can’t figure out how I feel about it. Like, somehow I feel numb to it, yet I’m not sure if the numbness is fear of caring or lack of feeling — and now it scares me a bit. In Dories Lessing – The Golden Notebook – one of the characters says how people go to psychiatrists because they can’t feel anymore, & it’s true.
Speaking of Doris Lessing – I think one of the things I like about me now is greater awareness of what can only be referred to as “women’s things.” Being more aware of the societal-sexist ways I am fucked up & fucked over as well as individual things. Fighting back against that for my personhood. Sure, tonight I’m waiting for a boy-to-call-me-back, but I’ve stopped letting people care for me – “do you have your keys” – simply because I’m a woman. It’s a hard line for me & I tend to be so defensive that it seems aggressive – again, it’s hard to give up the control if you can win it. I suppose that I would seem different to you in these ways.
No, I’m not going to talk about “us” – I don’t suppose that is really very relevant. To be honest I’m really curious about you & Lizzie, partly because I care about both of you, partly out of sheer curiosity. And I wish you would write me & tell me about you & about her — I guess mainly about you.
Many, many Cambridge people send you regards – as always. Please write; I really don’t want to lose contact with you.
My The address until the end of summer: 119 Oxford St, Apt 3 Cambridge (I think the Zip code is 02140, but I’m not sure) – if you feel inclined to call ever – 617-491 ——
I hope the summer is good – say hello to Lizzie for me.
Love,
Sarah
(ps – a very lovely record – closely tied to the Vineyard, James Taylor, etc — Carole King – Tapestry.
8 July 1971