Triblog

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

Howard dropped me off a few blocks south of MacArthur Park on Westlake. The imposing two-story white house featured an expansive front yard gone to seed, yet sporting a flourishing avocado tree. Incongruous amongst the teeming apartment complexes surrounding it, it seemed air-lifted from another time and place.

“Are you sure about this, Sarah?” he asked for the fifth time.

I nodded. “Come back here at 3, OK? I’ll be fine.” The late May LA sun had already seared through the morning fog, and I blinked rapidly trying to adjust as I climbed the porch steps.

Mike waited at the door, that Elvis-half smile flickering through his face. Impossibly tan, his sun-bleached hair now meandered in waves and curls half-way down his neck, almost covering his ears.

“Your hair…” we both said together, chuckling nervously.

“I didn’t think I’d like it short, but, it looks OK. Really,” he said, while opening the door, and ushering me through a foyer, walls splotched with grease marks on the fading white paint, the floor covered by a threadbare carpet needing a good vacuuming.

“How many of you here?” I asked. He gave me quick tour: two bedrooms on the first floor, four upstairs. The dining room housed two nursing students, sisters. Across from them, another med student and his live-in girl-friend. Upstairs, Mike sported the largest room – “I found the house, so I took first choice” –  with three other med students, one woman, two men, up there with him.

“Wow, eight people,” I noted. “It doesn’t look that crowded.”

“Maybe because we don’t have much furniture?”

“Just like my place now – four men, four women. How’s that working out here?” 

“The girls all hold their own,” was his response. He pointed out the main feature of his room, a “bed” consisting of four planks, stained light brown, nailed together, holding a waterbed mattress in check. He pushed on it lightly, setting off concentric rippling waves. “Come on, let’s go out, walk up to the park, we can talk along the way. How long did you say you’d be here?”

“He’s picking me up at 3.”

“Good. There’s a deli up on Alvarado, we can eat lunch there. Langer’s.”

Three or four blocks later, we’d arrived.

“Look at all the people!” I exclaimed. “I didn’t think anyone walked here.”

“Yup, LA’s a real city, not an endless suburb, like some people think. Bustling.” Entering the park, we immediately encountered a large lake, home to honking geese and some of those human-powered pedal boats. Mike steered us to a bench along the shore, shaded by several palms.

I hadn’t felt awkward at all, and Mike seemed equally at ease. I wondered what might be broiling beneath the surface, in both of us.

“How’s your mother?” I ventured.

He smiled. “She’s amazing. Back at work.”

“You mean she’s seeing patients? Didn’t she have to learn how to talk again?”

He nodded. “They cut off half her tongue in surgery. Then she had that stroke last fall…”

“Lizzie told me about that. She was with you?”

“Yeah we were all in the car, my parents, and came around a corner on the way up to the house – remember that road?” I nodded. “All of a sudden she sounded garbled, and by the time we got up the hill, she had trouble walking, and told us she thought she’d had a stroke. So calm, almost in charge.”

“A lady with an iron will,” I added. I wanted to ask him about Elizabeth, but was afraid to open that up.

He made it easy. “You know, Elizabeth decided last month, ‘We’re not right together,’ or something like that.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Remember Vanessa, the girl in our house back there? She had a friend, called him her boyfriend, in grad school at Oregon. Arranged for Lizzie to take a room in his house. She never told me directly, but I think they took up together, and that’s why she called it off, with me.”

“How’d that make you feel, Mike?”

“Boy, you really are going to be a psychologist, aren’t you, asking how I feel.”

“You know, I started seeing a therapist when I got back to school , after we…broke up? Whatever it was we did?”

He looked down at his sandals, frowned, then said, “I thought I was the one who got messed up by that, not you. You seemed to self-assured, like you knew exactly what, who you needed, what we each should do.”

“And you?” I stopped, not sure if I was ready to go there yet. “I asked you about Lizzie, and how you felt about her.”

“It’s funny. I like – liked? – her as a friend, first of all, of course. Then we moved in together, and that was so easy, just like a roommate, but a girl. Just a good companion, I thought.”

“But you only had one bedroom?”

“Yeah, maybe that’s what started it? I don’t know, one night I found her there in bed with me, and you probably know where that led.”

Now my turn to frown, I gritted my teeth and simply nodded.

“Funny, though we were friends, companions, then sharing a bed all summer. But I never really felt I loved her, ever.” He paused, sucked his teeth, then said, “I mean, I was hurt when she said we were done, but I think it was just my pride, not my heart being hurt, you know? Still, I was a little angry at her.”

“How could you get mad at Lizzie? She’s so sweet, or at least she was.”

“Oh, she still is. Apparently, she thought I wasn’t worth her time.”

“Come on, Mike, she’s up there in Eugene, you’re down here, about to start six years of the grind. What’s she supposed to do, wait for you forever? Give up her life to come live with you?” As I spoke, I realised what I was really trying to say, who I was really talking about. I decided, two years of therapy, I can go there. I thought of taking his hands; instead, I tried to capture his gaze. “Mike, you do know, don’t you, that I didn’t want to, I tried very hard not to, hurt you.”

Grinding his teeth, staring hard right back at me, he said, “Janie, you did. You…I was…I am…so angry, mad at you.” He didn’t shout, he didn’t even sound all that perturbed. Resignation was what I felt from him. Relaxing his shoulders, his eyes filled up with tears.

While he sniffed, trying to hold it in, I said, “Mike, I was angry, too. Not about us, I mean, we can talk more about that,. I was angry at you. And Lizzie. For getting together, for…I don’t know for what. I know you two weren’t trying to hurt me, you were just being yourselves.” I took a deep breath, hoping I could help him. “My therapist, she finally got me to see, it was not you, or Lizzie. I was the one choosing to be mad, to be angry at you. That helped me so much, once I understood that. It’s the main reason why I’m able to be here with you now. I don’t want to tell you what to do, what to feel. Lord knows I’m not a shrink, and certainly don’t ever want to be yours. But think about that, please?” I pleaded.

He nodded, still with a sad, almost sullen aura in his face. I waited.

Finally, slowly, he came out with, “I can’t just call you up, the way I do, say, my sister. I can’t keep in contact, fraternally, like that, because…because we’ve been in love. Caring about what happens, in an abstract way, to you – I can’t, I don’t want to, I don’t know how to do that. I’m not willing – able, maybe – to begin doing that, to expose myself again to the same dependency, that intimate affection we previously had.” He fell silent again. Geese honked and flapped out on the lake, the sun reflected mercilessly off the asphalt by our feet.

At last, he concluded “I guess you’d say, if I can’t have everything, I’d rather have nothing at all.”

I couldn’t leave him, leave us like that. “Mike, we can’t resurrect the past. You know that.” He nodded.  “But we can learn – I can learn – not only about what I did with you, but about what I’ll do, where I’ll go. We both can have good lives, will have good lives.” 

“But not with each other,” he said, almost inaudibly.

“Not, not with each other, not any more.”

“But not with each other,” he said, almost inaudibly.

“Not, not with each other, not any more.” I tried, light-heartedly, “So how is you love life now? Anyone new?”

“Sure. I mean, no. A few dates, but…I think you spoiled me.”

“Meaning…?”

“Meaning, I guess, I’m learning that not everyone likes me the way you did. You made it all so easy.”

I steered us back to future plans. “You said this is your last free summer for six years…”

After a cleansing sigh, he said, “Now we have clinical, the last two years of school. It’s like being an intern, rotations on all the services for sixteen months. First the required ones, then, the fourth year, some electives, finally get a start on real doctor training.”

“What’s first?”

“Pediatrics, then Ob-Gyn. Internal Medicine, and Surgery.”

“Psych?”

“I don’t know, Janie. The times I’ve done the clinic here, it’s been…underwhelming. Not what I expected. All drugs and confusion. The patients never seem to get better, the doctors don’t really have a real solid understanding of why they do what they, what works, what doesn’t. All guesswork.”

“Are you going to work anywhere this summer, then?”

“No. I’m planning on driving up the coast, see my aunt and cousins in Fremont, near Oakland. Keep on going to Seattle, my mother’s sister lives there. Sun Valley, with Shelly, Snowmass, on to Chicago.”

“Chicago?”

“The Olympic Trials for swimming are there, I want to see Molly swim, see if she makes the team.”

“By yourself? Where are you going to stay?”

“My dad gave me another Dodge, a Charger. It’s got a huge engine, goes real fast. The back seats fold down, there’s room enough for me to sleep. I’ll just pull over anywhere, I guess.”

We had our lunch at Langer’s. walked and talked around the park, then drifted back to his house just before 3, where Howard waited in the driveway.

“How’d it go?” he asked as I got in.

“OK, I answered. “Not bad. Kind of weird, but good, you know?”

********

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

Dear Mike,

It wasn’t that I didn’t try to answer you before (this summer), it was simply that I was congenitally unable. I started to write, but couldn’t finish it. But I shall try again.I guess my first feeling on reading your letter, after all the emotion, was something like —after waiting for you to express emotion for a year, all fo a sudden there it was – and a bit overwhelming. But

Where I am is still in Cambridge – for a while more. Looking for a job now – I was working as a research assistant at a Sleep & Dream lab but it was incredibly boring. I suppose the main reason I am staying here [is] because of someone I am going out with, or whatever the right expression is. It’s a bit strange sounding, I imagine, to hear that – me, so proud of my independence – but it is the way it is. My relationship with Howard is very different than my relationship with you—I suppose I really resented your comparing Lizzie & me, but it’s also true that it’s very different though I’m not sure how to compare it.And a lot of the difference has to do with my being out of school & us both being in Cambridge. I suppose I feel a lot more that I am on my own terms & stronger. And that probably has to do with therapy as well, which is now very intense & beneficial I think.Working things out about parents & emotions – I think what I want most is some way of figuring out trusting my feelings & living my own life — familiar themes to you I imagine. I suppose a good example would be — I knew perfectly well that it was upsetting that you were living with Liz this summer, but I really didn’t even know what I felt about it — all the feelings were much too “intellectualized”. I don’t have any firmer grasp on what “happened” between us, why we moved apart, and every once in a while I wake up late at night and remember things between us & get very sad and wonder what it all might have meant. And of course I don’t know. I suppose I still believe some of those things of being my own person—talking to my shrink, I suppose, that we could have done that together, I could have done it with you—like seeing other people that spring in Cambridge – but we were never strong enough, I never worked hard enough to do it together.

Sorry this is so garbled.  I suppose what it is now is having a firmer sense of myself as a woman – both sexually and in terms of being adult. I don’t know how to talk to you about sex, I don’t think we ever did enough [talking about that], but for me it has been taken out of that ethereal, I-want-to-have-your-babies plane to a more real one, of letting sex be real & enjoyable simply for what it is. I was always too scared with you to ever let myself enjoy sleeping with you — that is not to discount it, but my joy was always at the removed place of “I’m so happy doing this with Mike” instead of “this feels so wonderful for me.” And I suppose that comes as much from unpleasant experiences & just growing up as from anything else. And But by now it certainly makes me feel better about myself, just as feeling more responsible for my self does — I pay my own bills & cook dinner for 6 & and all those kind of things you do too.

Is any of this coming through? You certainly still know me – the longing & insecurities – but there’s more too, I suppose. Maybe if we wrote we could get a better sense of each other – I would try. My mother said your mother had a stroke this fall – is she all right? I suppose I was pretty hurt you didn’t tell me, but it isn’t major. But please tell me about her. And how is Lizzie, & you&Liz? In other words, write. If you can call for free, call. My number here is 617 – 491 – ——, but most night’s I sleep at Howard’s & that is most likely where I am if my roommates say I’m not home; you can call me there, but I suppose that depends largely on your feelings. Anyway, the number there is 491 – ——. And I’ll be at 119 Oxford at least for awhile. And tell me about you & [I] shall try more, again.

Love, 

    Sarah

I feel this is very inadequate – there are many things to say, about first loves & what they mean and the feeling that maybe someday it will always workout – I guess I want you to know I still think about these things — and wondering if I’ll ever come to LA & see you again – but I’ll try to write about that again – 

Janie

20 November 1971

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!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

Howard finished law school that spring; over the summer, while he volunteered at the Cambridge law clinic as he studied for his boards, we involuntarily passed from being occasional companions to true friends. I still saw my therapist most weeks, so I no longer needed a boy – a man – to hear my confused feelings. With Mike, the combination of first love, innocent love, progressing to friendship, through intimacy, then butting up against our inability to fully say good-bye, had tortured us on the downslope of our relationship, finally preventing any hope of breaking through to a life together.

So one day that fall, I woke up and realised, Howard and I are now a couple, and that feels safe and warm. But not the same, it never could be the same, as before. A full employment guarantee for my therapist, I suppose.

Early November, she asked, seemingly out of the blue, “Why do you suppose we so often refer to sex euphemistically as ‘sleeping together’?” Almost as if she herself were struggling with the idea, and wanted help in understanding.

“Trust” floated through my head. Out loud, I ventured, “At work, I see all these people asleep all the time. It’s my job to study them, to observe and record. Sometimes I wonder, ‘How can they trust us, strangers really?’

“Trust?” she repeated.

“They look so…vulnerable. Unmoving, peaceful, but helpless as a newborn baby. We could do anything to them, before they knew it.”

“Babies. Hmm…”

“Yeah, so when we’re – when I’m – having sex, I am, I feel completely open, totally at risk. I have to trust my partner, in so many ways, before, during and after.”

She speculated, “And might a partner feel the same way?”

Inwardly, I startled, realising I’d always been so wrapped up in my own feelings, of vulnerability, anxiety, that I’d never considered he – whoever he might be – could have anxieties of his own. “It’s hard, thinking about this. It is wrapped up in babies, and there were are, usually naked, dependent, almost babies ourselves.”

“What else?”

I wondered what she meant, where she might be pointing me. “Love. It’s all wrapped up in love, isn’t it?”

“Is it?”

Once again I started, as I compared my feelings about those two very different men. Those feelings weren’t the same, for sure. With Howard, we worked well together, but the childish romantic passion I’d had with Mike simply wasn’t there.

********

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

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 senses. 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 to lose contact with you.

[I added my address “until the end of summer”, and my phone number – if you feel inclined to call ever, then]

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

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!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

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 really 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 too,” I softly said. 

Marcia added, “Studying is fine, that’s good you have that, but you’ve got to pull yourself out.”

“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 are not so good an idea, I think…”

“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, “You don’t want to get stuck there, Sarah. Jeanne’s right. Talking to someone who’s a stranger, but trained to help you help yourself, that might be just what you need.

I remembered Justine, on that plane trip from LA, how good it had felt to pour my feelings out. But she didn’t know 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. Maybe it’s time to 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 as if you are a citizen 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 really 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 just met a 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 more than a friend. He’s someone I could live with I think.”

“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 low. “A little low-key fun,” was how she put it.

Mike had written several times that year, terse letters describing the oddness of the weather there, the new friends he’d made, even a ski trip he’d taken to see his sister in Sun Valley. “I think there’s a story there – I’ll send it to you when I finish.” 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 pontooned 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,

as if it were all he ever had to do,

Addresses both, reflects and 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) ended up sharing a 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 there.

********

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

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 you know,” 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 dancing on their over-grown lawn, I read the Chronicle cover-to-cover, grateful to ignore whatever current traumas perplexed the Times and Globe opinion writers. 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-shrouded 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. 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 right past Mike’s house. The other way 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 school, 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.”

“What about 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?”

“I’m thinking – west coast?”

“Any place special?”

“No, not yet. I want to go out this fall, look at schools like Oregon, Seattle, maybe even California. 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? Maybe a 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, tore it out, saying, “Here.”

“Thanks. Any messages?”

Again I stayed silent.

“Oh, that bad, huh?” was her reply.

********

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

Seven AM, the traffic flowing out of downtown LA was light, not at all the gridlock heading in. The sheer breadth of the freeway overwhelmed me, compared to the narrow streets and cobbled alleys of Boston/Cambridge. 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, I guess, this is how you get your views?” I queried the cabbie.

He gestured vaguely to the left, “No, we have mountains there, miss. Snow’s 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 spider-like narrow arches. Outside the PAS terminal, I paid the cabbie $35, shouldered my knapsack, and headed towards the gate. Airborne in my window seat, I stared down as we circled over the vast human-built environment below, abutted by the 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 our 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 aglow 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.

“Back in Boston,” I answered. 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 moving here?” 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 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 think I was reluctant to do anything more with him, to make any 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 think 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 think.” She frowned a bit, then brightened. “Oh, I’m Justine.”

Without thinking, I said, “Sarah.” Shaking hands, I went on bravely, “Why did you split up?”

Another wistful 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’m thinking. And you?”

“It wasn’t like that with us. We still love – loved – each other, I think. But it was as if we were sailing different seas, in the same boat.”

“Different seas, same boat,” she murmured, as if trying out the idea.

“Yeah, I knew he’d never give me all I needed. He talked about wanting to support me, 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, maybe a fantasyland, 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. What I needed, what we did 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 just 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 search 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 really 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…”

********