Triblog

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

“I’m going to try the ‘Introduction to Psychoanalysis’ course with Katy Winters,” Mike said as we traveled east along that unending stretch of western Kansas which if anything, was even flatter than before. “You studied Freud last year, right? What should I know about it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, for one thing, why are analysts in movies always asking, ‘How does that make you feel?’ What is it about feelings, why are they so concerned with that?”

I’d been thinking about this for months, both formally in class, and in life, talking with friends. “It’s pretty simple, really. Emotions drive what we think, what we believe, how we behave. Think of it this way. When I  saw the war on TV, or civil rights protestors getting fire-hosed, my immediate sensation was, ‘That’s wrong!’ I felt anger. Then, I started to come up with, formulate, reasons why it’s wrong, using words to describe that emotion. Or take your reaction to another person. Usually, our first reaction is a feeling, ‘I like him,’ or ‘Ugh! He’s a creep.’ After that we begin to figure out why we feel that way, and start to explain the feeling.”

Mike stared at the unbending four-lane ahead. I couldn’t tell if he was listening. I turned the radio on, trying to find music hidden within the static.

“What are you doing? I can’t think with that noise!” He looked over at me. “I still don’t get it. How can talking about feelings help anyone change what they think, what they do?”

“Are you sure you want to be a psychiatrist? I’ll try again. First, you feel something, you have an attitude about a person or an idea. Then, you come up with a rationale to describe why you think that way, or why you did something. If you want to change what you are thinking or doing, you must start with the feeling that is driving the rational thought or behavior.”

Mike frowned. “OK, so…Love. Fear. Anger. Sadness. Joy. Gratitude. Those are what we really are, and words are just attempts by the verbal part of our brain to describe, to share those feelings with others, or make sense of them to ourselves?” He waited a beat, then went on. “So, can it be a two-way street? Emotions drive thoughts and actions, but can words change the emotions?”

Exasperated, I replied, “Listen, buddy, where have you been the past three years? Don’t you remember all those poems you wrote? And showed to me, sent to me?”

Shrugging his shoulder, he softly said, “Yeah?”

With a heavy heart, I slowly told him, “Those poems, those words, they’re part of why I fell in love with you.”

We both fell silent, the wind coursing through the open windows the only sound.

  Finally, Mike decided, “I think I get it…you don’t love my words, you love the images they create. In you.”

“And you’ve always said, you don’t know what you think, what you feel, until after you read what you’ve written. The feeling creates the poem, then reading the poem tells you what you feel.”

Mike found the Motel 6 in Topeka without a hitch this time. Driving up, he pointed excitedly, “Look! A drive-in! Paul Newman movie – wanna see it?”

Being with someone continuously, I began to realise, is quite difficult. There’s only so far one can go just talking and sharing the same space. An isolated couple is an anomaly. Activity, friends, even a crowd of strangers, any outside influence helps smooth the ennui of habit and routine. Movies had always helped.

Afterwards, shuffling towards bed in the cramped motel room, I found myself saying, “After they robbed that train, and the sheriff…”

“Pinkertons”

Exasperated, I agreed, “OK, Pinkerton!” He couldn’t leave it alone, he always had to be right. “The Pinkertons followed them all day, and they came to that cliff. The only thing they could do was jump…”

“One of them, Robert Redford, didn’t want to…”

Closing my eyes in frustration, I went on, “He couldn’t swim, but he took the leap anyway. Then they hit the water, and it broiled and pounded all around them, taking them down the river, totally out of their control.”

“Yeah, that was the highlight of the movie for me, too. Funny, dramatic…” He was falling asleep He probably didn’t hear me when I said, “That’s the way I feel with you. You and I, we didn’t want to, but we jumped off the cliff together, not knowing what would happen. Now, we’re down in the river, it’s all around us, it’s bigger and stronger than us, and we don’t know where it’s going.” Seeing Mike’s slow and  sonorous breathing, I knew he could not hear me. “I don’t think I want to be buddies with you all the way to Bolivia, to the end. I need to wash up on shore, and soon.” 

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

A few miles out of town, we meandered up a valley road, then drove along a hillside to a rutted two-lane dirt path. Mike eased the car up to a boxy house covered with vertical honey-colored cedar slats, parking next to his parents’ Buick station wagon. Once inside, I stopped cold, mesmerized by the view filling windows on three sides. The ceiling rose up behind, to five more windows letting in the last evening light. On the right, clouds, cherry melting into orange, hugged the divide we had just come over, thirty miles away. In front of us rose the hills outside of Aspen, its ski runs all we could see. To the left, a massive ridge, so close and high I had to tilt back my head to see its treeless top, grey and granite with snow-filled crevices. Ski trails ran down its face, trimmed with dark green firs, a rocky halo at the tree line. As a walked through the open room, each step brought a new perspective of this rocky, bulky natural sculpture. I could feel the pull this view had on Mike and his father.

Jack smiled and waved at me, sweeping his hand around while saying, “We only had the house studded in this summer. Right now, I’m finishing wiring all the electrical, and I’ve put up the insulation in the bedroom walls downstairs.” He turned to Mike, continuing, “Shelly’s old bed is in that big room down there, the one with folding doors.” He went over to a table cluttered with tools, picking up a wire cutter and some screwdrivers. “Why don’t you help me with the last few outlets, Mike?”

With that, G came out up, smiling. She took me by the elbow, guiding me to a couch and chairs. The entire floor was open, with a kitchen towards the rear, and a dining/living area filling the rest. “I want to hear all about Radcliffe, and your studies, what you’re thinking, doing. Mike says you’re taking classes with Jerome Kagan?”

“He’s such a wise and curious man, I want to learn everything he can tell me.”

“Tell you about what?”

“About how people grow, starting with babies, all the way to…the end. How they create their inner world, and how that personality engages with the rest of life.”

G nodded, silently encouraging me. I told her of my plans for graduate school, a Ph.D in psychology, then studying and working with children. I told her about Cambridge, how it had become my home, how Boston was a special place. As I talked, her eyes seemed to mist over, perhaps recalling a life she too had dreamed about, but left behind. Then see asked, “And Mike, you and Mike, how are you getting along?”

With her eyebrows raised expectantly, her lips and cheeks a gentle smile, without a word she tugged out of me all the things I wanted to tell her son, but had felt too stifled to try. How he sometimes wouldn’t wait for me to figure things out on my own. “His mind’s so quick, he can’t wait for me to do something like adjust the mirrors in the car. He knows I’m just as smart as he is,   why does he have to be so impatient?”

While she listened, G opened her mouth, her lower lip across her teeth, and explored the back of them with her tongue. Slightly embarrassed, she apologized, “Sorry. I’ve got something under here, feels like food caught, but it;’s inside, like a cyst or swollen gland. Go on.”

“How do you do it, you and Jack. Stay together for thirty years, without driving each other insane?”

With a rueful smile, she replied, “Companionship is different from love, or friendship for that matter. Learning how to live with someone is a life-long proposition.”

“But how do you do it?” I almost pleaded. “Where do you begin?”

“It’s never easy. People are particular, they each have their own thoughts, ideas, emotions, and ways of doing things. We can change a little to make someone else happy, but in the end, each of us is trying to make herself, himself happy. That’s a good place to start. Then, to live with someone else, day-in, day-out, you have to really…” She struggled as if finding the right words to express her thought. “The other person has to be so important to you, that you simply can’t live without him. It helps a lot if he feels the same way.”

“How do you know that?”

Just then, Mike and Jack came back upstairs, my question hanging, unanswered.

Next morning, Jack & G left for Cincinnati, leaving Mike and I to explore on our own. Following a rock-filled creek, we drove 10 miles up from town, rounded a bend, coming to a mile-long valley ending abruptly at a mountain resembling a massive, off-kilter cathedral, complete with two towers. Small mounds of branches and mud plugged the meandering creek, interrupted several times by piles of bleached-white logs, backing up the sluggish water into a series of small ponds.

“That would be a great place for a golf course,” I observed cheerily.

“I don’t think the beaver would like it,” Mike laughed.

“Beaver?”

“See their homes there, the mounds of dirt? And their dams, all those white piles of trees they cut down.”

“Beaver?” I repeated. “I thought they were all gone, like the buffalo. Trappers killed them off, or something.”

“Well, not around here, apparently.”

Mike turned off the pavement onto an irregular path, parked, and announced, “We’re here. Ashcroft.”

Expecting a town, all I saw were a few grey buildings, devoid of all adornment, wind snaking though the holes created by missing slats. Behind me, dogs howled incessantly. “What’s that?” I asked, pointing across the road.

“Oh, Toklat Lodge. They keep huskies there, tourists come up in the winter for dog sled rides, and cross-country skiing. Remember ‘Sgt. Preston of the Mounties?’ These dogs were in that show. Come on, let’s take a little hike.”

Mike’s idea of a “little hike” meant three miles steeply up a dusty trail filled with roots and rocks, which quickly made me regret my choice of footwear. “I can’t do this, Mike. My shoes, they slip on the rocks, and my feet hurt.” My legs had quickly tired as well, but I dared not mention that.

“We’re not at the top yet, not at the lake,” he whined.

I stood firm. “No, I’m not going on another hike unless I can get some sturdier shoes.”

Reluctantly, Mike turned around and started back, but not before he found a branch under one of the trees. Pounding its end onto a rock, he said, “Here, use this as a hiking stick on the way down.”

The next day, new boots on my feet, my hair in its plump single braid, wearing a stylish cotton red-striped oxford shirt with khaki shorts for comfort, I agreed to accompany him once again on a walk to what Mike touted as “the best mountains you’ll see anywhere.” Another narrow road rising steeply next to another fast-flowing creek, another mountain sharply peaking towards the clouds, this one uncannily like an Egyptian pyramid.

Passing a small corral where several horses waited with saddles, Mike pointed, “Look! When I was ten or twelve, we took a ride out of here, from this ranch, up to the backside of that ski area. Not Aspen,” he said, motioning to the left, “but the Highlands, over there,” gesturing to the right. “Wanna try?”

I could not imagine what it might feel like, to sit legs splayed widely while tilting back and forth, side-to-side at the whims of a nervous equine. “I thought we were going to do this hike…”

“Right. Maybe some other time.”

A few minutes farther, as we got closer and closer to that jaw-dropping Pyramid Peak (that was its actual name, according to Mike), we rounded a corner to the right. Twin slabs resembling gargantuan bells emerged suddenly in front of us, their faces etched with layer upon layer of grey granite,. They looked like no mountain I had ever seen, certainly not like New England’s rounded slopes, tree-covered all the way to the top. I kept staring.

Finally, “Is that where we’re going? Can we walk up to their base? What are they?”

“Those,” Mike slowly announced, “are the Bells, the Maroon Bells. And, yes, that’s where we’re going, walking right up to them.”

“How far?”

“Maybe a mile and a half. Two lakes, then we turn around, unless we want to camp out over night.”

With my new boots, and my crooked hiking stick, I had an easier time. Each step, each corkscrew in the trail, brought another exhilarating vista. Used to the thin air now, I felt more invigorated than exhausted by the effort, willing to give Mike a hug when we reached the silvery lake set amongst the boulders at the bottom of the Bells. He smiled, shook his head, and said, “See. I knew you’d like this”

That night, as we lay in the Shelly’s old bed, I looked around at the shiny insulation between the wooden studs lining the bedroom walls. “This is such a friendly room,” I observed.

“Friendly? What do you mean?”

“These walls – they’re sparkling at us, almost like they’re winking. I feel a little bit happy here, “ I tried, hoping I could convince myself. Mike smiled with a short, contented close-mouth laugh. Squeezing my shoulder, we fell asleep in the luxurious expansive confines of that 19th-century four-poster.

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

We left St. Louis after lunch, traveling through rolling hills, farms, and open woodland, a wider vista then crowded New England and Ohio. Mike fiddled with the radio, trying to find the clearest AM radio stations, which featured Paul Harvey news, stock reports, and twangy country music. He grumbled, “It’s better at night when the big ones, like KOMA and KOA, come in. They play songs I…we…want to hear, not this stuff.” He lifted his right foot off the accelerator, and started driving with his left.

“Why are you doing that?” I asked, pointing at his foot resting near mine on the transmission hump between our seats.

“It feels better. I don’t get as tired. Maybe I’m left footed?”

“I can drive, you know.”

“Uh, great! OK, there’s a Stucky’s before we get to Columbia, I think, you can take over there.” He glanced over, eyeing my Marimekko, and asked, “What was it like there at Jeanne’s? What did you do?”

“I met Ruth, her aunt. She’s living part-time in Israel, spends her spring and summer on a kibbutz there. Told me any time I want to go, I should get in touch.”

“Are you thinking about it?”

“Well, not now, of course. But after I graduate, I want to travel, I want to see other parts of the world. It’s so cliché, everyone goes to Europe. I’d like to do something different.”

“Why Israel?”

I looked over at him, trying to decide if he was serious. No hint of a smile on his face or sarcasm in his voice, so I went on, “I feel a pull there. It’s where Jews go now. We’ve even got dual citizenship if we want it.” I wasn’t sure myself why the idea intrigued me. Was it a tribal, or maybe a religious thing?

He ventured, “That hasn’t really been a thing for you, I thought, being Jewish.”

“Ruth said it feels different, being Jewish there. She says she’s not always wondering how, or if she fits in, that it feels good being more like everybody else.”

“I thought there was a war, or bombs all the time.”

“Apparently everybody’s in the army, even the women, when they’re young. The country may be surrounded, but the people in it don’t think about that all the time, they know they can protect themselves, not like when they lived in Europe.”

Mike nodded, saying, “Yeah, I get it. A home in the homeland.”

Stucky’s specialized in pecan log rolls and kitsch. While the attendant filled our gas tank, we strolled the aisles, looking at small plaques with home-spun sayings and heavily sugared confections.

“They should have a dentist’s office next door,” I whispered. “Make a fortune.”

Mike took over driving again just outside of Independence. “You know there’s a tabernacle here, just like the one in Salt Lake City.”

“A Mormon one?”

“Well, kind of, but, no.” He explained, “After Joseph Smith was killed, back in Nauvoo, and Brigham Young took them out to Utah, some others stayed behind, following Joseph Smith’s son. They continued using the Book of Mormon, and the Doctrine of Covenants…”

“What’s that?”

“They believe God speaks through modern day prophets, gives them divine knowledge about how to live. ‘Don’t use tobacco, it’s for sick cows’, stuff like that.”

“And blacks aren’t allowed to be priests?”

“Yeah, that’s in there.”

“ How do you know so much about this?”

Mike launched into a short dissertation. “My grandmother, G’s mother, was in that church. G’s sister kept it up, always sent me stuff about it for Christmas, even took me to a church camp on an island near Seattle, the year I went there for the Worlds’s Fair. ‘Stories From the Book of Mormon, Stories From the Bible,’ things like that.”

“I thought G is an atheist. Is that where you got you interest in religion?”

“I guess so. But not from a practicing perspective. I like seeing how people explain the world. Philosophy, good novels, religions, they’re all trying to answer the same questions.”

The interstate turned into a turnpike once we got to Kansas, and Mike sped up to 80 miles an hour. The car started to wobble a bit, as if the tires were loose. “What’s that, that shaking?” I asked.

“My dad said something about getting the wheels aligned? This car’s getting old, over 90,000 miles it says on the thing here,” he said, pointing at the odometer. We hit the outskirts of Topeka. “There’s supposed to be a motel here that doesn’t cost too much, I remember from when we’ve driven out here before. Motel 6, costs $6 a night…Oh, damn!” He shouted and pounded the steering wheel, then pointed out the window. “We missed it, hope we don’t end up in Wichita!”

“It’s OK, Mike, don’t get so upset. Just get off the next exit, turn around, we have plenty of time.”

Next morning, we left the gentle hills of eastern Kansas behind, entering the totaly foreign terrain of what Mike called, “The West.”

“It starts right about here, where it rains less, there aren’t any trees, you can see forever. Look, must be twenty miles, not even a curve in the road!”

“I thought the West was mountains? Not this.”

He shook his head. “No music. Boring scenery. What do you want to talk about?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I know…What does it mean, friendship? What’s a friend, why do we have them?”

“Huh?”

“You. You and me, for example. We’re friends, aren’t we? What’s that mean?” he repeated.

We had an all day drive ahead, nothing to look at until Denver, so I let the question hang while I reached back, trying to name all my friends, why I felt good with them. Finally, “Hmm…I feel like I get to live lives through friends I wouldn’t be able to otherwise. We reciprocate the wish fulfillment of each other. The closer we are to someone, the more we can grow through…and with…them. Like Leslie. I wouldn’t want to be Leslie, but I’m glad I know her, she helps me see, think, about things I might otherwise avoid. But you have to give, as well as get. Having a friend helps me be a better me. I want to have them see me as my best possible self, maybe even serve as a role model for them sometimes. That means I have to be a strong enough person, with enough of my own life, before I can have a friendship like that. Like I said, friends help each grow, they support each other that way.”

“What about us?” he persisted. “I look around at who I know, who I spend time with. And I’d rather be with you than anybody. So I wonder, does that make you my best friend?”

The bristly sere wheat stubble, a monochrome dark yellow fading to dark brown near the fallow loam, spread in all directions. I wondered how anyone could live here, nothing changing in the landscape save for occasional summer storms rolling down from the still hidden mountains. I looked over at Mike, intent on the road , empty to the horizon. The vastness filled me with anxiety, tempered by Mike’s presence. I’d always felt safe with him, psychically and physically. I’d never told him that; I wondered how to put it.

“Last night, in that motel? We got to sleep in a double bed.” I started.

“Yeah, that was different, wasn’t it?” The road still held his gaze.

I went on, trying, “When I was little, I always felt nudgy if I had to sleep in the same bed with someone else. Didn’t matter the size of bed or who it was, even my sister. With you, last night, I fell right asleep. With you, I’m comfortable, can forget I’m with another person.”

He glanced over, enough time for a quick smile. “Me, too. I remember, it was like no time had passed, we could fall right back together.”

Stroking his thigh, I concurred, “That’s it. Safe and snuggly.” I struggled as my thoughts fought with my feelings. I closed my eyes, sighed, and plowed on. “That makes me scared, too.”

“Scared?”

“I don’t want to feel like anybody else… like you…have that control, can make me feel that way.” This wasn’t sounding right, I knew. “Anais Nin – remember her – says a woman should be just as independent as a man, just as able to chose who she’s with, and how she’s with him. That a woman’s life should not be tied to a man’s success.” I paused, awaiting a reaction. “And it’s all tied up in love. And sex. The pill has made it different for us now. We really can choose who, and when, and be the independent woman earlier feminists dreamed about.” Still silence from Mike, behind the wheel. A final thought bubbled out. “I’ve got to learn how to be with a man, without being dependent on a man. Can you understand that?” I wished he’d stop the car, so I could shake him by the shoulders, make him understand.

He pursed his lips, seemed to shrink forward towards the wheel, then suddenly sat bolt upright. “There they are!” He pointed at what appeared to be a dark cloud low on the  flat horizon.

Bewildered, I said, “What? Who’s there?”

“The mountains! The Rockies!”

********

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

The rain ended about the same time Mike finished eating. We sat on the front porch, staring at the leaves and branches flung down by the storm. One arm around his shoulder, my other resting on his leg, I asked, “You sure you’re OK? It must have been scary.”

“I was worried for a minute that the car was going to leave the ground…”

“Really?”

“Really. My parents told me when I was a baby, a hurricane came through when we lived in that apartment on Lynn Shore Drive. I’m starting to rack up disasters. Next, I suppose it’ll be an earthquake? But really, that’s not the worst thing that happened to me this week.”

I took my hands back, got up and started walking down to the street. Mike followed, continuing, “We have the swim meets every Thursday, this time was at home. This late in the summer, it starts to get dark before we’re done, so they have these light poles they stick in the concrete deck. The electricity comes underneath, it’s supposed to be turned off after the meet. But yesterday morning, I was working with the kids, yelling at one of them – you gotta yell, ‘cause it’s hard to hear under water – yelling at Linda, this really strong eight year old, the anchor of our relay. She was dogging it, and that’s a bad example when your best swimmer isn’t working. Anyway, I grabbed onto one of the poles so I could lean down, get closer to her.” He stopped, smiling ruefully.

“What happened?” I prodded.

“It must have still been live, because they tell me I started dancing around the pole, holding on with both hands. It was like when you stick your finger into a socket, but going all over and through my body. They said I was screaming, but the only thing in my head was a loud buzzing, drowning out everything and everyone. The head coach was on the other side of the pool, he dove in, swam over. By the time he got out, I must have spun myself off. The coach said, “Great! I don’t know how I was going to get you free, maybe a running tackle…’ So I must have been electrocuted, right? And everything from now on is a bonus, like I should have died but didn’t?”

“How do you feel now?”

“I was tired all day, slept 10 hours last night, I’m still a little tingly, but I’m OK. Just this spiritual afterglow, like I said, I should be dead but I’m not.”

I thought that was a little much, too dramatic a reaction. I decided to play along, though. “So what do you think you were saved for?”

“You know, I was thinking about that after the tornado passed in front of me. Two lives down – no three, with the hurricane? – six to go, that sort of thing. Funny, my first thoughts were about kids.”

“The ones at the pool?”

“Not really, just kids…and families…in general. At the club, there are all these big families, four, five, even eight. And you – you’ve got three brothers and sisters.”

“Sister, singular,” I interrupted.

“Right, sister. Anyway, I realised, I like the idea of a bigger family. I think that’s what I’m here for, to keep the chain alive.”

“How many would you want?”

“At least three, maybe four. I think I missed out on something, with just one other, my sister. The chances for interaction increase geometrically as the group size increases arithmetically, right, so adding just one or two makes a big difference in how many opportunities you get to learn from other people, other kids, when you’re real young. Like you, you had three older sibs, maybe that’s why you’re so much more sociable than I am?”

I gave that some thought. Linda, always using my naïveté to get me in trouble. George, quiet George, immersed in books and his fantasy world, never any help at all. Only Eddie, almost a decade older, seemed to be on my side, caring about me, helping me learn and grow. “Not really. It might just work the other way. The more there are in a family, the more chances for dissension and dysfunction.” I thought of my time cut short that summer in the psych lab. “For really little kids, infants, mothers are most important. That’s what I can’t get out of my mind.”

Two weeks later, on his day off, we drove up to Columbus, to the Ohio State Fair. “It’s supposed to be the biggest one in the country,” Mike said.

I didn’t really want to go. During two years in Boston I had become indoctrinated in the belief that the Midwest was a backwater, full of farms and auto plants, but not a haven for intellectuals or high achievers. The State Fair, no matter how big or famous, was that whole ethos writ large.

Mike was enthralled. Without a hint of irony, he reveled in the animal barns, the 4-H competitions, the cotton candy, and the blue-jeaned crowds. By the evening, he was ready for the midway.
“Look, there’s a ring-toss. I wanna try it!”

He missed badly the first time, which only spurred him on. “I can do this,” he growled, putting up another dollar for three more rubber gaskets. Circling one bottle, he won a rabbit’s foot key ring. 

“You know those things are weighted, it’s rigged so you can’t really aim or win,” I whispered as he pulled another dollar out.

“Watch. I’m gonna win a big prize. I’ve got the feel for it now.”

He adjusted his feet, bent a little at the waist, shook the first ring to test its balance, then flicked it out with a little push from his right index finger.

“One!” he said firmly.

Repeating the ritual twice more with the same success, he hollered, “Yow! Got ‘em!” Looking over at me, he pointed at the top row, where the big fuzzy animals hung. “Which one do you want?”

I scanned the options – teddy bear, lion, pony. My eyes lit on a lower row, where a small bald baby doll in a gingham checked t-shirt waited. “That one. The baby.”

Walking towards the rides, cradling our prize, I decided, “I didn’t think this was going to be any fun. I’m glad we came. It makes me think, makes me see, we can be us again.”

Mike gave me a squeeze around my waist, then guided me into a Ferris wheel car. While we ratcheted our way to the top, one car at a time, he pulled a yellow paper from his back pocket, unfolded it, producing a short, handwritten poem. Offering it to me, he said, “It’s not much, but the more I read this, the more I like it.”

Let’s not demand so much of every

single moment; 

in each fragment we’re

alive, a different herald trumpets in

a newer, fresher life and home for us.

Don’t expect that every heartbeat holds

its promise all fulfilled,

each breath

an intake filled with laughter, carried

in on waves of something deeper than we see.

Look out from life, not in at living;

The things I share, 

      so filled with giving

Are handed over freshly carved from the

Chisel of my joy – 

If I stop smiling, I might never know I’m happy.

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

I took the train home at the end of July. I needed time to myself, no crowds, no rush. On the way, I stopped in Rhode Island to see Eddie, Arlene, and Denise, hoping for a shot of their calm domesticity. Once there, we all packed up for a weekend visit to the Vineyard.

“We’ll look at some houses, see if we can find one to buy. They all turn over the weekend between July and August, most of them should be empty,” Eddie explained.

“Are you guys going to move there?”

“Not right away. We like it here, it’s cheap, it’s easier to find work at the hospital for Arlene. No, we want someplace small, near the shore in Edgartown, something I can work, fix up during the off-season. Then rent it out for a few years, put a little in the bank. Move there permanently in, I don’t know, three to five years.”

“What would you do, can you find a job?”

“Arlene’s a nurse, if we come at the start of summer, it should be easy to get on at the hospital. Me, I want to find a little hole-in-the-wall downtown, set up a shop where people can bring things they make, sell to the tourists. A lot better for Denise I think, than going to a city, all crowded, noisy. If we’re lucky, we can find something with a little yard, grow some of our food.”

While Eddie and Arlene scouted the real estate market, I got to escort Denise, now four and a half, on her own miniature adventures.

“Auntie Yane” – she was still having trouble with her “J’s” – “can we get some shells?”

“What would we do with them?”

“Pick them up. Then we throw them. They break on rocks.”

The high tide line was easy to spot, a mix of glistening brown seaweed, small white clam shells, and tiny black and grey rocks. Towards the ocean, the sand was firm, newly dried, filled will tiny bubbling air holes from the receding surf. Above, dry sand quickly faded into dune grass, the breeze rolling it along, tickling our legs at ankle level.

“Auntie Yane, are you a mommy too?”

I laughed nervously. “Not yet, Denise. Why?”

“Do you wanna be?”

From the mouths of babes, I thought. When I didn’t answer right away, she added, “Do you like babies? Do you?”

“What babies do you know?”

“A friend of mommy, she has a baby. Mommy says babies are fun, I was her little baby doll. He can’t walk, he can’t talk, I can’t play with him, he’s no fun at all.”

“Sometimes you have to let a baby just be himself. When that happens, you can learn who they are, what they like, that’s how they’re fun. To Mommies.”

“Mommy says she can’t wait ‘til I go to kinnergarter. Did you go to kinnergarter? what’s that like?”

“It’s where you’ll meet a lot of kids, a lot of friends. You’ll learn to how to go to school.”

“What happens at school?”

“You learn how to read, to write, how to grow up.”

“I can’t wait to grow up.” She put on a serious face. “I wanna be bigger. I don’t wanna be a baby, I don’t want to be little. I want to be big like you.” She sat down, crumbling a shell between her pudgy little hands. “You never told me, do you wanna be a mommy?”

“If I had a little girl like you, I would so much want to be a mother.”

“Well, why don’t you then.”

“Why don’t I what?”

“Be a mother. Get a little girl like me, someone who could be my friend.”

“It’s not that easy.” Uh-oh, I thought, shouldn’t have said that. “What I mean is, the best babies also have daddies.” I was digging a bigger and bigger hole.

“Like Arlene and Eddie?”

Relieved, I quickly said, “Yes. Exactly like Arlene and Eddie.”

“Daddy says you have a boy friend. He says he hopes you know what you’re doing. What’s he mean? Can a boy friend be a daddy, too?”

“Well…” 

Luckily, Eddie and Arlene came up from behind, Eddie picking up Denise, spinning around full circle. He tossed her in the air, caught as she laughed and screamed, then tucked her under his arm like a giant football.

“Did you find anything?” I asked.

“Maybe a couple. Now’s not the time to buy anything, we’ll come back after the season, see what’s what then.” Looking down at Denise, he went on, “You two get along?”

“She’s such a perfect little girl. Are you going to have another, someday?”

Eddie looked at Arlene, who was busy with Denise’s shoes and socks, trying to put them on while she wiggled in her father’s grip. She stopped, let out an exasperated sigh, then said, “Your brother’s going to have to learn how to share the load a little more, I think.”

Eddie started to complain, but Arlene stopped him with a quick, sharp look.

After the weekend, I spent three more days with them, mostly helping corral Denise while Arlene was at work. Eddie took that as a signal he could sail with some friends on Narragansett Bay. Denise was fun at first. Having a kid to manage, all day, was a new kind of exhausting for me. In the psych lab, all I did was observe, and sometimes play a little before or after with the older ones, but their mothers were always there. I realised what people meant about being the primary caregiver.

I got home on Thursday. Mike’s first free evening was Saturday. He said he’d leave the swim club about 6:30. With the new freeway, he should be in Clifton before 7. I went out to the front porch about 6:45, hoping to see him pull up. The air felt shimmery, almost electric. Thunder rumbled to the north, while a breeze rustled, then turned into a gust which bent the hardwood trees all along the street. Rain began to fall, at first dainty little drops, than bigger and bigger plops, quickly soaking my hair before I could run back inside. I wandered into the kitchen, where Mom was getting the food into serving bowls and onto platters.

“Where’s Mike, honey? I thought you said he’d be here for dinner.”

With a sour look on my face, I grumbled, “Maybe something was more interesting at the club.” Or someone, I said under my breath. The rain grew stronger still, beating against the windows like a snare drum and cymbals.

I ate dinner without him, sullenly picking at the lamb chop mom had dressed up for us. Finally, a little before 8, I heard Mike’s car outside. The rain had stopped, the wind was gone, but I was not going to greet him, I decided.

Dad got the door, let him in. Mike seemed shaken, nervously glancing form side-to-side. 

“What happened? That was some storm,” Dad asked.

Mike sat down. “I think there was a tornado,” he asserted.

“What!” my mother exclaimed. “Where? When?”

Now that he was inside, seated at the dining room table, eating the plate mom had warmed up for him, he relaxed, launching into the story. “I was coming down Reading. It had just started raining, that thunderstorm rain where you just can’t see even though the wipers are going double-time. I thought I should slow down, got down to 25, but the wind kept getting worse. Then the car started to shake, quiver like it was being jiggled by the Jolly Green Giant. I had to stop. Right then, this big old wall, like a grey curtain, just swept across in front of me, I don’t know, 400 yards away. Everybody, all the cars were stopped like me, all waiting like for a train to pass. It took less than a minute, then it was gone, so we thought it was OK to start up again. After a couple hundred yards, it was impossible. Power lines down, truck camper tops from that lot there near Galbraith, branches, trees even, all across the road. I had to go forever to get past it, all the way to Colerain almost to get around. All the roads were covered, blocked. So, I finally made it, here I am.”

“Sounds like a tornado,” Dad said. “Car’s OK? You OK.”

Mike nodded, then silently finished his dinner.

********

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

I’d been back in Cambridge a week when Bev and I finally had a chance to sit down and eat dinner together. She experimented with an eggplant-and-broccoli concoction, laden with lentils and rice and her usual eclectic mix of spices.

“You’re looking almost gaunt, Jane, what happened?”

I had never paid much attention to my body size or shape. There was no bathroom scale in the Stein house; George and Eddie had stayed pretty much the same size into their twenties, and Linda’s constant motion kept her equally slim. Then I remembered Mike’s birthday poem, my “newly slender cheeks.”

“I don’t know, I just haven’t been much interested in eating the past few months.”

“Maybe you’ve had a lot on your mind?” Bev probed.

I stopped chewing, trying to get some inner perspective. A wave of awareness flooded my thoughts. “I think you’re right. First, there’s Mike, he’s in my mind half the time, but never around. I pushed him away, pulled him back, and don’t know what I want from him, with him.”

Bev nodded, holding her fork up for emphasis. “Boys’ll do that to you.”

“Then, that strike, that night at Uni, when the cops pulled everybody out. I’m not sure why, but that got to me more than getting kicked outside the Hilton in Chicago last summer. It just went on and on, everyone so righteous in their anger, the Harvard admin so…establishment… in their response.” I took another bite. “The broccoli might not have been the right idea? Maybe tomatoes instead next time?”

“Noted.”

“Right now, I know I’m anxious about this thing I’m doing at the Cognitive Studies Center. Dr. Kagan got me into that, and now I’m working in a group with Barry Brazelton.”

“The pediatrician?”

“Yeah. Where does Harvard get all these super-smart charismatic guys? It’s so completely what I want to do, studying and learning about how kids develop. I don’t get to do much of anything, really, just getting coffee and collating papers, like a secretary even though I’m called a ‘research assistant’. The whole thing makes me super-nervous.”

“Why? They wanted you. You have to start somewhere.”

“I know. But there’s a couple of things. I feel kind of like I don’t really belong. I’m the only undergrad, everybody knows so much more than me, can talk so much more intelligently about child psychology. I wish it didn’t take so long to get good at something.”

We sat silently a while. I tried some home-made salad dressing, hoping to hide the slight bitterness of the broccoli.

Bev prodded, “You said ‘there’s as couple of things’?”

I sighed. “Oh, yeah. That’s probably the worst. The Center had a lot of grants from all over. There’s a big one from the NIH, it’s the one I’m being paid out of. I just heard yesterday that Nixon decided not to fund it when it comes up for renewal, July 1st.”

“Oh Jesus, why? What are they going to do?”

“Well, it was such short notice, they said they could move some money around and keep me through July, but that’s it. I’m gonna have to find something else, or go back home, I guess.” I put my fork down, done eating even though the plate remained half full. “It’s just a rumor, I know, but people are saying this is some kind of retaliation. Nixon sees places like Harvard as the enemy, the eggheads out to get him, so he had the HEW secretary look for any funding he could pull right away. I mean, I knew he’s a bad guy, but this is simply evil. We’re studying mothers and babies! How is that dangerous to ‘law and order’?”

Of course I wrote to Mike about the change in plans, that I’d be coming home. I expected he might call right away, but it was ten days before I got a letter back. It was filled with his rhapsodies about the kids on his swimming team, how they were probably going to win their league championship for the third year in a row. At the end, even when he did acknowledge how my summer was not going as planned, he talked about how that meant we could be together again. Not a sympathetic word or inkling that he understood how devastated I was.

Sunday,  July 20th, the team at the Center held a good-bye party for those of us cut from the staff. Someone brought in a small back-and-white TV so we could watch the moon landing. One of the post-doc fellows went on and on about the dissonance between all those billions of dollars being spent on the ‘frivolous Flash Gordon adventure’ and Nixon’s callous cutting of a few hundred thousand from our lab.

“Hell, we’re just an accounting error in the Apollo program!” he harangued.

Mike wrote the next day. He started with one of his usual trenchant observations, “We send those guys all the way to the moon, and the first thing they do is trash the place, leave a flag and lander behind, just like litter on a highway.” Then, a page and a half about his team, how they’d won the regional Junior Olympics, and how great that had made him feel. He closed by describing driving back home, alone, feeling almost depressed, having left the party of celebrating parents and swimmers, then having no one to share his joy. “It’s funny how, the happier you are, the worse it feels when it’s all over.”

********

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

Saturday evening, my studies finally done, we walked for several hours along the river. A single sculler, done with his evening row, hoisted his shell into the boathouse. Looking up, he waved at us. Walking silently hand in hand in the still, warm air, to him I’m sure we seemed lost in love. Mike waved back. Then, closing his eyes, he breathed  in deeply.

“This feels so right…we’re supposed to be together,” he vowed. He looked over at me, frowning slightly. “Aren’t we? Shouldn’t we…?”

Tentatively, I agreed. “Let’s just take what we have now, Mike. Let’s not put so much on the future. I don’t know, you don’t know where you’re going after next year. And I’ll be here, I want to stay here, for grad school, working here.” I left that hanging.

“How can we do that? I don’t want us to be over,” he answered plaintively.

“We’ve been doing this long-distance thing for … years now. I’m meeting people here, feeling like this is my home, and you drop in for a weekend or a week, you’re not part of that.” His hand tried to pull away; I held on tight. “I love you now. Can’t that be good enough?”

Back in my room, the night before I turned twenty, we made love for the first time in several months. Tucked tight together in that single bed, I woke at dawn with his hand cradling my head, fingers entwined in my hair. I made my own vow, that however long we had, how ever much or little we might be together, I would remember – would celebrate – his warm skin holding fast against me.

We started our drive back. Away from Cambridge, not yet in Ohio, we re-explored past adventures, secure in our private world. Martha’s Vineyard helped a lot, with scraggly trees growing up against the dunes, a constant sea breeze blowing fresh across our faces. Everything was for us, could be about us, once again. In Pennsylvania, along the Turnpike where the car broke down that night a year ago in March, Mike’s little red Lancer started to sputter. He found a garage, pulled in, and asked for help.

“Let me take a look. You two just go into the coffee shop there, I’ll let you know what I find.” The mechanic was young, under thirty, with long greasy hair, and a friendly smile. He wiped his hands on a stained red rag, and leaned under the hood to look.

When we came back, he smiled broadly. “Easy! See,” he said, pointing at the unfathomable tangle surrounding the engine, “you’ve got a fan belt here that’s starting to shred.” He lifted up a thick rubber band, frayed and cracked, running between two solid discs. “It’s slipping, so you don’t get a consistent spark. You need that spark to come precisely at the right time, to keep the engine running smoothly. You know, from the spark plugs?” He shoved his hand vaguely into the dark depths.

“Is that it?” Mike asked. “What do we need to do?”

The mechanic pulled a wrench from a loop on his overalls, loosened something, pulled off the belt, and threw a new one on. As he worked he announced, “Should be just a minute. Fifteen bucks is all. Plus the belt, another seven – ninety nine. There!” A final hard pull on the wrench. “You’re good to go!”

Back on the road, Mike fiddled with the radio, finding nothing but static in the endless Appalachian hollows. He asked, “How far do you want to go? Maybe get out of these hills, stay in Pittsburgh at a cheap motel?”

I nodded, sounding assent. I thought about the worn belt, and how just a little preventive maintenance saved our trip this year from ending up like the last one. Out loud, I continued, “It’s funny, isn’t it, how a little work like that can keep things going? There ought to be mechanics for people, shouldn’t there, to diagnose and treat us…”

Mike interrupted, “But isn’t that what a doctor, what a psychologist or psychiatrist is? Somebody who keeps you running, somebody who can help…”

My turn to interrupt. “You and me, us, we need a regular spark to keep us going. Maybe our belt’s gotten frayed, not running smooth?”

“That’s something we can fix ourselves, I think. Should fix ourselves. If we need somebody outside of us, to make us better, to make us whole, then what’s the good of…us?”

By the time we reached Cincinnati, we were whole again, wholly present with each other. For a week or two, we had that cocoon back around us, as we took advantage while his parents were at work, to lounge by the pool, or hid away in his bed. We didn’t talk about our summers, his at the swim club, mine back in the Harvard psych lab. I wondered, could a chrysalis stay in suspended animation, would anything at all emerge come fall?

Saturday night before I left, June 7th, Mike and I ate dinner at home with my parents. Afterwards, we headed to the den for that premiere of Johnny Cash on TV. Of course, it was Dylan we really wanted to see.

George followed us in. I tried explaining to him why this was special, that Bob Dylan never appeared on TV, that somehow he and Cash had become musical buddies, were going to sing together. My father thought it odd, off-putting, that a country singer from the Ozarks should cozy up with a radical ex-folkie from northern Minnesota by way of Greenwich Village.

“Hmm. It might be that musicians, singers, have more in common, more mutual respect over their songs, their authenticity, than they have differences in attitude, accent, where’re they from?” Mike offered.

My dad just grunted.

While we waited for Dylan, a tall blonde appeared with a guitar, singing, “I’ve looked at life from both sides now…I really don’t know life at all.” I almost started crying, her voice was so clean and pure, her words so sincere.

My dad said, “She sounds Canadian, hear how she said ‘about’ like it’s ‘a boot’?”
Mike asked, “Who’s that?”

I sighed. My older siblings had long ago introduced me to folk music. “Joni Mitchell. She’s really good.”

“Yeah,” was all Mike said.

After they sang “Girl From Saskatoon” together, a lean, disjointed fiddle player in a velour suit, ruffled shirt, with a chin sticking out almost as far as his nose came on, singing “Diggy diggy do.” As he played, singing with a continual catch in his voice, the audience clapped along with his yodels, smiles, and wild eyes.

Finally, after the second commercial, Dylan appeared, starting with, “If you find some one who gives you all of her love, take it to your heart, don’t let it stray. One thing’s for certain, you will surely be a-hurtin’ if you throw it all away.” Inwardly, I started to cry, and hoped I could hide it from everyone.

Mom wondered, “He’s not much of a performer, sweetie? What do you see in him? He can’t even look at the audience.”
I walked Mike out to his car. Silently, we hugged as he sat on the hood, pulling me closer, squeezing as if he never wanted to let me go. Finally, we eased apart, and locked eyes. He looked down, sighed, shook his head, and clasped his hands together in front of his face, pressing the tips of his nose with his index finger. He dropped his fingers to his lips, then reached forward to touch mine. Sighing once more, he said simply, “I hate to say good-bye.”

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

Mike showed up Friday afternoon, carrying Dylan’s new album, Nashville Skyline. On my little suitcase record player, the understated instruments and Dylan’s softened voice were right at home.

“This came out on my birthday. When you told me not to come up after all that stuff happened here, the strike, I decided this might have been the present you would have gotten me. Have you heard it yet?”

“Just snatches. I’ve been all worried – consumed – trying to catch up on the classes I missed. What’s with his voice, anyway? It’s not scratchy like before.”

“I read, after he had the bike accident, he had to stop smoking when he was in the hospital, the doctors wouldn’t let him, or something. This is what he sounds like without cigarettes, I guess.”

“It’s almost … sweet.” I offered.

We listened to it straight through together, both ostensibly reading, but, as it turned out, intensely focused on what, if anything, the songs could tell us about us. The album was filled with love songs which, oddly for Dylan, were unambiguous and straightforward. During those concentrated 26 minutes, we heard about new love, lost love, men wronged, women scorned, couples reunited. Not a minute into the album, Bob was joined by Johnny Cash in his warbling baritone drawl, “See for me that her hair’s hanging down, it curls and falls all down her breast…that’s the way I remember her best.” Mike walked up behind me, lifting my own tumbling black locks off my shoulders, sighing, “That is the way I remember you best.”

I held a book open on my desk, reading nothing, saying nothing. He returned to the edge of my bed. Five songs, including “I Threw It All Away”, quickly played on the tinny speaker. Mike flipped the record over, and on the other side we heard, “Lay, lady, lay; lay across my big brass bed.” He lay on his side, on my narrow dorm bed, also pretending to read. I couldn’t meet his eyes. By the time Dylan sang the final line, “Tonight I’ll be staying here with you” (after urging his love to “tell me that it isn’t true,”) neither of us spoke for a good five minutes.

Finally, I stood up and went to my closet. “No, that’s not the present I was going to give you. Actually, I didn’t have anything at all in mind, things were so crazy here.” He gave another sigh, sat up, and started to speak.

“But I did make this,” I quickly blurted out, reaching for my satchel on the closet shelf. I pulled out the sweater, still with a few strands of yarn hanging out, needing to be tied off and cut. “It’s way too big on me, so I think it should fit you.”

He didn’t smile, looking from the sweater to my face, and back again. I realised I was not smiling either. The air seemed leaden, stifling. Mike held the sweater out in front, then pulled the shoulders up to his. “I think it’s perfect. Just right. I don’t know what…I never had anybody do anything so good for me, so …loving. Thank you.” He sat back down on the bed. “You know that philosophy class I took this year? Phenomenology and Existentialism?”

“The one you thought would give you the answer to all life’s questions? Did you find the grail?”

He laughed drily. “No. It got pretty esoteric there towards the end. But they sneaked in this guy, Alain Badiou. It really got to me, this one thing he wrote, this past month since we’ve been…since we’ve not been…” He frowned, then went on, “Anyway, his point was, love is not all about the first encounter, that ecstatic initial bloom. He says, ‘Love is a tenacious adventure.’ Tenacious, because it doesn’t fully flower if you give up at the first sign of trouble. I really like his thought, that real love triumphs, often painfully, over the hurdles erected by time, space, and the world.” He left that hanging in the air between us.

“I’ve been cooped up here, for weeks, it seems. I’ve got to get out, walk around, feel fresh air. Want to come with me, down to the Square or something?”

He looked thoughtful. “No, you go ahead. I’m tired from driving here. And I think I want to write something. Is that OK?”

I nodded, touching his cheek with my fingers, drawing them slowly away as I headed for the door. Out on Walker Street, a rhododendron bush flowered over a picket fence in front of a three-story white clapboard house. I’d watched the buds burst into pale pink splendor over the past two weeks. The slowest buds were now only beginning to open, while the earliest blooms spread majestically, bigger than my two hands cupped together. I cradled one, sniffed, and leaned back, looking up at some thin high clouds. Their feathery edges tinged with the setting sun’s fading light, as if reflecting the flower I still held. I drew my hands away, and as I did, first one, then a second petal broke off from the center, each softly, languidly falling, slowly arcing away from each other, towards the earth below. I thought how they’d start to melt, disintegrate, becoming part of the soil, fertilizing the plant, renewing its beauty for another season.

After nine, I returned, finding Mike asleep on his side, fully clothed, facing the wall. On the desk, he’d left his spiral notebook open to a poem, written in blue ball-point on the white, lined paper. Titled “To Janie, on Her Twentieth Birthday”

Twenty

seems so , seems a bit too much

For your newly slender cheeks to carry 

  without dropping.

As old you are, as old you get, 

and yet,

To cap my slight remembrance and call back

a bright and sunny

Weekend,

    so long ago,

    when the only time we lost the sun

Was in our sleepy fog, 

who whipped in and back

Across the beach, as if he were a wave.

And clinging to the island roads, cavorting through the

Forest,

was a machine

who felt our joy

And she was happy.

But I kept from you a little girl, whose spell

had warped my heart, and made me weep

when I should laugh.

And now you keep yourself from me,

and through my

anger and my joy at summer’s toys

I might hide me too.

But I don’t want to,

        I can’t bear

to share another summer

    far away

without our forest island fog

and crowded summer house or beach

beyond the lobster boats.

But I must wait, and when your full day comes,

When you must grow alone,

          far from

any house or hope of home,

          think of me

and what will be,

as our love becomes a separate being,

which, like a child

born too early, must be nurtured separate for a while.

I looked over at Mike, hands curled under his cheek resting on the pillow, shoulders rising and falling evenly with each breath. I marveled at how he got…everything I was feeling. The special times together on the Vineyard, riding around in that converted VW dune buggy. My unformed fear of who or what he was going back to in the summer. The fight between his hold on me, and my struggle to be free. Our love, like a premie in a nursery away from its parents, struggling to survive, every breath an adventure, a tenuous hold on life. Beyond tired, exhausted not only from studying, from the relentless strike, tired simply from life, from trying to understand how to live my life with love, or without it. I lay down on the bed next to Mike, back-to-back, each of us fully clothed, and tried to sleep. A dreamless sleep, I hoped.

********

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

Next morning, I found one of those bulging envelopes from Mike, meaning it held a poem or poems. I ripped it open, reading it right there in one of dorm lounge comfy chairs. This one was five pages long, titled “Seeking An Unknown Master, I Had Some Friends Over For Dinner”. I read it more as a lyrical story than purely poetry:

I seek an unknown master; I sit patiently at my writing table, waiting for his arrival. How then do I seek, while I must wait? A high chair is not the best for waiting, but an easy, cushioned soft and sinking one is what I wait in.

I thought that while I waited, I’d have some friends over for dinner. They weren’t very tasty. Not only that, they couldn’t understand the candle in my window. I tried to explain.

“Look,” I said. “See that candle; its flame will soon expire, but not the hope that my waiting will wake into seeking. Not by sleeping, but by trusting, here with you, our after-dinner chatter. Like, ‘How is Margaret’s daughter, can she still hide her belly? And the butcher, does he still cut off too much fat? The important things we do are not resting on that mantle with my candle; they are hiding here with us – let’s go and find them, please.”

My neighbor raised her nose, and the rest of her head followed. She appeared to be ready to speak. While I waited for her favour, I remembered it was her son who’d helped young Margaret with her hidden bulge. “But why a green candle?” she fairly shouted. “Don’t you know that nothing can be representative anymore? There’s always been something slightly fertile about green, as far as I’m concerned.”

People hushed and then agreed, all gabbing at once, each explaining why every color of the rainbow was best suited for my candle.

“But!” I screamed, But But But I shouted at them ‘till they heard that I had said, “My candle does not wait, it only shows the way.”

“For whom? Or what” they asked, at last intrigued.

“For whoever wants to come, that’s who. All of you were able to find, to follow, to come to here to me by its wavering, dying light, weren’t you?” They all had to agree.

And then one, more clever than the rest (a postman, I think) looked thoughtful, and hushed the crowd. He said, “Was it we you were waiting for? Could it be perhaps that all you seek is us”

“Perhaps,” I granted, “But you’re not an unknown master. I know all of you very well, don’t I? I mean, once you’ve sat down to dinner with someone, and shared what’s really important, Well, you can’t help but end up knowing them.”

“And liking them, a whole lot,” a slightly flighty little lady gurgled.

We all agreed with a warm, comradely mutual laugh.

“Well, it certainly is pleasant to spend an evening with one’s friends, discovering who they really are, now isn’t it, one said. And we all sort of nodded and looked down at our half-eaten pies, smiling, shaking our heads, and clicking our tongues. We were privy to our lives, privileged to be privy.

But now they’ve gone. I’ve cleared away the dishes, fed the scraps to the dog and cats, and brushed away the clouded air of too many laughs and too many pithy observations. I’d vainly I sought with them; I now must wait, here in my easy chair.

“It’s time for musing, not amusing,” I murmured under my beard. “I’m not as lonely as I was yesterday, I’ll be more lonely tomorrow. I guess I can say, with a quiver and a break in my voice, constricted in my throat, welling in my eye, that I’ve never been so lonely in my life. Not just feeling, but being, Lonely.” That made me slightly melancholy, so I went on – 

My unknown master, I wonder what he’ll wear –

A rainbow-colored Joseph cloak,

        and a tassel made of silk

He’ll look like everyone I’ve ever known, 

and most of all like me.

        He’ll be so wise,

and I’ll read in his eyes

        any story, any preaching

I’ll ever need to know.

      Oh, he’ll mean so much

to me,

        he’ll feel so much for me,

He’ll be my own, my very private, privy

Unknown knowing Master – 

He’ll be me!

Under the final line he’d drawn, with the Rapidograph I’d given him, a curving arrow down to the words, “I think he’s also you, Janie; But then you are so very much me.”

Maybe it was the lingering effects of my experiment with marijuana, but I felt he’d been with me at the party the night before. Or perhaps he had foreseen it somehow, for surely this had been written some days earlier. And, it was obvious he was missing me – “never been so lonely in my life. Not just feeling, but being. Lonely.”

“Damn that boy!” I thought. Why can’t he let me be? Hadn’t he heard what I’d said? This story, filled with pride and loneliness, said he was not going to simply let me go. I spent the weekend flipping between imagining a life without him, one in which I was the master of myself, free from expectations of the past, free to create the person I knew I could become; and aching for more time with him, to give him another chance to come along with me, on my path, not just his.

The next two weeks, that battle in my head consumed me. I couldn’t eat, took hours to get to sleep, and drifted off in classes. Finally, I realised I could not purge the Michael Harrison of my mind, from my mind. I knew I needed him as a friend. He knew me better than anyone on earth. And, worse, it seemed, I could not drive him away from my heart. Each time I imagined myself without him, I felt an aching, a stabbing, through my gut, a fear I might never find another like him. That fear grew to anger; I did not want to be so dependent on anyone else, but did not yet know how to depend solely on myself.

He didn’t write or call after sending that poem/story, during the two weeks I was driving myself crazy futilely trying to wrest my thoughts and feelings away from him. I stayed inside, spending most days at a hidden carrel in Hilles Library during reading period, writing, studying, intent that my at least my grades not suffer, even as my sanity, my very sense of self, was dissolving.

Mid-May, my papers written, confident I’d studied enough for the final two exams, I called him up.

“Hello?” His familiar baritone, smooth and questioning, sounded impersonal. Until I spoke, I could be any one, I knew. I froze.

“Yeah? Hello? Who is this?”

“Mike, it’s me, it’s Janie.”

Now it was his turn to be silent.

“Mike? Mike?” This was going nowhere fast. Or maybe ending fast. I flashed that if neither of us spoke, that would surely be the end. He must have come to the same conclusion, because we both spoke at once.

“Janie, it’s you!” Eagerness enveloped his voice.

“Mike, Mike, we’ve got to see each other…” I wanted to say more, something like, It’s not over, but I still didn’t know it wasn’t.

We talked awkwardly for five more minutes, as if testing the other’s resolve to stay on the line, probing our feelings, finding our rhythm again.

Mike eventually pointed out that, “I’m done here this week. Should I come see you? I’ve got another birthday poem for you, I can get a present, I guess, or…”

“No, I need to study this last weekend, my final exam’s on Monday. But, I’m gonna go home after that, maybe we can drive back together, stop at the Vineyard one more time, maybe break down on the turnpike again?”

His familiar laugh meant yes, I hoped. “Uh…OK, sure. I guess I can find something to do on the weekend…”

That tug inside won the battle. “No, it’s OK, you come up this weekend. Stay with me, just stay out of my way if I need more studying. Maybe we can go out Saturday night, go to Boston, eat somewhere.”

“Um, yeah, great.” A pause. “Oh, I forgot. Did you hear that Bob Dylan’s gonna be on TV?”

“What? He never does anything like that.”

“Yup, that country singer,  Johnny Cash, has a summer TV show, and Dylan is his first guest.” Then, “I thought you were staying in Cambridge, to work this summer.”

“That’s still happening, but my parents said I had to come home for a week, so I go back on Sunday, the 8th.”

“Great! He’s on the 7th, we can watch it together then!”

With that, Mike and I carved out a three week island for ourselves.