Our "Girl Autobiographies"

[Absaroka]

Robyn,
nicely done again. I couldn't relate to that much of it, senior year was filled with self discovery of a far different kind. I suspect that there was a good amount of stuff in it that my first girlfriend, which was in my senior year, would have related to however.

I remember the girls that would disappear for a few months and how their friends would just say they were sick, and then they'd reappear somewhat discretely showing people baby pictures. Of course the girls who had abortions were much less obvious. This was late 60's early 70's And I remember the clear division between classmates who went to college vs those who went to work or into the military. Will any of the young men in this story be serving? You're about my age I think, it was on all our minds then.

I do remember the feeling of senior year I had finally figured something out, or so I thought. And then with graduation all the rules changed and boy was I lost.

Absaroka

[Robyn Katie]

Hi Absaroka,

'Fraid I'm a little on the older side ... graduated from high school in'55, college '59. That explains a good bit of the difference in so many things:

We were slower to come along as musicians, because we had to create our own musical environment in a musical wasteland ... rock hadn't happened yet ... so I sought traditional folk and blues out of the pre-1940s past and found the best music I know. But didn't mature as a performer until well after college—opportunities were lacking.

We were terribly romantic about love and sex but terribly uninformed ... sex hadn't had its media exposure yet. (Also, no Pill for years yet.) So we followed our instincts, defending ourselves as best we could against those who would keep us from doing that. We had to make all our own discoveries with no roadmap and precious little information. (Reliable sex information was still extremely hard to get.)

Education was good, and deep, but very traditional, and "relevance" had yet to be discovered. We were insulated from current events and politically unaware, until McCarthyism forced us to take sides. Then we wanted no part of the controllers and the persecutors. But they were everywhere, and for the moment that stymied us.

In general the information age had barely gotten going. In terms of general knowledge and awareness, we knew much less than people would know a few years later, especially between 1963-68 when JFK, MLK and RFK's assassinations, plus Vietnam, made it clear we'd have to know much, much more about everything.

Some of us knew we must escape religion, but how to find the authentic life of the spirit was obscure at the time, with few resources ... those would come along in a few years, too, but weren't there yet.

Parental authority had not yet been questioned in any real way. It was very broad, very deep, using guilt, shame and domination in various ways, not easy to defy or elude without making a total break, which I personally was reluctant (and afraid) to do.

Late blooming was the result—we didn't find ourselves or our real necessities until much later than the average person in the late 60s-70s. So Robyn committed to early love but balked at everything else.

I know this may seem controversial, but it seems to me in retrospect that for us Silent Generation / Beat Generation types, coming of age was terribly strenuous, because we couldn't accept the models we saw all around us, so we had to make our own maps. Growing up was such hard and repellent work, that some of us just refused to.

I personally feel I came of age with my second marriage and the hippie era in '67-'68. But by then a lot of my generation were pumping gas or locked into office life, horizons at zero. Others had landed where Allen Ginsberg said they were, raving, naked, minds blazing, lost in infinity. I came close to that, but was one of those who was lucky enough to escape destruction and find its opposite.

Strange life. That's as much as I can say about it for now. More than I should have, maybe. Didn't mean to run on so long! But Robyn's life represents, I guess, the absolute most I can report from those particular front lines, and sometimes I have doubts about saying even as much as I have.

Looking over this post, I'm dubious. Very conflicted, I admit! Still, here it is.

Love, Robyn Katie

[Robyn Katie]

P.S. When I say rock hadn't happened yet in the 1955 era, that's not strictly true. But the pablum that passed for rock in those years was nothing I wanted to hear.

Really until Dylan's "Bringing It All Back Home" and the Incredible String Band I didn't much care for rock ... after that I started hearing great things in earlier stuff, from Little Richard onward, that I hadn't been ready for previously.

But my tastes aren't important, and I don't really want to start any music discussions. Just wanted to set that one point straight.

Love, Robyn Katie

[Absaroka]

Robyn your post was as illuminating as your bio. Lots of food for thought. A whole banquet of food for thought.

In 59 I was in kindergarden, which meant that I remember the end of the 50's-the part that lasted till 62 or 63. I remember vividly the horror I viewed growing up with. The song I won't grow up from Peter Pan said it all. Wear a tie all the time even around the house, work at a job where you did as you were told, don't climb trees etc. My dad hated that life even as he tried to force us into it.

My parents were fairly thoughtful people so I knew some of what was going on in the world. I remember being overjoyed when the Soviets put a man in space. I thought it was progress for all humanity even if they did it first. I still feel that way although I am very glad we caught up and passed them. I was getting a pretty good subversive dose of how poor much of the world was via church as well at the same time that I was being terrified by hellfire and brimstone. And a lot of boys literature always had a strong anti authoritarian streak. Remember how the Hardy boys were always trying to get over on Aunt Gertrude?

But I think a lot about that period of time and how it shaped me and shaped the decade to come, which I continue to think was terribly self indulgent. We had a lot of ideals but most of us gave up on them when actual work and sacrifice was required.

What little I remember of the actual late 50's is different from the stereotype and probably way different from the early 50's you grew up in. I think what they had lived through, especially WW2, made our parents eager to shelter us from the truth. But with European Jews marrying into my family some things could not be hidden. Also the state of the world was pretty dismal at the time, what with the Soviets expanding and WW3 looking more likely all the time. Although in the end there was detente and collapse of the Soviets, with WW2 fresh in their memory who could have been expected to reasonably expect what happened internationally in the 1990s? The truth of the matter is I think our parents were scared out of their wits and doing their best to deny what they felt. Or at least keep it at bay with the demonization techniques of Mc Carthyism. Duck and cover said it all, since even at age 7 I knew it was useless.

As for the home front, remember Blackboard Jungle was written in the 50's. The movie threw in a few platitudes about JDs and then unabashedly appealed to kids, but the book was much different. It goes into a lot more depth about the tacit conspiracy between the students and the teachers to avoid educating the students and why this was happening. I could never have put this into words, and I lived in a nice suburb. But I knew. It's the classroom in two different dimensions in my girl bio. Of course by now we are in the late 50's, the fruition of the questioning done earlier in the decade by a variety of writers, many of them less notorious than Ginsberg and Kerouac and the like.

One of the childhood experiences that really left a mark on me in ways I didn't realize till later was that between kindergarden and 1st grade my eyesight changed dramatically. I sat in the back of the class, couldn't see the board, didn't learn as a result and kept running out of my seat to stand in front of the blackboard and stare. Thus I was a slow learner and had poor self control. Intelligence tests were done, copnferences held, and finally someone in a stroke of genius gave me an eyesight test. I couldn't see the big E at the top of the chart. After I got glasses I began to catch up but I spent 2nd grade in the "dumb class" with all the boys who were already slipping through the cracks and had attitudes to match. I learned a lot about school and society that year and didn't realize till much later that a lot of the people who run things were denied this experience. So a part of me always knew that the folks in charge make big mistakes even when well meaning.

I was by the way later told that my first grade teacher went on to become a very good teacher. We all learn.....

On to music

By the way I have a recording of Joe Turner and Pete Wilson from 1938 at the spirituals to swing concert. It's absolutely rock and roll. They just didn't call it that yet. I think it might even have been before they called it rythym and blues. Personally I think the 50's were extremely fertile-you had Miles and Brownie and Willie Dixon and Chuck Berry all at the same time. If you watch Jazz on a Summer Afternoon you will see Chuck Berry doing a dixieland version of Sweet Little 16 complete with his electric guitar, duckwalk, and a New Orleans clarinet. We were just to ignorant to know what was going on around us. My reaction to rock and roll was the same as my reaction to jazz when I first heard it:where has this been all my (short)life and how did this musician I've never met know this about me?

I think it's okay to talk about our musical influences here. It's a big part of your girl bio and I guess your male bio also. And it's about to become a huge part of my girl bio.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Absaroka

[Robyn Katie]

Hi Absaroka,

Yes, I too have had the very valuable experience of spending time among those defined as the "losers," both in school and in the Army. I think if everyone had that experience, and learned that they are people too, have a right to be here, and have their own story to tell, our world would be a fairer, more compassionate place.

Once you see why underpeople feel the way they do, how they get beat down, how few choices they have, how they get their horizons cut down to zero, you never forget it. Makes you understand how fear and hopelessness deadens people spiritually, humanly and politically till all they can do is react with hate and despair.

About the music, all I meant was that I'm wary of getting into a parallel discussion about personal likes and dislikes. Music is such a passion with so many of us, it could easily take over the thread.

So, for the thread's sake, I'd rather not talk about music in posts like this. (Somebody once said "Explanations are anathema ...") But just to answer your point (and I promise to keep it to one paragraph)...

You're right about rock having its roots in the '30s. Robert Johnson, along with Bessie Smith, was sought for the Spirituals to Swing concert but no one could find him, and it turned out he and Bessie were dead, both violently. Thank goodness Robert didn't record with string bass and drums; he was far better as he was. But if he had, he'd have been the authentic first rocker. His records excited everyone—Kokomo Arnold, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James, BB King, all the early blues rockers and rhythm busters. Not to mention outfits like the Harlem Hamfats, and so on to Willie Dixon, who as a producer/performer networked everybody. Rock mostly grew out of '30s blues plus church gospel, paralleling the move of blacks out of depressed farmland into the northern cities and finding electricity and urban ways. And yeah, I like Turner too, but because I wasn't listening to radio much, I didn't hear him, or most rockers, until years later.

OK I'll shut up now. Because I really do want to keep the music talk within my girl bio.

Maybe somebody should start a separate thread about CDers' musical activities and favorite musicians. Just please, not here (I hope you agree) unless it's within the autobiographies!

Love, Robyn Katie

[Absaroka]

Robyn you're right. We'll keep it in our bios. There are quite a few music threads buried in the forums already anyway.

Erin where are you?

Absaroka

[Absaroka]

Here's the next chapter, called Permission. Mostly stage setting and summing up-passing notes as it would be called in musical composition. But rereading this chapter I started to see how Zecheriah embodied some of the less realistic expectations I had of my eldest daughter. She also commented on his likeness to me in some other ways. In terms of self discovery I learned a lot from reading this chapter after it was written.


They had been to see her a couple of times again when Zechariah finally returned from his trouble plagued little odyssey. In her letters his daughter had told him about her two new friends and how they had been so helpful to her and he had been fearfully grateful that at least there had been someone to look after her occasionally while he was away. Now of course he would be home and there would be no need for anyone else. He supposed that they would write letters for a while but nothing more. He remembered how he had tried to interest her mother in his home once but the hike up the mountain had stopped her before she was half ways there. The occasional hunter or hiker that braved the forbidding landscape had been made to feel unwelcome enough by his unfriendly nature and with the arrival of his daughter he had become antisocial even by his own standards, thinking that his little girl did not need any strange men dropping in and that strange men were the only kind who ever came here. By now it had probably been several years since he could remember anyone but the two of them at their cabin. Yes, he was very grateful that his daughter had been cared for but enough was going to be enough.

On his return he had been most of the ways up the trail to the cabin when she came rushing down to meet him, throwing herself on him with an affection that had seemed to disappear a couple of years ago. She had insisted on carrying his pack for him and he thought she was probably taller than when he had left. After convincing herself that he was okay and not too weakened from his stay in the world she spent the rest of the way up telling him of her adventures. She tried to keep it focused on how everything was fine, the berries were picked and preserved and how she had recently shot a goat, but at every turn her words returned to her two friends and their contributions. The cabin looked good, with even a few improvements and a big woodpile all neatly stacked. She again exaggerated the help her friends had given with that. Inside was the greatest shock of all. Pictures! There had not been a photograph on display in the cabin since his first day there and he had never seen the need for a mirror. But nailed to the wall were several pictures of her and her friends and a small mirror also. He thought of the strange ideas he knew his daughter had about her reflection in the water and wondered how she had reacted to this as he studied them carefully over the next days. The boy seemed quiet even in his picture but the girl had something in her eyes that made him uneasy, a certain defiance and life that became even more disturbing when he recognized it as something that looked out from his own eyes as well.

His daughter had certainly learned a lot from his absence. Even by Zechariah’s standards she had become more independent and he thought that she would probably be able to take care of herself alone indefinitely now. In his absence she had built a little hutch and was happily raising a number of rabbits that she had caught to provide food against times of poor hunting. The vegetable garden had undergone a significant expansion as well with plans being considered to increase it yet more next spring. Two days after his return she woke him at dawn to inform him that she would be gone to for the day but would be back by sunset the next day. Another evening she had told him of a new plan for their traps and when he had disagreed she had simply responded that this way had been working for the last month so why change it. The news he had been dreading came a week later when she told him, with the matter of fact manner they both used to discuss things like the inevitability of winter storms and a spring thaw, that her friends would be arriving tomorrow. She knew that this was his cabin and had actually built a little shelter for them nearby so that he would not feel imposed on. She of course would be staying there with them. Think of it as an overnight to her lake she had said as she disappeared to her morning tasks. Her voice had the childlike joyfulness in it as she told him her plans. The same joy with which that she greeted each change of season, each first winter snow and each new bloom of the spring. There was no arguing with it. Change had come to his life again, as implacably as the change of the season. He wondered if there was any way he could possibly prepare himself for it this time.

The two of them arrived alone. Andy had made his parents stay part way down the trail from the town below with instructions to wait for him and bring books to read as they whiled away a couple of hours and then started up the trail with Vickie. His parents waited in silence as they left and then began to rehash the conversation they had had innumerable times by now about all of this.

They were not the sort of parents to let their son make decisions of this magnitude alone no matter how responsible and independent he was proving himself to be. Andy’s father had taken a day off from work to drive up to the little town and make some inquiries. Everyone had professed a combination of fear and ignorance of Zechariah. There was a general pronounced reluctance to discuss anything having to do with him until he spoke with the sheriff, who then directed him to the minister of one of only a couple of churches in the town. Upon hearing his questions the minister had thought to himself that the Lord must be feeling unusually mysterious today and then suggested a private little walk in the nearby woods where he and Andy‘s father could speak uninterruptedly.
First off, he cautioned, Zechariah’s carefully cultivated fearsome reputation was far more well deserved than was commonly realized. The more superstitious of the rumors about him in the town were untrue, and the ones about his allegedly half wild daughter were almost all complete fantasy. But although his daughter was not an ominous presence, the truth about Zechariah was if anything even less reassuring than the legends, and in an effort to avoid any occurrences that might difficult to resolve the minister and the very few other people who knew better had upon careful consideration avoided doing anything to dispel any of the local folklore about either of them. The minister agreed wholeheartedly with the common wisdom that it would not do to cross Zechariah. More to the point, any serious injuries to his daughter would almost certainly be dealt with in what the minister described as an overly traditional manner. All the ominous warnings aside however, it would be important to remember that Zechariah was also a deeply honorable man in his own way.

The minister laughed as he spoke further. Zechariah’s daughter was nearing the age when children just had to do something to let their parents know that they could make their own decisions. He had long wondered what form her adolescent rebellion would take and she seemed to have hit upon the single thing that could most be counted upon to unsettle her father without violating either his or his daughters sense of morality. That Zechariah had agreed to her idea was astonishing but then life was often astonishing.

He told him that Zechariah made offerings to the church. To be sure, they took the form of the first legal deer of the season donated anonymously, but the minister knew where they came from. He said that Zechariah had begun to come and speak with him every now and then perhaps six months or so after his daughter had come to live with him, about what the minister certainly would not say, but he could say that the man thought about things a great deal more than his parsimony with words might suggest. And he told him about how his daughter had been injured once and had required several days stay in a local hospital. The minister had learned a great deal about both Zechariah and his daughter at that time. Again, nothing that he felt needed to be spoken of. But a great deal none the less and if Zechariah had invited them into his home then the minister could think of no reason for them not to accept the invitation.

The problem of Vickie had been investigated and resolved also, at least sort of. Andy’s father had gone, by himself, to see Vickie's family, not telling anyone but his wife about it and deciding after the visit never to speak of it to anyone besides his wife. Vickie’s home had been a dismal place with an uncleanliness about it that had nothing to do with the squalor they lived in. They had barely paid attention to his words and he was convinced that they hadn‘t really understood what he was saying to them. They had no questions, no concerns, and when he had tried to explain more of what their daughter wanted to do they had listened absently, or perhaps just too drunkenly to really pay attention. He couldn’t really tell and soon his attempt at discussion degenerated into an absurd argument between her mother and father from which he hastily excused himself and left. As he drove home he thought about his son. Much of the time Vickie seemed to be wearing Andy’s clothes. She ate their food voraciously. Andy had several after school jobs, mowing lawns and similar things. Vickie usually helped him and he said they split the money but Andy never seemed to have any. They knew where it went. He did well in school, went to church with them uncomplainingly. He’d come home bruised but triumphant a few times from school and they no longer worried about how he once seemed to feel picked on at school. And what had seemed to be a mean vengeful streak developing in him towards his younger siblings had disappeared. He seemed happy, which was something they had not been certain would happen a few years ago.
Andy’s father wanted to talk more about Vickie. He hadn’t had to ask where her family lived, he’d seen their names in the police blotter often enough to know their address by heart. But Vickie seemed to be learning where an invisible line was that she kept from crossing, staying out of irreversible trouble. She did not belong in the home, if it could even be called that, that her parents had created for her. It wasn’t hard for him or his wife to see through the fearless warrior to the terrified child within, but that terrified child had seemed to be gaining real courage and strength. True there had been setbacks. Setbacks no doubt having something to do with things they didn’t know about, and some of them had been very disturbing. But nights that she spent on their couch in bad weather were quiet and she seemed genuinely respectful of their hospitality, even if they still despaired of her language whenever she was upset, which seemed often. And they knew that she spent quite a few nights surreptitiously on their porch. They’d agreed not to say anything, afraid of either inviting her into their home even more fully or of driving her away.

Both children were on the verge of the temporary insanity called adolescence. Maybe they were already there. He thought of the minister’s words about Mountain Girl. The other two children were at a crossroads as well. Andy they expected to grow quietly into adulthood. Vickie they had terrible doubts about. But they knew their son. As docile a child as he had always been, he had always made up his own mind. He was most certainly going to be making up his own mind about this. Vickie and Andy had done a fairly good job of carrying each other through a variety of trials the last few years. They might as well accept the inevitable. Vickie's family really didn’t care, as difficult as that was for Andy‘s parents to believe. They had no idea just how many nights she spent at Andy’s home. They were unconscious by the time they had told her to be home and still that way by time she was to leave for school in the morning. Andy’s parents knew that Andy had forged her parents signatures endlessly on the forms the school sent home. Andy’s father had talked long and seriously with his wife and in the end she agreed with him. It was time to accept whatever was coming next.

The day of the family’s visit the minister had by carefully arranged chance happened to meet Andy’s family at a diner in the town when they had a second breakfast prior to starting up the trail. As they chatted he thought that Andy seemed like a nice boy and the minister told them that he hoped that they would have a pleasant stay wherever it was they were going since no one, appropriately the minister thought, was forthcoming with this information now. Then Vickie had belatedly joined them and although she had been pleasant and happy the minister had looked in her eyes and known that his previous thoughts on God’s mystery had been woefully inadequate.

On reaching the cabin Andy and Vickie had been respectful and polite and after helping Mountain Girl with her task at hand she had broached to her father that of course he understood that they too had parents who would be along in a bit just to make sure because after all they were from the rest of the world and that this was all going to be fine, wasn’t it. Her last comment was a statement, not a question and Zechariah thought for a second as he had so often lately about the idea that it was not up to his daughter to dictate anything to him. But he had to admit that she had taken care of herself quite well in his absence and that carried a lot of weight with him. He had the thought that if he were to tell her that he would make the decisions that this might be the first time in many years that she would be tempted to defy him and he had to respect that also. His daughter had learned to care for herself and deserved to be treated accordingly.

Zechariah had been impressed that it took his daughters friends all of five minutes to get to work when they got here. It was almost as if they had come here solely to help and while he certainly didn’t need any help he appreciated that they were not guests or freeloaders. Definitely not like the occasional visitors who would appear when he had first come to live here. That his daughter had given them explicit instructions about this in her letter and in fact had arranged her chores over the last couple of days so as to make the most of this moment had never occurred to him. A little while later Andy retrieved his parents and he let his daughter welcome them and then announced that it was time for lunch anyway and that they were welcome to eat if they were hungry. The light in his daughter’s eyes was like that she had shown when he had returned and it did look nice. Perhaps a couple more visits from her friends would be okay he guessed. The other adults ate quietly with a few parental questions. His daughter offered to show them around after they had cleaned up and then asked her daddy to come also. She showed them all the lean to she had built for the guests and the other adults admired it for a bit. Zechariah thought it could have been sited a bit differently but held his peace. There were a couple of well placed questions and then to his amazement the father announced that he guessed it would be okay if the children stayed here a bit if he was okay with it also. The idea that they had their own doubts about him was a shock. He was the one who questioned everyone else, not the other way around. But his daughters work on the guest shelter and the happiness in her eyes were not something even he could argue against successfully. They could stay for two days.

That evening Zechariah saw something he had not considered or ever even really thought about. Dinner was done and cleaned up and he heard some noises on the other side of the cabin. He had looked and the three of them were running around playing tag. A somewhat brutal form of tag which involved knocking each other down a lot but they were having an awful lot of fun. He watched as the other girl caught his daughter and knocked her flying and he thought that he knew she was faster than that. She had let her friend catch her and a moment later he watched his daughter catch the other girl in turn and pull her to the ground by her hair, pulling just hard enough. The two of them rolled around a bit before stopping to laugh and he thought of how he would play with his daughter when she was younger, wondering if he was doing it correctly and always being careful because as tough as she was he was still afraid of hurting her. He had given her his all in his way but he was a grown man and she needed other children. He left them with a frown wondering if his whole effort at fatherhood had been a bit misguided and decided that maybe it would be necessary for his daughter’s friends to visit more often than he had thought at lunch. Well, they had the lean to, they could stay there and he might even help fix it up a bit for when the less pleasant weather came. He knew he was fooling himself and sighed. They would stay in his home in the winter. He might as well start preparing it now.

He had another thought, far less welcome. It was something that he had tried to think about as little as possible, something that had worried him for a long time. Perhaps a solution to his worry had presented itself.
When it was time for her friends to leave his daughter told him she would escort her friends down the mountain. He told her he would go also in an unexpected show of sociability. He took the other parents aside and explained that yes his daughter needed other children around. He told them a bit about the failed attempt at public schooling and of his surprise at the nature of fatherhood. Then he spoke of something else. “I’ve been an old man for a long time. Since before I came to live on this mountain, I suppose. But that was a long, very long time ago. I figure it’s not much longer before the coyotes get what they want from me. She’ll need someone then. She’s ready but not really. And she doesn’t deserve a life alone. Not like what I’ve chosen.” Andy’s parents looked at Zechariah and nodded. There were too many possible meanings to what he had just said for them to respond in any other way and they wondered just what they were agreeing to. But he obviously was not the sort of man to ask anything of anyone unless he considered it to be a matter of such importance as to have only one possible answer.

Whatever that answer was, they had just given it, just as they had given the answer to Vickie's’ unasked question the night she had appeared at their door in the snow. And then Andy came over to them and proposed another visit in three weeks. They had all agreed. Zechariah would be in his weekly town visit that day and would walk with them up the mountain himself. It would be pouring rain and they would be cheerful the whole climb up the mountain and when they got to the cabin Zechariah had known that his daughter was now less alone.

[Erin L]

Sorry I've been absent of late, girls. Things have been piling up again - my father-in-law being intentionally needful, my daughter continues to have acting-out episodes for reasons no one seems to be able to explain, and the work situation has only marginally improved (and the job market is awful - big surprise). Last Sunday, my wife and I suffered one of those awful meltdowns that good couples always swear will never happen, but somehow they do. Naturally, it was triggered by silliness, and we both pulled back from the brink, but not before we both suffered some emotional bruising (and, no, my dressing was not involved in any way).

We both took a mental health day on Monday, and we decided that there have to be some priorities reordered. We started pushing a lot more of the day-to-day support for my father-in-law on the health aide who is getting paid for it, and when my daughter's house called mid-week to ask for our suggestions for something, we told them what THEY had to do.

But I also realized that I've been spending a lot of time on this forum in the evenings, and in editing Erin's autobiography, and in just thinking a lot about Erin, to the point that it had become a means of escaping all the bad things in my life, lately. I'd been spending so much effort on Erin, and then the usual effort on my daily things, that there was too little time left to keep nurturing my relationship with my wife.

It's all about balance, and right now, the balance has to be with my most important relationships - my wife and my children. So, I will continue to visit and post when I can, but it probably won't be with the same frequency as it's been. Of course, I'll continue to post my "bio" in installments.

Hugs,

Erin

[Absaroka]

Erin it's good that you have a good grasp of your priorities. I hope things improve for you and your family and will look forward to hearing from you as time allows.

A lot of my writing got done in slow periods of work and when my family was away without me for a week one time.

Absaroka

[Robyn Katie]

Hi sisters,

Erin, I'm glad we heard from you! You know we all tend to worry about each other if one falls silent. Sorry life's giving you so little relaxation or time for enjoyment just now, and I hope it improves.

Coincidentally I've been having difficulty getting back to the thread, due to other pressing matters—pleasant ones, yes, but there's a lot seeking my attention now.

So though I ordinarily would have posted today (I've tried to put one up every Friday or so), it'll probably be a longer while before I, too, post next.

Life calls! And no need to feel guilty about that. Just everyone, please don't worry, or construe silence as bad news. My next post will arrive eventually, I promise, just not on time.

Love, Robyn Katie

[Absaroka]

Here's the next chapter, entitled "Gifts"

My discovery that revenge is better enjoyed as a fantasy than reality came a lot more gently than Andy's discovery. The quiet nerd with a bad temper that is Andy is me. Vickie's gift to him is something she uses sparingly-the truth. The conversation is reminiscent of one I had with a friend (David in the story) in my late teens about what his need for drug money had brought him to.

Mountain Girl isn't physically present but she has quickly become Vickie's conscience, Vickies route to the truth. A junior mystic in the wilderness..





It had been shortly after they returned, still in semi-disgrace from the camping trip, that Andy decided to take matters into his own hands regarding yet another aspect of Vickie‘s life. Her story of the disappointment at the loss of her trumpet had stayed with him well after their little adventure with own independence. As soon as he thought he was out of the doghouse he had a talk with his parents. He wanted to buy her a trumpet. With his own money that he had saved and put in the bank. Not only that but he wanted to let her practice at his house so as to not risk another loss, this time of his own money. His parents rightly suspected that should they forbid this, a year later he would have surreptitiously saved enough to do it anyway and after a long and unlistened to lecture they agreed to allow it. They went to the store and bought a used trumpet and the next day at school Andy insisted that Vickie come to his house. Making her close her eyes he placed it in her outstretched hand. Her eyes opened in shock.

She tried to tell Andy that this must have cost too much and that she couldn’t let him do this. It was a new argument from her; normally she was happy to accept whatever he offered her, even seeming to take his families kindness to her for granted. He thought for a moment about how direct Mountain Girl had been and tried to choose his words with her in mind, guiding him as he spoke. “I’ve never minded sharing anything with you but this is different. I’m not sharing, I’m giving. I worked really hard for the money to pay for this. It’s my money and I’ll spend it however I want. Don’t you tell me I can’t.” It was a challenge. And for a moment she had the thought that sometimes fighting back against every challenge was exhausting and pointless. But she didn’t want to think about any of that. She wanted to say thank you but the words wouldn’t come. And so for lack of any other response reluctantly she blew into the trumpet. The trumpet felt like Andy.

Vickie too had been thinking. Mountain Girl had made quite an impression on her. She thought of all the things she had tried and given up on, how much she had felt that she had to be a certain person, usually someone she didn’t even really like, and she thought of Mountain Girl, someone who had no use for anyone’s expectations whatsoever. If Mountain Girl could live alone in the woods eating wild food and be happy, then she, Vickie, could at least give what she suspected was a passion for her a shot. She imagined herself telling Mountain Girl that she wanted to do this but it was too hard, she was afraid to try, that she thought she might fail and felt a red flush of shame on her cheeks. “You’re sure your parents won’t mind me practicing here?” she asked Andy. “I don’t suppose you had the brains to get a mute for this did you?” Andy didn’t know what to say. Vickie concerned about being too loud and annoying people? But he had asked the music store owner about this. He got up and went to his room while Vickie wondered if she had just made another mistake. A minute later he returned with a mute in his hand.

She blew into the trumpet again. It didn’t play quite the way she remembered. It had been quite a while since she had played one and her lip was completely gone. Already she felt discouraged. But still the trumpet felt nice. She thought again of how it felt like Andy and wondered suddenly what it would be like to kiss him. He certainly deserved it. It was the same feeling she had begun to have when they wrestled around with each other. She thought a little more about it and felt something else. She thought of her sister and the trouble she had with her boyfriend. Of how her brother never seemed to have any real use for his various girlfriends. Of her parents violence and constant hostility to everyone and everything. Kissing Andy suddenly seemed like a very bad idea. She blew into the trumpet again. It didn’t sound that bad. She looked at him watching her and played a little more. Then she stared at him. After an endless moment she smiled. “Okay. Thanks. I guess. Are you sure I can keep this here and practice here?” “I promise. I already got my folks to say yes. If they don’t hear you practicing they might not believe me about how much I wanted to get you this. They might think I was being really dumb.”

She thought of Mountain Girl. She always hugged and kissed Vickie goodbye and it was okay. It didn’t feel too scary or embarrassing, just kind of nice. She’d been surprised at this. She guessed she could hug Andy. “Okay. Thanks” she repeated herself. She put the trumpet down and stepped towards Andy. She put her arms around him and held him next to her and felt his arms around her too. Just as she was trying to think of how to stop this they heard a car door in the driveway. It was his mom and Vickie was suddenly incredibly relieved that she was here. “Let’s surprise your mom” she suggested. She picked up the trumpet again and began to play what she could remember of one of the songs she had liked to play.

The love accompanying the giving of the trumpet seemed to have seeped into the horn itself. Vickie was almost immediately maniacal about making it to her lessons at school and seemed to be practicing constantly at Andy’s house. She also appropriated his father’s collection of jazz records and listened to them often, playing with them and trying to copy the solos. With a little help from Andy’s mother she learned to pick out a tune on the piano and to play simple chord progressions. Time spent practicing at Andy’s house practicing was time spent in a new kind of battle from what she had expected to excel at. The difficulties she and her foursome still sometimes found themselves in notwithstanding, she was very slowly becoming known as someone who used to be a bad kid.

The fight came on the first day of school that fall. Andy had been talking with Danny and Steven as he waired to see Vickie after school got out. He hadn’t seen much of them that summer and it sometimes felt like they weren‘t really actually friends anymore. But today, the first day of school, was a new year. Maybe they could still be friends. He hoped so, he missed them, even though so often the reason he wasn’t with them was that he was with Vickie instead. They were talking about how they had spent their summers when a group of a half dozen boys appeared. Obnoxious boys that they usually tried to avoid. Leo, Mitch, Eddie, a boy they called Peanuts and several others who’s names he forgot. They weren’t scary the way Dennis and David and Alan seemed to be and in the time since he had become friends with Vickie they had lost interest in Andy. He liked to think he had the efforts of her friends to teach him to stand up for himself to thank for that. But he often suspected that their respect was for Vickie and her friends, not for him, and that without their menacing protection that he would quickly resume his status as target. Whatever Andy’s circumstances, Danny and Steven had been less fortunate than him, and this year their tormentors looked to be putting more effort than ever to making themselves look good at the expense of everyone else.

It was Leo with the big mouth who started what he thought would be a little fun. Andy knew he ought to be more forgiving of Leo. His was one of the families who’s battles he and Vickie sometimes surreptitiously listened to and sometimes he felt really sorry for Leo. But today Leo wasn’t going to give anyone a chance to feel sorry for him. He made several unpleasant comments to Steven and Andy was tired of it. Tired of the abuse, tired of backing down, tired of watching his friends fear. Tired of feeling like his happiness had been stolen from him. Wanting to do something to prove to Danny and Steven that he was still their friend. Wanting to prove something to himself. Wanting to change what had once seemed like the natural order of things. Steven attempted to walk away from Leo but Leo blocked his path and continued with his verbal abuse. Steven seemed near tears in his humiliation.

He thought of Dennis and David and Alan. He wished he was like them. He wished he was one of them. Leo would never try this with them. “Leave him alone” he said to Leo and now Leo’s attention was on him. He made a couple of sarcastic comments to Andy as his friends arranged themselves in a circle around him. He tried to walk past them but another boy, Mitch, blocked his path. He tried to push past him but Mitch grabbed his arm. “That ugly bitch and her loser friends aren’t here now” he gloated. “You want to try something?” Andy was silent as he tried to think of something. Dennis and his friends were always so quick with a comeback that everyone was afraid to argue with them even without the added physical fear they inspired. Why couldn’t he think of something to say back to Mitch and Leo?

It all happened in an instant. He remembered things they had shown him when they tried to encourage him to stand up for himself more. David had hopes of being a boxer some day and had tried to teach Andy how to throw jabs and hooks with very limited success. But Dennis and Alan liked to say that a fair fight is when you win and the other guy loses. They had told Andy that it wasn’t how hard you hit someone but where you hit him and had showed Andy a bunch of ways to hurt someone in ways they might not expect. They weren’t difficult and they’d had Andy practice them when they were bored during recess.

He pushed the palm of his hand up into Mitch’s nose. They were right, you didn’t have to do this all that hard to get results. While Mitch was standing there in surprise Andy grabbed his hair and pulled his face down into his forehead. Another thing that you didn’t have to do that forcefully but he wondered what he was going to do next. Mitch let out a stream of curses as he held his nose and then swung wildly at Andy. His fist landed on Andy’s cheek and it hurt but Andy hit him back, managing to hit his nose again. Then Leo grabbed Andy from behind.

Mitch hit him a couple of times and then he heard a girls voice yelling at them to leave him alone. Mitch hit him again and then suddenly Vickie was there and she had kicked Mitch between his legs and he was curling up on the ground. Another boy, Peanuts, grabbed at Vickie but she hit him and then hit him again several times with her hard fists until Eddie came up behind her and grabbed her. And then suddenly Alan and David and Dennis were there too, attacking the other boys whether they were doing anything or not. Dennis pulled Leo off of Andy, knocking him down and kicking him before turning his attention to someone else. Leo got up but before he quite knew what was going on Andy hit him as hard as he could. He lucked out and landed his fist squarely on Leo’s ear. Leo looked dizzy for a moment and Andy hit him twice more, remembering to aim for the same place each time like David had told him. Leo stepped backwards and fell. Andy jumped on top of him, hitting him over and over while Leo wondered in confusion and pain how this had happened. There was a mass of confusion, yelling, and blows and then the teachers converged on them to stop the fight. Just about everyone ran away except Mitch and Eddie who were curled up on the ground trying to protect themselves from Vickie’s kicks. Andy was surprised at her rage. She usually knew when to stop, but this time her fury seemed boundless. There was something else different as well. He’d watched her in a great many fights over the years and was used to hearing a barrage of unending profanity from her mouth as she fought. But this time she was utterly silent and there were tears in her eyes. It was one of the very few times he had ever seen her cry and although they were tears of rage to be sure, they were still tears.

The teachers had gotten a pretty good look at all the participants and the next day everyone involved was brought to the principals office. The principal was furious with the idea that there had been a fight like this on the first day of school. All accounts were listened to and it was decided that it was clearly the fault of Vickie and her friends that any of this had happened. Danny and Steven had disappeared with their arrival and were considered to have not really been involved. The principal, who knew something about what Leo had to endure at home, decided to give the lies of Leo and his friends the benefit of the doubt as to what had happened, and so he and his friends got a break. But Vickie and company needed to be taught a lesson and along with Andy were suspended for the next two weeks.

He’d had the fantasy that once he really stood up to Leo and Mitch that everything would be suddenly fine, but that wasn’t exactly how things happened. At least his parents had believed his version of what had happened. His father had gone so far as to say that he might have actually done the right thing, although he would have to be willing to pay the consequences nonetheless. Most importantly of all they didn’t blame Vickie. But when he went to Danny’s house a day later Danny’s mother brusquely told him that Danny was busy. And when he went to see Steven, expecting praise for having defended his friends, Steven had been bitter. “This is what happens when you hang around her” he had said, referring of course to Vickie. Forgotten was the fact that Vickie, on her own and without any of Andy’s doing, had intervened on his behalf before. “She’s nothing but trouble. Now you’re suspended with all those other creeps. You should have known better. None of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for you.” Andy was at a loss. Didn’t Steven understand that it had been Leo and Mitch who had started everything? But Steven went on. “You’ve been saying for years how she isn’t so bad. But did you see what she did to Mitch and Eddie? You keep telling me we should try to be friends with her. Well not me.” “You could of at least said thank you for backing you up” Andy said, trying to bring the subject around to the fact that he had been defending his friends. “I heard you broke Leo’s nose” Steven responded. “Who knows what he’s going to do to us now. He lives just down the street from me you know.” Andy thought about that. "Sometimes you just have to stand up to people” he answered weakly. “What’s the worst he can do? Beat us up? I don’t care, I’m not going to let him push us around anymore.” “Easy for you to say” answered Steven. “You’ve got Dennis and David and Vickie and Alan, and probably all their friends too if they asked. Who have I got besides you and Danny? Do me a favor and next time don‘t try to help me. You'll just make everything a lot worse. You better go now anyway. I have to study.” Then he grinned, sarcastically. Sadly, evilly, despairingly. Showing off the language he'd learned from Andy he asked him another question Andy had been afraid to ask himself. "What are you doing anyway? Are you going to be her punk?" And by then Andy was too angry to say anything intelligent. He left wondering how this could have gone so wrong.

The day he returned to school Leo and Mitch and everyone else avoided him and he had the thought that things would be okay after all. But that night Danny called him to say that Peanuts and Eddie harassed him and taunted him all the way home from school. The next day he looked for Danny and Steven after school. Maybe if they walked home together they would be okay. He found Leo and Peanuts harassing Steven and thought for a moment about what to do next. He remembered something Alan had told him and picked up a handful of dirt and then walked towards them.

“Leave him alone” he yelled. He meant to sound angry but to him his voice sounded more scared than anything else. Peanuts looked at him and then looked around. “You’re all alone here” he pointed out. “Want another fight?” He proceeded to curse at Steven and then pushed him backwards. Steven fell and as he scrambled to get up he spit at him.
He walked over to Peanuts trying to appear calm in some way. “You’re just a punk” he said. "You wouldn't dare try that on someone who’d hit you back.” Peanuts laughed and took a step forward. Andy threw the dirt into his face and Peanuts grabbed at his eyes. And then he never had a chance. In few short moments he was lying on the ground curled up into a bloody ball trying to protect himself. Belatedly Leo took a hesitant step towards him, raising his fists to defend Peanuts from any further harm. Andy hurled himself onto him, knocking him down. They rolled around in the dirt with Leo trying to hit him and Andy scratching at his face. Then the teachers were there, pulling them apart and worriedly examining Peanuts. Steven was nowhere to be seen.

There was another suspension and this time his parents weren’t nearly as understanding. These last two fights had been nothing like the simple fisticuffs Andy had begun to have soon after his friendship with Vickie began and they wondered just how concerned they should be. Andy's father talked to him about some of the tactics Andy had used in his last two fights. They were dirty fighting, he told him, and Andy had responded that they had worked. His father talked some more about how these things could lead to people being seriously injured, saying that it was just luck that Peanut's eyes had not been damaged. Andy listened angrily while telling himself again that he didn’t care. But he didn’t know how to think about what had happened in the last few weeks. He didn’t want to be like Danny and Steven, afraid of everything, so unquestioning of what seemed to be the natural order of things. The pecking order at school, the rules, everything. But he hadn’t liked how he felt after the fight. He hadn’t liked seeing the bloody mess that was Peanuts limping off to the nurses office, and the anger had felt had subsided to leave behind it a feeling of shame over his actions and his rage. Vickie was always angry at something it seemed, and it gave her an energy for confrontations of every kind. But he didn’t want to feel her fury. He didn’t want to feel the rage she and her friends carried with them, he didn’t like seeing people get hurt, and he certainly didn’t want to pay the price she paid for her freedom. He didn't want anyone telling him who to be, not even Vickie, not that she ever did. He didn’t want to be like Vickie, didn’t want to be like Danny and Steven, and certainly didn’t want to be whoever it was that he seemed to be. He wished he knew who he did want to be. Danny and Steven seemed to think he was becoming some sort of a psycho and seemed like they didn’t want anything more to do with him. It was frightening. More than frightening. More than he could think about. To frightening to even acknowledge as a secret to be kept from himself.

Three weeks later they were sitting by the river one night. “That was a seriously cool fight” Vickie said, as she had said every time she had seen him since. As usual she followed it up with praise regarding how Andy had acquitted himself and a denunciation of Mitch, Eddie, Leo, Peanuts, and anyone else associated with them. Then she was silent, trying to figure out what she wanted to say next. She thought of Mountain Girl; of how direct she was, how she managed to say everything she had to say in just a few words. So unlike Vickie, who could talk for hours without feeling as if she had said what she really wanted to say. But this was important and she needed to express herself clearly. She threw a rock into the river. Then another, harder. And then two more, bouncing them off the railroad bridge with all her might. It seemed to carry a little bit of her fear and anger with it.

“You can’t do this very many times Andy” she said, her voice almost a whisper in her confusion. “Another time or two and too many things will happen. It‘s not just that your family might blame me. They know what really happened even if they were mad at you this time behind it. I guess. But no one else at the school, not your teachers, not Danny and Steve, no one, is going to let you be who you’re supposed to be if you keep doing this. You know? Pretty soon you’ll have to try to be one of us. And you’re not. You can’t be.” She stopped for a moment, resting before what she was about to say next. “It’s great being one of the worst kids in the school. We look out for each other. We love each other and don’t take any crap from anyone. Most of the time it’s pretty cool. We have a lot of fun. But there’s more to life, you know? I know it. I look at my brothers and see how this all works out in just a few more years and it really doesn’t last. You don’t want what’s going to happen to us. I know I don’t want what’s going to happen to me.” She paused to rest again for a moment and Andy was silent.

“I know you wish you were more like me. And sometimes I wish you didn’t seem like a punk. You’re not. I know you’re not. Den and Al and Davie all know that and who else counts, you know? And I guess those other pot hole know that now.” She laughed sardonically and then smiled, relaxing in that knowledge for a moment. “You’ve got the same stones we have, you just don’t like to fight. You're not pissed off enough to hurt people and feel good about it." Andy felt something release it's hold on him. She'd put it into words: no matter what else he felt he was glad nothing permanent had happened to Peanuts, and that was okay. He didn’t have to feel shame over his inability to enjoy what his friends seemed to think was simple payback. Yes, it was okay not to want to really hurt someone. His mind wandered back to the moment. He'd stopped listening but Vickie was going on, oblivious to his momentary absence.

"I wish I was more like you too. Sometimes I really don’t know about those three. I love them and I’ll never say anything against them. But sometimes…. They’re such fools they’re almost too dumb to wake up in the morning. I haven’t told you this and you can’t tell anyone. I know you never would but you really can’t this time. My brother’s got them helping him take off drunks now. I did it too a couple of times but I don’t really like it. Especially when Alan's there. That mean streak of his really shows then, you know? He can be really creepy at times, you know?" Andy nodded silently. He did know. Alan had begun to really bother him. Not that there was anything specific. Just a feeling. He started to ask Vickie something but she interrupted him with a laugh. A mean vengeful laugh. "They even did my old man one night. I think my brother was even there when they did it. It served the bastard right." Silence, as if she was embarrassed.

Her evil joy was gone suddenly. "But you know, she really makes me think about stuff, you know?” She referring to Mountain Girl, “And something else I didn't like. Alan said I’d make good bait. For what? A chester? Look at me! Do I look old enough for anyone but a perv? Sometimes it’s so much easier to have no one.” Andy stared at her in horror. His confusion about who he wanted to be was forgotten. He didn’t know what was more frightening, the idea that Vickie might agree to her friends new moneymaking scheme or that she might be on the verge of abandoning her unshakable loyalty to them. He couldn’t imagine her without them. She was silent while Andy tried to think of something to say. Finally he had an idea. “I wonder what Mountain Girl would say about all this?” he asked.

Vickie shivered and glared into the distance. Andy had actually managed to make this even scarier than it already was. “That’s not really her name” she replied, changing the subject. “She doesn’t think she needs one. Maybe she’s right. But remember that snake the day you took me to meet her?” She laughed again. The frightened, angry laugh that Andy had come to think of as her shorthand for any number of thoughts. “It tasted pretty good. I forgot this till just now. The night you left me there we went hunting. She said never hurt anything unless you’re going to kill it, and never kill anything if you’re not going to eat it or it's going to kill you. Anyone who tried to rip her off would be dead soon I think. Not that I‘m saying she’s a cannibal or anything. But she wouldn’t waste her time, you know?”

She returned to what she had been saying before. “I meant it when I said sometimes I wish I could be like you. You don’t know how much I wish that sometimes.” She smiled, to Andy’s relief suddenly far less serious. She’d said what she needed to say, with an incredible directness and economy of words. “Of course if you tell anyone anything…. Whatever we three tell each other, whatever we do for each other, is always our secret. Anything. Maybe…” she paused, wondering what she was trying to say. Andy, in that odd way of thinking about things he sometimes had, finished the sentence. “Maybe together we’d make up one person we liked. Maybe we should.” The idea made perfect sense to her even as she wondered what in the world he meant. It made sense to Andy too. He wasn’t so afraid all of a sudden. There was some sort of an answer to all this.

[Erin L]

Oh, I really have fallen behind. I haven't even had time to read Robyn's and Absaroka's latest posts, although I will. I really wanted to get this posted. In December of 1974, my wife and I really did help give a Christmas Party described below, and one of the girls in our group really did react the way Amanda is described. An eerie forshadowing, as it turned out.

I promise to get the next segment posted within the next day or so, unless I am waylayed, which isn't beyond the realm of possibilities. But, for now...

March, 1973 - December, 1974


Terri’s illness had some far-reaching effects. Jeff’s sister, Donna, and her fiancé, Rob, after what Donna sometimes referred to as “tortuous” planning of the wedding, decided that life was too short, Gloria was being too domineering, and therefore the big wedding was off and they eloped instead. I could sympathize with Donna, because I had seen first-hand some of Gloria’s excesses, but the hurt in Gloria’s eyes when she found out was almost too much to bear.

Jim proposed to Terri shortly after she got out of the hospital, and they announced their intent to marry. She was therefore the first one of us to be officially engaged. “Although,” she said to me one night on the phone, “We all know that you have been engaged to Jeff since you were 15.”

Jeff and I discussed the possibility of making plans earlier than we had originally intended. When we were affectionate with each other these days, I ached for him, and the resolve I’d thus far had of not allowing anything that could result in a pregnancy was beginning to weaken. We continued, though, to enjoy other methods of lovemaking.

And, for the first time, Cookie talked about possibly wanting to find someone with whom to settle down. I was amazed to hear her, one night, speaking in soft and serious tones on the phone. Not surprisingly, it didn’t last long, and a week later she was telling me of her latest adventures.

By the time Christmas rolled around, we had all settled back down to normal. There were a couple of times in the weeks before Christmas that I thought I saw Diane looking somewhat conspiratorial, but when I asked her, she looked at me like I was crazy. Then Jeff told me that he would only be able to see me at our house on Christmas Day, and I was consumed by disappointment.

I missed him terribly that Christmas Eve; I missed him at dinner, I missed him at Midnight Mass, and I missed him in the early hours of the morning. And when he drove up to the house the following day, a little late, so that the place was already full, I was almost desperate for him. I made no attempt at discretion when he came in, but simply threw my arms around him. I saw some interesting glances from my cousins and my two grandmothers, but I didn’t care.

“I haven’t missed the gift-giving, have I?” he asked, and I assured him he hadn’t. He placed my gift under the tree. Judging by the size and shape of the package, it was an article of clothing, and I thought that was sweet, that he already felt comfortable buying me clothes, although there was always the possibility that Donna had picked it out for him.

Fred served drinks and then we settled down for our exchanges, a rather frenzied and chaotic procedure in our family. I was busy handing gifts out, and would stop occasionally and open one that had been left for me. I also helped Mom keep things somewhat tidy – not an easy task in the free-for-all.

Things had finally started to calm down when I realized I hadn’t yet opened Jeff’s gift, although I had seen him open mine – a new leather briefcase. I turned to find him and he was right beside me. He kissed me to thank me.


“And just my size, too,” he said.

“Yeah,” Fred quipped, “She worried a lot about that.”

“You forgot this one,” Jeff said. I thanked him and kissed him on the cheek. I sat down to open it.

It felt very light. I tore the paper away, and there was a department store gift box that was taped closed on both sides. I carefully popped the tape and pulled off the top, and the collective audible gasp in the room almost drowned out mine. There inside the box was a ring box taped to the corner in an open position, and in the ring box was the most beautiful diamond ring I had ever seen.

At first, all I could do was stare in disbelief. Then, he pulled the ring out and slipped it on my left ring finger; it fit perfectly. We hugged for a long time, eventually interrupted by Mom kissing both of us, Fred kissing me and shaking hands with Jeff, and then everyone wishing us well.

When I got to Diane, she was grinning triumphantly, but it wouldn’t be until later, when everything settled down, that she told me her part in this. She had gone into my jewelry box one day and taken a ring she knew I had worn recently, carefully traced it on paper, and then had given it to Jeff one night when he came to pick me up for a date.

“When did you plan this?” I asked.

“One night when he called, and got me instead of you.”

“So,” Uncle Rob asked, “When’s the big day?”

I told him that we didn’t have a specific day planned, yet, but that it would be shortly after we both graduated – me from college, Jeff from law school. Later, Mom would say to me in the kitchen that she thought that was kind of a long engagement.

“Well,” I said, smiling, “We’ve more or less been engaged since we got back together last summer.”

“I should have known,” she replied with a smile.

Maureen was really happy for me, which was nice. She was now a freshman in college, and also a music major. I found my attention being divided by Jeff on the one hand and Maureen on the other.

We had a chance at one point to move away from the crowd and talk seriously. Aunt May’s drinking had continued, unabated, and she’d had some serious episodes, including a bout in the hospital with liver problems. Even now, she looked kind of sallow.

I could see the cracks around the edge of Maureen’s disposition, and I put my hands on her shoulders.

“This is not about you,” I told her. “This is her problem, not yours. You are not going to let this bring you down. You hear?!”

And she laughed, as I’d known she would, and we hugged.

“Listen,” I said, more lightly. “I need to ask you something; when Jeff and I get married, will you please be one of my bridesmaids?”

All at once, her eyes filled with tears, and she nodded quickly. I hugged her again until she could get her emotions back under control.

After dinner, Jeff and I managed to slip away downstairs, but we didn’t stay there for long. It was too obvious and we’d be discovered before long. But we did share a few sweet moments alone together.



Jeff launched his boat over the following summer, and I was proud to “crew” for him. On its maiden voyage, we took it out into Little Neck Bay and over to the little marina in Bayside. There we tied her up, checked for any leaks, then brought her back.

The rest of the summer included lots of little excursions on the boat, and we began to bring our friends along. One Sunday, Jim and Terri joined us, and it was the best I’d seen her look in a long time; she looked as if she had completely beaten her illness. She had only lost a semester from her college education.

It had been Jeff’s idea to take the boat to City Island, where we could tie up at one of the docks and go into one of the restaurants there. We had a nice dinner there, surrounded by other members of the boating community, sharing a kind of fellowship. But as we were finishing the main course, I noticed Jeff glancing out the window and looking concerned.

“We may have some rough weather going back,” he said.

“Do you want to wait it out here on the island?” I asked. He didn’t answer, but instead excused himself and walked out onto the terrace that surrounded the place on three sides. He was gone for about five minutes, and when he came back, he had a grim look on his face.

“It’s definitely going to rain, and it looks like it could be a long one. Waiting it out is out of the question, so I think we should get going now.”

No one disagreed. We paid the bill and quickly got down to the dock. We could see other boaters who had hastily come to the same decision.

It wasn’t that long a run back to Douglaston, but we’d have to cross the East River, and so would have to keep an eye out for barge traffic. Usually, it was exciting to be out on the water with bigger craft. Now, I was nervous.

We passed under the bridge connecting City Island to High Island, and were on the open water, passing tiny Rat Island off the port side (Jeff was pleased that I’d long ago mastered “port” and “starboard”). Hart Island was further off to port, but we were really in more open water, now. Jeff was still cruising along at about 15 knots, and since we were sort of making a run for it, I thought he’d pick up speed, but as we got out into the East River, he suddenly slowed down a little.

He pointed off to the right (sorry, starboard), and I saw the fog bank.

“Good news and bad news,” he said. “At least, the water won’t be too choppy, but on the other hand, we won’t see anything until it’s right on top of us.”

Jim and Terri got really quiet as we trudged along.

“Erin,” he called, softly. “I need you to go up on the bow and keep a sharp lookout.”

“Okay,” I said. “What am I looking for?”

“That lighthouse you like so much. Also, listen for any splashes or lapping of water.”

He was talking about Steppingstone Lighthouse, out in the middle of the river, a lovely little structure that I admired every time we were out on the water. As it was still late afternoon, the light might not be on, and it was built on a pile of rock.

The fog still wasn’t too bad, and I soon saw what looked like a shadow of the lighthouse.

“Lighthouse off port bow!” I called. Then I yelled, “Wait!” I strained to hear.

“What is it, babe?” Jeff asked softly.

“I thought I heard a voice.”

Jeff dropped the engine down to a crawl. No one said a word. I strained to hear, and soon I could hear the water washing up on the rocks. Then I heard the voice…no, two…a girl…a boy…both sounded young. They were arguing, but their voices were laced with panic.

Jeff dropped the engine to idling and strained to listen.

“Hello!!” I called out. The arguing stopped.

“Help!!” two voices called back.

“Other side of the island,” Jeff said, gunning the engine. He swung the boat around to the other side, going slowly and carefully. Having probed every inch of the rocky mound as a boy, he knew it well, but still, he took no chances.

We soon saw the young couple and their boat – or, what was left of it. It was a small skiff, like the Boston Whaler my grandfather had owned when I was a little girl, and had broken apart on the rocky shelf that projected out into the water from behind the lighthouse. The boy and the girl had climbed up on the rocks, and I could see that both of them were bleeding from their arms and legs.

Jim tied a rope to a life jacket, and threw it toward the young couple while I went into the small cabin and got the first aid kit. By the time I came back up, the girl was wearing the life jacket and had jumped into the water away from the rocks, and Jim was pulling her toward the boat. I could see she was wincing from the stinging of the salt water on her wounds, but she started swimming toward the boat, and when she got to the side, I put the small ladder out for her and Jim and I pulled her aboard.

“Thanks,” she gasped. She was trying not to cry, but she lost the battle. I wrapped her in one of our spare beach towels and had her sit down in the stern of the boat. I poured a cup of lukewarm coffee for her from a thermos we had filled that morning, and she gulped it and thanked me.

Terri went to work on her cuts, some of which were quite deep. She dabbed at them with cotton soaked in peroxide, which made the girl wince, but not protest. Her hands and arms were badly cut, too.

“I was trying to get hold of something to pull myself up on the rocks,” she said.

By now, Jim was pulling the boy toward the boat, so I went to help him pull him aboard. When we did, we found he was more badly cut up than the girl. It turned out he had tried to save the boat, and so had climbed back onto the rocks two or three times.

The girl’s name was Brenda; she was slight, with long, straw-like blonde hair, and she wore a little pink bikini that easily covered her tiny breasts. She was 15, the same age as my little stepsister, and I wrapped her in one of my sweatshirts as she shivered.

The boy’s name was Nick; he was whipcord slim and slightly muscular, with unruly brown hair and black swim trunks and a Yankee tee-shirt that was soaked through. He was a year older than Brenda. As Terri dabbed peroxide at his multiple seep abrasions, he tried hard to stay calm and brave, but after a while, a small tear escaped.

“Sorry,” Terri said, softly with a smile. Then she turned back to a particularly deep cut on his leg. She was keeping up a soft, friendly chatter with him, but I could see that she was having trouble getting the bleeding to stop. Finally, she took several gauze pads and adhesive tape and put a pressure dressing on the wound.

Jeff gunned the engine and began to back away from the island. It was raining more heavily, now, and it was rain, rather than fog, that impaired visibility.

“Where you kids from?” Jeff asked.

“Manorhaven,” Nick said through chattering teeth.

“Manorhaven?!” Jeff said. “What the hell were you doing way out by Steppingstone Light in that little thing?”

“Please,” Nick said. “That’s just what my father is going to say.”

“And mine,” Brenda added humorlessly.

Jeff pointed the boat toward the nearest land, which was the Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point. He was already on the radio.

“Okay,” he said. “Here’s the deal. You two need medical attention, and the infirmary at Kings Point is the closest.”

“Can’t you just take us back to Manorhaven?” Nick asked.

“Too far,” Brenda said, shushing him.

“Well, yeah,” Jeff said with a chuckle. “Visibility is getting worse, and I don’t have radar on this thing, so I do want to get off the water as soon as possible. But I also don’t want to take any chances getting you two the medical care you need.”

As we got closer to the pier at Kings Point, we could see an ambulance waiting.

“Is that really necessary?” Brenda asked.

“For you,” Terri replied, “No. But for him, definitely.”

“Is he going to be all right?” she asked, suddenly alarmed.

“Sure,” Terri replied, all smiles, soothing and soft. “He’ll just need some stitches, that’s all.”

As we pulled alongside the pier, I jumped off the boat and tied up. Jim came next and helped me finish. Terri helped Brenda and Nick ashore, and two paramedics were waiting for them.

“Let’s get you two out into the ambulance and out of the rain,” said one of the paramedics. “Then we’ll see what we have, here.”

“You have far to go?” the other asked Jeff.

“Nah, just Douglaston,” he said. “What about their families?”

“We’ll have them call them as soon as their medical issues are addressed.”

The kids thanked us again, and the senior paramedic thanked Terri for her first aid job. We got back aboard, loosened the lines, and were on our way. It was a straight run from Kings Point down into Little Neck Bay, and the rain was really coming down by the time we pulled into the tiny marina on the eastern shore of the bay. Despite the downpour, Jeff took his time pulling the canvas tarpaulin over the cockpit of the Queen Erin, and then he rowed us all to the main dock.

“Good work, everybody,” he said as we all got into his car.

“Thank you, captain, sir,” Jim said, and Jeff replied with an epithet.



Shortly after school started for me in September, we were in the kitchen one night cleaning up after dinner when Grandma seemed to falter for a moment, and then slowly toppled to the floor. Fred tried to move her and couldn’t, as she was in too much pain. He called an ambulance, and they took her to the hospital with a broken hip.



In early December, I had a visit from Cookie.

“I have a favor to ask, and I’m afraid it’s a big one,” she said. “My sorority usually does something for the holidays for sick or underprivileged kids. This year, our president suggested we do something for some kids that no one ever thinks about, kids with mental illnesses. Everyone was real gung ho about it, but now that it’s only two weeks away, a lot of the girls are getting cold feet. It looks like we may not have enough to pull it off, even with boyfriends, but we really would feel rotten backing out now.”

“So, you want Jeff and me to help out,” I said with a smile. She nodded.

“Laura and Greg are going to be there. I was thinking about asking Terri, but I don’t want to impose, what with her…”

“Ask her. She’ll jump at it. Trust me.”

We hugged.

“I can’t imagine Jeff saying no, but if he does, I’ll be there, anyway,” I added. “By the way, where is it?”

“It’s a children’s unit at Creedmoor. Not the Queens Children’s Hospital, but Creedmoor itself.”

I pondered that for a minute, and Cookie showed a look of recognition.

“Hey,” she said softly. “If you don’t want to do it, I’d understand. I guess I hadn’t thought about that.”

“Different hospital,” I said, waving away her concern. “And a different time; I’m not going to worry about it.”

Two weeks later, Jeff and I drove over to the hospital with Jim and Terri. We met the others, including Cookie, in the parking lot. Creedmoor was actually much more than just a single hospital; it was a campus that stretched almost a mile from north to south and about a half mile from east to west. Its main building was huge and dominated the skyline of Eastern Queens, but that day we were in one of the outlying buildings.

We were met by a staff member, a woman named Marge who was in her early forties. There were fourteen of us altogether, which meant that only a handful had come from Cookie’s sorority. Marge thanked all of us as we pulled stacks of wrapped toys out of the trunks of the cars.

She led us inside, and I felt my stomach constrict. It might have been a different hospital, but it felt almost exactly the same – the bars on the windows, like a prison; the steel-reinforced doors; the scuffed and stained walls, with layers of paint visibly chipping away. When we turned a corner in a hallway, I half expected to see Dad sitting there, eyes glazed over, slack-jawed…

“Before we go in to see the children,” Marge said as we gathered in a small office, “I thought I’d tell you a little about them. They are all between 8 and 10 years old, and they are all autistic. Now, I don’t know if any of you are familiar with autism, but it is a condition that we are only now just really starting to learn about.

“Autism is a disorder that affects the brain’s ability to sort through sensory information. At one time, it was thought that autistic children had hearing deficiencies, but we now know that they hear quite well, possibly too well. When they don’t respond, it isn’t because they can’t hear, it’s because they are tuning everything out.

“Now, I want you all to just stand quietly for a moment and listen…listen to everything you can possibly hear.”

We did.

“What do you hear?” she asked. One by one, we named sounds: a door slamming down the hall; a child crying; a truck going by outside; the humming of the light fixture overhead; a muffled conversation from the next room. “Good,” she went on. “Now, when I speak, do you still hear those things?”

“Well, sort of,” Jeff said. “But they’re kind of in the background.”

“That’s right. And that’s because our brains automatically filter out what we don’t want or need to hear in order to allow us to focus on what we do want or need to hear. That’s normal.

“Now, try to imagine for a moment, that you can’t filter out anything; that every noise you hear is just as loud and attention-commanding as every other sound; that the humming of that light fixture or the slamming of that door is just as loud and immediate as my voice, and in fact indistinguishable from it.”

“Oh, my God,” I gasped.

“That’s right,” she said to me with a smile. “Terrifying. Especially when you consider that we now think that children with autism begin to realize this confusion when they are about two or two and a half – much too young to be able to rationalize it.”

“So,” I said, “They just tune it out?”

“Very good,” Marge replied with a warm smile. “They tune it out, not really knowing that’s what they are doing. And for years, these children have been tuning out and retreating into their own world. They adopt behaviors that are bizarre to us because they seem to have no meaning, but to these children, they are perfectly normal. A lot of it is ritual behavior or routines. They’ll do a lot of vocalizing, possibly to block out unwanted noise with sound of their own. Many of them rock back and forth; flap their arms or hands when they walk; engage in hand or finger play.

“Some of these children are verbal, but only in a limited way. Some exhibit what we call Echolalia, which is to say that they will repeat exactly what you say. When you give them toys, they may play with them the right way, but they may just spin them or bang on them; you mustn’t let it bother you.

“Most of all, even if they don’t acknowledge you in any way, please know that you’ve done a lovely thing by coming here today. These children really have been forgotten, so it’s nice that you have remembered them.”

With that, she led us down the hall and into a large room that looked like a classroom. There were stacks of toys in the corner, most of them in varying stages of disrepair. We were all a little tense, especially when the children just regarded us with detached curiosity, if at all.

Laura looked a little uncomfortable, but Cookie and Terri were pretty much okay, if a little reserved. One of Cookie’s sorority sisters, Amanda, sort of stood off to the side, looking terrified.

“What’s the matter?” I asked her.

“This just really freaks me out.”

“Yeah, this really is a grim place,” I agreed.

“I don’t mean that. I mean…them,” she finished in a whisper.

One of the boys was rocking gently back and forth. I knelt down so that my face was even with his.

“What’s your name?” I asked. He fixed me with a determined stare, but said nothing and kept rocking. “My name is Erin. Can you tell me your name?”

He kept rocking.

“That’s Daniel,” Marge said softly from behind me.

“Daniel? Is that right? You’re Daniel?”

Recognition seemed to flash briefly across his face, and his eyes stayed locked on me as he rocked. They were dark brown; his slightly heavy brows were arched a little, and he seemed to wear a quizzical expression. I held out my hand, palm up.

“You want to shake hands, Daniel?” I asked. No response.

“Daniel,” Marge said. “Slap five?”

In a flash, his palm slapped down on mine. It jarred me a little, but then he was grinning. “Slap five again?” I asked, and again his palm flashed down on mine. This time I shook my hand like it had hurt, and he smiled a little.

Sitting next to Daniel was a little girl named Lily. She had a lovely little face completely framed by a mass of unruly brown curls. She also had a seemingly blank expression, but her eyes darted everywhere and seemed to catch everything.

Michael was a little black boy, maybe nine years old, whose eyes seemed always wide with wonder. Unlike Daniel and Lily, Michael talked rather a lot. But they seemed to be just random statements; it wasn’t like he was having an actual conversation with me.

Gradually, our group relaxed and the kids seemed to warm up to us. We served refreshments and gave out gifts, and the kids seemed to have a pretty good time. Daniel stayed close to me, and I found myself talking to him even if he didn’t respond.

Jeff asked me something at one point, and I turned to answer him, when I felt pressure on my shoulder. When I turned, I saw Daniel leaning up against me, his chin pressing hard into my left shoulder. I eased away from him, not sure what he was doing, but a few minutes later, while I was talking to Marge, he did it again.

“Oh,” Marge said with a laugh. “You’ve really made a friend in Daniel.”

“What do you mean?”

“What he’s doing with his chin is his way of kissing. Normal kissing is probably a sensory overload for him, so he does it that way. I’ll stop him in a minute, but…”

“No,” I said. “It’s okay.”

She stopped him, anyway, giving him a toy to play with. Then we stepped away, and she gave me a cup of coffee, which was very welcome.

“That was very sweet of you,” she said to me. “But we’re trying to break him of the habit because most people, even family members, recoil from it. We work with him to express affection in more normal ways. Usually, by this age, they’ve stopped chinning, as I call it, but Daniel is a little immature for his age.”

“I just don’t understand why these children are here,” I said. “I mean, they’re not really mentally ill, are they?”

Marge agreed they were not. “The correct term is ‘developmentally disabled,” she said. “But where else can they go? Most of them have behaviors that are extreme, and their families find they can’t keep them at home. They’re very disruptive, they act out a lot, there aren’t any decent schools for them, and it can be emotionally wearing to provide round-the-clock care for them. Here, they can be in a supportive environment all day, every day. We’re their school and home.”

“But it’s a hospital, not a home and not a school. There should be a special place for these children, a place that could feel like a home even if they aren’t with their families.”

She smiled warmly.

“He your boyfriend?” she asked, nodding toward Jeff.

“Yes. Well, actually he’s my fiancé.”

“He’s as good with these kids as you are.”

Soon it was time to go. We packed up, said goodbye to the children, and I got a reasonable facsimile of a hug from Daniel while Jeff got a real hug from Lily. Amanda and a couple of the others looked unabashedly relieved to be getting out.

Marge walked us out, and we eventually exited down the long hallway we’d come in before. As we got to the door, she stopped.

“Well, I want to thank you all. I know this was difficult for some of you, but you did a lovely thing for these children. Of course, I love them, but that’s because I work with them all the time; I just want to thank you all for seeing in them the beauty that I see in them.”

We decided to go out for dinner at an Irish pub not far from the hospital. They were able to seat us all at one large table. Cookie and Terri were right across from me, but it was Amanda who spoke to me.

“I can’t believe it didn’t bother you – working with those kids,” she said.

“You make it sound like they have some kind of communicable disease,” I said, trying for Cookie’s sake not to sound annoyed. But Cookie took care of that.

“For God’s sake,” she snapped. “It’s not like autism is contagious. It’s a developmental disability, a part of the brain that didn’t develop properly.”

“I know. But you can’t tell me that it wouldn’t bother you if your child was born like that,” she said, looking right at me as she said it.

“Of course, it would bother me,” I said. “All the hopes and dreams that you have for your children dashed like that…I don’t know how anyone faces that. But they’re still people, and still owed love, just like all of us.”

“Hear, hear,” Jeff said softly, slipping his arm around my shoulder and holding me tighter. Later, when it was just the two of us in the car, he said, “But I still know that our children will be brilliant.”

[Absaroka]

Excellent Erin, and I hear the voice of a lot of experience in this chapter. Did anything like that ever happen to you in a boat? Or is it writing out your fears?

I liked the part about the autistic kids. I worked as a tutor in a state institution for a while with retarded older adult men- most of them in their 60's and 70's and a few in their 80s. At that age I wasn't clear as to what I was actually supposed to be teaching them but my job was more to organize activities for people living there. Many of them had a lot of autistic behavior and some may have actually been autistic rather than retarded-it could be hard to tell. The institution was the end of the road for them. At that age there was often no family left even to visit them. It was a long look into a part of humanity that many never get to see and although if I thought about it in a certain way it was heart breaking, a horror show, or both, with other perspectives it was an experience I will always value. The institution itself was nice as institutions go and I sometimes had a lot of fun. It was out in the country and I spent a lot of relaxing afternoons fishing in one of the ponds with the clients. Other times were sometimes far less pleasant-the comment about difficult behaviors was right on the mark and there was a reason that people there had not been placed in the community in sheltered workshops and group homes.

One cirticism- grandma and her broken hip would seem to warrant more attention.

I liked what seemed to be a very girlish description of everyone getting married or engaged- to my mind at least you seemed to capture a girls perspective on this rather than who guys at that age might be writing about this. Also interesting with stuff like it's Jeff's boat, not hers. Lets us know it's a girl in a certain time and place.

I went to City Island once for a wedding. I have friends who like to go there a lot. They say it's gotten very Caribbean over the years-like the rest of the Apple I guess.

My next chapter is probably going to need a big rewrite, so it might be a little while before it gets here.

[Robyn Katie]

Hi Sisters,

In haste this time too, but I did want to post in this crevice of time before things get busy again. Enjoy.

Love, Robyn Katie

***

It’s been a hot drive home on this sweltering June day, me in pride of place in the front passenger seat perspiring into my rustly graduation dress, doing my best not to ruin it. What a relief to get home at last! I rush upstairs, hang this tulle by its neck to air, and with a sigh of contentment throw a slip over my head and my lightest, most comfortable summer dress over that. Nothing underneath. ‘Cause it’s just plain too hot!

This summer I won’t be able to spend my time in jeans and T-shirts except on weekends. For my summer job I applied to the Dolestown Bookstore and Stationery Shop, as they had an opening for a junior clerk, and got the job! Daddy said it would be good for me to learn something about working in a store, not just always on the farm and such.

Well, let me tell you, in this store I found out one thing quickly: I’m in the limelight no matter what I do. There’s only Mr. Garves the owner, and one other employee, Emily Scholz. She made it clear right away that I am going to have to do most of the work, but I will not be allowed to do anything the least bit responsible. Basically I think she doesn’t trust me. She’s not so very old—probably not thirty yet—but what an oldfashioned frump she is, with her frizzy brown hair and old-maid clothes and manner! She could be quite pretty, but I doubt she’ll ever let herself be.

I bustle about, fighting sleepiness—oh, the heat! I wish they had air conditioning like we learned about in school, but only fancy hotels have that. Seems to me we ought to use our ingenuity though— for instance, even a bucket of ice and an electric fan would help! But when I suggested that, Mr. Garves gruffed, “Are you mad, girl? That would wrinkle the stationery.”

It’s hard having to be driven seven whole miles to work all the time, now that my hundred-dollar car is so unreliable; the garage said it’s the starter, I’m saving to have it repaired. I probably should try to get a better one, but there’s no money for that. So Mom drives me to work and picks me up at the end of the day, luckily she is working at the Agricultural College library so she can give me a lift on her way to her own job.

Oh, right, my love life. (How could I’ve forgotten?) Well, first of all, my time is limited, as I am working a forty-six-hour week on a sliding schedule—one week I work Thursday nights when the store is open late, the alternate week I work Saturday until five in the afternoon, but have half Monday off.

That doesn’t leave me very much time to get up to mischief!

Secondly, as we are very deep in the country, next to nothing happens at home. But being on display, as it were, at the bookstore I now and then get asked to date by town boys. This is new! But not terribly welcome, I’m afraid, they being the sort that would never even set foot across the threshold of a bookstore unless a girl is in it. So I always refuse.

Well, almost always. One of the town boys, I must admit, has been very persistent. So on his promise to drive me home afterward Peter Hutt and I went out on a date last Saturday night when Marty couldn't see me anyway. I’m afraid I let him do this and that to me. But I did make the condition that when I say stop, it means stop. This mostly worked (not entirely). Afterward I felt cheap, like a steel penny.

No doubt you will ask, Hey, Robyn, what about Marty? After all you’re his girl, aren’t you, very likely to become his fiancée and eventually his wife? Well, the answer to that is, I have not seen fit to mention this to him. This is awful of me, isn’t it, dishonest and all that, scarcely the sort of faithful, loyal, honest girl I led you to expect I’d be?

I suppose so. But as it happens, being with Marty isn’t the breeze it used to be. In fact we have been seeing each other less and less. Not that we mean to! It just happens that I’m tied up (not literally like in those awful, yet somehow fascinating Bettie Page magazines at the newsstand), or he’s tied up, or our parents have something on and we’re stuck taking part …

So in practice we see each other on an average about two Saturdays in the month, with an occasional Sunday thrown in. It isn’t enough—I know that. And he complains of it. But it’s the circumstances.

I don’t like to admit that we’re coming unstuck from each other, yet it does seem that way, I’m sure, to people who just casually look at us. But, you see, we’re living so far apart, it’s not easy to get together. Also we’re much more closely watched, now that everyone knows we’re serious about each other. That means we’re suspected of having sex (with good reason, I do admit), and everybody colludes in trying to make sure we don’t do that. So opportunities are skimpier. His parents tend to stay home, fearing (correctly) that if they don’t, we’ll try to play house. My parents glare if we wander into the underbrush together, and on our return from the pinewoods we get sharp remarks.

Yes we do still make love, but not very often, due to circumstances beyond our control. More and more when we do, our lovemaking is hurried, sometimes frantic. Less and less do we talk.



So here we are in July. Heat of summer. Sultry, isn’t it. But somehow I’m not. Forlorn is my feeling, adrift on the possibilities. Temporarily I seem to have lost interest in what will happen to me. I wonder why that is. I somehow feel my life is going wrong.

In the second week of August, the weather ungodly hot, Marty takes me out on a date. We see Gigi at the drive-in. It makes me very sad, I don’t know why. Then we go parking at Seven Acres. Only after he has me naked and we’ve done the very thing prudence would scream at me not to do, does he tell me,

“Robyn? Been meaning to mention something.”

“What?” All unsuspecting I dash the hair out of my eyes, just hoping he hasn’t gotten wind of my date with Peter Hutt, knowing that taken out of context it could be rather damning in his eyes, though really there was nothing serious about it. But figuring it’s probably nothing, some little thing, like when our next date is going to be.

So what he says floors me completely. “I was thinking maybe we ought to stop seeing each other for a while—”

“What?”

“You know how it is, just makes sense, don’t you think, since we’ll be apart as soon as college starts? And besides—” faltering. My eyes look stricken, I guess, because he’s staring at me like I suddenly turned into a toadstool. “You okay?”

“Um, yeah, I guess.” In a preoccupied manner I scrabble about for my bra and blouse.

“All I meant was, maybe you’d agree we ought to be free, both of us. “

“Free? From what?”

“That’s not what I meant.” My obtuseness isn’t making it any easier for him, so instead of the high-road stuff Marty skips ahead to the real point without me even having to ask. “Besides, as it happens, don’t get me wrong or anything, but see, there’s this girl …”

Girl? Stabbed to the heart, I utter my dying words. “What’s her name?”

“You wouldn’t know her …”

“What’s her name?”

“Shirley. Shirley Killick.”

So, I think vengefully, that’s who’s taking my dearest boy away from me. I shall hate the name Shirley forever and ever, amen. Not that the name means anything to me, I never heard of her. But why would I ever have heard of her? “Who— Where—”

“She lives down the street. We used to play together! Turns out she always had a crush on me. Funny thing, isn’t it, how—”

My mind has turned into an evil swamp in which monsters rage up and down uttering bloodcurdling cries and eating random humans, among them Shirley Whatshername. “Is she pretty?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. About average I guess.”

So she’s pretty. “Prettier than me?” Also wondering What’s her cup size? but not quite being a maniac for self-punishment (yet) I manage to keep myself from asking that.

“Nah, you’re prettier.”

“Why then?”

Another shrug! He is so shruggy now suddenly. “Just one of those things I guess.”

We bicker, we snipe, we gasp with ill-nature, we say wounding things. Why go obsessively through the whole gruesome night of it, afterward being dropped off, numbly getting in my car (the starter repaired at last, but now the engine’s not working very well, running sort of rough, I meant to ask Marty to adjust the idle for me, but, well, not now), managing to steer well enough not to actually run off the road all the twenty-four miles home …

“Hi, honey, have a nice date?”

I haven’t the blood or bone left to pretend, even to Mom (to whom I pretend quite often these days). “Marty … just …” For the life of me I can’t think of any words to describe our breakup. (Is that what it is? a breakup? the word sounds so horrible, so inapplicable, it can’t mean us, not me and Marty; yet all of a sudden it does, and my mind just won’t comprehend it.) “I—we’re not—we just—it’s over I guess.”

Bewilderment. “The two of you called it quits?”

Fumbling through the kitchen grabbing onto whatever won’t give way under me, I don’t know what to answer. It’s yawning before me, the biggest abyss there ever was. Here I was calmly drifting away from Marty, thinking nothing of it, and all the time he was—! He and that Shirley were—! My heart feels like it’s having a heart attack. I’m probably dying, it’s just that I’m too numb to know it.

Shaking my head, “Not me. Him.”

Something like comprehension dawns. “Oh poor darling—!”

“No—no—” I fend her off. “I just need—I don’t know what I need. Tired. Need sleep. In the morning probably. Or maybe not. Don’t worry, I’m fine. ‘Night …”



I am alone in the bookstore with me, myself and I. Mr. Garves and Emily disappeared shortly after ten o’clock on various flimsy excuses. I would suspect them of having an affair, only it seems impossible, Emily is such a frump and Mr. Garves is so old, and fat, and repulsive.

It’s a terrible bookstore, as we carry only a few best-selling books. They are a dreary lot, these for instance: Bake the No-Knead Way, Let’s Cook It Right, Miracles With Minute Tapioca. The Rand-McNally World Atlas. Henry Steele Commager’s The Growth of the American Republic. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Crusade in Europe.

Most popular are the books that tell people exactly what to do and how to do it, so they’’ll never for a moment be in danger of having to do their own thinking about anything—like Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book, and Dale Carnegie’s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. Or what and how to believe, like Oursler’s The Greatest Story Ever Told.

There are any number of books on Canasta. There is Cheaper By the Dozen. And at least fourteen bodice-busting romances.

Ting-a-ling, and into the store marches a large imposing woman with a mink neckpiece despite the heat. Heaven knows how she drapes herself in winter—an entire polar bear skin?

“I beg your pardon, young lady, have you Sexual Behavior in the Human Male?”

A breath. “Yes, ma’am, we do.”

“I hope you do not keep it where it may be seen by the unwary.”

“Oh, no, ma’am, it is safely under the counter where it won’t offend, but may be asked for.” (I peeked into it myself, but I must say it was so unenlightening about any of the questions I personally had that I privately refer to it as Sexual Behavior in the Human Mole.)

The lady frowns. “I am of two minds about whether I ought to report this store for harboring indecent literature—if that name can in any way be applied to filth of that sort.”

Mr. Garves has schooled me in how to reply to such remarks. “Entirely your right, ma’am.”

“Let me see it, please.”

“Yes, of course. One moment, please.” Bending, I reach down for it, careful to press my blouse-top close so she can’t tell the police the store was clerked by a floozy in indecent attire. She looks it over, censoriously but greedily. Finally she says, “I have decided to purchase a copy. Strictly to examine the extent of the threat to public order.”

Off she goes with it, and nothing is ever heard from her again. (Her threats would have gotten me all upset and scared, had she not behaved exactly like the previous two women who bought Sexual Behavior in the Human Male).

For fiction, there’s The Big Fisherman, A Rage to Live, Pride’s Castle, The Young Lions, Father of the Bride and a few more. Kitty Foyle is a perpetual favorite here in Dolestown, as is The Miracle of the Bells, so we have those, even though they’re older. But nine-tenths of what we stock isn’t books.

I stir about, straightening, dusting, checking that there are exactly three and no more than three of everything on display, ready to jump, in case any item should happen to be sold, to replace it from the stock in the back room.

But very little sells. Few come in. (It’s not my fault! I smile very prettily, am winningly subservient, and behave like a real kewpie doll to every customer, no matter how wretched.) But despite all I can do, and despite its corner location on the main street of town, this is a very quiet place. To contain myself I have to think up makework (and plenty of daydreams).

I move among the counters that fill the floor space, neatening, straightening, being careful that my skirt doesn’t knock anything to the floor (such as the pen and pencil sets, always reaching out to waylay the unwary). Here is our pride: our boxes of fine Penworth stationery in three colors: pale blue, beige and white, tied with a ribbon bow. But we have numerous other types of boxed stationery as well, and cards for every occasion.

On this counter in the rear are typing paper, carbon paper, mimeograph masters and so on. Then there is the neatly arranged jumble of Dennison labels, fasteners, and three-ring reinforcements that look like little paper Life Savers. Right up front are the calendars and daybooks. Then all the fountain pens, pencils, erasers with brushes on the end. Along the walls are ranged the ledgers for bookkeeping, and adjoining those, the Smead file folders, dividers and covers, which are always getting out of line and having to be straightened. This is a job for a perfectionist, a role I can pretend to, but it always feels unnatural, since I rather enjoy disorder.

I practically leap like a greyhound when the opening door stirs the tingly bell. It’s a large man.

“Can I help you, sir?”

“Just looking, thanks, miss.”

He moves straight past the tables with the stationery to the shelf where the bibles are. Seems as if 95 percent of them never read anything else. He falls into a sort of daze, turning over pages, looking dissatisfied. Finally he approaches with a big one in his hand, bound in that rich red like pew cushions.

“Yes sir?”

“This Bible. I see it has the Apocrypha. All of them?”

“Oh, yes, sir.” Lesson number one, said Mr. Garves: never admit you don’t know.

“I’ll take that then.”

“Very good, sir. Shall I wrap it up?”

“No need.”

Three dollars and forty-five cents go into the till. “Thank you, sir. Goodbye, sir.”

Is this me, my girlness gone, lovelorn, cynical, feeling old, used up, washed out? Is this my life now? Books, stationery, stony-faced customers, lonely bed at night, no loved face to kiss, no arms about me, nothing? Maybe I should be grateful I have this silly job at this silly store. At least it helps distract me from thinking how lost I am, how overcome by lonely yearnings for what can never be again. Thoughts of Marty chase vain regrets.

One thought burns like ice: I knew it couldn’t last. I knew it because I went against my own best instincts, my deepest nature that told me What do you think you’re doing, pretending to love a man? You’re not a man’s girl! You’re a … woman’s girl?

But that makes me queasy, too, as if I’ve just uncovered something that can’t bear the light of day. Depths of my nature laid open and raw like that leave me fluttery, uncertain. I close it over as with a bandaid, and serve another of our infrequent customers.



There are moments when the tremendousness of my still live feelings for Marty just turn me into something out of The Snake Pit. Feeling sorry for myself, I sit shrunken and bowed, arms about myself.

Being his girlfriend wasn’t always easy! Especially those times when he was grumpy or out of sorts. He could be sullen when he didn’t get his way, and once in a while mean-tempered for no apparent reason. Growing pains I guess. Boys are said to lag a year or two behind girls at our age, I suppose that could be it.

It could be exhausting though, for it was I who had to be vivacious, fun, pleasing in order to keep him in good humor. So many girls as they become part of a couple seem to have to work hard, smiling, being cheerful, to provide the freshness, the brightness for both! Time and again (including times I didn’t much feel like it) it’s been I who’ve had to furnish the eagerness, the warmth and happiness for the two of us. Not to mention having to be the prudent one, making sure we didn’t get me pregnant, running interference with all four parents, giving way, bending, being outgoing and sociable. I used to scoff when my roomie Alison would fret that girls are expected to give, give, give, and always take care to make others happy, while boys were free to make nobody happy except themselves. Being from such a lonely place, in my eagerness just to be loved and cared about I wasn’t ready to see that; but lo and behold, she was right. I see now how one-sided it was. How often have I had to sympathize to keep Marty feeling good, when he had so little sympathy to give me?

Yes, being a girlfriend was hard.

But I wanted to be!

I would’ve been his wife, I realize. That was the direction we were heading. It does me no good to reflect that we might have been a very poor match for each other.

He was very sweet to me, like no one else. And of course he was my first; more than one girl has let me know that your first is the one you never forget. Even though I admit there were times I wished he’d been a girl, I think that’s true. He engraved himself on my soul, whether I liked it or not.

I hug myself disconsolately. The moment comes when it occurs to me I’m cradling the breasts he was so crazy about (and now he isn’t). They were the prettiest in the whole school! (or so he said).

“Phoo,” I told him.

“No, they are. They’re the most beautiful shape …”

“They’re not as big as Kay Strell’s.”

“That cow? There’s such a thing as being oversize.”

“But I thought boys liked them bigger-the-better.”

“Not this boy. Besides, look at these little magic tricks.” And he’d fall to teasing my nipples, which he knew of course went pop every time he did that.

Gently now I try to get the same effect. But it doesn’t work. Trying to solace myself, I only end up feeling sadder and sadder until I’m crying as if my heart will break.

All sorts of unworthy thoughts assail me. I wish there were some girl living nearby I could get together with. Someone to be a friend— Oh don’t kid yourself, Robyn, you want a lover. A real lover this time—a girl one.

But who? Where? How? What girls even live near me? There’s only Elsie Yeovil, and I’m not attracted to her at all.

So here I am, one lonely, miserable Robyn the world seems to have no companion for. I love no one; no one loves me. After two years of being someone’s (sexually speaking, not to mention emotionally), that is a staggering change. Just looking at it from the practical viewpoint, I’ve been used to a great deal of stimulation, quite often: daily in fact, or nearly. Granted this summer it hadn’t been so frequent any more—not even weekly, some of the time. (Was that a sign?)

Still it’s left me hanging.

It is a need I feel, I can’t pretend it’s not there. I am so easily aroused, any stray thought, the pressure of a door against my skin, the bed against my thighs ... The gleam of rainwater, odor of dusty summer or weight of an impending thunderstorm. Chance glimpse of lucky girls being kissed, squired, cherished … especially in a flock of girls, thoughtless smiles, touches, kisses …

It possesses me, this wanting, I don’t know how to handle it. I do my best to keep my thoughts in line, act modest, keep my mind out of the gutter. It seems absurd I can’t just cast myself back into virginity’s blissful ignorance. But once one has fallen off that particular cliff, how does one un-fall?

I go through drought, my sexy feelings dry up, I am barren like a rock being eaten away by a million years of wind. Not to be juicy any more, not to be sweet is such agony, yet how perilously easy it grows. For there’s no risk in being a rock, you just erode peacefully forever.

No. Everything I care about has to do with love. I won’t abandon love.

But love’s abandoned me!

How did my life go so wrong when I thought it was on an even keel? Why, suddenly, did things turn upside down? Was it something I did?

From somewhere deep inside, that same stern unbidden thought accuses me. I know it’s ‘cause I went against everything I am. If Marty had been a girl, in other words if I’d been a girl’s steady instead of a boy’s, would this have happened? But girls can’t …

Yet a girl would have been true, caring, would have understood …

Wait, no, that’s not the case either. Look at Lainey … she quit me too.



The thought of Lainey catches me unawares like a blow in the tummy, bringing a dizzying need I can’t easily quell. She and I, what we were to one another, our secret moments in the bed when Alison was in the infirmary …

The dizzying moment grows so pungent I can hardly keep my feet as, from the well of my memory, the sheer presence of Lainey rises and overwhelms me. Suddenly all I can think of is the closeness of those moments:

No longer having to hide from our roommate. Needing to be careful only that our giggles and moans didn’t get so loud they could be heard through the walls. Glad lifting of all restraints between us two. She accepted it then! Dizzying freedom of our bodies naked, skin to skin, our arms and legs intertwined, breasts pressed tightly, hot, soft, sweet like warm muffins, buttery vulvas pressed close in welcome, opening like flowers in gladness, merging till we were like one girl loving herself …

Stop, oh stop, I can’t afford to think like this, I can’t stand to!

Sue Moon.

It is a single heart-stirring possibility. Sue. Those moments on the school lawn, and afterward. Her crushed-pansy eyes clinging to mine.

But that can’t work. She’s much too far away!

Not at all. New York isn’t that far away.

Yes it is. How many miles, three hundred? No. Ninety. But for me that might as well be as distant as the moon she’s named for.

She said to call, though, didn’t she? Yes she certainly did. Fine, she asked for it then. Where is that piece of paper she gave me …

Frantically I scrabble through the drawers of the little desk, too small for me now, bought when I was in grade school and never replaced with the coming of my young womanhood that now troubles me, aches me, weighs me down until I feebly flounder, each movement of a leg, an arm costing all the effort I’ve got … For a while I feel I’ve lost it in the general confusion since graduation—

Ah. Here. I knew I hadn’t thrown it away!

Calling, however, takes a certain amount of scheming. There’s only the one phone downstairs. I must choose my time when I can be pretty sure Daddy and Mom will not be within hearing for the next—how long? Twenty minutes? Half an hour? I can’t make the call that long, they’ll rake me over the coals if the phone bill is huge.

Well, ten minutes anyway. I’ll pay them back for the cost of it. (My heart sinks, realizing I can ill afford even pennies out of my tiny hoard of money that’s supposed to be for things I need, but really gets spent on pretty clothes, folksong records, and books—bought not from the store where I work, which has no books any sane person would want, but cheap paperbacks, romance, science fiction, dreamstuff from Kerry’s Newsstand across the street.)

I dial, my finger shaking so badly I’m afraid my dialing’s too erratic; the call won’t go through. But it rings far away.

“Moon residence.” The voice is haughty. My god, a butler? Money too? Just another barrier between us. “Can I speak to Sue, please?”

“You are referring to Miss Susan?”

“Uh … Susan, yes.”

“And who shall I say is calling?” That voice may be smooth, but it’s the voice of a jailer.

“Robyn. Robyn Corin. From school, she’ll remember.”

“I have no doubt she will, Miss,” leaving me to wonder what depths of degradation that voice imagines of me. “One moment, I shall ask her if she wishes to receive your call.”

I wait. I am not used to this contemptuous aura, property and power staring me down like a mite on a microscope slide, as if I am worth nothing and less than nothing, and am to be fobbed off in any way possible so as not to contaminate the pure chill world of—

“Hello?”

“Sue, hi. It’s Robyn.”

“Yes?” Her tone is cool. It almost sounds as if she doesn’t remember me. I babble reminders, ending haplessly, “You said to call.”

“Yes, that’s true, I did. Well then, hi Robyn, how are you?” It is a very formal-sounding question.

“Um, I’m fine. I’ve been missing you, and thinking so much about you …”

“Have you? Me too, of course.” But it doesn’t sound like it.

Edgily, I ask, “Have I called at a bad time? Is it not easy for you to speak, where you are right now?”

“No. I’m in my room. It’s fine.”

But every word tells me how guarded she is with me. Something’s changed—by the sound of it everything’s changed. Where’s the girl whose eager, shy kisses, cool intimate flesh and imploring gaze sought to link our two hearts forever? Was I a whim for her?

“I was wondering if …” My words barely know how to form themselves. “Would you like to come visit me? My parents would be glad to invite you. In fact, I hereby invite you …”

“Oh, Robyn, sweetie, I’m sorry, but right now I …”

“Could I come visit you then?” This is a major burst out of my shell, ‘cause I am very scared of going anywhere on my own. But I realize if I’m ever to achieve anything I want, I will have to put up with being scared and simply go.

“I’d like that, I really would, but just now … I don’t think we can.”

“Why not?”

This is gauche. It’s bad manners. I oughtn’t to abuse her hospitality by thrusting myself on her if she doesn’t want to invite me. But, feeling suddenly ruthless and unprincipled, I do it anyway. I need her, why won’t she admit she needs me too, why is she fending me off? With every word she is more defensive, but can I take a hint? Not me. I am awfully persistent if I put my mind to it. And so, at last, I pry it out of her. The truth.

“I’m going with someone.” She says it wincingly, as if afraid I will berate her.

Oh. Like everyone else but me, it seems. “A him? or a her?”

She is scandalized. “How can you ask me that?”

“Sorry,” I say shortly. Then remorse really does strike. “Oh Sue, forgive me, I didn’t mean to pry, it’s none of my business, I don’t mean to be a gleep. It’s only that I’ve missed you so, and wanted to see you—” I run out of steam. “Excuse me, do? I feel like such a fool.”

“No, don’t! You’re not anything of the kind. It’s I who should feel badly.”

“You mustn’t do that …” I struggle to think what to do or say. Can’t think. At a loss, I give in to the impulse to flee. “It was nice talking with you,” I murmur, though it wasn’t.

“Yes, we must again sometime,” says she distractedly.

“Uh huh, definitely. ’Bye now.”

I carefully put the phone down in its cradle, rise, straighten my skirt, flip my bangs out of my eyes and pull back my hair into some semblance of shape. I hug myself to myself, the whole long sorrowful touch of me against my forearms and all the length of my legs, feet in their thin flats reminding me how insufficient I am in just about every way.

Morbidly, with a deliberate tread, I climb the stairs, all thirteen of them. What idiot defied luck to put thirteen stairs here? At the moment it seems the key to all the sadness of the world.

Once in my room I flop on my bed. Look out! dress wrinkles. Phooey, if it does, I’ll iron it.

For a long time I just lie staring at the interesting pattern of cracks in the ceiling. Gee, they look almost like witch faces.

All of a sudden I’m crying. This will never do, I tell myself, but in any case I cry for a while before I can stop.

There, that’s better.

Gee it’s a hot afternoon. August is even worse than July was.

Swimming? Might cool me. I could get in my bikini and robe and walk go over to Welches’, I’m sure they wouldn’t mind me using the pool. Of course I have to be a little bit careful, for instance if nobody’s around but Johnny. He might take the bikini for a hint. Wouldn’t do to give him any reason to think I’m offering myself to him on a platter.

Besides moving is too much trouble. I cry some more.

At some point, stunned, I stop in mid-sob and think: this is grief! Me, grief? Me, so horribly unhappy? But I can’t be unhappy, can I? I’m a happy person. Aren’t I?

I was. At least, I thought I was. But not any longer … All at once I’m crying harder than ever, and smacking at myself, hurting.

This won’t do. I have to stop this. With an effort I make myself stop hitting myself. Lying there, I resolve to get up on my feet and go do something—not sure what—anything—immediately—

Still lying here after another half hour or so, I find I am crying some more. And think of escapes. I begin to positively look forward to what I dreaded before: college.

***

Next Time: Starting Over

[Absaroka]

Great job of describing desolation Robyn. There were moments of visceral recognition as I read it. The first two summers after high school, unstructured except for jobs I didn't like, left me feeling so alone, adrift, and unable to do anything about it. And when I did have a girlfriend (she was actually quite nice and a good person) I felt even more alone and confused by all the feelings it brought up.

The defining ourselves through our relationships with others, or lack of the same, at that age really came through in this chapter.

What was your job the summer out of HS? I think I worked in a factory that summer. I was bored to tears there, but I don't remember which summer it was.

Were you Marty, telling your gf about someone else just after sex? Or did she do that to you?

I remember calling someone months later, far too late for them to be interested also.

Keep it up.

Absaroka