Scags at 18

by Deborah Emin

  It all began so good-naturedly. I had accepted his invitation for dinner on Thanksgiving.

  Sometimes I can’t tell these stories right if I go after them head on. I have been sitting here for a long time now trying to find the words for what happened.

  I didn’t know when I went for the run on Thanksgiving morning how upset I was to be left behind. I promised myself that even though the campus was virtually empty, somehow I would find things to do that would keep me busy and interested. I promised myself I would have a good time this weekend.

  The reward for that would be that things would work out between Charles and me. Next semester, I can go to his house and meet his parents. I didn’t want to contemplate the other possibility and so what happened between me and Prof. Keating also caught me completely off guard.

  The run was a disaster. I pulled my left hamstring. No one was here to help me work it out. The teams were away all weekend for competitions. I was injured and Alex wasn’t here to help me. That one simple thing sent me into the worst slide I have had since getting off the train in September.

  I came back to my room with great difficulty. I called Prof. Keating because I needed someone to at least get me some aspirin for the pain. I also didn’t know if I could walk as far as his house for dinner.

  He answered the phone and after listening to my story, he thought it would be better if he came and picked me up and that I stayed with them for the weekend. At that moment, I was so grateful. The pain was bad and the idea of hopping around trying to eat and get up and down the stairs frightened me. I had visions of me melting into my bed not to be found until Sylvie returned from Montreal on Sunday night.

  Arriving as a knight in shining armor, because at that moment he was, Prof. Keating came to my dorm room. He saw the pain I was in. Took my small bag down the stairs and then came back to help me down the stairs and into his car.

  I felt so grateful. I kept apologizing and then thanking him. I couldn’t stop myself. It was that or burst into tears.

  His car was comfy and warm. We went straight to his house and he helped me out of the car and into the house where Mrs. Keating while cooking away in the kitchen had warmed up a nice hot drink for me which she had left on the nightstand in the bedroom she had also prepared for me. The guest room had its own private bathroom. The bed was made, there were towels laid out. The bed was larger and cozier than my dorm bed. Prof. Keating encouraged me to lie down with the drink and let it do its magic for the pain. They would awaken me when dinner was ready.

  I felt like I had gone from the depths of despair to the heights of victory. No longer alone in that dreary dorm building, I was now comfortably resting in a huge bed with all these pillows to sleep on, with and to elevate my leg.

  The hot drink, whatever it was, went down like tasty medicine. It tasted good but smelled bad. However, it worked. I fell asleep and when I woke up, the pain was gone. Then the thought hit me that if the pain was gone, they might ask me to leave.

  With the smells coming out of their kitchen filling up my room, I didn’t want to have to return to the dorm and the food in the Commons for the next three days, sitting alone in a large room with this skeleton staff watching me finish my food so they could clean up and go home. I tried to adjust the level of pain I felt so that it was still severe enough that I couldn’t be left alone but not so severe that they might take me to the hospital.

  When Mrs. Keating came in to tell me that dinner was ready, I almost burst into tears again. She looked so angelic at that moment. Her hair had become a mass of curls from the heat in the kitchen. Her cheeks were bright red too but as I learned that was from the wine she drank while she cooked. She helped me stand up and even took a comb out of a drawer and ran it through my hair and asked me if I needed help getting to the bathroom. I assured her that for the time being, I was feeling much better.

  I hobbled a bit more than I needed to into the dining room but it got me noticed and applauded for making it to dinner. The table was stacked with dishes and platters full of food. Around the table were so many new faces, it shocked me that I slept through all of their noise. I recognized their children, Jeff and Robin, from the get togethers Prof. Keating throws from time to time. There weren’t any other students but a number of the Keatings’ friends from New York were there. They all smiled at me as I limped to my place.

  A Thanksgiving feast in the country began to work its magic on us all. There was more food than it seemed the table should be able to hold. I had never seen so much food on any table at one time. It could have been a wedding feast it was such an abundance of meats, salads, pies, puddings and breads not to mention the wines and beers.

  I have never eaten as much as I did that night. I filled up like a balloon. I forgot to hobble but no one paid any attention to me. We got so drunk on the food that there was no room in anyone’s mind to worry about a pulled hamstring. With no room for one more swallow of anything, I decided to stand up to see if the food would move down a bit so I wouldn’t choke.

  We left the overflowing table and retreated to the library. I liked that room. That was where Prof. Keating had his meetings with us. It had a really nicely messy look as if someone thought through how to be tastefully messy. I sat down and tried to talk to their son, Jeff. He was too full to do more than groan a yes or no to my questions.

  During dinner, Prof. Keating didn’t talk to me at all. He was polite but mainly interested in making sure all the food was passed around the table and that we all had the opportunity to talk if we wanted to and that our glasses were full.

  Mrs. Keating got drunker and drunker as we ate her food. At times I heard her make some comment about the “girl with the flowing red hair,” but I sat too far away to hear what she was really saying. I sat between the two kids. They didn’t talk but worked at eating the food. They seemed quite tired of all the adult chatter.

  I suppose this was what a real Thanksgiving meal is like—too much food and drink. I wanted talk of fun things and table games and even some singing.

  Instead I had to listen to Mrs. Keating talk incessantly about sex and make bawdy jokes. Prof. Keating didn’t say a word, but their friends egged her on and found it all quite hilarious.

  I couldn’t listen. My face and neck got redder and redder as she went on and on. By the time we got up from the table and went into the library, he seemed ready to change not just rooms but houses.

  Prof. Keating and Jeff and Robin and I sat down and tried to relax and loosen our clothes to help the food digest faster.

  Jeff and Robin fell asleep immediately. The food did act like knock out drops. I turned to Prof. Keating and he was staring at me. I felt uncomfortable and was trying to figure out a gracious way to retire to that lovely guest room they had set aside for me. I picked up the local paper to try and figure out a strategy.

  When I finished the article, I threw the paper down on their coffee table and tried to stand up to get to the bathroom. He saw me wobble and reached out his hands to steady me.

  I made it out of the room and into the bathroom. I could have and should have just gone to bed. No one would have cared. But it seemed impolite after all the work Mrs. Keating had gone to. So, I decided to return to the library.

  When I sat down, Mrs. Keating decided to join us. She doesn’t walk into a room, she makes entrances. It felt like she had been waiting to do that—to interrupt whatever we were doing, which was nothing. She made a snide comment about how generous her husband was to the students while she and their kids waited patiently every night for him to come home for a home-cooked meal. And now, she emphasized that word, she had a gimpy kid to look after all weekend.

  I had no idea that she didn’t want me there. I heard her words and I stood up and left the room. I put my things together and straightened their room as neat as I had found it.

  With that abrupt change in mood, I decided that food in the Commons was
in fact preferable to what I had found in the Keating home. I said a fast good bye to them all, thanked them for their hospitality and left.

  Prof. Keating jumped up and followed me out the door. The cooler air hit my face and I felt immediately better. I realized I had been holding my breath. He came to my side, offering to drive me back to the dorm. I let my guard down and gave in to the offer. I felt sorry for both of us. That was probably not the best way to handle this type of situation but I have learned another important lesson—having sex with someone because you feel sorry for them is a big mistake.

  From inside his car, the world was beautiful, safe and quiet. The noise level at the table had been deafening.

  Prof. Keating looked the strong, rugged type when he was with us. At home, he looked like a hen-pecked husband who can’t do anything right. I asked him what had happened? Was she drunk? Another mistake in the long list of mistakes I made that night. Don’t ask a married man what is wrong with his marriage. And never ask a married man why he decides to stay with his awful wife. There’s no end to the reasons.

  I have to remind myself that this little dalliance taught me many lessons, none of which I would have learned had I not spent the night with Prof. Keating

  I know plenty of girls here who want to sleep with him. He walks like he sort of expects all women to want him. I wonder how many of them have seen what his wife is like?

  It was when he cried while telling me one of about six reasons he can’t leave his wife that I began, in my overfed and drunken state to take real pity on him. Clearly this man could use some holding and kissing and then one thing led to another and it ended badly.

  Neither of us was all that comfortable in our bodies that night even with our clothes off. Too much food and drink spoiled things between us fast. I couldn’t believe it. After all that sweetness between us, neither of us could really perform.

  Knowing that Sylvie wouldn’t return until Sunday, we pushed the two beds together and fell asleep in each other’s arms.

  When I woke up in the morning, he was gone. Can you believe that? It sure made my life simpler. I can’t imagine what we would have said to each other waking up naked in bed.

  For way too many reasons it was a mistake to sleep with him. All weekend the guilt has been rising. I am so frightened that Charles will find out.

  My only barometer so far that no rumors of us sleeping together have leaked out is this: Eileen and Philip came back early. They got engaged. They’re going to drop out of school and leave the country to work on some communal farm in Mexico. Eileen came to my room to show me her engagement ring. She never mentioned Prof. Keating or tried to poke around and ask leading questions. Nope. The secret so far is safe with me.

  I can only pray it stays there.

  Date: Monday, 12/1/69

  The die has been cast. Such a banal statement for such a huge change. The lottery was tonight. Charles’s birthdate was the first one drawn and as fate would have it, Tony’s was the second. Can you believe it? The silence in our apartment was so uncomfortable that I felt like doing something so outrageously insensitive that it was all I could do not to.

  I felt so many things about his fate, and mine, after the drawing that I almost disappeared inside myself never to return again. Never before have I had these thoughts, but I thought, it’s my fault. I never should have slept with Prof. Keating. I should have told Charles about what Philip did to me. I shouldn’t have stolen the book and on and on. Every transgression I committed said to me, this is your fault, you could have saved him, if only . . . If only I had known that I could, perhaps, have saved him, I would have tried.

  No one can imagine the gloom that settled over us. We didn’t ship Tony off tonight either. After the non-reveling ended, we asked him to stay and he did, and he curled up with us in the big bed in our bedroom.

  Charles slept between us, as was his proper place. We all held hands. And stared at the ceiling. Numbness set in. We weren’t quiet but mute. We breathed and our stomachs may have needed food but we had no appetite.

  We each talked about our day before the drawing.

  Tony went first. He told us of his run in with one of his professors about a late paper. He successfully got her to extend the deadline until this Friday.

  “But you have to wonder what the point of that will be, don’t you? I mean, now, really, I’m screwed. I could shoot off my right hand, I guess. I know a guy who did that. The thing was, he was left handed but they didn’t know that at the draft board, they gave him a 4-F and told him to go home. Another guy I know just popped puncture marks all over this arms and told them he was a drug addict. He took something, though, that a stupid buddy had given him to hide the drugs in his piss. So they didn’t believe him. But they called the cops on him and he got busted for possession.

  “Man, this system is so fucked. And rigged against us. Ain’t no way, no how, I am off to that fucking war.”

  “I hear you,” Charles said and squeezed my hand.

  Charles isn’t a talker so what he eventually said took some courage for him. I give him that and a lot of love as well. I do love him, despite how badly I reacted to what he said.

  “I know no one cares right now for us guys that have to go and fight one of the stupidest wars in history. But, to you two, I am really indebted. If you weren’t here, I’d be killing myself and I mean it. I hate feeling like this too and I hate it because this is exactly the sort of feeling that makes me want to light up a joint or shoot up.

  “Tony knows that about me. He’s been a rock, you have man, and without you, for sure, when they threw me out of here for doing drugs, I would never have stayed alive to return and do well and meet this lovely woman who has been with me this term.

  “I know I’m lucky in that way. But I do want to just pack it all in and say good bye to life right now.”

  I listened to the two of them and my heart sat in my chest. It seemed so silly to be in love and it seemed so silly not to be in love.

  My current problems were infinitely less significant at that moment. So were my current successes. And so were the promises he had made to me before the drawing on television tonight.

  It no longer seemed of any real interest now that he had decided to give up drugs completely. That he promised me we were going to work things out and stay together, at least that was what he wanted.

  Maybe I’m just paranoid about these kinds of moments in life. I wanted so desperately to believe him, that we had a future together.

  He returned very late last night. He came directly to my room, walked in and looked around as if he smelled something was up. He had come to drive me back to his apartment. I was relieved to see him and to be held in his arms. We lived through our love for each other in bed that night without words. Charles lit the candles around the bed and brought a bottle of wine. He made his declaration of a drug-free life and all in all, I woke up this morning believing myself to be the happiest person in the world and if not in the world at least at the College.

  That feeling carried me right back into classes where even Dr. Fish looked happy today. Maybe it had to do, I thought, with some sort of sadistic pleasure he took in giving out bad grades. But that assessment changed quickly as I looked over the comments he had put on my paper; his “bad” comments were complimentary. He shocked all of us by how he walked into the classroom. He looked good. Then he announced he was going to congratulate a woman on her work. God damn but that woman was me. Can you believe it?

  I think the earth had to be off its axis for him to make that concession. I worked so hard on my “Frost at Midnight” paper. I liked being told I had what it takes to write about poetry from him. I would have given him a big hug, but I knew that would be going a bit far for him to accept. He had gone as far as any of us could have imagined him capable of already.

  Neal looked back at me and smiled. He had tears in his eyes. We all,
I think, felt so touched by Dr. Fish’s ability to accept my work, and others as well. I wasn’t the only one to pass his high standards.

  I learned so much working on that paper. I could write a paper for him about how much I learned working on it. I learned what it takes to be able to write about poetry. One of the things that helped was having heard live poets read from their work.

  So that was the best news for today. In my pottery class, there had been some minor accidents in the room, so, again, we sat around and shared ideas about pottery as an art form and pottery as a commodity. I still basked in the glow of Dr. Fish’s comments on my paper. I checked out, as it were, from that discussion.

  My other classes had gone well too. The end of the term is a rather long drawn out process. Most of us were focused more on the lottery than on class. If I had been in charge I would have cancelled all classes for the day. Now I feel like canceling life for a while.

  Date: Friday, 12/5/69

  What a week this has been. I have stayed tight with Charles because I didn’t want anything bad to happen to him. He was so incredibly depressed after that realization that he will be the first of those called up to fight in Vietnam. I still can’t believe it.

  Things got dark for a couple of days in ways I couldn’t have predicted. He even went out and had all his hair shaved off his head. He brought me a lock of it. I put it in the diary, at the back of it, taped to the back cover. It’s sweet, I think, to have that little token of him right here with me when I write. It’s brown and wavy under the tape that holds it in place.

  Once he did that, he seemed to start going in the other direction. He came back from the barber, I shouted, he laughed and rubbed his bald head and then we laughed. It was sort of like gallows humor, I think, but he was the Charles who laughs rather than that gloomy guy I had been keeping an eye on.

  He called Tony up and had him come over and we made a huge dinner together, the three of us and found a rhythm in the kitchen. I stupidly tried to keep up with the guys and took one of the knives to help chop vegetables. They gave me the salad chore. I loved it, every minute of us goofing off and Tony making snide remarks about Charles looking more like a convict that a soldier.