Scags at 18
Page 17
She pulled into the road and drove slowly towards the College. At the entrance to the College, I made her stop. It wasn’t smart to stop the car in the midst of the blizzard right in the middle of the highway. She knew why I needed to do this and we both got out of the car and stood side by side with the engine running where Charles had made his fatal choice.
How many times had I been a passenger in that car? How many times had I seen him gun the engine in order to beat the car coming at him? But that day when he gunned his engine, it choked, and stalled and he and the other guy died. In a huge burst of flames, the two of them were incinerated. There was no way to identify either of them.
I have no idea what was put into that coffin or what would be buried. But it wasn’t my Charles. Not the one I loved.
Lauren stood quietly beside me and held my hand. She didn’t say a word or try to make it seem like things would be okay.
She is the friend I have always wanted.
Date: Saturday, 12/20/69
I’m on the train returning to Skokie and will be home before Christmas. The train is very full with people ready to be festive for the holidays. Many colored packages fill the overhead bins. Presents galore.
I don’t feel like partying. It’s still impossible to believe that one week ago Charles died. I called Mama to tell her to pick me up at the station as we planned when I left in September. She didn’t ask me about Charles or what had happened to change my plans. Someone from the College must have called her to tell her what had happened. They are like that there. So thoughtful and helpful at the worst of times without saying a word.
Mama must be wondering what shape I am in after this experience. She won’t say a word until she has seen me. That’s Mama.
I’m going home. What a different life I thought I had a week ago. In my head, I had begun writing post cards to friends and family from the places Charles and I traveled to. I filled each card with wonderful descriptions of all the things we saw and all the new things I was now able to do.
I’ll go back to the College at the end of this break. With Charles, Prof. Keating, Eileen and Philip not there, it will be a bit like starting all over again. I have something good to say about that though, I did well in all my classes, so I’ll be returning knowing that I did what I set out to do. All the other stuff was extra-curricular.
That’s a pretty bloodless summation of this term: I got good grades. My boyfriend is dead. The man who wanted to be my boyfriend left. The friends who couldn’t be my friends moved to Mexico.
Sometimes things aren’t what they seem. If ever. Maybe I’m too young to need to be that certain of anything.
I opened the envelope Charles’ mother gave me. I was alone in my room after the memorial service. Sylvie had already packed her things and gone home. She left me a wonderful card saying how much she liked being my roommate and next term she’s getting an apartment off campus. She left her portion of the room clean for the first time.
I opened the envelope and found a card inside. Mrs. Payne had written a note to me in exactly the same handwriting Charles used. She told me she missed her son tremendously. She was sorry there would be no wedding. She repeated much of what she had said at the church and then said that she was giving me a check, that she hoped I wouldn’t mind her doing that. It was to honor the love that Charles and I had had for each other. She knew it was priceless and that no amount of money could equal it. I looked at the amount she had written on the check and my eyes blurred over. I had never seen that amount of money made out in my name before and I doubt I ever will.
She said, she hoped it would help to make my life easier and that no one at the College needed to know. Separately, they were going to offer a scholarship in Charles’s name so I wasn’t to do anything foolish but to have an easier life.
She signed it in an odd way, I never would have thought she would do this. She wrote:
Love from Charles’ mother
Tony dropped by to say good bye to me as I cleaned up the room. He looked gloomy too. He gave me a big hug. He said he would be back in February and look out for me as Charles would have wanted him to do. I told him I would look out for him too as Charles always wanted his friends to be friends.
When Tony walked out the door, I had that vision of Charles leaving again. I fell down on the bed and into a deep sleep for several hours.
Alex woke me up. He too wanted to say good bye. He had hoped we could go for a run but the weather wasn’t good for that.
We stood at the window in my room. Somehow being with Alex is always about being in the outdoors even when you can’t be. The untouched white snow below us held the sun’s glare in such a way that it looked like a huge crystal cloth covered the earth.
“I’ll be back in February,” I told him.”
“I had no doubts that you’d be back. I want you on my team.”
I agreed and we held onto each other for a long time. Before he left my room, he turned to me and said, “I owe you an apology. You did pick a good guy. He loved you and quit the drugs. I respect that, Scags. I do. I’m glad not to be losing you.”
I finished packing and made sure to hide that note and check from Charles’ mother.
Lauren gave herself the job of making sure I ate, had someone to talk to and hand out tissues. She also drove me to the train station and said a long good bye to me. I know when I return in February, she’ll be one of the first people I go see. She invited me to come back early if I wanted to and stay with her. I really do have a good friend. I may need to take her up on that.
The food on the train is better than I remember from my ride out East. It may taste good because there isn’t much to do on the train except eat. This time I’m enjoying eating in the dining car with the other passengers. I don’t have to say much of anything to anyone but they give me a reason to smile.
When I can see out the window, it is snowing everywhere. Each time we stop, I pull back the curtain and in the glass the lights from the station are refracted in such a way that they look like ornaments on a Christmas tree. Everything looks so beautiful and yet I can’t feel that beauty. I only know it exists.
My mind is filled going home with all the new plants that have taken root in me. I have found the means, I think, to keep sprouting.
My winter break reading list has filled up, including lots of Virginia Woolf. No writer has inspired me as she did with her wise words about being a woman and learning to write.
She’s right too about time. Women haven’t enjoyed enough time yet on their own to do all the things we want to do. I will become a part of that work too, I’m sure.
As to you, Charles, at least you had the good sense to give me that lock of your hair. I have had the good sense to tape it into the back of this diary. Every day I open the book at the back and stroke your hair, my Handsome Charles before I write down all the things that are happening to me.
I miss you.
Permissions
Permissions have been gratefully granted for the following material to be reproduced in part in this book:
Excerpt from “Skunk Hour” from COLLECTED POEMS by Robert Lowell (c) 2003 by Harriet Lowell and Sheridan Lowell. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC
The lines from “Night in the Kitchen,” Copyright (c) 1993 by Adrienne Rich. Copyright (c) 1969 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, from Collected Early Poems: 1950-1970 by Adrienne Rich. Used by permission of the author and W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
The lines from Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poem “I AM WAITING.” Copyright 1958 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Reprinted by permission of Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
We thank The Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of Virginia Woolf for permission to quote from “A Room of One’s Own.”
Acknowledgments
When I was at Niles North High School, in Skokie, IL, a fellow stud
ent, Bobby Solomon went to the auditorium several times a year to give his Nobel Address for the literature prize. Unbeknownst to him, I stood at the back of the room and listened. Would I ever have the chance, I wondered then, to make such a speech?
As it turns out, no, I haven’t had that honor. I did, however, have the opportunity to return to Niles North to read from Scags at 7 when it was first published. (Videos exist of that reading which also appeared on local cable television, much to my delight.)
Now Scags at 18 is finished. I am grateful to so many people for helping me to get it ready for publication that I could write a book about all of them. I hope they will accept my thanks instead.
However, there are some specific people I want to acknowledge. Let me begin with the folks at WebServes who have been both moral as well as technical supporters of the Sullivan Street Press website and without whose work, my work couldn’t be brought to you. In particular, thank you to James Bradley.
The designer of all Scags books, Patricia Rasch has been without peer in her dedication to getting the job done, including weathering erratic snowstorms and loss of power and yet helping to launch this book. I love the ways she has found to take my words and create the best cover and interior design for the series.
A number of good friends have been supportive of this project, including Angela Goldstein, Kerry Langan, John Royce, Gary McClain, Stephanie Dickinson and the entire Ginsberg clan in Cedar Rapids, IA. A special thanks to family members, Ross Berman and Lynda and Jessica Smith as well as the whole Pyrch clan.
I have been privileged to work with some wonderful professionals who came on board to work on this project, including Susan Robeson and Judith Matloff.
There can never be enough words about the help and support I received from my wife during the entire process of writing this novel. Suzanne Pyrch’s belief in me and her honest appraisal of all I write have been the anchor for this entire project. I never could have finished Scags at 18 without her.
As in all creative projects, more people should be mentioned who haven’t been. I am blessed with so many friends who offered guidance and concern over the course of the many years it took to write this book. Their efforts went to make this a better book but where it fails, that is solely my responsibility.
Scags Series
Scags is a character but also a series of stories that tell of a woman’s awakenings throughout her lifetime, from child to mature adult.
While we have read novels that are called “coming of age” novels, in the Scags Series I have designed a set of fictional accounts of four distinct periods in a woman’s life that reflect the various awakenings in the following ways:
1. As a child, she learns what a child needs to know about the fallibility of adults and that she will survive the adult’s weaknesses
2. As an adolescent, leaving home for the first time, she discovers the tools she needs to be in the world on an intellectual, sexual and political basis
3. As an adult, struggling to understand what success leads to, she pursues some unconventional routes that lead to an understanding of both human and spiritual love
4. As a middle-aged woman, she reflects on how she has arrived at this turning point in life, using most of what she has built for herself to pursue greater risks in seeking the greater good of others
Each of the novels proceeds through all four seasons, beginning in the summer. Each as well is told in a different first-person format: first-person present tense, diary format, epistolary and finally in a form that allows for a continuous narrative (memoir).
Scags at 7 (2008)
Scags at 18 (2011)
Scags at 30 (planned for publication in 2014)
Scags at 45 (planned for publication in 2015)
Author Bio:
Deborah Emin is the owner and founder of Sullivan Street Press. She lives and writes in Kew Gardens, NY. As much as she enjoys being squirreled away in her study to write, she also loves to travel. This was one of the reasons she began the Itinerant Book Show, which is a traveling bookstore where she helps to publicize and sell the work of authors unknown to most people across this vast country who would benefit from reading their work. She also gives lectures at these events about the changing world of publishing. Deborah hosted the REZ Reading Series in her neighborhood for a few years and was pleased to bring authors both published and unpublished to read to her neighbors and friends.