by Doug Raber
We went to Cynthia’s room, and I was astounded by her emotional state. Her eyes were red, and she could barely speak coherently.
“Oh, Timothy! Thank God you’re here.”
She ran across the room and embraced me. She buried her head against my shoulder and gripped me so tightly I had difficulty breathing. After a few seconds, she lifted her head slightly and spoke to her attendants.
“I want you all to leave. I need to talk to my cousin. He’s the only one I can trust. Everyone else out! Go to one of the other rooms. And for God’s sake, don’t say anything to my mother.”
When we were alone, she began to regain her composure. She spoke calmly as she crossed the room and locked the door.
“Oh Timothy, is this a big mistake? Am I screwing up everything? I’ve always been yours, Tim. Just for the asking. You know that.”
“It was never an option, Cynthia. Our families would never have allowed it. Our backgrounds are different. I don’t come from money. And we’re related. And besides, it might not even be legal. They would have stopped us. Lawyers and everything.”
“Maybe so, Tim. But it’s still terrible. I’ll miss you so much if I don’t see you anymore.”
She had put her head on my shoulder once more, and she held herself close to me.
“We’ll still see each other, Cynthia. Dave is my big brother. We’ll always be friends. There will always be a rationale for us to see each other. We’ll always have reasons to meet.”
She wiped away a tear.
“Yes, that is the answer, Tim. It may be the perfect answer. ‘We’ll always have excuses to meet.’ Promise me that. Promise me that you’ll always be able to find excuses to meet me. That way you’ll still be mine. I won’t have to give you up. I couldn’t bear that. There’s never been anyone like you.”
“It’s going to be okay, Cynthia. Really, it will.”
“You promise? Tell me you truly promise.”
“I do.”
“Then show me.” Her wedding dress was hanging in the open closet, and she was wearing little more than a slip. She lifted it above her hips as she moved toward the bed.
“Show me now Tim. Make this our sacrament. In church, they said a sacrament is the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. But ours will be invisible to everyone else. It will be our secret. Do that for us, Tim. Quickly. I need you now. I need you to consecrate your promise.”
Later during the wedding ceremony, my mind was a blur. I heard the questions. “Do you, David …” and “Do you, Cynthia …” But I didn’t hear the answers.
• • • • •
More than a year elapsed before I again saw either Dave or Cynthia. The occasion was Thanksgiving, and Uncle Christopher had invited me for the holiday dinner.
I was stunned when they arrived just as everyone was sitting down to dinner. Not because they had come but because they walked in with a baby.
It seemed that the other members of the family knew, and they besieged the couple with questions about sleep and colic and feeding. My inexperience with infants precluded me from even understanding much of those conversations.
When I was finally able to get close enough to speak to them, I was still disconcerted, and I stammered my way through a greeting.
“God, it’s great to see you both. I hadn’t heard. Nobody told me. How long …? I mean, how old …?”
They laughed at my awkwardness, but it was in a warm and friendly manner.
Dave and I shook hands, and he held the handshake for a long time. The warmth and intimacy were encouraging.
“We’ve just been so busy, Tim. We haven’t gotten around to mailing the birth announcements.”
“But we still have them at home,” Cynthia added. “Mostly addressed and everything. We’ll send you one when we get back. Please don’t be upset with us, Timothy. Isn’t he a darling? He’s five months old. And he looks just like his father. Doesn’t he, Dave?”
“Sure does. A chip off the old block, if I do say so.”
I smiled and did the math. Five months old, plus nine more. A year and two months. Two months before Thanksgiving. Mid to late September.
* * *
20
Senior Year
The two terms I had been away from campus were low in academic credits, but the experience had been worthwhile in every other way I could imagine. I harbored some worry that I would encounter difficulty with my coursework, but the opposite was true. Quite unexpectedly, to me at least, the time abroad had greatly increased my maturity and intellectual rigor. I would not go so far as to say my senior year was easy, but I was certainly up to the challenge.
I was able to focus on my specific interests in government and political science, and I attended seminars that allowed me to contribute on the basis of my study in Europe. My first-hand interactions with people in communist countries brought a perspective to the discussion that was appreciated by professors and students alike. All in all, it was a heady experience, as I had become the expert rather than the novice.
On the advice of faculty advisors, and of course, in consultation with Uncle Christopher, I made application to institutions for the following year. Previously, I had been undecided as to whether I should pursue law or commerce as my professional career, but my experience in Germany made the choice easy. Law meant the United States. Business was international. And I wanted to be involved with developments in Europe that I was convinced would emerge in the near future.
There were application forms and interviews, but I soon decided upon my first choice. Harvard Business School. To my good fortune, if not surprise, Harvard felt the same about me. The next step in my education was set, and I could devote my efforts to the pursuits of a college senior.
The year before, I had had continued the fraternity tradition of naming big brothers for new members. It was the same relationship I had established with Dave Treadway, except this time I was the big brother. My little brother was Rick Hightower. I’d been away in the spring of his sophomore year, but we remained close friends.
Near the end of the fall term, Rick came to me with a request.
“Laurie just told me that her ride home for Christmas break fell through. The girl who was going to drive is flying to Colorado for a ski trip instead.”
Laurie Cameron was a second-year student at Colby-Sawyer College, previously Colby Junior College, an all-girl institution less than an hour from Hanover. Its proximity, as well as the continuing male predominance in enrollment at Dartmouth, led to many dating opportunities for their respective students. Rick first met Laurie the year before, and they’d been together as a couple since their first date.
“She lives in Bethesda, Maryland, and she told me that it’s close to your home in Washington, right?”
“Not just close, Rick. It’s only a couple of miles, and I drive right through Chevy Chase to get home. So, relax. I’ll be glad to give her a ride.”
“When are you going to leave?”
“My last exam is Thursday afternoon. So, I was going to leave the next morning. I can change my plans if that doesn’t work.”
“That would be perfect, Timothy. She gets out on Thursday, and she could get a ride to Hanover. I’ll be able to meet her for dinner, and then she’ll be ready whenever you want to leave the next morning.”
“It’s a plan. Say hello to her when you talk to her, Rick.”
“I appreciate your doing this, Timothy. She’ll get home safe. I know I can trust you.”
My last final was for a course on European politics, and I had no doubt that I would receive an A. The professor said my term paper was the best he’d seen in years, and he asked me to present it for a class discussion. With my experience of studying abroad for two terms, there was no need for last-minute crash studying, and once the exam was finished, I packed my bag and put it into the trunk of the car.
Early Friday morning, I drove to the hotel where Laurie had stayed overnight, and she met me in the lobby. One
look at her baggage was enough to tell me that she was unfamiliar with the luggage capacity of an MGB. Once I wedged her suitcase into the trunk, there was no longer any room for my bag, and certainly not enough space for her train case if I packed anything at all.
She was embarrassed and almost in tears when I came up with a solution.
“It may be a little cramped, but if you can put the train case between your feet, we can manage. I just need to go back to my room and switch out my suitcase for a duffel that I can squash into the luggage compartment. It’s either that or travelling without a spare tire, and we don’t want to risk that.”
It only required a few extra minutes, and we were on the road. It was a gorgeous day, and even though the weather was too cold to have the top down, the feel of driving along the back roads of New England in a sports car was a thrill for both of us.
To have the nicest scenery, I decided to take the Taconic State Parkway, which took us on a route parallel to the Hudson River in New York State. I planned on a driving time of nine or ten hours, a long but not unreasonable drive that would put us in the Washington area that evening.
Even as it became cloudy, the ride remained enjoyable. The road noise made extended conversation difficult, so much of the time we enjoyed the trip without talking. By midafternoon, the sky developed a characteristic gray color that I saw as a portent of snow, and within an hour my fears were confirmed. At first, there were only occasional flakes, then a few flurries, which reduced visibility but did not affect the surface of the roadway.
As the afternoon progressed, a slightly slick surface changed to one with noticeable snow accumulation on the sides of the roads, although the traffic kept the surface relatively clear. Then it got worse, and there were only two tracks of dark pavement visible through an inch or so of snow, and each car followed in the path of the vehicle that preceded it. Soon, even those narrow strips of pavement disappeared, and we were driving on a completely snow-covered surface.
On two occasions, a front wheel encountered a small rut or defect in the pavement and threw the car into a skid. Only my expert driving prevented serious consequences, but I will nevertheless admit that traveling sideways was not the most relaxing mode of driving. Moreover, I knew I had other obligations. Laurie looked increasingly nervous, and I had promised Rick I would take good care of her.
Finally, I realized that continuing would be foolhardy. We saw no plows clearing the roads, and we passed several other vehicles that had skidded onto the shoulders at the side of the parkway. By good fortune, we were approaching the outskirts of New York City, and I recognized the next exit as one where we could find lodging. I had driven through the area on previous trips, and I remembered a charming, nineteenth-century inn only a short distance away.
Laura was surprised, thinking at first that I had lost control of the car when I steered to the right.
“Where are you going? Aren’t the local roads going to be even worse?”
“We can’t keep driving through this. It isn’t going to be long before even the best drivers are going to get stuck. We need to get to a place where we can stop and be safe.”
“Where? I can barely see the side of the road, and it’s getting deeper. I’m starting to get scared, Timothy.”
“Trust me. We’re going to be okay. I know a place near here. Only a mile or two farther.”
When we pulled up in front of the old stone manor house, the yellow glow of the lights in the fading afternoon were a welcome sight.
“I’ve never stayed here, but I’ve read about it. It’s supposed to be a really nice place.”
I left the engine running as I opened the door.
“Stay here for a minute while I check to see if they have rooms available.”
They did, and they were delighted to have two additional guests. The manager told me that the unexpected snowstorm had resulted in several cancellations, and they were pessimistic about their clientele for the restaurant that evening.
I got back in the car and pulled it over to the side of the building.
“They said to just leave it over here. They aren’t expecting any more arrivals today.”
We got out, and I opened the trunk, which dumped snow on top of our luggage and the spare tire. I managed to extricate my shaving kit from my duffel, but when we attempted to remove Laurie’s suitcase, we both found ourselves slipping in the snow. She almost fell, and I bashed my knuckles against the trunk lid when my hand slipped.
“Let it be, Timothy. This is crazy. We’ll fall over and freeze to death in the snow. I have what I need for one night in my train case.”
I agreed, and we quickly trudged inside the inn. The manager offered to have his staff retrieve the other luggage, but we decided it would just make things that much more difficult for us to repack the car when we departed.
“It was hard enough the first time,” I told him. “I’m afraid if we move everything around in this kind of weather, we’ll never get it back in again.”
At the reception desk, I requested two rooms and made a quiet aside to the clerk.
“Make them adjoining rooms, please.”
The clerk responded with a circumspect nod.
“Certainly, sir.”
We had no need for a bellhop, and the manager assured us that we were welcome in the restaurant in our current attire.
“This weather is beyond your control and ours, sir. We are pleased that we can be of service in a time of difficulty.”
As we walked up the staircase to our rooms on the second floor, Laurie leaned toward me and spoke softly.
“You’re such a gentleman, Timothy. I was really afraid we’d have to share a room. And … you know.”
I stopped and put a hand on her shoulder to provide reassurance.
“I understand, Laurie. It’s all okay.”
We walked down the hallway, stopping at the first of our two rooms, were I opened the door and handed her the key.
“Go on in. Make sure it’s okay.”
She went in and looked around.
“It looks fine.”
“Good. I’ll go check mine out.”
It was a well-appointed room, and I was pleased. After looking at the bathroom, I checked inside the closet despite having nothing to put in it. Then I went to what I had concluded was the connecting door and knocked twice. A second or two later, Laurie opened her side with a big smile.
“This is all just great, Timothy. It’s nice, it’s warm, and we’re safe.”
I smiled back at her.
“I should call my parents,” she said. “To tell them I’m safe.”
“Good idea.”
As I pulled the connecting door closed, I said, “Why don’t you freshen up after you call. Then we can go to dinner. Just knock. I’ll be here.”
I turned on the television to see if I could get a weather update, and then I relaxed while leafing through some tourist brochures. She knocked several minutes later, and we went down to the dining room.
Knowing there would be no more driving that evening, we ordered a cocktail before dinner and wine with dinner. This was at a time when the minimum drinking age in New York was still only eighteen, so there was no question of impropriety for either of us. We had a thoroughly delightful dinner, talking about mutual friends and acquaintances from school and about our childhood experiences in the Washington area.
We ate at a leisurely pace, and by the time we finished our meal, we were a bit tipsy but hardly inebriated. As we walked up the stairs, I noticed we were holding hands, although I didn’t recall having initiated that interaction. Not wanting to let go, I gripped her hand more tightly.
“I just want to make sure you don’t trip on the stairs. We’ve had a lot to drink.”
“I know,” she said.
I had both room keys in my pocket, so I opened her door and then gave her the key.
“Good-night, Laurie. That was a fun evening. We still have a long drive tomorrow, so we should probably get a good
night’s sleep.”
The hotel manager had approached us several minutes earlier as we crossed the lobby, and he said that the roads were expected to be clear by about nine in the morning.
“I guess you’re right. Thank you for a lovely evening, Timothy. You took what could have been a terrible experience and turned it into a delightful adventure.”
She closed the door behind her, and I went into my own room. It wasn’t long before I heard a knock on the door between our rooms.
“Sorry to bother you, Timothy. I just realized that my pajamas are still out in my suitcase. Do you have anything I could wear to sleep in?”
I was wearing a t-shirt, and I glanced at the button-down oxford that was hanging on the back of a chair.
“You’re welcome to wear my shirt.”
“Oh, I couldn’t …”
“I don’t see why not. We’re only going to be driving in the car tomorrow. If it gets wrinkled, I’ll be wearing my coat over it. Besides, when you give it back, it’ll smell like you, and I’d like that.”
She flushed, but she nodded.
“That’d be great. Thanks.”
I handed the shirt to her, and she walked back into her room, closing the door behind her. But she didn’t close it all the way, and it remained unlatched.
I returned to the chair I’d been sitting in and picked up another of the sightseeing brochures. It wasn’t long before I heard her voice.
“What do you think?”
She was standing in the doorway, dressed in the shirt. No shoes, no socks. I wasn’t sure what she had on underneath. It covered her, but most of her legs were visible, and overall, it was an extremely sexy look. I had to take a deep breath before I could answer.
“You look very nice. Extremely nice.”
“You think so?”
She twirled around, holding the front of the shirt closed because she had not buttoned it. I couldn’t be certain, but the brief glimpse seemed to answer my unspoken question. I concluded that she wasn’t wearing anything beneath the shirt.