by Trish Cook
Anyway, I was partially right. Fairfield is easy on the eyes, as are most of the Hadley students I’ve seen so far. Doing my usual shower routine, lathering all parts and hair while lip-synching, I wonder for a minute what life would be like here if the town were called “Hellville” or “Zitstown”—but when I emerge, clean and wet, and wipe the steam from the window, I can still see the soccer players and beautiful full elm trees. No ugliness here.
“She’s going to be here any minute,” my dad yells up from his post in the kitchen. I know his routine so well that I can tell he’s already come back from the gym and eaten the first half of his multigrain bagel. He doesn’t use jam, he squashes fresh fruit onto the bread and munches away. He will have already set aside the last cup of coffee for me in the microwave, which he will nuke for forty-six seconds prior to my arrival in the kitchen. We have a system. It’s what happens when you live with just one parent—either you don’t know each other at all or you’re way too familiar.
“Hey,” I say, right as the microwave beeps to signal my caffeine is ready.
“Big shopping day?” Dad asks. He flips through a book. I shrug. I’m not Prada-obsessed or anything, but I enjoy looking around at what’s out there. Mainly, it’s an excuse to get off campus and be with Aunt Mable, who gives me regular reality checks.
“What’s that?” I lean over his shoulder. Dad smells like strawberries and the original Polo from the green bottle. Dad smell. “Or, better yet, who is that?” The book in front of him contains black and white photos.
Dad puts on his game-show announcer voice, “The Faces of Hadley Hall!” I reach for the book. He holds it back and says in a regular voice, “I’m just trying to familiarize myself with the rest of the faculty. You’ll get your own copy later in the year.”
“And the IPSs?” (IPSs=Issue Prone Students—teacher code for screwups.)
“Maybe,” Dad says and bites the rest of his bagel. “Eat something.”
A car horn beeps. I can see Aunt Mable’s car out the front window. She emerges from the driver’s side and sits on the hood of the rusting black Saab 900. With jean cutoffs, black tank top, and Ugg boots the same camel color as her ringlets, Aunt Mable always looks like a rock star herself—Sheryl Crow’s lost sister or something.
“I gotta go,” I say. “You know I’ll eat more than my fair share with Mable. She’s taking me on a culinary tour as well as showing me her personal fashion finds.”
“Here,” Dad hands me a key. “Your name here.”
“My name here,” I say back. This is our “I love you.”
I take the house key and head outside. He could ask when I’ll be home and I could answer that I don’t know or make up some time frame, but the truth is, Dad doesn’t set rules like that for me. He knows I’ll call and tell him where I am and what I’m doing, and it’s not a big enough deal to bother setting up some structure that I have to follow. Besides, I’m a lousy liar, and I never want to lie to him. It’s his Jedi mind trick: He figures if he gives me enough freedom, I won’t actually want it all. Here’s the thing: Up till now, it’s been true.
Before I even reach the Saab, my senses are overwhelmed. Mable’s new carfume wafts from the rolled-down windows, and my aunt sits cross-legged on the hood of the car, singing along to Guns N’ Roses (“Sweet Child o’ Mine”) at the top of her voice.
“Skipping decades?” I ask, and join in on the chorus.
“After you are thoroughly informed of the 1970s, you will pass Go and move on to obscure eighties tunes,” she says.
“Axl Rose is not obscure,” I say.
“True.” She nods and slides off the hood to hug me. “But this is a classic.”
Mable drives the twenty-four miles into Boston using back roads, and explains the various towns and subway stops along the way. We pass suburbs and slumburbs, a country club or two, industrial buildings, and a huge water tower splashed with brightly colored paints.
“Supposedly you can see faces and words in the mural,” Mable says, pointing to the tower. “Personally, I think you can see Clapton’s profile in the red part.”
We make our way over Mass Ave., where hipsters and homeless people mingle. Passing by Berklee College of Music, I watch as students heft guitars, keyboards, and massive drums in the late summer heat. Aunt Mable watches me absorb the scene.
“Here we are, the mecca of vintage apparel,” she says, sweeping her arm towards a storefront like it’s a new car on display.
“Baggy Bertha’s?” I’m skeptical. Let me state that my own personal style is not fully developed. Not that I don’t know what I like—I do, and I’m well aware of what makes me gag—but I’m sort of all over the place when it comes to picking out clothes. I have no trouble finding items that appeal (a pair of black flip-flops with plastic red flowers on them, faded Levi’s 501s, two close-fitting tops—one electric blue, one layered white and gray), yet I have no idea how to put them together. It’s like I’m a crow drawn to shiny things. After shopping I usually get home and sift through my purchases only to find there’s not one presentable outfit in the lot. It’s why I tend to stick to music instead.
“Perfect,” Mable says of the suede jacket in front of her. “This, too. And let’s try this.”
She collects clothes, and I wander around the vintage shoe section, agog at the array of coolness and crap up for grabs. Next to thigh-high pleather boots (think Julia Roberts in the hooker phase of Pretty Woman) are Mary Janes and saddle shoes, Elton John disastrous sparkly clunkers circa 1976, and then—the black ankle boots I’ve longed for, like a riding boot only not in a dominatrix way. Plus, the heel would give me an extra couple of inches (I’m what the pediatrician called “on the smaller end of the growth chart”—better known as five-foot-two). I hold up my footwear find to Mable, who’s clad in a bonnet and purple boa yet still manages to be sexy.
Mable makes me try on the Aerosmith-inspired Lycra outfit she’s picked out, and I make her don a dress out of a fairy tale—not a Drew Barrymore kind of fairy tale; the Little Bo Peep kind. We stand in front of the three-way mirror, looking at the flipside images of ourselves.
“I’ll never be this kind of rock star,” I say, toying with the fringe on the sleeves. Mable smoothes her frilly petticoat. “If I placed an online personals ad with this picture of myself, would I find the love of my life?”
As I wait for Mable to get changed, I look at the old posters for Wood-stock (the real one, not the Pepsi-mudfest) and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the framed black-and-whites of Mod girls in thick eyeliner and go-go boots standing by their Vespa scooters. Was life better then? More fun? Simpler? Sometimes I think of life-as-told-by-a-Robert-Doisneau-poster (you know, the master of romantic photography, who took those pictures of people kissing in Paris or the woman walking down the street in Italy), and how the days must have felt—I don’t know—bigger somehow, more important. But then, I know I’m fantasizing because in these imaginings, I’m never in high school or doing dishes or tying shoes. But even the posters of hippies hanging out in front of the Metropolitan sign in Paris seem cooler than the midriff-baring teens we passed near Harvard Square. Maybe the past is bound to seem better, because it’s done with.
Reading my mind, Mable pays for my boots with cash, glances at the hippy posters, and says, “It wasn’t any different than today.” Then she tilts her head, reconsidering. “Okay—a little bit. No e-mail, lots of polyester, and too much patchouli and smoke.”
Boots in hand, I suddenly wish I were someone who felt that back-to-school shopping were the start of the rest of her life. But I’m not. I can’t help but think it’d be easier if I gained redemption or enlightenment with a new purchase, or that getting a cool outfit meant my year would work out. I think of my dad, fortysomething and still picking out his ties as if he were presidential, as if superficial coatings mattered.
“Hey, lighten up, Brick,” Aunt Mable says. She calls me Brick when, in her opinion, I’m thinking too hard or weighing down an otherwi
se pleasant moment.
“Sorry,” I say, shaking my head to shrug off my thoughts. I roll down my window, rest my arm on the door frame, and let the wind wash over me.
“Look at us. We’re like that Springsteen song.” Mable smiles. I don’t have to ask which one. She means “Thunder Road.” She mentions it all the time. She loves the line about not being a beauty but being okay just the same. I always wait for the one about how highways or roads can lead you in whatever direction you choose—forward or back, able to take you anywhere.
Just like that, I’m out of my small funk and say, “I can’t wait to get my license.”
“That’s right! You should be practicing. Drive. Hop in.”
We swap sides, and I attempt to drive standard in the highway hell better known as Downtown Boston (hell = one way meets merge meets six lanes and a blinking red = huh?). Once she’s fairly certain I’m not going to kill or maim us, Mable starts a round of RLG.
RLG is the game we devised—basically a musical Magic 8-ball. The rules for playing Radio Love God are elementary (though open for discussion and warping depending on how desperate the situation). The idea stems from the fact that we all do those stupid little tests with ourselves like “If I get this wrapper-ball into the trash on the first shot, so and so will like me,” or “If the song ends by the time the light turns green, I’ll get the job.” Sometimes the tests work, but of course the odds go down if you start doing the “It’s 11:11, make a wish and touch something red” and then you wish to become Paris and Nicky’s other sister (but, hey, if that’s what you’re wishing, you have other, worse, problems).
Anyway, to play RLG, you have the volume down and say something along the lines of “Whatever song comes on next is from—to me,” or “The next one is how my summer will go.” We make sure the volume-down rule is strict, because otherwise you can sort of cheat and, in the middle of “Your Body Is a Wonderland” say, “Oh, by the way, this is from the campus hottie to me.” And that’s just plain wrong.
The best part of this slightly loser game is that you can twist the lyrics to suit your particular situation. For example, even if it’s an ad for Jolly Jingle Cleaners and you’ve stated that it’s from your long-lost summer love, you could interpret “We’ll clean you, steam you, get the wrinkles out” as “See, he’s wiped the slate clean from when I kissed that other guy. He’s steaming—meaning he’s still hot for me, and the wrinkles of our relationship are gone.” And then you can go home and e-mail said boy, only to humiliate yourself when he doesn’t write back. It’s brilliant fun.
Mable takes her turn playing RLG and is saddened when she asks how business will go tonight and the reply is “Alone Again, Naturally.” Mable runs her own coffeehouse, Slave to the Grind, with comfy couches, a laptop lounge, and amazing lattes, so she’s constantly surrounded by people. I couldn’t take that much face time. I like my alone time—balanced, of course, with a good friend or conversation.
Mable lets me parallel park (parking = getting it on the second try!), and we go for greasy cheeseburgers and sweet potato fries, splitting a vanilla frappe (frappe = East Coast milkshake).
“Are you thinking about the scene in Grease when Olivia Newton-John and Travolta hide behind their menus in the diner?” Mable asks.
“No,” I say, sliding two fries in my mouth, whole, and then using dentist office-speak for a minute. “Ibuzthinknboutthishotguy.”
“What hot guy?” Mable asks. She has an uncanny ability to understand dentist office-speak.
“Someone at Hadley. He’s probably an idiot.”
“A really gorgeous idiot?”
“Yeah, that. Plus, I was thinking how much I miss singing.”
At my old school, I was in a band. Maybe not the best band, but Baby Romaine (“Baby,” as in the girl from Dirty Dancing who won’t be put in a corner, and “Romaine,” as in lettuce, as in let us play—hey, it was freshman year) gave me an outlet aside from Mable’s car and my shower for singing.
“Well, you’ve got an incredible voice. What about Hadley? There’s got to be—what—an octet group or something . . . like in American Pie.” Yet again, Mable references movies and songs to prove a point, but this one’s lost on me.
“Yeah, I know. But I don’t want that—”
She cuts me off. “Then write your own songs.”
I want to protest or crack a joke, but I don’t. I just eat my burger and nod. I’m so afraid of sounding cheesy in songs, or derivative, that even though words sometimes swirl in my head, I don’t write them down.
Bartley’s Burgers turns out to be this famous place. Harvard undergrads, former presidents, movie scouts on location, all come here for the grub. The walls are blanketed with peeling bumper stickers (ENVISION WHIRLED PEAS, ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING) and NO NUKES signs.
Mable sees me checking out all the paraphernalia and wipes her mouth on the little paper napkin. “Your mom and dad used to come here.”
My hand freezes before my mouth, a quivering sweet potato fry stuck in midair. No one ever mentions my mother. Ever. Not even in passing.
“Sorry,” Mable says and quickly slurps some frappe. “It was a million years ago.”
By my quick calculations, Mable’s overestimating by about 999,987. “No—wait—go back.”
Mable shakes her head. “Never mind, it’s late. I should drive you home.”
“It’s not home, it’s Hadley,” I say, annoyed at how teenagery I sound. “Seriously, Mable, I’m not being Brick, I just have to know something. Tell me anything.”
“Fine.” Mable takes a breath and looks around. “Once, I saw your parents sitting in that corner over there, sharing some sproutburger or whatever alfalfa mojo your mother liked then. Your dad drummed the table, as per usual. He’s done that since we were kids. And your mom put her hand on his like this.” Mable flattens her own fingers and leaves her hands resting on each other. “And . . .”
She looks at my face. Probably I look too eager, too desperate. She cuts herself off. “And that’s all.”
I open my mouth to demand further details, but Mable’s gone up to pay the bill.
The car ride back to Hadley Hall starts off stilted, with no conversation, just the radio’s declaration, over and over again, that summer is over. WAJS plays tributes to this effect, with songs talking about empty beaches and seasons changing. This, plus the sight of the Hadley campus, makes me cloud up again.
Chin on my hand, I stick my face partway out the window like a dog. In front of the house—our house—my house—Mable stops the car.
“Listen—forget what I said back at Bartley’s. Say hi to your dad for me, and just enjoy the here and now.” I know she’s not just talking about movies and songs and decades-old hippy posters. She means forget the maternal mystery, don’t dwell on what could be—just live in the present.
After dinner, I sit on the porch while my dad commits to memory student names from the face book. People here have names that seem more suitable to towns or buildings: Spence, Channing, Delphina, Sandford. I mean weren’t Pacey and Dawson enough of a stretch?
Outside, I can’t get comfortable—first too hot in my sweatshirt, then too cold in just my T-shirt. Then the porch slats cut into my thighs, so I stand up.
“It’s less windy on the other side,” says a voice from around the turret-edge of the house.
I go to discover the person to whom the voice is attached. Sitting on one of the white Adirondack chairs in the front of the house with her knees tucked up to her chest is:
“Cordelia, as in one of King Lear’s daughters, and a fac brat just like you.”
She rattles off other information—about me, my dad, the house (turns out the heart-shaped door knocker was put on by some old head-mistress who died a spinster, so not a lot of romantic omen there).
“I’m Love,” I say, even though Cordelia knows this already. And before she can make some joke about it, I add, “Bukowski. Love Bukowski.”
Trish Cook, So Lyrical