“I can tell. I can see you in a suit, with high heels, swinging a briefcase, scooting down Madison Avenue,” Dave said. His sparkly eyes and warm grin smiled at me. “New York?”
“No, not New York, Chicago. I think I’ll stay in Chicago.”
My correction was swift, as if New York was an alien place where I wanted no association. I was possessive of Chicago because it was my place, where I came from, my home. I defended its existence as if its reality and my being were in doubt.
We continued talking for another hour until the cold, shriveled pizza told us it was time to go. We headed for the door.
“Well, it’s been fun. Definitely an unexpected evening thanks to meeting a new friend. I’ll see you, Dave, and I’ll see you, Nancy, at the Gym again soon,” Jim said, pointing to each of us.
Dave walked me to my dorm, stopping occasionally to turn an ordinarily fifteen-minute walk into an hour’s stroll. We stopped in a dim corner away from the front door.
“You know, there are three very important women in my life named Nancy.” Dave whispered. He stared into my eyes. I waited for him to tell me who they were, but he didn’t, and I didn’t ask. My question-driven nature was halted by the looks of an attractive, older man.
“It’s been a great, fun evening, one I sure didn’t expect to turn out this way,” he said.
“I know. I’m sorry again for staring at you, I don’t know what I was doing, it was just that … I … thought that you … anyway, thanks for the pizza and inviting me out and sitting and talking with me. I really enjoyed it.”
“I’ve got your address and you have my mine. We’ll write. I want to keep tabs on how your advertising studies are going. You’re gonna do real well, Nancy. I enjoyed meeting you.”
His arms held my body as they wrapped around my small frame. I buried my face in his soft shoulder; tears pooled in my lids. My arms encircled his torso and I held on for as long as I could. I lived the moments where a new experience of feeling connected to someone was a birth I had never experienced before. Another personal cheerleader offered assurance through his words and big surrounding arms.
“I’ll see you soon. Maybe spring break I’ll pay Jim a visit,” he said. He walked away, waving, and I clung to the anticipation of seeing him again, for I considered it a sure thing.
A few weeks later as Dave headed into semester’s end, he called me one Saturday night. Luckily, I’d stayed in to do homework.
“Hi, it’s Dave.”
“Hi, wow, you’re up late. How are you? It’s so good to hear from you, good to hear your voice,” I said.
“I’m studying. Got a big exam tomorrow, and I’m just taking a break and thinking of you.” I imagined him reclined on a carpeted living room floor in his apartment with his back against a comfy couch, binders and papers stacked in a semicircle in front of him—oh, while drinking a scotch and water, too.
“Where are you? At the library?” I said.
“No, I’m holed up in my room, at my desk that is too small for all that I need to read and review. So how are you? How’s it going? How are all your studies?”
“Fine. Everything is going great. I’m managing to get it all in. I’ve got a good class load. I’m busy.”
“You’re getting out, though, too, aren’t you? I mean, you’re still going to the Gym?”
“I am but not too much, though. I enjoy staying in when it’s quiet and everyone else is out.”
“… and picking up more grad students?”
“No, no way. What I’ve got is just fine for now.” Could I be any flirtier?
“It is?”
“Yep. You’re just fine.”
“And you are too, Nancy. I enjoy your letters. You’re beyond your years. You’re really going to make it. I think about you. You are such a bright spot in the midst of my med school drama.”
If only he could have seen the smile on my face and my eyes light up. I wanted him to know how much his personal words meant to me. I knew for sure that he was the best pen pal, best friend, best everything I could have wanted. At the beginning of every school term and the end, I hoped he would come to see Jim. But my hopes came and went as the school semesters evolved with each summer. “You are the kind of girl the guy falls in love with, the kind they marry and settle down with,” he told me in a letter my sophomore year. What’s that supposed to mean? Does it matter if I fell in love with him that night I met him?
I hoped we could sustain an exchange of phone calls, cards, letters, and visits, but his correspondence arrived sporadically, and the phone calls ceased. His words on one Christmas card during my third year were impersonal. I was a fool to think he’d stay in touch with me forever or return for a visit, noting our distance, studies, and his interest in another woman as certain explanations for his lack of interest in me. The reason he dropped me didn’t matter, really, and when I realized this was only the start of many endings when I would become attached, I let it go.
I needed to move on and look forward, something I had drawn from my parents’ divorce and the move from Carlisle. Time would allow me to see arms that surrounded me in welcome to my dorm life giving me stability and comfort. They surrounded me like a catalyst, sparking the discovery of a new family in my dorm, my college, and the entire university.
My young-girl self understood that my home was defined by the physical, the material possessions and places and rooms, but in my young adulthood I learned that people, a family of connections and community, were also home.
As my life experiences continued, I knew I wasn’t alone, for a Jesuit university welcomed me into its home and gave me a sense of place, a renewed vigor for life, and a faithful rebirth in my belief in God. I was drawn to figuring out where I belonged and how I was going to fit in.
My understanding of the role of God in my life resumed after being dormant since eighth-grade graduation, which was probably not a good thing after being raised a Catholic, attending Catholic grade school, and receiving the sacraments. But attending a Jesuit university gave me an opportunity to reopen doors that had closed many years earlier and to look through them with both innocence and maturity. I was ready and open to have a new, different relationship, one I understood to be unconditional. My relationship with God became the only one that never caused anxiety, frustration, or loneliness for me. He was a connection I never questioned, doubted, or lost.
Gesu Church on Wisconsin Avenue was two blocks from my dorm and on the same block as Johnston Hall, my journalism school. I would pass those stately sculptured wooden doors and seek refuge there when I felt my sense of place losing its embrace, its connection with me. Stained glass circumnavigated inside walls that met the ceiling. I was drawn to these pictures and the stories they told. Every breath of musty, incense-laden air induced peace in my mind and heart. I heard the chants of religious leaders from many years ago, their rhythm echoing strength to the weak who faced them. I was surrounded with wonder peeking out from the church’s beginnings in 1894. Whether I sat alone in a pew in the front of the church or stood in the back, I was in the presence of something. I wasn’t alone; the air was filled with leftover conversations, deep meditations, and divine grace. And I was filled with a spirit where I believed God would always be with me and because of that, he would not let anything bad happen to me. He had big arms, too.
nancy undergrad
I walked into the law library for the first time as an apprehensive sophomore. I was afraid I’d be stopped because I was not a graduate student of law and was using the premises for undergraduate work. The law library was built in a circle with spacious floors, winding three floors tall. If you stood in the center of the library and looked up and turned around until you ended up where you started, you would have seen the entire law library. As I neared the front desk, I peered over the counter to see a law student slumped low in his seat. The light of the fluorescent bulb underneath the counter lit the top of his bowed head, which hung over his book. I dashed past him and was standing in t
he center of the library to assess where I might start when a gangly, dark-haired man with unevenly grown facial hair approached me.
“You need some help?” he asked.
“Umm, well, not really, but maybe you could tell me where I could start to find some information regarding the FTC and the NCCB?” I said. I stared at his full lips and white-toothed smile.
“The what and the who? Let me see that. What’d you have?”
I showed him my index card. “It’s my journalism law paper I’m working on, and they suggested I start here. I’m hoping there’s a case on it, and if this is too much, I can come back or just ask someone else. I don’t mean to take your time away from …”
“No, it’s okay, don’t worry about it. I’m Alex, by the way,” he said. I followed at his heels as he walked to the closet-sized room.
“I’m Nancy. I really appreciate this, really, a lot.” Our eyes squinted at the florescent lights rebounding off the white walls and linoleum floor.
“This is Lexis. She’s our wonderful friend who helps us with our case studies.” He pointed to an oversized computer with printer. “Let’s see what we can find.” Alex grabbed a chair for me and pulled it next to his. “You caught me at a good time; I don’t usually study here.”
I wondered why he didn’t. Maybe this was a place where only a select few students study—the real serious, brainy ones—and he wasn’t one of them.
“This may take a few minutes depending on how much information there is out there. So, you’re an undergraduate?” He leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, and tugged at his scruffy beard.
“Yes, journalism.”
“You do a lot of writing?” His black eyes narrowed. He seemed as curious about me as I was about him.
“Yes, I guess I do. But it’s not just the writing. I’m kinda interested in the law and its relationship to advertising.”
I wanted to get through this bump in my research and get on my way, but another law student popped his head in.
“How much longer, Alex?”
“Not too much longer. How’s it going, Grover?”
“Oh, you know, same old crap,” Grover said with a chuckle.
“Grover, this is Nancy, she’s an undergraduate, doing a paper on a case for advertising and the law.” Grover didn’t look very law school–like with his short red hair and receding hairline, wire-rimmed glasses, and skinny frame. He was all legs and not much chest and torso, which made him look like he was wearing his pants under his armpits. He was cocky and quick-witted, and I thought that would make him one of tomorrow’s best lawyers.
An uncomfortable run-in with my helper turned to embarrassment. I wanted to get out of there. I was pushing my luck with graduate students, as I was out of place because I’d stepped into a territory that was marked for others. My innocence and naïveté made me uncomfortable.
“Let me know when it’s freed up, okay? Nice to meet you, Nancy,” Grover said.
As he walked out, his eyes followed me as if to let me know I’d be seeing him again. He reminded me of a pesky schoolboy who never stopped talking to you.
“Well, let’s see what we have,” Alex interrupted. “Not too much. Do you know anything else about this case, so I can use some different key words?”
“Well, try the National Citizen’s Committee for Broadcast … you know, it’s a Friday night, and I’m sure you’d rather be in a more fun place than here,” I said.
“Tell you what, let’s finish this search, and if nothing comes up, come back and I’ll help you further.”
I was relieved. I didn’t want to be a bother anymore.
“You want to go to the Ardmore for a beer … that is, if you aren’t doing anything?” he asked.
“I’m not sure … I guess … you mean, right now?”
“Sure, let’s do it,” Alex smiled.
“I’ll wait for you outside,” I said.
I hurried out of the building to deeply inhale the night air as a sedative for my anxiety. I sat on the front step of the law library in anticipation of the evening. The unexpected always jumpstarted my analytical thinking, perhaps reading too much—that this was a date and he liked me more than just as a friend—where there was no story. Minutes later, Alex came up behind me and lightly touched my back, knocking me out of my future thoughts.
I thought all law students came from the same New England mold, like the graduate students in the movie The Paper Chase—sandy, curly-haired characters wearing crooked glasses that slipped down their noses. They’d be outfitted in button-down white or light blue oxford shirts with tails hanging out of their tan Chinos, maybe an off-center dark tie loosely hanging from their necks, too. They’d always carry notebooks and accordion file folders that slipped away from their grips as they hurried … somewhere. They looked like they just woke up and grabbed whatever was in sight because they were always late for class.
Alex was different. He didn’t fit my character study because he dressed in loose-fitting worn jeans and an oversized, red casual shirt that hung over his slouching, skinny frame. He looked Italian, but I was promptly corrected. “No, Sicilian.” He didn’t appear to have the discipline and the seriousness of the other law students. Maybe it was just that he was really good at learning the law thing.
After a couple of beers and easy conversation at the nearest bar, we strolled to my dorm.
“This is me, rather convenient to the library,” I said.
We slowed our pace.
“Yes, it is. So does that mean I’ll be seeing more of you there?”
I kept looking past him, over his shoulder, anywhere but at his face. He was engaging with those black olive eyes, but I wasn’t with my roaming green peepers.
“Well, maybe, because it looks like a great place to study.”
“Good, and not many law students study there, so there should be room for you. Let’s keep walking. Do you have to go in right now?” He took my arm.
As we started to walk, I saw groups of friends and couples walking, enjoying the warm evening, and I saw myself as one of them. The more we talked, the more I was at ease and no longer needed to question what he was doing with me. After stops and starts along Wells Street, Alex put his arms around me in a snug embrace. I was comforted as we stood close together, talking and laughing. I was glad to have made a new friend.
I continued to study at the law library that semester on Friday and Saturday nights when law students were usually not there. It was true that Alex didn’t study there, because I never saw him there again. I was disappointed. Why didn’t I hear from him after we had such a nice night and enjoyed each other? My mind told me to drop it, forget and move on, but my heart was sad because I wanted to see him again.
That following spring, Alex saw me walking away from campus.
“Hey, where you going?” he yelled, trying to catch up to me. I stopped and turned around.
“Hi. Going home for Spring Break. Taking the Greyhound.” I continued walking. I wasn’t interested in being picked up again.
“I’ll walk with you. Here, give me that, I’ll carry it.” He grabbed my duffle bag and put his arm around me like an old friend as we continued to walk.
“C’mon, let’s stop over here, at the park, he said.” Though I had nothing to say to him, I did have a few minutes to spare.
We sat on a hill blanketed in cool grass, overlooking the intersecting highways of exit and entrance ramps. A steady drone of traffic noise broke, occupying the silence between us. He acted as if he was picking up where we had left off that night after the library.
“Great day, isn’t it? C’mon over here, get closer,” he said.
His face was about as close to mine as it could get. His stare drew me into him.
“When are you back?” he asked.
“Next Sunday.”
“I’ll call you then, later that afternoon. Maybe I’ll come over, and then we can do something?”
Yeah, right. Alex stretched out on the grass, hand
s behind his head, legs crossed. I sat cross-legged, ready to stand and make a dash. Our attention was diverted to rustling sounds in the tree branches ahead, created by two squirrels performing gymnastics. The branches rustling in slight breezes changed my focus. I eyed the limbs, tracing them down to the tree’s peeling trunk, and discovered a mature birch tree with long, overgrown branches that appeared connected.
He pointed to the tree. “What do you suppose they’re doing?”
“Don’t know. Looks like they’re having fun,” I said, laughing. “Why can’t we do as the squirrels do?”
“We can.”
“Uh-huh. I gotta get going. I need to buy a ticket.”
He never called that Sunday afternoon. I missed him. No, I missed the feelings I’d had with him when we first met at the library, happy and excited. I was as eager to learn about someone new as I was about opening myself to being learned about. I’d wanted to believe he was interested enough to date me, but he wasn’t, and we didn’t. I had to see him exactly as he was: someone who helped me with my schoolwork, someone with whom I went out once and had a nice time.
My birch tree told me to loosen up and enjoy the playful opportunities. After I put this into context, I accepted what was and lived the moments as they were given to me. They are there. Just look. I became more accepting of what I could not change. My birch buddy told me home could also be a snapshot of time where the mix of person, place, or even a couple of scampering squirrels can give pleasure, laughter, and a smile. I carried a connection to the outdoors, starting in my youth with my birch tree and a bathroom window, to the smell of hops and the stockyards seeping through open windows in my college dorm room and the simplest connection with squirrels in a birch tree.
I continued to study at the law library and to meet more law students, all men. I could count the number of female law students on one hand. I was drawn to making new connections with others, as I believed they were what I had lacked long ago.
“Hey, we didn’t think you guys were coming,” Mike said. He was leaning on one elbow at the bar in O’Donohue’s Pub.
Under the Birch Tree Page 10