By mid-October I finally told myself that whatever we’d had in the year after Helen Pine’s death was over. Then, soon after I’d given up hope, I finally received a letter from you—a thick envelope with the familiar deep blue script. I felt as happy as when I’d raced to collect the mail at home and found thick acceptance envelopes from good schools. But that first letter was merely newsy, with absolutely no reference to our romance of the year before, and I realized that our relationship had been given a significant makeover. You did not want to sever the connection between us; you wanted to keep our friendship intact. So, you ignored the heated letters I’d sent and answered instead in a charming, witty, but decidedly unromantic tone. You told me about your classes, quoting lines of literature. You wrote amusing character sketches of the people you met. You included details you knew I’d appreciate—about the authors we’d loved and discovered together, the kinds of people we’d both found tiresome. Occasionally, you’d speak of events from our shared past, but made no mention of the relationship we’d come to after your mother’s death. When we’d left for college that previous August, there had been passion and intensity. Elliot. I did not fabricate this. Every single weekend there were dates ending in fogged car windows. Our shared confidences were true memories of that year. But when you wrote to me from Providence, it was as if we both understood that what we now had was friendship, albeit a deep and important friendship.
How foolish I felt after reading that first letter. We’d never really discussed what we would be to each other after we went away to school, that important conversation when people say: “We’re both going away, so we need to be free to meet other people, but I want you always to be in my life.” I’d expected that conversation and of course I would have agreed to the new terms, any terms at all, really. But the words were never said. And although I would have agreed, I also knew that what I felt toward you was not friendship. I loved you as passionately as I had since we were children and you’d come hurtling into our fifth-grade classroom with your bloody leg staining your white trousers. Finally, after your mother’s suicide, you’d reciprocated that love. During that terrible time when your grief was still new, our friendship had changed. Her death had given us a closeness I do not know would have happened otherwise.
But despite your grief, we were, after all, teenagers—brimming with life and curiosity. How could it be otherwise? It was nature. On weekends, we began double-dating with your brother Phillip, who was then a junior at the University of Chicago. He had his own car, a luxury few of us in high school possessed. Still a bear of a guy, Phillip squeezed himself into the front seat of a turquoise Oldsmobile, a big lumbering car that had been retired by your father, Max, who regularly bought himself a new Oldsmobile every two years. The steering wheel of the Olds cut into Phillip’s incipient gut; it looked terribly uncomfortable, but he refused to slide the seat backward, toward me, where I sat behind him in my customary spot in the back with you.
“Phillip,” I said each time I got into the Olds, “it’s okay if you move your seat back. I’ve got loads of room back here. Honestly.”
“No, I’m fine, Judith, you relax,” he’d say, sucking in his belly.
I felt terrible about making Phillip uncomfortable. All three of you Pine brothers had impeccable manners. But along with courtesy, there was a note of condescension in Phillip’s voice. I wondered if perhaps in his eyes I was too ordinary, less brilliant than he expected for his younger brother. Phillip’s girls were exceptional types. They’d published poetry or played violin in a professional string quartet. Despite his good manners, I felt disturbingly ill-at-ease in the company of Phillip and his University of Chicago dates. Was there anything special about me? I could think of nothing. I was smart enough, cute enough, well liked enough, but in no way distinctive.
Phillip’s current girlfriend was Diane, a fellow student at the university, whose family, like Phillip’s, lived locally. After you collected me from my parents’ apartment, Phillip would ride alone in the front seat, like he was our chauffeur. He’d fiddle with the radio dial until he found a piece of classical music he liked, and then silently he’d turn onto the Outer Drive, the four-lane expressway with sparkling, luxury apartment buildings to the west, and dark, brooding Lake Michigan to the east. Phillip drove like someone’s father, carefully and considerately. He never braked suddenly, but took each turn on the expressway smoothly and competently. Once, just once, I’d have liked to see Phillip speed. Or get a ticket. But, of course, neither happened.
Diane’s family lived in one of those glittering Lake Shore Drive apartments. Usually, Phillip would leave us in the car, the motor running to keep the heat on, while he dashed into the apartment building and brought Diane down. But one evening, as he drove along the lake, he told us that Diane’s family had asked why he kept us waiting in the car. They’d invited us up to their apartment before we went to the movies. They wanted to meet Phillip’s kid brother—and his girlfriend, of course.
“Great,” you said. “I’d love to. Right, Judith?” you added.
I mumbled something pleasant, but immediately felt my stomach clench. All these Saturday nights going to the movies, getting the delicious deep-dish pizza we all liked, or going to hear a group on Chicago’s near north side, where there was a burgeoning folk music scene, had made me acutely self-conscious. I was a high school girl with neither the sophistication nor experience of Diane. I constantly fretted about how well I stood up to the comparison in your and your brother Phillip’s eyes. Diane herself was a folk singer, a tall, willowy young woman with a blond, waiflike haircut. She’d already performed in clubs in Hyde Park.
“Hey, Judith,” Phillip said with a laugh as he drove. “You really have the shpilkes back there. You haven’t stopped tapping the bottom of my seat with your feet since you got in. Everything okay?”
You laughed along with your brother. A real guffaw. I froze. My body was always betraying me; the nerves I felt had transferred into a nervous rat-a-tat drumming under Phillip’s seat. But Elliot, you betrayed me as well, loudly laughing with Phillip while I put my hands on my thighs and willed my legs to stay still.
“No, I’m fine,” I said. “Maybe just a little cold.”
Phillip courteously cranked up the heat and drove the rest of the way humming to the music on the radio. He found a parking spot on a side street off Lakeshore Drive and we pulled on our hats and gloves to face the cold Chicago night. The wind off the lake left piles of trash swirling in front of us. It was at least ten degrees colder in this part of the city than it was in our own neighborhood, farther to the west.
Your brother walked nonchalantly past the doorman, who recognized him and tipped his hat. “Hi, Artie, how’s it going?” Phillip asked.
“Great, young fella. Come on in where it’s warm. I’ll call Miss Diane and tell her you’re on your way up,” the uniformed man said as he held open the heavy glass door.
“Thanks, Artie,” Phillip replied, at home even with this magical ritual of doormen. You and I scurried inside behind the hulking Phillip. We took the elevator to the twentieth floor, where there were only two apartments, one to the right and one to the left.
Diane opened the door before we knocked and gave Phillip a small peck on his cheek.
“Come on in, you guys. My parents are dying to meet your brother, Phillip. You too, Judith. Let me take your coats.”
The Bergmans were waiting for us in the living room, which had heavily draped windows facing the lake as well as elegantly carved furniture. There were Persian rugs and a baby grand piano topped with silver-framed family pictures. I have since come to know many such apartments. I have even lived in some myself, and I know now that there is a checklist for apartments of cultured Jewish city dwellers, with only a few variations: paintings, Persian rugs, parquet wooden floors, antiques. The Bergmans’ apartment was the home of musicians, so there were three music stands set up in front of three empty chairs. But when I was ushered through the door on the t
wentieth floor of one of the most desirable addresses in Chicago, it was the first of its genre I had ever been inside.
I saw how Phillip had provided his younger brother with much useful guidance. Three years older, Phillip possessed social graces and confidence that I could only gawk at. You subtly received cues from Phillip and responded, perhaps a beat behind your older brother, with absolute correctness, and with a flair all your own. Deftly taking a cracker and instantly placing a napkin underneath it so that no crumbs fell, sitting back comfortably on the couch with an ease of possession, commenting on the art. It was an eyeful to watch Phillip initiate an action, then have you echo it. There was absolute elegance and even musicality to your duet. Perhaps you had done this your entire lives. My own actions that night in the lakefront apartment were clunky and unharmonious. I spilled crumbs, sat at the edge of the couch, and recognized none of the artists discussed. I contributed little to the conversation.
Mercifully, we stayed at the Bergmans’ only a short time, and even more mercifully, we went to a movie nearby where I felt no more responsibility to speak or respond. I know now that all teenagers are awkward and worried, second-guessing their every move as they desperately watch themselves and obsess about what others see. It was you Pine brothers and your poise, not my own insecure fumbling, which was the exception. At the time, though, Phillip paralyzed me and your subtle mimicry of your brother made my fragile confidence disintegrate, just as flour for my mother’s cakes drifted through a sieve.
That winter and spring of our senior year, we went on regular dates. You no longer needed to ask me out for the coming weekend—it was assumed we’d be together. “What are we doing?” replaced “Would you like to go out on Saturday?” Occasionally, you were able to borrow your father’s car and then we went alone, not in the back seat as Phillip’s passengers. When we were by ourselves, no matter the weather, we ended up at the lakefront. You would find a dark spot to park in and then turn off the engine. Our kisses became longer and you explored my body with greater boldness. You gently touched me first under my clothes, reaching inside my bra, under my skirts, or into my jeans, eventually feeling under the elastic of my underpants. I held my breath, loving you so much, accepting all that you did, aching for it, but hesitant to explore on my own.
Finally one night, after we were gasping for breath and, despite the cold weather, dripping with sweat, you put your fingers farther underneath that elastic. I was wearing a skirt, long since pushed up around my waist. You had been stroking my thighs until I actually felt something unhinge in my brain, a click, and then something opened up inside my head as well as my lower body. I arched my back and moaned as you slipped a finger into my vagina. Your finger, first one and then two, explored deeper inside me, while with your other hand, you took my hand and put it on top of the bulge in your pants. I slowly began to unzip your trousers, thinking that if I moved very slowly, it would seem as if the zipper was descending on its own, not because of any action of mine. As your fingers began to probe deeper, with greater urgency within me, there was a horrifying, loud rapping on the windows. The windows were rolled all the way up and were completely fogged over. My first thought was that it was the sadistic killer we were all warned about, the one who preyed on couples parked in darkened spots along the lake. I jerked my head around to see if the door was locked.
“Open up in there, you two,” said a deep voice, and there was more knocking. It was, I realized, a policeman. He was rapping on the window with his nightstick, and then he shined his flashlight right into the car, illuminating my skirt hiked up around my waist and Elliot’s undone zipper.
“Yes, sir,” Elliot gasped. “Okay. Yes. Right away.”
The driver’s seat was reclined almost all the way back, and Elliot tried to zip his pants and raise the seat at the same time. I slid over to my side of the car and fumbled with my own buttons, trying to yank my bra down over my breasts.
“Roll down that window,” the cop demanded. “Right now.” I saw that he wasn’t alone. Another officer with a shiny Chicago Police Department badge was behind the first. I hated Chicago policemen—every kid in the city, black or white, did. The cops were unpredictable and cruel, and our parents warned us never to get in their way. My father, a modest and principled man, had even been forced to bribe the driver’s license examiner after I failed my driver’s test twice. Bribes were a way of life in Chicago in those days, but I certainly didn’t know the protocol for late night taps on the car window and didn’t know if Elliot did either.
“How’s it going in there, young man?” the policeman asked, a smirk now on his face, the flashlight trained on me alone. He slowly shined the light up and down from my face to my bare legs.
“Okay, sir. We were just going home,” you answered with amazing aplomb and smoothed back your hair. You tried to smile at the policeman.
“How about I see your driver’s license?” the officer said. You dug in your wallet and handed it to the policeman, who studied it, then passed it to his buddy.
“You kids are awfully young to be out here at this hour. This isn’t such a safe neighborhood, you know. Lots of unsavory folks prowling the paths along the lake here at night.”
“Right. You’re right. I think we ought to get home now,” you said.
“What would your mother think, young man? What would she say if I gave her a little call right now and told her what her sweet baby boy was up to out here? With this pretty little girl?” the policeman asked, a lascivious grin on his face as he looked at me.
There was a long silence. You took a deep breath in and looked ahead over the steering wheel into the black night.
“He doesn’t have a mother,” I finally said, almost whispering in the dark. “She died. Last summer.”
The policeman swung his flashlight back to Elliot, shining it in his eyes, making Elliot blink hard. “Well, that’s a tough break, kid. That’s a sad story. You better get this young lady home right now.” He handed Elliot back his driver’s license. “We’ll stay here and watch while you turn this car around and get back on the Outer Drive. How about that?”
“Yeah. I will. Thanks, sir. I’ll do that.”
On the way home, we said little. Finally, when we got to my house, you turned to me. “I wish you hadn’t told him about my mother. It sounded cheap. Like we were using her being dead to get out of trouble.”
“Yeah. I know,” I said. “But he frightened me. I just wanted to get us out of there.”
“I’m sorry it happened,” you said and pulled me close. “I don’t think he was going to do anything, though. Just trying to scare us. Embarrass us. I don’t know.”
Sex was like that for us that year. We both desperately wanted to do it, but there were so many prohibitions for good girls. Our high school had been divided into fast girls and good girls. Those who went all the way, sluts, and those who did not. It seems so silly now. There we were, at seventeen, as sexual as we’d ever again be in our lives, our bodies wanting each other so desperately, but we were not supposed to act on it. The night of the policeman surprising us in the car stirred up my feelings of shame. I told myself I had no business doing what I’d done and certainly no business wanting it as badly as I did.
That night, after the frightening rap on our windows by the policeman, I combed my hair in the car and smoothed my clothes as best I could. There was nowhere to park, so I got out of the car in front of my building, and trudged dejectedly up the stairs. When I unlocked the front door of our apartment, I found my father sitting close to the light of the lamp on an end table, his feet up on an ottoman, reading a paper. Other than the one table lamp, the living room was dark. He was reading the Manchester Guardian. I don’t know where he first got the idea, but he maintained all his life that the Guardian was the one truly unbiased paper in the world. He subscribed to the Sunday edition, receiving it on the next Friday in a wrapper covered with stamps from England, its news old, but still immensely satisfying to him. The paper was thin, parchm
ent-like, not at all like the paper used by the Chicago papers: the Sun Times or the Tribune or the Daily News. He read every word of the Guardian on Friday evenings, staying up late into the night. I think reading a paper that came all the way from England made him feel that he was different, more intellectual than the other men we knew. And he was, even though he’d never traveled and was just a shopkeeper. He was a voracious reader, an autodidact; and his politics were liberal and thoughtful. As I walked into the living room and saw him comfortably sprawled out on the couch, his glasses perched low on his nose and his smile welcoming me home, I decided to speak to him about what I was feeling. Speaking to my mother about sex was out of the question. She would have made a huge fuss if I even mentioned the word. But my warm and gentle father, the kindest and most intelligent man I knew, perhaps I could broach the subject to him.
“Hi, sweetheart, did you have a good time?” he asked. “Come on over here,” he said and patted the couch beside him.
“Yeah, it was fun. We went to hear some music. Near the university,” I lied.
“I hope you brought some money with you. I don’t like how you run around without money in your purse. What if you got stuck somewhere? That’s not a good neighborhood.”
“No, I took money. But there’s something else. I wanted to talk to you about something else,” I said and sat down next to him. He had a particular smell, my father, stale pipe smoke along with an overwhelming scent of Listerine mouthwash. He went through bottles of mouthwash each week.
My father folded the soft sheets of the newspaper, carefully along the creases. “Sure, honey. Anything the matter?”
Love Is a Rebellious Bird Page 5