The View from Mount Joy (13 page)

Hey Joe,

I’m supposed to be listening to my boring astronomy professor’s lecture on supernovas, but I think they probably have more exciting lectures on Uranus…ha ha.

So how’re you doing, Joe? I can still picture you falling so weird on the ice—yikes! I suppose you’re not having fun sitting out all those games either…but wait, I’m not writing to depress you, I’m writing to cheer you up!

So get a load of this—I tried mushrooms for the very first time. Have you ever? It was wild! My friend Brian (he’s from Santa Fe and says this Hopi Indian kid in high school turned him on to mescaline) and I and another couple took them and went to the movies—oh my God, we saw
Serpico—
that Al Pacino is
cute
! (That’s how I judge all movies—on how cute the leading man is, ha ha.) Next weekend we’re going to go camping and take them—Brian says being out in nature on mushrooms will blow my mind! I can’t wait!

Other than expanding my universe, it’s the same old same old. My roommate’s kind of a jerk—a big fat load who eats in bed when she thinks I’m sleeping. She sounds like a big rat, gnawing through her potato chips and malted milk balls. I am cheerleading, but for the JV basketball team, which is kind of b-o-r-i-n-g. I’m thinking maybe cheerleading is more of a high school thing….

So I hope you’re feeling better and getting stronger and life’s treating you better because
YOU DESERVE IT
!

Write me when you have time.

Love,
Kristi

I stared at the word
love
for a long time. Breaking all recent records, I smiled again.

Ten

I didn’t—couldn’t—suit up for games, but when I hobbled into the stands, the crowd gave me a standing ovation. The next time they cheered, and the game after that they clapped. Well, some of them. I didn’t think I liked getting attention for being the spaz who fell over the boards, but when the applause stopped I felt—and this is going to sound pathetic—a little abandoned. Then I got pissed off, resenting the fans for watching the players on the ice instead of me and then resenting them for taking my attention away from the game. To tell you the truth, it was a relief when the season ended.

But then just when life seemed to be getting back to something I might enjoy again—I was off my crutches and back in my dorm—my mom told me she had a boyfriend.

She said this during what had been a perfectly nice dinner. Beth had been telling us about a new cheesecake cookie that her company’s test kitchen had developed.

“This was not one of their better efforts,” she said. “They had these hard red chunks in them that were supposed to be the strawberry flavoring. Hal Lawson was in my office—he’s in charge of R&D—and he bites into one.

“‘Guess we’re going to have to research a better strawberry substitute,’ he says, and pulls out a piece of the tooth he just broke!”

My mother laughed for about a half second and then started clearing the table.

“Speaking of dessert,” she said, “we’re going to have company for ours.”

She looked frazzled, as if she’d run up a bunch of flights of stairs and still couldn’t find the room she was looking for; there were pink spots high on her cheeks and she was sort of breathless.

“Who’s coming, Carole?” asked my aunt, a tease in her voice.

“His name is Len, Joe,” she said, looking at me. “He teaches civics at my school.”

She blew at a curlicue of hair that was spiraling down from her forehead and grabbed my plate, even though I wasn’t quite done, and stacked it on her own.

I glared at my aunt. “Did you know about this?” I was suddenly mad at her, mad that my mother would confide in her before me. As usual, I was the last to know about anything.

“I didn’t tell you about him,” said my mother quickly, “because I didn’t know if there was anything to tell. We’ve only just…well, started going out.”

“Great,” I said, with a big oily phony smile. “I can’t wait to meet the guy.”

“Joe—”

“No, really, Mom. I mean it.” And it was true, despite the sour sarcasm in my voice, I had a great curiosity to meet the guy whose sudden appearance in my life made me want to run to my room and bawl like a baby.

He was bigger than me, which made me immediately defensive, and rumpled-looking in a frayed-collar, snagged-knit-tie, bad haircut kind of way. That I noticed all this made me feel like a big fruit and made me resent him all the more.

We both watched my mom shake the aerosol can and swirl pyramids of whipped cream on slabs of pie. I found myself smirking when she handed me the piece with the most whipped cream, but then I caught my aunt Beth’s look, which asked,
What is your problem?

“Len played hockey too, Joe,” said my mother after she had finished serving us.

“Well, in high school,” said the big guy. “I wasn’t good enough to play in college.” He spooned some of his whipped cream into his coffee. “I sure was sorry to hear about your accident, Joe. How’re you feeling?”

“Fine,” I said, and as my ears grew hot, I attacked the dessert in front of me as if I were an entrant in a pie-eating contest. My fork had turned into a shovel, and after I wolfed it down, I expected a bell to ring with a judge announcing,
Winner!

“Whoa,” said Beth. “You were hungry.”

I dragged a napkin across my chin. “Well, I just realized I’ve got this thing…this study group thing. We just started it and—” I looked at my watch with great urgency. “Man, I’m supposed to be at the library now.”

Len stood and shook my hand, and my aunt offered me her cheek to kiss.

“I’m glad to see how seriously you’re taking your studies,” she said with a saccharine smile.

My mom walked me to the door. As she watched me put on my gloves and jacket, she asked, “You think he’s nice, don’t you?”

Her voice begged me to answer yes, and so I did.

“Oh, Joe.” She reached out, wrapping her arms around me, and like a little baby, I held on too long, too hard.

Eventually you get over your mother’s betrayal. Especially when you realize that it’d be pretty psycho to think that your mother had betrayed you in the first place just by liking some guy. I mean, my dad’d been dead for five years; it wasn’t like she hadn’t put in her time mourning. I came to the brilliant conclusion that big, soft-spoken Len Rusk made my mom what I’d wanted her to be for years—happy—and it’d be sort of twisted of me to begrudge him for that.

Besides, I was not one to make good judgments about relationships, considering the one I’d just gotten out of.

Kelly was a devoted hockey fan who, when hockey practice began, hung around the hallway outside the locker room, greeting me with a big “Hi, Joe!” She was cute enough that I found her attention flattering, but during our first date—burgers at Stub & Herb’s—she confessed to me that
Love Story
was her all-time favorite movie and wouldn’t it be great if she and I became like Jenny and Oliver?

“People have actually said I look like Ali McGraw—she plays Jenny—especially around the mouth.” Wagging her head, she offered a big smile so I could see the resemblance. I didn’t. “And Oliver—Ryan O’Neal—plays hockey too, except for Harvard. So I guess that means you’re Ryan and I’m Ali!”

I ignored the blinking read warning that screamed:
Nut alert! Nut alert!
and slept with her that night.

“Joe,” she whispered as we lay sweating and spent, “I think we’re making our own
Love Story.
”

The thrill I felt after
finally
losing my virginity was tempered by the thought,
She’s losing her mind.

The idea of personal space was one that held no interest to her. Anytime I came home, there were notes posted by the dorm phone: “Joe, call Kelly.” A home economics major, she brought pans of brownies and seven-layer bars for me to share with the team—a nice enough gesture, except she did this before every practice, and every home game. I wondered when she found time to go to her own classes, what with all the baking and following me around—I couldn’t walk across the campus without her suddenly appearing from behind a corner. I’d be studying in Coffman Union and there she was, looming in front of me, her shadow falling across my books. Walking across the bridge that spans the West Bank and the East, I’d hear, “Joe! Joe! Wait up!” and have to resist the urge to run.

But like I said, she was cute and the sex was good—any sex at that point in my life couldn’t help but be good—and so I put up with her and her strange behavior, trying to convince myself it was cute and quirky and not nutty and obsessive.

She was hurt when I moved back home after my injury, asking why I wouldn’t let her nurse me back to health.

“Because you’re not a nurse,” I said.

“But I’m your fiancée.”

I cannot tell you the drop in temperature my blood took; suffice it to say I was chilled by her words.

“No you’re not,” I said, and because I couldn’t help it, I added, “Not even close.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I shrugged. “It means I sure as hell never asked you to marry me.”

“Well, maybe not in so many words.”

“Not in so many words, not in so many actions, not in so many
anything.
” I tried to look authoritarian, not an easy thing to do when you’re lying on your aunt’s couch underneath a quilt appliquéd with butterflies. “Now look, Kelly, I think you’re a…you’re a very nice person, but—”

“But you don’t love me the way I love you.” Hot spots of pink rose on her cheeks and her eyes darkened.

“I guess not,” I said.

“Well, that’s just fine,” she lied, and I knew it was a lie, because as she said it, she shoved the lamp that was on the end table next to the couch and it fell to the floor. Fortunately the floor was carpeted.

“Just fine!”
she said, and picked up a photograph of my mother, my aunt, and me and flung it against the wall, where the glass shattered. This seemed to please her, and she looked around for something else to throw.

I don’t need to elaborate on how a guy feels seeing his aunt wrestle a candy dish out of his crazy girlfriend’s hands and then wrestle the crazy girlfriend out of the door. Let’s just say
humiliation
was pretty high up there on the list.

There was a spate of hang-up calls and a delivery of burnt brownies (with a note that read, “These are black like your heart!”), but fortunately for me (and unfortunately for him) some basketball player responded to the cute girl bearing chocolate chip cookies and is now starring in Kelly’s
Love Story
fantasy.

The rest of my freshman year passed without any drama, which was good because it gave me a little respite before the excitement of summer.

“Joe? Hey, it’s Kristi! Listen, a couple of us are going up to Taylor’s Falls—we’ve got a big tent, so pack up your stuff and I’ll pick you up Friday morning!”

“Kristi? When did…Friday? When did you get home?”

“So I’ll see you Friday morning, okay?”

“I think I’m working.”

“Get it off. I’ll be by about eight!”

It would have been stupid for me to protest any longer because she’d already hung up.

“I heard from your sister,” I told Kirk as I tuned my guitar at our jam that evening. Ed had bought me a black Telecaster for Christmas (talk about feeling chintzy—I’d gotten him a Neil Young album), and although I still occasionally sat behind the keyboard, I was having more fun with the guitar.

“She’s in town?”

“Well, yeah. I think so. I mean, she didn’t sound long-distance or anything.” Turning the E string peg, I tried to look nonchalant. “Doesn’t she stay at your house when she comes home from school?”

Kirk shrugged. “I guess not.”

He stomped the bass pedal twice and played a jazzy little riff on the snare drum.

“So,” I said as I tuned the E string, still nonchalant, “you think I could have the weekend off, Ed?”

Ed looked up from his own fretboard and clenched and unclenched his fist.

“Man, my hand’s bugging me again. Forty-two years old and I’m already getting arthritic.”

“You’re an old man,” said Kirk. Like a nightclub drummer accenting a joke, he played a quick
ba-dum-dum.

“So you think I could?” I asked.

But it was Kirk who answered first. “First of all, Joe, why would you want to spend a weekend with my sister, and second,
why would you want to spend a weekend with my sister
?”

“Ben-Gay doesn’t even help,” said Ed, massaging his hand.

“Well, she invited me to go camping with her and a bunch of people,” I said, “and I…well, I used to go camping all the time. And I haven’t been in a long time, so I thought this would be really fun.”

“Tim Gjerke always wants more hours…. Kirk, you want to pick upan extra shift or two?”

Kirk shrugged and twirled a drumstick. “I could.”

“I guess you’ve got a weekend off,” said Ed, and he played the heavy rift that begins “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.”

The brook was babbling. Literally.

“Can’t you guys hear it?” I asked as we sat on the narrow strip of stony sand that lined the creek.

Kristi laughed. “What’s it saying, Joe?”

Gesturing for everyone to keep quiet, I cocked my head, one hand held behind my ear. I listened for a while, nodding.

“‘By the shores of Gitche Gumee,’” I translated, “‘by the shining Big-Sea-Water, stood the wigwam of Nokomis, daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.’”

The five people around me hooted and hollered.

“Wow,” said a girl named Pam, “that’s a poetic creek!”

“Shh!” said Kristi. “I want to hear that tree over there. It’s reciting Shakespeare!”

Thrilled at our collective wit, our laughter pushed us until we were couldn’t stand upright. It was my first acid trip, and like everyone else, I was one awestruck tourist.

A trap door had been opened to my mind and large truths jostled against one another in their haste to get through. I lay on my stomach, pressed against a million tender blades of grass who hummed a chant so primordial that I knew every living thing could be heard if I just understood how to listen. I listened closely, realizing that the grass with its greenness, its scent, its dandelions, its hidden clovers, was but the top layer, a ceiling covering Mother Nature’s rec room below. And who knew—maybe she was down there, underneath us all,
right now,
her hair long strands of the silver and gold men dug out of mines, her beating heart the slow pulse of volcanic lava…and what’s above? Quickly, I rolled over and looked up at the sky—the blue celestial roof of this crazy funhouse—just in time to watch angels wearing clouds do-si-do with one another. Birds who were magnified in size waved their wings in greeting and whistled the theme song of
The Andy Griffith Show.
The trees shook the maracas of their magic leaves as the wind blew by.