THE CRAZY ONE IN THE CAR -- episode 37

Going to college 1964-1968

Summer 1968

“Don’t marry Dick. Marry me.”

She laughs a weak gasp of surprise with a bit of you asshole disbelief.

“When I think of you not being in my life” — I’m trying not to say something cliché like ‘it’s impossible to go on without you’ — “I can’t imagine that.”

Disbelief becomes a smile as her eyes assess me.

It’s nearly 2:00 a.m. We’re sitting in my ’62 Ford Falcon on the street in front of her house. When I pulled up tonight, she came out and said, “You better not go in. Mother says she’ll cry if she sees you.”

We went to the Holiday Inn lounge and talked and at midnight I brought her back and we’ve been sitting here. I don’t want her to go in and she doesn’t want to go.

“I have the money my grandparents gave me for the wedding.”

“With you?”

“In my purse.”

In our teasing way, in the way she and I have of making jokes at the moment we’re supposed to say something mature and serious, I say, “Well, let’s drive to Canada tonight. Then I won’t have to take the physical and it won’t matter if I get drafted.”

She laughs but she’s looking at me, appraising.

And I realize that I’m serious. “I mean it.”

I toss this out: “You’re mother would be irreconcilably pissed.”

“She’d get over it.”

My heart has speeded up. She keeps looking at me with Mona Lisa’s not-so-mysterious-sister’s smile.

“What?” I ask. “Thinking about all you’d have to go through?”

She’s not smiling, not not smiling.

“The announcements are out. The invitations have been sent. The club is reserved and all the gifts have been bought. Everything’s set. All of that has nothing to do with this.”

I would go to Canada with her. I want to be with her. Whether it’s love or not, I don’t know, but I do know that this is all I’ve been thinking about.

“What I’m unsure of,” she is saying, “is you.”

I’m unsure of me, too.

“You’re a bad risk.”

“I know, I know. I’m all over the place and I’m—”

“That’s not what I mean.” She looks out the side window. The lights on the whole block are off except for the single bulb in the ceiling of the front porch of her house. She looks back at me. “The problem is we haven’t really seen each other for over a year. We haven’t talked seriously. And I’m not sure we know each other anymore.”

I’m scrambling. “We can—”

“And I’m sure it wouldn’t take long for you to tire of me.”

No! No! “No, I—”

“I’m not asking you to deny it. I’m just telling you how I feel.”

From the darkness we hear: “Carolyn.”

Mrs. Crawford is standing under the single light bulb in the ceiling of the front porch. Her hair is in curlers and her eyes are hidden by shadows and she’s wearing a floor-length night gown.

“Come inside.” The voice is one of the Furies giving bone-cold commands. “Now.”

“I better go or there will be a funeral — probably two — instead of a wedding.”

She gets out of the car and goes up the walk.

The next day Susie Givens calls. “Carolyn and I are going to the drive-in tonight. Why don’t you and Phil Torney go, too?”

Phil Torney and I go and when we get there, he and Carolyn switch cars.

The movie is Two for the Road. “Or,” I say, “The Story of Carolyn and Dave.”

“At least,” she says, “it isn’t The Graduate.”

We laugh. We always laugh.

“You make a good Elaine, but I’m not sure your mother’s Mrs. Robinson will do.”

“There’s not much of Benjamin about you,” she says, “but Dick is definitely a Carl Smith.”

We watch Two for the Road for a few minutes.

I pound on the steering wheel. “Elaine! Carolyn!”

She laughs.

We watch in silence.

“Mother said she’ll call off the wedding if I want.”

A jab of panic stabs.

“My physical’s tomorrow and Thursday morning I go back to Meadville.”

“And Thursday afternoon Dick comes to town.”

We’re both thinking.

“He’s so nice you can’t help liking him,” she says. We’ve been looking through the windshield to the drive-in screen, but she turns to me now. “Carl Smiths have their advantages.”

She seems about ten years older than either of us was when she and Phil switched cars. “So I’ll let you know what happens.”

*****

The draft physical at the Armory is like a track team physical at the stadium except there are a lot more people and nobody knows anybody else and nobody’s having any fun. There’s no excitement in the air, only dread disguised as routine. It lasts through the morning and into the afternoon. At the end of it, I’m reminded by a middle-aged guy in uniform that I have an appointment August 20 in Pittsburgh with the army psychiatrist.

Until then, I go back to Meadville.

*****

Tuesday, July 16:

Hi

Since you know what has been going on in my mind for the past week, there is no need to write it. All that I can add is that Dick, knowing the problem, threatened to leave on Thursday night. I would not let him go. Maybe it’s allegiance, probably it is love. So July 27th remains with Richard Gough’s name on the invitation. I will never forget you — I just hope that I can get over you again as well as I did last year.

I realize that you have no reason to do anything nice for me, but if you would not show in Latrobe again for two weeks, it would certainly make life easier for me — and possibly for you.

Hopefully, you won’t hear from me again.

Love,

Carolyn

Thursday, July 25:

“Hi.”

When the phone rang, I knew it was her.

“Hi.” I don’t make a joke about her marriage two days from now to Richard Fallsborough Gough III.

“I called last Friday but nobody answered,” she says, “and I didn’t want to leave my name.”

I’m glad Khorvack’s not in the apartment.

“Probably a good idea.”

My heart is racing for lots of conflicting reasons.

“I had called to see if your offer was still good.”

My breath catches. “Uh huh….”

“And today I’m calling to say that this marriage may not work out, but I’m going to do my best to try to make it work out. And if it doesn’t, I don’t give a damn.”

“I’m not going to be any help here.”

“I don’t expect you to be. But I think we should try to be mature about this. We can — we probably should — continue to stay in touch.”

She didn’t say “be friends.”

*****

I’ve jumped full force into Fantasticks rehearsals and I love it. Who even remembers the name of the guy who played Matt in that freshman year production I stage managed? But this summer’s Matt is Thom Coleman, recent high school graduate, soon-to-be NYU freshman majoring in film, hometown friend of the director, Frank Watson. And he owns this production. Onstage, he’s vibrant and engaged from the soles of his feet out to his fingertips and his singing voice is clear and strong and it plays on us like fingers on harpstrings. Offstage, all that passion and muscular engagement is balanced by just the slightest shyness and deference. Two weeks ago he and I drove to his favorite spot in the country and we sat under a tree and we talked all afternoon. I told him how much I admire his acting and how I respect him.

I didn’t tell him that I was falling for him.

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The Crazy One in the Car is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely co-incidental.