THE CRAZY ONE IN THE CAR--episode 5
Going to college 1964-1968
Freshman Year — Fall Quarter 1964
When Carolyn and Claudia come back, they’re laughing. They could be friends. Carolyn carries herself with an elegance that might at any moment break into galumphing strides with arms swinging all the way out to her long fingertips. There is the slight slouch, the slightest cave-in of her chest, that she says began in grade school when she grew taller than everyone and she tried to hide it. Last spring I stood next to her for a senior yearbook photo and when I realized I was looking down at her, I said, “Straighten up.” She mumbled, “For once in my life I’m not going to be taller than everyone else.” Narrow shoulders, narrow hips, small breasts—which I have yet to find the courage to touch—and though I have caused her pain with comments like “I’m glad you didn’t try to wear a strapless gown tonight,” now I say, “Every time I watch you enter a room, I remember my mother saying you should be a model.”
She crosses her arms in front of her. “Yeah, for freak painters.”
Claudia says, “I have to get to work, I’m late,” and as she pins her hair up, her ribcage and her breasts lift and she goes through a door to the kitchen of the South Hall cafeteria.
We go into the dining room and get in line.
Carolyn laughs. “Where did you and David go in Meadville, Carolyn? Well, we had lunch in the freshmen cafeteria.”
“You’re here for one day, I want you to see the school, I want you to meet my friends, I don’t have any money.”
I’m surprised by the vehemence in my voice and she says, “Jesus, I’m joking.”
I want to apologize, to say something placating or tender but somebody pushes into the line and says, “You better be Carolyn,” and I say, “This is Dan Corse,” and he extends his hand to her. “I’m joining you because I don’t believe you exist.”
“Sometimes I wonder if I do,” she says and we move down the line and I try a joke or two about the food and she lets me.
We come into the dining room with its high ceiling and the echo of lunchtime voices and the wall to the outside that’s almost all glass so you can see trees and I say, “One of these days Eva Marie Saint is going to come in and shoot Cary Grant.”
And she laughs.
There’s a table with only one person. It’s the gnomey freshman guy from orientation week. He’s reading Kierkegaard.
“Hi, Sid, may we join you?”
He mumbles something and he gets up and walks away leaving his tray on the table. We sit, Corse and Carolyn and I.
“Where’s Ed?” I ask, as if ‘Ed’ was the name I always call him.
“Disappeared early this morning,” Corse says with the smirk that suggests he knows something that would harrow his listeners’ bones. Then he turns full-bodied to Carolyn. “And you won’t meet Jerry Caraggino either. He went home for Thanksgiving. What a shame you’ll miss both of David’s special friends.”
“But what a blessing that she gets to meet you,” I say and then to Carolyn, “I really do like him though I don’t know why.”
John Fergus comes to the table wearing his waiter’s apron. “May I eenterest zee lady in today’s spessials? Downs a l’Orange pairhaps?” He smiles. “You’re Carolyn, aren’t you? It’s such a pleasure finally to meet you.”
“John is my favorite upperclassman,” I say and Carolyn smiles back at him and says, “I hope you’re going to be nice.”
* * * * *
We walk around campus and I become a child showing his favorite friend all the things he likes about summer camp. “That’s the library and this is Bentley Hall, the oldest building on campus and a good example of Federalist architecture. This is Brooks Drive; it ends in a cul de sac called Brooks Circle in front of Brooks Hall, the upperclass girls’ dorm. Brooks Hall is where the new fraternity pledge classes gather on pledge night and run out to greet the various brotherhoods in joyful male melee. I can’t wait.”
“What fraternity is John Fergus in?” and I tell her about Alpha Chi Rho and she says, “You really do love it here.”
“The guys in Baldwin laugh at me because when somebody asks if So-and-So is in his room, I’m the only one who says he hasn’t come home yet. Nobody else calls the dorm home. Everybody’s counting down the days till Christmas break and I don’t care if it ever comes.”
She stops walking and says, “Well, thanks.”
Oops. “No, as always, you are the exception to everything,” and she scoffs and we continue walking. We go up the path to Prospect Street. The sun is out, the clouds are gone and so is the chill in the air.
“I ran into your sister in Latrobe. She says to tell you”—and she laughs—“that your father is walking around the house like a dog who knows his favorite human will soon be coming home.”
I wish I could find it funny. “I think I liked it better when he walked around like a wounded bull ready to gore anyone in his path.” And glad to change the subject, “This is Arter Hall. In the basement is the theater where Fantasticks is being done.” She wants to joke about having to see a school play tonight, but she doesn’t. And I don’t want to talk about my father so we don’t.
We walk in silence.
“How do I seem to you?” she says and my guts wrench. All I’ve been thinking about is myself and her response to me.
I tell the truth. “It’s weird having you here.”
“Jesus.”
“It’s weird having you in my college context. And I can’t imagine you in yours.”
We both go quiet for a moment.
“I’m sorry if I’m being an asshole.”
She laughs. “I don’t think I’m going to like Northwestern. I envy you.”
And then I see it. The sadness in her eyes. The slackness in her voice. “I’m so sorry. What’s wrong?” and she clicks into her smart ass self and manages a laugh. “All the girls should be in sororities planning parties and all the boys should be brushing the straw out of their hair.” And before I can say anything, “You’ve spoiled me. I hate you. I compare every boy I meet to you and they always lose.”
“Hey! I’m doing my best to get you to take off your David colored glasses.”
“Do you date much?”
“This is Baldwin Hall.” We cross Main Street to Cochran Hall. “Not really. Dances and stuff. My friend Paul and I doubled one night when his girlfriend from home visited with a friend of hers from college. This is the college union.”
“Claudia likes you.”
“She and John Fergus kind of go out. She likes him more than he likes her.”
We walk in silence.
“I’ll be sitting at lunch or at a dance,” she says, “and when I see a guy coming toward me and I can tell he’s going to ask me to dance or whatever, I just stand up and let him see that I tower over him and he goes away.”
I have flirted with girls here. And I kissed Claudia once when I took her back to South Hall from a walk. I drew Marilyn Thorne’s portrait for the poster she used when she ran for class secretary. And when I called South 3A to ask Betty Spencer to a dance, there was a lot of giggling in the background. But there’s no reason to mention any of this. It’s meaningless.
We walk down Main Street past the new field house and toward the Pizza Villa. The afternoon passes. And Carolyn and I talk the way fish in an aquarium swim—purposeful but aimless. I feel purposeful but I don’t recognize the purpose—are we just talking or are we talking about something?
I must be at the theatre by 6:00. “Do you want to go to the Pizza Villa for dinner instead of South Hall?”
She looks at me with the indulgence of a mother whose child has attempted to right some minor wrong between them. “South’s fine. Anyway, I want to find out what the freshmen women think of you.”
* * * * *
John and Claudia go with Carolyn to the theater. I watch the performance from offstage as I operate the light board and call cues. It’s magnificent. Afterwards I tell Rick Hentzinger “good show” and he thanks me and is gone. I wait for the actors and the crew to leave and then I shut everything down. John and Claudia and Carolyn are waiting in the lobby when I come out.
“Sorry for taking so long, but I have to—” and John says something about how heavy lies the crown and we go. We walk for several minutes while everyone says how much they liked the show and then John says they’ll leave us to ourselves and Claudia beams and they take the path that leads to the old observatory.
It’s cold but I don’t want to go inside. There’s a dance at the union, but I don’t want to go. I give Carolyn my scarf and she puts her hands in the pockets of her jacket. I tell her how sorry I am that she won’t meet Edward C and Jerry. “I like them so much. More than Keith or Howdy,” my best high school friends.
“I keep wondering why I like Maryann so much. Sometimes I feel like I’m betraying Ginny and Patty.” Her best high school friends. “Maryann and I think we should probably have sex just to make sure we’re not lesbians.” She laughs.
Near South Hall we stop in a shadowed spot between two old trees.
“Are you glad I came?” she says.
Yes, yes, but I don’t say it. I kiss her. Gently. And again. We’re looking at each other. A Fantasticks moment.
“It is November,” I say, “before a snowfall.” And a little sadly. “Not a perfect time to be in love.”
She keeps looking at me, just the hint of a smirk, a hurt. “If you didn’t get a room, where did you and David make out? We didn’t make out. Why not? He didn’t want to. Why not?” She puts her arms around my neck. “A tender and callow fellow.”
I want to press myself against her. If I had an erection, I would.
“Mother has decided that it doesn’t matter that you were born in a coal mine,” and we watch other couples on the walkway. “When the Harvard Club promised you that scholarship, she had it all planned out that I would go to Radcliffe and we’d become the premier couple of Latrobe.”
“Must’ve scalded her when I decided on Allegheny.”
She laughs and we walk to the South Hall patio. “That you’re a Roman Catholic raises her blood pressure more. She loves you. She tells everybody I couldn’t do better than you.”
In the lobby with other couples returning in time for the freshmen women to sign in, we kiss. I’m aware we’re being seen.
It snows overnight. We eat breakfast in the cafe next to the bus station and we joke about sleeping in separate dorms the night before. Jokes rather than intimacy. It started in high school. Ridicule the potential romanticism of the moment and thereby escape it. Say something deflating before the other does. When the bus pulls in, she picks up her bag and adjusts the purse on her shoulder and she says, “You still mean something to me. And I still don’t know what I mean to you,” and she turns and goes up the stairs into the bus.
On the way up the hill, I’m flooded with longing for her. Why didn’t I let myself go? Why didn’t I tell her I love her? Why didn’t I hold her? Be with her? What keeps me from getting swept away? What kind of pride or what hesitation or fucking fear turns me into an ungiving, withholding jerk or freak or—from behind a hand claps me on the shoulder.
“Hey, man, I was hoping I would get back before Carolyn left.”
ECBIV comes beside me. I want to punch him and I want to cry on his shoulder.
“Gone with the wind that swept through Meadville.”
“Aw, I’m sorry I missed her.”
“Yeah…well…she’s gone.”
He doesn’t tell me where he’s been and right now I don’t really give a fuck. We walk up Main Street and back to Baldwin pretty much without talking.
And the guys on the floor give me grief:
“I know for a fact there was an empty room at Pig Inn over the weekend.”
“Downs, did you let them lock her in South Hall at midnight?”
“Hey, Gommers, I hear she had to borrow Sharon’s vibrator.”
“Fuck you.”
“Which brings us back to the empty room at the Pig Inn.”
“Hey, Jerkoffs.” It’s ECBIV. “He respects her more than you assholes will ever understand.” Silence. “And I heard she slipped out past the hall monitor during the night, so who knows?” Chuckles.
* * * * *
Jerry gets back from Cleveland later in the evening. I go to his room—the guys have made me an honorary member of Fourth Main since I’m up here so much—and he’s folding a duffel bag’s worth of clean laundry. I’m lying on Corse’s bed. I tell him about Carolyn’s visit and I’m not sure why I’m being so enthusiastic—“Oh my God, she and Claudia hit it off so well and she loved John, we had such a great time doubling with them”—but I think I want him to feel bad about not being here.
He’s folding pairs of white crew socks. He’s careful. Precise. You’d think he went to a military academy instead of Cleveland Heights High or wherever.
“I went to the movies with a girl I dated a lot last year,” he says. “She goes to Miami of Ohio. She was home for Thanksgiving. You’d like her. She likes to talk about things, too.” Six pairs of socks laid neatly in the top dresser drawer.
“As you surely do not.”
“Well”—he takes a pair of tighty whities out of the duffel, lifts them, considers them—“I guess I’m better at listening.” He folds them carefully.
“I like figuring things out.”
“You and Sue could spend hours figuring things out together.” He is deliberately not looking at me.
“And you could listen.”
Nobody needs to look that closely at briefs before folding them. And who folds briefs anyway? The third pair of folded briefs is put in the top drawer and he looks at me and smiles. “I could sit in the corner folding undies while you and Sue figure things out.” He reaches into the duffel. “You could come to my house for Christmas break and meet her and talk.”
Where’s the feather he just knocked me over with?
I hear myself say, “Or you could come to my house and meet Carolyn and listen.”
Suddenly it feels like we’re in a roller coaster car suspended at the highest hill point in that instant before it starts the downward plunge.
He folds the duffel and puts it on the shelf in his wardrobe. “I’m pretty sure mama wouldn’t go for that.”
“Maybe we could do half at your house, half at mine.” I’m breathing shallowly. I don’t want to move for fear of disrupting some important configuration of molecules that has formed in the room.
Corse comes in, goes to his desk, tosses his books, and turns and leans against the back of the chair. “I like Carolyn. She’s in for heartache, man. Wanna hit the Grill?”
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.