Hearts In Atlantis (59 page)

I never told my mom, but I actually hired
two
tutors with her three hundred, one a grad student who helped me with the mysteries of tectonic plates and continental drift, the other a pot-smoking senior from King Hall who helped Skip with his anthropology (and might have written a paper or two for him, although I don't know that for sure). This second fellow's name was Harvey Brundage, and he was the first person to ever say “Wow, man, bummer!” in my presence.

Together Skip and I went to the Dean of Arts and Sciences—there was no way we were going to go to Garretsen, not after that November meeting in the Chamberlain rec—and laid out the problems we were facing. Technically neither of us belonged to A and S; as freshmen we weren't yet eligible to declare majors, but Dean Randle listened to us. He recommended that we go around to each of our instructors and explain the problem . . . more or less throw ourselves on their mercy.

We did it, loathing every minute of the process; one of the factors that made us powerful friends in those years was being raised with the same Yankee ideas, one of which was that you didn't ask for help unless you absolutely had to, and maybe not even then. The only thing that got us through that embarrassing round of calls was the buddy system. When Skip was in with his teachers I waited for him out in
the hall, smoking one cigarette after another. When it was my turn, he waited for me.

As a group, the instructors were a lot more sympathetic than I ever would have guessed; most bent over backwards to help us not only pass, but pass high enough to hold onto our scholarships. Only Skip's calculus teacher was completely unreceptive, and Skip was doing well enough there to skate by without any special help. Years later I realized that for many of the instructors it was a moral issue rather than an academic one: they didn't want to read their ex-students' names in a casualty list and have to wonder if they had been partially responsible; that the difference between a D and a C-minus had also been the difference between a kid who could see and hear and one sitting senseless in a V.A. hospital somewhere.

After one of these meetings, and with the end-of-semester exams looming, Skip went to the Bear's Den to meet his Anthro tutor for a coffee-fueled cram session. I had dishline at Holyoke. When the conveyor finally shut down for the afternoon, I went back to the dorm to resume my own studies. I stopped in the lobby to check my mailbox, and there was a pink package-slip in it.

The package was brown paper and string, but livened up with some stick-on Christmas bells and holly. The return address hit me in the stomach like an unexpected sucker-punch: Carol Gerber, 172 Broad Street, Harwich, Connecticut.

I hadn't tried to call her, and not just because I was busy trying to save my ass. I don't think I realized the real reason until I saw her name on that package. I'd been convinced she'd gone back to Sully-John. That the night we'd made love in my car while the oldies played was ancient history to her now. That
I
was ancient history.

Phil Ochs was playing on Nate's record-player, but Nate himself was snoozing on his bed with a copy of
Newsweek
lying open on his face. General William Westmoreland was on the cover. I sat down at my desk, put the package in front of me, reached for the string, then paused. My fingers were trembling.
Hearts are tough
, she had said.
Most times they don't break. Most times they only bend
. She was right, of course . . . but mine hurt as I sat there looking at the Christmas package she had sent me; it hurt plenty. Phil Ochs was on the record-player, but in my mind I was hearing older, sweeter music. In my mind I was hearing The Platters.

I snapped the string, tore the tape, removed the brown paper, and eventually liberated a small white department-store box. Inside was a gift wrapped in shiny red paper and white satin ribbon. There was also a square envelope with my name written on it in her familiar hand. I opened the envelope and pulled out a Hallmark card—when you care enough to send the very best, and all that. There were foil snowflakes and foil angels blowing foil trumpets. When I opened the card, a newspaper clipping fell out onto the present she'd sent me. It was from a newspaper called the Harwich
Journal
. In the top margin, above the headline, Carol had written:
This time I made it—Purple Heart! Don't worry, 5 stitches at the Emerg. Room & I was home for supper
.

The story's headline read:
6 INJURED, 14 ARRESTED AS DRAFT OFFICE PROTEST TURNS INTO MELEE.
The photo was in stark contrast to the one in the Derry
News
where everyone, even the cops and the construction workers who had started their own impromptu counter-protest, looked sort of relaxed. In the Harwich
Journal
photo, folks looked raw-nerved, confused, and about two thousand light-years from relaxed. There were hardhat types with tattoos on their bulging arms and hateful grimaces on their faces; there were long-haired kids staring back at them with angry defiance. One of the latter was holding his arms out to a jeering trio of men as if to say
Come on, you want a piece of me?
There were cops between the two groups, looking strained and tense.

To the left (Carol had drawn an arrow to this part of the photo, as if I might have missed it otherwise) was a familiar jacket with
HARWICH HIGH SCHOOL
printed on the back. Once more her head was turned, but this time toward the camera instead of away from it. I could see the blood running down her cheek much more clearly than I wanted to. She could draw joke arrows and write all the breezy comments she wanted to in the margin; I was not amused. That was not chocolate syrup on her face. A cop had her by one arm. The girl in the news photo didn't seem to mind either that or the fact that her head was bleeding (if she even
knew
her head was bleeding at that point). The girl in the news photo was smiling. In one of her hands was a sign reading
STOP THE MURDER.
The other was held out toward the camera, the first two fingers making a V. V-for-victory, I thought then, but of course it wasn't. By 1969, that V went with the sparrow-track the way ham went with eggs.

I scanned the text of the clipping, but there was nothing there of any particular interest. Protest . . . counter-protest . . . epithets . . . thrown rocks . . . a few fistfights . . . police arrive on the scene. The story's tone was lofty and disgusted and patronizing all at the same time; it reminded me of how Ebersole and Garretsen had looked that night in the rec.
You fellows have disappointed me
. All but three of the protesters who had been arrested were released later that day and none were named, so presumably they were all under twenty-one.

Blood on her face. And yet she was smiling . . . triumphant, in fact. I became aware Phil Ochs was still singing—I must have killed a million men and now they want me back again—and a shake of gooseflesh went up my back.

I turned to the card. It bore the typical rhymed sentiments; they always come to about the same, don't they? Merry Christmas, sure hope you don't die in the New Year. I barely read them. On the blank side facing the verse, she had written me a note. It was long enough to use up most of the white space.

Dear Number Six
,

I just wanted to wish you the merriest of merry Christmases, and to tell you I'm okay. I'm not back in school, although I have been associating with certain school types (see enclosed clipping) and expect I will return eventually, probably fall semester next year. My mom is not doing too well, but she is trying, and my brother is getting his act back together. Rionda helps, too. I've seen Sully a couple of times, but it's not the same. He came over to watch TV one night and we are
like strangers . . . or maybe what I really mean is that we're like old acquaintances on trains going in different directions
.

I miss you, Pete. I think our trains are going in different directions, too, but I'll never forget the time we spent together. It was the sweetest and the best (especially the last night). You can write me if you want, but I sort of wish you wouldn't. It might not be good for either of us. This doesn't mean I don't care or remember
but that I do
.

Remember the night I showed you that picture and told you about how I got beaten up? How my friend Bobby took care of me? He had a book that summer. The man upstairs gave it to him. Bobby said it was the best book he ever read. Not saying much when you're just eleven, I know, but I saw it again in the high-school library when I was a senior and read it, just to see what it was like. And I thought it was pretty great. Not the best book I ever read, but pretty great. I thought you might like a copy. Although it was written twelve years ago, I sort of think it's about Vietnam. Even if it's not, it's full of
information
.

I love you, Pete. Merry Christmas
.

P.S. Get out of that stupid card-game
.

I read it twice, then folded the clipping carefully and put it back in the card, my hands still shaking. Somewhere I think I still have that card . . . as I'm sure that somewhere “Red Carol” Gerber has still got her little snapshot of her childhood friends. If she's still alive, that
is. Not exactly a sure thing; a lot of her last-known bunch of friends are not.

I opened the package. Inside it—and in jarring contrast to the cheery Christmas paper and white satin ribbon—was a paperback copy of
Lord of the Flies
, by William Golding. I had somehow missed it in high school, opting for
A Separate Peace
in Senior Lit instead because
Peace
looked a little shorter.

I opened it, thinking there might be an inscription. There was, but not the sort I had expected, not at all. This was what I found in the white space on the title page:

My eyes filled with sudden unexpected tears. I put my hands over my mouth to hold in the sob that wanted to come out. I didn't want to wake Nate up, didn't want him to see me crying. But I cried, all right. I sat there at my desk and cried for her, for me, for both of us, for all of us. I can't remember hurting any more ever in my life than I did then. Hearts are tough, she said, most times hearts don't break, and I'm sure that's right . . . but what about then? What about who we were then? What about hearts in Atlantis?

In any case, Skip and I survived. We did the makeup work, squeaked through the finals, and returned to Chamberlain Hall in mid-January. Skip told me he'd written a letter to John Winkin, the baseball coach, over the holiday, saying he'd changed his mind about coming out for the team.

Nate was back on Chamberlain Three. So, amazingly, was Lennie Doria—on academic pro but there. His
paisan
Tony DeLucca was gone, though. So were Mark St. Pierre, Barry Margeaux, Nick Prouty, Brad Witherspoon, Harvey Twiller, Randy Echolls . . . and Ronnie, of course. We got a card from him in March. It was postmarked Lewiston and simply addressed to The Yo-Yo's Of Chamberlain Three. We taped it up in the lounge, over the chair where Ronnie had most often sat during the games. On the front was Alfred E. Neuman, the
Mad
magazine cover-boy. On the back Ronnie had written: “Uncle Sam calls and I gotta go. Palm trees in my future and who gives a f—k. What me worry. I finished with 21 match points. That makes me the winner.” It was signed “
RON.
” Skip and I had a laugh at that. As far as we were concerned, Mrs. Malenfant's foul-mouthed little boy was going to be a Ronnie until the day he died.

Stoke Jones, aka Rip-Rip, was also gone. I didn't think of him much for awhile, but his face and memory came back to me with startling (if brief) vividness a year and a half later. I was in jail at the time, in Chicago. I don't know how many of us the cops swept up outside the convention center on the night Hubert
Humphrey was nominated, but there were a lot, and a lot of us were hurt—a blue-ribbon commission would a year later designate the event a “police riot” in its report.