Lessons in Love (8 page)

Due to my freshman-senior mix up, I haven’t yet pleaded my case to Mr. Chaucer. I check my watch and take a breath. Fifteen minutes and I can go to his classroom and hope to be heard. With my few free minutes post-lunch and pre-trial, I decide I can’t wait until tonight to talk to Charlie and head to Foster’s Hall to call him.

In the age before cell phones — an age to which we’ve suddenly returned now that the “new regime” has kicked in — Hadley installed pay phones around campus. My favorite one is an old-school phone box near the computer center, but since that’s fairly central (and thus open for eavesdropping), I choose Foster’s. Up two flights of stairs, through a set of double doors, I see the gleaming silver and black rectangle that will magically provide me with Charlie’s voice.

I drop in my money, holding the receiver to my ear. The heaviness of the handle makes me nervous for some reason, as if cell phone calls are chatty and lightweight, so easy you can slip them into your pocket without a second thought, and these calls — the ones that take actual change, that carry heft in their bulky designs — they mean more.

“Hey!” I love that we’re at the place now where we don’t need to identify ourselves — even without the benefit of caller id we just know.

“Hey,” Charlie says, breathy.

“You just run in?” I imagine him in tweed, all movie-collegiate even though it’s warm today, in the upper seventies and I’m wearing a tank top and shorts to prove it.

“No.” He breathes into the phone, sending shivers up my neck thinking of how his breath feels on my actual skin. Amazing that the phone lines can offer this kind of visceral reaction. Maybe doing away with cell phones is a good idea. Maybe we all talk so much and so often that we’re becoming immune to the beauty of the planned phone call. Not that I scheduled this one is, but with my cell I’m much more apt to be multi-tasking than solely focused on my call, certainly distracted enough that I might miss the chills Charlie’s bringing to my arms as he speaks now. “I didn’t just run in — I’m actually heading out…”

I swallow and push the phone hard into my ear like that will quell the miles between us. “Oh, yeah? Where?”

Charlie doesn’t wait for me to finish asking before inquiring, “Did you meet with Chaucer yet?”

I check my watch. “Ten minutes.”

“Nervous?”

“Very.” I take note of how abbreviated out conversation is, how normally long-winded he is — at least, in person. “I’m really glad you’re coming this weekend.” Just because I’m the one to bring it up, I get stomach flip-flops. What if he cancels? What if he’s one week back into Harvard life and already he’s decided a relationship with a high school girl is out of the question.

“Me, too,” he says, “I can’t wait.”

I breath in through my nose, slowing my heart rate. My fingers entwine with the silver phone cord, and I smile into the receiver. “I can’t promise much in the way of entertainment…”

In the background, I hear a swoosh of noise — the sound of water running and then keys jingling. “I don’t need anything but you.” He pauses. “And maybe some lame movie?”

I think about Friday Night Flicks — the av crew’s answer to empty, campus-chained weekend nights. They show double features which are watched only by film fanatics, the truly lonely, exchange students who don’t know better, and couples who need the dark for purposes other than plot and dialogue. It never occurred to me that one day I might venture to Flicks, but with Charlie, I’m game. “That I can manage,” I say, my voice echoing into the vacant hallway. Following the noise of my words are footsteps. Instinctually, I turn around. Jacob.

He’s at the top of the steps, the light form the arched half-window behind him casting rays on him so his hair looks angelic, all of him illuminated. I wave using only my the fingers of my empty hand, a small wave, like my body doesn’t want to give in to the hello. Jacob nods at me. We’ve yet to formally greet since returning. Sure, there was the picnic, the nods in the hallways while we were otherwise engaged, and a few near misses on the grassy oval between Fruckner, Bishop, and Deals, but nothing concrete. No alone time.

“I’m kind of running late,” Charlie says.

“Oh, sorry,” I say, then wish I hadn’t apologized for no good reason. I’m trying not to do that — if only so that when I am really sorry, it means something. “I mean, where are you going?”

I can hear Charlie lick his lips, he does it unknowingly, when he’s thinking, or buying time. “Out — well, that’s obvious. Um…”

Jacob takes a step closer. It’s clear from his body language — hands in his pockets, his torso slightly back — that he doesn’t want to intrude. “Hey.” He says it almost as a whisper.

“Hey.” I return the word to him.

“Who was that?” Charlie’s voice is at a regular level, which jars me just slightly.

“Oh…” I stumble, wondering if I should say no one — which would be insulting to Jacob and a lie — or just — “Jacob. Jacob Coleman?”

Charlie sighs. “Right. Your friend.” He says friends like it’s in italics but then drops the potentially touchy subject. He was calm on the Vineyard when I explained my past with Jacob — and there’s not much past there, when you actually do the math of it. “Anyway, I’ll see you Friday — okay?”

“Sure — around five-ish? I want to make sure we get dinner before the dining hall closes.” I then feel stupid for saying this, even if it’s my truth — my life is in fact, still regulated by school while his is not.

“That’s kind early for me — with traffic and — how about eight?”

My heart sinks. Eight means two hours of time together — maybe two and a half with weekend check-in times.“Seven?” I risk it. It’s not a big risk, but still.

“Seven,” Charlie says. Then, in the background, I hear the keys jingling again.

“Are those yours?” I picture his keychain, a metal ring encased with a red lacquer that’s worn off around the edges.

“Nope — those are Miranda’s — she’s infamous for her massive set of keys.” I laugh, thinking Charlie’s aware of his innuendo — I’ve got a pretty decent sized set of keys, too — but he’s serious. “She’s got what, twenty keys on here…” He starts to rattle off the different locations the keys work, and it suddenly dawns on me that he’s not alone. That this — Mrianda — is probably right there, swinging her massive keys in front of his face.

“And who’s Miranda?” I ask. He said her name like I’m supposed to know what it means. My heart flits and faults as I wait for an explanation.

“Miranda,” Charlie says again, “Did I tell you about Miranda Macomber — M&M some people call her…”

I hear her laugh in the background. “M&M…” I say, trying it out, wondering it I’ll ever eat the candies again without thinking of this phone call. “But no. No you never said anything about her.” Jacob looks at me, waiting for me to finish the call but not wanting to overtly listen in. I try to keep my tone even — for Charlie’s sake and mine. And maybe for Jacob, too, though I don’t know why.

“You’ll totally love her,” Charlie says. “She’s — you saw that picture on the bookshelf, right?”

I zing myself back to his cabin on the Vineyard, moving like a ghost in my memory of the décor. Photos of Charlie sailing with Parker. Charlie with his sister, Mikayla. “No — I don’t remember any pictures of anyone there — just on that red bookcase?”

Charlie clears his throat. I check my watch — five minutes and I have to be three buildings and four flights away pleading my case to Mr. Chaucer. “Not at the cabin,” Charlie says. “At the Big House — my parent’s bookcase in the library…” He says. “The Macombers and the Addisons go way back.”

I thoroughly dislike when people group themselves into their family names — maybe because my family’s small (and now kind of different — with an unknown sister springing up and my mother coming back). It gives this notoriety to “The Addisons” or “The Macombers” that reeks of monogramming everything.

“So she’s a family friend,” I say, using my wrap-it-up voice. I have to go and now I’m pressured from all sides.

Charlie pauses. “She’s a…yeah, she’s my friend.” He takes a breath. “My old friend.” It’s those last three words that tell me all I need to know.

Miranda is his Jacob.

Great.

His Jacob who’s already won a prize slot in the Big House, with Charlie’s uptight family and tight-knit social crew.

Charlie blows a kiss into the receiver, which has to count for something, but I don’t do it back. The black receiver is even heavier now, after this conversation, and I place it back with a quiet click.

I stare at the pay phone like it just let me down.

“So,” Jacob says as he takes a few steps closer to me. “We haven’t really say hi yet.”

I turn to him, taking in his presence, the easy way he walks, his side grin that whenever I see it wrenches a part of me. “No,” I say back. “But now’s as good a time as any.” I check my watch. “We have precisely sixty seconds before I have to sprint somewhere else.”

Jacob nods. “I accept those limitations.”

Leaving the pay phone a few feet away, and the stairs that lead to the rest of campus to our left, Jacob and I hug. The post-summer embrace. He could be thinking about Chloe, his new girlfriend or the fact that I have Charlie visiting or that he witnessed an awkward phone call. Or, like me, maybe as our bodies touch, Jacob is remembering sitting on the rooftop, the slight pink light fading, as we sang together.

I pull back before the hug is too long. “Good to see you,” I say and start down the stairs.

“Welcome to senior year,” he says.

And maybe I’m imagining it, but I feel his eyes on me as I walk away.

Mr. Chaucer’s room is probably bird’s eye center to the Hadley campus. The English rooms are light, airy, and on the third and fourth floors of Tennant. Unlike the standard science classroom, each of the Human rooms (short for Humanities — as though science is not only another building but another species) reflects its teacher. Mrs. Randolph’s room is the smallest, crammed with artwork she’s collected from her world travels, Mr. Hayward’s is afro-centric, colorful and then stark with black and white prints near the windows. There are others — Ms. Lucretia Melon, the resident Shakespeare expert — has a room so filled with old books there’s hardly enough space for students to sit — often, they kneel on the floor or sit on the table, unable to push the leatherbound volumes off of the chairs.

Mr. Chaucer’s room isn’t like any of those. Sophomore year when I had him for English, I was new — I thought his plain oak desk and the oval table on which years of graffiti had been etched — were just his way of saying he hadn’t yet settled in. I sat in that classroom for a year, and never paid enough attention to the walls to notice they had their own artwork. Probably I was too distracted by Jacob — class III English was where I’d first met him — and probably I was caught up in Chaucer’s electrifying teaching to notice that patchworking the walls were poems, first pages of short stories, laminated articles about Hadley kids who’d gone on to publish pieces in magazines, or win awards, or wrote in their best script back to Chaucer when they graduated and realized they’d never have another mentor like him.

All of this, I’m noticing now, as I sway in my sneakers while I wait for him to enter. I drop my bag on one of the wooden chairs that’s pulled out from the circular table and read some of the writing on the wall.

My Father’s House, Summer

Deck chairs surrender to the sounds of

the Atlantic — the ocean and periodical —

both of which are steadies alongside the coaster

topped with iced lemonade and its perspiration

horn-rimmed glasses, a blue pen, and two loafers

All of these items, bundled,

like children, within arm’s reach.

My heart aches reading this, my mind overwhelmed by the language. How incredible that a seven line poem can distill this scene and present it so clearly I’m right there, as it’s happening. I love it.

“Good one, hmm?” Mr. Chaucer comes in, collapses at his desk, and lets his weathered briefcase topple over on its side.

“I can’t write poetry,” I say. Actually, I can’t write anything — but I figure might not be the best intro when what I’m trying to do is talk my way into his five person class that’s a) full and b) filled with people who’ve done the required prior courses and c) who can write.

“What can you write?” Mr. Chaucer, like everyone, looks the same but different. His hair is thinning just the slightest amount — not on top but at the peaks, making him look like one of those Victorian poets but outfitted by Brooks Brothers or J. Crew.

“Well, that’s the thing,” I say and sit in the chair next to his desk — the one that you might sit in for a conference or if he busted you for plagiarism — the worst offense, according to Hadley’s handbook. He faces his desk, his feet on top of it, and I face the wall, calming my nerves by looking at the titles of other poems; Grand Idea, General’s Army, Honeymoon on the Moors, 1963. Some of the authors are people I know, or knew of — seniors when I was a sophomore, but many are names that mean nothing, who have long since writing these pieces graduated and moved on. “I want to have a great speech right now.” I take a breath. “But I don’t. In the movie version I’d be able to quote some famous author or politician and you’d be all…” Mr. Chaucer smirks, attentive with his arms crossed. “I’d start the speech but then cleverly it would cut to the end of the scene, or maybe the perfect song would play over it — Tom Waits or the Jayhawks or Dvorak or Kate and Anna McGarrigle — and then you’d say I could…”

Mr. Chaucer sits up, puts his feet on the floor, and checks the clock. Last period is about to start. I have it free — my one blank spot all day — but his group of freshman English students are already clomping up the stairs, waiting to come in the room. They hesitate more than a sophomore would, and a senior would probably come in, sit at the other side of the circle (even though I know circles have no sides) and not worry about interrupting. But the class IVs — they don’t know if I’m in trouble or just hanging out.

“Then you could what, Love?”