Dimestore (11 page)

I am remembering one starry summer night back in North Carolina, the kind of breathtakingly beautiful summer night of all our dreams, when Josh and I took a long walk around our town. He'd been staying with us for several days because he was too sick to stay in his own apartment. He'd been deteriorating for months, and his doctor had arranged his admission to UNC's Neurosciences Hospital for the next morning. Josh didn't know this yet. But he was always “compliant,” as they call it. We were very lucky in this. My friend's son wouldn't take his medicine and chose to live on the street; she never knew where he was. Schizophrenia is like an umbrella diagnosis covering a whole crowd of very different illnesses; but very few people with brain disorders actually become violent, despite the stereotype.

Josh liked the hospital. It was safe, and the world he'd been in that week was not safe, not at all, a world where strangers were talking about him and people he used to know inhabited other people's bodies and tables turned into spiders and all the familiar landmarks disappeared so that he couldn't find his way anywhere. He couldn't sleep, he couldn't drive, he couldn't think.

Yet on that summer night in Hillsborough, a wonderful thing happened. We were walking through the alley between the old Confederate cemetery and our backyard when we ran into our neighbor Allan.

“Hi there, Josh,” Allan said.

Instead of replying, Josh sang out a single note of music.

“A flat,” he said. It hung in the hot honeysuckle air.

“Nice,” Allan said, passing on.

The alley ended at Tryon Street, where we stepped onto the sidewalk. A young girl hurried past.

“C sharp,” Josh said, then sang it out.

The girl looked at him before she disappeared into the Presbyterian Church.

We crossed the street and walked past the young policemen getting out of his car in front of the police station.

“Middle C,” Josh said, humming.

Since it was one of Hillsborough's “Last Friday” street fairs, we ran into more and more people as we headed toward the center of town. For each one, Josh had a musical note—or a chord, for a pair or a group.

“What's up?” I finally asked.

“Well, you know I have perfect pitch,” he said—I nodded, though he did not—“and everybody we see has a special musical note, and I can hear every one.” He broke off to sing a high chord for a couple of young teen girls, then dropped into a lower register for a retired couple eating ice-cream cones.

“Hello,” another neighbor said, smiling when Josh hummed back at him.

So it went, all over town. Even some of the buildings had notes, apparently: the old Masonic Hall, the courthouse, the corner bar. Josh was singing his heart out. And almost—almost—it was a song, the symphony of Hillsborough. We were both exhilarated. We walked and walked. By the time we got back home, he was exhausted. Finally he slept. The next day, he went into the hospital.

Josh loved James Taylor, especially his song “Fire and Rain.” But we were too conservative, or chickenshit, or something, to put it on his tombstone, the same way we were “not cool enough,” as Josh put it, to walk down the aisle to “Purple Rain” (his idea) while he played the piano on the day we got married in 1985.

But now I say the words to Hal as the light fades slowly on the water behind us.

I've seen fire and I've seen rain

I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end

I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend

But I always thought that I'd see you again.

Well, I won't. I know this. But what a privilege it was to live on this earth with him, what a privilege it was to be his mother. There will be a lessening of pain, there will be consolations, I can tell. But as C. S. Lewis wrote in
A Grief Observe
d
: “Reality never repeats. . . . that is what we should all like. The happy past restored”. . . as it can never be, and maybe never was. Who's got perfect pitch, anyway? Yet to have children—or simply to experience great love for any person at all—is to throw yourself wide open to the possibility of pain at any moment. But I would not choose otherwise. Not now, not ever. Like every parent with a disabled child, my greatest fear used to be that I would die first. “I can't die,” I always said whenever any risky undertaking was proposed. So now I can die. But I don't want to. Instead, I want to live as hard as I can, burning up the days in honor of his sweet, hard life.

Night falls on the schooner ride back to Key West. I clutch the bronze vial that held some of Josh's ashes, tracing its engraved design with my finger. The wind blows my hair. The young couple in front of us are making out.

“Let's get some oysters at Alonzo's,” Hal says, and suddenly I realize that I'm starving.

“Look,” the captain says, pointing up. “Venus.”

Sure enough. Then we see the Big Dipper, Orion, Mars. Where's that French artist with the red beret? No sign of him, and no green flash, either—but stars. A whole sky full of them by the time we slide into the dock at the end of William Street.

Blue Heaven

MAY 1965

We leave Hollins at 10 a.m., six of us girls crammed into the car, Mary Withers driving. “My Girl” is on the radio. Some of us know the dates we'll meet in Chapel Hill; some don't. I don't. He is an SAE frat brother, but I can't remember his name. I am already tired. I have been up for hours, ironing my clothes, ironing my hair. At Martinsville, we stop for gas and road beer. We sing along with the radio. Now it's “Help Me, Rhonda,” by the Beach Boys. We are getting hot in the car because it doesn't have any air-conditioning, but we can't open the windows much because we would mess up our hair. I keep trying to remember my date's name. We stop in Danville for more road beer. “Ticket to Ride” is on the radio. In Chapel Hill, we pull up in front of the fraternity house; all these boys stand up and walk out to the car. Oh no. What is his name? Oh no.

Later that night, much later, we walk right up the middle of Franklin Street in formal clothes, giggling and singing. Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts played at the party. My date passed out, but now I have another date. He is from Scotland Neck, which I find hysterically funny. The sun is coming up. I'm carrying my shoes. It was some party.

JUNE 1966

Summer School. I sit on the grass near the Davie Poplar, books thrown down beside me. A soft wind blows my hair. I stretch out my legs. The boy puts his head on my lap. He wears a pastel knit shirt, pastel slacks, loafers. He looks like an Easter egg. But he is a golfer. I sigh languidly. I am in love.

AUGUST 1966

It is a hot, smoky café, the smoke barely stirred by the sluggish overhead fan. The backs of my legs stick to the sticky wooden booth. This conversation is the most intense conversation I have ever had, and also the most beer I have ever drunk. It is very, very late. This is a great conversation, I can't believe how significant it is. He leans across the table toward me. He pounds on the table to make a point. With his other hand, he touches my knee under the table. He is a member of the Student Democratic Society. We light more cigarettes. I am in love.

AUGUST 1967

It is raining, and we have been walking for hours, in a light, fine drizzle that jewels the edges of everything. We are soaked through. We stop to sit on one of the gray stone walls that are everywhere in Chapel Hill. We kiss. I run my finger along the jeweled stone. This time I am really in love. Later, much later, this guy will move to Chicago, taking my life-size painting of the Supremes and breaking my heart. Eventually I will recover. He was from Connecticut and talked funny.

JUNE 1973

Finally, I move to Chapel Hill with my husband, James Seay, a poet who has gotten a job teaching at UNC. I have always wanted to live here. So has everybody else who ever went to school here, and once school is over, many of them can't stand to leave. So everybody who comes to work on our house has a Ph.D. in something: the plumber's degree is in philosophy; the painter is a historian. I am embarrassed to have all these educated people doing manual labor on my house. I offer them coffee and cake. The carpenter listens to opera while he builds bookshelves. I have second thoughts—are we cool enough to live in Chapel Hill? I won't let the children play with toy guns while the workmen are here, so they won't think we are rednecks.

SEPTEMBER 1973

It is the first day of my new job teaching language arts at Carolina Friends School. I got this job by telephone from Nashville, where I'd been teaching seventh grade at Harpeth Hall, a prestigious girls' school. There the girls wore green and gold uniforms, the school colors, and the faculty dressed up. So I'm all ready for my first day at Carolina Friends, wearing a red linen suit with a straight skirt, pearls, patent leather heels, and stockings.

Only, I can't find the school. I drive out into the countryside as directed, on narrow roads past fields and cows and split rail fences, and then finally turn onto an unpaved road that disappears ahead of me into the forest. This can't be right! Gradually I perceive a number of ramshackle buildings here and there in the trees, then a large log house, apparently built by hand, up the hill, with a sizable deck running all around it. Built by hand? Where's the school? Harpeth Hall had a stone wall around its landscaped grounds, with paved walkways running everywhere.

Finally I spot an old man in a baseball cap and overalls, trudging up the road carrying a toolbox. I pull beside him and announce, “I'm looking for Carolina Friends School.”

“Well, you've found us.” He gives me a big smile and sticks his hand in the window for me to shake. I had him pegged as a janitor, but maybe not.

“But where are the students?” I still haven't seen one.

He points up the hill at the log house.

“They're settling in,” he says.

I stare at him.

“We start every day with meditation,” he says. “Quiet time.”

Really? I'm still thinking as I park in a cluster of old pickups and vans with peace signs on them. I have never known any middle school students to be capable of quiet time, much less meditation. It's pretty hard walking up the pebbly dirt road in these patent leather heels, covered by dust when I finally make it.

Nobody seems to be around, so I go on in the open door, mortified to find myself suddenly in the midst of about seventy people, young and old, all of them down on the polished wood floor, where they form a huge, ragged circle in every posture imaginable, heads mostly bowed, eyes mostly closed. Everybody's wearing blue jeans, cut-offs, or shorts, with sneakers, flip-flops—or simply bare feet. There's a giant, colorful hand-woven mandala on the wall above them. Across the big room I spot a guy I somehow know to be Don Wells, the head of the school, the guy who hired me on the phone. He's got long, blondish hair, he's sitting crosslegged, grinning at me. He does not get up. Out of some wrong-headed perversity I pick my way through the meditating students, across the open part of the circle, my heels clicking on the wood floor. Nobody says a word. But when I have almost made it, here comes a long, single, expert wolf whistle, and then a rising chorus of other wolf whistles. Oh no. I feel myself turning as red as this smart little red suit, which I will never, ever, wear again. The guy Don gets up and hugs me, laughing. Now everybody is laughing, scrambling to their feet, heading outdoors. Another teacher brings me some sandals so I can participate in the ropes course and the relay races and the trust-building exercises. Well, some of them, anyway.

I'm getting the drill—or the lack of the drill, I should say. They have no uniforms and no school colors and no sports except for Ultimate Frisbee, whatever that is. I stand out on the deck looking down at the hilly, wooded landscape covered with kids and grownups in all kinds of activities that are, I realize suddenly, much less random than they seem. This will turn out to be true of everything.

I am surprised and horrified to hear my first assignment, which is to plan and buy the food for a hundred people for one day of our upcoming weekend retreat at Quaker Lake.

“I don't know anything about feeding that many people. I just can't do that,” I tell Don.

“Oh, sure you can,” Don says.

At my first faculty meeting that afternoon, I have to settle in, too. Then Don welcomes me and asks, “What individual courses do you want to teach?”

“Well, what are the requirements?” I ask. “I mean, the curriculum.”

“We're in the process of figuring that out,” Don says. “You tell me.”

Everybody speaks up. They all listen to each other. They all have great ideas. I have no ideas. In fact, I'm having a panic attack, but then after a while something else starts happening. Somewhere, way down inside, it's like a dam gives way and I start getting excited. I love plays, I have always wanted kids to write plays and then put them on. I have always wanted to teach a class that mixes up art and writing, or photography and writing, I have always wanted to teach ghost stories, and Greek mythology, and poetry out loud, really loud. Also I've got this recipe for taco pie casserole that might work great for that retreat.

SUMMER, MID-1970S

A party on Stinson Street, probably Anne Jones's house. Everybody I know has lived on Stinson Street at one time or another. Stinson Street has constant parties, constant yard sales. Anyway, at some point during one of these parties, I go outside to get some air and wander across the street to Leonard Rogoff's yard sale, where I stand transfixed before a chest of drawers with a mirror attached to the top of it. I stand before the chest and look into the mirror for a long time. The mirror is tilted so that I can see a tree, the moon, my face. Oh no, I think. This is really my life, and I am really living it. I remember thinking that then, on Stinson Street.

LATE 1970S, EARLY 1980S

I sit on the edge of the Rainbow Soccer Field, where my kids are playing Rainbow Soccer, which is noncompetitive. You can't yell anything like “Kill 'em!” or “Stomp 'em!” This is hard for some parents. My son Josh is playing center forward. I am writing a novel.

I sit at the Chapel Hill Tennis Club, waiting for my son's match to start. This is my son Page. He's real good. I am writing a novel.

I sit on a wing chair before the fire in the Chapel Hill Public Library on Franklin Street . . . in a booth at Breadmen's . . . at a picnic table at University Lake . . . on a quilt at Umstead Park . . . in a wicker chair on my own back porch on Burlage Circle. I am writing a novel. I am always writing a novel in this town. Nobody cares. Nobody bugs me. Nobody thinks a thing about it. Everybody else is writing a novel, too.

“In Chapel Hill, throw a rock and you'll hit a writer,” someone once said. This has always been true. For Chapel Hill is primarily a town of the mind, a town of trees and visions. Thomas Wolfe praised the “rare romantic quality of the atmosphere.” Maybe the quiet, leafy streets themselves are still informed by his giant spirit, that wild young man from the mountains who raged through them in his archetypal search for identity.

The much-loved UNC English professor Hugh Holman wrote, “The primary thing that Chapel Hill gives those who come to be a part of it is the freedom to be themselves. It is an unorganized town. It is easy to persuade its citizens, along with the students of the university, to join briefly in a cause, to march for a little while beneath a banner . . . but to remain permanently organized is something else indeed, for Chapel Hill does not organize very well. Those who come to this town can find in it just about the quantity of freedom to be themselves which they wish to have.”

CIRCA 1980

I am with my children, and we run into some of their friends from their former community church preschool, along with the friends' mother.

“Hello, Naomi,” I say. “Hi, Johnny.”

“We have changed our names,” their mother says. “This is Trumpet Vine,” she indicates Naomi, “and this is Golden Sun. I myself am Flamingo.”

Oh my, I think. Oh no. My kids do not think that Trumpet Vine is a very good name. But then my younger son, Page, changes his own name (briefly) to Rick. He has always hated Page, a family name; he gets teased because it is too girly. Soon after this, Trumpet Vine, Golden Sun, and Flamingo moved away from Chapel Hill with some kind of sect, I think they were called the Orange People.

I never changed my name, but I have thought about it ever since. I would go with three syllables, too: Biloxi, Chardonnay, Sunflower . . .

SURPRISES, SPRING 1981

In retrospect, it seems inevitable. Both people of good will, my husband and I have been kept together by children and family and friends and common interests, but we are very different. When he suddenly moves out, I am traumatized. I am thirty-seven, old as the hills, old as dirt. And now I am getting a divorce. My mother bursts into tears. “Nobody in our family has
evah
gotten a divorce,” she weeps, though later she will admit that a numbah of them should have. My mountain father weighs in with his mountain advice: “Change the locks and get a handgun.” I don't do that. I do lose twenty pounds, almost overnight. In fact I lose everything, leaving jackets and purses all over town. I let my boys ride their skateboards through our empty house and eat exclusively from the Red Food Group so beloved by boys (SpaghettiOs, Hawaiian Punch, bacon, barbecued potato chips). I take them skiing in Colorado with my cousins for spring break.

I desperately need a real job instead of the part-time position I've got. Suddenly one comes up at North Carolina State University, full-time. Only I don't have the nerve to apply for it, I don't have the academic credentials. “Don't give me that crap,” my friend and fellow writer Doris Betts says. “Just go for it.” She pushes me into it, and to my surprise I get the job, which I will keep for nineteen years.

On Valentine's Day I get myself together, as my mother used to say, and go out for an afternoon Valentine party thrown by Marilyn Hartman, who directs the Evening College at Duke University, where I teach creative writing once a week. Here I meet another writer, a journalist named Hal Crowther, a recent transplant from Buffalo who is teaching critical writing in this same program. I know who he is, I have been admiring his columns in the new
Spectator
magazine. We start talking and it turns out that we have both stashed our children in video parlors so we can come to this party. Then we start talking about Robert Stone's recent novel,
A Flag for Sunrise
, which we have both just read. Hal keeps rattling his tiny cup in his tiny saucer and looking for wine. But there's only tea. “Would you like to go out for a drink sometime?” he asks.

A man is the last thing I'm looking for, but I'm not a fool, either. “Sure,” I hear myself saying from a great distance as I levitate over the Valentine party, something I have been doing a lot lately.

Soon after that I have to go to a meeting at N.C. State, so I meet Hal for lunch at a restaurant in Raleigh. But I am so nervous, I lean forward right in the middle of this lunch and say, “Well, how do you think this is going? Because I'm so nervous I would just as soon bag it if we're not having fun.” Hal says he is having fun, so I keep on seeing him.