What It Was Like (28 page)

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The good part about breaking up with Rachel was that I was free to experiment. If my life was to be changed, I could change it completely. Clean slate. I went through entire days without talking. Because I didn't have to talk to Rachel at 8:00 every night, I was free not to talk to anyone at all. I found that there was power in silence. I didn't have to lie about anything, or talk my way around the ups-and-downs-and-end of our relationship. I didn't have to imagine possible encounters with Eleanor Prince, and how I would craftily ridicule her without her even knowing it. I didn't have to waste a moment's thought on Herb, or his goombas, either, for that matter. (I never got a single good feeling from that guy, and I was proven to be right.) So for long stretches of time in the weeks that followed, I didn't talk to anyone. In the street and in the stores, I could just nod and smile. I briefly thought of getting cards made –”I AM MUTE” – but that would have been cheating. It was more of a challenge to get through the world without speaking. I could pick things out myself in a store or point to things on a menu. I didn't have to talk when paying for things. When people said “Thank you,” I could just smile my “You're welcome.” Maybe they would think I was a tourist or an alien; partially right in both cases.

The longest I went without talking was 104 hours. I finally had to break my Talking Fast (
haha
: pun intended) when Brilliant asked me a direct question in class, and I had to answer. Needless to say, I needed to do well in that class. By dumb luck I had read the material just before class and gave a correct, even semi-eloquent answer. He smiled at me, nodded with approval, and went on with the lesson, extending my answer. Funny, for a moment it was like the old days in high school: me, nailing the right answer and getting strokes from the teacher. There's nothing like the threat of Academic Probation and Loss of Scholarship to focus the mind. (Oh, did I neglect to mention that official “pink” letter from the Dean of Freshmen that I had received?)

The one “good” thing about Rachel's dumping me was that I was forced to put more time into my studies. For so long Rachel had been the most important thing in my life, that everything else was, if not insignificant, certainly less important. What I got from Rachel – acceptance, inspiration, and a sense of fulfillment – was supposed to be the end product of my education. But with Rachel, I had those things already. Every time I was with Rachel, I experienced complete happiness, both giving and receiving. At least that was how I remembered it.

Night after night, I sat in my dorm room, at my desk, in a pool of lamplight, and studied hard. I was behind in almost every class, so I threw myself into my course work with a combination of enthusiasm and desperation. Even “Rocks for Jocks.” For a while, it was a relief to get out of myself and get lost in Dante or Montaigne or Kant. But then I would come across some word or concept – like “earthly paradise” or “the sublime” or “obsession” – and my mind would involuntarily flip back to Miss Prince. And briefly I would disappear into The Zone. The Zone we lost. No, not “we” – The Zone that
she
threw away. I know that her family life was super difficult. Some only children are coddled by two permissive parents; others wind up being victimized by two vindictive ones, especially when there's a nasty divorce going on and there's a mother's disgusting, lecherous boyfriend living in the same house. But, hey, life is tough all over. I gave her my unconditional love, and she didn't know what to do with it. But all this rationalizing didn't help: there was no happiness for me without Rachel Prince. I was “infected” with her love, and there was no cure. Had she ruined me forever? And at the end of these mental excursions I would find myself sitting back at my desk with an open book in front of me, my mind would clear, and I would think,
I've got to do well in this class. I've just got to!
If my grades got so bad that I lost my scholarship, I would be totally screwed. No way my parents could afford the full tuition at this place. Which put more pressure on me.

One night I was sitting at my desk, deep into reading Edmund Burke on the French Revolution when a small black spider crawled slowly across the floor. I got up and stepped on it. It didn't belong in there.

“Sorry, Charlotte,” I said. And as I wiped off the bottom of my sneaker with a tissue, I couldn't help but think of Eleanor Prince.

Just then I got a “PHONE!” pounded on my door. Funny, I hadn't gotten a call on the dorm phone for weeks. I was starting to enjoy my regained anonymity, and now another call.

“Hello?” I said cautiously.

“Hi.”

It was Nanci Jerome.

“Oh,” I said in the same cautious voice. “Hi, Nanci.”

“You don't sound glad to hear from me.”

“Should I be?” I asked. I somehow knew that her call would not be good for me, but I didn't hang up.

Nanci paused before she said simply, “You know she misses you. You must know that.”

This was the last thing I needed to hear.

“Then why doesn't she call me?”

“She can't.”

“Then she doesn't miss me that much.”

I let the silence sit there on the line. I really had no business being curt with Nanci. She wasn't the one who broke up with me.

“I'm afraid she might do something drastic,” Nanci said finally.

“Like what?”

“Like I don't know,” she said. “You know Rachel.”

“Then you shouldn't say something like that,” I countered. “She did what she wanted to do. Now she has to live with that decision. We all have to. I am.”

“She still loves you,” Nanci insisted.

“Don't tell me that,” I said. “Tell her.”

“You're a cold-hearted bastard. You know that?”

I just had to laugh at that.

“It's getting really bad over there,” Nanci continued in a darker tone. “Eleanor hit Rachel, and Rachel even hit her
back
. It is
not
a good scene.”

“Do yourself a favor, Nanci. Don't call me again,” I said and hung up.

The last thing I needed or wanted was reports of how Rachel was doing without me. I had enough trouble learning to live without her, without backsliding and unnecessary echoes. Not that I didn't care about her: I couldn't help that. But I had to try to take care of myself first. And I have to confess that I wasn't doing that well, trying to forget.

Sometimes I just had to get out of my room, away from my studies and thoughts of Rachel, away from Roommate A and his cigarettes, away from no-thoughts-of-Rachel, to walk the streets of New York. That's one good thing about Manhattan: at any time of day there is always someone else awake, someone else walking the streets, someone else going through something worse than you are. At least that's what I saw when I prowled Morningside Heights almost up to Harlem, then down to the river, and through the West Side to Central Park. I went down to the Hudson many times, but I never jumped in. I developed quite a relationship with the Hudson River. I walked sometimes till I thought my legs would fall off. Twice I walked down to Times Square at 2:00 a.m. to get an Orange Julius. That's another great thing about New York City: you can get an Orange Julius at 2:00 a.m. (In fact, I wish I had one right now; it's a mighty satisfying beverage.) You are completely free to join the sleepless, the homeless, and the psychotic roaming the streets at all times of the day or night in perfect, timeless free-fall.

I walked through areas where I thought I might be mugged. Hell, I half hoped that I might be mugged; that would have solved a lot of problems. I didn't court trouble, but I didn't avoid it either. I walked in straight lines when and where I wanted to. I jaywalked when and where I wanted to. I walked against traffic down Broadway for a couple of blocks, causing a couple of close calls and a ridiculous argument with a Pakistani cab driver. I only did that once, walking against traffic. I really didn't want to endanger anyone else. My indifference to human life was strictly a private matter.

I held a fairly steady conversation with myself, weighing the pros and cons of past actions, how I would have changed things that were now, of course, impossible to change. I mentally relived the first walk to the baseball backstop, my back still sweaty from square dancing . . . the long, lost walks during Free Play, when we told each other everything . . . the rowboats on the lake, beating against the current. Bailey's and the Super-Coupe, sunset at the Quarry, and Sharon Spitzer telling me “
Summer things never last.
” Even the Five Days Without Rachel. With my Mets cap pulled down so that I could see the pavement and not much else, I ran these internal movies over and over in my mind: changing the dialogue, changing the endings, feeling the smooth stones that I kept in my coat pockets, amusing myself by muttering tongue twisters like “turmoil, turmoil, turmoil” and singing “So why on Earth should I moan, why on Earth should I moan, why on Earth should I moan,” over and over again.

One time I must have been talking out loud to myself because this homeless guy in the street came up to me and yelled, “Shut up! . . . Who made
you
God?”

It was on a grimy side street off Amsterdam Avenue where a lot of the social service agencies and flophouses are. I was walking down the street, minding my own business, and this guy just jumps into my face and starts screaming.

“Who made
you
God? . . . Who made
you
God?” he shouted at me, right in my face.

At first I was terrified. He was big in his grimy tan overcoat, and the whites of his eyes were yellow. He stood in my path, swaying and shouting. I tried to move around him but he blocked me with a surprisingly quick sidestep.

Fear flashed several alternatives across my mind: Retreat? Run around him? Punch him in the stomach and
then
run?

But instead I just rose up and yelled back at him, “NO – who made
you
God??? Go on! Who made
you
God?”

I gave madness for madness, and he – glory be – was frightened. He visibly flinched, frightened of
me
. I don't think anyone has ever been frightened of me in my entire life, but he was. His eyes flickered with the recognition of something, I don't know exactly what – perhaps the threat, perhaps the acknowledgement of a kindred spirit – but he turned his gaze from mine and, seeming to shrink inside his overcoat, slunk away from me, back toward his cardboard bed, hidden in a doorway behind some garbage cans.

I walked on, triumphant.

Now I ask myself . . . Was I different? Had I really changed inside? Had I actually been
damaged
by my relationship with Rachel? Was I “crazy-in-love” with her? How could that be, when all I had were good memories? OK, some of them might have been enhanced in the light of retrospection, but everyone does that. I thought that all I needed was love. I guess the Beatles were wrong.

No matter how far I walked or where I went I couldn't shake the continual, recurring questions: How did Good become Bad? How did I fail to protect what was dearest to me? How did I let Rachel get away when all I wanted to do was keep her? What could have been more important to her than keeping us together? Did I not understand her at all? How could I have been so wrong – about so many things?

I was on Central Park West now, walking back uptown, passing the Museum of Natural History. I thought I heard someone call my name. I looked up and saw only the statue of Teddy Roosevelt on horseback. There was another high-strung dude; I think he went to Columbia too.

Then someone suddenly grabbed me by my shoulder, yanking me backwards, trying to turn me around. Instinctively, I jerked away from the force, not knowing who was trying to hold onto me. Had the homeless guy followed me? Some cop? Was it Teddy himself?

I whipped around and saw a big kid there with a wide smile on his face, giving me this enthusiastic “hello.” I had no idea who this kid was as he grabbed my hand and shook it vigorously, but he looked vaguely familiar. He might have been one of my cousins from New Jersey, the ones we almost never see, but I wasn't sure.

And there was this woman standing behind him, this big, lipstick-mouthed woman, talking a mile a minute in my face. The kid was grinning, grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me happily. But it wasn't until he screeched, “I told you so! It
is
the Assistant Groinmaster!” that I realized it was one of the
Doggies
.

“You were Jonathan's favorite counselor!” the woman was saying. “He talks about you all the time!”

I pulled back from them, but they kept advancing. I watched her mouth move and kept looking at the kid, trying to figure out why he looked so strange.

“He always talks about how you saved the Klein boy from drowning,” she said. “He even wrote a composition on you for his honors English.”

“That's very nice,” I said, trying to say nothing.

“I got an A minus on it!” the strange Doggy said, still closing in on me. “Are you going back to Mooncliff next summer? I am. Dorny is. We all are.”

That's when I realized that it was the Doggy With Braces, seven months older – and now,
without his braces
! And he'd had a growth spurt: he was damned near as tall as me. And his face was a different shape. He was even uglier and more ungainly than before. No wonder I didn't recognize him.

“Because of you,” the woman said. “He's been reading real books. Not those awful comic books.”

The woman, presumably his mother, pulled me away from the kid and whispered in my ear.

“Jonathan respects you so much,” she said, smelling of Listerine and something else. “Do you think you could say something to him? He's been giving his father and me such a hard time lately. Say something to him.”