Beware of Love in Technicolor (5 page)

             
“Happy birthday!” Molly and I called out in unison.

             
I had gone to the local grocery store after my afternoon French class and bought a small birthday cake from the bakery. At Memories, I had picked out a funny, but not too personal, birthday card. Molly and I both signed it.

             
“Wow!” John stated in amazement. He was genuinely surprised by the expression.

             
We each had a piece of the chocolate cake, and then rushed to the bus stop to make the movie. On the way there, John turned to me, and quietly said, “Thanks.”

             
“For what” I asked.

             
“I know she had nothing to do with that, so thanks.”

             
We went to the movie. We had fun. I don’t remember much, except that suddenly, Friday afternoon, and my mother’s Honda, seemed to come a lot faster than I expected.

***

              Friday night was spent having dinner with my family. My brother, Cooper, was a sophomore at a Catholic, all-boys high school.

             
I’m pretty sure my mom made chicken pot pie and French fries. We all stayed up late at the kitchen table talking about anything from current events to latest books we were reading. I told them stories about the girls on my floor, including plenty where I imitated Molly’s accent and said things like “I’m gonna go git me a shower,” and “There’s pine straw all over these dang windowsills!”

             
We probably all watched
The Tonight Show
together, my parents excusing themselves to bed after the monologue. And then my brother and I most likely found some crappy eighties movie like
Meatballs
or
Midnight Madness
on late night TV, and giggled together at the familiar, corny jokes into the am.

             
People never really believe me when I tell them that our family was pretty free of excessive drama. It was a good way to grow up. I’d recommend it to anyone.

***

              Penny and I made the best of our day in Boston. At the Boutique Unique, on Newbury Street, I picked up a black, vintage men’s blazer, which was actually small enough to fit me without alterations. At Saks, I splurged on a pair of black leather cowboy boots.

             
Maybe Molly and her Texas talk was rubbing off on me, but I think it was more about the way the pitch of the heels made me stand. My butt looked really good in my faded Levi’s. I’ve never been able to wear flat shoes since those boots.

             
Penny and I may not have had much firsthand experience with boys, but both of us had been blessed with good genes, looks-wise, and were both late-bloomers. Together, we often passed as sisters, but only by people who were not looking closely enough. Both of us had each struggled with our weight, and now that we were both thin, we abandoned all baggy clothes so popular at the time, for the more form-fitting kind. But we were never trashy. We each had too much snob for that.

             
Later that evening, sitting behind home plate at Fenway Park, Penny asked me if I really was planning on transferring schools. She wanted me closer to Boston so we could take the train to see each other on weekends. I guess she sensed what I did not. Our lives were moving quickly now, and if we lived them apart, things would change. Penny hated change. College was turning out to be no more fun for than for me.

             
But I had a sense that, despite the applications to various big-city colleges sitting in my desk drawer back in The Pit, I needed to finish what I had started. And that meant sticking it out for at least a little while longer in that one horse town that was feeling more and more like home.

***

              I arrived back at Wyndham Hall that Sunday afternoon, around five-thirty. The floor was quiet. Most of the girls were at dinner, or at the library. Our door was wide open. Molly was sitting at her computer, writing a letter to her best friend back in Texas.

             
It was a time before Facebook and Instagram and texting. I imagine it must be easier now, for college students. Home must not feel so far away anymore. But how do you cut the apron strings if the strings are virtual?

             
I was antsy. I had spent an hour in the car, and wanted to go for a walk in my new boots. Molly wanted to finish her letter. I threw on a sweater, and left by myself. I climbed the steps to the second floor and into the chilly evening on the campus side of Wyndham.

             
I walked without a destination. The darkness grew thicker. The paved cul-de-sac connecting the dorms of Area 1 was brightly lit by dozens of street lamps. The concept of date-rape was just starting to get attention and the university was installing street lamps in abundance in order to stay ahead of the headlines.

             
“Hey, there’s a Winona for you!” I heard a loud female voice say as I approached the front of Holt Hall.

             
“That’s the girl who gave me the Jetson’s pencil at orientation,” another voice said.

             
When I heard this, I knew they were talking about me. In those days, I loved when people told me I reminded them of Winona Ryder. I don’t get that too much anymore.

             
I didn’t know the girl, but I recognized the guy right away. His name was Christopher and we had met during the two days of orientation back in June. He was a fellow journalism major, and had sat next to me during some necessary form-filling session or another. His pencil tip had broken and he didn’t have a backup. When he asked if he could borrow one from me, all I had to offer was a pencil with a big, plastic, Elroy Jetson on the top. I could tell from the look of him that he wouldn’t mind.

             
He was a skinny guy, with dark hair and the most amazing black eyelashes I’ve ever seen wasted on a boy. He was wearing a Smiths t-shirt and plaid shorts. It was impossible not to like him. He had a warmth that is hard to find, and reminded me of Duckie, from
Pretty in Pink
. I liked him right away.

             
“Hi,” I said as I approached them. They were standing under the light of one of the lamps, awash in a fluorescent glow. “Chris, right?”

             
“He wants you to call him Topher” now!” the girl said with obvious delight in making him squirm.

             
Whatever his name now, he shot the girl, her name was Christina, a look and she shut up. I never saw them together again. But that night, I stood there with them making small talk about how things were going and which classes I was taking, and how bad the dining hall food was. When the momentum of the conversation began to dwindle, I started to prepare my exit strategy.

             
That was when I noticed John’s silhouette, backlit by the excessive security lamps, approaching from across the street. Even though I couldn’t see his face, I knew from his height and the way his boots hit the ground that it was him.

             
I pretended not to see him, but lingered in conversation for just a few moments longer, waiting for the right time to make myself noticeable. Turned out I didn’t have to wait.

             
“John!” Christina called out. He saw us and joined our group.

             
“Did Abby leave already?” Christina asked him. I guessed that was his girlfriend’s name.

             
“Just put her on the bus,” he answered.

             
“She was cool,” Christina continued. “It’s too bad she doesn’t go here too, huh?”

             
“Not really,” he answered flatly. He turned to me. “How was Boston?”

             
“Great,” I answered. I stuck my right foot out to show off my new boots.

             
“Nice boots.”

             
“Thank you.” I smiled at him and noted the intense way he watched me move. Like he was studying me.

             
Topher and Christina, sensing they had been shut out of the conversation, excused themselves, leaving John and me standing alone in the fluorescent bath. He was wearing his standard concert t-shirt, black jeans, and Docs. That night he also wore a beat up, black leather jacket.

             
“Have you had dinner yet?” he asked me. He looked tired.

             
I shook my head. “No. I just got back about twenty minutes ago.”

             
“C’mon,” he said, putting his arm around my shoulder. “I’ll buy you dinner in town.”

***

              He bought me a chicken sandwich at a little sandwich shop on Main Street. He had a steak and cheese, with onions. We shared the fries. We lingered at a booth near the window for nearly an hour and a half. When I asked him about Abby, he shook his head, and smiled a weary smile.

             
“The weekend went well until about an hour before she had to leave,” he told me.

             
“Is she your girlfriend, or your ex-girlfriend, as you insist?”

             
“Ex-girlfriend. I don’t think she’ll be coming back here anytime soon.”

             
“Why is that?”

             
“I told her I had no interest in an exclusive relationship, especially a long-distance one.”

             
“Oh,” I said. I picked at my food. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, but I had a new wardrobe to protect.

             
“I told her about you.”

             
“What? Why’d you do that? What did you tell her?” My heart began beating like a drum.

             
“I told her I met someone I’d like to get to know better,” he said. Again, I felt like he was studying my face, my lips.

             
I had absolutely no experience on which to draw to come up with a response. None. So I sat there, my fair skin aflame. The only thing I knew how to do was ruin the moment.

             
“The French fries are cold,” I said.

             
These French fries are cold?

             
Yep. I really said that. The statement later became one of those private jokes we shared as a couple. But that came later.

***

              Though I have described myself as a punk rock chick, I grew up in a family of sports fanatics. There was no escaping their fanaticism. I remember fondly the heyday of the Boston Celtics in the eighties. We went to many games as a family when I was young, and I would paint giant green signs on white bed sheets to hang over the rails in the balcony. I loved getting my artwork on evening sports highlights, which I did twice.

             
The night the ball went through Buckner’s legs, the year the Red Sox lost to the Mets in the World Series, my brother became a Yankees fan. A piece of my father died that night.

             
During my tennis phase, I was a huge Stefan Edberg fan. I even stole his near-empty bottle of Evian water from a table top during an exhibition match at the Boston Garden. I kept it on my dresser in my bedroom for two years, until it was all nearly evaporated. I kept the bottle in a box in the basement until my parents moved out of their house when I was thirty-two years old.

             
But my favorite sport to watch was hockey.

             
My father still proudly displays the photo of me, at age nine, with Bobby Orr’s arm around my shoulder, in the photo collage in their family room. I remember Bruins parties at my parents’ house when I was a small child, when the neighbors would gather and get drunk, yelling at the TV in the rec room of the simple split-level home.

             
So, when Brian Deneen, a starting player on the university’s hockey team and a fellow Intermediate French classmate, asked me to go with him to the foreign film we had to see for class that night, how could I say no? He was a starting player.

             
I was standing in my closet, pulling on my boots when there was a knock at my door. I looked at my clock. It was a bit earlier than I was expecting Brian.

             
“Come in!” I called. We hardly ever locked our door. But instead of Brian, it was John, toting a backpack full of biology books.