Habeas Corpus, installment 4
Posted on November 19, 2007
Filed Under Habeas corpus, marriage, writings | 6 Comments
It had seemed like a hopeful beginning before it was patterned in failure – Chad and I alone on the balcony of the Phi Delt house, free from the great drifts of pot smoke and the gurgle and pull of the bong. He had grabbed my hand and pushed his way through the French doors and out into the spring night that was chill and moist and clear, leaving ten or so people slouched in chairs, draped across couches, paranoid and diminished. The music was still loud through the closed door. The volume a thin veil for the festive evening that had fizzled. He had kissed me there, for the first time, well past midnight, to the thump and strain of You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go.
I have come to think of this moment as dangerous, the balcony suffering disrepair, aggressive ivy shrouding the original architecture in dense greenery, climbing through windows and under siding, compromising the joists and balcony rails, diminishing the acceptable load with rot and moisture and aerial roots. We could have died there; plummeting to our deaths. The whole structure peeling away under the weight of two, kissing in April.
“But we’re friends, Chad. I mean really, really friends,” I said, stepping back a little to see him in the darkness.
“Exactly. I can eat sunflower seeds and watch baseball with you. All day. Without your ever mentioning the fat content of a seed. I love that,” he laughed, drawing me back into his chest. I could feel his clavicle against my temple.
Bob Dylan growled from the stereo,I’ve seen love go by my door/It’s never been this close before/Never been so easy or so slow.
“You need to live someplace that is warm and dry, without pets.” I said, reminding him that I was once and always from New England, that New England could have humidly oppressive summers and spring was yellow with pollen and bees and rag weed. I reminded him that I loved dogs, dogs that were great shedders, dogs that slobbered with aplomb.
“So where does that leave me? Allergy free and alone,” he suffered my resistance with humor.
I had always pictured him living in a one bedroom apartment on the West Coast, wearing loose clothing and sandals, reading lots of books. I had imagined that on weekends he would surf and paddle. I had never imagined that I’d play a role in Chad Gabbard’s post-collegiate life.
“Most women are psychotic. You’ve said that. Those are words from your mouth,” I said.
“Not you. A beautiful girl who acts like a guy. We could have children together and name them all Cal. You know, for Cal Ripken?”
“I’m your best friend and I’m gonna be honest with you. I have no idea who Cal Ripken is and you’re stoned,” I said with firmness, a trumped up severity.
There had been an awkward phone call a day later, his effort to apologize. He had asked me over for Milwaukee’s Best and bong hits. And we’d laughed and resumed friendship and failed to notice that this was our version of courtship, this quiet folding into one another. Two months later we rented a canine-free yet dingy trailer in the town of Grafton where Chad would play mountain-man for the summer. Our post-collegiate belongings mingled and merged, CD collections sorted and shelved, sheets and towels in neutral tones purchased.
Mom had tried to talk me out of going but only in a half hearted, I’m-too-tired-to fight-you-on-this, kind of way. And she had two things working against her in this argument. First, there was the general absence of conviction. The more she insisted that I should only abide the lure of engagement rings and well padded savings accounts, the more I could sense that she was uncomfortable arguing for tradition and appearances. Second, she had her own history with which to contend. At seventeen, Mom moved out of her parents’ three-story, antique home with its coastal views and terraced gardens and ran off with my father, one of the tennis pros at the yacht club. He had admired her long legs and her short skirts and, probably, screwed her regularly in the men’s locker room on weeknights. With his easy, wide grin and courtside tan, my father found it simple to talk her into doing something she would, for the rest of her life, regret.
As Mom tells it – when she’s defending the place she had made for herself in the world – Dad, with his quick charm and wicked drop shot, had all kinds of potential. He was offered a full-time pro position at the Junior College just outside of Northfield, only two weeks before the Fall semester was to start. She insists that there wasn’t long to think it through and she hadn’t yet learned about the drinking.
Dad didn’t keep that job for long. And Mom, when pressed, talks vaguely of restraining orders and a sad girl named Melissa in the way a person hints at something shameful. She’ll say in self defense, What was I going to do with a baby on the way and hastily acquired marriage certificate? Their town hall wedding was witnessed by Mom’s hairdresser and Dad’s only friend from the tennis circuit that had not yet given up on his total lack of discipline and his tendency to show up to matches horrifically hung-over. By the time I was born, he had quit tennis all together. I have never even seen a photograph of my father holding a racket.
Mom’s stubborn perseverance after years of obvious connubial failure was, I can only guess, an effort born of spite and malice, a way to offer up a giant middle finger to her own parents who passed a year or so ago, but not before ignoring their daughter, her hastily acquired husband and their only grand daughter for several decades. They were hard, uncompromising people and the day their daughter left with Don Bensley was the day they began denying her all access to the life of clanking halyards, lobster rolls and crisp pressed tennis whites save for a monthly check they sent without a note, without any correspondence at all, not even word scratched on the memo line – a monetary contribution to ensure their daughter’s exile.
I know there was nothing conventional about eloping. Not back then. It was an act of defiance before its time. The Summer of Love was still eight years off when Mother looked past money, class and a stable future for the sake of some romantic notion. When Dad began to spin off on his very own version of the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test but with whiskey and cheap beer, she was already anchored in the stuff of convention: motherhood, work, mortgage payments. Haight-Ashbury, the Beatles, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters had no resonance with her.
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