A Note of Leave-Taking

I have no recollection of how I arrived there, nor of the leave-taking- only of the moment. Standing in the darkness, merest of moonlight, she beside me, her presence as rocky as a shorn glacial sheet, as rocky as Dover Cliffs, glancing at me, acquiring her inimitable sense of the situation as we stood in the meadow, and the enormous hoofed creatures ran round us, thunderous, shaking the ground, circling, their pungence  pervading the mist.

I can’t recall how we arrived, as we were  students at a girl’s boarding school in Connecticut , and certainly were not allowed to venture into fields or off campus or onto horse farms after lights out. I was 15 or 16,  and she was my first roommate, a fascinating, eclectic creature of great selectivity, a quizzical smile on her lips at all times, save when we sat together in our room, when some of her would settle. How was I to know much of anything, at the time, though? I was the oddest being, my self, fresh from a disastrous home that looked to all quiet  and fine enough, if not rather wild. Many siblings, politically active parents, many out of control parties for good causes or not, replete with requisite class trappings and parents who intermittently were present and culpable, and then  again, nothing but nightmare.

She was of a very affluent background, of typically absent parents, it did seem, grand homes and parenting-at-a-distance. We met when I stumbled, reeking of desperate self doubt and fear, into the room we were to share, as my parent cheerfully left me at the door, as I mutely but WASP-ily -politely greeted her, and she did stand there, carefully taking stock of me. And very soon thereafter, chose quite obviously to be kind.

Affable she was not generally, not to others, and her mode of being in the school at large was one of distant, challenging geniality- as in, not too close, not too close, you over there. She was bright and questioning and generally did as she pleased, adhering to rules just enough to be left quite alone, as she made her ineffable way. Her thoughtful manner with me, a wounded soldier in the vastness of such a short life, was a surprise, and generally a secret, save for when she caught sight of older girls coming at me to ridicule or shock, such a prime and vulnerable target, at which point she would quietly approach, the alpha she was. I observed her at these times, as her behaviors seared open the alpha deep within me that had not sprouted one leaf or rootlet as of yet. In this way she did both shield  me, and show me the ways of the world, fixing her gaze upon the culpable ones, laughingly dominating them with her stance and a few words, and somehow I became the protected one, left alone by those who otherwise relished small cruel taunts and ways.

I had never before been protected, save by my older brother, who I protected also, as we protected our many young siblings, and I protected others, two and four footed, for as long as I can recall, finding myself intolerant of unkindness, that intolerance more challenging than any possible  retribution. So, to be seen as needing protection, which I had and still did, was a profound experience to have. And her informal protection changed me, smoothing the way for me to be free to grow and change, away from home, exposed to literature and theology and history and fine arts, with teachers who would have me at their dining room tables long after their family dinners were done, down in their apartments below the dorms, to spend hour after hour ensuring I somehow grasped what I needed to learn.

Within this atmosphere, of physically growing from a strange looking, long legged, masses of curls dowsed with Dippidy Doo teenager, with  enormous feet and hands, and the air of a feral cat….I  somehow found myself blossoming, a very apt word, to something quite different, that suddenly was of great interest to all those who disregarded my very breath some months before. Still, all of this inevitable adolescent shifting enabled me to expand and consider and develop depth and breadth and the very beginnings of self-hood.

And then there were the arts. The boarding school was a school of the arts, and its gift was the offering of a wide array of choices, mine being Fine Arts, a compulsive, life-giving activity for as long as I can remember. There was an art building, an old lovely tall white thing, with two brightly lit stories,  a basement, and blessed with a back staircase from the top floor out onto a country road rising up past the building into the Connecticut hills and woods beyond.

At the very beginning of my first year, as a sophomore, the beautiful young male art instructor came down into the bowels of the art building to gather us all up to come to a life drawing class, lucky as we were to have live models. For some reason he clearly saw the vulnerability both of my friend next to me, and my self, and proceeded to embrace us both, and kiss first one of us and then the other, a simple, wrong act which resulted in an abject lack of authority over us for the entirety of years we studied there.

In later years, on Sundays, I would entertain, with friends, boys from the nearby boys school, or boys from farther afield schools, who would secret themselves by car, bus or on foot, across towns, through the woods and up the back steps into the top floor,  where we would smoke cigarettes and laugh and talk our afternoon away. I do recall one very sweet Brit of a teacher, on duty one Sunday afternoon, somehow becoming aware of  the goings on, and storming across down the Main Building steps, across the paved drive, up the front steps of the Art Building, bam bam bam,  with all intention of catching the badly behaving young men, whilst the males all scrambled noisily down the back steps, laughing and gasping, spreading out into the thick woods beyond or racing up the shaded country road, the poor teacher left standing at the back porch, gazing after tehm, while the lot of us skulked quickly away to add to his confusion as to who may have done what.

As I acclimated to life without enormous home responsibility, I flourished. My hair stumbled down my back in curls that suddenly were fine the way they were. My long legs became something that was not a laughable liability, my freckles  simple things appearing cross my face from the sun, my slender frame my perfect home.

And within this transformation, she was there, at the start, suggesting the lopping off of skirts…freeing dresses of miles and miles of fabric, us grinning ear to ear, as we sat quietly, late after hours , on the floor of our dorm room, she in auspicious delight of my small leaflings bursting from the branch of self.

She showed me how to hem my gelded clothing, and the next day off we would go, in our uniforms, gradually transforming their counterparts by outrageous and yet allowable flair. Her tight shorn beautiful blonde head was the obstinate, wise antithesis of all the carefully primped tresses at school and in the country, designs to lure men and assuage the image of what it is to truly be a woman.  Off she would lop her curls as they grew a bit too much day to day, tossing the remnants in the trash, not a glance to the mirror, grinning at me , inasmuch illuminating a path to self delight. A choice for self determination. An option of  self ownership with these very small moments.

One of her favorite garments was a thick, almost to the knees white and bright blue wool sweater, certainly not fashionable in any sense, but so her in character, slightly worn and odd, with strange unique objects mascurading as buttons, providing necessary attachment on cold days. And about campus she would go , uniform beneath, odd wild strange sweater objecting loudly upon her frame. And if a teacher or dorm parent would bring up the suitability, the appropriateness, of the garment, or anything else for that matter, on would flash her genius of a smile, the deferring, powerful warning, and an intricate conversation that would leave even the most confident authority confused and somehow agreeing, affably, to almost anything. I, truly, studied her with delight.

To me, she seemed worldly, never speaking of her parents or siblings or home, preparing herself to meet up with the limo that would take her and her carefully packed minimalist suitcase to the airport to be brought to ever changing destinations, far away, to stay, with or without parent, for the duration of each vacation.

We all can be quite capable of appearing so casual and able, surely, and at young ages we often have no idea how very difficult the thing we are doing at this moment truly is, nor the psychic cost of holding so much upon young shoulders. Still, I did watch, knowingly, as she quietly managed without a word, and if you wished to avoid being politely snipped, adult or not, with authority or without,  you warily kept your distance, observations unspoken.

We did not remain roommates, as we began to  grow and change, as I began to come out of my self, and develop friendships with many kinds of individuals, some of whom  were expressive and casual, a vast array of young females.  But we remained bonded, close as odd but true litter mates.

And as I grew into my age and the school, the arts, academia, and friendships, we intermittently went on excursions, illegal ones, ones to the wrong places, at the wrong times, which we wer both quietly wont to do. Some girls did these things, did not think them through, and I was always so disgusted by the way they got caught. I always figured that if you truly wanted to go do the wrong thing, and truly did not want to be apprehended, you simply planned very well. We certainly did not want to be caught, and as a result, we each always planned very well, whether we were doing something alone or together.

And so that one night, I did find myself in the field with her, purportedly to address my admitted life- long phobia of horses, which she grinningly asserted would be resolved by us standing in a field deep into the night, while spooked horses we did not know circled us in their alarm and curiosity, a choice of mine that possibly was not the wisest, a suggestion of hers that was perhaps not the kindest, and an experience that certainly did nothing for my fears.

One winter, there was an epidemic of Mono at our boarding school, with those who acquired this illness happily packing up and bounding back home for free time with parent or maid, studies left behind. And so, this happened to her also- and I came upon her in the administration building as she, looking truly terrible and smelley and ill,  readied herself for her limo.

I was concerned, surprised, but she laughed and made jokes, and together we decided to quickly sneak  downstairs into the science classroom, and see if we could actually culture the mono, and when she was gone, I could ‘sell ‘ it (give it away) to others so they too could go home. What a laugh we had, as we scrounged petri dishes and those long Qtips ,  rubbing them along her gooey constricted throat, then wiping one after another into the dishes to be carefully tendered for the project. Finished, we laughed at each other, and off she went, never to return to school again. It was at this moment that she handed me her beautiful, strange sweater, then turned abruptly and departed down  to  the waiting limo, off to wherever home would right now be.

The following summer, we were in contact, and she invited my older sibling and me to come visit her in Newport, R.I. We fiddled around searching a street filled with homes so large it was difficult to tell where they began and ended, until we finally determined which was hers, it being ages before things such as cell phones. We parked our VW bug straight in front of the grand entrance, ran up the steps to the many storied building with  so many windows I could not count them, and knocked upon the tall double doors.

 She opened them, grinned her wonderful , impossible to describe smile, and welcomed us into an entryway larger than, possibly, could it be, a football field? Or possible a portion of one, with a very tall fountain splashing water about, stairs stretching up on either side of the bright room, and a view far back through the house to the back door, the glass windows enabling a view past into the yard,  to the long elegant steps, far  down through multitudes of gardens, and out toward the view of the  sea.

We wandered into a kitchen the size of…well…I will run out of comparisons, with many ovens and stoves and refrigerators, and she got us some kind of snack, which we then took across the entry hall to the library, which I think WAS the size of a football field. Or else so high and wide and long, with those impossibly  tall ladders attached to  wheels that slide along and let you access all kinds of books so  far up on shelves.

We sat upon facing sofas to laugh and talk, until she urgently  she told us we really must stop at this moment and listen to something she had just discovered. She was never one to talk idly, so we did stop short while she walked over to the stereo, placing the arm and needle just so, as sound swept into and penetrated  that enormous hall of a  room, with a song of great magnificence. The song was “A Whiter Shade of Pale” by Procol Harem,  their debut song released then,  May of 1967. The recording swept us away, both my brother, a remarkable musician, and myself , as the three of us sat, changed, listening time and again to an anthem of the profound wind that was in the process of moving through the U.S. and music and culture and politics and justice and equity and lives.

She laughingly gave us a tour of the second floor….a long  hallway, really, with doors on either side, countless, each with a beautiful bedroom and bath, and the third floor too, it all so beautiful and yet antiseptic, as if no one lived there at all. No personal items, no mention of lives, nothing but splendor and enormous proportions. We then visited the stables, long also, with a floor above with perfectly respectable bedrooms and baths, one after another down yet another endless hall.

I don’t recall sleeping over, or anything else about the visit, save her staunch brilliance and assertion of self, cast, oblique to this stage set,  this impersonal space.

Two years after graduation from the boarding school, I found myself living in New Mexico with my boyfriend of many years already, and she found me there. She was living in Arizona, taking some classes, and drove up to visit for a weekend, marveling at our scuzzy Barrio house and the majestic Sandia Mountains, our passel of cats and dogs, the hot spring trips and hikes among the scrub brush of the deserts.

I found her still acutely intelligent and sizing up situations and interactions with remarkable ease. I had not come into my own as of yet, my own ability to articulate such things, to yet feel the strength of confidence and self-hood, but was acquiring awareness and the growing capacity for observation, so that our quiet interactions were of such import to me, as well as her continual independent insistent clarity and sense of self.

Months later, she invited me to come visit her on my own, and it seemed an excellent idea, having recently quit yet another waitressing job. I was a disastrous waitperson, hired repeatedly for my long legs and sweet smile, but never for any semblance of legible handwriting, applicable memory, or actual ability. So, arrangements made for my boyfriend to have rides to and from a big-box-store type place where he worked, off I went, driving 6 or 8 hours to her place in Arizona , trailing racing semis through the night, the countryside breathlessly beautiful and stark.

One portion of the highway passed through a tiny town perched on a small steep hill, the flatlands on either side, necessitating the traveler to follow the winding, steep way up and through the small town, passing slowly past doorways of crowded buildings, with people and dogs and carts and vehicles squeezing by,  and then winding back down the other side and set free upon the speeding highway once again.

Her home was a small house built into a hill, one entire side of the interior consisting of a   huge boulder face. And there was a stream that ran through it. Through the house. So it ran down the rock, through a trough of cement built into the floor, and out the other side. Talk about zoning. The bathroom was a small area with a curtain pulled about it, the entire building set into a hillside of thick greenery. 

Into this place I came to visit for several days. She warned me of  an albino skunk that made its way through the house during the nights, nocturnal as they are, and scientists who would come by now and then to study the albino skunk.

To me, the travel far and away, the new lands, the town upon the perilous hilltop, her enigmatic-as-ever ways, sharing the content of our lives in quiet small conversations, was nourishing and life giving, and I had no idea how much independence would sprout within me from this knowing of this woman, nor how my own estimation and tender caring of her could be of such value in her own life, something I only see now in retrospect.  I hope she knows also…her value unto my own life.

Years later, I was living in Brattleboro, when I received her wedding invitation . I was so surprised. I was living an errant life with a cadre of fun-loving friends, working as a bookkeeper at The Brattleboro Retreat, a mental hospital, as we called them in those days, riling myself about, writing poetry and keeping the town hopping as best as I could most weekends.

My life was filled with the Vermont life of music everywhere, musician roommates and their string bands to follow about and visit, every Sunday morning visit bursting into an ever-growing group of friends with banjos and mandolins and guitars and non-electric reverberating song, trading another yet unknown and remarkable traditional tune or new and brilliant composition.

 I would wake in a boyfriend’s apartment, stand, and peer off the 5^th floor across the Connecticut far below, over to Rattlesnake Mountain across the way, the view glorious and untempered.  Then we would  bumble our wild ways down for hung-over weekend breakfasts of éclairs and strong coffee, mounds of laughing friends on sundecks of cooperative restaurants,  as burgeoning food coops, political activity, and an explosive art and music scene, replete with 21 year olds such as myself, spun through the old country town. 

I had no car at the time, my black VW van with no back seats and purple shag carpeting having bit the dust recently, but my boyfriend had a lovely yellow Fiat with only one problem…a broken frame. Which of course we saw as no problem at all, not an obstacle to, ok, yeah, why not drive to a posh wedding in Newport, R.I from Brattleboro VT, why not! Why NOT said all of our nuttiest friends, and why NOT I sang with glee. So we dressed and I got some sort of something that seemed like you got for a wedding gift, having absolutely no idea what one did for that.  We jumped in the bouncing, broken framed car (so as you drove, it kind of folded in the middle, front to back….) and started off.

And had successfully gone a few miles, when out of nowhere the alternator or the carburetor or the something…went. Went. The end. As in, who would be nuts enough to put another into a folding bouncing car. Which of course was not going to happen on this day, anyway. And the only train left  at 3 am, everyone knew. And, tragically, the wedding was at 4 pm. So there was no going to any wedding . At all. Not at all.

Which was so crushing. And sad. And disappointing. And then I was unable to locate her phone number, being rather addled and crushed and disappointed. And could not get it from information. And could not locate her again. Ever again. To this day.

Which was the last of seeing and knowing this enigmatic, crisp, brilliant, wonder of a being, who had bobbed in and out of my life so many times, somehow, some way. Or letting her know why I never showed up to her wedding and celebrated her choice and newest circumstance, instead to disappear without a sound.

I have looked for her here and there, with no success. I accept that these things happen to us all, the knowing of someone; then the losing, without being able to at least let them know the unintentionality of the losing. The apparent disappearing.

I hope to this day she is off somewhere, in some sort of life, replete with her circumspect clarity and take-no-hostages stern ways and her capacity to stalk out into her own life while making it look so easy. I hope she is living and breathing, as am I, somehow, when others we all have known, alas, are no longer. I hope she relishes her 61 years and her choices, the enormous unplanned circumstance that can almost cripple each of us, and the unending capacity for faith and strength that at times we are able to grow as we make our way from one end of our lives to another.

I hope that her own life has unwound as gloriously and as manageably as possible, as I hope for you also, that she has cast about and made her own sense of how life has played itself out. That sometimes she finds herself in the midst of horse visits, deep in the night, the muffled snuffling of soft noses and rippling muscles  quietly moving by her side as they stretch about her, about her as she wanders cross the field , in the night, simply because it is what she does, being her inestimable self.