Best Friends (4 page)

 

 

 

ON SATURDAY MORNING I finally went to a demonstration, letting Sally think I was going to the library. The demonstration was as small as it was listless. I don't remember what it was for. The organizers were three guys I barely knew, and when they raised their arms to lead chants, their stomachs were distractingly hairy. I walked off campus and breathed the autumn-smoked air, feeling adult, mature, a person who could handle the dashing of her dreams.

 

 

 

SALLY HAD SOME new clothes, but still the primmest, dullest ones I could imagine, all made by famous designers. She knew wine; she'd eaten snails. She'd stayed in a hotel in Madrid where President Nixon had stayed. It was wild. She looked so uncool, but she was cool. I was the twerp of the two-some.

She told the Hare Krishna guy to go away. I opened the door for him and I listened as he soulfully showed me his expensive book with its vaguely erotic illustrations. “No, thank you!” Sally said, practically pushing him out the door. “We have to study tonight, and we can't concentrate with you here talking. Good-bye!”

“Another lost soul from Brooklyn,” she said as the Hare Krishna glided away. “Doesn't he look like Joshua Goldberg from down the hall? If Josh shaved his head and put on robes.” It took me years to realize what she'd been pointing out.

 

 

 

ALTHOUGH SALLY WAS the Jewish one, I was the roommate who discovered the notion of the Sabbath. In our religion class, we read Abraham Pincus, who referred to the Sabbath as a sacred time, and I got so excited by that idea I set out to observe the Sabbath myself. My plan was to not study or do errands on the Sabbath, but to read inspiring things and take walks and think about life. Originally, I planned not to mention this to anyone but simply to worship in my own way, but my first Sabbath morning went so well I couldn't help but tell Sally.

“But it's Saturday,” Sally said, astonishment flooding her face. “Aren't you a Christian?”

Then I had to explain, flustered, that my Sabbath was going to be Saturday and Sunday mornings, which I knew was truncated and piecemeal but I didn't think the Lord would mind since I hadn't thought of the Sabbath at all before, and on Friday and Saturday nights I liked to go out, which was important for my mental health, and on Sunday afternoons I did my best studying. The skepticism on Sally's face grew with each word, so it hurt me but didn't really surprise me when at the end of my speech she started giggling.

“I can't wait to to tell Daddy,” she said.

Later, she appeared in the doorway. “Daddy wants to talk with you.”

My stomach lurched. I walked out into the dorm hallway. Sally following. The telephone dangled on its cord. Sally stood next to me.

“Clare?” a big voice said. “What's the deal with this Sabbath crap?”

I had never had an adult ask me so aggressive a question. I had only heard an adult say “crap” once, at a high school football game. I opened and closed my mouth.

“You know the word ‘travesty'? That's what you're doing. It's not evil, don't get me wrong, it won't hurt you, but don't you see you're missing the whole point? Remember the Shabbos to keep it holy. That's a commandment. You don't get to pick, okay? You don't say, well, I've got Wednesday between two and four, so that'll be my Shabbos. That's you penciling in God. When, if you believe in anything, God should be penciling in
you.
”

My throat was dry. I hadn't expected Sally's father to be so loud, his tone so definite. But why not? He was Sally's father. I realized that my own father was soft-spoken. “I see, sir,” I said.

Mr. Rose laughed. “You need to sir me?” he boomed. “It's God you need to sir. If you believe in God, that is. In a male God, that is.”

“I think I believe in God,” I managed. Too late, I realized what I should have said to him: Do you believe in God? Clearly the guy was big on questions. Sally was right beside me, grinning in an eager way. Down the hall a door slammed. Our Indian hallmate Nita emerged from the bathroom carrying a towel, shooting Sally and me a curious look.

“Not that you have to,” Mr. Rose said. “Heh, maybe God is dead, right?”

“Do you believe God is dead?”

Mr. Rose laughed louder. “Good question! I don't know what I believe. I am open-minded. A closed mind is worse than a stupid one, Sally ever tell you that? Listen, Clare, if you want to do Shabbos, I suggest you do it right. I'll send you a book. My daughter still there?” Relieved, I handed the phone to Sally.

“Well?” she said, back in our room. I was irritated she'd told her father about my Sabbath, but of course she told him everything.

“He's sending me a book.”

“He grew up in a really strict household. They couldn't turn the lights on or off on Shabbos. They couldn't flush the toilet. Daddy had to tear sheets of toilet paper ahead of time because you're not allowed to tear things on Shabbos.”

This shocked me. I couldn't believe the celebration of the Sabbath could be so bizarrely restrictive. I liked my version of the Sabbath much better. “Do you do that now?”

Sally laughed. “Oh God, no, we don't do anything. We're very assimilated.” She threw out her hands. “We have a Christmas tree!”

I never tried a Sabbath again, and Mr. Rose never sent the book.

 

 

 

IN THE HALL, a gaggle of students was discussing Nixon's recent resignation. They'd just moved on from his un-nurturing mother to his repressed id when Sally slammed our door. “I hate psychology,” she said. This surprised me, because every other college student loved it, always talking about their birth order or their parents' divorce or their oppressive superego. I had never met so many people who'd been to psychiatrists. The expression “She's a little neurotic” was not meant as an insult.

“You do?” I asked, “Why?”

“It makes things little,” Sally said. “It puts everybody in a box. Clare, I swear to you, people are mysterious.”

Mysterious. This adjective surprised me. I tried to think of Richard Nixon as mysterious. I thought of the people on our hall—Peter the premed, Karen the flutist, Melanie the angry feminist. None of them seemed mysterious to me. That Sally thought they were gave her—not them—a troubling sort of grace.

 

 

 

“CLARE,” she'd say, “that's sick!”—lengthening the adjective into two syllables, one high and one low. To Sally, lots of things were si-ick, often things I might find only suspect or mildly amusing, like Jim Fosdick's endless nattering about once having sex with a dog. “I strongly doubt it,” I told Sally when she asked me if I thought it was true. “But why he would he talk about it?” she worried. “Why would he even think of such a thing? Clare, that's—”

“Si-ick,” I finished, pleasing us both.

In the wings were guys. I had some wanton ways: a hockey player one weekend, a poet the next. I wasn't a very good flirt (how could I be? With three big brothers, I knew the male mind), so I slept with them and got it over with. My logic went like this: Sex is an enjoyable human activity, I'm human, X is human, why not have sex? There were certainly college guys grateful for a female with my attitude. I was insistent on having sex only in their rooms, never in mine and Sally's, and a few times (this gives me a twinge), I borrowed an off-campus apartment for the purpose. A couple of the guys fell in love with me and showed up in our dorm hall, but the ones I really liked sort of ignored me. I thought I must have a complex to only want the ones who didn't care. I reminded myself of my brothers in that regard. Sally eyed all my bedmates with polite disinterest. None of them was good enough for me. “But I have needs!” I told her. I thought of her story of the guy in Oahu. “Don't you have needs too?”

She made a funny fake frown and retreated through the door to her half of the room. “Not pressing needs,” she called cheerfully. “Not needs like that.”

 

 

 

ON THE FLIGHT back to Oberlin our second semester, the Los Angeles to Chicago leg, Sally sat next to an elderly couple who changed her dreams. They'd been married forty-four years and had five children, one of whom they were flying to Chicago to visit, and they were, as Sally put it, a “unit.”

“What do you mean?”

“They were so”—Sally lifted her hands and wrapped them around an imaginary globe—“together. They were two people but one entity. When they passed out blankets, she took one for him and tucked it around his legs. When they got off the plane, he held her purse until she'd stood up. I'd ask them a question and only one of them would answer, and it wasn't as if they were taking turns, it was as if they both knew which person should answer which question. It was wonderful.”

“How'd they meet?”

“Grocery store. She was his customer.”

“Did they know right off they'd get married?”

“They went out a couple times and then didn't see each other for a while, and about a year later, they ran into each other and it clicked. He said that: ‘That time we just clicked.' ”

I nodded. Sally had asked the questions I would have asked. “So how'd they do it? Unitize?”

“I asked them that! And she said, ‘Oh, we just kind of rubbed along together. ' But they've been through a lot, you could tell. The guy owned a print shop and went bankrupt. They had a son killed in the war. The woman had some kind of cancer.”

“So are your parents a unit?”

“No,” Sally answered without hesitation. “Are yours?”

She had met my parents. I gave her a scornful glance. “What do you think?”

“I haven't really met any units,” Sally said wistfully, “except for that couple on the plane.” But, knowing Sally's determination, it was not totally surprising when, one February evening, we walked out to the local burger place, got our food and sat down in our booth, and Sally smiled at me and said, “Clare, I'm in love. I've met the man I'm going to marry.” His name was George Timmey, but from childhood he'd been called Timbo. Sally had been in line at the bookstore, buying spring-semester textbooks for herself and her dad, and Timbo asked if she was a twin.

I saw a lot of Timbo. He and Sally were a strange couple, but logical: the two virgins at Oberlin had found each other. Timbo was from Kentucky. He had luminescent blue eyes, hair that was short and well groomed, and a big digital watch—the first I'd ever seen—strapped on his left wrist. I told Sally he looked like an ROTC cadet. Sally laughed. It wasn't entirely clear how he'd ended up at Oberlin; his high school guidance counselor apparently had recommended it. Timbo swam at the big new college gym, and he ran, and like Sally, he was an excellent bowler. At home he had three little brothers and two sisters, a brood he said he chased around “like ducklings.” Timbo could see a little townie kid in the street, bend over to talk with him or her—with extravagant gestures and head-rolling on both sides—then emerge with the kid on his shoulders. Sally would grin at me, squeeze my elbow in excitement. “I'm not kidding,” she said that first evening, pleased at my astonishment, “I'll marry him.” As if that weren't enough of a knife: “And guess what, he's from an even bigger family than yours.”

He was okay. They'd sit in Sally's room studying with the door between her and my room open, Sally bent over her desk and Timbo with his papers spread out on the bed. Sex wasn't a problem: they ended their evenings with some giggling and a kiss or two, then Timbo shoved through the door into my room, thanked me for putting up with him, and headed out to the hall—the kind of boy my mother would like (she was a member of socialism's puritan branch). He lived in a men's dorm, one of the few single-sex dorms, known as the haven for jocks. He studied biochemistry and plant genetics and psychology; he wanted to be a family doctor. Sally thought he was perfect, but I had my own ideas. He wasn't odd enough for her. The only odd thing about Timbo was that he'd ended up at Oberlin, and that was an accident, I was sure, not an act of will.

“He's the oldest, too,” Sally had said. “That's a lot of responsibility.”

“Oh that's right,” I said. “I forgot. I'm the spoiled baby.” I frowned. “Why did you say ‘even bigger than yours'? That hurt my feelings.”

“It did? You're kidding. It really did? Really, Clare?”

I nodded.

“I'm sorry,” Sally said, sitting up in her bed, hugging her knees to her chest. “I didn't mean to hurt you. He just, well, he
is
from a bigger family.”

“I know, but it was like . . . it was like you were saying he was better than me somehow. You know? It's stupid, I know, but . . .” I lingered in the doorway between our rooms, hoping she would say something to make me feel better.

“Oh, Clare. I would never hurt your feelings on purpose. You're my best friend. I don't think anyone except my family has ever known me as well as you. And I think I know you well too, don't I?”

I nodded again.

“Like”—she smiled—“I know about your needs.”

We both giggled.

“Clare, I was thinking, you've got to come to California. You've got to visit me this summer.” She pushed herself to the edge of the bed and slipped her feet to the floor, as if we were leaving this moment. “Oh Clare, don't you think you could visit?”

But how could I go? How could I? By car would be cheaper, but the only car I could borrow was my mother's, and how could I afford the gas? It thrilled me to think of a plane: up there, disconnected, not in orbit and not on solid ground. I'd never been in a plane; no one in my family had. It thrilled me too to think of Sally's house: the swimming pool, the espalier. But the trip was so expensive, two hundred dollars minimum for a round-trip flight, and I'd be working at my dad's office all summer making sixty bucks a week, with that money earmarked for textbooks and supplies. I chewed the inside of my right cheek, the way I always did when I got edgy. What, was I going to have a summer like every other, filing charts and taking old ladies to exam rooms? “Here's a cup for your urine, Mrs. Snodgrass; be sure you wipe off with the moist towelette first, front to back.” I thought of the old man who called me Miss Muffin, the way he liked to sneak behind me and eye my behind. You keep looking, Mr. Buns-for-brains, I told him in my mind. You drive up that nasty blood pressure and have your stroke.