Authors: Lynn Austin
“I didn’t realize you felt this way, Suze.”
I whirled to face him. “What way? I feel the same way you do! I’m studying my brains out so I can get into the best graduate school—just like you! I want a career—just like you! Why is that so strange? Because you’re a man and I’m a woman?”
“I don’t know. I always assumed you were more . . . traditional. That we shared the same conservative values. I didn’t know you were some crazy feminist. Next thing I know you’ll be running around burning your bras and all that other feminist stuff.”
“Well, I’m not ‘traditional’ according to your definition. I don’t plan to be
just like our mothers. I have a brain in my head, and I plan to use it. I don’t happen to think children and a career are two mutually exclusive options like you do—pick one, you forfeit the other. I want both someday, and I also want a marriage between equals. If that’s not what you want, Bradley, then you’d better speak up right now.”
That was the end of my relationship with Bradley Wallace. Any tears I shed were tears of profound relief at my narrow escape.
TWENTY-FIVE
There are few secrets on a small college campus. A week after Bradley and I broke up, I found another note from Jeff in my mailbox. This time it was a photograph, torn from a
National Geographic
magazine, of a field filled with hundreds of monarch butterflies. On a patch of blue sky at the top, he had painted another butterfly, soaring freely. The note read,
Congratulations! Meet me on the front steps of the art building at 9:12 tonight. We’ll celebrate. Jeff
.
It took me all day to decide whether or not I should meet him. Getting involved with this wild, unpredictable hippie couldn’t possibly be good for my cardiovascular system. And if Daddy ever found out I was seeing Jeff, it wouldn’t be good for his blood pressure either. In the end, I went. Curiosity compelled me. I sat down on the steps at exactly 9:10, my pulse racing. Two minutes later, I was about to bolt back to my dormitory when I heard the door open behind me.
“Hey, Irish, you’re here. Come on, I want to show you something.” I followed Jeff through the door and into the art building, certain that I was making a huge mistake. I barely knew this guy. The building was dark and nearly deserted. The last class had ended at nine o’clock.
“Elevator or stairs?” Jeff asked when we reached the lobby. His face betrayed no clue to what he had in mind.
“Um, elevator.” My knees were too shaky for stairs. We stepped inside and the elevator doors slid closed. We were alone. My stomach gave a small lurch as we began to ascend.
“So . . . too bad about old Bradley the proctologist,” Jeff said with a grin.
“That’s
psychologist
,” I said, “and I’m not sorry in the least. Do you mind telling me where we’re going?”
“You’ll see. What time is it?” He reached for my arm, peered at my wrist watch, then dropped my arm again. “Oh, good. There’s time.” He might have been a human generator, for the amount of electric current that raced through my body at his touch. I wondered if my hair was standing on end.
We got out of the elevator on the top floor, and he led the way to a closed steel door. It took him a moment to wiggle a key out of the pocket of his jeans and unlock it. It opened to a flight of stairs.
“After you,” he said with a small bow. I didn’t move.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Up to the roof.”
“Are you crazy?”
He furrowed his brow, pondering the question for a moment in mock seriousness. “I don’t think so. Why, are you?”
“I must be.” I sighed and climbed the inky stairwell to a trapdoor that opened onto the flat roof.
Jeff climbed up behind me, then closed the door. Above our heads was an unhindered view of a trillion stars.
“Wow! That’s incredible!” I breathed.
“Oh, that’s not the best part. The show hasn’t even begun yet.” He led me around to the other side of the building, where the view looked out over the rolling Pennsylvania countryside instead of the college town. We sat side by side, our backs against an air conditioning unit, and gazed at a row of hills in the distance. He made no move to touch me. Only our shoulders brushed slightly.
Slowly, magnificently, a full moon began to rise above the hills. It looked enormous near the horizon, and nearly as luminous as the sun. I could scarcely breathe from the sheer beauty of it, and the exquisite intimacy of sharing the experience in silence with Jeff Pulaski. I turned to face him, waiting for his kiss. He looked into my eyes and smiled. We were close enough to kiss, but he didn’t move.
“Thanks for the show,” I whispered.
“You’re welcome.”
When I couldn’t stand waiting a moment longer I asked, “Aren’t you going to kiss me?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“His lips were just inches from mine and I could feel his breath on my face when he spoke. “When I was a little kid,” he said slowly, “whenever someone gave me a piece of cake, I would always peel off all the icing first . . . very carefully . . . so it all came off in one layer.” He held an imaginary slice of cake in one hand and peeled imaginary icing off of it with the other hand. “Then I would eat just the cake . . . saving the sweetest part, the best part,
for last. Tonight I’m still eating my cake. . . . I want to save the icing for last.” He brushed my cheek with his fingers, then licked them. I shivered.
“That’s the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me. And from a hippie, no less.” I barely restrained myself from kissing him.
When the moon was high above the horizon and ordinary-looking once again, Jeff walked me back to my dormitory. I saw other couples in the shadows in front of the building kissing good-night. But Jeff reached for the door, not for me, and held it open.
“See you around, okay?” I watched through the window as he sauntered away, hands in his pockets.
Another drawing appeared in my mailbox the next day, this time done in pastel chalk on a piece of lined notebook paper. It was a slice of yellow cake with a single bite out of it—the thick pink icing was still intact.
“Why me, Jeff?” I asked when I found him waiting for me outside my art class that afternoon.
“Why you what?”
“Why are you standing here waiting for
me
instead of one of the hundreds of other girls on this campus?” He fell into step beside me as I walked to my next class.
“You mean aside from your classic Irish beauty?” I waved the comment away with a shake of my head. Jeff suddenly turned serious. “I don’t know . . . but ever since that first time we had coffee together, there has been a weird, metaphysical, chemical sort of thing going on between us . . . have you noticed?”
“Yes, I have,” I said, recalling his electrifying touch.
“Did you ever feel anything like it before?”
“No. Have you?”
“No. I’ve dated a lot of women, but this is new. This is . . . this is terrifying!” He grinned when he said the word and his eyes held mine. “It makes being with you so much fun.”
“Feeling terrified is
fun
?”
“Yeah, haven’t you noticed?”
We walked down the steps of the art building, and as I recalled the fear and the excitement I’d felt last night waiting for him, I knew exactly what he meant. I wondered why I’d been content to play it safe all my life.
“And I also have to say that I find you very wholesome,” Jeff continued.
“Thanks a lot.”
“That was a compliment. See, this campus is like a huge Hostess Baking
Company.” He gestured to all the buildings and scurrying students as we walked down the sidewalk. “Some girls are Twinkies. You know, pretty on the outside, fluff on the inside. Ten minutes later you’re hungry again. You’re a Wonder Bread woman. Wonder Bread looks good on the outside, too, all white and fluffy, but it’s fortified with essential vitamins and nutrients. Wholesome. ‘Wonder helps build strong bodies twelve ways.’You’ve got a brain and a mind that you put to good use.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw your name on the dean’s list. What do you want to be when you grow up?”
I laughed. “I’m a literature major. I want to get my Masters’ in journalism.”
“Go for it! But can I ask you a question? I notice you always wear a cross around your neck. Does it mean something or is it just a decoration?”
I pondered it for a moment, sensing that Jeff wouldn’t be content with a careless answer. “It means something. I’ve discovered that the things that happen in my life make a lot more sense when I include God in the picture. It’s like trying to work a jigsaw puzzle without the picture on the front of the box. You can do it, but the task of putting thousands of tiny pieces together will sure go easier and make a lot more sense if you can take a peek at the bigger picture now and then.”
I stopped walking and pulled Jeff to a stop beside me as a thought suddenly occurred to me. “Is there a reason why you asked—or is it because you’re an artist, trained to notice the details?”
“I’m a Christian too,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t raised in the church, so I’m a brand-new believer. I have a lot of catching up to do.”
“So how did you end up deciding to be a Christian?”
“When I started studying art, I saw the whole story of Christ spelled out for me in the great masterworks. They were paintings of incredible passion and beauty and devotion. I was curious. I wanted to know what all these great artists knew that I didn’t know. What inspired them to paint like they did? Who inspired them? I guess you could say I came to faith in Christ through the art museum door. You would probably find my beliefs very unorthodox.”
“I’d love to hear about them.”
He stared down at his tattered sandals, suddenly shy. “Well, I’m much better with visual explanations than with words.”
“So I noticed.” When he gave me a questioning look I said, “All the pictures you’ve sent me. They speak volumes.”
“Yeah? Well, listen, why don’t you come to New York with me this weekend?
I’ll take you to the Met and the Guggenheim . . . I’ll show you what I believe.”
“New York is awfully far away. Can we make it back to the dorm by curfew?”
“Probably not. Just sign out overnight. I have a friend in the Village we can stay with.”
My heart began racing out of control at the suggestion. I felt the warring conflict of attraction and fear that Jeff had mentioned. “I’ll have to pass,” I finally said. “It sounds much too dangerous.”
“Come on, Goody-Two-Shoes. What are you worried about? Afraid I might take advantage of you?”
“No, of course not.”
I was afraid I might let him.
We went to New York two weeks later in Jeff’s yellow Volkswagen Beetle. The car had no heater, but it did have rust spots that resembled terminal leprosy and a peace symbol spray-painted on the hood with black paint. I had never spent an entire day in an art museum before, but with Jeff as my guide, the day flew. He took my hand for the first time as we climbed the stairs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and like the opposite poles of two powerful magnets, we didn’t come unstuck for the rest of the day. He draped his arm around my shoulder as we sat on a bench to study a painting by Rembrandt. He circled my waist as we strolled through the corridors to the Impressionist gallery. And once, when a Van Gogh moved him to silent awe, he clenched my hand tightly between both of his.
As he led me from room to room, explaining the paintings, comparing one to another, I saw Christ portrayed as clearly as in any sermon. Jeff showed me how he had come to faith. Using masterpieces instead of the Bible, he showed me what he believed. His spiritual insight staggered me.
“That’s what I want to do,” he said. “Show Christ to the world, whether it’s a picture of Jesus or not.”
“How can you do that?”
“Come here, I’ll show you.” He pulled me back to the gallery we had just left and pointed to a canvas. “See this picture? It’s not a religious theme, but can you tell what the artist’s world view is? Life makes sense; there’s order and beauty. God is in control.” He dragged me by the hand to a gallery across
the corridor. “Now compare it to this painting. See? There’s no hope. Only death and darkness and destruction.”
“I get it! Now I understand!”
“Yeah, I can almost see the little light bulb switching on above your head.”
“I want to do that too, Jeff. I want to proclaim Christ in my writing, even if it’s not about religion. I want to say, ‘God is in heaven, the world is under His sovereign control.’”
“‘Ι will sing your praises among the nations,’” Jeff quoted, “‘Your kindness and love are as vast as the heavens. Your faithfulness is higher than the skies.’”
By the end of the day, I had fallen hopelessly in love with Jeff Pulaski.
“This is the rattiest hole-in-the-wall I’ve ever seen in my life,” I whispered to Jeff when I saw his friend’s apartment in Greenwich Village. “If Daddy could see this place, he would call in the Board of Health to light a match to it—right after he recovered from his massive coronary, that is.”
“I’ve seen worse.”
“Are you bragging or complaining, Mr. Pulaski?”
“Just stating the facts, ma’am.”
The door to the apartment had been unlocked. Jeff led me inside without bothering to knock. The only furnishings in the barren living room were a sofa with the stuffing falling out, a coffee table with surgical tape around one broken leg, a shadeless floor lamp, and a giant hookah with four smoking pipes. There were no curtains over the windows, no rug on the plank floor, no pictures on the gouged plaster walls. Two hippies sat on a bare mattress on the bedroom floor smoking pot. I couldn’t tell through the bluish haze if they were male or female. The music of Jefferson Airplane blasted from an undisclosed source.
“Jeff, I don’t think—”
“Don’t worry. I don’t do drugs. And I assume that you don’t either.” He closed the bedroom door to contain the smoke and muffle the sound.
“If you don’t, then why do you hang out with friends who do?”
He grinned. “Gee, do you think Bradley and all his frat brothers would let me hang out with them?”
“Hardly. Which one is your friend who rents this place?”