Much to my surprise, this turns out to be the summer that my youngest child discovered Archie comics. One minute, I'm worried about his getting enough reading practice this summer, the next he's gleefully raced his way through 5 double digests with no sign of stopping.
Obviously I'm not one of those parents who think comic books are substandard material for teaching kids to read. Quite the contrary - I've been impressed by the speed at which his comprehension of even difficult words has improved. Anyway, I experienced it myself when I was just about his age.
I can even remember the moment it happened.
It was the night before Easter, and we were spending the holiday with my seaside cousins, which was always a thrill. Their house was very quiet at night, though, much more quiet than my own, and I despaired of ever falling asleep. My cousin was snoring away in the next bed so she was no help at all. On her bookshelf I spied a Jughead Jones digest - it was a bit worn and no doubt appropriated from her dad's bedside table (and really, if a chemical engineer like her dad could read comics, then who could find fault?) I opened it up and began to read a story called "Scheme Supreme."
I hardly knew who Jughead was or why all the girls in town were plotting against him, but the idea of a secret society (The United Girls Against Jughead or U.G.A.J.) laying out complex plans to prevent the spread of his anti-romance ways was very compelling. Even if the plans were a massive failure and by todays' standards, definitely not politically correct.
The eternal allure of the unobtainable man
Most of all, I liked the idea of the unobtrusively-placed red thumbtack that signals the meeting. Even at 7 years old I was fascinated with signs and signals.
At any rate, I fell in love in love with Archie comics, and with Jughead and Betty especially (seriously, wouldn't they have been the best couple?) and they kept me company during those grim years at elementary school when I felt utterly alone.
For my son's part, he's thrilled to learn that Archie has been around for 80 years. This means he has 80 years worth of comics to read.
Now at least one of my kids will appreciate inheriting my ridiculously huge comics collection one day.
September third, oh so many years ago. My cousin and me, after my sister's wedding, running and sliding around the polished floors of the reception hall while this song was playing. We've never forgotten it.
Our formal dresses were as tacky as the decor in this video. Such were the ways of the 70's.
Much of my childhood was spent in the dimly lit netherworld of movie theaters and skating rinks. One of the theaters my brother managed had a rather eerie atmosphere. These pictures are modern - the building has undergone quite a bit of renovation in recent years - but it gives a hint at least of how it looked back those days. Despite any resident ghosts, the place was a sort of safe haven for me, a place of endless Twizzlers and SweeTarts and fizzy orange soda.
I originally posted the tale of my experiences at another site, which I've reposted here:
Back in the 80's, my brother was the manager of a movie theater. It was a huge old building, built during the age of the silent movie palace. I spent a good chunk of my childhood there - bro would put me to work cleaning the auditoriums between shows and making popcorn at the concession stand. The rest of the time I'd roam the place, which was full of nooks and crannies. It was a bit maze-like, so that was pretty fun. I was quite fond of the place.
Probably all theaters have a creepy feeling after hours. When my cousins would visit, we'd listen to what my cousin Nancy called "theater echoes" - those sort of faint, disembodied voices you hear in a place like that. I suppose it's the acoustics that cause it, I liked to imagine it's some sort of trapped sound that just bounces around for years and years. Anyway, that's probably not too unusual in a place like that, but it did add to the atmosphere.
Sometimes I'd get the distinct feeling I was being watched, but I put that down to the cranky old projectionist - he'd been working there since the 1920's and I was forbidden to go into his booth (which was covered in nudie pictures the times I did sneak a look!) But some other things weren't so easy to pass off. One was the thing we called "the bat" It wasn't a real bat (though occasionally one got in) because it would have to have been huge, able to move at warp speed and disappear from even an enclosed space instantly. The thing we would see was a large black shape like a wing that would appear in the corner of our eye. Turn to look at it, and it would appear in the corner of our other eye. I recall sitting on the stairs one day for ages, intently watching the thing flit through my peripheral vision - I was determined to look at it properly, you understand. But no luck.
This wasn't scary at all, just weird, and I thought it was just me until one day the staff were standing around and started talking about it - same large black shape, same peripheral flitting.
Then there were some nights, at 12 or 1 in the morning, my brother would be up in the offices finishing the day's paperwork when we'd hear distinctly human sounding footsteps slowly pacing the roof of the building. I recall bro saying that this happened all the time, and not being especially concerned about it. The roof wasn't flat though, so it couldn't have just been someone taking a stroll up there.
the basement
What was somewhat scarier was the basement. That's where the marquee letters were kept, and we'd have to go down there late at night when it was time to change the sign. The basement had a dirt floor and was always cold. Some of the older staff members attributed any haunting activities to this place, because years back one of the workers, a janitor who'd been allowed to sleep there, had died of a heart attack. I tried to stay away from there, not the least because the basement door was inside the men's restroom - the horror stories practically write themselves.
But the thing that really, truly convinced me the place was haunted were the candy machines. For decades, there'd been a couple of candy machines in the lobby, selling gumballs or candied peanuts for a nickel. Probably these machines has been used thousands of times over the years, but while my brother was working there, they'd decided to remove them. Still, after hours when everything was quiet, you could still hear them loud and clear - non-existent coin going into the slot, turn of the invisible crank, immaterial candy rattling down the chute. Over and over, clear as a bell. Everyone who worked there knew the sound.
This is probably the most harmless and innocent of all ghostly manifestations, but very convincing to me.
Looking back, I think this place wasn't seriously frightening because any hauntings were strictly of the Stone Tape variety.
Edit - I've just looked it up and found an article claiming the theater is haunted - but blaming all the haunting on the ghost of the pervy projectionist! Silly. They should have asked me. Although I'm sure his shade is still hanging around.
If three mystical referencesto1987 weren't enough already, tonight I give you The Enchanted World.
I don't know for sure when these books first began to be published (even wikipedia dates them to a vague "the 80's") but for me they figure importantly in my memories of that year.
The Enchanted World series was only available through mail-order, and - having always been one to burn the midnight oil - I recall seeing the rather intriguing commercials in the wee hours of the night. There were several, but this was my favorite:
They were beautiful books which (alas) did not fit into our budget, but my cousin Anna's parents were more indulgent. The books were sent one per month, and by the the time I arrived at Anna's house that Summer, she had several. Wizards and Witches, Fairies and Elves, Ghosts, Night Creatures, Dragons, and Water Spirits, I think she had by then. They were Anna's prized possession, and of course I dove right into them.
They were utterly fascinating, not the least because they were chock full of art.
So much of this, to me, blended with the atmosphere of Anna's house, and of course the mysterious aura of Anna herself. We'd burn incense - Gonesh #6 Perfumes From Ancient Times (mine, bought from the hippie record shop*) or violet Spiritual Sky (hers, bought at the renaissance faire). In fact, the combined scents from all the incense we had stored in Anna's room made the entire hallway smell like a temple. Add in Anna's lace tablecloth cloak, her glowing-eyed anthropomorphic tree and Stevie Nicks' Blue Lamp and you may start to get a clear picture of what things were like that Summer, down near the ocean where ghosts drift close at hand.
I don't know how many volumes of The Enchanted World Anna eventually collected. It was maybe 14 or so before she stopped. I was never able to order a set of my own, but happily, years later, my mother-in-law gave me her old set. All the favorites are there, with the exception of Night Creatures. It pays to marry into a family of bookworms.
Lacking Night Creatures, It's one of my hopes this year to procure a copy. Then one day I'll pass the books on to my own children.
Not quite yet, though.
*Sundance Records In San Marcos, when they were in the little shop downtown. Where I'd once bumped awkwardly into Stevie Ray Vaughan (I didn't recognize him at first because he wasn't dressed like a pimp.)
Continuing with the theme of 1987, I have occasion to ponder this little oddity named Cyphre, for that is the year I brought him home.
The first time I'd gone with cousin Anna to the mall in Lake Jackson, she'd made straight for a candle shop called Wicks 'n Sticks. She was deep into her Stevie Nicks phase at this point, so she was drawn there like (forgive me) a moth to a flame.
It was a neat little store, and the neatest thing was a collection of glass-eyed candle holders. Some were faces, like Cyphre here, or animals, or spooky anthropomorphic trees of different shapes and sizes. The eyes would change depending on the color of votive glass, so the display models flickered eerily in otherworldy hues.
Back then I was going through my Steely Dan-Voodoo-Breakfast At Tiffany's phase, but even so I found these enchanting. Eventually Anna talked her mother into buying one of the medium-sized trees. Myself, I'd have to wait. I never did have any spending money.
The trip to Anna's came to an end, but my interest in creepy candle holders did not. The next time I was in San Antonio, I discovered a branch of Wicks 'n Sticks at North Star Mall. Alas, my mother's generosity did not extend to a $30 anthropomorphic tree, but I could swing $15, and Cyphre was on sale.
I was a bit worried, though. My mother thought he looked like Michael Jackson, but being the sort of kid I was, I knew Mephistopheles when I saw him. Even if I hadn't been obsessed with the movie Angel Heart (watched surreptitiously on a friend's cable) I would have got the hint in his name.
Did I really want a representation of a demon in my bedroom? Was it not just asking for trouble? I was going to a Fundamentalist school at the time and was being warned of such things daily. No doubt this helped make my decision. I gleefully bought him and carried him home. As a hedge against bad luck, I declared he was a genie instead.
It's something I learned early on. We all fight demons in our own way.
Some months ago, I mentioned dreaming it was 1987 again. The dream ended, but the feeling somehow remains. There was nothing especially memorable about that year, yet the memories flit around unreasonably, like moths battering a window pane.
In those days, my cousin Anna was a huge fan of Stevie Nicks. So much so that she'd go around wearing her mother's antique lace table cloth and a pair of enormous boots. One of Anna's favorite songs was called Blue Lamp. This may seem strange to relate to 1987, as the song was released on the Heavy Metal soundtrack in '81, but of course we weren't allowed to see the film back then. Our brothers had the soundtrack, though (of course they did) and Anna's Stevie Nicks obsession gave the song a prominent place that year.
Now it's more than 30 years later, and for reasons unbeknownst to me, I've had the song stuck in my head for weeks. The lyrics have a poetic, mystical bent - slightly tinged with anger - of the kind especially appealing to young girls.
"There was no message to be found anywhere in sight
Inside or out
I had looked everywhere but the only lamp left on in the house
Was a blue light"
While this lyric may evoke loneliness for some, to me it was always a comforting image. Perhaps because I thought - and still do - that the blue light was actually the message. I like this idea, that a light may be a message as much as any written word.
According to Nicks herself, the blue lamp is a real object, a Tiffany lamp that was gift from her mother.
Stevie Nicks and The Blue Lamp
In the song, the lamp is a concrete object, but has also become a symbol. As Nicks has described it, "a light at the end of the tunnel" as well as her mother's love.
While I can't relate to the idea of having a loving parent any better than I could in 1987, I can certainly relate to the idea of light as a symbol of hope, a sense of not being alone. Back then I was just beginning to come to terms with my chronic sense of solitude.
"Downstairs the big old house is mine
Upstairs where the stars still laugh and they shine"
While I honestly can't say what Nicks meant by this line, I know what it meant to me. The image of an empty house and shining stars meant freedom. I imagined being completely on my own, moving about under my own power. I could seek out any adventure. I would no longer need permission. And the stars would keep me company.
"And the light that shines through the shining night
Is the lamp that I carried from my mother's home
And the light that burns through the window pane
And the love remains"
The act of carrying a lamp becomes something bigger, weightier. A legacy or heritage, perhaps. Maybe a transfer of feminine power, or love itself.
I intuited this much in 1987, even if I didn't quite have the words for it. I still don't have the words for it, to tell you the truth. But there must be a reason the song is stuck in my mind after all these years. These things don't happen without reason.
Every Easter, the nuns at school would pointedly remind us that our egg hunting and Easter bunnies had nothing to do with Jesus' resurrection and were just a bunch of Pagan Nonsense. While we understood their concern, this had exactly as much effect as their admonitions about Halloween; that is to say, none.
Anyway, it seemed a wee bit disingenuous, considering that right after class we'd run down to Girl Scouts in the church hall, where we'd weave Easter baskets and make bunnies out of pom poms. We loved ourselves some Pagan Nonsense in Girl Scouts. Even our Brownies ceremony smacked of something otherworldly.
In my own family, this Easter dichotomy between Christianity and Pagan symbolism wasn't a problem. While my parents claimed to be Lutheran, I never saw them attend church - though whether this was because they were irreligious or just too cheap to tithe, I don't know. Whatever the case, there was nothing to prevent the hedonistic thrill of Whopper eggs and marshmallow Peeps on Sunday morning.
Back in those days, Spring break almost always came at Easter week, and we'd travel down to the seaside to spend it with relations. If we were lucky, the wild flowers would be out, and the hills and fields would be sheets of bright color. The Indian paintbrushes were always my favorite.
Arriving at my aunt and uncle's though, it's the smell of roses that I remember, the velvety scent of the flowers that lined the walkway. My cousins and I would use the petals for money when we played store, and the smell had even seemed to permeate the wood of the house. This smell, beyond anything else, told me that Easter was coming.
Their house had a most magical feeling to it. There were two boxer dogs, polished wood floors, a piano and a clock with Westminster chimes. There was a rug made in concentric circles we could use for our space hoppers. There was even a ghost and a haunted mirror, because in our family, what else would you expect? It was all an adventure and great fun.
If perchance the weather was dark and stormy, we'd run about the yard with our pinwheels, in defiance of tornadoes or lighting strikes. The sky would be grey, the way the Gulf water is grey, and the wind would taste like salt. I liked to imagine (still do, sometimes) that there were fish up there, silvery or mackerel colored, a whole other ocean in the sky.
Come Saturday evening it would be time to make our nests. This was a tradition from the old country and one of our favorite things to do. We'd gather up grass and flowers to make a pretty place for the rabbit to lay his eggs, and scatter the rose petals all around. Then, instead of going to bed like we were supposed to, we'd stay up talking in the dark, while the Westminster chimes rang off the hours.
The next day would come the culmination of the Pagan Nonsense, the egg hunt. Of course I'm joking, but egg hunting (I've come to believe) is an inborn human instinct, or close to it. Didn't Helen Keller write that, as a small child with no hearing, sight or language, finding eggs was her greatest joy? It's a uniquely satisfying endeavor, especially for children. Whatever it was my cousin and I were really celebrating on Easter, whenever we'd pull a colorful egg from its hiding places, it certainly felt like magic.
And as always, late that afternoon, it would be time to leave, heading back inland away from the sea. We would usually cry a little as we waved goodby, because we didn't want the fun to end. I would stare out the back window of the station wagon, watching the fish jump in the Colorado and the bay, knowing that after we crossed Lake Texana there was no turning back. Soon enough we would pass through the fields of flowers, then the hills, and then back to boring old life at home. Dull as dishwater and dry as toast.
But there would always be next year, and when our childhoods were over, our own children to carry on.
Sometimes I wonder if Sister Angelita is looking down on us from Heaven with that pinched look on her face, as we indulge in our Pagan Nonsense and revel in the arrival of Spring. Maybe so. But I guess I'll have to leave that to the gods to sort out.
While coming to the uneasy realization that I did not fit in with my peers and was indeed the proverbial square peg in a round hole, it made sense that I would draw closer to my cousins. We at least understood each other, and visits with them were always an adventure
It was in March of the year I was 11 that my sea-side cousin came up to Grandmother's house for Spring Break, toting a bagful of old Fate magazines. Her friends' hippie parents, she said, had stacks of them, and had given her these to keep. These were digest-sized magazines, printed on newsprint stock, full of (as stated on the cover) True Reports Of The Strange And Unknown.
These true reports might never live up to skeptical scrutiny, full of anecdotal evidence and personal accounts as they were, but that was not a worry to me. As far as I was concerned, this was news from from the world of strange phenomena by people who'd wandered the territory, either by accident or design. The sense of wonderment that ran through the articles was very appealing as something that seemed - as near as I could observe - to be missing from the ordinary world.
Which isn't to say I was too credulous. Even today I only believe 50% of what I read, and which 50% is always liable to change. It didn't matter so much if it was objectively true, since perception is a funny thing. It was more that someone believed it to be true, and was willing to share their thoughts with the rest of us. The reader could decide for themselves. Also, the columns on Cryptozoology, UFOs and parapsychology provided a more detached view of things.
That said, one of the best parts of Fate were the ads.
Many proclaimed secret knowledge or hidden truths, to see into your future or past, or to bring good fortune. Many seemed to communicate with the (endlessly fascinating) language of signs and symbols.
This was satisfying to an unconscious mind devoid of spoken language but hungry for meaning. It made sense, too, because the invisible world was in so many ways beyond description. Words just end up in a tangle. A symbol gets right to the heart of the matter, the thing you know without being able to say how you know.
It seemed to us (while we sprawled on grandmother's floor among the pile of magazines) that the part of you without language was the part of you that perceived the Unseen. The part of you that just knew. That's what they called it in Grandmother's family, "knowing". It was no more complicated than that, really. To try describe it in words just confused matters.
Despite the appealing nature of these ads, I never had the urge to order anything. I was a do-it-yourselfer by nature. Learning about a subject was all well and good, but where was the fun in having it all done for you? I was content to ponder such subjects, but several of my cousins independently decided to take it to the next level.
There was an ad that had appeared, not in Fate, but in the back of many other publications. It was for The Magic Power of Witchcraft, by Gavin and Yvonne Frost.
My recent Catholic schooling, with its emphasis on the dangers of the spiritual world, had made actually buying a book on witchcraft a bridge too far for me. Besides, I couldn't imagine how I'd explain such a thing to my mother when it arrived in the mail. The promises made in the ad didn't necessarily appeal to me, anyway - spying on people's antics behind closed doors and the power to crush my enemies weren't my sort of bag. My cousins, however, had no such compunctions, and ordered away. The book even came with an amulet - that was pretty cool.
This state of affairs probably leads to a couple of questions, such as - why would buying a book on witchcraft be so much worse than the fortune telling, second sight and casual spell casting that already existed in the family? I suppose it was the ritual content, for one thing. These family quirks could be seen as "natural" or even "god-given" gifts that needed very little training to achieve - most of it was a matter of intent and grabbing the right signal from the ether, or whatever it was. No need to invoke any spirits, or anything like that.
I don't necessarily feel this way today, mind you - I don't have any problems with such books or rituals when used wisely (though I do believe some of the books are booby-trapped - not necessarily the one mentioned above, but some of them are). Even so, I'm still not a big ritual person. For me, it's the simpler, the better in most cases.
Secondly - the question might be asked, does witchcraft work? Short answer: hell, yes, it does. If things were already weird before the actual practice of ritual magic came into it, things became really, really weird afterwards. Incredibly, flagrantly weird. There were reports of ghost lights and apparitions. Tales of levitation at inopportune times. Visions of the future appearing in bowls of ink. The night hag of sleep paralysis began to visit, and we experienced shared dreams. Some of us had to cover our mirrors, as things that shouldn't be seen there had begun to turn up. This is to say nothing of the mysterious aura (for lack of a better word) that began to develop around one of the cousins and her entire house. We had become weirdness incarnate.
I suppose the moral of this story is that it's never a good idea to let a group of untrained pubescents practice ritual magic. It probably opened some doors to things we were not ready to handle. But it worked, all right. It still works, for good or ill. In the aftermath, some of us tried to put these things aside, or sought other forms of spirituality or faith, but it was not easy, or even very successful. It's like trying to disown your eye color, or the talent you inherited from your old auntie.
Today, so many in the family - whether we consider ourselves practicing "witches" or are affiliated with a religion or not - can still feel the crackle of magic in the air if there's a working going down, or feel a spell or hex that's been thrown at us like sticky glue.We know how to listen to the invisible world with one certain part of our attention while keeping the rest occupied. We also know that we shouldn't think about it too hard, or want it too much, because otherwise it will run. These are things we know in our bones.
We can hide it (some of us better than others) under a guise of normality, because we know these things have no place in in the ordinary world. But underneath we know. We've had to embrace our inner weirdness.
I've come to think that the title of the magazine was accurate. Some things are fated. Ultimately, there really is no escaping your true nature.
I had bought the vintage orange turtleneck over at St. John's Bargain Box some time before. Maybe a month, or a few months, there's no way to remember now. The sweater was one of those thin, ribby ones from the mid-60's, in pristine condition, and I was glad to have it. Things were pretty gloomy then and I needed some color in my life.
This is the prologue. Well, the prologue before the prologue.
...
The first time I came to Victoria, it was unexpected. It hadn't been part of the day's plan. What had happened was, my mother had gone to visit my aunt and uncle near Houston, and I'd ridden along. Mostly because I liked my aunt and uncle, but also because I needed a distraction. A friend of mine had killed himself that week, and everything looked grim. Since three hours in a car with mother is not something to be undertaken lightly, I had the Sunday edition of the Austin American-Statesman on my lap. The front page told the story of my late friend's shattered hopes and broken dreams. That was the ostensible reason I had the paper. The real reason was because I was searching the job and apartment listings.
I can't remember exactly when I'd come to the conclusion that my life had veered off the right path, but it was a distinct, uneasy feeling I couldn't shake. Things kept going wrong, badly wrong, and I felt there was a turn in life I should have taken but hadn't. It would have been simpler if I'd known where I should've been instead, but it wasn't clear at all. Hours spent trundling between work and my therapist's office only seemed to kill time. Holing up in my apartment brought no relief. The best solution I could think of was to find my way back to Austin. I wasn't sure if that was the right place to be, but it was better than where I was. I'd received my acceptance letter from the university there, so the day I ended up in Victoria, I'd been in the midst of planning my escape to somewhere altogether different.
The house of my aunt and uncle was a place of happy memories. Once upon a time, I'd romped with my cousins, playing Star Wars and having flashlight battles in the fog. But time moves on, and my cousins had grown up and moved away. We did get to hear a lot about them that visit - auntie not being one to hold back about her kids. Nancy, she said, was going to college in Victoria, and worked at the radio station on weekends. In fact, she called from the station every Sunday evening around 6, if we wanted to wait around to talk to her. 6 o'clock was a little late, considering we had such a long drive back, but auntie said that Nancy would be so disappointed if she'd missed us. Whether that was true or not, mom said we'd wait a short while longer.
Here is a point I don't like to ponder too frequently: had we left before the call came that evening, would the rest of my life have been completely different? Had Nancy not said "There's too much to tell you over the phone, is there any way you can come here?" what would have happened? There are so many ways it could have gone wrong. If my aunt's insistence that it was "just a simple drive" to Victoria had not won out over mom's protests, or if I had not had enough money for bus fare home, if it came to that...what would my future have been instead?
But we did end up driving to Victoria that evening, through the seemingly endless rice fields, with mom bitching all the way. We drove in from the east side of town, by Rio Grande street. We searched for the address Nancy had given over the phone, which I had written down as North Star instead of N. Star. We took a wrong turn and drove through streets milling with hobos, while mom shouted that she was going to turn around and go straight home. We did find the radio station eventually though, right as dusk was beginning to fall.
This is the part where I say, I told you all that to tell you this:
The moment I stepped out onto the cracked pavement, I knew - by some strange miracle - I'd made it back to the path. The disquieting sense of wrongness was gone. In some deep, ineffable way, I knew this. For reasons that were beyond me then, this confusing, creepy, backwater town was the place I was supposed to have been all along. Things had been so hard for such a long time. I breathed a literal sigh of relief.
Nancy popped out of a side door, waving cheerily. She ran to the car and pulled me across the parking lot, yelling over her shoulder for mom not to worry, I'd get home somehow. We rushed into the building, moving fast because she has to get back to the DJ booth before the end of the song. At that point, I already know - in that same ineffable way - that life is different now. The story that came before is over. Everything has changed.
I didn't move to Victoria right away, of course. That first visit I only stayed a few days. We had a lovely time, my cousin and me. A constant stream of friends flowed through her apartment, her phone rang off the hook. We bought cherry vanilla cokes at Sonic and drove for miles. We had ridiculous adventures, like breaking into an abandoned farmhouse and being chased by bees. At night, in the cool dimness of her bedroom, we'd lay out her Russian Gypsy cards and tell each others fortunes. It was just like old times. But I did have some vestiges of a life in my hometown, and I had to get back to it.
At home, things seemed wronger than ever. My job was becoming a problem. My friends were unsupportive. My apartment was haunted. My granola-and-Dan Fogelberg-loving boyfriend turned out to be a dud, though really that shouldn't have been a surprise. There was a constant drumbeat behind everything that said "this can't work, this doesn't work, this can't work..." Even my therapist thought I should get the hell out of town. I fled back to Victoria often that summer, when I was tired of swimming against the tide. Things were so much easier there. When mom scuttled my Pell Grant for UT because she didn't approve of higher education and my former stalker appeared down the street, it seemed I had many more reasons to go than to stay.
This is the prologue.
...
After the fall semester had started in September, Nancy and her friends had begun a new routine. Once a week after class, they'd all go to her place to study, except it was actually a party. This is what Nancy had told me over the phone. I had missed the first of these events and had gone home again before the second. Consequently, I was in my own bed asleep that Wednesday night - it must have been Wednesday, even though memory insists it was Thursday.- if the weather data for that year is at all correct, it was in the wee hours of September 14th, when I awoke to find Nancy standing over my bed.
It had been a warm summer night when I'd gone to sleep, but an early cold front had blown in, and gusts of wind were howling as Nancy stood over me calling my name. As Nancy lived three hours away and as far as I knew, I'd locked my doors, this was startling. Also, she was dressed like a cheerleader. I screamed. Since (as she explained later) Nancy thought I must be screaming at the apartment ghost which she figured was standing behind her, she also screamed. We screamed until we were brought up short by the sight of her friend Jason, who wandered into my bedroom wondering what the hell was wrong with us. That's when I realized they had just got bored after the party and had driven up in the middle of the night to bring me back with them.
I changed into some warmer clothes and threw some things into a bag. The orange turtleneck must have been one of them, though I can't recall choosing it now. I zipped the bag, locked the door and ran out into the windy night. That wouldn't be the last time I saw that apartment, but almost. We got into the car - fast, because of the cold - and drove back to Victoria before sunrise.
If that was the 14th, there are three days in this story left to fill. I only remember some things with certainty; how the next day was grey and chilly, and we cut our shopping trip short because of it. That we hung out at the Froth 'n Java drinking cappuccinos. I sat in on a class or two and we borrowed someone's copy of Pulp Fiction. We made repeated trips to Sonic. We must have hung out with friends - they were always around - Jeff, Jason, Ben, Lisa and more than a few Richards. The only one I hadn't met was Nick
Everyone talked about Nick. He was the funniest guy they knew. He was a genius. He was sophisticated. He was older and almost finished with his master's degree. He knew a lot about politics and once tried to replace a newspaper graphic of Ronald Reagan's brain with a picture of a walnut. I'd almost met him the first night I'd come to Victoria, since he and Nancy usually went for coffee after work on Sundays. He hadn't called that night, though, and since then I always seemed to miss him by moments. He'd begun to seem like a mythical creature to me, often rumored but never seen, so the night of September 17th was a little exciting. I'd woken up from a late nap to find a note from Nancy saying that we were going to meet Nick at Denny's after she got off work.
It was exciting, but a little worrying, too. I had the impression that Nick didn't suffer fools gladly, and I wasn't convinced that I wasn't a fool. I had a bowl of Campbell's vegetable soup and watched Star Wars while I nervously contemplated my ignorance. I also contemplated my wardrobe. I was again grateful for the orange turtleneck. It was the only item of clothing I owned that might not draw the disdain of some educated genius smart ass.
...
At Denny's, Nancy and I ordered coffee and french fries while we waited for Nick. He got off work later than Nancy, and it was already after 1 AM when Nancy's eyes brightened and she said, "there he is!" The door hissed behind me and I turned to look, but I only made out a vague shape before I turned back. A terrible heat had suffused my body and I realized I was blushing all over. Oh, the humiliation! Nick had made his way to the table with his cup of coffee by the time I had the nerve to look at him. To my surprise, I saw he was blushing, too.
He sat down at the table and surveyed his lack of silverware My future husband spoke to me for the first time, these immortal words:
"can I use your spoon? I don't have syphilis."
....
That was 20 years ago tonight, and since then, no one can tell me there is no such thing as love at first sight, or that Fate doesn't step in to conspire in your favor. We tell our kids not to mock the holy sanctuary of Denny's, for if it weren't for Denny's and Fate, they would not exist.
But I can't help but think the orange turtleneck had something to do with it. Ever since then, orange has been my lucky color.
High Summer. The cicadas scream in the trees. It was July, many years ago now.
All that month, information seemed to crackle through the air, blowing like the wind through the house. The house itself was like a sailboat on a sea of grass atop the hill.
It was all very secretive.Word had come from down the coast that our cousins, Anna and Edward, would be coming to stay. We weren't supposed to know why, but of course we did - anyone who thinks they can hide things from children is a fool - so of course we knew their parents, along with our other aunts and uncles, would be attending to Serious Family Business. We just had to pretend not to know.
This sounds much darker than we felt at the time. For once, there was no trace of anything ominous in the air. School was out, the weather was fine, our parents were otherwise occupied. What wasn't to love? Our family drama had become part of the background by then, just another thing we weren't allowed to talk about. There was nothing to do but carry on.
At Grandmother's house in the next county, all the family had arrived. If our own house was like a sailboat, grandmother's house was like a tall ship in a storm. The adults sat around the kitchen table and whispered while the rest of us cousins (how many by then, 20? 24?) ran about like wild things, playing with Anna's little dog or swapping cassette tapes and comic books. At nightfall, Anna and Edward would be coming home with us, dog included. The dog! Over mother's hysterical protestations, the dog had to come too, there was no way around it. She tried to insist it be kept in cardboard box for the duration, a plan that fell apart within the hour. Score one for us.
That night, at the Sac-n-Pac on the edge of town, we raided the candy aisle for packets of Razzles and those cheap wax bottles with kool-aid inside.When mother didn't give us the death glare but simply paid up, it occurred to me that the rules were different for cousins. We sat in the back of the station wagon with the dog and our candy, the night wind whipping our faces. For the moment, adult tribulations had given us free pass.
...
I'd never thought our house was mysterious, or not very, or at least not for a long time. With Anna in it, it became mysterious. I suppose it was seeing it through someone else's eyes, but then again I'm inclined to say it was because Anna herself was mysterious. A curious sense of anticipation bubbled up in the corners when she was there. As we sat on the floor of my bedroom, Anna unpacked her belongings, full of arcane things like Blondie records and old issues of Punk magazine. Our ages weren't even in the double digits yet, so how the girl had laid hands on Punk magazine I can't imagine, but there they were. We put the magazines in the stack along with my collection of Nancy Drews. We did not find this even slightly ironic at the time.
Anna had brought her piano music, too, so we could play duets and she could keep up with her lessons while she was away. What this really meant was that we played duets while making up rude lyrics to every song in the Leila Fletcher piano course, books two and three.
All around the neighborhood we ranged that month. This was a new thing for me - I'd never previously been allowed to wander, but again, rules were different with cousins. Besides, we had to walk the dog. While our brothers exploded leftover fireworks in the yard, Anna and I clattered down the hills in our Dr Scholls, plotting and scheming while her little dog nosed around in the sweet-smelling grass. Once, we walked to the river with mother, who gossiped with the neighbors on the way. Mr. Jonas next door said how much I looked like Lady Diana. Anna snorted at this, but I recognized it as the compliment it was meant to be, maybe the first compliment I'd ever had. Anna twirled her Jordache purse with studied casualness, and said she'd rather look like Debbie Harry anyway.
Inside the house, we were up to no good. When we weren't watching The Facts of Life and eating Chef Boyardee pizza, we were inventing secret codes and signals. Surveillance was gleefully carried out with tape recorders, messages passed through windows. All sightlines in the house and yard were carefully noted, as well as the silhouette of mother in her studio, where she spent hours on the phone.
One afternoon, the house seemed unusually empty. The brothers must have been out somewhere, and Anna was nowhere in evidence. She wasn't spying through the fence out back or in the ash tree out front. Nor was she at the piano, the utility room or the shed. She wasn't even in the bathroom, where the curtain flapped (in a certain lonely way) in the breeze. Clouds were billowing up in the west and the wind chimes were just beginning to ring when I finally found her around the corner of the house. She had a secretive smile on her face.
"Look at this" she whispered, pulling out a book from behind her back. "It was in the bathroom." She tried to stifle a laugh. I didn't get the joke - it was just one of my brother's sci-fi /fantasy books that propagated like mushrooms around the house. I'd seen this one a thousand times. It was called "A Feast Unknown" by Philip Jose Farmer.
"Well, did you ever look at it?"
"Of course not. Why would I read my brother's books? Especially if it's been in the bathroom. Ugh."
Anna looked around surreptitiously then thrust the book in my hands. "you mean to tell me there's dirty books lying around the house and you don't even notice!"
Indeed. I looked at the text and saw with alarm that it seemed to describe some kind of naked wrestling match. One of the naked wrestlers may have been Tarzan. And my brother had left it in plain sight, so sure that no one in the house would pick it up. Well, he was right, but he hadn't bargained for Anna.
Of course, after that, we went into our brothers' room and scoured through the rest of their books. That's how we found out that sci-fi was surprisingly filthy. We were the picture of innocence when they came home, scoffing and mocking the way they usually did. We were untroubled, content in our superiority. We knew their secret. They read dirty books.
It was August by then, and the corn was being harvested in the fields below town. A lone corn husk, blown by some updraft, sailed into the neighborhood and into the yard. I knew then that summer was almost over.
The night before my cousins had to leave, I dreamt that we were searching for Anna's dog, lost in the dark. I stumbled into a secret passage behind the fence, a tunnel of wild brush and flowers all limned with the most beautiful light. I crawled along in this mysterious place, where I found the dog playing with luminous moths that fluttered in the grass. I woke to the sound of Anna calling her dog and the sharp slam of the car door. I knew from the cold look in my mother's eye that my reprieve was over, the fun was all over. A rumble of thunder in the distance added the finishing touch.
The memories would remain, though, in places the adults couldn't reach.
Cicadas in the trees, moths in the grass, a bend in the road, the rustle of corn fields at the end of summer.
