LIFE GOES ON AND SO MUST WE
"But at my back I always hear, time's wingèd chariot hurrying near!" --Andrew Marvell, 1681
"And silvern chatter the pale ports o’ the moon. I said to Dawn: Be sudden—to Eve: Be soon . . . ." --Francis Thompson,1893
"Love is a bitter-sweet utopia." --Ned McDonnell, 1980
Ever had a life-event that, you know, you should leave behind you but never really do? Much like we remember the first time we fall in love, the first time that getting dumped crushes us, and the first-time grief’s lingering boney fingers curl around the heart.
For me, these three memories collided forty years ago today, when I had just graduated from Washington and Lee. The lady at the centre of his troubling trifecta? One Miss Leigh Woolverton of Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. Her beauty, still fresh when she (rarely, now) shows up in my dreamtime, reminds me just how striking she really is, even four decades later.
Five days after my graduation from a college appreciated only later, I kept myself busy getting ready for one of the premier parties of the Summer of 1980 (for which I had FINALLY received an invitation). The ironic timing of the ‘BIG EVENT’ on Friday the 13th added to its sizzle.
Being an idle past-time, vanity kept me busy and free of ‘taxing’ efforts like job hunting. So, when the old rotary dial phone, ossified, in my room rang, I ignored it blithely; I had more important things to do, like dry my hair ‘just-so’ for the evening’s festivities.
“Ned!” My sister was calling over from her bedroom, across the upstairs hall.
“Dickie Latture and Betsy Kyle are on the phone.” Immediately, the chill walked through me, like a wraith through a wall. Immediately, I knew these two frat-buds would have only one reason to call me here in Pittsburgh; fuck.
Still wet from the
old-fashioned bath just taken, I slumped down and felt my back sliding down the white metal-mesh cover of the old radiator. Naked,
on the floor, I picked up the phone receiver. Betsy and Richard kept the call
brief, their solemn voices already dripping with bereavement.
Leigh Woolverton, my first and quite unrequited love, had died, killed by
a drunk teenager in a head-on collision.
The impact of the head-on collision had apparently driven the steering
wheel and column right through Leigh, exploding her beautiful, beautiful form
into the dark; mercifully, she had died instantly.
There are days even now, so long after the brutal fact, when I wonder what her
last expression was, her last word, her last feeling. These insoluble questions
create a pain in the lower back, a pain of the aching burden of unknowing. The
funeral was to be in Jacksonville in two days.
Donning my coat and tie for the family sit-down dinner, I went
downstairs to inform my parents. Fortunately, my sister, Claire, had briefed them
from what she had overheard in those fateful, fatal minutes on the telephone.
The better money manager of the two of us, she instinctively, and charitably,
offered to pay for the air-fare to Jacksonville out of her meagre savings from
baby-sitting. Looking at me with an urgent solicitude, Claire said, “Ned, I have
money saved up so you can go to the funeral.” My parents nodded in assent, indicating
a willingness to chip in.
Feeling inadequate to the task of public mourning and unwilling to accept help
from anyone, I said quietly but abruptly, “No, thanks.”
After several more evasions, my sister looked at me while Mom
and Dad grimaced and puckered their lips. No one was fooled. We finished our dinner.
(“Is Neddy in here?” Soon, Leigh sees me, since I am sitting near the
Zeeb television idly watching a ‘Get Smart’ re-run with a pout because she has
ignored me again. She straightens slightly and says gaily, “There you are,
silly boy!” She giggles with childlike innocence and laughs and bounds diagonally
across the room, sitting right on my lap her arm wrapped around my neck.
Little do I understand beyond my self-centredness. Apparently, Leigh has been simply
getting coloured. Jealousy really becomes me very little. Soon, relatively late
in life, I will find the restoration of childlike wonderment that comes with
getting coloured. Ingrate that l remain, I notice first that my thighs are
tingling into sleepy numbness.
Now, I have seen for myself that this beauty, blond – I mean, no Alex Haley
roots – hair streaming to her shoulders. First hand, I know that physical
beauty exquisitely proportioned through years of being an equestrienne, with an earlier moonlight setting off perfectly sized breasts so much like Leigh
herself: supple, inviting, firm, and resolute. This girl has no fat anywhere. Now, I face a dilemma of almost painful proportions.
Muscle does weigh more than fat; I have heard that but remain too skinny to
care, until now. She wriggles affectionately on my boney lap, perhaps in a
desire to be closer to me. Maybe, finally . . . . But, no, it is more likely my
boney thighs and knobby knees cause Leigh discomfort. Her butt looks for
relief.
‘Get Smart’ is one of the dumbest fucking shows ever made; who can enjoy this
loser, Maxwell Smart, with a capital ‘L’? And therein lies the sadness of that
moment. Leigh giggles gaily through the episode, like I used to as a nine-year-old.
It never occurs to me that she is happy, really happy, to be sitting there,
sitting there with me. As she laughs at some stupid-ass remark, “Would you
believe . . . .”
Leigh flicks her hair behind that inviting ear – like a host of golden daffodils dancing in the breeze – that ear that I have kissed before, her
pearl earrings that much more elegant for being so easy to overlook. Colouring
has made her eyes into flying saucers; she stares strangely at the screen,
digging into it, looking behind it. Her nose, with its perfectly chiselled curve
makes me smile, as I could run my hand index finger off it into a friendly wave for .
. . .)
As I seated myself at dinner,
my ungrateful response had spoken its truth; Leigh and l truly had gone our
separate ways, albeit mine was the less willing. Like all unrequited lovers, I had repeated the tired platitudes of hope like ‘You’ll see, she’ll come to her
senses . . . .’ or 'Well, half a loaf is better than none.’ That tripe had sustained
the last sliver of my self-respect or, at least, my conception of it.
During the brief pause after dinner, alone again in my room, before leaving for the party, I rehearsed my evening's courage by muttering, to myself, that Leigh could not evade me that easily. That
pathetic declaration fell flat. Nonetheless, the flush of tinglies that
followed the fake fortitude felt like a quiet one-way communiqué from Leigh
saying that she did love me, but not in the way I had wanted her to, and that
she still existed, somewhere, rooting for me.
(“Oh, Neddy, don’t be absurd. You’ll meet somebody else, soon enough.
You always do.” That is it; circuit-breaker switches and HE takes over. HE
lives in me and is me, but HE lives alone, away from me. HE enters those
situations when an unwelcome reality has broken through to me, making the attendant
feelings unsupportable.
HE lives in my deceit; all reality remains bearable because there is often no
choice. Grow up, already! That the kind of thing. HE says, “But, Leigh, I will
miss you.” He makes sure I go no further. The determination finally to tell
this woman, after months of dithering, that I love her and will love her forever
falls to dust.
Leigh will surely laugh at me, hysterically. HE will not permit me to risk it. HE may permit humility, but HE can not abide by humiliation. Leigh says
something else that l can not, perhaps refuse to, hear. HE guides me now to
escape these feelings of betrayal and the bitterness of five months wasted in a
stupidly infantile infatuation.
HE will preserve my honour, so I delegate my escape to HIM. Accordingly, I stand up
stiffly, and inform Leigh, as amiably as contrived stoicism allows, that the
good-bye dinner has been a pleasure and that I shall be getting on home. Leigh,
seeing I am hurt, offers me a ride before she ventures back over to the mountain to Sweet Briar.
Yet again, I wave her off politely, saying a walk will do me good since I have eaten
far too much. Of course, that is an off-white lie, since I kept my eye on the
right side of the menu all evening long, setting myself up for embarrassment when
I ordered the un-filleted fish dish, not knowing what I was in for, just to
save two bucks!
About ninety per cent of the way home, after a mile or so of walking, I cut into the
cemetery to the grave of, with a tasteful monument to, General Stonewall Jackson.
HIS mission accomplished, HE leaves me utterly alone to weep, inwardly, for the
loss of something I have never had to lose.)
Alone in my bedroom after dinner, in the anguish of that moment and whistling Dixie in the dark to keep up my courage, I said out loud something like, “Well I guess I won’t be whining about you behind your back anymore!” Of course, laughing at death in the face sounds strong and defiant; it rarely works. Another lesson in a dense night.
Black humour dispensed with, I decided to go to that ‘BIG EVENT’ with my best friend from grade school and two of his female classmates from Kenyon. Bravely, or so I concluded, I acquitted myself as entertaining for those three hours. Getting back from the party early (i.e., midnight), my sister asked me again if I would like at least to borrow the money for the air-fare needed to attend Leigh’s funeral.
To Claire, I simply explained that Leigh and I were no longer close. While Leigh’s
death had shocked everybody in her wide circle of friends, I reasoned, the
funeral should be for others still very much in her life.
Deep down, I wanted to say ‘yes’ to my sister’s gracious offer but brushed my
feelings aside by taking pride in my apparent indifference, failing also, and
utterly, to appreciate my sister’s generosity. Only later did I realise how
over-rated and over-priced personal dignity really is. No surprise: that night
stretched into a sleepless one.
About four-thirty in the morning, I gave up trying to sleep and went down-stairs. Without
hesitation, I looked for the right medicine: a stiff bourbon and water. Confronting
the inward crevasse and its blackness, however, impressed me that liquor would
only make things worse. Instead, I played my favourite music a couple of times
through since it brought Leigh's machine-gun giggle faintly back in a
deathly draught . . . forgotten, fleeting.
CLICK BELOW
(Decked out in my second-hand full dress, used once or twice a year on the periphery of the débutante circuit in Pittsburgh, I wonder if I have over-done it. Leigh
takes forever to appear. Two friends are helping her, I will soon find out. For
now, I swear off women as insufferable; beautiful yes, but insufferable.
Anxiety begins to build; my timing stinks, on this occasion to go colouring. One
of Leigh’s friends appears, ready herself for W.&L.’s annual dance, and
she seems to suppress a smile; it’s Betsy, whose cinnamon hair, blithe smile,
and sunny disposition makes her an All-American girl all the way. In the Zeeb
house? Of course – we treat women with respect.
Leigh stands in front of me at the small corner landing, four steps up the stairway, holding her hands together in front of her, shyly. Her blue eyes gaze into mine, into me, through me – been that way since we first met four months ago on the Sunday brunch at the frat house. Her slight ascension perhaps awakens some lost archetype of the beneficent mother of God.
Now, definitely the wrong time for getting coloured. The sight becomes too much for me – such beauty, such life – Leigh looks at no other Zeeb, but at me. The colouring becomes too intense as I feel so transparent, so insignificant in the face of the perfection of feminine beauty, that I feel myself turning wraith-like, dissolving into eternity.
While such significance of peaking into my colours starts the evening, the mid-winter ball collapses under the weight of believing my inadequacy to be on unmistakable display. The night meant for transcendence ends in alienation. Leigh never leaves me, really, but, by night’s end, she senses there is another meant to be in her future.)
Returning the favour, I pulled his upper eyelids back to show the whites above them. How our dear, dear beagle loved that simple affection, one I had resolutely recoiled from extending to Leigh. My mother soon followed him. Finally, I felt ready to make my grim words dance. Mom kindly brought me the Crane’s double-folded stationery and we talked, meaningfully, for the first time.
Subsequently, I wrote a moving, sincere, and effortless note to Mrs Woolverton. As to attending the funeral, my family knew me well enough when to leave me be, notwithstanding feelings expressed clumsily by me at dinner nine hours earlier. My real reason for not making that trip South lay not in humble recognition of my lower spot in Leigh Woolverton’s pecking order.
Instead, my reason lay in simple self-absorption: I thought showing up would make me look ridiculous. Her Sweet Briar friends would say, “What is he doing here?" How self-centred I was. Accordingly, on the day of the funeral, I went to the Catholic Cathedral in Pittsburgh for the noon-time mass as a proxy memorial service. That boney-fingered grip tightened around my heart, relentlessly wringing one, just one, forlorn tear from one reluctant eye.
(“Oh, I just don’t know.” Leigh’s voice over the phone, clear as always, strikes a pensive note.
“Know what, Leigh?”
“Me.”
“Well, what about you don’t you know? Perhaps, I can fill you in . . . .” Her
laugh is more adult now, not the innocent giggling of a child coloured into the night.)
As that tear crawled slowly over my cheek-bone during the priestly invocations ringing over the old sound speakers, the
reality of that Friday the 13th finally etched its way into my life experience,
forever changing the way the world worked, at least for me. Leigh had a life-force that had been, and should have remained, unstoppable and unquenchable. Great events and
accomplishments yet awaited her. Frankly and sincerely, I asked God why Leigh Woolverton and
not me?
(The telephone conversation continues as Leigh says suddenly, evidently
summoning courage to do that following a few seconds of pregnant silence,
“Well, Ned, what if I told you I am lesbian?”
Truth be told, I had heard this rumour before but dismissed it for reasons of
obvious self-interest; the source being a few fellow Zeebs whose overtures Leigh has rejected brusquely. I
have never believed it, nor will I, ever. Leigh may not love me but that does
not make her a lesbian.
Straightening up in the old Windsor chair, hearing it creak under the strain, I
feel its rods rubbing into my shoulder blades. I say unevenly, “Well do you
think you are a, you know, a lez?”
“Lesbian, Ned, LEZbian.”
HE is back looking at me, standing behind the phone-stand. This time, I wave HIM off. Albeit inadequate to the task, I prefer to go it alone. So, I quip, “Well these S-A-T words always get me.“
Leigh laughs her machine-gun giggle; she relaxes. “You are a funny boy sometimes. But seriously, Neddy.”
“Leigh, I know you’re not kidding. But what am l supposed to say?” She exhales audibly, disappointed that I have failed again, this time, to knock the change-up out of the park. But all the choking up on the bat has never spared me from piss-poor hand-eye coordination.
So, I continue with an ungainly sincerity, “Well, I guess if you think you’re a LEZ-BEE-ONNN,” she laughs as l go on, “then maybe you are one. What the Hell do I know?” HE is back a second time, unwelcome, to extricate me from this onrushing castration; this time, I flip the bird [i.e., by extending my middle, so called ‘mafia finger’] at HIM and HE exits for good.
Leigh snaps me back to the real world. “Aren’t you, like, disappointed or something?”
“Leigh, honestly, I don’t know what I think right now . . . but this much I can say . . . .”
My pause is tactically timed. After two seconds, that seem more like minutes, Leigh displays anxiety – my God, the woman is human! – as she implores, “Wellll?”
Speaking thoughtfully, with an odd sense of confidence, I say tenderly, perhaps for the first time in our intermittent love affair, and shunning the usual requirement of entertaining her, “I don’t know about all that stuff, but you could tell me that you are an axe murderer and – give me a few days – but somehow, some way, I would find a reason that, though all axe murderers are evil, in the case of Leigh Woolverton, there is an exception to prove that rule.")
How could the inevitable shining of Leigh’s inexpressible arc be subverted like this? With the mere snip of a thread in the tapestry of time now rendered imperfect? Leigh Woolverton’s sudden departure made no sense to me, no matter how hard I tried to fathom it. From that moment on, I understood what the older people had meant when they talked about living riddles, never to be solved, left by those who leave before us so they can remain alive in our hearts.
