Gathering Clouds

  Like most of my friends, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and what, if any career I wanted to pursue. Going to college just seemed to be the next thing to be done. If you weren’t getting married or joining the armed forces, or taking a position in your father and mother’s business, what else would you do?

  My guidance counselor, Mr. Martin, visibly exhibited his frustration with me when he reviewed my grades and my extracurricular interests. He ran down a list of choices as if I were shopping the rest of my life that very afternoon in his office.

  “Do you want to do something in the arts? Journalism? Television? Drama? Graphic arts?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Do you want to be in the business world? Banking? Finance? What about clothing, designer clothing, fashion? Cosmetics?”

  I shook my head.

  “You don’t want to do something in medicine, do you?” he asked, grimacing in anticipation as if he expected me to say yes and then he would have to tell me how difficult it would be for someone with my grades in science.

  “Oh, no. I hate the sight of blood.”

  He sat back.

  “Teaching? What about that? You like working with young people?”

  “I don’t know. I never have,” I said.

  He stared. He had a habit of chewing on the inside of his mouth when he was annoyed.

  “Okay, what do you want to do?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Why do I have to make up my mind today?”

  “You don’t, but I can help you choose the right college for you if I have some indication of your interest. Some schools are better for this or that.”

  “I’m going to attend the same college my mother attended and I’ll be in the same sorority she was in, I’m sure.”

  “Um,” he said. “Okay, that’s a start, I suppose.”

  “Start of what?”

  “A future,” he said dryly. He wrote something in my folder and never called me into his office again. When he wished me luck on graduation day, he sounded like he really meant it, like he believed any success I might enjoy in my life was totally dependent upon luck and not effort. Maybe he knew more than I thought he knew about me.

  My parents had a big party for me, as did many of the parents for their children in my graduating class. We all actually left our own parties to attend each other’s. Victoria didn’t want to come along, which was a relief for me. It was a night of traveling in a wild caravan, drinking and singing and kissing boys we wouldn’t say hello to ordinarily. When the night ended and the realization set in that we were all going our separate ways and our carefree days of irresponsibility might indeed be over, a dark sadness took over. It was as if someone had dimmed the lights, popped all the balloons, and sent home all the musicians in the world. The silence of early morning was deafening, a roar of emptiness and loneliness all wrapped into the approaching dawn. I embraced my bed like a long-lost lover and hoped I would sleep through the next day.

  I didn’t. Or I couldn’t, was more like it. We were all going to spend the first few weeks of summer at a resort in South Carolina owned by a close friend of my father’s. Victoria hated the thought of it and tried to get left behind to apprentice at my father’s real estate office as she had done the previous summer, but this time Mother insisted we all be together. She said there wouldn’t be all that many times like this in the future. Victoria’s face was full of “So what?” I saw how important it was for Daddy, so I did my best to be enthusiastic.

  For me the summer would be aborted anyway. I had to attend orientation at my college and would leave by mid-August. I was as excited about it as any of my other friends, even though I wasn’t sure what I intended to do with myself, and even though I wasn’t sure a college education was that necessary for me. When I made the mistake of voicing this thought, my mother pounced.

  “What do you want to do, Megan, stay home as did Margaret Carlson and wait for your parents to find a suitable young man for her to marry? Accompany your mother as she does to all the events older ladies attend? Mope about the house waiting for this Prince Charming? I can’t imagine what she does all day, can you?”

  Margaret Carlson had graduated the year before and was very shy. In the high school yearbook, there was only one extracurricular activity next to her name – Audubon Society. Watching and identifying birds was about as venturous as she would be.

  “Of course not, Mother. I’m just confused,” I said.

  “Eventually, you will become unconfused,” she predicted. It was more like a prayer.

  In the end I was sure she wished I had been another Margaret Carlson.

  Mother’s college was a small, all-girls’ private school near Jamestown. My friends thought it would be horrible to attend and all-girls’ school, but I knew from perusing my mother’s college yearbooks and periodicals that they were inundated with boys from nearby coed colleges. There was something mystical about an all-girls’ school as far as most boys were concerned. It was as if they believed that because we were surrounded most of the day by only girls, we would be easier targets for sex and romance, hungrier for their company.

  Mother believed in a woman’s college, especially for me, because studies showed women were more apt to succeed and find their way and purpose at an all-girls’ school. She proudly rattled off the statistics that proved women were more serious about their studies, interacted with their teachers more, and generally were more successful in the business world.

  None of that particularly impressed or attracted me, but I knew the school was very expensive and would probably be the most comfortable of any I could attend. Daddy gave me a car over Mother’s vehement objections. It was a red Jaguar. He wanted me to always have the option of coming home. She said it would only provide temptation, waste my time, and give more distraction just when I needed less.

  Victoria agreed with Mother, but from a different point of view. Of all the cars to buy me, she said, this one made the least financial sense. It wasn’t fuel efficient and was too small for my bags.

  Daddy ignored the both of them. He took me aside and said, “This is your time, Megan. Let your hair down, feel the wind, and enjoy. They’ll be plenty of time to be sensible later.”

  If Mother had known what he said, she would probably have had him shot on the spot.

  I did have an impossible time trying to fit the things I wanted to take with me in the car. Daddy told me he would have everything sent anyway, so I shouldn’t be concerned. In the end, I drove onto campus with the top down, the wind in my hair, just as he had urged. Some of the other girls had sports cars, too, especially the older girls.

  I could have had a private room in the dorm if I had wanted, but I chose to have a roommate and I didn’t care who or what she was. As it turned out, she was an African-American girl, Lynette Robinson, the daughter of a famous NBA basketball player. She quickly became the school’s basketball star, having inherited her father’s talent and being five feet eleven and a half herself.

  We hit it off immediately. Aside from her obsession with basketball, she was just an ordinary girl, unspoiled by her father’s fame. Her mother was a very attractive woman who was nearly five feet eleven. One thing I loved about Lynette and her parents was how at ease they made me feel by not being in the least defensive or concerned about our racial differences. When Victoria discovered my roommate was black, she grimaced and asked me how I dealt with it, as if I were rooming with a disabled girl or something.

  “To tell you the truth, Victoria,” I replied, “I don’t even think about her being black. We just have a great time together. She’s a lot smarter than I am and usually helps me with the homework and research. Even though she’s so tall, she and her mother are very fashion-conscious. We love the same designers. Like me she loves wearing stylish hats. It’s just too bad we can’t share clothes.”

  “You would share clothes with her?”

  “Why not?”

  Victoria shook her head
and looked at me as if I were a truly different animal. Once again, I felt sorrier for her than she would have likes, but all I could think was Victoria has so many hang-ups, she’ll never be happy.

  She visited me at the college only once, and that was two months after the school year had started. She came along with our parents to Parents’ Day at the school when they were shown around the campus, attended some classes, and heard in more detail about the subjects we were taking and the objectives and goals the college board had set out for all the students. There was a basketball game that night and they attended with me and watched Lynette play. She was the highest scorer and responsible for the team’s victory.

  There were a number of boys from area schools attending the game, some of whom who were already seeing the older girls at our school, and some “just fishing,” as Tami Ryan, the president of the sorority that Mother wanted me to join, put it. I thought she was clever and funny, actually.

  “They come here, cast their rods, dangle their bait, and hope one of us will bite,” she said.

  Every even that attracted boys from area colleges was exciting for us. Despite Mother’s claim that all-girls’ colleges was exciting for us. Despite Mother’s claim that all-girls’ colleges produced more serious-minded students, it was clear to me from day one that everyone was looking for and hoping for a wonderful and exciting romance.

  I dated four different boys the first three months, but found each of them to be clones of Harrison McAlester. They talked so much about themselves, I wondered why I was even necessary. Money, the prestige around who their parents were, had shaped them into arrogant little princes. Being with them actually made mo more self-conscious about my own arrogance. Mother’s claims about my being spoiled resonated. I had come here blown up about myself, just as many of the other girls, and suddenly, seeing all that reflected in the high-society dates that were arranged for us disgusted me.

  I had finally found some ambition. I wanted to be different.

  I suppose that feeling, that desire, was a primary part of why I ended up dating Larry Ward, a friend of Lynette’s boyfriend Marcus Wells. It was truly unplanned. One Saturday in early November, Marcus and Lynette were going to take a ride to the beach to have lunch and walk along the beach. The day before, I had decided not to accept a second invitation for a date from Philip Rockingham. I suspected he was just the type of young man Mother would want to see me marry. He wasn’t bad-looking, but he never let me forget it either. In fact, I thought he was more enamored with his own looks than he was with mine. He bored me into a comatose state with his talk about his cars and boats and vacations on the French Riviera with his parents.

  Maybe I was too spoiled to be spoiled. He took me to a very expensive restaurant on the first date. He had a Mercedes convertible. Afterward, I met some of his fraternity friends, one of whom was as self-absorbed as the next. I actually found them to be childish, immature, with their silly antics and dirty jokes and their efforts to impress each other and me by how much they could drink or smoke dope.

  “I hate leaving you here,” Lynette said. “Why don’t you come with us?”

  “And be a third wheel?”

  “Marcus wanted to bring his friend Larry Ward,” she said. She let it hang in the air for a moment.

  Lynette had this wonderful, healthy and bright smile highlighted by her impish ebony eyes and soft, full lips. She really looked more like a model than an athlete.

  “Larry is very studious, a national achievement scholar and a published poet. Marcus is always trying to get Larry to ease up and have a good time. He might be fun to talk to and be with, knowing how you can unravel someone.”

  “Unravel?”

  “I see how you twist and turn some of the other girls, here, Megan,” she said laughing. “You come out with things that absolutely confuse them sometimes.”

  “I had a lot of practice growing up with the sister I have,” I said.

  “So? What do you say? It’d be just an afternoon. Nothing serious intended,” she added thinking she had to promise such a thing. “Of course, if you think your parents might not approve because he’s an African-American, I understand. It doesn’t hurt my feelings.”

  “He’s a published poet?”

  “Yes, in four different highly respected college magazines. He’s done some acting in school, too. Marcus teases him. Calls him the poor man’s Denzel Washington or Sidney Poitier.”

  I really didn’t think anything would come of it, but I also thought it might be fun, a different way to pass a weekend day, and it was unusually warm for the time of year. The ocean would surely be refreshing.

  “Okay. I’m in,” I said.

  She called Marcus to tell him. From the conversation I understood Marcus was having a hard time getting Larry to come along, but in the end, he managed to get him to join us. They came to the campus about nine in the morning. I wore jeans, a knit blouse, and a hooded light pink sweater. Neither Lynette nor I had mentioned our beach trip to any of the other girls in the dorm. We simply stepped out into the bright sunshine and got into Marcus’s station wagon. His car was a hand-me-down from his parents and not very sporty.

  I glanced at Larry and quickly closed the car door, checking to see if any of the other girls were watching us. I saw no one in particular and we drove off. After we pulled away from the campus, I turned to Larry Ward and smiled. He was wearing a turtleneck cable knit sweater and jeans and was as good-looking as Lynette had implied. He was lighter skinned than Marcus, and when we stepped out of the vehicle later, I saw he was close to six feet tall with well-proportioned shoulders. He had a shy but disarming smile that made me feel he was always two or three steps and seconds ahead of everyone else and able to anticipate reactions to anything.

  Unlike all of the other young men I had been with, he had no interest in talking about himself. Once we were over the awkwardness of just meeting, he asked me questions about where we lived, my school, the friends I had, and my interests. We talked about music and movies. He and Marcus had a nice banter between them, gently teasing each other about each other’s failures in sports and how Lynette could whip “both our asses” in a one-on-one basketball game.

  When we reached the beach and parked, Lynette and Marcus walked on ahead at a much faster pace, looking like they had come for the exercise mostly. Larry and I lingered far behind. There were long silences between the things we said until I asked him about his poetry.

  “When I was growing up in Baltimore,” he said, “I kept my poetry secret. My friends didn’t know about it until my senior high English teacher went and submitted one of my poems to a magazine for me and it was accepted. The school principal made a big deal of it at an assembly and I was exposed.”

  “What sort of poetry do you write?”

  “It’s all free verse. I’m more interested in images, allusions, irony, that sort of thing. I’m doing my graduate work in Shakespeare,” he added. Then he stopped walking and put up his hands, laughing. “I’m not going to be an actor, just a college teacher. Also,” he said, leaning toward me as if there were dozens of people listening in on our conversation, “I’m somewhat of an Anglophile. I’ll probably end up living in London.”

  We walked on. The breeze played havoc with my hair, but I didn’t mind. The water, the sunshine, and his soft, almost melodic way of talking made me feel so warm and contented in a way I hadn’t ever felt. Maybe I was just relaxed and had never really been.

  “So what do you want to be?” he asked after a few moments of silent walking.

  I paused and for the first time really thought about it. My guidance counselor, Mr. Martin, couldn’t get me to do this. Maybe it was because more time had passed, or maybe I didn’t feel threatened by any answer I might express.

  “I think I would like to be me,” I said.

  His laughter turned Marcus and Lynette’s heads. They paused and looked back at us. Then they walked on.

  “I think I know exactly what you mean,” Larry sai
d. “How do you like that?”

  “Oh? Why do you think so?”

  “I wrote a poem that goes Most of my life I’ve been looking into mirrors and seeing only what others see of me. I put on the clothes they expected I would wear. I went to places they expected me to go. I said the words they expected me to say, and then one day I went naked. I didn’t go anywhere and I was silent and suddenly, I was born and a stranger in the eyes of those who had known me. The stranger was myself.”

  He looked away quickly.

  “I love that,” I said. It’s exactly how I feel.”

  He smiled.

  We walked on.

  Somewhere inside me, a stranger stirred.

  Larry was a few steps ahead of me.

  Impulsively, I reached out and seized his hand.

  He turned and he smiled, and it was as if everything that I had felt and known before was like the tide washing over the shore and out to sea, leaving the sand sparkling like new jewels in the sun.

  FOUR

  There is something about a secret romance that makes every kiss sweeter, every embrace warmer, every lustful look of longing more forbidden.

  In the beginning I often felt Larry thought he had to sneak around to protect me. I soon learned he had no one from whom he had to keep our romance a great secret. His parents had separated, never really bothering to get a formal divorce, when he was only eight and he was brought up by his maternal grandmother. She passed away the year before he began his college education. He had been admitted with scholarship aid and he worked in the school library for his expense funds. He rarely saw either of his parents now.

  “I’m my own family,” he told me.