I never told my mom, but I actually hired two tutors with her three hundred, one a grad student who helped me with the mysteries of tectonic plates and continental drift, the other a pot-smoking senior from King Hall who helped Skip with his anthropology (and might have written a paper or two for him, although I don’t know that for sure). This second fellow’s name was Harvey Brundage, and he was the first person to ever say ‘Wow, man, bummer!’ in my presence.
Together Skip and I went to the Dean of Arts and Sciences — there was no way we were going to go to Garretsen, not after that November meeting in the Chamberlain rec — and laid out the problems we were facing. Technically neither of us belonged to A and S; as freshmen we weren’t yet eligible to declare majors, but Dean Randle listened to us. He recommended that we go around to each of our instructors and explain the problem . . . more or less throw ourselves on their mercy.
We did it, loathing every minute of the process; one of the factors that made us powerful friends in those years was being raised with the same Yankee ideas, one of which was that you didn’t ask for help unless you absolutely had to, and maybe not even then. The only thing that got us through that embarrassing round of calls was the buddy system. When Skip was in with his teachers I waited for him out in the hall, smoking one cigarette after another. When it was my turn, he waited for me.
As a group, the instructors were a lot more sympathetic than I ever would have guessed; most bent over backwards to help us not only pass, but pass high enough to hold onto our scholarships. Only Skip’s calculus teacher was completely unreceptive, and Skip was doing well enough there to skate by without any special help. Years later I realized that for many of the instructors it was a moral issue rather than an academic one: they didn’t want to read their ex-students’ names in a casualty list and have to wonder if they had been partially responsible; that the difference between a D and a C-minus had also been the difference between a kid who could see and hear and one sitting senseless in a VA hospital somewhere.
42
After one of these meetings, and with the end-of-semester exams looming, Skip went to the Bear’s Den to meet his Anthro tutor for a coffee-fueled cram session. I had dishline at Holyoke. When the conveyor finally shut down for the afternoon, I went back to the dorm to resume my own studies. I stopped in the lobby to check my mailbox, and there was a pink package-slip in it.
The package was brown paper and string, but livened up with some stick-on Christmas bells and holly. The return address hit me in the stomach like an unexpected sucker-punch:
Carol Gerber, 172 Broad Street, Harwich, Connecticut.
I hadn’t tried to call her, and not just because I was busy trying to save my ass. I don’t think I realized the real reason until I saw her name on that package. I’d been convinced she’d gone back to Sully-John. That the night we’d made love in my car while the oldies played was ancient history to her now. That I was ancient history.
Phil Ochs was playing on Nate’s record-player, but Nate himself was snoozing on his bed with a copy of Newsweek lying open on his face. General William Westmoreland was on the cover. I sat down at my desk, put the package in front of me, reached for the string, then paused. My fingers were trembling. Hearts are tough, she had said. Most times they don’t break. Most times they only bend. She was right, of course . . . but mine hurt as I sat there looking at the Christmas package she had sent me; it hurt plenty. Phil Ochs was on the record-player, but in my mind I was hearing older, sweeter music. In my mind I was hearing The Platters.
I snapped the string, tore the tape, removed the brown paper, and eventually liberated a small white department-store box. Inside was a gift wrapped in shiny red paper and white satin ribbon. There was also a square envelope with my name written on it in her familiar hand. I opened the envelope and pulled out a Hallmark card — when you care enough to send the very best, and all that. There were foil snowflakes and foil angels blowing foil trumpets.