We spoke and exchanged a few letters. I did write a little story about her which is printed below.
Writing has always helped me process whatever is going on in my life.
DEAD OR ALIVE?
We
sat side by side on the steps of our dorm. I was smitten. She was tiny, had
long brown hair, spoke in rapid staccato bursts, and was nothing like the
classmates I left behind at Shaker
Heights High School
where all people cared about were wearing the right clothes and carrying the
right pocketbook from My Darling Daughter.
The
sun shone that September of 1964 as the green grass of Vermont spread out like a golf green before
us. I was never so happy in my life. Away from home. At Camp Cardinal,
I had cried like a baby. Now I was free. And freedom, I discovered, is what I
had been seeking my whole life.
Freedom,
mostly, from conformity, a word that until I came to Goddard College,
had meant nothing to me. I was free to kiss whomever I wanted – red-haired
Felix was the first boy I kissed – and there were a succession of others. I was
a pretty girl back then, unafflicted with a variety of ailments that would
bedraggle me after I turned fifty or sixty.
How
good it is not to know what to expect when you’re young and beautiful and
sitting next to Wendy Davidson on the front steps of Kilpatrick Dorm.
Unlike
me, Wendy was an adventuress. Oh, hadn’t I ridden my bike back home? My sisters and I, when small, would see
firesmoke in the distance, and ride our bikes to wherever the fire soared.
“Move
back!” the police would yell at us. We stood behind the imaginary line and
gleefully watched the shiny red fire engines spew an awesome spray of water
onto the fire. We were unaware at the time that such hoses would be used to
disperse demonstrators during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
I
was in my dorm room at Kilpatrick. I had brought a set of cowbells from home
which I attached to the door of my room. Someone was knocking. It was Wendy,
who came in and sat on my neatly-made bed.
“Oh,
I’m such a mess,” she said. “Lenny pays no attention to me.”
“Lenny?
That cute boy who looks like Mick Jagger?”
“Yeah.
I think he’s gay.”
I
tried not to let on that I was shocked to hear that word. But I was. As a kid,
I’d asked my dad how it could possibly happen that men or women were attracted
to their own sex. He patiently explained it to me. And told me that one time, a
gay man named Marcus had come to dinner. He worked at my dad’s office and had
given me a book of poetry by William Wordsworth. I’ve kept it to this very day,
its cover scotch-taped to the slim green volume.
“Forget
Lenny Marin,” I said. “Let’s do something fun.” I put down the book I was
reading for English class, “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” by James
Joyce. I kept reading the first page over and over again, it was so beautiful.
Once upon a time and a very good time
it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was
coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo...
Wendy
explained she had found a beautiful meadow. I tied on my sneakers and we began
our walk. Plainfield, Vermont, was cow country. We passed the
little village with its grocery-post office – 05667, the zip code I wrote on my
letters home – and crossed the little bridge over the Winooski River.
“Wait
a sec,” I said. “Let’s stop and watch the river flow.”
Imagine!
Our very own river right in this town. Rivers were unknown back in Shaker. I
cocked my head and listened to the sound of the waves hitting rocks that jutted
out of the water. The bright sunshine added to the display and the joy in my
heart.
I
was free! I was free!
I was eighteen
years old.
Wendy’s
long brown hair was set atop her head in a bun. She led the way to her meadow,
up in the grassy hills. She spread out a blanket and then began to disrobe.
“Wendy!
I can’t do this!”
“Why
not? It’s fun to sunbathe in the nude.”
I
dropped my blouse, my 34-A Playtex bra, panties, and shorts onto the grass, and
lay on the blanket she had brought.
Staring
up at the cloudless blue sky, I felt the warmth of Father Sun caress my body. I
ran my hands lightly over my nearly-flat breasts, then lay on my flat and
muscled belly. I’d been the sit-up champ in our gym class.
One-hundred-and-fifty.
Wendy
lay on her belly, head turned to the side. She was beautifully proportioned and
even tinier than I was. Her buttocks was dimpled. And a tiny beauty mark rested
on the small of her back.
As
we lay, each with our own reveries, a male voice interrupted us.
“This
here is my property, dammit!” it said. “I want you off. Now!”
The
farmer wore overalls, just like in the books. He was fat with a straw hat
clamped down on his head.
“I
seen you here before,” said the farmer. “Don’t want you back again, them damn
Goddard students. Ruining our town.”
I
waited for Wendy to do the talking.
“Sir,
I’m so sorry,” she said with a laugh, leaning her head toward him. “We won’t
come back. I promise.”
He
marched away, indignant, while we dressed and walked down the hill.
Even
now, fifty years later, I can hear that musical voice of Wendy’s. Musical, even
though her family hadn’t much to sing about. They had been destroyed in the
McCarthy hearings. Her father lost his job as a Baltimore
judge and had no choice but to work mopping floors in a synagogue and churches
in Baltimore.
Now,
fifty years later, I receive emails asking me, “Is Wendy Davidson dead?”
I
had last spoken with her five years before. She had stayed in Vermont
but moved to the college town of Burlington.
Going to my desk in the living room, where I checked myself in the mirror – not
particularly liking what age had done to me, my round face was rounder and my
thick brown hair, which now hung lifeless as dead winter leaves, I colored
burgundy right upstairs in my bathroom. I reached into my desk drawer and pulled out
my green address book.
“Can
she be dead?” I kept thinking, as I opened the book with its soft green fabric
and found her phone number.
A
man answered. “Wendy doesn’t live here,” he said. “But you’re not the first
person to call this number.”
It
would have cost me money to find her phone number online, so I called the local
library, receiving an 802-area phone number. Clearing my throat, I dialed it
immediately.
That
awful robotic voice answered, telling me to leave my name and phone number.
But, then, a woman answered.
“Hello?”
she said.
“Wendy!
It’s Ruth, Ruth Deming.”
“Ruth!
It doesn’t sound like you,” she said.
“Really!
It is me, though.”
“You
don’t have that Ohio
twang anymore.”
Though
I said nothing, I felt sad about that. It was part of my identity. Although I’d
lived in many places – Ossining, New York; San Francisco; Houston and Austin,
Texas – I needed that twang as
proof of who I am.
I
told her about rumors of her death on Facebook. She was shocked, dismayed, I
could hear it in her voice. Perhaps I should have kept it to myself and just
pretended that I was calling to say hello.
Wendy,
whose birthday I always remembered, had turned 68 on May 29. I was younger by
seven months. She began to complain about her miserable life. “I don’t mean to
complain, but….”
Her
car was old and it cost too much to fix, so she got rid of it. She took the
senior bus everywhere - “Can you frigging believe it, Ruth? - she lived in an apartment for seniors –
“Can you frigging believe it, Ruth?” – she had no friends, she told me, and
stayed in her apartment for weeks at a time. “I’m isolating myself, Ruth, it’s
terrible!”
The
final straw was when she brought up Ellen Pansen. Ellen had been my roommate
but hadn’t liked me so she transferred rooms. One day she was found – hanging
from a rope in the shower. The Bible was turned to a page in Ecclesiastes on
the toilet tank.
I
moaned inside and changed the subject.
“Wendy,
why don’t you go for a walk?” I suggested.
No,
the neighborhood wasn’t nice enough.
“What do you see
out your window?” I asked.
“Trees,
just trees,” she said.
“Trees,”
I exclaimed. “Beautiful trees!”
How
we loved the trees on the Goddard campus. We all had our favorites. Autumn was
magnificent in Vermont, the fabled New England autumns where tourists arrive in sleek buses
for the golden views. And, now, as we spoke, it was autumn, sending glorious
overcoats of leaves onto the dying grass.
The
horrible words, “help-rejecting complainer,” came to my mind as Wendy continued
her litany of despair. Trained as a psychotherapist in my forties, these clever
words came from Irv Yalom’s classic text “Group Psychotherapy.”
Wendy
heard me putting away my dishes in my sunlit kitchen, where a cup of peppermint
tea was cooling on the table.
“What
are you making for dinner?” she asked me. I explained that I was putting away
the dishes – multi-tasking is second-nature to me – and told her I’d eat some
cabbage soup I made the day before.
“Oh,
I’m a horrible cook,” she said.
Desperate
to end the conversation on a positive note, I suggested perhaps she should get
a cat for companionship. I should’ve known. She was allergic to cats, so there
was no happy ending.
Only
for me, there was. The knowledge that I’d found Wendy Golden Davidson, that she
was alive, alive and living miserably in Burlington, Vermont.
The
next day I ordered a box of Thin Mints on Amazon.com to be delivered directly
to her apartment. Certainly, eating must be a way to cheer her up. I sure
wished I could fix her.
***
LETTER OF JULY 15, 2015
Ruth Z Deming
204 Cowbell Road
Willow Grove PA 19090
July 16, 2015
Wendy
Golden Davidson
214 North
Prospect
Apt. 203
Burlington VT 05401
Dear
Wendy—
Just in
from Goddard College….
Join
us for an Award Ceremony at the Fall 2015 Psychology & Counseling Program
Commencement to celebrate the accomplishments of our graduates and to recognize
the life and work of Jonathan Katz (BA RUP '71).
Katz
will give the commencement speech and receive the 2015 Honorary Doctorate of
Humane Letters from Goddard College President Robert Kenny at 2pm on Sunday,
September 6th in the Haybarn Theatre.
Can you
imagine! Our own Jonathan Katz will become an honorary Doctor! AND give a
commencement speech.
I think
we all give little speeches, don’t you, every day of our lives. When my mom
wakes up in her own bed, she says to herself, “I’m still alive.” She’ll be 93
in August. The eighth, to be exact, should we wish to send a card.
Today I
woke up in Scott’s bed. He’s my boyfriend of 9 years. “Is it that long?” he
asked me. Women remember these things. Scott was at work. He works in the dark
of the night fixing trains for the City of Philadelphia. I slept over b/c my
air-conditioning doesn’t work right. I watched a fantastic YouTube video of the
film My Cousin Rachel, by the same Daphne duMaurier who wrote Rebecca. This
film starred the young gorgeous curly-haired deep-throated Richard Burton who
was obsessed with Cousin Rachel, played by Olivia deHaviland, who was
part-evil! Are we all?
And all
dead now, sadly.
But not
the two of us. You have your Winooski River – or at least, Goddard does – and we of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
have our Pennypack Creek which dumps into the Delaware
River.
Look how
we kill the Injuns and keep the beautiful place names they invented. As Peter
Paul and Mary sang, “When will we ever learn?”
The
Twelfth of Never! Well, WGD, that’s it for now. Twould be nice to get a note
from you. That lovely penmanship I can still see in me mind’s eye.
Love
always,
***
Ruth Z Deming
204 Cowbell Road
Willow Grove PA 19090
July 16, 2015
Wendy
Golden Davidson
214 North
Prospect
Apt. 203
Burlington VT 05401
Dear
Wendy—
Here I am
sipping my one-dollar cup of McDonald’s black coffee at my upstairs computer.
“What size would you like,” asked the tall young man this morning. He told me
all sizes cost one dollar.
I got the
tallest cup, a lovely deep brown, with gold flecks. I love drinking coffee when
I write. Am working on a short story called “The Gatekeeper” about a 13-year-old
autistic girl who cannot speak. My bro had autism, dead at 29. We just lit Yahrzeit
candles for him. Or, should I say, thought about doing it but did not.
Enclosed
is a poem I wrote about you, plus an old photo when I had red hair. As we said
o’er the phone, you and I both stopped coloring our various heads of hair, mine
as thin as a skull cap.
Jonathan
Katz emailed me yesterday. He told me you were dying “and on a lighter note,”
he said, “What about those Mets?”
How did
he know? Did you call him? He invited me up for the commencement speech at
Goddard. At my age, 69, I can only drive around the block. Perhaps there will
be a miracle and I’ll wake up and be young and bold again, sit like a lady in
the audience at the Haybarn, see a few people we know – and wildly applaud, my
upper arms shaking like vanilla pudding.
Ding!
Ding! Ding! My library sent me an email that a good book awaits me at the desk.
Such nice people work there. Margie Peters, the director, fought cancer and she
won. Who cares if you’re in your late fifties and your boobs have been sliced
off like baloney meat?
Mine grow
huger all the time. I’ll send you a poem about that, if I may.
It’s in
the 90s today. I refuse to turn on my A/C since it’s too expensive. I sit a few
feet away from large fans, which blow what little hair I have and send cool
kisses to my legs residing under my blue dress – “Oh!” says Scott – “you’re
wearing one of your sexy dresses.”
Your
‘umble servant,
Ruth Z
Deming, MGPGP (master, group process and group psychotherapy)
215 659
2142
Here's the poem I mailed her
THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
Breasts
grow bigger with age
we agree,
one of many things
we talk
about at the kitchen
table
with the faux chicken liver
nearly
gone. No one can guess
that
cashews and green beans
account
for the taste. Mom,
nearing
ninety-three, is it? has
forced
her shutting-down
body to
make it. The woman
has
everything – family, friends,
Ron and
Hildegunde, servants
like
Ellen who do her bidding –
everything
but her legs which
used to gallop
across the tennis court.
We don’t
cry over the past. Miles
eyes
framed in black glasses and
Veronica
in a purple sundress will
travel to
her country of Columbia
over
Christmas. Her family hails
from a
modern city, too civilized,
she says,
for El Chapo to hide there.
He’s
running his drug empire from
the
hills.
Ah
mescaline! Mom’s antibiotics
made her
see patterns. Hands went
up around
the table over who used
it. There
wasn’t time to describe the
trip I
had in the rolling hills of Goddard
College,
the three of us walked into the
unlocked
library, with its red carpet. I
stole a
book, then mailed it back later
that
year.
Would it
be a lie – or my imagination –
if I told
you El Chapo Joaquin Guzman
has
tunneled his way into my house?
At sixty,
we are almost compatriots. He
sleeps on
the husband’s side of the bed
in his
black Hanes briefs, tapping me
when I
begin to snore. We love the
same TV
shows – Mad Men and X-Files.
I won’t
let him smoke in the house
so he
goes on the screened in back porch
and
lights up the night with his
Spanish
Galleon cigars. He has a
loving
heart and sends me to
the mall
to buy gifts for his
mother, a
few former lovers,
and tells
me: Someday, Amor Mio,
I will
buy you a ring.
He is not
to know, but I will turn
him in
before then, the everlovin’
Bastardo.
I will
miss him, certainly, the
sweat
from his body, those
little black
underpants, and the way
his gold
teeth shone in the dark.
***
I wrote this poem and mailed it to her
WENDY OF THE GREEN HILLS OF
VERMONT
Flowers
by wire on their way
A
selection of violets
which
will live long after you
my dying
friend from Goddard
College
in Vermont
The
trickle of blood
your own
Winooski River
went
unnoticed until
too late.
The cancer
has
spread through your
insides
like blue plum jam.
Who knew
your third floor
pad in
Burlington would be
your
final home. “I should have
stayed in
Maryland,” you sighed
over the
phone, as memories
of your
parents fill you with
longing,
longing now that the world
grows
small as a mattress
with a
morphine pump
on the
side.
You beat
me to age seventy
We were
risk-taking teenagers
when we
met, sun-bathing nude
in the
cow pasture, wishing our
great
unrequited loves could
ride over
the hill to caress us, Lenny for
you,
Frank for me.
I will
ride the wild stallion when
you’re
gone, galloping to the
high hill
on Terwood Road
to tell
you who came after Obama
and if
they’re advancing in
Alzheimer’
and dementia
Your
shoulder-length hair
is gray.
Like me, you stopped
coloring
it. A slow concession
to time.
I still remember your
articulate
sentences you spoke
at
Kilpatrick Dorm, while people
were
screwing in their rooms.
What must
that be like, I wondered.
Sip on
that licorice tea I sent you
it might
have healing properties
Who
decided to kill you off
Who
planted that curare flask
in your
womb that never bore
fruit?
As we
speak on the phone
you from
your bed
me on the
red couch
a
cardinal appears at your
window.
“He is there on
account
of me,” I say.
“For sure,”
you say in that
voice I
can summon at will.
The two
of us lying beneath
the stars
awaiting the blackness
that will
come when it will.
***
Some things I remember from speaking with her on the phone:
- Her incredulity that she had cancer.
- Numerous regrets - why hadn't she stayed in Maryland where she was born
- We reminisced about people we remembered at Goddard
- I told her to call me and I would write an obituary notice for her. This surprised her. Why? That I cared about her? That she thought she was important enough to be remembered?
- She was unduly modest. Or shall I say in psychiatric terms - she had terribly low self-esteem.
***
If any reader wishes to contribute to this eulogy of sorts, please email me at RuthDeming at Comcast.net.
I await your response or phone call - 215-659-2142.
No comments:
Post a Comment