I'll Be Gone in the Dark(13)
Afterward the seven of us went to an early dinner at the Sea Watch, a nearby restaurant overlooking the ocean. We’re laughers, my family, and we told stories about my mother that made us laugh. Seven people laughing loudly create a scene.
An older woman with a bemused smile came up to our table as she was leaving. “What’s the secret?” she asked.
“I’m sorry?” my brother, Bob, said.
“To such a happy family?”
We sat agape for a few moments. No one had the heart to say
what we were all thinking: we’ve just been cleaning out our dead mother’s belongings. We dissolved into more shrieking laughter.
My mother was, and will always be, the most complicated relationship of my life.
Writing this now, I’m struck by two incompatible truths that pain me. No one would have taken more joy from this book than my mother. And I probably wouldn’t have felt the freedom to write it until she was gone.
*
I WALKED THE SAME HALF MILE TO ST. EDMUND’S EVERY DAY, A LEFT on Randolph, a right on Euclid, a left on Pleasant. The girls wore gray plaid jumpers and white shirts; the boys, a mustard-colored collared shirt and slacks. Ms. Ray, my first-grade teacher, had an hourglass figure and a thick mane of caramel-colored hair, and she was always upbeat. It was Suzanne Somers herding a bunch of six-year-olds. Even so, she’s not my most vivid memory of St. Edmund’s. Nor, curiously enough, is any Catholic teaching or time spent in church, though I know there were a lot of both. No, St. Edmund’s will always be welded in my mind with one image, that of a quiet, well-behaved boy with sandy brown hair and ears that stuck out a little: Danny Olis.
My schooltime crushes ranged wildly in physical and personality type, but I can say with confidence that they all shared one thing—they sat in front of me in class. Other people are able to develop feelings for people sitting next to them or behind them, but not me. That requires connecting with someone too directly, sometimes even craning your neck to make full eye contact. Too real. I loved nothing more than the back of a boy’s head. I could project endlessly on the blank slate of a kid’s slouched back. He could be sitting there with his mouth half-open or picking his nose, and I’d never know.
For a dreamy projectionist like me, Danny Olis was perfect. I don’t recall thinking he was unhappy, but I also can’t picture his smile. He was self-possessed for a little kid, and slightly solemn, as if he knew something the rest of us gap-toothed fairy-tale believers would eventually find out. He was the Sam Shepard of our first-grade class. I’d been gifted with a stuffed Curious George when I was born, and something about Danny’s round, elfin face and big ears reminded me of my George doll. I fell asleep clutching him to my cheek every night. My love for Danny was big news in our house. Sifting through my old stuff during a move once, I came across a card Beanie had written me during her freshmen year at the University of Iowa. “Dear Mish, I miss you. How’s Danny Olis?”
I switched to the local public school, William Beye Elementary, for fourth grade. My best friends, the Van sisters, who’d saved me from loneliness by moving in across the street, went there. I wanted to be with them. I wanted to wear whatever I liked. After a while, I mostly forgot about Danny Olis. My Curious George disappeared, along with my other childhood things.
One night in my junior year of high school, a friend was helping me prepare for a big party I was throwing while my parents were out of town. She’d been hanging out the last few months with some boys from Fenwick, the local all-boys Catholic high school, and asked if a few of them could come to the party. Sure, I said. Actually, she told me tentatively, she was sort of dating one of them.
“Just kind of,” she said.
“That’s great,” I said. “What’s his name?”
“Danny Olis.”
My eyes widened and I half guffawed, half shrieked. I steadied myself and took a breath, the way you do when you’re about to share a big secret.
“You’re not going to believe this,” I said, “but I had the biggest crush on Danny Olis in grade school.”
My friend nodded.
“It started in music class because the teacher made you hold hands,” she said. My confused expression prompted her to continue.
“He told me,” she said.
I recalled nothing about holding hands and music class. And he knew? In my memory I was the quiet girl who sat in the back, faithfully but discreetly observing every swivel and dip of his head. Now it seemed my fixation had been about as subtle as a telenovela. I was mortified.
“Well, he’s very mysterious,” I told her, a little irritated.
She shrugged. “Not to me,” she said.
That night teenagers with Solo cups spilled onto my lawn and into the street. I drank too much gin and ducked and weaved through the throngs of unfamiliar people in my house. Boys I’d dated were there, and boys I would date. Someone played “Suspicious Minds” by the Fine Young Cannibals on repeat.
All night I was acutely aware of a quiet, sandy-haired boy standing in the corner of the kitchen near the refrigerator. His hair now covered his ears. His face had lost its roundness and was more drawn, but through quick glimpses I could see the steady, cryptic expression remained. All night I avoided him. I never looked him in the eye. Despite the gin, I was still the girl in the back of the classroom, watchful, never watched.