by Diana Welch
And when I pulled my head back into the car, Dan looked at me and nodded. “That’s what I’m talking about,” he said.
DIANA
WHEN CAMP WYONEGONIC ended that August, I got on a bus to take me to the airport. As I waved to my favorite counselor, a gentle, hulking woman with facial hair, she pointed to her chest, drew a heart in the air with her forefingers, and pointed at me. I turned away from the window and cried right there in the bus, in front of campers. It had been a long time since I had felt loved back.
I don’t remember how I got home that year, but I know that I arrived alone. Our new nanny met me at the door—a girl from Illinois named Krista who had taken over for Rhonda during her maternity leave. “I’ve been asked to tell you that we’ve had a nice, quiet summer,” she said in her flat midwestern accent, “and that we’d like it to stay that way.” A white scrunchie held her frizzy blond hair in a ponytail on top of her head, and she was wearing white sweat socks. When I had first met her a couple months ago, she’d seemed friendly and smiling and funny. I had thought that we could be friends. But it was clear that, in my absence, she had chosen sides.
This was a new feeling—that there were sides. School started in a few weeks, and I planned on keeping a low profile for the remainder of the summer. Still, my mom was always on me about stuff. She thought I was lazy and always told me so. She wanted me to ride my bike more, so I would, in a circle on the driveway, around and around as she watched me from the kitchen window. I just wanted to go be alone in my room. Even though I had hated it at first, I spent all my time there, dancing in front of the mirror with my hairbrush microphone or reading a book on my bed.
I liked to read by the pool, too. It was beautiful, built in the style my mom called “au naturel.” The water looked black, and the diving board was a big gray stone. I got busted for being lazy there, too.
“Those are not the thighs of an eleven-year-old girl,” my mom had said to me that summer, shaking her head. I was startled. My whole life, people had complimented my long legs, calling me “string bean.” I hadn’t changed much, as far as I could tell. But the next thing I know, she’s got me doing laps. I don’t remember the negotiations. I reluctantly got up, tossed my hat and sunglasses on the grass behind me, and dove in, my blue and pink ruffled one-piece straining at the straps.
I remember clearly looking up from the water at the woman I was calling “mom.” She was wearing a white hat and black sunglasses, and her lumpy thighs came tumbling out of her black swimsuit, filling up the chair. Still swimming, I said to her as casually as I could: “You have big thighs.” I felt an urgent need to point out how ironic it was for her to make me swim laps because she thought I had fat thighs while her own fat thighs just lazed around in a lawn chair reading the paper.
She flipped down the corner of her New York Times and looked at me, hard. “It is one thing for a woman in her thirties to have larger thighs,” she said, her voice high as though she were singing a song. “It’s quite another for a little girl to …” I didn’t catch the rest. I just dove down into the soft dark water in front of me, my gliding arms a dappled green.
DAN
I WAS REALLY nervous about going to college, but walking around campus that first day with Liz got things off to a good start. All the guys were, like, “Dude, who’s that?” Just as it had at Fox Lane and Trinity Pawling, it worked in my favor at RIT to have a hot blond sister. And she was so nice, saying hello, smiling back at everybody. She stayed to help me unpack and set up my room. Sure, I missed Mom and Dad at times like these, but my sisters always tried to make up for the fact they were gone. They had my back.
The best thing about RIT was that it wasn’t far from Skidmore, where Lisa went to school. That first semester, I made friends with a few guys who had cars and got them to drive me there every weekend. I was making friends easily, happy to have my confidence back, but I was also broke. I had to figure out a way to make money fast. I didn’t want to sell drugs anymore, so I decided to make fake IDs.
I bought a huge piece of foam board and press-on letters from an art supply store and made a giant replica of a Tennessee driver’s license. It was the easiest one to copy—all straight lines, no overlapping images. I charged people thirty-five dollars to get their Polaroid taken in front of this oversized license, which I then laminated with two pieces of tape and created the shittiest fake ID ever. The powder from the Polaroid would unglue the laminate, and people would have to come back for another one, which meant repeat business.
That semester, I made IDs for everyone in my dorm, and word spread. Soon, I started getting invited to all these parties on campus, and before long I was asked to rush Theta Xi, this fraternity that had a reputation for being bullies and tough guys. They also had parties every night and free alcohol. I agreed to rush.
For the first week, I had to wear a jacket, tie, and pledge pin, which was easy. I’d done that every day at TP. For Hell Week, we had to drink copious amounts of alcohol every night—the idea was to build up your tolerance so you wouldn’t act like an idiot at parties. Usually, I was able to hold my own, but one night, we had to line up naked and pound drinks. Everyone, including me, threw up; there was literally puke splashing onto our bare feet. It was disgusting. Another night, we were all locked naked in a closet, packed like sardines. It was supposed to be a bonding experience. Also, there were ridiculous games where I had to hold a carrot in my ass cheeks and drop it in a cup. It was bizarre.
Midsemester, I moved out of my dorm room and into the fraternity house, where I had my own room and a waterbed. For a while, I visited Lisa every weekend, or she visited me. But soon, I started fooling around on her. When I told her, she was so cool about it. “It’s okay,” she said. “Just always be honest with me.”
So that winter was about getting laid. I was at every party, hooking up with as many girls as I could. Second semester, I was voted rush chairman, the youngest in the history of Theta Xi. I took the job seriously. I focused on making our parties better. My new rule was: Get all the girls inside no matter what. If they don’t have money, loan it to them. Under my reign, that spring was the largest rush class in twenty years.
Lisa and I broke up in April. The long-distance thing was too hard; I was fooling around on her a lot. I knew she wasn’t fooling around on me, because that wasn’t her style. I loved her to death, but there were too many opportunities for me, and I felt that I needed to experiment.
LIZ
I TURNED TWENTY-ONE in Edinburgh and celebrated at Kilimanjaro, an African club, with a few friends. I was active in the Anti-Apartheid Club and was, on that night, dancing late into the night with two members of the African National Congress. Both had left South Africa fearing for their lives, and despite their heartbreaking stories—of family members and friends being tortured or killed—they seemed so happy that evening dancing and singing and stomping to the undulating beats of Johnny Clegg and Miriam Makeba.
That was a highlight of an otherwise grim month. I couldn’t afford to go home for Christmas and wound up spending it with the Raynes in London. It was lovely of them to include me, but it only fueled the hollow feeling expanding inside me. Amanda sent me a card and inside was my favorite present: two photocopied notes Dad had sent Mom that Amanda had found while unpacking the dozens of boxes she schlepped to Virginia from Bedford.
The first note, dated December 28, 1966, read: “Chops, The principle underlying all art is of a purely religious nature. I love you, your art, your nature.” It was signed “Pops,” and I recognized the sharp-elbowed Ps. I missed his handwriting, his smirk, his pipe tobacco and Colgate toothpaste scent. I missed that I would never really know the man who could write such a thing.
The second note was typed and signed. It read:
Ink smudges on white—what does it mean,
putting black thoughts on paper that’s clean
with a man-made and broken writing machine.
And a God-made and muddled mind.
Days into days and weeks into weeks
And never a meaningful word do we speak
And my roof and my soul and my eyes how they leak.
And no white cane to show I am blind.
On Christmas Eve, I transcribed both notes into my journal and ended the entry, “And so I cried. Merry Christmas Mom and Dad. I miss you.”
I did miss them. And I missed my siblings, too, my friends, my boyfriend. Edinburgh in February was bleak. I woke up in the pitch-black darkness and stumbled to class in it too. Even the sun seemed powerless, barely able to turn the sky a dull gray by noon before giving in to a bitter cold and bruised blackness by 4 p.m. My art history class ended at 5 p.m., and I dreaded the walk back to my flat across Warrender Park, where there was no respite from whipping winds and horizontal sleet that stung any exposed skin like microscopic darts. It didn’t help that I was reading Sylvia Plath. The Poem “Daddy” particularly disturbed me. Edinburgh in February felt like a boot in the face.
I needed a change of scenery and decided to do a pilgrimage. I had always wanted to go to Ireland. The Welches come from Sligo, Aunt Gail had told me. William Butler Yeats, one of my favorite poets, was buried there as well. I decided to visit Yeats’s grave and look for Dad in the faces of the folks who peopled that ancient seaside town.
I arrived in Dublin on February 10. As soon as I stepped foot on Irish soil, I felt better. I belonged in this land of squinty-eyed smiles. The bus ride to Sligo was as stunning and moody as I had anticipated: lush dark-green fields popped against the pale gray skies and outlined liquid-silver lakes. The weather grew fiercer the closer I got to the coast. I spent my first night curled up in an armchair reading Sylvia Plath’s Journals in front of a white-hot fire. That night, as wind rattled the shutters and egg-size ice cubes pounded the exterior walls, I dreamt of Dad. He was not on a boat or driving the Mercedes. In this dream, he was sitting on the bus in front of me heading for Sligo. And he was dressed not in his pressed chinos and button-down shirt but in well-worn workman clothes. His face was dirty and unshaven, and the sparkle in his eyes was dulled by the shame of my having found him.
DAN
I HAD A recurring dream of Dad, too. In it, I saw myself sitting in a movie theater watching a film. The glow of the screen illuminated my face. Dad came in dressed in a tan suit and he had long white hair, but I knew it was him. He sat three rows behind me to my left. There was no one else in the theater. And even though I knew he was there, I never turned around.
I had the same dream twice—once when Mom was alive, and the second time, that winter, when I was a freshman in college. Those dreams made me miss him. And both times I thought, in my dream, how could he be alive and not helping us, his kids? Now, I think it was his way of checking in on us, making sure we were all right.
LIZ
IT WAS STILL raining the next day when I began my trek to visit Yeats’s grave. It was five miles outside of town, but I decided to walk and was drenched by the time I arrived. I’d only been to my Dad’s and Mom’s graves once each, for his and her burial. Yet there in Ireland, I felt as if I was visiting someone familiar. As I sat in front of the Yeats tombstone, that drum-tight pressure of longing eased up a bit.
I hitchhiked back to town and learned, from the guy who gave me a lift, that after twenty-seven years in prison, Nelson Mandela had been freed that day. The news catapulted any sadness from my body. Instead of heading back to the hostel, I went straight to a pub, ordered a pint of Guinness, and spent a festive evening celebrating the news with locals who seemed just as happy.
I returned to Edinburgh and received a five-page letter from Diana. Over the years, I always wrote her postcards and letters from wherever I traveled and rarely received anything in response. This letter more than made up for that. In purple ink, she wrote:
Liz—
Hi Honey! I got your postcard, it’s terrific! I hope you like these poems, I decided to send them to you so you could name them. Their for you. So keep ’em close babe!
The poems were on separate pieces of paper, written in the same purple pen. The letter continues:
When you write back, (which of course you will as soon as you get this letter!) you can tell me the titles. It’s for you to decide. Anyway, I got the idea from, well you know the one about wonder and all? Well I got that from science class. We’re studying chemistry. It’s HONKEY! (great word, eh? I made it up myself!). The one about nothing (don’t make that the name cause—) I got that one from a song by Edie Brickell, “Nothing”. Okay, you wanted gossip, so I’m going to give you some, first: “frog baby blown up by terrorists bombing lily pad cradle” pretty spectacular, huh? Well here’s the real stuff. My friend Alicia is going out with the most gorgeous guy who thinks she is a righteous babe. Hah! And also who I adore! I’m pretty bummed because he’s hooked on her. This letters taking me a couple of days to write because I have absolutely no time! I was invited to a party by Harry, who’s real nice and great looking and I’m going if I don’t have to babysit Margaret and William. I went out with Harry last year, but that romance lasted for about two months. Then I gave the word. Get ready. Dumped. Poor guy. Actually he did not mind. We both just wanted to be friends. God Liz, you’ve got to come visit me soon. I’ve got so much to tell you! I’m not the letter writing person. So I never really get to talk to you. I’ve changed a lot. Liz, maybe its because I’m growing up. That sounds sort of sad, doesn’t it? You and I have got to have a much closer relationship because I love you so much Liz. You are the one who took care of me when Mom was sick and all. You are the only one I really know. I you Liz. Don’t forget that. I know it sounds dumb but write to me about your problems. Your letters are always happy and I know that’s not all. It makes it fake. I am 12 and growing all the time. So I really will understand anything you want to talk about. I’m still your little sister but hey, everybody grows up. Do you think I’m being corny, cause if you do I’ll stop. Well I guess you must because I am being corny. And I’ve said all the important things that really matter. And oh, I’m babbling again!! AAAAAAHHHHH!!! Sorry, tension breaker! Had to be done. I have major writer’s cramp! I got my hair shaved off. I hate it. How’s that for a problem? Oh Lizzie baby, U & I have to write back and forth a lot more. I guess it is because I’ve grown up more and I want to be close to my big sister in Scotland who loves me. Well big sister in Scotland who loves me, your little sister in Bedford loves you 10 times more. So their. One more thing I forgot to tell you—I U & MISS U LOTS!!! Love and hugs, Diana.
PS—Amanda sent me that Felix clock that used to be in our kitchen!
PPS—I U 10 × + 5! Translated: I love you ten times plus five!
Of the two poems she sent, my favorite went like this:
Sad,
Worried,
Scared,
Nowhere to go,
Nowhere to hide,
Why should I stare at the clear blue sky?
Relieved,
Happy,
Safe,
Not lonely at all,
Friends at my side,
Anywhere to hide,
Why me?
Why me?
I wish for a happy ending.
Why me?
Why me?
Why should I weep?
Why should I cry?
Why do I stare at the clear blue sky?
I pinned that poem on my bulletin board, next to a photo of Diana when she was a little girl, maybe four. In that photo, she is wearing purple corduroys and her pink glasses that magnify her crossed eyes. Her hair is a wild, tangled mane.
On the other side of the photo, I pinned the second poem:
In the stillness
Nothing comes.
Waking me
Shaking me
Telling me to follow.
I search through the hallways
Sleeping dreams awake
The stillness comes alive
Silent games partake
As nothing stands by.
In
the morning,
The sun comes up
Something there at last.
DIANA
MY MOM TOLD me that I would be going to boarding school next year, for seventh grade. I’d miss “B” and my other friends at Rippowam, but I knew I had no say in the matter. It was boarding school. Whatever. I liked summer camp.
That fall, we went to visit St. Anne’s–Belfield in Charlottesville, Virginia. The school was big and white, perched on a hill overlooking a parking lot filled with new BMWs and shiny pickup trucks. The admissions counselor was nice, and the interview seemed to go well. My mom talked about my potential and how she and my teachers thought I wasn’t living up to it. Then we all shook hands. It all seemed promising.
“So, what did you think?” my mom asked casually as she backed the rental car out of its parking spot. I remember that I was in the backseat, looking out the window, but I don’t remember what I said. We were off-campus when she spoke next. “Your sister lives in Virginia,” she said and caught my eyes with hers in the rearview mirror. I looked at her briefly before quickly turning away. If this was some sort of test, I didn’t know the right response. So I said nothing and stared out the window. Then she said something about visiting Amanda for spring break, and would I like that?
Amanda. My sister. In the five years since I had seen her, the only things I’d heard about her was that she was a drug addict who lived with this guy on a farm and that they had no electricity or hot water. I heard her house was a dive.
Visiting a drug addict in a dive sounded scary. And Amanda could be scary. I remembered the time she had yelled at me in front of all her friends at my favorite restaurant in Mount Kisco, the Pizza & Brew. Amanda was pouring soda out of a plastic pitcher and talking. I wanted some and kept telling her so, until she pointed at the table in front of me and yelled, “It’s right there! Jesus!” And when I looked down, I saw that she had already poured me some. It was embarrassing.
