by Lewis Shiner
Madelyn didn’t know where to begin. Hysterics seemed a poor choice. There was only one question: What about us? To be reduced to asking it meant she had already lost. She didn’t intend petulance either, though a trace still showed when she said, “I thought you hated San Francisco.”
“I didn’t love it. The thing is, it’s where this kind of music is happening.”
“When do you leave?”
Cole hesitated too long for plausible denial. “Lenny wants to go as soon as classes are over.”
Well, there it was. Quite nearly the worst possible answer. All that Madelyn saw to salvage was the remnants of her dignity, which meant not crying in front of Cole.
“Look,” he said, “as soon as we get out there and get settled, you can come out.”
“What, for my summer vacation?”
“No, come out to stay. Powell knows somebody at San Francisco State, he says the residence requirement is only a year. Then you’d be eligible for in-state tuition. See, I asked. I know what college means to you.”
“San Francisco State?”
“Okay, Stanford. I know it’s expensive, but with your sats and grades, you could get a full ride.”
She scooted off the foot of the bed, put her shoes on, and gathered up her books and last night’s clothes.
“Madelyn?”
“I need some time to think about this,” she said, quite calmly, she thought. “I’ll walk home, it’ll help clear my head.” She managed to hug and kiss him. “We’ll talk,” she said, and escaped out the door.
She passed Denise on the stairs. “Madelyn?” Denise said.
What must I look like? Madelyn thought. “Later,” she said.
She rushed out the front door, ran as far as Enfield Road, and then caught her breath.
She was in shock, as surely as if she’d looked down to see one of her arms lying severed on the ground. The thought of staying on in Austin without Cole was as utterly unacceptable as the idea of giving up everything she’d worked for and moving to California, where she was not even sure she was wanted.
She had walked this route dozens of times, feeling like royalty as she descended from her castle on the hill and looked upon her kingdom spread before her, an orderly world where she knew exactly what was expected of her and knew that she was more than equal to the task. That now seemed like a child’s simplistic universe of Santa Claus and Easter Bunnies, a sand castle eaten away by the rising tide of the grown-up world, where good choices didn’t exist, and certainly not easy ones, where every road dead-ended in loneliness and futility.
Once she was in her dorm room, she kicked off her shoes and threw her sweater at her desk chair. She pulled the covers over her head to shut out all thoughts and feelings, willing time to pass. When the phone rang, she barely heard it, and later, when Denise came in and whispered her name, she didn’t respond.
Eventually she had to use the bathroom, and when she came back to the room, Denise wormed the story out of her.
“The bastard,” Denise said.
“He’s not a bastard,” Madelyn said. “This is his dream. What if he stayed in Austin and he never got a chance like this again?”
“Does he love you? No, don’t answer that, I’ve seen him with you. So if he loves you and you love him and he has to go to San Francisco, what does that leave?”
“Giving up my dream.”
“Which is what, exactly?”
“I want a life where I go to dinner parties and drink pinot grigio while a Brahms string quartet plays in the background and people argue about Matisse and Virginia Woolf.”
“Better you than me!” Denise laughed.
“Not a roach infested apartment with people smoking dope and drinking Pagan Pink Ripple and mumbling incoherently about how stoned they are.”
“And how was Cole ever supposed to fit into your dream?”
“He’s in boots and a corduroy jacket, and he compares Dylan with Emily Dickinson and Wallace Stevens and every woman there and half the men are sick with envy.” She started to cry. “I’m an idiot, right?”
“Idiot is a little strong. Naïve is certainly not out of the question. You said he brought up Stanford.”
“I’m months too late to apply.”
“Start next spring.”
“What if I didn’t get in? What if I didn’t get a scholarship?” She was suspended halfway between hysteria and despair. “What would my daddy say about any of these harebrained ideas?”
“If Cole drops out…” Denise began, then didn’t want to finish.
“What?”
“He’ll lose his student deferment.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
They sat in silence. Eventually Madelyn picked up a page of Denise’s Russian homework and stared at it without seeing it. “How am I supposed to go to Russian class on Monday?”
“Don’t. I’ll turn in your homework, you can copy my notes.”
The phone rang.
“It’s him,” Madelyn said.
Denise, with a sangfroid that moved Madelyn to both envy and discomfort, cheerfully told Cole that Madelyn wasn’t there, that she hadn’t seen her, and yes, she would tell her to call.
“Now what?”
“Finish your homework. I’ll fetch us some burgers.”
*
Madelyn wandered through her Monday classes like a mental patient, unable to concentrate, constantly looking behind her. That night Denise reported that Cole, visibly distraught, had been waiting outside class. “I told him you had strep throat and couldn’t talk.”
“Did he believe you?”
“Why, was he supposed to?”
“I should call him.”
“He is currently six blocks away. He wants to be two thousand miles away? Let him stew for a while.”
When the phone rang that night, Denise didn’t pick up. “What if it’s Joe?” Madelyn asked.
She laughed raucously. “He can stew too.”
*
Madelyn wasn’t completely surprised when she saw Cole sitting on the grass outside Batts Hall. He knew her schedule as well as she did. Panic dried her mouth and made her heart race. His shoulders drooped and his eyes were sunken, and there was a split second before he saw her when she considered running away. Then it was too late and he was loping up to her and taking her by the shoulders.
“So you’re not sick,” he said. “I’ve been so worried.”
She tried to imagine she was someone else. Denise, she decided, would give Cole a quick kiss, on the lips, not negotiable into anything more highly charged. That was what she did. “‘The report of my illness was an exaggeration,’ to misquote Mr. Clemens. I’m fine.”
“You’re avoiding me.”
“I told you. I need time to think.”
Her casualness confounded him. “I miss you.”
She couldn’t resist. “Just think how much you’ll miss me when you’re in San Francisco.” She smiled. “I’m going to be late for class.” With his stunned, tragic look burned into her memory, she stepped around him and hurried into the building where, for the next hour and a half, she replayed the scene over and over, oblivious to the Sociology class around her.
*
Madelyn cut Russian again on Wednesday. She was sleeping poorly and looking as haggard as Cole.
“How long am I supposed to keep this up?” she asked Denise.
“Have you decided what to do?”
“How can I decide?”
“Then you’ve got a ways to go.”
*
When Madelyn came out of Sociology on Thursday, Cole was waiting for her. “Cole,” she said, “I told you I—”
He didn’t say anything. He slid one arm around her back and had her off balance before she knew what was happening. She threw one arm instinctively around his neck and her books scattered on the path. Cole scooped her up and began to carry her toward Littlefield Fountain.
“Cole, my books.”
He didn’t answer. He had a lo
ok of grim determination that frightened her.
“Cole, if you don’t go back for my books, I’ll scream.”
He stopped. “And if I do go back you won’t?”
“No,” she whispered. It had been days since he’d held her and she was overwhelmed by his heat and smell and lean muscularity.
Clumsily, he set her on her feet next to her spilled books, and as soon as she had them in her arms, she let him pick her up again. She had been so confused, so torn, and what a relief it was to surrender to someone else’s clear and simple vision. His hearse was parked on the street near the fountain and he set her down on the hot vinyl seat cover. They drove to the Castle in silence. Cole gently pulled her out of the car by her wrists and then hesitated, as if trying to decide whether to attempt to carry her up the stairs. “I’ll come quietly,” she said, “but I have to pee.”
What a scene from a tawdry romance novel it would have been, she thought, if she hadn’t spoiled it with dropped books and a full bladder.
In the bedroom he was more passionate than she’d ever seen him, telling her over and over that he loved her and couldn’t live without her.
Afterward they lay side by side, Madelyn stroking his back with the tips of her fingers.
“I meant what I said,” he told her. “I don’t want to live without you. If that means staying in Austin, then that’s what I’ll do. I want to be with you. Forever.”
“Oh, Cole, you can’t stay here. We both know that.”
“I won’t leave unless you come with me.”
She looked into his eyes, dark blue-green and sunken deep into his skull, bloodshot and leaking hot tears, and a reckless calm came over her, a certainty that defied reason and pushed aside the unfairness of it all. “Then we’ll go together,” she said.
He closed his eyes and kissed her neck and face. “Really?” he said. “Do you swear?”
“I swear.”
Abruptly he rolled away and opened the drawer of his nightstand. He took out a small red velvet box and held it out to her. “It’s just from the Co-op,” he said, “but it’s real gold. Denise told me the size, so it should fit.”
She flipped back the top of the box to reveal a thin gold wedding band.
“Cole, this is a wedding ring.”
“I want you to marry me, right here, right now. Texas is a common-law state. If we say we’re married, then legally we are.”
She blurted out the first thing that came into her head. “I’m naked.”
“All the better. Try it on.”
Slowly she reached for the ring, waiting for her better judgment to kick in. Her thoughts refused to cohere. She took the ring out of the box and slid it onto her left hand. It did indeed fit, though she couldn’t escape the sense that it was looser than it actually was, that it could too easily come off.
Cole held both her hands with both of his. “I now pronounce us man and wife,” he said. “I may kiss the bride.”
The kiss was so soft, so warm, that Madelyn felt herself melting, as if she herself were molten gold, like in Cole’s song, a pool of hot liquid flowing over his skin, her form becoming his, shining, beautiful, inseparable.
*
Cole drove to Dallas the weekend after their decision so that he could tell Montoya the news in person. He brought Madelyn along to break it to her father. They were mostly quiet for the three and a half hours, listening to “It’s a Beautiful Morning” by the Rascals and “Dock of the Bay” by Otis, “Dance to the Music” by Sly and “Lady Madonna” by The Beatles. Cole thought about everything he was leaving behind.
He dropped Madelyn off and arrived at the Montoyas’ in time for dinner. Jimmy was at a friend’s house, leaving only Al and Linda, though as always there was plenty of food. Cole tried to help with the dishes afterward, wanting to put off the discussion as long as possible. Frederica scolded him and sent him back to the table.
Linda had quietly disappeared. Cole sat at a right angle to Montoya, beers in their hands. “There’s been,” Cole said, “a change in plans.”
He told Montoya everything. The band, the move to San Francisco, the common-law marriage. Through it all Montoya stared at his hands clasped around the Bohemia bottle, nodding from time to time. His high seriousness made it easy for Cole to keep talking.
“My only regret,” Cole finished, “is that I feel like I’m betraying your trust in me. You invested in my education with the understanding that I would follow through with it. And I’m letting you down.”
Montoya was quiet for a long time before he said, “You’re not letting me down. My hope for you has always been that you would turn out to be a good man, and the fact that you’re here, telling me this face to face, says a lot for that hope.” Finally he looked Cole in the eye. “But I have to ask some questions, because I care about you.”
“Sure. I mean, I want you to care.”
“Going to San Francisco, that couldn’t wait until you finish school? Alex said the band is doing really well in Austin.”
“Something’s happening,” Cole said. “The idea of what music can do, of what it means, it’s changing so fast. Like, every day almost. In three years, the world is going to be so completely different… this is my chance, right now. I have to take it.”
“What about the draft?”
“It’s a gamble,” Cole said. “I’m hoping my finger will get me out if I get called up.”
“And Madelyn? She’s okay with this?”
“It’s not ideal. But we love each other.”
“Forgive my asking this, but she’s not…”
“Pregnant? No, we’re careful.”
“And Alex didn’t want to be part of this?”
“No. It’s weird. The band was his idea in the first place. Now he seems to have lost interest. Outgrown it or something.”
“I almost wish he hadn’t. I worry about him.”
“You shouldn’t,” Cole said, not entirely believing it. “He’s finding his own way. That’s what college is for, right? He might even find his way back to the family business.”
“God willing. One last question. Are you going to see your parents before you go?”
Cole shook his head.
“Not even to let them meet their daughter-in-law? If you could find a way…”
“Sorry,” Cole said. “It wasn’t me who closed that door. I won’t go back in that house.” He still talked to his mother every couple of weeks on the phone. He hadn’t managed to tell her about the marriage yet.
“Okay.” Montoya drained his beer and stood up. “It’s late. Thank you for the respect you showed me tonight.”
“Thank you for understanding. And for… everything.”
Cole hugged him and found it hard to let go.
“You’ll always have a home here, my son. Your room is ready for you upstairs.”
*
Madelyn loved San Francisco from the moment she first saw it. That moment came as Interstate 80, rolling into Berkeley from the north, intersected the shores of the Bay. Misty and mysterious, a sprawl of white buildings climbed back into green hills, triangulated by the Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate, and the deep blue water of the Bay itself. It was the most beautiful city she’d ever seen. The late afternoon light had a unique muted quality, a softness, as if the buildings themselves glowed with the pleasure of the day.
The journey that had started in Cole’s bed with a wedding ring, that had taken weeks of preparation and days of driving and covered two thousand miles, had reached its conclusion here in the second week of June. She felt like Percival outside Camelot, Pip come to London, Katherine Hepburn arriving in New York. It was the kind of city where destinies were forged.
The hardest part had been her father. She knew the wedding ring would give it away, yet she couldn’t bring herself to take it off. Her father noticed it immediately and said, “You’re not pregnant, are you?”
When she’d imagined the conversation, she was alone with her father in his study. The reality was
all four of them in the den, her father wounded and distant, her mother in shocked silence, Julia, unexpectedly, in tears.
“Julia,” her father said at last, “what in God’s name is the matter with you?”
“She’s going to be so happy,” Julia said. “I wish it was me.” She ran from the room.
Julia’s words touched her father in a way that Madelyn’s had failed to. “She’s right, isn’t she?” he said. “This is your happiness we’re talking about.”
“Yes, Daddy. I love him.”
He sighed. “I know the kind of person you are. That means I have to trust you. Can you promise me one thing? Promise me you’ll finish out the semester, and get decent marks, so if you do go back you’ll have that much done.”
“When I go back. And I’m going to make straight As this year, I promise.” Her heart was full of love for him in that moment, and love for Cole, with enough left over to even feel sorry for Julia.
She delivered her As, and Cole, thanks to her nagging, finished with a B average. It didn’t stop her nightmares of driving off a cliff or being pulled out to sea in an undertow; it did, however, reassure her that her will power was still intact.
They drove two cars to San Francisco; Madelyn rode with Cole in the hearse and Lenny followed in his pale blue Mustang, taking turns at the wheel with Tommy, the drummer. Their bass player had elected to stay in Austin, a situation that the others shrugged off. “There’s a million bass players in San Francisco,” he said. “We’ll get one in the first week.”
Of all the things she feared, Cole’s optimism was high on the list. That was her role, and too much confidence looked unconvincing on him. He was equally sure that they could find a cheap place to stay in the Haight, and be able to practice there, and that they would be playing at the Fillmore within a few weeks.
