Back to Jerusalem

by Jan Surasky

  “This way we won’t have to listen to old Richard’s speech.”

  The drive back to Geneva went quickly, the neon lights of the few bars on Route 20 still open heralding the city, now mostly dark. Bud stayed as sober as he could, the strong, black coffee of a diner which opened at five bringing him back to reality. They made it back to Penn Yan and the marina at six.

  As they sat on the bow of the Andersons’ thirty-two-foot boat, Bud put his arm around her. “Jenny, I’d like to ask you a question. I know we’re going to be separated soon. But, I’d like you to be my girl.”

  “Bud, we’ve hardly dated.”

  “I know my own mind. And, I don’t want to lose you.”

  “Yes. I think I’d like that.”

  “Good. That’s settled. We can visit, and I know you’ll be back here almost every weekend.

  “Can we seal that with a kiss?” Without waiting for an answer, he took her in his arms. The warmth of his kiss, the scent of his after-shave, brought back the sensations of the earlier evening. Jenny scarcely noticed the sunrise which they had come to watch.

  Chapter Ten

  Graduation was finally here. The years of preparation seemed to have flown by. Jenny primped as she looked into the full-length mirror which hung on the back of her parents’ bedroom closet, adjusting her cap with the tassel to the left, fixing the nearly-disposable white gown that had come boxed especially for her. She patted the pocket to make sure the short speech she was to give in acceptance of her art award was still there.

  Mother was rushing them, worried that the seats among the elite would all be taken. “Hurry, Jenny, we’ll be late and we’ll have to sit with the Walkers or the Kendals. Now, finish up and come down here.”

  Jenny walked the stairs with a sigh, realizing this was the last time she would tread the winding, creaking staircase as a high school student. As she reached the landing, Mother fussed. “Jenny, I wish you had done this earlier. That gown could use another pressing. But, Father wants some pictures before we leave. Let’s hurry.”

  As they all three stared into the camera, the sun full behind it, the camera set up on a tripod in the front yard with the timer set, with Mother urging them to all say “cheese,” Jenny thought of Jake. It’s true it was a day of rest for the Martins, but Jake would be sure to notice the stream of cars heading toward the school, the extra relatives chattering noisily through the open windows in their Sunday best scrunched together in all the back seats. She could see Anne and Sarah quietly sitting, or helping their mother with the midday meal, the little ones playing in the background.

  “Time to go.” Mother cut into her reverie with a snap-to attitude and orders to Father to pack up the camera and haul it along in the old Chevy which passed as the family car. Jenny piled in the back.

  “Now, Jenny, don’t forget to stand up straight and thank Mr. Richards when he hands you your diploma. Father wants to get a good shot.

  “Look at those Walkers, all piled into that jalopy of a pick-up. You’d think they’d have a little more sense than to keep adding to that brood when they can hardly feed what they’ve got.”

  Jenny tried to ignore the Walkers as Father passed the old Ford truck she had often seen up on blocks in front of their trailer. The parents sat in the cab, while the rest of the Walkers sat along an old board set up to resemble a seat. They all waved as Father gunned the motor. Jenny couldn’t help returning the sign with a smile.

  “Just stare straight ahead and they will ignore you.”

  “Mattie, you can’t be unfriendly. They’re honest folk.”

  “Watch the road, Lyman. They’re white trash. Mary Walker should have gotten a job a long time ago instead of staying home and chasing after a bunch of dirt-poor brats. It’s true she takes in washing, but she could have been cleaning houses and making a few dollars more. There’s plenty of people like the Andersons who can use good help.”

  As they arrived at the school, the parking lot was filling fast, cars coming in from all over, many of them with out-of-state plates. Father found a place in the back, off the asphalt and into the field behind. Jenny walked carefully, avoiding the dirt potholes to keep clean her new white pumps. Her dress, a pink cotton, lay carefully under her open gown, the heat wrinkling slightly the careful press she had given it.

  Aunt Gert was already there, waiting in the hall outside the auditorium. “Jenny,” she cried, as she hugged her niece, “I’m so proud of you.”

  “Oh Gert, let’s not be so demonstrative.”

  “Aren’t you proud, too, Mattie? I know you are. Hello, Lyman. How’s my favorite brother-in-law?”

  “How do, Gert. Long time no see. Don’t be a stranger. And, let me know if Charlie Potter needs help with the harvest.”

  “I will, Lyman. He does pretty well with his brother Alfred. They got the planting done pretty much with that old tractor they keep in the barn.”

  “Let’s go in. Hurry Lyman. Otherwise we’ll have to sit in those old folding chairs along the side.”

  Jenny left to sit in the area roped off especially for the graduates, finding a seat near both Caroline and Dotty. Mother sheparded Father and Aunt Gert to three seats along the aisle, Father sitting on the end so he could snap the appropriate photos. The Walkers sat nearby. Aunt Gert smiled at Mrs. Walker and waved to the children. Mother, looking annoyed, checked to see if Mary Lou Anderson had noticed.

  The chatter was loud among the graduates. Bud sneaked over to give Jenny a kiss on the cheek. Jenny talked to Caroline, who was full of excitement and talk about the family reunion and graduation party in her honor taking place in her family’s backyard. The tent was already set up and her mother and aunts had spent weeks freezing sandwiches and cookies, pies and cakes. Dotty talked of nothing but Jason, and Katt Johnson from Westchester County here to visit her cousin and get in some back woods graduation fun as her guest.

  Mr. Richards walked on stage, quieting the chatter. As he stood by the microphone, he surveyed his twenty-fourth graduating class. “Good afternoon and welcome. We are here to honor the sixty-first graduating class of the Penn Yan Dundee Central School District. Many of you have had parents graduate from our district, and some of you even grandparents.

  “I will try to keep my remarks short. It is a hot afternoon, and I know most of you are looking forward to celebrations.

  “I would like to say to the graduates that this is not the end of a long journey, but the beginning. Or, at least a threshold of great opportunity. An opportunity to educate yourself further, even further than we have educated you here. An opportunity in what should be a life-long learning process. A chance to learn and give back. A chance to appreciate what your parents and teachers have given you. A chance to contribute to the world, to leave your mark upon it, to leave it a better place than you have found it, to take the good in it you have seen and propel it forward. May you all do so each in your own way.

  “Now, the special awards.

  “Leland Anderson, Jr., Athlete of the Year.

  “Caroline Mackey, first prize, Westinghouse National Science Competition for high school seniors.

  “Jennifer Thompson, Tewksbury Art Award, given only in years to a senior deemed deserving by the faculty.”

  Jenny shared her classmates’ accomplishments as the list continued, each student standing as their name was called.

  Then, the diploma ceremony. “Graduates, please form a line to the left. As your name is called, please rise to the top step.

  “Jennifer Ruth Thompson.” The formality gave Jenny a special thrill, and a pride she hadn’t felt before. She smiled as Father beamed and snapped pictures.

  As the auditorium emptied, the graduates beaming as they held their new diplomas, everyone congratulating everyone else, Jenny returned to her family. Aunt Gert gave her a special hug.

  On the way to the car, Bud ran over for a last-minute hug. Mother’s face nearly burst with pride.

  As they reached the old farmhouse, Mother and Aunt Gert fil
ed into the kitchen, their voices filling the air with reminiscences of their own graduations and recipes for sandwiches and cakes and pies and cookies for next week’s family reunion and graduation party they had planned for months to hold out on the front lawn. Jenny slipped upstairs to change.

  As she stored her gown and threw on an old pair of jeans, she suddenly felt an urge for the comfort of Jake. She slipped out to the barn and climbed the ladder to the hayloft. As she climbed, she noticed a package, brightly wrapped, sticking out from under the stray stalks of hay escaped from the last storage of autumn bales.

  She pulled the card from the brightly colored wrap.

  “Dear Jenny,

  I would have liked to share your joy today, but I knew I couldn’t. I would like to be friends forever. I have gotten you a book of poetry by William Blake. He was an artist like you and I thought you would like his work. He wrote a poem about Jerusalem. It’s about England, where he lived, but I thought it might remind you of our Jerusalem. I hope you will read these poems when times are tough and when you need some time away from those fast college kids. I will be preparing to take my exams soon and will attend Hobart orientation in a month. I hope you will always remember our times together. I know I always will.

  Jake

  As she unwrapped the package, she noticed the bookmark, a plastic with the four leaf clover they had found together when Jake had first moved in, embedded between its two pieces. She opened the book to the page it marked. The title, Auguries of Innocence, was surrounded by the simple and airy faeries and angels of Blake’s engravings. She read the first two lines.

  To see a World in a Grain of Sand

  And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

  She turned to climb down the rickety ladder to the barn floor. Mother was making a special pot roast, and Aunt Gert had brought a four-layer cake with raspberry filling and a French icing she had made specially at Brandinis in Geneva.

  Chapter Eleven

  Jenny looked round her dorm room for her steno book. It was probably under her paint brushes or her oil rags. She finally found it under the scattered pile of clothes where she had left it two days ago. She gathered a few pencils, sharpened them to razor sharp quality, and took off for the class she liked the least.

  Miss Ransom the instructor was a middle-aged type with light brown mousy hair cut in a page boy and bangs who insisted on being called Miss when almost everyone had adjusted to Ms. long ago, and who only wore tweed suits or starched white blouses with proper skirts. But, Miss Ransom was a whiz at shorthand, and it was rumored that she had worked as a high-priced steno and private secretary for some of the best ad agencies and law firms in New York before she was called home to care for her ill widowed mother.

  Jenny left a note for her roommate Amanda, nicknamed “Sparky” for her ability to fix car motors in a flash, as well as vacuums, sewing machines, and sometimes even boom boxes, for a date for dinner and maybe a walk along the waterfront after their trip to the dining center. Amanda, from Westchester County, liked Jenny to show her the secrets of New York’s southern tier, and Jenny enjoyed doing it when they had time.

  Jenny walked across the campus, picking up her steps so she wouldn’t be late for the one o’clock class, slipping into a seat in the second row when she arrived. Miss Ransom, busy shuffling papers and getting last week’s tests together, called for order.

  “Order is the most important thing you’ll need. A clean desk, carefully organized files.

  “Now, before I hand out the tests, which most of you failed, I am going to dictate a paragraph. Listen carefully. Listening is more important than handwriting. You can always correct your notes, but you won’t get a second chance at listening to a letter.”

  Jenny tried to listen, her pencil flying across her steno book with shorthand symbols, but her mind was on her next class, the one she liked the best, Mr. Sigolowski’s mixed media. The young mustachioed professor, on leave from a failed stint to become a great artist in New York, always tried to make the class fun and succeeded. Nevertheless, her hand went up before the other girls. Miss Ransom began to collect the papers.

  The rest of the class was a blur, Miss Ransom delivering tirades on neat desks, secretarial proprieties, and the history of shorthand. To Miss Ransom, shorthand had a noble background, beginning with the Roman orator Cicero’s secretary who invented the first known shorthand. To Jenny, the symbols made good fodder for graffiti on Roman stone walls by bored and angry students.

  As the class ended, Miss Ransom called out her name. Jenny came up to the front instead of filing out with the other students who promptly cleared the room at the end of every class.

  “Jennifer, I know you don’t like shorthand, but it may come in handy for you someday, putting you into a corporation where you have an insider’s view of the greatest opportunities that exist.”

  “I know, Miss Ransom. But, I’m here only to please my parents. And, that was a condition for college.”

  “You have an aptitude for the subject, particularly because you have the artistic ability to form the symbols both quickly and quite beautifully. It would help if you would set a better example for the other girls.”

  “I’ll try, Miss Ransom.”

  “See you on Tuesday.”

  Jenny hiked across the campus to Roberts Hall, home of art and drama. Mr. Sigolowski, usually late, was in the midst of setting up a long, huge canvas.

  “We’re going to do a class project. We will be in competition with the Wednesday class. The best canvas will be sent to the Elmira Memorial Gallery for a month long exhibit. This will be your first juried show. Good luck.”

  As the students grappled with the heavier materials set out, Jenny decided on lengths of rope and beautiful shards of colored cut glass, set out to reflect the light pouring in from the large, open windows. She wondered what Chaucer would have thought of the random piles.

  Vivian Stanton, known to all as “Viv” and straight from Manhattan, placed the first piece, a garbage can cover, off to the right, and a little above the center. After that, the buzz of excited chatter or the silence of concentrated thought filled the room and the next hour. Mr. Sigolowski had to shout to end the class.

  As Jenny trudged the campus to Abbott Hall and her dorm room, she thought about Bud. Though he called her almost daily and picked her up almost every weekend to drive to the Syracuse campus, she still wondered what it was he had seen in her. His golden good looks and his spot on the football team must be making almost every Syracuse woman want to melt and fall at his feet. But, he and Jenny were pinned now, Bud having joined Psi U where the test and paper files stretched almost to the next frat house. Jenny dismissed these thoughts as the sun poured down upon her back and she looked upward at a nearly cloudless sky.

  “Hi, Sparks.” Her roommate lay on her perennially disheveled bed, clad in a torn pair of jeans and a fairly reputable tee shirt.

  “Jen. I’ve been waiting. Got your note. What say we study for an hour, head for the dining center, and sneak our dinner out onto the beach.”

  “Great. That way we can study till the sun goes down, watch the fish jump, and be back here to study some more till we hear the sign off on WKCB.”

  “You are a good influence. I’m sure my mom is counting her blessings on a daily basis knowing I’m rooming with you.”

  “It’s just that I have to make the most of the week. Weekends are losers for work. And, I promised my parents I’d work as hard as I can. They’re paying half my tuition.”

  “Great, Jen. But, when are you going to do something for yourself?”

  “You’re a bad influence, Sparks. I’m not going to listen to you.”

  “May be. But, I know how to have fun. I’m not sure about you, Jenny.

  “Okay, Jen, I won’t talk to you if you don’t talk to me. But, one hour and we’re heading for the simple but upscale Lucretia Mott Dining Center.”

  As they studied, Jenny’s thoughts kept wandering to Bud and the next Syracuse week
end. “Okay, time’s up.” Sparky slammed her thick, used engineering book shut. “Time to please the palate and the soul.”

  As they trudged to the dining hall, Jenny wondered if she could make it through four years. A world without families, groceries, or shops. Without fields of corn and hay. Without dogs or barn cats.

  Sparky had their food into her backpack before Jenny could reach for a thing. They walked to the beach in silence.

  As Jenny lay their blanket upon the sand, they threw their books on top of it and removed their sneakers. The sand felt good between their toes.

  “I’ll race you into the water.” Sparky rolled up her jeans, splashing before Jenny had hers up to her knees.

  “Do you realize, Sparks, this lake watered the Indians and their horses before us.”

  “It’s Native Americans, and I can’t relate because I come from a place where they sold the land for $24 in wampum that became home to eight million people with skyscrapers you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Still, Sparks, we have a history here.”

  “Okay, quit mooning and let’s get to work.

  “Are you looking forward to the next Bud weekend and the exciting SU campus?”

  “We’re going to see a Broadway show at the Elgin theater in Syracuse. I’ll be staying with Katt Johnson and she and her date will be going as well. Jason and his date, a Syracuse woman he just met, will be going along with us. Jason and Dotty broke up last week. Jason got Bud into Psi U.”

  “Well, you’ve got it made, Jenny. I have a hard time finding a date. And, there’s not much to do if you find one.”

  “There’s always Cornell and Syracuse. You know those boys are always looking for dates here. Maybe Bud could find you a nice Syracuse guy.”

  “Too fast for me. I’m not even sure what boys are doing in my classes. I spent too long at girls’ schools.”