***Out In The 1960s Be-Bop Night- The Recovery-The Sam Lowell Saga-The Final Story
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Sam Lowell was done with recriminations. Was done with remorse. Was done with self-flagellation. Was done with that game he was playing in his head about how he would get her back, mapping out exhaustive scenarios that could not possibly occur since she refused to talk to him. Was, most importantly, done with the mind game about what went wrong and who and what made it go wrong, he would leave that unanswered as he tried to move on with his life. Move on knowing that many things in life get no final answer. Naturally with that many “dones” staring him (and us) in the face the question of done with what or who could only be about a woman.
No, could only about one particular woman this year. Could only be about that short torrid affair that Sam Lowell had had with Melinda Loring, an old classmate of his from the North Adamsville Class of 1964, whom he had “met” last winter, the winter of 2013, on the website set up by the class reunion committee that was planning the 50th anniversary reunion. Sam, a friend of mine back then, back in the early 1960s in school and on the corner, although we had not been in touch for years had sought me out on the site and we became something like fast friends, especially as the affair with Melinda faded, a woman I did know back in school although I had seen her around ( who I probably gave one of my furtive glances to that I was famous, school famous, corner boy famous for in those days after seeing her class photograph on the site. In fact the more I think about it now I am sure she got one of those glances, with my slight head tilt and quick eye glance followed by a quick turn- around to see if the she in question looked back as well, although she must have dismissed me out hand since I know I never talked to her and Sam told me that when he checked her out back then he found that every guy who knew her (or tried to know her) called her the ice queen). I do not know now Melinda for that matter (although a more recent photograph points to her glance-worthiness even now) and faded or not faded Sam needed someone’s shoulder to cry on.
Well, more that cry on because over the summer Sam had had me doing yeoman’s’ work writing about his unpleasant final partings with Melinda. But that was all over Sam said. All the bathos, pathos, thantos and any other “os” that is appropriate to that situation over and done with. Now all he wanted to do was balance out the effects of the affair. Kind of put things in perspective, kind of recover. He said that he realized that putting a positive spin on things was not as “sexy” as spreading gossip or running through the scandalous moments of a flamed-out affair but so be it. One night, one late summer’s night after he had finally resigned himself to the fact that he would not attend the reunion, partially in order to finally put paid to the affair with Melinda, partially to avoid any further un-pleasantries since he had been informed that she planned to attend the event, Sam met me over at our favorite watering hole of late and told me in snatches between drinks about the good side of the affair. Here is the way I remember his presentation with the aid of a few notes that I took since I have been a little forgetful of late without them:
One of the strangest parts of the relationship that developed between Sam and Melinda was the way they “met” on the North Adamsville Class of 1964 reunion website since neither knew each other back in school and neither, as they discussed later, were looking to meet anybody that last winter. (The way Sam put it, and he said Melinda had agreed, they were just “muddling along with their lives.”) From the first few timid e-mails though they gravitated toward each other. Sam despite Laura, his long-time, very long time companion and house-mate, and Melinda once she knew the “score” on Laura despite that knowledge. So sight unseen they had moved toward each other. He could hardly wait for her e-mails so he could whip one out to her in return. (She being almost as ready to wade into a blizzard of e-mails as he-that method of communication techno-pile-up may be a new modern standard as a measure of love.) They were like two magpies writing about everything under the sun. Of course Sam a guy who loves to discuss everything under the sun could not be happier that he found somebody who was as interested in such things as Russian literature and the black liberation. (Laura a quiet more reflective and less well-read women was in some ways the opposite, a trait that Sam felt had allowed them to survive over the years, the years when they were lovers in any case.) Every e-mail revealed something new, and something old. The “old” that they were destined to meet in person after an intermediate stage of phoning each other, creating another techno-blizzard and maybe another new signpost in modern romance, could not satisfy their curiosities. The “new,” well to hear Sam tell it that he would finally get to meet in person one of the foxiest woman in his class and alive enough to brag about the fact at the forthcoming reunion. That meeting became much more probable when they discussed their early childhoods and found out the following which I am placing here from a note Sam send me at the time and my response:
“One exchange, the one that matters here, involved the question of where they had gone to elementary school, she to Adamsville North and he to Adamsville South. That Adamsville South response by Sam brought out the fact that Melinda’s mother, Margaret, had been a swimming instructor down at the Adamsville South Beach during the 1950s summers and had during her career there saved a drowning boy. Melinda, nine at the time, had been present at the event.
Sam said he had flipped out when he heard that information. See, and I remember him telling me one time about his love of the ocean but fear of it, fear to go too far out when swimming because he had almost drowned when he was nine down at the Adamsville South Beach one summer. Typical boy story: as the ocean was rising he had spied a log, an abandoned telephone pole, and had grabbed onto it. He drifted out for a while and then, as he said sheepishly, he realized he had gone too far but instead of holding onto the log he decided to try and swim for shore. Not a good swimmer and just too far out he started going down. His brother who was on the shore called for help and the swimming instructor came out and saved him in a nick of time.
So what lesson did Sam draw from that today. Anything about fate, karma, or just plain good luck. No. He told Melinda that since they had already “met” maybe they should get together in person and discuss the matter more fully. And guess what, she agreed. Jesus.”
No wonder they both expressed the sentiment that their “simple twist of fate” had written in the stars all over it.
And so they did, meeting up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire a convenient neutral meeting place for both. Oddly it was not the first date which seemed way too awkward as the evening moved along that got Sam, well, smitten but the second date a few days later, also in Portsmouth, where they really hit it off and were reluctant to leave each other. The parting was the thing that Sam vividly remembered. Remembered walking Melinda to her car, giving her a hug, a close hug, a heartfelt hug that brought a misty tear to Melinda’s eyes and in response Sam caressed her hair gently (she would mention that to him later as a point where she thought he might be her “forever” guy). Sam went back to his hotel that night perplexed but feeling very warmly about his Linny, his sweetie.
About a week later, just a few days before Christmas, they made a date to meet in Newburyport, up along the Massachusetts coast, in the afternoon. They had argued over lunch, all good things between them always had argumentative edge on them as well centered on Sam’s relationship with Laura and this occasion was no different. Centered as well on Sam spending Christmas at Laura’s relatives’ place, a thing that he had done for years since he had no family of his own to go to, a thing that he could not get out of and which he did not want to get out of at that point (despite his increasingly strong feelings he did not see any way to resolve the Laura situation without breaking up their shared household). He smoothed things over by buying Melinda, much to her delight and as it turned out his as well (and by Sam’s insistence that she pick out what she wanted, a good healing point), a very nice seashell bracelet (seashell signifying their ocean roots and ocean love). That afternoon he/she/they had their first “lean-in” kiss (they would giggle about that one for a while and e-mail each other about whether it had been a kiss or not, and about whether they wanted more, ah, young love).
Funny Sam said that “lean-in” kiss turned into a real kiss when they met after the holidays at a museum and he thought he would surprise her with that kiss on the lips when he met her at the front door. That feeling got solidified later that afternoon when they went to the Jack Kerouac Memorial Park up in Lowell, Massachusetts and he forgetting his reading glasses listened as she read off the inscribed-sections of his works, including the famous last page of his classic On The Road, that were positioned on the columns which made up the park. And that was when the idea of sex, sex with Melinda first came up in Sam’s head, although he/they did not talk about it then but left it to a blizzard of e-mails on the subject.
[When Sam talked about the e-mail and cellphone blizzard exchanges I was beginning to see where this thing was bound to go off the rails, that incessant discussing every issue like it was an important affair of state had too many moving parts to it that was not apparent to when Sam unwound about the ungainly parts of their affair earlier in the summer. Then it seemed that she was just a weirdo who did not know a good thing when she found it laying on the ground.]
Of course, despite all the AARP-hype and occasional reference to elderly sex in the magazines the question of sex, other than the usual “thank God that is no longer a factor” among the vast majority of elders who have taken up golfing, gardening or grandchild-doting instead, is not an automatic question. Or rather the question of “doing the do” as Sam and Melinda came to call it and sleeping together came up since both were interested, very interested in that prospect. (Melinda had told Sam, kind of testing the waters, that she would understand if he was no longer interested in sex and they could just be close he replied. “Yeah, right” in that nasal tone he has. She reportedly smiled a very big smile at that remark.)
So here is how it came to pass. And like all things Sam the situation had to be more complicated than necessary. They had bandied about the sex issue enough so both were ready to jump under the satin sheets at the first opportunity. (We will disregard Sam’s hesitations seeing the bedroom as a definite breaking point between him and Laura.) So Sam invited Melinda to visit him in his hotel room when he was in the vicinity. Not so much that time for sex as to get acquainted outside of the dinners and museums that had been their dating bill of fare previously. Melinda though had other ideas, had ideas about getting Sam under the sheets that night. So they had drinks and then went to dinner. Sam invited Melinda back to his room for a nightcap. Melinda assuming that she was staying the night had brought her overnight bag and had fed the cats. Sam just wasn’t ready that night though. Somehow they had gotten their signals crossed and about midnight a forlorn Melinda headed for home.
Sam would make things easier after that, realized that he wanted to sleep with Melinda and so out of the blue about a week later he called her up, asked her if she was doing anything that night and when she said no he told her to feed the cats, load up the overnight bag, and stop of at a store and bring some supper to his hotel room. She/they giggled over that one. They also giggled over plenty of things that night. The strip spin-the-bottle game Melinda “forced” Sam to play where he kept losing, and losing his clothes. Sam left out the details of that love-making night but just said that she was sore and he was too the next morning. A bright point no question especially when Melinda mentioned that the supposedly shy and puritanical Sam knew exactly how to get her going. Sunnier times for sure.
Naturally that most intimate bonding continued for a while first at hotels and then Sam was invited to Melinda lake-front home in Epping where he met the cats and tried to figure out whether he could operate in that environment. Many a cold wine-filled evening was spent in that comfortable place. (He also got to do his infernal jogging there on the snow and ice-filled almost car-free deserted back roads, a plus, no question a plus.)
No question the Washington trip a few weeks later was a highlight of their affair, feeling comfortable travelling together, sharing space for several days and learning a little more about whether they could survive together. Funny poor Melinda had had foot surgery several years before so prolonged walking, in this case prolonged museum walking, was a chore although she tried to hide her discomfort from him (by sitting down many times when he wandered off look at some painting). He caught her doing that and told her she did not have to keep doing that just to please him (he had had knee replacement surgery so he was painfully aware what limits to bodily punishment one could, or should, endure). But mainly Washington was about being comfortable together, and about making great love especially as both did special little sexual things to each other that showed how in synch they were then.
Even during the last period, the period where things came apart, partially due to Sam’s reaction to Melinda’s breaking her hip in a fluke accident at the pool where she swan in winter to get her exercise, needing surgery and needing him to take a care-taker role more than a lover’s role they found some precious moments when they journeyed to North Adamsville to try to exorcize some ghosts of the past. Both of them had had tough childhoods, his with a screaming mother who thought he was born guilty and treated him as such (his hard-working beaten down father played no day-to-day role in his life after the first few years except to back up mother’s edicts) and hers with a father who was beside himself with the fact that he was downwardly mobile and took his vengeance out on the kids, including some very strange, probably abusive sexual antics while her mother denied the reality of her unfit husband. They visited the old beach where her mother, a summer program swimming instructor had saved him and which has been detailed above (now returned to nature) where they first “met,” had lunch at a landmark restaurant a place that neither family could afford to go when they were children, visited the storied Adamsville Beach where she had first been kissed, and travelled to her ancestral home where she showed him the spot where she had been “the girl on the rocks.” That moment both professed that their affair had been written in the stars. Hell, even a few days, less than a week anyway, before the bitter end one night when he had gone up to her house in order to take her to the hospital the next day to be examined (and to see if she could drive, a task she was desperate to do on her own) they had laid down on her bed and put their heads together and talked the night away like two magpies. Talked about plans for the future after she retired, talk about going to California in search of the great American West night to see if they should settle there and start anew like many generations before them, talked about old high school stuff which was always a glue for them, talked and talked. Ah (my ah).
Yeah, Sam Lowell was done with recriminations. Was done with remorse. Was done with self-flagellation. Was done with that game he was playing in his head about how he would get her back, mapping out exhaustive scenarios that could not possibly occur since she refused to talk to him. Was, most importantly, done with the mind game about what went wrong and who and what made it go wrong. He would leave that unanswered for eternity as he tried to move on with his life. Yeah, this too though I could hear in his voice as he finished up, and I need no note as a reminder on this, that he was not finished with sorrows and sadness.
