A CIRCUS WITHOUT ELEPHANTS---Ch. 3

CHAPTER THREE

MRS. BRITTELL’S BACK PORCH

ROB’S PARENTS WERE EXACTLY as he’d said: his father, Art, gentlemanly and serious--balanced by Ruth, as vivacious and fluttery as a butterfly. Impossible not to like her.

The next month, Rob and I slid out of Stanford quietly, without fuss or fanfare. It was all too unnoticed, too unheralded.

A prideful, bookwormish student like me doesn’t leave a school like Stanford without a backward glance, so I was obviously not thinking clearly, but what did I know then . . . only nineteen and ripe to get married, following the lead of someone so brainy and fascinating I couldn’t imagine my life moving forward without him.

Our leaving took place by degrees--first Rob, then me.

How was he to know that the summer he chose to take two killer science courses--Qualitative Analysis and Organic Chemistry, both condensed (each a year’s work crammed into one quarter), he’d also meet me? His grades slipped and Stanford put him on probation. “Go down to San Jose State,” they said, “bring up your grades, and come back.”

His pride was seriously stung. “I’ll transfer all right . . . “ he said it with a certain grimness, a subtle set to the jaw that I would later see as one of his trademarks, “but I’m not coming back.”

I was only beginning to recognize the hard metal stratum that lay beneath his mercurial outer self.

A few weeks later we were in separate schools, divided by a length of Bayshore Highway and a forty-minute commute in Rob’s newly acquired but almost prehistoric roadster, a munge-green Lafayette dubbed the Turtle because of its low-slung, stumpy-looking rear end.

“This drive is hell on wheels,” he said after a few weeks, “it’s getting more grinding by the day. And where do I fit in homework? Nowhere, at the moment. Changes must be made. I’ve got to study more and see you less.”

“See me less? But Rob . . . ”

Which explains why, at the start of winter quarter, I left my precious “ivy-league” school to join him at San Jose State.

ROB HAD BEEN RENTING a tiny student room--a converted porch is all it was--from a Mrs. Brittell. To understand why we spent our first married month living on Mrs. Brittell’s back porch, you’d have to know that we’d left ourselves only one week between quarters to apply for a marriage license, a college transfer, an admission to San Jose State, a wedding ring and a Wasserman Test--though not necessarily in that order--and there simply wasn’t time to look for an apartment too.

Nor was there time to put together a decent wedding—-or, for that matter, any wedding at all.

Since we’re both terribly romantic--Rob doesn’t admit to this, but he gets misty-eyed in certain movies--the idea of being married in a judge’s downtown office began to give the pair of us a bleak, sagging feeling. As we waited to meet the judge, I looked around his forbidding office--no carpets, small windows, and a lot of dark wooden furniture that would have added layers of dreariness to an office in Tombstone--and I nudged Rob and whispered, “Honey, we can’t be married here!”

Rob nodded. “It’s not exactly a church.”

“Ask him if we can’t do it tonight--in his living room.”

With proper deference, Rob broached the subject, and the judge looked up and shrugged. His face had no more life than his office. “Doesn’t make any difference to me. You can come over if you want to.” He scribbled on a piece of paper. “Here’s the address. Do you have any witnesses?”

“No.”

“I’ll provide a couple.”

That night we learned a useless lesson—-useless because we’d never need it again: if you want a romantic wedding in a judge’s home, you’d better pick a romantic judge.

We arrived at his home at seven, both of us so slicked up and nervous it was almost like having a REAL wedding after all. We’d been thinking about the prospect all week--WE were getting MARRIED--and it was beginning to feel like a serious, grownup step. Driving over there I even dared hope that the judge’s wife might get into the spirit and provide some small touch, like candles, or a slice of cake . . . a simple gift, perhaps . . . anything to add formality and romance to the occasion. But I didn’t mention this to Rob, because in case she didn’t he might be disappointed.

The judge ushered us into his dining room and pointed to one side of a modest table. Starched and unsmiling, or just naturally bored, he positioned himself on the other side, and his young son, about eleven, came out just then and stood stiffly beside him and the father began to intone the ceremony. I looked around. Where was the wife? Would she appear in time to be a witness? Was this even legal?

No, apparently she wouldn’t appear (and I hope no one ever presses us on the legality), because she obviously had a higher calling in the kitchen. We knew she was busy because we could hear her, as sounds of running water and clacking dishes and other homey noises kept coming and going during our nuptials. Mind you, they didn’t take long. The judge must have found an abbreviated version, skipping such trivials as “for better or for worse, in sickness and in health,” and proceeding directly to the “I now pronounce you . . . “ which saved him significant amounts of time but left us with skimpy, pared-to-the-bones vows.

But I felt lucky anyway--partly because I was marrying Rob, and partly because he looked so awed and serious he made the ceremony resonate with significance right through the clatter from the kitchen. After a while I forgot everything except the expression in his eyes. When it was over, a look of profound tenderness came over his face, and he pulled me close and kissed me. He seemed to be saying he meant all the vows of marriage, even the ones the judge had skipped.

My heart melted. We hadn’t needed a cake or candles or a present after all. Rob made it an eloquent wedding all by himself.

Now, years later, I’ve almost forgiven the judge’s wife, since it’s possible her husband forgot to mention he’d be marrying two people right after dinner and please cushion the noise from the kitchen.

We went to a hotel that night, and the next day, after I’d finished registering at San Jose State, I asked brightly, “Well, honey. Where are we going to live?”

He looked surprised. “In my room, of course.”

“Your room? Are you serious? You mentioned something yesterday but I thought you were kidding.”

“I do have a bed in there.”

“Uh, yeah--I guess you do. But Rob, it’s so . . . tiny. And what about my clothes?”

“We’ll run up to Stanford this afternoon and collect your stuff,” he said, missing the point.

Even Mrs. Brittell seemed taken aback when Rob walked up to her front door asking permission with his arms full of my suitcases. “Well, I suppose you can both stay in that room,” she said, hesitating, “if you think you can manage. But the bed’s pretty small . . . “ She looked dubious. “It’s all right with me, I guess.” It was plain she thought there was no accounting for newlyweds.

With one of his charming smiles, Rob thanked her, and now, having solved our housing problem, he led the way around to the back of the house and up the narrow steps to the enclosed porch. The room was about six by nine. He went in and plunked down all the suitcases, then turned to me. “Well--here we are!” It was the same exuberance, the same blind delight he’d had in Hudson Bowlby’s arthritic Model A.

I followed, and barely able to get into the room with both Rob and the luggage already inside, I smiled and echoed with no enthusiasm at all, “Right. Here we are.”

“Let me get these things out of the way.” Rob attempted to shove the cases under the bed, but the bed was too low and too narrow, and they didn’t come close to fitting. “Guess we’ll have to lay them flat on the floor, then,” he said, and while I perched on the bed he spread the suitcases end to end and they filled the entire open space. From then on, we walked across my imitation alligator bags to get in and out.

It wasn’t so bad having a floor made of inlaid suitcases, but we did miss the presence of a desk. Since the bed was the room’s only raised surface, it eventually served as study table, barber’s chair, dinette, and--when we were tired enough--a bed. But first we had to toss our books over onto the luggage and brush the cookie crumbs onto the books.

To say we “slept” in the bed would be a euphemism. It wasn’t a bed, anyway, it was a cot, and though we spent plenty of hours there, we extracted about as much genuine rest as two large people could expect from a narrow padded plank. It was barely possible for both of us to lie on the cot stacked on edge, like two phonograph records.

At first Rob thought it was wonderful. Cozy. “You’re so soft, Babe,” he murmured from time to time, giving me a little squeeze. “Isn’t it nice to be married?”

“Heavenly,” I said, while circulation slowly backed up in my right leg, which was mashed against the wall. “Though I didn’t think marriage would be quite so crowded. I’d like a little more room to be married in.”

“Room?” he sounded almost hurt. “What do we need more room for? We’re so close this way,” pulling me still closer.

Then we began getting tired. Rob cautioned, “Now look, Babe, don’t try to straighten your legs. I like to sleep with my legs bent, and if we’re going to stay aboard a bed this small we have to be shaped the same.”

“But I don’t like sleeping with bent legs—-not all the time. Let’s straighten them once in awhile.”

We began disagreeing as we slept. Since Rob was in charge of nocturnal maneuvers, when he wanted to turn, we both turned. But occasionally I was in the middle of some nice dream that didn’t require a change, and when he went into one of those authoritative shifts, I resisted. Whereupon he jerked the covers until he was rolled up in them like a sausage and I was left blinking and wide awake. Also cold. I’d grab the covers back, and he’d wake up. If this happened several times in one night, we fought in the daytime, too. In those days I wasn’t used to following orders in my sleep.

This went on for several weeks until one day when Rob was in class and I wasn’t, I sneaked out and rented a brand new apartment. It felt like a bold move, as though I’d emancipated myself and gone off to Washington on a bra-less march, and I was afraid Rob would be angry, but he was delighted. “I’m glad you did that, Babe. Cozy is cozy, but enough is enough.”

We said good-bye to Mrs. Brittell, who, as a parting token of affection, sent us off with her old washing machine.

Soon my mother sent down a truckload of furniture from her ranch in Mt. Shasta, and included were some nice things, like a brown Bigelow rug, plus a few old formal chairs of the not-too-sturdy type which collapsed into splinters under our weightier friends.

Then there was a big black sleigh bed--a veritable monster of a bed--but a thing of beauty, I thought, compared to the cot at Brittell’s. It was so very SUBSTANTIAL.

“You know, it’s not that bad looking,” I said as we were struggling to put it together. “It has a homey look--kind of comfortable and old fashioned.”

“That’s one way to describe it,” Rob said, grimacing as he tried to ram an eight inch bolt into a rail.

“I mean, there’s something special about an antique.”

“Yeah, there is. It’s especially old.” He pounded the bolt all the way in while I held the rail in place. “There,” he said at last, straightening up. “That should take care of it.”

“You see?” I said, looking at the two curled ends, quite expansive and very black. “It’s really rather handsome, isn’t it?”

Rob studied the bed dubiously and finally came up with the only compliment he could muster. “I suppose you could say it has some kind of old world charm.”

The bed was listening.

One morning at two a.m. Old World Charm dumped us on the floor. Well, actually, it dumped us on the floor from the waist down. One minute we were sound asleep and the next our legs were bent at the waist and falling precipitously. Crash! The end rail hit the floor and the mattress jarred to a stop.

“What happened? What happened?” I shrieked, wide awake instantly. I thought we’d had an earthquake.

“Damn bed,” Rob growled.

“That was the bed?” The crash of the rail echoed in my ears and I could still feel the sensation of falling.

“Damn rotten, poorly-made bed,” Rob muttered. We were too shocked to move. Our feet were sloped dramatically downhill, and we were gripping the top of the mattress like two people clinging to a wisp of bush on a steep mountainside. Purely instinctive, as even a bird doesn’t want to be thrown out of the nest.

“No-good, flimsy weak bed,” said Rob, at an uncomfortable tilt from which he was still not moving.

“What happened?” I asked for the third time.

“It collapsed. Hell, I don’t know what happened, our bed’s on the floor, that’s all.”

Well, so it was. Eventually, since we had to get back to sleep, we disentangled ourselves from the covers and climbed off the sloping mattress to begin the resurrection. Rob went into the kitchen for a hammer and screwdriver, and I stood by and tried not to seem in any way offensive, lest I be lumped in the same category as the bed.

Rob lifted the foot end saying crossly, “Here!” and I held everything suspended while he pounded and screw-drivered down under. After more cursing and a considerable amount of time, Rob finally had it fixed and we got back in. But now we couldn’t sleep, so we spent the rest of the night giggling, because once the shock had worn off there was something funny about a collapsing bed.

A week later it happened again. Another crash and we were down, every bit as mad as the first time, but even more surprised, because we really thought Rob had made the necessary repairs. This time we didn’t lie around expecting our problem to go away.

He jumped to the floor calling the bed a son-of-a-something a bed could never be the son of, adding that fixing beds ranked extremely low in a list of best things to do at one a.m., and further directing me to “get out of that weak-boned piece of furniture and grab this end!”

Now I was sorry, apologetic, even, that I’d ever had a nice word for the bed. Right then I wished to retract whatever praise I’d uttered for something so mean-spirited . . . and yes, ugly.

Over the months I began to notice the bed was a thick, stubborn lump, so monstrously heavy it wouldn’t budge an inch if Rob tried to move it one way or another, but it moved plenty when it felt like it.

For as long as we lived in that apartment, and for its own temperamental reasons, the black sleigh threw us to the floor periodically, always at strange intervals, and generally just as we’d grown to trust it again. Old World Charm was like a horse with a bad temper--deceptively docile on its better days. But you just couldn’t predict its moods, so you never knew when it was going to turn mean and eject you.

Usually we cursed and dragged ourselves out of the covers, but there came a night when we were just too tired, and instead of getting to his feet, Rob growled, “Oh, the hell with it . . . “ and we slept at a jaunty tilt for the rest of the night.

The next day Rob surveyed the remains of our black sleigh spread across the floor. “Be sure to write your Mother and thank her for this lovely antique!”

The bed wasn’t the only distinctive personality that shared our apartment. There was also Mrs. Brittell’s washing machine, a solid Clydesdale by nature, as doughty and reliable as our bed was unreliable, and in addition, a marvel of Thirties engineering. Neither Rob nor I have ever seen another like it. The machine was approximately the age of our flighty bed, but had a determined spirit and a warm, giving heart--and it did its job with undaunted energy. Shaped like a great iron cradle, it sat on our back porch and rocked violently back and forth, while clothes, soap, and water gathered in frothy tidal waves and heaved from one side to the other.

There were no subtleties about the machine--it neither rinsed, wrung, nor spun, all that was up to us--but it certainly did wash . . . and it could have taught our bed a lesson in fidelity.

The washing machine became our resident comic performer. Since Rob and I had never seen an appliance with such an odd shape and so much vigor, we used to run it just for our amusement, and sometimes we fired it up to entertain friends.

“Come see what’s on our back porch,” we said, “if you want to meet the real character in this apartment.”

But we didn’t take it with us when we finally left San Jose, partly because of its mammoth weight, and partly because neither of us believed its plucky old heart could last much longer.

TOGETHER, ROB AND I FINISHED the school year at San Jose State, where we’d signed up jointly for child psychology and genetics. All I remember about those courses, besides the fact that we were both finally studying and consequently earning stunning grades, is that Rob and I bred a lot of fruit flies, which kept waking prematurely from their anesthetized state and escaping into the classroom, where they bred surreptitiously with other students’ flies and ruined everyone’s experiments.

ROB WAS THE PRIME MOVER behind our transfer to UCLA. “Let’s go back to Stanford,” I said, but his jaw got that look and I knew it was hopeless. Women who aren’t married to flinty husbands say things like, “You should have made him go,” but frankly, I’d just acquired this man and wasn’t ready to push him to an ultimate test.

So we transferred to UCLA, instead of some other large school, for a reason that now seems flimsier than dust. “The surfing’s terrific down in Los Angeles,” Rob exclaimed, and he wore that same bright expression and exuded the same air of breathless excitement that once made me imagine a “beach party” would consist of a significant number of people gathered on the beach.

“Babe,” he exulted, “the sand everywhere is broad and clean. And the water’s warm,” and then he added as an afterthought, “and UCLA’s an excellent school.”

His last statement was true. The rest wasn’t.

Before long I learned that the Santa Monica version of the Pacific Ocean was only slightly warmer than the water that lapped across the shore at Santa Cruz, which, by the temperature registered on my toes and legs, left it pretty frosty as oceans go.

But that never mattered much.

We were soon so busy with all the homework piled on us by UCLA . . . and making new friends . . . and coping with the nausea that accompanied my first pregnancy . . . that we hardly ever saw the beach.

ROB AND I DIDN’T REALIZE it then, but our move South was the first of dozens of paradoxes that followed us through life, accompanying the various choices we made over the years. In fact, if someone asked me, What is one of the inevitable consequences of living? I’d say Irony.

A Circus Without Elephants--Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

RIDING TO GLORY

FOR THE REST OF the summer, the courtship dipped in and out of our classes and ruined most of them. Scholastically, we came out bedraggled and besmirched. But as a couple we were doing fine.

When summer quarter was finally over, Rob asked me to go to Texas with him to visit his parents. “You’ll like them, Babe,” he said, with his old, beach-party enthusiasm. “Dad is smart--fairly serious but basically brainy, and my mom’s a nut and really funny. Everyone likes her.”

“I’d like to go with you, Rob.” What I meant was, I’d like to go with you anywhere, to see your folks in Texas or the moon, but mainly I don’t want our time together to end.

“We can take a train out of Los Angeles,” he said, “but first we have to get to L.A.” We looked at each other—-two naïve students, newly in love. And then one of us said, “Let’s hitchhike!” and the other said, “Why not?” as though the idea actually had a shred of merit. As though spontaneity was a virtue that deserved to be cherished above common sense.

Still, it wasn’t common sense that threatened to scuttle our plan, but sheepishness. There we were, standing beside our suitcases on Bayshore Highway tentatively holding out our thumbs . . . in my case with the same dawning mortification I’d had years earlier when forced to admit to myself I would never fully grasp the logic behind long division. Here was a new way to feel demeaned.

I, who’d never hitchhiked before in my life, could barely get my thumb to point in the right direction. Dressed like other Stanford coeds of the day in skirt, sweater, pearls, and pumps, I fancied myself born to the gracious class, a notch or two above your usual hitchhiker.

But as cars disdainfully hurtled past offering nothing more than a windy aftermath, all that graciousness blew away. Pearls or no pearls, begging rides from strangers had its tacky side, like straightening your panties when no one’s looking. My hand kept faltering and I had to keep pushing it out there, into the visual field of oncoming traffic. Finally I said, “Rob, I’m no good at this.”

“It’s not exactly my thing, either.”

“What if the wrong people come along?”

He gazed at me, for once with no answer.

“How will the right people know we’re the right people?”

“Maybe we can tell them,” he said. He gave me one of his thoughtful looks and then, skinny and driven as he was, he took off running along the highway looking for something, though for what, I hadn’t a clue. With Rob, ideas frequently weren’t expressed out loud, but simply acted upon. Sometimes the deed would merely appear, done and finished and presented with a kind of “Voila!” . . . and it was assumed I’d be charmed.

He soon came back holding a big piece of blank cardboard. “We’ll make a sign, Babe. You got a pen in your purse?”

I didn’t. But then I dug deeper. “How about this?”

“Excellent,” he said. “Good thinking, Babe,” and using my brilliant red lipstick, he consumed most of it printing the giant words, STANFORD TO LOS ANGELES.

“There . . . “ holding up his sign for my scrutiny, “that says it all.” I smiled. He didn’t seem to require my approval, not seriously. It was obvious that this work of genius had arrived pre-approved.

Edging closer to the highway, he blended into his sign and became a billboard with legs. Billboards being nicer than hitchhikers, I felt he’d given us a different aura, splashed us with new respectability. Any minute a genteel college professor would stop and whisk us away in his Oldsmobile.

Not for an instant did I imagine a different scenario, that we might be stepping, instead, into the twilight zone. With my usual optimism flowering away, I stood beside Rob and his sign, composing my face for innocence and trying to convey a message. We may be hitchhiking, but we’re not really hitchhikers, you understand, we’re students, and this is beneath us. A lot to convey in a split second.

Our sign’s tour of duty was brief. In only minutes, an enormous truck with attached trailer abruptly veered off the highway, sending up plumes of dust as it pulled to a stop a block away. I wasn’t even sure the eighteen-wheeler was stopping for us. But before I could comment, Rob had lifted his suitcase and started running toward the behemoth. I called after him, “Tell him thanks, Rob. Thanks anyway.”

While I waited and watched from a distance, Rob and the driver exchanged words, and then Rob was running back to me.

“Did he take it okay?” I said, but to my horror he grabbed my suitcase. “Come on, Babe,” he said cheerily.

For seconds I just stood there, stunned. “But Rob! That’s a TRUCK! We can’t go in that!”

“He’s giving us a ride,” said Rob, as though this was a perfectly acceptable idea, as though this was the kind of transportation we accepted every day. “Come on. He’s waiting.”

“It’s a truck!” I shrilled again, but he was leaving me, and suddenly I had a new and awful choice. Remain on the highway by myself or follow my boyfriend. The deserted island or the shark. With feet so slow they could hardly be construed as moving, I dragged down the shoulder toward Rob. This must have been the moment when I surrendered control of my destiny for all time.

As I reached the alien nether world of rumbling trucks and earthy truck drivers, the man was already deciding my fate. A burly fellow whose belly lapped over his belt, he was just tossing my suitcase up into the trailer, into some kind of void where it simply fell out of sight.

I watched it disappear. Whither my case goest, I thought glumly, I will go also.

The man pointed to the great metal steps. In my nice skirt (all women wore nice skirts back then), I was supposed to climb the three enormous steps and deposit my feminine self inside that yawning cab. Me, a Stanford girl who’d signed the honor code and actually believed in it. At heart an elitist, an intellectual snob. Make that a total snob. And here I was with two men who thought it not at all odd that I should enter the ultimate in a man’s world and ride ingloriously in a commercial truck!

Still on the ground, I looked around. There was no escape, nowhere else to go.

Grabbing a handle of sorts, I pulled myself up and finally landed on a broad leather seat. Rob came up and plopped down beside me. I was stuck. Stuck, stuck, stuck.

The driver came around and started the engine and our world began to move. I could feel every ton of that truck, sense its tires bumping over the dirt and making their way back to solid pavement.

Perched unhappily between the two men, I soon perceived a further problem. Between me and the driver was a forest of gears, one handle after another, and as the man revved through the gears, we both quickly grasped that he had no place to shift except up my skirt. Making a fast adjustment, I pulled my legs out of the way. But then he needed another gear, and another, and the whole sequence became impossible. I didn’t want his gears rubbing my legs, but then neither did he.

Within a block, the man was pulling over again so Rob and I could change places. So now Rob was in the middle and I sat next to the dust-coated window. Right outside the glass, the exhaust pipe belched and roared and filled my right ear with thunderous noise. From then on I could hear little of what was being said.

However, from time to time Rob shouted bits of information in my direction, which is how I learned that our driver’s name was Frank, and that his cargo consisted of ten tons of sugar. While the men talked, I sat there feeling more and more like a bug sucked toward a drain.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. We’d only been on the road an hour, bumping and careening down the highway, when another giant truck-and-trailer swung around us, accidentally veered off the highway in front of us and ran down the shoulder, raising a tornado of boiling dust . . . into which we drove at full speed with zero visibility.

I was aghast--both for the other truck and for us. In my head I was screaming, “Slow down, Frank!” but no words came out.

Rob turned to look at our driver, but strangely, Frank seemed unconcerned. He sat there gripping the wheel, staring ahead into the dust, nodding as the runaway rig regained the pavement. The dust cleared and we were still on the road, even in our own lane, and the incident seemed over.

Except it wasn’t.

Minutes later, our own rig accelerated, swung out to overtake the other truck, pulled hard into the right lane and veered toward the edge. In seconds we, too, were off the pavement, bumping crazily down the dirt, wholly out of control and lurching from side to side.

I was so terrified I felt myself turning white. With no seatbelt for security, I grabbed the dashboard and held on, sure we were about to strike a tree or a ditch, knowing we were seconds from death. The truck careened downhill, as reckless as a truck could get, hurtling the three of us toward eternity. For someone who adores all things sweet it seemed ironic that I was about to die under a runaway mountain of sugar. In my head I was screaming at Rob: I told you this was a terrible idea!

After what felt like hours, but must have been only a minute, Frank ended the horrifying ordeal and brought us back to pavement—-back to some marginal kind of safety.

Releasing my grip on the dashboard, I turned to stare at the man behind the wheel.

He was laughing. “I guess I got HIM!” he chortled, and with a glance in the side mirror, I saw behind us a cloud of dust obscuring the road. Clearly the other truck was now plunging ahead as we’d done earlier, driving blind.

“I really dusted him!” shouted Frank for our amusement . . . except Rob didn’t look amused, and I was so unamused I wanted only to order that idiot man to stop the rig and let me out. Actually, I yearned to throttle him where he sat.

But neither could work . . . the first because we were miles from anywhere.

I waited for Rob to do something. Glancing sideways, I saw his irritation and wondered that he didn’t speak up and tell the driver to drop us off at the next town. But he didn’t, and it was clear that Rob had chosen this singular mode of travel and now meant to stick with it. I wasn’t sure whether “sticking it out” was a good character trait or bad.

The rest of the night was long. Entertaining us further, our man gleefully exhumed stories about runaway trailers that overran their cabs and sliced through their driver’s compartments, instantly killing them. He told heartwarming tales of trucks losing their brakes on the steep, winding Grapevine and accelerating out of control down the endless grade, unable to make the required turns, unable to find an escape ramp in time.

At moments he actually made Rob laugh. But not for one second did I ever find him funny.

I wasn’t sure why he’d picked us up. But finally he revealed his motive: we were there to keep him AWAKE!

With such a driver, there was no danger any of us would sleep. The rest of the night I sat stiff as a tree trunk, and when we began barreling down the Grapevine, I watched each curve intently, judging the sharpness of the turn, waiting for the awful acceleration to begin.

True to the last of my nerdish instincts, I monitored our driver with my own set of standards, the Stanford Debutante Test of Acceptability, and on one of the steeper grades it became obvious our man was not driving at prudent speeds, and in fact the truck had picked up so much wild and dangerous momentum, the driver should be searching for an escape ramp. Any fool could feel the straining of the brakes and sense the trailer’s urgent impulses to overtake the cab. Reaching for the dashboard, I held on, consumed by terror. Oh dear God! Here comes the sugar!

Miraculously, though we flew by an escape ramp, the truck held together and the trailer did not come forward to pay us an unexpected visit.

As the truck finally roared down the last hill and slowed in Los Angeles, light was just creeping up behind the hills. Rob and I got out and for seconds stamped our feet, wondering if we could walk. Before we left, I actually thanked our driver---out of sheer gratitude that we were still alive.

With that event, our hitchhiking ended for all time.

But my life with Rob went on. When I looked back on our early months together, I thought of that trip--the hitchhiking part--as a defining moment, an occasion that caught the spirit of our relationship. Because of Rob I did the unthinkable, pitted my girlish, delicate self against a truck, and somehow came out a winner.

In later years, I would experience something similar with my oldest son, and I would feel that sense of triumph once again. You always win when you take on an experience that lasts in your memory forever.

CHAPTER ONE

THE MAVERICK “HAWAIIAN”

I DIDN’T GO TO Stanford University to find a husband.

I went partly because of the wondrous Stanford mystique and the thrill of calling myself a Stanford Indian . . . and partly because it was such an exclusive, snooty-tootie institution, if you got accepted you certainly had to go.

Before long, though, I was swept away by classes like Western Civ, where we dug around in the archives to unearth surprisingly modern truths from Plato and Aristotle, and by Russian History as taught by a guttural Russian. The campus beguiled me with its genteel Spanish Mission architecture, and I was soon rooting passionately for the plucky and gentlemanly, if somewhat inadequate, football team.

But I didn’t stay long, only a year and a half, not nearly long enough.

And what I got out of it, eventually and to my surprise, went far beyond what I expected.

IN MY TREMULOUS TEENS before Stanford, I dreamed private, sensual dreams, conjuring up the man I would someday marry. My imaginary suitor never had a face, only dark, passionate eyes that consumed me with admiration and unspoken longing. His key trait, if not intensity, was surely unending kindness, for some part of me was searching for the ever-loving father I never had.

Among the qualities I sought in my unknown faceless lover, “oddball” had never made the list, it wasn’t a trait that would even occur to a serious-minded girl.

Yet oddball was what I got.

I’D BEEN AT STANFORD nearly a year when my life changed. I first saw Rob Wills at a summer get-acquainted dance euphemistically called a Jolly-up. At eighteen I wasn’t expecting much, since so far the campus men seemed to fall into two categories--the nerds or the party animals—-and those who didn’t spend our date lingering on the mysteries of subatomic particles, were inclined to squander it instead guffawing with friends over last weekend’s drunken bash at Mama Risotti’s. (Never mind that to those who held such hi-jinks in high esteem I was one of the nerds.)

To put it more accurately, Rob first saw me at the Jolly-up and I never saw him at all. The flirting I did with the men observing from the sidelines had a kind of high-water mark, based on the fact that I’m tall, over five-ten, and resolutely never made eye contact with anyone shorter than six-foot-two, nor even noticed they were there. All my little smiles and coy glances went to the men who towered above the rest. It’s faintly possible that sometime during the evening my eyes flicked across the top of Rob Wills’s head, but I certainly never saw his face.

The truth was, I didn’t know he existed until he cut in on me.

He introduced himself, and when he took my hand to begin dancing, I saw at once that he wasn’t up to my height standards, his eyes being only slightly taller than mine, and when he looked at me it wasn’t with anything close to desperate unspoken longing, but something nearer amusement. He seemed awfully tan, too, and more so because his teeth were so white. Furthermore, he didn't fit my physical ideal in other ways; instead of the comfortable, filled-out shape I’d envisioned he was as skinny as a mop handle.

All in all, he didn’t seem promising.

"I tried to catch your eye," he said as he guided me across the floor, "but your eye wasn't catchable."

That’s a novel opening line. Having no fitting response, I fell back on a conventional tack and asked him to repeat his name, learning he was called, formally, Robert Victor Wills.

“Where are you from, Robert Victor Wills?”

“Call me Rob,” he said. “Where am I from, you ask. You mean last week or last year?"

Once again he threw me, and being an intensely-bookish type in those days and absolutely no good at fast repartee, I was still fumbling for words when he grinned and said, “I’m from Hawaii.”

Well, that explained everything: the dark skin (I learned later he tans if he walks past an open window) the gaudy aloha shirt, the owlish glasses. What the glasses had to do with such an assessment has now escaped me, but I said, “Oh, you’re Hawaiian!”

“Not exactly,” he said. “That’s just where I lived last. I’m transferring back to Stanford from U of Hawaii. My dad’s a Naval officer, so we traveled. Never stayed in one place long enough to tire of it." He smiled again, a generous smile that conveyed uncomplicated enthusiasm for his nomadic life. "How about you?"

"I grew up in lots of places, too. Los Angeles. Denver. Rochester, New York. A ranch in Mt. Shasta, California.” Unlike him, I’d hated the moving around. "My dad’s a doctor, but I’ve never lived with him. My mom divorced him when I was two. She’s not your normal, everyday mother, she’s sort of a Bohemian.” And she’s been married seven times, I thought, which only my mom considers amusing.

The music changed tempo and we danced faster. I was glad to see that the mop handle was graceful, that in spite of his shortness and not being an inch over six feet, I felt good dancing with him. When the piece was over he seemed reluctant to let me go, and instead pulled me off to one side and asked urgently, "Is anyone taking you home?"

"Yes."

"Who?"

I gaped at him, so surprised at his bluntness that all decent answers melted away. “You want to know his name?” Flustered, I suddenly couldn't remember the name myself.

"Never mind,” he said. “I withdraw the question.” And then an abrupt switch. “Do you like to swim?"

"You mean in a swimming pool or the ocean?”

“The ocean. It’s the only swimming that counts. I used to be a surfer, learned how at Waikiki Beach.” He gave me that smile again. “What are you doing tomorrow?"

Another blunt question; he was so full of them. Well, that depends, I guess, on what you’re offering. Before I could figure out a way to hedge and be cool about it, he said, “How would you like to go to a beach party?”

“A beach party?” I was beginning to sound like a parrot, echoing every word he said, but I needed time to think and he never gave me any, he just kept peppering me with questions and throwing me off balance.

“That’s right, at Santa Cruz beach. We’ll go about eleven. You should come, it’ll be fun, I promise.” He said it with a smile, with conviction, as if there could be no doubt.

I guessed then he was a fraternity man and he’d waited until the dance to nail down a date. But he seemed pretty sure of himself, not at all concerned, and in fact all his words were positive and definitely self-assured. He was looking at me with an intensity that lent his thin face a kind of radiance. Rob Wills was awash in youthful energy and high spirits, but I doubted he’d be serious-minded enough, long run, or mature enough to interest me.

Still, one little date for the beach wasn’t a lifetime commitment, and I thought, What the heck.

"I think I’m free,” I said. “A beach party sounds fine, I’d love to go.” In fact it sounded more than fine, because above all I’d heard the word Party, which meant I’d meet other men, some of whom would no doubt be taller and less frivolous and wouldn’t ask blunt questions.

In due course I went back to my dorm with the somebody else, and whoever he was, he’d already become indistinct and shadowy, dimmed by the brightness of Rob Wills.

THE NEXT DAY EVERYTHING changed.

When I went down to breakfast, late, I found a note from Rob in my box--a note so strange and personal, so shocking, really, I squirmed as I began to read. After the first few sentences I ducked into a secluded corner of the lobby, convinced my embarrassed expression would give the contents away. "You remind me of someone I once loved,” he began. “I was watching you at the dance, waiting for you to spot me, but you never did. You have wonderful legs, Maralys, and an aura that makes me feel I’ve known you forever.”

Oh Lord, I’m not ready for this, it’s too much. A love letter from a stranger. He was making me crazy, this maverick rolling through my life like an escaped tire, as blunt on paper as he was in person. Glancing around furtively to see who might be looking, I decided to get out of the lobby with the thing, lest it burst into flames.

Chagrined, I ran upstairs to talk to my roommate. “Listen to this note, Barbara. You won’t believe it.” She was wise and mature, thoughtful like I was, but quicker, with a tongue ten times faster than mine.

I read her all of it, or as much as I could endure. “In my room alone, I find myself unable to stop thinking about you. It’s as though we’ve been on a collision course, destined forever to meet . . . “

She began to chuckle.

Toward the bottom of the page I had to stop, too embarrassed to go on. “He’s got this image of me,” I said. “He’s put me on some kind of pedestal. Can you imagine, after three dances? What happens when reality sets in and I come clunking down to earth? What would you do, Barbara? How will I face him?”

"When is he picking you up?”

"In about half an hour . . . " A buzzer sounded in our room. "Oh, Lord, that must be him!” I threw a look at the clock. "Can you believe this, he's early! And I'm not even dressed!"

"You'd better get dressed," said Barbara. "And wear plenty of clothes. I'm not sure I'd bring a bathing suit. Not with what he's thinking."

“But it wasn’t a sexy note. It was all poetic allusions, his romantic notions of who I am.”

“Where do you think sex starts?”

I ignored that; it was too much to get into. “And now I have to go down there, feeling like my soul is exposed.”

She said dryly, “It’s not your soul you should worry about.”

ROB WILLS WAS LEANING against a wall in the lobby, loose-legged and careless, smiling the way I remembered from the night before. But he surprised me again, because he didn’t mention the note, nor did he seem the slightest bit awkward. "Did I rush you?" he asked pleasantly.

"Well . . . sort of. I wasn’t quite ready.” I wasn’t ready at all. I couldn’t face him, couldn't look him in the eyes. Please don’t ask about the note. I had my swim suit under my clothes, hoping I’d never have to take them off.

If Rob noticed my silence he didn’t seem to care, but bounded across the lobby in high spirits, expecting me to follow. “Let’s go. Our ride is waiting outside."

"Where are the others?”

He stopped. “What others?”

“You know . . . “

He obviously didn’t know, and gave me a puzzled look, then pointed to the door. “It’s out there,” he said.

Second surprise: Our ride wasn’t a “ride” at all, nor even close to what I’d expected. The transportation waiting for us outside was an aged green Model-A parked randomly to the curb. And the jalopy came with a driver--its owner. Rob’s friend, if that’s what he was, hovered near the car—-a solemn-looking male, thin and desiccated, like an old leaf.

Rob introduced us with an offhanded gesture. "This is Hudson Bowlby,” and Bowlby acknowledged me with bored eyes and the flattest of Hi’s. No mention of friendship there, no hint of who he was. They couldn’t be buddies, I thought, they were acting too distant, almost like strangers. Then why was he here?

"Get in," said Rob, and pointed to the ancient automobile’s one narrow seat. Black, of course.

I climbed into the car gingerly and without enthusiasm. “Not much room,” mumbled Bowlby, an unnecessary comment since I’d already noticed. Only inches were left for Rob, who squeezed in beside me.

Third surprise, revealed after a few pointed questions: everything I’d assumed the night before was wrong. Here, jammed together on the seat of a green Model-A, was the sum total of Rob's beach party--Maralys Klumpp, Robert Victor Wills, and Hudson Bowlby, all bound for Santa Cruz beach in Bowlby’s geriatric car. And two out of three not exactly happy about it.

The car started with an asthmatic wheeze and clunked its way down Stanford's tree-lined Memorial Drive. I could hardly believe what I’d gotten myself into. "You mean nobody else is coming?" I asked for the second time. "Nobody's meeting us there?"

"No," said Rob. He seemed surprised I was still probing.

"This is what you call a party?"

"Sure," he said. “We're going to the beach, aren't we? I've brought some food. It's a party."

It's not what I call a party! "You’re not a member of a fraternity?"

"No. Did I ever say I was?"

I looked over at him, so pleased with himself, so unruffled, so content with this idiotic arrangement, and I couldn’t help smiling. "Do you always exaggerate like this?”

He smiled too, his eyes alive with merriment. "I never promised you anything else."

"No, I suppose you didn't. It's what you implied.” Your word choices, I thought, the way you asked, your voice. You created an illusion--and it was all false. “What other surprises have you got in mind?”

He threw me a Wait and See look.

Right then I realized he was even more unusual than I thought. And maybe a lot more fun, too.

After that, with Hudson Bowlby driving with his eyes straight ahead like the world's best-trained English chauffeur, Rob and I talked without stopping.

To my surprise, Rob was more than he’d seemed at first. A great deal more. Under his outer layer of wacky, offhanded nuttiness, was a different Rob, an intense, serious man. I saw at once that he was keenly aware of the world beyond Stanford, and brimming with insights.

The two of us quickly forgot Bowlby was there, and we went ahead and settled all the pressing world’s problems between ourselves. We found we agreed on War, Sex, Money, Racial Discrimination, Peace, and Students Who Smoke--all more exhilarating than discovering we both hated sauerkraut.

(Some day I mean to look up Hudson Bowlby and ask him just what we did decide, since we don’t agree on everything anymore. Somebody has shifted ground, and I’d like to review Money and Sex.)

Halfway there I glanced sideways and noticed Rob’s strong, distinct profile and I thought, That’s a good face. And then I thought, What a mind he’s got! And right then I stopped caring that he needed to grow two more inches.

Once at Santa Cruz beach, we found the water too frigid for swimming, so we sat on the sand and went on talking. I could never remember, later, exactly what happened to Hudson Bowlby. I do remember asking, "How come you brought him?” and Rob answering, “We had to get to the beach, didn’t we? Bowlby had the only car I could lay my hands on.”

I stared at him--a man who knew how to get what he wanted--then broke into laughter because he was so outrageous.

After a while we ate the peanuts, cheesy crackers, candy bars and grape juice Rob had provided as food.

"I hope you own a bike," he said as Bowlby drove us home again, having reappeared from wherever he'd gone.

"I do, but it's old and doesn’t go very fast.”

"That’s all right. As long as it works. We’ll be able to get around, which is all that counts.”

I WAS HAPPILY AWARE that I now had a close friend on campus--a friend who cared deeply about everything, who was neither a nerd nor a party animal--a friend who was male.

His brains were what did it, the ultimate appeal to an earnest, appallingly-sincere, non-small-talking egg head like me.

I hadn’t thought it would happen.

Of course there was still the screwball side of him to contend with, the Rob who did NOTHING like anyone else. While other men summoned their dates from the dorm lobby via a buzzer, he stood under my third-floor window at Casa Ventura and whistled. The first three notes of the World War I battle song, "Over There," told me--and every girl on that side of the building--that Rob Wills and his bicycle had arrived. He knew they all heard him . . . as though he was whistling for his friend to come out and play . . . he knew but he simply didn’t care.

When I looked down, he’d be staring up at my window expectantly, like an eager Tom Sawyer, with shower water still dripping off his brown hair.

It didn’t bother him that other couples dated in cars. He was happy enough escorting me to the movies and around campus on his bicycle and mine.

FOR THE REST OF THE summer, the two of us were almost never apart. He had a friend take our picture with the bicycles near Casa Ventura. “ . . . so we’ll remember this summer,” he said. “I believe in memorializing the things that count. Come on, Babe, move a little closer.”

It seemed Stanford had delivered, after all, the gift I never knew I wanted: Rob Wills.

No, more—-months later it gave me an offbeat, unconventional, free-wheeling nut of a husband.

THE COOKIE SHEET

Nothing is forever, but sometimes you come close. I’m speaking of a group my husband and I put together forty-five years ago to discuss current events. Rob and I were young then—and so were all the other couples. But Discussion Group is finally old: yet it lives on.

Now, all these years later, various couples have moved away or well . . . died. We may be the only originals left. But our kids and our friends’ kids have joined, so the group has an everlasting quality--as in Methuselah. Each month, the topic resonates with some and bores others, but about one thing we’re unanimous—we all love the potluck.

Yet there’s this about potlucks—when you bring food to someone’s house, you’re bound to forget something: a hot pot holder, a serving spoon, a sheaf of papers, an outdoor jacket. My potholder drawer is full of unfamiliar potholders, my hall closet wraps its arms around two strange jackets, and for years my best serving spoon has been missing. I keep looking for it at other people’s homes, but I think I must have left it with someone who died.

Four months ago—the last time we were hosts—a couple left a cookie sheet. It was old and rusty, ownership unknown. And frankly, I wasn’t about to make fourteen phone calls. But next morning my friend Micki called. “Yes,” I said, “I found the cookie sheet.”

She lives quite a distance, which explains why she said, “I’ll come get it in a few days. When I’m down your way. Just put it on the front porch.”

For a month and a half, along with a pot of flowers, the rusty cookie sheet hovered near our front door. Nobody ever asked, “Why do you have a cookie sheet on your front porch?” Maybe we were assumed to be a little odd.

At the next Discussion Group, I remembered to bring the cookie sheet. But the couple didn’t come.

The following month, for which the couple DID come, I forgot to put the rusty thing in my car.

At last, this month, the cookie-sheet couple moved into hosting position. Three weeks ago, Rob said, “For God’s sake, Babe, put that damn cookie sheet in your car.” So I stuck it in back, where for weeks it bumped the legs of whoever was riding with us.

Last night, at two a.m., Rob gave a final order. “Move the cookie sheet to the dashboard. Now. Or we’ll forget it again.”

I said sourly, “It’s two a.m. The spiders are out. I’ll move it in the morning.”

“You’ll forget,” he said.

“I’ll put a note over the stove.” All night the note has been hanging there, waiting to be released to the waste basket. And the cookie sheet rests peacefully in its soothing backseat home.

I swear, if I forget it tonight, I'll make a special trip and drive it back to its owner. And I don't care how far away she lives. There's a limit to how long you can play accommodating hostess to a rusty cookie sheet. .

HOW DID I GET IN THE TWILIGHT ZONE?

For nearly a month I’ve had a watch problem. It all began when my reliable solar wrist watch stopped abruptly, and nothing short of mouth-to-mouth could revive it. Now, after some dozen jeweler visits with other watches that gulp down a new battery, submit to a cleaning, then fail to run longer than a day-and-a-half, the “watch thing” is playing games with my head. I talk about it constantly.

Two days ago, in the midst of all this, the computer also failed. Like other non-techies, I have a love-hate relationship with my computer. When it works I adore it. When the thing fails, I’m ready to do what a few men have done to their televisions—take a pistol and shoot it in the heart.

That morning my e-mail messages refused to “come out” or “come down” or “show up” --whatever they do. Even tapping the send/receive button like a telegraph key tapping out the Morse Code produced nothing. Since the machine was working the night before, I gave it a few hours to rest. Finally in desperation I began calling people. The wonderful man who set up my web sites. My web server. I was ready to call Bill Gates, but I’d run out of time. Anyway, I hoped the mule might yet come around.

That night, at 9:30, in desperation I called Cox. To my amazement, an actual person answered the phone. Graciously, he put me through enough routines to operate a nuclear plant, but produced nothing useful on my screen.

At last he said, “You know, we don’t actually support Microsoft Outlook.” By then he’d given me a new e-mail password, and a few keys to a secret kingdom of Cox e-mails that I never knew existed. Not a great site, but okay as a fallback for the truly desperate. “Guess you’ll have to call Microsoft.”

“But Microsoft charges,” I said. “They cost a bundle.” I heard the equivalent of a telephone sigh. “Best I can do.”

We signed off and I looked down at my newly-repaired watch. It was still 9:30. I stared at the face, at the non-moving second hand. Suddenly I realized it had been 9:30 for quite a few hours.

A creepy feeling came over me and I began thinking Twilight Zone. The computer was down. My just-fixed watch was down. Was I dead and didn’t know it?

Could I even walk away from here? I pinched my leg and took a deep breath and was relieved to feel them both. Still . . . my computer stopped. My watch stopped. Would my heart stop too?

I was actually afraid to go to bed. Gotta stay awake and keep breathing.

Downstairs, Rob heard the story over and over, until he finally said, “I’ve heard it three times, Babe. That’s enough. Let’s go to bed. It’s one in the morning.”

I was thinking, “How do we know it’s one? My watch has been ticking perfectly for three days. It says 9:30.”

I opened my mouth, but he gave me THE LOOK.

Next day, instead of paying a ransom to Microsoft, I called Cox again—for a lady tech’s long and useless session, until finally she said as an afterthought, “You might try turning it off and back on.” I did. And the computer worked.

Back at the jewelers, the man took out the latest battery and found it dead. We talked Twilight Zone. As he installed yet another battery, he said, “This really does smack of voodoo.”

And indeed it does. Because this morning that watch is once again dead.

IF YOU'RE THINKING IT . . . SAY IT

We could have gone to the Gala. At the Performing Arts Center, Gustavo Dudamel had just led the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a stunning Bruchner symphony, and all the program’s most ardent supporters were dressed for The Ritz and ready for a sumptuous, post-event dinner.

Then we learned the price: a thousand dollars. Each. Perhaps we didn’t love the symphony quite that much. So instead, Rob and I went to In And Out. (My choice, as long as they continue serving juicy hamburgers, which for me compete with steak.)

Anyway, in the next booth sat three male high-schoolers and a younger boy, all wearing Loyola tee shirts. For awhile I watched them. They all had decent haircuts, their conversation was subdued, and their laughter not too raucous. I thought they were behaving extremely well. Good kids, the kind you wish there were more of.

When they got up to leave, I suddenly decided to run after them. Outside the restaurant I yelled to their retreating backs, “You kids seem like really nice people. I was impressed with how well you behaved.” One of them turned around and grinned. They didn’t actually stop, but I could tell that the one, anyway, was pleased.

As I re-entered the restaurant, a woman stood just inside. She said, “What did you tell those boys?”

I stared at her.

“I’m their mother. Just wondered what you said.” Clearly, she was expecting the worst.

“It was a compliment,” I said, and told her how impressed I’d been.

She grinned, and it was obvious I’d made her day. “People never say nice things to kids. It’s always something negative. We just got back from a Loyola basketball game. They were pretty happy. I was hoping that wouldn’t change.”

“Well, I was thinking good thoughts,” I said. “Why not say them?”

“Yes. Why not?” she said, and we shook hands.

She’d made my day, too. The whole episode took maybe five minutes. I can’t vouch for the Loyola family, but for weeks those five minutes gave me little zings of pleasure.