Sweet May, the lusty month of May, of the year 1976, which as I have said involved much struggle with the demons of counterpoint and copying, not to mention an expanded consciousness and new intimacies, was also inaugurated with a letter from Ms. Walker.
Somewhere in there, somehow, and I no longer remember exactly how, I woke up in Tennant's bed with Tennant's wife. I remember him breaking out the champagne. Later on, in the winter of her discontent, she ended up somehow, somewhere in bed with Justin Van Dyke. In between, there was much poetry writing on both sides of the fens. It always struck me that Laird was able to celebrate my union with Lucy because he knew it was not that serious. Perhaps he thought me not that much of a threat. That man-child with the wild hair and the endless babbling about Beethoven and Bach? C'mon! Get real. Perhaps he thought his wife needed to blow off some steam. He plainly didn't see his role in the marital discord. Later, as winter rolled around and I had gotten more seriously besotted by the alluring Heidi Walker, and, also, in utter wife/whore horniness with her plain vanilla roommate, (how serious was I, after all?), it became clear to Lucy that I was not able to provide the sustenance she badly needed. The undertow of natural attractions was hard at work. The magnets began to move across the table on their own. Lucy Tennant and Justin Van Dyke snapped together after his organ recital (in partial fulfillment of the degree of Master of Music). Was it the Saint Ann? Was it the Messaien? Who knows? It was some sort of serious chemical interaction and pre-ordained attraction, and the dance on the pedal board only jarred the table enough to cause an irrevocable collision. Can I get across that this was serious? They remain together as I write, some ages and ages hence. Laird Tennant knew this. Instead of champagne, he began to kick apart the furniture.
This is Heidi's chapter, so I'll get back to May. The letter she sent had been in the works for most of April (the cruelest month). It dashes along on horseback. It continues Heidi's poetry corner, and it serves as a fair exhibition of line drawings. In verse she addresses the unspecified "you," proposing the planting of gardens and the taking of walks upon paths along rivers that sing out, drawing in her heart. Adonis shrugged.
At the midpoint, she ends up speechless. She mentions vikings and polar bears, her heritage. She's speechless because she's been napping. She worries that she's really only puddle deep. She's suffering a sort of shortage of confidence. I have apparently offered advice. Did I tell her, good Cal-vinist that I am (not), to get out and do something? That would have been my own palliative.
She returns to an interesting theme. It is something I still have difficulty associating with so fair a woman. She taps me on the shoulder and asks if I ever have destructive urges. I see that I've mentioned the Masters and Houston "Mind Games." Quite rightly, we've become disenchanted with the street drugs. The chemicals in general have the problem of becoming less effective with repeated use. One builds up a tolerance. The effect is like jumping. You can only stay up in the air so long. It is not long enough. So we begin to do trance inductions and play the mind games devised by M&H to try to achieve a more lasting, less destructive elevation. Heidi's been doing Yoga, so she's way out in front of us. Destructive urges emerging doing mind games? No. Destructive urges emerging during the envies and jealousies of partner swapping, yes. It's a sexual zoo out there. All is unfair in love and war. She hears the neighbors fighting. I've written her of Kesey's story about Thomas Wolfe. The punch line is "you can't expect to mess with it without getting some on ya." Kesey tried to get Tom to move an improperly painted buddha, and he got paint on his immaculate suit. Kesey, as the ur-Tennant (or vice-versa), tells a paternal tale. Heidi wonders if we do not want to mess with violence. She's the one at the rifle range. She responds to me obliquely, not meeting my gaze head on.
The month of May passes, and school is almost out. I squeak past (sneak pass?) counterpoint iv. She composes and delivers in short order a fat letter in one bursting envelope. A set of haikus and a poetic portrait of ship-board life. She writes of Kenya. Ya! An automobile accident sends the family into a huge screaming argument. The voiding of emotion. War.
And love. She tackles the topic of my wanting to be part of a solution rather than part of the problem. Say what? Are we negotiating a "relationship" by correspondence? This is like the endless discussion of an organization to organize itself, but in taking the time out to do this, failing to do what it was organized to do in the first place. (Faculty meetings.)
It seems loving of me to offer support as opposed to insisting on anything. Needs can be met only voluntarily. Why have I even broached the topic? I'm being an ass in pushing her to consider these things. I can't help it. Her response to this nonsense of mine is the even handed reasoning of a master diplomat. She wants me to rise up to my full height, to fulfill myself, to 'ride my desires as far as I can,' and not to ask her to figure out what she needs so that I can try to be that for her. She suggests that we give careful consideration to the words (and images) we use both between ourselves and our environments. She's just been through a bruising family battle. She is the conciliator in chief. She seeks a deep knowledge of our full selves. This is a major negotiation between friends. It would do as a framework for a lifelong partnership. It turns away from the refining fire. It leans out in its generosity towards a union more perfect. It is sexual politics of the best kind. I forgive myself for falling in love, but I don't forgive myself for fucking it up. Of course, there was no way that I could have done otherwise.
Among the items in this package is a fairly shocking letter written on a napkin in an airport. She's been stood up by the friends that were supposed to meet her there. She writes and writes as the drama lurks in the background: being stuck in an airport and being dead tired. We nearly offed ourselves with rat poison and animal tranquilizers; Heidi is in mortal danger as a vulnerable traveler in a foreign port. She knows it, she gives thanks that her parents can't be aware of her "poor planning."
What do I do? I send my mother a carefully drafted letter explaining my LSD experiences. What does Mom do? She sends a carefully drafted letter describing why she thinks that's not a good thing to be doing at music school. (Or with my life/mind.) You may be wrong, but you may be right. Anyway, you can see why I won't make it with this woman.
The drama is unresolved. She ran out of paper. I know she lived. She lives.
And then, she was in my sight. It was, as she says, a brief meeting. Details are lost to memory's fail. All I have to go on is the note she sent after the fact. Postmarked July, 28th, 1976, she sent a card that came from the Worcester Art Museum (had she been out to Worcester? We knew an old classmate there...) that reproduced the Mary Cassatt painting called "The Letter." How could she know that I loved Mary Cassatt? She fills the card's blank insides with an out and out love letter.
We are white heat; we are dancing on air. I stood before the muse and she smiled back. Beyond that, I cannot say more. She missed one train and then another. In the retake of her mind (and life) she might have missed them all.
She will be back, that old young woman of the lovely mind and body. There is no mind-body problem here, Mr. Tennant.
The next letter, postmarked 8-16-1976, works through the details of moving to Boston to attend the Museum School. She will live just down the street from the Cal Crib with a roommate. She yields more details of the Boston visit, recalling meeting Lucy and the scene of microcosmos jumping. She urges me to write my worried (alarmed) parents.
The final letter, postmarked the last day of August, 1976, reveals that Heidi is still in love with her old high school beau. He, in turn, is in a relationship with someone else, and out of the country to boot. She says she needs time to get over this hurt. She will have all the time in the world. Not only does she have cold feet, she has also injured her back. She reports that 14 more canons to the Goldberg Variations are extant. Well scratch my Bach!
There would be no more handwritten letters between us. Oh sure, I could break this silence now. I have the woman's address. But it's the mature woman who lives in my State, not the long lost object of my desire. Everyone from Dickens to Disney has warned of reopening such a Pandora's box. The box has been breached, the warnings notwithstanding. We message on Facebook. We don't need no stinkin' pens. Thus, into history the old young woman falls, as surely as if she'd gone down with the ship.
In the envelope with 'le dernier billet doux' is my response.
"A letter such as that burns its way into your mind, stays before the retinae like a faint eddy, and leaves behind only emptiness." Apparently, the long vanished youthful Cal did not think much of being postponed, or put on permanent hold (not held) by the memory of another man otherwise encumbered and out of the country. I can see why things got off to a bad start.
