1963-1964

I was sitting in the cafeteria of Wayne’s Student Center, a block-long, institutional space filled with Formica tables and folding chairs that could be easily reconfigured as people left for classes and new groups formed. The wall facing the street had large windows, so you could see if anyone you knew was walking by. A constant, noisy buzz, filled the room. Even intimate conversations took place at a shout. I had been there since ten o’clock that morning with a revolving group of friends and had just decided to skip my one o’clock class and make a day of it.

My friend Valorie was walking through the room and stopped at our table.

“He’s dead.”

Her voice was flat and her expression blank.

“Who’s dead?”

“The president’s dead. He’s been assassinated.”

We sat in stunned silence, trying to take it in. How could this be true? Presidential assassinations belonged in history books—not here, not now. Kennedy had been assassinated?

More people wandered in from outside, moving to tables as they recognized people they knew. “Have you heard?” Hundreds of voices dropped to hushed tones, and I could hear fragments of conversations around me: Dead. . . I don’t believe. . .Johnson’s president. . .

Then George walked in. My chest and throat grew tight, as it always did when I saw him. He came over to our table and stood there silently, his face wearing the same look of disbelief as everyone else’s. He could tell from our faces that we’d heard. I wanted to touch him but knew that I couldn’t. He shook his head in silent commiseration and moved on, stopping at a few other tables before leaving through the far exit. He hadn’t looked at me.

I put on my coat and followed him into the raw November afternoon, the wind slapping my face, dead leaves buffeting my ankles. The light was dim, even in early afternoon, but I struggled to keep him in sight. The president’s death was too much to absorb. My own loss, the loss of the boy I loved, was the only thing that was real to me.

I was always following him, but at a distance, so that he wouldn’t know. I could spot him anywhere, at any time, from any distance, recognizing his black-caped jacket and distinctive walk—long strides with his body leaned forward. I could spot him in a crowd. I watched him walking down the street as I sat in a classroom. I tried to absorb every inch of him. I needed to keep him in sight because I couldn’t bear to be without him.

That winter I regularly went to his apartment when I knew he would be at a rehearsal or in class. The building was a four story yellow brick building set among similar buildings and multi-family homes in the slum that held the Wayne campus. I went up the broken concrete steps to a black door badly in need of paint. It wasn’t difficult to get someone to buzz me in. I rushed up the three flights of stairs to his floor, fearful of running into someone I knew. He left his door unlocked, and I opened it to enter a place where he had been.

It could barely be called an apartment. There was a small room containing an unmade twin bed, and a chair draped with badly wrinkled pants and shirts, all of them familiar to me. Although the room was untidy, it was clean, and the bare walls were white. It was January outside, but in here it was warm. I moved first to the chair, picked up a black and white-checked shirt, and pressed it to my face in hopes of finding a trace of his scent. I found this ritual comforting. Then I wandered past the bathroom into the tiny kitchen and looked in the refrigerator, empty except for a jar of instant coffee. Finally I crawled into his bed, wrapped myself in a blanket and wept into his pillow. This was the only way I could be close to him, and I felt compelled to return again and again. But while I cried, hoping to somehow reach the bottom of this seemingly infinite well of pain, I watched myself and judged myself pathetic. I would have been humiliated if anyone had seen me.

Eventually I pulled myself together because I had to, got up from the bed, and arranged the covers in their original position—almost. I didn’t want him to know I’d been there, but I didn’t want to disappear from his life without a trace.

My winter classes ended and the spring ones began. I wrote papers and passed exams. I barely knew what I was studying.

The final play of the season came to an end. A large group of us went to an Italian restaurant after the closing. Our table quickly filled with bottles of wine and plates of pasta. I sat there in misery, remembering that a year ago George and I were just beginning the process of falling in love. People were seated around me, talking and laughing, but it was as if they were speaking a foreign language. I couldn’t understand a word.

George sat and the end of the table beside his friend Sara. Their heads were together and they were whispering and laughing, occasionally joining in on the general conversation. They had been spending a lot of time together in the last few months. Although they seemed to be playmates rather than lovers, I was desperately jealous. I knew that I had become invisible to him.

We went to a park after dinner. Everyone was a little tipsy. While the others got on the swings or played hide-and-seek, I lay curled on the ground, scratching the dirt as if trying to bury myself.

I knew that something terrible was happening to me. Every cell in my body seemed to be frozen. I felt cold to my core, even in the 90 degree heat. I wore my sunglasses all the time, indoors and out, to hide the water that periodically leaked from my eyes. I sat up all night studying for finals, aware that last year at this time I’d been cramming lines for the upcoming summer as and George and I would soon be falling in love. Every so often I closed my book, sobbed for awhile, and then resumed studying as if nothing had happened. On the rare occasions that I found myself alone in the house, I crawled into bed and cried loudly and with such intensity that broken blood vessels appeared around my eyes. No one seemed to notice.

I went to see a counselor at the Student Health Center. I did a brief survey of the room. It was a basic, institutional office with bare, pale green walls. The counselor was an older, grey-haired woman.

“My boyfriend and I broke up.”

I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I looked down at the carpet, which was beige and a little worn under her chair and mine.

I continued to stare at the floor through our second session. I thought that I should be feeling uncomfortable because of the prolonged silence, but I couldn’t work up the energy. I wasn’t feeling very much at all.

Halfway through our third session, she said “You really need to get over this boy, Deborah.”

A chill went through my already frigid body. Even I could do better than that.

I left and never went back.

I stopped seeing the few friends I still had. I had nothing to talk about. Why inflict my company on anyone else? Even I couldn’t stand to be with me.

I sleepwalked through the summer and fall. I acted in plays and went on a few dates. My parents’ friends offered to fix me up with sons of relatives, and I felt obligated to go. Then I came home and cried.

George continued to spend time with Sara.

“So what’s going on with George and Sara?” I asked our mutual friend Phil at a party that December. I was trying to sound casual but couldn’t meet his eyes.

“They’re in love,” he told me point-blank. “George is discovering Sara just the way he discovered you. You need face that, Deborah.”

I suddenly felt nauseous and couldn’t reply. I turned and went out the door without my coat and walked the four blocks to my house without feeling the cold. I walked through the front door without acknowledging my parents in the living room and ran up the stairs to my third-floor bedroom. Then I collapsed on the bed and began to wail. My mother had followed me up the stairs to find out what was wrong.

“George is in love with someone else.” I was moaning and writhing on the bed.

“You were still hoping after all this time. . . .”

My mother didn’t know what to do. She held me close, but I continued to wail. Then she gave me a half-hearted slap on the face, probably because that was what you did with hysterical women in the movies. It was totally uncharacteristic of her, but I was behaving like no one she’d ever seen.

I calmed down eventually, and she hugged me and left me alone. I lay in my bed, unable to sleep, staring at the ceiling until the room became lighter. I pulled myself out of bed and went downstairs to the kitchen, made some toast and attempted to eat it. It tasted like sawdust.

My mother sat down at the table with me.

“David heard you last night, and it scared him.” David was my six-year-old brother.

After that I kept my feelings to myself. I certainly didn’t want to frighten little children. I pulled myself together and went about the business of acting in plays and finishing college, living what appeared to be a productive life.

No one knew that I was dying.