I should have known.
Really, what did I expect? That my family would magically sprout roots in Gierman just so Amy and I could live happily ever after? I’d known all along that our life here was to be a temporary thing, just until Dad could get something more permanent.
So why was I so surprised when the shoe finally dropped? My only excuse is that I have a powerful imagination, especially when it comes to denial.
I’d imagined that somehow Amy and I would be able to stay together in Gierman until…well, to be honest, I never let myself think about anything coming after that “until”.
Meanwhile, all the signs were right in front of my face. I just chose to ignore them.
Dad’s agent had set up a deal with a major publisher and they had arranged to have a team of scientists go over Eugnosis of Alexandria’s scroll. Dad’s colleague in the Gierman physics lab had done carbon-14 dating tests on it, and they showed that the scroll was right around 2,300 years old.
Still, they didn’t want to get taken in by some hoax. Their lab guys did all kinds of tests on the scroll, the ink, the handwriting, you name it. In the end, everyone agreed that it was a genuine ancient Greek manuscript.
By then, the Gierman College people were getting pretty freaked out. It was beginning to dawn on them that they’d been in possession of one of the great archaeological discoveries of the century and had left it to collect dust in some forgotten storage room.
As if that wasn’t embarrassing enough, they’d gone and cut all the funds for their Classics department, just when Dad could have made the program world-famous.
Dad had even been taking time off from teaching to visit various colleges and universities, as potential job offers were coming in nearly every day. You’d think I could have predicted where all this would end, and I suppose in some corner of my mind I knew…I just didn’t go there.
So, on the night that Dad pushed his chair away from the dinner table and said the inevitable, “Well, I have some news,” I just sat there.
Stunned.
“Like a pole-axed steer,” Zach would have said.
It was like in the cartoons, you know, when some guy has an anvil dropped on his head? How he just stands there a minute, stunned?
Just before he crumbles into little pieces.
As I sat there with a stupid, shocked expression frozen on my face, Mom and Dad were positively gushing.
“…it’s a small liberal arts college in New England; small, but very prestigious. And you should see the town! It looks like the background for a Normal Rockwell painting. All the charm of a small town, but we’re a half hour outside of Boston and just a short train ride away from New York City! Weekend expeditions to the Big Apple! Broadway! Opera! Museums! We can learn to be cool and sophisticated!”
Mom laughed at that one but Dad just kept on going. “Come fall the maples explode with color. You’ll think you’re living in a postcard!”
Screw that! I didn’t want to live in a postcard! I wanted to live here! With Amy!
Dad raced on. “A full professorship! And tenure is practically guaranteed within two years! And as for a starting salary…”
He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Mom. Now she looked like a cartoon character. I thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head.
“There’s absolutely no reason why you should take another one of those jobs, my dear. You can finally dedicate yourself to completing your degree. Heavens, you can even go on to grad school.”
Mom looked like she was about to burst into tears.
I, on the other hand, was developing a stomach ache.
“And that’s not all!” Dad continued. “Look at this!”
He took another paper from his pocket and handed it to Mom. “Dean Williams put me in touch with a realtor and we spent an afternoon looking at houses. There are some other flyers in my briefcase, but when I saw this house…well let’s just say it was only the second time in my life when I experienced that proverbial ‘love at first sight.’”
I could just see the picture on the cover of the real estate brochure as he passed it to Mom. Brick, ivy, of course it was perfect.
I had to get out of there.
I was almost to my room before they noticed I was gone. I heard Dad’s voice, “Marcus?” Then Mom’s, “Drew, just let him be…”
I stormed into my room and slammed the door.
As I lay on my bad, dark waves of misery washed over me.
I was furious at the injustice of it all. Finally, after all these years I had something to be happy about and so naturally I was about to lose it.
Typical.
I felt like smashing something.
I felt like flying into a screaming rage.
But then who do I yell at?
Dad? Dad, who had, after all those years of struggle and frustration, finally achieved some success? What was he supposed to do, stay at a loser college like Gierman? They’d just cut out his whole department and now he had an offer of a full professorship at a real university.
No way could I ask him to give that up.
I couldn’t very well go off on Mom either. She’d been putting off her dreams for fifteen years, ever since I was born. All that time she’d been supporting Dad, moving from one minimum wage job to the next, and now she’d finally gotten a shot at doing what she wanted to do.
There was Zach, but even that was just embarrassing. Here was a guy who spent his childhood tramping through the mud and dust and blood of the Civil War, and I’m going to whine at him about having to move into a beautiful house in a picture-perfect town in New England?
It would be hard to complain about how unfair my life was to a guy who had been blown to bits by a cannon ball and still keep any semblance of self-respect.
At that moment, I desperately wanted someone to feel sorry for me, but I didn’t really have that many candidates to choose from.
I called Amy.
“Right! Of course! I like you and so you leave. That’s how the world works isn’t it: Amy LaBlanc cares about someone! Quick, get them out of her life! Dad, Mom, and now you…”
This conversation was not exactly going the way I’d hoped.
“Hey, it’s not like it’s my fault,” I countered lamely.
“Of course it’s not your fault,” she fumed. “It’s never anybody’s fault. It’s just my life! I’m cursed or something. It’s my fault for liking you. Or letting you like me…”
I sighed. “Come on, Amy, I hate this as much as you do! I mean, really, what can I say?”
“You can say goodbye.”
“Goodbye?”
“Goodbye!”
She hung up.
I didn’t get a lot of sleep that night.
It felt like I’d only just nodded off when I heard a tap on my door. Mom’s face peered in. “Marc? You awake?” I nodded fuzzily and looked at my clock. 7:03 jeez. “Telephone’s for you. It’s Amy.”
“Amy?”
“Marc? Hi, listen, I’m sorry about last night…”
“It’s okay…”
“No, it’s not okay! I shouldn’t have acted like such a jerk to you. I…”
“No,” I interrupted, “really, it’s all right. I’m…”
“Marc, shut up! I was awake all night going over this apology and you’re going to make me forget my lines!”
I shut up.
“Look, it’s just that when I get scared, I get mad, and when I get mad, I get all evil. I say things I don’t really mean, and…well…that’s what happened with Mama and we both know how that turned out…”
I thought about assuring her that I didn’t plan to drive any cars into any rivers that morning, but I wisely kept my mouth shut.
“Marc, if I’ve learned anything these last few weeks, it’s that what you get is all you get.”
Say what?
“No, that sounds stupid. And it seemed so profound last night…”
She stumbled on. “What I’m trying to say is that it’s like with Mama and me. If I had known that those were the last few moments we would ever have together, there’s no way I would have been so mean to her, but you never know that do you? When you’re going to lose someone…”
“June,” I said stupidly. “We’re moving in June.”
“Then I don’t want to spend the time between now and June acting all rotten and depressed about you going away. We’ve got two months. Let’s make the best of them.”
And for the most part, that’s what we did.
Most of that time it was just regular stuff, hanging out together, sharing lunch at school, watching old movies on TV.
But there were a few moments that were, well, perfect.
An example: The Gierman College Cinema Society was having a film festival, “The History of the Hollywood Musical”. Dad gave me a couple of the free passes that had been handed out to faculty members, so Amy and I ended up going to see Singin’ in the Rain.
If you haven’t seen Singin’ in the Rain, be forewarned; it’s probably the corniest movie ever made. Watching it though, you start to get the feeling that everyone in the movie knows it’s the corniest movie ever made, and they’re having such a good time, the audience ends up having almost as much fun as they are.
By the time Donald O’Connor started rampaging through the soundstage singing Make ‘Em Laugh, Amy and I were hooked.
At the end of the movie, after it was established beyond any doubt that Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds were going to live happily ever after, (big surprise), the whole audience filed out of the theater feeling warm and goofy.
Then, as we stepped out into the night, we saw that it was raining. (Like I told you, this was a perfect moment.) And this was no gentle drizzle. Sheets of water washed across the campus. Puddles were rapidly growing into small ponds.
People stepped out of the theater, stared in disbelief, then, laughing, pulled up their collars and scurried off for their cars or dorm rooms or whatever.
As Amy and I scrambled through the deluge, we could hear, from somewhere off to out left, a couple of voices breaking into song: “Singin’ in the rain…”
Then further away and ahead of us, “Singin’ in the rain…” Disembodied voices began to pop up all over the campus as people surrendered to the reality that no matter what they did, they were going to get soaked. So why not make the best of it?
Amy and I were headed for a covered walkway that ran along the Administration Building. Once we got there, we could walk around the edge of the college’s main courtyard under cover. We’d almost made it when…well I don’t know exactly what happened, probably an old downspout gave way or something…whatever the cause, the result was gallons of water dumping down on our heads all at once.
I started stamping around like an idiot, sputtering and spitting a lot of really bad words, while Amy just stood there, soaked and stunned. Then she looked at me, stomping and dripping and cursing…and burst out laughing.
She struck her best Gene Kelly pose, made an elegant twirl, and burst into song. “Singin’ in the Rain. Just singin’ in the rain…”
What can I say? It was way too late to maintain any pretense of dignity. I took Amy into my arms and we splashed across the courtyard in a really klutzy imitation of a waltz.
“What a glorious feeling, I’m happy again…”
We had some other perfect moments over the course of those last two months, but those are none of your business.