And he sure shone his light in her direction! She had had boyfriends. There was even one now at another college, but that guy, any other guys, stood no chance compared with this man. That was part of it—although he was only a sophomore, Lily thought of Rick as a man. What was wonderful was that at times he could be as silly and charming as a boy, but his strength and curiosity made him sure, calm, adult. They met in September, and that Christmas, Rick gave her a hand-tooled leather album of poems and photographs he had done especially for her. She’d saved up for months and bought him a special lens for his camera but then felt like a superficial twerp holding that beautiful black leather book, letting pages slip down her thumb. A lens compared with poems?
The more attention he paid her, the more happy and nervous she became. She was waiting for the bomb to drop or at least someone to hand her the bill for what this man and their relationship really cost. Most people think they deserve better than they’ve gotten. Trouble is, if we ever happen to get “it” we become terribly suspicious.
The bill arrived shortly after they moved in together and Lily had survived her cucumber episode with Mr. Aaron. One evening Rick announced he was leaving school for a while. Just like that he was dropping out for a semester and going to San Francisco to see what all the fuss was about there. Like a brain tumor or terminal disease that lies dormant for years in our body until the day it comes to life and begins to eat us away from the inside, Rick suddenly was afflicted with either wanderlust or irresponsibility. It depended on how you saw it and on where you stood in relation to him. Always the good boy, good student, good good, he abruptly decided to hit the road and see what he was missing. Just like that. Unfortunately he left behind (among other things) a young woman hopelessly tied to him and willing to put up with this romantic bullshit so she could remain in his life. She even asked if she could go with him. That was an astounding realization to make. Emotions like this really existed! She had actually met a man for whom she’d sacrifice everything. She would desert her old life too if he’d let her. But he wouldn’t. Not that he was thinking of her well-being. Borrowing from bad cowboy-film dialogue, he actually said something along the lines of a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do and left Lily Margolin on the doorstep in Gambier, Ohio, watching his Jeep buzz off into the sunset.
We do many foolish things at the beginning of a relationship. Later we’re apt to forgive ourselves because it was that first deep breath of big love, like high mountain air, that made us dizzy and consequently made us act so wrongly.
Lily waited for him. She should have wept and cursed his name for abandoning her, worn black clothes and looked poetically tragic for a few weeks. She jumped back into the interesting life of a college campus, but she had a streak of the Victorian in her. She once joked she would have been a good sea captain’s wife—the idea of waiting long months and writing longer letters that had little chance of ever arriving was very appealing to her sensibilities. Besides, what better experience had ever happened to her? She had grown up comfy middle-class. A pleasant life, but nothing in it ever shone, no, burned the way her relationship with Rick did. She felt lit by him, wattage she could never have conceived of before knowing this man. Anyway, maybe that was what you were supposed to do with something as magical as this—cherish it when it was there, worship it when it was gone. Perhaps Rick was even testing her—testing her long-distance dedication to him. No matter what the reason, she would show both him and herself what kind of stuff she was made of.
She became a hermit. She went to class, she went home. She studied too much for tests and took obscure courses that would never do her a bit of good. It pleased her to discover and read authors whose work had not been checked out of the library for years. Wyndham Lewis. James Gould Cozzens. She was the first because she had love’s time on her hands. One book she found and kept renewing, not because it was good (it was incomprehensible), but because of the title – The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole. What silly things won’t we do for love? Others asked her out but she wouldn’t go. Her refusal made her more alluring and mysterious. She was neither. She was simply in love with one man who had blown her up like a hot-air balloon and then, with no instruction, cut her ropes and sent her drifting off into space. The view up there was great but when you don’t know what to do next it becomes frightening. What would she do if he didn’t come back? Did the pain she had begun to feel ever go away? Was there any way to survive the loss of someone so important? She would willingly float above the world, aimless and lost for a while, but what happened after a while?
She didn’t have to worry. Rick reappeared two months later in a tie-dyed shirt, an Indian vest, and a beard that didn’t look very good on him. But she was so happy, he could have had a third eye implanted and she’d still have been ecstatic. Despite his new look, he was unimpressed with what he’d seen. That didn’t mean he was home to stay, however. The son of a bitch said he’d returned to Ohio only to see her, because his next stop was Europe. He was home! He was leaving! But he’d come only to see her! She said his visit was like going through a whole amusement park of emotions. What could she do but love him and give her all in the little time they had together?
Part of that all was sex. Lily said she never screwed so much in her life. She used a diaphragm. A month after Rick left for Luxembourg, she realized her diaphragm hadn’t worked. She went home to Cleveland to tell her parents she had been living with a man, was pregnant, was going to have the baby. And oh yes, the man wasn’t around anymore. Joe and Frances Margolin were the kind of progressive parents who wore dashikis and gave money to various revolutionary causes. If their daughter wanted to have a child, right on.
But before she’d completed her third month, Lily miscarried. When Rick returned from Europe, she told him for the first time what had happened. He was so touched and astonished that she’d been willing to have their child, even in the face of not knowing whether he would ever return, Mr. Wonderful decided then and there to stay put. They were married and lived happily ever after for two more years until he graduated and headed out for the territories again. This time it began via a job with a fledgling California computer company in the days before Silicon Valley when that whole new industry consisted of only a bunch of brilliant experimenters and enthusiasts flying by the seat of their pants. Rick liked the whole setup. One year short of her degree they moved West to disaster.
Six months. That self-obsessed asshole lasted six months at his good new job before complaining it was restricting and he had to split. That was the word he used. Where was he splitting to this time? Israel. A kibbutz on the Syrian border. He’d been talking with a guy… She stopped him in mid-soliloquy and asked point-blank if he was planning to take her this time. His answer was the beginning of their end: “Lil, you have to decide for yourself about your own space. It’s fine with me if you want to come.” When she told me about that conversation, a hardness entered both her voice and her facial expression that was years old and not the slightest softened by time.