Every clipping I read dislodged a memory. Every memory stirred an emotion:
There was Lawrence’s story on Adlai Stevenson’s suffocating speech at the college in the fall of 1955. I remember Effie leading us in a hilarious fake prayer afterward at Mopey’s. “Good and merciful God,” she implored, “please do not let the Democrats nominate Adlai again in fifty-six. Eisenhower will surely humiliate him again, and we beats are already as beat as our beatness can bear.”
There was Lawrence’s story on the controversial decision by the college to put television sets in the dormitory lounges. I showed it to Eric. “Believe it or not,” I said, “I was one of the forty-seven snobs who signed the petition to have them removed.”
“You’d still sign it today, wouldn’t you?” he said.
“In a heartbeat,” I said.
There were oodles of sports stories-Lawrence absolutely hated writing sports-and oodles of stories on the useless projects undertaken by the college’s fraternities and sororities. There were also lots of those inane “man on the street” stories asking students what they thought of the latest world events. I found one where he’d actually quoted me. It was about the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott: “Negroes should be able to sit wherever they darn well please,” opines sophomore library science major Dolly Madison. I remembered how upset I was that he’d quoted me saying darn well instead of damn well. I remembered how I’d ranted on and on about censorship and the need for journalistic courage at such a crucial time in history. I remembered refusing to kiss him for a week.
There was a story on the debate team winning the state championship. DEBATERS TALK THEIR WAY TO THE TOP, the headline read. Above the story was a photograph showing Rollie and his three equally nerdy debating partners-Don Rodino, Herbert Giffels and Elgin “Bud” Wetzel-standing stiffly in front of the Ohio State capitol with their big first-place trophies. Lawrence had taken the photo, too. I recalled how angry Lawrence had been when the editor sent him to Columbus to cover the debate tournament. It was Easter vacation, after all, and the Baked Bean Society had planned a week’s worth of sleepless celebrating. I remembered seeing him off at the bus stop. He had his ugly plaid suitcase, his portable typewriter and The Harbinger ’s big clunky camera around his neck. I could still see the long neck of the flashbulb attachment banging him in the chin every time he turned his face. “They better win the fucker,” he growled as I hugged him good-bye.
They did win, of course, and Lawrence dutifully took the photo and wrote the story. According to the date scribbled in the margin, the story ran one week after Easter.
Winning a state title in anything is a big story for a college paper, even in debate. But I doubt too many students read Lawrence’s story. They would have been more interested in another story that ran in that same edition-the one about David Delarosa’s murder.
I flipped through the files, forward and backward. I knew Lawrence hadn’t written any stories himself on David’s murder, of course, but I thought maybe he’d saved some of the stories written by others. If he had saved them, they weren’t in that tub.
But I did find one very small story on Jack Kerouac’s visit to the college the previous November that tickled me. I read it aloud to Eric. “Listen to this: ‘Nationally known avant-garde poet Jack Kerouac will appear at The E Pluribus Unum Coffee House, 2748 West Tuckman St., on Friday, November 23, at 8 PM ’ Paragraph. ‘Kerouac’s novel, The Town and the City, was published in 1949. A new novel, On the Road, will be published some time next year.’ Paragraph. ‘The appearance is sponsored by The Meriwether Square Baked Bean Existentialist Society. Admission is free.’”
Eric was not exactly impressed with Lawrence’s story. “That’s it? The great Jack Kerouac was coming to your puny backwater college and that’s all the ink they gave it?”
I put the little clipping back in the folder. I put the folder back in the Rubbermaid tub. “Kerouac was a nobody then,” I said. I rested my head on the back of the seat, closed my eyes and chewed the head off another marshmallow peep. “We were all nobodies then,” I said.
Eric was thoughtful enough to carry the tub inside for me. But he wouldn’t stay for dinner no matter how many times I asked him. He was anxious to get to Borders, to play chess with his worthless friends. “Go on,” I said, “leave an old woman all alone on a Saturday night.”
I laughed along with him. I wished he’d realized I wasn’t joking.
I watched him back out of my driveway. I watched his truck disappear up my street. I’d lived by myself in that house for forty years, but I couldn’t remember ever feeling more alone than I did that afternoon. Not even James’ silly face could cheer me. I put on my old gardening clothes. It was only four o’clock. I could spend a couple hours in my flower beds before the sun went down. But I made it no farther than the glider on my back porch. I pulled my legs up to my chin. I wrapped my arms around my shins. I rocked myself like a baby in a cradle. I watched the squirrels. I watched the rabbits. I watched the sparrows hop about on my trumpet vines. I watched the daylight fade. I wiped my nose and my eyes on my sweatshirt and went inside.
I dumped a can of tomato soup into a saucepan and put the burner on low. I pulled out my plastic cutting board and assembled my favorite sandwich-two thick pieces of Texas toast, two pieces of provolone cheese, a layer of thinly sliced tomato, a sprinkling of oregano. I sprayed my big iron griddle with Pam. I grilled my sandwich until the provolone was gooey, until the sad scent of oregano filled every inch of my little house. I clicked on the living room TV. I watched the news and then an old Lawrence Welk rerun on PBS. I put on my pajamas and moved my exciting night of television viewing to my bedroom.
Luckily for my mental health there was nothing worth a damn on television that Saturday night. The more I clicked my remote, the angrier I got-at the cable company, at the culture that produced such drivel, at God and the wicked world he created, finally at myself. “Get a grip, Dolly!” I heard myself growl.
I rarely call myself by my real first name like that. So when I do, I know I’d better obey.
I got out of bed and made a mug of Darjeeling tea. I gathered up my portable phone, my address book, some stationery, and a big flat book to write on. I crawled back into bed. I had work to do.
First I called Eric. It was only ten o’clock but he was already home. Knowing Eric, I did not have to ask if he was alone. “I’ve got another person for you to find,” I said. I waited for him to find something to write on. I waited for him to find something to write with. “Her name is Penelope Yarrow. Y.A.R.R.O.W. She’s an old girlfriend of Gordon’s apparently. From the sixties.”
Next I called Andrew J. Holloway III. I expected to get his answering machine, but he, too, was home, and from the silence on the other end, apparently just as alone as Eric and me. I got right to my question: “Exactly how long could a little slip of paper survive in a dump? Before rotting away or whatever paper does?”
“That depends on a lot of things,” he said. “Was it buried? Was it exposed to the air? To moisture? Was it sealed in something? If so, in what?”
“So theoretically, a piece of paper could survive for fifty years or more out there?”
“Under the right conditions-sure.”
I got down to the nitty-gritty. “Did Professor Sweet ever tell his students to be on the lookout for a restaurant receipt? Bags or wrappers with the word Mopey’s on it?”
“Uh-no.”
I put a chuckle in my voice. “Just the Betsy Wetsy dolls, old soda pop bottles and cocoa cans?”
He put a chuckle in his, too. “That’s right.”