Like Cora Avery. She’s probably one of the most glowing examples of young womanhood in the whole United States. I met her while jogging along the Charles one afternoon. It was clear even despite her floppy sweatsuit that she had an absolutely amazing figure. I was able to keep up with her just long enough to get her phone number. And we started going out.
On our first date I learned that she was a gym teacher at Brookline High. And a marathon runner. And a skier. And a long-distance swimmer. For relaxation she did aerobic dancing.
Naturally she wanted to recruit me for all these invigorating activities, and initially I went along. The fact that every muscle in my body ached was compensated by the fact that she could give a really great massage.
For a while there I thought We really had something going. But when I started staying overnight at her place I began to get cold feet. Literally. She’d shake me at 5:00 A.M., make me down a cocktail of megavitamins, and drag me out to jog. None of Boston’s notoriously inclement weather could deter her. Like a mailman, neither snow nor rain nor sleet nor gloom of night could keep her from her appointed rounds. We’d get back at around seven, and instead of letting me tumble into a bath or back to bed, we had to spend another half-hour lifting weights. By the time I got to the office I was a wreck.
But she was a great kid and liked me a lot. She’d often call and suggest we spend a lunch hour together. Unfortunately, this was always at the Harvard pool. Where, after quickly downing a can of Nutrament, she would entice me into the water and I would wearily paddle while she churned her daily mile.
Even my friends remarked that I’d never looked better in my life. And I know if I married Cora I’d probably live to be at least a hundred.
But then there are a couple of drawbacks.
I was beginning to get so tired in the evenings that when she returned from dance class feeling all romantic, I was simply too exhausted to do anything but snooze. She began to think I was not interested in her body. In truth, I was obsessed by her body. It was my own that was the problem.
At the end of next semester she plans to move to Hawaii, where there are better facilities to train for the triathlon (a combination of swimming, biking, and marathoning).
So, time is running out.
The reason I’m having trouble deciding is that new opportunities present themselves at every turn.
There’s Roz, a divorcee who lives in Weston. She’s bright, well read, and (for a change) a terrific cook. She’s constantly asking me out to the house, which is where I find the single obstacle. Or rather, multiple one. Her five kids loathe me. And I guess they’d have to be included in a connubial arrangement.
There are lots of other candidates too. But none of them seems to be quite right.
Perhaps it’s my fault, I guess my expectations are too high. I’d like to marry someone who enjoys sitting quietly (without doing push-ups) and chatting about everything from politics to children. A woman who enjoys reading the same books and discussing them.
Most of all, I’d like to find someone as lonely as I. Who wants a hand to hold and a grown-up person to love. Maybe that’s too much to ask, But I’ll keep looking.
From the “Milestones” section of Time magazine, January 4, 1983:
DIVORCED. George Keller, 47, Deputy Secretary of State, and Catherine Fitzgerald Keller, 39, political activist; on grounds of irreconcilable differences; after nine years of marriage; no children.
THE REUNION
June 5–9, 1983
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
They began to gather on Sunday, June 5. Advance reservations indicated that over six hundred members of The Class would be coming from every state and even Europe and Asia. Registration was at the Freshman Union, where they had all embarked on their great journey twenty-nine years earlier.
But who were these strange people — balding, bespectacled, overweight, and shy? How had they come to usurp the ball reserved for the firebrands of The Class of ’58? The only clue was the badges that they wore on their lapels.
Paradoxically, most of them were more frightened at the prospect of their return to Harvard than when they first arrived as undergraduates. For now there was one conspicuous item missing from their spiritual luggage — unbounded faith in their potential.
They were no longer like astronauts striding to the launch pad full of hope, ready to fly to the moon and beyond. They were most of them weary travelers whose horizons ended at the office parking lot.
And for all their glittering achievements, their triumphal entries into the pages of Who’s Who, they knew they had suffered the irreparable loss of what was once their most precious gift. Their youth.
The Class of ’58 had come home as grown-ups. The great expectations that once had burned in them had been replaced by ghosts of old ambitions.
The secret word was compromise. Nobody said it outright, but they all could sense it. Yet somehow it was comforting to see that everyone had aged. They had weathered all the storms of harsh reality, and here were seeking shelter in a place where they had once believed no rain could ever fall on them.
They were gazing at one another. Some too timid to approach the old acquaintances they thought they recognized — but were too far away to read the badges.
And yet how different from the looks they had exchanged while waiting on line for that first dinner in their freshman year. They all were adversaries then. Independent, trusting only in themselves. The Union air had been suffused with feelings of omniscience and infallibility.
But now they treated one another with a new affection. There were no hierarchies. They were meeting for the first time as fellow human beings. For they were not there to worship. The Class had gathered to commune.
Gradually they could allow themselves to laugh. And talk of football games and college pranks. The good old times when Ike was in the White House and all was right with the world.
The reunion had begun.
The week officially began with a Thanksgiving and Memorial Service at nine-thirty the next morning.
Considering how few had attended the Baccalaureate Service at graduation in 1958, it was remarkable how many were present in Mem. Church that balmy morning of June 6, 1983.
They all had studied the immense red book, the glorious compendium of their collective achievements. But the entries that had captured everyone’s imagination were the dead. Eminence is no protection in a highway accident. Cancer does not hold a Harvard graduate in awe.
Perhaps they knew that this was the reason they had really come. To be with classmates once again at the midway point in their lives. And though the service was to honor the departed, in so doing, they were all acknowledging their own mortality.
The church was filled only with members of The Class, their families, and — their survivors. Classmates led the service.