March 1968
“Wait one second.” Jeremy goes to the bedroom and returns with CC’s pocketbook. “Are you going to leave without this?” She takes it from him.
“Is this a final goodbye?” he asks, teasing her. She has been heartbroken before. She feels the beginning of that.
“Hold on,” he tells her.
He returns to his bedroom, reappears with his winter coat on, and walks past her.
“Come on,” he says.
“Where?”
“Let’s just go.”
They have encountered a blizzard. Tiny droplets of ice are coming down in sheets. Stiff wind blows the ice horizontally against their faces. Each drop is like a tiny dagger. On the radio the news had mentioned a blizzard, but it didn’t register. Both have been in blizzards before. But in Buffalo, blizzards are so common that the natives have learned not to panic, to take it in stride. For them that means having rock salt ready and gas for the generator should the worst happen. They have lived long enough in Buffalo to be used to the weather. Carol usually reminds Jeremy what is needed. But this year has been very different. Not only because Carol is not around. Amazingly, it is the first real storm of the season. So, at this moment, it’s more a novelty than potential danger, at least to Jeremy. But then anything would have the sheen of discovery, given the state he is in.
Six years teaching at the university has similarly taught Jeremy well to not fear a blizzard. Being the first, it’s more novelty than potential danger. Moreover, his wife, planning and caution, can usually be counted on to keep their family safe. With her in the hospital, Jeremy is feeling something better– free, like he did as a youngster. Today, everything happening to him has the sheen of discovery.
CC is as excited and fearful as Jeremy. From that very first time in his office alone, as determined as she is for it to go nowhere, the possibility is exciting to her. Other than at the movies she has experienced very few adventures. Her parents have watched over her. And she has continued to be the daughter they have carefully raised.
A car’s wheels can be heard spinning.
Trying to be heard above the howling wind she shouts “This is crazy,” She is smiling. They make it the garage. There, inside, shined up and spiffy, looking practically new, is a black and white 1963 Ford Galaxie convertible, wire wheels and all.
“Get in.”
“I’m not getting in unless you promise to drive safely.”
“I will. Don’t worry. Get in.”
As a joke, he unhinges the top and pushes the button for the it to come down.
“No way,” she shouts as it settles in the back of the car.
“I’m kidding.” He answers wackily, and returns the car’s top.
They drive slowly with the top up. As they drive, the snow and ice are rapidly sticking to the road. Then suddenly, twenty minutes into their drive, it lets up and the sun is shining.
“That’s amazing,” she says.
“What is it they say about Buffalo weather? If you don’t like the weather, wait a few minutes. It will change.” He says that in his teacher voice.
“That’s not Buffalo weather. It’s New England weather.” She answers like a smart student supplying an answer.
Again, with his teacher’s voice, he continues, “Where does that quote come from?”
Triumphantly, CC replies, “Mark Twain.”
He pulls the car over and stops. Once again, he reaches for the button to put the top down. With the sun out it might be fun.
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” CC asks him.
“I’m just curious what it would be like.”
“Crazy is what it would be like.”
“That wouldn’t bother me.”
“Well, for us not-crazy people, I don’t want to be driving around in a convertible during a blizzard.”
The top up or down, the scene is magical, snow softening all contours. On mailboxes, rocks, bushes, mounds of it are rapidly forming. The sunshine is brief. No more ice from the sky. Now there are actual snowflakes. A lot of snowflakes. Blown by the wind, swirls of snow dance in front of them, spin behind them, to the side, everywhere. Then ice returns. It bounces off the windshield like tiny pebbles.
She shouts excitedly. “It’s really coming down,”.
“I’ve seen worse,” he answers, trying a bit too hard to be cool. He’s hardly aware of the snow. Of anything. What surrounds them matters little. CC’s presence makes him oblivious to anything else, to the snow, the wind, to any threat presenting itself. Her face is all that registers. Her beautiful face. If anything, being in the middle of a blizzard makes their situation more romantic. Anything near, anything far. Everywhere he looks seems like perfection.
Fortunately, he has always loved to drive in the snow and is good at it, alert to whatever the road can throw at him. He’s driven in blizzards before. Worse ones. His mastery is obvious, and this reassures CC. Enough for her to let her imagination flow to its fondest place. They are gliding on a horse pulled sled as Lara and Dr. Zhivago did. When he broke the glass to have a last look at Lara, CC let out a sob. It happened the second time she saw the movie. And the third. She loved that movie; loved that scene. Loved Zhivago. She loves how she is feeling now. In in the distance alarms are sounding but she can hardly hear them. They’ve gone too far to turn back! And they have done nothing.
“I don’t understand how you can act like Carol isn’t with you. Am I the only one who feels she’s here? You are married to her. And you love her!”
“It was my idea to get out of the house. If we hadn’t left, I would have jumped you.”
“You would?” Intended or not, her answer comes out flirtatiously.
They drive on quietly wondering what will be next.
She speaks first. “You say you love me, but—”
“If it’s about Carol, I don’t want to hear it.”
“Not just Carol. How can you love me when you know absolutely nothing about me?”
He answers. “What do you know about me?”
“That you are the most honest person I have ever met.”
He laughs. “Yeah right. I’m obsessed with honesty, but that doesn’t mean I’m honest. You already know I’ve cheated on Carol before. Basically, I’m not honest at all.”
“So why is truth so important to you?”
He’s in familiar territory, which makes him cheerful. Time for one of his lectures.
“Why am I so hung up with the truth? Erich Fromm, the guy who wrote The Art of Loving, knows every in and out. He’s obsessed with love. People quote him all the time.
“So?”
“He doesn’t know what love is. He can’t make it work.”
“That’s not true.”
“He’s been married five times.”
“That’s not true either.”
“I was told it was.”
“Whoever told you that is wrong. I’ve read about him.”
Jeremy likes the confident way CC’s correcting him, a student teaching her teacher. He likes it a lot.
“Maybe. I’ll check on that, but the idea is still valid. People preach when something needs fixing. I’m obsessed with truth because I am basically dishonest.” He speaks in a stage voice. “‘Me thinks thou doth protest too much.’” His pedagogical voice resumes. It much resembles the voice of his ninth–grade science teacher, Mr. Haskel. Jeremy thought he was the greatest–the way he reasoned, explained things. That meant even more than the clarity of his conclusions.
“My dishonesty is something I’ve got to fix. So, I keep carrying on about it, like maybe by talking about it I’ll learn how to do it. Listen to anybody preaching. It’s always the opposite of who they are. If they’re nasty they preach goodness. If they’re too good, they preach standing up for yourself, meaning get nastier.”
Pleased with his idea she rides it. Being engaged as student and teacher is how their love began, then from afar, now intimately. “I got a better example,” CC says happily.
“Did you ever watch Jimmy Swaggart?” she asks.
“The preacher? . . . No.”
“They carry him in New York. He’s not on in Buffalo.”
“What about him?”
“When I’m home I’ve sometimes watch him. He’s pretty amazing.”
“You listen to a Christian preacher?”
“I’m not interested in the Christian part. It’s what happens to him on his show. He’ll start crying as he speaks. Tears–he cries from the bottom of his heart. As he is speaking to God. Begs him for forgiveness. He is being watched by millions. Doesn’t matter. He’s talking to God.”
“In TV land,” Jeremy says sarcastically.
“You’d have to see it. The way he begs. The tears pour out. You can’t fake that. He really is talking to God.”
“He’s acting.”
“I’ve never seen an actor do that. I’m sure he loves the spotlight, everyone watching. But it’s not an act. Doesn’t matter who’s watching. In the South a lot of people are there. God is alive. He’s there when Swaggart is speaking to him. He desperately needs God’s forgiveness. He begs for it.”
“Come on. He’s getting rich off of it.”
“It gets me every time. I start thinking about everything I ever did wrong. Then I’m repenting along with him. I guess I’m supposed to feel that on Yom Kippur, but I just think about what I am going to eat when I break my fast. . . Jimmy Swaggart tears himself apart. He’s with God.”
“And you go sin hunting with him? What have you ever done?”
“We all do things. . . Anyway, Jimmy Swaggart,” CC laughs. “They say he goes to whores every Saturday night.”
Jeremy grins. “What a hypocrite.”
“Doesn’t matter. I assume he forgets about God for a while. But his desire to be forgiven is coming from somewhere deep. God is possessing him. He’s there. He’s listening. He’s begging to be innocent. To be forgiven. We’re no different. Even if we don’t feel God is watching us. We need that. Our conscience is there with or without God.” She hesitates, thinks about what she is saying. “He gets me every time. I want to there like he is.”
“At least he goes to his whores with a clear conscience.”
Their smiles temporarily free the two of them from Swaggart, from his and thier guilt and innocence. It is a relief.
“So, there you have it. I carry on about honesty because I’m not honest. I want to be, but I’m not.”
“I’m learning,” CC says. “I’ve talked about this with Mark a lot. Jewish guilt. It’s plays too much of a part in who we are. Mark thinks that’s why so many Jews go into therapy.”
Jimmy Swaggart’s not Jewish.
“True. Okay. It’s not just Jews but the therapy part, trying to get rid of the guilt. I get all over my behavior thinking about it. People used to pray a lot. Not having God Jews try to figure it out.”
Jeremy smiles as he listens.
“My therapist said I use a trick… If I criticize myself, I’m no longer the accused. I become the accuser. Meaning I am innocent as long as I am accusing. Mark was pleased with that one. Anyway, I turn myself into a pretzel. That’s a better way to be than feeling guilty.”
“But what have you ever done so wrong?”
“I’ve done plenty.”
“What?” Jeremy answers firmly.
“I have mean thoughts, nasty thoughts. A lot of them.”
“So does everyone!”
“I’m sure they do. And all of us have to escape our guilt. We want to be nicer than we are. Whatever way we can fool ourselves. Mark has explained that to me.”
“You said Mark wants to be a psychiatrist, right?”
“Figuring out what makes people tick, what makes him tick. Mark’s really into that.”
Jeremy’s fascination with CC takes a leap. This entire conversation he has suspected it, but now he is more fully realizing she is not just a pretty face. He should not be surprised. The fact that he could turn her on with his ideas means that she likes to do serious thinking. Most people don’t. Why else is she with him right now? Most people don’t care about what he is trying to teach. She went there with him. The same desire to nail things down. Carol has that same quality. Having a partner, someone he loves, right there with him, thinking together with him. He needs that.
“So, we shouldn’t get involved? The guilt would be too much?” he asks. He assumes that is where she is leading.
“Carol—”
He rolls his eyes. That goes right through her. She doesn’t continue.
For a while the snow had been flurrying, gently coming down. No longer. The abundance of snow surrounding them, surrounding everything, engulfing them, is blinding. The roads are becoming treacherous.
Once or twice, they skid. She knows that Jeremy is not skidding intentionally. Her initial alarm, feeling at the mercy of an idiot, is gone. She sees that he is adept driving in the snow. His years in Buffalo have made that so. He isn’t at all alarmed. He’s enjoying himself. His muscle memory is more than adequate.
Still, one gust of wind after another keeps coming, whistling, howling, roaring, screaming a warning. The weatherman on the news was right. It is a blizzard, the real thing, and they are in the middle of it. The fact that he is calm and seems to know what he is doing helps. But it is a blizzard. She wouldn’t dare drive in this kind of weather on Long Island. And they are in Buffalo. People die in this kind of weather. Their car gets stuck and they can’t see beyond 20 feet in any direction. They are far away from civilization. On Long Island, where there are houses everywhere getting lost in a blizzard has been a story on the news. On the Long Island Expressway! Her father wouldn’t let her drive even with small snowstorms. A blizzard was out of the question. He was right. He always is right about practical things. Like her father she’s wondered about motorists trying to drive in a blizzard, why they would do it? Now she is one of them. CC’s fear is growing. With or without Jeremy she is, in fact far away from everywhere.
“Maybe we should turn back?” she asks.
“Are you kidding?”
“I can hardly see the road. I’m surprised you can. We’ve passed three abandoned cars.”
“I love it,” he answers. “Nobody’s on the road. I feel free. I hope we have two feet of snow.”
“Where are we going?”
“Don’t know. Somewhere.”
The crazy sounds of the wind turn Jeremy on. He saw this movie Sacred Waters. These were the sounds as the hero took on the Swiss Alps, saving a village. Loved it. He’s driving carefully, but if he weren’t with CC he would be grinning corresponding to the wind, his eyes lit up like a madman.
“Do you have snow tires?” CC asks.
“No. But that makes it more fun. I love this.”
“Your parents should have taken you to Coney Island more. To get it out of your system.”
“My father encouraged me to go there. Left me money for the rides. One summer I rode the Cyclone every day.”
“I went on it once and that was enough,” CC says.
He doesn’t respond. He’s too involved with his adventure.
“I hope you realize this isn’t Coney Island.”
Betsy, his beloved Ford Galaxie, is heavy, but several times, the wind causes it to swerve. Jeremy goes with the sway. He remains in control.
“The Cyclone has all kinds of safety features built in,” he says. “Too many! This is better. It’s real.”
“You rode the Cyclone a lot?”
“Every day one summer. I eventually got bored by it.”
She’s not thrilled to learn that. Is he being honest? Or showing off? Is he a wild man or a wild talker? But then, as quickly as it had whipped up, the wind dies down.