Date: Saturday, 12/20/69

I’m on the train returning to Skokie and will be home before Christmas. The train is very full with people ready to be festive for the holidays. Many colored packages fill the overhead bins. Presents galore.

I don’t feel like partying. It’s still impossible to believe that one week ago Charles died. I called Mama to tell her to pick me up at the station as we planned when I left in September. She didn’t ask me about Charles or what had happened to change my plans. Someone from the College must have called her to tell her what had happened. They are like that there. So thoughtful and helpful at the worst of times without saying a word.

Mama must be wondering what shape I am in after this experience. She won’t say a word until she has seen me. That’s Mama.

I’m going home. What a different life I thought I had a week ago. In my head, I had begun writing post cards to friends and family from the places Charles and I traveled to. I filled each card with wonderful descriptions of all the things we saw and all the new things I was now able to do.

I’ll go back to the College at the end of this break. With Charles, Prof. Keating, Eileen and Philip not there, it will be a bit like starting all over again. I have something good to say about that though, I did well in all my classes, so I’ll be returning knowing that I did what I set out to do. All the other stuff was extra-curricular.

That’s a pretty bloodless summation of this term: I got good grades. My boyfriend is dead. The man who wanted to be my boyfriend left. The friends who couldn’t be my friends moved to Mexico.

Sometimes things aren’t what they seem. If ever. Maybe I’m too young to need to be that certain of anything.

I opened the envelope Charles’ mother gave me. I was alone in my room after the memorial service. Sylvie had already packed her things and gone home. She left me a wonderful card saying how much she liked being my roommate and next term she’s getting an apartment off campus. She left her portion of the room clean for the first time.

I opened the envelope and found a card inside. Mrs. Payne had written a note to me in exactly the same handwriting Charles used. She told me she missed her son tremendously. She was sorry there would be no wedding. She repeated much of what she had said at the church and then said that she was giving me a check, that she hoped I wouldn’t mind her doing that. It was to honor the love that Charles and I had had for each other. She knew it was priceless and that no amount of money could equal it. I looked at the amount she had written on the check and my eyes blurred over. I had never seen that amount of money made out in my name before and I doubt I ever will.

She said, she hoped it would help to make my life easier and that no one at the College needed to know. Separately, they were going to offer a scholarship in Charles’s name so I wasn’t to do anything foolish but to have an easier life.

She signed it in an odd way, I never would have thought she would do this. She wrote:

Love from Charles’ mother

Tony dropped by to say good bye to me as I cleaned up the room. He looked gloomy too. He gave me a big hug. He said he would be back in February and look out for me as Charles would have wanted him to do. I told him I would look out for him too as Charles always wanted his friends to be friends.

When Tony walked out the door, I had that vision of Charles leaving again. I fell down on the bed and into a deep sleep for several hours.

Alex woke me up. He too wanted to say good bye. He had hoped we could go for a run but the weather wasn’t good for that.

We stood at the window in my room. Somehow being with Alex is always about being in the outdoors even when you can’t be. The untouched white snow below us held the sun’s glare in such a way that it looked like a huge crystal cloth covered the earth.

“I’ll be back in February,” I told him.”

“I had no doubts that you’d be back. I want you on my team.”

I agreed and we held onto each other for a long time. Before he left my room, he turned to me and said, “I owe you an apology. You did pick a good guy. He loved you and quit the drugs. I respect that, Scags. I do. I’m glad not to be losing you.”

I finished packing and made sure to hide that note and check from Charles’ mother.

Lauren gave herself the job of making sure I ate, had someone to talk to and hand out tissues. She also drove me to the train station and said a long good bye to me. I know when I return in February, she’ll be one of the first people I go see. She invited me to come back early if I wanted to and stay with her. I really do have a good friend. I may need to take her up on that.

The food on the train is better than I remember from my ride out East. It may taste good because there isn’t much to do on the train except eat. This time I’m enjoying eating in the dining car with the other passengers. I don’t have to say much of anything to anyone but they give me a reason to smile.

When I can see out the window, it is snowing everywhere. Each time we stop, I pull back the curtain and in the glass the lights from the station are refracted in such a way that they look like ornaments on a Christmas tree. Everything looks so beautiful and yet I can’t feel that beauty. I only know it exists.

My mind is filled going home with all the new plants that have taken root in me. I have found the means, I think, to keep sprouting.

My winter break reading list has filled up, including lots of Virginia Woolf. No writer has inspired me as she did with her wise words about being a woman and learning to write.

She’s right too about time. Women haven’t enjoyed enough time yet on their own to do all the things we want to do. I will become a part of that work too, I’m sure.

As to you, Charles, at least you had the good sense to give me that lock of your hair. I have had the good sense to tape it into the back of this diary. Every day I open the book at the back and stroke your hair, my Handsome Charles before I write down all the things that are happening to me.

I miss you.