Chapter 11

Summer 1998

The summer after my junior year was hot, hotter than anything I could remember from back in Chicago. There was something different about North Carolina summers. I grew up on the lake, and while East Coasters scoff at the idea of Lake Michigan (as opposed to the more vast Atlantic Ocean), it provided entertainment and a breeze during the summers of my youth. We welcomed summer, even those humid, ninety-degree days, because it was such a change from the gray winters, the snow piled up in the corners of mall parking lots, the endless parade of boots and scarves and single lost mittens. The humidity was bearable because there was the cool water of the lake, festivals and, always, an early evening breeze.

In Durham, summer brought a thickness to the air that was unrelieved by a nearby body of water or a breeze. The days were still, the nights more so, and there was the constant shifting between air-conditioned rooms and the merciless heat outside. Many people in Chicago had no air conditioning, since the summers were so short, and, if you lived close enough to the water as we did, you only needed to open your windows to feel instantly cooler. In North Carolina, air conditioning was a necessity, and those who did not have it suffered during those long months between May and October, sometimes even November.

I always felt sticky during North Carolina summers. I couldn’t take enough showers. As soon as I dressed and stepped outside, my clothes began to wilt and dampen. The summer after my junior year at Duke, I wanted to spend all my days lying under a fan in our apartment, which had a window unit that only seemed to work properly when we didn’t need it. Instead, I spent the summer as a research assistant for my chemistry professor. My white lab coat was a necessary evil, so I took to wearing shorts and T-shirts underneath while I carted stacks of books back and forth between Perkins and the science building.

But perhaps I was romanticizing Midwestern summers. It may have been sweltering, but the summer of 1998 was the best summer of my life.

* * *

In April of that year, Angela caught Jason cheating. Not caught, as in found phone numbers in his pants pocket or heard an incriminating telephone message. Caught, as in walked in on Jason standing in his bedroom with a girl on her knees in front of him. Jason tried to explain. Was it really cheating if she was the one technically doing all the work? Angela picked up a British lit textbook and hurled it at Jason’s head.

“It hit the other girl,” he told me afterward. It bothered me that he didn’t even say her name. “I tried not to laugh.” But he laughed when he told me. I didn’t bother to laugh with him. He was trying to pretend like it wasn’t a big deal, that he didn’t care that he’d devastated Angela. I cared.

I watched his face. When did he become so smug? When did he develop that uncompromising set to his shoulders? I didn’t know why Jason had changed, and I realized that we never really talked about anything important. We were not friends, not real friends. Neither one of us could let down our guard enough for that to happen. Over the past few months, Jason and I had become strangers. The girls, books and our own reticence created a gulf that I could not bridge. I realized I didn’t want to.

I went to her apartment later that day. Her roommate was out and Angela was sitting on the sofa in the dark, wrapped in a blanket. The television was on but the sound was so low that the voices were murmurs. I had never been to her apartment before, but of course, I knew where it was. The first thing I noticed was a framed print on her wall. It was a reproduction of Le Jazz. The original hung on Coach Grant Davis’s wall in Baltimore. I wondered if she knew that.

“Are you okay?” She arranged herself on the couch after letting me in. Her eyes were vacant as she stared at the television. I saw next to her, the blanket a mountain between us.

“She smiled at me.” Her eyes still watched the screen.

“Who?”

“That slut. With Jason. I walked in on them, and she just stood up, as proud as you please. And smiled at me.”

I didn’t know what to say. I just watched Angela as she watched the screen. After a while, I went into the kitchen and made some soup I found in the cupboard. Angela shook her head when I offered it to her, but she took the bowl and sipped from the spoon. I think she did it to make me happy. The programs changed from daytime game shows to the evening news, and we just sat there. When she started to cry, I held her hand over the blanket mountain.

* * *

Angela and I took African-American Literature together that summer. She was an English and African-American studies major, so it made sense for her. For me, I just wanted to do something different, something to break up the long, hazy days. And I wanted to be near Angela.

That summer, I discovered writers and ideas I never knew existed. I learned about slave narratives and the Harlem Renaissance. I finally read Ralph Ellison, and I hated Hurston. I recognized the anger in Native Son. The class ended with some contemporary things: Mosley and Wideman and Walker. I wasn’t sure I understood Walker, and I went through Mosley’s stories and novels so quickly that I was left longing for more. I loved James Baldwin. Angela liked Toni Morrison. We spent hours talking about why. I wished the class, and the summer, would go on forever.

That summer, I discovered that Angela was a real person, with feelings and flaws I had never imagined. Both her parents were closet alcoholics, so she didn’t drink. She had an irrational love of romantic comedies, overdone drivel that fed into hopeless Cinderella fantasies. She was studying to be an English teacher, eventually a college professor. But her secret wish was to be a wife and a mom, staying home to care for four, five, even six children. She was old-fashioned and stubborn. I wished the class, and the summer, would go on forever.

We didn’t talk about Jason. I tried, once. She was telling me about her high-school boyfriend. He was her first love. She thought they would get married. Their parents had been friends since high school. It had seemed like a perfect match.

“But there’s no such thing when you’re sixteen,” she said. We were sitting outside a coffee shop in Chapel Hill. She drank coffee constantly during the day, said she couldn’t study without it. We’d grabbed a sidewalk table. It was cloudy and humid, one of those days where rain would be a relief to the thickness of the air. But all of the tables were filled. Franklin Street was a mix of bars, secondhand record stores, restaurants and small shops selling everything from clothes to incense. College kids came from all the area schools to hang out here, where the vibe was relaxed, a throwback to simpler times. Franklin Street was what made Chapel Hill a quintessential college town. But it wasn’t a place just for kids—the atmosphere welcomed people of all ages and races.

During the regular school year, Franklin Street was always vibrating with energy. There were fewer people here for the summer, and a certain laziness hung in the air. Most of the people sitting around us were young men and women, studying during the summer but not taking anything too seriously. Summer was for relaxing, for fun. We were still young enough to feel the pull of irresponsibility when the weather warmed. I looked at the twosomes around us, wondering whether they were real couples, or more like us: man in love, woman oblivious.

“He broke up with me the night before graduation. He was supposed to come to Duke with me, but he told me he’d decided to go to Berkeley instead. Like he wanted to get as far from me as possible. He told me I was too traditional. I wasn’t ambitious enough. What’s wrong with wanting to be a teacher, a wife, a mom? Why is that wrong?”

She said all this in a rush, as if the words needed to escape before they disappeared. I could see her trying to hold back tears. She sipped her coffee and wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“That guy sounds like a jerk. Your dreams are your own—they’re not for anyone else to judge. You deserve better than him. And Jason.”

It was more than two months since she discovered Jason was cheating. We never really talked about it. When I mentioned his name, she turned sharply toward me.

“He’s your roommate.”

Was she accusing me of some complicity? Maybe she was right. I knew he was doing it. Maybe I should have told her. But self-preservation had stood in my way. I knew what happened to the messenger.

“I’m not perfect. But I never would have done that to my girlfriend.” I paused and swallowed hard. “I never would do that to you.”

Our gazes held for a few beats. She was the first to look away. She shrugged and shook her head. She looked down into her empty cup, then smiled up at me. I couldn’t read the smile. It was a perfectly friendly, perfectly empty smile, meant to return us to safer territory.

“I need more coffee. You?”

I smiled back and tried not to wonder whether to consider this a rejection. I watched her back as she stood in line to order.

* * *

Classes ended in early August. Most of the other summer-school students left campus during the time between the end of summer classes and the beginning of the fall semester. We were going to be seniors. Jason and I had agreed to live together again, although we hadn’t spoken all summer. He was in Baltimore, working for his father as an intern in the Bullets’ public relations department. I called him once to work out the details of the rent. He spent the entire conversation name dropping, telling me about all the parties he went to, all the basketball players he was friends with. I didn’t recognize most of the names and I didn’t care about the parties. I think he knew that.

Angela had to be out of her dorm room by the end of the week. She had a ticket to go home to Chicago, but I could tell she didn’t want to leave. It was just after nine on a Tuesday morning. We had just turned in our final paper for lit, and the day was sunny and the grass was still damp and cool. We decided to take a walk through the gardens before the steam began to rise.

I liked to walk through the Sarah P. Duke Gardens. It was like a botanical oasis in the middle of the gothic architecture that housed the business of education. There were expanses of lawns, fountains and flowers that I should have known the names of, but didn’t. When I needed to think, I wandered the five miles of pathways and trails, sometimes wishing to get lost, sometimes just sitting on a wooden bench trying to separate all the sounds and fragrances. People were always walking through the gardens, either students taking shortcuts to classes or tourists visiting and exploring. But the mass of greenery silenced human noises and created a sense of privacy around each person. I always felt I was alone in the gardens, even when I passed groups of giggling high-school students trying to decide whether Duke was their top choice.

The gardens felt like my place, and that made me happy to walk through them with Angela. Of course she’d been there on her own, but I took her along my favorite little paths, away from the main sections where most people went. As we walked, I told her about all the plants and flowers, making up names to make her laugh.

“I had no idea you were such an expert.” We sat on rocks next to a pond in the Asiatic Arboretum.

“That’s probably because I’m not.”

There was silence as we sat and watched the fish make ripples just underneath the surface of the pond.

“I’ll miss this when I go home.” She looked at me. “I know it’s only for a few weeks, but being with my parents for a few weeks feels more like years. You just don’t know.”

I raised my eyebrows and thought of my father. “Oh, I can imagine. My family isn’t exactly the Cosbys.”

She shrugged. “Even the Cosbys aren’t the Cosbys, if you know what I mean.”

She smiled at me and I blurted it out before I could think.

“You could stay at my place. I mean, until your roommate comes back and you can move into your apartment.”

The moment the words left my mouth, I wanted to take them back. I didn’t want her to think I was trying to play house. I told myself that my intentions were only honorable. I told myself that I only wanted her if she wanted me, too. I would not use the fact that her roommate was spending the summer in Paris to my advantage. I almost believed me.

She tilted her head and looked out at the water. Maybe she was considering whether she wanted to set foot in the place where Jason lived and had betrayed her. Maybe she wondered about my motives. Maybe she saw through me and was thinking of how to let me down easy.

I opened my mouth to take it back, to apologize, to ask for forgiveness. I opened my mouth to tell her I loved her. Before I could speak, she looked at me. She leaned close, and I could smell her skin, fresh and clean, like the smell of a just-bathed baby. She kissed me.

* * *

It was all smell and touch. The mint of her mouth against mine. Her hands running over the back of neck. My fingertips against the small scar on her left side. The musk between her thighs. Our eyelashes brushing. Our legs entwining. My pelvis pressed against hers. A sweet odor. Strong, aggressive. Honeysuckle, I thought. I was delirious. There, on the banks of the pond where anyone could see. I whispered.

“I love you.”

She murmured back. We fell asleep for a few moments, lying in each other’s arms, our clothes rumpled and tangled. We were the only two.

* * *

When I think of the rest of that summer, it comes to me in a series of vignettes, a montage of scenes that show how Angela and I felt about each other. In a romance novel or a film it might seem clichéd, but living through it, it seemed we were the first two people to ever be in love.

After class, we usually went to the Coffee Bean when Angela wasn’t working a shift. We sat drinking free coffee, escaping the North Carolina summer sun and making top ten lists. Top ten Chicago restaurants. Top ten celebrities we would want to date. Top ten movies from the 1980s, cheesy pop songs, children’s books, episodes of Seinfeld. We argued over Spandau Ballet’s “True,” whether songs based on dances like “The Macarena” counted, whether Madonna deserved to be in the category of cheesy pop. We agreed on “Say Anything” and the first “Lethal Weapon.” I had never told anyone that I loved Hardy Boys mysteries when I was a kid, and secretly, I also read Nancy Drew when I went to the library. I laughed when she was able to recite entire pages from The Lorax by heart, and although it was impossible to decide which of the Seinfeld episodes was the best, we made ourselves cry reciting lines from our favorites.

Sometimes, we talked about family. At least, she talked about hers. Her father was serious and stern, and her mother was solidly middle-class but always wishing she was more.

“My mother wanted me to be a debutante,” Angela said, wrinkling her nose. When I thought of debutantes, I thought of rich white girls in ball gowns and white gloves, entering the kind of society I knew little about.

“Black people can be debutantes?”

Angela explained the structure of the organizations, which were often affiliated with black fraternities and sororities. High-school kids gathered for service projects, formal socializing, networking for college scholarships and part-time jobs. But there was another side to it all. Angela talked about how the black elite held these balls and tried to encourage pairings between teens of the “right” class. But the pairings couldn’t be too close, of course, because teen sex and pregnancy was for the lower classes. Black people couldn’t afford those kinds of mistakes, since the Talented Tenth represented black culture to the world.

“It all goes back to slavery, to the Africans being taught that the more like white people they were, the better.”

I considered this. Angela was full of theories about the oppressed and racism. She saw the world in very definite terms, and she didn’t tend to see the grays. I knew I was like this, too, but about different things; not politics, but family, relationships, love. In terms of race, I’d been on both sides, accepted by whites as a token, shunned by blacks as a sellout, and I thought that these things had less to do with race and more to do with class and human nature.

“So who were you paired with?”

She made a face, sticking out her tongue and rolling her eyes. I laughed.

“His name was Richard Lovell. He went by Dick, and I think that says it all.”

I smiled. “I’ve never understood guys named Richard who go by Dick. Rick, Ricky, Richie, Rich, Ric with no ‘k’—there are just so many other options.”

“I know!” Angela was still making a face, but giggling at the same time. “It speaks to character, right? He had no sense of humor, didn’t get irony at all. I mean, if you call yourself Dick, but with a wink, it’s creepy, but at least you’re acknowledging some kind of awareness of the culture.”

“So was that the main thing, his name? I just want to make sure I have the whole picture.”

Angela thought for a moment. “When his parents offered to buy him any car he wanted, he picked a Taurus. We were in high school. It was green.”

I gave a mock shudder. “Well, no wonder you refused Dick and all the debutante accoutrements.”

Angela nodded gravely. “My mother is still mad about it.”

“Where do you think old Dick is now?”

She shrugged. “Probably still driving that stupid Taurus like he’s fifty instead of twenty-one.”

* * *

One week, Angela and I challenged ourselves to the task of going to a matinee every day. We would randomly pick a movie each day, and we were required to watch it in its entirety, no matter how bad.

“Let’s make it interesting—we each have to finish a tub of popcorn by the end of the movie, or else it’s two movies the next day,” I told her.

“Two tubs of popcorn the next day, too?”

“Of course.”

“You’re on.”

We began with I Still Know What You Did Last Summer on Monday.

“Brandy’s not a bad actress, but this movie is ridiculous,” Angela whispered, sotto voce, in the middle of the movie.

“Shhh. You know black people already have a reputation for talking during movies. Don’t feed into the stereotype.” We giggled until the one other person in the theater shushed us.

Tuesday was Armageddon. Angela got teary when Bruce Willis sacrificed his life so that his daughter might live happily ever after with Ben Affleck.

“You’re such a sap,” I teased. She punched me in the arm with a fist while she wiped her eyes with the other. “Resorting to violence doesn’t make you seem any tougher, you know.”

We saw Can’t Hardly Wait on Wednesday, which inspired a catch phrase we repeated to each other whenever the other wasn’t expecting it.

“I can’t feel my legs. I CAN’T FEEL MY LEGS!”

Thursday: Dr. Doolittle. It tested my resolve, and I took a long bathroom break in the middle. Angela threatened me with two tubs of popcorn, claiming that overly long bathroom breaks were cheating.

“By the way,” she added, “didn’t Eddie Murphy used to be cool?”

On Friday we saw Lethal Weapon 4 in homage to the original, and agreed that the only good thing about it was Chris Rock.

We saved Out of Sight for Saturday because Angela insisted we read the Elmore Leonard book first, and I read much more slowly than she did.

“I think I’m in love,” I sighed during one of the movie’s early scenes.

Angela looked at me, her eyes big.

I stared at the screen. “With Jennifer Lopez.”

She shook her head, and in my peripheral vision I could see her smiling.

“I’m adding George Clooney to my top ten list,” she said.

“You’re just trying to compete with me. He’s not your type.”

“Oh yeah? Who’s my type?”

I looked at her and slipped my hand into hers.

“Me?” I couldn’t help but make it a question. I wasn’t quite confident enough to assume anything, despite what was happening between us.

She looked at me for a long moment, and then she nodded.

“You.”

On Sunday, we stayed in bed all day.

* * *

Calvin on redemption:

I changed a lot during the years I was away from my children, after Vanessa and I divorced and I moved back to North Carolina. When I first went home to my mother, I was still in the throes of my addictions. For me, it wasn’t a specific drink, and I never was too interested in drugs. Even the women, if you consider that a type of addiction, weren’t that important to me. I suppose it’s this way with all addicts: it’s the feeling that matters, not the substance. Anything that provides the feeling you’re seeking becomes the drug of choice.

I don’t much about other people’s struggles with this type of thing. I’m not a student of the twelve steps, although they seem reasonsable enough, especially the simple idea of taking one day at a time. I didn’t go to rehab (mostly because I couldn’t afford it and I was ashamed to ask for help), and I didn’t attend meetings. So all I know about it is from inside me, and that is the feeling I was seeking when I cheated on Vanessa, drank too much and pushed her away. All I wanted was to avoid rejection. Acceptance is the other side of that, I suppose, but avoiding rejection goes farther than that. If I don’t commit to one person, she can’t reject me because I provided an excellent reason for us to break up.

The drinking was a part of the same not-so-clever plan, but it was also a way to isolate myself socially. Alcohol became my friend so I didn’t have to cultivate human, adult relationships. No friends, no family, no rejection. Just as I distanced myself from my ex-wife, I did the same with my children. I left them before they could decide I was a terrible father. I decided it for them.

Or at least, that’s what I was trying to do. After Vanessa died and the kids came to live with me, Ellison rejected me all over again, and I found myself trying to prove myself not only to him, but also to Maren. Daughters are easier on their fathers; Maren forgave my past, present and future sins, although I had no right to expect her to. Ellison may never do the same. I don’t know if I blame him one bit.

—From Save Me: A Memoir by Calvin Emory