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Jewish World Review Nov. 16, 1999 / 7 Kislev, 5760
“HI MARLENE, this is a voice from your past!” said the message on my
voice mail. The past, indeed. I dated Carl throughout high school. He was
my first love, the guy who broke my heart and left lasting stretch marks from
the weight I gained in the aftermath. He was calling now, after more than 30
years. Wow!
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The return of my first-love
By Marlene Adler Marks
His wife, it turns out, had seen a notice that I was coming to speak at
their local book store in Boca Raton, Florida they looked me up on the
internet. And then they -- I mean, he -- called.
My friend Olivia says that calling me was cruel. He’s married, what’s
the point? But I was intrigued by the overture. Life is messy. The past is
a hedge around the soul. What we do with our memories and experiences shapes
us like Edward Scissorhands’ topiary. Mine were, at best, unkempt. I had
not thought about Carl in so many years, the brambles and thorns between us
were thick like Briar Rose’s vines. Three days later, after I got a manicure
and a new moisturizer, I called him back. I had some cleaning up to do.
In high school, Carl was something else. He was tall, a bear, with a
football player’s shoulders, the model for all the men I’ve known since. We
met the weekend at a Jewish youth conclave
in Westchester after John F. Kennedy was killed. We dated for months before he really kissed me, in the back
seat of a friend’s old black Thunderbird, on the night of our junior prom.
Blonde hair and bright blue eyes. His own car was a flashy Chevy Impala
metallic blue convertible. He had a great laugh.
Right away we were like some old couple. We dated every weekend; bowling
and movies, football games, Broadway shows and restaurants in an old-fogey
routine with other couples. I knit him three sweaters, one for every winter
of our love.
He went away to college and, had we really been as mature as we felt,
that would have been that. Still, we held on. He became jealous, and I
discovered feminism. You don’t own me! I said. And then came the letter,
that he was seeing Helene. I put on 25 pounds. And I never wanted to love
again.
My mother once told me a story. She was 15 when she
started dating my father. But apparently my dad was already late. She’d
been seeing someone else, and my father didn’t like competition. When they
went to their high school reunion, nearly 60 years later, the man was still
interested in my mother. My father nearly had a fit.
I thought about that now, waiting in the Florida humidity for Carl and
Helene to arrive. Feelings don’t die. Some lie dormant, like a virus,
waiting for warmth. It was very, very weird. I was staying with my parents,
and for a moment, time scaled backward and I was a teenager again, waiting
for the blue Impala to appear down our block.
They drove a late-model Acura, bronze. His hair was still light brown,
only slightly receded. He had jowls I couldn’t remember, and a mustache that
I could live without. I could see, by the way he held the door open,
allowing her hip to brush against him, that they still had it for each other.
I’m good at these things, so don’t worry about me. On the way to lunch,
I sat in the back of the Acura and, as we talked about their son and my
daughter -- now the age that we were when Carl and I dated -- I didn’t think
at all about the way I had once gently taken the measurement of his neck so
my sweaters could fit over his large head. And I didn’t consider the way the
nape of his neck felt against my hand, and the soft flesh beneath his ears.
On the morning after the prom, we lay on the sand at Jones Beach, making
waves.
Because all the time we were gabbing about our children and our work and
our lives’ varying paths, I was focused on the occupant of the front
passenger seat.
Helene is shorter and darker, and calmer, but, since it was her curiosity
that sparked the meeting, quite a bit like me. Like the me I might have been
if I’d married my first love and had stayed home in a secure marriage to
raise our child. She’s active in school and the Jewish community. We share
the same values, natch.
But change places? Never. This was the day’s big relief. I had been
there when his mother died, but five years later, at his father’s funeral, I
was gone. A life-time has passed, and I’ve become, well, myself. Meanwhile,
Helene had grown, too, making that life -- for which we might once have
seemed interchangeable parts -- completely her own.
They took me to see their home, and, lovely as it was, I thought happily
of mine. I showed them photos of my own husband, who had been about the same
age as Carl when my daughter was born. All the outcomes now seemed good.
Carl had been part of my life, as close to my heart as anyone had yet
come, and I as close to his. We were each other’s preparation for all that
was to be. We’d been young, but not, as Nat King Cole once sang, too young
too know.
Next time we meet, we’ll double
JWR contributor Marlene Adler Marks is a columnist and author of "A Woman's Voice: Reflections on Love, Death, Faith, Food & Family Life ". Send your comments to her by clicking here.
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