“You can do anything,” Jimmy said. “Remember that.”
THE EXAM WAS less difficult than she had expected. Perversely, she had refused to read “Thanatopsis” and there was a lengthy question about it, but the other topics were familiar, even easy. She could have written all day about the New England Renaissance and was glad of the chance to expound on her theory of Louisa May Alcott’s significance in it, even though she knew the Stanford literati would scoff. Still, she was quite sure Jimmy could have done better on the exam than she had.
“I skipped the question on ‘Thanatopsis.’ I didn’t read it after you said it was so awful. I read it this morning. It’s a horrid poem!”
“I had to memorize it in high school,” said Jimmy.
“Oh, please don’t recite it! It’s just too dreadful.”
“I’m sure there are worse.”
“Probably.”
“You deserve a celebration. I’ve got tickets at the Fillmore.”
“For what?”
“Guess—”
It was Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin.
WATCHING THE POWERFUL singer in her cluttered duds, Ann felt exhilarated. Since she arrived at Stanford she had been tumbling along in an inevitable rush toward something she could not define, and now for the first time she felt optimistic about her academic future. Yvor Winters could have his heyday and she could have hers. She would defiantly write about the modern mind of Samuel Taylor Coleridge—STC Meets the Beatles—for her dissertation. And she would throw Janis Joplin in too—the lava flow of her harsh voice, raw in its volcanic spewing. It might belong.
In the car driving home from the show, Ann and Jimmy listened to the Doors’ “Light My Fire,” the long version. Ann felt its turbulence and desire matching the urgency deep inside. She had heard the song so many times that she could anticipate the precise instant in the long organ interval when Jim Morrison would resume the vocal.
The day ended softly, sweetly, as she and Jimmy lay entwined in each other’s arms, his hair making a pillow for her. She thought she heard rain, then remembered that it never rained here. It was the kitchen faucet dripping. It seemed attuned to the pleasure of hearing the singer at the Fillmore, like a new force of nature that echoed in Ann’s memory.
She woke up in the middle of the night. Jimmy was thrashing and murmuring.
“Can’t you sleep?” she asked.
“No.” He went to the bathroom and peed. When he returned, she was sitting up, jarred awake.
“Do you feel all right?” she asked.
“I guess so. My mind has the collywobbles.” He turned on the pole lamp by the bed.
“What are you worried about?”
He lit a cigarette and blew smoke across the room.
“Are you really awake?” he asked.
“I guess so. I’m sitting up, talking.” She pulled the comforter under her chin. The ceiling fan made a cool breeze.
He rose and turned off the fan. He pulled on a T-shirt and sat on the side of the bed. He wore no pants.
“I have to do something,” he said, twisting to face her. “It’s why I didn’t take the exam.” He clasped her hand. “Promise you won’t hate me.”
“Why would I ever hate you?”
Slowly, he exhaled a stream of smoke like a cloud on the conversation.
“Don’t hate me.” He flicked the cigarette ash into the ashtray on the night table. “I told you I had to do something, and well, I did it. . . .”
“Good. Now maybe we can get a crop out—as Mama would say.” She was trying to tease him, but he frowned.
“I want you to understand this, Ann. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, the hardest decision I’ve ever made, and you’ve got to accept it. I can’t deal with it if you don’t. Please don’t be upset with me. I need you. Come over here. Let’s get up.”
He lowered her onto his reading chair by his desk and settled the comforter around her. “I’m serious. Look at me.”
“What are you talking about?” She reached up and clasped his arms. “Out with it.”
“I joined the army.”
“What?” She pulled the tail of his T-shirt as if pulling it could silence her scream. “No! No!” She burst into a thunderclap of tears. The comforter fell from her shoulders.
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“Why?”
He held her for a long time, back in the bed, while she cried herself out. She would lose him, he would die, he would be gone. This was the end.
“But you hate the war,” she said, still sobbing. “We should be fighting against the war.”
“But I do. I am.”
“It’s two years?”
“Three if you volunteer. I go in the fourteenth.”
“Why?”
“You know why. Haven’t I made that clear?”
“No.” Ann knew that Jimmy had felt the draft wasn’t fair to the underprivileged, but who would question a draft deferment? Chip, she remembered, had been definite about avoiding the draft.
“I thought you had been talking hypothetically,” she said without meeting his eyes. Her shock had turned to a quiet fury.
He lit another cigarette. Her head was in his soft lap. They didn’t speak.
“How could you do this to me?” she said finally.
He grew angry then. He had never been angry with her.
“It’s a question of what I’d be doing to myself, and ultimately to both of us, if I didn’t do this. You don’t have to go along. You can just drop me. I may regret this, but I wanted to do it. Now I’ve done it.”
She sat up. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you stay away? Why did you lie to me?”
“I don’t know. I’m a chicken, I guess—the same way I used the deferment to hide. I just couldn’t tell you. I didn’t want to worry you and interfere with your reading for the exam.”
It wasn’t in her nature to scream or even to raise her voice or argue stridently. But she could bawl. She went to the bathroom and stood facing the mirror.
“Why didn’t I figure this out?” she asked when her cries died down.
“Don’t make me feel worse. I know I wasn’t being straight with you. You know I couldn’t tell you long-distance.”
“But you thought I knew what you were going to do? How can I read your mind? I thought you were reading for the exam. I thought you were in Chicago with your dying grandma.”
“That was all true.”
“Why didn’t you want to be with me?”
“I just couldn’t make you worry all summer when you were supposed to be studying.” He swabbed her eyes with his fingers. “I tried to break up with you, to spare you all this. But I wasn’t that strong.”
“I really don’t understand.”
“I couldn’t live with myself if I kept the deferment. I would apologize a thousand times to you, but it would never begin to be enough. And you ask what is fair. Are you being fair to me?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what I’ve really been struggling with.”