Those Several Summers (eBook)

Portland, Oregon

1. At Harrington’s, Friday, June 29

I’d taken a bus from the Reed campus and headed to downtown Portland. As I walked to the museum, the “Harrington’s” sign surprised me. The book I’d bought in Powell’s, Being Single in Portland, had a section about places “to meet people,” Harrington’s being one of them. I was far from home and lining up things to do to keep me entertained for whenever our seminar wasn’t meeting. I’d noted Harrington’s as a place to eventually check out, but when I saw the sign at street level, I thought I’d take a look right then.

Halfway down the wrought iron staircase that led to the underground restaurant, I hesitated. I could see a man in a brown leather jacket sitting at one end of the long bar, drinking a beer. He looked to be in his forties, as I was. I liked his moustache, his glasses, his seeming pensiveness. Would it be too absurd to take a seat near him, maybe talk to him?

I’d met men this way before. I would appear self-contained, but glance their way and make eye contact, maybe strike up a conversation. A social hour at Harrington’s promised to be a place that would promote such a scene, although it was only three o’clock, too early. Still, the interesting-looking man was alone, and I debated. Should I continue down the curving staircase and take a seat near him? Or find the Portland Art Museum? I started back up the stairs—then stopped, looked down again.

The man in the leather jacket seemed tall—a feature I found appealing. I’d order something simple, perhaps talk, perhaps not, and be on my way. I knew no one here in Portland. My seminar didn’t meet on Fridays, which was what today was, so I’d spent the morning alone, studying Henry IV, taking a walk around campus, and now, heading to the museum.

On the staircase I debated: down-up, stay-go, which one?

Oh well, what difference did it make to talk to that man who was alone? I was already here, wasn’t I? I descended the curving steps, pulled out a stool two seats away from him. He turned to me when I did that, and I smiled slightly. He nodded his head in acknowledgment, smiled slightly also, and turned back to his beer. His height was apparent in the way his legs extended out from the barstool, his back broad beneath the brown leather of his jacket. I ordered a club soda and took out a pack of cigarettes from a carton that my rather uncommitted boyfriend back home, Doug, had given me as a send-off gift. I left matches in my purse. “Do you have a light?” I asked the man.

He turned toward me, pulling a lighter out of his pocket, and looked pleased to have been asked. His eyebrows matched his moustache; his hair, although thinning, needed a trim. I was dressed up for a city museum visit: a black linen suit, bone-colored pumps. The man extended his arm gracefully toward me and lit my cigarette, shaking out one of his own to join me before tucking the lighter back in his pocket. The smoke drifted upward. On the sound system a piano played softly; it sounded like Gershwin. “Biding My Time,” I said.

He laughed. “I guess I am, too. Right now.”

Was he deliberately playing with the pun? I gestured toward the loudspeaker. “I meant the music, that song. I’m on my way to the art museum.”

He listened briefly to the music, studying me. “It’s a great museum,” he said. “A few blocks from here.” His eyebrows lifted a bit in inquiry.

I must have seemed different—a woman alone in the afternoon going to a museum and stopping in a bar to order a club soda. I admitted to him I was new to Portland; it looked to be a beautiful city. “Do you know the Michael Graves building?” I asked. “I read about it on the plane, in the plane’s magazine.”

The man turned fully toward me; he had to move the middle stool a bit to make room for his legs. He lived in Portland and knew all about the building, as well as the planned statue of “Portlandia” that would eventually adorn it. He’d been a city planner for ten years before he quit to open his own business—long story—but it had failed. I heard the words “live in Portland” and “city planner” and was thrilled, feeling that I’d walked into an information source—something to share with my seminar fellows in getting to know them.

The man said he was once again looking for a real job and selling cars in the meantime. His wide shoulders shrugged an apology, and he paused a moment. “What are you doing here, all the way from—?”

“New Jersey,” I filled in. “I’m studying Shakespeare. At Reed.”

The word “Shakespeare” sometimes caused strangers to pull back, but he seemed pleased with that information. “That’s great. Reed’s a great school. Is there a summer program?”

I was still absorbing the candor of his admission of failure and felt, absurdly, that I was now boasting. But I explained. Yes, there was a program, a National Endowment for the Humanities, for a six weeks’ study. “It’s for high school teachers—we apply for it. I mean, I teach high school English, Shakespeare.” I shrugged, took a sip of my club soda. He was still turned toward me, seemingly with interest. “I arrived two days late,” I continued. “Long story there, too—and found out our seminar doesn’t meet on Fridays. I think the others probably already made arrangements for today.”

I didn’t tell him I was the only participant who had asked for the one available studio apartment and so been granted it. Several had opted for the communal dorm; a few brought families and rented houses. Since I’d been a single mother of teenagers for years, I loved the idea of my own place. When a cab took me from the airport to the apartment, I was so happy to be there that, even though it was three in the morning, I poured a glass of whiskey from a bottle of Canadian Club that Doug had also given me. Actually, Doug had suggested he might visit me in Portland, and so I’d also accommodated that possibility, remote as it seemed.

“But I bought a book about Portland yesterday,” I continued to the man at the bar, “that praised the Art Museum—and also mentioned Harrington’s. I saw that sign up there at the top of the stairs—”

“I saw you come down,” the man said. “You turned around and went up and came back down.”

I blushed. I think I blushed. “I bought a book on Shakespeare criticism, too,” I said.

He laughed. “I don’t even know why I’m here today.” He said he got off work—the car lot—early and went to the Virginia Café, but for some reason didn’t like it and thought he’d try something different. “I haven’t been here in Harrington’s in years,” he said. His eyes behind the wire frames were direct.

We continued to talk, this man in the leather jacket and I, nursing those drinks along. Whatever we touched on we seemed to have in common. I was single—divorced a while back—with children in college; he was in the process of a divorce with one son who had just graduated from college, another son still there, and a third son living with his almost-ex wife.

The ambient sounds of people beginning to mill around alerted me to check my watch—it was after five o’clock. “I think I’ve missed the museum,” I said.

He agreed. “Let’s get something to eat. Do you like jazz? There’s music and great pizza at the Jazz Quarry, around the corner.”

That sounded like a good idea. Why not? What else was I doing?

When he stood, I saw his great—to me—height. Doug, whom I’d been dating, was tall to me at six feet. This man—I asked—was 6’4”, a full foot taller than I. Together we ascended the staircase where I had initially vacillated into the street, the man I just met behind me.

His name—Bruce Martin—I asked that too—sounded made up, and I said as much. Of course, my own, Jackie Davis (the last name an acquired one), sounded equally false.

“It’s not,” he said matter of factly and didn’t question mine.

Still, I suspected he might be a sham; he was too agreeable, too bright, too altogether interesting to me, and oddly comforting in his size, his angles. He had a wart on his cheek, faintly disheveled hair, and, behind his glasses, clear hazel eyes. I couldn’t put him together.

At the end of the block he suddenly turned to me. “Maybe you don’t want to do this,” he said. “I mean, I can pay my share, but I don’t have enough money to pay for both of us. I’m sorry.”

I looked up at him. I’d never been told such a thing. It was 1984, and through my dating over the past nine years, I had not picked up a single tab. Either it was the standard of behavior then or I was fortunate. My last two relationships—spanning as they did the past six years—had spoiled me: always dinners out, performances, trips. But this man from Harrington’s was baldly admitting that he could not pay for two. I shrugged it off. Of course I’d pay my share.

He nodded but looked uncomfortable. Then he smiled and indicated the Jazz Quarry, a few doors ahead. As we entered, a small combo of middle-aged men was playing “Sweet Georgia Brown,” and I...