Alexis

The following excerpt from my father’s autobiography chronicles the end of his affair with a 19-year-old student named Alexis in early 1978. He was 40 at the time. Chronologically, this follow the Lucy stories (1977), but was written before those. There are a few things that are striking about this part if his autobiography, most notably the shift to third person, as if he’s telling the life story of someone else. It might have signaled a decision to turn the autobiography into a novel. If that were so, he changed his mind again, as his writing over the days leading up to his death were written, again, in the first person. He also indicates for the first, and only time, that Gudrun and Joanne were his two greatest loves.

Finally, it should be noted that Charles Darwin’s birthday, mentioned in the story, would have been significant to my father in that his doctoral thesis was on Darwin as well as the subject of one of his books. He also borrows two lines from Shakespeare in the opening paragraph.

          So what was it all about? Full of sound and fury; signifying nothing. What a life. He loved not wisely; but too well. But did he do even that? Did he let it all pass by him—an unrequited malcontent who lived the less for wanting more. But he never had Gudrun, or Joanne; those he claimed as his life’s two greatest loves. Who did he have; who did he let get away? Diana? Yes. Elizabeth? Yes. Mary Ann? Yes. Helen? Perhaps, but not when he believed he had her.
          And what about those years after Lucy? after the divorce . . . 65% of the total. Lucy, clearly, must have had an effect on him. Was it something new? Or was it a reconfirmation of long-held beliefs, doubts, fears, insecurities?
          Lucy, it seemed to him, ruined it all. He believed there was much in her that would have constituted a new beginning, a new life; by mid-July of ’77 it was all evaporated. He even nurtured the hope that, somehow, on his return, it might indeed be restored: that glimpse of what could be.
          It hurt him, eleven years later, to think about that fall; the separation, the rendering—of the good, the family, what had been, at least on the surface of things, the good life. He had to leave the house when they returned from Europe at the end of that Summer, for one thing . . . but where to go? Not much of the old charter flight fortune left now . . . merely the humble professor’s salary. David Dickstein, former neighbor and sometime pal, had a big communal house in West Philadelphia. He offered me a room there, but no real privacy; and he got used to that. Besides, the days were ticking away on what little time was left to be with, to enjoy, the girls.
          It was to be the Freshman Interdisciplinary Studies Program that turned him around; a bit. The shared teaching with seven other professors removed some of the aura of the single professor hitting on his young students. There was one stunning young woman, Alexis, who, although only 19, was seemingly quite mature for her age. She was feeling stifled by strict and conventional parents. She had made her iconoclasm felt when she shocked Roxborough (a blue-collar community north of Philadelphia) by having a Black date for the Senior Prom and an illicit affair with the Vice-Principal (facts not known to Peter at the start of things). Alexis was not his “type” save in her tall, slender body and her obvious sensuality. She was dark and quiet; Baudelarian, sultry—like a black panther; a definitely female jungle animal. She had poise and bearing, such only commonly found in women over 30 and with no little worldly experience. He came on and she accepted quietly, with no questions, no conditions, no reservations, and, as it turned out, no commitment.

          They became intimate to the tune of a Nilsson album, A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night, playing in his part-time bedroom at Dickstein’s house. It was no big deal in terms of difficulty, nor was it accompanied by any resistance or form of ritualistic (or otherwise) protestations. She simply became his and they moved into a relationship. The only awkwardness (and that was felt more by her than he) was that she was required to return home every evening. She clearly could not overnight at Wallace Street; not, that is, until October 13th, when Beverly and the girls were to leave. Then there were a few overnights. Friday afternoons were ritualized to include a bottle of champagne and a pound or two of boiled and peeled jumbo shrimp . . . then quietly unadorned lovemaking. Time was spent with the Conroys . . . talking, playing cards (at which Alexis did not feel comfortable), watching TV and out for the occasional movie. While he accepted it as he would any other relationship; she was feeling beset by the restraints imposed by her living with her parents. By January he pushed, and she did what was required to force the issue at home. By the 8th of February time had come for her to make the move. The night of Sunday, the 4th of February 1978, a large snowstorm hit Philadelphia.
           He had to prevail on good old Uncle Al [Seidman, his neighbor two blocks away] and his roomy station wagon, to facilitate the move. Out to Martin Street, it took him, Al, and Alexis’ brother and Alexis herself to complete the move before dark and possibly more snow and before Alexis’ father came home from work and a possible ensuing scene. There was not a lot of stuff . . . two chairs, a chest and boxes of various things—mostly clothes, but some records, keepsakes, etc. That weekend was like most weekends only Alexis didn’t have to go home. He couldn’t remember her talking—at least at any length he might have noticed—with her parents. Friday afternoon they had gone down to the bank to arrange for checks on his checking account to be issued to Alexis in her name. Sunday she had to go home because her house was to be the scene of a bridal shower for her oldest sister who was to be married in the early summer. That Sunday began rather routinely, with a mid-morning breakfast. As they sat together at the kitchen table, he reflected on the fact that this would be her first trip home since her moving out and the first time they would be apart since. The first emotional glitch—seen only retrospectively hours, days, and weeks later—came when he felt moved to say something then. She had been commenting on what time she’d have to leave to make the shower when he reached over and put his hand lightly on her forearm and said that he’d miss her. Even years later he could remember her noticeably flinch at this heart-felt comment on his part. She was clearly feeling the smothering claustrophobia in a relationship wherein one party is moving emotionally faster and more intensely that the other. It passed right by him; not so much from insensitivity as an overwhelming not-quite-at-the-surface feeling he had of wishing she were saying that to him. It was not a good omen, that at the door on her way out—her sister had come to fetch her—he quipped that she shouldn’t forget to come back.
          In his insecurity and his not-fully-healed psycho-emotional state, it turned out to be a long, uncomfortable day. She left just before 11 a.m. And it was just getting dark when, at around 4:15 p.m., she returned. He had to quip again that he was beginning to think she wasn’t coming back. This gave her the easy and convenient opening for her to say that she wasn’t coming back, that she had decided to return home and was just coming back to tell him face-to-face and to pick up a number of items. Perhaps, said she, he could inveigle Uncle Al to let him use the station wagon to re-deliver her goods. This was clearly the moment at which the shock of the moment wore off and bitterness could be felt flowing upwards, from whence his heart had sunk, in his body. He asked how she could even make such a request of him; how he could be expected to haul all the stuff himself?, etc. She said she was in no hurry and the insouciance of this remark let him feel, in no uncertain terms, that she had rather firmly and unswervingly made up her mind on this. It was starkly real: the whole affair was over, ended, finis—in a very finalistic way, standing in the hallway, by the door slightly ajar. He couldn’t believe this was happening to him! And the same snow still on the ground outside . . . now trodden down by many sets of feet going in and out that door in the last days.
          He was in quiet turmoil for the remaining 30 hours before he delivered Alexis’ things to Martin Street. He lived not only all those hours in anguish; but relived those involving Lucy side-by-side with them. By Tuesday morning, his first full day at home not working, alone with his thoughts, he was a wreck. He kept asking himself, over and over again, what he had done wrong. What must have he said, and done, wrong, that pushed her away, that frightened her? And this is when, for the first time, he recalled her flinch when he touched her arm and said how much he was missing her already. Did he scare her away? Was he representing the alternate and equally alarming specter of quasi-parental containment? Emotional claustrophobia of the young who are not quite keeping amatory pace with their nominal lovers? He returned the record that she had bought of Billy Joel singing “Just the Way you Are” for their communal pleasure. Also, perhaps a little more significantly, he returned the gift she had bought him of two lovely sterling silver champagne goblets which memorialized their Friday afternoon shrimp-and-champagne ritual. He clearly felt he would no longer have any use for them. It was his way of signaling in return his equal acknowledgment of it being the end of them. And so it was. He smiled wryly as he recalled it being February 12th; Charles Darwin’s birthday.
           What was to be remembered about Alexis? That she was beautiful, certainly. That she was quiet and asked for very little; that she was understanding, but, like youth, she was not quite sensitive enough to others. That she was only relatively mature for he didn’t think she ever thought very much about what she could be for him; what he so badly needed at that juncture in his life. She was spreading her own wings; there was no question of blame here. And her quietness and reticence prevented her from articulating in a way that would, perhaps, ease his pain. So he went painfully into that good night.