C'est Dommage

Words aren't enough to describe those times. We lived in an elevated state of exsistance.

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“Love hurts”, the poets sing. Over and over they remind us that Cupid’s arrow pierces the heart. And we say, “Yes, how true”, yet something in us is not completely persuaded. Only the blood flowing from our very own wound will make us really understand.

Me included.

My first instruction in this ancient wisdom came from a slender beauty named, Robin Adair. She was barely 16. I was almost 19.

We met in church.

One Sunday in the springtime her mother, with Robin in tow, came to sample the service at Parma Christian Church. She liked what she found and decided to join the congregation. Thereafter, they were regulars at Sunday service – and pretty soon Robin started showing up at the church youth activities, too.

I had been backsliding a little when it came to religion and I hadn’t attended any of these youth functions for quite a long time. I suddenly found them newly compelling. Mom was quick to note my conversion and, of course, the actual source of attraction, but she didn’t say much about it – probably because she was just glad to have me re-involved in church life, for any reason.

I was drawn to Robin very nearly at first sight, not only because of her beauty, but also because of her style. She carried herself like a princess. And she augmented her regal gracefulness with a softly measured way of speaking that seemed unnaturally mature for her mere 15 years – all of which added a touch of mystery to her more obvious charms.

We spent many hours together in study, prayer and good works, but not nearly enough time together. And it was getting crowded, too, what with all those other youth always around. I thought we needed more space to ourselves. So I started spending less time with her in the church groups and more time visiting at her house. Robin and her mother, Edith, lived only a few miles from me in a tiny, rented house on Montauk Avenue, in Parma. They seemed to be very poor, but they weren’t, quite. They had rich benefactors who supported them – some of whom I later met. Her mother never had much cash on hand, and no job, yet their bills were paid, and they had all they needed for food and clothing.

Robin had an older sister who lived in Chicago. I never met her sister, although I did come to know her very well. I don’t know a thing about her father. Nothing was ever said about him, and I never asked.

Anyway, I would walk over to her house, pick her up, and we would go for walks – long, long walks, all over the neighborhood and often through the woods that lay at the end of her street. As we walked, we talked – about art, history, music, life, and philosophy – addressing each topic in the earnest, certain, and muddled way of adolescents everywhere, throughout the ages.

I was reading Jack Kerouac at the time, so I introduced Robin to the jazzed up, Americanized, crazy-lazy notions of Zen Buddhism that are sprinkled throughout Mr. Kerouac’s two main works: On the Road and The Dharma Bums.

Dharma is a Hindu word that means: right behavior. Good Buddhists try to practice it as they seek enlightenment. But for Kerouac’s Beatnik buddies the search consisted mostly of driving frantically back and forth across the country “digging” whatever came up, getting their “kicks” at whatever they could get away with doing. Still, I fell for it. (Such things seem much more plausible when you’re 18).

Robin in turn, tutored me in the formalities of polite society. Most of which she had picked up from her older sister – who traveled in very ritzy circles indeed, in Chicago. She also had learned a smattering of French from her sister. And so, I learned some French, too.

One phrase she used often (or maybe I just remember it better) was “C’est dommage”. Literally translated it means “there is damage”. But the French use it in much the same way English speakers use expressions like “Oh, that’s too bad”, or “How unfortunate”. It’s the sort of term that is nearly irresistible to a teenage girl. It sounds so sophisticated, and there are so many occasions to us it.

The art of Amedeo Modigliani was another frequent topic of those days. The barest facts of his brief and tragic life could be written straight into a screenplay with no need of further embellishment. I liked his work then, and I like it, now. He’s probably most famous for his paintings of elongated, sensuous nudes that recline across the width of his canvas’ like landscapes. And every one of these impossible ladies he painted possessed the same slender contours that were so evident in Robin. They looked like her, or perhaps it was the other way around. In any case, each reminded me of the other.

Music was important, too. Every great romance should have a soundtrack. Ours was supplied by the English classical guitarist, Julian Bream. It was the single album (out of my total collection of 3 albums) that we played most often. I would take it over to Robins house and while we sipped cupful’s of Jasmine tea Mr. Bream would serenade our unfolding passion. The whole album was good, but the sad beauty of Ravel’s Pavane Pour Une Infante Défunte (Procession for a dead Princess) was the cut that we liked best. I’ve heard that piece performed many times since then, though never more movingly. Is that because of Julian Breams artistry, or is it only because that particular version is fused with my memories of those days. I think it’s both.

And so the months rolled on – all summer, through the fall, and into the winter.

We spent every hour together that we could manage, and we were very skillful at managing such things. We disappeared for long stretches of time. Sometimes we were out all night. Robin’s mother, and my parents, too begin to worry. We were “too young to be so serious”, “who knows what might happen”? Well, that’s not strictly true. They had a real good idea of what might happen. They just didn’t know how soon, or how often – the answers to which were: already, and very.

Hormonal lust and True Love is a volatile mixture. It’s not easily contained even when you try hard to contain it – and we weren’t trying very hard.

About the only thing that held us back at all was lack of a suitably private space for our trysting. That problem was overcome when I got my first car.

I had a part-time job (after school and summers) as a stock boy at a small grocery store. I had saved most of the money I had earned, and that was how I paid for the car. My savings amounted to only $500 – not a lot of money, but adequate. The car, a second-hand, red and white 1956 Ford Sunliner cost me $480. It was a modest investment that compounded much. Handy as that car was though, it wasn’t altogether satisfactory. It lacked comfort, and it wasn’t nearly romantic enough. So I came up with a different solution.

On Friday afternoons, after school and before work, I would drive down along W. 25th. Street and look for apartments to rent. The W. 25th district of Cleveland was then, and still is, a very poor part of town. There was choice in abundance. Rundown apartment buildings lined the street, each featuring tiny furnished rooms that could be rented by the week – no questions asked – for as little as $16. That was roughly comparable to one day in most motels, but motels insist that you to fill out forms, give them your license plate number, and so on. W. 25th. Street landlords didn’t require anything but cash.

On Saturday evening, and sometimes on Sunday evenings, we would move in. Robin would bring along a nightgown, a large canvas travel bag filled with, candles, clean linen, incense, and a few other such small items. And with these she would transform those shabby little rooms into enchanted grottos.

We wouldn’t stay all night, just most of the night. Then we would abandon the place and I would look for a new one the following week. I suppose we could have kept the same apartment for weeks on end, but I didn’t want to arouse suspicion, and anyway, there was no shortage of other rooms to be had.

Does all that sound sordid, or silly? It may – but it wasn’t. Words, at least the words I can muster, aren’t up to the task of describing those times. We were living then on an elevated plane of existence, apart from ordinary reality, and lost in our involvement with each other.

It lasted for months.

And then it all came to an end.

Just a few weeks before Christmas Robin’s mother had a nervous breakdown. Robin had told me about her mom’s history of emotional fragility, but I hadn’t seen any evidence of it until then. I later learned that Christmas was the time of year in which she was particularly vulnerable – as it was and still is for many people. My mom was the first to tell me what happened. I don’t know for sure what actually took place because several versions of the event had been circulated around the church. Some said Edith had been found naked, babbling incoherently, and running up and down the sidewalk in front of her house. That’s probably exaggerated, but whatever transpired did result in Edith being removed to some facility, somewhere, for rest and treatment. And since Robin was underage, she was removed too. Where? No one seemed to know. I was helpless to do anything about it, but wait.

A few days later Robin called. She had been taken in by an elderly couple who were friends of her mom. She expected to be staying for some indefinite time at their home in Northfield. Northfield is about 20 miles southeast of Cleveland, and about 12 miles west of Parma. I was somewhat relieved; It wasn’t that far away; life would continue as usual.

Or so I thought.

I was wrong.

The folks who had taken her in were the owners of the Franklin Ice Cream Company, locally famous, but now defunct. They lived in a mansion just down the road a bit from the mansion of Cyrus Eaton, the Cleveland billionaire who founded the Eaton Corporation. Actually, they didn’t live in a mansion, it was only a much larger house than anyone I had ever met lived in. They invited me to Christmas dinner with them and Robin.

It was a pretty formal affair – which finally gave me an occasion to put to use the etiquette that Robin had tutored me in. The meal was outstanding. The conversation was stiff, sparse, and very correct. It wasn’t that we didn’t like each other; it was just that the cultural gulf separating them, Robin, and myself was so very large. As I left, I got a brief goodbye kiss from Robin, which was the total extent of our physical contact for the previous month and a half. I consoled myself with the thought that the holiday vacation would soon be over, and that we would have time together again when we returned to school.

Wrong.

The old folks, together with Robin’s sister, had decided that Robin needed a more structured environment. They had enrolled her in Andrew’s School for Girls – a combination high school/finishing school that catered to the proper young ladies of Cleveland upper crust.

It was located some 50 to 60 miles northeast of Cleveland, and me. If the distance wasn’t bad enough the rules were: No visitors, except on Sunday – only for a few hours, and only when the “guest” had been cleared with the dormitory’s House Mother. The dormitories were grand old houses, and the House Mothers looked as though they came with the house when it was converted to dormitory. They were polite, and about as flexible as your standard drill-sergeant. Of course Robin and I wrote letters to each other, and talked on the phone (2 calls per week), but I was beginning to despair. Nevertheless, summer vacation would eventually come. Surely Robin’s mom would be back to normal by then, Robin would return to live with her over the Summer, and our fractured romance would be back to normal, too.

Wrong again.

Robin’s mom did return, but Robin didn’t. Her sister had arranged that Robin would be spending the summer with her – in Chicago. The result was a lot more letters, and considerably fewer phone calls – due to the expense of long-distance dialing.

Nevertheless, we didn’t give up. We weren’t about to let a few hundred miles and an over-protective sister thwart our passion. We exchanged letters several times per week, long, hot letters that did as much as possible to compensate for the chastity we were forced to endure In retrospect I can recognize that toward the end of that summer Robin’s responses to my letters were focusing a lot less on us, and a lot more on all the fascinating things she was doing in Chicago.

Her sister seemed to live in a world of endless grand parties, art festivals, and concerts. I wrote off Robin’s enthusiasm for these things as compensation for our forced separation. That seems remarkably short-sighted to me now, but in my overheated condition it was very easy to delude myself. Moreover, Robin wrote to tell me that she would be returning to stay for the last few

weeks of summer with her Mom. She said that she would be home on such-and-such a day, and that she could hardly wait to see me.

Oddly enough, I had gotten to know Robin’s mom, Edith, pretty well over the course of that summer. Since I couldn’t see Robin, I visited with her mother. We had many fascinating talks. Edith had a lively mind, and many interests. She had a small record collection of mostly early jazz and blues music. My first exposure to Jelly-Roll Morton was through Edith - who also explained to me why Jelly-Roll had such a colorful name. Edith loved all the arts. She subscribed to the New York Times, the New Yorker magazine, and several other similar publications. She instructed me in a sophistication of letters that I had not known of before.

We were good company for each other. Actually I had better conversations with Edith than I did with Robin. I also made myself useful by doing small home repair jobs for her, generally being as helpful as I could be. I should say, too, that in all the time I was with her, she never appeared to be the slightest bit crazy. All-in-all Edith and I had a quite pleasant time together, although we both missed Robin very, very much. I think we were equally relieved to know that she would soon be home.

Finally the great day arrived.

Robin met me at the door with a kiss on the cheek. Then she turned to introduce me to a friend that she had brought with her from Chicago – a male friend.

At that point I had something like an out-of-body experience.

My audio-reception went completely out of whack. I could see that people were talking, me included, but I couldn’t hear a thing. I seemed to be looking down on the event from somewhere near the ceiling, and all I could feel was a suffocating swirl of pain, rage, and horror.

It was over.

I muttered some kind of excuse to leave... I had forgotten something at home... I had some kind of errand... something, anything. I think I said that I would be right back. But I didn’t come back – not then, not ever.

Instead I went slowly home, trying to recover my senses. Once there, I went straight to my room and gathered up all the letters, photos, and every other scrap of anything that reminded me of Robin. I dumped the lot of them into a brown paper grocery bag. I put the bag in my car and drove down to the forest behind the John Muir School. I walked a few hundred feet into the trees, scooped out a shallow hole, loaded it with dead leaves and wood, capped it all off with the paper bag, and set the whole sorry pile ablaze.

I watched it burn until there was nothing left but a smoldering black hole – just like the hole in my chest, where my heart used to be.

The poets tell us that Cupid’s arrow pierces the heart. It felt more like a hand-grenade to me. I was sure I would never love anyone again.

Of course, time proved me wrong.

But not soon.

By K. L. Shipley

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