So
in the library we talked and talked …..
actually, whispered… as we rolled the book cart among the stacks and returned
texts and tomes and James Michener best-sellers to their rightful Dewey Decimal
homes on the shelves. Sure, I would try to kiss her back there in the
stacks. After all, she was a girl and I
was a certified idiot. She seemed to understand and simply move out
of the way.
When
I thought of it, I would wonder about
the two of us, how a boy and a girl could just click so completely on an cerebral
level and seemingly not have a romantic interest in each other. Or maybe that’s just my memory fooling me
again.
I
wasn’t inexperienced with women. I had
dated a girl in high school, after all, and pledged my undying love for ever
and a day. But I lost her telephone
number and she found someone else.
Mina was quite different. For one thing, she never looked at me like I was crazy. She thought what I said had value. And she always said the neatest things. She had the deepest thoughts and the coolest
ideas about life and love. I could feel
the heat of her mind’s passions when I could get my mind off the heat of her
physical attributes.
Her
revelation of Harry was unexpected. She
didn’t tell me much about him … hardly anything … but immediately I felt
threatened. I told myself I should not
feel anything except happiness for her. After
all, we didn’t have a romantic relationship.
But I wasn’t sure I believed myself.
Mina
was an orphan. She had no family of any
note. She had spent a few years in the
1950’s at the House of the Good Shepherd, an orphanage just south of the Parkway. Each morning before breakfast, the children
would say a prayer to the Good Shepherd.
He was the grand and beautiful one who took care of his little
sheep. He loved them and was genuinely
concerned for their welfare.
The
orphanage was torn down in 1954 and replaced by a bowling alley and a regional office
of the New York Telephone Company. The
children were placed out to foster families.
Young Mina was taken in by an older childless couple on Kensington
Drive. She was thrilled to have her own
sunny bedroom and to sit down each night with “Mom and Dad” and have dinner and
talk about where they would go on vacation come summer. His vacation at the insurance office would be
in August this year. Everything was
perfect and each night she would kneel down at her bed with her new doll and
look around her room and thank the Good Shepherd for loving her so much.
She
returned from school one afternoon to find her suitcase on the front
porch. There was a note attached saying
to wait there and a social worker would pick her up. The couple had changed their minds. The doll they had given her was not in the
suitcase. She banged on the front door until her hands bled and she screamed
into their windows and she cursed them and she vomited and she choked and she
cried until she almost died, for Chrissake.
Plain old died.
She
told me this one night in the book stacks and it was the only time I ever saw
her weep. Just tears now, there were no
sobs. They had gone off to hide, maybe to
harden into a defensive callus for the future.
Through
her tears Mina asked of no one in particular, “How could she have done that?” I reached out to her, but my hand stopped
midway.
In
the summer of 1963 as my graduation approached I got a job offer in New York
City. It was a great opportunity and,
truth be told, probably better than I deserved.
Mina was happy for me.
Attending college part time, her
graduation was a couple of years away.
She told me everything she had read that one could see and do in New
York. One evening as we wheeled the book
cart back into the stacks, I told her I wasn’t sure I wanted to go. She looked into my eyes and I could feel her peer everywhere
inside me. I felt naked, but not the way
I would have wanted.
“Well,”
I said, “New York seems awfully far away.”
“So
is the rest of your life,” she said.
“And
I would miss our…..times together,” I said.
She continued to peer into me.
After a moment, I relented and said, “I’m afraid, Mina. I’ve never been anywhere and I’m
afraid. And…I would miss you.” I knew she knew it. She took my hand and brought it to her,
opened my palm and kissed it.
“Well,”
I said, clearing my throat, “ I’d be home some weekends. I’d come to see you. Maybe we could actually
go out on a date. Or something.” She returned my hand, tenderly, and placed it against my chest.
“But,”
she said, “I’m seeing Harry.”
Harry? Who the
hell was Harry? She said his name
was Harry and when she told me of him I didn’t want to believe her, but I never
doubted anything she told me.
“Who
is Harry?” I almost shouted. “I’ve never
heard you talk about him.” She looked
up from my hand and said, “You could say
he’s the Good Shepherd.”
Mina
never mentioned Harry again and neither did I.
I tried to, but like the time I had reached out to her and stopped halfway, I knew there was something I didn’t want to
touch or couldn’t touch. I imagined it
to be a kind of strength that wasn’t mine to investigate. I didn’t want to hear the truth. To this day I don’t know what I wanted to
hear.
In
two weeks the final semester ended and I was headed down the Thruway on a
Greyhound bus.
I was excited
and gloomy and scared all at once and I thought of Mina. She had been right. The rest of my life seemed a long way away.
I
called her once from New York in late October.
She was civil, but distant. I had
lost my shepherd, but I wished for Mina the good fortune of finding her
own. I never saw or spoke to her again.
---o---
In
the 1970’s the newspaper viewing room at the Utica Public Library was located
on the second floor, hidden away in a corner and piled high with old papers and
boxes of little coils of microfilm. It
was easier back then to find a parking space near the building and then make
one’s way through the ornate and beautiful lobby up the staircase and toward
the front windows overlooking Genesee St.
Each
week or so I would drive in from Syracuse where I was in graduate school
working on my final project. Sometimes
I would bring my wife and two children and drop them off at my parents’ home on
my way to the library.
Rolling
through the microfilm of the past 3 years’ newspapers and taking notes was
tedious. If I had known someday there
would be an Internet and Google I would have seriously thought of delaying my
thesis for 20 years. For a break, after
going outside for a smoke, I would often look through obituaries for the fun of
it. Not because death is humorous, but
the family names and street names mentioned would often bring back memories and
take my mind away from the task at hand.
On page three:
Shepherd, Harry Brent, age 72, of Kensington Drive.
At rest on September
23, 1973. Devoted husband of Mina Hurley Shepherd. Mr. Shepherd was a retired insurance broker
and had previously been married to the
late Irene Lassely Shepherd, who died June 12, 1958.
There were no children.
David Griffin, copyright
2007/2016
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