Remembering
“Happy Birthday!”
Many names are jumbled together following the cheer: three small voices saying Grandpa, two adult voices saying Daddy, and a handful saying Jason. Four generations are here to celebrate. My sixtieth birthday was actually yesterday, but not everyone could come until today, a Saturday. After more than twenty-thousand days, what’s one more?
They’re all here to acknowledge my birthday, but, to be honest, also to see how I’m doing nine months after I lost Nancy.
“Thank you all. This is the best day I’ve had in some time,” I tell everyone.
“What was your best day ever, Jason?” Andrew asks.
Andrew is my son-in-law, the father of two of my grandchildren.
“Oh, that one’s easy. The day Nancy said yes.”
The party is nice and I open my presents. I’ll cherish them all, especially the drawings that Jeremy, Lily, and Megan, my grandchildren, drew for me. But I’m not used to all this commotion. Especially before the spring semester starts Tuesday. I live a very quiet life.
I tell everyone I’m going to go sit in my easy chair in the living room and rest for a while. I close my eyes and think about the earlier question. That was definitely my happiest day. Either that or the day Natalie was born.
But it wasn’t my most important day or rather days. The first was forty two years ago, to the day. The day after my eighteenth birthday, I remember it like it was yesterday.
I was a senior in high school, but I’d exhausted all the math courses they taught, so I was taking courses at the local state college. I’d taken Calc 3 in the fall and I was taking Linear Algebra this spring. The fall course had been in the same building as all the math offices, where my mother had brought me one day the summer before to meet a professor. I was comfortable with that building.
This class was in a building on the other side of the quad, the Wilson Fine Arts building. The class was after my regular school day ended and I had to take a city bus from my high school to campus. I got off at the wrong stop that first day and ran the whole way across campus. I scrambled up the stairs at Wilson, hoping not to be late. I saw the numbers 201 on a door in front of me as I exited the stair well. A closed door.
Gulping that I was about to be scolded for coming late, I walked through the door and stopped dead in my tracks. In front of me, on a small stage, was a naked woman lying on a couch. I stood petrified, my mouth agape.
I’d never seen a real live naked woman before. I’d seen some pictures in magazines, but this was a real woman, fully naked, less than ten feet from me.
A woman, I assume the instructor, asked, “Can I help you with something, young man?”
“Umm, I thought my math class was in here. I am pretty sure this isn’t Linear Algebra.”
“What room is your class in?”
“Two oh one”
“This is two oh seven. Two oh one is down the hall a little ways.”
“Sorry.”
Turning bright red, I turned and left the room. I could hear the whole class laughing as I shut the door.
I looked at the number of the door. It does in fact say 207. I could have sworn it said 201. I find my class down the hall. When my class gets out, I see that the door to 207 is now open, the room empty.
That night, all I can think of is the naked woman. Every detail of her is seared into my brain. I masturbate to the image of her. And the next night. And the night after.
She is still dominating my thoughts four weeks later when I have my first exam in Linear Algebra. This math comes easily to me; I finish early and the professor tells me I can leave. Looking at my watch, I realize I have just enough time to catch the earlier bus if I hurry. Otherwise, I’ll have to wait an hour to catch my usual bus.
Home an hour earlier means an extra hour on my Atari. I grab my stuff and sprint out of the room, towards the stairwell. And crash full speed into someone coming the other way.
That someone is the woman of my obsession, but she is wearing a robe right now. Or mostly wearing. We have both fallen to the ground in the collision. Her robe has fallen part way open, exposing most of one of her breasts. I’m sitting on the ground just staring at her.
She laughs. “I recognize you. You’re the mathematician who can’t tell a seven from a one. I take it you found your class?”
Just as I did the other time she saw me, I'm turning bright red. I snap myself away from staring at her breast and say “Yeah, I just finished an exam. Sorry about this, I was trying to hurry to catch a bus home and wasn’t looking.”
“Well you’re certainly looking now,” she says, still laughing.
She looks at me and adds, in a more understanding tone, “I wasn’t looking where I was going either. I’m guessing you missed your bus now.”
I look at my watch and nod. “Probably. Oh well. There is another one in an hour.”
“What’s your name, math boy?”
“Jason.”
“Well, Jason. If you can get up without ripping my robe off the rest of the way and let me get changed, I’d be glad to have a coffee at the union with you until it’s time for your next bus.”
I pull my legs from their entanglement with her, stand up, and offer her a hand up. I can’t help but look as she flashes her privates at me as she gets herself up off the floor.
“You really can’t keep your eyes off, can you?” she asks, laughing once again.
My color, which was starting to return to normal, is back to beet red again. I do look away.
“It’s okay. I really don’t mind. And it’s flattering, to be honest. Wait here, I’ll be back in a minute.”
She goes into an unmarked door and comes back out moments later, fully dressed. Or more or less fully dressed. She is wearing jeans and a knit cotton top that clings to her breasts, unobscured by a bra. Her nipples clearly protrude through the soft fabric.
We chat while we walk across campus to the union.
“Do you model every week for that class?”
“No, only when you're around.”
I look at her quizzically, and she clarifies, “I think we are on a four week rotation. I was joking about it being tied to you.”
Just before entering the union, she says to me, “How old are you Jason and what are you doing taking math I’ve never even heard of when you’re still a teenager?
“I turned eighteen last month. I’m in my senior year of high school. But I took Calc in eleventh grade, which was the last math course the high school offers. So my mom brought me in last summer to meet with a math professor here and he arranged for me to take Calc 3 in the fall and Linear this spring.”
“What is all that math? Scratch that, I don’t think I want to know. So you are some kind of genius.”
“The math comes easily to me. To be honest, these two courses are fun but they are still not especially challenging. I at least do have to spend some time to do the homework now.”
“How about your other classes?”
“The sciences are okay, except Biology. I hated that. And I don’t like the labs for any of them. English is okay, too, but I’m not a good writer. I love reading though. Oh and social studies is just stupid.”
I think about what I just said. Did I just stick my foot in mouth? “Are you a student?”
She nods.
“What is your major?”
“Psychology and history double major. Or as you call it, social studies.”
I look down dejectedly.
“It’s okay. I hated my high school social studies, too. It’s different in college.”
I perk back up some. “You never told me your name.”
“I’m Ellie. I was wondering when you were going to ask.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not used to talking to girls.”
“I’m a woman, Jason. Don’t call anyone over eighteen a girl.”
“Well, the only woman I ever talk to is my mom. We talk a lot.”
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“No, it’s just my mom and me. My dad died four years ago. His car got hit by a wrong way driver on the highway when he was coming home from a shift in the ER.”
“Was he a doctor?”
“Yeah.”
“That must've been hard on you.”
“It sucked, but more for my mom. I was always closer to her. My dad worked a lot of hours and neither of us were into the classic father-son stuff. You know like catch or fishing or anything. He didn’t get video games and he didn’t read much anymore. I guess he doesn’t read at all now. But my mom and I got even closer after he died. I think she needs someone to talk to now, so we talk a lot.”
“Does she work?”
“Yeah, she’s a nurse. It’s how they met. She works an eleven AM to seven PM shift weekdays now. So the late afternoon class worked out well.”
“Your class meets once or twice a week?”
“Twice, Tuesday and Thursday four to five-fifteen.”
“What do you do the rest of the week?”
“Three afternoons a week, I work at the comic book store from three to six and then Saturday from nine to two.”
“Does that leave you any time for friends?”
“Terry was really my last friend. His family moved away two years ago. Andy, who owns the comic book store, is nice and we talk when the store’s quiet.”
“No girlfriends I take it either.”
I shake my head no.
“I will make you a deal. I will meet with you after class every Tuesday and Thursday. But you have to make one promise to me.”
“What’s that?”
“Take a shower every Tuesday and Thursday morning. And maybe use deodorant. Unscented though if you do. You’re stinky.”
I blush yet again.
“It’s okay. It’s a problem with lots of guys your age. But it’s not much fun to be around you when you smell bad. You might even get a girlfriend out of it someday.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“I kind of expected you to ask me a lot of them today. What’s this question?”
“Why are you doing this? Why are you being so nice to me? No one ever does this, except Andy and my mom. I think he’s even lonelier than I am. And she’s, well, my mother, so of course she’s nice to me.”
“To be honest, I’m not sure. You were adorable when you walked in on me modeling that first day. Especially when you blushed. Was that the first time you’d ever seen a naked woman?”
“Other than the pictures in the magazines Terry would steal from his dad, yeah.”
“I figured so. And you’re so sincere. Most the guys I meet, ones my age I mean, will say anything to me to try to get into my pants. And so many of the women are more than a little catty under the surface. You’re a nice break. I can relax a little.
“And you are cute, in a scruffy way. And you looked like you needed a friend.” She paused for a moment. “Or maybe because you fit something in my head for the Adolescent Psych course I am taking now. I really don’t know. But I enjoyed our talk, didn’t you?”
I nod my head vigorously. I really did enjoy this time. And I am mostly managing not to stare at her boobs through the knit top.
“So, Jason, do you have any more questions for me before you have to go catch your bus?”
“You said guys your age. How old are you? I know you’re not really old like my mom, but you seem a lot older than all the girls in my school.”
“First off, you better not tell your mom she’s real old. But I’m about to turn twenty two, so a little less than four years older than you. I’m a senior this year. Everyone grows up a lot in those four years, men and women. You’ll be very different in four years than you are now. And I’d have to worry that you’re trying to get into my pants. Not that you wouldn’t want to be there now, I bet.”
I blush one more time, confirming her suspicions I guess. I try to seem cool as I look at my watch.
“I better go before I miss this bus, too. Are you serious about meeting me again on Thursday?”
“Absolutely, but don’t forget that shower. No more stinky-poo meetings. I’ll be waiting at a table here.”
I hurry to catch the bus, but my heart and my mind are racing much faster. As I think about her during the bus ride home, I get a huge boner. I pile my jacket in my lap so no one else notices and try to compute cube roots in my head to calm down. At home, I can’t even survive the first level of PacMan. All I can think about is Ellie.
