In the morning JUMB presented me with Charenton's own "Pretty Virgin" maple syrup and dosed me with coffee and sent me on my way. I had to tell the mechanic I didn't know what year the car was, or what its plate number was--though it was probably the only one with Massachusetts plates--and he had to tell me he didn't know if he would be able to work on it that day. If I had arrived as a stranger instead of under the wing of a regular customer, I would have had no hope, I think. Leaving the car was hard: not that I could fix it myself, but this put it totally out of my hands. LEB picked me up and off we went to campus, where, I realized, I would spend more consecutive hours than I had since 1994.
The new office spaces completely threw me. There are holes through floors--deliberate ones--for air and light. And televisions in the old library (office space since before me). I greeted my former cronies and got the schedule for the only undergraduate I know, the middle child of the woman whose illness inspired me to donate my hair, because I had promised to look her up, but I was in no mood to chat with anyone, let alone a 19-year-old woman whom I haven't seen since before her mother died. Then I found publicly available computers, one with a nearby plug for my phone, now sad and voiceless. I emailed everyone I knew was coming to UncasCon, canceling because of uncertain transportation and expecting my sister to be mad that I broke her car, and stressed at RDC by phone. He suggested not stressing, and finding a VW dealership nearby who might have more experience or at least knowledge of how to bypass the broken switch, and also not stressing. The closest VW place was in Glastonbury, for pity's sake, in the opposite direction from Boston, and claimed to be available no sooner than two weeks out and in that case only for cars purchased there. The serviceman did tell me how a mechanic could get to the gas door through the trunk, anyway. That made me hopeful I could fuel the fucker.
I am a little too good at stressing and a little not good at anything else. And behind me the televisions displayed memorials, because it was Thursday, September 11th, and so I got to feel even guiltier for being so self-involved on such a day.
Emailing was time-consuming. The web interface for penguindust takes so damn long and has no spam filters and sifting through 450 headers looking for the 15 I wanted was more than I wanted to deal with. I didn't think to, say, ask anyone I emailed for a phone number, but then, I wasn't going to have access again to retrieve replies anyway. I canceled immediately instead of later because I was...overly stressing? or just being efficient and taking responsibility for the situation? Whatever. Possibly mistake number three, but probably I should stop enumerating them.
I had left the car to be serviced, I had let everyone know who needed to know, and I needed to get away from the televisions and out into the sun. I had been told, but forgot, that English is no longer in JHA (which is going to be demolished, along with HRM, long the two ugliest buildings on campus, hooray for instance of Change is Good!). I climbed to the third floor and immediately sensed Change. Aha, it now houses Linguistics. No wonder the doors are boring and undecorated. (I was traumatized by a Linguistics professor. I know now that the subject matter is interesting, but he did his best to disguise that fact). So I scampered to the new building, which houses English, Statistics, and Geography, which subjects all complement each other quite logically. Enough of all the foreign languages and Journalism being in the same building as English! What sense did that make?)
I found the office, I tracked down the bulletin board listing the professors, their office hours and room numbers and class times. Happily, RJH had office hours right then. I scampered downstairs and found his door ajar. I rapped, he called, "Come in!" and, OMFB, we were both ecstatic at the sight of each other. Though we're both lousy correspondents, as he said, "It feels like we were friends in another lifetime," because time and distance drop away when we're together. How I do adore him.
Ironic, innit, that nothing has changed in 12 years, that I still invade his office to compel him to entertain and shepherd me through various emotional crises. This time, again, he was talking me down from the same sort of nauseous panic: if Change Is Bad, well, then, good, because that hasn't changed. And, of course and always, he makes me laugh. I suggested he record it so his office would sound right.
I had to tell RJH this one: The courtyard in the Gardner is amazing. All bluey-lavender and white flowers, a mosaic patio, statuary, a fountain; it's just beautiful. CLH and I stood and gazed for a long time, and we looked at it from every window as we passed through the rooms. French windows (RDC said, "In France they probably just call them 'windows'" but Nisou tells me they are portes-fenêtres, door-windows) overlook the courtyard from almost every room, and as we looked out from the Dutch or the Italian room, CLH said, "Quote something from 'Room with a View.'" So I did, exactly in context because that's how much of a freak I am: "Come away from the window, Lucy, you will be seen!"
*Two days later at Uncas, of course this one repeated itself frequently: "My father says the only perfect view is of the sky over our heads." (It might be "real," not "perfect.")
RJH responded that his favorite line is "Excuse me, my dear, but it seems to me, you're in a bit of a muddle." This he left in the carel in the library where I worked for him, in Latin for me to English out, one very long time ago. And mine is "But I've got to go to Greece! The ticket's bought and everything!" And the wonderful thing about RJH is that he knows exactly why that's my favorite: that reasoning is why I entered the grad program.
We talked and laughed and he wrote a quiz and I read and he went to class and I walked up to the top of Cemetery Hill to kill some time before RCD got out of her class. I hadn't been up there since…probably RDC's and my farewell lap around campus, if then, but likely years before.
After I left RJH's office for the last time, in the later afternoon, I was after food, my first since a slight breakfast, and news of the car, and books. I stopped in LEB's office for the third or fourth time, but the garage still hadn't called. While LEB and I gossiped, the garage did call. The car was fixed. I should have pulled the levery button up instead of down (mistake number one), but it was fixed, a simple matter of popping the door panel off and resetting the thing. It was all okay. The relief was abrupt and physical and I didn't even try not to tremble.
LEB offered to drive me to the garage right then, but I felt grovel-y enough with the two shuttlings that I could not have her disrupt her day more. I called JUMB ("all okay") and RPR ("tonight is a go"). I bought a couple of Clif Bars and apple juice, because apple juice is what I drink when I'm miserable. Possessed of cell coverage, I called RDC and then my sister.
I had avoided that last step out of trepidation. But CLH was not at all mad. Well, she was, at Volkswagen, because the button had broken before, and her dealership--just like the one in Glastonbury, though without the excuse that it didn't come from there--also said "two weeks," until she--contrary to me in similar situations, evidently--got in someone's face and reminded him that one of the car's selling points was the dealership's service. Even though I pressed instead of pulled the lever, she didn't think it was my fault.
In front of the Benton Museum, under trees, near a trickling fountain, I slowly ate and drank and talked to my sister. She outright commanded me to use the car as she had intended me to do and to stop beating myself up.
So. I canceled to be responsible, I didn't try to uncancel because I thought that would be presumptuous. I went back and forth on this. A lot. Which I will spare you, gentle reader.
I got to RPR's house and talked to the barking dogs. I met the new puppy and admired how he seems to be extending the older dog's vivacity. She showed me all that they've done to the house and I admired the lovely painting job I did on the staircase last summer (I think I only primed it). We talked about the impending Little Stranger (hooray!) and I admired its little kidney-beanness with a thread of spine in the ultrasound. It is a remarkable thing, an ultrasound. Also I patted her not-yet belly and later rubbed her back until she went to sleep. It is interesting to me how different women take to pregnancy. I admire or sympathize or just observe quite happily from the sidelines. If the dogs are any indication, she is going to have the most well-behaved child ever. She picked up two treats, and the dogs ran out to their kennel and sat down to await their treats. At bed-time, she picked up two treats, and the puppy ran for his crate and the older for his pillow and they both sat down to await their treats and immediately lay down to sleep. It was a little freaky, but being owned by a whiny, overly indulged cockatiel, I can only wish and delude myself.