Letter From Elba

When I was in sixth grade at the Avoca School in Wilmette, Illinois a new girl from Maywood joined our class.  Her name was Barbara R. and she quickly became my … well everything.  My role model and my idol.

I was cuh-razy about her.  Everything she did, said, wore, thought, liked, ate, became what I wanted to do.

And besides falling madly in love with her, I adored the rest of her family.

She had a wonderful set of parents.  They were terrific.  Fun, great cooks, wonderful hosts, always laughing and/or cooking.  They really were – to me at least- the dream mom and dad right out of the television set. They hosted swim team dinners, football team banquets and pool parties. Their house was the constant epicenter of teenage fun for New Trier.

But best of all, Barbara had two handsome, popular older brothers who I worshipped from VERY afar.

John was the oldest.  Star of the New Trier football team, tall, dark and handsome and about four years older- and a thousand light years away from dorky twelve year old me.

And then there was Robert.

He was only one year ahead of us in school but I was in total awe of him.  Sarcastic, smart, dangerous, and way ahead of me in music (The Beach Boys, WVON, Jimmy Reed, Bo Diddley)  movies (The Birds, Psycho) just out of my league all together in sophistication.

I learned a lot from these guys just by watching and listening.  I was their kid sister’s ever-present nerdy, bookworm friend and they patronized me, teased, and ignored me in turns.

I practically lived at their house. And over the years, not only did I become an expert of all things “John and Robert,” but I knew all about their cool friends, as well.

John had one friend I heard about all the time.  Bobby S.  He was someone that the whole family admired. Rich, handsome, sophisticated, with an older brother named Larry- and a legendary house.

It was this house that I heard about all the time.  A gigantic mansion complete with ballroom, elevator, tennis courts, butler, cook, and a basement nicknamed “The Passion Pit” where sexy goings-on with the likes of Bunnies, cheerleaders and beauty queens were the order of the day.

To pre-teen me, this sounded like nothing less than the Playboy Mansion, and when I later heard that the father of these two boys was actually an investor in the Playboy Clubs, I had a hard time distinguishing between the two for glamour and savoir faire.

And when I finally espied the famous Bobby S. I was not disappointed.  He was a dreamboat on the order of Robert Wagner or Warren Beatty.  That handsome.

And best of all- to me at least- Bobby S. was Jewish.

The R.’s were not.  They were Scottish Presbyterians, I think.  And back in those days, W.A.S.P.s were not wont to praise or envy Jews about anything. The fact that they admired and welcomed both Bobby S. and me so willingly into their fold spoke volumes about how truly wonderful they were- to everyone.

But boys will be boys, and John and Robert use to tease me unmercifully about my crush on Bobby.  (Barbara had one too, so I was in good company.)

“Maybe one day he’ll take you to the Israel Bond Debutante Cotillion,” they’d howl.  Just the very thought of R.J. Wagner and Frankie from A Member of the Wedding did them in every time.

I really didn’t mind  It seemed absurd to me too.  It was like trying to imagine Cary Grant squiring me to the Avoca Fair.  Impossible to conjure up.

But time and fate stepped in, and a few years later, when I was not so scrawny and I had ditched the glasses, the pony tail, and the braces, I found myself one Fourth of July on a group date that began at Green Acres Country Club and ended at that very famous house I had heard so much about all these years,

Even though I had never been there before, I felt as if I knew every nook and cranny of the place- from its magisterial gates and long, impressive drive to the fabulous coach house complete with its own gas pump ala the Audrey Hepburn movie Sabrina.

Yep, there was the elevator, and I knew the ballroom was on the fourth floor.  It was too dark to see the famed tennis courts, but here we were all going down to “the Pit.”

Thanks to the R. family I knew everything I needed to know.

Except for one thing.

Larry and Bobby S. had an adorable little brother named Billy.

Somehow he had never been mentioned in all the R. brothers’ recaps and teasing.

I met him that night.

And five years and one week later…

Reader, I married him.

At 443.

Author’s Note:  This post is dedicated to Kevin G.  Thanks for the handsome pen, buddy. But then you always did have great timing.

As usual, Tolstoy said it best.  He said that when he was born, he didn’t know if he was a boy or a girl- but he knew he was a writer.

Me, too.

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t doing this.  In fact, when I got my job as humor columnist for the Pioneer Press, when it came to the line marked  “newspaper experience,” I wrote “Feature Editor, The Avoca Parrot.”

That was back in the seventh grade and there has never been a time when I wasn’t writing something.

For somebody.

Early on I was doing my brother Kenny’s homework.  And by the time his high school junior theme rolled around, I had already written so many of my friends’ essays, I was a seasoned pro with a note card and a footnote.

I will not debate the moral implications of cheating here.  It was dead wrong.  I am 100% guilty.  (And if Kenny had to do it all over again, I’m sure that he would still have me step in and ghostwrite his papers all over again.)

Kenny hated to do anything indoors.  He was much happier on a ball field.  It was pure, unadulterated torture for him to sit still and write something.

(Or read something for that matter.  The ONLY book report he had ever handed in was The Hound of the Baskervilles.  And he hadn’t read the book. He had only seen the movie.)

So whenever something big was riding on the outcome, a grade, a college acceptance, something important, I would step in and “help” him.

By the time he went off to college, we had a system and it worked like a charm.  I would write the paper, Mary Lu- his girlfriend since high school junior year- would type it and Kenny would hand it in.

Then Kenny would sit back and relax.  A good grade was guaranteed to be had by all.

(If there had been email and Google doc-sharing back in the day, his hands never would have had to actually touch the finished product.)

I only remember one time when he complained.  I had used the word “vicissitudes” and Kenny freaked out.

“She’s going to know, man,” he moaned.  “The teacher is going to know that I didn’t write this.  Vicissitudes?  Vicissitudes?  Give me a break.”

“Kenny,” I patiently explained.  “If your teacher is so darn dumb that she can’t tell that you didn’t write that paper because it’s beautifully constructed and has a cogent thesis, she is never going to land on the word ‘vicissitudes’ and figure it out.  You’re cool, man.”

Kenny thought this over for a minute.

“I know what I’ll do!  I change it.”

So he got out a thesaurus, looked up the V-word and dumbed it down to “problems.”  And then went out to play a pickup game of soccer.  Happiness reigned once again.

There was one college paper I do remember however that almost got me in a lot of hot water.

I had written a paper that purported to be an interview with a Navajo wind talker named Joe Goes in Center. (Christened in honor of Natalie Goes In Center, a girl in Natasha’s boarding school class.)  No relation because my Mr. Goes in Center was fictional.  (All the wind talkers I needed for the actual report were dead.)  So hence for the assignment, I invented the guy, asked him real historic questions and then answered them myself.

The paper got its owner an A.  And then came the Little Big Horn.  The professor, so impressed with this man’s exploits and war record, wanted  him to lecture to the class.

“What shall we do?” asked the panicked owner of my bogus theme.

No problem.  I just sent Joe to the Happy Hunting Ground.

But there was one other time…

Kenny’s senior year in college.  The book:  The Light in August by William Faulkner.  I hated this mother-f…er.  Couldn’t stand it.  Didn’t understand it.  It was downright painful for me to read, yet alone write about.  But I had promised, and Kenny was busy playing ball, hanging out with his friends, you know, college.

I was married and living in Baltimore at the time.  And  I thought happily.

But I came home from Goucher College one afternoon to find that my husband had taken all my jewelry, sold my car, taken the dogs, cleaned out the bank account and had fled to parts unknown.  My house looked like it had been hit by a tornado. Everything inside it was destroyed.  Even the mattresses had been slashed.

I was in shock.  Utter disbelief at what I was looking at.  Then the phone rang.  It was Kenny calling from college.

“Oh my God, Kenny,” I blurted out.  “You have no idea what’s happened here.  He’s taken off and taken everything I own with him.  The dogs are gone!  Even my typewriter is gone. What am I going to do?”

Kenny was quiet for a minute.  I could feel his worry and concern.  I was touched.

“Does this mean you’re not going to write my Light in August paper?  Because if you’re not, I’ve got to find someone else…”

I wrote the paper.

Luckily for my career,  I now get paid to write book reports.  And for years I have quietly turned my attention to the business and social world -and the need for public speaking they impose on their participants.

And  so I have been ghost-writing business speeches, president-to-president letters, charity “ask” campaigns, college application essays, grad school apps, web site copy and even eulogies for almost forty years.

My slogan is “When you care enough to say the very best.”  And although I honor confidentiality and can’t tell you who my clients are, they are a very happy bunch.

Come hell or high water, I can assure you that your words will be golden, your fund-raising quotas will be met, your business brochure copy will sparkle, you’ll get into that grad school.

In other words, you’ll be pleased with the results.

Just ask Kenny.

(If you can get him in from the ball field.)

And now a word from our sponsors…

Second Author’s Note: This space was reserved for the URL for my hired gun writing site- “Ghost.”  But due to a technical glitch, the site is not live yet.

Since the perpetrator of that technical glitch is my son, Nick, you and I are going to have to suck it up and do without it temporarily.

Our highly-high tech conversation went something like this:

Me: Nick, come on!  I need that site up and running now!  It’s almost time for college and grad school application essays..

Nick:  Chill out, Dude.  I am swamped with work right now.  If you want it done right, you’re going to have to wait until the end of October at the earliest.  Do a soft launch and give me a break.”

(I’m leaving out his actual tone.  It was kind of a cross between a sigh, a snarl, bone-weariness and a warning.)

I got the hint.

So if any of you want something written, punched up, ghosted or looked over, you know where to find me.

As ever, the Gray Ghost

Once upon a time- after a brief romance abruptly ended- I carried a torch.  I admit it.  The gentleman in question had broken up with me and I pined.  And I languished.  And I re-lived every glorious moment we had spent together.  I had been crazy about him and now, too soon, (for me, at least) it was over.

I remembered every little detail about him.  I had loved his brains and his laugh and his car and his cat and his serious save-the-planet demeanor.  But mostly I loved the way he looked.  His tall, lanky frame, those long, slender fingers, his gorgeous blue-gray eyes.

And, above all else, I loved his hair.

It was a shade we used to call “dishwater blonde,” and it went great with blue eyes and blue jeans.  It was thick and shaggy- a mop top that was lush and luxuriant.

When he ended our love affair, I was sad and nostalgic for years.  And long after I forgot what he sounded like or kissed like, I could remember that great head of hair.

Over the years, I kind of kept unofficial track of him.  It was hit or miss back then- once it involved telephone books at the public library- but I always knew where he was in the world.  Just idle curiosity, I think.  And pretty harmless.

But then the Internet happened and it became a whole lot easier to do a random check on him every now and again.

I had no interest in getting in touch.  After forty-some years, he had become a bittersweet memory; forever young, forever handsome.  I just kept this little secret sorrow to myself, and it made me sigh whenever I heard “our” song on the radio.  It was delightful to revel in such rosy-hued nostalgia.

And then it happened.

One day, I idly googled him and a website for his company popped up.  Before I had a chance to think it through, I clicked, and voilà!  All the employees of the firm had posted pictures of themselves- and their families.

There he was- complete with wife and kid.  The wife was so-so.  The kid looked nice.  And he?  Still tall, still thin, and… balding.

All that gorgeous mop top was now gone.  His receding forehead actually gleamed in the photo’s sunlight.  His sparse locks let his scalp peek through.

One photo op killed what forty years could not.  A bucket of ice water doused my torch faster than you could say “Rogaine.”

Forever.

The Internet is a great tool.  I use it for practically everything.  But when it comes to rosy-hued nostalgia and old beaux, it’s a complete buzz kill.

So here’s some advice.

When tempted to find your long-lost love, just DON’T do it.

And while you’re just not doing it, pray that they’re not looking for you.

(See Fifty Shades of Gray.)