"Holly Parsons and I were in college together. I'm
surprised she didn't tell you. That's why you're here."
"She told me she had sent your school a story of mine.
And that you had liked it. And then I got those recommendations,
and you invited me out here. I don't know anything about you
and `Holly.' "
"Oh, dear. What webs we spin. Where to start? I guess
with you. That's what's important now.
"We run a good school here. Look at those awards on
the wall. From the governor, and a couple from Washington.
Doing good things for the youth of America, that sort of thing. And we
do a good job. Our graduates end up everywhere. Some on the
assembly line, some supervisors, even a few of the big shots started
here. Mostly our kids come from schools around here—Michigan,
Ohio, Indiana. But we get a few every year from other parts of the
world. There's even a kid from Turkey in this year's graduating class,
so New Hampshire isn't so unusual."
"Turkey is probably more like home than what I've seen
of Detroit."
"Listen, your job right now is to relax, just make
yourself comfortable. You may not want to come here. You may love
this place. Just go with the flow. Is that what you say?"
"Sure. Go with the flow. But tell me about Holly.
Ms. Parsons. Are you guys. . . . Were you and she. . . . How do
you know her?"
"We went to Kent State together. They had paired up
the dorms, and Holly's dorm and mine were matched. That first
week, we did lots of getting-to-know-you kind of stuff. It was the
late seventies, and there were lots of touchy feely games that
were supposed to relax you. But that's not the way I get comfortable.
So I spent a lot of time sitting on the sidelines, just watching.
And that's where I found Holly. Another outsider. And for the next
four years, that's where we were. On the outside looking in."
"So you just spent college watching everyone else?
I thought college was classes and learning and books."
"Oh, sure. I was taking business courses, and she
was studying English—the poetry of Blake and the plays of
Will Shakespeare. She would recite poems to me late at night out on
the back roads of Ohio."
"Uh, oh. Where are we going here? Were you and
Ms. Parsons like, you know, um, more than friends?"
"More than friends? We were friends. Real friends.
That's one of the most important things you can have in life—a real
friend. We shared everything. The good, the bad. I suppose the ugly
too. Whenever I needed someone, she was there."
"So you weren't, like, uh. . . . I can't imagine Ms.
Parsons. . . ."
"She wasn't always forty. She was quite something to
look at. She'd wear peasant blouses, and her hair in a long braid
down her back. Does she wear glasses now? She came to college
with contacts, but that first spring we both ordered some steel
rim glasses. You look surprised."
"She still wears steel rimmed glasses. But her hair's
short. You sure remember a lot of details. How come you haven't
seen her recently? Have you seen her since college?"
"No. No, I haven't. But I think of her often, and when I
got her letter, well. It brought back a lot of memories."
"Some friendship."
"We were best friends. Best friends. For four years. And
fall of Senior year she and her boyfriend had a real bad argument."
"I thought you were her boyfriend?"
"No. Best friends don't always make good lovers.
But sometimes they do. Her boyfriend moved out and I moved in.
We lived together the last six months of college. They may have
been the best six months of my life. But. . . ."
"But what? It sounds like you should have gotten
married. What happened?"
"We both came running home one day, excited,
bubbling, full of ourselves. I had just received a letter from a company
in Detroit, and she had a letter from Exeter High. And I was sure
that she would come to Detroit with me. But she was ready to have
me move to Exeter. And we were each too stubborn to
compromise. Does that sound like the Holly you know?"
"She does seem stubborn sometimes. But that's the
way with teachers. They all think that they have the right answers."
"So we ended up eight hundred miles apart. Not
much distance, maybe, but we were each determined that we had
done the right thing, and that the other was a jerk for not seeing
our wisdom. We exchanged hopeful letters for a while, but then
they stopped too. I got the sense that her work was more important
to her than I was."
"Wow."
"Wow? Is that all you can say?"
"My teacher. Ms. Parsons. She had a life. It's so hard
to comprehend."
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