Chapter 47: College Creeps Closer

I don’t remember how I got home, I was so tired. I recall saying hi to my mother, who was in the kitchen, and then saying good night. I took off my shoes, but not my clothes and was asleep as soon as I hit the pillow.

I slept late, and had to make my own coffee when I got up on Sunday. I found some eggs and scrambled them and made toast, and that pretty much depleted my store of energy.

I took my second cup of coffee out back under the tree and figured I’d finish it and then nap for a few hours. I actually was starting to doze off, when I heard Jeff. This was turning into a regular event.

“Over here,” I called with as much volume as I could muster, which was barely enough. He waved and trotted over, and pulled up a lawn chair.

“What happened to you, you get mugged?”

“Something like that. How was the movie?”

“Not very good. With you and Anne not there, we kinda got to making out in the back of the balcony. We couldn’t do much there, except feel each other up. What’d you guys do, anyway? By the time I got her home, you two hadn’t shown up.”

“I suppose you’ll hear all about it eventually, so I might as well just tell you.” So I filled him in on the coffee and the talk and the proposition, and the sex.

“Is that true,” he asked, “about her ex, Jimmy? He was really like that to her? He sounds like a real shit, and kinda stupid to toss her over.

“By the way, I got a closer look at the new girlfriend in the theater while they were buying popcorn. She looks kinda cheap, too much makeup, too blond. Maybe they’re made for each other.”

“Anyway,” he went on, “that was nice of you to make sure she was okay, even if you had to have sex with her to help her through it.” He was smiling at his joke.

“She’s a nice girl, and cute. I’m sure she’ll have a few new guys lined up in no time. Any one of them has got to be better than Jimmy. You and Kate going out again tonight?”

“Nah, she’s going to stay home with Anne, ‘cause Anne’s parents aren’t due back till tomorrow. I don’t know what I’m going to do tonight. Maybe we should go to a movie.”

“I may have had my fill of movies for awhile, and there’s nothing I really want to see anyway. I’m gonna take a nap and see what I feel like when I wake up.”

“Right. Call me if you want to do anything.” He cycled off down the driveway.

I settled in to take a nap again, but now found I couldn’t get to sleep. Maybe the coffee was catching up to me. Finally I sighed, got up and went in to the house and washed my breakfast dishes, then went upstairs and tried reading some of the Italian books I’d bought.

I was still missing some words, but I found that the reading itself wasn’t too bad. I thought I could get the gist of what was before me, and could recognize tenses and voices and noun gender.

I still had the nagging problem of becoming fluent in the spoken language. The tapes in the language lab helped some with pronunciation, but I really needed to find someone, a native speaker, to practice this with, mostly so I could see how the language was formed in their heads. I put that on my to-do list.

I had other things on my to-do list, most recently a conversation with my parents about making a decision on the colleges I was going to apply to. I had put that off for about as long as I could, and now I had to make up my mind.

I actually had a mental list of places that had interested me, but many of those were chosen without any regard to the likelihood of my grades and test scores meeting their minimum requirements, much less how my parents would pay for them. We weren’t well-off, and paying for it would likely mean scrimping and a second mortgage.

There was the possibility, as my guidance counselor, Mr. Fremont, had suggested, that there might be some scholarship aid involved, but I couldn’t count on that.

I had a number of other schools on the mental list that were “selective”, to use the creative but meaningless description that colleges love to apply to themselves, and which also had a decent academic rep that I had a chance at, plus one or two “safety schools” like State, where almost anyone with a pulse could get admitted.

I was supposed to do the “college visit tour” to check out the schools I liked, much as my cousin Andrea had done, but that was going to be iffy because it was hard for my parents to take time off work without jeopardizing their jobs, and the cost of the trip itself might even be a factor.

But I resolved to at least write down the list on paper and winnow it down to, say, ten schools.

I would have to take the SAT tests again. I had done well enough the first time I took them, but Mr. Fremont strongly recommended taking it a second time, as I was likely to do better after having seen how the first time went.

I had finished the last item on my calculus to-learn list, power series, and had reviewed all of multi-variable calculus. I was ready to be tested on it in the fall so I could get credit for it. I had already left a message for Mr. Fremont at the school asking him to set it up as soon as school started, so I could get it out of the way.

In the end, I did nothing at all on Saturday. I had dinner, I watched a video I’d seen before, and I went to bed. Some days the excitement never stops.

Sunday started just about the same, lazy way, a late breakfast and coffee, skim the paper sitting under the tree in the back yard, read a little Italian.

Around two, Karen called and said that her father was going to grill again tonight, and why didn’t I join them? And if I came a little earlier, I could show her a few more defense moves. I said sure, and we agreed that five would give us enough time for a short training session, then she could shower and by the time she was done dinner should be about ready.

I told my mom I wouldn’t be there for dinner, then read some more and took a shower. I found some old clothes that didn’t mind getting dirty and grass-stained, put them on and packed some clean clothes in my backpack. Just before five I bicycled over there.

“Hi, Tom. I see you wore your formal dinner attire.”

“The last time I was here you ruined a perfectly good pair of pants and ripped my shirt when you threw me on the ground. I’m not taking chances this time. I’ve got a change of clothes in my backpack.”

In the back yard, we reviewed a few of the moves she had learned last time, and I found she had retained most of it. Today I thought she had learned enough restraint -- or so I hoped -- that she could learn some debilitating kicks and hand strikes.

Before we did that, I talked about how easy it was to seriously, permanently injure someone, even if they were an attacker. Most attacks did not need defenses that caused permanent injury, so we practiced pulling punches and kicks, so they stopped just short of the target.

“Karen, I’m trusting you, now. This is no joke. I will show you things that could cause me to lose my sight, or never walk correctly again, or even lead to hospitalization. So when you apply these, you must stop short of contact while we’re training, understand?”

She said she did, so we started with kicks and appropriate targets, like groin and solar plexus, or the side of the knee. I had brought a kicking shield she could use as a target that would keep me from getting injured, and a reusable breaking board.

With some practice she was able to kick pretty accurately and fast enough to stop an attacker, provided she didn’t signal her intentions. I held it, with some trepidation, over my groin, and told her to imagine where the target was. She didn’t hesitate, and kicked me hard enough that I was forced back a step.

We tried the same thing with a kick to the solar plexus, using the toe of her shoe if she were wearing shoes, or the ball of her foot if she wasn’t. She was still accurate, and fast.

I showed her how to do a skip step to the side, followed by a side kick to the outside of the knee, which should leave an attacker howling in pain. I didn’t trust that she would be able to do this with restraint, so I knelt down to knee level to hold the bag while she kicked. It was enough to knock me over onto my back.

Lastly I showed how her fingertips or the edge of her hand could be a weapon when applied to the right area. I pretended to be an attacker reaching in to grab her and showed her how fingertips stabbing at the eyes could cause the head to snap back, allowing her to step in, extend a foot behind mine, and throw me on my back with my hand in a wrist lock. She liked that one.

Finally, I told her we were going to practice all of these, and I wouldn’t tell her what I was going to do, I would just keep attacking. Her mother, and then her father, had come out to watch near the grill.

I did the common attacks we’d practiced, grabbing her from behind and in front, attempting to choke her, grabbing her wrist, grabbing her hair. I will give her credit. She broke each attack and got away, either by throwing me or kicking me -- she did remember to pull her kicks so there was no contact.

At the end, breathing heavily, I said, “You pass. If you ever have the chance to study this, maybe in college, I think you’ll be really good at it. You should consider it.”

She said, “Maybe. If it doesn’t get in the way. Have you had enough for today?”

“I think so.”

“Okay, I’m gonna shower. You can change in the bathroom in the den.”

I got my equipment together and walked toward the house. Her parents watched me. When I got closer, her father said, “It looked to me like you weren’t holding back when you attacked. Was that right?”

“I wasn’t,” I said. “Especially when we’re trying to teach this as separate self-defense moves rather than as a cohesive martial art, it’s important that she gets the sense of imminent danger and react immediately, without thinking. I was a little worried about the kicks and hand attacks, that she wouldn’t remember to hold back before she made contact, but she did, mostly.”

Her mother said, “And it also looked like she was throwing you pretty hard. Are you okay?”

“I’ll have some bruises and aches, I think. But this was kind of a final test to see if she remembered the things we learned, without a chance to review it in her mind, so I had to keep attacking to keep her off balance. She did well. You asked me once before if she was doing okay, and I said that I thought that if she ever studied this formally, she’d be really good at it. I haven’t changed my opinion.”

I undressed in the bathroom, and poked at a couple of places where I’d probably have bruises tomorrow. I splashed some water on my face and changed into my clean clothes. When I came out, her mother was setting the table.

“Sit, Tom, you look like you might need a few minutes to recover.” She poured me some iced tea, and put some nachos and salsa in front of me.

It felt good to relax, and the food was smelling pretty good, too. It wasn’t steak today, something else I thought.

Karen came out, hair damp, and wearing a tee shirt and shorts. It didn’t matter what she wore, she’d still look gorgeous. She sat down next to me.

“You’re looking a little the worse for wear, Tom. I was trying not to go full-bore, but I sometimes get a little competitive.”

“Competitive? You? Why, until you brought it up I had no idea! You hide it so well.”

“Sarcasm is not your thing, Tom.” But at least she smiled when she said it.

Her mother carried a tray from the grill and set it on the table. Oh, that’s the smell I couldn’t place, ribs! They smelled great, and there was cornbread and salad and some kind of rice dish.

They tasted really good, too, and I found myself having more than I usually did.

Karen asked, “How’s your Italian going? Mastered it yet?”

Her mother asked, “I thought you spoke Spanish and, what’s the other one? Oh, and French. Did I misremember?”

“No,” I answered. “Italian’s new. The professor I work for at the college is Italian, and I was looking through one of his books and noticed the similarity to Spanish. He lent me a couple of books, and I’ve been teaching myself, then he got me a temporary pass to the college language lab so I could work on pronunciation.”

Karen said, “I’ll bet you learn this just as fast as Spanish. It’s not fair.”

“What does this remind me of? Let me think. Hmmm. It’s right on the tip of my tongue ... oh, right, competitiveness. Well, rest easy, Karen, because I can read it, and even speak some, after a fashion, but I can’t be called fluent, because I’ve got no one to speak it with, and I need that to learn a language fully. You’d think there’d be someone in my circle of acquaintances who spoke Italian, but no.”

We talked some more while we ate, and not surprisingly the talk moved toward college choices and the application process. It turned out that Karen and her mother were setting off on her college visit tour next week. Not all of the places on her list, but the ones that could be reached by car in the time they had available.

I asked her what schools were on her final list, and of all of them there was only one that I also had on my list. I guess I wasn’t surprised, but I was still disappointed. The chances of us being anywhere near each other were dwindling rapidly.

They asked me what colleges I planned on visiting, and I explained about my parents’ job situations and not being able to get away. I thought, I said, that I’d try to visit a couple on my own, taking the bus or a train, but I wouldn’t be able to do more than a couple.

Her parents started reminiscing about their college days, what they’d gotten out of the experience, some of the embarrassing things they’d done, and so on. This was the first time I’d seen them being informal, out of the host-guest mindset, and it was clear that they still liked being around each other, were still interesting to each other. I thought that was nice.

Her father turned toward me and said, “I don’t think that I ever mentioned that I went to ------- as an undergrad.” He named one of the schools on my list.

I asked him some detailed questions about the reputation of certain departments, about accommodations and clubs, what the city near it was like, and such. He said that he didn’t feel like he knew enough about the current academic environment to answer me, but he’d make a couple of calls and let me know.

We wiped our greasy hands with some wetnaps and cleared the table. Mrs. Sunderland brought out ice cream with some toppings for dessert, and coffee.

“Karen, I think I’ve shown you enough that you can get out of most sticky situations. If you want to do more, let me know, but I think you can handle yourself.”

“I think so too, Tom. I kinda liked it, learning how to turn someone’s attack around, fighting back. I’ll think about it, try to figure out what kinds of situations I might be facing and if what I know will get me out of it. We can talk about it.”

I thanked her parents for dinner and packed my things. Karen walked me out.

“That talk about colleges got me thinking, Tom. The reality of it is starting to loom large. We’ll be heading off next year, and I think you were right, it’s not likely we’ll be anywhere near each other for the better part of each year. I know it’ll be an exciting time, for both of us, but I’ll miss you.”

“I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I’m afraid of what will happen when we’re apart. Will we stop caring about each other? I hope you don’t forget me, Karen.”

She reached up and kissed me, a slow kiss. “I don’t think I could ever forget you, Carter. Let’s take this one step at a time.”

On that depressing note I strapped my gear to my bike and headed home, thinking about four years of not seeing Karen, except maybe at Christmas and summer vacations.

At home I found my parents in the kitchen doing, of all things, a jigsaw puzzle on the kitchen table. I must have had a puzzled look on my face, because my mother said, “We were cleaning out a bedroom closet and found this in the back, and one thing led to another. Don’t judge.”

While they were both there, I brought up my problem of college visits. I told them I knew they couldn’t get away to drive me, but said I thought it might be important to visit at least a few. I tossed out the idea of bus and train trips to some of the closer places. I had some money put away from working, but it might not be enough if I had to do hotels and cab rides.