Our move to the middle-class respectability of Saranac Avenue also meant that Joel, Ruth, and I changed schools as well, and that, too, was an upgrade on many levels: teachers were better and resources more plentiful. Even as a sixth grader, I could tell the students were more eager to learn—myself among them. What’s more, one of my classmates was as beautiful as a vision.
I had never seen anyone in my life as graceful as Sue. I was mesmerized by her features and her voice. I just stared. I watched Sue in class. I watched her walk down the hallway with her friends. I watched her on her bike, following her from behind. Her very existence was as if she had waved a hand in front of me, causing every one of my confusions to fall away. Like the Lady of the Lake of Arthurian legend, she rose up out of the water on a day when I was lost in the forest and said, “Now, listen.”
Sue, however, wanted nothing to do with me. She was tall and had brown hair, a sloped back, and a double-jointed thumb, which fascinated me. She would not say hello to me in class or in the hallways. I would think, “Please say hello to me. I can’t be the first to do it. I’m scared. But if you do it, then I can say hello back, and maybe by then I’ll have thought of a question: Where do you live? What sports do you like? Do you even like sports?” But she said nothing to me, which was the most reasonable thing in the world because I never said anything to her.
Just the mere mention of her name—Sue—enchanted me, but that paled before the image of her walking to the front of the class to give a report on Lord knows what. Who cared? All I could remember, and it would haunt me later, was the swoop of the small of her back, her shoulders, the sweater she was wearing, as if she were a woman emerging from the body of a young girl, and though I was tall, and myself becoming a young man, I could not believe it was happening. I could not get the thought of her out of my mind. Or maybe that’s why I seemed to be doing everything at once: so I wouldn’t have any time left to moon over a girl who didn’t seem to know I existed.
At school, I joined club after club. I can’t remember anymore what the activities were, but I plunged into them with all the vigor and interest I could muster. After school, I played ice hockey, baseball, and basketball. Later, in high school, I would add cross-country and track to the sports roster. I also had to find time to rehearse with the school orchestra.
Outside school, I took trumpet lessons because I thought playing the trumpet was cool. In time, the instrument became something noble to me, like a sword at the center of a legend. I also liked the fact that it was loud—maybe too loud for my family when I practiced—but for me the sheer volume of the noise helped drown out the memory of the terrible silence of our previous life. Mostly, though, I just felt good playing it. Making music is like a prescription for a disease that cannot be cured but whose symptoms can be alleviated. Music did that for me back then, and still does.
In time, I even took a small step toward getting to know Sue. In eighth grade, we were the two finalists in the school spelling bee sponsored by the Buffalo Evening News, one of the two leading local newspapers. Sue, up first, was asked to spell “silhouette.” She misspelled it!
Then it was my turn. I might have flubbed it on purpose, in tribute to my still well-concealed adoration of her, but I spelled it correctly and won. That potentially costly triumph amounted to a momentous breakthrough: I had come directly and forcefully to her notice as someone to be respected. The next fall, when we transferred to Bennett High School, we would have at least some sort of relationship, but it wasn’t until our sophomore year that Sue began to respond as I had been hoping for so long. Encouraged, I dared to invite her to the annual Cancer Charity Ball. Almost miraculously, she said yes.
The evening of the ball, I drove to her house to pick her up, knocked nervously on the turquoise front door (my heart pounding), and was greeted by a stunning young woman. I froze. This vivacious, radiant person did not seem to be the same serious girl I knew in the classroom. Although my eyes were fixed on her, she appeared not to notice that I was staring. Instead, she took my hand and welcomed me into her home, introducing me to her parents, Helma and Marty Roseno, who greeted me warmly.
It was the beginning. Sue and I sometimes went out to an apple orchard in the countryside on fall weekends. Some of the apples would have fallen to the ground, but most were still clinging to the branches. We were both terribly innocent in those days. Walking between the trees, knowing that in the evening we would be busy on a date with another couple (double-dating was common in the fifties), we occasionally stopped to sit and sometimes make out a little. On date nights, we would mostly talk…and talk. I usually had a great deal to say; things needed to be sorted out, ordered—a symptom of youth, perhaps, to want to explain who belonged to what group, to understand
