The Mysterious Case of the Weekend Visitor

I haven’t thought of this incident in decades. As it constitutes a mystery that will never be solved, I suppose I tucked it away in a piece of my brain that I don’t visit very often. I don’t know what caused me to think about it now.

When I was a senior at Auburn, I was seeing a girl at Florida State in Tallahassee. Let’s call her Matty. She was a freshman at FSU but was only two years younger; I had misguidedly raced through college and would graduate in three years. In truth, in high school, I had had a miserable crush on her older sister, Trish, and was only dimly aware of Matty. But I wasn’t creepily stalking Trish; I honestly liked Matty.

She was more laid back than Trish and quieter, more kind, and every bit as bright. Both girls had bright dark brown hair and soft brown eyes and hooked noses, my favorite. I called Matty my eaglet, which she liked. She also had a band of freckles across her nose, which I found breathtaking.

So at some point I went down to Tallahassee with my roommate, Tom, who had actually formed some sort of relationship with Trish on a previous visit that Trish took to see me in Auburn—crushing disappointment!

There’s a funny moment in there. Trish came to see me before Matty even got to college, and I’ll always wonder what was going on there. Did Trish actually like me? Anyway, she showed up on a Friday afternoon, and I was studying history with, of all people, a varsity basketball player, Brent Sutton. Brent was a big forward with straight black hair and a shy manner. I have no idea how we got to be friends. Brent was shy on the court, too, averaging 1.2 points a game (this is the truest fact in this post). Once, he grabbed an offensive rebound, and as I was shouting “Put it back up!” he simply handed it to Robert Osberry, who cheerfully dunked it. Oh, Brent.

Anyway, we were working, and Trish was just hanging out, and then she reached under her shirt and did this thing that I suspect only really coordinated women could do: she took off her bra and pulled it through the armhole. Brent was entranced. Trish was breezily unconcerned. (This fact is also true.)

Oh, youth. At some point at the end of a term, I found my way to Tallahassee, and Trish drove us to Ft. Lauderdale, where my mother still lived for a time. At some point, Trish started staring over in my direction. I decided that she was gazing at me. I kept my eyes on my book, but was grateful, felt loving, decided that this was a breakthrough for us. Finally I glanced up and saw that she had been staring at the sunset.

I suspect that Matty and I went back and forth a couple of times, till, finally in the spring, she was coming up to Auburn to see me on a Friday and would stay the weekend.

By my senior year, my mother had procured a job at Auburn teaching in the School of Education, in the same department as Dad. They lived in a small, comfortable brick house in a stand of pines on the edge of town. I was in a duplex closer to campus with Tom. As I think of that little, hot, molding place, I can hear Seals and Crofts’ “Summer Breeze” in my head. (https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=seals+and+crofts+summer+breeze. You’re welcome.)

This happened 46 years ago, so I’m a little iffy on the details. Thus, to avoid annoying the narrative, I’ll make some stuff up. Don’t worry; you won’t be able to tell the difference. When I’m done, neither will I. (Remember Gloria, an ex from the post of December 6? She married a man named Len whose last name was either Epstein or Levine. When I wrote about Gloria in a novel, I used the name that wasn’t the real Len’s. I no longer know which it is.)

At any rate, at some point late in the afternoon, one of my parents called with sad news: Matty couldn’t make it. I figured that Matty must have called me, but I was in class and this was before message machines, so she called my parents. The sad fact was that my weekend was screwed, and I wouldn’t be. So I shrugged and went to a movie at the iconic Samford Hall, which contained a large auditorium where the college showed free movies every Friday night.

I absolutely must digress at this point, for I don’t want this irrelevant event to be lost to fading memory. On another occasion, I was in Samford Hall watching a movie, sitting in the back row, and I was joined by the ghost of Ahmed Ben Bella, the first president of independent Algeria. We had a nice chat, complicated by the fact that Ben Bella didn’t die till 2012.

So maybe not his ghost? Just an apparition? He seemed pleased that I knew his history, which is complicated; he was deposed in a bloodless coup. (His rival has the best name in history: Houari Boumedienne. Even if you don’t do French pronunciation, let the name roll on your lips and tongue.) But later when Ben Bella died they gave him a state funeral. Not bad for a deposee. Anyway, he was a terribly nice guy, good company, evincing a shrugging equanimity about that bloodless coup. I hadn’t been drinking or smoking anything at all. Ahmed Ben Bella just came to chat. I am not making any of that up.

When the movie was over, I went back to my duplex, resigned to a night of…what did I do on Friday nights as a senior? Read? Doubtful. We had a television. Who knows? In any event, in a few minutes, one of my parents called.

Matty was at their house. She had come after all. Mortified—though I don’t know why, it was obviously some strange misunderstanding, not my fault—I waited till I suppose my parents drove her over to my duplex. (I didn’t have a car till late in graduate school.) She was understandably a little miffed, though my parents had explained to her that they had received the call that she wasn’t coming.

But, we wondered then and I wondered for a long time after, what the hell happened? She swore she didn’t call my parents, and why would she have? My mind immediately leapt to wondering who must have played a prank.

Here’s an admission. Auburn wasn’t really my people. So I had maybe two friends in college who might possibly have known that Matty was coming to visit. They would have been my roommate Tom and my best friend in the English Department, Elizabeth. Neither would have been likely to have called my parents and made such a claim.

OK, another admission; I might have wished that Elizabeth had done such a thing out of jealousy. I had a three-year crush on her, utterly unrequited. But maybe she harbored complicated, contradictory feelings for me? No, very doubtful. And Tom would never have gotten in the way of a fellow man’s possible sexy time.

So maybe one of Matty’s friends at FSU? That is completely unknowable. I’m sure I discussed it with her at the time, and she must have been unable to proffer a culpable candidate. So we shrugged it off and enjoyed each other’s company; all’s well that ends well, especially when you’re a couple of goshdarn crazy kids.

But at the end of the day (a bit of corporate-speak I love when it’s used ironically, that is, when its assumed portentousness is undermined by the silliness of the event described, like now), someone intervened. Someone was mean. Maybe I’ll get back in touch with Matty and bring that up again. Though it’s likely she’s never given it another thought.

Ah yes, the next thing. I graduated and saw Matty one more time, after I’d gotten my MFA and was back at Auburn teaching, and she was still at FSU doing theater. The weekend did not go well, and we lost touch, though not before Trish wrote me a letter blistering me for having mistreated Matty, which did NOT happen, and by return post I set Trish straight.

Trish got married and had four kids. In a Facebook correspondence a few years ago, she seemed completely to have forgotten that Matty and I had seen a bit of one another, indeed, to have forgotten that I knew Matty at all. Another example of memory’s betrayals!

In a final, sweet coincidence, Matty moved to Sacramento and in 1982 met a Nancy, and they subsequently married. So did I! In 1982, a Nancy, and we got married. Take that, you long ago, long-forgotten miscreant. I wonder who you were, and what mischief you thought you were up to. If you’re reading this, please give me a call. Otherwise, I will simply. Never. Know.

Ahmed Ben Bella, who joined me for a chat in Auburn's Samford Hall.