When, to Begin (F)

To begin, Andrea Loris was never my girlfriend. She was a girl I met, a fellow student in junior and senior high school, someone to talk with now and again, and then someone I was able to share some space with in our own time. In today’s parlance, well I don’t really know how kids would label the relationship—even that word is off by a thousand miles.

When you come into the town from the west, Highway 6 makes a steep long curve down to the Loris River Bridge, where the roadway crosses the river about 50 yards upstream from the railroad trestle, and then track and road run parallel to the other side of town where the railroad veers inland and the highway mostly follows along and above the lakeshore.

The decision to return for my 20^th high school class reunion was made three days before the event started, which was of no particular concern as the drive north was only a little more than 4 hours even if I did choose the old highway rather than the Interstate. Arne Carlson on the reunion committee told me about Andrea via Facebook. He and I had not spoken since we finished up at the university. That’s how it goes, lives I mean.

I pulled over on the east side of the bridge where there was one of those wayside rests with two unpainted picnic tables and a historical society marker briefly noting Loris as the gateway to vast timber reserves that made the town boom in the mid-1800s. I walked down the stone steps leading to an outcrop of rock that allowed a view under both bridge and trestle. The water was low as it was every August, and in the light of the high sun, I could easily see the pool beneath the trestle that always remained deep and cool even during the summer.

What did Arne say? Andrea slipped. Andrea jumped. Three boys were swimming in the pool at the time, and they said they waved for her to move farther out from where she had stopped on the track 40 feet above. But, she didn’t. Arne told me she landed on Flat Rock.

Flat Rock. Sat out there mornings and afternoons, and before and after sunsets. Alone sometimes, sometimes with friends, sometimes just guys, sometimes guys and girls. Sipped my first beer at Flat Rock. Stared at the stars and howled at the moon from Flat Rock. I know Flat Rock.

From my vantage above, I looked hard at that great, nearly smooth, flat slab of rock. I shielded my eyes as I looked at the trestle. I dropped my hand and closed my eyes. I knew. Andrea let go.

The Loris mansion was a little more than half a mile above Highway 6 in an area known as West Heights. The 3-story sandstone home was about 100 yards below the bridge on Maple, which was the only way to get from the Heights into town. I first started walking along the riverbed in the summer just before I turned 12 and would begin 7^th grade at the junior high. We two weeks before moved in from Des Moines—my father, who was a chemical engineer, got a higher paying job at the Loris paper mill, which was the biggest employer in the region.

During the snowmelt, the river raged and roared in such spectacular fashion it constituted a sort of mini-tourist event for day-trippers. The crowds always amused me as they gawked at the surging brown water, ooh-ing and ah-ing when stumps and logs would tumble over the falls just 50 feet or so above the bridge. Only they numbered in the hundreds, not like Lumberjack Days that would drag in five or six thousand visitors.

But that first summer, I learned the river as not much more than a benign creek that afforded half a dozen easy crossings between the two bridges. Our new house was only four blocks from the river, and so I nearly daily explored the bends and drop offs as I waited on the opening of the school term.

At the beginning of our senior year, Andrea turned around in her seat, and in her low voice, said, “You have been sitting right behind me in homeroom since 7^th grade.”

Well, that was surely the truth. And due to education’s great love affair with alphabetical seating, that truth mapped a part of our geography in at least a dozen classes during our time at Walker Junior and Loris Senior.

“I must like your hair,” I said.

“Not all you like.” Well, that too was surely the truth.

The first conversation between Andrea and me did not take place on the opening day of 7^th grade homeroom. In fact, we never said anything to one another that school year, not even in World Geography, where her desk was right in front of mine. She took what I handed her and passed it forward, and she passed back what came to her from the front for me.

One morning in late July, just before my 13^th birthday, I went down along the river and crossed over to the west side and its jumble of boulders and tree trunks, some measuring ten feet or longer, and slowly worked my way up the steep, uncertain route. In sight of the Maple Street Bridge I decided to just finish out the hike on River Road, and the place I chose to give up the nature walk was right in front of the Loris mansion.

Andrea was sitting at the top of the front steps, and on either side of her were two 4-foot lion heads, snarling and wide-eyed. To my surprise, when she saw me, she waved me over.

“Hi!”

“Hey.”

“Weren’t you in geometry with me?”

“Uh, no. Geography.”

She laughed. “You like the river.”

“Yep.”

“Me, too. I like sitting down there by myself. Even when it’s cold.”

As I stood on the bottom step, I glanced at the great double doors behind her. “This your house?”

“Yes. My grandfather’s. My great-grandfather’s actually.”

“You live here?”

“With my brother. He’s eight.”

“With your mom and dad?”

“No, just my grandfather and my brother.”

“Oh.” I let her words settle. “These lions are huge.”

“They are Japanese. Or Chinese. Yes, Chinese.”

“So are you related to—“

“We are that Loris. Okay?”

“Okay.”

The only other things I remember about Andrea that morning were how straight and dark her hair, and how dark brown her eyes, and how soothing her voice. Later, I told my mother that Andrea’s voice was so very soft and low, but she wasn’t whispering. Mom just rolled her eyes and handed me a peanut butter and banana sandwich.

The morning we were signing yearbooks in our senior honors English class, Andrea turned in her desk, holding my book to her chest. “Hey.”

“Hey. You okay?” I asked.

“You remember that morning—you know that one—at the river, in 9^th grade?”

“Yes.”

“Really? What do you remember?”

I shifted a bit in my seat and glanced down at her yearbook on my desk. “Well, I remember you looked like you had been crying.”

She waited. “And?”

“I remember the river was running really hard still and the air was cold, a lot colder than up on top.”

“Keep going.”

I flinched. “Andrea—“

“Say it.”

I looked around at our classmates to make sure no one was listening. “I put my arm around you. Then, I, well you, you put my hand inside your shirt.”

“That shocked you, didn’t it?”

“Yes” I whispered. “Yes, of course.”

“I liked it. You liked it too. You remember Ninth Grade Day, the last dance?”

“Of course.”

“We slow-danced. I liked that too.”

Yes, I liked it, too. I remember sitting at home in the kitchen and telling my mother how surprising it was that Andrea chose me for the last dance, and I told my friends the next afternoon sitting out on Flat Rock that holding her in my arms was like holding the softest thing that I could ever imagine. They didn’t need to know about the moment at the river when she had been crying.

“You’re going to the U?”

“Yep, with a bunch of others. Kind of boring.”

She laughed. “I won’t be that far away. Not like the ones who are going east. Don’t tell anyone, but I picked Northwestern out of a hat.”

“You did?”

“I found my great-grandfather’s bowler—black and round and still shiny—and put the names of the schools in there, and that’s what came out. So I’m going there.” She giggled and handed me my yearbook. “Promise you won’t read it until you get home. I signed on the NHS page.”

“I promise.” And, I kept that promise. A promise is a promise is a promise. The rest of the school day, as soon as I saw that page and her very large and rounded writing, I skipped to the next page.

The first of those did-you-hear-about-Andrea stories was that she slept with her Western Civ instructor and dropped out after the first semester. I can tell you she was for a fact a no-show at the 10-year-reunion. Diane Larson, who was as close to being Andreas’s best friend as anyone during high school, told us that Andrea was working at a strip club in Miami. Becky Tastides told us that Andrea was a porn star and was trying to get together enough money to start her own movie company in Los Angeles.

Arne told me that Andrea never returned to Loris until her grandfather’s funeral, that she stayed at the house with her brother and his wife and their three children, and that no one saw her anywhere other than at the church. She spoke to no one. It was closed-casket and the funeral was family-only.

Two days later, Andrea was dead.

After logging off with Arne, I picked up my senior yearbook and held it tightly with both hands. Maybe this will make some sense or maybe not, but in some unspoken way, Andrea and I were always on the same side. Did I need to read it again? Taking a short breath, I opened to the page.

Up the left side of the page and across the top, she wrote “Wish we could have talked more! Good luck in the Pulitzer race! Write me! Tons of love!!! Forever!!! A.”

Forever. Amen. Ladson 2013