1962
I remember her walk. I'd be sitting in the student union when she'd come in, smile, and walk over to me. She had a wonderful walk -- slow and easy, fluid, without a hint of effort. She'd walk over to me and then we'd sit there and talk, about nothing much.
Marion Tyree was in the Ira Aldridge Players, the school's drama society. Now that I was sort of a playwright, so was I. I don't remember what she did in the group nor do I remember how we met, but being in the club broke down barriers, and we began to talk. Her voice sounded so pleasant with just a hint of a southern accent. She was slender and very dark. I was Jewish and pale as a biscuit. We must have had crushes on each other, but I remember being with her was like a slow canoe ride across a lake rather than the turbulence of shooting whitewater. I don't remember being on guard for rocks, but I imagine I was, and I imagine she must have been, too. After all, it was 1962 in a city that slanted south. She was Black, and I was White. Yet, I don’t remember an issue, nothing fraught, no sense of anything we shouldn’t have been doing, no conversations I couldn’t have had with someone else. We were still children of the fifties, innocent and pristine. It was enough to simply sit together in the student union between classes and just talk.
Somewhere in here Dr. Turpin, mentor to the drama society, producer and director of my play, a fine man to whom I owe the beginning of my writing career, told me he'd made arrangements for the play to be produced in New York. The Ira Aldridge players, cast and crew, would be headed for the bright lights of Off-Broadway on stage at the Columbia Teachers College way uptown but a bite of the Big Apple nonetheless. Marion and I would be hundreds of miles from our hometown. We never spoke about it, but I doubt that was lost on either of us. This is what I remember: not a lot about rehearsals or performance but a taxi ride with Marion Tyree down to Greenwich Village to see Jean Genet's "The Blacks'' starring a young actor named Louis Gossett. Another couple shared the cab with us: a friend and fellow student from Morgan, another Marine as I had been, Reg Kearney, and his date, a coed from Barnard. I still don't know how he managed to pull that one off in the limited time we were in the city, but he did. Reggie had hit his trifecta: she was zaftig, white, and Jewish. Reggie was in heaven. All four of us were in the back seat, so I sat as close to Marion as I'd ever been. I cautiously put my arm around her, and she settled in. Nestled in. It was a small move and gentle, and felt so right. After the show (which was electrifying) we walked to a restaurant, and, for the first time, we held hands, right there, out in the open, we held hands. At first I thought every set of eyes in New York City was on us, and then I realized none were. We held hands and walked to the restaurant, and I was happy. I was a produced playwright, and I was holding hands with Marion Tyree.
When Marion’s grandchildren were grown she told them about me. “He was a white boy,” she said. “No, grandma, no,” they screamed. “And he was Jewish,” she said. “Grandma, no,” they yelped in disbelief. Then came the kicker.” And he was a good kisser, too,” she said, and laughed when they squealed and went wide-eyed. “Oh, no, grandma, you didn’t!” “Yes, I did,” said Marion, totally delighted with their reaction. At that moment she became a legend to her grandchildren who couldn't conceive of grandma ever doing such a thing. But we did do such a thing, and it has become a cherished memory.
If I had been born a ship I would have been a fishing trawler. My nets were out trawling for stories long before I even knew I wanted to tell them, countless details hauled around for years like heavy cartons of old books I could not leave behind. Thoughts and people; smells, colors, sounds. It’s not clear when things began to sort themselves out, but, when they did, Morgan was such a story. Marion Tyree was such a story, a story I will happily tell ‘til my gums dry up and my mouth withers away. It was all so nice and easy. We saw a play. We were hungry. We walked down the street looking for a place to eat, and we held hands.
THE END
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