Smitten with Tori

On a non-descript spring day in the year 1963, Morgan Schiller, then thirteen, became obsessed with Craig Grumman's sister, Tori. Morgan and Craig were classmates at Pennington Junior High and lived only about a mile apart. After school let out for the day, Craig invited Morgan to hang out over his house. Morgan didn't even know that Craig had a sister until shortly after he arrived and minutes later Tori returned home from her grade school. "Who's that?!" Morgan asked after Tori moved out of earshot. Craig told him, not fully aware, despite Morgan's excited tone, that he was smitten.

To this day, Morgan can't fully explain it. Tori was just nine at the time, a slender, leggy pre-teen not even starting to develop. He did find her incredibly cute. That face, man, that face, the sort of kinder (German) beauty that would have producers of kids' shows rushing to sign her up. Morgan didn't fully dissect it at the time, didn't articulate the various parts, her light tan coloring, her high cheek bones and bright smile, her emerald green eyes and her long, light brown hair that swirled around her head in the wind. It was the sum of her parts, the gestalt, and it included the infectious way she laughed and the sensuous way she said her brother's name—Craaig—dragging out the a in that soft, lovely voice of hers. She could sing, too, and looked so adorable standing in front of Morgan and Craig, singing some of the era's Top 40 hits, songs like "Puff the Magic Dragon" and "Surfin' USA."

It turned out that Morgan wasn't alone in his affection for Tori. When he returned to class, he told Steve Bass, another classmate, that he had been over Craig's house. "So what do you think of his sister?" were the first words out of Steve's mouth. Morgan's friend Roger liked her too, and when the two visited Craig, they both vied for Tori's attention, engaged in a competition of sorts. 'Tori talked to me more than she talked to you today,' was a common refrain.

However, while Roger's ardor faded with time, Morgan's developed into an obsession. It wasn't sexual in the sense that Morgan dreamed up sexual scenarios involving him and Tori. Unlike some of the girls in his class or Playboy centerfolds, she wasn't on his list of adolescent masturbation material. As noted, she was only nine, and Morgan was no pedophile. No, it was something else, some nebulous sense of the romantic that grabbed this naive young boy and wouldn't let go, that clamped onto his soul like some metaphorical pit pull.

In June of '63, when Tori turned ten, she moved with her family out of the city. Tori and Craig went to different schools. For Morgan, that should have been that. But no, his obsession lived on. More accurate, he refused to drop it. Even when he started dating, he always wondered about Tori, what she was up to, what she looked like. When he turned sixteen and got his driver's license, he'd cruise by her house, hoping to get a glimpse of her. No luck. In the summer of '69, when he turned twenty and was deeply in love with a girl he met at college, he ran into Craig at a movie theater. In front of their dates, they exchanged pleasantries. Then, before parting, Craig said, "You ought to see my sister now." That remark told Morgan that Craig hadn't been blind to Morgan's attraction to his sister. Tori was then sixteen, and if Craig said that Morgan ought to see his sister, that's just what he was going to do.

Come fall of the following year, Morgan decided to make his move. He knew Tori was a senior in high school, knew the school and when she'd probably arrive home. This time, instead of driving by, he parked his car in front of her house and waited, seated behind the steering wheel, holding up a magazine. His timing was near impeccable, for minutes later, a car drove up and pulled in front of Morgan's Olds Cutlass. Morgan peaked over his magazine and there she was, alighting from her car, in all her blond, longhaired glory. Morgan knew that she must have dyed her hair. No matter, Craig had been right; the girl was striking. She was also suspicious. She kept looking at this strange guy in the white Olds, parked in front of her house, alternately raising and lowering a magazine. Finally, she went in, and Morgan peeled away, profoundly embarrassed.

Years passed. Morgan got a college degree, began working, developed several romantic liaisons. And still thought of Tori. During the Disco era, Morgan had heard that she was working as a server in a Georgetown bar/restaurant. So he and Roger, also curious, though hardly obsessed, paid a visit. Based on his last sighting, Morgan had a vision of what the then twenty-something Tori looked like. "That must be her," Morgan said to Roger as they sat and sipped their beers. The young woman he meant had long, light brown hair and was the prettiest server there. Tori, right? Had to be. Not! Tori was the thin chick with short brown hair, cute but hardly the hot raving beauty that Morgan had expected. It should have been enough to kill his ongoing obsession.

Except it wasn't, and he continued to make sporadic contact, mostly with her mom to get updates. Around 1980, he learned that she lived in Margate and worked in one of the Atlantic City casinos. It sounded right to him, because he had her figured for the adventurous type, someone who wasn't afraid to try new things. Morgan recalled a brief phone conversation he and Tori had when she was still in high school, the one where she told him she planned to backpack in Europe—and that was after she had returned from a weeks-long adventure on the island of Ibiza.

Then, in June of 1983, the month Tori turned thirty, Morgan decided to make his boldest move yet, to finish what he considered unfinished business. He again used her mom as a resource to get her phone number. She was back in town, living temporarily with her dad (her parents had divorced decades before). "Welcome to the big three-o," he said as an opener. He said he was an old friend of Craig's. And did she remember when he and a boy named Roger came to visit after school twenty years before? She didn't, but Morgan's call roused her curiosity enough to where she agreed to go out.

He picked her up at her dad's place, a stately, nineteenth century row home in a gentrified city neighborhood. Tori at thirty didn't look much different than the Tori he had seen a few years before in Georgetown: slender, short hair, legs long but not particularly shapely and green eyes, still beautiful. They conversed over wine at a trendy bar/restaurant. Tori regaled Morgan with tales of the three or four years she spent in Atlantic City. She had always been interested in theater and had hoped, somehow, to be "discovered" by some big shot who might have wandered into the casino. Obviously, this wasn't the same person that had rocked Morgan's sheltered little world on that spring afternoon during the final months of the JFK administration. Thirty and unemployed, she seemed to have lost her way—an impression further gleaned when they repaired back to her dad's place, and she revealed that she had pending a possession of paraphernalia charge. A cop had pulled her over for speeding and found a scale in her car, presumably one to weigh drugs. A court later dismissed the charge.

By the late nineteen-eighties, Morgan was married. Yes, Tori crossed his mind from time to time, though he was hardly obsessed, at least with the grown Tori, the Tori that didn't seem to know what path to take, that wasn't the raving beauty that Morgan thought she'd become. Yet years later, he was curious enough to search for her on Facebook. Tori Grumman had become Tori Warren, married to an older man with kids from a previous marriage. She lived in suburban Virginia, was the mom of two kids, a boy and a girl. She had a college degree, had taught at a community college, and was retired, seemingly happy and content. Morgan messaged her through Facebook: "Hi, we met for drinks at the Homewood Pub back in June of 1983 when you turned 30. Remember?"

"Yes, I remember," she messaged back. "At my dad's, you asked to see pictures of me when I was a little kid. I thought that was a little...strange." Morgan laughed, remembering that also and the disappointment he felt when she didn't have any available to show. Tori went on to say that she met her husband just months after the pub date and that's when things started falling into place for her.

Morgan didn't try to contact her after that, but he continued to peruse her Facebook page, one loaded with pics and postings and other things you could see without being her "friend." Her daughter Marian was very pretty, looked a lot like her mom when Tori was little. Morgan's hope was that she didn't look like her mom when Marian turned late middle-age. That once beautiful child, the one that could wow and flutter the hearts of young teen boys back in the day, had, by her early sixties, turned into an overweight, frumpish looking woman attired in loose fitting, frumpish looking outfits. She looked like someone's babushka. She hadn't aged real well.

Included among Tori's many pics on her timeline page was one color photo from 1963. She's posing in front of what looks like a white Lincoln Continental wearing a knee-length white coat with a fur collar and brass buttons, white socks and black patent leather shoes. She's leaning against the side of the car, one arm on the front quarter panel, the other down by her side. Her left leg is bent at an angle, with just her toe touching the ground. The photo captures her light tan complexion beautifully, and she's wearing that adorable smile that Morgan remembered so well. Her hair is pulled back in front, while the back drops below her shoulders. This was the Tori he remembered, the only Tori he wanted to remember. When he showed it and a recent picture to a good friend, the guy almost refused to believe they were the same person. "No way, no fucking way," he groused.

Of course, it's the '63 image that will be forever etched in the obsessive-compulsive mind of Morgan Schiller. Balmy spring days and nights, combined with old songs ("Puff the Magic Dragon") can trigger a wistful mood, can take him back—back to that white, two-story Gatsby-era house with the tree in front, the one he once saw Tori climb on a windy day, her long hair blowing around her fresh, young face—and back to that time when he was an impressionable young teen, smitten with a pretty lass named Tori Grumman.