The Humper Game Pt. 05 Ch. 08

"But this other friend, Sam, went back to her own room that night, and tried to figure out how she felt about it all. She cares deeply about me and about Jenny, both of us, and it hurt her that we were so unhappy. And the way she tried to figure out her feelings was to try to sketch things, about what had happened and about how she felt about it. And what she finally came up with was that picture, which she gave me as a gift later.

"So this is about the time that's actually pictured, trying to catch Jenny in that game, with lots of other young men trying to catch their partners, and the young women trying to get to the finish line without being caught. And that time I caught Jenny. But it's also about the other time on that same track, before the sun came up, with not so many people running and not so bunched up together, when Jenny said angry, unfair things to me and left me. And Sam was asking about that time, would I catch her? Meaning, would we go back to being together? And we tried, but we didn't succeed. And it still hurts, both Jenny and me. And Sam, who drew it, too."

I was once again kind of near tears. And to my surprise—not to say utter astonishment—Hannah stood up and came around the table to me and gave me a hug. She said, "But you have Ellen now, and she loves you and wants to marry you."

I said, "That's right, and we hope that will work out better. And we love each other very much, and we're very happy to be together.

"But I still love Jenny and miss her, and she loves me and misses me. You'll find this out more as you get older. This world isn't heaven, and there's sorrow in it, even though there's joy and many very good things too. And when we're sad and hurting, life is still going on, and we have to live it the best we can. Thank you very much, Hannah." And she went back to her own place.

I was the only one who hadn't finished dinner yet. I said, "Please, you all get dessert. I'll try to keep quiet and finish." So dessert was gotten, and other people talked. The dessert was cookies and ice cream, both favorites for me. Ellen contrived to serve me last, so that my ice cream wouldn't melt too much before I got to it, and I got an extra cookie or two.

Barbara and Kelly jumped to cleaning up and doing the dishes, and I wasn't feeling up to telling them not to. Kelly asked me what to do with the leftovers, and I told her what containers to use for the peppers and sauce, I suggested that she put what there was left of the fruit salad into the container she'd brought it in and take it home. She insisted on leaving it for us, so I had her find something of suitable size.

Tammy gave me a very fond hug. "Thank you for the lesson. It was an eye-opener, and it shouldn't have been so much, because I've seen you, that time you cooked eggs at our place. Please, really, next semester let's find an evening when you can do this again, every week or most of them.

"These peppers were really, really good, too, but I think I liked them a little better the other time. I think it was the cheese. And I have Worcestershire sauce at home. I'm going to have to experiment, myself. I wish we could find some good way to repay you for all the help you've already given us, you and Ellen both, and here I am asking for more. And I realize that in theory you're getting me to do the cooking, but I know what you did today was more work than doing it yourself would have been. At the very least, I'll insist that you let us provide ingredients. And Pete's as grateful to you as I am, as you must already know."

"You're forgetting some things. It's not as one-sided as you're thinking. But we'll talk later."

Scott said, "Hannah Grace really needs a nap, and she'd better get it now. And you've been very, very well-behaved, young lady, and we're very proud of you.

"And I'm sure my daughter isn't the only one in the world, but she's rare. A lot of kids insist on having a favorite story read before they'll settle down to sleep. Ours insists on songs. Sweetheart, you know I sing those with guitar, not mandolin. Do you want something else, or shall I try to do them and probably make a lot of mistakes?"

"I want those songs. And I know you, you'll play them right no matter what you play them on."

"OK, you go off to the bathroom, and I'll sing when you come back." She headed into the bathroom.

I said, "We don't have a child seat or anything."

Martha said, "I checked, and this should be fine. We do have one down in the car, if we need it."

Scott got out his instrument and tuned. "It's really strange that she likes these. I do, but they're not kids' songs. There's some history. They're old, but not all that old. They're from not that many years after I was born. They're off the second LP of a progressive rock band in the late sixties. Ars Nova. They'd gotten a lot of publicity for their first LP, which was a studio extravaganza, something of a rock-classical fusion. If I have it right, the band fell apart in doing it, and they seem to have attributed this partly to a long time when they went in individually to lay down tracks but never got to play together, and I can certainly understand the problem with that. Anyway, they reformed with different personnel, and their second LP was more of a rock-jazz fusion with a few classical bits still in the mix. And it went absolutely nowhere.

"I have no idea why, but my dad loved both LPs. He found the second one in a record-store bargain bin, totally by accident, he said, and he hated around half the tracks. And I do, too. Anyway, someone was good enough to post the albums on youtube a while back, and since I can't play LPs any more I'm happy about that. For some reason Hannah liked these two songs the first time she heard me playing them, so she wants them at nap time. This isn't going to resemble the original, much, and I'm making up the mandolin part as I go. Not much to make up for a full band."

Hannah was back by this time. Scott played a bit, probably eight bars' worth I thought, and then began to sing. The introduction wasn't anything like the melody of the song, anywhere. Here's what he sang.

She left her shadow there.
She left a whisper in my room.
Her perfume on the collar of my shirt she wore
Silently reminds me she is nevermore.
No explanations, no long goodbye.
Gone again.
Gone with the memory of those before,
And every time I know there'll be one more.

What's there to do, what's there to say?
Round once again, round once again.
Round once again, round once again.

I love you, I heard her say.
Not now, my fear was answering back.
I've just returned from somewhere and I'm resting now.
Please don't ask for something that I can't allow.
No explanations, no long goodbye.
Gone again.
Gone with the memory of those between,
Never becoming what she might have been.

What's there to do, what's there to say?
Round once again, round once again.
Round once again, round once again.

I found myself tensing as I listened. This was hitting a little close to home. Ellen came and sat next to me, pulling her chair up against mine, and put her arm around me.

Scott paused just a moment when he was done, and looked at Hannah. She nodded, and he started playing again.

Now, remember that I'm tone deaf, and I don't hear music the same way most people do, much as I love a lot of what I hear. But to my ears, on the refrain of the second song, both the harmony and the rhythm seemed to wander very strangely. And I wasn't really able to listen to the second stanza and refrain, because I fell apart. I found the songs on line and got the words, much later. But here are the words to what he played and sang.

She promises everything.
She moves, I move not a thing.
Seeing through her eyes, is it fine?
Filling up all of the time, filling up all of the time.

And she knew, and she knew, oh she knew,
I can't promise anything.
It's so hard finding out, and lately she's taken to hiding.
It's so hard finding out, and life will go on while we're choosing.
Gone again,
Gone again, gone again, gone again.
Gone again, gone again, gone again.

She waits by the windows.
She's smiling, silent. What a thing!
Breathing all the love into mine,
Drinking the last of our wine, drinking the last of our wine.

And she knew, and she knew, oh she knew,
I can't promise anything.
It's so hard finding out, and lately she's taken to hiding.
It's so hard finding out, and life will go on while we're choosing.
Gone again,
Gone again, gone again, gone again.
Gone again, gone again, gone again.

As I said, I was missing from before the second stanza, because I had fallen apart again, completely. I couldn't get my breath, and tears were streaming down my face. Ellen was hugging me very hard, and she said, quietly but with intensity, "Phil! Pull yourself together. Those songs are around fifty years old. That's not you and Jenny! And I'm not going away, unless you drive me away, and that's flat, so forget about 'round once again!'"

Scott looked at us and said, "I'm sorry, I didn't think! And you just told us all about it." He looked at Hannah, who seemed to be shrinking in on herself, and said, "Hannah Grace, it's not your fault at all."

I managed to pull myself together enough to say, probably not as forcefully as I meant to, "Listen to your dad, Hannah. They're beautiful songs, and I'm glad to have heard them, and none of you had any reason to know they would hit me so hard. Please, don't blame yourself, and I really mean it." She looked very uncertain, but much better than a moment before.

Ellen said, "Will you be all right if I go help?" I nodded and gave her a little hug, and she followed Scott and Martha and Hannah into our bedroom. The sound of low voices emerged, but no words could be discerned. Ellen came out, and in a little while, Scott too.

He said, "May I play and sing a little more? It probably will put her to sleep pretty fast, and you may enjoy it too." We all agreed. He played a little, then sang:

Sometimes when I leave the house, I must admit I worry.
I try to do what I must do, and get back in a hurry.
The thought of what a cat might do when left at home alone
Makes me fear what I might find when I come back home.

When he got to the refrain, it said:

Life with a naughty kitty
Isn't very pretty.
So I sing this mournful song
About when cats go wrong.

Martha came out pretty soon. We were all laughing pretty hard by then, trying to be quiet about it. I know that it eased the sadness that still had a grip on me. A lot. Like cold water on a hot day.

Martha said, "She's really tired. She went to sleep pretty much instantly. In a minute, if it's OK, we'll try a different kind of music a little. Strangely enough, that seems to help her sleep.

"And now that I think, I can see connections to the story you told Hannah, but there must be more to it, somehow. Will it help to talk about it?"

"I don't know whether it will help to talk, but I think I should tell you more."

Ellen, who had sat down next to me again, said, "Phil, no you should not! You're too fragile right now! You let me do the talking, unless I get something wrong.

Scott interrupted to say, "May I play quietly, while you talk? For Hannah Grace?" Ellen nodded, and he started picking and strumming, very quietly. We could all easily hear Ellen as she went on, even though she spoke pretty quietly, too.

"Phil started to say something about this on Tuesday, but then Pete and Tammy had decided what they were willing to say to Kelly and you, and then you told about yourselves.

"Phil told you about academics in our high school, and he was going to tell you about another unusual feature. I'm pretty sure he was starting off with a disclaimer, that this was something he had reservations about in the abstract, and great objections to in terms of how it actually worked." She gave a very brief account of the sex ed week, with no details of the activities.

"A little earlier, though, they made an innovation, trying to motivate us to work harder at getting fit. It was the game Phil told Hannah about—except that if the boys caught their partners they got to have sex with them. There was a lot more I'm leaving out! Anyway, Phil was assigned by lot to Jenny that first day. They'd been friends, and she had kind of wished they could be more—but earlier, any kind of romantic or sexual behavior was kind of ruthlessly squashed. So they agreed to study together daily, and run together mornings—every day—with sex when they could fit it in.

"Only Jenny really wanted it to be exclusive. Phil pointed out that this wasn't practical in the circumstances, and Jenny reluctantly agreed. And, well, Phil fell a little in love with almost every girl he had sex with, and most of us fell in love with him at least a little. We all wanted more chances, and especially after sex ed it seemed reasonable.

"By the way, I was early in this. I had heard two girls saying that Phil had been their first, there in gym, and how gentle and considerate and tender he'd been. One especially had been really afraid of the pain and other things, and he'd taken the time to ask about it and do everything he could to make it good.

"So when he drew me—. Um. I run faster than Phil, lots faster. But I decided I'd rather have him, um, deflower me than some random guy later, and so I tripped and fell. I recovered fast—verisimilitude, you understand. But he reacted instantly and poured on every bit of effort he had, and he caught me. And then, he was so good to me!

"Then, later, just talking, he kept on being totally considerate. And I fell in love with him, completely!

"Well, at that point Phil and Jenny and the two I mentioned and I wound up studying together every day, with time out for sex when we could afford it. And Jenny provided the room, and scheduled our little interludes. Including occasional interludes for him with other girls who wanted them. They were all so nice that she felt it was unreasonable to refuse, and she tried to be happy with it.

"Then, sex ed week came along. Phil wound up paired with Sam—Samantha, at that time. There's way too much to tell about that, but two things have to come up.

"First off, Samantha was really, really not a nice person. And for some reason, three years earlier, she'd taken a dislike to Phil, and she harassed him mercilessly, constantly for three years. He responded by being as polite and courteous as possible back to her. And that just made her want all the more to hurt him.

"But early that year, just after the game had started, she got involved in something really terrible—criminal—and she got badly hurt, too. And she realized that she had brought the same thing on this other girl, who didn't deserve it, but that she—Samantha—deserved what happened to her. And she fell apart inside, trying to put herself back together differently, and in a way Phil was the model she had of how she should be."

I looked at Ellen in astonishment. OK, I was supposed to be so insightful, and that was a side of it I had never noticed! But she went on.

"So she came to Phil, very publicly, and confessed at some length how she had treated him, and asked him to forgive her. For both of them, this was a very emotional event, and still is. He forgave her, and meant it without reservation. But inside, he'd been hurt so much, he couldn't respond to her physically, at all. He couldn't even bear to hold her to comfort her as she was crying. He kept letting go and stepping away.

"So their first day of sex ed was totally frustrating for them both, until Phil's instructor came up with something that broke through this. And for both of them, the rest of that week was full of joy, joy in each other, and bound them together very deeply. For all that we're all expecting me to be the one he marries, there's something special there that's way beyond what Phil and I have. There was recovery from great pain on both sides.

"One more big complication, in that week. Jenny's partner turned out to be gay, and was abandoning her at night for his boyfriend. The rules for the week said you stayed with your partner, period, unless instructed otherwise. And Jenny was hurting so much, and Phil and Sam noticed it, along with anyone else with eyes. Sam—the new Sam!—was as concerned as Phil was, and they were both trying to figure out how to help her, without knowing what the problem was. Phil told Jenny that if she needed to talk, they would drop everything to listen and do what they could, and Sam backed him up completely.

"So that night, Jenny came to Sam's room to talk to Phil, just so she could cry and at least say how much it was hurting her. And right off, Sam said that Jenny could stay with them that night, having Phil make love to her to show her that she really was attractive and that they cared. And then Phil went all decisive, as he occasionally does." She gave me a fond look. "He went out, got the floor monitor to call his instructor, and told her what the problem was, and demanded that Jenny be made his co-partner with Sam. And in the end, this was done. At that point there were a few more girls than guys, so there were a very few partnerships with two girls and one guy, already.

"Well, after that I had my own partner, and I really thought that was going to be permanent. Exclusive after the end of the school year. But things happened, and suddenly I was at loose ends, in effect. And then Jenny came to the end of her rope. She'd been so selfless about Phil earlier, but she just got to where she couldn't stand not having more of him, and she thought he should see how she was feeling without her having to say more. She connected with my former partner, and that looked good for a while, and she just dumped all her feelings on Phil and stormed off.

"Here's the really hard part to understand. Sam—. No, actually, first Sam went off, forced her way into Jenny's room, and refused to leave until Jenny admitted she was wrong in how she'd handled it. You could hear them screaming at each other, anywhere in the girls' wing. But Jenny did admit it. She could have asked Phil to discuss the situation, and he would have agreed to change things. Probably not enough, admittedly. And if she'd said, I can't take this any more, we're through, in fact he had agreed in the beginning that would be OK. They would have broken up, but amicably enough, and it would have hurt both of them but not the same way at all. So Sam brought Jenny to Phil, and she apologized, and they agreed to go back to running together and studying together but no more—but they were on friendly terms again. Jenny asked for time to decide whether to come back to where things had been, or as close as was now possible.

"Anyway, Sam—for whatever reason!—didn't try to keep Phil for herself. She started talking to me about replacing Jenny, if Jenny decided to go the other way. And then when it dragged on, as Jenny couldn't make her mind up, Sam raised the idea of bringing me in either way. And Jenny eventually couldn't make things work with—with my former partner. He had changed from the guy we all had known. So Phil wound up with not two but three partners. This was after sex ed was over, so any partnerships were informal and up to the people involved.

"When this year started, well, here's where he and I wound up. The other two are across the country. Sam, well, Sam's in the middle of developing other commitments. And Jenny understands that what she did really damaged her relationship with Phil, and it probably can't ever go back together the way it was. And there are some other things we can't talk about now, too. So all three of us—and Phil, too!—think Phil and I are going to wind up together.