I

I’d imagine I was in the North Woods of Wisconsin. By mid-winter, the lake would be frozen to a foot thick, and at night I could skate across the expanse of ice toward a moon that, in my imagination, was always full. The lake was ringed by a darkness of tall pines, their peaks silhouetted by stars; within the darkness, light from cabins would shine onto the ice. Silence, except for the hiss of my sliding skates. I would worry about the fish below, living in frigid darkness, but they were cold-blooded. The skating kept me warm. At the far shore I would turn back, and the moon would then project my slanted shadow before me onto the ice. Yet having to return was disappointing. If I were on Jupiter’s ice moon, Ganymede, I could skate ’round forever. I enjoyed conveying to classmates the surprising fact that it was larger than Mercury. Jupiter would hang overhead like an enormous ornament. Or I could skate Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, a snowball in black space. Fissures ejected ice particles that formed one of Saturn’s rings. How beautiful those rings would appear as you skated beneath them!

I disliked the outside world. Chores must get done, and I had to awaken early for school where I had to interact with others, had to think of something to say. After school, I would hear: Remember, you have a dentist’s appointment tomorrow. Why don’t you want to be in the play? Finish homework? But I found I could remain happy by imagining ice skating in the North Woods of Wisconsin or by studying my world atlas or by thinking about Christmas or by reading Nancy Drew mysteries (The Hardy Boys were a bore) or by thinking about the sun or the blue sky or by studying aircraft or the oceans or the planets and outer space, or, or⁠ ⁠… Until the outside world inevitably intruded again: New shoes rubbed a blister into the back of my foot. The patch on my bike’s flat tire slow-leaked. Are you going to help wash the car this weekend like you promised?

But I would soon retreat to my happy, secret, imaginary world.

Pamela Bauman sat two rows over and one seat up, like a knight move in chess. Her thick blond hair had a slight wave in it, as if caused by humidity. She wore black-framed glasses, and I would try to imagine what she’d look like without them. No doubt still pretty, but I never saw her with them off. She was not “popular.” By the middle of seventh grade, there was a group of girls who began wearing cashmere sweaters and fancy skirts and shoes to school. Other girls tried to break into their group, usually with painful results: the group would make you feel you weren’t cool enough while maintaining the possibility of admittance. Pamela wasn’t in the group, nor did she seem to want to be⁠—nor even seem aware of its existence. She earned top grades. I liked the way her forehead crinkled and her eyebrows arched upward when she smiled, though she had not yet ever smiled at me.

There was a knock on my bedroom door. The handle turned, shook, but the door didn’t open.

“Jack, you there?” said my mother’s voice.

I opened the door.

“Please don’t lock this.”

“All right.”

I sat on the bed.

“What are you doing, sweetheart?”

“Reading the atlas.” The heavy book lay on my desk under the lamplight.

“Can we talk?”

“I guess.” I started to feel worried.

She sat next to me.

“I spoke with several of your teachers. I spoke with Ms. Jacobs, your geography teacher. She says you are very quiet in class. This seems a lot like last year.”

“Oh.”

“She’d like you to participate more. Think you can do that?”

I liked Ms. Jacobs and learning about all those faraway places. She was young; occasionally she was confused for an upper-school student. But she did not understand that participating would entail departing my private world. For what good? To open myself to scrutiny? To judgement? Better to remain in my secret place than to participate in the primitive world. It seemed simple and obvious.

But I said, “Okay.”

“Okay, yes?”

“Yes.”

I would make an attempt, to please my mother, to please Ms. Jacobs, to alleviate the pressure. Like last semester, like last year. And the year before that. My immediate concern was getting back to my atlas. I’d been studying the polar regions.

“Do you have friends now at school, Jack?”

“I have friends⁠ ⁠… Tony’s my friend.”

“Tony? Oh, Tony. Yes, he’s your friend, but he’s your cousin. He lives in California, and we don’t really see him much, do we?”

“No.”

“I thought you had friends now at school. Don’t you want friends?”

“I don’t like it out there.”

“Out there? Out where? What are you saying, Jack?”

I wanted to be saying, ‘I’d be happy if I could be left alone,’ but the words I spoke were: “I’ll try.”

“Talk to the other children, maybe you have common interests. If you’re quiet, it’s hard to make friends.”

“Okay.”

“So you’ll try that?”

“Sure.”

“All right.” She headed for the door. “Keep this unlocked, okay?”

“Okay.”

She left, leaving the door open, and I was freed to return to my atlas.

Ms. Jacobs stepped around her desk. “We’ll start with an easy one,” she said. “Who can name the largest lake in the United States?”

She often used verbal quizzes to teach geography. A forest of hands waved at her.

I thought about my atlas; this might be my chance. Kids began supporting their tiring raised arms with their other arms.

“Carol?” said Ms. Jacobs finally.

“Lake Superior,” she said, and smiled a superior smile.

“That right, class?”

There was general agreement.

I put up my hand.

“Jack!” said Ms. Jacobs.

“Lake Michigan,” I said.

“What do we think, class? Superior or Michigan?”

Lake Superior was the consensus.

“Lake Superior it is. But we appreciate your input, Jack.”

I raised my hand again.

“Lake Superior is larger, Ms. Jacobs,” I said. “But about half of it is in Canada. Lake Michigan is entirely in the United States. So Lake Michigan is the largest lake in the United States.”

“Well, now. What do we think, class?”

There were murmurs around the room.

She looked at a pull-down map of North America. “Actually, he may have a point,” she said. She studied the map another moment. “Lake Superior is the largest Great Lake, but it looks like Lake Michigan would be the largest lake entirely inside the United States. So much for starting with an easy one! Interesting, Jack.”

Carol turned to me and sneered. The faces of the other kids looked at me as if they had never seen me before. Pamela Bauman, at her desk a knight’s move to my right, made eye contact, and I awaited her smile, but she merely turned away.

I pushed the horizontal bar on the door and exited the school. Pamela Bauman was standing on the middle landing. She waved bye to several girls in our honors section. She finished speaking to Warren and waved bye to him. Warren was in our grade but not in honors.

“How’d you know Lake Michigan?” she said, as if we were in mid-conversation.

I wondered if she’d been waiting for me.

Her blue eyes seemed enlarged by the lenses of her glasses; had I ever seen her so close up?

“I study atlases,” I said. I realized that sounded strange and added, “I find them interesting.” Then: “Which way you go?”

“This way,” she said. “You?”

“That way.”

“All right, then,” she said. “See you tomorrow.”

Her eyebrows arched upward as she released toward me her radiant smile.

“Tomorrow,” I said.

As I started home, I imagined what her house might look like: large, with a fireplace, and her bedroom white and organized and peaceful⁠ ⁠… I spotted Warren as he walked along near the end of the block. He was the tallest boy in our grade and, since he’d been held back once, probably the oldest. I began a run to catch up, clumsily, my book bag banging against my legs. I would speak to him and could tell my mom I’d taken the initiative to make a friend, too, when she inevitably asked. Then I realized speaking to Pamela could have qualified, but it was too late. Warren turned.

“Hi,” I said.

“Oh. It’s you.”

“How’d you like school today?” was all I could think of to say.

“It sucked, like every other day. Want something?” He loomed even taller now as I stood next to him.

“No.”

“I saw you talking with Pam.”

“We talked about geography.”

“I like your hat.”

“Thanks.”

“Let me see.”

Warren yanked the wool hat off my head, pulling my hair too. I smiled anyway. He removed his cap and pulled mine on.

“Fits good. Thanks, Jack.”

“What?”

“Thanks for the new hat, bub.”

“That’s my hat.”

“Come get it.”

“Give it back.”

“Get lost.”

He walked off. “You’re a jerk!” I yelled and gathered the contents of my book bag, which had spilled open.

When I walked in, my mom was sitting in the living room.

“How was school? Participate in class?”

“Yes. Lake Michigan is the largest lake in the United States.”

“Not Lake Superior?”

“No.”

“Where’s your hat?”

“I don’t know.”

She exhaled. “Jack.”

“Can I go upstairs?”

“Where did you lose it?”

“I don’t know. I’m going upstairs.”

The next morning, I stood before my open locker, hanging my coat, when I felt a presence beside me.

“Hey, Jack,” said Warren.

“What do you want?” I said.

“I’m here to give you your hat back. If you don’t tick me off. Maybe I shouldn’t.”

“You are?”

“Didn’t tell anybody I took it, did you?”

“Not yet.”

“Here.” He handed it to me.

“Thanks,” I said.

I stuffed it into my coat pocket. Perhaps he wasn’t a bad guy. But probably he was just worried about getting into trouble.

In the bustling hallway after school, I approached Pamela.

“Hi, Jack,” she said.

A thrill shot through me: she’d spoken my name.

“Hi.”

“Cold out.”

“Yes. Listen, I was wondering if we could maybe study together sometime.” I’d practiced saying this.

“Maybe. See you tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

Pamela walked down the hall. As she neared the exit, she released her broad smile as Warren joined her⁠ ⁠…

How stupid could I be?

I ran up to my room.

I locked the door.

I threw my book bag next to the bed. My dream of being with Pamela was stupid and vain.

How could I be so stupid?

She was stupid. How could she be interested in Warren? He was tall, and outgoing, but average-looking and not smart and a jerk.

But there she was with him.

I lay on my bed.

I hadn’t connected them before: best to not get close.

Better to preserve a dream than to see it destroyed.

I avoided them the rest of the year. Warren and I might nod at each other in passing, and my interactions with Pamela never advanced beyond cordial. That summer, our family moved into a larger house a few miles away, and I enrolled for eighth grade at Saint Bartholomew Grammar. Being a new kid in a new school gave me cover to withdraw; I wouldn’t have been expected to have friends. I liked that uniforms were worn. For boys: black shoes, dark pants, blue shirt, striped tie. I didn’t have to decide what to wear, it made mornings uncomplicated.

II

The girls at my new school were competitive, familiar, physically large, academically intimidating, alternately unapproachable and nurturing. They seemed several years ahead of the boys, as if a confused administrator had mistakenly admitted children into a class of young women; we were treated more like annoying little brothers than classmates. By the middle of eighth grade, we were catching up, but by then, the girls were more interested in the freshman and sophomore boys attending the high school down the street. Some of the girls were hanging out with the high school boys⁠—not going steady, for a high school boy with a grade school girlfriend would have lost status and been harshly teased. But I didn’t take too seriously the attitudes of the girls in my class, for I had become interested in a girl in the class behind.

I cannot recall a first encounter. An initial memory of her eludes me. Her green plaid skirt swung gently as she walked the hallways of Saint Bartholomew Grammar, books balanced between her forearm and waist. Autumn-leaf red hair with golden highlights swept across her slender shoulders. She was usually with friends, smiling and chatting. Her high smooth forehead sloped down to sky-blue eyes and soft round cheekbones and soft pink lips to a slightly pointed chin that only enhanced the curved beauty of her face. We might look at each other in passing, eye contact held longer than a casual glance. I was ambivalent about school then, but I headed there in good spirits most mornings because Maureen Fitzpatrick was there; because, even if I didn’t see her, for a few hours the chance existed that I might.

Yet I never spoke to Maureen. Around her, especially, I was withdrawn. But silence, I found, created mystery: and mystery preserved the illusion, the dream. The deep feeling.

I had a weekend paper route, then began an afternoon paper route which included the Fitzpatrick house. One early-winter afternoon, after dark, it was snowing, and as I climbed the stairs to place their rolled paper between their front doors, I spotted Maureen through the living room window. I felt as if I were looking at a huge, clear color photo, until someone inside moved. She was sitting on a sofa-chair, and several of her sisters were sitting on a sofa nearby. She wore short denim shorts and a snug V-neck T-shirt; the living room looked toasty. Her thin white legs were slung over an arm of the chair, and she twirled a strand of her autumn-leaf hair as she watched something not visible to me, probably TV. Several times she laughed. Something felt different⁠—I was accustomed to seeing her in the formal context of school, in uniform⁠ ⁠…

That evening, after dinner, I lay in bed and flipped through my heavy Atlas of the World till I came across, “Midwestern States, U.S.” I wondered, not for the first time, why the Upper Peninsula was part of Michigan⁠—it really belonged with Wisconsin. I imagined skating on the frozen lake in the North Woods, as I had when I was younger. Cabin lights shone onto the ice. The peaks of pine trees were silhouetted by stars. But someone was with me now as I skated: Maureen Fitzpatrick. While I lay alone on my bed, we raced across the ice toward the always-full moon. On Ganymede and Enceladus, we could skate forever.

As graduation approached, I was aware that when I began high school in the fall⁠—all boys⁠—there would be no Maureen Fitzpatrick to see in the hallways anymore. So I had to act, and my solution was to try to befriend her older brother. Keith Fitzpatrick attended a different grammar school, and would be attending a different high school, co-ed; and he was popular; so it wouldn’t be simple, especially for me, to slip into his orbit. Keith was thin, with a huge head out of proportion to his body, rust-colored hair, and eyes like blue spotlights. Girls were attracted to him: he was sarcastically funny, and his thinness brought out a maternal instinct⁠—think Sinatra, the early years.

There were grammar school graduation parties throughout June, and it was at one of those parties that I spotted Keith. At first, he seemed perplexed why this person he only knew peripherally, and probably thought of as timid, was suddenly speaking to him, but I tried to convey that I wasn’t who he thought I was, and we moved into a discussion about baseball, the merits of a recent (dumb, we agreed) trade the Cubs had made. As the conversation ebbed, he seemed about to step away, and I panicked and made up a story about an extra ticket I had to an afternoon game at Wrigley Field: would he want to go? Happy to help with that, Jack, he said. Keith Fitzpatrick always stands ready to help! I was worried for several days, not actually possessing the tickets. My out was that my dad and uncle had decided to use them, but I didn’t need it: the Cubs weren’t so popular back then, and it was easy to purchase cheap bleacher seats. At the game, Keith attempted to finagle beer for us from the roaming beer vendors⁠—unsuccessfully, until some rowdy college guys behind us offered to buy. Buzzed on beer, he flirted with some girls a few rows down. The beer helped me overcome my introversion and to connect with Keith. We each possessed a dry sense of humor; we made each other laugh. Those were the first beers I ever had. The game went eleven innings, and we left nearly as blasted as the college guys.

The Fitzpatrick house stood on a double-lot, wide, white, with numerous rooms and passageways to accommodate the seven children of the Fitzpatrick family⁠—that was my count, though I suspected, back then, that there might have been brothers or sisters I wasn’t aware of. I’d head over to connect with Keith, and I enjoyed his company, but once inside I was on the lookout for Maureen. His six younger sisters were close⁠—Maureen, Noreen, Kathleen, Colleen, Eileen, and Caitlin, the older sisters looking after the younger ones. I might spot Maureen as she bounded down the stairs; or as she slowly spun on a stool in the kitchen, shoulders raised, feet swinging, speaking with her sisters; or as she relaxed on the living room sofa, legs crossed, book in the air, reading. But most times I’d head home, or head off somewhere with Keith, disappointed that I hadn’t seen her⁠—yet somewhat lighthearted: for a short time, I had been in her proximity, I had been inside the house where she lived.

My first formal introduction was at a party there. Each of the seven siblings had invited friends over, which became a large multi-aged group, playing ping-pong and shuffle-alley and pool and pinball in their huge, remodeled basement. Maureen came over to speak with Keith and, with the loud music, she nodded a quick hello to me. I was thrilled to receive her acknowledgment. She kept her eyes on Keith as she spoke, or as she closely listened, and when I said something⁠—shouting a line about shooting pool without cue-tips on the sticks⁠—she shook her head, didn’t understand what I’d said over the music. The comment not being the wittiest, I was relieved she hadn’t understood it. She continued speaking with Keith. A girl ran up, perhaps six or seven years old, and placed her arm around Maureen’s waist, leaned her head on her hip. She had bright red hair, blue eyes, a child version of Maureen, who absently stroked her head. The girl looked at me, expressionless. Years later, this girl and I would play important roles in each other’s lives, but I could not know it that afternoon. She quickly became bored and ran off to play with the other kids. Maureen seemed to agree with something Keith had said, I watched her lips say “Okay.” Then the music suddenly dropped in volume, someone had turned it down⁠—Mr. Fitzpatrick. “Let’s try to not blow the walls down, Keith,” he said. Maureen’s blue eyes seemed to brighten as she smiled at her dad. Then she turned and put her hand straight out, to shake, her blue eyes seeming to brighten again as she smiled at me. “Nice to see you, Jack. I used to see you around school.”

“Saint Bart’s Grammar.”

“Right.”

“I remember you,” I said, too seriously. Her voice was quiet, words you could not quite hear till a moment later when they registered in your ear; at the time, I thought this effect was due to her speaking after the loud music.

The redheaded little girl returned to Maureen’s side and began tugging her arm. “All right, Caitlin, all right,” Maureen said to her sister. “Looks like my presence is requested elsewhere,” she said to me, laughing. “All right, Caitlin, all right!” she repeated as she was pulled away. Maureen then tucked her right arm in so her left arm, which Caitlin had been tugging, appeared longer. “Uh-oh,” she said. “You stretched it out.” Caitlin looked concerned till Maureen with a smile shook her arms and they magically returned to equal length. Caitlin squealed a laugh, and they ran off. Later, I saw Maureen sitting in a circle with a group of children, leading them in some game, rolling sideways, laughing harder than the children were.

Walking home that evening, I felt happy: I had spoken with Maureen. This was a start. My introversion wasn’t as intense as it had been when I was younger. I had learned how to fake being outgoing in social situations, though this took energy, and I would need time alone afterward to recover; my default was still avoidance. I became so good at faking that many people might not have thought me introverted at all. I was least affected when I was with a single person, such as Keith, but if a third person arrived, my shyness, my introversion would come crashing in on me, and I would have to work hard at being social. I was living a paradox. I was content to exist in my own world, to be alone, and I could still, to an extent, will myself happy. Yet I was unhappy that I wasn’t more outgoing, that I couldn’t easily engage with others. I realized this was simply the way I was, and there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it, and I would have to play the hand dealt, especially with Maureen.