I Love to Write
Capricorn in Aquarius - Part Two
I daydreamed in Before-School Detention, sketching red-ink hearts without looking down at the paper and staring at nothing, while I thought about Mari.
Mari - Marianne Beaulieu - was a good kid. Even my parents admitted that. She was respectful and obedient - to a point. When a drunken Johnny crashed her sweet sixteen party and both parents found him at the house, they threw him out and grounded Mari for letting him in the door in the first place, Mari was angry. Her parents went a step further and forbade Mari to keep company with me when Johnny was around. This was at the time when Johnny was drinking all the time, every day and night, and trying to get me to quit school and move into an apartment with him. I couldn't get a job - I was only fifteen then - and I had to choose between my best friend and my sometimes-fiancée. Then he disappeared for a long while, and Mari came back to me.
Aa I said, Mari was angry with both her parents. She bore her anger in silence for a long time - especially toward her mother. In sophomore year, when we had to take at least one year of a foreign language, Mom wanted me to take Swedish. I wanted to take French with Mari. We argued about that - until Mom went to school with me, determined to force me to take Swedish - and discovered that class had been discontinued due to only four signups. I got my way and went into French with Mari. I wasn't very good at it, but both Mari's parents were French and sometimes spoke French - especially her mother - and she picked it up like nobody's business.
(To Be Continued.)
I daydreamed in Before-School Detention, sketching red-ink hearts without looking down at the paper and staring at nothing, while I thought about Mari.
Mari - Marianne Beaulieu - was a good kid. Even my parents admitted that. She was respectful and obedient - to a point. When a drunken Johnny crashed her sweet sixteen party and both parents found him at the house, they threw him out and grounded Mari for letting him in the door in the first place, Mari was angry. Her parents went a step further and forbade Mari to keep company with me when Johnny was around. This was at the time when Johnny was drinking all the time, every day and night, and trying to get me to quit school and move into an apartment with him. I couldn't get a job - I was only fifteen then - and I had to choose between my best friend and my sometimes-fiancée. Then he disappeared for a long while, and Mari came back to me.
Aa I said, Mari was angry with both her parents. She bore her anger in silence for a long time - especially toward her mother. In sophomore year, when we had to take at least one year of a foreign language, Mom wanted me to take Swedish. I wanted to take French with Mari. We argued about that - until Mom went to school with me, determined to force me to take Swedish - and discovered that class had been discontinued due to only four signups. I got my way and went into French with Mari. I wasn't very good at it, but both Mari's parents were French and sometimes spoke French - especially her mother - and she picked it up like nobody's business.
(To Be Continued.)
61-69, F
