so?"
"She wasn't ever very subdued, but when the hair was flat, she'd be more thoughtful. But when the hair was big, she was a real hell-raiser. When the hair was big, she'd say, ‘Let's get in the car and drive.' When the hair was flat, you'd find her in the library."
"Why do you think Martiya was in the Anthropology Department?" I asked.
He furrowed his brow. "In those days, anthro was for a lot of folks who didn't feel at home anywhere else. It wasn't a big department, and it had a personal atmosphere. Everyone knew everyone else. All the professors would have parties, and I guess it's one of the few places on campus where Martiya could find people who really got how she had been raised. She was kind of a celebrity in the department, and I think she liked that. Also, she was curious. One of the most curious people I've ever met. There aren't that many curious people out there."
I wrote "Martiya—curious" in my notebook.
Tim puckered his lips. "I'm not sure ‘curious' is the best way to put it, actually," he said. Reluctantly, I added a question mark to the word. "Martiya was a self-improver. Ambitious. She bought the
Norton Anthology of English Literature
and read her way through it, fifty pages a day, from one end to the other. Then she got on this poetry-memorizing thing where she tried to memorize fifty lines of poetry a week. Then it was swimming—she hadn't learned to swim as a kid and she decided she needed to know how to swim. Soon she was swimming laps three-quarters of an hour every day."
The phone rang and Tim got up to answer it. His wife was on the line, and he said, "Hi, babe," and "Uh-huh," and "Okey-dokey," and "He said
that
?" and "Sonovabitch," and "I've got to go, we'll talk when you get home." He didn't mention that he was talking to a journalist about his ex-girlfriend. Then he hung up and sat down again. "The van der Leuns, big influence on me," he said. I had the impression that much of what Tim was telling me now had been prepared before my arrival, as if the night before he had lain awake thinking. Piers van der Leun was a "distracted elderly scholar type, you know, really from another generation," slightly ill at ease in California, especially in a California where the tennis whites to which he had so proudly accustomed himself were no longer the epitome of style. Martiya was "passionately devoted to her father." Although she lived in her own apartment on the north side of the campus, she stopped by her father's office almost every day in the late afternoon, and he would take her to the faculty lounge for coffee. Sometimes Tim would be invited. "My dad, he was the kind of guy who talked about nothing but baseball and union politics," Tim said. "Don't get me wrong. I love baseball, still union." Tim threw an imaginary baseball to emphasize his loyalties. "But these two, they'd spend hours talking about grammars and lexicons and Chomsky and poetry and politics—I never heard people talk like that. And Professor van der Leun would ask my opinion about all sorts of things, and then he'd kind of hang on my response, as if there was nothing more important in the world than my opinion, this little twenty-year-old twerp from Modesto."
Tim and Martiya went for long drives up the California coast. Tim had an old Pontiac that he could barely keep running, and a chocolate Lab named Chocolate, and they'd drive north, as far as they could go in a weekend. Knowing that you are happy when you are happy is a rare gift, and Tim knew how happy he was.
" ‘All life's grandeur / Is something with girl in summer,' " Tim Blair said.
"I'm sorry?"
"Robert Lowell. It's true. You're too young to know it. You'll see." The couple drove along the coast and bought sharp cheddar cheese from an old cheese-maker in Point Reyes and white wine from a vineyard in Sonoma, then wandered—sometimes ending up on the banks of the Russian River, other times going as far north as Mendocino. Once they stopped on a bluff over
"She wasn't ever very subdued, but when the hair was flat, she'd be more thoughtful. But when the hair was big, she was a real hell-raiser. When the hair was big, she'd say, ‘Let's get in the car and drive.' When the hair was flat, you'd find her in the library."
"Why do you think Martiya was in the Anthropology Department?" I asked.
He furrowed his brow. "In those days, anthro was for a lot of folks who didn't feel at home anywhere else. It wasn't a big department, and it had a personal atmosphere. Everyone knew everyone else. All the professors would have parties, and I guess it's one of the few places on campus where Martiya could find people who really got how she had been raised. She was kind of a celebrity in the department, and I think she liked that. Also, she was curious. One of the most curious people I've ever met. There aren't that many curious people out there."
I wrote "Martiya—curious" in my notebook.
Tim puckered his lips. "I'm not sure ‘curious' is the best way to put it, actually," he said. Reluctantly, I added a question mark to the word. "Martiya was a self-improver. Ambitious. She bought the
Norton Anthology of English Literature
and read her way through it, fifty pages a day, from one end to the other. Then she got on this poetry-memorizing thing where she tried to memorize fifty lines of poetry a week. Then it was swimming—she hadn't learned to swim as a kid and she decided she needed to know how to swim. Soon she was swimming laps three-quarters of an hour every day."
The phone rang and Tim got up to answer it. His wife was on the line, and he said, "Hi, babe," and "Uh-huh," and "Okey-dokey," and "He said
that
?" and "Sonovabitch," and "I've got to go, we'll talk when you get home." He didn't mention that he was talking to a journalist about his ex-girlfriend. Then he hung up and sat down again. "The van der Leuns, big influence on me," he said. I had the impression that much of what Tim was telling me now had been prepared before my arrival, as if the night before he had lain awake thinking. Piers van der Leun was a "distracted elderly scholar type, you know, really from another generation," slightly ill at ease in California, especially in a California where the tennis whites to which he had so proudly accustomed himself were no longer the epitome of style. Martiya was "passionately devoted to her father." Although she lived in her own apartment on the north side of the campus, she stopped by her father's office almost every day in the late afternoon, and he would take her to the faculty lounge for coffee. Sometimes Tim would be invited. "My dad, he was the kind of guy who talked about nothing but baseball and union politics," Tim said. "Don't get me wrong. I love baseball, still union." Tim threw an imaginary baseball to emphasize his loyalties. "But these two, they'd spend hours talking about grammars and lexicons and Chomsky and poetry and politics—I never heard people talk like that. And Professor van der Leun would ask my opinion about all sorts of things, and then he'd kind of hang on my response, as if there was nothing more important in the world than my opinion, this little twenty-year-old twerp from Modesto."
Tim and Martiya went for long drives up the California coast. Tim had an old Pontiac that he could barely keep running, and a chocolate Lab named Chocolate, and they'd drive north, as far as they could go in a weekend. Knowing that you are happy when you are happy is a rare gift, and Tim knew how happy he was.
" ‘All life's grandeur / Is something with girl in summer,' " Tim Blair said.
"I'm sorry?"
"Robert Lowell. It's true. You're too young to know it. You'll see." The couple drove along the coast and bought sharp cheddar cheese from an old cheese-maker in Point Reyes and white wine from a vineyard in Sonoma, then wandered—sometimes ending up on the banks of the Russian River, other times going as far north as Mendocino. Once they stopped on a bluff over
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