Inner Exit

     Billi Jo just realized her breakup was real. She breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Playing the daring role of the liberated woman out in the open spaces of time, she never once guessed that the secret of that kind of fool's identity could be so frustrating, lonely or disheartening. She could hear his voice singing to the car radio as she grabbed for his car door, got in, and slammed the front passenger door shut, almost afright and  looking pale. That last time was just one too many times. She blamed everything but the kitchen sink on her ex- boyfriend, Bo Jim. He had always been close to a night's daily  tomorrow  for her.
          Now that their relationship was more than on the rocks he pleaded with her for one  last chance via a long letter. It said that he just couldn't do without her. He would jump off a  bridge if he couldn't have her, he'd kill his cat and then himself. Like a gentleman caller's  unforgettable walk away from a lover's door in another century, he looked like a hero with a  foggy final departure. Finally, thus, he had phoned.  Billi Jo--who looked like wild violets following mad rain (pure and fragrantly soaked with the thought of blithe spirits inhabiting her soul)-- had turned him down flat. Never bother me again.she had said, slamming the phonedown on him.Where was Billi Jo ten years before this? In the Berkshire mountains, in the mist, thinking on a cold weather nightfall. With her relationship over, she wrote a letter to a girlfriend, asking for advice. Her Jewish friend was special to her. It had only taken her a few moments to complete but she knew it would do her a world of good. Moments which would win reason to wonder over their long discussions as  in the time it takes to begin an elaborate jigsaw puzzle.
          Her ex-boyfriend was gone for sure. His image dulled. It was like child's play under the willow trees: the shadows delighted her as if experience was what she wanted. What she needed to do was turn to meditation, without it she would surely become distraught with demons, not sure what love was without time to think clearly. "So where am I going now that summer winds have claimed my lover, the only sure thing in my life?" She lived at home, at twenty-two years old. As she mused, she sat on her Mom's porch swing, alone. Each day was a ride into the cityas a mail-clerk in the postal service.
         Billi Jo coped with the same naive excitations that had pushed her through years of frustrating the passions of young anxious boys in their sweet youth. How lightly she took their high-minded challenges, as if what they did or might say by being only good friends wasn't important. Why, it was the very best way to look forward to the domain of matrimony! The elements of her difficult nature had a man leaving her with a bruised psyche, like a nosebleed in cold climate as proof that she just didn't take any man seriously at all. 
          The young man in this stage of her life it appeared thought highly of her. He had the one peculiar thing in common--that crushing gallant way of protecting a woman's pom-pom glory to the very end. Other boys--and they had walked into her life since the age of fourteen (either strolling into departure, casually abandoning her, or slyly murmuring "Get off my back" in so many words)-- were raised in the spirit of decency. They were queerly as fragile as a duck in rain boots, some of them shaking hands with her proud exits by walking out in mid-evening in a field full of fireflies gracefully wanting to be rid of infatuation by getting giddy and charming with their fates against the wind.
         Such a clean untamed country this was, in those days during those staying free years--when it came to love--that her chastity was more hurtful than becoming. It was the manner in which she exhibited this kind of loose chastity that gave her tortuous anxiety. Billi Jo chose the tough way of handling a losing situation by gracefully bowing out of a tender kiss, never wishing to ever be a woman in peril, so then who was noticing her at the time she appeared to catch a man's glance would always notice her handling herself very well, and yet, distant from a young man. It all did end in though, why had none been good enough?
         This would cause Billi Jo to cry bitterly over what she had said for things to go so wrong. These boys were at their best when they really believed in themselves, which many of them did, with the map of luck and chance rolled out like a red carpet, they showed a grand philosophy of the way they could lead themselves to better destinies. When a boy talked with ease to prove what an intelligent man was asking for, Billi Jo respected this; yet it was all counted as a refusal. The interesting thing about leaving a young boy to explain the pueperal link may have occurred to reach most of them;they had turned and missed the moment of truth when love felt like falling from grace.
         Oh, the impossibility of a man's friendship to Billi Jo in younger years!***Billi Jo woke up one day, a few weeks after breaking up with Bo Jim to suddenly find herself without a date and still distraught over leaving him. So Hans. Who was he? A certain man who was just a young friendly guy who frequented the bar up the street from her Mom's home. She had his number on a scrap of paper in her purse. So she phoned him, then met him outside the bar that evening in the park, in the pouring rain. "Hans," she said aloud, still sitting on the park bench, "I'm too scared to button up my broken down umbrella, it'll just fall apart on me. I just want a meal somewhere.""Red Bull Inn." he insisted.
          The rain had just then stopped."The restrooms. Have they got liquid soap?""Why, Billi Jo, it's got great empty tables. The place is clean."She took this for a proposition. He was cleverly exact. Hans, without selling his charm for one evening's companionship, had the image of playfulness. She needed a miracle."Alright, Hans. Somehow I don't think I'm ready for a big meal. At the Bull--well, we'll see about a cup of coffee, okay?""I'd pay for the check.""A gentleman!""Did you guess that I'm the one you need to be with, here and now?""I'm trusting you," she said, "Besides I can't turn down a good cup of coffee."Hans was nice enough for a few hours. A game of two hearts playing with a cold spin engaged in by two people who were not close friends. Somehow Hans had mastered the art of opening the door to the Red Bull Inn with a kind display of inner strength. The newly-won friendship that evening had him speaking about the night that it was 2.A.M. in an unsought-after German town. How the ale was so good that the most delightful evening had been produced out of mere conversation, how easy it was to look a woman in the eyes like a cat and say, I LOVE YOUR PERFUME without having bought any for her. Then there were the songs, he said, they sang for the women until daylight, they called out to the waitress that it was dawn. Why don't you take off your dirty apron? Why don't you take it off for me? He was laughing wildly lost in his rememberance of the town when he was only seventeen, when he could have had a seat with a woman on his lap, holding hands
         .After about an hour of this, Billi Jo washed her hands in the restroom, as nonchalantly as anything, looking in the mirror, playing with her hair and raising an eyebrow as she studied her own face. Was she pretty enough? Did she want any of this? She didn't know.Sitting back at the table, she said to him, "I come here too often." She thought of Bo Jim for a moment, his classic smile smack in the middle of cream cheese conversation. They had visited there like fools enjoying too much Christmas turkey too late in life.
          She concentrated on the thought of going to work, stone cold depressed. ***Billi Jo had vacation time coming that month, in  November. So she took a week off. At exactly 8:30 A.M. Billi Jo was then in transit dreaming of another strange bus ride. She had traveled through years of bus rides on a low-income. A bus could actually open her past, if she thought about it long enough. It might reveal how she had gotten lost in crowds, seeking refuge at a pitstop arrowing a place to sleep. A book already in her hands, she was not concerned so much with how many weary faces appeared, as she was her own destiny.The bus turned right on a sharp curve and for a moment she didn't realize her space in time. She was about to revisit a part of her past and it felt dreamy. It was ten years later, now. Billi Jo had gotten a letter of advisement from her friend, Phyllis.
         This was who she was to meet in Pitstop, in four hours.Bus Number 7083, Express left Albany New York at 2:15 in the afternoon and headed for all points north. Eventually, it would wind itself up into the beautiful Berkshire Mountains.She came full circle with a glamourous daydream, praising Anais Nin for the novel she had in her hand. Billi Jo was going up into the mountains, to get away from fortune-hunting. She lived from day to day in the workings of wages, dreaming of better jobs with better wages, with weekend's at retreats with their families. What she really agonized over was the awful threat of vagrancy, and how her casual way of simple life was at an opposite pole to a higher stylish one. Billi-Jo thought back ten years. She could hear herself say then, "We have asked that you please go home, Billi Jo. Try to get rid of the smokes."          Oh. Was smoking the reason for her dismissal as counselor to Jewish girls in a summer camp? She supposed. She blamed it on herself, on her attitude, on her ineptness at giving children the right skills. Billi Jo was at one time the girl you remember going out to sell girl scout cookies with a little green uniform on, covered with merit badges. She had been an ambitiously good neighbor. The wheels were rolling, it was Saturn Trailways. Billi Jo took a a deep look at the texture of her hands. Her palms were a bit hot. She was nervous? Was it that she and Phyllis hadn't seen each other for ten years and she didn't know what to expect? What would Phyllis ask her? Billi Jo recalled the particular evening that a girlfriend of hers was glad to give her a place to
          Somehow, Billi Jo had been one to run into that kind of trouble. She was abandoned once when she then took a town bus to catch a train to Chicago. She was back in Ohio two days later. She was even almost mugged once on High Street in Columbus. She had a thing for cross-country. Billi-Jo had wadded a slip of paper denoting her dismissal at the Jewish Camp and chucking it into the trash, she proceeded to make a cardboard sign with the word L-A-K-E G-E-O- R-G-E on it. She had stood at the edge of a highway exit, knowing that she could have flown back home to mother that easily. Undaunted by failure, she was to get another job at Lake George at a restaurant waiting on tables. At the highway exit, Billi Jo was picked up in twenty minutes by a family of Mexicans who were conveniently about to vacation at the lake. Billi-Jo sat in the back of a Thunderbird with a young child who gaily continued to offer her Raisinets constantly for a full hour. "Eh? You go to lake too?" the Mexican fellow driving asked her. "Si." "Ah, bien, bien, you speak Spanish. We like beach. We have much fun at Lake. You been there before?" "No." "It is nice. Sky . . . muy azul." The child beside just then had a terrible smirk on his face and began to argue in Spanish. So just what was camp like for Billi Jo? Briefly interviewed, and an orientation over with, she wore the tag "Young Teens" on the first day of camp to introduce her to young women in Bunkhouse 12.
          She greeted a proud gang of Jewish girls who took the first opportunity to defend themselves against any remark said to them concerning bad behavior. What Billi-Jo wanted to ask these girls from the first day on was, "Am I the problem? Wold you like me to play guitar for you? Can I read to you?" So then, not getting up in time for the recording of Revelle which sounded its tune from the main office at 6:30.A.M. was indeed the final unforgivable for her dismissal three weeks into the summer. So, Billi Jo on the bus. Now, many years later. It was a packed one.
         A pretty brunette with an eight year old daughter across from her, an Italian couple in their sixties in the very front seats, a well-dressed collegiate type looking handsome fellow busy reading as well, somewhere in the corner of her eye as she glanced to the back of her.  A quarter of an hour later, she woke up from dozing off. The daughter of the young woman across the aisle was crying. The child kept it up and so on, asking the mother why grandma never came with them. That they always had to visit grandma's house. "Can I have a candy?" "No, Jenny Lee." "Why not, Mommy?" "Because it will make you sick to your stomach. You already had two pieces, didn't you?" "I guess so." "Can you color while the bus is moving, honey?" "Sure I can Mommy." "Go ahead and color then. But don't let me catch the crayons rolling on the floor. Take them out one at a time." "Okay, Mommy."Billi Jo recalled an article which she dreamed she had written for Woman's Day. She studied all of the faces of characters in a story, trying to put them into her past. Uncannily, it was one of those recent storylines that might have claimed psychological roots to ten years before. A piece written about good behavior in young teens. The article was called "Tried Love". One learned to survive, to keep ahead of the cry baby in the crowd by relying on insight. She thought of the Jewish girls, chatting to themselves on a warm evening, late--when the heat caught the girls in a restless mood that seemed to unearth moody slaps and mean remarks toward each other. The girls were even whispering that Billi Jo had retired to the back room to take a shower and let mild mischief take its course, and was therefore an out and out chicken.
         Yet, Billi Jo had given them what they wanted. That chance to bend the rules of a strict Jewish summer girl's camp.Back to the woman who was visiting grandma's house. "Mommy?" "What Jenny?" "I have to go to the bathroom, will you take me?" "Alright, sweetie."The bus turned left due east on another sharp curve and for a moment she was disheveled. She hung on to the strap of her totebag. They were moving up into the mountains now, the altitude was high, her ears popped. Phyllis, her Jewish chum from the circle of camp counselors, had a unique bond with Billi Jo during her short stay at the Camp. Billi Jo wondered what sort of personal reunion it would be? Just two women who barely knew each other, giving it their best to recall memories? Phyllis and Billi Jo had written to each other many times. After Billi Jo had been fired, Phyllis took it as an affront on all the counselors. She was well-known at the Camp, having gone there as a child, and she knew the personnel. With all her credentials, she couldn't overturn the personnel's decision to fire Billi Jo. She had a recent photo of Phyllis that she had been sent. She smoothed her fingers over it, and then smiled.The last line of Phyllis' advice letter had come back to her. Believe me, Billi Jo. Not one of them, those wonderful children, wanted to hurt you. Billi Jo recalled the third week after orientation. Sorry to say, she had not worked out, the job was just not right for her, her image was poor. What made you take long walks at night? Were you restless? The children sent notes. They fear you smoke cigarettes. Whether or not you know it, camp is important to girls. Even more important than granting yourself the freedom to proceed with your own rules. Billi Jo had to pack her luggage and find another job. It was the only recourse.Billi Jo accepted it.
         She remembered her last conversation with Phyllis. "I guess they've gone and really done it." she said to Phyllis, tears in her eyes. She and Phyllis had edged out to the back of the bunkhouse, near the lake, to sit down on the grass."It's tough, Billi Jo, You know I like you.What was your problem most of all?""Nobody thinks Jewish. It wasn't that." "Phyllis, I never meant to hurt them. It was lack of faith in myself, in my own nature. I don't undertake ruling the universe, it rules. I watch things, they go by. Like the short time I spent here this summer. It's a rare thing . . . to know how to teach. I just haven't got it." She then burst into tears, uncontrollably. "To counsel, Billi Jo, one must display tact. You threw your leftist ideas up at the girls. But Billi Jo, you couldn't have done it with any more class! You know darn well, they loved your guitar-playing. Their eyes lit up. 
          Those girls are good Jewish girls who wanted a chance to be understoodfor what they have always stood for."Out of the blue, a likeness of her ex-boyfriend boarded Saturn Trailways. It would be approximately ten minutes until they  reached Pitstop. She studied him, out of the corner of her eye. He had enough distinct markings to be the same guy. She gave him a smile, and kept her bag tightly closed. He smiled back, resting his eyes on hers for a moment. Who were all these people in an inner exit, sauntering through time and space like a line at the cafetaria for coffee and fancy tarts, never knowing who they were with but strangers busy looking the other way?
         Then suddenly the fellow beside her took out a newspaper and proceeded to read it. He carried a compartment bag made of expensive leather. He put the compartment bag up above on the luggage rack in such a way as to appear important. Not a scratch of dandruff. Clean-smelling all the way. Finally he folded the newspaper, and then said to her, "Have you been up to the mountains this way, before?" Almost immediately, she didn't want her past known to him, so she just smiled and said quietly, "The mountains. Yes."  reassurring him that she wasn't conceited. Billi Jo looked out of the window. She was almost there!What not to do with arriving at Pitstop.
         Would Billi Jo push her luck and try and be charming, from the get go? Or, simply, twitter about the weather? Then, realizing her totebag had fallen, she retrieved it, nervous and a little warm from the heat.The bus came to a halt at quarter to seven in the evening. The driver had suddenly got out and then finally she was standing in the dust, watching her baggage. How uncertain was this exit? Was this just the beginning of how a fruitful journey ends?The town had not changed. The heart of farmland, Pitstop would always be charming. The excitement just in recalling visiting the Friendly's ice cream parlor, ten years before.
         The small circle of counselors who had first taken her for a friend as if she too had been the most competent and the most popular, would be absent. Her meeting looked as though it ought to look: greeting a friend who had cared about her at the camp.Suddenly, she saw Phyllis. Her heart went to her stomach. How lovely she looked. A little leaner. Her hair was very long now, and she had it pulled back in a French braid. Yes! It was still the same Phyllis--a country Jewish Venus."Hi, Phyllis? It's me, it's me, it's Billi Jo." She grabbed her and kissed her on the cheek. Phyllis said, "The town couldn't wait."Billi Jo exclaimed, "I have to sit down. Let's go to Friendly's like we always did. I'll get some coffee.""Sure," said Phyllis, "You look extremely good.""In this heat? I've got to comb my hair. I've got to straighten my skirt. I'll do it in the Restrooms. Come on, come on. Let's go."Billi Jo and Phyllis got into Phyliss' Saab. They immediately went to the Ice Cream Parlor and sat down."Remember this being an old haunt of Arlo Guthrie in his traveling van?" "Yeah, huh. You look like you're feeling really healthy.""But, Phyllis, you look even better than I. You always did. You're younger than I and all."They crossed glances. "You know, kid, if I were to have taken a photograph of you the last time we'd seen each other. And have one now? I would tell you how beautiful you look, Billi Jo. Just beautiful.""How many times have you been the one in letters to assure me that every year will always be better. I recall that on this date, close to ten years ago, I was in tears. You never stopped telling me I could be who I wanted to be, if I just tried." The mood music at the Ice Cream Parlor was running computer music and the song was Masquerade .
          She pointed it out to Phyllis. She smiled, as they went into a full- length discussion of jazz music, where the Bed and Breakfast would be that they would be staying at together, how Phyllis had a steady named Saul who didn't mind one bit that she was staying the night with Billi Jo, what wardrobes they had of late, women's politics, women's problems, women's pains and  women's jokes.
         Billi Jo woke up to a wonderful  Corn Flakes breakfast. Just like in the movies, the two of them had come together with a true bond. What Billi Jo admitted to Phyllis, that past evening was she knew full well why she was getting fired from a Camp Counselor job. Undisciplined.Billi Jo had given it some thought. She turned to Phyllis, having one last glance at Phyllis before she left Pitstop near noon. "You're good at premonitions, Phyliss. Should I go back with my old boyfriend? At least, try to patch it up."Phyllis' answer was a memorable firm, Yes.* * *When Billi Jo returned, she sent her ex-boyfriend a long apologetic note in the mail. Would he be expected to be her always-available? Certainly, the fact that he had once thrown pebbles at her window to wake her up from a deep dream about ignoring him made him a man meant to be a hero.He called her at her mother's house a week later. Could he take her to his apartment in the city? He just loved her and always would. "I have not forgotten you, at any given moment, Billi Jo." he confessed to her. "You know that? It's exciting to know what I have always lacked in the past. How many times have I wished for a pert little maiden to sweep me off my feet the way you did? Maybe a million. And to think. In a cafe. I found you. Amazing.""Oh, I'm so ashamed.  Telling you I would never see you again.  Why I . . . am so pig-headed, I should be dead.
         ""Don't say such things, Billi Jo. I knew you would return. I don't pretend to be the sort of guy who knows it all. I have faults. I get up sometimes in the mornings at an early hour and go to look into the reflection of an unshaven face with a ridiculous inferiority complex and think about what it is that I'm lacking as I move closer to the looking glass. Ah! There were days back at college in Ohio when I didn't show my face in class because no-one took me to heart or I had been childishly reclaiming a lost dreamchild that took shape in the form of a Sorority godess. Hey, I just thought about it. I remember covering up in my bunkbed, reading Madame Bovary and enjoying a tumultous love affair with her. Yes, Madame Emma. She was such a star!
          I ached for days to meet up with a contemporary French woman who lived in some obscure country estate with the door-knockers shining in the company of lovely strangers who stopped briefly to converse in a melange of discourse at a supper party. I wanted celebration with my drink and a soft lady of fashion sitting beside me with rose bud cheeks telling me how wonderful I was. Oh. Those were the days. Can you understand my madness? My complete foolishness that overcame me in the midst of heavy business courses like Accounting and lengthy studying on Lit and French. I needed any woman then.  Now . . .  I have you.  It's what I want..""Oh." Billi Jo stopped him from going on.
          She suddenly kissed him. She had not seen an inkling of this inner person before that night. She stared at him for a long minute--caught up with his well-hidden shyness at  having true blonde hair. What lay in store for her? He continued to skillfully open up to her, between caresses. Nothing will stop me now she suddenly thought to herself. I will give in to him and it will be just as I wished it to be . . ."You know, Bo Jim. I can't stand myself when I think of how little I imagined you had crammed in that sensible brain of yours. I can't begin to tell you how much I admire the quality of compassion you have shown me. How darling you are!""Yes." he replied,
         "Ah. I went into this totally chaotic morning, when my store clerks at the book store were complaining about how miserable their salaries appeared to them. My ovaltine morning. Just another dull day. I was figuring a way of rearranging the entire storefront with a different look. You know what I mean? Maybe have a whole collage of large D.H. Lawrence photos. " "Hey," said Billi Jo., "Let's play twenty questions." She leaned against his shoulder and whispered, "I love you, dummy." waiting for him to go off the deep end.* * *It was that next weekend, when she went to see him again that complicated her life forever. They were in his parlor room as he ran his fingers quickly through the labeled tapes that were packed neatly in a carton.
          The epitome of true variety from Country-Western to Classical Bach. A place for everything and everything in its goddawful place, she thought."Look. I can tell you've got something on your mind. Come on, come on. Out with it.""Just a minute. Just a minute." He removed his watch and his boots. That gave him a better mastery of the situation. Taking the reins and pretending not to be ridiculous all at the same moment, he needed to display his manliness as best he could. "I need to say this flat out.", he continued. "I'm so damned terrified of what you might say that I don't give a gd  what happens, just so I have your word you won't laugh in my face.""Of course not."
         He placed his knee against hers and grabbed her in a full embrace. Their arms entwined and they returned kisses. "Look, there is something I want to get off my chest.""You're stalling. Out with it.""I want you to know that I'm bringing this speech to a halt before I faint because I want to remember giving you this engagement ring in the morning." Bo Jim then popped open a small velvet case that was hidden in his breast pocket and placed it nicely on the table top. He folded his arms determinedly and said, "That is what they look like, close up."She was overcome with joy. She was enchanted with the possiblility, yet confused as to how it all came about. It was fate. It was a genuine piece of good luck. Legal paradise? "Hey, Bo Jim. You're kidding.""Nope.""Should I touch it?""Try it on, damn it."She looked at the ring pressed into the folds of the elegant velvet. "Did it cost a mint?""A small fortune.""I'll bet. It's probably much too expensive.""But you like it.""Yes.""Will you marry me?""I guess I'll say . . yes." His face reddened. She really thought he was going to faint. "Are you okay?""Yeah, hey, yeah. I'm fine. I'm perfectly fine." Bo now was in the kitchen carefully slicing an apple with one if his paring knives. Billi Jo went to the kitchen following him a little hesitantly. Finally she mixed up a bowl of tuna fish salad and grabbed for some potato chips. He yelled for her to grab the white wine out of the fridg and be careful with the frosted glasses in the icebox.Time for a compelling movie. "
          You want to watch this honey?""What is it?" she asked., "Last Tango In Paris.""Oh, Brando.""You know the film?""Hey. I thought it was so racy that it gave me doubts. Let's watch it anyway."The two of them watched the movie, feeling sexy and passionate. Billi Jo had gotten something she hadn't planned on.  A daring proposal of marriage.Somehow, Billi Jo had to find her freedom in another way.
         The thought of a break-up was over. All over now. Billi Jo was back with Bo Jim. She was overjoyed to know that Phyllis had a steady. And the Jewish girls from Camp? They had been living lives of their own all this time. Billi Jo was probably one of the luckiest women in the world.  Many women, losing their men, would never find happiness. He was who she had known from the beginning to be the best choice. Billi Jo wished the best for them as she whispered in Bo Jim's ear,Kiss me darling. They stayed locked in each other's arms for a good hour.