Cyndy Lou



I was in the middle of everything that was dirty, nasty and foul smelling about the planet: Cleveland. The year I lived there was the year I fell in love for the first time and the year the Indians won 111 games before they were swept by the Giants in the World Series. Seeing what happened between me and Cyndy Lou, it was a chilling parallel.

Dad had moved us for the third time in five years, meaning that for my last year in high school I was the new kid again. I was miserable, I hated the teachers, the guys had an attitude and somehow I ended up in the home room with jocks and cheerleaders. Me, kind of short at 5-5 and kind of broad at 155, with glasses.

Then, and I don’t know to this day which of the gods to sing praises to, I got Cyndy Lou Miller as my lab partner in chemistry. Ah Cyndy Lou! Cyndy Lou had straight blonde hair she sometimes wore in a French twist, and her eyes were Bunsen burner blue. And her skin! Pale, luminous skin that shone in the dark. She was smaller than me, just, but enough that when we stood together (I’m getting ahead of myself here), her silken head nestled right into my neck.

But the most important thing of all was that Cyndy Lou liked me. She thought my stories were funny, and that I was really brave around chemicals. Ever see magnesium strips go up in flames? Really white and bright. And the fun we had with mercury, tossing it back and forth. Yeah, I know now that wasn’t too smart, but compared to living in Cleveland?

Chemistry was the only class we had together, but I’d see her in the hall, usually in the middle of a bunch of guys, a queen and her hive. She’d wave every time we passed. I heard the guys whisper, “Who’s the dork?” I don’t know what she said back, but she never stopped waving.

I helped Cyndy Lou ace her chemistry tests and lab experiments. One day, in lab, about a week before the Christmas dance: I’d been rehearsing the question for weeks and just before the bell rang I blurted out,

“Cyndy Lou, would you go to the dance with me?”

“Roger, I thought you’d never ask. I almost said yes to Joey. I’d love to go with you.”

I couldn’t believe it: me and Cyndy Lou, Cyndy Lou and me. My dad let me have the car for the night. So in the middle of winter, I’m out in the freezing cold, the wind is blowing icicles off the lake, and I’m washing the car, shining the tail pipe on our old gray 1950 Studebaker, the one with the rocket nose.

I drove up to her house, a big one in Shaker Heights; where else would Cyndy Lou Miller live? Her dad came to the door. Big guy, ex-linebacker at Notre Dame. Put a paw on my shoulder, surrounded my hand with his, and shook my arm off.

“So you’re the chemistry genius Cynthia’s been telling us about?”

“Well I guess so, sir,” I said.

“Don’t be modest son, chemistry’s a good thing, there’s a great future in chemistry.”

Then he leaned down and whispered, “Now before Cynthia comes down, and I don’t want to say I don’t trust you, but you bring my little girl home before midnight or I’ll be out looking for you.”

A little extra squeeze on my shoulder sent slivers of pain through my left arm. I had almost recovered when Cyndy Lou floated down the stairway in a pink skirt all net and gauze and crinolines. And on top she was wrapped in pink satin ribbon. If this wasn’t heaven I didn’t want to know what was. Heaven it was, for the rest of the school year. No one understood why Cyndy Lou was going out with me; certainly no one at school; even my Dad asked me once,

“How’d you pull that off, son? You got something you’re hiding?”

Then it was summer. My folks made me get a job to help pay for college; Cyndy Lou’s dad thought his little girl ought to have the summer off before getting down to the college grind. I worked nights, Saturdays and even Sundays sometimes. Mel’s Drive-In. And who hung out there? After tennis and swimming, there was Cyndy Lou and Joey and Mary and Bobby in Joey’s Chevy convertible; I smiled when they were there, cursed when they left.

I got a Saturday night off and asked Cyndy Lou if she wanted to go out.

“Gee, I’d love to, but I’ve got this party I’ve just got to go to over in Avon. One of my very very best friends from the sixth grade. I haven’t seen her for years, I really have to go.”

The following week we had a date, parked out by the lake and kissed a lot, and if I remember, I’d gotten to first and was about to steal second when a bunch of cars pulled up beside us, horns blaring.

Late August: I’d been out with Cyndy Lou all of two times since June. So I called and told her I had to leave for college the next week and wanted to see her before I left.

I laid it on thick. Dinner at the Blue Pointe Grille, movie, “The Barefoot Contessa,” to get her in the mood, and then drove to a 100% guaranteed secluded spot by the lake. I had my arm around her shoulder; she was leaning into me; we were talking about college. There was a pause, which usually meant she was ready to start kissing, but she straightened up instead.

“Roger, there’s something I have to tell you. I’ve been dating Joey; he’s going to Holy Cross too, so I’ll have a friend there. The chemistry between you and me is gone, I can’t feel it anymore.”

She actually said that with a straight face, the bit about chemistry. Then she reached into her purse and started to brush her hair.

I went off to Purdue a week later. It was September, about the time Cleveland first baseman Vic Wertz’s sure fire double was going over Willie Mays’s left shoulder into his glove; I tried to write her a letter, telling her what she had meant to me and how I still loved her. But when I sat down, I couldn’t write her name.

The Write Side Up, 2007