Good Girl : A Memoir (9781476748986) by Sarah Tomlinson Page A

about you last nite + when I woke up it was as if I had been with you. It was nice. It made me wonder how you were doing? Did you receive my books? What if anything you think of them? Enclosed is a card to let me know. I always wanted to get a James Dean card in the mail.” For the first time in a year, he talked about coming to visit, in his usual specific but elusive way: “I have a round trip to Brunswick ticket good until June 19th, I’ve been waiting til I accumulate some money but that might not happen, I’mgoing to see if they’ll extend the time on it . . . Whot da ya think?” He also mentioned that Morrissey was playing at Great Woods that summer. “Does that still hold any interest for you? Let me know. Love, John. Hello to everybody.”
    I dutifully sent off the James Dean postcard the next week, my text written in the neurotically neat all caps I had adopted after briefly mimicking my dad’s script, written in a spiral, to be arty. I didn’t mention Simon’s Rock, but told him school was out June 13 and, yes, I was going to see Morrissey. “I’ll call if I’m around in Boston. Maybe we could see each other.”
    That June, Oliver’s letters yo-yoed between affectionate declarations of how much he liked me and increasing blackness—but always accompanied by intelligence and humor. His letters were missives from somewhere important. And he continued to talk to me in an adult way I craved about love and sex, mentioning his own experiences, and wondering if I had experienced either, and if I could understand how much they changed things. I hadn’t and couldn’t, but I wanted to know.
    I never questioned why a twenty-two-year-old man would want to take time out of the fabulous, busy experience I so aspired to in order to talk to a fifteen-year-old girl. But the scenario was perfect for my dramatic, dreamy sensibilities. Since we were separated by age and distance, I didn’t have to worry about the details of fooling around or losing my virginity. It was much easier to be thrilled when he confessed secrets about his troubled romantic life, which he’d never told anyone else, or joked about us moving to the woods and living there, and how I’d hire him as my maid—or marry him—when I was rich.
    I received a letter in which he declared his love with all of his usual silliness and charm. I was ecstatic, swept up in what felt like my first love. Almost every day that week he sent me a letter, some hinting that he might have violent tendencies—or at least fantasies—because of inadequacies he felt, but mostly lovely insinuations of the feelings we didn’t dare speak. We talked on the phone for hours, me going on excitedly about my plans for school that fall. He was no longer takingclasses and had yet to earn his degree, but I still thought of him as a college student and was excited to join his world. Even though I was only fifteen, I had leapt ahead and was going to meet him where he was.
    I was happier than I’d been in years, maybe ever. And then, I began to hear less from Oliver that July. It was a familiar feeling, as if the tide of his attention and affection was suddenly going out without any warning or explanation. I could only assume what I always did with my dad: if there was no specific reason, the fault must be mine.
    At least I had Simon’s Rock. I’d gotten a summer job at the one restaurant in our village, Anchor Inn, which opened for the season on Memorial Day and was packed with tourists through Columbus Day. I was obsessed with earning enough money to ensure nothing would prevent me from going to Simon’s Rock and worked as many shifts as I could. As my mom had explained to me from the start, while boarding school was not financially viable for high school, they were committed to helping me attend college. As long as I took on the maximum loans, and a work-study job, and Mom