Molly

Thursday, February 19, 1995
David
Senior, Sociology
Columbus, Ohio


I and I alone walk from Russell House to Molly's apartment on Greene Street, none of the usual cars or kids or credit card salesmen’s calls or anything at all to dim the crunch of ice beneath my boots or the howl of wind in my ears. My chin is tucked against my chest. My hands are buried in my green nylon Gap parka’s pockets, its grey, cotton-lined hood tied tightly around my head. Molly’s dinner, in a snow-white plastic bag tied around my wrist, swings into my thigh with every quickening step.
The snow has slowed since this morning, but the wind is merciless: papercuts across my hands and face. It’s only a little after five o-clock, but the sky is already overtaken by an ominous gray, infinite and uncompromising, and I try my best to keep my eyes locked on my feet to avoid its engulfing, all-encompassing, never-ending gaze. 

A streetlight switches on as I pass underneath, and then another, and then another, and it causes me to relax, loosen, drop my shoulders, sigh. Relief.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch as I hike through the snow. The cold vapor of my breath erupting in front of my face with every step.

 In the distance, far above me, through the light of a window in a room high up in Snowden, a television flickers. A figure sits, and I can actually see the steam rising from his cup of something I imagine to be coffee, warm and heavenly, mirroring and brazenly mocking the visible bursts of breath escaping from my mouth—bursts that become closer and closer together as my pace becomes even quicker. Snowden was a shantytown dorm when I lived there my Freshman year. Now it’s just plain shitty. A sort-of Freshman exile for the kids too irresponsible to register early and land a sweet spot in Bathesda House, or even Gambrell Hall. It's heart-of-campus location is it's only saving grace. Other than that, it is dilapidated, decrepit, no air conditioning, an interior with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I’ve heard reports of roaches in the beds. Athlete’s foot in the showers, showers that sometimes work but usually don’t. Last week Chris Kohler told me about a guy in his Parks and Rec lab group who swears he caught crabs from one of the seventh floor toilet seats, and I don’t doubt it. I smile at the idea of the Snowden Freshman Welcome Week care package grab bag including a roll of yellow “Police Line – Do Not Cross” tape along with the standard toothbrush, toothpaste, laundry detergent and phone list of all the pizza places around town. On any other day I'd avoid Snowden like death, but right now, I have to physically fight the urge to hang a left, sprint up the stairs and rip that steaming mug of heaven from it's owner's hands and snuggling into his, or her, sheets. I trek on instead, passing Snowden on my left. On my right, the dark windows of the snow-day-cancelled classrooms of Kentia Hall.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Molly's dinner swings into my thigh with every quickening step.

I tuck my chin tighter to my chest and press forward, having no idea how far down Greene Street I've walked. The cold wind bites and pinches into any, every exposed portion of skin it can find, and the wind whips needles into my face. I squint my eyes shut, grind my teeth, pick up the pace even more.

Seeking respite, I let my mind wander, and when it does it wanders, ironically, and rather cheekily, straight to snow.

There are some things I’ll never forget for as long as I live. The toy clown coming alive in Poltergeist, for one. I was five years old when I saw Poltergeist on HBO. My dad said I walked into his room with eyes the size of dinner plates and I said, “I don't think I should've seen that.” I don’t remember saying that, but I do remember sleeping with the light on for three months afterwards. The Saturday morning on which I finally beat Mike Tyson in Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!!! for the first time--I will never forget that. I saw Poltergeist when I was five. I beat Mike Tyson in sixth grade--that would've made me 11. After that, a lot of shit happened in my life, I guess, and then Molly.  I don’t think there’s anything I will ever forget about Molly. 

The memory my mind goes to now is the day of our first snow. We were both Sophomores. It was February of 1993, and she had just moved into her apartment on Greene Street: the apartment I’m making my way to now. The snow was much lighter than any snow I’d seen in Ohio, ever, but the city itself reacted like Godzilla himself had just made Columbia his jogging route: closing all roads, businesses, and classrooms almost the second the first flake hit the ground.

I never liked snow, probably because I've always loved baseball, and to a kid who loves to play baseball as often as possible, snow is a unwelcome delay of game, a wasted weekend inside. And throughout my entire childhood, it never seemed to snow on the weekend unless we had spent the entire week planning a baseball game that would take place on said weekend. Unless we spent fifth period Social Studies deciding who was going to be Julio Franco and who would get to be Odibe McDowell. This snowed-out weekend bullshit happened so often that I began to take personal offense to it, like it was just snowing to piss off me and only me. So much so, that snow was the one thing I went to college in the south to get away from. To me, snow was a nuisance. Not to Molly, from Huntsville, Alabama. What was once the driveway-shovelling destroyer of my Saturdays was wide-eyed Molly’s first puppy, her Christmas morning, her first dance on Prom night. She shook me awake at just a little after seven that morning. Not nudged. I wouldn’t say russeled, either. She shook me awake, forceably and unforgivingly. I grunted as I awoke, as Molly focused into view. She was wearing my boxers and my Comstock High Lacrosse sweatshirt, but, as always, I noticed her smile first, before any of that.

“It’s snowing, baby!” she said. I’m not a writer by any means, but if I ever wrote a story about that day, I’d punctuate her sentence with an exclamation point, not for the volume of her declaration, which was barely a whisper, as delicate and soft as snow, but for the enthusiasm she packed into every word. It would represent not the volume of her words, but the wideness in her eyes.
“Wake up! It’s snowing!” she whispered, still shaking me until I obliged. 

Ten minutes later, just a little more than three years ago today, I sat on the balcony of the very apartment I was walking to right now. We sat hand-in-hand as we watched the snow fall, saying absolutely nothing at all for what seemed like hours on end, even when she pulled her gaze away from the hypnotic, "Chewie, hit the hyperdrive!" falling snow and into my eyes. She smiled that smile--that pretty girl from Huntsville Alabama seeing her first-snow smile--and scooted her chair closer, just a little. Then a little more. Then a little more, laughing. A little more, until our chairs were touching. She kissed me on the cheek, a quick peck, and smiled at me once again before resting her head on my shoulder. I put my arm around her, kissed the top of her head while, below us, a group of bundled up students, probably freshmen, rolled snowballs and threw them at each other and made snow angels in the paper-towel thin layer of snow that had stuck so far. We went inside shortly after, not knowing or caring if our classes had been cancelled, and she put an extra comforter on the bed and we took our clothes off and afterwards she wrapped up in that extra comforter and got out of bed, twisting open the mini-blinds so she could watch the snow fall as she fell asleep in my arms. It was still snowing when we woke up six hours later. We spent the evening in bed, watching Seinfeld and Friends, and later she wrapped herself in the comforter, stood up again, disappeared for a long time, and while she was gone, I remember running my hand across the mattress where she had been, longing for her to come back. She came back with two cups of coffee, and I sipped mine from an adorable Snoopy mug, Woodstook sitting on his head, both holding steaming mugs of coffee, both smiling with eyes blissfully closed, the caption on the coffee cup read, “Happiness is a Warm Cup of Coffee.”

We fell asleep shortly after, and I remember her being warm. That’s another thing I’ll never forget: how warm Molly was. So warm and so calm on a day when the entire rest of the world wasn’t.

Her apartment building’s door handle is so cold it stings as I touch it. I quickly twist the knob and yank the door open in one awkward motion, pulling my had away and replacing it in my pocket just as fast. I slip through the door, stomp the snow off my shoes onto the rug in the building’s downstairs lobby, and my feet are so frozen that pins puncture them with each stop.

Cupping my hands, breathing into them for warmth, I stomp up the stairs towards Molly’s apartment, Molly’s dinner still swinging from my wrist. I stop at her front door, Number 9, signified with the “Welcome, Friends” doormat. I rummage through my jeans pocket for the key, hidden under the receipt for Molly’s chicken tenders and fries.

I open the door and I step inside.

“Molly?” I say, almost a little to myself. No answer, and I call her name a little bit louder. “Molly?”

Nothing.

I make my way through the living room, and wade straight into a mountain of clothes that had been clumsily discarded in the middle of room, embarrassed as I realize all of them are mine, and right then my stomach knots and I stop.

It’s suddenly very hard for me to move, and I find that I don’t really want to anymore. Molly doesn’t know I’m coming. I could about-face right out the front door. I have a Psych test tomorrow I should probably be studying for. At least 20 pages of “Rich in Love” to read. I could walk back to Bathesda, eat Molly’s dinner, watch the Channel 2 Movie of the Night, I think tonight it’s “Singles.” I love “Singles.”

I glance back at her apartment door. Turn around. My feet won't move.

“Hello?” she calls from somewhere behind me. “Is someone out there?”

My gaze stays fixed on the door, until I consciously pull it away. As I do I exhale forceably, audibly, and only then do I realize that I had been holding my breath. I try to speak, try to answer her, and am surprised that I can’t. Finally, laboriously:

“Hey. It’s me.”

“Davy!” she says. No. She sings. I can both hear and see the smile in her voice, which today, as always, is nothing short of angelic.

She has never, ever called me “Davy.”

“I’m in the bathtub! Come join!”

I step through the bathroom’s door-less doorway, hands still tucked deeply into pockets, teeth still chattering a bit, and starring back at me with the most inviting eyes and entrancing smile is Molly, naked, in the bath. Her head rests against the back of the tub as she beams up at me, a cigarette dangles from between her fingers on her right hand, which dangles over the edge of the tub. I glance from her eyes, to her breasts, to the lipstick smudged on the wine glass resting just outside of arms length on the corner of the tub, and I think she sees me see it because she laughs a mischevious laugh, and suddenly the “Davy” and that mischevious laugh makes sense.

She is so beautiful.

“Davy!” she repeats as if on cue, her voice a field of daisies. 

“Hello, Molly,” I say, and I can’t help but to laugh a bit as I say it. “How are you?”
“Hmmmmm?”

“I asked how are you?“

“Happy snow day!” she giggles.

She takes an over-exaggerated deep breath, squints her eyes shut, and slides downward until her head is fully submerged. She blows bubbles under, until she starts to laugh and she can’t take it.

Her head launches out of the water. She looks me in the eyes, and says “Happy snow day!” And she gazes up at me smiling, and I can’t help but to smile back.

Again I laugh, and she laughs back, and for a second I actually think about shedding my clothes and joining her in the tub.

“You start without me?” I ask, nodding at her wine glass.

“Jump in. Catch up.” she answers, smirks, almost dares, and I almost do. I almost do. I shrug my right shoulder instead. The plastic bag bobs up, swings out, hits me in the hip.

“Brought you lunch.”

“That had BETTER. Be chicken fingers." The words trip and fall, stumble out of her mouth.

"Yes." My best Brad Pitt as Floyd in True Romance impression.

She extends her arms. "Give me to them." And then she cackles like a madwoman and re-submerges herself.

She breaks the surface of the water and cackles.
.
“Hey, uh...can I get you some water or something, babe?”

“You can get me. Chicken fingers.” she giggles. Cackles. "Into my mouth." Tilts her head to the side. Puppy-dog adorable. 

I smile back. She is so beautiful.

"I'm fine, babe," she continues. "Just having fun! Get in here!"

 “I’ll be right back. I say, smiling, shrugging my shoulder again. "Leave this here?" The lunch bag bobs up, hits me in the thigh.

“Where are you going?”

“To get you some water”

“Davy. I want you…in this tub…in five minutes or less Davy Caldwell.” Every single word of that sentence was slurred. Her huge green eyes lock with mine and she pouts and she is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my life.

“Maybe," I say, walking out of the room. Turn my head. "If you’re lucky,” I add, as an afterthought, in her living room.

In the kitchen, i pick her favorite glass. The Tervis tumbler with the Gamecock logo. I fill it with water. Add some ice. Make one for myself.

Back in the bathroom. Molly is passed out.


I don’t know if I was supposed to see the note. In fact, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t, at least not today. It was camoflaged, face down on the white ceramic tile floor, cigarette ash sprinkled on top of it, and as soon as I entered the bathroom, my eyes were drawn directly to it, even though I had completely missed it before. I rest the cups of water on top of the toilet, pinch the letter up between my thumb and pointer finger, shake it, cigarette ash snowflakes flutter off it as I do. I turn it over and almost don’t look even look at it, ready to fling aside her Sociology notes or weekly to-do list, and I almost do fling it aside instinctively, until I happen to notice the salutation at the top. In my hand is the beginnings of a letter, and the name in the salutation is mine. Not Davy this time, or even Dave, but

“My dearest David.”

She has never, ever called me “David.”

I start to read.

Fresh drops of water have caused most of the words to run, rendering most of Molly’s letter illegible, but I don’t have to squint or play detective to make out the first sentence, and I guess that’s the only sentence that really matters. They’re words we’ve skirted around, danced about, sidestepped for the last few months. The feeling behind those words had been there, lingering between us every time we were together, but the words themselves were never spoken, never put to ink until now.

My stomach tightens and cramps. My skin, freezing cold and wind-ravaged only seconds ago, instantly blushes and boils, and my undershirt instantly soaks with sweat.

I fold the letter. Drop my arms. The letter, as heavy and final as the words on it are, is surprisingly easy to look away from, and when I glance up from it, I find myself meeting my own gaze in Molly's bathroom mirror. I see eyes much sadder than Molly’s. Not sadder, really, but cloudier. I see a face full of just as many wishes but hardly any of her wonder. Hardly any of her hope. I look for solace.  Just a glimmer of Molly’s wide-eyed, girl from Huntsville, Alabama seeing her first snow smile, but I don’t see it. I don’t see anything, really. I don't see anything but Molly’s boyfriend.

I find that my gaze is much harder to pull my eyes away from than Molly’s letter was.

I'm in Molly's room, sitting on her bed. On the right side of the bed. My side of the bed. I had picked Molly up, carried her out of the bathtub. She had mumbled something when I did, but was asleep again before she even touched the bed. I’m watching her now, beside me, tucked snugly underneath two comforters, passed out and prone but still, somehow, utterly mesmorizing. Impossibly beautiful. Both comforters rise and fall with every delicate breath, and in each breath I see everything the world has ever meant to me.

She looks so warm. 

I reach down slowly and touch her face, softly, as if waking her would cause heaven to crumble and collapse. I brush my finger across her cheek.

She smiles.

She smiles as she sleeps, never once opening those eyes that so many times gave me hope and confidence and comfort from the cold.

My left finger continues to stroke Molly’s cheek. In my right hand is Molly’s note, the note I’m now absolutely sure I wasn’t supposed to find, at least not today. I’ve folded it neatly into fourths.

On her note is my reply.

I stand up slowly, and softly slide the note into her hand. I turn around, eyes fixed on my shoes, making absolutely sure not to see my reflection in her bathroom mirror as I pass. I make my way into her living room, around the mountain of discarded clothes, through her door, down the stairs, into the lobby, and back outside into the freezing cold.