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CarolThe last time I saw Carol was early February, seven weeks before her death. Carol had beenliving in rural Vermont since the beginning of October with Tim, her new lover, and I had beenliving with Lisa since January. So Carol and I figured it was time for a mutual show-and-tell newlovers visit. The memories of that day return to me now, like scorched snapshots of a world that hassince been otherwise totally consumed in flame.Lisa and I spent a sweet, cordial day visiting Carol and Tim in their rustic New Englandhome. Carol and Tim and Lisa and I exchanged social niceties amid the chips and salsa and beer,warm and cozy in front of the purring woodstove, warm and cozy amid the glow of our affection,oblivious to the looming catastrophe, aware only of writing another fleeting page in the long,winding journal of our friendship.Eventually, the fire grew old, the night grew late and finally Carol and Tim bundled us off tothe guest room for the night. The morning dawned soon after, as Carol had to leave early to driveto Worcester to attend her grandmother's funeral and Lisa and I had to leave early for my hometownof Marblehead so Lisa could meet my family for the first time.Thus after the requisite morning rituals of bathing and breakfasting, we said our goodbyesand drove off in different directions, riding the currents of our lives. Carol left first, Lisa and Ideparted not long after, and Tim stayed behind to hold down the fort. Lisa and I soon found our way back to the highway and settled into casual chat as we careened down the interstate, nestledtogether in the comfortable cocoon of our easy friendship.An uneventful half-hour later, Lisa interrupted our chatter to call my attention to a stylish blonde cruising just ahead of us in svelte gold Porsche sports car. To my surprise, this turned outnot to be your average, run-of-the-highway, good-looking woman in a sports car. It was Carol, onher way to Worcester. Somehow we had caught up to her, despite having left fifteen minutes or more after her. Maybe she had stopped for coffee or gas, or maybe she was in even less hurry tosee her family than I was to see mine.Delighted at the unexpected high-speed reunion, I pulled the car up along side Carol andhonked a couple of times to get her attention. Carol must have been listening to music, or lost inthought, because, despite my persistent honking, she drove on oblivious to us. She was like acharacter in a movie, dressed to the nines, beautiful as can be, ensconced in the golden Porsche like1
 
a precious stone set in a tony piece of jewelry. And like a movie, she was completely inaccessible,so close and so perfect, yet same time as far away and unreachable as the glittering stars in thenight sky after which mortal celebrities are so aptly named.That then was my last sight of Carol. At the time I naively assumed she was just going on aday trip to visit her family, one quick stop en route to living her life with Tim, one tiny excursion inthe long journey that she and I had shared for so long and would continue to share in the future.That's what I assumed, but I was wrong. It turns out Carol was driving out of my life forever thatday, off to rendezvous with death at the hands of unknown assailants on a distant beach in Mexico.We had always worried that Carol's recent infatuation with motorcycle riding andmotorcycle riders would eventually get her hurt. (By we, I mean my sister Susan and me, who hadsomehow ended up as Carol's closest friends.) We were baffled and at least mildly disturbed whenCarol became involved with her first biker boyfriend, Marcus. Among all Carol's many lovers over the years, Marcus appeared particularly defective. Inarticulate, immature, insecure, adolescent. Wehad to work overtime to find any good qualities in him in order to understand Carol's perplexingchoice to be involved with him.Marcus offered Carol an abrupt detour to the upward trajectory of her recent years. Iwonder in retrospect whether that was exactly the point. Carol had been moving upward for years,up from her flaky, fluffy hippie artist phase, through which she wafted through many years of her life like a bit of dandelion fluff on a lazy breeze. Amazingly, that bit of fluff eventually landed onfertile soil and gradually grew into something with substance, something with roots. It startedwhen Carol's alma mater Montserrat School of Visual Design developed a degree-granting programand Carol re-enrolled to maybe get a degree.To everyone's surprise, especially her own, Carol excelled at art academia. She cruisedsmartly through Montserrat, then went on to the Yale University Summer Program, and from thereto snooty Yale itself, where she persevered to earn a Masters of Fine Arts degree. And as if goingfrom dandelion fluff to Yale wasn't ascent enough, upon graduation, Yale offered Carol a positionon the art school faculty.Such a stellar ascent amazed and impressed everyone in Carol's world. Most of all, I think it amazed and impressed Carol, herself. It was by all measures an amazing transformation, through2
 
which Carol gained substance and self-worth, in addition to allowing her to develop as an artist, anacademic, and an adult in the world.The only problem with all Carol's success is that it didn't make her happy. In the fifteenyears that I knew Carol, she always carried a troubled soul. Clouds of darkness and depressionwould overtake her without warning and despite her capacity for flights of fancy, she never strayedfar from the desperate treacherous swamp of darkness in which her heart was perpetually mired.Thus was Carol's citadel of academic and artistic accomplishment built upon the unstablemud and murk of her benighted psyche. The higher Carol ascended, the further she was prone tofall when the darkness overtook her. During her Yale years, Carol suffered through a series of failed relationships, accompanied by incapacitating episodes of depression and despair. Eventuallythe gothic ivy-clad manses of Yale became nothing but a prison for Carol. After years of playingthe endless games of Ivy League academia, despite all her accomplishments, Carol found herself unfulfilled, alone and completely at a loss.It was at this point in Carol's life, outwardly successful, inwardly defeated, that Marcus theJerk pulled up on his growling motorcycle, an unlikely dark hero to rescue Carol from her successand hurl back into the swamp.Marcus was the brother of the boyfriend of a co-worker of Carol's at the graphic designstudio where Carol worked after concluding her position at Yale. I was visiting Carol in NewHaven, helping her move into a new apartment, on the weekend they first connected. Carol and Iand the co-worker and boyfriend were in the midst of doggedly lugging possessions--furniture,multitudinous boxes filled with housewares, clothes, and books, canvases in various stages of completion--from old apartment to new, when Marcus arrived hours late to lend a hand. Lending ahelping hand, though, did not turn out to be of interest to Marcus. Instead, after sizing up the work still needing to be done, he asked Carol if she wanted to go for a ride on his bike. There was, of course, no time for joy riding in the middle of so much toil, yet much to my surprise Carol agreed,and off they rode, while we abandoned volunteer movers watched in annoyed disbelief as theyroared off to explore the countryside together.Carol's brief but reckless abandonment of her friends and responsibilities that day turned outto be an omen of what was soon to come. Despite my immediate and lasting impression of Marcusas an adolescent jerk, Carol and he were soon involved in relationship. At first, Marcus wouldcommute from his home in rural New Hampshire to visit Carol, but after a while he decided that3
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