Bethany – Part Nine

Another part of that same process of enlightenment was the long overdue realization that conversation involved both talking and listening, and if I wanted to get to know a girl I wasn’t going to accomplish it by my former method of sitting there blabbing about myself. Rather than trying to impress Bethany with my wit and erudition, I now knew enough to try and impress upon her my very real interest in her, and I soon learned that despite having spent three years in such a small school together I knew next to nothing about her.

Everyone knew her father was, if only because his name was on the realtor sign in front of almost every house for sale in Fox Chapel. He was a prominent citizen of the suburb, but not quite of the first rank, being a little too brash and a little too Catholic for the prevailing WASP tastes, although the days when people who made a lot of money were seriously stigmatized for such things had passed. I had no idea, however, that before Pitt Prep she’d attended an institution called Saint Scholastica, or that she was the oldest of ten children. She also revealed to me a strata of activity I’d only been dimly aware of, a world of bake sales, of float making, of various harmless, mostly ceremonial Senior "pranks," all instigated by Bethany. There’d even been an all girl road trip to Western Reserve Academy in Hudson, Ohio in order to cheer the football team on. In my entire time at Pitt Prep I’d managed to avoid exhibiting any school spirit, so all this was foreign to me, and interesting in an anthropological sort of way.

But really impressed me was Bethany’s genuine enthusiasm, her energy, her ingenuity – and to what end? She wasn’t one of those camp followers (to whose ranks I bitterly included my crush Virginia) whose school spirit was just a displacement for their devotion to some jock – clearly despite all her spunk and spirit the lunkheads had never been able to see past her unprepossessing exterior.

No, all this passion was an essential part of her, a controlled lust for life, a committed engagement with all the proper available opportunities that I could only marvel at, a hunger for experience the extent of which was soon to surprise me. It was even reflected in how she ate her BLT with an honest appetite, a graceful middle ground between big Tina over there gobbling fistfuls of fries with both hands and anerexo Debbie next to her, idly stabbing the desiccated tomato in her salad as if it were her worst enemy.

Of course, new as I was to the two way conversation thing, the proceedings could occasionally take on the appearance of a cross examination, a fact not lost on Bethany. "So why are you all interested in this all of a sudden?"

"I don’t know. I guess I just figured out all I was missing." I didn’t think the whole enlightenment thing would play very well at the moment.

"Hmmmm…"

But there were relatively few wrinkles in the evening’s smooth unfolding, no long pauses or moments of disapproval or incomprehension. I was clearly getting better at getting along with people and Bethany had just as clearly always been a natural at it. And so time passed quickly, and we talked even after our plates, empty except for the ancient garnish, had been taken and the waitress tired of refilling our water glasses. Ever the traditionalist, Bethany made only a token protest when I picked up the check, and we walked out almost unobserved, most of out classmates having already moved on.