Photo by 🇨🇭 Claudio Schwarz | @purzlbaum on Unsplash
1972. Sonya stands in front of Bennett Hall, the women’s dorm at Shimer College, the great books, small liberal arts college in Mount Carroll, Illinois—a tiny town near the western edge of the state, nine miles east of the Mississippi River.
Her long brown hair wraps around her shoulders. It’s February; Sonya wears an Army shirt but no jacket. We say hello; I stop and chat—our first meeting.
By March we become good friends. Soon afterwards, we concoct a plan to hitchhike around Europe, and in early summer, Sonya flies from her home in Florida to my home in New York, where she stays with my family for a few days before we fly from Kennedy Airport to Reykjavik, Iceland, then to Luxembourg.
I’m on I-40 now, another summer, traveling from Raleigh to my home in Fayetteville, recalling Sonya and our epic European hitch-hiking trip forty-eight years ago.
I bump up my speed and lock in the cruise control at seventy, the speed limit on this part of the interstate. I’m in the right lane—cars zooming past on my left. The sky glows in late afternoon light. I’m enjoying my thoughts too much to turn on the radio. Instead, I breathe into memory.
And there’s Sonya, appearing before me, walking in my suburban New York neighborhood and talking about our upcoming trip. We’re seventeen, and we decide that it will either make or break our friendship.
Sonya and I stand in a sweater store in the Reykjavik airport, the one stopover on our trip. The sweaters are beautiful, and I covet one. But they’re expensive and too bulky to fit in my small knapsack, so I pass.
Next, Sonya and I walk through Luxembourg City. Remnants of an old wall encircle the city, which goes back to Roman times when two important roads crossed at its center. At some point, those walls came down. Later, in the early medieval period, inhabitants built more walls; then during the renaissance, built an additional defensive stone wall. Walls dismantled, built again, and then crumbling over time. The history of Luxemburg told by its walls.
I think of “Mending Wall,” in which Frost writes: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall / that wants it down.” What is that something? I wonder.
Interstate traffic now slows, but I can’t tell why.
At the edge of the Luxemburg city, Sonya and I walk a road near an open field, look down on railroad tracks, then, walking further, where buildings no longer obstruct our view, two rivers converge around what appears to be the old city. I’m moved by the stone architecture, crumbling walls, the city’s visceral history of walls, stone, river.
Memories appear before me: At the end of our first day, Sonya and I sit in the back of a car, traveling the autobahn, zooming toward Paris. Wolfgang and Helmut, two German boys, laugh in the front seat as they offer us cigarettes that we refuse. The boys are charming, if grotesque caricatures. Wolfgang wears huge square-framed glasses, and Helmut has thick rubbery, Germanic lips.
Neither boy speaks good English, and neither Sonya nor I speak good German or French. So, we laugh, communicating in three broken languages.
Soon, however, we realize that “Helmet-Hair” and “Wolfy”—nicknames we’ve given the boys—expect sexual favors. When we make it clear that that’s not part of our plan, they abruptly drive to the side of the road, stop, and insist that we get out. But by this time, we’re already in Paris.
We walk the outskirts of the city, looking for the bus that we’ve been told will take us into the central district. One road, in particular, reminds me of Queens Boulevard, near where I grew up. Seeing it now in memory unsettles me, and I feel lost between then and now, negotiating the slowdown on I-40.
There’s been an accident. In the distance, I see that a Ford Explorer has overturned onto the grassy shoulder. An ambulance and two police cars attend the scene, and although both lanes of the interstate are clear, drivers are rubber-necking, causing the slowdown.
I’m interested, too. As I glance toward the shoulder, I see a young woman, an older man—her father?—and a Yorkshire Terrier on a leash. But I can’t see if anyone is hurt.
In a moment, all the cars pick up speed, and I accelerate.
I’m back in Paris. I see the YWCA, located in a gritty part of the city. Sonya and I share a small room with two bunks. I look out the window to a spiral fire escape. Sonya, a great photographer, takes a wonderful black and white photo of the staircase—a photo I still have.
The next day, we rent Mopeds and laugh as we take them the wrong way down one-way side streets. I’m driving on a sidewalk; annoyed pedestrians move out of my way as Sonya pulls her Moped up beside mine, slows, motions with her map. We turn onto the street among parked cars, stop, decide to find the Louvre and the Eifel Tower.
We climb up the Eifel Tower, look down at Paris, dirty and beautiful, beneath us.
We stand in front of the Mona Lisa after waiting an hour in line. She is surprisingly small and lovely.
We sit at a café as a man approaches us to ask if we’d like to stay with him. Earlier, we checked out of the YWCA and now need a place to stay. Sonya questions him to make sure that he understands that we’re not interested in sex.
“No, no, no,” he says, shaking both his head and hands, insulted that we’d mention such a thing. Taking him up on his offer, Sonya and I follow him down multiple side streets into a grimy neighborhood of rundown buildings, until we climb up old unpainted wooden stairs a depressing little apartment above a butcher’s shop.
The man introduces us to his young son, maybe seven or eight, who is playing in his room on a bare mattress. I’m surprised that he’s been left alone and that the man hadn’t mentioned him. The boy looks up, smiles.
We are shown the man’s room, where two mattresses lay across a bare floor. A bulb hangs on an electrical cord from the ceiling. The man explains that this is where we will sleep.
I-40 has been stalled with traffic twice now—once with the accident, now with roadwork splicing two lanes into one. The delay only lasts a few minutes, and, quickly ahead, I see the turnoff for I-95, which I take, then merge onto.
Back in Paris, Sonya and I are in our sleeping bags on top of a bare mattresses. Neon lights from restaurants and bars blink through a curtainless window. I’m sleepy, doze off, but not completely. Soon the man is motioning to his groin. I open my eyes to see that he’s standing in front of us, naked, with an erection.
Sonya is awake, and we’re both on high alert now. It’s the middle of the night, and the small naked man is thin, pitiful. His dark greasy hair is combed, fitting like a cap on his head, and his feet are apart. He points to his penis as if it were a small uncaged animal that has run away and now needs capturing.
Sonya looks at me. I think of turning over, going back to sleep, avoiding the man, who has targeted Sonya and looks imploringly at her. Standing above us, he is ominous—primal man with primal needs. Sonya, feeling singled out, sits up, jostles me, whispers, “Want to go?”
We discuss whether to leave. The neighborhood is dangerous. We don’t know where we are or how to get back to the Paris of yesterday. And, it’s still night, between 3:30 and 4:30, we estimate.
The guy touches Sonya’s shoulder. Sonya brushes off his hand, whispering “creepy” to me. Climbing out of her sleeping bag, her long hair disheveled, wearing sweatpants and a tee-shirt, she shakes her head.
“Ready?” she asks me.
“Yes,” I say.
On the highway, I signal to change into the left lane. There’s a lot of truck traffic, and the right lane is slow. I speed up, make my move.
Now, locking in at seventy-five, I’m back with Sonya, as we roll up our sleeping bags.
The man, now wearing boxer shorts, appears in the doorway. He’s unhappy but looks harmless.
“Let’s go,” Sonya says. And through the window, we see that the sky is lightening.
We finish packing up sleeping bags and tie them onto our backpacks. As we exit the apartment building, neon café lights blink in predawn gray—grizzly, sad.
Traffic on I-95 remains open, and the sun, setting to my left, casts an orange glow over the landscape. I switch into the right lane again, pop the cruise control back to sixty-five, slip off my sandals, and push them deep under the front seat.
We wander the Paris streets, walking out from that neighborhood, trying to locate an open café. Which we soon find and meet two guys—young, hip—an artist and his friend, who invite us to join them, and we do—sitting at an outdoor table, drinking coffee, eating croissants.
I can’t see their faces. Nervous, Sonya and I eat quickly, excuse ourselves, leave.
The streets are cobblestone. Sonya and I walk one block, then another. Paris is waking up. Cars honk, and the tawdry night veneer has been peeled back to reveal another city, more charming, trustworthy.
A woman in a clean gingham apron sweeps the sidewalk in front of her shop. A man straps a briefcase onto the back of his Vespa. Two Catholic school girls in short plaid skirts, starched white shirts, bobby socks, Oxford shoes, khaki knapsacks on their backs, walk by us, giggling and holding hands. I look at Sonya, put my arm around her waist. She turns to face me, smiles, and I realize that I love her.
On I-95, a road-sign tells me that I’m back in Cumberland County. Just a few more miles before my exit. The sky fades from orange to gray. I put my lights on, think about calling Sonya—who, after forty-eight years of friendship—I still love very much. Although we’ve had some challenging times—times during which I’ve been preoccupied with work or family, times that Sonya has needed me but I have haven’t been there, times during which Sonya’s been preoccupied by work, lovers, friends. But none of these matter now. The bond between us matters.
I signal right and travel up the ramp, yielding again to memories. I see Luxemburg with its crumbling stone walls, and Paris from the Eifel Tower, the complicated city shimmering below. And there’s Sonya, standing beside me, her long brown hair blowing in light wind.
We’re created by experiences, memories—and the emotional truths they offer. I turn into my driveway now, switch off the car, and breathe into the dark interior—stars illuminating the sky, love illuminating my night.
Originally from Queens, New York, Robin Greene is a Professor of English and Writing, and Director of the Writing Center at Methodist University in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Her latest novel, The Shelf Life of Fire, is available at Amazon, as is Real Birth: Women Share Their Stories, her collection of birthing narratives. Greene is the author of five books and publishes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry regularly in journals.