Prolog   Today is October 9, and it is one year to the day since Beverly left us. This is being written in the Dominican Republic at the common business venture of our circle of friends, Eden Bay Resort, where I got the news a year ago. After some sunny days, it began pouring down rain late last night and through today, as if nature itself were preparing an appropriate atmosphere for the anniversary.

In the backlog of stories—all true; as I’ve said, I write no fiction—that I’ve noted on my to-do list, but have also essentially already written in my head, is one about some friends we knew years ago. The story is appropriate for this occasion. Aside from its poignancy and appropriateness, to the surprise of absolutely no one it does involve both travel and language.

Arabic on Fourteenth Street   Many will recall Erich Segal’s 1970 short novel “Love Story” and the film also of that year of the same name with Ryan O’Neal as Oliver and Ali McGraw as Jenny. The couple are academics studying at Harvard and Radcliffe respectively, his father doesn’t approve of her, the couple struggles financially, she gets sick, he reconciles with his father, she dies of leukemia. [In an ironic twist of fate, in 2001, it was Ryan O’Neal who was diagnosed with leukemia.] You may also remember the Theme from Love Story.

Not to get too serious, I must mention Carol Burnett’s parody of Love Story, which to my mind, is second only to her parody of Gone With the Wind. The best scene has her as Jenny embracing Oliver as she says something like: “How wonderful life is! How could anything go wrong!”, and then turns to the camera and coughs: “A-hem. A-hem.”

I’d like to say that life follows art, but I can’t, since this story actually takes place a few years before Love Story.

We had been married about five years at the time, and we very frequently got together with a group of friends from Beverly’s school. One of them that occasionally joined in the group’s activities was Jean M., an English teacher. We eventually met her husband John, a lawyer in Manhattan, who, if we for instance, had gotten together after school for drinks and dinner at someone’s house, would join us after he took the train from Grand Central back up to Westchester County. At this point most of the group would have been roughly thirty, give or take a few years. On one if not two occasions, I can recall the group getting together at Jean and John’s house, and his coming home to join us after a while.

At one point, the news circulated among the group of a momentous, and exotic, change. Although I can’t describe the program exactly, John, who was very interested in expanding into international law, had been accepted into some sort of government, or maybe private, program. Perhaps even a scholarship was involved, but I really never got the details. At any rate, he was to go to Egypt, with Jean, for several years to study Egyptian law. That also included, of necessity, studying Arabic.

I have to assume that neither of them actually quit their jobs, but probably took leaves of absence, John from the law firm where he was employed, and Jean from the English department. It wasn’t clear what Jean would be doing in Egypt; perhaps some study as well. As the school year came to an end, they made all their plans, ending the lease on their apartment, putting all their furniture in storage, everything you’d have to do for a major life change. A-hem. A-hem.

It’s actually quite easy to calculate what year we’re talking about. This story took place just three years before Love Story came out, in 1967. That’s the year the Six-Day War broke out between Israel and its neighbors, including Egypt. The timing of that war was just that more awkward, since it fell in early June (5-10), close to the end of the school year.

Since Israel had invaded the Sinai peninsula, with troops poised on the east bank of the Suez canal, Egypt understandably declared a state of emergency, and cancelled all travel and all study programs. But since all the participants in John’s program had made such major plans, a temporary solution was worked out. All participants would go to London instead for their studies, perhaps eventually to continue in Egypt, depending on political conditions. Again I don’t know if it would at this point have been international law in general he was to study rather than specifically Egyptian law. Perhaps at this point Jean would also be involved in studying Arabic with John, but I don’t know these details. So, during the summer, off they flew to London to begin this new, but modified, phase in their lives. A-hem. A-hem.

It was well into the fall semester that year when word came to our group of friends that John hadn’t been feeling too well, and had gone to the doctor, where he was diagnosed with leukemia. Jean and John cancelled all their London arrangements and flew back to New York.

Having already burned their Westchester bridges behind them, they found a rental apartment towards the lower part of Manhattan directly on Fourteenth Street, a major east-west artery. It might have been a furnished apartment, or they might have taken some of their furniture out of storage. At least it was convenient for John’s chemotherapy treatments.

Despite those treatments, both Jean and John enrolled in Arabic classes at Columbia University. They regularly took the subway from Fourteenth Street up to Columbia at 116th Street. At this point, any thoughts of law study were dispensed with. In a sense, the tail was now wagging the dog.

We had always gotten together as a group of friends, but Beverly had an idea that I’m pleased about to this day. She got Jean’s number and called her, saying we’d like to see them. Jean invited us to dinner, for the first time just the four of us.

They had a simple apartment in a small building on East Fourteenth Street, not a quiet side street. My clearest recollection is of a pale John sitting in an easy chair with his feet up. After dinner, we discussed everything, although, of course, some topics were difficult. Given the circumstances, we had a very memorable evening, and I’m glad Beverly decided to take it upon herself to make that phone call.

As the winter wore on, we heard that John had taken a turn for the worse. At this point, Jean went up to class on 116th Street by herself, took careful notes, and came home to study Arabic on Fourteenth Street with John.

News of John’s death reached us by springtime. It was, unfortunately, not unexpected. Some weeks later our group of friends joined other people from school, John’s law office, both families, and other friends, at a memorial service Jean had arranged, followed by a reception. I can still picture Jean speaking at the pulpit. I kept remembering this memorial service, and Jean speaking, as I arranged and spoke at Beverly’s memorial service and memorial dinner last November.

That memorial service was the last time we saw Jean. She did not return to Beverly’s school, but we heard took a job in a publishing house, apparently starting another new life on her own after this failed attempt for the two of them.

Also, I see it as significant that the memorial service was not held in Westchester, where they had lived their earlier life, but instead to a location just a few blocks away from the new, temporary home they had established, where they continued to cling to the final remnant of their Egypt dream that had dwindled down first to London, then to Columbia University, then to merely studying Arabic on Fourteenth Street.

Epilog   Love Story dealt with academics whose life together ended early. Jean and John’s story was a similar situation. Yet although Jean and John’s attempt at a major life change via an academic project ended sadly, at least Beverly and I both got to accomplish the year studying in Germany right after we met, and the six-year doctorate program we completed in the following decade, to say nothing of travel and languge study together. Although the Bevin story could have been much longer than the 42 years of marriage and 43 years of acquaintance, at least we did have that many very good years.

I’ll also note here the coincidence that Beverly’s date of October 9 was the very date that Hurricane Vince was declared to have formed in the Eastern Atlantic. It was apparently a maverick (oh?), since it was both the furthest east and furthest north on record that such a storm has formed. One online source I found said—and I quote verbatim—“Vince is a very odd one”, not only because of its location, but also because it was headed for Europe (oh?). Vince decreased from a Catagory 1 Hurricane to a Tropical Storm to a Tropical Depression, so it’s apparently mild-mannered. It started WSW of the southwestern tip of Portugal and headed ENE for either Portugal or Spain, finally making landfall on the southwest coast of Spain near Huelva.

When I read Hurricane Vince was headed toward the southwestern tip of Portugal, I thought of another coincidence. We’ve always liked to go to points of land, some of which are beachy (the NE tip of Sicily, the northern tip of Denmark), some of which are rocky headlands (Land’s End in England). Beverly’s travel diary tells me that on July 8, 1987, while we were in Portugal, we went to the headland pointing out into the Atlantic which is well-known as being the southwesternmost point, not only of Portugal, but also of all of continental Europe. We toured the lighthouse and saw the ocean views off the cliffs. We were on Cabo de São Vicente (Cape Saint Vincent), pointing SW into the Atlantic.

Hurricane Vince rushing straight toward Cabo de São Vicente—there has to be some irony there.