Story: Destiny or Just Dumb Luck?

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1

The day after Richard Nixon was elected President, I started looking for a job abroad.  I was committed through the next summer, 1969, but I thought it was time to go as soon as I could.  I told myself it was likely to be a permanent emigration.

Sure enough, in early September, there I was in New York City, climbing aboard a somewhat worn Atlantic cruiser, headed for my new job in south-central France.  There was no one to see me off, so I was lost in a quiet reverie as I walked up the gangplank.  It was about noon.  I hadn't thought about lunch.

"Welcome aboard, sir," the Purser said as I reached the top of the gangplank.  I showed him my passport, and he told me my cabin number and showed me on a little diagram how to find it.  It turned out to be on E deck (down under water, the least expensive way to travel).  He added that the first seating for "luncheon" was scheduled for directly after we steamed past the Statue of Liberty.  That was my "seating."

I dumped my hand baggage - a little grip or valise - in the cabin.  There was no one else around at the time, but there were three other empty berths.  I went right back up to the part of the ship the Purser had recommended for the best view of the Statue of Liberty.  One couldn't miss that, could he?  The deck wasn't too crowded, so I was able to move right up to the rail.  The view at that time was of the pier and the busyness of freeing up the big ship to take off... not to mention the skyline of the lower half of Manhattan.  This was all pretty heady stuff, even for a grizzled 28-year-old like me.  Was I an adult yet?

After twenty minutes or so, as we sailed by that iconic monument, I was still lost in my own thoughts.  I was thinking I was probably the only one on that deck who was saying to myself how ironic it was for us to be admiring this mighty symbol of all the best about America - about the United States - at a time when the country itself was going to the dogs.

So I looked around at the others.  Standing next to me at the rail was a smart-looking young woman in a neat, khaki trench coat.  She seemed absorbed in her own thoughts too, and our eyes did not meet.  But when I went down to the dining room a half-hour later, it turned out that all the single young people on board had been seated together... and she ended up next to me.  Her name was Teri.

2

Two weeks later, I was sitting in an out-of-the-way staircase in the basement of American Express in Paris.  I was hot, tired, hungry, and most of all frustrated.  What I should do next? I wondered.

After arriving early that morning at the Gare de Lyon, Paris's station for trains from the south, I had taken the Metro to the modest little street in the student district, la Rue de Rennes, where I'd told Teri I remembered from my JYA in Paris a whole row of decent but moderately priced hotels.  Since I hadn't heard from Teri in the week I'd spent in my new home city, I just started looking for her at the first hotel on the left side of the street, coming from the Metro.

At each of the eight little hotels, I explained I was looking a friend.  Everyone was most cooperative, but no one had seen Teri.  Most did have rooms available. 

It was a warm mid-September day.  My little grip felt heavier every time I left each hotel.  When Teri was nowhere to be found... "I know she said the 20th," I said to myself, "That's today."  

"Something must have happened."

It dawned on me that, wherever she was staying, maybe Teri might have read in her little guidebook that the American Express office over near the Opera across town had a message service where you could find or leave messages.  I got back on the subway and headed over there.

The basement was crowded and stuffy.  As I waited in the particular line for the names in the alphabet that included my own, I jotted a note on a little scrap of paper I ripped from a tiny notebook in my shirt pocket.  "Where are you staying?" I wrote.  "It's almost 1 p.m. now, on Thursday.  I'll check back here to see if you have left me a message at 4 today and at 10 tomorrow morning.  Ron."

There was no message.  Teri's last name started with a different letter from mine the line for which was down the counter a station or two.  But the young woman who waited on me was nice enough to take my little note down to her colleague at the right spot.  I thanked her and looked around for a place where I could observe the crowd for a while, and rest my legs, and cool off, and figure out my next step.  Along the wall behind us, there was a little staircase going to an office door. 

I flopped down there, nearly out of hope, wondering again if I could have screwed up somehow...  when Teri walked in!

3

"Well, I never thought you would actually come!" Teri said a little later while we had a sandwich at the grand Cafe de la Paix next door.  "I know how it is."

"So, on the ship when we talked about getting back together in Paris... You didn't think I meant it?"  I found that hard to believe, but I laughed gaily.

"Oh, you meant it at the time," she said, laughing in her turn.  We were both happy to be together again, after all.  "But you get to a new place, start getting settled..."  She shrugged.  "I didn't think much about it."

I'd been thinking of little else, myself, but why mention that?  I was telling myself she'd been thinking it was too good to be true... so she just went on with her vacation.  When I'd had to get off in Le Havre while she went on to England, that was it, for her.  The five days on the ship had been fun... but life goes on.

When she arrived at the Paris train station last night, right there in front of her she saw a tourist office with signs - in English and other languages - saying they could find a hotel for her.  That seemed too great to pass up.  They had respected her expense limits, the hotel was nice, that was that.

She'd been to Versailles on a tour that morning, and on returning, the bus made a stop at American Express.  On a whim she got off.

And there I was!

4

Teri's original plan was to spend three days in Paris and then move on to Geneva for three days, before ending her four-week vacation in Italy.  I toyed with the idea of going to Geneva too, but I wasn't exactly sure when I was expected at my new job.  We ended up staying four days in Paris, when Teri headed off to Geneva for only two days, and I went back to the one-room apartment I'd rented in my new home city.

We'd exchanged addresses, of course.  I fretted over how long I should wait to send my first letter so that it would just get to Wisconsin in time to meet her coming back from Europe.  It was after all a good thing I'd checked in at work, since my French employers had been a little anxious I might not show up, but the work itself did not actually begin right away, so I could concentrate on finding a grocery store, a self-serve laundry, the nearest Post Office, and start a local bank account.  That all took about a day...

I took long walks down by the beautiful, wide river that flowed right through the center of town.  Like Teri's and my time in Paris, it was sunny and warm.  But I was busy wondering where in Italy Teri would be each day and what I should say in that important first letter.  I had the lightweight blue, special "air letter" paper unfolded on my little desk under my only window, but I didn't want to write until the day I would send the letter off.

5

When I hadn't heard anything from Teri two full weeks after she would have returned to Wisconsin, I was getting impatient.  I sent her a cheery airmail post card:  "How was your return trip?  How's everything going?  I've started on the new job.  A few surprises.  Nothing bad!  Please let me know you're okay... OK?  Ron."

First-class mail to the U. S. was supposed to take about three days, maybe four, so I thought a reply could come in ten days, two weeks...

When a full month had passed, with no mail from Teri, I was sure I must have had the wrong address.  But there it was, in her own hand-writing, on the page I'd torn from my little notebook ...  What could I make of that? 

To be honest, it never occurred to me that maybe Teri had just been stringing me along.  Maybe it was good to have a companion going from one tourist attraction to another - the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame cathedral... - but a long-term friendship may have been another thing altogether?  No, I didn't think of that, frankly.  Maybe she was sick?  It was more than impatience I was feeling by then (but less than self-doubt, I guess).

6

"The gentleman would wish to send a cable to the United States?" the postal manager asked me politely.

"Yes, if you please, sir,"  I replied, equally politely and correctly.  This was the second person I had spoken to in the nearest Post Office to my apartment.  I realized that my upset must have been obvious to them from my manner, the strain in my voice, and the expression on my face.  But I could tell it myself mainly in my uncharacteristically bad French accent.  I was thinking of what I would say to Teri so much that it seemed to be hard to switch to French.  To myself I sounded like an American trying to speak good French, rather than - my usual pose - a European raised in France speaking his native tongue.

I was upset because another two weeks had passed with no word from Wisconsin.  When the morning mail that day - about 9 a.m. - had brought nothing from Teri, I walked straight from the mailboxes near the front door of the building, outside and to the left across the square, and down the two blocks to the Poste.

A pleasant young woman seemed concerned that I - evidently - was feeling an emergency, when she responded to my inquiry about sending a cable, "Yes, sir.  One moment, if you please."

Then she had returned with the man, who I presumed was her supervisor.  "You know the precise postal address in the U. S.?" he asked as he sorted through papers behind the counter.

"Yes, sir."

"Please write the name and address here and your message here," he said, pointing.

"In English?" I asked.

"But yes, monsieur," he replied in a reassuring tone.  "No one will know what you write."  And he smiled and nodded.

I wrote:  "Teri:  I have written you twice but had no reply.  Please cable if you are well.  Ron."  I had edited the message down - saying "twice" instead of "a couple of times," for instance - in order to reduce the number of words.   I didn't know how much this was going to cost.

It seemed like a bargain, after all, when I paid.

7

Then, it seemed like in no time (since everything really is relative), a letter from Teri came.  It was not effusive, but friendly. 

"I had been meaning to write sooner.  There was no reason for you to worry.

"Things have been busy here.  I am moving to a new apartment with my friend Joanie.  I must have mentioned her.  It is much nearer my work in Milwaukee.  Joanie is a teacher.

"Have you made many friends?  I'll bet you have been busy too.  I hope the job really is going well.  What were the surprises anyway?"

That was the tone, more or less like our conversations on the ship and in Paris.  I was still puzzled about the long delay, but I relaxed... and enjoyed the long-range conversation.

I wrote back that day, and in a couple of weeks there was another letter from her.  And a pleasant sort of rhythm set in.  I never found out if she replied to my letters on the very day when they arrived.  Probably not, but they came pretty soon.  Once in a while, we got out of sync and letters crossed in the air mail.

After a while, she actually sent me something I had never seen before, a little camera that you could only use one time before sending it all in to be developed.  "Use it to take some pictures of your apartment," Teri had written.  "I want to see what it's like.  Take a lot.  There's no reason to waste any."

Before I had my friends at the Poste send it back, with customs stamps and everything, I photographed about every square inch of the apartment.  I stopped short of snapping the primitive toilet and the cramped shower down the hall.

8

In February, Teri had another vacation coming.  She and another high school friend had found out that the cheapest way to travel was to sign up for a ski trip.  The first stop was on the French side of the Alps, not far from where I lived.   She came to see me before joining the group with her friend Kate.  Then we both went to Chamonix and then on to Grindelwald, Switzerland.

This time she wasn't surprised when I met her at the train station.

When I finished work that summer, I went to Wisconsin.  We got married.  We did return to France, where I had another one-year job. 

But then, we came home... just about 40 years ago.

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