Free Souls, Chapter 17

"Sandy," her Design professor said to her one day in March shortly after Spring Break, "I'm happy to let you know that your University Chapel presentation will be displayed in the school gallery at the next change of shows."

She straightened up from her drafting table to face Professor Ruben.  "Thank you very much," she said respectfully.

"No, thank you very much," the teacher said.  "It's a privilege having you in my studio. You showed good promise when you started this semester, and you certainly have surpassed all expectations."

"Thank you," she murmured again.  "Do I need to run another set for the exhibition?"

"Yes, that would be a good idea.  The one I have in my office might be a little crumpled at the edges."  Professor Ruben smiled and said, "I hope you realize, Sandy, that only the best work in this school is displayed in the gallery. We do not select projects simply to be representative of particular studios and years.  It is very rare that a freshman presentation makes it in, so when I say your chapel design is among the best of the best, you may believe it is true."

"Thank you," she said once more, beginning to feel like a broken record.

Professor Ruben assumed a hearty tone.  "Well, your hard work is paying off.  And I hope you will understand me when I say that it reflects credit not only on you, Sandy, but also on me and on this school."

She again returned some polite nothing, and the teacher continued on his rounds among his students.  As she watched him go Sandy could barely suppress a raucous laugh.  "Reflects credit, on you, Professor Ruben?  Oh, no, all the credit belongs to a certain man whose initials are J.C. and he's upstairs with Gabriel!"

For a split second the idea was the funniest thing in the world.  Then she realized the implications and made silent, frantic confession:  "Sorry, Lord, that was bad, I shouldn't say that about Jeff, You're the only Lord, You're my only Lord, really, Lord, I'm sorry, please forgive me!"

But despite her protests of contrition her effective church continued to be the school exhibition space on the first floor, and her primary act of worship was haunting that room, hoping against hope that Jeff would come in and admire her work and accept the offering she had secretly made to his glory. 

One time he was there when she was. He was approaching the place where her chapel design was displayed, he seemed to be slowing down to look at it . . . And then Professor Ruben, curse the man! came up wanting to talk to her about something or other. He took quite a long time about it, and his bulk was between her and her spot on the gallery wall, between her and the object of her adoration. By the time he moved, Jeff was gone.  At that moment she knew what it was like to want to kill with her bare hands.

“Lord help me, what an idolater I was! I worshipped him! I even called him my Apollo . . . ” 

There was no excuse for it. Not for her. She of all people should have known better. 

“And it got worse.” 

She grew tired of weaving fantasies about married life with Jeff. They were always set in the vague future, and they were nothing since they might never come true. What it would be like to actually know him physically now, before they lost their time together here? What would she do if he were to take her in his arms some spring evening here at the school, someplace private, and overwhelm her with his love? Would she say Yes? Would he need to ask her to say Yes, or would her Yes already have been said?

By that time she looked back on her pledge of the previous spring as naive innocence. How silly they had all been! A soft nagging voice in her gut occasionally reminded her that the standards she had committed herself to hadn’t been made up by a gaggle of romanticizing schoolgirls.  The voice was easy to ignore. She hadn’t been to church since she was home for Christmas vacation, and as for reading her Bible, why did she need to do that? She knew what was in it already and with all the demands of Architecture school, she rationalized, she simply didn’t have time.

Besides, God must have meant her to meet Jeff, just as she was sure He meant her to be happy– overwhelmingly, deliriously, divinely-- happy with him.

The roof of the Architecture building, that would be the spot. Up there with the starry night spreading its mantle over them . . . “Jam nox stellata velamina pandit . . . ,” as the words of a poem she’d picked up in high school put it, and Jeff Chesters like a young Caesar taking possession of her body, her heart, her soul . . . “veni, vidi, vinci,” . . . a happy country he had conquered a long time ago.

Back then she never realized what a hypocrite she had become. “There I was, despising and condemning the Christys and Elspeths and Martinas, while in my heart I was just as bad as they were! Maybe worse, because I knew better!  Heaven help me, I was sure my beliefs were Christian as ever, just more enlightened, more mature!”

But they had suffered a revolution. By late winter of her freshman year she was convinced that love, True Committed Love (she had thought of it in all upper case), sanctified sex. Oh, of course, marriage would have to follow. Some day. But there was no hurry. The mutual declaration of true love was what made a marriage, not a public ceremony or a piece of paper. God certainly would understand, even approve. After all, wasn’t God love?

“Yes, blast me, and love was God and Jeff was Love and Jeff was god, and sorry, Jesus, seeya later!” 

She thought she truly loved Jeff Chesters, but in truth she was infatuated with the man, besotted by him, and couldn’t tell the difference. She hardly knew where she ended and her image of him began. Early that spring one of Jeff’s projects won the Senior Design Award and Sandy’s joy and pride knew no bounds. “You would have thought I’d won the damn thing myself,” she thought now. He was her Apollo, her god of the sun, her sustenance, her shield; and though she was only a very minor planet in his orbit, she was convinced the day would come when he would notice her and her work and make her his own.

The day came. Or rather, the night.

Free Souls, Chapter 15

“Mrs. Schmidt,” Sandy addressed the secretary in the Architecture School office, “Professor Robbins says there’s a grant I can apply for and you have the forms. Could you get them for me?”

“Certainly, Sandy,” said the secretary. Sandy leaned on the counter, watching Mrs. Schmidt as she extracted the forms from a filing cabinet. It was a sunny day in November, and the light streamed through the tall narrow office windows and reflected rectangles like illustrations from a geometry book on the white-painted wall of the waiting area.

Just then another student erupted into the office and rapidly approached the counter. His face and hair intercepted the light from one of the windows and were thrown into high relief, like a figure in a Baroque painting. It was Jeff Chesters, and she had to suppress a gasp of delighted wonder.

“Mrs. Schmidt!” he called out to the secretary. “Can I get an appointment with Dr. Forsythe?”

“Of course you can, Jeff. Just wait till I get this paperwork for Sandy here.”

As if noticing for the first time there was a third person present, he turned in her direction. For a moment their eyes met, but his held no acknowledgment or recognition. His glance was neutral, accepting her merely as part of the environment, like a chair or a potted plant.

“Whew!” she sighed with hidden relief. She was glad simply to drop her eyes and be absolved even from daring to say Hello. What could she possibly say to him without making a fool of herself? She satisfied herself with wondering what his business with the principal might be. It must be important, she was sure. Jeff Chesters and Dr. Forsythe: she could see them consulting nearly as equals.

Mrs. Schmidt brought her the grant forms. “Here you go, Sandy. Be sure this section is completely filled out, and this one, and here’s where you sign. If you have any questions, just come in and ask me.”

“Yes, Mrs. Schmidt. Thank you.”

“Now, Jeff,” she turned to the young man, “you were needing to see Dr. Forsythe?”

“That’s right. I need– ”

Sandy wished with all her heart she could hang around until she learned what it was about. But she had no excuse.  Still, she left rejoicing in having shared the same small space with him even for two minutes.

Better still were those occasions when she happened to come into the student store in the basement when Jeff was there. In the store there was a backless bookcase set up as a kind of display shelf at right angles to the counter. She could duck around behind it and see him without him seeing her, and bathe in the aura of his nascent greatness as it seemed to fill the little room. Nevertheless, she always maintained the presence of mind to observe what brand of triangle and what weight of leads he preferred. Then, when some other student volunteer was on duty, she could come back and buy the same.

Best of all was when she could watch him sitting reading in the school library. She would carefully look to see what architecture books he was perusing, and if they weren’t senior year texts she’d wait for them to be returned, and read them herself. And to think that his capable hands had touched them, and his artist's eyes had gazed upon these very words . . . the idea was almost too wonderful to bear.

And if she couldn’t see him in the flesh, she could study his beautiful drawings. Almost always he had some project posted in the school gallery. Sandy certainly would not copy his designs, even if the freshmen and the seniors had been assigned the same projects. That would be plagiarism, and dishonorable. But she could emulate his style of printing, the way he drew his North arrow (with a little alteration of her own, so it wouldn’t be obvious), the firm, confident ground line under his elevations, the way he arranged the various smaller drawings on the larger sheet.

As the weeks passed and she learned more, she could also recognize and learn from the way he paid homage to the great Modern architects like Wright and Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, discreetly following their lead in his plans but at the same time making the design his own. “I can do that,” Sandy thought to herself. And she sketched and studied and persisted, and in time her own individual work also gave honor to Wright, Le Corbusier, Mies– and Chesters.

“But there, too,” Sandy thought now, “I was getting off base. I came up intending to design for the greater glory of Jesus Christ, but halfway though my first year I was focussing on how my work would glorify some guy I met in school!”

But for Sandy in her nineteenth year Jeff Chesters was not just “some guy.” The second semester brought a happy change in her studio arrangements. She managed to get in the class taught by Professor Ruben, whose studio was on the second floor. Of course she had picked his section because he was the best architect who taught freshmen; the fact that being in his class put her closer to the staircase most of the seniors used was just a bonus.

By the time she returned from Christmas break she had gotten over the silly notion that it was wrong for her to admire Jeff's body as much as she did his work. But of course it wasn’t just his body, it was also his mind, his soul, everything about him she admired– and thought she loved.

True, Sandy had never actually had a conversation with him. She was never invited to the parties where Jeff was likely to be. He had an apartment with some other guys while she lived in the dorm, so she never saw him outside the walls of the school. “But I thought his drawings spoke for him. I was sure anyone who designed that beautifully must have a beautiful heart as well.”

Was he a Christian? Of course, he had to be. Obviously he wasn’t Jewish or Moslem. And if he were an atheist, she was sure she would have heard something about it. People like that (she drew on her limited experience) tended to be very outspoken, especially on a college campus.

So since he had to be a Christian, it was all right to think of him . . . to think of the two of them, he and she . . . together . . . someday . . . wedded in a true partnership of architectural design and Christian love. At the moment she was sure he didn’t know she was alive. But the time would come, if not now, then later, once they both graduated and were out working, when he would discover her and love her deeply for the excellence of her design and the beauty of her soul.

For awhile that hope was enough to make her content.

But not for long.

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by Catrin Lewis, 1982, revised 2013 & 2014.  All rights reserved