Jack Weyland - A New Dawn

1984 Deseret Book Company

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

First printing February 1984

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Weyland, Jack, 1940

A new dawn.

I. Title.

PS3573.E99N4 1984 813'.54 83-24049

ISBN 0-87747-994-1

eISBN 978-1-64933-072-7

I t was Saturday night, and Lisa Salinger had a problem.

Actually three problems. The first was her graduate research project assigned by Dr. Owens, her adviser at Princeton University. She'd already spent three months on it and had gotten nowhere. It was no wonderEinstein spent the last twenty years of his life searching for a solution to the same problem, and he never found the answer either.

Her second problem was that she wasn't going home for Christmas. Dr. Owens had asked her to stay in New Jersey over the holidays so they could get some research done.

To top it all off, her roommate Kimberly Brown was coming up the stairs with Hal. Lisa couldn't stand him.

She wrapped the old sheepskin coat tightly around her in case Hal came in. She'd picked up the knee-length coat the previous summer at a garage sale in her hometown of Fargo, North Dakota. She wore the coat over her flannel nightgown to keep warm against the damp winter nights.

She looked at the clock. It was eleven-thirty. She'd have to go to bed soon, or she'd be too tired to sing in church the next morning. She enjoyed singing in the choir of the First Methodist Church.

Hal and Kimberly were talking just outside the door. "Thanks again, Hal. The movie was a lot of fun. See you tomorrow for lunch, okay?"

"Wait, don't go in yet. It's still early. Let me come in for a few minutes. We could listen to records or watch TV." There was a pause, which meant he was kissing Kimberly. "Sometimes I get to feeling so lonely. Just for a while, okay?"

Kimberly sighed. "I'll ask, but you know what a bear she is."

The door opened. Lisa frantically began scribbling equations in hopes of discouraging Kimberly.

"I'm back," Kimberly called out. "Gee, you look busy."

"I am busy," Lisa said abruptly, breaking the point on her pencil for emphasis. She grabbed another pencil and continued.

Kimberly paused. "Hal wants to come in and play records for a while. He says he's lonely."

"If he's lonely, buy him a gerbil for Christmas," Lisa snapped.

"We'll keep the volume way down so you can study."

"I can't study with him around."

"Why not?"

"Because he's a jerk."

Kimberly paused. "Well, how about if you go to the storeroom for a while, like you do when I have a party."

Lisa turned to face Kimberly. "Why do I pay rent here? I spend all my time in the storeroomyour whole life is one party after another."

"You sound just like my mother. By the way, if she ever calls, don't tell her about the parties. She thinks I'm studying this semester."

"Just once I'd like to get some work done in my own apartment."

"Lisa, be reasonable. You've had four hours to study while we've been gone. Isn't that enough? C'mon,just for half an hour."

A minute later Lisa opened the door of the apartment on her way to the storeroom.

"Hi, Lisa," Hal said. "Busy on a term paper, huh?"

She gave him what she hoped was a withering stare. It didn't faze him.

"You work too hard. Me, I buy all my term papers. There's this company...I've got the catalog if you want to look at it sometime. It'd save you a lot of work." He flexed his arms. "Hey, how do you like my biceps now? Coming right along, huh? My roommate got me started. We go four times a week. You've probably noticed the difference in my arms and chest lately. Give me three months, and the girls are gonna go crazy." He flexed his muscles again. "How about that? Speaking as a woman, how is it to look at a Real Man?"

"I'll let you know if I ever see one." She turned and walked away.

On the way to the storeroom, she passed a pay phone in the hall. She decided to call home, using the telephone credit card she'd received in the mail a few weeks earlier.

As the phone rang, Lisa imagined the small apartment in Fargo where her mother and sister lived. They hadn't always been in an apartment. Up until she was in the seventh grade, they'd lived on a small farm, but after her parents' divorce, they'd moved into town.

Her mother answered. "Hi, Mom."

"Lisa, is anything wrong?"

"Everything's fineI just wanted to wish you a merry Christmas."

"The same to you. Oh, we got your package today. Thanks, but are you sure you can't come?"

"I'd better not. My research adviser wants me to stay and work."

"How's school going?"

"It's okay."

"Well, if you ever decide it's too much, you can always come home."

"I know, Mom."

"I wrote you a letter today. We've got big news back here. Karen's getting married."

Karen was her eighteen-year-old sister, three years younger than Lisa.

"She is? Who to?"

"A young man named David Passey. They met at work. It looks like it might be in May, but they keep moving it up."

"Karen's getting married?" Lisa said, trying not to sound threatened that her baby sister was getting married first.

"Well, I say she's too young, but you know how it is when a girl meets Mr. Wonderful."

"Can I talk to her now?"

"She's out on a date, but I'll tell her you called."

"Tell her I'm very happy for her."

"I will, dear."

There was a long pause. "Well, I guess I'd better hang up now. 'Bye, Mom."

As she started for the storeroom, she saw Mike Anderson coming down the hall. He was a graduate student from Utah, working toward a master's degree. She wrapped the sheepskin coat around her and hoped he'd just nod and pass by.

"Hi, Lisa," he said, stopping. "Kimberly having another party?"

"Not reallyshe and Hal are playing records, but I can't study with him around."

"I got a letter from Val today," he said, referring to his fiancee. "I told her you had some questions about BYU. She sent you a catalog."

Lisa shrugged her shoulders. "She didn't need to go to all that trouble. I was just curious about their physics program."

"Well, I've got the catalog, if you want to take it now."

She walked with him to his apartment. He let her in and went to try to find the catalog. She said hello to his roommate.

Once she'd been in Hal's apartment with Kimberly. After seeing that, the most remarkable thing to her about Mike's apartment was that there were no centerfold posters on the wall, no pyramid of empty beer cans, and no stolen road signs.

He gave her the catalog and showed her a new picture of Val.

A few minutes later she shuffled downstairs in her old slippers to the storeroom and opened the door. The room was full of suitcases, trunks, and junk left by generations of previous tenantsa pair of long wooden skis, a lawnmower, three broken bicycles. It smelled of dust and mildew, and it was cold. A dim lightbulb in the center of the ceiling lit up the room just enough to emphasize its ugliness.

Lisa unzipped the sleeping bag on the old cot and crawled in. She wanted to sleep, but it was useless.

Her baby sister was getting married.

The next morning as she got ready for church, Lisa paused to study her image in the bathroom mirror. More than anything she looked efficient. Her short brown hair was styled to reduce the time spent fussing over it. Her wire-frame glasses made her look intellectual and a little bored with life. She wore no makeup, and there was a perpetual frown on her face.

I used to smile, she thought. Where did it go?

As a child she'd been happy enough. On the farm in North Dakota, there were trees to climb and always a litter of kittens to play with. In the summer, the sweet smell of alfalfa filled the air. A small pond across the road was stocked with enough fish to make it worth the time spent sitting on the bank watching a red plastic bobber in the water. A girl Lisa's age lived on the farm next to them, and she had a horse. Sometimes she let Lisa ride it.