An Old-Fashioned Romance-With Donovan’s Catch TheWind In Mind

By Lester Lannon

Ben Fuller and Nancy Logan had had an old-fashioned storybook romance, a romance straight out of the movies, not the current movies like Woody Allen’s Midnight In Paris where the stresses of modern life take their toll or one of those George Clooney things with the detached unresolved ending but sometime more like Bogie and Bacall in The Big Sleep or To Have Or Have Not where the sparks fly for minute one and they probably would have jumped in the hay right then except Will Hayes’ censorship operation would have had a heart attack or the same Bogie and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. Or maybe something out of the books, some misty F. Scott Fitzgerald you pick the story, Gatsby, Tender Is The Night, or a million Saturday Evening Post entries or maybe some modern lesser light like Robert Turner who specialized in such tales. But we might as well get to the details now that you know that while they are as modern in their world outlook, their upwardly-mobile professional careers, their consumer and cultural predilections, and their devotion to every technologically-driven communication devise they were, are incurable romantics although it didn’t start out that way.  

See both Ben and Nancy had known each other for ages, known each other since about fourth grade at Riverdale Elementary when Nancy had in a simple twist of fate pulled Ben’s hair from behind as they both sat in Miss (now Ms., okay) Winot’s class. Ben didn’t like it, but he also did not squeal to dear Miss Winot like other young boys who had not yet discovered the mysteries of young girls for he hardly thought about her existence then but also did not want any of the other boys to bait him like they had when he had merely mentioned that Theresa Wallace was kind of pretty and not like the other silly girls in school (including Nancy then). So he let it past (although later, even much later, they would both be able to recite chapter and verse the events of that day almost exactly as they happened). And that was the way things stayed all through elementary school (where Ben later became enflamed by Theresa Wallace and she him and Nancy was a non-factor) and middle school (except for a change in enflamed to Louisa Stein).

The only contact even though they were always in the same schools since Riverdale was, and is, a small consolidated school system was that each summer Ben’s and Nancy’s families would both summer (the verb ‘to summer” at that time unknown to me, in my hanging around town poor boy no away summer vacation time to have verb application) in Ipswich near Crane’s Beach and a couple of times they had run into each other talked and left it at that. Well maybe not exactly “at that” since one time when they met on Crane’s Beach on one of those off-shore August wind days the winds howling forty miles an hour off the point from Plum Island Ben had sighted Nancy as she was being blown into the fleck-foamed surf  and Ben had run over and pulled her back. Ben was ready to leave her side when Nancy said “maybe I was trying to catch the wind today” with a look like maybe Ben was the wind she was talking about trying to catch. Ben laughed and left somewhat perplexed.           

It was not until high school, the summer of junior year that they again met on Crane’s Beach. Another howling off-shore wind day from the point. There Nancy was, all slim one hundred pounds of her being tossed toward the surf. Ben “saved” her but one thing was different this time Ben stood his ground and said to her that “maybe she was trying to catch the wind again” and gave her a look like maybe he was thinking he was the wind she was trying to catch. And that began the first whirlwind (excuse the pun) romance of Ben and Nancy. A romance that couldn’t last past graduation since Ben was going to State U to study computers and “make a ton of money” and Nancy was off to NYU to be a literary light. The truth was that both had been smitten on the nose by other people, Ben by Samantha James and Nancy by Henry Dillon III of the big money Dillon family that had helped run, own really, Riverdale since who knows when, since as long as anybody could remember. That was that.            

Well almost “that was that,” no, that is not right, that was far from that was that. In the summer after their respective freshman years, quite by accident at least that was the way they told the story they met on another one of those inevitable howling windy days on Crane’s Beach while they were both visiting parents before taking off for other locales. This time Nancy was not caught up by any wind but was chasing a bunch of photographs that had blown off her blanket and were heading toward the dunes. Between them they were able to salvage all but a couple of them. Nancy profusely thanked Ben for his help because these were photos of her fiancé. Ben was shocked not by her being engaged so much as by the fact that the photos were not of Henry Dillon III but an older man, a man of about forty although he was admittedly good-looking at that. Nancy told Ben that she had given up young Dillon about half-way through the school year when at a party given by some poets in the Village she met this professor from Columbia, Jack Logan, who swept her off her feet, made Henry seem like a mere boy she said. Once Ben got over his shock he mentioned to Nancy that “maybe she had caught the wind” she had been looking for so long but she seemed when he asked not to know much about the guy except that he was a big-time academic and that he was very attentive to her (later that “attentive” would be clarified to that he was good in bed).  

Ben, after they parted, parted with backward looks maybe both remembering the times they had caught the winds at Crane’s Beach on their own, that night could hardly sleep thinking about Nancy and about how he had been a serious fool to have let her go just because she had decided to go to NYU rather than State U with him. But what really got to him was that there was something wrong with the whole set-up. Nancy had left home to go to college because her father was always picking on her, telling her she needed to do better no matter how well she did and she wanted to not deal with that any longer. And here she was going to shortly be married to a man old enough to be her father. He decided that he needed to talk to this professor and see what he was all about before Nancy made a mistake, an awful mistake as far as he could tell.   

Then the roof fell in. Ben went to his computer and Googled onto the Columbia school website to see if he could meet with the professor in New York City soon. No professor by the name Nancy had given him was among the faculty listed at this Ivy League school. He called up the school and after about an hour got to Human Resources and found out that the named professor had taught there although he had only been a lecturer and had been let go after his contract year was up for poor evaluations from the students so he really must have been bad since at State U at least most teachers got a free ride pass. That had been about six years before. Ben then hired a private detective that his father knew from some work he had down when his father thought an employee was stealing and selling information to an insurance competitor, to scope things out and the P.I. had come up after a week’s work with information that the professor had been living off various schemes and women for the past decade. That last piece finally made sense to Ben since Nancy’s family although not as rich as the Dillons (or as long-standing in the town) was well off. So what the professor was doing was playing off the vanities and inexperience of a young girl for dough. Probably had no intention of marrying her, probably had some “can borrow some money since my money is tied up in this project until my ship comes in” plan to bilk her and her family. At least her.         

One day several weeks after he got the P.I’s report Ben finally decided that he had to confront Nancy with the dirty facts before she got seriously hurt. He called her up to tell her he had some information she needed to know. She seemed kind of distant, a little icy but they agreed to meet, meet where else, but at Crane’s Beach. The both arrived about the same time and sat down at the picnic tables near the bathhouses. Ben went right to the heart of the matter. Told Nancy what he had found out about the professor, and how. Nancy started crying, started to break down because as she confessed to Ben then she had already found out about the professor, about his real intentions, when he had tried to borrow money off of her father “until his ship came in” and her father had had the professor investigated. As Nancy dried her eyes she said she wished that Ben had not found out but since he did she hoped he would keep the information confidential.

She got ready to leave after he gave her his assurances that he would be quiet about the whole affair when Ben suggested they go for a walk along the beach since it was a calm day for once. She agreed with a half-smile, maybe thinking for a flash about their “history.” As they walked along the wind as it will do in the summer began to pick up and as it began to howl rather than go back to the parking lot they kept going. Ben holding Nancy’s arm and Nancy holding both her hands on his other arm. Yeah it was like that. As they walked they both said almost at the same time “maybe we will catch the wind” and laughed.

[After Nancy graduated from NYU and Ben from State U they were married that summer. Married on Crane’s Beach. Where else.]