17. When John Met Kate

or How I met your…

When I first saw John, I was sitting on the grass in the Bradens’ backyard at a party with way too many teenagers and not one adult. (It always struck me that the man who wrote Eight Is Enough left his eight children, many of them teenagers, alone for days, sometimes weeks, to invite 100 friends over on a Friday night.) John was walking toward me in the dark, tall and lanky, with streaks of mud on his t-shirt after a pick-up soccer game in what would become, decades later, his parents’ backyard. At this point, though, it still was part of the Bradens’ sprawling Chevy Chase yard. 

Who is that? I asked my friend. That’s John Brinkley. When he got close enough to hear me, I said, Hi, John. Hi, he said. Who are you? Kate, I answered. That was that. John says he walked by me three more times that night, and I didn’t speak to him. Not sure why he didn’t just talk to me, but I’ve wondered that now and again for the past several decades.

The next time I saw him, John was playing poker in the basement at another party. It was about one in the morning, and he was cheating with my friend Rick. They had been drinking beer and playing cards for several hours at that point, and there was no subtlety to the cheating. The other participants weren’t picking up on the signals, though. Just for the fun of it, I thought I would mention it.

What does that mean, Rick, when you put your index finger next to your nose? John started to laugh. Rick feigned ignorance. I mean, really, what does that mean? John’s shoulders shook with laughter, and he refused to look anyone at the table in the eye. Henry got up to get himself another bottle of wine. He didn’t like beer, and it was his party.

A month or so later, I went with some friends to Ft. Reno Park. In the late ‘60s, the National Park Service started holding free summer concerts there with local bands. That night Nils Lofgren’s band Grin was playing. Nils went on to play with Neil Young after they met at the Cellar Door, and then he joined Springsteen’s E Street Band. But then he was just a local guitarist with a good reputation. John was there, too.

Early in the evening, he volunteered to go down the street to Tenley Liquor store to get some beer. Several people shot requests at him, and John said, I’ll never remember all this. I will, I said. So we walked to the store together, talking about how we had grown up just a mile from each other but never met. I wondered if he ever went to the pharmacy at Northampton and Connecticut for candy or to the library to study. Yes, to the former; no, to the latter. 

Although we lived so close to each other, John went to private school, and I went to Catholic school — and never the twain shall meet. When he was 14, he moved with his mom from Chevy Chase to Georgetown after his parents’ divorce. Soon after, he left Landon for boarding school, first in central Virginia, then outside Wilmington, Delaware.

After the concert, John invited everyone to his house for a swim. Late that night he kissed me by the stove in his mother’s kitchen. I remember that the stove could be retracted when it wasn’t being used. As he leaned into me, the stove did just that, and we nearly landed on the floor. An auspicious start.

The next morning I got up at five to drive to the beach for the day with another guy. It hadn’t occurred to me that I should have gone home early and gotten some rest before a day trip to the beach. I fell asleep on the sand and ended up burnt to a crisp. For the next several days, I took ice baths with epsom salts and lay in front of a fan. I never saw that fellow again.

My brother Joe and his family were staying with us that summer. His older daughter Rita, who was about ten, was my confidante, I told her all about John, and she told me about her crush on the boy across the street. His name was Luca Crispi. His family was from Italy and his dad worked at the World Bank. He was also gorgeous.

If the phone rings, answer it, I said. If the person has a deep voice and asks for me, I’ll take it. If not, just let me stay here in front of the fan. Rita and I were sitting in front of the fan when he called.

John invited me to come back to his mom’s house in Georgetown for a swim. This time, I brought Rita with me. When she walked in the house, she looked up at him and said, in her newly minted Louisiana accent, Is your daddy Howard Cosell? He laughed, No, but that would be cool if he were.

Chris, who was a good friend back then—and still is today—told John to steer clear of me. She’s trouble, he said. She’ll break your heart. Chris has a great sense of humor, but about this he was deadly serious. When I found out that he’d said that to John, I was afraid to ask him why. Maybe I should do that sometime.

But that summer we spent lots of time together: playing pool at his dad’s house, wandering through Savile Bookstore a block from his mother’s, eating sandwiches from Neam’s Market, and listening to many more concerts at Ft. Reno.

In the fall, I was at Lisa’s with my friend Claudia. They were talking about how much fun it would be to have a birthday party for me at John’s. I said that I would not suggest that, and Claudia said, I would. She picked up the phone and called him. Hi, John. What would you think of having a party for Kate’s birthday? (It was the 70s — I could only hear Claudia’s half of the conversation.) Great! What? You want to make it a surprise party? Okay. I won’t tell her. She turned to me and shrugged.

Oh, no. I thought. I would have to pretend to be surprised. This is going to be awful. I’m a terrible liar. On the night of the party, Lisa, Claudia and I showed up at John’s, and I put on my most surprised face. It was, indeed, awful. He knew right away. But as he has done so many times since, he forgave me. The house was filled with revelers, some of whom I’d never met. We were young, and it was Georgetown. Without cell phones, we had the ability to send the message that a party was happening on P Street, and the whole world showed up. Maybe it was telepathy.

The following April our friend Joe offered us his apartment on Newark Street. We thought that, at 18, we were adults. So we said, Sure. Why not? Let’s move in together. None of our parents were happy about this development. We hadn’t even started college.

Joe left all his furniture in the apartment, as well as a sweet kitten named Jazer and a very nasty coatamundi who lived in the kitchen. Jazer stayed; the coatamundi was gone within the first week. Four months later, we couldn’t meet the rent, and John’s mom had told Neam’s not to put any more of our sandwiches on her account. John went to his dad to ask for some financial assistance. His father, a clever man, said, I can help you with the rent or I can take you both with me to Maine for a couple of weeks in August. John loves Maine. And now, I do, too.

That fall John started Berklee College of Music in Boston, and I started classes at American University. It was a sad good-bye, but we both knew it was time to grow up, not just pretend to be grown. Our usually passionate, often funny, sometimes crazy love story had come to an end. Or so we thought.