“Did you really shit in a fish tank?” I said.
She narrowed her eyes and said, “I guess I’m the only person who ever made a mistake around here.” She opened her car door and gave me the finger, or gave the whole place the finger, or maybe it was all the same to her.
III.
By the time the Delta Chi spring formal rolled around a year later, I thought I would never graduate. I was browned out and solo when we got to the bar; Frankie, my sort-of boyfriend, got too high to leave the house after the pregame. Kornberg and Becky were guzzling water at the bar, and he stared at her like the world had been ravaged and she had risen out of the ashes with her brown hair and modest green dress and cute little nose and he couldn’t believe she was his. They had signed a lease on a place in the West Village, which basically made them married. I’d spent the previous summer interning at a literary agency in Manhattan and didn’t care for the city. It was just a place to escape Mama and her now-fiancé, Sergei, hook up with randos, and work on my MFA applications. Most of the places I applied to were in remote, artsy towns that wouldn’t have many Duke types in them.
But it didn’t work out. I got rejected by all the MFA programs I applied to except Iowa, which I still hadn’t heard back from; I was trying not to get my hopes up. If I didn’t get in, I decided, I would go to California to start my life, just as Dr. Monroe had done. I wasn’t adventurous enough for a cult or a commune and didn’t know what I would do there. I wanted to just go.
The charges against the lacrosse players were dropped that week; they never even went to trial. The prosecutor was disbarred for dishonesty and fraud, and the string of allegations against him and his team was long and convincing. The stripper, an NCCU student whose name and identity were revealed, faced no charges for her false accusations. Of course it wasn’t fair that she chose those three guys at random from a messed-up photo ID process, but it was hard for me to get pumped about this victory for Duke and the players. They transferred to play lacrosse at other colleges and were heading to Wall Street just fine, not to mention the millions they got in the settlement. The only one who had a rough go of it was the emailer; he was suspended for a few months and then allowed to return to school, but no one could forget what he wrote. I had been thinking about Ellie a lot during that time. Had she been following the case? What would she do next? I pictured her entering the Peace Corps or going to law school to become the good kind of lawyer.
I approached Becky and Kornberg as the night wore down. He and I were cordial, but there were no more drives to Cook Out and he hadn’t read a word I had written since he’d gotten a real girlfriend. He’d spent all year cooking with Becky and reading The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and applying to law school. I’d spent most of the year writing in my apartment or getting high in Frankie’s car. Kornberg and I were friendly enough when we saw each other, but we weren’t friends.
He said, “Can you believe it’s all almost over, Kon Artist?”
The nickname stung me. He hadn’t used it in a long time, and he didn’t have the right to, all of a sudden. “It’s been over for a while,” I said, and he narrowed his eyes. I turned to Becky. “Why don’t you drink?”
She gave me a small smile. “My dad’s an alcoholic.”
I sucked down my drink, resenting her for her acceptable reason for not boozing; I was hoping for a sordid tale of an addiction, a dark and skanky past.
“My dad’s dead,” I offered cheerfully.
“I know. I’m sorry.” The cunt, she even put a hand on my shoulder. “I just read your poem about your dad in The Archive. The one about you standing on the chair, reciting Lenin? It was so beautiful and sad.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“I read it,” Kornberg said. “It still didn’t sound like you.”
“What do you want me to sound like?” I said. I was pissed but he was right, that bastard. I had spent the better part of the previous summer trying to resuscitate my poem from freshman year, but after all the work I’d put into it, I didn’t think it sounded like me either. But it was the poem I had sent to all the MFA programs. I had nothing better. I stared him down and eventually he left for the bathroom. I watched him walking away in his suit and tie, looking handsome, almost adult, like the lawyer he would be one day—and not the good kind, I was sure. I knew I might just melt into the earth if I saw him casually drape his arm around Becky one more time. I drained my drink and wished for oblivion. Why wouldn’t this feeling die?
“Bergy’s a little harsh,” Becky told me. “I loved the poem.”
What the fuck was a “Bergy”? I couldn’t let her get away with calling him that.
“I can’t say I’m all that thrilled the lacrosse players are free,” I said. “I mean, I know they didn’t do it, but they were still rich and racist pricks, you know? I’m not as relieved as I was when Kornberg got off,” I said, and only when Becky’s eyes got big did I see what I had done. I had only suspected she didn’t really know before, but now I was certain. “You know, because he didn’t do anything wrong. Everyone knew Ellie was crazy,” I said.
“What?” she said, putting her hand on the bar.
Kornberg returned and we continued to stare at each other. Becky looked a little wobbly, but she managed a smile for her boyfriend.
“I have to go,” I said. “So long, Bergy.”
I carried my heels and began the trek home to my apartment. It was a warm night. The moss hung lazily off the trees and there was a sharpness to the stars, as I walked along the wall of the freshman campus, that reminded me there were a few things about this place I would actually miss. I needed to see the lacrosse house before I graduated. It didn’t take long to find it. I hadn’t realized how close it had been to Teaberry the whole time.
It looked so clean and ordinary on its dried-up patch of lawn under the dim streetlight. Nobody had lived there since the investigation, so there was probably nothing to see. I stepped across the front lawn and cupped my hands to the window and looked in anyway, but it was too dark to see anything. I tried the front door, but it didn’t give. There was a door around the back, though. It opened easily, as if the house had been waiting for me all along.
There wasn’t much inside. The walls were bare, the counters were clean, there were no signs of the cops or of an investigation. One chair stood in the center of the kitchen. I sat down on the carpeted floor and pressed my back against the wall. It was scary quiet in there. It didn’t occur to me to turn on a light, because there was enough to see by with the moonlight streaming in, and anyway it didn’t take long for my eyes to adjust to the darkness.
* * *
—
My Iowa rejection came in the mail a week later. There was a typo in it. I got drunk after that. Luckily it was the last day of classes, so my behavior was socially sanctioned; Rachel and I made Popov punch at Sarah’s first thing in the morning. My last poetry workshop was that day, so I was tipsy as I faced Dr. Monroe for the last time. I scanned the room and noted that none of the other seniors had even applied to MFA programs. Brooke was going to Wharton—no more pink hair for her—and the other writers were working at GQ or Rolling Stone or going into finance. It was like they all got a memo I missed.
“Well, this is our last class, but your journey is just beginning,” Dr. Monroe said. She spoke about nourishing our talent once we were out in the world and told us we had a responsibility to do good work. “You will be your own advocates,” she said. “You’ll have to motivate yourselves, because no one else will care if you stop writing. Not your friends, not your lovers, and certainly not your family. In fact, they will all probably be a bit relieved if you stop. The question is, what path do you want to take? I cannot answer that for you.”
Her eyes were open the entire time, which made her words hit harder for some reason. Her speech, combined with the potent effect of
a few cups of punch, slightly lifted my spirits. As the other students filed out, I noted that no one else was drunk. How had that happened? I faced my teacher, hoping she didn’t smell the booze on me, and tried to find a way to thank her for everything.
“I didn’t get into Iowa,” I said.
She nodded. “Don’t let it discourage you.”
“I don’t need an MFA,” I said. “I’m just going to work hard, like you said. I know I’ll get there eventually. I might even go to California, you know, to get away from all this.”
I had never stood so close to her before. I was surprised by how old she looked up close, barely younger than my mother.
“You’ll need an MFA to get anywhere as a writer these days. Honestly, you should keep trying Iowa if you want anyone to notice you.”
“But you just went to California—”
“Yes, dear, but after the cult business, I was a Stegner Fellow.”
I watched the students carousing on the quad through the arched windows, and though I had been desperate to leave all day, all year really, now I wanted my teacher to embrace me. I didn’t want to return to the world.
I said, “Remember that day you told us to write something true?” She nodded weakly. “Did you have a specific answer in mind?”
“It was a hard time for everyone on campus. I was not very generous with you all then,” she said. She clutched my wrist and her face broke into a smile. “What was that lovely poem you wrote about the girl watching that boy take those girls up the stairs? It was written in a Russian tradition? ‘The Idiot’?”
“ ‘The Dumbass,’ ” I said glumly.
“Of course,” she said, clasping her hands together. “That’s the one that stays with me. It was funny and moving at once. Harness that energy. When I remember you and the work you have done here, I will always think of ‘The Dumbass.’ ”
* * *
—
Kornberg had called nine times while I was in class. I called back and understood he had broken his sobriety pledge. He told me what I hoped and feared was true: Becky had dumped him. She’d found out about Ellie and felt betrayed because he hadn’t told her. It didn’t seem like she’d told him how she knew.
“I’m on the roof,” he said.
“Don’t move, don’t drink.”
I ran through West and the freshman campus, dodging clumps of pastel-clad people milling about their dorms’ decorated benches, their beers sloshing onto the manicured lawn. I could barely pick out Northgate before I cut through the back and sprinted to Teaberry, passing a cop pulling somebody over.
I caught my breath outside the house, knowing I needed to act carefully given that my wildest dreams had come true. The guys were playing pong on the front lawn, future bankers and doctors and lawyers and world-conquerors. They were oblivious to the fact that I was standing there, a currently unemployed writer, trying to calm down. A few guys tossed a Frisbee to Macy the dog, and she happily caught it in the air. I could hear “Santeria” blasting inside, drowning out the sound of somebody actually playing a guitar.
Inside, a couple was making out on the couch, and the carnage of the day’s festivities was on full display: a few stray balloons and scattered confetti, a collapsed beeramid, a tower of pizza boxes, a small pile of cardigans, a baseball bat, an explosion of glowsticks. There was finally a hole in Beeman’s rotted floor, just the size of a footprint, and I missed him for the tiniest second. I poured myself a cup of Stoli and went to Kornberg’s room, which was even more of a wreck than the rest of the house.
His bookshelf was knocked over, vomiting Hemingway and Pliny the Elder and Herodotus, which mingled with Cook Out wrappers and a milkshake that had exploded over his family photo. Thick shards of glass were scattered across the room, reflecting the harsh light. By the window, which had been punched, there was a trail of blood along with brown liquid from a shattered bottle of Jack, and there were three more holes in the wall.
“Oksana?”
I brushed some glass off the sill and climbed onto the roof. He wore a COLUMBIA LAW shirt and cargo shorts, and his face and arms were covered in blood. I took off my cardigan and wiped him down. He looked ruined, and I was the one who had done it to him. When I looked up, I saw that there was a balloon caught in the big tree that rose above the roof.
“I hope you weren’t counting on getting your security deposit back,” I said.
He gave me a sad smile that said my comment didn’t deserve a response, and I couldn’t have agreed more. Jack Johnson came on after Sublime, which made it ridiculous to feel feelings. I moved toward him. I didn’t see the point in lying.
“I’m the one who told her,” I said. “It was the only way to get her away from you.”
“I know.” He staggered up, teetering dangerously. “But why?”
“You shouldn’t have said that thing about marrying me when we were twenty-five,” I said. “I lost my patience.”
“You have to be fucking kidding me,” he said. “You didn’t get what I meant at all. I meant I hoped you would take yourself more fucking seriously by then. I gave you so many chances. What did you do anytime we were alone? Start your comedy act. Recount your latest sexual misadventure. You were impossible.”
Down below, the boys whooped wildly. “Why didn’t you just tell me?” I said.
“I told you over and over and over. You refused to listen.” He sighed and shook his head. “You kept laughing at everything like your life is a big joke. Like nothing at all matters to you.”
“That’s just how it looks,” I said.
How could I tell him that everything mattered to me? That it all mattered so much that I couldn’t help but laugh or I would explode?
His jaw was firm. I waited for him to tell me to fuck off, to set me free, to give me permission to get away, to leave these soon-to-be-spackled walls for California and never look back. But he didn’t look mad, only exhausted and dirty. How could I have missed everything? I had missed so much, there wasn’t anything left over for me to get.
“I’m sorry I didn’t see it,” I said.
He nodded, a nod that said he agreed and goodbye all at once. His floppy hair was on fire from the day’s last specks of sunlight, and his eyes were red and lovely.
As I backed away, I saw the faces of the men I had loved or been with up to that point not as flowers but as balloons that smiled down on me. Well, I had only loved one, but I knew there would be more of them, many more, even if it didn’t feel that way right then. One day there would be so many that when I held them all by their strings, they would lift me off the ground and carry me up into the sky.
Lee and I buy a stack of books at the Strand kiosk outside Central Park and take them to a sunny rock above a lake crammed with rowers and lily pads next to kids running around like they are never going to die. I should be excited to see Lee for the first time in half a year, but I’m still pissed from my fight with Mama that morning back in Jersey, where I was supposed to stay to help out with my stepdad’s birthday tomorrow. I thought returning to the city and seeing my old friend-lover and soaking in the only scrap of green in Manhattan would soothe me, but it doesn’t. I can’t stop staring at the Freedom Tower looming in the distance, with cranes pecking at the few unfinished floors at the top, which thrust pointlessly toward the sky.
“Eyesore,” I say. I glare at Lee and dare him to challenge me, but he just laughs. I say, “Nothing says freedom less than a building called the fucking Freedom Tower.”
“I believe they changed the name.”
“Nobody uses the new name,” I say. “It’s too late.”
“You’re the expert,” he says.
“Hardly an expert.”
“You’re so salty today, O,” he says, and he reaches into his tattered red backpack to pull out Breakfast of Champions t
o counteract my foul mood. He reads and reads in an exaggerated version of his Dallas drawl, and I’m cracking up in spite of myself.
Since we met at a summer writing workshop right after I graduated from college, I’ve seen him when he leaves Dallas to visit his boarding school friends, and we occasionally talk on the phone in between the visits, but not that often, because we don’t need to. Though sometimes when I fail to lure some poor horny boy home, or fail to get lured, I drunk-dial him and he reads to me until I fall asleep. He was kicked out of two boarding schools and one college, and once or twice a year he goes into a stint of what he calls “gentle rehab.” He’s four years older than I am and works for his doctor dad as a glorified receptionist, which means he reads all day—he has read more than any person I have ever met, and that doesn’t count for nothing.
When he gets bored of his performance, I pick up the copy of Fathers and Sons in Russian that my grandmother gave me, to read something good for my soul instead of the dreck I have to wade through every day at the literary agency where I work. I grabbed it on impulse after feuding with Mama, because I wanted to read the part where Arkady’s poor father wanders around his farm, feeling lost and disconnected from his son; I remembered it being so beautiful in English, the poor old man filled with longing and despair in a way only a Russian man could be, but I can’t find the fucking passage in my native language, so I snatch Vonnegut out of Lee’s hands.
He pulls out Catch-22 and reads with his nose about an inch from the page. He looks like a lost little mole. His mushroom cut is a bit longer than usual, strands of hair falling into his eyes. I put my book down and drift off, soaking in the day’s lovely light, and when I wake up he is sitting with his hands folded over his knees, watching the kids on the other side of the pond, and I don’t like it one bit, him looking wistful at the sight of other people’s kids as if he wants some of his own.
Oksana, Behave! Page 12
