“Huh? But I thought we were going to go to the Walker tomorrow and then head out to Darwin to see the world’s largest ball of twine?”
“We can still check out the sculpture garden and see that spoon with a cherry on it and then go to Willis.”
“Papo, no offense, but I don’t really want to check out Willis. I mean, I’ve already decided on Macalester and plus, all the kids from Meadowdale that’ve applied to Willis are real assholes. I mean, a whole campus of assholes? I don’t think that’s really interesting.”
“Your uncle said it is a cute town. He says they have some nice antique shops so we can bring something home to Mom. The TasteeWheet factory is also located there and I really want to go. I will give you a choice; you can either interview at Willis or at St. Sven. But we are going to visit Ames Mill tomorrow.”
I’d heard about St. Sven, a nice enough school, my friend Emily was going there in the fall, but a religious school didn’t feel like a good fit, so I relented.
“OK, Papo, call Willis and get me an interview.”
”I already did. It’s tomorrow at 1.”
V
The restaurant of the Ramada on I-90 is dimly lit. For years I wondered if this was just the way I remembered it, my memory taking the uncertainty I was feeling at the moment and projecting it as reality like something out of a Fassbinder movie. Then I visited a few months ago and no, it really is that dark. There’s an enormous skylight five floors up whose frosted glass diffuses the midday sun well, but that nearly blocks out the early morning light.
The funny thing about all this is that living in darkness pointed out the amazing weight of what was head of me, triggering a silence that brought the world into rare teenaged perspective.
Until now, the whole trip had been an act of parentally-approved teenaged rebellion but, that morning I realized that the trip was really about taking control of my future and the reality of my current liminality and the impending unknown was too big for Papo and I to make jokes about, so we downed our pancakes in silence.
Ames Mill is separated from Minneapolis by a nearly an hour of interstate surrounded in parts by farmland, and other parts by suburbia. In the suburban sections we could see commuters headed into The Cities, as locals refer to Minneapolis and St. Paul, or across their ring of small towns. In the rural sections there were cows, lots of cows, grazing on farmlands that were just subtly different enough from the ones just outside of Chicago as to cause a half-step dissonance that rendered them alien to me.
Neither of us were in the mood for much of anything on the way so we refrained from the steady diet of Keillor, Fitzgerald and Andres Segovia we’d been consuming the whole trip and instead let NPR narrate our morning. Listening to the latest Clinton scandals and his election-year promises for a second term seemed to drag out the trip, and by the time we reached Exit 69 we were ready to just get there. I tried to make up my mind to hate it the way I’d done on the trip from Rockford to Beloit a month earlier, but I was completely unable to do that. The memory of my life-altering conversation with Jake Swearingen kept playing over and over in my mind as we drove down State Highway 38. I’d made up my mind to hate that hour of my life and ended up falling in love, who knew what resolving to hate this hour would bring? No, better to go into this interview with a legitimately open mind I thought. Because if I resolve to dislike it, I might try and overrule myself and fall in love with the place just to spite myself. If I resolved to love it, I might go the other way out of spite and really screw myself over.
Seriously, I’m really glad I’m not 17 anymore.
If the hour down the interstate had seemed interminable, the ten miles up Hwy 38 were even worse. I’d expected the campus to be right there, along the interstate, ready to welcome me with open arms. Instead we had the silence of the drive, pines to the right of me, cows to the left and the knowledge that turning NPR back on just wasn’t an option. My father, for his part was beaming. Though I’ve never asked him why, I suspect that things were going according to a plan he’d had in the mid 70s when he decided to marry my mother, stay in this country and roll the dice on his children’s future. I know it’s probably a flight of fancy to believe that in the midst of Watergate, Stagflation and WIN buttons my father managed to have this specific variation of the standard immigrant American Dream, but waiting for Ames’s Mill to appear before us like Jericho, this delusion was the only thing keeping the butterflies from retrieving the silver dollar pancake feast from the Ramada in St. Paul.
Then, just pass the shack that offered APPLECIDERCHEESEFUDGE it appeared; the belltower at St. Sven College, standing atop a large hill looming like that demon in the “Night on Bald Mountain” sequence in Fantasia. From there, the town appeared nestled in the Turtle River Valley and on the other side of the valley, Willis College.
VI
When we got to the admissions office we checked in and met Greg Daniels, the admissions counselor in charge of Illinois. An enormous man, Daniels loomed over me as he smiled and extended his hand.
“You must be the two Diegos!” he said.
“That’s us!” my father said reaching out for Greg’s outstretched hand.
“Welcome to Willis. How was the drive up from Chicago?”
“We drove up two days ago. We went to the Twins game yesterday…”
“And I interviewed at Macalester, too.” I said deciding that if I didn’t interject myself into the conversation quickly, it’d be my father interviewing at and attending Willis the following fall.
“Good school. Did you eat at that ambiguously ethnic place on Grand? What’s it called? The Tartan Elephant?”
“Yeah, it is. Pretty good place, even if their haggis pad thai leaves a bit to be desired.” I replied.
“You think? I always kinda liked it. The one you have to stay away from is the vegetarian blood sausage. I don’t know how they manage that one. Anyway, you wanna come back with me, we can do our thing and then your dad can come back and join us a bit later.”
And with that, I was off.
I’d be lying if I said anything other than I liked Greg right away. I mean; I was skeptical that he could possibly be as cool as he seemed and I was certain that he couldn’t be a…wait, is that a Willis diploma on your wall? Shit, he can see me staring.
“Yup, I graduated from here in ’95 and started working in the admissions office right away. I mean I’m not totally representative of the average Willis student…”
HA! Got him, so he’s he lone cool guy in a sea of assholes.
“…but I don’t think there’s an average Willis student. I mean; I know what doesn’t make a good Willis student. You’re from Meadowdale HS, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, notice how no one who’s applied here in the past few years has gotten in?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, we don’t accept assholes.”
Yeah, this was my guy.
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“So, like. What’s so cool about this place? I mean. I didn’t even consider interviewing here until my dad forced me to come down yesterday when we were standing in the Metrodome parking lot.”
“Let me tell you a story. K?”
“K.”
“See that picture on my wall?”
“The big one, the football team picture?”
“Yeah. That’s it. That’s the 1994 Willis College football team. I was captain of that team. Starting middle linebacker...”
That explained the size.
“…we were neck and neck with St. Sven for the conference title and it all came down to the Miller’s Trophy game. Last game of the year, crosstown rivalry game and the same day as the LSAT. I’d been studying for that thing for years and I wasn’t about to blow it. So, I took the test in my gamepants and undershirt, ran out after the test went to the stadium, stretched and played the whole game. Two sacks, one interception and five solo tackles lat
er we had both the conference title and the Miller’s Trophy.”
With that, he took off the large ring on his right ring finger and handed it to me.
“Nice story, but what’s that got to do with anything?”
“Well, I scored a 175 on my LSAT and earned that ring all in the same day because of the things that Willis taught me. And along the way, everyone was there to help me. My coach let me move my weightlifting time around, professors went easy on me the week of the LSAT, the cafeteria guys had breakfast waiting for me before they were officially open so I could eat before the test and be carbed up for the game. My teammates and classmates each supported me in the arena opposite of the one I knew them from. Everyone wants you to succeed here, because when you do well, they do well too. We’re a family here, and by what Sully sent me a few weeks ago, you’d make a perfect part of this family.”
I was so amazed by the prospect of a being a Willis student after this speech that I didn’t even notice or much care that Sully and my father’s treachery had been revealed. I just wanted desperately to get into this school; my life was in the process of beginning and I wanted desperately for that life to begin on this campus and in this town. But, I didn’t have time to really absorb any of this. No, Greg had stopped speaking and now it was my turn to say something. Knowing that I couldn’t really tell him any of this, and not knowing what else to say since my mind was still reeling from the serious paradigm shift that had just occurred I said the second thing that popped into my mind.
“So is a 175 a good LSAT score?”
VII
“Papo, I really want to go here.” I said as we pulled the Quest out of the parking lot.
“I know.”
“How do I break this to Renee?”
This was it, one of those defining moments in life that you don’t really realize is all that important until you’re older, have been on a few diets and tried to figure out how to potty train your first kid.
We all have that one breakup that defines us, that gives us a roadmap for how to navigate all further relationships. Some people encounter it when they’re in high school; some encounter it when they’re getting divorced for the second or third time. But we all have it, that one dissolution of a relationship that haunts us through our days. Right there, in a parking lot in Ames Mill, Minnesota my father and I had a conversation we’d only have twice, each time with amazingly different results.
“Are you going to marry this girl?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t have to tell her a thing.”
“OK.”
Here’s a tip for all you youngsters out there, never change your girlfriend’s plans without her permission and expect her to be happy about it.
VIII
Lacking the testicular fortitude to dump Renee, I kept up the charade that I was applying to the schools she’d picked out for me. But, I didn’t tell her about my applications to Beloit, Mac and Willis. In the end, I applied to those three plus U of I, Brown and Northwestern
The campus visits were like something out of a FOX teen drama. Though, I guess with the dynamics of the visits we were probably more O.C. than 90210 or Glee. Yknow, Seth and Summer and the Brown debacle… On both occasions we walked through downtown Evanston and Providence while I held her hand and allowed her to imagine that someday we’d walk down these streets, just steps from the apartment that we shared. As these conversations drew on, I began to understand how much trouble I was going to be in. The first time you come to understand how bad a human being you have the ability to be, there’s a certain amount of denial that gives you the potential for redemption. But, being the weak and horny teenager I was, I let hormones overrule conscience and I kept on going, covering one lie with another until April came and there was no more time left for lying.
Long story short, Renee got into UMKC and U of I, I got in everywhere.
She decided to go to UMKC and, as life would have it, I hadn’t applied to a single school within 400 miles of there.
“So you’re going to apply to KU, right? They have rolling admission, there’s still time for you.” She told me.
“Baby, but I got into Brown, Northwestern, Beloit and Willis. I’m a presidential scholar at Beloit and Greg is still trying to find more money for me to go to Willis. I mean, I’m not going to throw my future away just to follow you.”
“You think being with me is throwing your future away?”
Here’s a tip for all you youngsters out there, grow a pair or quit while you’re ahead.
Two months before graduation, six weeks before prom, I broke up with my high school girlfriend.
“I’m proud of you son.”
“Papo, I mean, what did I do right?”
“You got into some of the best schools in the country, some of them are still fighting over you, there are full rides on the table and you didn’t follow a girl to school, you made your own way. That’s all I can ask of you.”
I sent my deposit to Willis covered in one cent stamps and received the following email.
From: Greg Daniels [[email protected]]
To: Diego Hidalgo [[email protected]]
D-
That was some iconoclastic postage buddy. You’re gonna be an awesome addition to the Willis Family, hope you received the shirt I sent you in the mail. I think it’s your size. I remember your dad saying that you’d forgotten to get one on your visit to campus last fall. It’s the same design as the one I wore when I took the LSAT, classic grey with the purple logo. Hope it’s as important to you as it’s been to me.
-Greg F. Daniels
Admissions Counselor
Willis College
1 N. College St.
Ames Mill, MN 55077
I ended up going to prom with Erin Mullingher who was still reeling from the Husky debacle. Husky, for his part, went to prom with his cousin Gina from Schiller Park. Renee imported some guy from Conant who looked like he could have taken Greg Daniels out in a fight. I figured that it was a shot at me, but I just didn’t care. Plus, Erin and I had a great time.
Chapter 3:
Alex’s Summer ’97 Goodtime Happy Party Mix
I
Maria- Ricky Martin
Feeling So Real- Moby
Somewhere Over the Rainbow- Marusha
Forever Young- Interactive
House of God ($50 Mix)- DHS
Egg Man- Beastie Boys
They Want EFX- Das EFX
Revival!- Me Phi Me
Summertime- DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince
I Used to Love H.E.R.- Common
Big Poppa- The Notorious B.I.G.
II
Frenchapella…How Do you Save Love?- Deee-Lite
Bizarre Love Triangle- New Order
What Do You Want From Me?- Monaco
Take a Chance On Me- Erasure
Go West- Pet Shop Boys
Everytime You Touch Me- Moby
Move Your Ass- Scooter
Temple of Dreams- Messiah
Groove Is In the Heart- Deee-Lite
Testify- Parliament
Chapter 4:
Monaco
I
The evening of Wednesday, August 27 1997 wasn’t different from most of the nights that summer. Rafa was at work and Papo had new parent orientation at school so my mom and I were left home alone. In the craziness that was senior year I hadn’t had much time with Mom, so it was nice to spend some time alone with her before I left for Willis. We didn’t do anything particularly interesting, we just sat around and watched the Cubs pull out a late win over the Expos at Wrigley on TV before making dinner and settling in for the night; me with some Henry Louis Gates book Willis had sent me for their freshman seminar and her with some Christian spirituality book or another in Spanish.
I remember looking at my mother reading that book and wondering when she became the type to read books like that. It’s not like my mother was an atheist b
efore this sudden spiritual awakening, it was just that she was more of a- be nice to others and go to church periodically Catholic in my mind. Not the kind of person who spent their free time looking for Christ’s message for them in her daily life. I guess that my confusion was yet another indication of how far apart my mother and I’d drifted during the last year. Thinking about how far we’d grown apart in one year living under the same roof filled me with a peculiar dread about the decades that were to start after I left for college the following week.
Our comfortable and familiar silence ended around 8p or so the phone rang.
“Hello?” My mother said as she answered. “What?”
I could see the blood draining from my mother’s face and in a move stolen from every movie where the heroine gets some bad news she reached for the armrest to the couch and sat down very, very slowly.
“Pero como? When? En Sherman?” She said into the phone.
The hospital? What? Someone was in the hospital? I thought. I was really confused. It couldn’t be Rafa because he was at work so the nearest hospital to him was Northwest Community. And Dad was …SHIT! DAD!
The Road to Goodbye Page 3
