As she spoke, the bell rang for dismissal, as if to answer her question. But they couldn’t even joke about it.
“The girls are waiting for me,” Dean said.
“You can’t just blow me off,” Laura said. “I can’t be here for you when you need me and spend the rest of my time wondering what’s going on in your head.”
“Sometimes you overthink things.”
“That’s better than what you do. I’m starting to see why your wife felt like she was shut out.”
“Who told you that?”
“You told me that. You told me everything about your life and now I’m just supposed to be the girlfriend you keep on the side?”
“Nobody told you to break up with your fiancé. If you needed me to be your excuse to change your life, that’s fine.”
“I didn’t need an excuse. You’re projecting things onto me.”
“I don’t have time to be analyzed, Laura. I’ve got three kids. I have to think about them.”
“You know I can’t argue with that.” Her eyes were filled with tears. “I think that’s why you’re saying it.”
“I’m sorry—”
“No, let me go. I’m going.”
He followed her into the hallway, but he couldn’t say anything more because Megan was waiting outside his office. She was sitting on a bench near the small gym, at a respectable distance, which made Dean think she must have overheard something.
“Hey, Megan. What’s going on? Did you talk to your dad about getting racing flats?”
“Not yet. My mom just wanted me to ask if you still need us to babysit tomorrow night.”
“Oh, yeah.” Dean had forgotten that he was supposed to go to an away game. Garrett had asked him to come along, a couple of weeks ago—not to coach, but to ride in the van with the Boosters, as a “special guest.” In the back of his mind, he’d thought of asking Laura to meet him there.
“So you’ll drop them off tomorrow?” Megan said.
Dean paused. He really didn’t want to go. This was his chance to cancel. He nodded and said he’d drop them off at five.
ON TUESDAY, STEPHANIE took her Psych I midterm and failed it. She had never failed a test before, and when she got it back, on Thursday, the letter was written so neatly and precisely that it didn’t immediately register as a bad thing. In her mind’s eye, an F would be written with a thick red pen; it would be angry-looking. This F was a small notation at the top right-hand corner of her blue book. She flipped through the pages, skimming the corrections in the margins of her error-ridden essays. She barely remembered writing them.
Next to her, the margins of Raquel’s exam were punctuated with checkmarks and stars. She had done well, somehow. Her mind wasn’t caught in the same fog.
“How’d you do?” Raquel whispered.
Stephanie shrugged. “Not great.”
“I pulled this B-plus out of my ass,” Raquel said. “I don’t like cramming, I never want to do that again.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” Stephanie shoved her booklet into her backpack. Something had shifted in her relationship with Raquel. Without discussing it, they’d stopped eating meals together and now only met to study in the library, where they couldn’t talk much. It was as if Stephanie had swum out to a place that Raquel didn’t want to go. Or maybe it was simpler. Maybe Stephanie had admired Raquel and now she didn’t and without that admiration, the coziness between them was gone.
The professor started to go through the exam, question by question. Stephanie couldn’t take it. She excused herself to use the bathroom, but once she was in the hallway, she knew she was going to leave the building. Outside, the day was overcast, the sky a dull white sheet in need of washing. She went to the library to check her e-mail. There, sitting in her inbox, was a message with the subject line Re: Nostalgia’s a bitch. She opened it hungrily.
Steph, I am so sorry I didn’t answer this sooner. I kept putting it off because I wanted to say the right thing. Anyway, I’m sure you’re feeling much better about school now. The first weeks were hard for me, too. I think I had this ideal in my head. I thought none of the guys here would be like the guys we knew in high school because they were smart, but it turns out that being smart does not prevent you from being a boring asshole. Also, it has to be said, there are a lot of nerds here. And the drinking is out of hand. Apparently it gets worse in the winter. I don’t know how that is even possible. All that being said, I am pretty fucking happy. My roommate is really funny and he’s getting me into improv comedy. We’ve been going to shows in town. And my classes are amazing. For the first time in my life I am struggling to keep up and it’s a weirdly good feeling. I already know I want to go to grad school, maybe even get a PhD. It feels possible. There is such a huge distance between my life here and my life at home. I don’t know if you feel that way, too, but it makes me feel lonely sometimes. This is going to sound so sentimental but I was thinking of you the other day, wondering what kind of person you are going to grow up to be (and at the same time wondering what kind of person I am going to be) and imagining us as friends ten years from now. It was all very vague but I just had a strong sense of how happy we would be, and that maybe the hardest thing—leaving Willowboro—is behind us. It was a big leap for me. Maybe not as much of one for you, because you always knew you were going to have a different kind of life from your parents. One more thing, Steph, I had a dream about your mother: She was walking in a field behind my house. I stopped her and asked if she needed directions. She said, “Oh no, I just wanted to let your father know that I’m dead.” I said, “Because my dad’s a pastor?” But she didn’t answer and that was the end. I don’t know what the dream means, probably my own Freudian shit, but when I woke up it was like I had seen your mother. I remembered so many things about her—the smell of her hair and her smile and the way she had of pausing, very slightly, before she answered a question. And I thought, if I can miss her this way, then Stephanie must really really miss her. So I am so sorry, Stephanie, I am just so sorry. I don’t know what else I can say except that. And I miss you. And I hope we will always be friends.
Love, Mitchell
Stephanie read the e-mail twice. Then a third time. She inhaled deeply through her nose every time she reached the end, needing to keep back her tears. Relief, sadness, and a sense of deep, deep longing. She closed her e-mail without answering Mitchell’s message and left the library. Outside, she let out a brief, involuntary moan. Then she felt better. Not good, not normal, but better. Something had been cleared away. She felt she would never forget this day in her life, the cold air on her face, the gray sky, the worn grass, the red brick, the bare trees, and the voices of her classmates in the distance. She walked back to her room, and as she made her way down the paved pathways, she listened, with childlike concentration, to the sound of her own footsteps.
THE NEXT MORNING Stephanie woke up early, had a quick breakfast of raisin toast, and headed toward the other end of the campus, to the history building, where her academic adviser had his office. Every first-year student was assigned an adviser, a professor randomly selected and, more often than not, ill-suited to his advisees. In Stephanie’s case, this was Professor Haupt, a short, good-humored man whose glasses were almost always pushed to the top of his forehead, balancing uncertainly, waiting to be called into service.
Stephanie knocked softly on his door, nervous because she was visiting right at the beginning of office hours. When no one answered, she turned to leave, only to see him coming down the hallway carrying a cup of coffee and a large muffin on a paper napkin. He seemed so contented that she didn’t want to disturb him. She began to write her name on the sign-up sheet outside his door, as if this had been the original purpose of her visit, but when he saw her, he called to her.
“Sarah! How can I help you?”
“It’s Stephanie,” she said.
“Oh, right. Beg pardon. I got the S right, at least.”
He invited her into his office and she sa
t down in a wooden chair across from his desk, which was noticeably messier than on her previous visit, at the beginning of the school year. There were stacks of file folders, fat with student papers, as well as piles of books, all of them about Lincoln or the Civil War.
“I’m reviewing a new Lincoln biography, and it’s taking over my life,” Professor Haupt said, clearing a space for his breakfast. “I’m also writing a book about Lincoln, fool that I am. If you go into academia, do yourself a favor and stay away from the great men. They’re already covered in other people’s fingerprints, so the best you can do is to write about the fingerprints—or over the fingerprints. Remind me, what are you thinking of majoring in?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” Stephanie said. “I came because I need to use my freshman drop—for Psych I.”
“Are you sure?” Professor Haupt asked. He pushed his glasses down and began to search for her file. “As I recall, that’s not the most challenging course on your schedule.”
The freshman drop was a kind of safety net for first-year students, allowing them to stop taking a class midsemester, no questions asked, and with no adverse effects on their GPA. Students often invoked its magical powers in conversation when they were feeling nervous about an upcoming test or paper, but Stephanie had not yet heard of anyone actually using it. She wondered if she had misunderstood and suddenly worried that she would be penalized for using it on a gut course.
“I just failed the midterm,” she said.
“You can make it up on the final and with the labs.” He had found her file and was flipping through it. “At the very least you could wait a few weeks and see how you feel.”
“I don’t want to study psychology,” she said. “It’s not what I want to learn right now.”
Professor Haupt’s face registered surprise, and she knew she sounded stubborn, like she was issuing a pronouncement to the world: I refuse to learn psychology. The truth was, she didn’t want to waste her psychology professor’s time. Or her own. She had other things to learn.
“Fair enough.” He handed her an add/drop form and continued to look through her file while she filled it out. “I didn’t realize you were from Willowboro,” he said. “That’s a very small town.”
“It’s not that small,” she said, feeling defensive. He probably thought she was on the slow side. Admitted for geographic diversity.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love Willowboro.” Professor Haupt pushed his glasses back up to his forehead.
“You’ve been there?” Stephanie said.
“Many times. I wrote a book about the Battle of Antietam.”
“The single bloodiest day in American history.”
“That’s right! My book was actually about the hospitals that sprang up nearby, the way people turned their houses and barns into makeshift infirmaries. You probably already know this, having grown up in the area, but Lincoln visited several of these residences. But there are no official records of it. All we know of his visits is from the letters that soldiers wrote home. Apparently, he gave speeches at each one—incredibly beautiful speeches. One man wrote to his daughter that every soldier was moved to take out his handkerchief.”
“That’s interesting,” Stephanie said neutrally. She was a little bit suspicious of anyone who fetishized the Civil War. It was always men and boys who knew the battles intimately, memorized the gains and losses and the weather patterns and the terrain. She got the feeling they saw these old, prenuclear wars as a kind of lost sport—a pure, brutal game that could only exist in a simpler time.
Professor Haupt pushed his glasses back down to sign Stephanie’s add/drop form. “I would give anything to hear those speeches. History is such a heartbreaking field. Don’t become a historian.”
“I won’t,” Stephanie said. “Thank you.”
Classes were letting out when she left the history building. Stephanie headed toward the campus center to get her mail. She was waiting in line at the packages window when she saw Raquel checking her mailbox. Her maroon hair was in a stubby ponytail, and her natural color showed at the roots like a dark halo. She must have felt someone staring at her because she looked up and Stephanie had to wave.
“You disappeared!” Raquel said.
Stephanie just nodded.
“You waiting on a care package?”
“Yeah. Probably another Bible from my aunt.” Stephanie still felt compelled to be sarcastic in Raquel’s presence.
“Isn’t it totally bizarre that we’re studying serotonin right now?” Raquel leaned in to whisper, “I mean, considering?”
“That’s karma for you.” Stephanie had no idea what she meant. She was just trying to get this conversation over with. She realized she’d been fooling herself: She and Raquel were no longer friends. They were acquaintances, and in a few months, they’d be even less than that. At graduation, Raquel would go back to using her real name, Kelly. Her hair would be a deep, good-girl brown, her clothes would be ironed, new, preprofessional, and she’d have a one-way ticket to graduate school. That was her future, if she wanted to take it, and she would, because it was never really going to be any other way. She was like Theresa, except she wasn’t as kind.
The boy working at the package window called to Stephanie, and she used it as an excuse to say good-bye to Raquel, who seemed equally relieved to go.
“You have two,” the boy said, glancing at her slip. He excused himself and then returned with a large box from her aunt and a small white FedEx package from her father. It had been mailed two-day express, a lavish expense. Guilt sickened Stephanie. It felt like a poison she had to spit out.
Back in her room, Stephanie opened her aunt’s package first. The box was full of food: pretzels, Hershey bars, dry-roasted peanuts, raisins, jars of peanut butter and Marshmallow Fluff, gummy bears, gum, mints, and a shoebox of homemade chocolate chip cookies. At the bottom of the package was a folded-up newspaper article and a Garfield card containing a ten-dollar bill and a coupon for Herbal Essences. How did she know Stephanie’s favorite shampoo? Families were so strange. The trivial things you knew, the big things you didn’t. The two getting confused, one masquerading as the other. Her aunt had written a short note:
Dear Stephanie,
Hope you’re having fun at school! We’re fine here but we miss you. You’ve probably heard from your dad how well Megan is doing. She’s a runner now on his team. Her picture was in the Sunday paper. I put a clipping in the box.
Love,
Aunt Joelle
Stephanie unfolded the newsprint and there was Megan running, the camera catching her midstride, head-on, so that she appeared to be floating above the ground. Her expression was pained, making her seem older. Behind her was a huge expanse of sky bordered by pine trees. Where were they? It looked like Colorado. Stephanie skimmed the article, which covered several cross-country races across the county. Megan’s surprise win was mentioned in the first paragraph. The reporter noted that she was coached by “Willowboro’s former football coach.” That bugged Stephanie. It was like her father was getting credit for Megan’s talent.
She opened her father’s box, expecting something practical like her mail from home. Instead she found a fleece jacket. She unfolded it, baffled by the gesture. It was the kind of present her mother would have sent her, because her mother always wanted her to wear the thing that everyone around her was wearing. And she would have been right about this jacket because everyone had them. It was kind of a joke between her and Raquel. They called them Muppet pelts.
Stephanie pulled it on. It was cozy, she had to admit. She got why people wore them. She checked her reflection in the full-length mirror that hung from the bedroom door. She had lost weight and her clothes fit her loosely, her boring clothes: faded brown corduroys, a black turtleneck, black Chuck Taylors. The purple fleece was a dose of richness; it would be called aubergine or maybe just plum in a catalog. She recalled a line of dialogue from the matinee she’d gone to on Sunday: “a plum plum.” The movie had sta
yed with her longer than she’d expected. Much of it took place in an abandoned farmhouse that reminded Stephanie of an old, falling-down stone house that she used to play in as a kid. It was in the woods, on the other side of the creek. You had to cross over at the shallow part, where Robbie and Bry liked to build dams. Maybe it was one of Professor Haupt’s Lincoln houses. As a little girl, Stephanie dreamed of buying the house when she grew up—buying it and fixing it up. She was obsessed with fixing things up. When she drove through town with her mother, she would try to imagine how everything would look if the buildings were remodeled and made to appear new again—still with their old façades, but with fresh clapboard and shingles and doors. It bothered her that things got old and fell apart. It wasn’t until she was older that she learned to see the beauty in decay and even gloom. Grunge had schooled her in that sensibility. Or maybe it was her way of learning to live with her mother.
Stephanie got her books together to go to the library. She was tired and depressed, but she had to catch up on her reading for her medieval studies class. She thought of Professor Haupt telling her not to study history. He was one of those people who told you not to do the things they clearly enjoyed, some kind of defensive irony. Or maybe it was the luxury of those who paid nothing for their happiness. She was never going to be like that. She was never going to pretend like she wasn’t feeling something.
THE AWAY GAME was in Plattstown, a half hour’s drive. Dean dropped the boys at Joelle’s before dinner and headed toward the highway, a route that took him by Coach’s. He pulled into the bar’s parking lot knowing that he was never going to make it to the game. It was an out-of-body feeling. He knew he should go for the sake of his players, but they were playing fine without him. They weren’t going to be a championship team, like last year’s, but Dean doubted that he could have brought them to that level anyway. They were too young. Key players had graduated. Last year’s team had been special; there was an intensity to that group, a brotherly dynamic that let competition, love, and aggression mix together. He wondered if girls could have that, too, if he could build the cross-country team the same way he’d built the football program.
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