Dear Reader

by Mary O'Connell

  “There’s plenty of room on my side of the room,” I offered, which was true. I just had a purse, a backpack, a laptop, and two big suitcases—mine a Coach peony print, and Brandon’s, an ancient blue Samsonite plastered with a faded, partly peeled-off bumper sticker of a sexy mermaid that now only said: SAILORS HAVE MORE FU.

  “Put it there, partner,” I said, bizarrely affecting the voice of an old-time gunslinger while I motioned for him to put the box between my twin bed and desk. But Mr. Ping smiled at me gratefully, and over the protests of Nancy and her mom, he unloaded all the applesauce.

  I let them have their private good-byes. I met up with Brandon in the coffee shop downstairs. He was sitting at a table by the windows, a gloomy figure with an empty Pop-Tart wrapper there amongst the depleted parents refreshing themselves with Vitaminwater and Clif Bars.

  He looked so lost that I did a Miss-America-coming-down-the-runway walk to his table, smiling hugely and flipping my hair before I stopped in front of him and did a single step-ball-change, accompanied by jazz hands. “Everything’s fantastic!” Then I lowered my voice to a normal range and sat next to him. “You can totally stay. We’ll be pretty cozy sleeping in a twin bed, so rule number one: No more drunken freight-train snoring. I got a total of negative three hours sleep last night.”

  “Your math seems a little off.” Brandon squinted as if seeing me from some great distance. “She really said that it’s okay for me to live in the dorm room with you both? You already talked about it and got it all worked out?”

  Dear Reader, the memory of Brandon looking down at the table and nervously pressing the wrinkles out of the foil Pop-Tart wrapper made me feel as if I were swallowing razor blades but it also strengthened my resolve to find him, to join him. I kept searching for him as I trailed the pair of friends along Broadway. For the moment I had everything under control, and though I was still sick, I also felt the warmth of my good intentions: I am coming for you, Brandon. You are not alone.

  Of course, I hadn’t actually asked Nancy Ping if it was okay if my boyfriend lived in our dorm room—her parents had been in the room! Yet I sensed she would be okay with it and I imagined things would unfold gradually—one night turning into a week, turning into a month, and then into the entire fall semester and then the spring semester, too—a laid-back trajectory, so that I would never have to ask at all.

  “Nancy—her name’s ‘Nancy’ and she’s totally cool—said it’s fine, no big deal at all.”

  Brandon nodded. “Okay,” he said quietly. “Well. That makes one thing that’s working out, then.”

  Brandon had hoped to get a job as a taxi driver and then rent an apartment close to Columbia when he’d saved enough money. He loved to drive at home—sometimes he would get on the highway at night and drive just for relaxation—so driving a cab seemed a perfect fit. But when he had called the NYC Taxi & Limousine Commission—after being transferred from extension to extension—he’d finally spoken with a man who had seemed perplexed by his questions. One could not apply for a job as a NYC cabdriver, not really; driving a cab required investment money, good fortune, special schooling, and a prohibitive in-the-know aesthetic, as so many things in NYC did.

  “Let’s take a little walk, B.”

  “I’m not really feeling that great.”

  But I coaxed him up, and we were off, walking the main path bisecting the quad that made the Columbia campus look like a movie set, all stone benches and green lawns and postcard-friendly statues—The Thinker! The Library Lion!—and then we were on Amsterdam Avenue, a whole new world to explore.

  We went to the Hungarian Pastry Shop and admired the careful petit fours and dense baklava, the glazed, Technicolor glow of the kiwis and mandarin oranges on the fruit tartlets. (Brandon rued having spent money on Pop-Tarts.) We split a small pizza at V & T, where we were served by the crankiest old man in the history of cranky old men: He repeatedly moved our water glasses away from the edge of the table as if we were unsteady toddlers. But it was the best pizza we’d ever tasted, and so I asked Brandon the eternal question: “You know when I’m eating at Pizza Hut again?”

  Revived by the delicious food, he laughed easily. “I’m going to guess … the twelfth of never?”

  “Put it on your calendar.”

  We hadn’t planned a sightseeing excursion, but the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine was right across the street. We held hands and craned our necks, trying in vain to see the towering, ornate church in its entirety.

  O, Dear Reader. Seized by the Holy Spirit, by my own good fortune, I was entirely innocent of the fractured future. All of life in that August moment was distilled possibility: baklava and black olive pizza and someone to love.

  Brandon and I followed clutches of tourists up the steps and into the coolness of the cavernous church. There was a happy family right in front of us: The mom and dad were both sporting Oklahoma Sooners T-shirts, but the dad was also wearing a brand new Columbia University baseball hat. When he walked into the Cathedral, the dad looked at the ceiling and said, “Dang! You could put a lot of hay in this barn.” The college-aged son smiled tolerantly, more than tolerantly, his eyes behind his hipster Buddy Holly glasses looked so loving. Brandon was watching the family, his expression unknowable. Was he mourning his dream life, the one where his father was not a prisoner but a regular, responsible dude walking around with him on the Dodge City Community College campus: meeting the football coach, touring the gym and the locker room, and making a quick trip to Walmart for a case of Pepsi to stash in his dorm room before going downtown for steak dinners with the freshman football players and their families?

  I panicked. What had I taken from him?

  “Wow! Can you believe how huge this church is?”

  Brandon looked askance at my false brightness, but the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine truly is the national monument of American churches—expansive and ecumenical, and, according to the literature at the welcome booth, constantly being built and changed. We did not pay the suggested donation, as it was a mere suggestion, but I couldn’t resist buying a black tote bag that said MEET ME AT THE CATHEDRAL. I hung the empty bag on my shoulder, relishing its lightness.

  “Is this a Catholic church?” Brandon asked.

  I pointed to the Human Rights Campaign poster, the iconic blue and yellow stripes. “I would guess not. I think it’s Episcopal.”

  He nodded.

  He was not the sort of triple H—homophobic, hulking, and handsome—ex-football player from Kansas that you may be envisioning, Dear Reader. His mom had met her partner, Liesel, when Brandon was fifteen. Brandon loved Liesel; he loved the gift of security and normalcy she brought to their lives. Because of his mom’s previous stormy relationships with men, Brandon had seen a lot. He once told me: “If we ever have a daughter, I want her to grow up and marry another woman, not a man. I want her to be safe.”

  Liesel worked as a Head Start preschool teacher and brought home the majority of the bacon, albeit lean. Brandon’s mom was a lushly beautiful drummer who had given birth to him her senior year of high school. She had met Brandon’s dad at a Descendants concert in Omaha; her joke—which never drew more than the awkward chuckle—was that she knew him “briefly, but well.” She played in a number of semi-successful punk bands around the Midwest, always with little Brandon in tow.

  Dear Reader, lest this sound too bucolic—punk rock played in the cornfield, anti-establishment fun for a red-state child!—Brandon started drinking beer like chocolate milk when he was five, and his mother, never the brightest bulb, thought this was okay, because children drank red wine in Europe like it was chocolate milk. By the time I met Lisa, she had already fallen in love with Liesel and quit the bands and the men and the drugs and the various combos thereof; she did yoga and cooked complicated vegan dinners for Liesel and Brandon. Lisa also sold life-sized cloth dolls of her favorite musicians: PUNK SOFTEES. Though her website had lots of “traffic,” she was puzzled by her overall lack of financial succes
s and delighted by the odd, intermittent windfall: Once a German X fan had commissioned an Exene Cervenka Punk Softee for what seemed a staggering sum.

  Can I say that her work habits were not stellar?

  My senior year I would race out of school, get in Brandon’s truck, and drive to his house. (Mom, going to yearbook meeting, home for dinner!) Lisa would sometimes be relaxing on the living-room couch next to whatever half-finished Punk Softee she was creating. An odd tableau: Brandon’s mom drinking a Heineken and watching TV, as if on a chaste date with naked, sexless Joe Strummer, all fabric and stuffing and with one already embroidered eye next to a smooth blank of ivory cotton, as if he had been in a horrible, eye-obliterating accident. I would awkwardly sit next to Joe Strummer and Lisa on the couch and take in her beauty—her cheekbones could cut cheap steak—while making small talk, but I was the duplicitous face of suburban ambition, always thinking: Turn off the TV and let’s get cracking on that Punk Softee, sister!

  Still, if she was a bit lax about beer-drinking kindergartners and Punk Softee productivity, Lisa had always been adamant that Brandon attend Mass. So I thought that being in a church, the normalizing sanctuary of this childhood, might make Brandon happy, or at least give him a little serenity.

  We looked at the tapestries along the perimeters of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine and walked down the aisle of the sanctuary—wooden chairs for tourists and sightseers—and right up to cordoned-off seats closer to the altar, where I imagined the actual parishioners sat on Sundays.

  Brandon looked up at the altar. “I’m scared,” he whispered, as if talking to Jesus himself. “I don’t think this is going to work.”

  “Yes, it is,” I said brightly. “It totally is.” I cranked it up a notch, and apropos of nothing, added a shrill British accent. “Work it shall!”

  It sort of had to. Brandon had already passed on the football scholarships. He had no alternate plan. I put my hand on the back of his neck, that muscular nest. “It totally is, B.” To cheer him up, I licked his neck and ran my hand through his hair. As we had approached the altar, I had noticed a few roped-off areas along the sides of the church. I took Brandon’s hand and led him to the first alcove, and after a quick look around—the security guards had their backs turned, and the tourists had their cameras aimed at statues and tapestries, not wayward teens—I pulled him behind the velvet rope, an ornamental warning, and into a short hallway with two closed doors and a bulletin board listing volunteer duties.

  “Cait,” Brandon hissed, “we should not be back here.”

  I pressed my shoulder blades to the smooth coolness of the stone wall and pulled Brandon close. Dear Reader, I kissed him in the Cathedral.

  He protested of course. “Really, Cait? We are in a church.”

  I laughed and kissed him again, this time smack on the jugular. “Well, since we aren’t Episcopalians, it’s all good.” Just as he was relenting, kissing me back harder, I opened my eyes and saw a young-looking security guard in a navy blue uniform open his mouth.

  “Hey!”

  Brandon sprung off me, a pouncing leopard in reverse.

  “You two can’t be back here!”

  The security guard’s voice was loud, menacing even, but he politely lowered his eyes as I adjusted my scoop neck T-shirt, which had gotten pulled a little low. He wasn’t a pervert; he just wanted us out of there. “Don’t ever think you’re alone in the Cathedral. We have cameras everywhere. You can be arrested for being in these areas.”

  “Well, you’ll have to forgive us our trespassing!” I was proud of my churchy wit, but the security guard appeared immune to my charms. He gave a disgusted little tongue click and shook his head.

  Brandon glared at me, then turned to the guard. “Hey, man. We shouldn’t have been back here. We saw the rope and everything. I’m really sorry.”

  But the guard was talking into his headset: “I’m with the couple. I’m walking them out.”

  He pointed to the back of the church. “Let’s go. We aren’t pressing charges. You can’t do things like that in the city,” he said, correctly identifying us as bumpkins. “Maybe back in the day, before 9/11, you could find a cozy spot, and everybody would look the other way, but now? Just know you can pretty much count on being arrested if you’re somewhere you shouldn’t be.”

  Curious tourists whispered and gaped as the guard led us down the side aisle. Brandon had his hands in his pockets and his head down, but I smiled proudly, as if leaving the podium after my valedictorian speech: Thanks to each and every one of you! You all played such an important part in this! Best wishes, everyone! Best wishes! Because I had almost gotten arrested inside a church. My God, it was all so excellent! Anything could happen to a person in New York City!

  “You two need to use better judgment.” The guard held open the door for us, and then pulled it closed before I could offer up my slavering faux-gratitude for his life coaching.

  On the steps of the cathedral was a silver-haired man, a bit stooped, but still handsome in his security uniform. He was giving us a big “Ain’t love grand” kind of smile, and I grinned back shyly: Yes sir, it most certainly is. He looked a little melancholy, though, perhaps mourning the pre-9/11 world where life was freer, where darting behind a forbidden area could lead to a miracle of sorts: Conception in the Cathedral! The guard winked at me as we passed, and called out to Brandon: “Good night, Sweet Romeo.”

  We could still hear him chuckling to himself when we were down the stairs.

  “It was Juliet’s idea,” Brandon groused under his breath.

  And then we walked back to our room at Carman Hall, where Nancy met Brandon, where Nancy possibly fell in love at first sight, and we had a bit of bliss. Saturday became Sunday, and then Monday came, and Nancy and I went to class, and Brandon watched Netflix, and Monday bled into Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday, and Brandon became another roommate, and Nancy never mentioned his perpetual presence. We formed a cozy trio of companionship, watching Top Chef and Project Runway obsessively, always guessing who the winner would be. The three of us walked to Nussbaum & Wu for smoothies and to the Hungarian Pastry Shop for cookies and coffee, and to V & T for pizza. That first week at Columbia, all of Manhattan was shrunk down to our little neighborhood. The city below 110th Street seemed like pure whimsy—Wall Street? Times Square? The East Village?—and possibly nonexistent. On Thursday night I pressed five dollars into Nancy’s hand and asked her if she would mind going out for a latte.

  “It’s prostitution in reverse!” Nancy said cheerfully, packing up her backpack, and I couldn’t disagree, not really. The business of paying one roommate a nominal sum so you could have relations with your other, unofficial roommate was a delicate business indeed and, Dear Reader, I would omit it altogether, except to let you know that dorm life is full of shady etiquette, so fasten your seat belt.

  I digress, though. My first week at Columbia was rather exciting—for his inaugural lecture in Frontiers of Science, the professor had stripped to his underwear and sat in a folding chair holding a stuffed bunny rabbit while images of war and destruction played out on a screen behind him, all in the name of quantum physics. It was a science class my parents wouldn’t have envisioned when they rolled their favorite hyphenated word around in their mouths like the most sublime raspberry lozenge, pre-med. Caitlin is pre-med. I never had the slightest inclination to be a doctor, but because I was a thoughtful girl and they got such a kick out of the idea of me going to medical school, and because they were paying the bills, I indulged them in their misty, watercolored My-Daughter-Is-Going-to-Be-a-DOCTOR fantasy world for far too long: But, Dad, medical schools like for you to take a lot of writing classes. God, Mom, everyone knows that a broad base in the humanities is the key component of admissions. When it was time to apply to medical school, and I had to drop the nuclear reality bomb about the English Lit major, the truth left my parents as furious and wounded as awkward, overindulged junior high kids who had spent years bragging about all thei
r kick-ass gifts from Santa.

  It was clear from the subdued atmosphere of my Intro to Women’s and Gender Studies class—why were my privileged peers covertly checking their phones instead of discussing Audre Lord’s open letter to Mary Daly?—that I was not going to be the most dullardly student admitted to the freshman class. Far from it, actually. My first week at Columbia was a short, sweet respite of Happily Ever After.

  And then, that Friday night: three compound fractures in my right hand, my good hand.

  I was back at class on Tuesday, maneuvering my laptop with my left hand—a toddler could have typed faster—but when I wrote with my left hand my notes were a feathery jumble: illegible.

  Dear Reader, can I blame my subpar ambidexterity for the way things turned out?

  A guy in my Women’s and Gender Studies class took pity on me when I showed up with my hand in a fat, neon-orange cast. He zipped my books in my backpack for me and carried my backpack to Carman Hall, where I rushed him off with the quickest thanks, in case Brandon or Nancy were lurking in the lobby.

  Later that night he e-mailed me his notes.

  The next morning when I was leaving for my 8:30 Spanish class, there were flowers waiting for me at the front desk: a vase of violets the exact shade of the Virgin Mary’s iconic blue robes, and soft, snow-white pearls of lily of the valley that rose up over the violets like airborne confection, delicate as love itself. The card attached to the white vase by a length of pale blue velvet ribbon read: Caitlin, Hope your hand is feeling better. Such a drag to have that happen so early in the semester! Best, Miles.

  The elevator dinged, and I spun around nervously, but Nancy had already left for class, and Brandon was still sleeping. Still, I knew I had to ditch the bouquet. I pawed through the Chipotle trash in the wastebasket with my good hand and sunk it to the very bottom and then stuck a half-eaten burrito bowl over the pristine blooms. I ignored the drippy girl working the front desk: Oh my God, are you really just throwing those away? But the flowers stayed in my mind all day, and when I thought of the quiet blue and white palette of the violets and lily of the valley—the surprise of Easter flowers in autumn—my Judas heart flew up with the splashy joy of resurrection.