“What’s ‘gullible,’ miss?”
“It’s on your next vocabulary quiz. I gave you the words last Mon— you know what? It doesn’t matter, Billy. It really doesn’t matter.” He was nearly giddy as he shuffled rapidly off in the direction of the boys’ room.
I looked down at my feet, then up at the ceiling. Then down at my feet again. If I’d had the choice, I wouldn’t have reentered my classroom. There was something about covertly ordering a fourteen-year-old boy to jerk off that really took the idealistic wind out of my professional sails. Besides, Pablo clearly had the class under more control than I ever would.
I looked in through the glass in the door and saw the students sitting up and paying rapt attention to Pablo. He was speaking with authority, gesticulating to make points, and pausing to answer questions. He carried himself with the regal bearing that comes naturally to those who are doers and winners, those who set goals and accomplish them. As he captivated that audience of his fellow ninth-graders, Pablo seemed much older than a fourteen-year-old freshman. Which made sense, because he was a seventeen-year-old freshman.
I shifted my gaze to the board and saw that he had drawn detailed, labeled diagrams of the Glock 29 and the Glock 36 semiautomatic pistols. He had even spelled “sub-compact” correctly. I smiled proudly and stayed in the hallway for another few moments, watching a truly gifted educator at work.
Chapter Nine
Maybe, Baby
As my year teaching high school in Texas drew to a close, I knew I had to devise a plan. To my deep disappointment, I realized I would never be properly compensated for my favorite pastime: sitting in the local Middle Eastern restaurant/hookah bar/grocery store, scribbling my feelings in a black-and-white mottled notebook and sipping very sweet Moroccan mint tea. I hated most things about teaching, except for the standing-in-front-of-a-crowd part. The only other profit-generating occupation I could think of that would employ an audience was stripping, and I am neither a confident nor a talented dancer. And while I could entertain a crowd of teenagers with relative ease, I had no other discernible skill. Changing children’s lives, it seemed, was my best option. I decided to apply to graduate programs in teaching, figuring I could always write “on the side.” I conveniently ignored the truth I knew so well: teaching high school leaves room for absolutely nothing “on the side” beyond exhausted stabs at dilettantism, and drinking.
I got an A in the course I took in Texas to make up my missing credits, and I knew my diploma from Warren Wilson was forthcoming. Because I couldn’t wait to resume my old life, I applied to Western Carolina University’s master’s program in teaching. I maintained the fantasy that I would move into an adorable rented Victorian house in Asheville with my long-distance carpenter boyfriend Tom, a place he’d fix up in exchange for a discount on the rent. I’d go to WCU, get my degree, and get a nice job teaching nice students at a nice private school, something without too much Christ in the curriculum (a little Christ was okay). I’d have an organic garden (even though I couldn’t even keep a spider plant alive) and we’d get a puppy and I’d cook all the time (even though I didn’t know the difference between baking powder and baking soda) and he’d propose to me and give me a gorgeous vintage ring with a non-bloody gem (ooh! Maybe a sapphire!), and then we’d buy a cute gingerbread cupcake house together and start a new garden and the puppy would run around in the yard and I’d get pregnant and deliver painlessly via a C-section from which I’d immediately recover, and I’d lose all the pregnancy weight plus some, because I’d breastfeed, like a proper back-to-nature hippie, and we’d have the sweetest little family in the whole wide world and when the baby was napping I’d write a bestselling novel and we’d be totally rich.
But I also harbored another fantasy of what my future might hold. I’d nurtured the dream since childhood, tucking it into the very tiny corner of my mind where all things were possible. This was also the corner where a sense of adventure and freedom reigned, an itty-bitty infinitesimal space where risk seemed like a reward rather than a death sentence. In this wee little nook, which was too small and insignificant for Fear or Doubt to ever notice, I folded up and tucked away a very big plan that I knew would never come to fruition. If you visited this secret hideaway in my mind (you would have to crawl in, as the ceiling was too low for standing), you would have found a degree from Columbia University in the City of New York. That’s what I wanted. And that’s what I knew I would never get.
Still, it didn’t hurt to dream. I’d been wondering what life was like at that particular overpriced institution of higher learning since I was in the seventh grade. That was the year I took the SATs for the first time (my parents and I agreed it was excellent practice). I got a high score for a thirteen-year-old, and this was significant enough to fill my parents with the hope that in a few years, I’d nab a full ride to . . . to . . . well, it didn’t really matter where.
When I was fourteen, I read an article in Sassy magazine, for which the admissions committee at Columbia University inexplicably allowed a reporter to sit in on the meeting in which the powers-that-be decide who gets in and who gets a polite “no thank you” letter. It was fascinating to read how the different officers decided who was worthy and who wasn’t. There were the obvious measures of success—test scores, GPAs, academic awards—but then there were the less tangible aspects of a student’s value. Did he or she write a moving or funny essay? Had he or she overcome a disability or personal tragedy? Was he or she a curious, motivated learner? I read that Sassy article over and over, combing it for clues that would help me get into this mythical place where everyone read really impressive books all day and played Frisbee on something called a “quad.”
Then my mother suggested we visit the actual campus, and I became the happiest eighth-grader in the world. Though my usual queasy/nauseous/terror-of-death combo was present during the ride into the city, the actual campus tour was a blissful marvel. All those columns! All that brick! All those cute boys on the quad, which turned out to be a green rectangle of grass in front of the majestic Low Library, where they filmed Ghostbusters! Later, I learned that Low was now just an administration building, but it had the famous Alma Mater statue and those beautiful, oft-photographed steps. I felt like I’d stepped into an enchanted world, a world full of people just as fascinated by literature and art as I was, a world where nerds were safe from ridicule and where sophisticated intellectual discourse took place twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Most important, it was a world without parents.
Unfortunately, it became clear within a few years that I was not Columbia material, academically at least. And by the time I was twenty-four and applying to graduate schools, I knew for sure I’d never get into my childhood dream school.
Among the many reasons my attending Columbia was an impossibility, a few stood out. First, my grades weren’t high enough. In high school, I’d gotten mostly As and Bs, but those were hardly the stellar marks expected of an Ivy League student. And college . . . well, that hadn’t gone so smoothly.
Second, there was the whole terrified-of-living-in-a-city thing. Specifically, there was the lifetime-fear-of-Manhattan thing. While I’d managed to adjust enough to be able to enjoy day trips and even the occasional overnight stay at Alexandra’s aunt and uncle’s apartment in the big city, I still didn’t greet the idea of life in New York with excitement. It was too big, and too hot in the summer, and too cold in the winter, and too bright at night, and too busy, and too gray, and too smooshed-together. I wasn’t thin enough or glamorous enough or hip enough to make a splash there. I’d get lost in the crowd, and I’d freak out and choke on my own terror and go crazy all over again.
Besides, what did people in New York City do when they waited for the subway and had to pee? I thought about this frequently. I also wondered what happened if they got stuck on the subway, and what happened if the air-conditioning on the subway broke on one of those face-melting, humid, hundred-degree Manhattan summer days. Terrorist bombings di
dn’t enter my mind, but the thought of not being able to get to a proper bathroom gave me nightmares.
Besides, a teaching degree from Columbia would take me away from Tom. We’d been together for almost two years, which to me meant that we were destined for the altar. What started in Asheville became a long-distance relationship when I moved to Texas. Early in my desert adventure, he drove all the way out to see me, carrying scrap lumber in the back of his van so that he could build me a bed when he got to my new apartment. This genuinely generous and romantic feat distracted us both from the fact that we made each other miserable. He criticized me constantly out of a misplaced desire to save me from myself; I cried jealously to him over the phone when he did anything remotely fun or interesting without me. I called him each night from the bed he built for me, and our conversations usually ended with one or both of us in a bad mood.
Yet I was sublimely happy to have him in my life, because what frightened me even more than the prospect of being trapped in a bathroom-less, A/C-free subway was the prospect of a life spent alone. A few years earlier, my spectacular breakdown in Boston had left me with the conviction that my mind was too volatile a thing to be left unoccupied. A relationship gave me something to focus on, obsessively, all of the time. And it gave me the chance to take care of someone else’s whims and worries, which I did religiously, whether he wanted me to or not. This in turn provided the alluring option of feigning martyrdom whenever he got angry with me. Truly, dating me must have been a party and a half for the guy. I loved him desperately, and couldn’t wait to get back to Asheville.
Still, there was nothing wrong with dreaming about a school I’d never actually attend. I might as well apply to Columbia, just for the fun of it, just so I could say I’d finally gotten the chance to fill out that powder-blue application and mail it off to New York City. So I printed it out, and while pondering whether to write in black or bubblegum-pink ink, I called Tom.
“Hey,” he said, and my heart bounced in the way it always did when I first heard his voice. I still idolized him, even though I sometimes fantasized about setting his tool belt on fire.
“Guess what I’m doing?” I said, in the worst possible way in which a woman can pronounce those words. “Guesssssss what I’m do-inggggggggg?” with a chirpy trill at the end.
“I can’t imagine,” he said.
I paused and grinned at my reflection in the mirror.
“Filling out my application for Columbia!”
Silence.
Oh my God, I thought. He’s upset. Oh my God oh my God. He’s upset. Oh, that’s—that’s—that’s awesome! He doesn’t want me to go to Columbia! He wants me to go to WCU so we can live together and do that thing with the garden and the puppy and the baby and the vintage fair-trade non-diamond ring! It’s sort of like I told him I was kind of maybe interested in another guy, and it made him value me more! Awwww.
“Oh honey,” I said. “Don’t be scared. Even if I got in, I wouldn’t go. I just wanted to see if I could get in. It’s this dream I’ve had since I was a little girl. But you’re bigger than that dream. I want to come home to you, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
More silence.
“Are you mad?” I asked, a familiar note of anxiety creeping into my voice. “I hate getting you mad. I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. I feel so bad. I didn’t mean to worry you. I’m really totally one hundred percent committed to us and to our future together, I promise. I really, really, really—”
“How much did you spend on the application?” His voice was stern.
I was taken aback.
“I’m spending . . . I’ll send a check for seventy-five dollars with the application.”
He sighed loudly.
“Baby?” Now I wasn’t sure exactly what I had done wrong, but I knew I could apologize for it repeatedly, until my apologies annoyed him into forgiving me.
“Why would you waste money on an application for a school that’ll never take you?” he said irritably. “You can’t get into Columbia.”
Everything got very quiet then, on both ends of the call. I felt something bumping against my ear and realized with a start that my hand was shaking. At the same time, a feeling I couldn’t identify rose in my stomach. I immediately wondered if I were having some kind of stroke, or if I’d suffered irreparable nerve damage while printing my name on the application.
Then I looked at my other hand. It was clenched. And I realized, to my shock, that I was angry.
Angry. I didn’t get angry, or at least I tried not to. Whenever I started to get mad, I took deep breaths and stuffed the feeling down into some box deep inside me. Anger was something men displayed, and women were the ones who soothed them. Only cunts got angry and showed it, and I wasn’t a cunt. I was a nice person. I was a very, very, very, very, very nice person.
And he was just looking out for me. Tom was being protective, really. He knew sometimes I spent too much money on silly things, and he was trying to instill good habits in me for our financial future together. And besides, he was right, wasn’t he? Sure I’d done well in the class I’d taken in Texas, and those credits would enable me to finally graduate from Warren Wilson. But I still had those two Fs on my transcript, and my graduating GPA was barely a B. Plus, I’d taken six years to finish college. I didn’t go to any good schools, either. I didn’t win any impressive awards or do anything spectacular other than drop out that one time and go to the hospital that other time, and you didn’t get bonus points with Ivy League admissions officers for being a recovering mental case with a history of “episodes.”
I opened my mouth, and what I meant to say was, “You’re right, Tom.” But to my surprise what came out was, “I’m gonna get in.”
“Sara,” Tom said in the tone he used when I was being childish. “You’re basically throwing seventy-five bucks away.”
I looked at the black pen and the bubblegum-pink pen and realized I had a third option resting on the floor near my foot. Purple. The favored color of royalty, like Queen Elizabeth I, and Prince. Yes. I was going to use my purple pen. And maybe draw a picture of myself in pink, in the margin, to be funny. Admissions officers had to slog through a kabillion of those applications, right? Must get boring after a while. I could probably make somebody laugh if I drew something really goofy. And I could probably make them laugh even harder if I wrote a really funny essay. How many times a day did admissions officers get to laugh? Probably not many. They had to read transcripts all day, and everyone knew transcripts were just lists of numbers and letters that totally didn’t represent the actual worth and awesomeness of the prospective students who had earned said numbers and letters.
“You’re being irrational,” he added.
I thought, You stupid fucking fuck, I’m going to make you eat your words, shit them out, smear them on your face and walk naked through the center of Asheville. I will fucking destroy you. I hate you so goddamned much! I hope you fucking die!
“I love you,” I said. “Gotta go.” And I hung up the phone.
The next morning, bleary-eyed and queasy, I walked into my first-period class and collapsed into a chair.
“Damn, miss,” a girl with tattooed eyebrows said with a whistle. “You look busted today.”
“Yes, Teresa,” I said faintly. “Yes, I suppose I do.”
“You out partying or what, miss?”
“No,” I said, struggling to sit upright. “I was applying to Columbia University. I spent six hours writing an essay. Just mailed the whole thing out this morning.”
“Miss, didn’t you already go to college?”
“Yeah, but that was undergraduate college. This is grad school.”
“Grad school?” Teresa looked horrified. “What the fuck is that?”
“It’s for an advanced degree, like a master’s degree,” I said, trying to remember if I’d put on deodorant. “It’s not required. It’s just . . . you can go if you want to.”
“I do not fucking
want to,” Teresa said. “Like, for reals? No fucking way, miss. I’m doing an associate’s in fashion merchandising and that is fucking it.”
“That’s cool that you’re going to Colombia, though,” a boy said. “They make coffee down there, eh? They speak Spanish but I heard it’s like nothing you can understand. Plus there’s mad cocaine down there.”
“That is true, Manuel,” I said, thinking of the trust fund babies who regularly flood Ivy League universities with entitlement and nose candy each fall. “Now who actually did their homework?”
Months passed, and I got my acceptance letter from Western Carolina University. It came in a big, lovely envelope stuffed with various letters of congratulations, as well as a request that I phone the departmental office when I received the letter. I did, and was bowled over with excitement when a honey-voiced official offered me a full ride plus a paid teaching assistantship that would cover many of my outside expenses for the year.
“Can you believe it?” I squealed to Tom over the phone. “A full ride plus a teaching assistantship!”
“I knew it,” Tom said with what I told myself was pride. “I’m not surprised at all. Congratulations, baby. You deserve it.”
“Oh, Tom, you believed in me that much?”
“Well, it is Western Carolina University,” he said, laughing. “Did you really think there was a chance they wouldn’t take you?”
I was so excited by the good news that I didn’t feel bad about the inevitable rejection letter that I knew would arrive from Columbia any day. The point had been to say I’d applied. I could always be proud that I’d tried.
A week or two later, I opened my mailbox and saw something powder-blue poking out from beneath some bills and magazines. “About time,” I said to the rejection letter. I touched the blue corner, and realized to my surprise that it wasn’t the thin business-size envelope I’d expected. And then I pulled a big blue packet out of the mailbox.
Agorafabulous! Page 19
