After the Leaves Fall

by Nicole Baart

  He was still looking at me, and his face had taken on a serious expression, eyes and all. “Can I give you a little advice, Julia?”

  “Sure,” I said quietly.

  “Next class, don’t wear pink.” He sat back in his chair and regarded me with his arms crossed. Cocking his head, he nodded at the curls that had fallen over my shoulder. “Don’t curl your hair,” he said matter-of-factly.

  My mind flashed to Becca and her tousled bed head and wrinkled clothes. Maybe I should have followed her lead.

  “If you want to be taken seriously,” Parker continued, “you have to act the part. Your life is now engineering: Newtonian physics, linear dynamics, calculus, statics—” he gestured around the room—“and mind-numbing discussion hours. You don’t have time for makeup or curling irons. I doubt you’ll have time to depress the pump on your perfume bottle.”

  I shrank, hoping he couldn’t smell the Clinique Happy that I had generously spritzed on only hours before.

  “Don’t look so sad.” He patted my arm. “You want this, remember? You want to be an engineer.”

  I tried to smile but it was less than sincere.

  Ignoring my obvious lack of enthusiasm, he pressed me more. “What type of engineering do you plan to study? Biomedical? Chemical? Industrial, mechanical, or electrical?”

  “I’m thinking biomedical,” I managed, though my voice was small.

  “Good choice,” he affirmed. “Brighton partners with the state university medical school and hospital. You’ll be set.”

  I was grateful when someone brushed past me, and I looked up to see a man who could only be the professor making his way to the podium on the floor of the hall. It meant the beginning of my formal education as an engineering student, but it also meant that Parker would finally have to leave me alone. For someone who asserted that he could “say it like it is,” I found Parker to be the most perplexing person I had ever met. He seemed to have struck up some sort of friendship with me, yet I still didn’t know if he liked me or regarded me as a bit of a joke. Was he laughing at me or advising me because he wanted to see me succeed? I didn’t know how to take him.

  Apparently the entrance of our professor wasn’t enough to deter Parker’s running narrative. “Newbin is brilliant but arrogant,” he whispered, motioning to the gaunt, graying man who was almost angrily pulling stacks of papers from a box that he had carried in with him. “He’s a chemical guy, but they all take turns teaching the undergrad courses. Newbin just resents it more than most. Don’t get on his bad side.”

  I was past nodding or even acknowledging that he was talking to me.

  “Are you smart?” Parker asked.

  “What?” I gasped, shocked that his bluntness seemed to have no end.

  “I said, are you smart? If you’re not, Newbin will know it by tomorrow. He can sniff those things out from a mile away—and he doesn’t even have to see your work to make that judgment call.”

  I tried to gather myself. “I got a scholarship,” I finally offered as if it was proof of my intelligence.

  “Four thousand dollars every year for the next four years?” Parker asked.

  I nodded in disbelief. “How do you know my package?”

  “Oh, it’s standard. Half the people here got that scholarship. We’ve got a well-funded program.”

  I was so dazed I didn’t even attempt to respond. When Newbin started talking, my mind was too frozen to hear much of what he was saying.

  I was ready to at least try to collect myself and focus when Parker leaned over one last time and, hiding his mouth with the back of his hand, whispered, “I hope I didn’t scare you with all the nuts and bolts of engineering. You’ll be fine. You have friends in high places.” He winked at me.

  I looked at him blankly.

  “I’m the TA,” he said with a smile. “You know, teacher’s assistant? You’re just lucky I saw you before you start looking the part.”

  I couldn’t decide if I should consider myself fortunate or if I had just made the most problematic connection of my college career.

  Time and Again

  THE REST OF THE WEEK was dismal by anyone’s standards.

  I took Parker’s advice, not because I trusted him, but because after studying my peers in the engineering college, it seemed he was telling me the truth on that score at least. No makeup, boring ponytails, and frumpy clothes made my morning routine much simpler, but it made me feel invisible at best and downright ugly at worst. I sat in my liberal arts classes half slouched in my seat. The girls who had majors like education, business, or communications looked nothing like me. They didn’t have to stop caring in order to be taken seriously in their fields. And they were the ones the guys brushed past me to notice. They had dates by Friday night.

  I told myself that I wasn’t jealous. That I had always been—and would always be—just plain Julia and that looks and boys were about as important to me as watching grass grow. But things were different here, and although I didn’t want to be someone I was not, I did want to be someone I had never been before: intelligent and self-possessed and anything but unattractive, undesirable, unstable.

  Even Becca, who maintained the sloppy-cute, I-don’t-care-look that she had assumed for the first day of class, informed me that she was going out with some guy named Chet. Apparently, pajama bottoms and sleep-flattened hair aside, she was still attractive, desirable, stable.

  “I’m so not into him, but Kara likes his roommate, so I said I’d be a pal and double just this once.” Her eyes glowed even as she tried to appear blasé and uninterested.

  It wasn’t just the crummy image that I had to maintain in order to gain credibility in my chosen discipline. Classes were so indecipherable it was as if the professors were speaking in a foreign language. Homework was a steadily growing and seemingly unattainable mountain. And what baffled me more than anything was that Parker hovered between being a thorn in my side and my very best friend. Though I struggled to make sense of exactly which slot he filled in my confusing life, he simply defied explanation.

  As Newbin’s TA, Parker led our statics discussion group on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I was hopelessly lost and felt I had absolutely nothing to offer or add to the dialogue, but whenever a pause presented itself, eight times out of ten Parker would turn to me. Sometimes he would let me fumble and flounder before turning away almost in disgust, as if he had expected more from me and I had embarrassed him and let him down. Other times he would guide my comments and finish my thoughts so I seemed intuitive, exceptionally perceptive, and bright—capable of seeing things my classmates didn’t, though that couldn’t have been further from the truth.

  I wanted to drop out.

  Or at least change my major and get myself out of that suffocating cluster of classrooms where competition, derision, and even fear lurked so close beneath the surface that my heart beat faster with every step that brought me nearer to my next engineering class. But it had been only one week. One week, I reminded myself over and over even as I avoided meals because my stomach was too upset to find food appealing. One week, I whispered as I stared blankly at page 23 of a textbook that had cost me more than all the books for my liberal arts classes combined. “One week,” I kept repeating out loud because it could only get better after this. Things could only go up because I couldn’t fathom what it would look like for them to go down from here.

  Parker must have read my mind. It was an uncanny ability that he had picked up by midweek. As we waited for the class to begin on Friday, he pressed his shoulder against mine and said, “Hey, the first week is tough for everyone.”

  I was sitting next to him because I couldn’t make it to class any faster to allow myself to choose another seat. I had already decided to ask Grandma for a bike for Christmas.

  “Yeah,” I responded absently, wishing he would simply leave me alone.

  “Everyone thinks of dropping out,” Parker persisted.

  “What makes you think I want to drop out?” I asked, t
rying to spice my tired voice with a little indignation.

  He didn’t say anything, and against my will I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. He was raising his eyebrows at me as if to say, Please. Don’t even try to fake it.

  He was right and we both knew it. I couldn’t defend myself, so I cooperated and asked, “So it gets better?” because that was what he wanted me to say.

  “No,” he replied thoughtfully. “It gets much worse. But you get better at it.”

  I tried to take at least a little solace in that.

  Parker left me alone for a minute, and I thought about asking him to lay off a bit in discussion group. Even though I sat beside him during lectures, I wasn’t afraid of my classmates thinking he had found a pet—he was regularly way too nasty to me to make that suspicion seem warranted—but I disliked the attention anyway and hated the way he played me. In the end, I didn’t say a word. Mostly because I was a big chicken, and I was afraid a heartfelt plea could have the opposite effect and make everything much, much worse.

  When class was over and my mind was full and dizzy, Parker pushed almost rudely past me and started to leave. Turning back quickly, he nodded toward the statics book I was cramming into my bag and offered, “If the homework questions give you too much trouble this weekend, e-mail me.”

  His e-mail address was public knowledge, and the entire class had been given the opportunity to do exactly what Parker had just invited me to do, but the fact that he singled me out made me feel a bit unnerved. I still couldn’t discern if he liked me or if he had it in for me.

  “Thanks,” I finally said, not meeting his gaze. “I think I’ll be fine.” When I looked up again he was gone.

  I practically stumbled back from class, numb and thankful that for two whole days I didn’t have to set foot in a single lecture hall. Although the bag on my back was heavy with obligations to meet and requirements to fulfill, it actually felt lighter when I mounted the steps of my dorm hall because in less than twenty-four hours I would get to taste something familiar and sweet. Grandma was coming to visit.

  I had told Becca that my grandma was coming, and she seemed mildly excited to meet the woman who was my sort-of mother. Although we hadn’t further discussed my cordon bleu mom at her swanky five-star restaurant in Minneapolis, I did remember to nonchalantly warn Becca not to mention my mother to my grandmother.

  “They have a bit of a strained relationship,” I explained, trying to give her a consequential look. “I want to have a nice visit with my grandma. It would be best if we didn’t mention Janice.” Oh no. Now she knew my mother’s name.

  But Becca didn’t seem to register what I was saying. She was picking out an outfit for her not-really-a-date with Chet. “Sure,” she murmured noncommittally, holding a pair of dangly earrings against a silvery white blouse.

  So I had nothing to worry about. Friday night would be relaxing and quiet with Becca gone; I could get a head start on my homework. Saturday would bring Grandma and some semblance of normalcy and peace, and I didn’t even have to be concerned about Becca exposing my stupid lie. Maybe Parker was right. Maybe I was already getting better at this.

  I struggled my way through two of the five assigned questions for statics on Friday night. I had used up four sheets of graph paper already, and while I was slightly concerned because Newbin had informed us we would probably fill only four or five sheets in total, I was hesitantly confident that I was at least on the right track. It was a good thing, though, that both philosophy and psychology were only reading assignments and that I didn’t have calculus or chemistry until Tuesday—I would need a good portion of the remainder of the weekend to complete my statics homework.

  My sleep was the sleep of the exhausted hopeful, and it stretched uninterrupted—save for a brief, half-conscious hello for Becca at close to 2 a.m.—from just after midnight until ten o’clock Saturday morning. I hadn’t planned on sleeping so long, but my body must have needed the rest because my alarm clock, which was set for eight, was unplugged and I didn’t even remember doing it.

  The bathroom was empty, and I crossed my fingers when I stepped into the shower, only to be met with an almost blistering stream of water. I nearly yelled from shock and joy. I took a shower so hot and long that my skin was red and shiny by the time I stepped out to towel off. I finally understood why there was never any hot water. Once you stood underneath that invigorating, scalding spray, it simply wasn’t in your power to reach over and turn it off. It was a small, extravagant pleasure.

  I was in such a good mood as I brushed my teeth that I ended up taking an extra fifteen minutes to do my hair. Parker wouldn’t be seeing me today—it was Saturday. Relishing the thought, I tried to make curls like that girl had created almost a week ago. I wasn’t quite as accomplished as her, and my hair certainly didn’t look as spectacular as she had made it, but I still looked nicer than I had in days. As I left the bathroom, I actually smiled at myself in the mirror.

  Thomas was sitting on my bed when I walked into my room.

  Something in me detached when I saw him—it was so surreal and improbable that he was sitting only feet from me—and I didn’t even react at first.

  He had been chatting with Becca, who was sitting up in her own bed with the blankets wrapped around her knees and her sleep-blushed face making the most of the look that she pulled off so well. They had been sharing a laugh, and when I opened the door, Thomas turned toward me and smiled as if this were something familiar and comfortable, as if we three friends talked and laughed together often.

  “Your friend is great,” Becca piped up. “You didn’t tell me you knew such fun people.”

  I blinked and looked at Thomas, still too stunned to respond to his presence.

  He quickly got off the bed and crossed the room in a few strides to stand in front of me. His arms were open, palms up as if in supplication, and he said, loud enough for Becca to hear, “It’s so good to see you.” Just for me he added, “Your grandma said it was okay for me to visit.” Then he wrapped me in a careful hug.

  I didn’t hug him back.

  Thomas must have anticipated a little coolness on my part because he ignored my slight and took control without pausing. He turned to Becca and asked with an easy smile, “Do you think I surprised her?”

  Becca giggled.

  To me he said, “I was just telling Becca that you weren’t expecting me today.”

  I wanted to include, “Or ever.”

  Becca jumped in. “Julia was expecting her grandma today. Seeing you must be such a nice surprise.”

  Everything clicked. “Grandma’s not coming?” I asked, though it was more of a statement to myself. I was still processing the thought that it was Thomas she meant when she so vaguely mentioned a visitor.

  “Is that what she told you?” Thomas murmured.

  “No,” I clarified. “I just assumed that when she said visitor she meant herself.”

  Thomas shrugged with an air of artificial self-consciousness. “Sorry to disappoint.”

  “I’m only disappointed you didn’t bring any of those famous cinnamon rolls I’ve been hearing so much about.” Becca pouted.

  I hated her for flirting with him.

  “Two strikes,” Thomas confessed. “I’m not Grandma DeSmit, and I didn’t bring cinnamon rolls. But I will try to redeem myself.” He looked at me questioningly. “I was hoping you would let me take you out for a late breakfast. Or brunch. Or an early lunch. Whatever you want.”

  I was afraid if I said no, Becca would try to take him up on his offer, so I said yes even though I’m sure my eyes were communicating something very different. The single, choked word sounded strained even in my own ears.

  Thomas ignored the contradiction in my voice. “Good,” he affirmed, clapping with finality and then grabbing my fleece jacket off the back of my desk chair before I could change my mind. “You’re going to need this—it’s chilly,” he said.

  I allowed him to hold it for me while I slipped my arm
s into the sleeves. He lifted the coat onto my shoulders and gave them a little squeeze before he let go.

  “Bye, Becca,” he called with a friendly wave. “It was nice to meet you.”

  “Ditto,” she said, smiling from beneath her yellow gingham comforter. “Turn off the light on your way out, will you? I’m going back to sleep.”

  I clicked off the light, and we left the room in silence.

  We didn’t say much as we crossed through the building, but Thomas kept looking at me encouragingly, almost as if he was trying to ease my discomfort and let me know that he meant me no harm.

  For my part, I was convinced he was here to personally tell me that he and Francesca were finally engaged, that we were adults now and should put any childish misunderstandings behind us, and that he wanted me at his wedding because I’d been such a big part of his life for so long. I wondered what it would feel like to hear him say the words.

  I didn’t know how I felt about him after all this time. Other than brief interactions at church functions or special occasions when his parents had invited Grandma and me to their loud and happy family gatherings, Thomas and I hadn’t spoken in two years. Thinking back to the afternoon I first laid eyes on Francesca, I realized it was almost two years to the day.

  When we got to his car, Thomas opened the door for me like a gentleman. It was just something he always did, something his father had taught him was important, but it made me feel uncomfortable. It felt intimate, and Thomas only added to my unease by commenting, “You look really pretty, Julia,” as I lowered myself past him into the passenger seat.

  I didn’t say anything in response.

  When he slid in behind the wheel, he continued, “You’ve changed.” He was hard to read, but he seemed appreciative of whatever change had occurred in me.

  “You have too,” I said carefully, noticing how he still made something deep inside me resonate as if he had spoken in a canyon and I was the echo.