by Nicole Baart
I couldn’t look at him, and I didn’t know what to say, so I repeated my earlier attempt at an apology. “That was so . . . awful. I am so sorry.”
He reached across the arm of the couch to grab a paper towel from the end table. It was covered in unidentifiable crumbs, and he shook them onto the floor before handing the crinkled napkin to me. “Here,” he offered kindly.
I cleaned myself up, hiding my face in my hands for a moment under the guise of wiping away my tears. After a shaky breath, I balled the paper towel tightly in my fists and got up to leave. I still hadn’t looked at Parker once since he told me wordlessly that I had not passed the test. As I crossed in front of him, I glanced furtively at him out of the corner of my eye and tried to give him a wry smile.
He was studying me, and when he met my gaze, he put his legs up on the coffee table and would not let me pass. “You’re not going anywhere,” he informed me. “If you think you can deter me with a few tears, you’ve got another thing coming.”
I didn’t know how to respond, but I didn’t have to because Parker stood up to block my path. He cupped my face in his hands and examined me as if trying to burn in his memory each and every freckle and line. “You can cry with me,” he said faintly.
When we kissed, I knew that there were too many emotions behind it. Sorrow and disappointment and anger assembled eagerly beside longing and desire—a legion of pent-up aches and loneliness. I needed him like a drowning woman gasping for air, and he responded to my intensity with equal passion. It was mindless and foolish, but neither of us made any move to stop, and though the occasional spark of consciousness rose to the surface, I was either unwilling or unable to pay attention to it.
At some point he took my hand and led me to his bedroom.
I followed.
Aftermath
LATER PARKER GAVE a humorless little laugh and said that we should definitely use protection next time.
The room spun, and the nausea that I had been restraining for hours lurched into my throat so I could not speak or breathe. “Next time,” he’d said. I pressed my eyes shut because I had never planned on there ever being a this time. I was lying on my side and he was behind me, running his fingers down the length of my arm. My mouth was dry and forming words that he could not see and I could not distinguish. It wasn’t until I had repeated them ceaselessly for longer than I could remember that I finally realized I was whispering, Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. … It may have been a prayer. Or a curse.
Parker leaned over me, took my hand, and kissed each knuckle before tucking my closed fist under his chin. “Hey, you okay?”
I didn’t say anything and kept my eyes tightly shut. Maybe he would think I was asleep. Maybe he would leave me alone.
He didn’t do either. “I forget sometimes that you’re only eighteen,” he said softly. Then he sighed heavily and gave me back my hand. “You need a good night’s sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
I thought I would probably feel much, much worse in the morning, but I couldn’t say that. Instead, I managed to clear my throat in such a way that it sounded like affirmation.
He gave my shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Good,” he whispered, still trying to cultivate a carefree atmosphere though the room was thick with things unspoken. I couldn’t imagine what he wanted to say to me when words were so foreign to my petrified mind that I couldn’t form a single coherent thought.
Parker rolled onto his side away from me, and in a moment I felt him cover my bare arm with the sweater we had discarded.
I dressed and left in silence.
It was impossible that I was drunk, but the drive to my dorm room was an erratic mess of embarrassing proportions. I blinked and swerved and shook my head to give myself just enough perspective to keep the car between the curb and the yellow line. My hands were shaking, and I looked down at them as if from a great distance and realized that the rest of me was shaking too. I was cold. My teeth were chattering.
When I stepped from the car, it was dark and clear. There was no one in the parking lot, but the stars were a million prying eyes. In the silence and the stillness my body finally rebelled, and I vomited until there was nothing left inside me. I was void of tears, so my stomach had responded to the need to empty myself of something, to create an escape for some of the crushing horror that threatened to consume me. It didn’t help. I was still being devoured. Trembling, I touched my face and neck with ice-cold hands. It felt like somebody else’s face, somebody else’s hands. I wondered if death was this glacial and tremulous.
But whether you want it to or not, life goes on.
If there is anything that I will take to the grave as certain, it is that life goes on. It isn’t true that whatever doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger—sometimes you are left as little more than the most fragile, defenseless shadow of the person you once were, broken and insubstantial and weak and lost—but whatever doesn’t kill you does leave you vulnerable to another day. Your life—or what’s left of it—will go on. That is not always necessarily a good thing.
My life went on though I didn’t really want it to. Monday morning came on the heels of Sunday night just as it has since the beginning of time. I got up and got dressed and went to class because it was what I was supposed to do. I imagine I looked exactly the same. I sat in the same spots in the lecture halls and wore the same jeans that I donned at least a few times a week, and I was, for all intents and purposes, the same Julia that I had always been. Except that I wasn’t.
I didn’t blame Parker or Thomas—or anyone for that matter— and when I thought of seeing Parker in statics, instead of wanting to attack or avoid him, I was plagued by a need to apologize to him. I had to say sorry to someone—the desire for pardon, for someone to say that I was absolved, that I was forgiven, was as desperate inside me as the impossible wish that I had never gone to Parker’s apartment in the first place. One could never happen; the other was a possibility. The hours between waking and statics found me anxious and weary.
Parker was waiting for me in statics, and he held out his hand as if to steady me when I stepped next to him to take my seat. He couldn’t very well hold my hand in front of the entire statics class, but I could see in his eyes that he had to touch me somehow, and because I didn’t hate him, I placed my hand in his. For a moment, he squeezed.
“You look tired,” he commented gently.
“I am,” I replied. My voice sounded far away, as though I were calling up from the bottom of a deep well.
He didn’t say anything for a while, just watched me as if he could glean the right response from the tilt of my head or the pallor in my cheeks. I was thankful that he didn’t ask me if I was okay. “You know,” he finally started, “we may have gone too fast. Let’s slow things down a bit, Julia.”
It seemed way too late for such a feeble sentiment, but I nodded because it was what he wanted me to do. Then I whispered, “I’m sorry.” I meant it with all my heart, and I said each word with gravity and an earnestness that was so solemn as to be grim. I opened my mouth to say it again, but Parker smiled. It was the wrong reaction entirely. I looked at him, wounded and confused.
“You don’t have to be sorry!” he said. “It’s not that big of a deal. … Sure, it happened earlier than I would have anticipated, but …” He shrugged. “What are you going to do?”
He was a stranger to me. I did not know him and probably never had. Looking at him with a half smile on his face and an almost mischievous glint in his eye, it crossed my mind that I did not want to know him. But what can you do when nothing turns out the way you planned? when you don’t know what to do or where to go? You cling to what you do know, even if it is not what you want. Even if he is not who you want.
Parker was patient with me for a couple of weeks.
He was thoughtful, conscientious even. He sent me flowers once. The bouquet was simple white daisies with a yellow ribbon in a clear glass vase, and it hurt me a bit to look at them. It was apparent
that in Parker’s mind I was being a little ridiculous, a little immature because I was reacting so strongly to something that was simply the natural course of every adult relationship. He was indulging me, though it was against his better judgment, and I decided I should be thankful that at least he hadn’t run the second I became so withdrawn. I guess it was hard for him to understand that my one mistake with him was just the icing on the cake, the slip of hand that tumbled my castle of cards to a dismal, chaotic wreck. I felt like a little girl sitting among the mess and picking up cards one by one, trying to figure out where I went wrong.
I gave up entirely in my engineering classes and attended only because it was habit and because it was a sufficient place to wonder where I would go from here. Maybe it would be a good idea to get a job for a while and just figure out what I really wanted out of life. Maybe I could take Parker’s advice and start over next semester with a course load of classes that actually piqued my interest. But what I really wanted to do was crawl in a hole and close my eyes until everything faded enough that I could live without shielding my face. Everything felt too much—too bright, too loud, too intense.
One night in early December, Becca and I were actually in our dorm room at the same time getting ready for bed. The room was calm, and though I couldn’t explain why, I suddenly wanted to talk to her. Something compelled me to reach out of the trance that I had been in for weeks.
Becca hadn’t gone home for the Thanksgiving break and was so anxious to do so in a week that she had already begun packing for the monthlong Christmas holiday. A toothbrush poked from her mouth as she folded and refolded a blue sweater, then threw it on top of the open suitcase at the foot of her bed.
We hadn’t said much to each other as the semester drew on, and I found that I didn’t quite remember how to begin a conversation with her.
I tried. “Are you going to have enough clothes left for classes next week?” I meant it to sound teasing, but my tenor wasn’t right.
She glanced up quickly as if I were being sarcastic. “Of course,” she mumbled around the toothbrush, barely pausing to look at me.
I could hear her sucking from across the room, but I hardly even bothered to notice anymore. Becca had an odd habit of chewing on her toothbrush long after she had brushed her teeth. It was just one of the many quirks we each possessed that had accumulated into a mountain of grievances we held against each other.
I really wanted to ask her advice about something, so I pressed on though she didn’t seem interested in conversation. “You must be so excited to go home.”
“Mm-hmm …” Becca sighed, pulling a stack of jeans from the shelf in her closet. She added it to the growing pile in her suitcase. It landed with a dull thump.
“Are you still undeclared?” I asked as if it had just occurred to me. “It’s been so long since we’ve talked. I don’t even know if you’ve chosen a major.”
The slump of her shoulders made it evident that I was irritating her by continuing to talk. We had reached a sort of unspoken arrangement: we could cohabit tolerably by staying out of each other’s way as much as possible, but we admitted our differences and gave up trying to be chummy or close. Apparently I was breaking the tacit code. I didn’t say anything else.
Taking a cup from her desk, she dropped her toothbrush into it. After a deep swig from her open water bottle, she said, “Yeah, I’m going with social work.”
“Social work,” I parroted. “What made you decide that?”
Becca raised an eyebrow at me. “Because I liked the classes.” She turned back to her halfhearted packing. “You have to make a decision at some point,” she said offhandedly.
“I’m dropping out of engineering,” I said out of the blue, surprising even myself. I hadn’t admitted it to anyone yet, not even Parker—though he had deducted as much.
For the first time in a long time, Becca leveled me with a straight stare. She held my gaze for a moment before asking simply, “Why?”
“It didn’t feel right.” I shrugged, struggling to be nonchalant.
“What does your boyfriend think of that?” she asked, tipping the lid of her suitcase closed. “May I turn off the light?” she added.
“Sure.” I answered her second question so I had time to formulate a response to her first. She flicked the light off, and the ensuing darkness was leaden and absolute as my eyes adjusted to the change. I heard her crawl into bed, and I followed her lead. “Parker is more a friend than a boyfriend,” I said into the shadows because I didn’t want to admit that Parker didn’t know about my decision. And because I felt the slight need to defend—something inside me flinched when she referred to him as my boyfriend.
Becca was quiet for so long that I was sure she had decided to pretend she was already half asleep. But her breathing wasn’t even, and she eventually said, “He sure seems like a boyfriend.”
I didn’t say anything.
The bed complained noisily as Becca turned over, but she had rolled toward me instead of away. Her voice sounded close when she spoke again. “What are you going to do? I mean, if you’ve dropped engineering, what’s your major?”
“I don’t have one,” I confessed abruptly, the words longing to jump off my tongue.
“Oh. Well, hey, no big deal. You’ll figure it out.”
Encouragement from Becca’s lips made me smile in spite of myself. At what point had we switched places? When had she become so collected, so together? When had I become such a directionless mess?
“Yeah … ,” I said, drawing out the word. “My schedule is obviously complete for next semester, so I guess I’ll have to change all my classes. . . .”
“What will you take?” Becca asked, and I could hear her stifle a yawn.
I tried to give the question my full and complete attention. Math and the sciences had spilled out of my veins when I had realized how utterly defeated and useless they left me. I was almost too embarrassed to try again. What if I failed? On the other hand, I always had to fight and wrestle my way to a good grade in the humanities. I loved to read but not to analyze. I loved to write but only personal correspondence and the infrequent and often mortifying journal entry. My options seemed pretty limited. Becca was waiting for an answer. “I don’t know,” I finally offered weakly.
“Well, you have to have some idea,” Becca chided as if I were holding out on her.
“Not really,” I countered. “Maybe I should just get a job while I sort things out.” It was a hesitant suggestion, a careful statement that was more a question than anything. I was looking for approval or guidance or at the very least a little advice, even if it was poor advice. It had once been Becca’s specialty.
But she took my casual disclosure as the absolute truth. “You’re quitting?” she asked, her voice croaking on that odious word. I could see her silhouette in the dim light glowing from between the shades. She was sitting up rigidly and staring in the direction of my bed.
“No, absolutely not,” I quickly assured her. “I’m just … brainstorming. …” To be honest, dropping out didn’t sound like an altogether horrible option, but Becca was a little too excited by the possibility. Had I become that unbearable of a roommate?
“Oh.” She flopped back onto her pillow, turning away from me this time.
I found I didn’t really want to talk to her anymore either, and I rolled to face the wall.
After a moment she shot over her shoulder, “I guess you could always go and intern under your mother. That would be fun … living in the city …”
I bit the heel of my hand while I tried to come up with something to say. In the end, I didn’t have it in me to lie anymore, so I muttered, “Becca, my mom is not a chef. I think she’s a waitress.”
The hush from Becca’s side of the room was tangible. I wouldn’t have blamed her if she didn’t say another word to me, pathetic fraud that I was. As it turned out, she wasn’t going to let me off the hook that easily. “Julia,” she started and her voice was cool, “I’m not ev
en going to ask. But, girl, you have issues.”
She didn’t know the half of it.
Nineteen
ON DECEMBER 10, I turned nineteen years old. No one but the resident director at the end of the hall knew it—I hadn’t told a soul—and when a bright sign festooned with ribbons and a couple of sagging balloons was hung up on the strip of corkboard next to our door. Becca tried not to notice it. She had begun to completely ignore me, and I didn’t try to win her over because I would have done the same thing if the roles had been reversed. Her contempt for me was matched only by my own disgust for myself.
But she couldn’t avoid the gaudy sign as she left for class in the morning, and she was civil enough to read the bold, red message out loud. “‘Happy birthday, Julia,’” she mumbled, but I couldn’t tell if she meant it or if she was merely repeating what the poster proclaimed.
“Thanks,” I said softly. She was already gone.
Grandma had sent a package, and she left a message on my voice mail. I was in the room when the phone rang, but I pretended that I wasn’t around because I didn’t have the heart to talk to anyone. The small package she had sent was sitting neatly on my bed—I hadn’t unwrapped it when it came in the mail a few days earlier, adhering to the conviction that birthday presents were meant for birthdays, not the day before.
As the telephone rang in the background, I used my car key to rip open the packing tape on the squat cardboard box. There was a card tucked in a baby blue envelope on top of a milky white square of crocheted yarn. I put the card aside, feeling incapable of reading about my grandmother’s love, and lifted the blanket out carefully. The folds dropped open, and the blanket spread from my chest to pool like spilled cream on the floor at my feet. It was thick and soft, and my fingers disappeared in the gentle shimmer of an exquisite pattern. The design was so intricate that I could hardly identify where Grandma had started and stopped—the wool moved and shifted like a strong current beneath the surface of still water.
