All We Ever Wanted

by Emily Giffin

  As I sat on the steps of the Parthenon, which housed the art museum where we used to stroll as a family, one memory rushed back to me. It was late fall, both of us wearing jackets, and I sat in a spot close to this one while Finch collected leaves pretending to make rutabaga and collard green stew. He’d learned the words from a children’s song, the lyrics all coming back to me now: Victor Vito and Freddie Vasco / Ate a burrito with Tabasco / They put it on their rice, they put it on their beans / on their rutabagas, and on their collard greens! I thought of how much Finch had loved to sing and dance. How much he’d enjoyed music and art and cooking.

  “Girly things,” Kirk had called them, always worrying that I was making our son “too soft.”

  I told him that was ridiculous, but at some point, I caved to my husband’s wishes, allowing Finch’s free time to be filled with more mainstream boy activities. Sports and technology (Kirk’s interests) replaced music and art (mine). I was fine with that—I just wanted our son to be true to himself—but with hindsight, I had the feeling that he was following in his father’s footsteps. In all ways.

  Maybe it was an oversimplification, as I know a person isn’t the sum of his hobbies. But I couldn’t help feeling that I had lost my son. Lost both of them. I longed to go back. Do things differently. Give Finch fewer material possessions and more of my time. I would have tried harder to keep talking to him, even when he no longer wanted me to.

  I thought back to my own time line—the uptick of my philanthropic work and all the socializing in those same circles that began a few years ago. How that swirl of activity happened to coincide with both the sale of Kirk’s company and the onset of Finch’s teenage years. It was hard to say which had happened first, but I wasn’t blameless. I thought about the hours I spent on the trivial things that had become so integral to my life. Meetings and parties and beauty appointments and workouts and tennis games and lunches and, yes, even some very worthwhile charity work. But to what end? Did any of that really matter now? What was more important than squeezing in a conversation with my son about respecting women and other cultures and races? I thought about Kirk and the hundred-dollar bills in my bag—how they pretty much summed up his approach to life, at least recently.

  I thought about our marriage, wondering exactly when our priorities had shifted away from our relationship and toward other things. I thought about all our small, seemingly insignificant daily choices and their cumulative effect. How they may have impacted Finch, even subconsciously. He certainly didn’t see his parents talking much these days, and when we did, it was often about money or other superficial things. Even Kirk’s compliments to me were nearly always about my looks or purchases, not my ideas or good works or dreams (though I wasn’t even sure what those were anymore). Had it always been that way with Kirk and me? Or was I just noticing it now that Finch was older and consuming so much less of my time?

  I felt a deep, aching loneliness, coupled with a painful longing for a simpler time. I missed all the chores that once felt so tedious—driving my son to school and to all his other activities, cooking breakfast and dinner for him, nagging him to go to bed, and even my least favorite, helping him with his homework at the kitchen table.

  All of that segued into thoughts of Tom and Lyla. Their single-father/daughter relationship. Tom’s reaction to Kirk, then me. Lyla’s feelings about everything that had happened to her. I wanted to talk to her—so intensely that it didn’t quite make sense. Only it did—as if there was no way not to make a connection between the present and the past, her story and mine, ancient and buried though the memories were.

  * * *

  —

  IT HAPPENED IN the fall of my first semester at Vanderbilt, while I was still finding my footing and adjusting to a much bigger, fancier pond. I had been more than ready to graduate from high school and escape the mundane day-to-day of Bristol, but I was still a little homesick. More than missing my parents or home, my heart ached for Teddy, my boyfriend of nearly two years who was three hours away in Birmingham, going to Samford University on a basketball scholarship. Teddy and I talked on the phone every night, and wrote long letters by hand, always pledging our love and undying commitment to each other. There was no doubt in my mind that he was the “one.”

  In the meantime, though, I forged a fledgling friend group, consisting of my roommate, Eliza, and another two girls on our hall—Blake and Ashley. Although the four of us were different in many ways, including geography (Eliza was from New York, Blake from L.A., and Ashley from Atlanta), the three of them all shared a certain wealthy worldliness, something I distinctly lacked. They’d all graduated from fancy private academies while I’d gone to a run-of-the-mill public high school. They’d traveled the world and visited many of the same spots, like Aspen and Nantucket and Paris. They’d even been to more exotic places, like Africa and Asia, while my family’s idea of a special trip was the Grand Canyon or Disney World. They were all foodies (before that really became a thing) and they constantly bitched about the cafeteria food (which I actually thought was pretty good). They lived for the emerging restaurant scene in Nashville and didn’t think twice about dropping their dads’ credit cards to pay for entrées in the double digits, which I could never afford. I avoided those outings—or declared myself “not very hungry” before finding something from the appetizer portion of the menu. Their wardrobes were insanely good (though Eliza and Blake went for edgier pieces than Ashley’s Laura Ashley look)—while my clothes were extremely basic; the Gap was my version of style. Although they weren’t trying to be snobs, they just sort of naturally were that way, and I found myself struggling to keep up with their sophisticated frame of reference, vacillating between feeling clueless and feeling embarrassed.

  Frankly, Teddy didn’t help matters. One weekend he borrowed his buddy’s truck and drove to Nashville, showing up out of the blue to surprise me with a bouquet of wildflowers he’d picked himself on the way. I was thrilled to see him, of course, and touched by the romantic gesture, but as the girls came around to meet him, I found myself feeling inexplicably embarrassed. In Bristol, Teddy was a big deal—not only extremely handsome but also a star athlete. As I looked at him through their eyes, he seemed a little too sweet, too simple, and very country. Even his thick drawl, which I’d always thought was so cute (he was actually born in Mississippi and had grown up there until age twelve), now seemed to border on redneck, along with his many backwoods expressions (things weren’t broken, they were “tore slap up”; they weren’t catty-cornered, they were “cattywonked”; and he was never “about to” do something, he was “fixin’ to”). His hair and clothes and shoes all seemed a bit off, too—nothing I could put my finger on exactly but somehow noticeably different from the boys at Vanderbilt, at least the ones my friends gravitated toward. Of course, it wasn’t enough to shake my confidence in our love—I wasn’t that shallow. But it did make me think a little about what my life would be like with him, versus with someone else.

  Aside from anything having to do with Teddy himself, I also had the feeling my friends thought it was sort of lame of me to have come to school with such a serious boyfriend. One night, for example, the three of them were flipping through my yearbook (I never should have brought that sucker to college—they had all left theirs at home) and saw that Teddy and I had been named “most likely to get married.” It amused them to no end, which I couldn’t quite understand.

  “Omigod! Hysterical!” Blake said, cracking up and exchanging a telling look with Ashley. It wasn’t the first time I had the feeling that they’d discussed me behind my back.

  I grabbed my yearbook from them and snapped it shut.

  “It doesn’t mean we will get married,” I said, feeling slightly guilty toward Teddy. “Just that we’d been together the longest or whatever.”

  “Hmm,” Blake said.

  Eliza asked, “Did I hear you guys fighting last night?”

 
“We weren’t really fighting,” I said, trying to remember the precise topics from our marathon phone conversation. We always started and ended well, but occasionally there was some petty insecurity and jealousy sprinkled in.

  “Long distance never works,” announced Blake, the self-proclaimed authority on dating of any kind.

  “Don’t say that,” said Eliza, often somewhat protective of me, perhaps because I’d confided more in her. “It might.”

  “Are you at least going to see other people?” Ashley pressed.

  “Or just cheat on him?” Blake said, laughing.

  “No, and no,” I said, aware of how naïve I sounded to them but not caring.

  “But don’t you want to experience sex with someone other than Teddy?” Blake asked as she lit a cigarette. “He might suck, for all you know. You need a basis for comparison.”

  I swallowed and forced myself to make the confession I’d been avoiding. “Umm. I actually haven’t slept with Teddy yet,” I said.

  Eliza looked surprised, and the other two laughed and said some variation of “you gotta be kidding.”

  “No,” I said. “But we’ve done everything else.”

  This addendum didn’t impress them.

  “What? Why?” Ashley asked, as if I were the subject of a fascinating sociological study.

  “I don’t know….I just wanted…to wait,” I said, thinking of Julie and the vow we’d made during our freshman year in high school to wait as long as we could, and at least until college. I suddenly felt an intense pang of longing for the person I never had to explain these sorts of things to.

  “Wait for what? Marriage?” Blake said. “Is it a religious thing?”

  “No,” I quickly said, feeling increasingly uncomfortable. Although Teddy believed sex outside marriage was wrong, he was willing to sin if I was.

  “Oh. I thought Samford was a big Bible school?” Blake said, her tone slightly critical, though I wasn’t sure whether she was judging the Bible—or Samford as an academic institution.

  “Yeah, it’s a Christian school,” I said. “But he’s not a saint or anything.”

  “Well, I think it’s great to wait,” Ashley said. Of all the girls’, our values felt the closest, perhaps because we were both from the South.

  Eliza and Blake nodded, but I could tell they weren’t buying it—and that they put sex in the same category as sushi. By eighteen, you should have tried both—and California rolls and hand jobs didn’t cut it.

  For the first time, it occurred to me that they might be right and that I was playing it too safe. After all, I was in college now. I needed to be a little bolder, broaden my horizons, start thinking for myself instead of relying so much on Teddy.

  “Okay, girls,” I said, eager to change the subject. “I’m ready for a drink.”

  In my head, I was ready for more than one. I was ready to get good and drunk for the first time. It was something else Teddy thought was wrong, and the few times I’d had a beer at a party, he’d disapproved. I once tried to talk him out of his stance, pointing out that people were constantly downing wine in the Bible.

  “But it also says to obey the law and be filled with the Spirit,” he said, then explained to me that he’d gotten drunk once with friends and didn’t like the way it had made him feel. “I was filled with spirits and not the Spirit.”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant exactly, and why you couldn’t be filled with both. But I admired him for it. I still did admire him, but I decided that Teddy was more than three hours away, and my college experience didn’t have to mirror his.

  So I stood up, went back to our room, and made myself a cocktail from Eliza’s makeshift minibar. She was out of mixers, so I poured Smirnoff into a plastic cup, then added a scoop of Crystal Light. Not even bothering with ice from the machine at the end of the hall, I began to chug. Almost instantly, I caught a strong buzz, feeling a rush of happiness and great affection for my friends and all things Vanderbilt. I then borrowed a short, tight halter dress from Eliza, and all the girls agreed that I looked hot. Their compliments about my figure, hair, and face were sincere, wistful, and frequent. I was also aware of all the male attention that greeted us everywhere we went, and I decided that being drunk at a party was way more fun than whining to Teddy on the phone from under the covers of the top bunk. Maybe my friends were right about long-distance relationships, I remember thinking, as I flirted and danced and continuously drank, haphazardly mixing beer and liquor. At the very least, maybe Teddy and I needed to start seeing other people.

  At some point, I got into a long, flirty conversation with one of Ashley’s friends from home. His name was Zach Rutherford, and he had a mop of blond hair and the cutest dimples. He was several inches shorter than I was and on the scrawny side—not my type even if I didn’t have a boyfriend—so I didn’t feel guilty talking to him, then dancing with him. When he started to get really friendly, though, I told him that I was going to head back to my dorm.

  “I’ll walk you home?” he offered.

  “I have a boyfriend,” I blurted out.

  “Duly noted,” Zach said, laughing. “I’m not trying to hit on you, Nina—I’m just offering to walk you back.”

  I hesitated, then did a sidebar with Ashley, who reassured me that Zach was a good guy, adding that he was a nationally ranked golfer and could have gone to any school in the country. “Everyone in Atlanta wanted to date him,” she said, her implication clear, even before she winked and added, “You never know!”

  I shook my head and said, “He’s just walking me back.”

  By then though, I’d felt my first stab of guilty attraction and intrigue over Zach. But I really did need to get back, as by then I was wasted, and I told myself I really could use a male chaperone across campus.

  So off we went. Only before we got to my dorm, Zach asked if we could do a quick detour to his. He needed to get something, he said. I agreed, because I was drunkenly enjoying the walk and his company (though at that point, I would have enjoyed just about anything). When we got to his dorm, I started to wait in the lobby lounge area, but he suggested I come to his room. I went along with it. A few minutes later, we were cozied up on his futon, sharing a beer and listening to R.E.M. croon “Nightswimming.” When he tried to kiss me, I went along with that, too, pushing Teddy as far from my mind as I possibly could.

  That’s pretty much the last thing I vividly remember from the night, until I woke up in a strange bed, naked, next to a naked boy. At first, I couldn’t even place that it was Zach—but then it all came back to me in a rush of horror.

  “Where are we?” I said, staring up at the bottom rails of a bunk bed.

  “In my room,” he mumbled.

  “What happened? Did we…?” I asked, knowing we had because it hurt. A lot. In the faint fluorescent light from his closet, I could make out the blood, both on his sheets and streaked down the insides of my thighs.

  “Yeah,” he mumbled, still either out of it or half asleep.

  “Oh my God,” I said. “No. Nooo!”

  “You wanted to,” he said, just as a flash of it came back to me. The moment he entered me. The pain. My balled fists and tears. My telling him—shouting at him—no, stop, no. It was like a bad dream, but it was real. It had happened.

  The room spinning, I managed to sit up, frantically searching for my clothes, finding Eliza’s white dress, twisted up in his sheets, along with my underwear.

  “You wanted to,” he said again, his eyes only half open, his voice still slurring, as I looked around in the dark for my shoes. I couldn’t find them, so I headed out the door, barefoot, as Zach remained motionless in his bed.

  I ran back to my dorm, but I didn’t cry until I got to my room and discovered with relief that Eliza was still out. I checked her dress for blood, relieved that there was none. I hung it up, then stripped out of my cloth
es, wrapped up in a towel, put on my flip-flops, and walked to the communal bathroom. I took the hottest and longest shower of my life, sobbing the whole time, then returned to my room, where I finally forced myself to play back the four messages on the answering machine.

  They were all from Teddy, as I knew they would be, his voice getting increasingly worried and agitated, asking me to call him no matter how late I got back. Ending every message with “I love you.”

  I wanted to hear his voice more than anything in the world, but it was four in the morning, and I told myself he would be asleep and had an early class. I shouldn’t wake him up. But deep down, I knew the real reason was that I couldn’t bring myself to tell him what had happened any more than I could bring myself to lie to him. Instead I called Julie, waking her up in her Wake Forest dorm room, telling her everything.

  Almost immediately, Julie used the word rape.

  “It wasn’t rape,” I whispered, huddled under my covers. “I was kissing him….”

  “It was rape,” Julie insisted, ahead of her time, or at least ahead of my 1995 views of what constituted date rape. “You need to go to the campus police. Or better yet, the Nashville police.”

  I told her that was crazy. Besides, I’d already washed away all the evidence. “Nobody would believe me.”

  “Yes. They will,” she said. “You were a virgin.”

  I started to cry again. “I can’t go to the police,” I sobbed.

  “Why not?”

  Because, I told her, at the very least, I shared the blame. It was my mistake, too. My fault for leading him on. My cross to bear.