Been There, Done That Page 10

  “Good thinking. I don’t know that song, though.”

  “It’s a torch song. Makes me think of our days together.” Why did I always have to ruin my moments of empowerment like this? “Just kidding—that’s just the first song that came to mind. Got any other ideas?”

  “I leave it up to you. You’re the musical one.” When Tim and I were college freshmen—real college freshmen—I’d told him I was going to audition for one of Cornell’s prestigious a cappella groups. He shook his head in disapproval. “You’ve got to pick your priorities. If you focus your energies and work really, really hard, you’ve got the potential to be a great journalist. But let’s face it. You’re never going to be a great singer.” I skipped the audition, telling myself that I probably wouldn’t have made it, anyway. There were times—too many—when I wished I could re-embody my eighteen-year-old (twenty, twenty-four-year-old) self and shout back at Tim: Why must everything have a purpose? Why should I always be working toward a goal? Why can’t we ever do things just for the hell of it, just for fun?

  And here I was, eighteen again. And all I wished was that Tim was eighteen with me, lying on my bed, fully clothed, stroking my hair and telling me how great life would be when we finally grew up.

  “I think we should set a time to meet,” I whispered. “Away from here—at my office, maybe. Got any free time this week?” We agreed to meet at Salad’s office on Thursday afternoon.

  When I was eighteen, I thought Tim was the most ambitious, focused person I had ever met. He was going to be a writer, he told me, that first day over coffee. A reporter. He seemed so much more mature than the other boys I had met at Cornell, who never seemed to think much beyond where their next beer was coming from.

  When I asked him what dorm he lived in, he said, “I don’t,” and took a drink of his coffee. I waited. He set the cup down and told me he was a commuter student, a rarity at Cornell. He lived with his parents in Endicott, NY, an hour away.

  “Why don’t you just live on campus?” I asked, stupidly.

  He raised his eyebrows. “What does your father do?”

  “He’s a banker.”

  “Your mother?”

  “She was a housewife till a couple of years ago, but she got bored and got a job as an office manager.”

  He nodded. “My parents work at a grocery store. Dad’s the deli manager, Mom’s a checker.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “But they’re two of the smartest people I’ve ever met,” he said, tipping up his chin. “Most of my friends’ fathers work at IBM. There’s a big plant in town. But they aren’t any smarter than my parents. My mother does the New York Times crossword puzzle in pen.”

  I envisioned his parents as two professors in red grocery aprons, but when I met them at their tiny Cape-style house, about a month later, they surprised me. I stuck out my hand to greet his mother, as my mother had taught me, and said, “I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs. McAllister.”

  She ignored my hand and enfolded me in her bony arms. “I feel like I already know you, Kathy. Call me Barb. Everyone else does.”

  Meanwhile, Tim’s father beamed at me. “You’re just as beautiful as Tim said you were.” I felt a flash of pure happiness. No boy had ever called me beautiful before. It didn’t even occur to me to wish Tim had said it to me instead of to his parents.

  When Tiffany came in, I went out. She wasn’t so bad, really; her manic spurts, set to a Clay Aiken soundtrack, alternated with long silences during which she wrote letters on scented pink stationery or listened to defeatist music sung by wailing females. When I was lucky, she wore earphones. Perhaps she did this out of consideration for me, or maybe it was because, on one of my cranky hangover mornings, I’d remarked, “What is this—music to slit your writs by?”

  Still, I’d been living alone three years, ever since Tim moved away. In my apartment on Beacon Hill, I left the bathroom door open, flipped on the television at two in the morning, strolled around with bleach cream under my nose. Partly, I needed to be alone to get away from the pressure of being found out. More fundamentally, however, I simply needed time by myself. As Sheila was fond of saying, I needed my space. Of course, her space tended toward the ten-thousand-square-foot range, while mine was more metaphoric.

  “I’m heading to the bookstore,” I told Tiffany. Her wounded look told me that I should have gone with her, that she was analyzing our pseudo-friendship and sensing a rift. “I can’t believe I didn’t think to go with you,” I said, a bit too obviously. “I’m such an airhead—I mean, like, I need books, right?” I wondered whether anyone still said “airhead.” Surely “space cadet” was out by now. I should really avoid slang altogether. “What time were you thinking about dinner?” I asked as I picked up my faux leather backpack.

  “Whenever you want,” Tiffany chirped, sitting up a little straighter on her bed. The night before, I’d left the dorm—in a group, of course—while Tiffany was in the bathroom. From her immersion into the aforementioned desperate wailing music, I gathered that she thought I’d done it on purpose.

  The bookstore was mobbed. So much for getting a little space. I shoved my way to the textbooks, which were arranged according to the classes for which they were assigned. I’d kept my course load as interesting as possible without it being too demanding: photography, women’s studies, film, and, my personal favorite, a course entitled “Ethics in Journalism.” I began loading my basket, but before my arm even had a chance to start aching, I realized that I didn’t need all these books; I’d be leaving Mercer before most of the reading came due. With some regret, I returned most of the books to the shelf, reserving only a photography reference and Primary Colors, the reading preassigned for my first journalism class. I’d read the book a few years back, even had it in hardback at my apartment, but the standard class copy was necessary to avoid suspicion. The rest of the books could wait; I’d buy them as they were assigned.

  I picked out a Matisse poster—hardly original, but our room was begging for a non-Clay element—and joined an absurdly long line at the cash register. The skinny student in front of me had oily, shoulder-length brown hair and wore tight jeans and a ribbed T-shirt. I busied my brain trying to decide whether it was male or female. I had finally decided on female when “she” craned her head around to scan a blonde in a tube top and bell bottoms. I marveled at the reemergence of such unlikely fashions, then returned my bored attention to the student in front of me. It was male, after all. It wasn’t the girl-watching that gave him away; I’d already learned that lesbianism was suddenly chic, perhaps even more than tube tops. No, it was the facial hair that tipped me off—a soul patch, to be exact. My skills as an investigative journalist were growing every day.

  Troy scanned the room without pausing when he saw me. Apparently, I hadn’t made much of an impression at his party. Good.

  A chubby, shaggy boy wearing oversized everything swaggered over and gave him a soulful handshake. “Troy, my man!”

  “Hey, Homie!” Troy crowed. In a week, I had grown increasingly weary of suburban white boys trying to sound like they were from Harlem. Had there been any black students at Mercer, they would have been similarly exasperated.

  Ever-so-casually, Baggy Boy plopped his plastic basket, overflowing with books, on the floor next to Troy. “No cutting!” I wanted to yell, but I didn’t think it was wise to draw attention to myself. Besides, I never did get around to taking one of those assertiveness training classes.

  “How’s business, Bro?” the cutter asked. He began gliding his head from side to side as if listening to his own drummer. I think it was meant as a conversation filler.

  Troy swirled his head around to make sure no one had heard. My heart raced. I set my face in the mask of perpetual boredom mastered by every eighteen-year-old I’d encountered. “What’s your problem, Sean?” he hissed. “You trying to fuck me up?”

  Sean reverted to a jittery white boy, struck by the realization that, in his attempt to be cool, he had revealed
himself as the most despicable low-life imaginable: the dork. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean—I was just joking around.”

  His deference softened Troy. “Business is profitable,” he murmured. “Didn’t mean to snap, my man. It’s just that—maybe you haven’t heard—but it isn’t exactly what you’d call legal.”

  Sean laughed. His shoulders loosened. He was in the groove again. “Fucking uptight society we live in.”

  Troy grinned. I half expected broken teeth or prominent fangs to appear about his soul patch, but no: clearly, his parents had sprung for orthodontia. “Who can blame us for breaking a few rules?”

  Jeremy’s door was open a crack. I rapped twice and poked my head in. He was sitting on his single bed, surrounded by books and papers. His bedspread was forest green, I noticed with approval, and he had painted his walls a cozy toast color. He looked up. When he saw it was me, he smiled.

  I pointed to his books. “You’re not doing work already?”

  “I’ve got a neurology test the first day of class. Instructor wants to see what we know.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Nervous?”

  He shrugged. “Bored is more like it. I’m just not that into physiology.”

  “Actually, I was making a joke.” I tried to be gentle. “You know, neurology—nervous.”

  He held my gaze. “I know you were. But it just wasn’t that funny.”

  I gawked at him. “Maybe this is the real reason girls get so uncomfortable around you! Maybe it has nothing to do with your looks at all!”

  He softened and looked away. With a sly grin, he said, “No, I think you were right the first time. I’m just such an Adonis.”

  “Yeah, that must be it,” I said, as if I didn’t believe him at all. “So why are you taking neurology if you find it so boring?”

  “I’m pre-med.”

  “Oh!” Okay, I admit it: I was impressed. “I didn’t know Mercer had a pre-med program.”

  “They don’t, I mean, not technically. But I’m a bio major, and I’ll have taken every physiology class they offer by the time I graduate.” He folded his arms behind his head and leaned against the wall. Very Calvin Klein, I thought, except his eyes weren’t vacant enough.

  “Why do you want to be a doctor?”

  “It’s about the most important job you can have, right?”

  I thought about it. “Right.”

  “And impressive.”

  “Extremely impressive.” I waited for more arguments. They didn’t come. “But what makes you want to do it—to survive med school, put up with the sleep deprivation, cut up all those cadavers. What drives you?”

  Suddenly sober, he reached for his books, started shuffling through the papers on his bed. Finally, unexpectedly, the truth: “My father. It’s what he always wanted to do, except his family couldn’t afford to send him to college. I guess he planted it in my brain pretty young, because I’ve always just figured I’d be a doctor some day.”

  I feigned interest in an Ansel Adams poster, which I considered unoriginal but a big step up from the Jessica Simpson shot that presided over so many college boys’ rooms. “I have an older brother,” I said. “He’s a doctor. Well, an ophthalmologist—I mean, that is a doctor, just not what you normally think of. I’ve always thought he chose that specialty because by the time he realized he didn’t really like dealing with the human body, he was too far gone to back out. This way, he gets to do laser surgery all day long without ever needing to touch anyone.” This was the first true thing I’d said in so long, it jarred me a bit. I was afraid that one truth would lead to a multitude of others.

  “Does he live nearby?” Jeremy asked.

  “Denver.”

  I searched for a way to change topics and suddenly realized why I’d come in the first place. “I just got back from the bookstore. What a zoo. I’m already starting to recognize faces, though. Like that guy—what was his name? The one who had the party.”

  “Troy,” he said flatly.

  “Right.” I knew that of course. I was just being crafty. “Sounds like you don’t like him much.”

  “Not particularly.”

  I paused, waiting for him to continue. Most people can’t bear silence and will start blabbing just to fill it. Unfortunately, Jeremy was the exception. “I don’t see why,” I continued. “Yeah, okay, he’s fake and sleazy and a major poseur, but beyond that he’s probably a very nice person.”

  Jeremy smiled. “He’s what my mother would call a bad influence. So tell me more about your brother. Did your parents pressure him to go into medicine?”

  There was a rap at the door. It was Katherine. She was wearing her usual tank top, which looked just like the undershirts my mother used to make me wear in grade school. “Um, hi.” She giggled. I wouldn’t have pegged Katherine as the giggling type, but Jeremy was so cute, he probably could have made a mime giggle.

  Katherine’s eyes flitted to me. I detected something: disappointment, irritation, envy—something unfriendly, at any rate. “I was just, I was, you know, thinking. Jeremy, maybe you could give me some advice.” Katherine smiled at him and leaned against the door jamb. “I’m just, like, so totally confused about notebooks. I was going to go loose-leaf, that’s what I used in high school, but now I see all these people buying spiral, and, ohmigod, I, like, hate making decisions!”

  I slipped out, and Katherine’s giggle became noticeably louder.

  Tiffany was dressed and ready for dinner at 4:30, perhaps so she wouldn’t risk me leaving without her. She wore bell-bottom pants. If we were truly friends instead of just pretending, I would have found a nice way to tell her that bell-bottoms are a no-no for anyone larger than a size four—which is to say most of us—and that they actually look pretty stupid on the skinny chicks, too. Her shirt was oversized, shapeless and pink: no, no and no. She wore bright pink lipstick and black eyeliner that had already begun to smudge. I longed to drive her to the nearest Clinique counter.

  Since she’d gotten dressed up, such as it was, I felt I had to follow suit. That meant changing into clean jeans and a long-sleeved powder blue Gap shirt that said “Snow Angel.” I brushed my hair and used my pink tube of Maybelline mascara before remembering that I’d neglected to pack eye makeup remover.

  Since we were virtually the first ones at dinner, we had our pick of tables. Tiffany, first off the food line, chose a windowless spot next to the garbage cans. “This okay?” She anxiously clutched her tray.

  “Perfect!” I soothed. The garbage clearly hadn’t been emptied since lunch—there was a soiled napkin sticking out of the flapping door—and I detected a faint odor of old fried chicken.

  We placed our orange plastic trays across from each other on a table meant for ten. Tiffany had bravely heaped a glutinous white mound of turkey tetrazzini on her heavy white plate. I’d stuck with the salad bar, figuring the ice-berg lettuce hadn’t been out long enough to be coughed or sneezed on.

  Stories of dining hall horrors abound, but I’d never understood them before now. Because Cornell boasted a top hotel and restaurant mangement school, the food there was excellent. The sundae bar alone was worth an extra pants size. Mercer was another story. Casseroles reigned supreme, many of them bathed in a watery, garlic-free tomato sauce that stained the plates a suspicious orange color. Ground meat—beef, I think, though I never wanted to press the issue—was also popular, with or without the orange sauce.

  Tiffany had barely finished chewing her first bite of tetrazzini when she said, “So what do you think of Katherine? Pretty slutty, huh?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” I said.

  “I don’t think she’s a virgin.”

  I attempted an expression of shocked contemplation. Tiffany shoved some more pasta into her mouth. “And she doesn’t even mind living with Amelia,” she said. She scrunched her nose and, mercifully, swallowed. “If I’d gotten Amelia for a roommate, I would have made my mother call Housing Services to switch me. She’d probably switch me now if she even knew
I was on the same hall with her.”

  I stirred my lettuce around, trying to coat each tasteless leaf with ranch dressing. “Amelia seems to keep her private life pretty much to herself.”

  “The Bible says homosexuality is a sin,” Tiffany said as forcefully as I’d ever heard her say anything.

  I almost chirped, “Hate the sin, love the sinner!” But I didn’t think it was fair to call Amelia, one of the nicest people I’d met at Mercer, a sinner. “How’s the tetrazzini?” I said instead.

  “Pretty good.” She nodded and chewed. Amazingly, her plate was almost empty. And then: “I think Cherie might be queer, too.” I blinked at her. At Troy’s party, I’d seen Cherie, clad in her usual black on black, piercings sparkling, sucking face with a tall, skinny guy in a rugby shirt. Cherie might be having trouble deciding whether or not she wanted to remain a Goth, but her sexual identity seemed pretty clear-cut.

  By the time we got around to dessert (Boston cream pie—and not bad, actually), Tiffany had dissected every girl on the hall (and a couple of the less attractive boys). Finally, she licked the last of the custard off her fork and put it on her tray. “Well, I’m off to my fellowship group,” she announced. “We’re talking about Mary Magdalene today. Want to come with?”

  I mumbled something about wanting to get my things organized before classes started the next day and skulked off in search of another piece of pie.

  seventeen

  Meeting with Tim on Thursday meant skipping my “Ethics in Journalism” class. The irony was not lost on me.

  It was only the second class and I was sorry to be missing it. Tuesday’s session had focused on Primary Colors. The instructor and I had had a spirited discussion about Newsweek’s decision to fire Joe Klein. After about fifteen minutes, a squinting girl raised her hand and asked, “Who is Joe Klein?” Of course, I was the only person in class who’d read the book before Anonymous’s identity was revealed, then followed the resulting controversy after a computer program that analyzed writing styles pinpointed Klein. I felt like an absolute relic and tried to cover my tracks with liberal allusions to “my sixth-grade current events studies.”