I pause, listening to the shriek of a little kid jumping off the high dive. When Melanie and I were little, we used to hold hands and jump together, over and over again.
“But what if it’s not him? Not Willem.” It’s weird saying his name out loud. Here. After embargoing it for so long. Willem. I scarcely even allow myself to think it in my head.
“Don’t tell me another guy dicked you over!”
“No! I’m talking about me.”
“You?”
“It’s, like, the me I was that day. I was different somehow.”
“Different? How?”
“I was Lulu.”
“But that was just a name. Just pretend.”
Maybe it was. But still, that whole day, being with Willem, being Lulu, it made me realize that all my life I’ve been living in a small, square room, with no windows and no doors. And I was fine. I was happy, even. I thought. Then someone came along and showed me there was a door in the room. One that I’d never even seen before. Then he opened it for me. Held my hand as I walked through it. And for one perfect day, I was on the other side. I was somewhere else. Someone else. And then he was gone, and I was thrown back into my little room. And now, no matter what I do, I can’t seem to find that door.
“It didn’t feel pretend,” I tell Melanie.
Melanie arranges her face in sympathy. “Oh, sweetie. It’s because you were all hopped up on the fumes of infatuation. And Paris. But people don’t change overnight. Especially you. You’re Allyson. You’re so solid. It’s one of the things I love about you—how reliably you are.”
I want to protest. What about transformations? What about the reinvention she’s always going on about? Are those only reserved for her? Is there a different standard for me?
“You know what you need? Some Ani DeFranco.” She pulls out her iPhone and shoves the buds in my ears, and as Ani goes on about finding your voice and making it heard, I feel so frustrated with myself. Like I want to pull my skin wide open and step out of it. I scrape my feet against the hot cement floor and sigh, wishing there was someone I could explain this to. Someone who might understand what I’m feeling.
And for one small second, I do imagine the person I could talk to, about finding this door, and losing it. He would understand.
But that’s the one door that needs to stay shut.
Eighteen
Somehow, using the same we’re-adults-you-have-to-treat-us-that-way argument from the Beer Dinner, plus promising to hire a hotel-approved taxi for the entire night, Melanie and I manage to procure parental permission to go to that New Year’s Eve party. It’s being held on a narrow crescent of sand, all lit up with tiki torches, and at ten o’clock, it’s already slamming. There is a low stage on which the touted Mexican reggae band will play, though right now a d.j. is playing techno.
There are several giant piles of discarded shoes. Melanie tosses off her bright-orange flip-flops. I hesitate before taking off my less conspicuous black leather sandals, hoping I’ll find them again, because if I lose anything else, I swear I will never hear the end of it.
“Quite the bacchanal,” Melanie says approvingly, nodding to the guys in swim trunks holding bottles of tequila by the neck, the girls in sarongs with their hair freshly cornrowed. There are even actual Mexicans here, the guys smartly dressed in sheer white shirts, hair slicked back, and the girls in fancy party dresses, cut up to there, legs long and brown.
“Dance first or drink first?”
I don’t want to dance. So I say drink. We line up at the packed bar. Behind us is a group of French-speaking people, which makes me do a double take. There’s hardly anyone but Americans at our hotel, but of course people from everywhere come to Mexico.
“Here.” Melanie shoves a drink into my hand. It’s in a hollowed-out piece of pineapple. I take a sniff. It smells like suntan lotion. It is sweet and warm and burns slightly going down. “Good girl.”
I think of Ms. Foley. “Don’t call me that.”
“Bad girl.”
“I’m not that either.”
She looks peeved. “Nothing girl.”
We drink our drinks in silence, taking in the growing party. “Let’s dance,” Melanie says, yanking me toward the ring of sand that has been allocated as the dance floor.
I shake my head. “Maybe later.”
And there’s that sigh again. “Are you going to be like this all night?”
“Like what?” I think of what she called me on the tour—adventure averse—and what she said at the pool. “So like me? I thought that’s what you loved about me.”
“What is your problem? You’ve had a stick up your ass this whole trip! It’s not my fault your mom is Study-Hall Nazi.”
“No, but it is your fault for making me feel like crap because I don’t want to dance. I hate techno. I have always hated techno, so you should know that, what with me being so reliably me.”
“Fine. Why don’t you be reliably you and sit on the sidelines while I dance.”
“Fine.”
She leaves me on the perimeter of the circle and goes off and just starts dancing with random people. First she dances with some guy with dreadlocks and then turns and dances with a girl with super-short hair. She seems to be having a fine time out there, swirling, twirling, and it strikes me that if I didn’t already know her, she would no longer be someone I would know.
I watch her for at least twenty minutes. In between the monotonous techno songs, she talks to other people, laughs. After a half hour, I’m getting a headache. I try to catch her eye, but I eventually give up and slip away.
The party stretches all the way down the curve of the water—and into it—where a bunch of people are skinny-dipping in the moonlit sea. A little way’s farther down, it gets more mellow, with a bonfire and people around it playing guitar. I plant myself a few feet away from the bonfire, close enough to feel its heat and hear the crackle of wood. I dig my feet into the sand; the top layer is cool, but underneath it’s still warm from the day’s sunshine.
Down the beach, the techno stops, and the reggae band takes the stage. The more mellow bump-bump-thump is nice. In the water, a girl starts dancing on a guy’s shoulder, pulls off her bikini top, and stands there, half naked like a moonshine mermaid, before diving in with a quiet splash. Behind me, the guys on guitars start up with “Stairway to Heaven.” It mingles strangely well with the reggae.
I lie down in the sand and look up at the sky. From this vantage point, it’s like I have the beach all to myself. The band finishes a song, and the singer announces that it’s a half hour until the New Year. “New Year. Año nuevo. It’s a tabula rasa. Time to hacer borrón y cuenta nueva,” he chants. “One chance to wipe the board clean.”
Can you really do that? Wipe the board clean? Would I even want to? Would I wipe all of last year away if I could?
“Tabula rasa,” the singer repeats. “A new chance to start over. Start fresh, baby. Make amends. Make ch-ch-changes. To be who you want to be. Come the stroke of midnight, before you kiss your amor, save un beso para tí. Close your eyes, think of the year ahead. This is your chance. This can be the day it all changes.”
Really? It’s a nice idea, but why January first? You might as well say April nineteenth is the day that everything changes. A day is a day is a day. It means nothing.
“At the stroke of midnight, make your wish. Qué es tu deseo? For yourself. For the world.”
It’s New Year’s. Not a birthday cake. And I’m not eight anymore. I don’t believe in wishes coming true. But if I did, what would I wish for? To undo that day? To see him again?
Normally I have such willpower. Like a dieter resisting a cookie, I don’t even let myself go there. But for the briefest second, I do. I picture him right here, walking down the beach, hair reflecting in the flames, eyes dark and light and full of teasing, and of so many other things. And for a second, I almost see him.
As I open myself to the fantasy, I wait for the accompanying clench of pain. But it doesn’t come. Instead my breath slows and something warms inside me. I abandon caution and all good sense and wrap myself in thoughts of him. My own hands circle around my chest, as if he were holding me. For one brief moment, everything feels right.
“I thought I’d never find you!”
I look up. Melanie is striding toward me. “I’ve been right here.”
“I’ve been looking for you for the last half hour! Up and down the beach. I had no idea where you were.”
“I was right here.”
“I looked everywhere for you. The party’s getting totally out of control, like roofies-in-the-punch wild. Some girl just puked six inches from my feet, and guys are hitting on me with the worst pickup lines in the world. I’ve had my ass pinched more times than I can count, and one charming guy just asked me if I wanted a bite of his sandwich—and he wasn’t talking about food!” She shakes her head as if trying to dislodge the memory. “We’re supposed to have each other’s backs!”
“I’m sorry. You were having fun, and I guess I just lost track of time.”
“You lost track of time?”
“I guess so. I’m really sorry you were worried. But I’m fine. Do you want to go back to the party?”
“No! I’m over it. Let’s leave.”
“We don’t have to.” I look toward the bonfire. The flames are dancing, making it hard to pull my gaze away. “I don’t mind staying.” For the first time in a long while, I am having an okay time, I’m okay being where I am.
“Well, I do. I’ve spent the last half hour panicking, and now I’m sober, and I’m beyond over this place. It’s like a Telemundo frat party.”
“Oh, okay. Let’s go then.”
I follow her back to the shoe piles, where it takes ages for her to find her flip-flops, and then we get into our waiting taxi. By the time I think to look at the dashboard clock, it’s twenty past twelve. I don’t really believe what the singer said about midnight wishes, but now that I’ve missed mine, I feel like I should’ve tried before the window of opportunity closed.
We ride home in silence, save for the cab driver softly singing to his radio. When we pull into the gates of the resort, Melanie hands him some bills, and for a minute, I get an idea.
“Melanie. What if we hire this guy in a day or two and go off somewhere, away from the tourists?”
“Why would we want to do that?”
“I don’t know. To see what would happen if we tried something different. Excuse me, señor, how much would it be for us to hire you for a whole day?”
“Lo siento. No hablo inglés.”
Melanie rolls her eyes at me. “I guess you have to be satisfied with your one big adventure.”
At first I think she means this party, but then I realize she means the ruins. Because I did actually manage to get our families to visit a different ruin. We went to Coba instead of Tulum. And just as I’d hoped, we stopped at a small village along the way, and for a moment there, I’d gotten excited, thinking this was it, I had actually escaped into the real Mexico. Okay, my whole family was in tow, but it was a Mayan village. Except then Susan and my mom went crazy buying beaded jewelry, and the villagers came out and played drums for us, and we all were invited to dance in a circle and then there was even a traditional spiritual cleansing. But everyone was videoing everything, and after his cleansing, my dad “donated” ten dollars to a hat that was conspicuously put in front of us, and I realized that this was no different from being on the tour.
The condo is quiet. The parents are all in bed, though as soon as the door closes Mom pops out of her bedroom. “You’re early,” she says.
Just One Day - English romantic Novel
Re: Just One Day - English romantic Novel
“I was tired,” Melanie lies. “Good night. Happy New Year.” She pads off toward our room, and Mom gives me a New Year’s kiss and goes back to hers.
I’m nowhere near tired, so I sit out on the balcony and listen to the dwindling sounds of the hotel’s party. On the horizon, a lightning storm is brewing. I reach into my purse for my phone and, for the first time in months, open the photo album.
His face is so beautiful, it makes my stomach twist. But he seems unreal, not someone I would ever know. But then I look at me, the me in the photo, and I hardly recognize her, either, and not just because the hair is different, but because she seems different. That’s not me. That’s Lulu. And she’s just as gone as he is.
Tabula rasa. That’s what the reggae singer said. Maybe I can’t get my wish, but I can try to wipe the slate clean, try to get over this.
I allow myself look at the picture of Willem and Lulu in Paris for a long minute.
“Happy New Year,” I tell them.
And then I erase them.
Nineteen
JANUARY
College
Two feet of snow fall in Boston while I’m in Mexico, and the temperature never rises above freezing, so when I get back two weeks later, campus looks like a depressing gray tundra. I arrive a few days before classes start, with excuses of getting prepped for the new semester, but really because I could not handle being at home, under the watchful eye of the warden, one day longer. It had been bad enough in Cancún, but home, without Melanie to distract me—she took off for New York City the day after we got back, before we got a chance to ever resolve the weirdness that had settled between us—it was unbearable.
The Terrific Trio comes back from break full of stories and inside jokes. They spent New Year’s together at Kendra’s family’s Virginia Beach condo and went swimming in the snow, and now they are ordering themselves Polar Bear T-shirts. They’re nice enough, asking about my trip, but I find it hard to breathe with all that bonhomie, so I pile on my sweaters and parkas and trudge over to the U bookstore to pick up a new Mandarin workbook.
I’m in the foreign languages section when my cell phone rings. I don’t even need to look at the caller ID. Mom has been calling at least twice a day since I got back.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Allyson Healey.” The voice on the other end is high and winsome, the opposite of Mom.
“Yes, this is Allyson.”
“Oh, hello, Allyson. This is Gretchen Price from the guidance office.”
I pause, breathing through the sickening feeling in my stomach. “Yes?”
“I’m wondering if you might like to stop by my office. Say hello.”
Now I feel like I’m going to throw up right on the stacks of Buon Giorno Italiano. “Did my mother call you?”
“Your mother? I don’t think so.” I hear the sound of something knocking over. “Damn. Hang on.” There’s more shuffling and then she’s back on the line. “Look, I apologize for the last-minute notice, but that seems to be my MO these days. I’d love for you to come in before the term starts.”
“Umm, the terms starts the day after tomorrow.”
“So it does. How about today, then?”
They are going to kick me out. I’ve blown it in one term. They know I’m not a Happy College Student. I don’t belong in the catalog. Or here. “Am I in some kind of trouble?”
That tinkling laugh again. “Not with me. Why don’t you come by—hang on.” There’s more shuffling of paper. “How about four?”
“You’re sure my mother didn’t call?”
“Yes, Allyson, I’m quite sure. So four?”
“What’s it about?”
“Oh, just getting-to-know-you stuff. I’ll see you at four.”
Gretchen Price’s office is in a crowded corner of the ivy-covered administration buildings. Stacks of books and papers and magazines are scattered everywhere, on the round table and chairs by the window, on the love seat, on her messy desk.
She is on the phone when I’m ushered in, so I just stand there in the doorway. She gestures for me to come inside. “You must be Allyson. Just move a pile off the chair and take a seat. I’ll be with you in a second.”
I move a dirty Raggedy Ann doll with one of the braids chopped off and a stack of folders from one of the chairs. Some of the folders have sticky notes on them: Yes. No. Maybe. Paperwork slips out of one. It’s a printout of a college application, like the one I sent in a year ago. I shove it back into the folder and put it on the next chair.
Gretchen hangs up the phone. “So, Allyson, how’s it going?”
“It’s going fine.” I glance at all the applications, all the comers who want a spot like mine. “Great in fact.”
“Really?” She picks up a file, and I have the distinct impression my goose is cooked.
“Yep,” I say with all the chipperness I can muster.
“See, the thing is, I’ve been looking at your first-term grades.”
I feel tears spring to my eyes. She lured me here under false pretenses. She said I wasn’t in trouble, it was just a getting-to-know-you session. And I didn’t fail. I just got Cs!
She looks at my stricken face and motions for me to calm down with her hands. “Relax, Allyson,” she says in a soothing voice. “I’m not here to bust you. I just want to see if you need some help, and to offer it if that’s the case.”
“It’s my first term. I was adjusting.” I’ve used this excuse so much I’ve almost come to believe it.
She leans back in her chair. “You know, people tend think that college admissions is inherently unfair. That you can’t judge people from paper. But the thing is, paper can actually tell you an awful lot.” She takes a gulp from one of those coffee cups that kids paint. Hers is covered in smudgy pastel thumbprints. “Having never met you before, but judging just from what I’m seeing on paper, I suspect that you’re struggling a bit.”
She’s not asking me if I’m struggling. She’s not asking why I’m struggling. She just knows. The tears come, and I let them. Relief is more powerful than shame.
“Let me be clear,” Gretchen continues, sliding over a box of tissues. “I’m not concerned about your GPA. First-term slides are as common as the freshman fifteen. Oh, man, you should’ve seen my first-semester GPA.” She shakes her head and laughs. “Generally, struggling students here fall into two categories: Those getting used to the freedom, maybe spending a little too much time at the keg parties, not enough time in the library. They generally straighten out after a term or two.” She looks at me. “Are you pounding too many shots of Jägermeister, Allyson?”
I shake my head, even though by the tone of her question, it seems like she already knows the answer.
She nods. “So the other pattern is a bit more insidious. But it’s actually a predictor for dropouts. And that’s why I wanted to see you.”
“You think I’m going to drop out?”
She stares hard at me. “No. But looking at your records from high school and your first term, you fit a pattern.” She waves around a file, which obviously contains my whole academic history. “Students like you, young women, in particular, do extraordinarily well in high school. Look at your grades. Across the board, they’re excellent. AP, science classes, humanities classes, all As. Extremely high SAT scores. Then you get into college, which is supposedly why you’ve been working so hard, right?”
I nod.
“Well you get here, and you crumple. You’d be surprised how many of my straight-A, straight-and-narrow students wind up dropping out.” She shakes her head in dismay. “I hate it when that happens. I help choose who goes here. It reflects badly on me if they crash and burn.”
“Like a doctor losing a patient.”
“Great analogy. See how smart you are?”
I offer a rueful smile.
“The thing is, Allyson, college is supposed to be . . .”
“The best years of my life?”
“I was going to say nourishing. An adventure. An exploration. I’m looking at you, and you don’t seem nourished. And I’m looking at your schedule. . . .” She peers at her computer screen. “Biology, chemistry. Physics. Mandarin. Labs. It’s very ambitious for your first year.”
“I’m pre-med,” I say. “I have to take those classes.”
She doesn’t say anything. She takes another gulp of coffee. Then she says. “Are those the classes you want to take?”
I pause. Nobody has ever asked me that. When we got the course catalog in the mail, it was just assumed I’d tackle all the pre-med requirements. Mom knew just what I should take when. I’d looked at some electives, had mentioned that I thought pottery sounded cool, but I may as well have said I was planning on majoring in underwater basket weaving.
“I don’t know what I want to take.”
“Why don’t you take a look and see about switching things up a bit. Registration is still in flux, and I might be able to pull some strings.” She stops and pushes the catalog clear across the desk. “Even if you do wind up pre-med, you have four years to take these classes, and you have a lot of humanities requisites to get in too. You don’t need to jam everything together all at once. This isn’t medical school.”
“What about my parents?”
“What about your parents?”
“I can’t let them down.”
“Even if it means letting yourself down? Which I doubt they’d want for you.”
The tears come again. She hands me another tissue.
“I understand about wanting to please your parents, to make them proud. It’s a noble impulse, and I commend you for it. But at the end of the day, it’s your education, Allyson. You have to own it. And you should enjoy it.” She pauses, slurps some more coffee. “And somehow I imagine that your parents will be happier if they see your GPA come up.”
She’s right about that. I nod. She turns to her computer screen. “So, let’s just pretend we’re going to jiggle some classes around. Any idea of what you might like to take?”
I shake my head.
She grabs the course catalog and flips through it. “Come on. It’s an intellectual buffet. Archaeology. Salsa dancing. Child development. Painting. Intro to finance. Journalism. Anthropology. Ceramics.”
“Is that like pottery?” I interrupt.
“It is.” She widens her eyes and taps on her computer. “Beginning Ceramics, Tuesdays at eleven. It’s open. Oh, but it conflicts with your physics lab. Shall we postpone the lab, and maybe physics, for another term?”
“Cut them.” Saying it feels wonderful, like letting go of a bunch of helium balloons and watching them disappear into the sky.
“See? You’re already getting the hang of it,” Gretchen says. “How about some humanities, to balance you out? You’re going to need those to graduate anyway as part of your core curriculum. Are you more interested in ancient history or modern history? There’s a wonderful European survey. And a great seminar on the Russian Revolution. Or a fascinating American Pre-Revolution class that makes excellent use of our being so close to Boston. Or you could get started on some of your literature classes. Let’s see. Your AP exams tested you out of the basic writing requirement. You know, we could be devilish and slip you into one of the more interesting seminar classes.” She scrolls down her computer. “Beat Poetry. Holocaust Literature. Politics in Prose. Medieval Verse. Shakespeare Out Loud.”
I feel something jolt up my spine. An old circuit-breaker long since forgotten being tested out and sparking in the darkness.
Gretchen must see my expression, because she starts telling me about how this isn’t just any Shakespeare class, how Professor Glenny has very strong opinions on how Shakespeare should be taught, and how he has a cult following on campus.
I’m nowhere near tired, so I sit out on the balcony and listen to the dwindling sounds of the hotel’s party. On the horizon, a lightning storm is brewing. I reach into my purse for my phone and, for the first time in months, open the photo album.
His face is so beautiful, it makes my stomach twist. But he seems unreal, not someone I would ever know. But then I look at me, the me in the photo, and I hardly recognize her, either, and not just because the hair is different, but because she seems different. That’s not me. That’s Lulu. And she’s just as gone as he is.
Tabula rasa. That’s what the reggae singer said. Maybe I can’t get my wish, but I can try to wipe the slate clean, try to get over this.
I allow myself look at the picture of Willem and Lulu in Paris for a long minute.
“Happy New Year,” I tell them.
And then I erase them.
Nineteen
JANUARY
College
Two feet of snow fall in Boston while I’m in Mexico, and the temperature never rises above freezing, so when I get back two weeks later, campus looks like a depressing gray tundra. I arrive a few days before classes start, with excuses of getting prepped for the new semester, but really because I could not handle being at home, under the watchful eye of the warden, one day longer. It had been bad enough in Cancún, but home, without Melanie to distract me—she took off for New York City the day after we got back, before we got a chance to ever resolve the weirdness that had settled between us—it was unbearable.
The Terrific Trio comes back from break full of stories and inside jokes. They spent New Year’s together at Kendra’s family’s Virginia Beach condo and went swimming in the snow, and now they are ordering themselves Polar Bear T-shirts. They’re nice enough, asking about my trip, but I find it hard to breathe with all that bonhomie, so I pile on my sweaters and parkas and trudge over to the U bookstore to pick up a new Mandarin workbook.
I’m in the foreign languages section when my cell phone rings. I don’t even need to look at the caller ID. Mom has been calling at least twice a day since I got back.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Allyson Healey.” The voice on the other end is high and winsome, the opposite of Mom.
“Yes, this is Allyson.”
“Oh, hello, Allyson. This is Gretchen Price from the guidance office.”
I pause, breathing through the sickening feeling in my stomach. “Yes?”
“I’m wondering if you might like to stop by my office. Say hello.”
Now I feel like I’m going to throw up right on the stacks of Buon Giorno Italiano. “Did my mother call you?”
“Your mother? I don’t think so.” I hear the sound of something knocking over. “Damn. Hang on.” There’s more shuffling and then she’s back on the line. “Look, I apologize for the last-minute notice, but that seems to be my MO these days. I’d love for you to come in before the term starts.”
“Umm, the terms starts the day after tomorrow.”
“So it does. How about today, then?”
They are going to kick me out. I’ve blown it in one term. They know I’m not a Happy College Student. I don’t belong in the catalog. Or here. “Am I in some kind of trouble?”
That tinkling laugh again. “Not with me. Why don’t you come by—hang on.” There’s more shuffling of paper. “How about four?”
“You’re sure my mother didn’t call?”
“Yes, Allyson, I’m quite sure. So four?”
“What’s it about?”
“Oh, just getting-to-know-you stuff. I’ll see you at four.”
Gretchen Price’s office is in a crowded corner of the ivy-covered administration buildings. Stacks of books and papers and magazines are scattered everywhere, on the round table and chairs by the window, on the love seat, on her messy desk.
She is on the phone when I’m ushered in, so I just stand there in the doorway. She gestures for me to come inside. “You must be Allyson. Just move a pile off the chair and take a seat. I’ll be with you in a second.”
I move a dirty Raggedy Ann doll with one of the braids chopped off and a stack of folders from one of the chairs. Some of the folders have sticky notes on them: Yes. No. Maybe. Paperwork slips out of one. It’s a printout of a college application, like the one I sent in a year ago. I shove it back into the folder and put it on the next chair.
Gretchen hangs up the phone. “So, Allyson, how’s it going?”
“It’s going fine.” I glance at all the applications, all the comers who want a spot like mine. “Great in fact.”
“Really?” She picks up a file, and I have the distinct impression my goose is cooked.
“Yep,” I say with all the chipperness I can muster.
“See, the thing is, I’ve been looking at your first-term grades.”
I feel tears spring to my eyes. She lured me here under false pretenses. She said I wasn’t in trouble, it was just a getting-to-know-you session. And I didn’t fail. I just got Cs!
She looks at my stricken face and motions for me to calm down with her hands. “Relax, Allyson,” she says in a soothing voice. “I’m not here to bust you. I just want to see if you need some help, and to offer it if that’s the case.”
“It’s my first term. I was adjusting.” I’ve used this excuse so much I’ve almost come to believe it.
She leans back in her chair. “You know, people tend think that college admissions is inherently unfair. That you can’t judge people from paper. But the thing is, paper can actually tell you an awful lot.” She takes a gulp from one of those coffee cups that kids paint. Hers is covered in smudgy pastel thumbprints. “Having never met you before, but judging just from what I’m seeing on paper, I suspect that you’re struggling a bit.”
She’s not asking me if I’m struggling. She’s not asking why I’m struggling. She just knows. The tears come, and I let them. Relief is more powerful than shame.
“Let me be clear,” Gretchen continues, sliding over a box of tissues. “I’m not concerned about your GPA. First-term slides are as common as the freshman fifteen. Oh, man, you should’ve seen my first-semester GPA.” She shakes her head and laughs. “Generally, struggling students here fall into two categories: Those getting used to the freedom, maybe spending a little too much time at the keg parties, not enough time in the library. They generally straighten out after a term or two.” She looks at me. “Are you pounding too many shots of Jägermeister, Allyson?”
I shake my head, even though by the tone of her question, it seems like she already knows the answer.
She nods. “So the other pattern is a bit more insidious. But it’s actually a predictor for dropouts. And that’s why I wanted to see you.”
“You think I’m going to drop out?”
She stares hard at me. “No. But looking at your records from high school and your first term, you fit a pattern.” She waves around a file, which obviously contains my whole academic history. “Students like you, young women, in particular, do extraordinarily well in high school. Look at your grades. Across the board, they’re excellent. AP, science classes, humanities classes, all As. Extremely high SAT scores. Then you get into college, which is supposedly why you’ve been working so hard, right?”
I nod.
“Well you get here, and you crumple. You’d be surprised how many of my straight-A, straight-and-narrow students wind up dropping out.” She shakes her head in dismay. “I hate it when that happens. I help choose who goes here. It reflects badly on me if they crash and burn.”
“Like a doctor losing a patient.”
“Great analogy. See how smart you are?”
I offer a rueful smile.
“The thing is, Allyson, college is supposed to be . . .”
“The best years of my life?”
“I was going to say nourishing. An adventure. An exploration. I’m looking at you, and you don’t seem nourished. And I’m looking at your schedule. . . .” She peers at her computer screen. “Biology, chemistry. Physics. Mandarin. Labs. It’s very ambitious for your first year.”
“I’m pre-med,” I say. “I have to take those classes.”
She doesn’t say anything. She takes another gulp of coffee. Then she says. “Are those the classes you want to take?”
I pause. Nobody has ever asked me that. When we got the course catalog in the mail, it was just assumed I’d tackle all the pre-med requirements. Mom knew just what I should take when. I’d looked at some electives, had mentioned that I thought pottery sounded cool, but I may as well have said I was planning on majoring in underwater basket weaving.
“I don’t know what I want to take.”
“Why don’t you take a look and see about switching things up a bit. Registration is still in flux, and I might be able to pull some strings.” She stops and pushes the catalog clear across the desk. “Even if you do wind up pre-med, you have four years to take these classes, and you have a lot of humanities requisites to get in too. You don’t need to jam everything together all at once. This isn’t medical school.”
“What about my parents?”
“What about your parents?”
“I can’t let them down.”
“Even if it means letting yourself down? Which I doubt they’d want for you.”
The tears come again. She hands me another tissue.
“I understand about wanting to please your parents, to make them proud. It’s a noble impulse, and I commend you for it. But at the end of the day, it’s your education, Allyson. You have to own it. And you should enjoy it.” She pauses, slurps some more coffee. “And somehow I imagine that your parents will be happier if they see your GPA come up.”
She’s right about that. I nod. She turns to her computer screen. “So, let’s just pretend we’re going to jiggle some classes around. Any idea of what you might like to take?”
I shake my head.
She grabs the course catalog and flips through it. “Come on. It’s an intellectual buffet. Archaeology. Salsa dancing. Child development. Painting. Intro to finance. Journalism. Anthropology. Ceramics.”
“Is that like pottery?” I interrupt.
“It is.” She widens her eyes and taps on her computer. “Beginning Ceramics, Tuesdays at eleven. It’s open. Oh, but it conflicts with your physics lab. Shall we postpone the lab, and maybe physics, for another term?”
“Cut them.” Saying it feels wonderful, like letting go of a bunch of helium balloons and watching them disappear into the sky.
“See? You’re already getting the hang of it,” Gretchen says. “How about some humanities, to balance you out? You’re going to need those to graduate anyway as part of your core curriculum. Are you more interested in ancient history or modern history? There’s a wonderful European survey. And a great seminar on the Russian Revolution. Or a fascinating American Pre-Revolution class that makes excellent use of our being so close to Boston. Or you could get started on some of your literature classes. Let’s see. Your AP exams tested you out of the basic writing requirement. You know, we could be devilish and slip you into one of the more interesting seminar classes.” She scrolls down her computer. “Beat Poetry. Holocaust Literature. Politics in Prose. Medieval Verse. Shakespeare Out Loud.”
I feel something jolt up my spine. An old circuit-breaker long since forgotten being tested out and sparking in the darkness.
Gretchen must see my expression, because she starts telling me about how this isn’t just any Shakespeare class, how Professor Glenny has very strong opinions on how Shakespeare should be taught, and how he has a cult following on campus.
Re: Just One Day - English romantic Novel
I can’t help but think of him. And then I think of the tabula rasa. The resolution I made on New Year’s. The fact that I am pre-med. “I don’t think I’m supposed to take this class.”
This makes her smile. “Sometimes the best way to find out what you’re supposed to do is by doing the thing you’re not supposed to do.” She taps on her keyboard. “It’s full, as usual, so you’ll have to fight your way in off the wait list. Why not give it a shot? Leave it up to the fates.”
The fates. I think that’s another word for accidents.
Which I don’t believe in anymore.
But I let her register me for the class just the same.
Twenty
Stepping into the classroom for Shakespeare Out Loud is like stepping into an entirely different school than the one I’ve attended for the past four months. Instead of a giant lecture hall, which is where all my science courses were located, or even a large classroom like Mandarin, it’s in a tiny, intimate classroom, the kind we had in high school. There are maybe twenty-five desks arced into a U, around a lectern in the middle. And the students sitting at them, they look different too. Lip rings and hair dyed colors not found naturally on the human head. It’s a sea of well-manicured alienation. The arty crowd, I guess. When I come in and look for a seat—they’re all taken—no one looks at me.
I take a seat on the floor, near the door, for an easier escape. I may not belong in chemistry, but I don’t belong here either. When Professor Glenny strides in five minutes late and looking like a rock star—shaggy graying hair, beat-up leather boots, he even has pouty Mick Jagger lips—he steps on me. As in, literally treads on my hand. As bad as my other classes have been, no one has ever stepped on me. Not an auspicious start, and I almost leave right then and there, but my way is now blocked by the overflow of other students.
“Show of hands,” Professor Glenny begins after he has dropped his artfully worn leather satchel on top of the lectern. “How many of you have ever read a Shakespeare play for the sheer pleasure of it?” He has a British accent, though not the Masterpiece Theatre kind.
About half the hands in the class shoot up. I almost consider raising mine, but it’s just too much of a lie, and there’s no point in brown-nosing if I’m not staying.
“Excellent. Ancillary question: How many of you have fallen asleep while attempting to read a Shakespeare play by yourself?”
The class goes silent. No hands go up. Then Professor Glenny looks right at me, and I’m wondering how he knows, but then I realize he’s not looking at me but the guy behind me, who is the only person who’s raised a hand. Along with everyone else in the class, I turn and stare at him. He’s one of two African American students in the room, though he’s the only one sporting a huge halo of an afro covered in bejeweled barrettes, and bubble-gum-pink gloss on his lips. Otherwise, he’s dressed like a soccer mom, in sweats and pink Uggs. In a field of carefully cultivated weirdness, he’s a wildflower, or maybe a weed.
“Which play bored you to sleep?” Professor Glenny asks.
“Take your pick. Hamlet. Macbeth. Othello. I napped to the best of them.”
The class titters, as if falling asleep while studying is so déclassé.
Professor Glenny nods. “So why, then, please—sorry, your name . . . ?”
“D’Angelo Harrison, but my friends call me Dee.”
“I’ll be presumptuous and call you Dee. Dee, why take this class? Unless you’re here to catch up on your sleep.”
Again, the class laughs.
“By my count, this class costs about five grand a semester,” Dee says. “I can sleep for free.”
I attempt the math. Is that how much one class costs?
“Quite prudent,” Professor Glenny says. “So, again, why take this class, given the expenditure and given Shakespeare’s soporific track record?
“Well, I’m not actually in the class yet. I’m on your wait list.”
At this point, I can’t tell if he’s stalling or parrying with the professor, but either way, I’m impressed. Everyone else here seems eager to give the right answer, and this guy is stringing the professor along. To his credit, Professor Glenny seems more amused than annoyed.
“My point is, Dee, why attempt it even?”
There’s a long pause. You can hear the fluorescent lights humming, the throat-clearing of a few students who clearly have a ready answer. And then Dee says, “Because the movie of Romeo and Juliet makes me cry harder than just about anything else. Every damn time I see it.”
Again, the class laughs. It’s not a kind laugh. Professor Glenny turns back toward the lectern and pulls a paper and pen out of his satchel. It’s a list. He stares at it ominously and then checks off a name—and I wonder if this Dee just got himself kicked off the wait list. What kind of class did Gretchen Price put me in? Gladiator Shakespeare?
Then Professor Glenny turns to a girl with weird pink Tootsie Roll twists who has her nose in a copy of the collected works of Shakespeare, the kind of girl who probably never deigned to watch Leo and Claire’s version of Romeo and Juliet or fall asleep while reading Macbeth. He looms over her for a moment. She looks up at him and smiles bashfully, like, oh-you-caught-me-reading-my-book. He flashes a thousand-watt smile back at her. And then he slams her book shut. It’s a big book. It makes a loud noise.
Professor Glenny returns to the lectern. “Shakespeare is a mysterious character. There is so much written about this man about whom we truly know so little. Sometimes I think only Jesus has had more ink spilled with less fruitful result. So I resist making any characterizations about the man. But I will go out on a limb and say this: Shakespeare did not write his plays so that you could sit in in a library carrel and read them in silence.” He pauses, lets that sink in before continuing. “Playwrights are not novelists. They create works that need to be performed, interpreted. To be reinterpreted through the ages. It is credit to Shakespeare’s genius that he gave us such great raw material that really could survive the ages, withstand the myriad reinterpretations we throw at it. But to truly appreciate Shakespeare, to understand why he has endured, you must hear it out loud, or better yet, see it performed, whether you see it performed in period costume or done naked, a dubious pleasure I’ve had. Though a good film production can do the trick, as our friend Dee has so aptly demonstrated. And Mr. Harrison,” he looks at Dee again. “Thank you for your honesty. I too have fallen asleep while reading Shakespeare. My college textbook still bears some drool marks. You’re off the wait list.”
Striding back to the whiteboard, Professor Glenny scrawls English 317—Shakespeare Out Loud on it. “The name of this class is not accidental. It is quite literal. For in this class, we do not read Shakespeare quietly to ourselves or in the privacy of our bedrooms or libraries. We perform it. We see it performed. We read it aloud, in class or with partners. Every last one of us will become actors in this class, interpreters for one another, in front of one another. For those of you not prepared for this or who prefer a more conventional approach, this fine institution offers plenty of Shakespeare survey courses, and I suggest you avail yourself of one of them.”
He pauses, as if to give people a chance to escape. Here would be my chance to go, but something roots me in place.
“If you know anything about this class, it’s that I coordinate our readings to go with whatever Shakespeare is being performed during the term, be it by a community group or professional theater company. I expect attendance at all the plays, and I get us excellent group rates. As it happens, this winter and spring bring a delightful selection of plays.”
He starts handing out the syllabus, and before one gets to me, before he finishes writing the order of plays on the board, I know it will be among them, even though Shakespeare wrote more than thirty plays, I know this one will be on our list.
It’s midway through the syllabus, after Henry V and The Winter’s Tale and before As You Like It and Cymbeline and Measure for Measure. But there on the page, it seems to jump out at me like a billboard. Twelfth Night. And whether I want to take this class or not is irrelevant. I can’t stand up here and read those lines. That is the opposite of tabula rasa.
Professor Glenny goes on for a while about the plays, pointing to them one by one with his hand, erasing the ink in his enthusiasm. “My absolute favorite thing about this class is that we, in effect, let the themes choose us by letting the plays choose us. The dean was skeptical at first of this academia via serendipity, but it always seems to work out. Take this sampling.” He points to the list of plays again. “Can anyone surmise this semester’s theme based on these particular plays?”
“They’re all comedies?” the girl up front with the Tootsie Roll twists asks.
“Good guess. The Winter’s Tale, Measure for Measure, and Cymbeline, though all have much humor, are not considered comedies so much as problem plays, a category we shall discuss later. And Henry V, though it has many funny bits, is quite a serious play. Any other takers?”
Silence.
“I’ll give you a hint. It’s most obvious in Twelfth Night or As You Like It, which are comedies—which isn’t to say they’re not also quite moving plays.”
More silence.
“Come now. Some of you fine scholars must have seen one of these. Who here has seen As You Like It or Twelfth Night?”
I don’t realize I’ve raised my hand until it’s too late. Until Professor Glenny has seen me and nodded to me with those bright, curious eyes of his. I want to say that I’ve made a mistake, that it was some other version of Allyson who used to raise her hand in class who temporarily reappeared. But I can’t, so I blurt out that I saw Twelfth Night over the summer.
Professor Glenny stands there, as if waiting for me to finish my thought. But that was it; that’s all I have to say. There’s an awkward silence, like I just announced I was an alcoholic—at a Daughters of the American Revolution meeting.
But Professor Glenny refuses to give up on me: “And, what was the main source of tension and humor in that particular play?”
For the briefest of seconds, I’m not in this overheated classroom on a winter’s morning. It’s the hot English night, and I’m at the canal basin in Stratford-upon-Avon. And then I’m in a Paris park. And then I’m back here. In all three places, the answer remains the same: “No one is who they pretend to be.”
“Thank you. . . . ?”
“Allyson,” I finish. “Allyson Healey.”
“Allyson. Perhaps a slight overgeneralization, but for our purposes, it hits the nail right on the head.” He turns to the board and scrawls Altering Identity, Altering Reality on it. Then he checks something else off on his sheet of paper.
Professor Glenny continues, “Now, before we part ways, one last piece of housekeeping. We won’t have time to read each play completely in class, though we will make quite a dent. I believe I’ve made my point about reading alone to yourselves, so I’d like you to read the remaining sections aloud with partners. This is not optional. Please pair up now. If you’re on the wait list, find a partner also on the wait list. Allyson, you’re no longer on the wait list. As you can see, class participation is rewarded in here.”
There’s bustle as everyone pairs off. I look around. Next to me is a normalish-girl with cat-eye glasses. I could ask her.
Or I could get up and walk out of the class. Even though I’m off the wait list, I could just drop the class, leave my spot for someone else.
But for some reason, I don’t do either of those things. I turn away from the girl in the glasses and look behind me. That guy, Dee, is sitting there, like the unpopular and unathletic kid who always wound up the remainder during team picking for grade-school kickball games. He’s wearing a bemused look, as if he knows no one will ask him and he’s saving everyone the trouble. So when I ask him if he wants to be partners, his arch expression falls away for a moment and he appears genuinely surprised.
This makes her smile. “Sometimes the best way to find out what you’re supposed to do is by doing the thing you’re not supposed to do.” She taps on her keyboard. “It’s full, as usual, so you’ll have to fight your way in off the wait list. Why not give it a shot? Leave it up to the fates.”
The fates. I think that’s another word for accidents.
Which I don’t believe in anymore.
But I let her register me for the class just the same.
Twenty
Stepping into the classroom for Shakespeare Out Loud is like stepping into an entirely different school than the one I’ve attended for the past four months. Instead of a giant lecture hall, which is where all my science courses were located, or even a large classroom like Mandarin, it’s in a tiny, intimate classroom, the kind we had in high school. There are maybe twenty-five desks arced into a U, around a lectern in the middle. And the students sitting at them, they look different too. Lip rings and hair dyed colors not found naturally on the human head. It’s a sea of well-manicured alienation. The arty crowd, I guess. When I come in and look for a seat—they’re all taken—no one looks at me.
I take a seat on the floor, near the door, for an easier escape. I may not belong in chemistry, but I don’t belong here either. When Professor Glenny strides in five minutes late and looking like a rock star—shaggy graying hair, beat-up leather boots, he even has pouty Mick Jagger lips—he steps on me. As in, literally treads on my hand. As bad as my other classes have been, no one has ever stepped on me. Not an auspicious start, and I almost leave right then and there, but my way is now blocked by the overflow of other students.
“Show of hands,” Professor Glenny begins after he has dropped his artfully worn leather satchel on top of the lectern. “How many of you have ever read a Shakespeare play for the sheer pleasure of it?” He has a British accent, though not the Masterpiece Theatre kind.
About half the hands in the class shoot up. I almost consider raising mine, but it’s just too much of a lie, and there’s no point in brown-nosing if I’m not staying.
“Excellent. Ancillary question: How many of you have fallen asleep while attempting to read a Shakespeare play by yourself?”
The class goes silent. No hands go up. Then Professor Glenny looks right at me, and I’m wondering how he knows, but then I realize he’s not looking at me but the guy behind me, who is the only person who’s raised a hand. Along with everyone else in the class, I turn and stare at him. He’s one of two African American students in the room, though he’s the only one sporting a huge halo of an afro covered in bejeweled barrettes, and bubble-gum-pink gloss on his lips. Otherwise, he’s dressed like a soccer mom, in sweats and pink Uggs. In a field of carefully cultivated weirdness, he’s a wildflower, or maybe a weed.
“Which play bored you to sleep?” Professor Glenny asks.
“Take your pick. Hamlet. Macbeth. Othello. I napped to the best of them.”
The class titters, as if falling asleep while studying is so déclassé.
Professor Glenny nods. “So why, then, please—sorry, your name . . . ?”
“D’Angelo Harrison, but my friends call me Dee.”
“I’ll be presumptuous and call you Dee. Dee, why take this class? Unless you’re here to catch up on your sleep.”
Again, the class laughs.
“By my count, this class costs about five grand a semester,” Dee says. “I can sleep for free.”
I attempt the math. Is that how much one class costs?
“Quite prudent,” Professor Glenny says. “So, again, why take this class, given the expenditure and given Shakespeare’s soporific track record?
“Well, I’m not actually in the class yet. I’m on your wait list.”
At this point, I can’t tell if he’s stalling or parrying with the professor, but either way, I’m impressed. Everyone else here seems eager to give the right answer, and this guy is stringing the professor along. To his credit, Professor Glenny seems more amused than annoyed.
“My point is, Dee, why attempt it even?”
There’s a long pause. You can hear the fluorescent lights humming, the throat-clearing of a few students who clearly have a ready answer. And then Dee says, “Because the movie of Romeo and Juliet makes me cry harder than just about anything else. Every damn time I see it.”
Again, the class laughs. It’s not a kind laugh. Professor Glenny turns back toward the lectern and pulls a paper and pen out of his satchel. It’s a list. He stares at it ominously and then checks off a name—and I wonder if this Dee just got himself kicked off the wait list. What kind of class did Gretchen Price put me in? Gladiator Shakespeare?
Then Professor Glenny turns to a girl with weird pink Tootsie Roll twists who has her nose in a copy of the collected works of Shakespeare, the kind of girl who probably never deigned to watch Leo and Claire’s version of Romeo and Juliet or fall asleep while reading Macbeth. He looms over her for a moment. She looks up at him and smiles bashfully, like, oh-you-caught-me-reading-my-book. He flashes a thousand-watt smile back at her. And then he slams her book shut. It’s a big book. It makes a loud noise.
Professor Glenny returns to the lectern. “Shakespeare is a mysterious character. There is so much written about this man about whom we truly know so little. Sometimes I think only Jesus has had more ink spilled with less fruitful result. So I resist making any characterizations about the man. But I will go out on a limb and say this: Shakespeare did not write his plays so that you could sit in in a library carrel and read them in silence.” He pauses, lets that sink in before continuing. “Playwrights are not novelists. They create works that need to be performed, interpreted. To be reinterpreted through the ages. It is credit to Shakespeare’s genius that he gave us such great raw material that really could survive the ages, withstand the myriad reinterpretations we throw at it. But to truly appreciate Shakespeare, to understand why he has endured, you must hear it out loud, or better yet, see it performed, whether you see it performed in period costume or done naked, a dubious pleasure I’ve had. Though a good film production can do the trick, as our friend Dee has so aptly demonstrated. And Mr. Harrison,” he looks at Dee again. “Thank you for your honesty. I too have fallen asleep while reading Shakespeare. My college textbook still bears some drool marks. You’re off the wait list.”
Striding back to the whiteboard, Professor Glenny scrawls English 317—Shakespeare Out Loud on it. “The name of this class is not accidental. It is quite literal. For in this class, we do not read Shakespeare quietly to ourselves or in the privacy of our bedrooms or libraries. We perform it. We see it performed. We read it aloud, in class or with partners. Every last one of us will become actors in this class, interpreters for one another, in front of one another. For those of you not prepared for this or who prefer a more conventional approach, this fine institution offers plenty of Shakespeare survey courses, and I suggest you avail yourself of one of them.”
He pauses, as if to give people a chance to escape. Here would be my chance to go, but something roots me in place.
“If you know anything about this class, it’s that I coordinate our readings to go with whatever Shakespeare is being performed during the term, be it by a community group or professional theater company. I expect attendance at all the plays, and I get us excellent group rates. As it happens, this winter and spring bring a delightful selection of plays.”
He starts handing out the syllabus, and before one gets to me, before he finishes writing the order of plays on the board, I know it will be among them, even though Shakespeare wrote more than thirty plays, I know this one will be on our list.
It’s midway through the syllabus, after Henry V and The Winter’s Tale and before As You Like It and Cymbeline and Measure for Measure. But there on the page, it seems to jump out at me like a billboard. Twelfth Night. And whether I want to take this class or not is irrelevant. I can’t stand up here and read those lines. That is the opposite of tabula rasa.
Professor Glenny goes on for a while about the plays, pointing to them one by one with his hand, erasing the ink in his enthusiasm. “My absolute favorite thing about this class is that we, in effect, let the themes choose us by letting the plays choose us. The dean was skeptical at first of this academia via serendipity, but it always seems to work out. Take this sampling.” He points to the list of plays again. “Can anyone surmise this semester’s theme based on these particular plays?”
“They’re all comedies?” the girl up front with the Tootsie Roll twists asks.
“Good guess. The Winter’s Tale, Measure for Measure, and Cymbeline, though all have much humor, are not considered comedies so much as problem plays, a category we shall discuss later. And Henry V, though it has many funny bits, is quite a serious play. Any other takers?”
Silence.
“I’ll give you a hint. It’s most obvious in Twelfth Night or As You Like It, which are comedies—which isn’t to say they’re not also quite moving plays.”
More silence.
“Come now. Some of you fine scholars must have seen one of these. Who here has seen As You Like It or Twelfth Night?”
I don’t realize I’ve raised my hand until it’s too late. Until Professor Glenny has seen me and nodded to me with those bright, curious eyes of his. I want to say that I’ve made a mistake, that it was some other version of Allyson who used to raise her hand in class who temporarily reappeared. But I can’t, so I blurt out that I saw Twelfth Night over the summer.
Professor Glenny stands there, as if waiting for me to finish my thought. But that was it; that’s all I have to say. There’s an awkward silence, like I just announced I was an alcoholic—at a Daughters of the American Revolution meeting.
But Professor Glenny refuses to give up on me: “And, what was the main source of tension and humor in that particular play?”
For the briefest of seconds, I’m not in this overheated classroom on a winter’s morning. It’s the hot English night, and I’m at the canal basin in Stratford-upon-Avon. And then I’m in a Paris park. And then I’m back here. In all three places, the answer remains the same: “No one is who they pretend to be.”
“Thank you. . . . ?”
“Allyson,” I finish. “Allyson Healey.”
“Allyson. Perhaps a slight overgeneralization, but for our purposes, it hits the nail right on the head.” He turns to the board and scrawls Altering Identity, Altering Reality on it. Then he checks something else off on his sheet of paper.
Professor Glenny continues, “Now, before we part ways, one last piece of housekeeping. We won’t have time to read each play completely in class, though we will make quite a dent. I believe I’ve made my point about reading alone to yourselves, so I’d like you to read the remaining sections aloud with partners. This is not optional. Please pair up now. If you’re on the wait list, find a partner also on the wait list. Allyson, you’re no longer on the wait list. As you can see, class participation is rewarded in here.”
There’s bustle as everyone pairs off. I look around. Next to me is a normalish-girl with cat-eye glasses. I could ask her.
Or I could get up and walk out of the class. Even though I’m off the wait list, I could just drop the class, leave my spot for someone else.
But for some reason, I don’t do either of those things. I turn away from the girl in the glasses and look behind me. That guy, Dee, is sitting there, like the unpopular and unathletic kid who always wound up the remainder during team picking for grade-school kickball games. He’s wearing a bemused look, as if he knows no one will ask him and he’s saving everyone the trouble. So when I ask him if he wants to be partners, his arch expression falls away for a moment and he appears genuinely surprised.