The rack is not new; it creaks as it spins. In two days, we are going to visit a university, all of us—Mother, Aunt Angelina, Finny, and I. I have to find something to read or I will go crazy sitting next to him for four hours with his scent and his profile looking out the window. Perhaps I already am crazy. Jamie says so all the time, and he only knows half of it.
I reach out and take a book that I’ve already looked at twice. Maybe there is something here, something that I can hold on to, that can take me away for a little while.
I had another appointment with Dr. Singh yesterday. He nodded at everything I said and refilled my prescription. I think of my fantasy home where the furniture—tables, chairs, and bed frames—are all piles of books. I wonder if he would nod thoughtfully at that too. Perhaps he would ask me what books mean to me. I would tell him that it means living another life; that I am in love with both my lost best friend and my boyfriend and I need to believe in another life. He would write something down after that.
On the ride back from his office, I asked my mother if she ever thought I would need to go to the hospital, and she started crying. She didn’t pull over or even slow down. She just stared down the road and cried.
“Sorry,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She wasn’t apologizing for crying, but for something bigger, something she had given to me, done to me, withheld from me.
“It’s okay,” I said. It wasn’t her fault.
At the bottom of the rack is a small collection of Japanese haiku. Poetry collections might be good. Poems can be read over again and studied.
Jamie comes up behind me. His chest brushes my back.
“Are you done yet?” he asks.
“No,” I say.
“Okay,” he says, and I can feel my love for him, a small warm place wedged between my stomach and lungs; it flutters and settles again.
“Soon though,” I say. I haven’t turned to look at him yet.
“We have time,” he says. We’re going to a movie. We’ll eat hamburgers in the mall’s food court and Jamie will make fun of me for the way I eat my fries.
Jamie is going to apply to different schools from me. He isn’t even considering the school we’re going to the day after tomorrow. This school is the only one I can afford that has a creative writing program. Jamie has faith that it doesn’t matter at all; he’ll marry me as soon as college is over. We’ve picked out a house a few blocks from mine. It has a yellow front door; that’s why I like it. He likes it because I like it.
I pick up The Bell Jar. I’ve been too afraid to read it, and partly too annoyed by the cliché to overcome that fear.
“I’m done,” I say.
“Cool,” Jamie says. I turn around. He’s smiling at me. His dark hair is hanging in his blue eyes. I remember seeing him on the steps the first time, how I stared at him as if I couldn’t believe that his face could exist.
“What?” I say.
“You’re pretty today,” he says.
“I wish you would consider going to Springfield,” I say.
“We’ll make it,” Jamie says. “I’ll call you every night before I go to sleep.”
“I’ll miss you,” I say.
“Good, then you won’t leave me for a poet.”
Outside, the hot air surrounds us like a membrane, so thick it seems palpable. My goose bumps vanish.
“And you know, you don’t have to go there,” Jamie says.
“No, I have to,” I say. Jamie still wants me to teach. He wants me to at least get a minor in education. He does not say anything. The car is stifling inside, and Jamie rolls down the windows before starting the engine. Jamie can’t understand my need to major in writing. Or even my need to write. Acceptance is what he has given me, and I know I’m lucky to have that. And I think that’s enough.
46
There was a moment, after the campus tour, when Finny and I were alone, standing by the fountain. The sun was bleaching everything around us a painful, bright white. When the wind blew, the spray of the fountain cooled us, so we stayed where we were, waiting for The Mothers to stop taking pictures and head back to the hotel. I was looking around at everything, anything that wasn’t him, when he spoke.
“So what do you think?” he said. I shrugged.
“I like it, but I’m not sure if I would be happy here.”
“You would be,” he said. I looked up at him. He was looking at me.
“Why?” I said. He shrugged.
“There are lots of trees,” he said.
***
We’re heading home now. Finny is driving. It surprised me—though it shouldn’t have—when Aunt Angelina shook the keys and asked him if he wanted to take a turn. She offered me the front seat too, so I could stretch my legs out. In the backseat, The Mothers are feeling sentimental. They want to talk about the Christmas the power went out or Finny’s fifth-grade soccer team or the poem about dead fairies I wrote when I was ten.
“Do you guys remember your first day of school?” my mother says.
“No,” I say.
“I do,” Finny says.
“You ran off without Finny,” Aunt Angelina says. “He was still clinging to my skirts in the door and you shot across the kindergarten to the monkey bars.”
“And then you hung upside down and scared me to death,” my mother says.
I don’t just not remember it; I don’t believe it either. I was terrified of being away from Finny and he was at home wherever we went.
“You guys must have that backward,” I say.
“You were wearing a skirt and everyone could see your underwear,” Mom says.
“You were always the brave one,” Aunt Angelina says.
“It was you,” Finny says. His eyes don’t leave the road. He does not see me glance over.
I don’t remember always being the brave one. I remember being afraid that he would leave me someday. I never would have left him.
***
“What about you?” I had asked him. We were sitting on the edge of the fountain now. The Mothers were still wandering with the camera. I watched them as they walked this way and that.
“I like it too,” he said.
“Really?”
“Yeah,” he said, “and it’s not too far from home.” He paused then, and I looked back up at him. He wasn’t looking at me. “I think maybe I’ll go to New York for med school though.” Finny in New York instead of me. By then, I’ll be married to Jamie and be back in Ferguson. It’s funny how things don’t turn out the way you thought they would.