For Sure & Certain (3 page)

              His SAT scores had changed everything and nothing held him back besides frustrated parents and a disappointed brother. But none of their excuses kept him from coming to this Business Intensive Summer Program, a program enrolling rising seniors, a program that granted him admission due to his extenuating circumstances.

Namely, the fact he never went to high school.

              He was here.

              He unlaced his shoes and unhooked his suspenders, thinking of the late evening walk he’d taken. He’d been so excited to see the campus, even though everything was dark by the time they finished eating in the dining hall. The brick walkways, the enormous buildings as old as the city itself, the graveyard filled with tombstones hundreds of years old.

              He wished he could tell Joshua about his day. Maybe they’d sit around a bonfire, or he might even have told Esther about it in a quiet buggy ride. But Abel knew even if he were face-to-face with them, the people he’d known his entire life, they wouldn’t understand. They would want to know what strange foods he ate, what clothes people wore, and if everyone thought his accent was funny. Those weren’t the things he’d want to share.

              He wanted to tell them things they wouldn’t understand. He’d say walking that brick path was better than taking his first steps, he’d swear the library they passed smelled like the books he dreamed of reading, he’d say he saw an angel in the graveyard, dressed in lace spun by the moon, praying to a fountain filled with gems.

              He’d say all his wishes had come true.

chapter two

Marigold

She honestly didn’t expect their threats to come to fruition. But the week after her father’s book launch, they called her to the study before she’d even eaten breakfast. Completely caught off guard, like that was their plan or something.

“We didn’t raise you to be lazy,” her mother said coolly, flicking the hair from her grey eyes, sitting in a tweed armchair. “We’ve all chosen to put your past behind you. Thank god your father’s connections kept you away from court and judicial punishment.”

“It’s not exactly behind us if you keep bringing it up,” Marigold said softly. She was so tired of defending herself. Yes, she had screwed up, but she’d paid the price.

Her mother shook her head as if not wanting to get sidetracked by Marigold’s feelings. “Listen, if you aren’t going to use this summer preparing for your future you need to procure gainful employment.”

Marigold stared at them, not ready for this. It was still morning; her hair was in a messy bun atop her head, a yellow tank top with sparrows embroidered on the front clinging to her ribs, a pair of baby blue bloomers on her legs. She was barely awake.

“Where could I even get a job? You know as well as I do that nearly every shop in the area threatened me with a retraining order last year. Why are you doing this?” Her blank eyes blinked at the people before her. Her mother pointedly held Marigold’s gaze. Sighing, she realized what they were actually doing: forcing her into a corner she didn’t want … college.

Her father coughed, his wrinkled face appearing more wrinkled the week after his book release. He didn’t appear all that interested in being summoned from his morning routine for Marigold. The Wall Street Journal sat folded in his lap and his weathered eyes kept glancing down.

“Max,” Eileen prodded. “Say that thing you said you were going to say.”

“Oh god, Eileen, give it a rest. This whole idea is so proletarian of you. You want her to go get a job? She’s never even washed her own laundry.”

They argued incessantly, this was no surprise to Marigold. However, what she did take affront to was the fact her father knew nothing about her besides shallow assumptions.

“Seriously? I make my own laundry soap, don’t you know anything?” Marigold asked, incredulous. She was the one who taught the housecleaner how to mix borax with lavender oil.

“She needs a job, Max, she’s sitting around the house everyday like a degenerate.” Marigold’s mother spoke as if her eldest daughter wasn’t in the room.

“Says the women who insisted on letting her child choose her own bedtime, her own hobbies, her own limits. Look where your child-led parenting got you eighteen years later.” He mocked his wife openly and Marigold didn’t like it, but she also didn’t like her mom’s new parenting tactics. Namely, forcing employment.

“Don’t you dare throw that in my face, Max.” Eileen stood up, crossing her arms in protest. “I can’t have my child waste away, I don’t want her to end up like the Parson’s boy.”

The Parson’s boy had moved into a commune in Berkley and used Kickstarter to fund his Veggie-Oil refinery. He was happy. She imagined a very pleasant life for herself if she was anything like the Parson’s boy.

Marigold wanted to tell them how she really felt, that college was a waste when she didn’t know what she wanted. That college wasn’t for everyone. But she’d already tried to explain herself so many times. She was trying to prove that she was in no rush to become who she wasn’t.

Max sat in the chair as if no amount of disruption would get in the way of the paper and coffee. But still, he was angry. “You say that, Eileen, but I met you on a picket line!”

It was true. Eileen had been a young activist, writing columns for the newspaper berating big business. Nine months later, she delivered the steel mogul’s son. They were married. She put down her mantle and got an MFA and began writing stories glamorizing a life she never lived. A life the Parson’s boy
actually was living
. She was a hypocrite.

“Enough!” her mom shouted. “Just be on my side, Max. I need you to support this. You promised me this from the beginning. You promised to take my side with the children.”

While this conversation took place, Marigold continued to sit with her hands in her lap, knowing they were just going to get more upset with her if she spoke.
Maybe she should just move to the Parson boy’s commune,
she thought. The main issue to that plan, or any other plan that wasn’t college, was the fact she had no money to support herself. She’d given every penny she’d made off her YouTube videos to the barista she’d gotten fired.

Maybe a job wasn’t the worst idea in the world. If only she could get one. Obviously no business in the vicinity would hire her after the videos she took on their premises. But there had to be places that
would
employ her.

Max put down his paper and looked at his wife across the room. The wife who appeared exhausted from not getting her way. The wife who everyone knew wouldn’t stop until she did.

“Fine. Marigold, you have to get a job.” He gave in completely, as if he hadn’t been yelling a few moments ago. He was no longer interested in the fight.

Marigold’s father Max was twenty years his wife’s senior, and this morning, his age showed. Marigold rarely thought of his maturity, she’d always been more aware of the fact that her dad wasn’t the dad of the year.

He attempted to appear at the appropriate times, but he was busy and sort of famous from his how-to books about the business specter. And considering they were absolutely nothing alike, it never bothered her all that much.

Now that she was being cornered into a job, all she could remember were the times he had neglected to show an interest in her achievements, especially her latest ones. The ones that she was most proud of.

When she’d learned to sew her own clothes, when she gave every person in the family a handmade Christmas gift, when she single-handedly prepared a six-course dinner on Thanksgiving. It had been the best meal she’d ever eaten. Everything was from scratch; not even the cranberry sauce came from a can. She had boiled fresh berries in sugar water and cooled it a day ahead of time. None of that was on her family’s radar.

Academics or nothing. To them, she was a failure.

“Don’t you want to know the requirements?” her mother asked.

Marigold was so caught up in remembering those buttery mashed potatoes and the golden turkey she forgot what this conversation was actually about.

“Requirements for what?”

“The job,” her mother said evenly, raising her coffee cup to her lips.

She’d never had a job of any sort in her life. No one she knew had either, and though she realized how entitled she sounded, it was her truth. But she needed one, if she was going to get away. From them, this house, this life. She was tired of apologizing for her past, she needed to move forward with her future.

Maybe she could take a bus to a mall in the suburbs, she thought. Get a job at Jamba Juice and wear an apron. She already had lots of those. Find a manager that didn’t think she was the detriment to small business and ask for a job.

“If you refuse to make firm plans for attending Jamestown University in the fall, which is only an option because of the strings your father and I pulled mind you, then you need to work. We aren’t letting you flail under our roof, without direction,” her mom explained. “The job will need to be full time, and you will need to pay for your own expenses. We aren’t supporting this behavior any longer.”

“Any longer? I just graduated and honestly, I don’t want to waste your money when I don’t know what I want.”

Her mom snorted at that statement, “Call it what you want, Goldie, it was winter semester and you’ve been wandering the house for months like a desperate housewife. When you chose to finish school early we assumed it was to get a head start on your future plans. But it’s been four months and you’re still doing nothing.”

“Okay. That’s fine.” Marigold shrugged, preferring this to the alternative. She knew lots of people didn’t have parents who were willing to pay for their college, so she knew how privileged her life was.

But at the same time she couldn’t help what wonder what that privilege was worth when it confined her in a box she didn’t want to live in.

“That’s fine?” her dad asked with disgust, looking up from the paper once more.

Marigold was surprised to learn her words were shocking enough to engage him.

“Fine? What is fine?” he asked. “You have all the opportunity in the world. Opportunity I would have loved to have when I was your age, and you squander it as if you’re above being a citizen. We’ve put up with quite enough from you. The reckless behavior that consumed last year is not going to start up again, not in my house!”

Marigold bit her lip, not trusting herself to speak. The things she wanted to say served no purpose here. She stayed silent.

Her mom’s intensity cracked under Marigold’s nonchalance, and she held her hands to her face, crying. Marigold didn’t want to hurt her, but she also had no intention of setting her life in motion under a caste system she had no taste for. She didn’t want to go to college, it wasn’t complicated.

And it also wasn’t criminal. She needed time to figure out what she wanted.

“Why won’t you just go to Jamestown?  You could audition for the acting conservatory, or be a film major, anything that puts you in a dorm with a roommate and class schedule. Just don’t do this to us,” her mom begged. “You have so much potential, Marigold, don’t waste it.”

Those words were a slap in the face, and everyone in the room knew it. An acting conservatory was the last thing she would set foot in. They knew the shame she carried with her, and how that girl she’d been wasn’t even the real Marigold. It was an image, an obnoxious attempt to be different. She didn’t need the attention anymore.

“I’ll get a job. I’m not going to let someone spend fifty grand a year on something I don’t want,” Marigold said as she stood, not looking back at the people who wanted her to be all the things she wasn’t.

***

Marigold decompressed with needles. After the morning she’d had with her parents, she needed to feel the familiar weight of them between her fingers, away from her family’s judging eyes. In a bookstore café, she sat in a worn leather chair with a ball of yarn in her lap, her head down. Without makeup, a disguise, and a crew of friends laughing in the background, no one knew who she was.

She took a sip of her iced-tea, realizing with a slight groan that a stack of her father’s new release was on display a few feet away, itching for someone to pass by and pick up a copy of
Man of Steel: Modern American Business Men.

Marigold’s go-to spot at the campus library was now off-limits because Lily was hanging out at Jamestown for her summer Business Intensive. She wanted to avoid that, and any run-ins with old high school classmates, at all costs.

She turned up the volume of her iPod and glanced around. A guy wearing a straw hat had his back to her. She watched as he picked up her dad’s book, turning it around to read the jacket copy. She knew what it said,
Maximillian Archer, NYT Bestselling Author, spent his earlier life he as a steel industry innovator and is now taking his business savvy to the people. Man of Steel explores the pursuit of being your own Industry Superhero.

The guy put down the book and she swore she heard him give a small chuckle before walking away. Marigold smiled to herself, knowing her father believed his book blurb was irresistible. She thought that theory was presumptuous at best, pompous at worst. The fact that the broad-shouldered guy in hipster-suspenders somehow agreed, pleased her.

Looking back at her tiny knitting needles, she realized she had missed a row and unraveled a bit of yarn to get back on track. She purled a new row with swift movements, and then another, satisfied with the way the soft camel-colored scarf finished up.

She glanced at her watch, realizing she needed to head over to Tabitha’s. Her oldest friend, Tabby, was spending the day packing before she left for her summer abroad. Marigold tied off the end of the row, finally finished with the project. Packing up her things, she tossed her empty cup in the trash.

It was a quick walk to Tabitha’s house and she had promised to meet up with her oldest friend before she left for her summer adventure.  It was the least she could do, considering she’d distanced herself from everyone over the last few months. She needed closure. She wanted to move on.

The housekeeper let Marigold in and Tabby ran to the door, in her perpetual state of drama. “I’m so glad you’re here. You’re never where you need to be. I wish you would answer your texts like a normal person,” Tabby whined, walking into the foyer, throwing her arms around Marigold.

Marigold didn’t say anything; she just hugged her friend back. Sometimes words will only come out wrong. Growing apart from someone you’ve known forever is complicated.

When Tabby pulled away, she took in Marigold’s ensemble. “What are you wearing today?” Her face scrunched up in disapproval.

“Just some more stuff I found in my granny’s old trunk of clothes, and I kind of reassembled them. I swear you’ve seen this before.”